Why the Left is Winning the Culture War: Hard Right

Previously, I wrote of the common notion that the progressives were winning the culture war, a brief and by no means complete survey of reactionary thought on the matter and proposed a number of explanations for and caveats to that idea. Now, I begin to look at the deeper reasons why the right, the reactionaries especially, have a difficult time even maintaining the status quo, let alone in turning back the clock, in modern civilization.

The right wing political message is harder. By harder, I mean that right wing political thought trades in both foundational principles and policy proposals that are less likely to be widely popular. Conservatives have always been the "party of no", the party-poopers of the political scene. They claim that we cannot achieve all of our legislative goals without punishing levels of taxation and government overreach.

Central to conservative thought as far back as Edmund Burke is the notion that human nature is not fundamentally perfectible, and indeed it's an uphill battle to improve it at all. Humanity is in need of some kind of higher set of moral and philosophical principles beyond the reach of his will to power in order to keep him on the right track. Religion is often touted as the source of this.

Overall, this is a less popular message than that peddled by reformist politicians and ideologies of boundless optimism. First classical liberalism, then socialism and today feminism promise if not utopia, at least a greatly improved way of life over what we have now. This is naturally a more attractive message. It is more attractive to believe that pressing social problems can be solved, than to view them as intractable and that trying to solve them will simply squander limited and valuable resources. We feel better about the left's message of a brighter future. It flatters our egos. We don't like being told that we have a naturally debased nature that makes social progress very difficult and even dangerous.

The left has a long history of offering up ideal classes of people: the proletariat, the 3rd world, women, the poor and marginalized, who if they were just given the reins of power, would guide us into a world free of exploitation, poverty and war. Being the sober voice in a climate of excitement and enthusiasm doesn't win popularity contests. And don't expect to be exonerated in hindsight when the project truly does go awry, just as you predicted it would, either. Of course, the right does sometimes enter its own politics of fervent hope and even utopianism, but these incidences occur in spite of, rather than because of, the underlying nature of conservative thought.

It is not that the left does not posit the need to make sacrifices for the achievement of its goals. But the left tends to ask more of those who are, at least according to leftist bodies of thought, able to give up more. Moreover, leftism offers hope of societal improvement when all is said and done. The sacrifices demanded by reactionaries, on the other hand, are mainly to stop things getting worse than they already are, and more often fall on those already on the less fortunate end of the social spectrum. This is in contrast to the deeply rooted Christian ethic otherwise so much touted on at least some segments of the left, which generally extols charity and concern for the less fortunate.

It is not that right leaning people are unwilling to be charitable. But they're far more likely to balk at the encoding of charity into our political, economic and social structures in the way that leftist calls for reform advocate for. Rightism would prefer that charity be a private, individual decision, and don't like the notion that there are structural inequities and injustices in the way that wealth and resources end up being distributed. Most people know, or at least suspect how inadequate this will be in the face of the real need out there. Right wing people may sneer at how easy it is to be generous and charitable with other people's money, and that's precisely the point. It is easier. It is easier to at least advocate for redistributive taxation and social spending, even if the threat of capital flight and investment strike make those programs tricky to implement.

Up until very recently, the right was seen as the side of the prudish, the censorious and the puritanical. Say no to drugs. No sex until marriage. Abstinence only. Contraception and abortion are bad, murder even. Every sperm is sacred. Sex, drugs and rock and roll were seen as the gateway to Sodom and Gomorrah. Not among all right leaning people, but those who thought that way did lean right.

That is not the path of least resistance to which people are naturally inclined. While we can hew to very straight and narrow lifestyles in times of shortage and hardship, or else when in tight knit social environments that share the same values, once modern levels of affluence and technological development made less stringent ways of life attainable with reduced social costs, that's naturally what most people did. Who would naturally deal with the shortage and hardship of marrying young and having a mess of children once this ceased to be economically necessary or socially mandated? If there's no real reason not to enjoy sex, drugs and rock and roll once we stop believing that they'll make the baby Jesus cry and your parents, boss and neighbors won't object to it, it's easier to do so than not to, however real the very real problems of addiction and abuse are, at least for some people.

Over the last decade or so, the cultural left has introduced its own culture of austerity, with privilege checking, broadening definitions of sexual harassment and rape, speech codes, avoidance of bad words that might trigger someone with a marginalized identity, deconstruction and critique of movies, music, video games and so on for sexist and racist content and so on. This goes back a bit further on college campuses, to the late 1980s approximately. And even here, they are not so much suggesting that we "just say no" but rather that we merely get informed, enthusiastic and affirmative consent. In triplicate, and you'd better cross all the t's and dot all the i's. And still hope that no one cries rape or harassment, since the zeitgeist demands that the accuser be given the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, this new stringency doesn't seem to apply to historically "marginalized" groups: women, ethnic minorities, trans folks etc.

Still and all, this is an altogether different message than abstinence only, at least until marriage. An option that is increasingly beyond many people's price range, and not likely to be entered into until after the long period of education and preparation needed to secure the kinds of middle class jobs you can raise a family on. Whatever flaws exist in hook-up culture so called, and there are many, people will simply not revert back to the sexual morality that prevailed in agricultural societies where for all intents and purposes, you were an adult at fifteen.

So while not completely equivalent, the emergent social justice warrior (SJW) is sometimes mentioned as the leftist counterpart to the stuffy Christian conservative. Hard leftists - Marxists, Stalinists and Maoists and the like, have had a similar sort of tough mindedness, but these have never been significant even on what's considered left wing in the 1st world. What's relevant here is that the last few decades wherein second wave feminism gradually gave way to the SJWs are a wink of an eye in the face of the history of western civilization overall, wherein it has been religion and conservatism that has eschewed creature comforts in favor of stoicism and stern morality.

Moreover, reactionaries propose some genuinely harsh measures. Who is going to tell women - the majority of the population and currently united and galvanized by feminist ideology - that their place is at home, barefoot and pregnant after all? This seems like political suicide, and so not surprisingly is backed away from even by those on the right who actually do think this way. In a similar vein, it is the right wing that is proposing that worker's rights be curtailed or even done away with entirely, and employment for mid to low skill workers with little bargaining power reduced to something comparable to serfdom. It is the right wing that proposes that much of the populace lose access to health care, public education, or a social safety net in times of need. Outside the United States, these messages unsurprisingly do not resonate with working and middle class people. And conservatives within America must go to great lengths and expense to gain working class buy-in for their frankly sado-masochistic kinds of policies.

So it is that the right wing presents a harder path for individuals and societies to follow, and not always with a long term payoff to make it worthwhile, other than the suggestion that the left will lead us to a still worse place. This is a handicap for the right. As a reason for progressive dominance in the culture war, I'd say it's relevant, significant even but not central.

For one thing, the right's message of austerity doesn't always fail to resonate. While they haven't convinced most to just say no or wait for marriage, they've convinced many more, particularly in the English speaking world, that harsh cutbacks to social services, infrastructure and the like, along with weakening the power of the unions and the state to affect wages and working conditions were necessary to preserve the long term economic health of the 1st world nations.

The message resonated deeply with many of the people who had the most to lose from it, because it appealed to a sense of heroic mission and sacrifice, as well as to a sense of individualistic masculine pride. The aforementioned Robert Conquest and John O'Sullivan, they who believed leftward drift inevitable in any but explicitly right wing institutions, would have been quite surprised by the direction that Tony Blair would take the British Labour party, and how this was the rule and not the exception in social democratic parties across the western world.

In my own jurisdiction of the province of Alberta in western Canada, it's very hard to win an election if one isn't running on a platform of economic austerity. The deep cuts to social spending implemented in the 1990s by then Premier Ralph Klein make him one of the best remembered premiers in provincial history among Albertans, and they elected United Conservative leader Jason Kenney as premier in April of 2019 in the hopes that he can repeat Klein's performance.

The trick to pulling this off, though, is that a LOT of long term investment into policy institutes, think tanks, alternative media and similar kinds of capital intensive ideological infrastructure was necessary to eventually gain mainstream buy-in. Not just investment, but long term strategic thinking that boiled down the message of austerity to three to four word sound bite slogans with which a compliant media could saturation bomb the public, until massive cut backs and privatization just became common sense.

Another example: to this date, the late David Koch and his brother Charles have financed libertarian minded organizations, with highly successful online outreach and thus right-libertarianism has a notable following among post-boomer generations, particularly of white males who've been excluded from the mainstream narrative of privilege and social justice, themselves rather infamously funded by rival billionaire "philanthropists" such as George Soros. While libertarianism has been, for reasons soon to be discussed, less successful than social justice overall, it does show that the more dour nature of right wing thought is not an insurmountable weakness, provided there's sufficient resources and organization behind it. Which there often isn't, for reasons to be discussed in future installments of this series.

Another weakness of leftism is that it's ideologies are more complex and systemic. The core of right wing thought can be boiled down to the idea that some people are naturally more gifted than others, or that good and/or smart people do good and/or smart things, and so succeed. When society goes astray, it's because bad people are gaining the reins of state power and implementing redistributionist policies. These ideas can range from relatively reasonable criticisms of center left politicians to bizarre conspiracy theories implicating the Illuminati, Elders of Zion or even reptilian space aliens.  As naive as these views are, they are also simpler and easier to understand for the uninitiated.

Leftist theories, by contrast, posit deeper, more complex, abstract and systemic views of the world, and come up with their own unsettling sorts of ideological claims. Leftist explanations of poverty and steep levels of inequality are systemic and therefore not as easy to grasp. They're also easier for the right to straw-man: "leftists are just jealous of people who are better than them and want to take their wealth and resources for themselves" or similar nonsense.

Moreover, leftist claims posit their own challenges that no shortage of people would like to duck or deny. If poverty and hardship have systemic causes and could happen to anyone, does this not then place a burden of responsibility upon the polity and its citizens? Should we not be willing to pony up more in taxes to help the poor, raise the minimum wage or even be prepared to roll up our sleeves and take to the streets because, after all, the means of production aren't going to seize themselves? Is it not easier to simply suggest that the poor are just stupid and lazy and leave the tough job of managing the economy and the polity to the smart fellas willing to put in the time and effort to do it? And if they get paid a lot more money to do so, aren't they deserving of it? This isn't so easy a line of argument to refute as the left would like it to be. It's not completely and entirely untrue either.

Of course, the outcomes of this kind of thinking don't always rebound to the benefit of the right, as "woke" dominance in cultural spheres imposed by incorporated cultural institutions make clear. Cultural leftists did an effective job of organizing and strategizing in order to increase their influence in academia and the media, as any paleoconservative willing to talk about "cultural Marxism" would be only happy to tell you. The thing is, the whole "long march through the institutions" thing isn't simply a right wing conspiracy theory. There's something to it and it goes a long way towards explaining current progressive cultural dominance in cultural spheres, because the right was so poorly equipped to deal with it.

So the right's core political message is tougher overall to accept, though there's plenty of qualifications and exceptions to this. This is one reason for progressive dominance in the current culture war, but by no means the most significant one.

Continued in Part 3: Left Alone

Follow Ernest Everhard on these formats:

Ernest Everhard on Facebook.

Alternative Left on Facebook.

Alternative Left on Twitter.

Samizdat Broadcasts on YouTube.
Ernest Everhard on Minds

Why the Left is Winning the Culture War: An Introduction to and Rejection of that Fundamental Premise

I must confess here and now that listening to conservative and reactionary YouTubers is a guilty pleasure of mine. They do, believe it or not, have their admirable traits. On average they come across as more reasonable than their woke counterparts, though this is a fairly recent phenomena. It is, sadly to say, easier to have a conversation with a conservative intellectual than a leftist college activist these days. Would that the former were a bit more numerous and the later a good bit less so. Of course, reasonable leftists would be best of all.

A common lament among the more astute and honest people on the right (yes, they do exist) is the long defeat they've been waging against emergent progressive culture. A good recent example of this is a video posted to YouTube by the Heritage Foundation of a moderated panel discussion hosted by the Claremont Institute entitled America's Cold Civil War. The panelists engage in a familiar refrain: why does the strategic initiative in America's long running culture war now most certainly reside on the left?

The answers that they come up with should be familiar to anyone at all versed in conservative and reactionary thought. It's attributed mostly to the emergence of the new left in the 1960s and their capture of academia and radicalization of the democratic party shortly thereafter. This is not entirely untrue, nor even insignificant. In fact, so not insignificant is it that I've even done a blog series about it, and said series has even been cited as a "foundational text" for reform of the current year social justice movement! But enough plugging out of me. The point being is that many right wing thinkers, ranging from Patrick Buchanan to the more moderate David Brooks to conservative mainstays such as Dinesh D'Souza, Sean Hannity and just about any Fox News commenter you can name lay the blame for the current climate of moral laxity and political correctness at the feet of the new social movements that arose in the 1960s and after.

Some reactionary thinkers trace progressive dominance back much farther than that, and lay it at the feet of the enlightenment itself. This is the premise of the infamous Dark Enlightenment outlook. This being the big N neoreaction, abbreviated NRx and exemplified by thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) and Nick Land.

Progressive triumph and concomitant civilizational decline is such a prevalent theme in neoreactionary work that it's become one of their axiomatic philosophical claims. NRx refers to the current dominance of progressive thought and values as "the Cathedral" and compare it to the dominance of the Catholic Church over medieval culture. They regard mainstream conservative political parties as little more than severely compromised and controlled opposition. A common observation they make is that "any institution not explicitly right wing will gradually drift left," a law of politics they often cite. It is one of three of Robert Conquest's laws of politics, and John O'Sullivan's first law states something very similar. Discussions of the Cathedral and the long term prospects for western civilization are common in neoreactionary spaces, and the mood is not a positive one. Democracy and egalitarianism have triumphed, in their view, and civilization is doomed now that the riffraff are at the helm.

It's interesting to note that neoreaction's criticism of the enlightenment and its views on left wing cultural hegemony place them in a curious and ironic kind of kinship with the very "cultural Marxists" they're otherwise so critical of: the Frankfurt School, the French post-structuralists and even Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci's theories of cultural hegemony. This blog features a discussion of neoreaction as actually being the right's embrace of postmodernism.

Neoreactionary thinkers have spawned an entire underground of bloggers and YouTube commentators. One notable neoreactionary YouTuber who tackles these questions frequently is a trad-Catholic who calls himself The Distributist. I mention him specifically because he's put out some very deep and thought provoking material on this subject that would be well worth looking at. This includes a multi-video series asking What's Wrong with the Alt-Right, a near two hour long video (combining several shorter episodes) on Resisting Progressive Institutions, a video called Sargon, storytelling, Patreon, and power (why the left is winning the culture war) - the name says it all, and a noteworthy video discussing the left as being antifragile. The Distributist is by no means alone in holding these views, but is noteworthy because he articulates them especially well, and his videos are worth a watch if a long view, as in a civilizational level view of the ongoing culture war interests you.

And of course, no discussion of this subject would be complete without a mention of the brilliant Decline of the West, opus of the German philosopher of history Oswald Spengler, published in two parts, one in 1918 and one in 1921. Spengler's influence on reactionary thought would be hard to understate. Basically, he proposes that civilizations go through life-cycles, and he uses seasonal cycles as a kind of metaphor to outline this. Spengler calls western civilization "Faustian" and that its primary cultural motif or "ur-symbol" is a striving for an unattainable infinity, thus lending it a tragic character. The premise of the work is that Faustian civilization is entering its "winter" phase.

This phase is marked by a rise in materialism and primarily economic and world-power concerns and a concomitant loss of connection to its foundational culture. For Spengler, ideas we would term "progressive" - democracy, emphasis on economics, secularism and the like, exemplify the decoupling of civilization from the culture that initially galvanized it. While deep and thought provoking, Decline of the West is a very ponderous and dense work. Spengler's core ideas are also outlined in this 63 video series outlining the work. Yes, 63 videos, and I would recommend you watch them all. I would name only Karl Marx as a thinker that's been more influential to me personally long term than Oswald Spengler.

I would not necessarily call Spengler a reactionary, and in some ways he had an influence on the eventual emergence of the cultural relativism that today's right so despises. This is because he doesn't believe that a culture or civilization can be rightly understood in the terms established by another culture or civilization. Moreover, he doesn't seem to think that civilizational decline can even be reversed. Attempts to recapture lost glory are part-and-parcel of what the decline, or winter phase is all about. In short, reactionary thinking is a symptom of, rather than an antidote to, civilizational decline.

Moreover, his analysis of western civilization seems to make a progressive orientation practically inherent to its very nature. For Spengler, Faustian civilization is a "historical" as opposed to an "ahistorical" civilization. Historical civilizations see themselves as having a wider sense of involvement in the unfolding direction taken by the human race as a whole, and mark the passage of time and significant events in the civilization's history. This naturally lends itself to a progressive as opposed to a conservative or reactionary view. This underlies much of Spengler's apparent pessimism concerning western civilizational decline.

While Spengler's work was generally regarded as reactionary - he considered "blood" the only force capable of overthrowing the power of money (though he does conceive of race in very different terms than the Nazis and fascists did, and was therefore critical of them) - he did attract some progressive and even radical attention. Frankfurt theorist Theodore Adorno published an analysis of Decline in 1950, which while frequently critical, also hoped that Spengler's reactionary ideas could be turned towards progressive ends. Adorno is a man after my heart, it would seem.

Pessimism pervades classical conservative and neoreactionary thought on cultural matters. Leftism has triumphed, and there's nothing for it now except to observe the long descent into destructive anarchy, from which a culture rooted in strong and sustainable cultural and social norms may eventually reemerge. Or not. According to the reactionary narrative, liberal social norms lead to falling birth rates, which cast the economic and even military advantage of the west into long term doubt, or else necessitate high levels of immigration from nations with very different cultural traditions. Cultural traditions not afflicted by the postmodern malaise and atomistic individualism of the west. It is only a matter of time, therefore, before we all end up having to face Mecca five times a day, whether we wish it or no. Already the cities of western Europe have "no go zones" wherein immigrant communities essentially rule and conduct their affairs in accordance with their own indigenous traditions.

Worse yet, this defeatism underlies much of the nihilism and bitterness one encounters on the fringe right, including that nihilism and bitterness that can drive them to kill. As such, this is a more serious issue than it may at first appear. The manifestos of many an apparently deranged far right terrorist or mass shooter highlight this sense of impending civilizational doom. Feeling like there's nothing left to lose, domestic terrorists such as Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant go on murderous rampages bent on taking as many leftists and Muslims down with them as they can. As such, this is an issue of concern to us all. Now, before you all start barking, I should note that comparable motives such as disdain for the decadent materialism and sexual laxity of the west also underlie a lot of Jihadist militancy and terrorism.

What I want to propose, and what I will explore in further installments of this series is that while this pessimism is not entirely baseless, it's also far from being completely warranted.

Of course there are certain very real advantages that the left enjoys, especially at present and on cultural and social issues. Some of these advantages are "merely" temporal and institutional, such as dominance in mainstream media and academia. Others of these advantages are deeper and more fundamental to the way the progressive vs the reactionary political mind works on a deep level, and each side's views on and resulting forms of political activity.

However, the right wing also has and continues to have its own advantages, and I doubt that the victory of the progressive left in the culture war was ever certain and need not have even been likely. A different kind of right wing could have gotten a different kind of result. Moreover, there are presently very real areas of right wing ideological dominance, and for several decades, hegemony even. What this shows us is that rather than leftist victory being inevitable, both the left and right have been successful in those areas in which each has invested the greatest measure of importance, and thereby activist vigor.

Finally, I ask whether or not what has triumphed in the zeitgeist of the current year really does constitute leftism at all? Are the neoreactionaries correct in that equality, democracy, liberalism and socialism are essentially triumphant, and all that remains now is to watch this unsustainable faux egalitarianism bring about societal collapse? This is a highly questionable proposition. While social equality across certain lines; race, gender and sexuality especially, are currently vigorous and popular notions, in other ways we've never been more unequal and under the thumb of forces and institutions completely lacking in any kind of transparency or democratic legitimacy and accountability than we are now, and this has repercussions for the authenticity of such democracy and egalitarianism as we now have in the west.

Continued in part 2: The Hard Right

Follow Ernest Everhard on these formats:

Ernest Everhard on Facebook.

Alternative Left on Facebook.

Alternative Left on Twitter.

Samizdat Broadcasts on YouTube.
Ernest Everhard on Minds

SJW Grandstanders will NOT go Away on Their Own

Youtubber "Mouthy Buddha" praises the stoicism and resolve of University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson in the face of a noisy SJW demonstration against a talk he recently gave.  Mouthy Buddha commends Jordan for "time and time again setting an example for us" as the video shows him largely ignoring a rowdy group of protesters trying to shut down his lecture.  Mouthy Buddha's video may be viewed here.

These sentiments are echoed in the comments following the video.  

"Jon the Bastard" writes, "I wish I could be as stoic as Professor Peterson. The man is a Legend in the making."

"Mike Stewie" writes, "I agree - Peterson sets the standard. While I enjoy listening to the likes of Bearing & Undoomed; an abusive medium is not the way to engage public interest productively. By arguing rationally and non-offensively we make serious arguments, but we also polarize the conversation in a way that shows SJWs for what they are: spoiled & irrational children."

"quizads" writes, "Peterson has truly become a worthy example of nonviolent discourse. I am moved to tears as well."

Others praised him in almost religious terms:

"Jeremy David Evans" writes, "I also almost cried watching his upload.  Truly, he walks his talk. He is shooting for the Christic ideal and reaching it.  When the Israelites were bitten by their own sins and temptations, Moses placed the bronze serpent on a cross so that all who looked on it would be saved. Peterson has taken up the cross of persecution, gained the spotlight, and those of us that see his truth are ever more drawn into that place of truthfulness. The cost is great, but the reward greater: the resurrection of society."

"Marthin Lukas" writes, "Shit....that was.....Jesus-esque......damn it Prof. Jordan."

I would not condemn a man for being stoic and resolved, and I do find Prof. Peterson's conduct in the video to be admirable.  But sometimes turning the other cheek doesn't cut it.  Sometimes appeasement isn't the answer.  Neville Chamberlain is not remembered as a superior Prime Minister to Winston Churchill, and the Dalai Lama no doubt still waits for the communist Chinese to return to their senses so that he can return safely to Lhasa and resume his duties there.  He's been waiting a while now, and will be waiting a long time yet.

People have been waiting a long time for college leftists to come to their senses.  Political correctness was dismissed as a passing fad in the early 1990s, though the ideologies underlying it go back further than that.  Sure, the Students for a Democratic Society did peter out, but their legacy has not.  Feminist theory and critical race theory are multigenerational now.  The umbrella of ideological protectionism - the equation of criticism of the theories with actual misogyny and racism - has sheltered these theories from real scrutiny or opposition for decades.

Sometimes, a firm and decisive stand is what's required.  The SJWs are one of those times.  We've been waiting and appeasing.  Things only get worse.  It's time for the gloves to come off.  It's as simple as that.

The forerunners of today's SJWs did not go away after Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American mind in 1987.  They did not go away after Dinesh D'Sousa published Illiberal Education in 1990.  They did not go away after Christina Hoff Sommers published Who Stole Feminism in 1994.  They did not go away after the minor humiliation of the Alan Sokal affair in the late 1990s, Rolling Stone's false rape story, and have not gone away after Milo Yiannopoulos's repeated exposure of their campus antics.  

Smugly dismissing them as mentally unbalanced, as crybabies or as special snowflakes is not making them go away.  They will not go away despite the fact their women's studies degrees will not qualify them for good jobs.  They will not go away after being unfavorably compared to the generation that stormed the beaches of Normandy or even the generation that marched for civil rights back in the 1960s.  They have not gone away despite being shown on social media time and time and time again for being fools.  

Criticisms spanning the decades, from libertarian, men's rights, traditionalist, classical liberal or marxist materialist perspectives has done nothing, not one thing, to dislodge them.

Voting conservative will not make them go away.  Neither Brian Mulroney nor Stephen Harper did anything about this during their tenures as Tory PMs in Canada.  Nor did Margaret Thatcher, John Major or David Cameron in the UK. Even if Justin Trudeau was unseated by a Tory, even one so un-PC as Kevin O'Leary come 2020, or were Nigel Farage to (somehow) become PM in the UK in the next general, the smart money is on the SJWs becoming more, rather than less vehement. Stateside, they didn't go away after Nixon won the 1972 election or after Reagan won the 1980 election or after George W. Bush won in 2000.  

The foolishness of those who believed Trump's 2016 victory would prompt a rethink on part of identity politics progressives in academia and mass media must by now be perfectly representative of the oft quoted definition of insanity.  

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

In fact, the title of Mouthy Buddha's video really does say it all.

SJWs are STRONGER Than Ever 2017.

He damn well knows this, and admits it in his own comments section:

The title may seem like hyperbole but it's not. Jordan Peterson's views are a minority within a minority in our university campuses, and although many students do side with him, and show him support, the onslaught from the regressive's truly are stronger than they used to be, because academia is now 100% behind the methods and tactics involved. 

They are vehemently against Jordan choosing not to say certain words, but are ok with students screaming "transphobic piece of shit". 

The following is the first sentence in a statement made by McMaster University: 

"We are 'deeply troubled' that Dr. Jordan Peterson has been invited to speak at McMaster." 

Right. He's too fashy, all the freedom for all and free speech stuff is troublesome. 

Let's all get our heads out of our asses here.  The SJWs aren't going anywhere on their own.  They won't be coming to their senses soon, or ever.  Because what they're doing is working, and they damn well know it.  The SJWs are winning.  It's as simple as that.  Brexit and Donald Trump did nothing whatsoever to change that.  One look at the advance of feminism, gay rights, and so on, especially in cultural institutions like academia and mass media make that perfectly clear.  It's so much easier to just shrug your shoulders and capitulate to whatever the latest demands are than it is to do what Jordan Peterson has done and dig in your heels on a matter of principle.  Especially when, unlike the SJWs, you're pretty much guaranteed to stand alone.

And that's precisely the problem.

If you wish to win a culture war, as the SJWs most certainly do, not standing alone is a fairly elementary principle.  And that's just the first of many things the regressive SJWs know that their shoulder shrugging, "what do you do?" asking political opponents don't.

The campus SJWs understand how grassroots activism and organizing work.  At the very least, they seem able to get names on petitions and participants for boycotts and protests.  They analyze the structures of institutions like colleges and look for the weak points where they can get the best results through the application of pressure.  They gain key positions of authority and instruction within academic institutions and use those positions to establish curriculum, guide research efforts and either allow or hinder the career development of students and fellow faculty depending on whether they tow or oppose the ideological party line.  They also structure their ideologies in such a way as to lend credibility to their inclination to use their institutional authority for ideological purposes.  By making claims that erode the perceived differences between scholarship and activism, for example, or subject to postmodernist deconstruction enlightenment notions of objectivity, neutrality and equality of right.

They study media and media relations, and not just on a surface level.  They know full well that the medium is the message.  They deconstruct literature and understand how language frames thought.  They understand the mythopoetic structure of political thought, and understand how important narrative construction is.  They are fully cognizant of the fact that framing and narrative consistently trump even the most airtight of logical arguments.  These people get degrees in English, psychology, sociology, religious studies, media studies and a host of other fields that delve deep into the workings of the human mind and the operations of social interaction.  While their ideas are flawed in the sense that any ideas that take root and become hegemonic in any closed social system become flawed due to ideological siloing, it certainly can't be said that they are lacking in political shrewdness or are fundamentally stupid.  If the SJWs are so dumb, why are they in charge?

They understand these things, and have understood them for decades.  The results speak for themselves.  In Canada, besides academic and media hegemony, a firmly established deep state consisting of advocacy on behalf of women's groups, aboriginal groups, pro-immigrant groups and so on insures that they control the narrative regardless of the party in political office, and genuine dissent carries with it risks of ostracization, job loss or even an appearance before one of our Orwellian "Human Rights" tribunals, as indeed Professor Peterson is being threatened with.

That's quite the little knapsack of privilege we've just unpacked.  The good news is that there's nothing preventing those with a genuine concern for free speech on campuses and elsewhere from understanding the workings of any of the above either.

The end game for anti-regressives, whatever their stripe, will have to look something like this.  I've already published these, but will do so again, to give an idea of what's possible given time and, more importantly, effort.

Three particularly important goals for enemies of regressivism:

• Requiring that intent to harass or create a “poisoned environment” be proven on at least a balance of probabilities or a preponderance of evidence in order to secure a remedy in court over a harassment or hate speech allegation.  “Privileged” people cannot be held responsible, on pain of professional or even legal consequences, for the emotional states of “marginalized” people, given what we know of how the human mind works, regardless of “social context” so prized by regressive social theorists.

• As a corollary to the above, political opinion and opinion on social issues should be a protected category of legal discrimination, especially in employment, just as race, gender, etc.  It should be especially costly to terminate an employee for expressing an opinion on political or social issues, just as it is for protected grounds for discrimination.  Exemptions to this can be extended if the non-expression of certain views can be shown to be a bona-fide occupational requirement.  There’s plenty of information about these  concepts in fields pertaining to human resources management and employment law.

•  Strong College Campus Free Speech legislation must be passed, preferably at the federal level but at least at the state/provincial level.   It's provisions would include the following:

1. Require colleges to adopt, at the governance level, policy statements that make crystal clear organizational commitment to free expression, and make crystal clear that it is not the university's role to protect students or faculty from ideas they find offensive or disagreeable.
2. The campus must be declared open to any speaker invited by students, student groups or faculty.  Disinvitation of controversial speakers should thus be prohibited.
3. There must be serious consequences for actions that result in shutting down speakers on college campuses or harassment of students and faculty for political reasons, including complicit administration failing to act accordingly in response to such events.  Suspensions for first offenses, expulsion/termination for cause in the case of repeat offenses, and even legal prosecution if warranted.  
4. Independent bodies should be established to investigate student and/or faculty allegations of "ideological gatekeeping", which I define as attempts to block the academic progress or careers of students or staff for political or ideological reasons.  This body would also be emboldened to investigate claims of ideological indoctrination in academic settings.  Remedies could include reprimands or other disciplinary measures up to and including termination (in the case of multiple repeat convictions) against offending faculty members.
5. The legislation itself would contain language cautioning academic institutions against fostering or allowing to be fostered a campus culture that romanticizes violent extremism, direct action, and other militant and confrontational forms of activism.  Honest discussion of the above would be permitted.
6. Strong protections for the due process rights of students and faculty charged under any of the above sections, and strong protections for the rights of student and faculty to engage in peaceful and non-disruptive protest. 

People simply must have assurance of their protection from legal or employment related repercussions for expressing their views if regressivism of all kinds is to be pushed to the margins of society.  If they not already have been, these ideas or ideas like them need to be adopted in your jurisdiction.

The SJWs will not go away by themselves. We must know this.  We must accept this.  This means complete acceptance of the fact that they will settle for nothing less than totalitarian control.  They are indeed getting stronger and getting bolder because they've been successful, for the most part.  It doesn't matter how many people dislike them.

The good news is, it doesn't have to.  If dislike can make the jump into no-nonsense organized and effective opposition, I think we'd all be surprised at just how weak the SJWs actually are.

What the regressive left knows that libertarians and the populist right does not.

The online cultural libertarian movement is in a tailspin again.  In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they've ever been in anything other than a tailspin.  This time, it's because feminist critic Christina Hoff Sommers is alleging that several of her YouTube videos have been classed as "potentially objectionable."  Social media user clauses under names like "community guidelines" are notoriously vague, and the only patterns to emerge from the Kafkaesque world of social media moderation seem to be that it's primarily right-leaning stuff that gets deleted and accounts suspended.  These kinds of stories are commonplace, from the deletion of anti-SJW Facebook pages to Milo Yiannopoulos's infamous Twitter ban.

What is happening, our beleaguered shitlords wonder?  What of freedom of speech?  What of objectivity in media, in academia, in the broader society?

There are certain things you learn and catch onto when your political background is in Marxism, or an offshoot of it.  One of those things is that the hard left does not approach politics the way liberals of various hues approach it.  The liberal tends to have faith in human reason and its eventual impact on politics.  The truth once told will set us free, and the reasonable people in positions of power in our various organs of state and culture will set about acting upon what they know to be right.  Failure to do so is simply chalked up to stupidity or ignorance, or perhaps at being bought out. Come election time, simply vote in people who will listen.  Or not, if the incumbents win.  Or not, if a "reformer" wins but nothing substantial changes.  This seems to be happening a lot these days.

People with ideological roots on the far left harbor no such illusions.  They do not see politics as a chivalrous clash of ideas.  They see it as a war of irreconcilable interests between oppressed and oppressor groups.  In this war, anything goes so long as it is done in the interests of the "oppressed" or their self appointed representatives.

This is not new.  The tumblr generation did not invent this.  The great grandfather of tumblr, Vladimir Lenin, called the concept Kto-Kovo, translating roughly into "who, whom?"  Who benefits?  Whose interests prevail, that of the capitalists or that of the revolutionaries?  It is on this basis and this basis alone that the right or wrongness of a given course of action is to be evaluated.

Such thinking did not confine itself to the USSR.  No less a luminary of the (then) new left, Frankfurt School standard bearer Herbert Marcuse famously argued in his 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance:

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.

This by one of the founding fathers of critical theory, which along with varying strands of postmodern philosophy, notorious for its denial of enlightenment era claims of objective morality and liberal notions of enlightenment universalism, underlie the core ideology of the regressive left. Should it surprise us, therefore, that people trained in such thought act as ideological gatekeepers in the academic and media institutions their credentials enable them to take administrative posts at?

Back in the USSR, meanwhile, the Leninist traditions carried on, with liberal notions of civil liberties being dismissed as "bourgeois morality" and guilt or innocence in criminal and civil proceedings being determined more by one's professional and class background than whether the evidence of the actual accused's guilt or innocence.

Sound familiar?

When we hear SJWs today claim that there's no such thing as misandry, or racism against white people, they're trodding a very, very well worn path.  Pravda was saying similar things for many decades before tumblr was ever up and running.

Naturally, all of this lends itself to a ruthless political approach that the cultural libertarians and social conservatives have been unable to respond at all well to.  Except where they had no need to respond well since the collapse of the USSR did their work for them as far as refuting Marxist Leninist political economy is concerned, thought the "new" left had long since abandoned those ideas in any event.  But in the realm of identity and cultural politics, different story. Perhaps the Milo Yiannopouloses of this world need to dust off their copies of Machiavelli, if they have any.  For starters.  And the cultural right might want to give up its silly obsessions with true Scotsmen and make Milo their leader.  He's as savvy an activist as they've had in a long time, however much an avatar of everything not socially conservative he quite obviously is.

The alt-left will have similar difficulties if it does not study and learn what the regressive left has been decades in the studying and learning.  Ultimately, the alt-left seeks to challenge not only regressive left dominance in cultural matters, but neo-liberal dominance in economic matters.  We're going to need all the help we can get:

• We would do well to study the above mentioned Frankfurt School and its theoreticians.
• It's a myth that Antonio Gramsci coined the phrase "long march through the institutions." It's still an idea worth looking long and hard at, though.  As are Gramsci's theories.
• The postmodern emphasis on language deconstruction is no mere academic exercise.  It's revealed powerful knowledge on how the human mind uses language to structure and frame thought. You need not study such wordy and pretentious volumes to get an idea.  Cognitive linguist George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant" is a great little primer on this whole subject.
• Speaking of media, it works in ways people who don't study media at a post-secondary level don't realize.  Message content is barely the tip of the iceberg.  It can't hurt to study a bit of Marshall McLuhan as part of your broader curriculum in political efficacy.
• Did I mention Saul Alinsky yet?  Conservatives love to grumble about him.  They love to grumble about a lot of things that their opponents learn and put to effective use.  As my earliest political mentor, former Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra once said, "don't hate the media, become the media."

And I'm sure there's lots more than this, and it will all need to be worked into broader political strategies as time goes on.  It might be useful to know, for example, that campus speech codes can be attacked and ridiculed until hell freezes over; university boards of governors are much more worried about compliance with government hate speech and harassment laws.  It's something called a fiduciary duty.  So nothing will change until those laws do.  Just as one example.  Who knows what might be possible one day?  But a lot can be made possible today too, even if it's just you not walking away from a flame war with a regressive leftist wondering what the hell happened?