His intent is really irrelevant. There are plenty of people with good intentions who are out and out jerks.

Being educated doesn't make one intelligent. There are plenty of idiots with PhDs. Education is correlates with intelligence but it is not a benchmark. Never really has been. Also, there are multiple forms of intelligence. No one could argue the genius of savants, but a lot of them can't get through their day without someone to take care of them. They might be geniuses, but their genius is highly limited.

Focusing on intelligence is often classist. That's part of the draw to Peterson. He's a classist too. Like seeks like.

Sooner or later someone with classist, elitist thinking will always show their true colors. Then the racism the sexism, the xenophobia, the homophobia come out. The pattern was always there, there were always little bread crumb dog whistles that those who aren't on the "in" of that elitism recognize for what they are.

Peterson is no different. It was always there. It was always very obvious. As was the fact that once that ego deflation got turned on him, he would tuck tail and run and sob and moan about being canceled or what have you. There's no big shock here. Of course it was going to play out that way sooner or later. Of course.

I think we're better off leaving the pointing out extremist rhetoric to comedians than intellectuals. Because their primary job is to be funny, they're just less inclined to let their own ego run away with them, people tend to idolize intelligence in an unhealthy way — it has a tendency to skew perspective, and humor has a way of getting past defensiveness whereas "intellectual" bickering tends to make people dig their heels in and that's not good for discourse.