A very small selection of grassroots Christian initiatives, inspired by this Killing Joke sleeve.
Archbishop Pio Laghi with Argentinian dictator Jorge Rafael Videla in the 1970s.
Pope John Paul II with Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 1987.
Luteran Bishop Ludwig Müller at the National Synod in Wittenburg, 1933.
Spanish dictator Gen.Francisco Franco with Cardinal Tedeschini in 1952.
Benito Mussolini with the Vatican's top hierarchy signing the Lateran Treaty, 1929.
Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo celebrates Adolf Hitler's birthday, 1939.
26 comments:
Such things go hand in hand.
What a shame you didn't stick some pics of famous atheist do-gooders such as Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung or Mao Tse Tung.
Oh you idiot patriot, I seriously think Claude let's your comments through to show us all how stupid racists really are.
Atheism is not a religion you dolt, although I doubt you grasp this at all and all of those people you name all utilised religious imagery and context in order to push their agendas, they did not practice atheism, or to be clear, atheism was not responsible for their crimes; whereas religious hypocrisy is as old as time.
You sir, are a terrible idiot.
*yawn at the patriot* The whole 'Stalin were atheists and look how shit they were!' angle is a load of rubbish. All those people you mention are hardly atheists, they cast themselves as a god for people to obey and worship, with the ruling Party as the church. They're about as close to what atheism means as Pope Benedict is to what Christianity means.
You call me an idiot, Hoffy? Take a look in the mirror. It'll turn into a magnifying glass.
The reason why your mates Stalin, Lenin etc rejected religion was that they saw it as 'the opiate of the people'.
They wanted to rid the world of religion to such an extent that they levelled hundreds of churches and persecuted and killed thousands of nuns and priests.
Both Stalin and Lenin believed that religion was an opiate that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist society.
That was done in the name of their ideology. Atheism was integral to that.
They didn't say 'we are atheists but you can do what you want'.
They said 'we are atheists, we think we know better than you, we hate the fact that you are religious and either you put up or we'll exterminate you'.
The fact that you can't see any of that shows you are an absolute prat.
"patriot",
you really are one.
a) This post was about the Roman Catholic church.
I know you specialise in Whataboutery, but if I start listing in one go all the crimes and the atrocities committed by all other organised religions and atheists alike I think I may actually exceed my allocated online space.
b) Though I'm agnostic myself, I come from a Roman Catholic family so Catholic hypocrisy is something that has always struck a chord with me.
c) All the dictators you mentioned belong to history. Completely. Either they died a long time ago or are completely discredited. This is not the case for the Vatican. They're still extremely powerful, they still like to come across as pious and pure and they are still actively sticking their nose into the internal affairs of sovereign states. Just look at the Pope's recent crap about LGBT equality in the UK or the Vatican's role in both Italian and Spanish politics.
d) Whils people like me and, I assume, both Charlie and Daniel, would have no probs saying that Stalin & Co's atrocities were appalling, you just simply cannot do the same with fascist murderers and their white robe-wearing supporters.
claude,
as for your point d)...do you though? Do you lot really find Pol Pot and Stalin the headcase 'appalling', like you claim?
Because judging by the gobby way those muppets here replied it's as if they'd just been kicked in the nadds.
Indeed Charlie, yawn at the patriot, it is a waste of time arguing tired old ideas that have been utilised by racists and other idiots for what feels like ages.
You are trolling patriot and when called out on it you get all uppity about how we've responded to you, when your whole point is to troll, is to get a rise out of people as you hide behind your fake identity and the Aston Villa homepage, whilst calling yourself a patriot.
What kind of aim is that you sad cretin? To get a rise out of people by talking utter horse shit, backed up with no facts, no evidence and only a rudimentary history of anything?
First of all you use the word 'mates' which once again illustrates the narrow band of your concentrated thinking, you poor limited human, then you expose your own deep-set ignorance of what the regimes of the people you mention actually were and how they worked, esp. in relation to atheism.
You have such a limited capability for grasping things that exist out of your tiny sphere of knowledge that when it does move into areas such as this post by Claude, you cannot help but trot out the aforementioned tired old drivel, spieled by many idiots before you and no doubt many after.
The kost damning thing 'patriot' is that when Claude kindly rebuts your useless assumptions, all you can muster is to mark out the last one and substitute your opinion (often confused with fact) instead of actual evidence based thought.
I wonder if you come here only to be made to feel humble as your limitations are cruelly exposed?
Ha ha!!!
Look how you get your undies in a bundle, you sorry excuse of a 'liberal'.
Let me remind you, Paul Rutherford secret brother, that you were the one calling me a racist in the first place.
You called me a racist and cussed purely coz I dissed mass-murderers such as Stalin.
You obviously dont like that. The proof is in the fact that liberal Hoffy gets so ticked off when Stalin is ramed on.
Just admit it, you nerd. You screwed up when you said murderers like Stalin had nothing to do with atheism.
Alleged patriot:
Is that the best you have?
You not only make a terrible error in presuming you know whether my 'undies are in a bundle', as you delightfully put it, I'm guessing that the fact your terrible ideas are being taken apart with such ease must equate, in your small world, to the aforementioned undies.
What a simple life you lead.
I call you a racist patriot based on the tripe you often pass as comment here, never mind your ridiculous non de plume, full of impotent portent as it is. Add to that your deep-set loathing of anything remotely left-wing, which you often mis-understand in such a profound manner I find it quite endearing, we have a clear picture of a bigoted divot.
And I hate to break it to you but Stalin's reputation was already long in tatters before you dissed him, you can insult Stalin all you want, it is your mis-understanding of the role of atheism in all of those regimes that illustrates your copious stupidity.
And what makes it worse is, you make no effort to engage here with the rebuttals that have been put your way, you just reduce this argument to ever decreasing circles.
As Claude pointed out, you presume to know people when clearly you have the interpersonal skills of small child, so perhaps I should speak to you as such and you'll get it?
NO ONE HERE LIKES STALIN AT ALL BOY, INCLUDING ME.
And to be clear with you child, Stalin's acts were not inspired by atheism, they stemmed from his own personality cult and twisted view of the world but alas, I think such sentences are too long and complex for your minimal brain.
Best if you go home now and play with your toys.
What a good debate! It is a fair point however that during the twentieth century the big killers were atheist ideologies. Communism in both the Soviet form and its racialised German form National Socialism. In fact Hitler's SS required its members to recant their Christianity. The Nazis if anything were pagan.
Paul, I have a serious problem with the idea of atheist ideologies as a term of description for the workings of Stalin and Hitler, what they did to humans and what horrors they held as a world view where far removed form anything to do with atheism.
I think it best, when referring to both of those totalitarian regimes, to leave religion or the lack of it, out of it; as we would Hitler's vegetarianism and his love of dogs; dog lovers and vegetarians are not automatically good anti-Semites.
Seriously now.
Enough of the constant diversion.
We're not talking about Stalin here. We all know Stalin was an utter cunt. OK?
That said...What do people think of the Vatican's approach to far-right politics throughout the 20th century from Mussolini to Pinochet?
PS. Paul: True, the Nazi had roots in paganism. But very soon, the Church started courting them. Similarly, with Mussolini, the Vatican simply went along with it until 1929 and then endorsed it. There is a vast literature of all the Vatican high cadres in the 1930s who became gradually more outspoken in their support for both Mussolini and Hitler.
You lot are just an immensely rude and intolerant bunch.
But I'm going to ignore the poor man's Freddie Mercury's criticism (Hoffy's), Charlie's bulls and Claude's nonsense and tell you what I really think.
The left can't forgive Pinochet for defeating communism and successfully transforming Chile into a model free market economy. The harsh truth is that without Salvador Allende there would have been no Pinochet. The former was elected in 1970 with a bare majority - slightly more than a third of the popular vote.
Allende wwas remarkably ignorant, fatuous and weak. He thought of himself as both a democrat and a Marxist, and professed to see no particular contradiction between the two. The Cubans had already become well ensconced in Chile, maintaining a large military mission and supplying armaments to the Communist forces. The same thing happened also in Nicaragua. There is no doubt that the Cubans were only waiting for the time when their secret police experts could start helping the Chileans to construct the standard KGB-style apparatus for securing all the vital sectors of the state and for initiating a campaign of terror against the population in order to bring it into complete submission.
Expropriation and looting of property 'in the name of the state' was rapidly dismantling the free-market economic system. The currency of the country was debased. The agricultural sector of the economy was destroyed, causing food shortages. Unemployment, dislocation, impoverishment by state-sponsored robbery, the rise of a black market. All the standard methods for the material and moral destruction of the "bourgeois" society were at work in Chile in 1972 and 1973. Pinochet rescued the country from disaster.
Similarly, the alternative to Mussolini was the Communists who around 1921 were busy occupying every factory in Italy causing civil unrest and panic. The truth is, Mussolini was loved in Italy.
In Spain, Franco rescued the country from the onslaught of anarchists and communists setting churches alight and slaughtering the clergy - talking of Atheism..., eh DFG?
I'm not defending the way each of those later descended into dictatorships as they later did. I'm just saying the alternative would have been like Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro or Kim Il Sung.
Well, I'm rather enjoying the excellent Victorian-style insults, really.
Especially Divot and the instant classic 'Undies in a bundle'!
'The harsh truth is that without Salvador Allende there would have been no Pinochet.'
Rather omitting the CIA there aren't we?
As for the rest of your Pinochet defence, it's now clear we have Margaret Thatcher herself on the boards!
Okay, back on topic Claude, you're surely correct that some right wing authoritarian regimes operated with the connivance of the Catholic Church. In fact I would go further and say that during the Second World War the Pope (can't remember which one) may even have colluded in the killing of Jews. A far more serious allegation perhaps you know more about it than me. Daniel, I'm not suggesting that Atheism was responsible for Nazi or Soviet crimes. What I'm stating is that both regimes and particularly the Soviet one were officially Atheist. The Soviet one went to great lengths to suppress the Orthodox Church. The Nazis opted for an accommodation with the Churches, although they did murder brave figures who opposed them like Dietrich Bonheoffer. In fact Bonheoffer is one Christian from that period who is worthy of being called a martyr.
Alleged Patriot:
You are projecting and I think you'll find it is you who is rude and intolerant and comes here with the sole reason to troll, you have no affiliation with the politics of this blog, every time you come here you come to smear, to insult; thus to troll.
I get the feeling that your silly ideas being taken apart has got to you, normally you leave one dumb comment and then go away but this time, you are a repeat offender, for all your projections of others getting their 'undies in a bundle' you clearly fit that description.
"But I'm going to ignore the poor man's Freddie Mercury's criticism (Hoffy's), Charlie's bulls and Claude's nonsense and tell you what I really think."
In other words, you're going to duck the issues put to you, ignore the questions and counter arguments and plough a lone furrow of ad hominem and poorly thought out concepts that are mere opinions and conjecture with no evidence whatsoever for your mewlings.
You sir are a coward and an idiot.
It takes Charlie all of 4 lines to dismiss your harebrained take on the horrors of Chile and in regurgitating such a worn out take on events there, you only confirm our fears that you are a cretin.
It has been a while since I've seen such human rights abuses dismissed in such a glib and ineffective way.
Then I realised something Alleged Patriot, I realised that your lengthy spiel on Chile did not read like you, it was too well constructed and put together, even if it was wrong and then I found itright here. You'd stolen the text and attributed it to yourself.
So to coward and idiot we can now add plagiarist thief.
Paul:
I dispute that Nazi Germany was officially atheist, it used religious imagery, was headed by a a lapsed Catholic and utilised connections with the Church to affect its aims.
Crucially, atheism has nothing to do with what the regmes carried out, you could eqaully say that the vast majority of Nazi's were Germans, thus Germans are inherently leaning towards acts of genocide and atrocities.
Being German and/or atheist is disconnected from the acts and polices of the Nazi Party.
Stalinism with its even greater personality cult is not atheist at all for me, although it pretend to be such, it was a religion of the cause, it had replaced the Gods of the Church with the Gods of the party and thus was not atheist in reality.
Fantastic work, Daniel!
Fair play for serving "patriot" a public online humiliation.
Incidentally, I did think his "analysis" of Chile and Pinochet didn't sound quite like him.
He has been horribly caught out, I only hope now he takes his beats and buggers off.
Oooooooooooh the poor man's Tom Selleck and his uppity claque here are so conceited.
So what that I referred to some online resources? What you trying to prove?
Interesting how you go all barryboom over a PARTIAL cut &paste but you're not able to knock together half a decent rebuttal to my point.
The 'men of the people' (the haughty stuck-up left wingers) like to get their kicks from sneering at other people's lack of fancy she-she-la-la grammar and Hoffy Selleck's attitude and his bootlickers bitching about 'public humiliation' (not) prove what I mean.
You are the reasons why this country's going to the dogs.
Take my advice, Hoffy. Spend less time trying to look like Bruce Grobbelaar's younger brother and instead of googling my stuff, google what Pol Pot did to religious people. It'll do you some good.
Alleged Patriot:
Wow, you have got some serious nerve to come back here when you got caught plagiarising someone else's argument. An argument that is not only irrelevant to the discussion at hand but the tone of which was so clearly not what you are not capable of writing. You are now backtracking, in front of everyone, trying to say what is wrong with referring to online sources, trouble is you didn't refer you troll, you passed it off as your own and you still are with phrases such as 'my point'. It's not yours, you stole it wholesale to back up your irrelevant point there because you just do not know when to quit a debate you're losing horribly.
Seriously, go away before this gets worse for you, you've been found out.
And yet you still come back? With the nerve to say the words you stole have not been dealt with when you have constantly ducked anything put to you with phrases such as: "I'm going to ignore..."
All you've got is worn-out moustache based insults, which is all fine and dandy coming from an anonymous Internet bitch, too scared to put any name or face to what nonsense they spiel and, well, more personal attacks.
Is that it?
Is that all you've got weakling?
I would suggest that is the reason the country is going to the dogs (which it isn't BTW but that's for another discussion), thick, myopic idiots like you; emptying your tired,third-hand ideas (cut and paste from the Internet) to piss and moan about the state the country is in, blaming everyone but yourself.
Stupidity is the enemy of this country, not knowledge, go away and educate yourself rather than all this anti-intelectual posturing, you're scared of knowledge because it will confound your narrow minded views.
Now be a good boy, read some books and stop plagiarising stuff from the Internet you terrible troll. I am honestly embarrassed for you, esp. as you insist on coming back and digging the hole you're int o new horrible depths.
Patriot: There's an enormous difference between 'referring' to a text and copy and bloody pasting whole chunks of it just because your brains too small to put together a rational argument of your own. Not to mention that what you pasted, you silly billy, had fuck all to do with the article.
You have the debating style of a six year old who's just been pushed off a swing.
Go and do one.
Patriot, what an utter moron you are.
I feel for you. You must have felt so embarrassed when Daniel put your moronity on view.
To the point, which is actually a really interesting one.
In my view the problem is that a religious group such as the Catholic church cannot simply get away with saying that people like Pinochet or Franco were necessary because Allende may have introduced socialism into Chile.
It just doesn't stand. You cannot preach peace and forgiveness and "turn the other cheek" and then instead of the cheek you turn a blind eye to torture, state-sponsored kidnappings and tyranny.
I frown upon Maggie Thatcher praising Pinochet. It's crap, but at least it's legitimate. She was a(terrible) politician, not a priest.
But for the Vatican to prop up vile regimes so brazenly and then beat their chest on a Sunday, to me, that is the biggest most revolting piece of hypocrisy of the entire 20th century.
'But for the Vatican to prop up vile regimes so brazenly and then beat their chest on a Sunday, to me, that is the biggest most revolting piece of hypocrisy of the entire 20th century.'
Quite right Stan that was disgusting. But you cannot say that is all that Christianity was in the twentieth century. Plus for hypocrisy look at Marxist/Leninism and the regimes it spawned, to quote Orwell 'all animals are equal, only some animals are more equal than others'. There have been Christian figures including those from the Catholic Church who have campaigned for human rights and against oppression.
Daniel, your last point Re the Soviet Union was a well articulated one but it may have missed the point. You said the Soviet regime was not atheist but then actually described an atheist regime and how it worked. How it would substitute the worship of God or Gods for the worship of the regime. I'm paraphrasing you of course and I suppose we're splitting hairs. But whilst religious regimes have been frequently vile, secular or atheist regimes have presided over mass imprisonments and genocides as well. In fact they did much more of that in the twentieth century. I'll concede your point about the Nazis. Upon reflection it's a sad fact that the German Soldiers who committed genocide in Russia, wore 'Gott mitt Uns' on their belt buckles.
Send those wonderful photos to Wikipedia Commons, please!
Post a Comment