It's not an academic notion (at least not strictly), since virtually everyone uses it routinely.

Oddly since I got many downvotes with this statement, it's clear the average hacker news reader knows very little about world history or common knowledge

That's very reductive of you. "western" like "3rd world" is used very differently than what you or academics would like.

I feel like you didn't even grasp the base sentence meaning. "Classicism" is an academic concept