Stossel: Jordan Peterson vs. “Social Justice Warriors”

Many leftists hate Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto.

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Leftists began to hate Peterson after he said he'd disobey a proposed Canadian law that would force Canadians to call anyone who doesn't want to be called "he or she" something else, like "ze" or "xe."

When Peterson said he'd refuse to obey, angry students shouted Peterson down, blowing air horns and screaming to make sure others couldn't hear.

Peterson defends his position to John Stossel: "I don't care what people want to be called. That's fine, but that doesn't mean I should be compelled by law to call them that."

It's not just students who slam Peterson. In one TV interview, Peterson stayed calm while the host tried to put words in his mouth.

"You are saying that women aren't intelligent enough to run these top companies....You don't believe in equal pay," Cathy Newman, the reporter at Britain's Channel 4 News, insisted.

"No, I'm not saying that at all," Peterson responded. He hadn't said that. What he had said, is that natural differences explain most of the gender wage gap.

As an example, Peterson cites studies that find, in wealthy countries that focus most on equality, like Sweden, even fewer women major in science and math. Instead they pick fields that deal with people, like teaching, and men tend more toward technical fields.

Peterson says this shows that when men and women have the most freedom to decide what they do, they pick fields that line up with their natural biological interests.

That idea infuriates leftists. "It should infuriate them," Peterson tells Stossel. "Because I'm going right at the heart of the radical leftist doctrine."

That doctrine is social justice, the idea that all groups should have equal outcomes; that there should be just as many female CEOs, scientists, and computer programmers, because men and women are essentially the same. If outcomes differ, it must be sexism.

Peterson says that the focus on group equality is a spinoff of Marxism. That after Marxism failed spectacularly in the economic realm, Marxists applied their way of thinking to issues like the difference between men and women.

"We've got a hundred million corpses stacked up to demonstrate" the failure of Marxism, says Peterson. And the new Marxism-derived focus on group equality won't end any better.

Peterson calls for the opposite of Marxism–a focus on the individual.

He says people should stick with "the principles that govern the West; capitalist principles. The free market principles." With those principles "we do better than any place has ever done."

The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel, his independent production company, Stossel Productions, and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.