Nice theory. Must go away and chew on that.

Oppression isn't falsifiable in a relevant sense. The definition of a social reaction is a logical definition a priori definition which must be known before any analysis or observation of the social context can be performed. Before one can tell whether or not a sun is present, they need to know what a sun looks like.

These are the definitions which Marxism, Feminism, etc. deal with. The a priori definition of an exploitative social reaction which we must have before we can even deal with the question of whether a given society is exploitative or oppressive. If we take Marxism, the "inherent exploitation" only goes insofar as the social context of capital is exploitative. Marx's point then being, within observed capitalism, there are these feature of exploitation, values expressed and power relationships. In these respects, they are descriptive of the social situation being spoken about, not independent notions which are true no matter how society might be defined, people might exist, etc.

Regardless of theoretical confusions; when you see something like gays banding together for gay marriage to be a thing, people advocating for and setting up needle exchanges in drug infused areas, the end of apartheid, setting up free evening classes in impoverished areas, the entry of all races into most parts of the workforce; would you agree these changes are in part attributable to 'identity politics' in the broad sense? — fdrake

Some of those movements (e.g. gay marriage) I don't see those as natural movements of opinion and feeling, they're mostly astroturf. I'd say the same about most supposedly grassroots Left-wing movements.

Sometimes they take reasonable, legitimate claims and put them through the mincer of PC cult ideology, whereupon they come out as claims for special privilege disguised as redress of legitimate grievances; more often they don't even bother doing that, and the claims are absurd in the first place. The "representatives" of such movements weren't voted for by the group they represent, they thrust themselves forward as representative, gather some well-meaning followers and some noisy followers, and then the asses in the media focus attention on them because it's supposed to be the cool thing. All pure rhetoric and persuasion, not an ounce of reason in it anywhere. Even when there's a kernel of validity to some of the claims, it's co-opted by the ideology, and ends up doing nothing but reproducing the ideology, the particular causes cancel out.

(Obviously I have no problem with evening classes; as far as race goes, I'm color blind and I believe meritocracy should rule - no barriers against, but no affirmative action for.)

But yes they're based on identity politics: among other things, identity politics gives people an excuse to claim special privileges and disguise them as legitimate redress or (that laughable oxymoron) "social justice."

I think we can agree that someone trying to represent a social movement, in the sense of stealing its voice for their own valorisation, is a bad thing. I very much doubt most instances of people speaking for a whole group of people who're effected by an issue, for example people with fibromyalgia or CFS in the UK struggling to get disability and unemployment benefits complaining about it in public, are doing so out of anything but the best intentions.

Or, if not the best intentions, it might be an example of solidarity becoming a form of viral content. It's worthwhile to ask if, historically, movements have been seen as self aggrandising viral content as soon as they become perceived as a threat to established political organisations and ways of thinking. The best model of this I can think of is the civil rights movement (and its historical predecessors and antecedents) in America.

Here's what a critic has to say about Marcus Garvey:

A Jamaican Negro of unmixed stock, stock, squat, stocky, fat and sleek, with protruding jaws, and heavy jowls, small bright pig-like eyes and rather bull-dog-like face. Boastful, egotistic, tyrannical, intolerant, cunning, shifty, smooth and suave, avaricious; as adroit as a fencer in changing front, as adept as a cuttle-fish in beclouding an issue he cannot meet, prolix to the 'nth degree in devising new schemes to gain the money of poor ignorant Negroes; gifted at self-advertisement, without shame in self-laudation, promising ever, but never fulfilling, without regard for veracity, a lover of pomp and tawdry finery and garish display, a bully with his own folk but servile in the presence of the [Ku Klux] Klan, a sheer opportunist and a demagogic charlatan.

my bolding.

What about MLK? He was obviously a covert Marxist-Leninist, as the FBI believed. Conflating a civil rights movement with Marxism is a very old trick and oft repeated to this day. By people who have demonstrably no understanding of the conceptual distance between, say, King's thought and Maoism, Foucault and Marcus Garvey - these figures would all be contemporaries and ideological allies if your set of distinctions was approximately true.

The 'cliffnotes' of post modernism, and probably 'post modernism' in its current conceptual form wasn't created by the philosophers and socioeconomic theorists who are usually united under the designator. Extreme relativism, naive adherence to equality of outcome, the fetishisation of the role power plays in discourse are histrionic projections which create 'postmodernism' as a intellectual monolith whose real development was never a unified whole or even focussing on the same set of themes. You have to do quite a lot of intellectual gymnastics and speak in extremely broad strokes to unite themes present in larger subsets of postmodern thinkers.

Chomsky was instrumental and very vocal in generating this perception. It's usually rooted in a transparent sleight of hand. If someone's analysing narrative structures, social forces - how things come to be believe and enacted en masse, whether the content of the ideology is true is a largely separate question. How ideas shape movements and how movements shape ideas, these actions operate irrelevant of the truth of the ideas shaping them; of course truth ideally guarantors more difficult refutation. Chomsky does acknowledge this distinction but then pretends it's the incoherent form of moral relativism. The academy in the UK reacted in much the same way. It's very formulaic and is regurgitated every time some self-perceived (rightly or wrongly) outgroup gets too big for their boots.

Rick Roderick has a series of introductory lectures, for a popular audience, about postmodern themes. It does an excellent job of cutting through the bullshit smeared all over post modernism. If a guy can make post modernism accessible (which he very much does), these charges of meaninglessness are more a function of incomprehension or refusal to engage than any dearth of meaning on postmodern thinkers' parts.

The hysterical criticism of social justice movements and the conflation of their ideologies with Neo-Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-EconomicDeterminist-Trotskyist-Foucauldian-Poststructuralist-Derridean-Geneological-Deconstructionist-Syndicalist-Anarchism* is just intellectual laziness with a sprinkle of reactionary zeal. It has a sordid history, and crops up in much the same manner whenever there are popular movements about anything.

This is not to say that if you found a real example of a movement that obeys the ridiculous construction in the previous paragraph that it shouldn't be criticised; or better yet sent to the flames.

*Which I'm sure you can tell is not a thing when it's written like that.

On the level of a society, certain groups will probably have more advantages afforded to them; sometimes this is ok (like citizens), sometimes it's not ok (like citizens being unable to vote), sometimes there's a lot of ambiguity and horrible shit (treatment of asylum seekers). — fdrake

You're taking a lot for granted here (for example the desirability of a universal franchise, equality, etc.). But at least we can agree that where there's verifiable oppression, people should act - even if it's vague and diffuse, that's still worth talking about, and possibly doing something about (depending on the cost/benefit calculation).

I probably am taking a lot for granted. Though, I don't see the point in chasing ghosts. You should really check out Roderick's lectures!

A priori needn't mean unverifiable/unfalsifiable. I agree that we bring definitions of possible things to the table and see if there's anything in nature that answers to those possible natures, or essences - but that very process involves verification/falsification. If it doesn't make a difference, it doesn't make a difference.

If we take Marxism, the "inherent exploitation" only goes insofar as the social context of capital is exploitative. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This seems circular to me.

Conflating a civil rights movement with Marxism is a very old trick and oft repeated to this day. — fdrake

Well yes, and that's what's often done - by those leading the movements.

But I respect that you're trying to "clean house." However, I fear that you're the exact kind of hopelessly idealistic "useful idiot" who would be first up against the wall, come the revolution ;)

IOW, the problem is always that the rhetoric you are using can be turned against you, and will be. The scum always rises in the Left - and that's never been a coincidence.

It's more often a rhetorical strategy to delegitimise a movement. Especially since, when taken at face value, it literally makes no sense.

But I respect that you're trying to "clean house." However, I fear that you're the exact kind of hopelessly idealistic "useful idiot" who would be first up against the wall, come the revolution ;)

Yeah. I'm pretty sure that when I get old I'll be one of those grandpas whose grandchildren recognise as prejudiced in ways I can't possibly understand. A life, hopefully, spent being employed to understand stuff ending in a poverty of the intellect.

If you could stop trying to get your black belt in passive aggression that would be swell, thanks.

I'm not one who says that literally everything that's ever come from any of these schools of thought is crap. I understand very well that some things (like Postmodernism) are, or at least see themselves, as evolutions from previous stances, and as part of a continuing tradition, and I think the leading lights (e.g. Derrida, Foucault) have indeed had interesting things to say. It just doesn't translate very well into either (from a critical Left-wing point of view) activism or (from a critical Right-wing point of view) public policy.

It's more often a rhetorical strategy to delegitimise a movement. — fdrake

How would you tell the difference between that and an actual wolf in sheep's clothing? Or don't the people in your tribe do that kind of thing? Always the good guys, huh?

It's always a bit tricky dealing with someone who has a measured position that I could probably agree with on some points, but who reflexively stands by the "no enemies to the Left" trope.

So which examples of identity politics do you think of as irredeemable rubbish and why, then? — fdrake

Anything modeled on the Marxist type of societal analysis (of oppressor/oppressed groups, with the groups marked by their closeness to, or distance from, "power", arbitrarily defined). So: anything based on good, old-fashioned Marxism; anything based on analyses derived from Critical Theory, or any other blend of Freudianism and Marxism; anything based on Feminist analyses, or derived therefreom as a template; anything grounded philosophically in Post-modernism or Post-structuralism; anything based on Intersectionality and/or Standpoint Theory. — gurugeorge

All of this is rubbish:

• anything in the intellectual tradition of Marxism in any sense
• any critique which distills oppressors and oppressive groups with differential distances from 'power'
• anything from Critical Theory
• anything feminist
• anything which could be construed as postmodern
• anything which could be construed as post-structural
• anything which makes use of intersectionality
• anything which makes use of standpoint theory

But you namechecked everything in my list except for anarchism and syndicalism. I'm very surprised that you think you successfully conveyed the following idea:

I'm not one who says that literally everything that's ever come from any of these schools of thought is crap. — gurugeorge

How would you tell the difference between that and an actual wolf in sheep's clothing? Or don't the people in your tribe do that kind of thing? Always the good guys, huh?

Hmm... I look for things like mass murder of civilians, enforced curricula, book-burning, the collusion of police and military. Y'know, concrete indicators that everything is going to or has already gone to shit. 'Nother good one is when people are holding AK-47s in-front of schools in Bangla and asking Westerners for money (true story).

It's always a bit tricky dealing with someone who has a measured position that I could probably agree with on some points, but who reflexively stands by the "no enemies to the Left" trope.

I'm not defending the circular firing line of the left. I think there are legitimate criticisms of all the movements and theoretical constructs you have referenced: I just think you think you advanced coherent criticism of the doctrines when you kinda just blah'd generalities and conflations into the comment box.

If any of these ideas are crap, I want them to be shown to be crap, you aren't doing that.

Here is a very curious interview (or snippet of a longer interview) with Jordan Peterson. I thought the host did a (mostly) good job of articulating his skepticism towards Peterson's views on activism, and forcing Peterson to explain his convoluted and controversial remarks (pay no attention to the hyper-partisan, moronic video title).

However, when confronting Peterson's disdain towards activism, and his belief that one should "clean up one's own room" before engaging in political activism, I thought the interviewer committed a huge misstep when bringing up Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of one who had personal issues, but was nonetheless committed to political activism. Peterson easily waves this away because while he can't say no, MLK was not right to commit himself to social justice when he should have worked out his personal problems first, he can uncontroversially admit that Martin Luther King Jr. was an exception to the rule, and no one is going to argue that run-of-the-mill activists are comparable to the venerated Martin Luther King Jr.

rather, the interviewer should have offered the example of those civil rights activists generally, who marched with, worked with, and protested alongside MLK. Martin Luther King Jr. played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement, but he didn't work in a vacuum, he had hundreds of thousands if not millions of activists who were there with him. If asked pointblank, I'm sure Peterson would argue that most of these activists had personal problems as well, but if they heeded Peterson's advice, then the Civil Rights Movement would have likely failed. In fact, the Civil Rights Movement would very much likely have been successful, one way or another, without MLK. Taking Peterson's advice would have made any activist movement a non-starter.

Anyway, it's an interesting conversation that taps into Peterson's view and exposes his limitations as a serious public intellectual. He stumbles quite dramatically near the end of the video when discussing climate change.

I'm not one who says that literally everything that's ever come from any of these schools of thought is crap. I understand very well that some things (like Postmodernism) are, or at least see themselves, as evolutions from previous stances, and as part of a continuing tradition, and I think the leading lights (e.g. Derrida, Foucault) have indeed had interesting things to say. It just doesn't translate very well into either (from a critical Left-wing point of view) activism or (from a critical Right-wing point of view) public policy.

Then why elevate criticism of people using bastardisations of theory in incoherent ways to criticisms of the theory? I'm with you insofar as people really are using theory as a cudgel, like 'Oh you wouldn't understand this, you haven't read Negative Dialectics!', but I hardly ever see that.

I've seen more, or used to see more, bastardisations of standpoint theory; I don't agree with it when it's interpreted that I have to put all of my beliefs into suspension because someone I'm reading is a woman, trans, etc - but I rarely saw that too (and it was typically confined to one sort of debate, angry standpoint theorists vs angry marxist radfems). Sometimes I probably should have because all of my beliefs about a topic were bollocks misinformation, and I got my ass handed to me by a few talented interlocutors. In general I think being wrong is ok, but being not even wrong about a topic is shameful.

So I still appreciate this kernel of insight from bastardisations of it: shut up and listen for a bit if you're unfamiliar with the terms of discussion, that's just giving your conversation partners charity and respect. It gives an opportunity to learn new ways to see from people. In my experience if you can make your points in terms of someone else's conceptual apparatus (including standpoints), you conduct yourself with respect and charity, and you don't treat the negation of their standpoint as a condition of possibility for correctness. Remember, if they're wrong, you can explain why in their standpoint*!

edit:* if the terms don't make sense, being socratic and asking for clarification without using it as a rhetorical strategy of undermining their view was generally successful.

hey, uh, are we the postmodern neomarxist academic left dominating courageous intellectual dissent against our pompous and overly verbose whining?

For sure. I mean my apartment is currently a mess, I guess that means I can't care about transgender rights

You misunderstand. There is no question of "essences," just a defitnions of a particular instance social relation and significance. The a priori definition is nothing more than an understanding of the feature of the world being looked at. If we cannot distinguish a car from the road, we cannot observe it and understand it is there. The same of is true of these social relations.

If we are to observe the particular relationships of significance and power in our society, we need to understand their definitions so that we can recognise when they are present. Without understanding this meaning, we won't be even be able to notice these social relationships when they are sitting in front of our nose.

There is no circularity. The a priori definitions in question aren't the basis for "proving" what is true. They are the basic understanding of the definition of relationships of status and power which we need recognise if we are able to observe when they are occurring in our society. Just as I need to know what a book is before I can point out in observation, I need to understand the meaning of social relationships, statuses, power relationships, etc. if I am to make the dissection of where they are present or not.

So in Marxism for example, I need to understand what constitutes an oppressive relationship, an organisation and control of capital, how is amounts to exploitation, before I can even observe instances where it occurs in the world. After that is defined in my understanding and observe whether or not a present society has those relationships. If it then so happens that I find those relationships are present (which Marx did) in society, it's a feature of the world as it exists, not some assumption of essence. The facts of those power relationships and exploits are defined in how that capitalist system is working, not by definition magic. If the capitalist system were to avoid those relationships, it'd got to step up and define a social organisation in which these facts of social relations are not present. Marxism is defining its position based on observation of what present capitalist society is doing.

All of this is rubbish: — fdrake

All identity politics derived from that sorry lot is rubbish - there's some philosophical/political value here and there in the originators, the leading thinkers, as I said. There's food for thought in Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Badiou, even someone like Habermas (if you can make it through a page of him without falling asleep) - heck, even a minor light like Shulamith Firestone on the Feminist side (a particular old flame of mine when I was a socialist in my youth) can have sparky, interesting things to say.

But identity politics as it's taught in universities now is a complete mess, a Frankenstein's monster of cobbled-together bits of intellectual arse juice from all those sources.

The problem isn't with the schools of thought in terms of their ideas necessarily - ideas are ideas, you can consider them or not - rather the flaw is in the tic, the automatism, of seeing everything through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed" group analysis. It's the unexamined (un-criticized) water in which the fish of academia swim, and it's polluted.

Plus also the obfuscatory language - if you need your man Roderick to simplify it, something's gone terribly wrong. Nobody needs to simplify Hume ;) But even that wouldn't be so bad on its own - idiosyncratic language use is kind of charming in the greats, it's like a musical jingle - but when it's garbled third hand and fourth hand in academia so that sons and daughters of the Great & Good can get a high paying job sucking the life out of society by working in an NGO or the Stasi HR department of a big law firm - then you've got trouble.

If any of these ideas are crap, I want them to be shown to be crap, you aren't doing that. — fdrake

I thought I did up-thread somewhere, then we went around the houses: I want to see real, verifiable instances of oppression to fight against, I'm not interested in apriori ideological candy floss designed to kafkatrap political opponents.

If you want to dig deeper at a theoretical level, the problem is social constructionism, of the kind that goes back to Rousseau. The fact that our ideas come from our side, or subjectively (as a Kantian might say) as opposed to being directly perceived in the traditional Realist sense, doesn't mean they can't be objective. We bring the tests to the table, we project possible ways of being, sure: but Nature answers yea or nay.

So social constructionism - what's the motive behind that? Well, in the context of a secular version of Protestantism, with its notion of the equality of souls before God, the general idea is that Man is born innocent (with everyone equal) but corrupted by social structures (particularly property). If you want the real root of the poison, that's it right there, in that Rousseaian idea (or rather the idea that Rousseau made immensely popular).

shut up and listen for a bit if you're unfamiliar with the terms of discussion — fdrake

You cannot possibly be serious that you think this is any way to conduct an intellectual conversation.

Again, I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but from my point of view what I perceive is a smidgin of cognitive dissonance, and you trying to reconcile what you'd like to think are the elevated, noble thoughts of some of these schools of thought, with the reality of how they're increasingly being used to browbeat people - particularly White males, in what is becoming an increasingly blatantly racist and sexist manner (as those terms used to be used, when they actually meant something verifiable).

There is no circularity. The a priori definitions in question aren't the basis for "proving" what is true. They are the basic understanding of the definition of relationships of status and power which we need recognise if we are able to observe when they are occurring in our society. — TheWillowOfDarkness

"Recognize" = "proving." Otherwise there's no point to the exercise, and it's indistinguishable from the confabulation of a lunatic, an LSD trip, the idiosyncratic backyard sculpture of a naïve folk artist - or something true.

So in Marxism for example, I need to understand what constitutes an oppressive relationship, an organisation and control of capital, how is amounts to exploitation, before I can even observe instances where it occurs in the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Sure, but how do you distinguish ideological hallucination from reality? Was it ever possible for capitalist relations not to be intrinsically exploitative?

In fact it's the other way round from what you say: Marxism is a plain old possible explanation for verifiable, noticeable bad things happening, not an identification of bad things happening that nobody ever noticed before. Very good: but what's the test? In what way could it be a wrong possible explanation?

n fact it's the other way round from what you say: Marxism is a plain old possible explanation for verifiable, noticeable bad things happening, not an identification of bad things happening that nobody ever noticed before. Very good: but what's the test? In what way could it be a wrong possible explanation? — gurugeorge

Marxism describes what is happening, but if we describe anything we are doing so from a state of detachment; the implication is that things might be otherwise. What is special about Marx is that he doesn't accept any particular set of economic relationships as being somehow the natural state of affairs; things have changed in the past and can therefore change again. Famously: Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

So the fundamental argument against Marx would be that we have reached the end of history.

If you want to dig deeper at a theoretical level, the problem is social constructionism, of the kind that goes back to Rousseau. The fact that our ideas come from our side, or subjectively (as a Kantian might say) as opposed to being directly perceived in the traditional Realist sense, doesn't mean they can't be objective. We bring the tests to the table, we project possible ways of being, sure: but Nature answers yea or nay.

"It's just a social construct" in meme form is sophomoric bollocks. Find me one example of anyone you're throwing under bus trying to say something isn't important or is entirely specified by noting that it is a social construct. I mean the thinkers, not first year first semester social anthropology undergrads speaking to their friends on Facebook.

Find me any example of social constructionism being operative in the day to day lives of people who're supposedly so beleaguered by it.

The problem isn't with the schools of thought in terms of their ideas necessarily - ideas are ideas, you can consider them or not - rather the flaw is in the tic, the automatism, of seeing everything through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed" group analysis. It's the unexamined (un-criticized) water in which the fish of academia swim, and it's polluted.

I'm pretty sure this is less of an all pervading force in culture and academia and more of a ghost conjured by histrionic proclamations.

The problem isn't with the schools of thought in terms of their ideas necessarily - ideas are ideas, you can consider them or not - rather the flaw is in the tic, the automatism, of seeing everything through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed" group analysis. It's the unexamined (un-criticized) water in which the fish of academia swim, and it's polluted.

I thought I did up-thread somewhere, then we went around the houses: I want to see real, verifiable instances of oppression to fight against, I'm not interested in apriori ideological candy floss designed to kafkatrap political opponents.

You mean like... the growing awareness of how horrible clothing supply chains are, anything to do with the TTIP, people starving to death due to austerity measures... How disproportionately violence effects trans people, the growth of racist populist movements in the wake of 2008. There is a lot of housework to be done. In the case of trans people and the growth of racist populist movements there really are disproportionately effected groups. Or is that too close to a typology of oppressors and oppressed for your liking?

Plus also the obfuscatory language - if you need your man Roderick to simplify it, something's gone terribly wrong. Nobody needs to simplify Hume ;) But even that wouldn't be so bad on its own - idiosyncratic language use is kind of charming in the greats, it's like a musical jingle - but when it's garbled third hand and fourth hand in academia so that sons and daughters of the Great & Good can get a high paying job sucking the life out of society by working in an NGO or the Stasi HR department of a big law firm - then you've got trouble.

No. The thing which went terribly wrong was that people saw all this theory coming from the European continent, the states and the academy identified it with Marxism; all under the presumption that just because someone's Marxist means they have nothing important to say; and it became incredibly fashionable to ignore and misrepresent any continental thinker instead of putting in the god damn work to understand technical philosophy translated out of its mother tongue.

Also your idea that no one needs to clarify and reinterpret Hume is ridiculous. Look at all the secondary literature clarifying, reinterpreting, applying ideas etc. Every popular thinker leaves a giant cloud of secondary academic literature.

So social constructionism - what's the motive behind that? Well, in the context of a secular version of Protestantism, with its notion of the equality of souls before God, the general idea is that Man is born innocent (with everyone equal) but corrupted by social structures (particularly property). If you want the real root of the poison, that's it right there, in that Rousseaian idea (or rather the idea that Rousseau made immensely popular).

Do you really think it's surprising that social constructionism is useful methodologically in the humanities? They are literally studying social dynamics. If there's a theory which facilitates the crystallisation of social processes into representative chunks, then looks at those chunks in motion, would you NOT use it? Oh wait, you already are.

The entire argument you're making is a geneological critique! You're taking ideas, interpreting them as social forces, then applying those social forces ceteris paribus to easy, sophomoric epigones who have little to no education in the supposedly 'underlying' theory. You're literally interpreting the production of theory in the humanities as a social construct. There's even a bloomin' Marxian element in what you're doing - you've made a schism between the parasitic elites of this movement, those people in false consciousness who serve them (the SJWs) and regular Joes who are having their freedom (reality itself?) attacked by the canon questioning canons. You even interpret the role of post modernism as the ideology of the fucking ruling class.

Pankaj Mishra wrote a unique article in the New York Review of Book yesterday, placing Peterson within a line of "intellectuals" who promote national myth, religious stories, and symbolic archetypes to advance a right-wing, hyper-masculine, quasi-fascist (or just outright fascist) hierarchical-based politics.

Peterson responded with an entertaining twitter meltdown, where he threatened to slap the author, which is totally not a hyper-masculine response.

Peterson responded with an entertaining twitter meltdown, where he threatened to slap the author, which is totally not a hyper-masculine response. — Maw

Yah, not a great response to be honest.

Pankaj Mishra wrote a unique article in the New York Review of Book yesterday, — Maw

Bugger... Whenever I'm trying to look away from the Peterson circus and keep to more serious readings, one of those crop up.

I don't like the hit-piece all that much. I don't like Peterson's reaction even more though. He lost that round far too easily.

How is it a hit-piece?

How is it a hit-piece? — Maw

Maybe because of its lopsidedness? I think the piece is informative in identifying most of the unsavory strands in Peterson's thinking and many of his unsavory and oft forgotten recent historical progenitors. Unlike the equally harsh criticisms by Žižek and Gyrus, though, it fails to enlighten the reader about some of the good reasons why many people get attracted to Peterson, and hence fails to promote self-critical reflection for liberals and progressives.

What @Pierre-Normand said, and the fact that if you're going to go after someone partly on the basis of their hyperbolic, inaccurate and uncharitable attacks on your side, the best strategy is to do the opposite. Seize the higher ground. Not doing so makes your opponent look bigger than they are. (Although in this case, JP's inability to control his inner child mitigated that negative.)

national myth, religious stories, and symbolic archetypes — Maw

There's nothing wrong with these things per se.

Nor is there anything wrong with masculinity or hierarchical based politics. Taken to extremes, they can can be wrong, of course, but there is no evidence that Peterson does so take them. It's funny to me that the left is busy painting Peterson as an alt-right reactionary, when the right views him, correctly, as a left of center Millian liberal with a fondness for Jung. If Peterson is, as you suggest, a right winger and even an "outright fascist" what the hell do you consider someone like myself, who is in fact to the right of Peterson? What of the people to the right of me? You have obliterated all meaning from political categories in your tinfoil capped frothings about Peterson. In your Overton window, virtually all of humanity must be consigned to the right.