> 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.
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.