Bruce Charlton's Notions

Does he have to be either? - you ask. And the answer is, in principle, of course not.

But in practice Jordan Peterson is indeed being treated as if a saviour, or potentially such; therefore - since he is nothing of the kind! - in practice JP is indeed an antichrist.. and such by a precise definition of being a person who rhetorically uses aspects of a Christianity he disbelieves and opposes to deny Christ; someone who advertises to superficially-Christian agenda but who is fundamentally pursuing an un-Christian agenda.

(An antichrist is not supposed to be explicity against Christ - as some people mistakenly imagine; an antichrist is someone who seems a Christian or Christian supporter; who might indeed appear 99% Christian - but the missing percent is their real agenda. Because the Antichrist is a deceiver, in-practice. Whether an antichrist is a purposive deceiver, or has deceived himself before he deceives other people, is not a crucial distinction - an antichrist can do his evil work even if he is unaware of his own true motivations; and perhaps more effectively. For example: antichrists abound among 'Liberal Christian' church leaders - who may speak 99% Christian-talk, but whose real agenda is an aspect of Leftist materialsm, such as progressing the sexual revolution.)


But is Jordan Peterson really being treated as a saviour? Well, yes! Obviously!

Now of course anyone who - in their hearts - is regarding JP as a saviour may deny it to themselves or others; but my personal experience over the past year or so has been to have an unprecedented number of individuals write to me to recommend Jordan Peterson.

It was not just the fact of them having written to inform and enlist me; it was the starry eyed enthusiasm of their advocacy that was so striking. The tone was that 'Here, at last!" was someone to inspire faith and hope, someone to get-behind... (CoughAntichristCough)

By unprecedented, I mean that this has never happened before with any other person, nothing like it; yet these letters were frequent enough that I at first assumed that there was an organised campaign, or that they all emanated from a single besotted 'troll'... however, it became apparent that there was indeed a 'movement' who regarded JP as their personal saviour and the world's potential saviour.


Am I sure that Jordan Peterson is not a saviour? Yes! Of course he isn't! He lacks the 'one thing needful' - which is to be a Christian; and the other linked needful, which is to advocate a non-materialist, a transcendental metaphysics that acknowledges the objective reality of the spiritual.

What Peterson advocates is merely a moderately libertarian variant of modern, mainstream, Leftism - and those who can't see that fact at a glance are merely revealing their own unconscious complicity in the assumptions of secular, hedonic/ utilitarian materialism.

To base a world-view, a morality in (this-worldly) psychology just-is Leftism; and the disagreements and differences among Leftists are merely quibbling over the most effective means to that end.

This is a plain fact of categorisation: Peterson is a Leftist and a materialist - and there is absolutely no way in which yet-another Leftist materialist is going to awaken, inspire or lead anybody in the direction they need to be going... except, perhaps, in seeing-through and understanding the deception being practiced, and reacting-against JP.


In principle, of course, one can read/ watch/ listen to JP for what he is worth - just as we do with any other non-Christian materialist. I personally have read a great deal of Jung and his disciples and followers, and there is certainly value in it.

Yet this is not what is needed. No psychology addresses what is fundamentally wrong in us, or in modern society. And if we overvalue any kind of psychology as an aim in life, it will block what is needed. Sometimes a half-correct, semi-satisfying, moderately-useful answer becomes a trap that does more harm to us than an answer that is more-obviously inadequate and impels us to continue seeking the truth.

However, if/ because/ when circumstances force us to make a choice between embracing Jordan Peterson as saviour or rejecting him as antichrist; well, the answer is a no-brainer.

It is all very well for me to call Jordan Peterson an antichrist, and to warn people off taking seriously someone who is a merely a psychotherapist, left-libertarian, atheist... but the rejoinder is that 'who else' is there in the modern world getting mainstream coverage that is talking as much common sense?

And the answer is: nobody. Nobody else who has comparable fame and impact is any better than Jordan Peterson  - and yet Jordan Peterson is qualitatively inadequate for the needs of this time: he is a waste of time, a blind alley, a red herring; thus, in our state-of-emergency - he does more harm than good...

There just isn't anybody who has anything significantly worth listening to that most people have heard of, or who has power or fame. That is the nature of our time and place...

Surely this is not surprising? What do you expect - we live in an evil-dominated totalitarian society! What public figures, 'public intellectuals', people with a high impact 'platform' were there in Stalin's USSR or Mao's China or current North Korea? Exactly the same number that we have in the UK, the US and Western Europe.

For people to regard JP as a significant thinker is evidence that they have no idea of the severity of the situation here and now.  They have no idea of the pervasiveness and depth of corruption in a society that officially advocates and enforces moral and aesthetic inversion; which punishes truth and systematically generates an interlocking structure of lies. We are in a very bad way indeed - advanced en route to self-chosen damnation on a mass scale.

Put it this way; if our situation was such that Jordan Peterson really was a valuable public voice saying something we needed to hear; then we would not need him.

But as things are, to find what we need, we must (and must means must) look outside the scope of the mainstream mass media - that is: we need to look to writers and thinkers from the past or other places, or who operate in relative or extreme obscurity.

What we need to know will not be given us - we need to seek for it. And if we haven't sought for it, then we can be sure that it is not what we need... That's what it means to live in a totalitarian society.   

At one time I spent a great deal of time and effort in understanding, and attempting to live-by, the ideas of James Hillman.

Yesterday, I took a look at some of the online interviews with and talks by Hillman that have been posted over the years; and I can see what it was that appealed about him. He is extremely intelligent, articulate, creative - and consequently generative of interesting ideas.

The current successor to Hillman is, of course, another post-Jungian: Jordan Peterson - and the contrast is interesting. Peterson is also articulate and intelligent, albeit less so than Hillman, but he is not creative: JP is a summariser, not an originator.

There is a smallish political contrast: Hillman was a radical Leftist who worked in the in the sixties counter-culture and its descendants; whereas Peterson is a Left-libertarian. Hillman called himself a polytheist - but was only ironically so; and his main alignment was as an anti-Christian. Jordan Peterson is not a Christian, but is pro-Christian in his political alignment.

The thing is: James Hillman was evil - by which I mean that he was explicitly, strategically and self-consciously against Good (as Good is understood by Christians). Of course, Hillman said many good and true things, because all people have both Good and evil in them: but Hillman's alignment was undoubtedly evil.

By contrast Jordan Peterson, is on the Wrong Side in the Spiritual War that is Life; but he is not explicitly, strategically and self-consciously against Good.

Anyway, Hillman is an interesting case! As I watched him speak yesterday on various YouTube vids, I felt on the one hand a fascination at the ideas, and mode of expression; on the other hand a mounting distaste and discomfort - a kind of revulsion or disgust which built up the longer I watched. I was insidiously drawn-in; and also felt an increasing desire to flee...

I suppose what James Hillman was, was a kind of dragon! Much like Smaug of The Hobbit. Impressive, hypnotic, beady-eyed, witty, eloquent, sly, manipulative - and with a stone-hard heart!

I have blogged about Jordan Peterson half a dozen times over this past year; and these posts gathered quite a lot of comments (by this blog's modest standards).

I haven't qualitatively changed my views - but I do know a lot more about him, not least via Vox Day's blog, than I did last time I wrote.

I always thought that he was a net-harmful cultural influence (mainly because of the way that people respond to him) but I would now consider that JP quantitatively does a great deal more harm than good. This took a while to unfold, because Peterson is doing a soft-sell, playing a long game; so the balance of evil/good has incrementally increased as his fame and influence has spread. 

I am curious to know what readers currently think about this chap, who is clearly an international commercial phenomenon - apparently his lectures sell out everywhere, yet it costs more to go and see him talk than it costs to go to the opera!

So - what do you think? 

Over at Albion Awakening:

William Wildblood: ...It is a truism that spirituality relates to the soul not the mind. The mind may be involved but it is the secondary participant in the endeavour. If it steals the show, as it rather seems to do with Professor Peterson, then you will probably get sidetracked into theory. What is the soul in this sense? I would prefer to answer that question by saying instead how it speaks to us, and that is through imagination, through intuition, through conscience and through faith. It is these things that will give us an entry into the spiritual world, not thinking about it which will leave us remaining on the outside. Perhaps that is Jordan Peterson's weakness. He approaches the metaphysical world through the mind but that world will only really give up its secrets when we step back from rational thought and give priority instead to intelligent openness to intuition...

John Fitzgerald: ...I was particularly struck by David Jones's 1943 painting, A Latere Dextro (a title taken from the Latin Mass antiphon above and meaning 'from the right side.') ... What we are looking at is the moment of Consecration in the Mass, the Traditional Latin rite which Jones saw as a unique repository of spiritual and cultural value, a link for him between twentieth century Britain and the country's Roman past. The priest, standing at the altar in the centre of the painting with candle-bearing altar boys behind him, lifts up the chalice in a medieval-style chapel of columns, curving arches and high, vaulting ceilings. We are present at a miracle. Ordinary red wine - the kind we might buy in Co-op or Marks and Spencer - is transmuted into the blood of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ...

Now that another objectively fake 'new year' pseudo-celebration has passed*, what next? Well, nothing special, because it is an unnatural and bogus 'beginning' - we may choose to force our personal lives into a January-First-shaped cycle - and the mass media and calendar makers will support us in this; but it is unsupported by anything profound in The Real World, including in Religion.

As long-time readers may know - I used to be an active scientist and theorist in the field of intelligence, personality and creativity; and therefore I noticed that the (vastly-over-rated) media pundit Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been doubling-down on some objectively false and demonstrably ignorant remarks he made about intelligence testing (IQ tests).

No surprises there; but a useful reminder of the way that someone's personality flaws are amplified by cultic admiration until these flaws become... well, I was going to say 'undeniable', but that is wrong: let's just say 'very dominant'. The same can be seen with Jordan Peterson. The thing is, in this world here-and-now nobody gets rich/ influential/ famous and stays that way, unless they really want to be rich/ influential/ famous as (pretty much) their primary priority in life.

And that's the top and bottom of it. The influential maverick is an oxymoron. Anyone who is looking for spiritual and Christian leadership among those who have significant impact in the mass media, those who are high in the establishment, those at or near the head of major institutions - is making an error. Such seekers will not find even 'neutrality' among such eminent individuals (not least because there is no neutrality in the spiritual war) - they will find only those who are more, or less, completely aligned to purposive evil.

That isn't to deny that there is some good in such persons, something valid to be learned-from them; of course there is. There is always some good to be learned from even some of the most evil people in history (or in personal life). But it is a matter of choosing your mentors with discernment. To learn good from someone acknowledged to be net-evil is a very different matter from being guided by someone whom you regard as a worthy mentor. In neither case should discernment be set-aside; but the basic mind set is extremely different according to the nature of the person.

What of this matter of being 'influential'? It is interesting that the whole thing is impossible except for that handful of truly 'Great Men' as they used to be called. 99.9% of influential people in The West are obedient servants or slaves to The System, The Establishment - and ultimately the demonic powers behind it all. The individual servants/slaves may perhaps suppose they personally have harnessed great powers to their own ends; but the reverse is the case.

To be corrupted by evil entails convincing oneself that one's harness is a self-controlled tool; that obedience to evil is a roundabout strategy for good. Ultimately, that whatever The System dictates and imposes is what you yourself actually always wanted, all along. That what is, is best. 

The more influence such persons crave, the more compromises they make; the more compromises they make, the more fully they are enslaved - because compromise is just as euphemism for submission.

Corruption at the higher levels is universal. The promise is that by moving to a higher level in the hierarchy, one will be able to 'make a difference', 'work from inside' and shape matters for good... This promise is made to a thousand, ten thousand, people a day - usually in the context of taking-on managerial roles.

https://babylonbee.com/news/nations-fathers-engage-in-time-honored-ritual-of-telling-their-kids-they-havent-seen-them-since-last-year Some, may, initially believe it, and genuinely intend to do it. But it never happens. And once a person has been through cycle of this corruption a couple of times, they know in their hearts that it never happens... but they choose promotion anyway.

Indeed, the better you do the job, the stronger The System becomes; whatever contrary fantasies you may indulge.

And The System is evil in its intent - that is, its strategic intent is the destruction of Good.


*From The Babylon Bee yesterday: U.S.—In a beloved custom, every single father in the nation told their kids this morning that they haven't seen them since last year, according to sources across the country. "Hey look at you, sleepyhead," said one man in Nebraska as his son came downstairs. "Say, I haven't seen you since last year!" "It's an important tradition," he told reporters as his son groaned and shook his head. "Everyone loves it, especially our kids. They enjoy seeing their father employ a little cleverness and wit." He added that when your kids act like the joke is tired, unfunny, and embarrassing, that's when you know it's actually really funny. "It's all part of the dance," he said. Millions of other fathers all over America partook in the tradition as well, dutifully reciting the joke, which relies on the conflation of the colloquial and literal understandings of the term "next year." "Frankly, if you're a father and you haven't made a joke like this in the past 24 hours, you should probably get right with God," said Paul David Tripp. "It's an essential part of gospel-based, grace-centered parenting."

When things are coming to a point - there is In Reality no neutral ground.

One is either For or Against God, the Good and Divine Creation.

And (because things have come to a point) if one is not obviously For, then one is, as a matter of fact, Against.


(Therefore all the people about whom one is 'not sure' - or who seem ambivalent/ ambiguous - are actually on the wrong side. Of course everybody has some Good in them - I am talking about which side a person serves in the spiritual war of this mortal world. Remember: There are only two sides, and they are getting further separated.)

In reflecting on the (apparent) demise of neorxn.com, that legacy of the middle-late noughties neo-reactionary, dark-enlightenment, alt-right movement; I was reminded of that movement's critical built-in falsehood with a poisonous legacy - which was to state that Christianity led to Leftism. 

This idea probably originated with Nietzsche - but was propagated by Mencius Moldbug and seems to have spread from him. 

I have often explained why this is wrong, and I cannot be bothered to re-hash it now. Christianity-causing-Leftism is one of those inverted-truths that is so very obviously false (to those whose assumptions are Christian and who are informed about history), that explanations have no traction. 

Indeed - because those who believe this are not Christian and are not informed about the history of Leftism in relation to Christianity - to explain seems actually to reinforce the error.

(Much like trying to 'explain' or prove why men and women cannot really change their sex. Anyone who believes they can is already too far gone to respond to explanations.) 

The real truth is that it was the decline of Christianity that led to Leftism, Indeed, the only two sides in The West are Leftism versus Christianity (i.e. Satan versus God) - there is No political 'Right', distinct from Christianity - it simply does not exist, as has become apparent over the past year.

This is why neo-reaction cannot accurately be described as a half-way-house to Christianity (a 'gateway drug' to use that false analogy), or supportive of Christianity - even though some individuals traversed that path to some extent. 

(There are innumerable paths to Christ - including alcoholism, crime and sexual debauchery - this does not justify any of these activities; any more than having-been a route to Christianity for some people endorses the Secular Right - or the validity of someone like Jordan Peterson!) 

The Secular Right movement was founded-upon the same 'anything-but-Christianity' assumptions that have generated mainstream Western culture for the past century; and which continue to sustain the evolving sexual revolution and the other Litmus Tests of the past year.  

By Christian-Fellow-Travellers I means those primarily political (e.g. conservative, reactionary or libertarian) political intellectuals who approve-of Christianty (they may even self-identify as Christians) without adopting a Chriustian perspective... I mean people like Roger Scruton or  Jordan Peterson, who are the examples here.

By contrast are people who are primarily Christian, and from-that derive their political views - my examples here are Jerram Barrs (a Calvinist) and John Granger (an old-calendar Russian Orthodox).

The test I propose is to consider the reaction to the Harry Potter books among those who actually like the books - who find something to admire in them.

If you can be bothered  to watch these four videos - I think you can see that the Christian-Fellow-Travellers miss the Christian-point of these books; and this comes as a consequence of their primarily political persepctive.

So what is my point here? It is that there is a world of difference between being a 'Right Wing' Christian-fellow-traveller, and being an actual Christian - and that difference includes the persepctive from which you view and interpret the world... including the Harry Potter books...

I should add that since publishing the Harry Potter books, and in her public persona and pronouncements; their author JK Rowling gives every appearance of having apostatized from her Christian faith, and indeed is in-effect an influential anti-Christian. Nonetheless, the Harry Potter books themselves tell a very different story.
 

There is a great deal of scholarly fake spirituality around the place - oh yes, a great deal of it! There has been, indeed, a lot on my own bookshelves - although pressure of space is weeding out this genre, incrementally.

Over the past century, genuine religiousness has been deeply resented by the literary and intellectual establishment - but scholarship has been tolerated (until recently). This dual pressure has led to a large and semi-respectable genre of scholarly pseudo spirituality; which consists of non-religious/ spiritual myth-disbelieving people writing about religious, spiritual and mythological matters.

Other branches include travel books, country life books, wildlife books, therapy and self-help books (these especially!); books about all manner of things that are flavoured and permeated by the implication that the authors is a spiritually sensitive and deep, soulful kind of person... but not, of course, actually religious in any open/ serious/ life-changing/ 'fanatical' way! 

Such work is therefore pervaded by irony - and thus is regarded as safe. Indeed, it may be praised as subversive - especially insofar as it attacks Christianity, traditionalism, and recent history.

Thus authors may write about the soul, spirituality, myths, fairies and folklore; and especially comparative religion... describing - in a positive way - the religions of other-people in other-places... and the more 'other' the better.

The authors of this genre are... what is the best word?... evasive about their own spiritual and religious views. This may be done by irony, or may be done by complexity. That is where the scholarship comes in.

Such authors are keen to project themselves as spiritually aware and deep and wise; on the other hand, they do not want it to be thought they are simple-minded, 'fanatical', 'religious fundamentalists' of any kind! (Such persons are not just low status, but are hated and feared.)

They do not want to be regarded as simple, so they are complex - they do not wanted to be regarded as simple so they are evasive - they do not want to be regarded as simple so their work is chock-full or facts and references and comparisons... They do not want to be regarded as fanatical so they are ironic and self-aggrandising...

(Reading such work, one is nearly always aware of a person trying to seduce the reader; often - one feels - quite literally so! Such books seeming like a roundabout and deniable 'dating profile'. It is no surprise that such authors of scholarly fake spirituality invariably embrace/ advocate one or other, or all, aspects of the sexual revolution. Maybe that is the whole point of the whole exercise, if truth be told?)

Probably the great fount of such work has been CG Jung, and his many offshoots and followers - some overt admirers, others covert and rivalrous.

There is a great deal that is wrong with such work. Being obvious, praised, widely available - it absorbs and ultimately always wastes effort, time and energy from serious spiritual seekers - leading them into a blind alley where they may get stuck or abandon the quest for reality. It creates a class of fake spiritual 'experts' who again inevitably either dissipate or deflect any spiritual seekers who fall into their gravitational field.

Such work confuses, and it subverts. It is not religious - but it is not even spiritual - because its its spirituality, its 'benefits', inevitably and always reduce to mere psychotherapy - that is, to making people feel better, here and now, in this life.

Scholarly fake spirituality is in essence an elaborate kind of tranquilliser drug - it is pleasant in the short term, but always creates dependence (difficult to stop using it) and often creates addiction (an appetite for more of the same, in a stronger dose).

In sum - it is not safe for spiritual seekers to engage with such books! Such books are (implicitly) designed to capture and hold exactly such persons!

But once you have spiritually-found; once you are actually-religious as a base for spiritual seeking - then such books are safe enough; and may then (but only then) be read and experienced with pleasure and profit, enjoyed for what they are and what they really have (while filtering-out the unsavoury aspects).


Readers may guess from the above, and they would be right, that I speak from experience about this literature; that I was myself captured and held, addicted and dependent-upon, such literature - for much of my adult life. Its spirit, indeed, is all-but pervasive in the world of scholarship as applied to 'life'. A currently fashionable and influential example of the genre is Jordan Peterson... just think about it.... 

Some commentators on 'the right' seem to think it is a clever insight and useful analysis to describe Wokeness/ Political Correctness/ New Leftism as A Religion. They announce this as if it were a strikingly original thesis, a radical and dissenting position - and a basis for effective opposition*. 

Yet, when one Googles "Woke" and "a religion" there are over six million hits - spread across mainstream media as well as dissenting sources (and that is just using the relatively-recent "woke" as a search term)**.  

So the idea of Leftism (or communism, socialism, feminism, environmentalism, healthism, antiracism or whatever) as A Religion is very far from original, new or marginal.

Nor is the idea oppositional to The Establishment - indeed the level of official media coverage of this concept makes clear that the 'idea' of regarding Leftism as A religion is one that serves the interests of Leftism, and promotes the Globalist, totalitarian Left agenda. 

How? Well, most obviously because Leftism is, Very Obviously, anti-religion generally and anti-Christian specifically - root and branch and explicitly. So much so that one has to have a very special kind of blindness Not to see such an obvious fact. 

But that that particular blindness to the obvious is common, normal and is atheism. The people who regard it as clever and useful to call woke-ness A Religion are people who regard religions as ultimately false. 

These Woke=Religion people do Not believe that we dwell in a divine creation, do Not believe in a personal God, do Not believe in a spiritual realm that contains, and is greater than, the material, do not believe in a life beyond biological death. 

All of these are core-to and characteristic-of Religion, and without them belief system is Not a religion but merely 'ideology'. To call something that rejects them all A Religion; is merely to deploy a common Leftist subversion that what matters most in an 'institution' is Not its deep and distinctive 'function' or attribute; but something it shares with all others. 

Thus a school or university is Not about education, nor science about truth, nor law about justice - but all are 'really' about Leftism. Likewise when it is asserted that Religion is Not about God, the spirit, life after death, divine creation etc - then the concept of Religion has been hollowed-out and killed.  

To call Leftism A Religion is intrinsically anti-religion, including anti-Christian; because it regards religion sociologically and politically - and an institution purely; in terms of is effects not its causes. 

To call Leftism a religion is therefore a positivist, reductionist, materialist stance; it comes-from a position that is itself one of de facto Leftism. 

This discourse is, indeed, merely an in-house squabble among Leftists, it is merely office politics in which pragmatist-hedonistic Leftists. 

The Woke=Religionists desire nothing more than a comfortable, prosperous and peaceful life; they are pushing-back against 'idealistic' Leftists who are happy to pull-down civilization in order to 'signal their virtue' and feel good about themselves. 

But pragmatist-hedonic Leftists are, after all, Leftists; and have taken the side of Satan against God - chaos against creation; hence rejected even the possibility of coherence in thinking or social organization. 

These are tough times in which we are called to make a binary choice of taking side with Good or with evil; and in which everybody has already made a binary choice (although that choice is not irrevocable). 

The Woke=Religion crew have already made the wrong choice: so they are part of the problem, not a possible answer.    

*Note. Of course, trivially, Wokeness is like a Religion - in some ways. Just as Men are like monkeys, lizards, trees, amoebae in some ways. Any thing is somewhat like any other thing. The point at issue relates to core essential attributes. Religion can be analyzed as a generic social institution - analogous to a corporation, a political party, a profession - or whatever. But the question is whether this captures the distinctive quality. To say Woke is A Religion is to reject exactly that which is distinctive to Religion - to deny (as inessential) that which is distinctive to a religion. It is to argue from assumptions that regard religions as institutions merely.  

**Further Note: The concept of "controlled opposition" (CO) referenced in the title refers to the way that the Establishment promote dissent that focuses on partial specifics of the Leftist agenda - while accepting the core root and basis of that agenda. To be mainstream is to be controlled. 

To be part of the "controlled" opposition does not require that the pseudo-dissenter is aware of playing this role; as I know from experience (i.e. my own self-consciously 'dissenting' writings, lectures, administrative work etc. - up to c2008  about when I became a Christian - were in fact controlled opposition). CO merely requires that the dissenter accepts the basic assumptions of Leftism regarding the nature of reality and what is important (i.e. materialism of discourse and explanation, hedonic-utilitarianism as the aim of life/ policy/ society etc.). 

A recent prominent example of controlled opposition was the meteoric media rise of Jordan Peterson - a Leftist with a few points of disagreement with the mainstream agenda. Another would be the recent attacks on JK Rowling in relation to trans. 

(Interestingly, Rowling was converted from being a Christian to Wokeism by the clever Establishment trick of providing massive mainstream media publicity to the ignorant criticisms of obscure US 'fundamentalist' Christians. She reacted, as intended, by repudiating the pervasive and explicit Christianity of the Harry Potter books.) 

The controlled opposition of Woke=A Religion is core Leftist - the Establishment aim being that popular dissent be channeled into a short loop which sooner or later returns to support the mainstream Left agenda, while quibbling over details. Even the most extreme 'secular Right' attitude is merely a longer loop CO strategy, sustaining that which is maybe 'only' 66% Leftist - but the intended end-result is the same. 

Further extra note: There are some real Christians who have used the "Leftism is a religion trope". These are not necessarily Leftists, but they are mistaken. This is a tactical example of the Boromoir Strategy of Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron! - i.e. they are rhetorically appealing to the anti-Christian/ anti-Religious sentiments of their audience in order to discredit Leftism. Or maybe they are trying to make the more subtle argument of "Leftism is Bad religion". This contrasts real with fake religions: that Leftism is the kind of inadequate fake religion that is sucked-into the psychological-spiritual vacuum created by rejecting real religion. However; subtlety and nuance in rhetoric play into the Enemy's hands. Whatever is intended by this argument, the consequence is almost sure to damage the cause of Christianity - because the argument implicitly accepts Leftist premises: surely the worst possible strategy? So, even when motivations are genuinely good, Woke=Religion-speak is still a mistake.