Jordan Peterson: Why Hasn’t He Been Cancelled?

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

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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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.

Barton Swaim, The Wall Street Journal, “The Man They Couldn’t Cancel

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.