Employees at Canada’s largest publisher are said to be distraught after learning their employer will publish Jordan Peterson’s next book. Vice reports their were complaints and tears from some employees during a town hall meeting about the book, titled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. The book is scheduled to be released on March 2, 2021:

Four Penguin Random House Canada employees, who did not want to be named due to concerns over their employment, said the company held a town hall about the book Monday, during which executives defended the decision to publish Peterson while employees cited their concerns about platforming someone who is popular in far-right circles.

He’s popular on the right, therefore he should be silenced is an argument that employees at a book publisher are making. I guess the idea is that de-platforming Peterson would save them the trouble of burning his books later. It’s really the same impulse. The reasons for this push toward censoring speech are all somewhat vague. One employee said Peterson was an “icon of hate speech” and added that was true “regardless of the content of his book.” No need to even read it before condemning it.

“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” a junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community and who attended the town hall told VICE World News.

Another employee said “people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives.” They said one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalized their father and another, who is talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend…

A third employee told VICE World News the company’s diversity and inclusion committee received at least 70 anonymous messages about Peterson’s book, and only a couple are in favour of the decision to publish it.

One employee told Vice that it seemed the company was really publishing the book because the first one had been such a success. In January of last year, Peterson said it had sold 3 million copies. In any case, it seems to be a bit of a shock to that particular employee that a book publisher might want to sell books. But of course that doesn’t matter to the woke: “The employee said the company’s diversity and inclusion committee aired concerns about how this will affect other authors.”

Yesterday, Peterson released a 10-minute-long video announcing that the book was available for presale around the world and explaining some of the contents. This is meant as a companion to the earlier book. The video also goes over some of the contents of each chapter.