Once More, and Again on the Bankruptcy of "New Atheism"

Here is a rather amusing conversation I had with a bunch of "New Atheist" hacks on youtube. It went like this.

ComradeRemus: It strikes me as odd to describe statism as a religion. Are we all clear on the actual meaning of the word religion?

Quq Balam: No, we're not. Even Chomsky is kind of playing with the very loose term of "religion" that Hitchens and Harris use. I mean, these are the same ignoramuses that call Marxism, or at least offshoots of it like Maoism, religions despite being atheistic ideologies that oppose religions. One wonders why is it that their own atheistic ideologies don't count as religions as well.

Richard Fennimore: You appear not to know what the term religion means. There is nothing loose about the term. It’s pretty straight forward really. A religion is a system of faith (belief without evidence) and worship of a superhuman controlling power, normally in the form of a personal God (theism). I hate to break it to you pal, but atheism is simply a rejection of theism, so it cannot be defined as either an ideology or a religion.

Michael Gregory: I agree completely with Quq Balam. I think the problem is the definition of religion is stretched so thin (by Harris and Hitchens before Chomsky) that it is perfectly reasonable to say that about Harris. Harris, Hitchens, Bill Maher and others sided with the U.S. against the Soviets during the Cold War and China, North Korea and others today. China, North Korea are atheist and the former Soviet Union was atheist and America is largely Christian. When the Soviet Union fell the Imperialists not only waged an ideological offensive against Communism but also atheism as the Soviet Union was very much a bastion of world atheism. The common thread between this and sided with the U.S. against Muslim countries IS NOT secular values but an allegiance to U.S. Imperialism. Rather than own that fact they come with this convoluted argument that Communism is a religion. Chomsky really is just using their own line of reasoning against them.

Richard Fennimore: Japan, the Czech Republic, France, Australia, and Iceland are all majority atheist countries too. This has nothing at all to do with whether they are communist, socialist, or capitalist. Your comments are complete babble. No coherent argument in there anywhere.

ComradeRemus: +Michael Gregory I've heard hitchens talk, and I don't think he ever called communism a religion. He just insisted that the USSR manipulated the eastern orthadox church and employed aspects of religion to help control the citizenry.

Richard Fennimore: +ComradeRemus You are correct sir. While Hitchens did jokingly refer to North Korea’s former supreme leader Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il as “one short of a trinity” (i.e. “the father, the son, and the ??” - because the North Korean people worshipped them as if they were Gods), neither he nor any of the other "new atheists" have ever referred to communism as a religion.

Michael Gregory: Richard Fennimore, you seemed to have dodged all of my points. As for the countries you have listed, not all countries have been affected equally. Religion is very much on the rise of the U.S. One place that has been most affected is the Middle East. The Middle East used to b largely secular nationalists and Communists, now it is largely Islamic fundamentalist. ComradeRemus I watch Bill Maher's show on regular basis and he HAS so unless Hitchens was in fundamental disagreement with Maher then my point still stands. They a both part of the "New Atheist" movement and their views are virtually identical.

Michael Gregory: The fact is capitalism relies on religion to provide artificial happiness for the oppressed when preaching unquestioning obedience to authority. Religion itself is caused by deprivation and capitalism inevitably breeds poverty and oppression. As longer as the social conditions exist for religion exist, it will prop up now matter how many times it is debunked ideologically. Harris, Hitchens and Co.'s support is almost exclusively amoung well to do able-bodied, neuorotypical, white men precisely because it provides NOTHING for the oppressed. Most atheist who are female, non-white, poor and disabled hate Maher, Richard Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens.

Richard Fennimore: Michael Gregory, I didn’t dodge your points, I ignored them. There is a big difference. I am sorry sir, but with as much respect as I can muster, there is no other way to say that it’s impossible to have an intelligent conversation when your arguments are nothing but babble and drivel. I rest my case.

ComradeRemus: Michael your only comment towards me was to say that you heard Bill Maher say something, and it follows that Christopher Hitchens has to have believed it as well. Did you really think through that poppycock before you shit it out of your keyboard?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt9QCAUPPeY

They managed to dodge really all of my points but still managed to pat themselves on that back. Perhaps someone should explain to these erudite Ivy League frat boys that in order to rest one's case one must first make a case and defend that case. Interesting how I point out most female, non-white and disabled hate them and that they have nothing to offer such people and they reply that it is "impossible" to "have an intelligent conversation with me". Perhaps they find it "impossible" to "have and intelligent conversation" with women, non-whites and disabled. Nothing racist, misogynist or ablest about that. Since they are unwilling to actually answer me, lets just say I won by forfeit. They really strike as similar to Donald Trump and George W. Bush in that they manage to imbeciles but also see themselves as they smartest guys in the room.

Sam Harris's and Bill Maher's Islamaphobia has Nothing to Do with Secular Values

I was recently reading this rather turgid tract by Sam Harris where he rants about Chomsky. The whole tract is basically claiming that violence by Muslims and middle "proof" that they are savages. But when first world Imperialist countries like America kill people they have "good intentions". He apologizes for the war in Iraq which killed about a million people, the US sanctions on Iraq which killed 1.5 million people (including 300,000 to 400,000) children and even the Vietnam War which killed 3 million people. He even tries to paint the Mai Lai massacre as "a few bad apples". When dark skin people kill, their savages, when whitey does it, they're "well intentioned". He even suggest some cultures (read: the west) are more civilized than others (read: Muslims and the third world).

I certainly have disagreements with Chomsky over the Bolsheviks, the October Revolution, Kronstadt and Nester Mahkno etc. but on this issue he doesn't have the vitriolic, "the only good Muslim is a dead one" mentality.

I watch Bill Maher regularly. He rants about Islamists being worse than Nazis, the KKK, Skinheads, "Right to Life" terrorist and right-wing militias because the latter don't "threaten America" (read: the American ruling class and U.S. imperialism). He is hostile to the U.S.S.R., China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos which are all atheist. America is predominantly Christian. So his (and probably Richard Dawkin's and Sam Harris's) hatred for Islam has nothing to do with "secular values" and everything to do with allegiance to U.S. Imperialism (or in Dawkins's case British Imperialism).

It seems that Sam Harris have stooped to uncritically interviewing a hard-core apologist for Pope Pius XII, who collaborated with the Nazis and refused to condemn the holocaust. Basically Sam Harris and Mark Riebling white-wash Pope Pius XII and regurgitate the Catholic heirarchy's talking points. He has taken his insistence that his "the west is a good and the Muslim world is evil" narrative to it's logical conclusion. For years I have insisted that Sam Harris's (and Bill Maher's and Richard Dawkin's) anti-Muslim bigotry and everything to do with their allegience to Western Imperialism. This rather grotesque article make's my point for me. Sam Harris and other "New Atheists" seek to discredit atheism in the eyes of workers, leftists and the oppressed. Sam Harris's atheism IS NOT my atheism. At this point I have no clue why any atheist would give him the time of day.

Harris and Riebling conveniently leave out that it was the Soviet Union that smashed the Nazi war machine (a fact that most serious historians, such as Oliver Stone, acknowledge) but instead proceeds to bash Communism and the U.S.S.R. and argues that "free thinking atheists" would fair better than in a religion (Nazi Germany perhaps) than a under Communism.

This is no accident, Riebling is, according to Sam Harris, "architect of post-9/11 “intelligence-driven policing,” co-founding and serving as research director for the Center for Policing Terrorism" (read: Washington shill). By the 50s at the latests, all of the former Nazi commanders and capitalists who supported Hilter were released from prison and were restored, by the U.S., to their former positions in U.S. occupied West Germany. During the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and West Germany's Chancellor visited a Nazi war memorial to pay respect to Nazi war dead. What the Catholic heirarchy and the U.S. have in common is BOTH are Nazi collaborators and both seek to whitewash their own histories. And Sam Harris is more than willing to assist them in doing so.

It is worth nothing that Sam Harris has stated the, “The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.”“The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.” He even goes as far at to make grotesque apologies to the crusades!

Their atheism is not my atheism!

See also: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/rethinking-hitlers-pope

Hitler's Pope by John Cornwall

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse/

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/09/siding_with_christian_fanatics_like_ben_carson_over_noam_chomsky_sam_harris_exposes_inherent_conservatism_of_new_atheism/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/sam_harriss_detestable_crusade_how_his_latest_anti_islam_tract_reveals_the_bankruptcy_of_his_ideas/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/sam_harriss_detestable_crusade_how_his_latest_anti_islam_tract_reveals_the_bankruptcy_of_his_ideas/

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/18/opinion/oe-harris18/2

http://www.salon.com/topic/sam_harris/

Bill Maher's and Sam Harris's Reactionary Line on the Islam, the West and Israel/Palestine

For anyone who follows Bill Maher and/or Sam Harris is likely aware hatred for Muslims. It is true that Sharia law, honour killings and the veil are oppressive and should be opposed. But they cling to this notion that Islam has some sort of monopoly on women's oppression and reactionary violence. Whenever anyone brings up fundamentalist Christians who bomb abortion clinics and assassinates abortion doctors Bill Maher lashes out. Statements like "it was fifty years ago" or "it was the one guy" and other exlain it away statements.

Bill Maher DID once admit the existence of fundamentalist Christians who bomb abortion clinics and who assassinate abortion doctors, Nazis and the KKK as well as right-wing militiamen. But he quickly adds that Islamist are worse because they want to "destroy America" while the white christian fascists don't. Imagine telling the family of Emmett Till of the families of the "four little girls". "Why yes the Klan murdered you family but they don't want to destroy America". The privileges of being rich and white in a first world country is you can afford to be oblivious to the real dangers fascists oppose to oppressed peoples. In fact fascists like the British National Party and English Defense League in Britain have cashed in anti-Muslim sentiment peddled by the likes of Bill Maher.

And of course both are big apologists for Israel genocide of the Palestinians. Sam Harris cynically states that Israel just wants to live in peace with it's neighbor. Yet fails miserably to explain the Apartheid wall, the continued settlement by fascistic Zionist militia in the West Bank, Gaze being and open air prison sealed off on all sides by Israel (and Egypt), how the Lukid openly deny Palestineans right to state-hood and self-determination along with Lukid advocating "free settlement" of Jews everywhere from the Arab sea to the Jordan river, how Israel was built on the displacement and killing of Palestinians along with how Israel regularly deliberately murders Palestinian children (roughly one child every three days). Sam Harris compares the Palestinians to Nazis but conveniently ignores the fact that Palestine is oppressed and that Israel is the oppressor. Also, it is well documented that the Zionist were making deals with the Nazis during the early stages of the Nazi era. But we mustn't let facts get in the way of Sam Harris's Pro-Israel narrative.

Bill Maher on his show cynically states that, "yes the Palestinians were displaced" but that "displacements are a fact of life so move on". So in other words anything Palestinians do is justification for killing any Palestinian in sight but if Palestinians are killed and displaced they should "move on". One of his guests, that episode, Jamie Weinstein, continuously referred to the Palestinian refuge camps as a "propaganda tool" is a lot like when Nazis call the holocaust "Jewish propaganda" (Ironically Jamie Weinstein is a big apologist for the Euromaidan movement, and two of the main parties spearheading that movement are the fascist neo-nazi parties that firebomb synagogues and murders leftists). There was another woman, Jane Harman, who stated that Israel "withdrew from Gaza", conveniently leaving out the fact that Gaza is a open aired prison sealed on all sides by Israel (and Egypt) and that Israel's "withdrawal" merely gave Israel a freer hand to attack the Palestinians. She also cynically claimed that Arabs have "equal citizenship rights" in Israel, conveniently leaving out the fact that they must pledge their allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state", that Jews who have never been to Israel get immediate citizenship rights upon going there while Palestinians who have lived their entire lives don't have such rights and that Jews get special treatment in housing, land ownership, education employment and most other areas of life.

It certainly indisputable that Israel is a brutally repressive genocidal Jewish chauvinist regime. If the Israeli military and/or fascistic Israeli settlers in the West Bank are attacked by Hamas or any other Palestinian forces or there is a conflict between the Israeli military and/or fascistic military settlers on one side and Hamas, it is the duty of revolutionaries to give Hamas and the Palestinians military defense. This being said, Hamas deserves no political support (there misogyny, homophobia, anti-communism and anti-secularism must be opposed as well). Although attacks on Israeli solders and on fascistic settlers should be defended, Hamas also attacks Israeli civilians. The latter should be opposed as it will only drive these people, including Israeli worker's into the hands of the Zionist capitalist ruling class.

Unlike the ruling class of Israel, Israeli workers derive no real material benefit from Israel's oppression. In fact the ruling class of Israel brutally exploits of Israeli workers. For example, in order to pay for murdering Palestinians and further annexing Palestinian territories, they gut public services that Israeli worker's rely on. Hamas has no intention of working with Israeli worker's precisely because they right them off as the enemy and draw an equals signs between Israeli worker's and Israeli capitalists. Although Israeli workers may share their rulers hatred for Palestinians, it is actually against their interests to have such sentiment.

As long as the struggle is against Israel against Palestinians, Israel will win out as they are vastly superior militarily. What is needed is an revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist worker's party to mobilize the Israeli working class side by side with the Palestinian working class to smash the Zionist fortress. To do this Israeli workers must be broken with Zionism, anti-Arab bigotry and won over to the need to champion the national rights of the Palestinians. Palestinian workers must be broken from Antisemitism and Arab nationalism.

Not only should the Zionists rulers be toppled but there need to be worker's revolution to topple the various ruling classes throughout the middle east (many who also have a hand in oppressing Palestinian) to establish a socialist federation of the middle east.

Sources:

http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no26/no26meast.html Not Jew Against Arab, But Class Against Class! Defend the Palestinians!

http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no33/ibt_1917_33_02_boycott_divestment_sanctions.html On the ‘Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions’ Campaign: Strategies for Palestinian Liberation

http://bolshevik.org/statements/szhc_20140924_zim_shanghai_call.html End the Siege of Gaza! Picket the Zim Shanghai Starting September 27 at the Port of Oakland! Call from the Stop ZIM Action Committee

http://www.bolshevik.org/statements/ibt_20140912_labor_action_gaza.html Down with Zionist Terrorism! Defend the Palestinians! For International Labor Action against Israeli Apartheid!

http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no6/no06sanc.html Workers Sanctions & Capitalist Sanctions: ‘Fire and Water'

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/19/18760302.php Israeli Ship Continues to be Successfully Blocked at the Port of Oakland

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/26/18760701.php United States Port Actions End Business as Usual For Israel

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/08/18/18760208.php Facebook: Protest For Gaza Censored and Steven Argue Blocked From Posting

http://www.internationalist.org/defendgaza1407.html Defeat Israel / U.S. War – For Workers Action Against Zionist Slaughter Defend Gaza and the Palestinian People – For Arab-Hebrew Workers Revolution!

http://www.free-tv-video-online.me/internet/real_time_with_bill_maher/season_12.html Real Time with Bill Maher - Season 12 - 18 July 2014 - George Takai, Jamie Weinstein, Jane Harman, Nate Silver & Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Victory to the Teamster Local 31 Strike!

Since June 22, 2011 the Board Attendants, working for Rocky Mountaineer's and organized under Teamsters Local 31, have been locked out. As the they state in one of there leaflets:

"The issue are simple". When bargaining began we asked for overtime beginning after 11 hours (our shifts are often up to 16 hours or longer), and modest improvements to health and welfare benefits and wages increases.

Rocky Mountaineer's response was to quietly recruit replacement workers, place them on trains as passengers, and then lock us out and order us off the trains part way through our trip."

What is needed is to break the working class from the labour bureaucracy and to build and win the working-class over to a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard (i.e. a revolutionary leadership).

Workers for VIA rail are organized under a different union than rocky mountaineer.
A revolutionary leadership would fight for all railway workers to be organized under one union. This is necessary to prevent scabbing from workers' not on strike.

Such a leadership would mobilize workers to barricade the working place and physically block out scabs.

The labour bureaucracy as well as there political arm the New Democratic Party (NDP) are quite capable of selling out this strike. They sold out the Hospital Employees Union (HEU) strike in 2004, they sold out the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF) Strike in 2005 (then NDP leader Carol James even revoltingly told strikers to "bide by the rule of law") and they sold out the Telecommunication Workers' Union (TWU) strike in 2005.

The workers' must not play by the bosses rulebooks. Karl Marx was right when he said the "law is the will of one class imposed on all". Canada is a capitalist society and every government here is a capitalist government whether Liberal, NDP, Conservative, Green, Bloc Quebecois etc. The legal system is built to defend the capitalist class. Those who are hired to enforce those laws are on the capitalist side of the class line. Be they cops, security guards, courts, prison guards etc. Such elements much be driven out of the unions and kept out. The Liberals, Conservatives, Greens and Bloc Quebecois are all capitalist parties from top to bottom. Despite its working-class base the NDP is a thoroughly pro-capitalist party in both leadership and outlook.

Workers in other industries especially related industries must support this strike not just in words, letters and petitions but in deeds (i.e. striking in solidarity). These workers also deserve the support of all the oppressed be they women, immigrants, students, homeless people, the "disabled", the "mentally ill", Asian, south Asian etc.

Victory to Teamster Local 31!

The Barbarism of Capital Punishment

First of all, I think it should be stated that the death penalty is a barbaric act and very much part or the legacy of medieval torture. Even lethal injection a supposedly humane form of execution has proven to be barbaric. There have been instances where this method has taken half an hour to actually kill the person. So even this is a slow agonizing death. All the other forms are as bad as or worse than lethal injection.

I think that Robert Boyle, who commented above, is dead on when he spoke about the race and class bias of the death penalty. In capitalism, the state, which includes the cops, military, courts and prison, serves to defend the rule of the capitalist class against the working class and the oppressed.

American capitalism had the enslavement of blacks by whites built into it from it's inception. Racial oppression, namely black oppression, is the bedrock of American capitalism. Blacks and Latino's are disproportionately represented in the prison population and on death row. As the writer, former Black Panther and MOVE supporter pointed out in his book Live from Death row, the chance of a black person receiving the death penalty for killing a white person is much higher than a white person receiving the death penalty for killing a black person.

There are also plenty of cases of innocent people on death row. And it doesn't do a thing to reduce crime. The US has a much higher crime rate than Canada and West Europe and the former country has the death penalty and the latter countries don't.

There is also the fact that the criminals and the cops and other state apparatchiks are not necessarily separate entities. A third of the police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have been implicated by the FBI for having ties with the mob. In the south of the US the cops have a history of working hand-in-hand with the Ku Klux Klan!

(This is in response to the following article http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/defending-the-undefendable/201106/the-death-penalty)

Reply to an Anti-Working Class Libertarian

Its interesting for all his allegations of unionized workers being "always violent" he can't even provide one concrete instance of it. Oh and how about the strike-breaking cops, security guards and private gun thugs? Think they aren't violent? Also, the notion that scabs are all kind and gentle I think is ludicrous. The scabs and gun thugs are the nucleus of the fascists movement and I wouldn't call the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler "non-violent".

Also, comparing the term scab to n*$*$er or k&$e really goes a long way toward trivializing anti-semetism and racism. As I said the fascists (including Nazis and Klansmen) aren't exactly nice to Jews and black. Since this guy is a "Libertarian" I wonder what he has to say about Rand Paul thinking that restaurants should be allowed to exclude black people.

(This is a reply to the following article http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/defending-the-undefendable/201106/is-there-right-unionize)

Remeberance Day: Why Revolutionaries Don't Commemorate the Crimes of Imperialism

One day commemorated in capitalist Canada is Remembrance Day. Other imperialist powers have similar holidays. The US has Veterans Day and Memorial Day. A question that I think should be asked is what purpose these days serves. A revolutionary Marxist I would argue that such days serve no other purpose then to drum up national chauvinism and support for imperialist war.

As for wars Canada has been involved in, there is the War of 1812, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the War on Afghanistan and the War on Haiti. The US has been involved in the American Revolutionary War, the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War on Afghanistan, the two Persian Gulf Wars etc. (There are really too many to list for the US).

Britain ruled the world from the barrel of the gun all the way till World War II. They invaded people's in Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia etc. France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland and the like have similar blood-soaked records. Britain and Holland fought in the Boer-War and the Napoleonic War. Britain, France and Germany both fought in both world wars. I want to apologize in advance if I don't get down to the point.

Well for World War I. It was an inter-imperialist war. Britain, France, the United States, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey were all imperialist powers fighting for markets, resources sources of cheap labour, raw materials and spheres of influence. This being the case revolutionaries have no side. And revolutionaries at the time rightfully fought for turning the imperialist war into a civil war of the proletariat (working class) against the bourgeoisie (capitalist class). Revolutionaries OUGHT TO honour the soldiers who point their guns their generals and the capitalists though. This did in fact happen in Russia and made the October Russian Revolution successful.

As for World War 2 this was a similar situation. Britain, France, Canada, the United States, Japan, Germany and Italy were all imperialist powers and revolutionaries didn't side with any of them. Revolutionaries did take a side with the Soviet Union, a bureaucratically degenerated workers' state (a state based on collectivized property where capitalism had been overthrown but where political power had been monopolized by a privileged bureaucratic caste which rested atop the workers' state). The Soviet Red Army smashed the Nazi war machine (no thanks to Stalin and other bureaucrats though) and the they SHOULD be honoured.

As for the Korean War, Revolutionary had a side with the Soviet Union as well as China and North Korea (the latter two were bureaucratically deformed workers' states which is similar in definition to a bureaucratically deformed workers' state) against the Imperialist powers led by the U.S. and included Canada, and many countries from Western and Northern Europe.

As for the Vietnam War, North Vietnam was a bureaucratically deformed workers' state and the revolutionary working class had a side with it against US (and Australian) Imperialism. The Soldier to be honoured were the Viet Cong as well as the US draft dodgers and defectors like Mohammad Ali.

As for the two US led wars on Iraq and the US led war on Afghanistan, revolutionaries sided with Iraq and Afghanistan without giving any political support to the reactionary Taliban or the bloody capitalist regime of Saddam Hussein. The Balkan wars were similar Revolutionaries sided with Serbia against the imperialist without giving political support to the genocidal regime of Slovajo Milosevic (I hope I am spelling that right). The US led war on Bosnia would be quite similar.

As for the American Civil War, revolutionaries had a side with the Northern Union against the Southern Confederacy. Capitalism in the US had yet to cross over to reaction at this point. It wasn't until the notorious Compromise of 1877 that they crossed over to reaction. The capitalists in Europe crossed over to reaction in 1848.

In the same light the American Revolutionary War was supportable as it free American farmers and capitalists from the grip of the British colonial overlords. This was a political revolution. While the American Civil War along with the English Civil War, the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution were social revolutions.

As for the Mexican-American war, it was a reactionary war on the side of the US. I am embarrassed to admit that Marx and Engels initially supported the US. Fortunately, they later repudiated this stance. Marx and Engels initially thought that when European and American powers colonized people it lead to economic and social development in those colonies. They saw the blood spilled as a tragic necessity. They later realized that when the US or West European powers colonized people's, they didn't promote social and economic development but arrested it. Britain promoted the caste system in India and tribalism in central Africa. More recently, the US led forces enshrined Sharia law in Afghanistan and in Iraq they gave the mullahs the authority to strike down any law they saw as "un-Islamic".

As for the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic War, revolutionaries had no side. Revolutionaries did not have a side with either Britain or Holland in the Boer-War or with the US or Spain in the Spanish-American War.