“12 Rules for Life” author Jordan B. Peterson is fed up with the questionable practices of tech giants when it comes to honoring the idea of free speech.
The recent decision by crowdfunding platform Patreon to remove popular YouTuber Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, may have been a free-speech tipping point for the clinical psychologist. Mr. Peterson and fellow pundit Dave Rubin of YouTube “The Rubin Report” announced plans to build a “better alternative” for intellectuals and content creators.
“We’ve been engaged in lengthy series of email exchanges with all of the people in our network, and no one is happy at all with what’s been happening,” Mr. Peterson said a joint video released Sunday. “We’ve been determining what our options are. We looked at Subscribe Star, but it looks like PayPal decided to cut funding out from them.”
At issue is Patreon’s decision to kill the account of Mr. Benjamin in early December after its staff was made aware of a guest appearance on a small YouTube channel 10 months ago.
The social commentator took an epithet favored by his racist critics, used their definition for the sake of argument, and said they were acting like white versions of the word.
“I didn’t think that Patreon would go and say that their terms of service simply don’t matter, that they would just judge me on my brand, which has always been politically incorrect, and then now instead of some point instead of the last four years, decide to get rid of me,” Mr. Benjamin said Dec. 14. “There were so many different people affected by this over a vast swath of the political spectrum. It’s not just people who supported me who were bothered. It’s people who are generally interested in taking part in the political dialogue.”
Patreon: Problems and Solutions: Dave Rubin @RubinReport and I discuss what we are going to do in the aftermath of Sargon of Akkad's banning: https://t.co/nH7zaVF2Bw pic.twitter.com/1L3GPx2L86
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) December 16, 2018
Mr. Benjamin has said that Patreon, besides failing to put his words into proper context, is violating its own terms of service since his appearance was never posted on the platform.
“I think we should just make it very clear for everybody how significant what happened to Carl Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, is,” Mr. Rubin said Sunday. “It doesn’t matter what you think of him or whether you agree or any of that stuff. The banning of him for doing something that was not on the Patreon platform, that wasn’t even done on his channel because of a word he said where he was using the word against the ‘alt-right’ or the neo-Nazis or whatever you want to call them, is a massive move of that line of what’s acceptable.”
Mr. Rubin also noted that Patreon’s decision is at odds with comments its CEO, Jack Conte, made while on his show.
The platform is supposed to only hold people accountable for “Manifest Observable Behavior,” on the platform.
“‘M.O.B.’ You can’t make that up. There’s a real beauty there,” Mr. Rubin deadpanned.
“I’ve been working on a system to allow authors and other people who engage publicly on intellectual issues to interact more effectively with their readers and viewers and listeners,” Mr. Peterson said. “It occurred to me this week that with a bit of modification that that can serve exactly the function that we’re hoping it could serve. What we’re going to try and do as fast as we possibly can is to set this system up on a subscriber model that’s analogous to Patreon. It will have a bunch of additional features, which I don’t want to talk about right now, and I don’t want to overpromise because the system is new.”
“We going to try and get that rolled out as fast as we possibly can,” he continued. “Dave and I are planning to do this as soon as we can do this in an intelligent way. … We have not been sleeping on this front, man. People are trying to figure out what to do so this stops happening.
Good luck to Peterson and Rubin.
As always from Dr. P., an active and practical solution.
Dr. Peterson is definitely a gray champion.
Whew! For a moment there I thought you said ‘gay’ champion.
Within a year of start up, Peterson’s Re-Patreon will probably ban 99.9% of the same people Patreon bans. It’s just another fake solution in search of victims from him. It’s more theatrical staging, to lend false credibility to Peterson and his ilk. These people are controlled, fake, opposition. They will have you wasting years arguing over whatever irrelevant crap they are selling this week, while our civilization rots to the ground around us.
In my opinion, Jordan Peterson’s job is to keep whites quiescent and completely isolated from any effective means of exercising political power in their own self interest – and completely ignorant of the actual problems we face and of their source. When you analyze his various positions and proposals, ask yourself if they will enhance or diminish white political power.
I believe, ultimately, the path he is attempting to lead white people down ends with us being exterminated – and I think he knows it will end badly for us.
He pushes this socially and politically suicidal garbage, and I think he knows full well where he is trying to lead us. To me, he appears to be a human Judas Goat – leading us to a slaughter which he believes he will escape – and so are the other members of their ‘intellectual dark web,’ a web intended to deceive and ensnare and destroy us.
These people appear to be utterly evil, and are seemingly eagerly willing to sell us out for thirty pieces of silver. I think that if you place any trust in these people, they will lead you and everyone you care for to a bad end.
You’re looking for a messiah, to lead you out of this desert. If you follow them, you’re placing your faith in the wrong people.
What is your reasoning. Spell it out. You told us nothing.
Vox Day has exposed this in detail in his book and his blog posts.
Vox did a marvelous service to us all, in exposing this guy. I too had been sucked into his little cult, but *something* about him just didnt square-up right, and now it makes sense as tot he scam he’s pulling (the 12 rules book is an absolute JOKE, btw). Im glad VD took the time to research it all, and then take the abuse from JP’s unthinking sycophants to explain all of this. It’s all right there to read…
Agreed. Peterson’s Patreon replacement will be as different from Patreon as the Republican party is from the Democrat party.
Peterson teaches people how to argue in an elegant, intelligent way which cannot be dismissed. That alone is an enormous lasting contribution.
There’s a BIG difference between being a Judas goat and standing up like a leader under fire and saying “follow me!”
Harrington Richardson
Well-said AC. Peterson is a vapid, word-salad huckster, and should not be trusted. And he WILL start banning people on his new platform for *exactly the same crap* that the Leftists-converged sites do now!! And you can take THAT to the bank.
There is some truth to what you have stated but I would like to see a full analysis. The fact Peterson has become such a celebrity in such a short time, with major exposure in the Fake News Networks, raises serious questions. Also, his unwillingness to address the Elephant in the Kitchen, i.e. the Jewish Question, raises a lot of red flags. This may be tactical on Peterson’s part because taking on the cultural Marxists and social (in)justice warriors takes a lot of guts and a constitution of steel. The important point is that anyone who fights against Cultural Marxism and for free speech cannot be all bad and regardless of his motives serves our purposes. I view Trump in the same light as a step along the tortuous path to freedom and true sovereignty. As some point, when he is strong enough, Peterson who is a great supporter of Alexandra Solzhenitsyn will have to address Solzhenitsyn’s last and most powerful book, “Two Hundred Years Together” that documents in great detail the corrupting and subversive role that Jews have played in Russia leading up to the Jewish Bolshevik coup d’stat (this was not a Russian people’s revolution) and the tyranny and mass killing of tens of millions of Russians under Bolshevism without a “shred of remorse”.
OK maybe JP is or is not what he claims to be (though personally I belive he is). But let’s do a little objective thinking.
JP claims to be upset about Patreon, and I think he has good reason. Call me old fashioned but I actually think honorable people should do what they say they’re going to do. In this case Patreon hasn’t – it has lied about its ToS and shut down (gagged) someone for reasons that aren’t about its ToS. (Which I guess raises all sorts of questions why? Why would a commercially successful platform seemingly put a gun against it’s own head like this?)
JP says that he’s working to create a new platform which should support free speech better. OK, let’s see. But at least the man claims to be doing something (which is more than most armchair warriors are doing). And, it sounds as if his plans are quite advanced (almost like he recognised in advance that there’s an issue with establishment websites shutting down free speech…. who’d have thunk?)
Let’s see if he delivers, and yes let’s also see if his attempt survives the same sort of pressures it seems Patreon has fallen to. But at least here’s someone who seems to be trying. What are you doing other than taking pot shots at him? Only one of you seems to be in the arena.
I guess I see a bigger picture here where something vital and fundamental is under attack – the right for individuals to think and talk freely about what they think – which seems to be an absolutely fundamantal human right. It seems increasingly clear that this is not a right that we may have for very much longer on the internet. There are dark forces (vested interests) desperately and actively working to take that right away from anyone who doesn’t think in certain ways. Our right to share what we chose to think is steadily being stolen. Now, JP may or may not be the real deal, but he claims to believe that free speech is something worth fighting for; he seems to be trying to do something about that, and he seems to have a lot of reputation on the line. And I don’t actually see too many others doing that.
This all feels very much like a David and Goliath fight, where your and my right to openly express what we feel is TOTALLY at risk. In the absense of anyone actually taking to the streets, folks like JP will get my support.
I’ve always liked Peterson, even when he said things with which I do not agree, though those are limited. Like many of you, I stumble on the Jewish questions, wanting someone without an agenda of their own (loves Nazis/hates Nazis/denies Holocaust/survived Holocaust) to just explain to me in simple terms how one ethnic/religious group managed to embroil themselves in just about every conflict known to human history, at least if the propaganda is to be believed.
So, I don’t necessarily blame Peterson for having difficulty answering the questions about Israel and the Jewish issue. He is a clinical psychologist by training and profession, with teaching a development from that, I grasp. He is also pragmatic and, perhaps, the most sober, attentive and active listener I’ve ever witnessed.
I wish him success in this effort. If he has to ban a few idiots and assholes, well, the best of them do, eh?
On what backbone will this new platform ride? Who owns the backbone?
Yes! Im not sure they are thinking this thru all the way… they will have to have their own infrastructure, top to bottom… servers, a card processing site, heck maybe even their own bank, bc the SJW’s will go after them at all levels to stop it (and they WILL). But in the end, it wont matter, bc either he will submit to their insane ideology (which JP already does, just not quite as extreme) or they will crush him. A truly independent financial system will need to be based on something outside the current banking infrastructure, and will probably have to go via the Darkweb, bc they’ll just make it illegal
JP is making serious money on Patreon, about 70 k$ a month. Seems to me he’s thinking of putting his money where his mouth is.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/14/patreon-rise-jordan-peterson-online-membership
This is great news and what one would expect. While they at it, could they create a new Google/YouTube that does not censor content, searches and comments. We also need to replace Facebook and Twitter with similar services that upholds free speech and privacy. BTW, where are the government regulatory agencies when you need them…sorry…a rhetorical question only because we all know the answer? The best thing Trump could do is shut down, de-fund government…permanently.
I’m a huge fan of anyone taking on Marxism. Here in Santa Cruz 2 MORE Marxists were elected to city council, amazingly considering they were the only candidates who ran on a rent control platform, got combined less votes than those who voted for the odious Marxist rent control measure ‘M’, that itself lost 2:1. There were votes split among the other 8 candidates, and heavy lobbying of leftist brain-washed wanna-be SJW transient college students put them over the top, barely. Now they want to do rent control by Ordinance, and they will, against the will of the people. This has real consequences. The lefties who want RC demonize gentrification, but worse things can happen to a city. It can become a welcoming haven zombieland of the economically dysfunctional at the expense of the few remaining wealth producers. The zombies have figured out if they camp on state land (along the highway) the city can do little to stop them (with a communist council that uses that as an excuse to do nothing). You should see the hundred of tents, the ideologically possessed speaking at every council meeting with no income, no address, and being welcomed while the landlords are essentially crucified in words and legislation. The next 2 years will be a tipping point I’m afraid. For your amusement here is an old Santa Cruz high-light video of what meetings are like. I assure you not much has changed except imagine MUCH further leftist strange-o’s than these.
What was that?
Sorry, I don’t know, that was from 2008, but she is mild compared to what goes on now. Anyone gets 2 minutes to speak on any agenda item. The city is loaded with artists who can’t sell “art”, more non-profits than for-profits (maybe), Buskers galore, homeless advocates and havens, great surf, the left-most radical University in the nation easily.
LOL… thanks for the attempt.