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Al Rasool mosque burning in Iran
(hexbear.net)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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the science of marxism is when we look at every revolutionary movement and discard the things that worked, and embrace things that have never worked and will never work
Communism in Afghanistan fell apart and contributed to the death of the USSR.
They had a strong anti-religious stance. But they got wrecked by the Taliban.
Yes the US participated, but so did the USSR. It wasn't good enough.
They had the country, then they lost it. Now look at Afghanistan. They sell girls at the market and stone women for religious infractions.
No... part of this is true.
The Afghan government was initially state atheist, swiftly abandoning this at the behest of the soviet union in favor of secualrism, at the behest of the USSR adopted concessions to the religious right on secular reform which never satisfied them (Even after ending compulsory education of children, the largest complaint of the initial religious resistance) and they ended up losing to the Mujahideen who fractured and started a civil war. The Taliban arose during the subsequent civil war as a response to institutionalised pederasty.
The Afghan war is a pretty good case study in the fact that you can't compromise your way out of a conflict with religious authorities as a left wing project.
Ending compulsory education of children is a failure of one of Marx's 10 pillars of communism.
I agree. Don't compromise with them. Deal with them intelligently and systematically.
Chuddic brains don't respect compromise. It just means you're weak.
So in other words. Anti clericalism must be pursued immediately (Or you get Iran) and must be sustained (Because letting up on it doesn't work, as per Afghanistan).
It must be immediate, sustained, uncompromising, methodical, thorough, and strategized.
The point of the mosques and killing the clergy is a failure on the final point.
Actually, at no point should the mosques go away. I've seen secular places turn churches into libraries. You do not destroy heritage and cultural sites - a violation of international law that could easily be weaponized against you.
There are other ways of neutering religious institutions than physically taking them down. You are attacking the face of the beast and not the body.
It's like going after western media reporters but not their sponsors. You are just hitting the most visible, most replaceable, and least valuable target.
Morerover, because you are hitting the most visible target, it is much much easier to rally opponents against you.
The mythically ideal solution is one that is complete and that is unreactable.
We should have compulsory education of children everywhere, but citing a specific platform in the manifesto because Marx wrote it is not a good way to argue that.
i blame Carter and the bleeder faction. if the US had been prevented from arming them there would have been no need for the socialist government to invoke their defense pact and there would have been no soviet war because there would have been no war.
Blaming the imperialist is an interesting position.
In order to use that be our model of understanding continuing forward, we would have to presume that there is no imperialist state when we operate in MENA in the future.
This may be a valid track, only if the US falls and another colonial power doesn't come to fruition.
it's wrong to boil these things down to single axes but some factors are necessary foundations of events. I don't think we can depend on there being no imperialist state but the current US or a collapsed US is significantly less effective than it has been in the past.
and i use "we" loosely as fuck here because i can only project power to the neighbors' property lines.
You're going from emphatically saying killing clergy is an objective to going "violence will be necessary in some cases to politically marginalize them" like the least convincing attempt at a motte-and-bailey that I've ever seen.
Edit: Removed points that I didn't think were useful
Thank you for pointing this out. I had the strange feeling of arguing with a shifting target when I was writing some of my replies in this thread. When I read it all again to double-check, I realized that that was what was going on, but it's nice to see someone else point it out explicitly.
I didnt say killing priests was a goal unto itself. I said you have to plan for it. Further, the idea that i am the one doing motte and bailey on this one is hypocritical when my interlocutors can seamlessly go from "Repressing the clergy is bad as evidenced by X" to "Okay so X proves that you have to repress the clergy but you have to do it differently" without a mention from you.
You're misrepresenting the position of most of your opponents here when most people agree with the motte in the motte-and-bailey (which is the point), and furthermore even if we assumed that they were entirely hypocritical (which they are not), your appeal to that would be a crass deflection just as it is in our present situation.
Well, all the militant atheist socialist projects haven't existed in decades while AES is reconcilitory towards religion. Vietnam and Cuba still exist with Catholics running around while the Soviet Union/Yugoslavia/socialist Albania/socialist Romania are no more.
This is pretty conclusive that state atheism is at best not very important and at worst detrimental to the longevity of the socialist project.
Trying to claim Castro and Mao for your "State atheism is bad actually" argument is farcical.
Noted liches Castro and Mao who still rule their countries from beyond the grave.
Keld is wrong here, but the Catholics as a political force are definitely a detriment to Cuba currently. There does need to be more of a crackdown on reactionary institutions, just not summary execution of the clergy.