"Before they got power, they wrote nicely, just like modern Leftists do."

Not really, have you read what Lenin, Stalin, and Mao said and did before they took power? They displayed authoritarian tendencies and methods, which btw, was taken noticed by and condemned by other Leftists before they took power.

In addition to being empirically wrong, as Sapshin highlighted, what you said doesn't even have the concepts right.

Western Maoists, Leninists etc... hate identity politics, intersectionality, discourse analysis etc etc. The Marxist or Marxism inspired left dislike identity politics; in that it fractures the interest of the proletariat in some way, or is entirely irrelevant to any class struggle in other forms of Marxian doxa. Particularly dogmatic ones, like any contemporary third worldists, get really pissed off if you start trying to locate an oppressed class or sites of struggle which aren't fundamentally reducible to economic class. They think along with Peterson that the contemporary liberal left is engaged in useless virtue signalling partisanship and the third worldists (read: those with Maoist heritage) hold this belief especially strongly.

Does this make Peterson a Maoist or a Marxist? No. Does this mean that the majority of these leftists with Maoist sympathies are actually engaging in revolutionary violence? No, the majority of them are blogging from good universities in the US (in my experience).

So how can we be sure that some of our nice modern Leftists aren't nascent savage psychopaths? — gurugeorge

We don't have to be for the generalized comparison to be absurd just like we don't have to be sure that some nice modern conservative writers aren't nascent savage psychopaths for the generalized comparison of them to Hitler to be absurd. Anyhow, you don't have to look further than the population at large to find a significant proportion of budding psychopaths—or at least the kind of potential for savagery that we would identify with the extremes of fascism and communism etc.—as Milgram and others have demonstrated. So, it would hardly be less valid or useful to compare us all to Pol Pot.

IOW, the comparison is not at all absurd, because the expressed ideology is virtually identical. — gurugeorge

Except it's not at all.

Lesson #1 in pathological paranoia: go around asking how we know something is not the case: how do we know the royals aren't really blue bloods? How do we know that aliens don't really live among us?

How do I know that you aren't a pathologically self-loathing bigot?

A quick study, you are!

I was just trying to figure out your logic. Assert baseless shit > mock those who call out said shit > ???

Me, mock? No, no, pathological paranoia is a serious problem that should be treated with the gravity it deserves!

Phew, I'm glad that we agree. The pathological paranoia that many have with white males is a serious problem that should be treated with the gravity it deserves, :fire:

Identity politics!

He specifically says that the ideology that drove Mao from his beginnings to his psychopathic — Mr Phil O'Sophy

That part. I don't see what your graph has to do with what I said. It's the same as saying Islam equals terrorism because there were a few Islamic terrorists. Then we can also conclude Christianity is evil due to all the wars fought in its name. It's not an argument.

He specifically says that the ideology that drove Mao from his beginnings to his psychopathic end — Mr Phil O'Sophy

How could Peterson possibly know what drove Mao to his destructive end?

According to your report, it seems that Peterson asserts that it was Mao's Marxist ideology. Yet no shred of evidence is offered to support such an assertion.

I could with the same level of justification assert that it was Anders Bering Breivik's Christian ideology that drove him to murder seventy people.

Both assertions would be as baseless and nonsensical as each other.

Failing to see the cause of either adulation or condemnation with Peterson. — Wayfarer

If, as some of his supporters on here have suggested, he has claimed that Marxism leads to mass murder, then that is a sufficient reason for condemnation. It's effectively proposing a relaunch of the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era, and CIA activities like the assassination of Allende, supporting Suharto's murderous regime and fostering Fascist coups in goodness knows how many developing countries, all in the name of protecting us from Marxism.

I don't know whether Peterson has actually said such things, because he seems very careful to confine his more controversial utterances to video talks, rather than setting them down in writing where they are readily accessible to all, and less protected by a 'heat of the moment' or 'taken out of context' defence.

I'm not going to waste time suffering through his long videos. If his political opinions are not important enough to set down in writing, they are not important enough for me to waste time sifting through an endless video to find.

So my criticism - it would be OTT to call it a condemnation - is that when it comes to politics he is a trivialising, anti-intellectual lightweight that is not worth serious people spending their time on. If he has written a book giving helpful life advice to young men then good for him. But it is his hysterical condemnation of Marxism that is the subject of this thread, not his life advice to young men.

he has claimed that Marxism leads to mass murder, then that is a sufficient reason for condemnation. — andrewk

There were indubitably acts of mass murder conducted by Sovet Russia and Communist China, among others. Doesn’t warrant hysteria but the fact remains.

I think it’s a ref to people brandishing the Little Red Book. They should be aware of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.

Doesn’t warrant hysteria but the fact remains. — Wayfarer

But this is obviously not just about facts. JP is not presenting a history lecture, he's making a political argument, so what matters is not the veracity of his facts, but the validity of the argument he draws from them.

So saying that communist regimes have had bad records on mass murder is just emotive rhetoric without the firm argument that all left-leaning politics will lead to communist regimes of the type previously seen.

Ironically, its a fairly Marxist interpretation of societal change to say that anything has an 'inevitable' direction.

he's making a political argument, so what matters is not the veracity of his facts, but the validity of the argument he draws from them. — Pseudonym

Do you think the measure of the validity of that issue can be ascertained scientifically?

Do you think the measure of the validity of that issue can be ascertained scientifically? — Wayfarer

To the extent that it can be ascertained at all, yes. Hypotheses can be formulated, based as much as possible on existing knowledge, and these can be tested. Where that can't be done, it's anyone's guess, we might as well toss a coin.

Except it's not at all. — Baden

But it is. For example, there's the same mangling of language - the modern Left's rhetorical tricks are identical to those that enabled bastards within older Leftist ranks to rise by kafkatrapping their "useful idiots" (the starry-eyed idealists) using the same rhetorical methods that were formerly used against to kafkatrap the "oppressors."

There's the same atttribution of collective guilt to individuals (formerly via socioeconomic class, now via race and gender). The same pseudo-scientific sense of base-to-superstructure determinism (that if you're part of that group you must therefore necessarily behave in such-and-such a way), and the same impossibility of redemption other than by toeing to the party line.

And above, all the same uncritical idealism, regarding the same unquestioned absolute ideal (equality), that nullifies ordinary moral qualms, because the goal is so beautiful that any means are justified in its attainment.

Western Maoists, Leninists etc... hate identity politics, intersectionality, discourse analysis etc etc. — fdrake

No they don't, they practice identity politics in terms of socioeconomic class - they're just a bit too stupid to realize what the modern Left realized: that race and gender gives you a much bigger pool of people you can entrap.

IOW, it's true that the old, hard Leftists are pissed off with the identity politics of the modern Left, but that's only because they think it's focussed on the wrong type of identity.

There were indubitably acts of mass murder conducted by Sovet Russia and Communist China, among others. Doesn’t warrant hysteria but the fact remains. — Wayfarer

If war is diplomacy by other means, mass murder is social policy by other means. No one approves of it, but mass murder seems to have been a handy tool which has been reached for when more deliberative processes don't seem to be getting the job done.

That said, Stalin and Mao are both stand head and shoulders above the crowd of mass murderers, along with Hitler, and some others. But it wasn't communism, as far as I know, that led the US to pretty much wipe out native people. They were in our way, camping on valuable ground that, in our humble opinions, was not being put to its highest and best purpose--i.e., making America Great the first time around. The Japanese empire wasn't a communist operation either, as far as I know. Neither was the British Empire (killed a few, here and there) or the Spanish Empire (killed a few, here and there).

For that matter, it probably wasn't communism as envisaged by Marx and Engels and a batch of other early socialists/communists that drove Stalin and Mao. It was paranoia and bad policy

it wasn't communism, as far as I know, that led the US to pretty much wipe out native people. They were in our way, — Bitter Crank

Have you not read @gurugeorge's comments in the other JP thread (The politics of responsibility). Apparently early Americans didn't massacre the native population at all, they just all died mysteriously but completely unsuspiciously shortly after voluntarily handing over their land. Those damn commies however...

Wikipedia (my favourite philosophy textbook apparently) has lists of mass killings from all sorts of anthropogenic causes, together with mean, lower and upper bounds of the estimated death toll. It makes for interesting reading.

Communist states feature highly in both massacres and deaths from avoidable famine. Fascist states have committed the largest single atrocities. Colonialism features most highly if you take the upper estimates (estimates are wide because no-one really knew the starting population). But they're all outweighed quite significantly by the advertising and commercialisation of cigarettes at a massive 79 million.

I wonder if a complete ban on cigarette advertising has figured highly in JPs agenda?

Communist states feature highly in both massacres and deaths from avoidable famine. Fascist states have committed the largest single atrocities. Colonialism features most highly if you take the upper estimates (estimates are wide because no-one really knew the starting population). — Pseudonym

One might almost think that there is a commonality of regime change, and fragility of power structures that leads to massacres. As if those in power do not relinquish it voluntarily...

Peterson tweeted about the Current Events article yesterday, and hilariously, couldn't tell the difference between a legitimate ad and a parody.

Apparently early Americans didn't massacre the native population at all, they just all died mysteriously but completely unsuspiciously shortly after voluntarily handing over their land. — Pseudonym

Quote?

Doesn’t warrant hysteria but the fact remains. — Wayfarer

It is a historical observation. Just as the facts of the many acts of mass murder conducted by Christian regimes and by Western capitalist colonial powers 'remain'. Facts are not arguments. Further, unless connected to an argument or proposal they are meaningless.

But a careful consideration of the political track record of Marxist regimes. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

That's not even a sentence. If you have a proposal or argument to make, then make it. If your proposal is that people should study the horrors of Mao's China and Stalin's USSR, you're a bit late. People have been writing dissertations on them for decades. As they have also been for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the many genocides of aboriginal people, mass atrocities conducted under the motivation of Christianity and Capitalism.

I do not regard modern-day Christians and Capitalists as proto-mass murderers on account of those past atrocities. Neither should anybody regard modern-day Marxists as such.

So you see class politics as an example of identity politics?

So you see class politics as an example of identity politics? — fdrake

I see party politics as identity politics.

I vaguely remember that you see all politics as identity politics.