SCAPEGOAT

When researcher and surrealist Stephanie King began investigating Jordan Peterson's work, she expected to critique his ideas. What she discovered was far more daunting: systematic academic fraud spanning decades, built on fabricated research, uncited claims, and plagiarism—all weaponized against women through hostile sexism disguised as intellectual discourse. Much attention has been given to his reactionary discourse toward the trans community and less on the implications toward women generally in his fraudulent scholarship and political strategy. This project has a heavy focus on the latter, but will touch briefly on the former.

Scapegoat is a 6-episode documentary series that forensically patterns Peterson's academic fraud, including fabricated research in his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, exposes his use of zero credible sources for central claims about ancient mythology, and his appropriation of a violent Nazi terrorist's manifesto whilst utilizing it with his framework which was allegedly against fascism. The series exposes how Peterson fundamentally misunderstood and weaponized René Girard's mimetic theory—arguing that "speech alone" (regardless of truthfulness) was acceptable, when Girard taught that scapegoating violence emerges from false accusations. Peterson systematically scapegoated Black women for the deterioration of quality at Harvard on his podcast, has claimed women want "brutal male domination", has engaged in reputation destruction while lying about it being a "female proclivity", and has pathologized a false fabricated disorder, the Oedipal Mother Complex.

Scapegoat establishes the Truth: public intellectuals can sell a million copies of their book and their fraud go unnoticed. In the case of Peterson, this phenomenon abetted mass deception.