Jordan peterson

Pity the poor rockstar who finds himself embroiled in the culture wars because he liked the wrong book. Winston Marshall, banjo player for  the hugely successful band Mumford and Sons, almost certainly had no idea what he was getting himself into when he decided to tweet praise at Andy Ngo, the conservative journalist, for his best-selling book about the horrors of antifa. 'Finally had time to read your important book. You’re a brave man,' tweeted Marshall, referring to the conservative journalist’s latest periodical Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. The book describes itself as telling 'the story of this violent hate group from the very beginning'. Queue a barrage of condemnation from the Twittersphere, accusing Marshall of 'endorsing fascism'.

If you have ever visited the internet, you likely noticed it is rife with hyperbole and lacking in nuance. All jokes are to be taken literally, and responded to with long, academic-sounding threads that explain why the joke, in fact, amounts to violence. Everyone we don’t like is a fascist. Those who disagree with our ideologies are murderers, and political differences are cause for excommunication. The response to foibles or disagreements is a days-long hounding of the guilty party, leading them to get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness or simply disappear. The best way to make the world a better place, according to social media, is by destroying someone else. I have been told to kill myself, drink bleach, and die in a fire more times than I can count.

A common view is that the mainstream media loves censorship. Mainstream commentators smear people as bigots, mainstream social media platforms close their accounts and mainstream politicians applaud their efforts. Alternative tendencies like the 'Intellectual Dark Web' have emerged to oppose censorship. But is the alternative media free of its own censorious trends?One of the more memorable episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience involved the comedian cum commentator-cum-podcaster Mr Rogan sitting down with his friends, the comedian Bryan Callen and the UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub. Schaub had just come off a loss by technical knockout and expected to discuss the bout in a collegial fashion.

Readers can be forgiven – indeed, should bless the Lord – for not knowing ‘Tana Mongeau’ and ‘Fousey’ but on the strange alternative universe that is YouTube they have 3.7 million and 10 million subscribers respectively. Young people have flocked to hear their crazed, interminable ramblings about fashion, music and ‘drama’. This year, both decided to take their newfound fame into the outside world and hold festivals where they could meet and entertain their fans. Both of their events were catastrophic. Mongeau’s resulted in gigantic queues after she overlooked the elementary task of selling tickets according to the venues capacity. Ambulances were called after her fans suffered from dehydration in the summer heat.