Jordan Peterson | Full interview | VPRO Documentary (2019)

This interview was not conducted to be a stand-alone interview, it was conducted for a Dutch documentary about male/female-dynamics in Canada. Within this documentary, we explored how an event like the Toronto van attack could happen in Canada and how Canadians are trying to heal from it. More broadly, we looked at misogyny and violence against women within Canada, and what it is about contemporary feminism that makes some men angry or lost. We also paid attention to men suffering from violence that their female partners had inflicted upon them. As prominent Canadian voices, we included both Margaret Atwood and Jordan Peterson.

Psychology professor Jordan Peterson has become a controversial figure ever since speaking out against Bill C-16 (2016), a law which adds gender expression and gender identity to the Canadian Human Rights Act. He has received both praise and criticism after the publication of his self-help book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018). His fans are thankful for the advice he’s given them to take responsibility for their lives, his critics argue that his emphasis on the danger posed by ‘postmodern neo-marxists’ is dangerous in itself. He has been accused of being anti-feminist and feeding into the alt-right. While he gained support among people who do identify with the alt-right, he himself does not.

Peterson has become an important inspiration for various men’s groups, an influential voice. Therefore, we wanted to get clear where he stands on contemporary feminism and how he interprets the van attack, which took place in the city he lives in. Since the documentary episode only allowed for brief passages from the interview, while Peterson’s answers are extensive, we decided to provide the entire interview.

We talked to Peterson on the 4th of June 2019, in Toronto, Ontario. Since there were some breaks (for adjusting the camera and for having coffee) during the interview, it consists of multiple takes. Apart from leaving out the breaks themselves and making the transition between breaks more fluent, no further editing has been done.

The documentary about the Toronto van attack and male-female dynamics in Canada is available here:

presented by Emy Koopman
directed & filmed by Hans Pool
sound recording Pepijn Aben
editing Jouke Dubel
research Sasha Ourikh
local research Margot Minjon-Grant
grading Gerhard van der Beek
audio post-production Pepijn Aben, Mark Meewis
music Ocobar
production assistant Jeroen Mondria, Anna Schuitema, Margo de Roos
subtitling Daniel Naamani
web editor Evelien de Vries
marketing & communication Wieneke Mulder
producer Elleke Claessen, Nicole Frints, Nicoline Tania
commissioning editor Hans Simonse

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