After Trickle Down, Kicking Down: On Jordan Peterson, Naturalizing Inequality, and Neofascist Indirect Apologetics

This paper argues that Jordan Peterson’s enthusiastic reception, including on the neofascist Right, reflects how his discourse functions as a form of indirect capitalist apologetics, which no longer obviates how the sociopolitical system produces massive inequalities, but sanctifies inequalities as natural and eternal. Part 1 frames the contention of the paper, addressing methodological issues. Part 2 establishes the understanding of indirect apologetics, drawn from Gyorgy Lukács’ account of fascist ideology as involving the following three irrationalist functions: first, ontologizing and relativizing peoples’ material, socioeconomic concerns; second, positioning the in-group as privileged by nature; and third, displacing socioeconomically mediated anxieties onto designated enemies to be combatted by a revivified, masculine culture. Part 3 shows how Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life proposes a social Darwinism (indirect apologetics, function 1), whose darker underside is authoritarian permission to ‘kick down’ on the weak, or those who would seek to ameliorate sociopolitical conditions (indirect apologetics, functions 2, 3).