Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Gage Skidmore
Get more news and opinions in the twice-daily Beast Digest newsletter. Don’t miss the next big story, sign up here.
Jordan Peterson has undergone the worst possible transition for a pop-culture intellectual. He has become boring. He is largely played out—not as a prominent and popular figure with a committed, even growing fanbase; but as a compelling and consequential figure capable of shifting the needle in the wider public discourse.
The issue isn’t whether his positions and sentiments resonate as strongly as ever with his followers—they do. The issue is the forfeiture, of his withdrawing from the war for hearts and minds in the malleable middle, where social narratives are effectively contested.