this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Don't get me wrong, I know Anton LaVey is a huge piece of shit regarding his flirtations with fascist attitudes and eugenics. I've known a few of them and they tend to have straight up obnoxious opinions on communists despite the fact that we both share a lot of the same criticisms of religion. Then there's LaVeyanist groups attacking leftist groups as well.

Generally, it seems like there's a lot of left-leaning ones with a good mass of reactionaries with a anti-theist bend. Is there a reason the anti-communism comes into play here though?

Could also purely be anecdote. Reason I post is because I'm curious on the thoughts you all have.

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[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 26 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Because being critical of religion is not an ideology. Atheism (since 99.9% of "satanists" are just edgy atheists) is not an ideology. When you're an edgy teen it may feel that way, but in reality you can't build a political and ideological identity on what is simply a rejection of one particular claim. But since they tried to make atheism into a group identity they needed to actually add a whole ideological framework around their atheism. Their ideological conflict with communist atheists becomes inevitable when they start to advocate for extreme individualism and Ayn Rand style sociopathic egoism. That is always going to clash with communism regardless of any shared belief in the non-existence of a god or gods.

Or to put it more simply: being an atheist is just not sufficient grounds to guarantee compatible world views between different people and groups. I'm an atheist but i have more in common politically and ideologically with communist Christians and Muslims than i do with libertarian atheists.

[–] Sherman@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I could not have said it better myself. Just being against things is not really enough to build up a society of substance and the little they do stand on is nonsense that'll scatter the masses anyway. It's cool for a couple of moments when you want to break out of a haunted religious upbringing, but a well-rounded ideology needs to develop later if you actually want to affect change and have an accurate analysis of reality beyond catering to self-indulgence.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Just being against things is not really enough to build up a society of substance

Exactly. It's not enough to be against something, you have to be for something else. It's why i don't much like it when some people on the left just describe themselves as vaguely anti-capitalist. It's good to be against capitalism but what are you actually for? In the case of communists it is clear: we have a well defined vision of the kind of society we want to build. We are for socialism.