Jordan Peterson: I will see this contemptible 're-education' process through to its absurd end (2024)

On Thursday, my attempt to defend myself against the ideologues and petty tyrants that now occupy so many positions of authority in Canada came to an end — or I finally got what I deserve, due to my incautious verbal utterances, depending on your stance. I am (still) a licensed psychologist in Ontario, and was once a full professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Back in 2016, both of those occupations basically came to an end, when I had the temerity to object to the idiot legislation passed by our jackanapes prime minister, Justin Trudeau, the worst leader Canada has ever had, and a contender for the worst in the western world. His moralizing compatriots decided at the time that it was a good idea to rejig the very definition of sex — what could go wrong with that? — and to simultaneously compel everyone to accept that redesignation, on pain of law.

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Bill C-16 made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of the made-up neo-Marxist/postmodernist/queer theory categories of gender identity, which do not exist, and of gender expression, which is literally nothing other than fashion (from the Ontario Human Rights Commission: “Gender expression is how a person publicly expresses or presents their gender. This can include behaviour and outward appearance such as dress, hair, make-up, body language and voice. A person’s chosen name and pronoun are also common ways of expressing gender”). This is legislation for ideologically addled three-year-olds. Bill C-16 is, in a phrase, unutterably stupid, as only a damned fool would assume that criticizing the fashion choice, say, of an autogynephilic 40-year-old with children who decides, despite his family, that he is really a woman — and now wears a dress and nylons for sexual kicks — has anything to do with the racism that doomed the Blacks in the southern United States to their fate, or the murderous anti-Jewish pogroms of eastern Europe.

But we have become such fools in Canada, moralizing blindly and pridefully while inverting our traditions and perverting our legal system. Who cares? Why die on that hill? People asked me such things when I said very publicly that I would rather rot in jail than use the bloody pronouns demanded of me by people too stupid to understand what they were doing — the outright metastatic communists of the progressive liberals and the minor moralizing tyrants of the elite liberal bureaucracy. I care. Why? Because I could see where all this idiocy was headed, as clear as day. I told the arrogant fools in the Canadian Senate (and a hostile and dismissive bunch they were) that confusing young people about their sexual identity would lead to an epidemic of gender dysphoria among young women, and that is precisely what has happened.

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In my wildest dreams, however, I did not have the imagination for evil to predict what else was going to happen. I really had no idea that a horde of surgeons would arise to mutilate and sterilize children, often autistic, gay or otherwise “marginalized” (in the appalling parlance of the so-called progressive left). Such things are likely, apparently, when you mess with the very conception of sex, which is in all likelihood the most fundamental of all perceptual and conceptual categories. If you can mandate acceptance of the fact that a man can be woman merely by saying so, then all manner of lies now become not only acceptable but required.

I use social media regularly — and well. I have literally tens of millions of people who subscribe to my various channels, and hundreds of millions who listen to and watch my YouTube videos and their derivatives. I have used those channels to voice my thoughts about such affairs of sex and gender, criticizing the ideologues who are practising their evil craft on the most vulnerable members of society. I believe that the ”transing” of minors is: first, a crime against humanity (as the involuntary sterilization of human beings is so defined by the United Nations); and second, the worst moral crime that the medical community has ever committed.

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I have made such views known not least on X, the world’s premier free speech platform, where I have objected, since 2016, to the trans “gender-affirming” butchers and the artists and actresses who have aided and abetted them. I also used that platform to spew some derisive words toward Trudeau, who — as the most scandal-ridden, incompetent, moralizing and economically illiterate prime minister in the history of this now rather sad little country — richly deserved it. I said some rather rude things about his former chief of staff, and about some councillor in Ottawa who could not refrain (like so many politicians) from spreading outright lies about the Freedom Convoy.

I talked to Joe Rogan — who is arguably the world’s most influential journalist, by a large margin — about the lies of the power-mad climate apocalypse-mongers and doomsayers who, abiding by a Malthusian view of human economy and planetary biology, insist that there are too many people on the planet and that degrowth and deindustrialization — which will be undertaken on the backs of the poor — are the only acceptable solutions to the depredation of mankind. I do not believe any of that. I believe it is a pack of contemptible lies, told by those who hate humanity and will stop at nothing to regulate absolutely everything. I ask you, Canadians: has the planet been served well by the fact that you can no longer put your groceries in bags? Or is that just another bit of evidence that there is nothing too petty for the demented moralizers of the progressive green left to regulate and control under the guise of planetary salvation?

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There were some people, out there in the wide world, who objected to my tweets. The College of Psychologists of Ontario has a convenient complaint portal on its website that anyone, anywhere can use to inform and carp about my behaviour (and that of other psychologists) for any reason at any time. This is true whether they were one of my clients or not — or even knew anyone who had been one of my clients. Such complaint processes regarding professional conduct have been weaponized by the Machiavellian left, experts as they are at the kind of covert warfare that characterizes those with so-called Cluster B psychopathology: the histrionic, borderline, narcissistic antisocial types who use gossip and reputation destruction to carve their destructive swath through their own lives, the lives of others and the general social world.

So they submitted their complaints, electronically, at no cost to themselves, with no risk of public exposure, and to my detriment. The College of Psychologists of Ontario is duty-bound to investigate every complaint, no matter how trivial or falsely motivated, and then to decide what to pursue.

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Unfortunately, that body has also been taken over by the same ideological types, and at least a small coterie of them (and it is so often now exactly that small coterie) have decided that holding my clinical license hostage, attempting to destroy my reputation and subjecting me to tremendous legal expenses (I have already spent more than $1 million defending myself against this lawfare), insanity-making stress and interference with my livelihood is something well worth doing, given that I have had the constant temerity to inform the public — as is my duty — about just what the hell is transpiring on the psychological front. Hence the series of complaints that have been upheld by this delightful board, even after my insistence that all of this is politically motivated, as it is, culminating in the college’s decision to subject me to indefinite “re-education,” at my own expense, at the hands of one of their so-called social media experts (a professional designation that in no way even exists), until I have learned whatever lesson I am supposed to learn, which I suppose is to hold my bloody tongue.

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I objected to such cavalier and ideologically motivated treatment at the hands of an ideologically captured and essentially anonymous accusatory mob, and pushed my objections through the provincial court of appeal, which rejected them, to the Supreme Court itself, which did the same thing as its provincial counterpart on Aug. 8. I am now subject to the re-education process, and have no further appeal. I have no idea how this charade is going to play itself out.

Who is going to teach me? What am I supposed to learn? Do not fool yourself into thinking that there is any precedent to this, or any plan. It is all being made up by the subterranean prosecutors who are pushing their ideological agenda. Where will it end? I cannot say, but I can tell you this:

Canadians once again have a very hard choice in front of them. The Supreme Court has essentially decided (or, more accurately, failed to take responsibility and therefore decided by default) that the much-vaunted Charter of Rights and Freedoms can be completely ignored by the regulatory bodies that license professionals in Canada. There are two conclusions that must be drawn in the aftermath of this decision. The first is that the Charter itself is not worth the paper it is written on. If comparatively low-level bureaucrats can suspend its most important provisions, more or less at will, it is a document with no real force whatsoever. I suspected as much when it was implemented back in the 1980s, and it is certainly the case that my worst suspicions have been justified.

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Worse, however, is the clear consequence for professionals and those they serve in Canada. My fellow citizens: it is now a legal requirement in your sad state for the lawyers, engineers, teachers, physicians, psychologists and social workers who serve you — often in your hours of most desperate need — to lie to you, in order to ensure they are not transgressing against the ideological assumptions of those who fly the flag of the radical left. This means that if you have a child in psychological trouble, for example, you will not get the truth from the professionals whose counsel you may be driven to seek. The same applies to lawyers — and even more so to the physicians who will now be more likely to castrate and slice off breasts and sterilize when children present themselves with the typical confusion of adolescence.

Why believe me? If I was in the position of the average Canadian, I would be unlikely to do so. Here is the terrible conundrum such individuals now find themselves in: either Jordan B. Peterson is an unreliable purveyor of paranoid fantasies, and rude to boot, or the entire Liberal party, Justin Trudeau, the higher education system itself (and let us not forget about the appalling K-12 leftist teacher-led propaganda venture) has become unreliable to the point of inviable corruption.

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It is much easier to believe the former. Unfortunately, the former is not true. I am merely saying publicly, however badly, what all my cowardly, craven, lying colleagues know full well to be true: that all this “gender-affirming” nonsense is not only a lie, but a foul, dangerous lie; that the overwhelming majority of children with so-called gender dysphoria will grow out of it by the time they are adults; and that the course of action with the least possible damage is the right response to such confusion. The right response is anything but the identity transformation, puberty blockers, hormonal interventions and grotesque and brutal surgical procedures that are far too often recommended by those who should, and likely do, know better.

Why are all the professionals — psychological, legal and medical — going along with this madness? Because they do not want to suffer the same fate — loss of employment, loss of practice, complex legal entanglement, severe stress, unsustainable financial expense — that has come to visit my family and me. So they lie through their teeth, to ensure the demented propositions of the radicals can remain unchallenged, and their destructive and increasingly deadly ideology can continue its propagation through our once-great institutions.

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Here’s where we are, Canucks. To reiterate: on Aug. 8, your Supreme Court determined that professionals practising in your country cannot rely on the most fundamental document of our polity — the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — to protect them against the nonsense-purveyors of the idiot left. If your professionals cannot speak their minds, not only can they not do their jobs, but their fate indicates yours. If lawyers, physicians, psychologists, engineers and other highly skilled, licensed people have to lie in order to maintain their standing — to ensure their livelihoods, to maintain their reputations, to stay free of the long and increasingly corrupt hand of the law — what makes you think you have any chance whatsoever to maintain a relationship with the truth?

I really do not have an iron in this fire, practically speaking. I could escape to the United States (an increasingly tempting alternative), or tell the college to go to perdition and renounce the professional license that I am more and more embarrassed to have, given the stunning cowardice of my compatriots, and which I really do not use in any case, because working as a practising psychologist has become something untenable for me. But I am instead going to see this contemptible process through to what will almost certainly be its absurd end. I am going to find out just what sort of person will step forward to “re-educate” me. I am going to see what constraints are put on my movement, and the sound of my tongue, while all that unfolds, and I am going to make it as public as possible.

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But in the meantime, my fellow citizens, you might consider awakening from your slumber. The Canada of today is not what it was 20 years ago — even 10 — and its new configuration is not one that will bring you the benefits to which you have become accustomed. We now live in a land — not least courtesy of Bill C-16, which I warned you about, to my great peril — where it is potentially illegal to insist that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, or to object to the castration and mutilation of children. We now live in a land where the federal government is essentially in opposition to the economic engine of the land (dependent as we are, for better or worse, on the resource economy). We are poorer than our American cousins. Our real estate costs have spiralled out of control. Our borders are open. Our leader is a juvenile narcissist. Our finances are a mess. And our Charter of Rights is not worth the ink that was spilled in its production.

National Post

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