What the Media are Saying About James Damore

I was reading a few articles today that referenced some YouTube channels that I’ve followed for quite some time now. The articles were in response to the respective channels’ hosting James Damore on their shows. He’s the publisher of a controversial Google memo that was leaked to the press. I hadn’t seen the videos yet when I read these, but I was curious to see what was being said about the interviews before going on to watch the videos myself.

Here they are if you’re interested in viewing them:

The YouTube channels in question are Jordan B Peterson and Stefan Molyneux. Apparently Damore didn’t feel comfortable at first speaking with mainstream media outlets, so he spoke instead to the alternative media personalities who he thought would be fairer in allowing him to express his point of view, and who would be more accurate in their reporting of his story. Boy was he ever right. When I read the articles I just had to laugh at the absurdity of some of the statements being made.

Business Insider

Here’s the first gem, Fired Google memo writer gives first big interviews to rightwing YouTubers. This is the title of the article by Business Insider writer Shona Ghosh. I can sort of forgive the ignorance of Ghosh on calling Molyneux rightwing due to his recent praise of Donald Trump during and after the election. It’s technically incorrect, he is more aptly described as an anarchist who is sympathetic to the right on certain issues, but even that would be over-simplifying things. Some people’s views are nuanced, Molyneux being among them. Many of Molyneux’s views could also be easily characterized as left leaning as well, such as his anti-war stance and his advocacy for peaceful parenting.

Characterizing Peterson however as right wing is quite simply a complete lack of journalistic due diligence. If Peterson had become famous, say, ten years ago, I don’t think there would have been a person on the planet who would have thought of him as right wing. This would mean forgetting about the fact that his statements on gender and equality wouldn’t have been considered controversial at that time, and that he probably wouldn’t have become famous as a result. After listening to him speak about various social issues, I’d peg him as solidly in the liberal camp, and so left leaning. Now he might be further right on the spectrum than your average MSM journalist these days, but as I’m increasingly seeing evidence for recently, that doesn’t qualify one for being “right wing.” It just means that he’s not a radical authoritarian leftist.

Even more egregious is the characterizing of Peterson and Molyneux as alt-right in the main body of the article. Alt-right is about as extreme right as you can get. They are so far right that their views are considered even too extreme for the Republican party and other conservative groups. Again, while it’s technically not correct, I can see how that mistake might be made in reference to Molyneux. He’s made some rather controversial statements that are also supported by alt-rightists (as far as I understand), and he has been very flattering to Donald Trump in his recent videos, but he doesn’t identify with that group, and couldn’t given that his views are often contradictory to theirs. Peterson on the other hand, as I explained above, is to be considered a left liberal by any reasonable standard, meaning that he would be almost as ideologically opposed to the alt-right movement as a person can be. Characterizing these hosts as alt-right sets the reader up to associate Damore with an ideological movement that has recently been vilified in the MSM as racist, misogynist and bigoted. Even though it is a falsehood understood by anyone who has actually listened to the arguments coming from all three men, any person unfamiliar with Peterson and Molyneux will probably assume that the moniker is appropriately applied.

Another attempt at connecting Molyneux’s Damore interview with the alt-right was with Molyneux’s use of the acronym “SJW.” This connection is attempted when Ghosh says that Damore laughed nervously at statements “such as Molyneux's referencing of "SJWs", or Social Justice Warriors, alt-right slang for progressives.” It’s not exactly correct to draw an equivalence between the use of SJW slang and the alt-right, or even its reference in regards to progressives. Yes, I’m sure the alt-right likes to throw around the term SJW quite liberally, but its origin isn’t from the alt-right movement, and the alt-right certainly isn’t the only group I’ve heard use the term disparagingly, including some people who identify as liberals and progressives themselves. In fact, it’s a moniker that was originally self-applied to people in the Social Justice movement who saw themselves as fighting for that cause. Trust me, Damore is not a part of the alt-right, just read the memo if you don’t believe me. An alt-rightist would never advocate for diversity in the way that Damore does in this “anti-diversity manifesto.”

The Guardian

In another flub, an article in The Guardian by Sam Levin claims that “Peterson, also a University of Toronto psychology professor, has faced backlash for discriminatory remarks against transgender students, saying he would refuse to use gender-neutral pronouns for trans and non-binary students who don’t identify as male or female.” This is also completely false. Peterson never made any discriminatory remarks against transgender students as far as I’ve found (please post a direct quote and a link below if you happen to have found one, I haven’t). He also didn’t say he refused to use gender-neutral pronouns outright. What he did do is refuse to be compelled to use the pronouns by force, especially given the impossibility of knowing ahead of time what a transgender student might self-identify as. This was in response to a law that was recently passed in Canada that compelled such speech and he rejected the law on the basis that it compelled speech, and that’s as simple as it is. To further paraphrase him, he said that under the right circumstances, given an established relationship with each transgender student individually, that he would be glad to voluntarily address them however they felt comfortable, but otherwise he would address unknown trans people according to whatever part they appear to be playing at the time of his meeting them. Again there’s some nuance here that the mainstream media outlets repeatedly have a hard time understanding, but I’m increasingly unsurprised by this.

The next thing that stuck out to me in the Guardian article was the use of the word “manifesto” in reference to Damore’s memo. The Guardian is not the first publication I saw use this word to describe the document. In fact, only two out of the dozen or so I’ve read before and after Damore’s identity had been revealed used the correct word “memo” instead. The first time in my life that I saw “manifesto” used in print was in reference to the writings of Ted Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber. By using this word to describe the memo, the writer is intentionally trying to prime the reader to think about Damore in the same light as a domestic terrorist who murdered and maimed a couple dozen people for ideological reasons, or at least someone like him. This is, to put it mildly, a little disingenuous. The guy wrote a memo. He didn’t try to hurt anyone, not even with his meticulously chosen words.

Next on the list for The Guardian was the claim that the “manifesto” “was widely criticized for relying on shoddy science.” One of the interviewers that the Guardian was writing about, Jordan B Peterson, is in fact a published and respected clinical psychologist qualified to expertly assess the validity of the science quoted in the memo, while those critical of it are quite a bit less qualified to make that assessment. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re wrong, but Peterson contradicts them, claiming repeatedly that the memo’s assertions on the science are nearly 100% correct, so much so that he goes on to say that the document could easily have been written by an expert in the field. That’s quite the endorsement. If that’s not good enough for you, in the description of Peterson’s video link above, you’ll find he included links to an extensive reading list of the relevant scientific literature so you can make the determination for yourself.

WTH Is Going On Here?

To sum this all up, these are just a couple of articles in the large collection of others coming from the MSM and elsewhere that are obviously a witch hunt designed to ostracize a person who is simply making measured and reasonable arguments supported by facts in the current scientific literature. After reading it myself, I can see that he still seems to support the very diversity that they espouse, in spite of his criticism of some of their tactics used to achieve it. The idea that the average woman (not all women) would choose not to pursue the position of programmer, engineer or even CEO because of biological predispositions is so inflammatory to their world-view that they will stop at nothing to suppress it. They successfully got this seemingly nice man fired from his job, slandered him all over the internet, and associated him with an inflammatory ideological movement that he doesn’t identify with. All of this because he is not so much “anti-diversity” as they’re all claiming, but because he is “anti-bullshit” as far as I’m concerned. It’s depressing to see these supposed journalists in the media descend even further into their black hole of fraudulent reporting, but it’s also getting a little bit boring it’s so common these days. There is no justice in doing this to Damore, social or otherwise.