In the end, Mr. Peterson hasn’t been successfully canceled. He retains his academic post; his YouTube lectures and podcasts have not been scrubbed from the internet; and his publishers stuck with his books, which are available for purchase. This is true for basically two reasons. The first is that he has tried to understand his would-be cancelers and thinks of them almost as outpatients.
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Barton Swaim, The Wall Street Journal, “The Man They Couldn’t Cancel“
The second reason follows from the first. The cancelers’ strange fixations mean that apologizing to them is folly. Mr. Peterson hasn’t apologized or disavowed any previous statement. Now there’s a rule for his next book: Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong.
I have my disagreements with Jordan Peterson. I also think efforts to cancel him have been silly. The last line is the clincher. If you’re leading, if you’re making a difference, you’ll have critics. You’ll have enemies. Some criticisms will have validity. Others should be brushed aside. When you’ve made a critical error, a mistake that has caused harm, you should apologize.
But when the matter is one of disagreement about ideas, carry on. Don’t cave to the mob.
