> so it seems his appeal is primarily limited to the kinda-sorta-far-right.
That's actually not the case (just see what kind of questions he gets from his actual audiences to see for yourself). Though on a surface level some of the alt-right likes him because he pisses off SJWs. But they're mistaken to think he's any kind of ally. He's spent much of his career opposing their views and sees both the alt-right and extreme left as big problems.
The idea that he's alt-right is really nonsense. He taught for decades at Harvard and the University of Toronto. As he says himself, you can go and look through his hundreds of hours of lectures and try to find where he's promoted anything alt-right. It's quite the opposite.
It's largely a false narrative driven by the extreme left, who are trying to dismiss and ruin him because he's critical of what they're doing.
It's only recently that Peterson has formally denounced the alt-right. Before, he was on JRE saying things like "as far as I can tell, Kekistan is a defense of comedy," when it was obvious to everyone else that it was blatant nazi propaganda. Only when the alt-right became emboldened enough to attend his lectures and start asking pretty direct questions about the Jewish question, globalist conspiracy, etc. that he finally saw what his audience was becoming and sorted himself out.
Most people on the left don't think that JBP is a nazi, or alt-right, or whatever is the inverse of the "postmodern neomarxist" boogeyman. People on the left are critical of JBP because of his blatant misreadings of Marx, Deleuze, Foucault, his confusion about Bill C-16, etc. His overly broad equivocation of postmodern critiques of power and Marxian class theory is the basis of his incredibly nasty attacks on these so-called "postmodern neomarxist feminists" yet he has published no real thesis.
He can't even be said to be critical of leftist ideologies because he never puts forward any real arguments, and all he does is signal that the left are evil.
And I'm saying all of this as a leftist who has supported Bret Weinstein from the beginning. I accept the postmodern feminist criticism of identity politics and agree that SJWs and their constant search for categories is harmful to the left. I would love for Peterson to put forward an actual, rigorous criticism of leftist ideology, but frankly he doesn't seem to have one.
That's actually not the case (just see what kind of questions he gets from his actual audiences to see for yourself). Though on a surface level some of the alt-right likes him because he pisses off SJWs. But they're mistaken to think he's any kind of ally. He's spent much of his career opposing their views and sees both the alt-right and extreme left as big problems.
The idea that he's alt-right is really nonsense. He taught for decades at Harvard and the University of Toronto. As he says himself, you can go and look through his hundreds of hours of lectures and try to find where he's promoted anything alt-right. It's quite the opposite.
It's largely a false narrative driven by the extreme left, who are trying to dismiss and ruin him because he's critical of what they're doing.
This also happened with the progressive professor Bret Weinstein - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM
They tried/are trying to destroy him. It's a real problem.