A thought follows from my recent bothsiderism post. There have been a lot of situations like this in recent years, haven’t there? A group or individual devoted to a cause decides they hate some oppressed people so powerfully that they ally with opponents, and set their own cause back by decades. The obvious example is terfs aiding fundies to absolutely devastate women’s rights, all because trans women are yucky.
The slvmepit queen’s contribution to fascism set vaccine acceptance, research, and availability back decades, when that was originally her cause. If memory serves. Maybe she was more of a nü atheist, whose raison d’être was pwning christians, and didn’t spend much digital ink on pro-vaxxing. It’s been a long time.
Dawkins, Harris, etc set atheism back a lot. One of the sorest groups of burned atheists has to be the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who recently had to watch christian bigots gloating as they excluded women from military careers, had to watch the executive branch that controls the military go from being the most inclusive it had ever been in history to literally labeling DEI as a hate movement. But, y’know, having to respect people on their own terms is a tall ask. Better to hand the world over to theo-fascism, right?
Man that last group really hacks me off. Terfs are just comparable to nazis to me. They’re gloating, gleefully evil moustache-twirling freaks, living their best lives at the expense of the human species. Consistent in their evil, right? Anti-woke atheists are such mealy-mouthed little creeps, weaselly motherfuckers acting like there’s a centrist or even liberal way to oppose social justice, man, I wanna slap the shit out of them. Don’t ever let me meet that little old man. I don’t know how well I could restrain myself.
I wonder if there are any environmentalists out there who got environmental protections overturned because somebody asked them to be nice to black people. I wonder if there are any black power activists who got racist politicians elected because the alternative was a woman. I wonder if there are any women who … eh, we all know that story now.
All I’d like to say in conclusion is this: If your support for a cause is so weak that you’ll throw the game that hard, maybe don’t get involved in the first place? Nobody needs friends like you. Fuck’s sake, atheism is probably worse off now than if Dawkins had never picked up a microphone.
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Yeah, I can believe this. If not for Dawkins, there would have been other people, or else we would have just had less of a culture of celebrity. And Dawkins chased people out, so whatever his contributions, you’d have to subtract that.
im thinking less of numbers, for which atheism still seems to be on a gradual global increase, than about law. on the bothsiderism post you disputed my assertion these marginal influencers contributed substantially to the current fascist takeover. i can see that point of view but disagree with it; i might elaborate on another post.
With regards to the environmentalists part, well, looking over RFKjr’s list of ‘accomplishments’ might be enlightening. Though I think it’s pretty clear that he was never really an environmentalist on principles: he was a David crusading for a Goliath to defeat. Whether or not he was on the right side of any given fight was never as important as him satisfying his ego and making himself out to be ‘fighting for the little guy’.
Dawkins was a slightly different thing: his shtick (like a lot of that breed of atheist) was entirely tied up in ‘I’m smarter than those people’, and it lasted just long enough until people started pointing out his mistakes, at which point he was more tied up with being ‘smarter than you’ than he was with being, you know, actually willing to follow the facts like the scientist he claimed to be.
spot on, jennyfire
@2,
Yeah, fair, we’re thinking along different lines.
As to the importance of Dawkins et al. to modern fascism, I think it’s a question where the yes/no answer doesn’t really matter, but we could learn something from thinking about it. I’m not super committed to a “no” answer, but rather I think there is something interesting to say from that point of view. And likewise there could be something interesting to say from the opposing point of view.
that’s my favorite type of disagreement, i love that shit.