The debate, or should I say discussion, was much better than I had anticipated – based on the comments and 'analyses' on social media I read before watching. This was a good example of how the hype and advertising of the event were completely off the mark; Peterson and Zizek didn't follow everyones expectations of doing a 'battle'. When Zizek pointed out how the audience shouldn't see the discussion as a competition, which was nice, I'm sure some people in the audience were taken by surprise and some might have got disappointed, since based on the oddly timed laughters some of the audience consisted of leftists who were there to witness the 'slaughter of Peterson'.
From the timing of laughters and applauding, I got the impression that for some in the audience (my guess is leftist SJW-types) the discussion was too complex to follow. For instance, at one point when Peterson was explaining something, Zizek shook slightly his head, just as a nervous movement, part of the audience started laughing because they clearly interpreted this as a disproving signal from Zizek, which from what I could tell (also based on his comments straight after) wasn't the case at all.
As others have pointed out, it remained unclear why Zizek affiliates himself with Marxism, since his views are quite far from it. As Peterson pointed out, he has some good original thinking going on. My guess is, that he has later come to realize the madness of Marxism, but his followers pressure him to still carry that label and/or if he'd abandon the label, he'd loose legitimacy as an expert. He might even be scared of the reaction of the radical leftists.
As I listened them talk, I couldn't help thinking how they are missing perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle, that could make their analyses more complete: ponerology, and the influence of psychopaths. I hope that they some day read Lobaczewski. Since they are talking about Marx, and Marx clearly was a schizoid personality (at least according to L.), the whole movement and influence of these ideologies can't fully be understood without the knowledge of ponerology, OSIT.
Not surprisingly, the commentaries and articles after the event were completely missing the content of the discussion. It's mind boggling to see how people and journalists (like the one in The Guardian) write about how "...Peterson was googling the meaning of postmodern Neo-Marxism" and "...Peterson came unprepared". What the *** are they talking about?! Didn't they understand anything of the content, the important stuff?
