At face value it is odd, then, that Jordan Peterson’s new venture, The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), should boast an acronym designed to invoke the story of Noah while simultaneously railing against ‘the false idol of apocalyptic ideology.’ Look closer, however, and the contradiction resolves itself in a familiar, albeit familiarly veiled, way. The apocalypse is indeed here, only it isn’t global heating that poses an existential risk to humanity but the usual culture war suspects.

At this juncture, it’s difficult to evaluate the Journal of Controversial Ideas as anything more than a performance of daring by thinkers who want to win the culture wars, and in which the ‘free enquiry on controversial topics’ takes the backseat to political posturing of the most transparent kind.