Thanks for your input. There is a certain irony in that local atheist groups seem to be revisiting the same Enlightenment spirit of a public sphere Habermas had studied in his early work. Some meetings take place in pubs and cafes. Habermas from what I grasp also put forward some ideal concept of lifeworld which can get corrupted by power and money. Not full bore culture industry of earlier Critical Theorists and much less pessimistic.

My post was kinda meta in that Critical Theory itself seems to be taking a bashing from opinion leaders (I’m sticking to that one). But perhaps dynamics of power and money are at play here too. There is a component of marketing and retooling the attack from the stale bogey of religion with diminishing returns towards a vaguely constructed culture war bogey that is far afield from the likes of Habermas, Honneth and their ilk. This is kinda annoying IMO. But it creates some unfortunate confusion amongst the followers of these opinion generators and diffusors. People should try to differentiate between Frankfurt, pomo, and wokeism (whatever that means) which are three quite distinct things. Whether anyone finds Habermas useful or not is irrelevant to that point.

I luuuv when big words are used to disguise little thoughts!