‘Wokescolds ruining comic books’: Jordan Peterson and fans notice Captain America villain sounds an awful lot like him

Influential author and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson expressed shock after discovering that some of his ideas were projected onto a well-known Captain America comic villain, seemingly to take a swipe at his politics.

“What the hell?” Peterson tweeted on Monday evening, responding to an image pulled from Marvel’s Captain America comic where a bad-guy character appears to be modeled after him.

The image includes the villain Red Skull, who is often portrayed as a Nazi in the comics, on a laptop with text that reads: “10 rules for life,” which appears to be a fairly obvious spin on Peterson’s book ‘12 Rules for Life.’

The scene from the comic was shared in a reply to a comment Peterson made in a tweet about the Atlantic promoting cancel culture. It came from a past issue written by none other than Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has contributed to the Atlantic and written on Captain America since 2018. 

In another image from the Captain America comic, the similarities between Red Skull and Peterson become even clearer, as other characters discuss the villain’s views on masculinity. Peterson himself often comes under fire often for his views on ‘masculinity’ being under assault in the culture. 

“It’s the same for all of them. Young men. Weak. Looking for purpose. I found the flag, you found the badge. They found the Skull,” Captain America says in the second image. “He tells them what they’ve always longed to hear. That they are secretly great. That the whole world is against them. That if they’re truly men, they’ll fight back.” 

Peterson called the quotes a “parody” of his ideas.

The controversial author was far from the only one to see and criticize the similarities. 

“The wokescolds ruining comic books has been going on for several years. This is the natural apex,” Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro tweeted in a thread on the matter. 

“It was very obvious after Avengers: Endgame that we desperately need new stories. Instead all the system can choke out are spin-offs, reboots and, in this case, broken archetypes written by ideologue hacks,” author and podcaster Dave Rubin added. 

Some Peterson critics, meanwhile, appeared to get a kick out of the attack on his ideas. 

Like this story? Share it with a friend!