At this point, Canadian psychologist and self-help author Jordan Peterson, beloved by the alt-right, is practically the patron saint of White cisgender heternormative male grievance.
After being banned from Twitter over the summer for making transphobic comments about actor Elliot Page, the author—who has made hay by portraying liberals and social justice activists as “snowflakes”—cast himself as a free-speech martyr under attack from “woke” forces.
So bursting into tears because actor and director Olivia Wilde called him a “hero” to “incels”— “involuntary celibates,” the online community that blames women for their inability to be attractive and believe women should be punished for their failures—isn’t exactly a turn of events you’d expect from someone with so much bluster.
But that’s what happened when fellow conservative mouthpiece Piers Morgan revealed Wilde’s take to Peterson on a recent episode of his show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, as seen below.
Guess he’s triggered.
Morgan revealed to Peterson the villain in Wilde’s controversial new film, Don’t Worry Darling, was based on Peterson. Speaking with fellow actor Maggie Gyllenhaal in a recent Interview magazine profile, Wilde said of the character Frank, played by Chris Pine:
“We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community…”
Said community has long had ties to far-right and White nationalist communities. Perpetrators of several mass murders and shootings have been self-identified incels, including most notably the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista massacre.
And Wilde is right incels have long embraced Peterson and he has embraced them right back, telling a New York Times reporter in 2018 the solution to incels’ loneliness is “enforced monogamy.”
***
It does not seem to have occurred to Peterson the reason people “pile abuse” on incels is because they deal with their alienation by advocating and often committing violence—including rape and murder—against women as retribution for their own failures.
