For someone who has studied communism in such detail, who seemed to have an understanding of the dangers that the Marxist-left poses, and, who has suffered greatly at the hands of cancel culture, I question how someone could be so monumentally wrong about what is going on with the Left & Right at the moment, particularly, with regards to the 2020 election fraud.
(He also believes fascism is on the Right, and, that most Democrat politicians are "very moderate", but, that's a discussion for another time).
The only explanation I have is Jordan has become a bit out of touch with reality, given his life-threatening medical condition, which took him out of the political landscape for a significant amount of time. He has only recently recovered & returned to the scene in the past few months.
His views of election fraud first became apparent on his recent podcast, with interview guest British intellectual Douglas Murray, whom also shares Jordan's belief that election fraud is a "conspiracy theory". (This was apparently recorded before January 18th, 2021).
He summarizes his discussion with Douglas, during his more recent podcast, with Gad Saad, as follows (recorded January 18th, 2021, released February 15th, 2021):
"I've noticed recently among friends and family members, as well as, more broadly in the culture, that there is a pronounced increase in the degree to which conspiratorial theories in particular, and, paranoid theories are propagating on the Right.
Now I don't know much about Q-anon, I've been out of the loop, and, I should be more on top of that, but I'm not. I do know that it's popular and pervasive.
And I do know that Trump's claims to have won the election are supported by a network of conspiratorial thinking. I was speaking with Douglas Murray about that, and you tell me what you think about this, this is sort of the conclusion of our discussion was that Trump claims that he won the election, and actually that he won it by a substantial margin, that's the claims as far as I've been able to understand them.
To believe that, this is what you have to believe:
(1) you have to believe that the electoral system in the United States is broken to the degree that fraud is widespread and pervasive and of sufficient magnitude to move an election,
(2) you have to believe that people as close to Trump as Mike Pence have become part of a conspiratorial network or have been shut down by people who are able to put sufficient pressure on him,
(3) you have to believe that the judiciary in the United States which I believe has ruled something like 60 times against his claims and one time in favour, you have to believe that it's become uncontrollably corrupt, even on the Republican side, even when those Republicans were nominated by Trump or Trump's people, and,
(4) you have to believe that the only person standing on moral high ground, through all of this, has been Trump.
Each of those propositions seems to me to have a low probability of truth, and their combined probability is infinitesimally small.
But, there's widespread support for Trump's claims that he won the election and was robbed of it."
(I've added the numbers to the list for clarity, and removed some of his stuttering of words).
Gad Saad dodges Jordan's question of whether he believes in election fraud, and they never return to it later in the discussion.
We do have some extra benefit of hindsight, in seeing TIME magazine's admission of guilt of the "conspiracy", but even so, I'd wager that the vast majority of us, prior to having seen the TIME piece, believed (and still believe) that election fraud was widespread enough to overturn the election.
Trying to put myself in Jordan's shoes, or someone like him, if I had known nothing about the details of the election fraud, and, were at least partially asleep, his argument would actually sound convincing. He says it with such a level of confidence, despite seemingly not having looked at the evidence, and paints election fraud believers as conspiracy nuts, basically.
So, a question for the community.
How do we convince someone, as intelligent as Jordan, of the election fraud, if they don't seem particularly interested in looking at the evidence, and, have already passed judgment on it as a "(crazy) conspiracy theory"?
Source footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_RrYz85E1A (Douglas Murray interview; ~43 mins in, Douglas begins to bring up the topic of elections & election fraud, Jordan weighs in at: ~45min 45s, ~48mins 15s, ~49mins 45s, ~1hr 5mins, ~1hr 8mins, ~1hr 20mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBcKlBaaoc (Gad Saad interview; ~9mins 50s in, Jordan begins the above quote about his thoughts on the election fraud)
You're welcome.
To the point of SCOTUS, at the time of recordings (mid January), it would have been unclear that SCOTUS would even hear the case. Some of us still doubt they'll hear it on Feb. 19th.
My point is more broad, though.
The chances of all of these pieces of evidences not amounting to an overturning the election is "infinitesimally small" (as Jordan would say). I have a hard time believing that Jordan actually examined the evidence carefully and arrived to the conclusion that he did.
This suggests to me that he simply hasn't looked at the evidence with the level of scrutiny we are used to seeing from him.
True.
Maybe the DS was behind his illness and he's treading lightly for a while?
I think the pressure put on him by the Left, at least in part, led to his deep depression. This eventually led to his anti-depressant issues (which was what became life-threatening).
I could have sworn I seen part of a recent interview of him with Abigail Shrier, about the transgender issue. Looking online, it has seemed to have disappeared, or, I have mixed this up for a different interview (either with Jordan & someone else, or, Abigail & someone else).
Anyways, at the beginning of the interview, I remember Jordan saying something to the effect of "what you [Abigail] are doing is brave, some of that braveness has been beaten out of me [by the Left]".
I think the Left have possibly frightened him to be less "controversial". Don't need to invoke the DS for this possibility. Basically, the mob got to him.
Good Point.
No doubt he was thrown into The Colosseum. Not many people could survive that scrutiny and pressure. He had his whole career on the line along with his family being thrown in the arena with him. A tremendous burden. Heroic to say the least.
I watched the Douglas Murray segment and would say that he stressed several times that the US elections were extremely close. Implying that it was close enough that cheating could have swayed the election.
Im watching the Gad Saad one now. I'll agree, he threw Q under the bus.
He did say the election was close, but, how I hear it, considering both videos, is that he believes there was not sufficient cheating to rob Trump of the election.
Possibly. I haven't listened to Peterson since his illness. I feel like I got most of what he was about in the pre-illness talks.
I'm sure he's disoriented now, and he's leaning on the "Well, if the judges refuses to listen to the case, that means there must be no evidence, right?"
A good academic might be good for learning things in the past, but it might be too much to imagine they'd see it in the present. Some can. But ... he doesn't feel the same since his illness. That's understandable. But he was also wrong on Kavannaugh, now that I think back on it. (Not that I care much for Kavannaugh, but I do know if you can impeach a man due to an unverifiable story from some crone from his teenage years, then no one can ever serve).
Some historians are not the people to ask about current events.
Looks like Jordan re-uploaded the Abigail Shrier podcast, just re-ordered it within his series (was originally episode 2, 3, or 4 if I recall correctly).
It is in the first 3 minutes that he says he was afraid to interview her because of the attacks which may come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSKQfATa-1I