Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/23/antitheology.html
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When I was in the CCCP (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик) back in 1981, these kind of craptastic souvenirs were everywhere, and dirt cheap too.
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And they would have nailed it, too, if they hadn’t turned the Communist Manifesto into their Bible, made saints of Marx and Engels, and painted icons in tribute to Stalin. Irony strikes again.
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A thoughtful way to counter the pro-religious propaganda… religion.
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Thus continuing the 1.000 batting average of Marx accurately identifying a problem, and Communism implementing a “fix” at least as bad.
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Communism as a whole has a better average than just the Marxism-Leninism varieties. The problem was that the M-L’s, capitalists and fascists all agreed that the alternative forms of communism needed to be stomped on before it made them look bad.
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It’s hard for me to see anti-religious propaganda made by murderous dictators as anything other than a power play. Religious leaders have social/political power and are therefore threats to political leaders. To run an authoritarian regime you need to either have religious leaders backing you or you have to stamp them out. Marx may have pushed them in the “stamp it out” direction, but the basic co-opt or oppress mechanism of authoritarianism towards everything doesn’t really have anything to do with communism.
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I think that’s it exactly–the utopian cover being used to justify the oppression.
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That’s also exactly what religion is. The word ‘propaganda’ originates with the missionary activities of the catholic church. This is anti-propaganda propaganda.
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See also Alexander Nevsky for an example of that stuff in film. Also, you’ll be able to see some of the footage Ralph Bakshi rotoscoped for Wizards.
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It still boggles my mind how religion is even a thing outside of some kind of club you want to go to. It shouldn’t have anything to do with government. Rotaries, Masons, Catholics, Jewish, etc, etc, etc. It seems like the mode of operation is to sit/kneel and look up or down and say your special words, then go have coffee and doughnuts.
I’ll skip the first part and just have friends over for coffee and doughnuts. Then bust out a frisbee or soccer ball and discuss morals and the proper way to behave with the kiddos around to hear it.
Can I make that into a religion?
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There’s a lot of well-produced artwork on this theme- The Soviets did a very good line in propaganda posters (or as we in the west know them, advertising).
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It’s just that, I think, in many authoritarian regimes the religious leaders align their message with the authoritarian - e.g. churches in Nazi Germany were pretty pro-Nazi. That serves authoritarianism just as well (or better). I guess my point is that no matter how negatively we might see religion, anti-religion propaganda wasn’t about stamping out something that was bad for the people, it was about stamping out a possible source of opposition to the government. It was anti-anyone-who-doesn’t-swear-fealty-to-us propaganda, or just “propaganda” for short.
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It’s not a religion, but there is Sunday Assembly:
See if they have one in your area:
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To be fair, advertising is really just propaganda. The father of modern advertising and public relations literally wrote the book on propaganda, too (Bernays).
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Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, survivor of Gulag forced labor camps made the same comparison in his book “A World Apart”. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
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Prokofiev’s score for that film is so good!
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On my very short list of “scariest passages in science fiction” is this, from Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang
“And there is the council meeting. I haven’t been to a council meeting in years. They hold them in the commune cafeteria at the long hour on Thursday nights. I don’t know who decided that since the martian day is 37 minutes and 23 seconds longer than the Earth day we should have the long hour from 8:00 to 9:00 last one hour 37 minutes and 23 seconds. If we’re going to have a long hour I’d rather have it in the morning. But it’s a bureaucrats dream, an hour and 37 minutes to have an hour meeting.”
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Okay? I guess I’m not getting the connection between that and Sunday Assembly?
I’m not sure I’ve read any of her stuff, though. I’ll have to check her out at some point.
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