An in-depth, searching article from the man who all but gave Jordan Peterson his job at U of T. There's a *lot* in here. In essence, Schiff accuses Peterson of becoming the demagogic messiah he disdains so much in his work.
thestar.com/opinion/2018/0…
thestar.com/opinion/2018/0…
Notable, however, is the confirmation that Peterson is a man who believes the rules don't apply to him. He, alarmingly, fought against mandatory ethical reviews of his work. 
Central to Peterson's appeal on the far right is the idea that he's this rugged individualist who wants people to stop complaining, square their shoulders, and be strong.
It's always been obvious that he's the exact opposite of this, but Schiff's profile confirms this in detail.
It's always been obvious that he's the exact opposite of this, but Schiff's profile confirms this in detail.
Peterson has, frankly, always been an inveterate whiner and special pleader, a man who believes he's too special to be bound by common consent or rules. He complains. A lot. Like a whiny child, he doesn't want to be told to eat his vegetables. Yet he sells himself as a stern dad.
And thus, what he fights for is the right for white men to do as they please, not for genuine personal responsibility.
His complaints are always valid, your complaints as women, POC, or queer people are evil postmodoMarxistanarchism.
His complaints are always valid, your complaints as women, POC, or queer people are evil postmodoMarxistanarchism.
Schiff's larger point is not to be missed, however. Peterson has obsessed over demagogues and dictators, studying their methods, living in terror of their charisma. Now he has come to embody them in a messianic bid to, supposedly, end tyranny.
Like so many before him, he is more "SJW" than the actual "SJWs"; as an academic, he is as obscurantist, unrigorous, and pretentious as the postmodernists he derides; and even as he warns people away from politics he flirts with leading the Conservative Party.
Hypocrisy is endemic to these reactionaries. Always has been. But Peterson is distinguished by the sheer heroic ambition of his hypocrisy and its marrow-deep contradictions--and by the number of smart people he's deluded into ignoring it.
Were he anyone else, his academic theories would have his fans going "lol paging Dr. Sokal," but because his shabby and pretentious work has been bent to reactionary political goals, he's a genius to them. The hypocrisy is all there is.
Can you imagine the outrage if a professor, who was a black woman, said she didn't need to submit her work to an IRB? All of Peterson's media friends would call her everything wrong with academia and identity politics. But Peterson's "the most important intellectual of our time."
