Even as he asks his audience, in his refined and elevated way, to hold an open mind when it comes to the positions of the alt-right.
Your personal response is just that. If you find his trite self-improvement advice helpful, great. But there’s a lot more that was going on with Jordaddy at the height of his popularity. Here’s the M.O. that made him the gateway to the alt-right, as observed in the lectures I watched:
Anodyne statement about the need to “get one’s life together” in a way that’s totally obvious to anyone who’s a well-adjusted adult with life experience. Often one of his “rules for life.”
Just-so story about gender or racial differences explaining why it’s now so difficult for poor oppressed white males to follow this advice despite it being the natural order of things.Cherry-picked quoting of impressive study and/or respected dead white male thinker to bolster this view of traditional ways bogged down by feminism, affirmative action, etc.
“So, if QED all right-thinking people should believe this should we not also give due consideration to…”
Brief and oblique shout-out to alt-right talking point which is a more extreme version of 2.
Criticism of a society that won’t give this idea a hearing even though he’s “proved” reasonable people and scientific research support it.
Self-pitying story about how he’s been 'censored", too.
Someone else called him a “dumb person’s idea of a smart person,” but it goes well beyond that. He is smart even if, like many succesful charlatans, he believes his own BS. He understands that his fans aren’t only poor critical thinkers and ignorant but also that they’re immature and lacking in direction despite an outsized sense of entitlement , which also describes your typical right wing authoritarian follower. That Peterson has found his moment at this particular time is no co-incidence.
More about Jordaddy in this topic:
With all due respect, there is no context where Peterson’s remarks and attitudes are not condescending, unhelpful drivel. As a prairie lad myself, I understand his fear of change and the appeal of rigid structure, the siren songs of halcyon days past. The good doctor is mentally unwell, and has been for quite some time.
His inability to speak or write precisely and concisely is deliberate. There is nothing he says that cannot be defended by cries of “out of context”, even when they are horrific…
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