I can see why young men who lack direction in life would follow a charismatic leader

Like the current Islamic terror movements, and any communist/fascist/nationalist movement in the past.

I also kinda wonder if anyone's done a case study in why so many regressive alt-right types like Peterson or Harris self-identify as liberal.

Peterson is not at all "alt-right." Not at all. He is a traditional 1950's religious traditionalist that thinks if a lot of these young men go back to church all will be better. Harris is also not "alt-right" either. He is on the left of the US political spectrum, or was when I was following him before I got sick of the online atheist communities. I have been called "alt-right" because I did not vote for Clinton in the primary, and I am a Sanders-supporting borderline-socialist lefty. The word "alt-right" is being thrown around like the word racist, nazi, terrorist etc because we no longer have arguments over politics in the West any more. We have two fundamentalist radical religious groups vying for ideological purity being very loud and the people on either side being drug along with them. I want to go somewhere with this, but I have to go to work then teach an astronomy class today and don't want to get into an argument over who is the biggest shitheel in society right now (hint all sides are shit).