The Forward Compares Jordan Peterson to Hitler

Twitter users expressed their anger this week after The Forward published a column comparing Professor Jordan Peterson to Adolph Hitler.

Foward columnist Ari Feldman penned a column this week accusing popular psychology professor Jordan Peterson of enabling “Jew hatred.” The article is accompanied by a featured image that places Peterson side-by-side with Adolph Hitler.

“Peterson didn’t reach these heights because of his discourses on Jewish topics. His primary preoccupation is healing broken masculinity, and his main following is the young men with whom such a focus resonates,” Feldman wrote. “Peterson is nowhere near as toxic as various other internet cultures, like the ‘incels’ who blame women — and sometimes murder them — because they’re not having sex. Yet behind the father figure role he affects lie darker preoccupations with Hitler, Marxists and the ‘radical left’ on college campuses. That’s where his teachings can provide fodder for conspiracy theorists and bigots.”

But the claim seems to be almost entirely without merit. In fact, Peterson has used the Holocaust since his days on the faculty at Harvard University to teach others how humans might prevent mass genocides.

The Forward column sparked a response from Quillette Magazine, in which Feldman was blasted as “click-bait” and “libel.” Users on Twitter expressed their frustration with the Feldman column by writing hundreds of tweets directed towards The Forward and its editors.

Jordan Peterson found himself at the center of a controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University at the end of 2017 after a teaching assistant used a clip of a television debate featuring Peterson in one of her class lectures. Audio of administrators berating the teaching assistant went viral on the internet and the university was ultimately forced to apologize.