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The Anatomy of Outrage

Maziar Ghaderi
Apr 25 ·

It’s been exactly one year since my city’s deadliest mass murder, the
Toronto Van Attack. When it happened last April, my knee-jerk reaction
was that the killer was likely an anti-immigrant lunatic because he
chose to do it in a district with many Iranian businesses. But that
quickly changed as I learned more about the story. It doesn’t help when
political opportunists, such as Tariq Nasheed and Paul Joseph Watson,
market the currency of outrage by twisting and turning horri�c stories
like this one into a narrative that �ts their sculpted worldview. Just last
week, 321 Sri Lankans were murdered in a string of bombings across
luxury hotels and churches on Easter, one of the most sacred holidays
for Christians worldwide.

It’s hard enough not to feel hate and anger when gut-wrenching
tragedies like the van-ramming attack, the Sri Lanka church bombings
and the New Zealand mosque shootings occur. Let alone when
nefarious voices online exploit our innate irrational and tribal nature
by ramping up division and rage.

“My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet

nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the
taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and
dreams—like the lives of all men who stop
deceiving themselves.”

― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

When news of the New Zealand mosque shootings broke last month, a
photo featuring Jordan Peterson next to a fan wearing an “I’m a proud
Islamophobe” t-shirt started circulating. A hideous wave of heat and
hate rushed through me. “Fuck white people. They all hate Muslims
deep down,” I thought. The potency of my reaction caught me o�
guard; why did I care so much if I myself don’t even agree with the

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Islamic worldview? Why did I feel tribal and take this personally if I’m
not even Muslim?

In that moment, I reverted back to a previous version of myself that I

described in my �rst article for Quillette. It took me three days of close
examination to fully make sense of this moment of hate. Given the
ampli�cation and frequency of online outrage in our digital world, I felt
compelled to write about my experience to help unpack its complexity
right down to the bone. We certainly have no shortage of tragedies and
I know that I’m not the only one who lets pixels on the internet get the
best of me.

Screenshot of the original post in the Jordan Peterson Liberal Discussion Group.

1 HEAD
I hate how these kinds of t-shirts hide under the guise of innocent
rationality and freedom of speech when their impact is entangled in
attention-hungry provocation. If someone wears a t-shirt like that, the

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last thing I think he’s after is articulate debate. He’s proudly blaring
generalizing stereotypes about what a group of people are and how
they think. This should at least �y in the face of Jordan Peterson’s
philosophy of individualism and his intentions of constructive dialogue.
Why would he pose in the photo? But then again, is he supposed to
police what people wear in photos with him? My head raced with
questions.

I’m no neuroscience bu�, but I understand that the amygdala controls

the ancient emotions, sex and violence rooted in our psyche. An MRI
scan would have probably been o� the charts if taken of my head when
I �rst saw that photo.

I was already in a cynical and dismal headspace due to the then-recent

New Zealand mosque attacks. Some people thought the shooter
himself was posing in this photo with Jordan, though I l never believed
that rumour. Seeing the arrogance of that t-shirt beside Jordan simply
got the best of me. I left a bitchy comment on the post about how “it
was fun while it lasted but I’m now going back to hating white people.”
I quickly felt dumb and deleted it.

Sometimes impulsive and racially-charged reactions like this can

consume me. Even though his was a di�erent path, I appreciated how
forthcoming Liam Neeson was in his public commentary about his
experience transcending a dark period in his life. Many years ago when
Neeson discovered a black man had raped his close friend, he said that,
for several days, he “went up and down areas with a cosh … hoping
some black bastard” would come out of a pub so he “could kill him” in
an act of revenge. When I watched that clip on YouTube, I mouthed to
my smartphone “You too, man?” Among my friends, I was one of the
few that wasn’t shaking his head and thought his reaction was a natural
one, albeit irrational, violent and morally wrong. I didn’t really
understand why everyone else was ready to “cancel him” when he was
just being honest and clearly knew, and stated, that his reaction was
wrong. Is everyone else really so perfect? I know I’m not.

2 EYES
Then I kept seeing mangled dead babies. The youngest victim of the
New Zealand shooting was Mucad Ibrahim, a 3-year-old Somali kid.
With wet eyes and a dry throat, I read how that little guy ran towards
the shooter thinking it was a video game before the tiny parts on his

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tiny body were pierced open by a terrorist’s bullets. I’ll never fully
understand why my eyes go out of their way to read this stu� when it
upsets me so much. Maybe if my parents raised me with religion, that
could have been my body-meat punctuated with lead and steel as my
family watched in utter horror before it was their turn.

In addition to identifying with Mucad, I think my obsession with his

tragic end goes back to my teenage fascination with the macabre, with
the dark arts. I’ve always identi�ed with the visual imagery associated
with the unlucky antihero, the charismatic villain, the amoral trickster
who toys with the bourgeois and dwells at the border of humanity and
chaos. I was a black-washed hip-hop head with a Scarface poster
pinned on my bedroom wall and tapes of 2Pac, Triple Six Ma�a, and
Brotha Lynch Hung on heavy rotation in my Walkman.

Author’s teenage macabre in�uences.

Perhaps my interest in violent gangsta rap and �lm is linked to the

reason why I now read about the Charlie Hebdo victims and the kids
killed in the Sandy Hook massacre? In my darker moments, and in an
attempt to make sense of such madness, I’ve watched ISIS propaganda
and browsed Daily Stormer forums. To this day, I still think about Sam
Harris’s, “What Do Jihadists Really Want?”. I know that seeing this
content will only make me upset, but sometimes I simply cannot close
the window and look away.

Ever since I could remember, I’ve wanted to see evil. What it thinks.
How it walks. How it ticks. My glimpse into evil—and its capacity to
reach me through technology makes it all the more real. The white
identitarian, the militant jihadi, the homicidal incel all use social media
to bring their infamy and ideology to a world stage with crypto-memes,

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live feeds, and professional cinematography designed to remind you of

one thing: emotions control you more than you know, let alone like to
admit. The desert cry to kill In�dels, the Fourteen Words, and their
pixels show you how to feel and act. I’ve learned to recognize the
dangers of gazing into the abyss for too long, for it can leak right back
into me, making it hard to tell where the shadow ends and I begin.

“A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations

seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, �at,
normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to
smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a
cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages…”

― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

3 EARS
In conversation with my �ancée about the photo, I heard a point that
helped to ground me home. She reminded me about my initial reaction
to Jordan’s “A Picture of Mohammed” back in 2017, as a motion to
condemn Islamophobia was being discussed in Canadian Parliament. It
was an artful commentary on the perplexing point of convergence
between an ancient blasphemy law (the depiction of the prophet
Mohammed) embedded in the Quran and the Western staple of free
speech. The video made my ears perk up and I immediately texted
Tammy, Jordan’s wife, to praise it. I also noticed that his argument was
commended by several Muslim viewers in the comment section.

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Top YouTube comments from Muslims supporting Jordan’s “A Picture of Mohammed” video.

It was like performance art in its delivery and execution, and helped
me to hear out why Jordan was skeptical about the term
“Islamophobia”, which has become politicized by proponents of both
the left and the right, rendering it meaningless and light years away
from what it should do: protect individual Canadians from
discrimination—not unlike the intent behind anti-Semitic hate-speech
laws.

Hearing this video and remembering my initial reaction to it showed

me that we can have thoughtful and respectful conversations about
taboo topics without being foolish enough to resorting to ear-covering
typecast messaging that deter dialogue.

4 FISTS
One of the confusing aspects of my reaction to the photo is that I’m no
stranger to throwing my �sts when it comes to Islam. To describe my
experience with Islamists, let’s rewind to a decade or so, to before it
became fashionable to hate on Muslims. When I was in my 20s, I visited
family in Iran for the �rst time, with my father. Despite living my �rst
�ve years there, I hadn’t returned in two decades. My mother always
told me, “In your heart, either you live here or there. You can’t do
both.”

I quite enjoyed holding the hands of aging uncles and aunties who all
knew me on sight, even though I didn’t have any recollection of any of
them. Far from the hot roar of the city, I found a sense of appreciation
from being in such an atavistic part of the world. I thought of the
creased leather faces of ancient Silk Road traders every time I saw a
random dirt road carved in the countryside. I remembered pretty girls
with Nicole Kidman nose-jobs, cheesy guys with complicated jeans,
gutsy pedestrians, �avoured barley soda and spiral dreads of dark
brown opium hidden in basement ceilings. Memories of the ruins of

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Persepolis, Zoroastrian temples, and tombs of dead mystic poets were

forever singed my mind. It felt taboo and special to be in Iran, but also
strangely warm and familiar—almost like it was someone else’s
memory, someone I knew very well but had never met in the �esh.

Author and his father at a Zoroastrian temple in Esfahan, Iran (2010).

These delicate moments were sharply interrupted by a looming fascistic

presence across the propaganda billboards towering over a bustling
avenue, or felt even while sitting in the corner of a cousin’s living room,
eating take-out. It was a sad and vivid reminder of who really ran the
country.

During a mehmooni (dinner party), I met a distant cousin who

happened to be a bureaucrat for Hezbollah, the militant Shia political
group in Iran. Through my father, he asked me what I thought of Iran
based on my impressions from our trip. It’s not common for the more
conservative types to address young people directly when a parent is
present. In my third-grade level Persian, with clenched �sts, I began
blaming the persistent relics of the Islamic Revolution that Iran was so
far behind the global stage in literally every aspect of public life. I
remember not wanting him to get away with anything. I remember

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wanting to hurt him and wanting him to know how I felt. Your
favourite neighbourhood “proud Islamophobe” would have grown even
prouder if he knew of my angry, iron-�sted rant on that cool evening in
Tehran.

On the other hand, I don’t think snarky political t-shirts are

courageous, intelligent, or helpful in the slightest. They repel
conversation with our Muslim neighbours who would otherwise be
willing to talk, which is important in a practical sense because the
unavoidable truth is that Muslims are the only people that can sculpt
the future of their faith, even though this continues to be a bloody
undertaking. The fact remains that dialogue is the best way forward,
and whatever replaces it is worse—much worse.

If our “proud Islamophobe” had worn that t-shirt in Tehran, it would

take on a whole other meaning. That would be badass to the point of
criminality and I’d be the �rst to pay € 30 for a t-shirt with his now-
deceased face on it. But that’s not what this was. This was a virtue-
signaling Westerner excreting ignorant stereotypes about Muslims on
dryer-safe cotton to other Westerners safely in the West. There’s zero
courage in that.

5 NOSE
Following the scent of the next leftist rally in town protesting, oh let’s
say, the inherent misogyny of phallic-shaped vape pens, I too can wear
an “I’m a proud Christophobe” t-shirt and on it, list negative stereotypes
about European Christians—such as separating Native kids from their
families, forbidding them from speaking their language, raping them,
and then lying about it for decades.

In a frenzy of Palestinian scarves, Che Guevara t-shirts and purple hair,

the crowd roars hoisting me on their shoulders—I feel like a million
Euros; a perfumed insta-hero. Anti-white Christian-bashing is the trend
because it’s seen as punching up by the mainstream left and given that
I’m a brown once-refugee, I’d probably get a Hollywood movie deal out
of it. But let’s mute the allure of my rosey coastal career prospects for a
moment and remember that donning a reeking t-shirt like that makes
the issue more about me and less about the actual victims I’m
pretending to care about.

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My �ancée, Patricia Marcoccia, initially set out to do a documentary on

Jordan’s friendship with his honorary brother, Charles Joseph
(Charles’s family adopted him), and master carver of the
Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation. I began to think more deeply about
Canada’s history with indigenous populations after I met Charles and
to this day, I still think about one scene from those early shoots in 2015.
Jordan and Charles were driving to a Truth & Reconciliation
Commission event in Ottawa when Charles said, “The triggers were the
smells” to which Jordan asked, “Any particular smells?” and Charles
replied, “It was a smell that Natives don’t have…not seeing the person
but knowing you’re getting hurt by them. You just don’t lose that. When
you’re a young boy getting molested. When your eyes are closed-in pain
your senses get stronger. They called it Bible study time and bring you
to a private room and there isn’t even a Bible in it.” He continued,
“They punched me around, ripped my clothes o� of me…cut my hair
all o�. The abuse started minutes after entering that building…”

Author visits Charles Joseph in his home studio, Surrey, BC (2019).

The traumas Charles carries from residential schools still haunt him to
this day, as do the countless Iranian women, like my mother, that have
lost so much of their civil freedoms under Islamism. But there are more
useful ways to express our frustration with the injustices committed in
the name of religion than an “I’m a proud Christophobe” t-shirt, which
doesn’t actually invite Christians into the conversation in the spirit of
reconciliation, but rather purposefully alienates them in the name of a
misplaced, narcissistic vengeance.

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6 MOUTH
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to talk directly to Jordan about the
photo. In the age of online rumors, partisan emotions and Twitter
feuds, it’s always best to have direct dialogue to sort things out, when
possible.

Jordan has been a challenging �gure in my life, ever since Patricia

started a documentary project on him, several years ago.

In the 2016 YouTube video that entrenched Jordan’s public identity as

the controversial professor against political correctness, “Fear and the
Law,” he explains that when people are having a genuine
disagreement, anger is often a natural part of the experience. It’s an
indication that the issue at hand is worth talking about. Jordan became
the avatar of speaking your mind, even if you say it badly or clumsily at
�rst. But was the t-shirt simply an expression of free speech?

To my relief, Jordan listened intently and understood my discomfort

and anger at the photo. He said that he tries to keep the events
surrounding his book tour relatively apolitical and that he would now
instate a policy that kindly asks guests not to wear clothing with
provocative political slogans during his VIP meet & greet events. This
makes sense to me, because Jordan is supposed to be a beacon for
dialogue, and whether he likes it or not, he inadvertently becomes
entangled in whatever those slogans may be as their images proliferate
on social media.

When speaking with Jordan I began to think that maybe in some ways
—and possibly in the most important way—it’s a beautiful thing that a
guy with Islamophobic views resonates with Jordan’s work. What the
people who banned Jordan’s books, rescinded his Divinity School
fellowship or questioned whether Jordan Peterson has “gone too far”
don’t understand is that Jordan’s philosophy is fundamentally about
valuing people as individuals, not for the collective identity groups they
belong to. The New Zealand terrorist denounced individualism and
held a worldview that was completely opposed to seeing Muslims as
human beings, which is what propelled his unforgivable act of hate
against them.

That sunny afternoon in Toronto with Jordan and his debate with
leftist scholar, Slavoj Žižek, reminded me that conversation is the most
important tool to use when sifting through troubling issues. Our
mouths serve as pressure-releasing valves that help maintain a civil

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sanity held in the space between con�icting worldviews. A heated

debate can turn into real violence when these arteries get clogged,
which is a good reminder—as it was for me—of how to keep the vital
veins of communication open and not disrupt their �ow with self-
centered provocation that can end a conversation before it starts.

7 MIND
The re�ective mind can be a powerful thing. By working to sort out the
layers of my di�erent reactions and by being reminded to be patient
with myself and gentle with others, I was able to make a bit of sense of
the world in and around me.

My moment of outrage forced me to excavate no simple answer, but a

complex layer of reactions to unpack that which can’t be dumbed down
into a sensational sound bite or clickbait headline. Anything worth
delving into can’t be summed up so neatly, and anything worth talking
about is often accompanied by strong reactions.

A self-examined life has the potential to better de�ne our views and
morals with the pinnacle being a beautiful death of our more outdated
parts and a parsing out of what we think from what we feel.

Some advice from NYU social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt comes to

mind: that we must remain slow to judge others for most of us have
more in common than we’d like to think. Very rarely in life do we meet
true villains and heroes as we skirt on the shores of competing worlds.

“As a body everyone is single, as a soul never”

― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

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