Penguin Random House Canada Staff Want Jordan Peterson’s New Book Cancelled

“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” a junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community and who attended the town hall told VICE World News.

Another employee said “people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives.” They said one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalized their father and another, who is talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend.

“The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this. It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative,” the employee added.

A third employee told VICE World News the company’s diversity and inclusion committee received at least 70 anonymous messages about Peterson’s book, and only a couple are in favour of the decision to publish it.

In an email statement, Penguin Random House Canada said it is open to its employees’ feedback.

“We announced yesterday that we will publish Jordan Peterson’s new book Beyond Order this coming March. Immediately following the announcement, we held a forum and provided a space for our employees to express their views and offer feedback. Our employees have started an anonymous feedback channel, which we fully support. We are open to hearing our employees’ feedback and answering all of their questions. We remain committed to publishing a range of voices and viewpoints,” the statement said.

Several employees of Penguin Random House Canada cried when they learned that the publishing house would be publishing Jordan Peterson's new book. https://t.co/av54zRQRFn

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 24, 2020

I can’t hear town hall meeting without thinking of Parks and Recreation, but in any case, the response to Peterson writing a book that is a follow up to his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which discusses growing up, accepting responsibility, and owning your role in your life is tired and predictable given the response to Peterson in general, who, in a just world, would be the least controversial figure among us. I’d also put money on the table that no one objecting to the publication of his second book has read its predecessor.

12 Rules for Life is a national and international number one best seller because it’s chocked full of basic boundary holding advice that’s all but completely missing from most facets of broad culture and even parenting these days.