Upon further consideration, it was decided that perhaps what Marx had meant was that certain varieties of opium were, in fact, good for the people.

the father son and holy ghost

The holy Xinity

Are you surprised???

Honestly, concerns over the possibility that religion might be a political opponent and trying to neutralize it by replacing figures with one’s own are not new.

It’s just a little unusual to have it happening in 2024 between gods and secular leaders.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_syncretism

Religious syncretism is the blending of religious belief systems into a new system, or the incorporation of other beliefs into an existing religious tradition.

This can occur for many reasons, where religious traditions exist in proximity to each other, or when a culture is conquered and the conquerors bring their religious beliefs with them, but do not succeed in eradicating older beliefs and practices.

Same shit, different century. Ever look up the actual history of Christmas or Easter? They were pagan holidays and Christian rulers forced everyone to jam as much Christian stuff into them as they could.

It’s literally one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Obviously Mao is Mary, giving birth to Xi the Jesus, that will be betrayed by his own government.

Can’t say China is anti lgbt now as Mao Zhedong is trans all along.

As a Muslim this is one of the times I'm glad paintings of humans and animals are haram in Islam. We don't got none of that shit in mosques (or anywhere else, really).

Does it help?

You point to poorly sourced telegraph articles and you expect to be taken seriously?

Don’t give them ideas!

Ai had difficulty to do a nativity scene without Mary 😀

So techically these are Chinese sheeps, Chinese fodder, Chinese cloaks… A lot of things are coming to mind

A Chinese Mohammed A Chinese Jerusalem A Chinese Israel

<img alt="" src="https://i.imgur.com/THdSVqC.jpeg">

ಠ_ಠ

Replace baby Jesus with adult Mao in the manger.

I wouldn’t be able to stop laughing in that church.

To be honest, I don’t trust The Telegraph any more than I trust The Onion. At least The Onion is straightforward about what they are.

First that’s attacking the messenger not the message. Cope. Second seeing how ML rely on information disproven nearly 100 years ago. And how ML state media is worse than western media on every metric. A true accomplishment! It’s an especially sad and hilarious tactic.

The Americanization of China would be rather complete.

Yeah that’s positive christianity and it was an actual thing.

The end goal of fascism, per Mussolini:

“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Fascism innately rejects the concept of the separation of powers and human rights alike.

If you view the traditional three pillars of heirarchy and power in a capitalist society as the state, the corporations, and the church, the absorbtion of both corporate and church power is simply the end goal. You might also ask “couldn’t the corporate powers or churches effectively do the same thing by absorbing the others instead?”

Funnily enough, Hirohito and Japan had already effectively absorbed that pillar of power with State Shinto and the literal deification of the imperial line.

And slaughtered a lot of clerical people in the wake. There is a monastry where more than 1000 monks have been murdered under Stalins influence in Mongolia.

Overall tens of thousands of clerical people must have been murdered under Stalin

Dictators always do that.

And, not because they’re atheists as the butthurt Christians so often claim.

It’s all about centralized control and not allowing for divided loyalties or spaces for people to gather outside the party’s control.

The Chinese approach is far more effective I fear. The Soviet way worked only with mixed results and was more ideology driven than logical. In Poland, the Catholic Church became a huge factor in the opposition because of that. If religion is deeply rooted in society, controlling and steering religion makes for a powerful tool to control the masses while fighting it automatically makes it a strong opposition force.

There’s a really good mod for Crusader Kings 2 where you play in a post-apocalypse America and one of the religion groups is Americanism, with the Founding Fathers as gods.

It’s supposed to be a commentary on the concept of the American civil religion but it’s mostly just awesome because NYC is still a Republic that follows one of the branches, and one of the starting families that rules Gotham is the Waynes :)

Reestablishing America as Batman wasn’t quite what I expected from a CK2 mod but it was the best possible way to say goodbye to the system before CK3 dropped.

Keep waiting, bud.

because China has always been oh so welcoming of other religions right? Sources are great but calling this an outrageous claim is a bit much given the historical context.

I mean if you really don’t think there was a Jesus that existed, was popular, and was executed by the Roman empire, then I think you may be the mistaken one.

Saying that he wasn’t the son of God and his mother wasn’t a virgin is a different story however

I’m first in line to make fun of basically all religions (ones that would have you take things on faith, anyway) but those that want to should be left alone to practice how they want.

“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”

-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds