Twitter’s suspension on Canadian psychologist and public intellectual Jordan Peterson is just supposed to be temporary — but, to hear him tell it, it may as well be permanent.
In remarks to Canada’s National Post, Peterson said he refused to delete a supposedly “transphobic” comment he made on the platform, saying he would “rather die” than acquiesce to the social media giant’s demands.
(At The Western Journal, we’ve chronicled the uphill battle any public figure or publication faces when they don’t toe the line on gender ideology: Big Tech is going to silence them in a big way. When we report on issues like this, for instance, Google will try to starve us of ad revenue. We’ll keep reporting the truth, however, no matter how much it costs us. If you support our mission and our values, please consider subscribing. It helps us thumb our nose at Silicon Valley’s woke tech tyranny, as well.)
Peterson’s suspension came after he quote-tweeted a New York Post article about Elliot Page, the transgender actress formerly known as Ellen Page, “who (now) uses he/they pronouns.” The article dealt with Page’s pride in the fact “their real-life gender transition will be represented through their ‘Umbrella Academy’ character.”
“That’s obviously a big component and part of my life and a beautiful thing to experience now,” she told late-night host Seth Myers. “A lot of the time, my life was just trying to move forward, and so getting to embrace the experience as much as I get to now … it’s made me better in so many facets.”
In his tweet, Peterson said, “Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.”
According to the New York Post, that meant Peterson had committed a double whammy against their policy, which prohibits “hateful conduct”: Not only had Peterson called it a “sin,” he “deadnamed” the actress by calling her by her former name, Ellen Page.
The insanity continues at Twitter. @jordanbpeterson has been suspended for this tweet about Ellen Page. He just told me he will “never” delete the tweet.
Paging @elonmusk… pic.twitter.com/o1FEEq0vda
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) June 29, 2022
Should Jordan Peterson leave Twitter?
Wow. @jordanbpeterson got a twitter strike. No more twitter until he deletes the tweet. Definitely not a free speech platform at the moment @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/YuBTwnjz5W
— Mikhaila Peterson (@MikhailaFuller) June 29, 2022
The social media company confirmed that the tweet “violated the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct. The account owner will need to delete the violative Tweet before regaining full access to their account.”
That little Twitter bird oughtn’t hold its breath, however, waiting for Peterson to delete it.
“If I can’t be let back on because I won’t apologize, I could care less,” Peterson told the National Post, which leans conservative.
“I penned an irritated tweet in response to one of the latest happenings on the increasingly heated culture war front,” he said.
“There are no rules on Twitter except don’t do what we don’t like today,” he continued. “They are always applied post hoc by algorithms and idiots bent on maintaining their woke superiority.”
Not only won’t he be deleting the tweet, he sounds glad to be gone.
“Twitter’s a rat-hole, in the final analysis, I have probably contributed to that, while trying to use, understand and master that horrible, toxic platform,” he said.
Thankfully, Peterson can walk away. He’s a best-selling author, he’s one of the world’s leading public intellectuals and he has an outlet through the Daily Wire, which just signed on to produce and distribute his podcast.
Regrettably, not all of us are so lucky. Conservative Christian satire site The Babylon Bee hasn’t tweeted since March 21, when they were similarly locked out of their account for tweeting an article that also questioned gender ideology. They won’t delete it, and the account remains frozen.
While the Bee has its ardent fans (this writer among them), they hardly have the resources to lose a major distribution channel and still stay profitable. But then, this is the choice many personalities and publications alike will have to make in the coming months and years.
Twitter has made it clear that — no matter what your religious, psychological or medical beliefs and opinions are — there is one correct interpretation of the gender construct. That interpretation is whatever Twitter says it is today.
The same goes, it’s worth noting, for any interpretation of human sexuality. Now that the left has hissy-fitted up itself over the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, expect there to be one correct interpretation of what constitutes human life in the not-too-distant future.
That interpretation may be entirely fluid, but rest assured it will be enforced with an iron will by the Twitter Safety team when they come across any strain of thought that contravenes it — and rest assured, whatever Big Tech functionary has their finger on the button likely isn’t amenable to any worldview that isn’t their own, including and especially ours.
Peterson can and should leave, but that doesn’t solve the overarching problem: For a relatively small-ish, relatively rudimentary social media platform, Twitter carries outsized influence because it’s the favorite mode of communication of world leaders, journalists and other elites. It’s where important sociopolitical issues are hashed out — if, indeed, in a somewhat adumbrated and simplistic form.
If the platform says we simply cannot countenance any talk about transgenderism that isn’t joyously affirming, they’ve now shut up anyone who believes what was held to be common sense just a decade or two ago — including and especially adherents to Judeo-Christian values. It’s one thing to tell Peterson to take a hike. It’s another to say the same thing to the Creator.
