James Lindsay vs St Michael the Archangel

Part 1 of 2

Defend us in Battle

It all started on September 29, 2024. Donald Trump Posted on his Truth Social Platform. Considering the backlash to this post, you would think he insulted a political opponent or journalist (but I repeat myself.) After all, that’s what we know about Donald Trump on social media, he makes headlines by saying the things others won’t.

But that’s not what happened.

Trump posted the St Michael the Archangel prayer written by Pope Leo XIII in 1886. Catholics will be familiar with the prayer, but if you’re not Catholic here it is

“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host,
by the Divine Power of God,
cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls”

September 29 is known as Michaelmas or the celebration of St. Michael the Archangel in the Catholic Church. It has been celebrated in the Eastern and Western Church since the 5th or 6th Century. St Michael the Archangel led the armies of God against Lucifer. He is the leaders of the four archangels and amongst others is the patron saint of warriors. Suffice it to say, his story is pretty epic. Obviously there is going to be reaction against anything Trump puts on social media, but James Lindsay’s response peaked my curiosity to say the least. While ultimately I disagree with his conclusions about Trump’s post and later musings against the “woke right” I want to give his commentary its due to see what if anything can be gleaned.

If you don’t know, James Lindsay rose to prominence as part of a team of academics who wrote fake papers and submitted them to activist academic journals to point out the hypocrisy and insanity that is social justice or “the woke.” His website newdiscourses.com has everything you could want to know about the history of the left wing social justice movement and precisely what goes wrong with the ideology. He’s done trainings to help parents spot and fight against DEI measures, and even has an encyclopedia to make the purposefully complex ideas accessible. To be clear, I’ve spoken and written about Lindsay numerous times favorably in the past, but on this I would say he missed the mark and some of his commentary borders on the absurd.

Theosophistry and the Fetzer Institute

Per Lindsay, “You should probably familiarize yourself with what the evil people running the world think about Archangel Michael before you start promoting their psyops about him.” Let’s do exactly that. We should start by defining a couple of terms that swirl in these conversations. Gnosticism is “the thought and practice especially of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries distinguished by the conviction that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through gnosis” Occultism is the “belief in or study of the action or influence of supernatural or supernormal powers.” In other words, gnostics believe that our physical reality is a problem, and moreover they have special knowledge as to the nature of the universe. Occultists meanwhile try to utilize supernatural forces (spirits, demons, etc) to their advantage. While each has a slightly different definition they are often used interchangeably as someone who seeks to harness metaphysical entities to their will will also reject material and physical truths about the world.

The Theosophists were or are an “occult movement originating in the 19th century with roots that can be traced to ancient Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. The term theosophy, derived from the Greek theos (“god”) and sophia (“wisdom”), is generally understood to mean “divine wisdom.”” In particular Lindsay and others point us to documents surrounding the founding of the Fetzer Institute which pioneered the (largely debunked) research on “emotional intelligence” and teaching method social emotional learning (SEL) Who believed they were channeling St Michael the Archangel sost m that “Nations will unite under the banner of one world hierarchy and universal brotherhood will be achieved.” Taking a look at some of the documents that were posted on X, there is indeed references to the Archangel Michael in the writings in these gnostic cults.

Certainly worth knowing, but what did Lindsay actually say?

“Operation Michael”

Now that we have a basic understanding of what Lindsay is talking about, let’s examine his post in full with my commentary interspersed. His words will be in quotes and italicized for clarity.According to Lindsay,

“Operation Michael is designed to undermine the anti-Woke Right. It's a damn shame Trump has been pulled into this, probably on deliberately bad advice. It's already a live active measure now and mostly unstoppable.”

Here's how it works:

Most Americans, even Catholics, don't know anything about Archangel Michael except in a very vague sense. I grew up Catholic. Michaelmas was not a thing, ever, with any Catholic I knew.”

I too grew up Catholic, and while I have struggled with my faith I have never stopped being one. Most people would call my upbringing as “religious.” We went to mass every Sunday and I attended Catholic school from 7-18. Before I went to college I could count on both of my hands the amount of time we missed mass as a family. I was not familiar with the specific term “Michaelmas” but I certainly knew that St Michael the Archangel had a feast day like all saints do and I can also recall that the other archangels were celebrated on the same day at the end of September. Moreover the St Michael the Archangel prayer was a part of my spiritual upbringing.

“So now Michael idolatry will be a big thing for our side, and the Theosophists will fill in the details of what it means for most broadly ignorant Americans to mislead Christians further, particularly toward war and violence.”

As we have seen, it can certainly be said that some devotees of Theosophony might idolize Michael the Archangel. However it’s a stretch to say that the American Right will now “idolize” the saint. Certainly, there are issues with many Protestant factions that exist in the United States. Also in the Roman and Eastern churches. We are fallible creatures after all. But for a largely Christian country to begin worshiping an angel whose only purpose is to serve God (and lead his armies to boot) is a leap of logic to say the least.

Meanwhile, since it's a dialectical attack, the Left will use it to characterize Trump as a religious warlord type, fitting the worst of the Operation Christian Nationalism motifs. Because of the Left/Right dialectic in play in the op, we'll all be forced to take a side or dip out into irrelevance (with respect to the op).

To point out that there is a dialectic (or opposing arguments) in an election cycle is like pointing out night follows day. Anything Trump says is immediately twisted to paint him in the worst possible way. So what exactly do we have to gain from hand wringing?

“Theosophists have a very particular and evil interpretation of Michael as the bringer of the new age and the driver of human evolution, which they explicitly seek to control. He is the bridge and mediator, for them, between the figures of Christ, Lucifer, and the Zoroastrian demon of chaos and division, Ahriman, whom they regard as equally sacred parts of a triune whole.”

The spiritualism of this occult religion is already completely infused in your children's schools through Social-Emotional Learning, which came from the Fetzer Institute. The Fetzer Institute is an occult Theosophical nonprofit based upon channeling and summoning Michael in order to bring in the next spiritual age of humanity (Aquarius). They say so explicitly.

“Elements of this view will be sprinkled in in various subtle ways, never openly invoking Lucifer or Ahriman but only their "positive"-seeming attributes, to ensnare good believing Christians and new Christians who lack the needed discernment to avoid being taken astray. Michael Flynn's Christian Nationalism has been appealing to Michael in the exact words of Theosophist Claire Prophet for years, leading unassuming Christians to repeat her incantations word-for-word in mass groups as a prayer. Beyond heretical!”

Technically speaking, I’m not sure what lies “beyond heretical.” Heresy or not is a binary you either cross the line or you don’t. Lindsay correctly points out the truth, these theosophist views about St Michael the Archangel are heretical. The threat is real, it exists at the material, cultural, and spiritual level. This all being said, at no point should we grant validity to the argument that any of these people are truly “channeling” the archangel Michael. Lindsay does not explicitly argue this, but we will come to see how he comes dangerously close.

This is serious. The cult that controls the world and the Left believes in this occult religion and will certainly co-opt the Right into a dialectical foil version and partial spiritual contamination. It's also covered over with the fingerprints of a counterintelligence operation we should be very slow to trust.

We must be more careful. We must also find out who fed this idea to Trump and expose the bad actors and dangerous fools in his circle. This is no coincidence.”

“The Right” properly speaking should not run away from a dialectic that puts them on the side of angels and others the side of demons. To run away from a fight is to lose the fight especially in rhetorical battles. Most of the reason “the right” has lost every cultural and political battle to date is because any of us who are marginally right wing - which is to say not left wing - take for granted the arguments of a broader liberal and leftist world view. This is the world we were raised in and therefore we believe something is wrong with us for disagreeing. As the adage goes, if you’re not a liberal in your 20s you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative in your 40s you don’t have a brain. Everyone takes the label “conservative” for granted but we must ask “what are we conserving” The answer of course, is liberalism.

The Problem

Taking everything Lindsay argues as true we can understand why his alarm bells would go off when he saw a reference of the Archangel Michael in Trump’s post. However, given the context of St Michael the Archangel’s feast day in the Catholic Church, that the prayer is written by a Catholic Pope, and the prayer is used by Catholics around the world - the obvious conclusion to draw is that Trump is courting the Catholic vote.

Lindsay however sees this as an insidious attach on the right half of the electorate painting “us” in a corner because we have to defend a Presidential candidate posting a prayer while also being subverted because someone somewhere claimed heretically to be channeling the Archangel Michael.

I’m careful to remind readers of this page and listeners of the podcast that “seek and ye shall find” is just as much a warning as it is a promise. We all have the ability to see good and evil everywhere we look. Our discernment is loaded with bias, and left to our own reason we can construct the world as we see fit and not as it is. In such a world, a prayer to St Michael the Archangel is seen as a threat because one man in recent history claimed knowledge of him that was impossible. In such a world, the state of Christianity is such that good thinking people will abandon God to worship an Angel. Certainly this is the world a fallen angel desires, but he cannot reach this end through a Catholic prayer.

When people with a similar profile and regular X users started to react negatively, Lindsay doubled down and lashed out at right wing profiles. He then began to admonish the “woke right” which would appear to be his ultimate target. We will examine that next, so make sure you’re subscribed for the latest in better sensemaking.