(Mic) On YouTube, conservatives are thriving, with innumerable videos of right wing pundits like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk “destroying social justice warriors” rack up millions of views. Meanwhile, right wing educational channels like PragerU dole out bite-sized lectures on why socialism isn’t as cool as the kids think. But perhaps none of YouTube’s reactionary thinkers and preachers are more effective and popular than Jordan Peterson.
For young conservatives, the Canadian professor and clinical psychologist has become a “father figure,” which is the term adorning the book jacket for his new self-help book 12 Rules For Life. The book, which mixes practical advice like “clean your room” with angry screeds about feminism, has spent weeks toward the top of Amazon’s best selling lists. The New York Times’ in-house conservative columnist David Brooks declared in January that we are in the “Jordan Peterson moment,” and speculated that the is “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.”
