2. Jordan Peterson and Conservative Antisemitism Online

Abstract

The age of digitalisation is characterised by an explosion of information as well as opinion exchange, but also by uncertainty and disorientation. In view of the polyphony of speakers and multitude of information, many web users tend to orient themselves to a range of new opinion leaders who could not have established their huge visibility prior to the era of the interactive web. Jordan Peterson, a former psychology professor, embodies perfectly the new ‘globalised’ public intellectual surrounded by a bevy of followers. In December 2022, Peterson interviewed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reactions of web users were numerous and―in stark contrast to the bulk of Peterson’s contributions―clearly negative. Peterson’s fascination with political heavyweights or strongmen is nothing new. Here, however, he provided a forum to one of the world’s best-known Jewish figures and the representative of the Jewish state. Peterson and Netanyahu’s conversation seems to have triggered various antisemitic ideas among those with a far-right worldview. However, many of the comments seem to come from the conservative online milieu to which Peterson belongs. The online thread discussing the clip thus forms a symbolic arena for proximity and friction between conservative and alt-right milieus in relation to Jew-hatred―a relationship that is not given enough space in the media and in academic analysis, as the focus is too often on the confrontation between the left and the alt-right and white-supremacy milieus. This paper qualitatively examines the commenters’ diverse reactions―of disillusionment and reorientation, but also of their devaluation and exclusion of a former idol―identified in the corresponding YouTube comments section and reconstructs the underlying concepts in a pragma-linguistic framework.