Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Crybullies in publishing attack Jordan Peterson but not Mein Kampf

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While we are on the subject of Cancel Culture, readers may know of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. In an astonishing display, employees at Penguin Random House Canada staged a hysterical blubberfest to try to force the publisher to cancel plans to publish his next book. This would be off topic except that we may anticipate similar scenes played out in the future around books with any theme that Cancel Culture deems ID-friendly (or whatever their beech is):

At a town hall meeting on Monday, employees aired grievances over the move by Penguin to publish the book, saying that the company shouldn’t be offering a platform to Peterson because of his popularity with the far-right. Vice reports that anonymous complaints about the book’s release have been made by “dozens” more employees…

“The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this,” one employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Vice. “It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative.” Vice reported that it spoke with four separate employees, all of whom held similar views.

Staff, “Jordan Peterson’s ’12 Rules’ sequel sees staff complain to publisher Penguin Random House” at National Post

And from the Toronto Sun: “Outrage, anonymous complaints and even fits of crying were on full display during an employee town hall at Penguin Random House Canada following Monday’s announcement that the company would publish Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, the new book by psychologist Jordan Peterson.”

As it happens, Penguin’s UK branch publishes Hitler’s Mein Kampf but that’s okay with the Woke because shut up.

Your News writer (O’Leary for News) is a Canadian who has been an editor for over forty-five years. I want to go on record as saying that I do not have the slightest sympathy for Penguin’s blubbering staff.

In my day, if you didn’t like your publisher boss’s decisions, you founded your own publishing company and published what you thought the public should/would buy and read. In Canada, publishers can often even get government grants in aid of publishing Canadian authors. Alas, a friend of my generation assures me, these people are far, far too fragile to do anything but weep, demand, and complain. I hope my friend is mistaken, for their sakes as well as everyone else’s.

If said friend is right, they should not be in the publishing industry. Whether you are a writer, an editor, a publisher, a bookseller, or a critic, you either grow a thick skin or get out. Publishing has never been a warm place to sleep.

Incidentally, here’s my own review of one of Peterson’s books: Jordan Peterson: Do the stitches hold?

See also: Cancel Culture tries to get a Nature Communications paper retracted. We are informed that all science Twitter is in a ghastly rage over an open access paper in Nature Communications which seems to show that female scientists benefit more from male mentors than from female mentors. To a layperson with some life experience, that wouldn’t be a surprising outcome at all. In a system that has been male-dominated since forever, more guys would be higher up on the pole. And if you want to get ahead, it pays to know Top People… But, of course, the Outrage Mob is sharpening the guillotine. Their final enemy is, after all, reality in any of its forms.

Comments
It is long past time to do what is needed with the cancel idiots who would not know a fascist if Mussolini were to kick them in their back side. When they go on the attack like rabid dogs, respond with charges and lawsuits against them. It is illegal to incite violence, yet that is what the most vocal of the whining cowards do. They incite violence against anyone who disagrees with them in a very fascist way. If they seek to stop someone from printing things they do not like in the United States, bring a federal suit against them for violation of First Amendment rights.BobRyan
November 29, 2020
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Nah. Peterson knows what he's doing. Like any Hollywood celebrilty, or like Trump for that matter, he knows that "negative" publicity is vastly more effective than positive. He's a showman.polistra
November 29, 2020
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