May 13, 2020 16:31 ET | Source: Imperium Group

New York, NY, May 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Instagrams user base continues to climb, reaching 1 billion users in 2018. Instagram sponsored posts are steadily rising, with 6.1 million total sponsored posts expected by 2020. And, the Instagram influencer market has swelled, approaching $2.3 billion by 2020.

No doubt, Instagram presents marketers one of the ripest channels for influencer marketing. Many top brands are running Instagram influencer marketing campaigns89% of marketers list Instagram as the most important influencer marketing channel. But who are they working with?

There may be hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of top Instagram influencers across practically any category imaginable. While factoring in the niche appropriate for your brands campaign is important, its worth knowing the top Instagram influencers across the board. These Instagram stars take the meaning of sensational to new heights, partnering with major brands to work on creative and impactful influencer marketing initiatives.

We had a chance to chat with entrepreneurs that are poised to disrupt their industry.

Jorge Pelayo - @iamjorgepelayo

Jorge Pelayo is a half Cuban and Puerto Rican American who went from serving breadsticks to building a successful business. After seeing challenges growing up he made a commitment to become a young millionaire. He has built a team of over 3,500 licensed Agents across the United States that does 8 figures in sales annually. He is a Chairman Council with PHP Agency Inc. His agency has helped over 50,000 clients protect themselves and plan for their futures. He focuses on teaching aspiring entrepreneurs on how to build their own businesses. As a business coach, hes helped several people cross six figures and more.

Aside from helping clients and agents, he loves helping people. His first mission was to Haiti with an organization called, Hearts for Haiti. He saw first hand the need that exists in the world and decided he wanted to dedicate his life to serving people. His passions are family, salsa dancing, whiskey, wine, food, chess, movies, and traveling. He is in the process of writing his first book so stay tuned. His hobby is real estate development and has recently built his first few properties from the ground up. He speaks on leadership, sales, organizational management, and personal transformation and recently shared the stage with Kobe Bryant, George Bush, Billy Bean, Jordan Peterson, and Patrick Bet-David at the 2019 PHP Convention.

Douglas Lusted, CEO of AdStash

A successful Canadian tech entrepreneur, Douglas Lusted has been transforming offline advertising with new innovative products for the better part of the last decade. He is the CEO of AdStash, a free platform that is generating thousands of brick & mortar venues additional revenue by monetizing their digital screens/signs with advertising. Douglas also previously co-founded LINKETT, which landed him on Forbes 30 under 30 list at the age of 21 as well as on Entrepreneur.coms 27 under 27 list. info@adstash.com

Dillon Breslin, CEO of ROUND2

Among the newest wave of tech entrepreneurs, Breslin found a way to enter the 90B dollar a year sporting goods industry by proprietarily ranking sports gear and equipment, individualizing each athlete's search. ROUND2, the marketplace he co-founded in 2018, has already received recognition from top tech accelerators like Capital Innovators and the Oklahoma City Thunder Launchpad.

One of the hottest sports tech startups is ROUND2. Founded by Dillon Breslin and former MLB draft pick Brian Fletcher, ROUND2s sporting goods marketplace uses AI and automation to rank gear and equipment, customizing every search for each athlete. ROUND2 is a portfolio company of Capital Innovators, a top tech accelerator and looking to rapidly expand in 2020 and beyond.

Shazir Mucklai, CEO of Imperium Group

Shazir Mucklai, a 23-year old, Goldman Sachs alum, who took investment banking and private equity and coupled it with an act for public relations. Shazir first debuted his book on Amazon when he was 16 and went on to become the youngest writer for Forbes at 17 and has generated over 8 million unique views on publications he has written for. Mucklai now represents over 200 celebrities, brands, and media production houses and is an award-winning influencer, an activist investor, a former analyst at Goldman Sachs and is currently in law school while growing his public relations digital arbitrage firm.

Contact:

Shazir Mucklai CEO Imperium Group shazir@imperium-pr.com

See the article here:

Imperium Group Features Top Disruptors and Entrepreneurs of 2020 - GlobeNewswire

I was in Mountain View, toward the end of 2019, in front of a plain gray building awaiting the presence of The Ciardellas and The San Vicentes. My nerves were clawing me to pieces. I felt like, to paraphrase Martin Sheens character in Apocalypse Now, Id split from the whole program. Gone rogue. Crossed some kind of line.

Cause I was about to sit among these couples and take in Candace Owens

You likely know The Ciardellas and The San Vicentes: Larry and Christina, Victor and Pearla. Victor ran for State Senate in 2018. Larrys the assistant Chief at Spring Valley Fire, and was a long-time Milpitas Planning Commissioner.

The five of us walked into a room full of Trumpers. Candace Owens, for the uninitiated, is the black leader of what shes termed the Blexit movement, consisting of black people whove grown tired of the Democratic Party. Far be it from me to summarize Blexits positions, but they largely boil down to a version of What have you done for me lately? In other words, the Democratic Party, despite being vocally aligned to people of color, hasnt been the provably more effective party at raising black peoples wages over the past several decades, or ensuring for them a more secure or fruitful way of life.

Owens is smart as a whip, fast as a lightning bolt, and charismatic as holy fire. If youre on the left, as I am, and you can bear your political bubble being pierced for a moment, you can watch this brief video of Owens in action, schooling a pair of white women on the ground-level realities of white supremacy.

The video shows where weve arrived at, on the left: white people lecturing black people on how much they should fear white supremacy. And if a black persons a Republican, forget it: shes an apostate, a denial case, a pathetic Aunt Tom. Every word she fires back at the lecturer, no matter how compelling, can be denied on the basis of her unacceptable party affiliation.

The left is eating itself, its been said lately. This is because the left is insular and thus blind. I know no form of enjoyment more delicious than watching two lefties who largely agree with one another arguing over the tiny ways in which they disagree. Ive not only witnessed this; Ive been forced to partake in it. My Republican friends either nod respectfully upon hearing my views or avoid debating altogether. My Democrat friends swerve into paranoia and judgment if I diverge from them by 1% on any given issue. It makes sense, though: I mean, who else would they argue with? After all, they refuse to speak with, much less listen to, the opposition.

Speaking of which: Better still is what happens when insular Democrats are outright exposed to Republicans. They grow panic-stricken. Their blood turns to ice. Republicans are supposed to be out therenot right here!

This has become like a freaking cartoon.

I dont want to be insular, much less blind. I want to know Ciardella. I want to know San Vicente. I dont wish to be TRIGGERED. Nor do I wish to be surprised again, the way I was back in late 2016, when the Orange Man took it and I didnt sleep for half a week.

Id prefer to know where my friends on the right are coming from. And I befriend them not as an anthropological experiment, but because (heres the crux of it) in many ways I feel safer among them than I do among their left-wing counterparts

Did I feel safe at the Candace Owens event? With no shortage of irony, Owens was pretty much the only black person in the room. And I meanwhile thought my thick, dark eyebrows were serving as a flashing sign that read Hebrew.

These were white people, all around me, the ones the left-wing media had long been warning me about. The privileged ones. The evil ones. And of coursethe racist ones. And the ones whom it was OK to be racist toward, as their status as the oppressors of people of color made reverse racism definitively impossible.

The left started mainstreaming these sentiments in 2014, in the late Obama years. That was the point when the precepts of intersectional feminism, also known as intersectionality, started being spouted from many left-wingers lips. Bear in mind: I respect and value intersectionality. Per its framing, by way of systematic injustice, white people oppress people of color, straight people oppress LGBT+ people, and males oppress females, as well as those of other genders. Even a brief observation of how our government and economy tend toin generalcultivate an easier and smoother path through life for white people, straight people, and male people (and most of all, naturally, those that check all three boxes) grants validity to the intersectional view of reality. My problem with intersectionality is not its grip on basic horrifying truths.

It is its readiness to wield the language of war rather than the language of peace.

Case in point: the word oppressor. As a straight white male, Im told repeatedly that this is what I am. Painful to take in, since I hold no person under lock and key (except for my 5-year-old, but sometimes he runs out the front door!). Moreover, my wifes half-black, half-Asian. Our children are black-Asian-Jewish (Im mashing race, ethnicity, culture, and religion here in service of my broader points). Am I my wifes oppressor or her partner? Can I possibly be both? Should she sneer at me when she passes by me in the hallway? What of my children? Are they half oppressed (their black-brown side) and half oppressor (their white-Jewish side)?

And what of Jews, in general? Some of my Jewish friends, citing the alarming violence against our people, refer to themselves as oppressed. Myself, citing how white privilege has largely afforded Jews a strong and stable position in the U.S. economyI find the idea of oppressed American Jews to be melodramatic.

More to the point: I could have received intersectionality differently. Instead of quibbling with it, I could have conformed in full to the mindset of my left-wing comrades. Could have played up my multiracial household. Could have played up my Jewish upbringing and culture. Could have played up bisexual instances from my formative years. Could have even played up the joy I get from cross-dressing! My straightness, my whiteness, my malenessall dealt with, all contextualized for and tailored to the lefts approval, all effectively apologized for.

To hell with that.

I reject the lefts simplistic, war-like, and undiplomatic insistence on framing every political discussion through an intersectional lens. I find it demeaning, dehumanizing, and disrespectful to hear my straightness, my whiteness, and my maleness blamed for all of societys major ills, as though theres a direct line from longstanding systemic evils to me sitting on my couch eating potato chips (i.e., just sitting around Being What I Was Born As).

The left deems Trump a symptom of our oppressive system: for them the man is Exhibit A. The right, meanwhile, deems Trump an effective pushback against and a perfect answer to the lefts emergent politics of disrespect.

Whats more difficult to understand and often too subtle to detect is that both things happen to be true at the exact same time.

I wrote a novel about this. Its called RED DENNIS. Its about a straight white male who gets radicalized as a result of being demonized. Its not a left-wing book, much less a right-wing one. Cause in my mind both the wings are melting, and sometimes there can just be a story about a guy (or can there?).

Watching Owens, I had a panic attack. I felt like an undercover cop. When I panic, my stomach juts up into my chest, tightening everything and making me feel like my hearts stopped beating. I panicked when she dished harsh truths (i.e., Trumps tweets are a part of what keeps him in power). I panicked when she evaded harsh truths (i.e., landing punchlines regarding transgender people despite their sky-high suicide rate).

Most of all, I panicked cause Im a man without a functional political language, exhausted from speaking the language of the left (wherein constant reassurances that you despise Trump and Republicans are mandatory) and turned off by the priorities ascendant on the right (touting small government in a time of environmental and respiratory disrepair, preservingIm gonna say it!white hegemony and majority status).

This doesnt make me a moderate. Im not in between. I lose sleep over climate change. I vote for women by default when I dont know much about the candidates. I havent eaten meat in 18 years.

Yet there I go againreciting my resume. Volunteering my qualifications so my lefty friends can trust me.

This game grows tired. Pandemic or no pandemic, Trump could win yet again. And if he does, the left, unseeing and unknowing, with their war-like language and their politics of disrespect, will have very much helped to keep him there.

After all, if not for the ills of the left, Candace Owens would not have a career right now. Like with Joe Rogan, or Jordan Peterson, or Dave Rubin, or Ben Shapiro, or Tim Pool, or so many others, so long as the lefts disrespect goes unchecked, the content pushing back against it wont run out.

Speaking of which, here is more.

Steer clear if you get easily triggered. Or on second thought, jump right in.

Go here to see the original:

RED DENNIS & The Politics of Disrespect - The Milpitas Beat

On Monday, the hashtags that usually start trending on Twitter are, say, a musician getting cancelled or our politicians acting meme-worthy. But an unusual phrase started to pop up on the trending page, pulling in thousands of uses and even more confused onlookers: "cuck zone."

This phrase stemmed from a drawing created by artist Chelsea Saunders and the editors of Current Affairs, a leftist print magazine that often posts satire. "The Campus: As It Exists in the Mind of a Conservative" is a lambastic take on how conservative talking heads envision a modern, liberal college. Complete with "Oppression Olympics" and a "Department of Intersectionality," the campus also features a bar designated as "Cuck Zone."

The image was published in 2018 for the "The Current Affairs Big Book of Amusements," alongside other Saunders drawings like the "Intellectual Dark Web Carnival" that spoofed conservative figures like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson.

"The staff at Current Affairs wanted to poke fun at right-wing conservatives, who view college campuses as wild liberal playgrounds," Saunders told Newsweek. "It's funny because colleges are not really like this, and even if they were, they would be amazing places."

The piece originally gained some viral momentum on conservative reddits like "The_Donald," editing out the original title and taking it at face value. One user, "r/LouderwithCrowder," shared the image with the tagline taken out on Monday. "It's depressing how fairly accurate this is," wrote one commenter looking at an image containing an "Oppression Olympics."

"The piece surfaces every couple months, but this is by far the biggest wave," Managing Editor Lyta Gold said. "Every time the illustration pops up, I think the reaction is hilarious. And I'm glad Chelsea's work is getting attention and recognition, even in this odd circumstance...I think it's so funny that whenever 'The Campus' pops up, people aren't quite sure what it's satirizing or who made it, but everyone's absolutely sure they're the ones who get the joke."

The "Cuck Zone" is one of the main points of interest on the map and became a viral point of interest for the image. Gold and her team of editors, who came up with most of the jokes in the image, were the inspirations for the over-the-top bar.

Saunders is proud of her work on the image and says that the "internet has been surprisingly tame to me" and that she hasn't "been attacked for [her views]."

"Political satire is such a great expression of the times," Saunders said. "Glad Twitter thinks it's rad, too."

You can purchase prints of the piece on the Current Affairs online store.

Originally posted here:

'Cuck Zone' Artist Is Happy That Twitter Thinks Her Work Is 'Rad' - Newsweek

Mohamed, (not his real name), was a Muslim in his 30s, an migr from Iran who had built a life for himself in Canada. Sadly, a blanket of personal problems marred his efforts to thrive. He sought out psychotherapy. For the sake of rapport, I made a mental note to avoid mention of Jewish insights into human nature, normally a staple in my work.

As the therapy progressed, my apprehension dissolved. So relevant were the ideas of Rabbi Akiva Tatz and other Jewish thinkers that I began to introduce Mohamed to concepts that spoke directly to the challenges with which he grappled. He was intrigued and one day reflected, Ive read a lot about Buddhism and new age psychology but I know nothing about the Jewish approach. Can you recommend a book? I suggested Rabbi Tatzs Living Inspired and when our session ended he went to a local Judaica shop and picked up that book and three others.

Mohamed made nice progress in the work. He implemented important changes and I commended him; these changes were quite dramatic. To demonstrate just how so, he described an incident that had occurred 10 years earlier when he stood in army fatigues with 250 other Iranian soldiers, all heavily equipped with weapons. The men participated in a familiar ritual: the burning of the American and Israeli flags as the men shouted, Death to Israel! Death to America! He looked me dead in the eye and said, Ten years later, Im buying books at the Judaica store!

I was shocked, but shouldnt have been. As we approach Shavous, the commemoration of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, we can remember that Jewish thought is part of the arsenal we are given to change the world. This body of knowledge contains timeless wisdom that can help individuals change, both Jew and non-Jew.

Case in point: I would argue that, right now, the most widely recognized mouthpiece for any number of important Jewish concepts is a Gentile, Dr. Jordan Peterson. When I stumbled upon his work, I was amazed at the resonance between his ideas and those of Rabbi Akiva Tatz, author of both Living Inspired and Worldmask. Indeed, my excitement about this resonance and the way the Rabbis ideas inform those of Peterson compelled my writing of two books: This Way up: A Faith-Based Introduction to Jordan Petersons Maps of Meaning and In Good Standing: Using Jordan Petersons Insights on the Structure of Self to Sort Yourself Out.

Its ironic that so many Jewish psychotherapists seeking to anchor their work in a wisdom tradition pursue Buddhist studies. These practitioners dont realize the wealth of resources that are rightly theirs, if only they would look in their own backyards!

But dont take my word for it. Take Mohameds. His ancestors werent included in the Sinai experience. But maybe his experience shows theres a basis for the old proverb: if Mohamed cant come to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohamed. And every year at Shavous, the mountain comes to you.

Interested?

Annette Poizner is a Columbia-trained clinical social worker who graduated with a Doctorate of Education in Counseling Psychology. As an Israeli-trained graphologist, she specializes in projective personality assessment, as well as strategic psychotherapy. Her work has been featured extensively in the media and in academic venues. She founded Lobster University Press, an imprint which explores the work of Jordan Peterson. Her books, the most recent being, "From Chaos to Order: A Guide to Jordan Peterson's Worldview," summarize Peterson's ideas and explore the intersection between his insights and Jewish wisdom. She also produces animations which relay some of Peterson's insights in short soundbites.

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Mohamed and the Mountain | Annette Poizner | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

Former WRAL Sports Director Bob Holliday brings back a memory from the WRAL vault, a moment when Michael Jordan and Buzz Peterson had some fun on the golf course.

DISCRIMINATORY WORK CONDITIONS TO MOVE FORWARD. IF THE DISTRICT JUDGE SIGNS THE ORDER, THE TRIAL WOULD LIKELY BE DELAYED UNTIL 2021. THE MICHAEL JORDAN DOCUMENTARY THAT HAS THE WORLD BUZZING, THIS CONTINUES TOMORROW NIGHT. THIS WEEK'S STORYTELLER SEGMENT BRINGS US SOME MOMENTS THAT HAPPENED OFF THE COURT. >> IN THE COUNTLESS TIMES THAT YOU COVERED THE CAREER OF MICHAEL JORDAN IS YOUR FAVORITE THE INTIMATE SETTING ON THE GOLF COURSE? >> ABSOLUTELY. THIS WAS JUST SO MUCH FUN. IT WAS ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE STORIES. ONE DAY JAY JENNINGS AND I GOT WORD THAT THEY WERE PLAYING GOLF AT FINLEY. WE WENT OVER THERE. WE GOT OUR GOLF CART AND FOUND THEM ON THE COURSE WITHOUT MUCH DIFFICULTY. IT WAS LIKE THE OLD TIMES. AS SOON AS WE PULL UP THEY SAID HOW ARE YOU DOING? HOW'S TOM AND CHARLIE? MICHAEL KEPT UP WITH US, HE REALLY DID. >> THE GOLFER YOU BASKETBALL FANS KNOW IS DOUG PETERSON BUT YOU RECOGNIZE THE VOICE OF THE PLAY-BY-PLAY? >> HE GRABBED THE MICROPHONE FROM ME. >> 15 PETE FEET FROM THE PIN. >> THAT'S RIGHT, MICHAEL JORDAN. HE IS DOING A BIT OF EVERYTHING THESE DAYS. >> THE MATCH IS TIED. THERE WAS GREAT TRASH TALKING DURING IT. MICHAEL STANDS OVER THE SHOT. BUZZ IS GIVING HIM THE BUSINESS AND MICHAEL SAYS, HEY BUZZ, 17 SECONDS. HE TOOK HIS DRIVER BACK AND SMACKED THE BALL 250 YARDS DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE FAIRWAY. IT WAS A GOOD SHOT. IN MANY WAYS, WE THINK OF MICHAEL JORDAN AS THIS LARGER THAN LIFE PERSONALITY WHO MAY HAVE FORGOTTEN WHERE HE CAME FROM BUT TO YOU GUYS HE WAS STILL VERY MUCH THAT MIKE THAT YOU MET. >> ABSOLUTELY AND THIS REALLY HAPPENED, IT REALLY HAPPENED. MICHAEL SAYS, HOW IS TOM SOUTER DOING, IS HE MARRIED? THIS WAS BEFORE TOM AND JULIE STARTED DATING. HE GRABS THE MICROPHONE AGAIN AND SAYS, TOM, THIS IS MICHAEL, I HEAR YOU AREN'T MARRIED. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT, TOM. COME TO CHICAGO. WE WILL FIX YOU RIGHT UP. THIS WAS LONG BEFORE THE DAYS OF TENDER. THE MICHAEL JORDAN MATCHUP. >> EXACTLY. >> YEARS LATER, JEFF BRANTLEY CAUGHT UP WITH MICHAEL JORDAN AND ASKED AGAIN, AT THAT POINT TOM WAS ALREADY MARRIED TO JULIE. A CRAZY STORY THOUGH. [

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Bob Holliday talks about the fun day when MJ and Buzz Peterson went golfing - WRALSportsFan.com

Exactly two years ago, on May 8, 2018, Bari Weiss published an essay in the New York Times titled Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web. Describing a subculture of liberals, conservatives and disaffected leftists who were engaging in conversations about free speech, left-wing censoriousness and un-PC subjects like sex differences and transgenderism, Weiss described three common features of these different people:

First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting whats politically convenient. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought

The article was smothered in cloying pretension. The name might have been coined jokily by the mathematician Eric Weinstein, but once it was affixed to the subculture it became absurd. Sex differences and transgenderism are controversial subjects, no doubt about it, but the intellectual equivalents of the drugs and guns that are traded on the Dark Web are not profiled in the New York Times. Also, somebody had made the well-meaning decision to photograph the likes of Weinstein, Sam Harris and Dave Rubin in night-time shots that made them look like the supporting cast of a dirt cheap neo-noir independent film.

Soon, the web in the name evoked not the Dark Web but a spiders web. Curious browsers were trapped in long-winded podcasts, paralyzed by anti-leftist platitudes, and gobbled up by classical liberalism. As I noted in my review of Dave Rubins book, there was too much talking about talking about ideas, and too much using free speech to talk exclusively about free speech. There was no systemization or institution-building but a constant stream of monotonal discourse.

But am I being too cynical? Is it not a failing of opinion columnists that we live to drag people down and not to build them up? Perhaps. So, I wanted to look for the good in the IDW and how better than to read a left-wing analysis of the phenomenon!

Michael Brooks begins his study of the Intellectual Dark Web, Against the Web, by defining the IDW as a group of men. Like most political movements and subcultures, it is largely male. Any sensible analysis of the phenomenon, however, would place Heather Heying, Christina Hoff Sommers, Claire Lehmann, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others in its sphere. Brooks wants it to be a group of men because it suits his ideological framework. Perhaps the Intellectual Dark Web has made people more skeptical about this kind of dull and disingenuous identity politicking, which is good.

Such annoying sleights of hand come thick and fast throughout Against the Web. We learn, when Brooks writes about Ben Shapiro, who somehow got a column as a teenager, that conservatives have an obsession with teenage prodigies that never ceases to amaze. Why, yes, that is just a conservative obsession, and Greta Thunbergs youth is incidental to her fame. Later, he says, young, angry white men have historically been a pretty dangerous group. More dangerous than others, huh? Perhaps Brooks does not mean that, but the IDW has at least raised awareness that this is one of the only groups one can problematize in polite society without the whiff of scandal.

Brooks does land some powerful shots. Writing about the psychiatrist-cum-self-help guru Jordan Peterson, Brooks justly notes the absurdity of railing against alienation and atomization while tip-toeing around the alienating, atomizing forces in consumer capitalism. This is a fair point: Jordan Peterson should have read Christopher Lasch. But Brooks blames all social evils on market forces. Families are collapsing and birth rates are dropping because of relentless anxiety and undercompensation. Really? Thats it? African people have a lot more kids and I dont think that they are better compensated than Americans, Europeans and East Asians.

By the time Brooks segued into talking about how everything from air pollution to homelessness should give us psychic anguish rather than the psychological focus on the self, I was fanning my armpits with my smartphone. Of course, those are important subjects, but informing sad and lonely men that the cure for what ails them is far left activism feels more opportunistic than anything Peterson says. For all of JPs limitations and eccentricities, at least the man gave good advice like read the Bible and dont waste your time watching porn. Its not exactly Aristotle, but theres something to work with there.

Brooks has a problem in that he wants to write a funny book dunking on Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson and a sincere left-wing internationalist manifesto. Too often without wanting to sound like Stefan Molyneux he relies on ownage rather than argumentation. A passage criticizing the belief in IQ and innate intelligence gets side-tracked by a long-winded and pointless digression about how IDW idol Christopher Hitchens rejected the concept because apparently they think he was omniscient and Brooks never gets around to addressing twin studies or predictiveness, or explaining how, if IQ is defended by white commentators trying to find scientific cover for their racial attitudes, they suggest that Jewish and Asian people have, on average, higher IQs than white people.

Brooks is also vague enough about his own ideals that they can escape the kind of scrutiny that he applies to others. We find him wringing his hands about pressing threats to democracy in todays worldrepresented by Singapore and Hungary, but also praising the noble revolutionary tradition represented by Cuba. Im not going to huff and puff about the Castros fiefdom, which is hardly the worst place in the world to live, but dont howl about threats to democracy and then get teary-eyed about a state that has been ruled by two brothers for 60 years. I hope the IDW has tarnished the romantic image of revolutionary leftism in academic and cultural spheres.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that Against the Web does offer good advice to Brookss comrades. Quoting the late Mark Fishers essay Exiting the Vampires Castle, Brooks criticizes the lefts reliance on shame-based moralizing, which has indeed served to drive a lot of left-wing men and women rightwards. Riffing on the great Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. Jamess respect for European culture, Brooks also promotes cultural cosmopolitanism over a knee-jerk hostility towards cultural appropriation. These are great suggestions and I cynically hope that no one listens to him. But I suspect that they will not because left-wing politics, even more than right-wing politics, is so based on grievance, and on acquiring status by displaying grievance. You can laugh at Jordan Petersons rather cack-handed criticisms of postmodern Marxist feminists or whatever but at least his work is founded on the premise that nature is harsh and constrained. If you doubt this, then resentment is a natural consequence.

The Intellectual Dark Web has fractured now. Sam Harris is still droning on his podcast with more soporific power than a packet of Restoril. Rubin has become an overblown Fox News personality. God bless Jordan Peterson, wherever he is. The phenomenon left lots of people with a lot of questions. If we want them to have answers, well now is our chance.

Read the original here:

An autopsy of the Intellectual Dark Web - The Spectator USA

The National Posts Jonathan Kay recently interviewed American author Dave Rubin, whose tour for his new book, Dont Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in the Age of Unreason, was disrupted by the ongoing pandemic, and is now being done out of Rubins garage.

Jonathan Kay: Nice suit. Look what Im wearing. Thanks for making the rest of us look like crap.

Dave Rubin: I thought Id keep it professional, you know? Im on a book tour.

Kay: Whats it been like doing a book tour without actually touring?

Rubin: I got to tell you, its really bizarre, actually. The book came out on Tuesday, April 28, and I was supposed to be in New York the week before, doing all kinds of press, going on every TV show you can imagine and meeting with the publishers and all that good stuff. And then I was supposed to be on a book tour starting that night. We were gonna be at the Gramercy Theater in New York. And then I think I was going to be in D.C. and then across the country for the next month and a half or so. And instead, Im in my garage. I mean, this is my garage. I happened to have a studio in my garage. So its kind of funny. Were seeing all these CNN anchors in their kitchens, in their living rooms and things. I was a little ahead on the home studio thing. So Ive got a nice professional setup here, which is great. And, you know, theres a certain convenience to it that I can do this all from here. But I guess it is missing a little something. Talking to a live person always adds a little something else to the conversation. But Ive enjoyed this. And in many ways its allowed me to do more than I was going to be able to do because I can basically just, every day for the last four or five days, Im starting in the morning. I started literally at 6 a.m. and I go till about 8 p.m., with just minor minor breaks and maybe lunch, if Im lucky. So, you know, Im happy to talk to people. Im glad the books being well received. And you do what you gotta do.

Kay: You write that your original book idea was about how you abandoned the left side of the political spectrum and then you decided you had a more interesting idea. Tell me about that.

Rubin: Yeah. The original title of the book was Why I Left the Left, which is the title of a very popular PragerU video that I did that has about 20 million views or so. I became sort of a left the left guy. I talk about the regressive left and that the left is no longer liberal.

Thats very much in the mix, the stew of things that Ive been talking about for the last five years or so. And I started writing that book. And then I quickly realized I was like, you know, I dont know if I want to write a book about just what Im against or what I used to be. I want to write a book about what Im for. And thats what it became: Dont Burn This Book. But I lay out three moments in the book that were my seminal wake up moments.

I wont give you all three. Ill give you one of them. You may know David Webb, who is a commentator, conservative commentator on Sirius XM Patriot Channel. He guest hosts on Fox News all the time. And years ago when I was a lefty, I was on the Young Turks. We were watching a clip of Fox News and David Webb came on and suddenly they were saying all the worst things about him. He was just talking about some basic conservative beliefs. Doesnt even matter what he was talking about specifically. But suddenly they were calling him an Uncle Tom and a sellout and a race traitor. Just all of the worst things that you could say about somebody. And what they didnt know was that a few years before I had had a show on Sirius XM and although I was a lefty and David Webb was on the right, wed met in the hall one day and we started chatting. I used to go on his show every week and wed debate topics and then wed go downstairs and have a steak and have some whisky. And we were good, even though we disagreed on almost everything. But I knew him to be a good man and forthright and a passionate advocate for his positions.

It wasnt some fake thing. And yet here the Young Turks were, the supposed tolerant people, the people who loved diversity. And they were suddenly seeing a black man. And just because he didnt think the way they want black people to think he was the bad guy. He was all the worst things you could say about somebody. And because I knew him, it suddenly became so stark, so clear to me that when we think of racism, we think, oh, that youre racist. You dont want those people using a water fountain, something like that, which obviously is racist. But theres a new pernicious racism, which is that you say youre for groups gays, blacks, women.

But you cant be for whole groups because, believe it or not, black people think all sorts of different things. Gay people think all sorts of different things. Women think all sorts of different things. And to watch a group of supposedly tolerant people be angry at a black man who just thought differently than them, I realized was a new sort of systemic racism. And I say systemic because its sort of spread throughout all of the left. And even right now, Harvard discriminates against Asian people because they had too many Asian people by their measure being admitted to the university.

What the left does is they see racism almost everywhere except where it really is. They're looking for it constantly. So they have to find it.

Dave Rubin

Kay: But what about the counterargument that theres still a lot of old-fashioned racism thats still around.

Rubin: I dont see that now. Thats not to say that there isnt a KKK. There are some marginal white supremacist groups or the Westboro Baptist Church or something like that, which dont have any mainstream traction, because anytime they do any stupid little thing that, of course, the media goes crazy with it. Does David Duke exist? Of course. David Duke exists. Does he have any influence in any way whatsoever? Of course not. So I dont see actual influential bigotry out of the conservative side or on the right. But I do see it almost everywhere on the left. The left has become obsessed with identity, obsessed with gender and sexuality and the colour of skin. And I wouldnt even call that reverse racism. I would call that racism. If you rail all day long against white Christian men because theyre white Christian men, thats racism.

Again, Im not saying that there are no racist people on either side of the political aisle. Of course there are. But I think what the left does is they see racism almost everywhere except where it really is. Theyre looking for it constantly. So they have to find it. And just because you believe in low taxes doesnt mean youre a racist. Just because you believe that America should have a strong border, doesnt mean youre a racist.

These movements, they get equality, but then they the activists don't want to go out of business. So then they have to just keep finding new and new perceived oppression.

Dave Rubin

Kay: Your book is partly about what you call the pitfalls of leaving the left. What are those pitfalls?

Rubin: The biggest growing political movement or political ideology in America right now is the disaffected liberal, which is what I would say that I am I am a true liberal. And I lay out what classical liberalism is, which, of course, is about individual rights, meaning everyone that is a legal citizen of any country should be treated equally under the law. And then basically laissez-faire economics, light touch. Thats pretty much what my belief system is. Thats live and let live. And we could talk about the marginal differences between that and libertarianism.

As far as the pitfalls, well, I lay out some of the things that I guarantee will happen to you if you leave the left or not even leave the left once you start questioning it. Because if you remember four or five years ago when I started talking about my frustrations with the left, I was always saying we. I was saying we guys, we the left have abandoned liberalism. We have to fix liberalism. We have to stand for the things that were supposed to stand for, like free speech and open inquiry and not deplatforming speakers and destroying people. These are liberal principles. So I was doing this from the left. And what I think a lot of people see right now is that Im trying to give them the courage, I suppose, to be able to walk and not be destroyed once you pick one position that is counter to whatever mainstream leftist orthodoxy is of the day.

If you dont check all of those 10 boxes, they will eliminate you and they will try to mob you on social media. They will go after your employer. You will watch friends and family members turn on you and call you all of the worst things. And even if you say no, those are none of my beliefs. Well, then theyll move the goalposts and try to extrapolate something else on you. One of the very important tips that I give people is dont apologize unless you genuinely have done something wrong. Im not saying never apologize. Weve all wronged people. Weve all done things that are wrong. So you can apologize if its earnest. But I think a lot of times that we see this when the mob comes after celebrities all the time, you know, a celebrity will say something that everyone knows is basically right. You may remember Mario Lopez said that we shouldnt be something to the effect of we shouldnt be transitioning kids who are four years old, you know, gender transition. And its like everyone knows thats the truth. Thats not anti-trans. Its just that we might want to wait till theyre a little bit older. Then we could discuss all of that stuff. But he got mobbed. And then what does he do? He basically issues in a faux apology, even though we know he doesnt really apologize. He doesnt really feel any contrition about what he said.

Another one would be a Hollywood actor who Im sort of friendly with, Mark Duplass, he basically tweeted out something to the effect that Ben Shapiro is not the devil, he just has different political thoughts. He got mobbed and then deleted the tweet and issued an apology. And its like once you do that, once you apologize for something youre not sorry for, now theyve got their foot on your neck forever and you will never get up. And theyre using that power over you. So one of the things you can do is be brave and stand up for what you believe. And I think if more of us start doing it, we can actually silence that mob.

Kay: But political cults come from the right side of the spectrum, too, no?

Rubin: Lets not forget, it was mostly people on the right who were going after violent video games. Remember, they were trying to ban Mortal Kombat from the shelves. So these things are cyclical. And Im glad you brought it up because its an important point.

Kay: Were talking about censorship and preventing people from saying what they think. But its interesting that youre not talking about government censoring people which is what we would have been worried about 20 or maybe even 10 years ago. Instead, were talking about people censoring each other.

Rubin: We should always be wary of the government silencing dissent, silencing speech. But at the moment, I mean, Donald Trump can tweet whatever he wants and then what happens? The first hundred people that respond to him are usually blue check journalists or actors or activists, all telling him hes a Nazi, hes Hitler. Hes going to burn in hell. I mean, the worst things you can imagine. And guess what? Nobody knocks on their door. The Gestapo doesnt show up to drag them off to the gulag. I mean, theres no version of any of that. The bigger worry to me is that we are censoring ourselves. That is separate than the government. Its an important distinction.

Kay: Youre a gay man. Ive noticed, anecdotally, that many of the people pushing back against social-justice cultism are gay men, lesbians, Jews, Muslims people who have some trait that makes them stand out from ordinary white people. Do you think having at least some mark of outsider status gives you moral capital to push back?

Rubin: I love this question because Ive asked this of other guests of mine who are in similar situations. So Douglas Murray, the wonderful author from the U.K. whos written a lot about this and talked about immigration in Europe and all sorts of things. His last book, Madness of Crowds, is one of the best books of the year. He happens to be gay. Hes a gay conservative in the U.K. And Ive asked him about this. I see this from women. I see this from black people. It sort of gets to what I was saying earlier about why when you say youre for a group, you will actually crush all of the free thinkers within that group. And thats what Im trying to restore. Im trying to stop that from happening.

If youre a minority because of your sexuality or your skin colour or some of these things, now, I dont think that should give you power over people. I dont think that inherently makes your opinions correct. I mean, that would be absurd. As absurd as saying, you know, someone who is a white male, that his opinions are correct just because of that. So those are silly notions. But what I do think is probable is that if you are a minority of some sort, you start looking at the world from a bit of an outsider perspective. Youre not in the machine all the time. And because of that, you suddenly realize that uniqueness is deeply important. You realize there is something different.

So the most interesting example of this would be whats sort of happened to the gay community. I would say that for four decades, the gay community brought a tremendous amount of art and music and comedy and all of this cultural stuff that would start in gay clubs or whatever. I was never even into that scene at all. Much of this is before my time. But we all know that so much great music and all of this cultural stuff came from the gay community. Then, things shifted and the progressive movement sort of infiltrated the gay community. Im not saying, well, their intentions were bad. Gay marriage, by the way, is an extremely positive development that the progressives pushed because they were pushing for equality. But they were pushing for gay people to be equal, not to be above. And what happens usually is then these movements, they get equality, but then they the activists dont want to go out of business, sort of. So then they have to just keep finding new and new perceived oppression.

So what I think, unfortunately, has happened is the gay community, for whatever that term broadly means, they went from fighting for something. They went from being outsiders. And by the way, that comes with a lot of pain and all sorts of stuff. I mean, many gay people have written about this. And, you know, from my own experience, the pain and drugs and just doing stuff that I shouldnt have done, its just part of being closeted and the outsider and the rest of it. But you take that, then you get equality. And now thats great. Now things are good. But then the progressives move in and they kind of use you as a tool.

So if you notice, theres really nothing interesting coming out of the gay community these days. And that is to directly answer your question. That is why were watching so many gay people walk away (from progressive orthodoxy) right now. And by the way, its the exact same thing with the black community.

Kay: Youre an American. Do you find your political message resonates with Canadians? It used to be that a political writer like you was mostly a celebrity in your own country. But thanks to social media, things are much more global.

Rubin: It really, really does. Now, part of that I have to credit Jordan Peterson, obviously, because, you know, Jordan, whose origin he was a clinical psychologist in Toronto and professor at the University of Toronto, you know, hes sort of Canadas biggest export over the last couple of years, certainly intellectually their biggest export. And I toured with Jordan Peterson. We had many stops in Canada. Ive done some speaking events with Maxime Bernier from the Canadian Peoples party. And I do sense that there is a strong liberty movement growing in Canada. You know, as Justin Trudeau and the Liberals of Canada sort of extend their power. And I know you guys have all sorts of problems. You know, Western Canada and the Calgary area feeling that theyre sort of being left out from what the decision-making process is. I sense that there is a there is a strong liberty movement there. So we absolutely wonderful receptions in all of our Canadian stops. I love doing them. We had a running joke in every Canadian stop on the tour because I would moderate the Q-and-A at the end of the show. So the way the shows would work, I would do about 15 minutes of crowd warm-up. Jordan would give about an hour and a half speech and then we would do about 45 minutes of Q-and-A. And each time, somebody would ask if Jordan would run for prime minister and hed make you know, its a fun, silly comment about Trudeau. And it would always get a huge laugh. So I do sense that that there is a certain set of Canadians who are waking up to some of these more liberty or individual rights issues, which maybe isnt fully within the Canadian political ethos as much as it is within an American one.

But, yes, to your point. Look, were all on YouTube, were all podcasting. Were all doing all these things. And what is local is now everything. You know, its like everything is now local and whats local is now everything.

Kay: Thanks so much for joining us. Stay safe!

National Post

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Dave Rubin interview: His new book, censorship on the left and what he sees happening in Canada - National Post

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All Our 2019 Corrections And Clarifications - CANADALAND

With respect to McManus and Hamilton, who have admittedly produced a very interesting article, there are characterizations and theoretical points within their article that I feel need to be addressed.

Introduction

As a practicing psychotherapist investigating political expressions of psychoanalytic thought, I was very interested to read Matt McManus and Conrad Hamiltons recent critique of Jungian and Lacanian perspectives. I was also intrigued by McManus and Hamiltons choice to assign, respectively, these thinkers to the Right and Left of the political spectrum. They did this, in large part, through their interpretations of how Jordan Peterson and Slavoj iek have, in turn, drawn from each psychoanalysts work. With respect to McManus and Hamilton, who have admittedly produced a very interesting article, there are characterizations and theoretical points within their article that I feel need to be addressed. In particular, it is necessary to demonstrate more accurately the complexity of the perspectives held up as representatives (I believe inaccurately) of Left-situated or Right-situated expressions of psychoanalysis.

Although clear divisions of Lacanian thought into the Left and Jungian thought into the Right might make for an engagingyet choppy articlethere are a number of similarities between the two perspectives. There are also complexities internal to these perspectives that have to be eclipsed for this interpretation to hold. Especially noticeable in reading their article were the failure to acknowledge the left-wing Jungian streams of theoretical development (that have largely been ignored since Jungs death), the equation of Petersons focus on order from chaos with the aim of Jungian analysis in general, and the erasure of theoretical similarities between Lacan and Jungs perspectives. Also, I believe there were some inaccuracies regarding admittedly difficult aspects of Lacanian theory (the misrepresentation of the early infants relationship to the mirror stage, for example), as well as a degree of irony when the two authors (themselves influenced by Marxism) invoke charges about lacking evidence or unfalsifiabilitywhen it comes to those with whom they disagree. However, I will sideline these later concerns in favor of primarily addressing the implicit characterization of Jungian thought as being inherently conservative or right-wing in analytic approach.

To a degree, I believe that the authors are aware and acknowledge partially the complexities of Jungian thought, and this causes some discomfort with the original premise of their piece. McManus and Hamilton take pains to differentiate and separate the decidedly un-progressive personal figure of Jacques Lacan (Freud was not a progressive) from the interpretations of Lacans interlocutors. These interlocutors were often the resolutely fashionable left-wing figures, who haunt the bookshelves and syllabuses of continental philosophy departments. These names include Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and, of course, the focal figure of their article: Slavoj iek. This highlighting of the development of Lacanian theory through its academic interpreters allows it to be positioned on the Left, within the topology of McManus and Hamiltons article.

It is strange, therefore, that the Jungian analogue to psychoanalysis (analytic psychology) does not receive the same treatment. Instead, when it comes to the supposedly right-wing orientation of Jungian analytical psychology, we are presented with a paucity of examples. We are offered Jungs alleged racism, his spurious personal actions during the Second World War, and his influence on Jordan Peterson as proof for their characterization of Jung as right-wing. It is important to note here that Peterson, while a renowned clinical psychologist, was not a trained Jungian analyst. iek, on the other hand, is a trained (albeit not practicing) Lacanian analyst. As such, to use Peterson and iek as examples of their relative schools is already perhaps to overstate the point. McManus and Hamiltons somewhat impoverished overview of Jungian thought may also be partly due to the acknowledged unpopularity of Jung within the academy. The authors are academics, rather than clinicians; so their seeming lack of familiarity with the outgrowths of Jungian theory can perhaps be forgiven. Who (outside the murky world of clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy) could be expected to know the permutations and arcane growths of post-Jungian theory? Instead, as they did in their piece, it might be easier to focus on the twin poisons of mysticism and racism, when it comes to Jung.

McManus and Hamilton reduce Jungian thought to the twin streams of the problematic proclamations of its founder and the fiery exhortations against progressivism leveled by its most easy listening popular exponent, Jordan Peterson. Yet, there are many broadly progressive and left-wing developments that have emerged from (and been influenced by) the Jungian field. Indeed, McManus and Hamilton mention the Anti-Oedipal work of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari as being desirably progressive critics of Lacan. However, McManus and Hamilton fail to mention the tribute that these two thinkers pay to Jung in their 1980 book A Thousand Plateaus. Within A Thousand Plateaus work, Jungian archetypal theory is, indeed, referenced. Although described as insufficiently deterritorializing, Jungs approach is seen by Deleuze and Guattari as being closer to the mark than the single all-encompassing Oedipal model employed by Freud. This refers to the Oedipal framework which, of course, Lacan based his entire theoretical edifice around in his return to Freud.

This Deleuzian connection runs deeper than this single mention in the Capitalism and Schizophrenia series. Deleuze further references Jungs work inhis 1968 book Difference and Repetition, and Deleuzian ideas expressed within this book are reflected theoretically in the work of the former Jungian (and creator of Archetypal Psychology) James Hillman. Hillman was originally a Jungian analyst, who guided studies at the Jung Institute in Zurich. His workwithin books such as Re-Visioning Psychologyreflects a pluralist, deconstructionist, and anti-authoritarian turn within Jungian thought. There are also influences from the Sufi mysticism of Henry Corbin. Years before Jordan Peterson arrived on the scene, Hillman had already anticipated and argued against popular conservative interpretation of Jung. He did this by critiquing the over-emphasis on the monotheistic (slaying-the-dragon-of-chaos) Hero archetype, as well as the individualist ego later associated with it.

Hillman felt the over-identification with this archetype was inherent to Western cultures excesses. And his own pluralist re-imagining of Jungian theory sought to mitigate this through emphasis on difference. He also railed preemptively against Petersonian reductions of archetypal imagery to evolutionary psychology and biological processes. Again, Hillman saw these as attempts to slay the power of the images of the unconscious, stultifying them by turning them into abstract scientific concepts. Furthermore, Hillman questioned the individualist basis of therapy, advocating for changes in the political and social world. As such, he anticipated many left-wing critiques of this individualism inherent in the profession, such as those articulated in Anti-Oedipus. As perhaps the most popular post-Jungian psychologist in the United States (apart from Peterson), it can hardly be said that Hillman was right-wing or conservative.

Further examples of radical attitudes latent within the Jungian model of analysis are plentiful. For example, the interpretation of psychosis as a breakdown-to-breakthrough, a spontaneous reorganization of the conscious self by the unconscious, also reflects and anticipates the anti-Oedipal promotion of deterritorialization, within the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The importance of Jungs personal deterritorialization and psychotic breakdown to the creation of his system are most clearly illustrated via the posthumous release of the almost Lovecraftian esoteric tome called The Red Book.The Red Book features an articulation of the content of Jungs breakdown, complete with psychedelic artwork and a hallucinogenic narrative of underworld figures. Jungian scholars such as Sonu Shamdasani and Hillman have held this as being far more foundational to the creation of his school than the influence of Freud, and the entire book can be held up as an instance of deterritorialization, par excellence. These elements do not a conservative form of psychoanalysis make. Far from the imposition of a right-wing orderor, slaying of chaosthis is a descent into the abyss of the underworld and a reforging of self and identity through deterritorialization and radical difference, in the vein of Zarathustra.

To fail to present these elements of Jungian thought and characterize it as merely a vessel of Petersonian order is to exclude its essential origin myth. With the above points in mind, it becomes difficult to maintain the view of Jungian analysis as a right-wing perspective. Although the authors of the original article do pay some heed to the contradictions between Jung and Petersons interpretations, by excluding the other half of Jung (the many ways in which Jungian theory emerges from more of a Deleuzoguattarian upsurge of radical difference and otherness), a false image of theoretical conservatism is more sustainable. It is not my intention to hold up Jung as a progressive icon in opposition to McManus and Hamiltons articleor to present him as a hidden leftist. Rather, I seek to highlight the ambiguities within his work and the more progressive tendencies of those of his followers who are not named Jordan Petersonand who have had far more legitimate clinical (though perhaps less popular) impact.

Race, Antisemitism, and Jung

Jungs behavior during the Second World War is also put forward by McManus and Hamilton as to why Jungian analytic psychology should been regarded as an inherently right-wing articulation of psychoanalysis. While it is true that Jung performed ambiguous (often unacceptably complicit) actions in regard to Nazismand made statements that even for the time and context would have been considered Antisemitic (See Stephen Froshs work on the subject)he also worked in order to help Jewish colleagues escape from Nazi Germany. Jung also explicitly criticized the Nazi regime, once the explicit barbarity of it became more apparent. This, of course, does not excuse his earlier actions or his Antisemitism. However, again, we are presented with an ambiguity that has led to intense levels of soul-searching, within the Jungian analytic profession. Theoretically, as Hamilton and McManus point out, this profession has a vested interest in exploring and articulating the shadow not only of the individual client but also of the personality of Jung himselfand of Jungian institutions.

Jungs Antisemitism especially has been laid bare not only by Frosh but by the well-respected Jungian Analyst Andrew Samuels. Samuels, as one of the most prominent and high-profile Jungian thinkers, again shows the political ambiguity in Jungian thought. Samuels actually is far more deserving of the title of representative of this school of analysis than is Peterson. Samuels, for instance, has been the chair of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. He was also an advisor for the British Labour government and one of the first professors of Jungian Analytic psychology in the world. Samuels has also long been the pre-eminent voice in political psychotherapy of any denomination: promoting a very strongly pluralist, left-wing, and progressively-orientated approach to integrating these two fields. His identity as a Jungian is not in contradiction to his political identity as a leftist. Jung and Jungian thought hold a level of ambiguity that McManus and Hamilton miss, either owing to their ignorance of its existence or as a result of misconstruing Jungs complicated background for the convenience of creating a simple binary: Left or Right.

It is Jungs initialoften deeply flawed or problematicpersonal explorations around questions of plurality, difference, and race that allowed for post-Jungian theory to develop reflexivity around these questions, which Hillman and Samuels demonstrate. This evolution is even reflected in the tribute to Jungs theory that decolonial pioneer Frantz Fanon makes in his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks. This is the book where Fanon attributes his own theories around introjected racial consciousness as being inspired by those made by Jung. Although Fanon was a Lacanian by training (and emphasizes the constructed rather than inherent basis to archetypes in his appropriation of archetypal theory), still Fanon acknowledges that his work owes some debt to Jungs original psychoanalytic exploration of racial consciousness. Again, my point here is not to excuse Jungs racism by reference to Fanon. Rather, I aim to illustrate that even around the issues of race, Jung (and also his legacy in terms of post-Jungian analytical psychology) is far more complex than McManus and Hamilton imply.

Peterson as Senex Possessed

Although McManus and Hamilton do mention in passing that Petersons work is an idiosyncratic rendition of Jung, it is perhaps not emphasized enough how Petersons over-emphasis on the aspects of order, the individual ego, and the heroic slaying of chaos moves away from anything resembling the aim of Jungian clinical work. What these aspects of Peterson perhaps would indicate to a Jungian analyst is a personality under possession of what is called a Senex archetype: This archetype is the Grey old man, the representative of established order. It is reminiscent of the image of Saturn devouring his children. While standing for repression, stasis and, conservatism, he rails against the attempts of the young to gain power and overthrow order. The Senex is often seen as being within an archetypal complex, in which it is positioned in conflict with the archetype of the Puer (the eternal youth). We can see Peterson falling into this complex through his position as the substitute dad of estranged Western masculinity. He follows this with father-like exhortations to clean ones bedroom. Then, there is the mutual hatred between Peterson and the infantilized Puers of the social justice movement. Petersons theoretical reduction of the images of the unconscious psyche to biological and evolutionary explanations would also be likely seen by many Jungian thinkers as an example of a Senex possession. This results in an attempt to make concrete the fluid material of the unconscious. In this way, individuation and differentiation can take place and, therefore, fossilize the unconscious: ossify it in a form that is more socially and academically acceptable to explainor, as Deleuze would have, Oedipalize it.

Possession of the personality through an archetypal complex such as this is far from the aim of individuation in the Jungian sense. With more integral interpretations of Jung as seen in the works of Hillman, Samuels, or even from Jung himself (within The Red Book), individuation is, instead, articulated as being the differentiation of self via bringing forth radical difference from the unconscious. In holding Peterson as an exemplar of Jungian thought, a caricature of analytical psychology as conservative can be promoted. However, this cannot be sustained if any sort of faithful account of Jungian theory is provided.

It might be said that in trying to cleanly divide Jung and Lacan into Right and Left political positions, it is almost a replication of the Senex-Puer complex that I identified Petersons work as suffering from. Admittedly, there is perhaps some attraction in framing the perspectives of complex, ambiguous thinkers in this way. It allows one to frame ones preferred perspective as either that of a righteous rebel or, alternatively, a defender of order. The truth is thatmuch like Lacanunderneath the unipolar portrayal of Jung by McManus and Hamilton, an ambiguous figure lurks. There is a figure who is sometimes conservative but sometimes radically other. There is a figure who emphasizes individuation and differentiationbut also the influence of collective archetypes. There is a figure who saves his Jewish colleagues but promotes theories of Aryan supremacy. Jung is a profoundly complex figure. As such, there must be a reckoning with himin all of his ambiguitythroughout the academy before his form of psychoanalysis can be labelled right-wing.

Nick Opyrchal is a psychotherapist in private practice. For his M.A., he researched the intersection between Lacanian and transpersonal perspectives in psychotherapy. His current doctoral work investigates the intersection of identity politics and the transpersonal within psychotherapy.

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Jordan Peterson and Carl Jung's Worldviews Have Been Greatly Oversimplified - Merion West

On this weeks episode of The Ben Shapiro Show: Sunday Special, The Daily Wire editor-in-chief talked with Dave Rubin, the host of The Rubin Report, about his upcoming title Dont Burn This Book: Thinking For Yourself In An Age Of Unreason, which will be released on Tuesday.

During the conversation, Shapiro asks Rubin about his close-knit relationship with Professor Jordan Peterson, who remarks on the front cover of the upcoming book that it is topical, engaging, personable, and, above all, reassuring.

I want to get back to some of the lessons that you have, Shapiro told Rubin. One of the ones that really struck me, because it was actually rather moving, is your discussion of your relationship with Jordan Peterson.

Rubin then talks about an event he did with Peterson and Shapiro in Los Angeles and the vitriol that was targeted at them in response before going into some observations about Petersons resolve during his own book tour for 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos.

We found out in the middle of the tour that his wife had what they thought was terminal cancer thank God it turned out not to be terminal, and shes actually doing much better, said Rubin.

Try and imagine this guy who was a mild-mannered psychologist and professor, who suddenly became the worlds father in a way, really the pre-eminent public thinker of our time, he said. The fame, the hit pieces. You know, you remember the enforced monogamy hit piece in The New York Times, and you remember the Cathy Newman so what youre saying is moment.

All of those things, living through all of that and then thinking his wife is going to die, said Rubin. We were at lunch, at a steakhouse of course, when he got the call about his wife. I saw this man live through something unbelievably, extraordinarily horrible or as he would say brutal and always put his best foot forward.

I never saw him break one of those rules, said Rubin, referring to the rules set forth in the professors own book. I saw him just trying to be true, and if he gave me anything, through osmosis or through accident, its that. I am really trying to do that.

Shapiro also asks whether Rubin has learned any particular lessons from Peterson, noting that a passage of Dont Burn This Book talks about the professors decision to improve his public appearance.

Rubin emphasizes the importance of dressing well, and recalled when he was touring in Sweden, he overheard a conversation between a young man and a cashier, and that the young man remarked that he was buying a suit for the first time to go see Petersons lecture.

I thought, this is absolutely incredible, said Rubin. [Hes] buying the first suit of his life so that he can present himself in a responsible way, to go to an event to hear how he can further fix his life.

After the Sunday Special was published, Peterson himself remarked that the interview between Rubin and Shapiro contained comments from good friends.

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Dave Rubin Talks To Shapiro About Learning From Jordan Peterson On Tour - The Daily Wire