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Episode 1006: Jordan Peterson & Bret Weinstein

postmodernism cultural marxism Evergreen State College Bill C-16 gender identity campus politics

Why This Episode Is Problematic

This three-hour conversation pairs two figures who have built public profiles around grievance narratives targeting academia, gender identity protections, and the political left. The discussion blends legitimate concerns about campus discourse with misrepresentations of postmodern philosophy, Canadian law, and the actual events at Evergreen State College.

TL;DR: Two professors outside their expertise present a conspiratorial framework (“postmodern neo-Marxism”) that academic philosophers reject, while Joe Rogan amplifies the narrative without pushback.

Guest Backgrounds

  • Jordan Peterson — Clinical psychologist, then a tenured professor at the University of Toronto. His expertise is personality psychology, not philosophy, political theory, or law.
  • Bret Weinstein — Evolutionary biologist, formerly of Evergreen State College. His expertise is evolutionary biology, not sociology, education policy, or political philosophy.

Both men were riding waves of viral controversy at the time of recording — Peterson over Bill C-16, Weinstein over the Evergreen protests.

Claim 1: “Postmodern Neo-Marxism” Has Captured the Universities

Peterson’s signature framing throughout the episode is that postmodernism and Marxism have fused into a unified ideology controlling humanities departments.

“Postmodernism” treats everything as a social construct, a “landscape of conflict between groups,” where “the only actual means of expression is power.”

What the evidence says

  • Wikipedia / Academic consensus: The term “postmodern neo-Marxism” is not used in academic philosophy. It conflates two traditions that are largely incompatible. Source
  • Jacobin (2022): Postmodernism (Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault) is defined by skepticism of grand narratives — including the Marxist one. Marxists and postmodernists spent decades attacking each other. Source
  • Notes On Liberty: Peterson’s “Derrida” is “largely a fictional character he has created.” Peterson has not engaged with the primary texts. Source
  • Viewpoint Magazine: Peterson cites neither Derrida nor Foucault in 12 Rules for Life. The conspiratorial framing is not grounded in the source material. Source

Why it matters

“Cultural Marxism” — the rhetorical ancestor of Peterson’s “postmodern neo-Marxism” — has documented antisemitic roots, evolving from Nazi-era “Cultural Bolshevism” conspiracy theory. Mainstreaming this framework launders an old smear.

Claim 2: Bill C-16 Compels Speech and Could Jail You for Using the Wrong Pronoun

Peterson built his international fame on the claim that Canada’s Bill C-16 would criminalize pronoun misuse. This claim is repeated and elaborated on in the episode.

What the evidence says

  • University of Toronto law professor Brenda Cossman and a clear majority of Canadian legal scholars confirmed at the time that Bill C-16 does not criminalize pronoun use and does not “compel” speech. It added gender identity and expression to existing anti-discrimination categories.
  • Centre for Free Expression (Toronto Metropolitan University): The compelled-speech reading misstates how human-rights law actually works. Source
  • Oxford Political Review: Peterson’s interpretation conflates anti-discrimination protections with criminal speech regulation. Source
  • The bill passed the Senate 67-11 with broad legal support; no one has been jailed for pronoun misuse under C-16 in the years since.

Why it matters

Peterson’s framing has become foundational text for anti-trans political organizing in North America, despite resting on a legal misreading.

Claim 3: The Evergreen Story As Told Is the Full Story

Weinstein presents the Evergreen protests as a clean morality tale: a reasonable professor objected to a racially exclusionary event and was mobbed by ideologically captured students.

What the evidence actually shows

  • Pacific Standard (2017): The Evergreen “Day of Absence” was a voluntary event, not a mandate that white people leave campus. Right-wing media (and Weinstein’s own framing) mischaracterized it. Source
  • PBS NewsHour: The actual May 2017 protests were triggered by a separate set of incidents on campus, not directly by Weinstein’s email. Source
  • Inside Higher Ed: Evergreen ultimately settled with the Weinsteins for $500,000 without admitting liability, while Weinstein and his wife resigned. The narrative was rapidly weaponized by right-wing media. Source

Why it matters

The Evergreen story became Weinstein’s entire public brand and the launch pad for his pivot into COVID-19 misinformation (ivermectin promotion, vaccine fear-mongering, “mass formation psychosis”) on his own podcast a few years later. Episode 1006 helped build the platform that enabled that pivot.

Joe Rogan’s Role

Rogan acts as an amplifier, not a skeptical interviewer:

  • He does not challenge Peterson’s central claim that postmodernism and Marxism are the same movement, despite this being a well-documented academic error.
  • He does not push back on the legal claims about Bill C-16, even though Canadian legal experts had publicly rebutted Peterson’s reading.
  • He accepts Weinstein’s Evergreen framing wholesale, asking clarifying questions but never pressing on context, timeline, or competing accounts.
  • He treats both guests as authorities on subjects (philosophy, law, sociology, race relations) outside their academic training.

This is a recurring pattern: Rogan platforming credentialed people speaking confidently outside their credentials, while providing no friction.

Real-World Impact

  • The “postmodern neo-Marxism” framework became a staple of online right-wing discourse, eventually feeding into broader “woke mind virus” rhetoric.
  • Peterson’s C-16 misreading is regularly cited by anti-trans activists despite being legally inaccurate.
  • Weinstein parlayed his Evergreen platform into the DarkHorse podcast, where he later promoted ivermectin as a COVID treatment and amplified vaccine misinformation — content that public-health researchers have linked to documented harm.

Bottom Line

Episode 1006 is a foundational document of the post-2017 “intellectual dark web” pipeline. Two professors discuss subjects outside their training with confident sweeping generalizations, while the host provides no counterweight. The conversation is articulate and feels rigorous — which is precisely why its inaccuracies have been so durable.

Sources

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