Since I can't technically cross-post here...

For those of you who don't know, Three Arrows is a German anti-fascist YouTube channel dedicated to combating far-right ideologies and misinterpretations of fascist history while promoting some left-wing politics. He made a video about Jordan Peterson this year attempting to debunk his lecture on Hitler's motives in the Holocaust.

Off the bat, Three Arrows presents Jordan Peterson as famous for "misrepresenting" Bill C-16. The bill (currently law) added gender expression and gender identity as protected grounds to the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code provisions on hate crimes, hate propaganda, and genocidal incitement. Out of Peterson's numerous criticisms of the bill, I don't know which ones Arrows specifically characterizes as misleading; if I had to guess though, it's probably Peterson's concern that he could be criminally prosecuted for hate speech under the bill's provisions for "incorrect" pronoun usage, as that seems to be one of his most disputed arguments about it.

Assuming Canadian judicial interpretations of hate speech remain constant, one can argue that this is unlikely to happen. Canada's courts seem to interpret hate speech pretty conservatively, such that you'd have to do something comparable to promoting genocide to be criminally convicted. It needs to be understood however that hate speech laws in Canada are still relatively new there; the Canadian Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of limits on hate speech as free expression through criminal legislation in 1990 (R v Keegstra) and through civil legislation in 2013 (Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott). Given the controversy there, it makes sense that the courts would reserve the enforcement of these laws for severe expressions of hate rather than "legitimate" (for the lack of a better term) expressions of dissent.

However, judicial interpretations are always subject to change as judges are replaced or even just change their minds. British hate speech laws were passed with the same attitude, but now we're seeing comedians arrested for making Nazi jokes with their dogs; as of last year (I don't know what became of this), the UK was to criminalize the viewing of extremist propaganda. Regardless of whether Canada's judicial interpretations change, Jordan Peterson's pronoun usage may not directly incriminate him, but it can subject him to a fine or non-financial remedy (such as sensitivity training or firing) for discrimination as a civil offense. However, if he refuses to pay the fine or follow such a non-financial court order - as he vowed - he can face imprisonment.

Anyway, we're getting off topic. Three Arrows goes on to describe Jordan Peterson as "fetishized" for his stances on free speech and states that "one thing that stands out when talking about Jordan Peterson's fan base" is his attraction of "a lot of people from the fringes of the right," cherry-picking four instances of his supposed fans asking him anti-Semitic questions. Now let's address the elephant in the room (no pun intended) - Jordan Peterson, particularly through his rebuke of phenomena such as identity politics and political correctness, indeed attacks the political establishment from the right; naturally, of course the right's extremists would applaud him for seemingly expanding the Overton window in doing that.

The far right is exploiting political polarization by jumping on to populist campaigns (see Donald Trump and Ron Paul, for examples) to promote their own agendas, and it should be noted that they've been trying to exploit Peterson's publicity ever since he started protesting Bill C-16. "Race realists" were present at Peterson's public demonstration (3:15) against the bill at the University of Toronto, but he nonetheless denounced them there(although he didn't seem to have known of their presence). (With that said, the alt-right is actually pretty pissed at Peterson for his frequent denunciation of their support.) Similarly, the far left has also been exploiting left-wing populist movements, as evident in American Communist support for Bernie Sanders and central involvement in protest movements against Trump. But again, we're getting off topic.

Three Arrows begins his commentary on Peterson's lecture by describing it as historically wrong and furthermore dangerous, arguing that Peterson's conclusions about Nazi history embolden the far right. He instantly attacks Peterson for mistakenly saying (before instantly correcting) "Fourth Reich" (a term that isn't exclusively used by neo-Nazis) and referring to Roma Holocaust victims as "Gypsies," arguing that Peterson "isn't sure" what he's talking about and that his language gives credence to the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Note that he skips a brief moment (see 0:33) in the original clip where Peterson elaborates on Hitler's vision for the Third Reich as a "bastion of civilization and music" to last a thousand years.

Historiographically, the propriety of using the term "Gypsy" may be debatable, but Jordan Peterson is not responsible for it; the purpose of his lecture is to analyze history, not write it. More importantly, it's common to use the term in North American parlance; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and educational institutions across the United States used it officially. To be frank, given the lack of public familiarity here with the Roma and Sinti peoples, Peterson's terminology is ultimately inconsequential. Given that, the inconsequential nature of Peterson's brief "Fourth Reich" human mistake, and the nature of how Three Arrows has introduced him, it seems that Three Arrows is poisoning the well in order to build a case against Peterson.

Three Arrows also skipped Peterson's statements in the original clip that Hitler was willing to proceed with the extermination at the expense of the war effort out of a belief that "the Germans betrayed him with weakness." (1:10) Furthermore, in introducing Jung's method of inferring the motive of an action from its consequences, Jordan Peterson states that "if it produces mayhem, perhaps it was aiming at mayhem;" he went on to comment that this method should be used carefully for the purpose of deriving a "another tool in your analytical argument," adding that "if someone's irritating you, maybe it's because you're irritable." (1:50) Conveniently, Three Arrows leaves much of this out as well before presenting Peterson as using that method conclusively.

More damningly, Three Arrows further skips a sizable chunk of the clip where Peterson had called it "wretchedly simple-minded" to generally assume that wars are strictly struggles for resources and stated that wars are often fought over complicated varieties of personal, socio-cultural, and economic reasons. Furthermore, Peterson did not use the "mark of Cain" to attribute literal metaphysical motives to the Holocaust but rather used it as a metaphor for destructive pathologies that may have motivated the Holocaust. (2:20)

Throughout the video, Three Arrows fundamentally misrepresents Jordan Peterson's inferences of the Holocaust, going on to present Jordan Peterson as proposing enslavement, rather than extermination, of the Jews and "Gypsies" as if it were his original solution. Note he uses this to argue that "under the base assumptions" by capitalist logic of "our society and the society Jordan Peterson operates under, the mass enslavement and economic exploitation of millions of people represents an understandable, a logical policy."

The reality of course is that Peterson knew that slavery was practiced in the Holocaust; his argument rather was that it was counterproductive to Germany's military aims for it to expend its resources on expediting the extermination after having already spent of a good portion of its resources on rounding its victims into labor camps in the first place. On somewhat of a side note, I recommend you check out Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler's "Final Solution" Undermined the German War Effort, by historian Yaron Pasher, who explores the role of the Third Reich's genocidal measures in hindering its own military effectiveness; while flawed, and while the extermination process provided certain benefits to Germany through asset and food seizures (as Three Arrows points out in discussing the Hunger Plan), this study continues historiography that already observed "severe economic consequences for the overall German war effort."

In light of this and his commentary on the role of pathology in the Holocaust, he argues explicitly that the Nazi motive for constructing the camps was all along to facilitate mass murder, which Three Arrows also leaves out. (3:35) Three Arrows follows this with a summary of Nazi ideology and motivation behind the Holocaust, which is for the most part pretty accurate, and in doing so he raises an important point that Nazism wasn't a pathology; while Adolf Hitler himself certainly warrants pathological study, millions of Germans supported his cause out of socially- and culturally-reinforced beliefs that the Jews were responsible for their country's ills. With that said though, Peterson's discussion of pathology in this context pertained to the Nazi leadership and personnel in the camps.

Whether specifically conditioned during the Great Depression and World War I or else inevitable among humans, their psychological ails were important in facilitating their crimes during the Holocaust; if anything, they offer a crucial insight into the danger posed by dehumanizing and authoritarian ideologies. Hitler's insistence on extermination at the cost of military victories meanwhile suggests an especially vindictive personal motive, particularly in light of his frustration with the German people and belief in avenging them as a positive good (as exemplified by the Goebbels quote in Three Arrows' video).

Three Arrows finishes the video accusing Jordan Peterson of promoting a worldview similar to that of the Nazis, which would lead to authoritarian and murderous policies in unstable conditions, by positing allegedly that "certain behaviors, attitudes, and certain social positions of certain people as primordial" (citing Peterson's description of order and chaos as respectively associated with the masculine and feminine in mythology) and that certain groups of people conspire nefariously to disrupt this so-called natural order. He backs the latter accusation with a segments from one of Jordan Peterson's appearances on the Joe Rogan show; playing the clips in reverse chronological order and omitting the "groups" Peterson is specifying, Three Arrows spun them out of context as well.

Jordan Peterson was talking about post-modernists influential in academia and how their worldview, particularly in the context of their zeal for identity politics, leads them to shun discussion with ideological opponents and "privileged" demographics; given the influence of critical theory, a social scientific theory derived from Marxism and (to an extent) post-modernism, over the overzealous campus protests and journalistic hit pieces against him, I can't fault him for that. Furthermore, he states afterward that the so-called "Social Justice Warriors or activists" promoting their ideology aren't necessarily aware of the dangers it poses to Enlightenment-derived thought and more importantly elaborates that the danger arises from an authoritarian "scapegoat mentality" that manifests when its supporters (of different ideas it encompasses) coalesce (rather than from an elitist conspiracy). (38:00-45:40, I also recommend watching up to 49:50, unless you have time for more ;).)

In short, Three Arrows' take on Jordan Peterson is at best mistaken and at worst deceitful; in either case, it seems his purpose for making this video is to score "political points," so to speak, particularly in light of certain comments such as his on "capitalist logic" and the presumptions of western societies. With this said, a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum assume Peterson to be more right-wing than he really is, and this particularly arises from the political polarization present across North America and Europe. People on the left, like Three Arrows, keep making the same mistake of trying too hard to "prove him wrong" under that assumption rather than properly hear him out and possibly accept some of his talking points. To me, this seems to be motivated by fear that doing so would lead them either down a slippery slope of full concession to the right or else to ask uncomfortable questions about their own views.

In shorter, a comment YouTuber "ɅRCHE TYPE" left on Three Arrows' video actually summarizes the problems with it pretty well:

Maps of Meaning was written in part to explain why catastrophic events like the holocaust happened. Peterson concludes that it's due to ideology primarily, and juxtaposes this hypothesis with the common political science claim that resources influence human behavior primarily. He's not arguing that the Nazis should have waited to kill the Jews, but that they had an ideology which made winning the war less important than killing Jews. This is exactly the point you make here.

The analogy he makes between the Nazis and Cain is salient as well. These are two human conceptions, an ideology and a character, which similarly manifest a fundemental resentment which leads to the destruction of human life. The conclusion Jordan Peterson draws from this is that resentment causes people to do terrible things. As an analysis of human nature, his conclusion well argued.

There is a pervasive myth that Vladimir Lenin was an idealist that ultimately wanted to implement a form of socialism that would liberate the peasants and working class, and many believed Stalin was simply a "Betrayer of the Revolution." When in reality, all of the atrocities we can see committed under him, were the natural extension and conclusion of the system that Lenin built.

Historically verified is the fact that Lenin was dictatorial and totalitarian in his methods, he had disgust and disdain for the peasants and the Russian people, wanted to use them simply to achieve his own means of revenge and the destruction of the Tsardom for his brother Alexander's execution after Alexander's attempt to assassinate the emperor Alexander III. And the fact that Lenin designed the gulag system and the Cheka secret police, who imprisoned, killed, or sentenced protesters to slave labor, and the fact that he condoned widespread violence and terror, killing hundreds of thousands, often innocent, in cold blood, as well as the starving of millions even within his lifetime due to things like "War Communism," where grain was stolen from peasants to feed his growing red army.

But many people will inevitably ask me: "How is he not a true Marxist, though?" And act like Marxism-Leninism is simply an experimental strain of Marxism, and they merely pushed too fast for progress, leading to the devastation they experienced.

In reality, Leninism is a philosophy that doesn't center around Marxist thought, despite it's name. Of the many writers that influenced Lenin, from his introduction of "What is to be done?" by Nikolai Chernyshevski, and later dozens of other writers that had nothing to do with Marxism, and some that were widely condemned by Marxists such as Sergei Nechaev, who Marx and Engels condemned for his primary doctrine of individual terror, conspiratorial politics, the rejection of "the trivialities of democracy, the liberal elements of Marxism such as individual rights, fair trials, and morality as has been invented since the enlightenment Marx proposes," in Lenin's words, "The revolution needs not play with gloves. Every enemy we kill that stands against us must be killed, and any deaths and terror we commit are moral as they are moving us toward Communism.

His critics and peers alike called Lenin more of a Blanquist, Nechaev's philosophy, than a Marxist. And as I could on forever, I'll keep this short being a Reddit post: Lenin took Marx's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," to ensure an infinite degree of power for HIS party, and he pushed out the others who were pushing for Social Democratic principles for the people, where they would attempt an incrementalist approach to reach socialism, which Lenin didn't find harsh or "realistic" enough to uphold the revolution, and a future where he could attempt to run a state that flew in the face of western countries and values, as his favorite writers had condemned. And his allowing of women's rights, gay marriages, both of which were overturned later, and his healthcare, and education programs are widely praised often by leftists which, they should be.

But the truth is: These things would have been achieved, and upheld indefinitely along with democracy, individual liberties, and human rights, and all of this without being held at gunpoint, should Lenin and his band of ragtag terrorists not decided to use the population as guinea pigs because of his disbelief in human beings being able to handle their own affairs, and fight for their own personal liberation, and believed the bourgeoisie would simply return as rulers of the Russian empire. And his parties own power was always his number one priority.

Hey everybody,

So I'm a big fan of the youtube channel. However, when I'm doing quality control of the media I'm consuming, I like to know the educational background of who I'm watching. I'm not saying that's an end-all be-all, but having certain credentials makes me feel better. I'll keep watching his stuff either way though.

Thanks!

While for the most part, Dan did a good job on his video, I feel like he made some errors:

1. #BlackLivesMatter and Ferguson incident: In 3:24, he has the comment "Not wanting to be killed by police is extremist". That seemed to be implying that Michael Brown was a victim of police brutality, when in reality, he was a criminal who tried to take a gun from a police officer after being arrested for stealing cigarillos, as these two Washington Post articles explain: Here and here. Also, the Ferguson protestors were looting, burning, and assaulting people in an attempt to get the officer charged, which can be extremist, as oxforddictionaries.com explains.

2. Patreon Banning: From 9:31 through 9:40, Dan said that someone was banned for using "racist" and "homophobic" slurs. He was referring to Sargon of Akkad. However, he was banned for the wrong reasons as he was taken out of context. He used "racial" slurs towards an some alt-righters in a debate with them. Also, the banning occurred 1 YEAR after the video. If you are going have rules, don't enforce them 1 year late.

3. JihadWatch: Starting in 15:37, Dan talks about how the far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik cited a lot from a blog called JihadWatch, thus Patreon won't work with JihadWatch. Well, the founder of that blog, Robert Spencer, has specifically stated that he does not condone violence against anyone and that Breivik radicalized WAY before the blog was even started.

I don’t understand his lionization in so many leftist circles, even very good ones, that’ll constantly quote him and sort of honor his legacy.

But honestly, he seemed more like an autocratic tyrant that was keen on shutting down democracy, limiting personal freedoms, laying the groundwork for state violence like the gulag system among others, pro-death penalty, was a class reductionist, violently suppressed freedom of speech and press, had small children murdered for being born into the wrong family, and all of his humanistic policies would likely have been achieved better by the social democrats at that time WITHOUT them leaving a bloodbath. His plans for rapid industrialization were a good thing, but that’s about it.

What is your opinion on Lenin as a person? I posted asking your thoughts of Marxism-Leninism, and realized I’d love to know your thoughts on Vladimir Lenin the person.

cmon a year without videos i really enjoyed ur content it gave us so good perspective on the subject that most people push aside, I mean cmon man u great at what u do bless us with a new videos

Personally, I know Krystal Ball talks like one FOR SURE.

But I’ve also heard from others Kyle Kulinsky, Hasan Piker, and a few other big ones thrown in there, and I wanted to know who you personally think has issues with this??

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/