this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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Yeah they've been inoculated against the red virus through constant propaganda.
Everything you say will be filtered out by "this person excuses a mass murderer on par with Hitler!"
And if it's not Stalin there is some other thought terminating assumption taken for granted that you run up against. I mean what broke me out was people being friendly to me even though I had "christian" in my name. All my life people had pointed to the "persecution" of the church in the GDR as an example of what communists would do to me and my family. So I said "Hi" to the rabid redfash tankies on hexbear with this username on my lemm.ee account to troll them really and they were nice?? These people praise guys like Stalin who probably would've shot me himself why aren't they all jumping me like I've seen them do around the fediverse
So I read around a bit and found a really nuanced good take on religion, a debunking of what Marx meant by "Opium for the masses" and suddenly everything I thought I knew had to be called into question.
edited out me defaulting to man sry about that
Thanks for sharing your experience with it. It's insightful to read.
Curious what the take was if you don't mind sharing
Basically that religion is a huge part of the culture. The year of a lot of cultures revolves around major religious holidays, christmas, ramadan etc. It's deeply ingrained into social dynamics, language and so on basically messing with it will cause a huge upset just from the magnitude of the impact it will have on peoples lives. Being part of a religious community is a big part of those peoples lives. Celebrating religious holidays a big affair with the whole family. Also could you imagine western economies without the christmas season? A lot of peoples livelihood depend directly on producing commodities for easter or christmas.
It's also not really something material you can control, people can choose to be religious and teach their kids accordingly no matter what. Where's the boundary to organized religion?
Add to that that it both gives comfort to a lot of people but also makes it hard for them to break with it on the threat of some form of punishment (like opium, dulls pain but once addicted its painful to suddenly stop taking it). I know I wouldn't have survived my depression if not for religion.
So a shock "therapy" banning religion as much as is possible will cause a huge pushback because it's dear to a lot of laborers. It's been used by the bourgeoisie yes, but very indirectly. You can point at how someone withholding the means of production needs to be made to relinquish it, but you have to look at the case of each clergyman individually in how much they collaborated with the capitalist class.
I'm sure someone with a deeper understanding can explain it better but that was the opinion as I saw it and which got me intrigued.
That's a good take, thanks for sharing
Another helpfull thing to remember is that during Marx' time, opium was a common part in many medicines. He himself took some opium stuff because of his skin condition to make it bearable.
The kindness and forbearance here got me hooked. Being disillusioned isn't always fun, but as someone on another platform says; A lie travels quickly, but the truth endures.