I admire Petersen in so far as he takes on the intersectionals and the crazed PC mob. I say that as a Bisexual Socialist and Anti-Fascist.
I don't necessarily agree with his socio-economic politics though. Some of his political vids have been posted here as if they were an extension of his fight against the loons, they're not. He has centre-right views on a range of economic matters and his views on women and the family are at best old-fashioned and allow his critics cover to misrepresent his positions on academic independence.
So I'll defend him in the good fight against censorship in academia, the media and the arts but criticise his broader politics.
He is an interesting fellow and his advantage is that he’s spent a lot of years formally studying psychology and also working as a clinical psychologist. It may irk many who think their opinion is right, but JP generally has the evidence and experience of helping people to know when he’s right. A lay person or journalist may not like it, but he, generally speaking, is in a far better position to judge what is good for people, than many who disagree with him are.
He is strongly against tyrannies of
all forms, whether they be on the
far left OR the far right. Like most people who read widely and have studied the behaviour of groups, how tyranny rises and forms and what constitutes ‘evil’ behaviour, he appears to understand the most stable way, is that we all have freedom to express views and beliefs, that these do not necessarily come without consequence, and that this along with strong democracy is the best defence
against tyranny of any form or ideology.
I do think he uses academic definitions which allow others to misrepresent his argument. If one was, for example, to say a ‘normal’ woman will tend to be more ‘
agreeable’ (as a trait) than a 'normal' man, and that this difference might then be reflected in choice of career and/or behaviour, many bridle without a moment's reflection.
However, if one was to look at the definition of normal as “within one standard deviation either side of the median score of said trait” then this is perfectly correct. This doesn’t mean anyone is ‘abnormal’ (in the pejorative sense) if they are outside that range or there is necessarily anything wrong with a really ‘agreeable’ man or a really 'un-agreeable’ woman.
As it happens, the median scores for ‘agreeableness’ between men (as a population) and women (as a population) are about half a standard deviation apart. However, there is a major difference between allowing anyone to follow their chosen life path without prejudice, i.e. equality of opportunity, and forcing some kind of gender based equality of outcome, because that suits someone’s world-view.
Of course both genders should be allowed to freely choose the career they want. Because there are definite trait differences between men and women
across a population, this may mean that some roles are predominantly filled by men and some roles are predominantly filled by women. Pressuring men to work in psychology or women to work on oil-rigs, in order to ‘prove’ some notion of equality is ill-informed, a form of petty tyranny and doomed to failure.
[I used the above careers as exemplars only, they may be wrong in and of themselves for all I know.]
JP also promotes the idea that social hierarchies are a normal facet of human behaviour (although I think he would be wise to abandon his lobster exemplar round about now). As I understand it, he suggests that the societal problems are not caused by hierarchies
per se, but by hierarchies
NOT based predominantly on merit. For example, those hierarchies transmitted by birth, or by ‘being at the right school’. The former is normal, the latter, although ‘normal if allowed to flourish’, is not a good thing. It is the latter that represses, not the formation of hierarchies in and of themselves.
[So for example, there is nothing wrong with me have a manager who is better at that job that me, but everything wrong with someone incompetent holding that role 'just because they're the boss's cousin'].
This (in conjunction with other normal human traits) can look like a slightly to the right of centre old fashioned view if you really really believe we’re all born equal ‘blank slates’. If you wish to believe this, be my guest, but there’s no science in the world that supports this belief.
One might as well believe the 'proper upbringing' will make us all Einstein’s or blond-haired and blue eyed ‘if only it was done right’.
If (in the UK) all the braying social justice warriors would get together and mount a sustained campaign to introduce some kind of proportional representation, they’d do far more good for the common man and those in minority groups, as they’d be far more likely to see such minority groups represented in government, certainly more than in the existing lop-sided bi-partisan old boys club that’s stifling equality of opportunity in the UK.