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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

21 Comments

  1. Camestros Felapton
    April 12, 2018 @ 9:16 am

    ‘In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, one of the green monsters drinks a serum in the genetics lab, and gains a capacity for intelligence that far exceeds that of his kin. He later dons a turtleneck and blazer, and gives an interview on live TV. ‘

    Applause. Bravo.

    Reply

  2. Yossarianduck
    April 12, 2018 @ 3:19 pm

    The Hulk Hogan of Order is now part of my personal Pantheon.

    This piece was excellent, as an avid follower of Eruditorum and the G2 Institute, I hope we see more guest posts from you here in the future.

    Reply

  3. =8)-DX
    April 12, 2018 @ 5:07 pm

    I commend this appreciatory piece on the genius of Jordan “Bremlin” Peterson within the context of Laibach and Gremlins 2 Studies. It’s a shame his work has not reached the hights of hypergremlination, but then not all satirists can be expected reach such philosophical hights.

    =8)-DX

    Reply

  4. lhensleigh
    April 13, 2018 @ 7:10 pm

    Dear Dog, this was brilliant. Just effing brilliant.

    Reply

  5. starskeptic
    April 14, 2018 @ 11:31 am

    “…but out of biological essentialism and social darwinism.”
    I would have added the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ to that, but at this point…’tis a quibble…

    Reply

  6. Austin G Loomis
    April 14, 2018 @ 8:19 pm

    I didn’t even know the Institute existed, let alone how much I needed it, until I read this post. Truly, the Gremlins join the Doctor and the Joker as manifestations of the ruling hyperstition of our age, the Guizer*.

    (Alan Garner, in The Guizer: a book of fools, uses this term for the Trickster, who he says also embodies “the dawning godhead in man.” I expand his meaning to include the Trickster and his-or-her opposite number the Opener of the Way.)

    Reply

  7. Left Leaning Centerist
    April 26, 2018 @ 5:56 am

    Elizabeth calls professor Petersons work ‘moronic and dangerous’, and yet layers assertion after assertion as to how he’s wrong without actually providing any decent counterargument.

    I can almost trust my intuition that Elizabeth views Peterson through a feminist Marxist lens, and as such has her goggles of ideology on, and doubtless less academic authority to speak on the topics being disagreed with. In her eyes, Peterson disagrees with the conclusions of Feminism, therefore he is CLEARLY a fascist!
    Disgusting.
    Surely no person could find anything objectionable about an identitarian collectivist movement.

    Lets just ignore the vast audience of young men who, disposable, white priv scum as they are, seem to be starved of messages of positivity and personal responsibility, compatible with a world they recognize, let alone messages that don’t castigate them for being that which they were born as, agents of the Patriarchy, and evil oppressors.

    However, that said, I remain unconvinced Elizabeth has the slightest grasp of who Doctor Peterson is, or what his goals are; she mentions him calling for the Purging of Departments, but doesn’t mention specifics;

    Namely he sets his sight on the overwhelmingly leftist humanities departments, some of which are specifically dedicated to turn impressionable young minds into becoming unthinking, chanting activists with goals of anarchism, communism, and causing seditious harm to their own nations.

    I’m left leaning, before you make assumptions as to MY biases, and nothing makes me want to disavow the left more than the vile lies being printed by ignorant, bigoted, ideological reprobates like Elizabeth here.

    I wonder if they have the guts to leave my message, or fear free discussion, and will add it to the pile of ‘message deleted’s here.

    Thats fine, I never visit a place that censors free dialogue twice.

    Reply

    • Elizabeth Sandifer
      April 26, 2018 @ 12:46 pm

      This would work much better as a provocation if you’d read closely enough to notice that this is a guest post and that I didn’t write it.

      As it stands, it’s almost as brilliant a satirical performance of the sort of sealioning dipshits who fawn over him as “Doctor Peterson” himself is.

      Reply

    • Jack Graham
      April 26, 2018 @ 1:39 pm

      Hey, ‘Left Leaning Centerist’, if you want to “disavow the left”, please feel free. Don’t dither. Don’t worry about hurting our feelings. I mean, I’m sure you’ve been very active and helpful while on our side, but if it’s time for you to move on… hey, that’s life. All good things come to an end. I feel free to speak for the entire left when I say that we’ll muddle along without you somehow. Ta ta.

      Reply

      • Left Leaning Centerist
        April 26, 2018 @ 11:26 pm

        Of course! Just like self-appointed speakers for feminism get to do the speaking for all women, (you disagree with my politics? YOU UNCLE TOM FACIST!) you feel completely justified speaking for all the left and, instead of having any idea of HOW to bridge the gap of grievances, you’re more than happy to shore up the gaps of a nice little echo chamber to where you only hear from people who agree with your (possibly increasingly insular) views.

        You have absolutely NO idea of what my ‘left wing street cred’ is, and are more than smug enough to assume that you’ve done better.

        This reminds me of young neo-fems attacking Niel Gaimans work for being repressive, and representative of patriarchal gender stereotypes.

        If you think that the answer to objections is to strive for further ideological purity, and to purge the discord, congratulations! You’d fit in fine in the far right too!

        Lets stick to the issues. Jordan Petersons most pressing infamy is that he won’t moderate his language based upon the ideologies of the ‘boundary blurring progressives’.
        In some peoples books that makes him some kind of fascist, even when his opponents are clearly in the ‘lets have government mandated terms of speech’ camp.

        Reply

        • T.S. Smelliot
          April 27, 2018 @ 2:49 am

          “Lets stick to the issues. Jordan Petersons most pressing infamy is that he won’t moderate his language based upon the ideologies of the ‘boundary blurring progressives’.”

          Really? I thought it was because he was some nutbag pop-psychologist spouting nonsensical bullshit about feminist chaos dragons and generally being a pretentious, insufferable, Kermit-the-Frog-sounding asshole while all the slack-jawed dullards that listen to him act like picking up after yourself and keeping a baseline level of cleanliness in the home is some magical life-changing advice from on high when in reality it’s something they should have learned when they were five goddamn years old

          Reply

        • Sam Keeper
          April 27, 2018 @ 6:51 am

          “I never visit a place that censors free dialogue twice.”

          🤔 hmm

          Reply

        • steve
          August 14, 2018 @ 8:40 am

          watch you dont get possessed by any animuses, or is it animi? you can always turn it inside out into an anima, but don’t expect anyone to call it by its preferred pronoun

          Reply

    • The Entire Left
      April 26, 2018 @ 4:49 pm

      What Jack said

      Reply

    • theoditsek
      April 26, 2018 @ 9:06 pm

      Hello there, Jordan.

      Reply

    • Dungarr
      April 27, 2018 @ 1:57 am

      The last time I saw a self-burn this bad, my brother needed to get skin grafts.

      Reply

    • R.G. Meinke
      April 27, 2018 @ 7:05 pm

      Bravo, sir! Your response is precisely the type of Laibachian stiobe the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies describes in this article, and I salute your seemingly effortless mastery of such a challenging genre of satire.

      Some constructive criticism – like Peterson’s over-the-top Canadian accent, the misspelling in your username makes the joke a bit too obvious.

      Reply

  8. Thethirdway
    January 7, 2019 @ 1:04 pm

    I think Peterson’s strawmanning of the political left has upset a lot of people.
    He has, as you correctly pointed out, vaingloriously charged into political debates then tries to frame it as overlap in his work as a social scientist when these debates haven’t went well for him.

    He calls for ‘something deeper’ than political correctness, and I have to say I line up with him on that. Although you may find his corollaries pretentious, he is coming from the psychology direction and his arguments in that field are tighter. He seems glaringly more intelligent when talking about real life individuals whose lives are governed by order and chaos, and I choose not to dismiss his psychological reading of the Bible.

    His bogus arguments on identity politics is a deflection of concepts he doesn’t fully understand. We know if he tried to run his Gulag, and Road to Wigan Pier analogies by Chomsky he would be torn to shreds on how his not only his knowledge of British politics, but the hypocrisy of defending British conservative thinkers like Keith Joseph or Roger Scruton who wrote “Without obedience society crumbles into the powder and dust of individuality.”
    British conservatism is collectivism for the old money rich, and “there’s no such thing as society” (Thatcher) for the poor who should have individual agency, but don’t through education and job opportunities being miles below par. Conservatives blame this on Blair and Browns mess, and the deindustrialised jobless workers with a chip on their shoulder. They have them working below minimum wage 40 hour ‘voluntary’ jobs for £71 a week. The precedent of fiscal autonomy is Victorian times. That’s persecution, not equality of opportunity by benevolent force.

    So JP really steps his big size nines in it when it comes to politics. I truly rate him as a creative thinker in the field of a psychological approach to the humanities (you say comedy, ok), but politics is about power, and ‘something deeper’ is utopianism. He has a lot of good questions about how political dialogue should be constructed, but can only provide the flawed Peter principle as the remedy for world politics.

    If he were in the room right now and I would mention the state of British politics. I’m sure the first thing out his mouth would be “In Scandinavia…” or some other derailment. As a psychologist, he should look back on his interviews and see how often he does derail them, then question if he’s living by his recited tenet of ‘being honest.’

    Reply

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