You can’t be a Christian and an atheist at the same time. BLM describes itself as explicitly atheist (and neo-Marxist). Fundamentally incompatible world views. https://t.co/4ZjT0vcy4s— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 25, 2020
I googled my question Does BLM describe itself as explicitly atheist? I'm not seeing that. Is this just an inference from the idea that it's Marxist? The phrase "explicitly atheist" should be based on more than an inference. And it's an inference on an inference on an inference if we have to infer that Black Lives Matter is Marxist and to be Marxist is to be an atheist.
I googled Is Black Lives Matter explicitly Marxist and I'm not getting a clear answer that it's Marxist, so my working assumption is that the group is not explicitly Marxist.
It does seem to be the case that 2 of the founders have described themselves as "trained Marxists." Here's an editorial from a month ago in The Washington Times, "The matter of Marxism: Black Lives Matter is rooted in a soulless ideology" that reports the quotes and makes some inferences:
In comments uncovered and reprinted in The National Pulse, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors reveals that she and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza are followers of an ideology that could not be more foreign to the American way: “We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular, we’re trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on ideological theories.”
Ms. Cullors is unapologetic in describing Black Lives Matter founders as “trained Marxists,” so it’s worth examining the words that inspire their deeds. Marxism, the 19th-century worldview systematized by German revolutionary Karl Marx, is fundamentally atheistic. It subscribes to a theory that matter — physical stuff — comprises the fundamental reality of human existence. The transcendent experiences of the human heart are regarded as nothing more than biochemistry — fantasies of brain function. Stuff, whether molecule or man, is just soulless stuff. In short, matter doesn’t really matter.
Clearly, Marxism stands in diametric opposition to the Judeo-Christian foundation of America, which views each person as infused with a spirit unbounded by time and space, a manifestation of an omnipotent Creator....
Americans watching the Black Lives Matter demonstrations on TV have been witnessing the handiwork of “trained Marxists” practicing the dialectic. The hair-trigger harpies screaming obscenities in the faces of police officers attempting to keep the peace, the masked bullies yanking down statues of historical figures, the hooded guerrillas hurling Molotov cocktails — all are putting Marxist ideology into action.
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139 comments:
BLM suffers from bad economics, not atheism.
Harold Bloom, I would say, was an atheist but a great appreciator of religion (except Jehovah's Witnesses).
Levinas sees God as derivative from ethics, not vice versa, so he's not believing either.
Derrida said that only atheists can pray. Believers are just ordering pizza when the pray. In prayer you can't know who you are addressing if anything.
36. And we do here what we do in a host of similar cases: because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed, for example, to the colour), we say that a spiritual (mental, intellectual) activity corresponds to these words.
Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, would should like to say, is a spirit.
- Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
"Atheists Launch No Lives Matter Movement"
Justify racism by standing on the corps of Christ, check.
"I googled my question Does BLM describe itself as explicitly atheist? I'm not seeing that."
There's Google and then there's the recent vandalism of Catholic churches.
Marxism is a branch of atheism. "Atheism" is a theologian's word. "Materialism" is a philosopher's word for the same thing. When Marx and Engels explored dialectical materialism, they were exploring how people interacted in the absence of God. And they will happily kill every one of us, because why not?
Communists are 100% anti-Christian. So are Satanists following Crowley’s OTO witchcraft cult that the BLM Owners seem to celebrate in Spirit Cooking and child sacrifices. Makes you miss Christianity.
I don't know how many times I have to bring up the motte-and-bailey argument/fallacy, but I'll bring it up again. The BLM organization is extreme by pretty much any measure that does not include North Korea, and I suspect the Norks would balk at some of the positions the BLM leaders communicate when the mask comes off. BLM is whatever you want it to be apparently - even I support some of the moderate versions of it - but at the end is totalitarianism. There is no way to support "Defund the Police" without explicitly having that as your end goal. The point is to remove law and order so as to fill the vacuum when the inevitable disaster results.
There is a large number of people and organizations that think they can, to use the metaphor, ride the tiger and all will work out well for them. Maybe they are right, but it is extremely foolish. History is littered with the failures who were eaten by the revolutions they championed for cynical reasons.
How quickly we went from "Kneeling during the national anthem is brave dissent!" to "Not kneeling during the national anthem is racist refusal to join in your peers' support for this holy cause!"
"Black Lives Matter is unapologetically queer, black, multiracial, feminist, digital, atheist or at least non-denominational, and young," said Travis Gosa, social science professor in Africana studies at Cornell University and editor of the upcoming book Remixing Change: Hip Hop and Obama.
Black lives matter. Of course they do. I never thought differently.
This whole kneel-deal with major sports, is morphing into something cult-like. Some sort of forced woke virtue signaling BS. An obsessive need to force certain rituals, lectures and symbols, and group-conformity. Symbols that mean different things to different people and therefore, the forced capitulation is in itself, a form of fascism.
It's almost new age crap? right?
the hypocrisy.
right after the George Floyd murder, I recall some cops kneeling before a mostly black crowd and I was fine with it. I thought it was a nice show of 'hey -= we get you, and you don't deserve bad cops - we serve the public and that means everyone,and hey - we are not all bad cops. We get you and we are going to serve all of you.'
But no no no - this is now about a pack of over-paid sports gods/chi-com dirty money who want to force us to kneel before zod. the message that black lives matters is all but gone.
Now it's Oprah+ rich celebrity sports + white left Marxism.
Bad religion.
Does Marxism need to be atheistic? No. However, just about every implementation of it has been, ranging from semi-tolerant but hostile to religion to fanatically atheistic. The problem with Marxism is that it consolidates almost every source of power - the military, the police, the courts, the media, the schools, the economy - into the government except for religion. Religion becomes the main (and only) internal rival of the communist, so it needs to be dealt with or else there will always be a counterculture. As you may have noticed, communism never actually works, so if it cannot control the population it will fall apart quickly, which can only be countered by making it so the population has no alternatives. In theory, this could be done by co-opting a religion as the official communist state religion, but they find that the established religions rarely are interested in cooperating with their evil. Atheism, not being organized in any real sense, is much more malleable.
If someone claims to be a Marxist, you must assume they are also atheistic until proven otherwise. The non-atheist Marxist is as rare as unicorns.
let's see if i can try verbal venn diagram)
BLM == Explicitly Opposed to:
EVERYTHING that America stands for
(that's the big circle)
GOD is something that america stands for (you might not believe in GOD, but; America sure does)
(that's a little circle inside the big circle)
A virus is not a virus if it can hide in cells. T cells need to get twitter alert.
BLM is, as it currently stands, a racist organization. A corollary is that BLM supporters are themselves racist. By "racist" I mean serving to promote one race above all others. Remember the 2016 Dem primary when the question was posit: All lives Matter or Black Lives Matter? The only acceptable answer was that only the Black Lives Matter.
RNB said...
How quickly we went from "Kneeling during the national anthem is brave dissent!" to "Not kneeling during the national anthem is racist refusal to join in your peers' support for this holy cause!"
yes but! you missed a step
How quickly we went from "Tim Tebow is explicitly FORBIDDEN from kneeling on the field"
to
Colon Kappering is EXPLICITLY ALLOWED to kneel
to
Everyone MUST KNEEL
. In short, matter doesn’t really matter.
Wait, I thought matter was all that mattered, if you're a materialist.
"I googled" there's the problem.
Not only is Marxism atheist, but the whole worldview of scientific naturalism given to us from the Enlightenment is too. This is the great struggle of modern western man and woman, to find meaning again in a world devoid of God.
In the middle ages, people built giant stone cathedrals because God mattered to them. The cathedrals we build today are giant financial buildings or sprawling medical centers. Because money and bodily health are what matter to us now in a society where God is absent.
you will be forced into woke rituals and state-sponsored religiosity.
Mega-sports will help you along. they care.
You racists.
BLM's sister website, M4BL, describes the Black Lives Matter movement explicitly as "anti-capitalist." If you go back through the Wayback Machine to read the blog posts on the earlier iterations of the BLM websites, it's pretty clear that to the extent any of them are interested in religion, they would like to "transform" churches that adhere to conservative/traditional theology into embracing Marxist liberation theology.
I care not a whit how BLM might modify its website after interviews with two of their founders surface in which they describe themselves as Marxists. They and their anti-nuclear-family and defund-the-police schtick aren't worthy of attention. Protest peacefully all you want, but that doesn't require me to watch a bunch of millionaires who, after struggling with billionaires, want to take advantage of TV cameras to push their self-righteous, virtue-signaling "protests." And by the way, if kneeling wasn't about the flag or the anthem, then they'd kneel in the locker room instead of when the anthem was played and the flag was raised. The cancel culture can go full circle, and I'm going to get my licks in.
If the rules say no one born before 1990 can be trusted, does it explicitly say 35 years cannot be trusted? I think so. Some inference is appropriate.
I suppose some of the Marxists who founded and run BLM could see themselves as "Christian Marxists." The Left has sort of made an art form of denial and self-delusion, and so can turn a blind eye to Granddaddy Karl's racism, and the Religious Left can gloss over "Thou Shalt Not Steal" and "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Goods." If you can convince yourself, despite all history (especially modern history) and economics, that the State is your best friend, you can convince yourself of anything.
Strange Althouse is looking to Sullivan for clear and logical thinking.
Sullivan is emotional, petty and a drama queen.
One thing that BLM is not is Christian. Which distinguishes itself from historical personages such as MLK.
There are essential components of Christianity that are anathema to BLM, namely, forgiveness and reconciliation.
“Derrida said that only atheists can pray. Believers are just ordering pizza when the pray. In prayer you can't know who you are addressing if anything.”
Derrida never read “The Cloud of Unknowing”?! That’s pretty basic.
When I see one kneeler on the screen I change the channel.
So, did they actually play in the field with the face diapers on?
When I see one kneeler on the screen I change the channel.
Why would you imagine that you would get any kind of accurate accumulation of responses from Google? Once it explicitly dropped the "don't be evil" motto they became just what you would expect from their doing so, and their whole purpose is to obfuscate. On any issue of importance Google will lead you to nothing and to nowhere.
Isn't it human nature to reject the action when someone is forcing you to do it?
The reason for the force vanishes and the entire subject becomes "FORCE".
Resist.
As with so many of these groups, BLM is not explicitly anything. It’s not a formal organization, it’s a banner under which different sorts of people gather. Like the Tea Party, nobody speaks for it because you’re in it if you say you’re in it and nobody runs it, nobody keeps membership rolls or minutes or a platform.
“Derrida said that only atheists can pray. Believers are just ordering pizza when the pray. In prayer you can't know who you are addressing if anything.”
Prayer is not us speaking to God so much as it is us responding to God, who has already taken the initiative of reaching out to us. That is, prayer is us answering the phone, not us making the call.
And, a lot of good prayer consists in shutting the hell up and letting God get a word in edgewise.
the other message going on is: "IF YOU DON'T CONFORM - WE WILL DESTROY YOU."
That's a nice message.
doncha think?
At the fall of the Soviet Union, many Soviets came to believe that one of the reasons for its crumbling within, with corruption, alcoholism, and low motivated workers was caused by a spiritual deficit. After the collapse many decided that environmentalism would be the spiritual framework they would build the new socialism around. Gorbachev's Gorbachev Foundation" that he immediately formed, promoted a "New Spirituality" (actually not new) based on environmentalism. He also founded the Green Cross International. I think his website still promotes this. So when the American Socialists promote the "Green New Deal", they are not just wishing to create a global welfare system, they are also planting the foundation for their "New Spirituality".
I suppose only professional atheists (like Richard Dawkins) could be considered "explicitly atheistic." Marx proclaimed that religion is the opiate of the people, which seems about as explicit as any political organizer is willing to be. But of course if liberal Christians or Jews or Muslims (or Buddhists to include a nontheistic religion) want to consider themselves Marxists, no political organizers will kick them out as long as they useful to the cause.
But any person involved in a genuine spiritual path is never going to be confused as to the utter incompatibility of Marxist materialism with his or her view of life's meaning.
Althouse falls for the motte-and-bailey.
Black lives matter is true.
That would be just as true for all lives.
However "Black Lives Matter" is a Marxist organization dedicated to the overthrow of America.
That they share a name is the confusing point.
And that is the point of the motte-and-bailey.
I can't believe it
The way you look sometimes
Like a trampled flag
on a city street
Oh yeah
And I don't want it
The things you're offering me
Symbolized barcode,
Quick I.D
Oh yeah
Bad Religion-21st Century Digital Boi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYApdmp6je8
The Christian god comprises three gods mysteriously combined into one. You logically wouldn't have to believe in two of them in order to be a Christian. Furthermore, you wouldn't have to believe in the divinity of Jesus, or believe a single word of the Bible or of St Paul, who invented Christianity, to be a Christian. Buddhists can worship Buddha without confusing him with a Divinity, and a Christian could likewise be someone who esteems Jesus as a mere man who considered himself a lifelong Jew and had the childhood genital mutilation to prove it.
Once you come to realize that you don't have to trust a single word of St Paul or the Bible, you can call yourself a Christian -- meaning Jesus-fan -- if you feel like it. Moreover, all Muslims and Christians are atheists: being "mono-theists," they disbelieve in all gods but their own; our so-called Atheists just believe in one god fewer than they all do.
Any quote from Derrida simply reinforces his essential fraudulence. An atheist has nothing to pray to, and hence by definition cannot pray. An agnostic, of course, can pray to Dog or anything he happens to feel might be Out There... that's just Pascal's Wager ... but any "atheist" who prays is simply not an atheist at all, just someone pretending for the imagined cachet of his denial.
The non-atheist Marxist is as rare as unicorns.
That association, statistically somewhat true, for liberalism if not actual Marxism, has always embarrassed me; I'd call my politics something like "right-wing libertarian", namely the opposite of Marxism, and that seems to be true of my (small non-random sample of) atheist/agnostic friends. IOW, I think it's fairly common that atheists are not economic idiots.
A movement that wants to maximize its appeal will define itself by the awful thing it's against. Hence, "antiracism" is the banner in this case. There's no point in the vanguard saying what it actually hopes to achieve, since that would only splinter the movement. Better to let the foot soldiers imagine that what they want is what the leadership wants.
Given that, it's remarkable that some of the top leaders of BLM are happy to declare themselves marxists. I guess that tells us how comfortable with marxism the universities have made their students.
Marxism cannot allow other modes of power.
That is why "Black Lives Matter" is against religion.
And the traditional nuclear family.
All Leftist Collectivists - from Socialists to Fascists to Communists - hate competing sources of power.
Nothin outside the state, after all.
Meanwhile, I wish "Black Lives Matter" would help reduce the number of black victims of all crime sources, in an effort to prove black lives, in fact, matter.
Marxist = atheist. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Howard: "Justify racism by standing on the corps of Christ, check."
Howard and his Howard Heroe's will tolerate no gods before their marxist secular gods.
Just a few days back Howard was extolling the virtues of the marxist leftists in the Spanish Civil War who murdered thousands of priests and nuns (yes, thousands and yes, nuns) and gleefully burned down churches.
It is safe to assume that was the feature of leftist actions during the Spanish Civil War that Howard most respects as he was four square in favor of burning St Johns Church in Lafayette Square as well.
Howard: "Justify racism by standing on the corps of Christ, check."
7/25/20, 12:09 PM
RNB: "How quickly we went from "Kneeling during the national anthem is brave dissent!" to "Not kneeling during the national anthem is racist refusal to join in your peers' support for this holy cause!"
7/25/20, 12:20 PM
Perfect juxtaposition.
I won't be surprised if BLM demands that this white boy change his name.
To heck with BLM, the organization.
Most people using the phrase "Black lives matter" are not using the proper name in reference to the organization, but using it as a statement, and most likely know nothing of the organization and its Marxist leanings.
The BLM organization itself gets most of its press from people using them as an excuse to dismiss all attempts at positive change.
They are a small group that serve as living, breathing strawmen in order to justify the status quo.
On the internet it always devolves to the Nazis...but the common refrain is how easily people fell for it early on before they got rolling. How could people be so stupid to not see it when they were telling you what they were going to do?
Feels like that today....
2 Peter 2:22 addresses this situation pretty well, for something written so long ago:
“But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”
Those crazy kids and their Marxism, atheism, violent protests! Pity the kids haven't learned about this craptastic ideology from the last time around, in the 1960s US, or everywhere else it has happened.
Tell me again why anyone should take Bum Lives Matter seriously. As for kneeling, subjects kneel, citizens don't.
BLM is incompatible with Judaism and Christianity:
The First of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3):
"Thou shalt not have any other gods before me."
The Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22):
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
"I'm not getting a clear answer that it's Marxist, so my working assumption is that the group is not explicitly Marxist."
They are keeping it just vague enough to give nice liberal women plausible deniability, so the fellow travelers can wallow in their working assumptions or express solidarity, until the hammer comes down good and hard.
"fellow travelers"
Not saying Althouse is a fellow traveler, of course.
Some, select Black Lives Matter is not Christian. It is explicitly Marxist (e.g. diversity dogma), which implies an atheist faith. They are also notably an activist sect in the Progressive Church with a Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic religion. #BabyLivesMatter
(you might not believe in GOD, but; America sure does
and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them
Yeah, we do. implicitly, or explicitly.
Ann:
Use your super lawyer and law prof research skills and you'll quickly conclude that BLM, Inc. is a Marxist and revolutionary group.
After the global warming scam, BLM has pulled off the second greatest scam in US history. The BLM execs must sit around their clubhouse drinking Dom Perignon and eating beluga and laugh their asses off all day. "I can't believe these dumb honkeys are falling for this shit."
One of the best courses I took at Creighton was about the French Revolution. I never thought I'd see nearly the same thing happen in the US.
In prayer you can't know who you are addressing if anything.
Thus the logical domain "faith." That said, we should do as the Jews and Christians do, and recognize a separation of logical domains, and religious (i.e. moral) philosophy should be judged, not by its philosopher, but by its principles.
If you go to BLM' webiste you wont' find one word about Religion or Christianity. What you'll find is rhetoric very similar to that of the American Communist Party. Here's what CPUSA says about BLM:
The tragic video of the callous murder of George Floyd, and linking it with Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner, has given birth to this new movement. We extend our congratulations, solidarity, and support.
Among its just demands are:
Defund the police: a popular demand for police departments not to be the largest item on municipal and state budgets;
Set federal standards for police behavior;
Establish local civilian-run police accountability boards with the right to discipline, fire, and prosecute police misconduct;
Ban choke holds and strangulation holds;
Pass a bill to make public the records of police brutality and use of lethal force;
Trump must resign!
Let’s turn the marches in the streets to marches to the ballot box in November and beyond! Below, find our take on the Black Lives Matter struggle in New York and other cities. We look forward to your comments and feedback!
I agree that calling BLM explicitly "Marxist" or "atheist" is unproven. But why get upset at such niceties when Trump is called a Hitler or a Nazi by supposedly mainstream journalists!
If you go to BLM' webiste you wont' find one word about Religion or Christianity. What you'll find is rhetoric very similar to that of the American Communist Party. Here's what CPUSA says about BLM:
The tragic video of the callous murder of George Floyd, and linking it with Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner, has given birth to this new movement. We extend our congratulations, solidarity, and support.
Among its just demands are:
Defund the police: a popular demand for police departments not to be the largest item on municipal and state budgets;
Set federal standards for police behavior;
Establish local civilian-run police accountability boards with the right to discipline, fire, and prosecute police misconduct;
Ban choke holds and strangulation holds;
Pass a bill to make public the records of police brutality and use of lethal force;
Trump must resign!
Let’s turn the marches in the streets to marches to the ballot box in November and beyond! Below, find our take on the Black Lives Matter struggle in New York and other cities. We look forward to your comments and feedback!
I agree that calling BLM explicitly "Marxist" or "atheist" is unproven. But why get upset at such niceties when Trump is called a Hitler or a Nazi by supposedly mainstream journalists!
Plenty of cultural Catholics who are really atheist. Like the entire notre dame theology faculty.
VDH:
" What should we expect then if Biden wins and either steps down or more or less is left as a diminished figurehead controlled by the hard Left?
First, there is one theme that unites “the Squad,” Black Lives Matter, the globalist technocracy, and the international Left: unapologetic anti-Semitism. We will see overt anti-Semitism in a way this country has not seen since the early 20th century, all couched in ideological and politically correct attacks on “Zionists” and “the rich” and “Wall Street”—and why Israel has no business being a “Jewish state.”
It has already begun with an NFL player voicing Hitlerian tropes and praising Louis Farrakhan, and then being seconded by an array of rappers, woke Black Lives Matter activists and “Free Palestine” demonstrations. To smear “the Jews” no longer is grounds for an immediate and expected apology, but more “So what are you going to do about it?” Anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within the DNA of the BLM movement—and professional sports as well, as we saw recently from the warnings of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Charles Barkley.
“Eat the rich” sloganeering and plans for a wealth tax, and jacking up capital gains and income tax rates, all seem like they are aimed at the super-rich. But don’t think weaponizing the tax code, the government bureaucracies, and the culture itself will do much to the immense wealth of Jeff Bezos, the heirs to Steve Jobs, the Google zillionaires, George Soros, the Walmart fortunes, the lesser tech billionaires, the Facebook clan, or Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. None of them will be touched. "
Kneel before God, before your wife, and no one else.
That said, bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.
The problem is the MSM -which marches in lockstep - is completely uninterested in telling us precisely WHO BLM/Antifa and the "peaceful protesters" are - or WHAT they believe. Or even what they're DOING.
If the Press couldn't interview some of the leaders and protesters, and inform us it'd be appreciated. But we know way they don't. It will hurt the liberal/left.
jimbino (ignorantly and foolishly) said...
The Christian god comprises three gods mysteriously combined into one.
No. Not at all.
Ann,
Please incorporate additional search engines into your research methods other than relying somely on Google.
Unless when you state that you 'googled' a topic you are using it as a verb.
Seriously though, alternative search methods need to become habit for more peolme in general.
In prayer you can't know who you are addressing if anything.
Thus the logical domain "faith."
The supposed separation between knowledge and reason on the one hand and faith on the other is another ignorant and foolish falsehood.
BLM = Making blacks poor and keeping blacks down and angry and stuffing leftwing coffers.
Do these rich assholes on the team do anything for black lives?
Nope.
Make rich leftwing assholes richer. (D)
So, 2 co-founders describe themselves as trained Marxists yet we're still confused whether they are Marxists. Oh the nuance.
Instead of telling me to look harder, just present the evidence you found.
Sullivan wrote as if something is obvious. I didn’t find it obvious, so I stopped there. If you want to rebut the presumption I made, come forward with some evidence.
the evidence is quite clear, in the founders statements in the backers of the tides foundation, what else do you need,
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/25/mike-parson-100-st-louis-murders-uncharged-kim-gardner-charges-mccloskeys/
"To heck with BLM, the organization."
You may not care about BLM the organization, but it cares about you.
Where do you think those billions of dollars are going?
"The supposed separation between knowledge and reason on the one hand and faith on the other is another ignorant and foolish falsehood."
If you could reason your way to God, there'd be no need for faith.
You can’t be a Christian and an atheist at the same time. BLM describes itself as explicitly atheist (and neo-Marxist). Fundamentally incompatible world views.
Oh great, that's an easy out. Think of all the conversation I can avoid.
Ann Althouse said...
Instead of telling me to look harder, just present the evidence you found.
Sullivan wrote
Quit cunting around about "evidence." What is evidence? By your standards, i.e. reportability in your favorite media, the fact that someone said it is evidence.
So Sullivan said it, tada, there's your evidence.
When you invoke "gimme evidence" you just mean "I don't want to accept that and you can't make me so there, nyah!" It's your cara dura. When has "evidence" ever really mattered to you?
Why don't you make yourself useful and reach out to AS and ask this question? I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. You'd learn that he knows who you are, maybe, which would make you giddy. I think that's why half the Left writes, to learn or affirm that they are known to the "right people."
"To be a Marxist is to be an atheist." Marxism posits that all of reality is material ,i.e., matter in motion. In other words, no thing exists that is not matter. The Marxist therefore must deny that dreams exist as well as time (the "ideas" of past, present and future). And so the only god or gods that a Marxist can believe in are gods made of matter. I don't recall Marx, or any other Marxist, discussing the role the ancient Greek Gods play in their philosophy. So, if Marxism denies the existence of material gods like those of the ancient Greeks, they are true atheists.
You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Maybe the BLM just needs to get laid more so it will leave the rest of us alone.
As for evidence and Google:
Megaera said...
Why would you imagine that you would get any kind of accurate accumulation of responses from Google?
Indeed. They said recently that Althouse blog didn't exist. Hope you enjoyed your stay in the memory hole, Ann. Be a good girl and conform, and maybe, just maybe, they won't put you back in.
BleachBit-and-Hammers said...
Isn't it human nature to reject the action when someone is forcing you to do it?
The reason for the force vanishes and the entire subject becomes "FORCE".
Resist.
7/25/20, 12:58 PM
Not even humans. My friend was having a dog training lesson and the trainer said, you can't give him any commands while you're tugging on the leash, because while that's happening he can't process, while that's happening, nothing is real.
“The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day,” Marx told Friedrich Engels in a letter from 1867.
Marx's erupting skin may have influenced writings
LONDON (Reuters) - Karl Marx, who complained of excruciating boils, actually suffered from a chronic skin disease with known psychological effects that may well have influenced his writings, a British expert said on Tuesday.
Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands — found mainly in the armpits and groin — become blocked and inflamed.
“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem,” said Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.
“This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”
@AA,
Instead of telling me to look harder, just present the evidence you found.
Or, how about a reason why BLM would be cagey about their atheism?
As I've posted here many times, the most religious ethnic group in the US are American blacks. Both J. Edgar Hoover & the Communist Party of the USA in the 50s & 60s agreed that communism should be able to make massive inroads into the American black community. The Commies tried really hard, and for years they trumpeted what moral martyrs they were to the cause of civil rights. But, honestly, they never got very far. You know why? Because the commies were atheists & the only institution that hadn't failed the blacks were the black churches. There was no way the blacks were givin' up on Jesus.
The modern Left knows this history. They know that if they are explicitly anti-religious they turn off a large fraction of the blacks & Latinos (the #2 most religious community). Thus, the Left is very cagey around these communities when they speak on matters of religion.
As a rule of thumb, if you find a source aimed at political or moral uplift of blacks that doesn't use explicitly religious language, then you've found a cache of lefties who are hiding their atheism. Who turns down such a ready-made & at-hand communal moral vocabulary unless they have to for fundamental ideological reasons?
Floyd was murdered by whoever supplied the meth and fentanyl, probably a chain of folks going back to China.
BLM is certainly not abiding by do unto others as you would have done unto you.
I’m an atheist, and anti-Marxist, anti-BLM, and anti-Anti1A. I’m against a lot of things.
I think the two young persons claiming to Trained Marxists need to take a refresher course.
YoungHegelian showed last week how you can trace the principles and positions of today's protest movements, including BLM, to post-structuralist and other latter marxist thinkers. One important point: it is important to BLM to pretend that their movement is an authentic expression of black consciousness, arising organically from the lived experience of black people in American, rather than some ideology descended from dead Europeans. So, uh, much like ANTIFA don't have membership cards, BLM activists and "thought leaders" take some pains to obscure the explicitly socialistic origins of their ideology and movement. But philosophers and social theorists sympathetic to and hostile to the post-modernist project have laid it out, and it goes a little like this: after the failures of early "purer" forms of Marxism, later socialist thinkers explicitly changed or expanded the ethical and epistemological standards of socialism. From perpetual class struggle to perpetual race struggle. From an oppressive and repressive hegemonic culture to silence is violence. It all seems a little obvious, although if the point is to refine this argument so that it can appeal to those for whom it's not obvious, well, yeah. Good point.
The leadership is atheistic and Marxist, but the membership can believe whatever they want. Top to bottom they worship The People Whose Lives Matter. Most of them worship their own black asses.
Kneeling is submission.
Hicks is hostile to post-modernist thought and socialist ideologies, but here he lays out the evolution of socialist strategies, in a way that explains everything about the modern leftist/progressive coalition of cancelers, science-deniers (knowledge and language are all constructed, so unreliable and in fact repressive of authentic knowledge), race-obsessed white fragilistas, and even the resort to violence.
Nobody needs to prove that self-described Marxists are atheists; it's baked in. Any Marxist who claims to be religious too is simply confused . . . but then intelligence and clear thinking are not required to be either a Marxist or a believer, and America is nothing if not syncretistic (in the worst way).
Like Fernandinande, I've been puzzled by the widespread myth that being an atheist requires lefty politics and viceyversy. The idea does a lot of work--as the saying goes--for everyone but the normal everyday atheist who just wants to get along.
Now, as an atheist I will say clearly that there are many human lives that matter not a whit to me.
Narr
Better things to do
Explicitly, implicitly, tomato tomahto. They are obviously Neo-marxist, and the first rule of being a Neo-marxist is never talking about Neo-marxism.
I kept seeing references to one Coonrod and I'm all WTF?
Now I see.
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He's no kneehilist!
"If someone claims to be a Marxist, you must assume they are also atheistic until proven otherwise."
There are plenty of non-Marxists who are also atheists.
And what's so wrong with atheism, anyway?
"'(you might not believe in GOD, but; America sure does'
"...and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...."
Just fancy words to justify their agenda, like politicians who say "God supports our campaign against / for...(whatever it may be)." Certainly not meant to incorporate god or religion into our government.
As far as I can see, BLM consists of decentralized gatherings of people from all walks of life who are protesting state oppression directed at minorities. State oppression ultimately reaches to all of us, but it is most visible in state treatment of minorities and the poor. I doubt most people participating in the protests are following (or even aware of) any directives from an organized leadership hierarchy.
Does this deserve a 'religion substitutes' tag? Progressivism has progressed to the point where you are forced to accept the Almighty State as your lord and savior.
The supposed separation between knowledge and reason on the one hand and faith on the other is another ignorant and foolish falsehood.
On the contrary, the conflation of logical domains is both ignorant and foolish. Consider that science is, with cause, a philosophy and practice in a limited frame of reference, notably the near-domain. Consider further what we know, don't know, and cannot know. Also, what we could know based on our own efforts: the philosophical logical domain, the center of the logical space, where hypotheses are conceived and birthed, influenced by the other logical domains. The faith domain is merely an allusion to trust, trust required to understand that space, trust required to function in that space, trust requires to reach that space.
Heres a video of Patrisse Cullors saying shes a trained Marxist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyhy4IvkENg
I like baseball as a pure thing. They have muddled it with politics, I don’t care whose politics, it’s base and low. What’s the point of watching it now? I would rather find a cricket match or even horse racing.
Certainly the other BLM, the Black liberation movement, has rejected certain religions as being inherently imbued with white supremacy and structural racism merely because of their extensive European history. Of course, we all know I am talking again about Christianity.
Meanwhile, they have been quite receptive to those "religions" that are against Christianity, namely, Islam. The thing about Islam is that, although Muslims speak of "Allah," it really is not a belief system; there is no deep theology. Rather, it is a system of practices regardless of what one thinks internally. Hence the name Islam (submission).
And if you look at the history of Islam and the BLMs, you will notice that they have great similarities, to wit, they are based on taking and holding power.
They want to brainwash the population to free it not only of understood
history but the very language learned in childhood. Words are to take
on new meanings shaken loose of the unconsciously absorbed racism of
white people. They don't know they are racist and can never know
because...they are racist. Those whites who claim to be opposed to
racism are the worst racists of all in this new understanding. So this
intersectionalism or whatever ism is a lose-lose game for the white
players, most of whom are young and uneducated thanks to four years of
fluff studies in college. And the women are the worst, the shrieking
Lyssa of Greek mythology whose behavior was called rabies when
exhibited by animals. Nothing in Western Culture will withstand the
analysis of this inchoate philosophy. Everything must be pulled down
and the new world built on its ruins. The Soviet Union was created
under this principle and more recently during the Maoist years in
China and more completely in Cambodia, where things were taken to
their logical conclusion, the neatly stacked towers of human skulls.
If you wore spectacles, you were murdered because they pointed to
reading and reading meant you had taken in knowledge that had to be
extinguished. But at least you had to do something to warrant the
punishment instead of merely being born into whiteness. It's early
days for White Fragility but the intended path is clear.
Grammar--white grammar--is on the chopping block at your alma mater,
but that target is too obvious not to spread in the swamps of academe.
All standards will fall until proud ignorance sits firmly in the
saddle.
You can’t be a Christian and an atheist at the same time.
If only it were as simple as that.
But given that faith properly understood involves the whole of the person, not merely what they think or think they think, there are those who profess to be Christian, but are really non-believers at heart, just like the Pharisees that Jesus condemned as being nothing but empty tombs, all dead inside. These are the people that will go up to Jesus on the last day and say, "Lord, Lord." And Jesus will respond, "Go away, I don't know you." Why doesn't he know them? Because although they professed to believe with their lips and with their minds, they never really allowed Him into their hearts. They are/were effectively atheist. (A cautionary warning here -- Are we one of those people?)
Conversely, there are those who believe themselves to be atheist, who insist that they do not believe in God, yet internally on the level of the soul are greater believers and better Christians or Jews than we are. The problem with many so-called atheists is that they have an erroneous conception of who and what God is. (We see it expressed here now and then.) Their disbelief in a strawman god does not mean that they do not have some measure of faith in the actual God. Once they gain understanding, they then believe.
So, yes, one can be an atheistic Christian and one can be a Christian atheist.
And the examples of agnostic Jews are too many to count.
Meanwhile, today -- and yesterday and tomorrow and last week and next week, etc. -- the Communist Chinese government has implemented a policy of demanding that people take down pictures of Jesus in their homes and put up pictures of Mao instead.
Those who refuse to comply . . . well, you know what happens.
Portland Commie Trash
I don't have a problem with Prof. Althouse asking for proof that BLM is "communist". (and I don't think that level of proof can be found -- at least I couldn't find it.) But I want this forum to hold the same level of proof for other claims -- that such and such a group is "white supremacist" or that DJTrump is "racist".
So for this latter claim to be proven we need a verifiable statement from DJTrump along the lines of "whites are better" or "blacks are worse". But the standard advanced here is it is insufficient to show that a reasonable person can make an inference (that BLM is communist or that DJT is racist). We need an explicit admission.
A few people have mentioned it. I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents. Stop Googling stuff. You are not going to get a straight answer out of those asshats.
Why do liberals and liberal groups get the benefit of the doubt?
How quickly we went from "Kneeling during the national anthem is brave dissent!" to "Not kneeling during the national anthem is racist refusal to join in your peers' support for this holy cause!"
This is one of the reasons why I'm inclined to think that there is a certain amount of truth to the suggestions of many that 'the deep state' (whatever that may be, precisely), that the Buwayan 'powers behind the scenes' etc etc are at work here.
daskol said...
it is important to BLM to pretend that their movement is an authentic expression of black consciousness, arising organically from the lived experience of black people in American, rather than some ideology descended from dead Europeans.
Are you saying that Marxists have co-opted the "anti-oppression" movement?
I am shocked, absolutely shocked. This has got to be a real downer for the liberals who think that their good intentions will win the day.
On a more positive note, increasing numbers of Black influencers and thinkers are questioning whether the Left is trying to help them or is simply using them.
I, for one , don't mind people saying Black lives matter while refusing to say "w"hite lives matter. The reason is that I am an adult and either I matter or I don't, that is up to me and no one else. What someone else says does not bother me at all.
Regarding atheists, I don't much care for proselytizing atheists, leave me alone please. I like the cultural properties of having a God, but its poetry. I'm not on a God mission.
They lionize Michael Brown, who was engaging in Marxism when shook down that store clerk for some stogies.
BLM's what we believe seems to undergo repeated revisions..
Blogger Robert Cook said..."As far as I can see, BLM consists of decentralized gatherings of people from all walks of life who are protesting state oppression directed at minorities. …I doubt most people participating in the protests are following (or even aware of) any directives from an organized leadership hierarchy."
So, like a Tea Party who likes to trash things, eh Robert?
Francisco D said...
Are you saying that Marxists have co-opted the "anti-oppression" movement?
I am shocked, absolutely shocked. This has got to be a real downer for the liberals who think that their good intentions will win the day.
****************
I would like to make this point to the nice but clueless Canadian lady up the street, who put up a BLM sign on her lawn.
I'd like to ask her if she'a naturalized citizen, and if so, how she can justify her oath of citizenship with supporting Marxist revolutionaries.
But that would be...mean....aggressive.
There's nothing particularly wrong with communism except that it never works out the way the theory says it should.
If you want a theory of value, what better and more intuitive than the labor theory of value. Women mostly believe it, as it relies on short term feelings. It's taught starting in Kindergarten in various ways, and works out there because even the talented kids are not very talented. Everybody's work is pretty much worth zero there.
Some sociology has been left out of the theory, is all.
Marxism is definitely a religion substitute, for those who like that feeling of goal-oriented community in a struggle against evil.
To me that's one of the most devastating meta-critiques of Marxism there is.
Another similarity is that--in my experience--neither the majority of Marxists nor the majority of spiritual-religious actually have a clue as to the origins, development, and
history of their ideology. (Cf. you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into.)
Paradoxically, both Marxists and many believers share the arrogant (and almost endearing in its naivete) conviction that if only the scoffers truly understood they would agree--their Truths are demonstrable to the open mind.
Narr
A pox on both houses
Might be the saddest image of this entire phase of our history. I mean all those kneeling, not the one soul standing. Don't know as I agree with Sullivan's take on BLM as "atheist." Marxist they surely are and thoroughly anti-Semitic, by the way. So I suppose atheist is also plausible. But Coonrod does not say they are, he says something else. In any case, this is the most disgusting corruption of my game I have seen in my lifetime. These kneeling players are betraying their sport and mine, and the owners who likely put them up to it are most certainly betraying it. There are layers of dishonesty here that ought to take your breath away. Dishonesty about what they are for, who they are kneeling to, what motives they have for what they are doing, etc.?
On another matter, I appreciate that Althouse referred to "The Cloud of Unknowing."
"But the standard advanced here is it is insufficient to show that a reasonable person can make an inference (that BLM is communist or that DJT is racist). We need an explicit admission."
You can't require that. To give an example, various inspector generals have pointed out that they find no explicit admissions of attempting to overthrow the government. But statements of bias and scores of policy breaches that all run in one direction are solid circumstantial proof that a coup was attempted.
One has to keep in mind that Soviet disinformation was cranked out for at least sixty years, probably longer. The Warsaw Pact countries had hundreds of thousands of people creating false history and divisive materials. Part of their mission was to launder their disinformation through thousands of entry points so that Soviet fingerprints could not be found on it. So it's not surprising that people who subscribe to these ideas would deny that they're Marriage. Just ask them their philosophy comes from, though, and see them stammer when they get back to about 1970.
The recent women's movement is a good example of this. Western women happily lapped of the notion that their father's, sons, brothers were the enemy. That wouldn't fly in the Islamic world, so it was quite a surprise for soccer moms to go the Women's March and find themselves surrounded by Jew haters. All feminists, but just different messages for different audience segments.
"Right-wing fantasy rag calls BLM marxist"
Par for the course.
Robert Cook said...
As far as I can see, BLM consists of decentralized gatherings of people from all walks of life who are protesting state oppression directed at minorities.
None so blind.... You are hilarious, Cook.
"So it's not surprising that people who subscribe to these ideas would deny that they're Marriage"
Should be "they're Marxists." Damn spell check.
I consider that we are both atheists, you and I. I just believe in one less god than you do. And when you understand why you reject all other gods, then you will understand why I reject yours.
(I stole this.)
Robert Cook said...
As far as I can see, BLM consists of decentralized gatherings of people from all walks of life who are protesting state oppression directed at minorities.
Of all the lefties on this site, I used to respect you the most. I did not agree with you most of the time, but you never seemed batshit crazy.
What happened?
I'm disappointment Robert Cook would buy the corporate press- D party narrative.
"peaceful protests". Our ass.
NBC corporate press is wiggling a little off the D-corporate narrative.
"From Black lives to 'white spectacle,' Portland protests have lost focus, civil rights leaders say..
“The focus has been moved from where it is supposed to be and made to be a spectacle, a debacle," said the president of the Portland NAACP."
White Antifa fascists took over.
Please explain how a pack of WHITE-BOY leftwing fascist anarchists who live in mom's basement - and ARE ALL WHITE AS MARSHMALLOW FLUFF - BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN MOMMY'S BASEMENT - are helping you.
They are rioting.
For nothing but leftwing Nazi Anger.
see here:
Portland protests have no goal except violence and anarchy
I think Sullivan is on stronger grounds if he just says BLM repudiates core tenets of Christianity. In particular it repudiates forgiveness.
"Red Baiting": The practice of calling people who call themselves Reds, Reds.
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I learned that in college
Next up for Robert Cook: Was it really 100 Million killed in the 20th century by commies.....or was it really ONLY 98 or 99 million? What's the answer you capitalist running dogs???!!!
Yes, #BlackLivesMatter is explicitly Marxist.
Andrew Sullivan - again - surprised Obama is a Leo.
The man's an idiot.
What's fascinating about BLM or any Marxist organization, including the Anarchists of Antifa, is that they don't necessarily consider or perhaps understand what sits on the other side of their "revolution." That would be government control of the means of production and, more explicity, few, if any, individual freedoms.
So they counterintuitively work towards a system that would deny them what they claim they want. What fools these mortals be.
Lawrence Person said...
"Yes, #BlackLivesMatter is explicitly Marxist."
Who cares?
You guys are just trying to use them as a wedge against blacks - there's always been Marxists, socialists, and every other group in the Civil Rights Movement against whites, like you, who are so bullheaded and stubborn.
As long as BLACKS aren't Marxist, I don't care who gets your boot off my neck.
Francisco D said...
"Robert Cook said...
As far as I can see, BLM consists of decentralized gatherings of people from all walks of life who are protesting state oppression directed at minorities.
Of all the lefties on this site, I used to respect you the most. I did not agree with you most of the time, but you never seemed batshit crazy.
What happened?"
The narrative is comforting. Reality is harsh and forces one to question. He is captive to what he believes. Not to what he knows.
Crack Emcee..........uses a lot of words but says nothing.
"Of all the lefties on this site, I used to respect you the most. I did not agree with you most of the time, but you never seemed batshit crazy.
"What happened?"
Nothing happened. I'm still not batshit crazy, or even just crazy. Still perfectly rational.
Do you really think most people attending BLM protests are organized, following instructions from playbooks, listening to hierarchies of "leaders" laying down agendas? Most are just people showing up, wanting to express by their presence that they support protests of police violence against blacks.
There will always be that sub-group of crazies, criminals, and opportunists who will show up to take advantage of the protests to act out, steal and wreak violent disruption, and there are surely even some police agents provocateurs initiating damage to public property and encourage the protestors to violent actions. The media focus on the violent persons and incidents skews the public perception such that this minority is falsely perceived as being the majority.
"and there are surely even some police agents provocateurs initiating damage to public property and encourage the protestors to violent actions."
Oh yeah, Robert. Perfectly rational.
Assumes, on your part that Google is not putting a thumb on the scales of your search — algorithmic and, like immaculate conception, thus even keeled as they might Be.
If you want a theory of value, what better and more intuitive than the labor theory of value.
Read Heinlein.
Shawn Levasseur said...
The BLM organization itself gets most of its press from people using them as an excuse to dismiss all attempts at positive change.
During the Tea Party the left media taught us a movement is defined by its most extreme member. So it's interesting the same people who pushed that conclusion are now denying it applies to BLM.
What could have changed to alter this basic principle?
Robert Cook said... Most are just people showing up, wanting to express by their presence that they support protests of police violence against blacks.
We can identify this group easily. This type of protester does not show up in uniform to help antifa blend in. They do not interfere by mobbing police so the violent members can get away. They do not carry umbrellas or mob videographers to hinder identification of those who engage in violence. They do not surround and attack others hoping to create a reaction they can portray as violence against protesters.
Once you eliminate this group it's far from clear those who simply oppose police brutality are a majority.
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