He did donations against same-sex marriage. I see why some people would not want him to be an influential person, myself included.
Also because of how economy works now, interest in Brave translates to the value of its built-in cryptocurrency (BAT) and therefore the economic power of its creator.
Childish rants sounds, well, dismissive. Can you enlighten us on what exactly makes his utterings "childish"? Do you agree with the onslaught of "diversity, inclusion and equity" policies which have flooded institutions as well as commercial entities for the last years? Do you understand why many older - as in "graduated before these policies were enacted" - medical doctors have agreed with their colleagues that they will treat each other when necessary so as not to be exposed to recent graduates? Do you agree with the lowering of academic standards to please this doctrine? Do you think that this type of "affirmative action on steroids" does anyone any good, let alone the institutions on which these policies are foisted? If so, can you explain why this is?
Peterson speaks for many - read the comments to the video and those to the article it is based on for some examples - academics who have seen their institutions cave to these interests. Are all those academics "childish" as well? Are they all some form of "-ists" and "-phobes"? What about all those people who are not academics who realise that these doctrines emanated from academia to infect society, are they "childish -ists/-phobes"?
HN eschews political discussions for a good reason, they tend to end up as shouting matches between camps. The "no politics" policy is not an absolute, there are plenty of politically tainted discussions on this forum. HN is a place where many (if not most) visitors were and sometimes are part of academia, either in the role of student, as assistants or as faculty members. The phenomenon Peterson describes here is real, there is no getting around this - try if you want. The creeping authoritarianism he describes is also real as the last few years have clearly shown. Together these make for a poisonous cocktail. Even Vladimir Putin - or at least his speech writer - sees this as can be gleaned from his quote from the article:
The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness. Godspeed, hoist the flags, as we say, go right ahead. The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs, and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion, and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones — all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.
“This, I believe, should call to mind some of what we are witnessing now. Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices — which we, fortunately, have left, I hope — in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past — such as Shakespeare — are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what color or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Sure, he says those things because he thinks he can gain from it by showing the populace - who seem to follow those speeches - that the neighbour's grass is withering so better stay safe in mother Russia's embrace. That does not make what he says less true...
