Islam critic Jordan Peterson raised the profile of the Brain Bar Festival in Budapest, Hungary, already a rising standard compared to the elitist Bilderberg gathering at Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
The gatherings occur nearly simultaneously on an annual basis, both winding up about a week ago.
Peterson, whose intellectual stock rose with his sharp criticism of identity politics and laws pandering to transgender identified persons, aimed much of his criticism last week at Islam and the free-flow of migrating Muslims into Europe.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán joined Peterson in pointing out the immense burden that has been in place on Europe because of the tide of Islamic immigrants.
Peterson went as far as to announce that there is no evidence that Islam and democracy can possibly coexist.
“It is not clear to me that Islam would be compatible with democracy,” Peterson said. “We have no evidence that it would be.”
He added that he is yet to observe even one “positive example of a successful, independent Muslim democracy. . . [this] is a fundamental problem that is unfortunately not allowed to be discussed.”
Orbán in the past noted himself as a guardian of Christian values, and last year he assessed refugees coming from across the Mediterranean as “Muslim invaders.”
Peterson, a university professor, Canadian political scientist and psychologist, assessed Hungary’s rebuild and freedom breakthroughs since the 20th century as an amazing success.
He was introduced to the festival and among Hungarians as a Christian conservative thinker who spoke of everyone having a “divine responsibility,” to do what “must be done,” or else be tormented by their conscience, unable to live in harmony.
Tribal societies are extremely dangerous
Peterson
Little is known of what was discussed at the Bilderberg gathering. Criticism of the secretive confab of super elites centers on possible conspiracies that equal nothing good for the vast majority of humanity.
While the Bilderberg gathering is an annual conference established in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Brain Bar came along in 2015 as a platform for intellectual discussion of the future of humanity in an open forum, with the help of Prime Minister Orbán.
Because of the open forum, there’s a lot to be said for the Brain Bar Festival, more than 10,000 in attendance and many more checking in on social media.
One important observation is a conclusion that Peterson drew for festival participants in which he warned of a leftist delusion that is helping numerous movements toward dangerous totalitarianism, that it’s not just Islam that is a threat.
About the political left’s ideology, he said, “The left wing has started to believe in the Utopian thought that group identity is above all. But it’s a return to tribal thinking, and tribal societies are extremely dangerous.”
