Famed psychologist Jordan Peterson is decrying the government’s march toward “totalitarian” rule in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, rebuking vaccination mandates.
Peterson made his comments about the U.S. during an interview with podcaster Dave Rubin.
“The thing that surprised me the most, probably, was how rapidly we stampeded to imitate a totalitarian state in the immediate aftermath of the release of COVID,” he said. “You know, if you think it through a little bit, no one really knew how serious the virus was going to be, and so, it was an unknown threat. And so you could imagine a herd of animals or a school of fish, for that matter, because this kind of phenomena is universal throughout the animal kingdom.”
“The cost of overreacting to a threat is generally minimal compared to under-reacting to a real threat,” Peterson continued. “Overreacting to a hypothetical threat is cheap compared to under-reacting to an actual threat, because, if you under-react, you could die, whereas, if you overreact, you generally just get fired for a minute.”
Content warning: The below video contains strong language
The “12 Rules for Life” author noted that his father isn’t vaccinated and decided against it “partly because they were telling him he had to.”
He later condemned vaccination mandates.
“You know, Canadians who aren’t vaccinated right now cannot leave the country,” Peterson said. “[W]hy is that? And I’m — look, I got vaccinated, and people took me to task for that, and I thought, ‘All right, I’ll get the [expletive] vaccine.’ Here’s the deal, guys: I’ll get the vaccine; you [expletive] leave me alone!”
“Did that work?” he continued. “No. So, stupid me, you know? That’s how I feel about it. It’s like, well, now I have to get tested for COVID when I come back into Canada. I have to get tested before I leave Canada. Now, that might be — the latter issue, that’s an issue with the Americans, so that’s outside of the Canadian purview, but the restrictions to get back into Canada are even more stringent. It’s like, why did I get the vaccine then if you’re not going to leave me alone?”
Also during the interview, the clinical psychologist said much of the world followed the model set forward by China, where the COVID-19 pandemic originated.
“The Chinese acted first — now, unfortunately, they are a totalitarian state — and we all followed,” he explained. “And that’s excusable in some sense, because we didn’t know what sort of threat we were facing.”
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