To begin with, would you please read my edit at the end of the original comment? I admit I messed up.

Regarding shutting up, is it an exaggeration for effect? Like when some ML say on the Internet “Mao did nothing wrong”, when actually he was probably 70% good, 30% bad? Honest question.

Fascism is liberalism’s plan B, as confirmed by History and by liberal theory itself.

Historically, look at Latin America (I am Brazilian). All over Latin America, when people elected leftist (not even communist) governments within the institutions of liberal democracy, the elite (with US support) staged a coup and installed a military dictatorship, effectively saying: no, the people are not allowed to choose socialism. So we hereby abolish democracy.

And Jacobin covers the justification for this under liberal theory itself:

So, important liberal thinkers insisted as early as John Locke, you can’t tax the rich without their consent. If you do so, you give the victims of these policies a good reason to rebel and use violence against the usurpers. Liberal politics thus had a dictatorial option inscribed in it from the very beginning. And so it became a dogma to assume that the main task of politics is to protect property, and its principal sin to inveigh against it. But of course, that is a very narrow definition of what politics can or should do. And we suffer from that confinement to this day. In a typical Western democracy, you can do many things — as long as you refrain from infringing on private property. [1]

In short: liberal theory itself gives absolute priority to private property (over the means of production). If it conflicts with democracy, democracy is tossed out the window.

I always clarify “over the means of production” when attacking private property. There is this widespread confusion that communist thugs are going to invade your house and confiscate your bike. AFAIK, communists don’t do that.

Fun fact: in 1989 Brazilian elections, neoliberal Collor terrorized the people saying that Lula would confiscate everyone’s savings. With infamous support from Rede Globo (massive right-wing biased media corporation), Collor won, then quickly moved to confiscate everyone’s savings. Lula was elected in 2002, 2006 and 2022, and did nothing of the sort. Sadly, Lula is not communist, but social democrat.

1: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/nazi-germany-national-socialism-hypercaptialism-social-darwinism-liberalism

Context. If you look at the terrible Allied violence in WWII, without context, you easily conclude the Allies were the villains.

Also, of course, there is widespread capitalist propaganda.

Would you say that communists should not concentrate our energies attempting to prevent liberal democracy from turning into fascism? Like supporting social-democratic parties to keep fascists away. My understanding is that liberal “democracy” has some temporary advantages over fascism, but is not worth much energy.

Fascism is more acutely violent, but also temporary. Hitler initiated a war against much of the World, which he could not win. He was also incompetent. Out of insane hubris, he bypassed his generals and military strategists, because he was the chosen genius. Allegedly he didn’t have a real strategy to defeat the British Empire. He wanted to win the war by winning battle after battle. Thus he was defeated (largely by the Red Army), and “only” some 80 million lives were lost.

Liberal “democracy”, on the other hand, kills ten million people every few years, for centuries.

Fascism is brutal, crass, and visibly hateful. Liberal “democracy” is sophisticated, less acutely violent, and is falsely compassionate, but is also more competent at preserving itself and making victims.

Hi comrade! I am new here. Anyway, what you said is confirmed by History and by liberal theory itself.

Historically, look at Latin America (I am Brazilian). All over Latin America, when people elected leftist (not even communist) governments within the institutions of liberal democracy, the elite (with US support) staged a coup and installed a military dictatorship, effectively saying: no, the people are not allowed to choose socialism. They chose socialism, so we hereby abolish democracy.

And Jacobin covers the justification for this under liberal theory itself:

So, important liberal thinkers insisted as early as John Locke, you can’t tax the rich without their consent. If you do so, you give the victims of these policies a good reason to rebel and use violence against the usurpers. Liberal politics thus had a dictatorial option inscribed in it from the very beginning. And so it became a dogma to assume that the main task of politics is to protect property, and its principal sin to inveigh against it. But of course, that is a very narrow definition of what politics can or should do. And we suffer from that confinement to this day. In a typical Western democracy, you can do many things — as long as you refrain from infringing on private property. [1]

In short: liberal theory itself gives absolute priority to private property (over the means of production). If it conflicts with democracy, then democracy is tossed out the window. Fascism is liberalism’s plan B.

I always clarify “over the means of production” when attacking private property. There is this widespread confusion that communist thugs are going to invade your house and confiscate your bike. AFAIK, communists don’t do that.

Fun fact: in 1989 Brazilian elections, neoliberal Collor terrorized the people saying that Lula would confiscate everyone’s savings. With infamous support from Rede Globo (massive right-wing biased media corporation), Collor won, then quickly moved to confiscate everyone’s savings. Lula was elected in 2002, 2006 and 2022, and did nothing of the sort. Sadly, Lula is not communist, but social democrat.

1: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/nazi-germany-national-socialism-hypercaptialism-social-darwinism-liberalism

You are welcome. It seems Lemmy lacks a reaction feature, so I upvoted your reply, and wrote this.

Is this about my comment, or am I being egocentric? In case it is about my comment, I post here some clarifications I made there:

I did not expect such emotional replies, some gravely misrepresenting what I wrote. Clarifications:

1. I did not mean to accuse hexbearites of being bad like New Atheists. I could have worded it better. I wanted to use the antisocial behavior of New Atheists (fruitless anti-religious intolerance) as an antiexample. In my experience, leftists discern between “theocrat” and “religious comrade". I felt this thread was an outlier. But I worded this in an offensive way, appearing to conflate you with New Atheists.

2. The accusation of loving massive war crimes in the Middle East is for foaming lunatic New Atheists like Sam Harris, not Hexbearites.

3. I meant that anti-religious bashing is easily misrepresented by right wing propaganda. I explicitly said that the “atheist elites” narrative is disinformation. Cubans practice their religions in peace, just not theocracy.

4. I did not mean all “true” Christians are Catholics or whatever.

I sympathize with trans people, who go through Hell, replying “no, I can’t respect this guy”. Also I may have misread this forum and how my post would be read. I am a newbie and autistic (actual diagnosis). I care a lot for detail and took offense with some misrepresentations.

Anyway, I am still getting up to speed with the LGBT movement.

Today I realized this analogy. I hate when Rede Globo (massive right-wing media org) sheds tears for “democracy”. They supported the military dictatorship for decades, and still distort reality in favor of capitalism, NATO, and Israel. I could forgive them if they actually turned around.

So I sympathize with trans people who look at the crimes in Catholic History and who personally suffer Catholic hate even today, saying they will only respect the Church if she actually turns around.

I made a further big change to the “Edit” section. Would you give it a read? I apologize for taking so much of your time, but I want to clarify things. I don’t want to burn all bridges with Hexbear.

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Hi. I thank you for your offer, but now I have actually manually mass subscribed to all interesting community on four of my desired instances. Lemmy.ml is too big so I stopped partway.

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Will you be so kind as to delete your comment? I said nothing similar to what you think you refuted. Someone who skims through my comment and sees your reply would be misinformed. Misinformation is the tool of the Right.

I quote what I actually wrote:

Most of the working class is religious, and in the West that religion is Christianity

You do not refute the claim that most of the working class is religious by saying that China and India workers aren’t Christians and that USSR Party members were atheists. Both of the latter facts are true, but do not refute what I actually said.

Commenting without reading the article is bad enough. But replying without reading what you are replying to?

I meant to contrast the rhetoric of two different camps (leftists vs New Atheists), to highlight counterproductive rhetoric. I mentioned chearleading for war crimes to emphasize that New Atheists are right wing fanatics who lash out at religion possibly as a cover, so they do not appear to be right wing fanatics in their liberal social circle. And that when we do anything remotely similar to New Atheism, we should at least suspect it is wrong. You read it as conflating the gravity of lashing out at religion (part of what New Atheists do) and the gravity of cheerleading for massive war crimes, which is another part of New Atheism. I repeatedly clarified this.

I did not mean that attacking the Catholic Church is equal to attacking the entire Christian Faith. I meant that those who attack the whole Catholic Church (instead of just Catholic theocrats) have the same attitude of those who say “evangelicals are fanatical hypocrites” instead of attacking only evangelical theocrats. Anticatholicism is not equal, but often analogous, to general antichristianity.

And many Catholics say the Church is not supposed to make a “culture war”. The Church should do spiritual work, moral education, charity, and aid social movements such as landless workers. All that is compatible with secular values. The problem is when the Church indoctrinate the Faithful into enforcing anti-trans (or homophobic) politics, claiming that unisex bathrooms are a catastrophic threat to “Christian civilization”.

The thing is: arguing against theocracy has some chance of convincing moderate Catholics to disavow theocracy. But attacking the entire Catholic Church is much more likely to cause them to hate the left and associate Marxism with New Atheism hate.

Please. Terrarium was speaking of foreign cultures, like some Muslim cultures, where some men do indeed marry teenage girls. One thing is taking exception to that practice, another is taking a jab at Muhammad (which was his analogy). The latter alienates not only the husbands of teenagers, but alienates that entire culture, and even Muslims from cultures that don’t have this practice.

Hi. I believe you misrepresented the comrade said. Please see my other reply:

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7632787/6256137

Even people who make terrible errors or crimes should only be accused of what they actually did. We should know this better than anyone. Stalin purges, in a terribly difficult context where the whole world attacked the USSR, including real saboteurs and traitors, did kill some 800 thousand (according to Ben Norton in The Grayzone), which is indeed horrible, yet we take great exception with right-wing fanatics who say that Stalin was equivalent to Hitler and killed 12 million “victims of communism” because (they say) he was a power-hungry totalitarian paranoid maniac. Then the right wing fanatics reply that we are splitting hairs, covering up for Georgian Hitler, and that the “details” don’t matter.

The widespread sex crimes were horrible, and I think a major reason it took decades to solve was that, instead of debating actual solutions, each side just weaponized it for its pet cause. Traditionalists blamed the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Conservatives blamed tolerance of homosexuality and lack of discipline. Progressives blamed celibacy, male-only priesthood, and opposition to abortion. With all these people foaming at the mouth while yelling at the others, the problem could not be solved.

It that context, I strongly suspect the claim “Francis didn’t do anything to end the church’s official doctrine of covering up sex crimes on behalf of its members” is propaganda. What I know is that there was a decades-old rule that the Church would not share evidence with the State, arguing that was necessary to protect the privacy of the victim and the accused, so the victim had to give a second testimony before the State. But Francis abolished that rule, did he not? And don’t most people who are not conservatives (conservatives believe in Vigano’s conspiracy theories) credit Pope Francis with alleviating the problem? Wikipedia, citing The Guardian and CNN, says “Pope Francis made sweeping changes that allow for greater transparency”. Yes, Guardian and CNN are capitalist, but that only makes them suspect for certain subjects (such as actually existing socialist states). I have never seen anyone accuse The Guardian and CNN of pro-Catholic bias.

So you can plausibly argue that Pope Francis was too slow, but please check your sources and do not grossly inflate his actual errors.

Religion is “compatible” with Marxism in the sense that a Marxist state need have no problem with citizens who practice their religions in peace without theocracy, like (I believe) happens in Cuba. Any religion, when mixed with politics or money, results in disaster. The Catholic Church has a problematic history precisely because it mixed with the State since Roman times. A communist society would provide a more healthy environment for legitimate, non theocratic religion to develop. Religion would not mess with the State, which is great. And maybe less people would have Faith, but those who do would be more reasonable and authentic. In fact, a Liberation Theology priest once told me that real Christianity is never the majority. In societies such as Medieval Europe (and even the USA and Brazil today) that discriminate against non-Christians, people have an incentive to be fake Christians. But we don’t have to litigate that here, I just wanted to clarify what I meant.

Regarding Hexbear sometimes talking about religion: religion still affects politics, so it cannot be ignored.

While I appreciate your critique, I have to object to one thing: the Catholic Church is not Christianity as a whole. It is a political organization that represents the religion, but it is not omnipotent of the religion.

Hi. I did not mean that all “true” Christians are Catholics or whatever someone might have interpreted. I do think that attacking the entire Catholic Church instead of attacking just Catholic theocrats is analogous to attacking Christianity instead of just Christian theocrats.

And as political organization, it has done a LOT of bad shit in its very, very long history.

But I still believe it can continue to exist as the Catholic Church but be prevented from messing with secular politics. I am not sure that was your point, but you seem to think that the Catholic Church is inherently a “political” (secular politics) arm of Christianity. That is not my view. Let’s not litigate this specific claim (not the focus of this forum), I just want to clarify that is not my view.

I never asked for sympathy for New Atheist attacks on me. I asked people to reply to what I actually said.