> It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual,
Which it does.
> when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author.
But it's not, if by that you mean the particular “reactionary” figured mentioned in that paragraph, the criticism of whom in that paragraph is of he same tenor as that of public intellectuals of different political stripes in the paragraphs preceding and following that one (the next begins, “But it’s not just the conservative public intellectuals who are slacking off...” Your thesis seems to be based entirely on taking that paragraph out of context and pretending it is the secret central point of the article, when it is clearly not, and comes off as the kind of knee jerk defense of those figures (particularly Peterson) common from certain corners of HN.
The actual central criticism of the article is made explicitly later, standardly enough in the two paragraph conclusion which also includes a resolution as well as a criticism; the main criticism being not focussed on any one political leaning, “The individuals who have since become symbols of thought — from the right (Christina Hoff Sommers) to the left (Roxane Gay) — are overrepresented in the media, contravening the original definition of their role as outsiders who spur public action against the insiders. In a capitalist system that promotes branded individualism at the expense of collective action, the public intellectual becomes a myth of impossible aspiration that not even it can live up to, which is the point — to keep selling a dream that is easier to buy than to engage in reality.”
I don't know that much about Peterson, but from what I understand he would be aligned with believers in progress like Pinker, and therefore not "reactionary".
The article doesn't have to be perfectly balanced in criticism of different political groups of course, but if you can read it start to finish and think it doesn't have an obvious bias then I think you're deluding yourself. I picked an extract that seemed to me the post obviously politically focused, but if I wanted to choose a positive mention of a left-wing person, or a negative mention of a right-wing person, I could have chosen about forty different clauses.
> I don't know that much about Peterson, but from what I understand he would be aligned with believers in progress like Pinker, and therefore not "reactionary".
The belief in "progress" does not disqualify one from being a reactionary (and I don't mean to make any specific comment on Peterson or Pinker since I've only read critiques of certain aspects of their thought, so I don't feel qualified to judge them as wholes).
>but if I wanted to choose a positive mention of a left-wing person, or a negative mention of a right-wing person, I could have chosen about forty different clauses.
That part is easy if you think the article is as you suggested: "the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author."
Besides, you left out the part of the excerpt you chose which alluded more to the actual central criticism the previous comment was pointing out:
"...tied in some vague way to academia, which they use to validate their anti-intellectualism while passing their feelings off as philosophy and, worse, as (mis)guides for the misguided."
> I don't know that much about Peterson, but from what I understand he would be aligned with believers in progress like Pinker, and therefore not "reactionary".
At least on a wide range of social issues, I can't think of a better example of the advocacy of a return to the (romanticized) past that defines a reactionary as Peterson.
But whether Peterson is or is not a reactionary is really beside the point.
> but if I wanted to choose a positive mention of a left-wing person, or a negative mention of a right-wing person, I could have chosen about forty different clauses.
Well, if you wanted to find negative mentions of public intellectuals of any stripe, you'd find plenty, but no, you couldn't find many positive mentions irrespective of politics because there are very few. (The only clearly positive mention of a current figure outside of the conclusion is of Ta-Nehisi Coates, and only positive in regard to dropping his Atlantic column; I suppose the description of Zola’s seminal piece as sort of the archetype from which public intellectualism has devolved is positive, but outside of the far and alt-right, public anti-anti-Semitism isn't exactly a position dividing the right from the left these days.)
It's true that the three figures used as examples of the new model at the end are left-leaning figures, but they aren't praised (insomuch as the emergent model is praised) for their viewpoints, which differ little from the left-wing figures that are criticized, but for their manner of engagement.
As much as you are desperately grasping at straws to make this about left-vs-right, that's very much not what this piece is about.
No, it's not.
> It starts as though it has a general point to make about the idea of the public intellectual,
Which it does.
> when in fact the real purpose is the simple, everyday attack on those who have different political opinions to the author.
But it's not, if by that you mean the particular “reactionary” figured mentioned in that paragraph, the criticism of whom in that paragraph is of he same tenor as that of public intellectuals of different political stripes in the paragraphs preceding and following that one (the next begins, “But it’s not just the conservative public intellectuals who are slacking off...” Your thesis seems to be based entirely on taking that paragraph out of context and pretending it is the secret central point of the article, when it is clearly not, and comes off as the kind of knee jerk defense of those figures (particularly Peterson) common from certain corners of HN.
The actual central criticism of the article is made explicitly later, standardly enough in the two paragraph conclusion which also includes a resolution as well as a criticism; the main criticism being not focussed on any one political leaning, “The individuals who have since become symbols of thought — from the right (Christina Hoff Sommers) to the left (Roxane Gay) — are overrepresented in the media, contravening the original definition of their role as outsiders who spur public action against the insiders. In a capitalist system that promotes branded individualism at the expense of collective action, the public intellectual becomes a myth of impossible aspiration that not even it can live up to, which is the point — to keep selling a dream that is easier to buy than to engage in reality.”