Today i had the misfortune of encountering a western “leftist” on Twitter. He stans Podemos (a spanish demsoc party, very liberal and proNATO, they are now in a coalition government with the socdems and they love Zelenski). We discussed the Ukraine War and Russia. I thought he would do the typical “ok the US and NATO are very bad, but Russia is bad too!” so i brought up the NATO invasions of Yugoslavia and Libya to show how the west is manufacturing consent now with Ukraine just like they did with Yugoslavia and Libya, which i assumed he would say were bad. Well the motherfucker goes and says “akchually those invasions were good, we stopped genocides and evil dictators”. WTF. How are these people “leftists”? They are straight up NATOist warhawks. How is this “the left” now? And this is in Europe, where the left is much stronger than in the US! I cant stand this. HOW IS THIS “LEFTISM”? Im so angry right now, what a piece of shit human being, defending imperialist genocides while calling himself a “leftist”. He even had the gull of saying “you arent a leftist, you defend genocidal regimes like the USSR, Putin or North Korea, youre a fascist!”. Fucking unbelievable. Ok rant over.

Oh and he also defended finnish and baltic nazis of WW2 and said “bolshevism is just like nazism”. Plus he said holodomor was real and when i showed him that expert historians on the subject like Mark Tauger, J Arch Getty and Stephen Wheatcroft think otherwise, he said “youre wrong, the historical consensus doesnt agree with you”.

  • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    3 years ago

    Churches should become like a kind of mass organization imo, with all its assets owned by the state and the organization also controlled by the state.

    Yes and no. While state should control it, it should be matter of security services, not official part of the state, and the control needs to be excercised carefully. Religion turned into state puppet bring plethora of its own problems. I see it more like every other NGO under socialism, just a club. Agree on the property, the historical sites should be property of nation anyway and the nonhistorical as much as any other club.

    The church functions as a church but is subordinated to the party and takes orders from it.

    No, churches should not be directly subordinate of the party. It would create dangerous precedent of party abandoning materialism and dabbling in religion.

    I also think you shouldnt discard the progressive potential for religion. I think religion is a tool, so its not bad by itself. Sure religion is very often used by reactionaries, but it can also be used progressively.

    This is what i’m trying to say, religion is INHERENTLY reactionary. It can be used as weapon against something even MORE reactionary, like imperialism nowadays, but it’s playing with fire, leave it unchecked and you will burn everything. Not to mention even the most progressive religion will never turn to marxism, because marxism is antithetical to every religion philosophically and every religion is in a nutshell philosphy + worship practices. It may coexist, but again i’m just reiterating Lenin.

    And also very important part - when religion and marxism met, it’s not relgion that need to be controlled more strictly. It’s party, to not be infiltrated by idealists.

    Indeed, the beliefs of the mainstream religions (islam, christianity, judaism and buddhism) are often quite compatible with socialism

    Yet historically they always oppose marxism. Clerical socialism is a thing, but it isn’t the right thing. It’s just opportunism. Note they are always negating marxist class thory, that should tell you everything.

    Hell if Jesus Christ was alive today hed be 100% called a “communist” by the libs.

    That is low bar considering even libertarians are calling eachother “communist” over minuscule differences in what pass for theory for them. Also Jesus WAS communist, he was heavily influenced by essenes sect and they were archetypical primitive communists, but as you can probably guess, primitive religious communism is not the right thing too.

    in Poland it wouldnt work

    Yeah it didn’t. During PRL every priest had his own papers, and there was no other society as heavily infiltrated by the state security. That’s why i’m sceptical about that control you speak of, and not because the pope, in practice local churches can just ignore him totally and he will not do anything because the fear of schism. It’s because we tried it and it didn’t work, catholic church organisation, at least in Poland, resemble mafia more than anything.

    I think its an option as valid as state atheism. Both options could work in the appropiate material conditions i think.

    No, state atheism is the only possible option.

    Funnily enough, your idea was was tried already. I don’t think i need to elaborate on Robespierre attampt to create new revolutionary religion, or more importantly on american civil religion as example what happenes if state is too close to that. And neither of those is even marxist. But i just want to mention this very debacle happened in bolshevik party around 1910, with resolt obvious - people attempted to were treated as more dangerous than mensheviks and trotskyist because they strike at the very heart of marxism.