In this episode, I speak with Logan Lansing and James Lindsay, authors of The Woke Warpath and The Querying of the American Child, about the intersection between Marxism and postmodernism, and the ways in which the two ideologies come together in order to create a metanarrative that purports to encompass everything, but is actually a theology that encompasses everything but a totalitarian theology, allied with a philosophical school that claims to claim that there are no overarching metansarratives, despite the fact that Marxism is precisely one of those. How do these two things go together? How can anyone oppose such noble views? How do we know that all of our theorizing isn't just a mask for our weird bigotry? And how can we stop being labeled as racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-colonialist, etc. by the leftist ideologues who come to define the terms that we use to describe ourselves? Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers a roadmap towards healing. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. -Dr. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiety provides a roadmap toward a brighter, more hopeful future. Go to Dailywireplus.me/Dailywireplus and start watching Dr. B.P. Peterson s new series, "Depression and Anxiety: The Path to a Better Life" on Dailywire Plus. - Subscribe to Daily Wire Plus to get immediate access to his newest episodes of his new podcast, "Dr. Jordan Peterson's Depression and Depression: A Guide to the Future You Deserve." - Subscribe, Subscribe, and Learn How to Find a Bright Future you Deserve a Brighter Future You Can Have a Positive Place in the New World You Desired, Safe Place. Subscribe, Share, and Share, Share and Retweet this with a Friend and Share it on Social Media Connect with Someone Who Can Help You Reach Someone Who Is Experienced It! Subscribe to the Podcast, Share It On A Friend Me on Itunes, Share it On Itunes and Share It on Insta-Upside Down the Podcasts, and Subscribe to Itunes Subscribe on Podchaser, Subscribe on Instagaming, Share It Out There! . Thank You For Listening
00:00:00.940Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:01:10.700I had the opportunity today to speak to Logan Lansing, who is the author, along with James Lindsay, who was a guest on my podcast and is a force in his own right, obviously.
00:01:24.720The new book, The Querying of the American Child.
00:01:32.060Well, we talked about the intersection between Marxism and postmodernism, right?
00:01:37.240The strange intersection, Marxism being a metanarrative, right?
00:01:41.580A theology that purports to encompass everything, so a totalitarian theology, allied with a philosophical school that purports to claim that there are no overarching metanarratives, despite the fact that Marxism is precisely one of those.
00:02:52.920So, Mr. Lansing, you have two books, The Woke War Path, which is an inquiry essentially into, what, Marxism and postmodernism fundamentally, the strange alliance between those two things.
00:03:08.540And then, more recently, a very provocatively named book, titled book, The Querying of the American Child with James Lindsay.
00:03:17.640And so, I want to wander through the domains covered by both of those books.
00:03:23.960And I thought I might as well start by asking you a fairly blunt question.
00:03:28.680And it's a question I torment myself with, I would say.
00:03:34.320The claims from the radicals on the left is that they're all about the good things.
00:04:12.560You know, I mean, people accuse me of being a bigot, for example, being homophobic, for example.
00:04:21.540Whatever the phobia of the month is, there's an accusation that goes along with it.
00:04:26.460What makes you think that you're not, that those epithets don't apply appropriately to you?
00:04:34.540Well, I think the left has done a very good job at deceiving a lot of people.
00:04:42.560When they use the words diversity, equity, and inclusion, they may share your language, but they don't share your dictionary.
00:04:49.920Those terms have been deceptively defined.
00:04:52.880And when they're in a social circle where unsuspecting people are present, those words mean one thing.
00:05:00.040And then as soon as they've got an ounce of power, they immediately turn to the esoteric definitions that they've got for those terms and employ them.
00:05:10.340So, I mean, I know myself, I know I'm none of those things, and I know a majority of people that the left come for are not those things.
00:05:20.140But under their definitions of those terms, there is no one who could escape being labeled those things because they're all-encompassing.
00:05:28.780They've got an ism or a phobia for everything on the planet, and they're always going to find one.
00:05:33.720So you're never going to escape that if you're someone they want to come after.
00:05:38.740And, of course, those terms are used, you know, racism, homophobia, bigotry.
00:05:42.520They're used to shut you up so you don't talk.
00:05:44.760They're used to drive ideological conformity.
00:05:46.920Okay, so one of the things that I've seen recently, because I've been going after the right-wing psychopathic troll demons that inhabit the virtual universe,
00:06:03.700and especially with regards to their anti-Semitism, because I've seen a dreadful spike in anti-Semitism,
00:06:14.420not only since October 7th, when it's become painfully obvious to anyone whose eyes are open that that's precisely what's happening,
00:06:21.000but long before that, not least because there was some association between me, for example, and Ben Shapiro.
00:06:28.900And then, of course, I joined forces with the Daily Wire, which everyone knows is run by a cabal of evil Jews,
00:06:36.560even though the CEO is an evangelical Christian.
00:06:40.340So I've seen the worst of the bigots, maybe the worst.
00:06:45.720I mean, hell's a bottomless pit, so the worst is a long ways down.
00:06:49.840But there is no shortage of the bigoted types that the radical leftists like to point to.
00:06:57.300Now, I personally don't believe that the right-wing anti-Semites are as much of a danger to the Jews and to the general population as the left-wing anti-Semites.
00:07:09.380I believe there's far fewer of them, for example, and that their arguments are much more transparent and much less credible in a sense, in an intellectual sense.
00:07:21.100But they're still as nasty a bunch of scumrass as you could hope to array.
00:07:30.460And so when we're battling against monsters, as Nietzsche pointed out, you know, if you look too long into the abyss, then the abyss tends to look into you.
00:07:42.360And that if you're fighting monsters, you have to be very careful not to become one yourself.
00:07:47.480And so I'm going to push you again on this a bit.
00:07:50.460So I've been thinking about Chris Ruffo, for example, who's been a very effective counter-propagandist, you might say, in Florida.
00:07:59.260He's certainly put a bee in the bonnet of Harvard University and fought a pretty decent fight with regards to the unsuitability of Claudine Gay to serve there as president.
00:08:13.540The DeSantis administration, along with Ruffo, are making moves to implement a certain degree of political control over the content of at least one university in Florida.
00:08:29.800And that would mean that there would be like one new conservative university compared to 99% of the radical leftist universities.
00:08:37.900But there's still a danger there, you know, and the danger is that the political starts to explicitly permeate the educational.
00:08:49.840And you could say, well, the leftists walked right into that because of their insistence that the ideological permeates the educational.
00:08:57.600But it still doesn't look to me like that excuses the potential for an equivalent error on the more conservative side.
00:09:07.900So, you know, you said you know that you're not a bigot and you're not a homophobe, etc.
00:09:14.260But I would say most people who might deserve those epithets, not all of them, would also claim that they're not.
00:09:22.840And so, what is it about what you're doing that makes you think that you're a reliable commentator on such matters and that you're not just acting out some variant of your own personality pathology by going after the, you know, the hyper-compassionate, all-inclusive utopians of the left-wing sphere?
00:09:44.080Yeah, so I'd start with just a quick note on the point about, you indicated that, you know, the left has control of, what, 90, 95% of social institutions.
00:09:58.300We're really worried about it in education.
00:09:59.940That's where my work is primarily concerned.
00:10:01.540And what do we do when the right becomes very explicit about their intention to look at the left and say, look what they're doing.
00:10:09.880And I would just quickly note, we can get into this later if you want, that that's precisely playing into the hand of the ideology at the core of the left, which is based in conflict.
00:10:19.180They need two poles to move history forward.
00:10:22.920That's really the core of their faith.
00:10:27.800And they don't care what that conflict looks like as long as things are destroyed in the path.
00:10:31.160So I think that they welcome someone like a Christopher Ruffo figure coming in and saying, we are going to have certain values and we are going to be political in whatever it is we do.
00:10:43.820I think they welcome that because that plays right into their dialectical game.
00:10:47.640Well, it goes back to the issue of, you know, your own feelings about your own trustworthiness as a commentator.
00:10:56.260Well, you know, we do have in-group preferences, for example, as human beings, we tend to prefer the familiar.
00:11:03.140And there's going to be a certain amount of probably at least racial preference that goes along with that that's reflexive, you know, that takes a certain amount of conscious effort to overcome.
00:11:16.480And so, you see now and then, I think it was David, was it David Brooks, I don't remember, someone wrote an article in the New York Times who said, you know, are we the bad guys?
00:11:28.500And so that's a question that people should always ask themselves.
00:11:31.320And so you wrote these pretty provocative books, The Woke War Path, The Clearing of the American Child, that's a particularly provocative title.
00:11:38.460Well, why aren't you precisely the sort of bad guy that the leftists like to point to?
00:11:45.840And are you in the same camp, would you say, then also as someone like Chris Ruffo?
00:11:51.900That's a good question, and I'm not sure.
00:11:54.500But what I will say in terms of my trustworthiness, I wouldn't consider myself an expert in anything.
00:12:04.540It's almost like a derogatory term nowadays to hail around the title of expert.
00:12:10.380All I have done, which is nothing special, is I've spent years, the last five years, reading the left's literature on their own terms and just sharing it, saying, look, everyone, this is what they're saying.