LB: “Just came to say that even saying that it is a reaction doesn’t have to come with a judgement.”
LB, you wrote this in your OP:
“Charedi was really a response to the Haskalah and unrelated to some “true” Judaism.”
Sure sounds like a judgment to me.
Was the Rabbi trying to deligitimize “Chareidiism”? That is how it sounded from your OP.
None of us here heard the shiur, so we don’t know if that was really his point, and it is possible that you quoted him out of context. All we know is what you wrote. From what you wrote, it sounds like a deligitimization of Chareidiism, and that is what everyone is reacting to.