Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr. Speak Out After YouTube Censorship

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jordan Peterson have spoken out, after a podcast episode—in which it was said that chemicals in water have led to young people becoming transgender—was pulled from YouTube.

On June 5, Democratic presidential candidate Kennedy Jr. told media commentator Peterson that he thought the "sexual dysphoria" seen in children, particularly boys, was because they were "swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals."

The nephew of John F. Kennedy spoke in response to a question from the Canadian psychologist and media personality, in which he likened a so-called "climate apocalypse" narrative of global warming to the use of fear in imposing coronavirus lockdown measures.

Kennedy Jr., the son of assassinated former Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy Sr., has long been known as a vaccine skeptic. He has previously spoken out about his opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The episode has since been pulled from YouTube. A spokesperson for Google, YouTube's parent company, told Newsweek that the 95-minute podcast was removed for violating the platform's terms of service regarding vaccine misinformation.

"We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube's general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities," read the statement.

YouTube's decision was criticized by Kennedy Jr. He shared Peterson's link to the full video on Twitter as he thanked the social-media platform's owner Elon Musk.

"What do you think ... Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates?" RFK Jr. wrote. "My conversation with @JordanBPeterson was deleted by @YouTube. Luckily you can watch it here on @Twitter (thank you @elonmusk)."

"Now @YouTube has taken upon itself to actively interfere with a presidential election campaign @RobertKennedyJr," Peterson responded to the post.

Peterson brought the matter up again on Monday. He commented on an article link from The New York Times that said President Joe Biden "needs to face the challengers in his own party. Those include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist who has emerged with unexpected strength in early polls."

Sharing the article in a quote tweet, Peterson wrote: "'Unexpected strength' @RobertFKennedyr: you mean despite the censorship @nytimes?"

During the discussion, Peterson said that vaccine mandates had "pushed forward the use of fear," and had "demoralized young people to a degree that's almost incomprehensible." The Biden administration says that lockdown measures and vaccine mandates were necessary to protect public health.

The Canadian psychologist added: "I've seen the climate apocalypse [narrative] use fear to induce something approximating the same kind of level of tyranny as far as I'm concerned that characterized the vaccine lockdowns."

Asked about his thoughts on this, Kennedy Jr. said that he saw "these huge levels of depression and despair, loneliness in kids, and I don't think that there's a single cause to it. I think blaming it on depression about [the] climate is probably oversimplistic."

However, Kennedy Jr. added: "In fact, I think a lot of the problems we see in kids—and particularly boys—it's probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we're seeing."

The presidential candidate said such children were "being overwhelmed by a tsunami; they're swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today and many of those are endocrine disruptors."

Endocrine disruptors are organic or synthetic chemicals that interfere with the body's production of hormones. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences lists atrazine, a common herbicide, as one.

Kennedy Jr. said atrazine was "throughout our water supply," before adding that if put in a tank with frogs, "it will chemically castrate and forcibly feminize every frog in there and 10 percent of the frogs—the male frogs—will turn into fully viable females able to produce viable eggs.

"If it's doing that to frogs, there's a lot of other avenues that it's doing it to human beings as well," Kennedy Jr. said.

A 2010 study at the University of California, Berkeley, found that atrazine exposure was highly correlated with "low sperm count, poor semen quality, and impaired fertility" in humans. However, it added that the chemical was "most potent in amphibians" as frog skin "absorbs atrazine at a much higher rate than the skin of mammals."

Its mention echoes that of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan wrote. In one widely seen video, Jones said that the government was putting chemicals in the water that were "turning the freaking frogs gay."

A June 2022 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found that in the U.S., the number of transgender individuals has "remained steady over time" as a proportion of the wider population. The study added that a transgender individual was "more likely" to be aged between 13 and 17 than 65 or over.

However, some academics have said using studies such as the one on atrazine's effects on frogs paints LGBTQ+ individuals as contrary to natural norms and "as deviant, impure or contaminated."

In another recent podcast with Joe Rogan, Kennedy Jr. lamented the apparent injuries that he was anecdotally aware of that he said had been caused by the vaccine. Others have accused him of spreading disinformation about vaccines. Rogan has also faced boycott calls in reaction to Kennedy Jr.'s comments.

While anti-vaccine campaigners have pointed to cases of vaccinated people developing sudden and inexplicable illnesses, health officials say that adverse effects of coronavirus vaccines have been found to be only rare occurrences.

The World Health Organization says that vaccines are "very safe" and many of the adverse effects are minor. The most serious events occur in between one per thousand to one per million cases. The WHO adds that there are "so few deaths can plausibly be attributed to vaccines that it is hard to assess the risk statistically."

Peterson has faced backlash for his views in the past. In July 2022, his Twitter account was suspended indefinitely after he refused to apologize for comments he made about trans actor Elliot Page. Peterson was later reinstated when Musk took over the social-media platform.

Earlier this month, Peterson accused transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney of "parodying women" in a way that "makes blackface appear loving."