Last month at London’s O2 Arena, a few days after Justin Timberlake took to the stage, 6,000 people came through the doors to hear the psychologist Jordan Peterson. He was appearing with the writers Sam Harris and Douglas Murray, but to judge by my conversations Peterson was the main attraction.
“He’s the most important man on the planet,” one thirtysomething fan tells me. (There is a hint of irony in his smile, but he’s not just kidding.) Peterson, he says, exposes the falsehoods of “the cultural elite.” “They say he’s a Nazi, of course, but that’s to protect themselves. They can smell that the game is up.” And why does that make him so popular, I ask, gesturing at the queues stretching across the O2’s central hall. The man takes a copy of the New York Times—“our ****ing cultural arbiter”—out of his satchel. “Look at this. Page two.” He jabs his finger at a story about transgender representation. “That’s why.”
