You certainly wrestle with the issues here and dig up some great quotations. I had no idea Jabar was so philosophical, let alone that he wrote something on Peterson.
I think Peterson’s just plainly become a demagogue. He’s exploiting alt-right, hypermasculine grievances, serving as their pet intellectual, adapting evolutionary psychology, and scapegoating Marxism and postmodernism to reassure White males that they deserve to dominate.
Then again, I think so-called wokeness has become problematic too. The YouTube socialist Douglas Lain has explained the difference between the fad of “wokeness” and socialism. The former is what privileged consumers talk about to be politically correct, whereas socialism is about changing the material conditions of injustice, by seeking political reform.
Being opposed to sexism and racism is one thing but trying to make social outcomes equal is another. And wokeness becomes illiberal when it opposes free speech and thought. Wokeness also seems infantilizing with its safe spaces, microaggressions, and so on. This is to say that what became wokeness is part of a larger cultural trend.
I think centrists are problematic, too, though, for reasons I spell out in my articles on conservatism and on the political spectrum.
