Well, there are different kinds of intelligence. I see a number of readers dismissing Peterson as an idiot. But Trump was an idiot too, meaning he was anti-intellectual. But that didn't stop him from seizing the Republican Party and becoming president. I don't know if Peterson is crafty and ambitious in that way. Probably not, since he's mainly capitalizing on an old viral video. If anything, Peterson's overeducated, which would make him incompetent in practical affairs. Still, liberals are often too dismissive of their opposition. That was Hillary's problem when she ran against Trump.

I think Republicans exaggerate the threat of wokeness too, because as pseudo-Christians, they have to paint themselves as the victims of persecution, never as the persecutors.

But I suspect there is extremist populism on both sides of the "political spectrum" in the US. It's just that the right-wing kind is more dangerous because those rural folks are less educated and they have less to lose. They're more radical because they're not part of "the establishment."