Jordan Peterson's books advocate personal responsibility.
Ta-Hensi Coates insinuates himself into the comic book world, appropriates a character created by someone else and then attempts to characterise a well-known figure as a fascist in order to cover up his hucksterism and obvious creative failings:
A professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Peterson first rose to prominence in 2016 for a series of YouTube lectures in which he spoke out against identity politics, and in particular against a federal government push to criminalize discrimination against “gender identity” — which Peterson argued would forcibly compel the use of gender-neutral pronouns such as “ze” or “zir.”
Ever since, Peterson has become a kind of self-help guru advocating personal responsibility and pushing against increasingly trendy concepts such as unconscious bias or the gender pay gap. “Have some humility. Clean up your bedroom. Take care of your family. Follow your conscience,” he writes in his latest book Beyond Order.
In the latest Captain America, first published on March 31, Red Skull is shown recruiting wayward young men into armies of crypto-fascist street gangs. “It’s the same for all of them. Young men. Weak. Looking for purpose … he tells them what they’ve always longed to hear. That they are secretly great,” is how Captain America describes Red Skull’s tactics.
The issue is part of a series of Captain America authored by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a bestselling author and former writer for The Atlantic. In one of Coates’ most well-circulated articles, written in 2014, he became a prominent advocate for African-American reparations.
Peterson first became aware of parallels between himself and the new Red Skull in a tweet from a supporter, to which he responded on April 5th with a tweeted “what the hell?” Although the reference circulated widely around the internet this week, no direct link has been confirmed by the issue’s authors.
“I have received no confirmation or comment from Marvel or Coates. Nor do I expect to,” Peterson told the National Post. “They can say or imply whatever they wish. I firmly believe that the public is smart enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.”
More:
A fuller answer is that Peterson, through a combination of his intelligence and to some degree the operations of chance, was hurled into international prominence and gained an audience of millions. He offered the fullest, most thought-out rebuttal to the very key, trendy and dogmatic positions of the hard left. These are the scourge of identity politics, environmentalism as a substitute religion, the pernicious notion of collective guilt, anti-white fulminations, and the repression of free speech that shelters under the ludicrous banners of “safe spaces” and the “speech is violence” mantra. To this litany of malefactions he added praise for, and recommended the currently outrageous idea of, personal responsibility.
In other words, Dr. Peterson, almost single-handedly, took on the whole woke sensibility and all its attendant onslaughts against common sense, its obsession with deploring the culture of the West, its serpentine entanglement with the arts curricula of most universities, and, ultimately, its quintessential preciousness. He shook the columns of the whole left-thinking temple. He was, consequently, one man at the centre of a hurricane. ...
Seems author and culture warrior Ta-Nehisi Coates scripted — an adult wouldn’t want this known — the latest Captain America, and gave to the villainous Red Skull a slimly disguised and slimy version of some of Peterson’s teachings. Dr. Peterson responded to this contemptible puerility with “What in the world is this” and more tellingly I think with: “Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull?”
Answer: Yes you do. You also live in a universe where the smallest people go for the cheapest insults.
Political correctness and its guillotine blade, cancel culture, is the palsy of our days. There is no vaccine for this scourge, and there is no one looking for a vaccine. Peterson’s resistance against both is, in my view, one of the truly virtuous and courageous actions of our time. No wonder he is so viciously maligned.
Aside from fan-boys, does anyone still read comic books (rather - "graphic novels") anymore? Once a childhood distraction and perhaps a newer incarnation of ancient myths and their values, these items now are nothing more than inane screeds cobbled together by people who wish that they could write as well as previous writers could. They project their bitterness against people who stand on their own. They are not even clever enough to create their own nuanced characters and plots.
So much for good writing.
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