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Do memes from 1911 count if they're still true?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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We need an updated version of this.
First, the money goes underneath the liberal politicians and their capitalist and fascist cronies. The Marxists got that wrong. They don't serve capital - capital serves them.
Second, replace the religious types with media personalities.
Third, replace the diners with upper middle-class "managerial" types and move them one step up.
Fourth, move the goon squad one level down and - of course - replace them with pigs.
You don’t think religion is still used to control people?
Not really. I don't think religion was ever used to control people. Certain aspects of religion was used to justify certain classes hoarding the real means of control - which is always a material thing - but that makes religion no different than any other justification (such as nationalism or the belief in the so-called "free market")
Marx himself had a pretty nuanced take on this - I'd say he was half-right about it. The Marxist-Lennists completely fudged it - as they do with almost everything - but even anarchists got this horribly wrong.
Even if you disagree with what I'm saying - and most leftists do - you still have to admit that the only way you control religion today is through media.
So you're saying that trusted religious sources that tell people in person (believe it or not, going to church is not "media.") what to believe does not control them and that's only a left-wing view that trusted people control others? Really?
Do you know what happens to religious organisations or movements that starts to threaten the line laid down through the media by the status quo? This.
The example posted also nicely demonstrates just how easily the status quo can be threatened by religion.
Religion is a very important propaganda tool - but it doesn't control squat. Control is a material thing - justifying that control isn't.
If you could control people through religion you wouldn't need goon squads to terrorize people into giving you that control in the first place, would you? Humans are not zombies - they can interpret religious ideas on their own just as they can political ones.
That must be why LGBT+ people are so tolerated in Muslim and evangelical Christian communities in countries where being queer is legal, right? They're really tolerated and loved and no one in a church or mosque is telling them they're evil, just the media. Because you can't control people through religion.
There's no need to go all reactionary atheist (a religion that has no churches or temples - but lots of media) on me - it's not going to gain you anything.
I'll explain it this way -
To be anti-LGBTQ+ is to be anti-working class. Period. No ifs, ands or buts.
To be anti-religion is to be anti-working class. Period. No ifs, ands or buts.
There is no contradiction here. If you think there is one, it's your logic that requires examination.
Who do you think tells them to be homophobic? Do you think it's genetic or something? They get it from the churches.
Do you really believe that it's religion itself that is (somehow) fundamentally threatened by homosexuality? Are you really going to try and tell me that Christianity grew inside the Roman empire because the Romans (of all people) were all closeted homophobes deep down?
Come now... I know you're smarter than that.
If the Christian churches all over the west that align themselves with empire are peddling anti-LGBTQ+ narratives it's because the embrace of LGBTQ+ people poses a threat to said empire - not Christianity.
Please explain to me how queer people are a threat to Western governments. This should be interesting.
You mean...liberals themselves hysterically painting transgender people as a "threat to liberal values" isn't enough for you?
Content warning - it's very liberal.
I mean... did you really think the colonialists brutally imposed heternormativity on the colonized world for shits and giggles? Or do you perhaps suspect that it has somethng to do with the vast resources flowing from the colonized world to the liberal empires and the cheap, expendable labor that makes it flow in the first place?
Yes, I know right-wing people hate queer people. That doesn't answer my question. If it is governments, not religions, that are the cause of homophobia, what threat do queer people pose?
What did you think right-wing ideology exists for? What did you think the status quo is?
You really don't know any of this, do you? Fine.
None of this is a secret anymore, you know - you could have found this all by yourself.
Maybe find a better source. An opinion article from a medium-credible one isn't exactly great.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/novara-media-bias/
But I get it. Religion is blameless. No evil in this world can ever be traced to religion.
No. It's a perfectly fine source for a lot of things - that is, unless you prefer the "objective" centrist claptrap I showed you first?
It's your choice.
More reactionary atheism... and you're still stuck in a dead-end.
It's clearly not a fine source as I showed you.
But fine, if I'm stuck in a dead end, name three evils that religion is responsible for.
Again... it's a perfectly fine source - anyone that tries to convince you that there is, or has ever been, such a thing as a "far left" has already dealt their own credibility a crippling blow.
Which one of the hundreds of thousands that has existed over the last six millenia would you like to focus on? Remember... your argument - the same argument that all reactionary atheists peddle - wholly rests on the hopelessly ahistorical presumption that there is something fundamentally "evil" about religion. In order to prove this argument, you have to find a pattern of the exact same "evil" in the religious practices of a whole bunch of pre-modern civilizations (both large and small) than the ones you attribute to modern day ones.
Reactionary atheists have all failed at this - most don't even try, and simply pretend this big flaw in their anti-scientific pretzel-logic doesn't exist.
Wanna try your hand at it?
I never said there is something fundamentally evil about religion. Those are your words, not mine, and I would appreciate you not putting words in my mouth.
All I asked for is three things. You can't even do that. Are there zero evils religion is responsible for?
I see no reason to "try my hand" at anything you ask me to when you won't do what I asked you to do first.
So. Three things. Any religion. Can you list them?
You didn't have to - the people who made, printed and distributed that poster you posted already did. And it's a narrative that exists among the left to this very day. That's why I suggested we need an updated version, remember?
Neither do I. I didn't actually expect you to perform that which is historically impossible to do - merely to understand how ludicrous this line of reasoning actually gets the minute you unpack it.
Religion doesn't do anything. Period. We can talk all day long and discuss how the DRC supported the Apartheid-regime... but that discussion will contain lots of ideology and lots of realpolitik but very little that can actually be called "religious," won't it?
Sorry, we're not going to continue this discussion when you're not going to acknowledge you put words in my mouth.
Suit yourself. But remember... only one of us leaves here with an unresolved contradiction in their narrative.
That's you, by the way.
And the other one of us leaves here a liar. I know which one I'd rather be.
Grab at any and every straw you feel like - it doesn't change anything.
Ignoring thousands of years of history where religion literally controlled people does not help the rest of your arguments. You clearly lack a wealth of knowledge on how society functions both in the past and in the now.
I'm afraid not - it's you that is blithely ignoring history. Religion has been used to justify revolt as much as - if not far more - than it has been used to justify conformity.
I guess we're beyond the point of merely calling this "edgelord atheism" now - I'd say that a better term for it would be fundamentalist atheism. And, like everything peddled by the right, it's perfectly ahistorical and essentialized.
I like this one