The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is an international centre-right political organisation founded by the Canadian psychologist and political commentator Jordan Peterson. His spacecraft has touched down in east London and is entertaining friendly natives.
On Tuesday, day two of its conference at the Excel Centre in east London, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was invited to talk to Peterson about Ideas with a capital I. Peterson is not a man who warms up with small talk about the weather.
The pair arrived on the enormous stage and sat close together, knees almost touching. But in approach, they were miles apart.
It’s fair to say Peterson is not a natural interviewer. He launched straight into a two-minute soliloquy about net zero policy. He takes the view that one shouldn’t use one word where four will do.
“The environmentalist climate scam was really an offshoot of the Club of Rome, Malthusian stupidity that is predicated on the presumption that resources are finite and there’s a terrible anti-human motivation lurking underneath all of that that’s pessimistic and brutal and genocidal in its fundamental ethos,” he opined.
As he finally drew breath, he asked Farage to answer the unanswerable. “It’s like, how appalling is it?” Peterson queried.
“Good morning, everybody,” Farage told the crowd to a round of applause, when he was allowed to speak. “Old-fashioned upbringing, couldn’t help it,” he added, to laughter, to a crowd that was already scratching its collective head.
Farage reported a conversation with the late astronomer Sir Patrick Moore to argue that sunspot activity and underwater volcanoes produce more carbon than mankind does. Those in the hall who knew who he was talking about recognised an all-round good British egg. Farage’s innate understanding of what his British audience is looking for made this conversation all the more weird and disjointed.
Peterson, in gaudy wide tie and pinstripe suit, would blend in at a Maga convention. In London, his brand of populism was applauded in the hall. However, outside it would bring on that sense of panicky embarrassment which appears when someone starts preaching the gospel on a packed commuter bus. Wrong time, wrong place.
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Read MoreAt the ARC conference there are some highfalutin ideas being thrown around, watched by a large proportion of jet-lagged American delegates. On Monday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch made waves by suggesting Western civilisation might fall without the Tories.
So, it wasn’t entirely a surprise when Peterson dragged out some more academic big words. In a discussion about heterosexuality and family values, he suggested, “A circle of tolerance; let’s make that the a priori axiom. But then a commitment to long-term stable, monogamous heterosexual child-centred marriages”.
Farage, even among a sympathetic audience, is too clever to speak in anything other than plain English, although there was an amusing half-moment when his reply suggested he might be coming out of the closet himself.
“I may not necessarily be the best advocate for monogamous heterosexuality…” Farage began. The guild of newspaper sketch writers perked up immeasurably. Was this it? Was Farage about to give them the news line of the century, accompanied by a rousing up-tempo rendition of “I Am What I Am”?
But no. The sentence, when completed, was merely a statement of fact. “I may not necessarily be the best advocate for monogamous heterosexuality… or stable marriage having been divorced twice,” Farage actually said, adding that he has tried to bring his children up in as much stability as he can. The sketch writers put down their pens and scratched their noses in disappointment.
“We’ve kind of forgotten that what underpins everything is our Judeo-Christian culture,” Farage said. “Of course, family matters enormously. Of course, we need higher birth rates, but we’re not going to get higher birth rates in this country until we can get some sense of optimism.”
That optimism isn’t going to come under the “declinist,” “miserabilist” Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Farage argued, echoing criticisms Labour has made of his brand of politics.
“We’ve got to get that spirit, that sense of optimism, back in the country. We had it in the late 1980s, we actually had it through much of the 1990s, that’s what we have to recapture. We need a change of attitude in Britain, and we get that right, people will have more kids,” he added.
Peterson is part of a wave of North American right-wing thinkers such as JD Vance who believe the UK and Europe have given in to leftist ideas that stymie free speech.
There is no doubt they are influential. Reducing and removing diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace is just one example of American ideas winning support over here.
But it comes with other ideological baggage, such as the push for higher birth rates. X and Tesla boss Elon Musk appears to be repopulating the world by himself, one baby at a time. Do Brits really want this idea imported into the UK?
In the current ideal of Republican America, women can either have the glossy big hair of Washington, DC power players, or cosplay as Little House on The Prairie homestead moms. These women, dressed in cottage-core, pickle, bottle, preserve and breed. Just not necessarily in that order: they need to take time out to put content on their Instagram feed.
The ARC conference can be seen as a warm-up gig for North American liberal right of centre philosophy. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Later this week, the right-wing roadshow moves to Washington, DC for the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC. That’s where the big Republican guns come out: Donald Trump is due to speak. The actor who played Superman in the 90s will be there. Farage will be speaking too.
If Peterson is a duck out of water in London, Farage will be hoping to blend into the Maga crowd in Washington, perhaps after a photo with Trump. He’ll be attempting to prove to the Labour Government back home where the diplomatic channel of ideas really lies, and to British voters who he thinks they should be listening to.
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