http://www.fifthinternational.org/sites/default/files/Downloads/newmemberseducation.pdf This is some basic information about Trotsky and Trotskyism, if you don't want to read the entire Wikipedia article

The following was deleted by a mod on r/atheism for shaking the evangelism of their superficial understanding of their own worldview. I'd like to note that I myself am an Anti-Theist.

I'd like to recategorize a few things to package the core message of Atheism.

I strongly feel that there has been a few misconceptions regarding terminology, so let's make a table:

| Yes | No ---|---|---- God's Existence | Deism | Adeism Do We Know Its Laws? | Theism | Atheism

Step 1 is to prove an unfalsifiable hypothesis — there is no evidence For or Against it, so the hypothesis remains as good as imaginary, so it's best to remain "agnostic", because we simply have no data on what was before the universe; it could have been a Quantum Vacuum, or an ever repeating timeline of the same universe, or we're part of a multiverse. Nobody knows.

Step 2 is quite simple for us. Noting that we don't know enough to say whether god exists, we sure as hell cannot know what this hypothetical entity wants from us. The knowledge, or at least, the inference of what god wants from us would mean we proved god exists, in order to be sure that the way existence works is orchestrated by a divine force. The more we understand, the smaller becomes this God of the Gaps.

Now, I know the initial definition of Deism is: "God created the universe, but he left it alone and doesn't intervene," but I'm sure the definition is wide enough to be included in our table above.

So, let's summarize with an example:

You can be a Deistic Atheist, which would mean you believe God exists (somehow, you have this evidence, congratulations), but you acknowledge that you don't and/or cannot know what it wants from you.

Play mix and match with the categories to your heart's content for amusing what-ifs.

The most reasonable position to hold is to be 99.99[...]9% certain that the argument of "God did it" is as plausible as any other hypothesis of the pre-universe for which there is no evidence, and, given that we can't possibly know what an unproven entity wants from us, Deity-Agnostic Atheism should be what one identifies with.

As for the definition of this deity? It's too broad a title. We can certainly be "Adeistic" about Jehovah or whatever, as these were Bronze-age human attempts at describing a hypothetical supreme organism with a very anthropomorphic set of features to project onto it, often endowing this character with emotions deriving from a human's experience with harsh resource scarcity.

So, there is no God as we describe. This character is our ancestors' application of our evolved brain to infer about the order of existence: there is always a stronger beast, and its violence is the law of the land.

I probably don't need to go into the core fear that drives all this: Death Anxiety.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let's make one thing abundantly clear:

Collective Responsibility is a Fascist concept.

It is to place shared blame on involuntary members of an in-group on the merit of them being members of the in-group.

Just as one does not share his brother's individual accomplishment, neither should one share responsibility for his brother's individual crime.

To end discrimination based on painting with a broad brush, we must discriminate on the merit of individuals acting individually.

Unless we are dealing with a cult founded on pulling in people of a shared idea, one that is driven by causing harm and danger to others, we must not judge entire groups of people on resemblances, whether physical or ideological, at least not without extensive inquiry and empirical evidence that a certain trait (e.g. sociopathy/psychopathy) or a certain idea (e.g. Holy War) is enough to merit to discriminate against the group.

The only privilege people have or do not is money, education, behaviour, and high value features in the so-called "sexual market" (derived exclusively from healthy genes and having grown up eating high nutrient diets in efficient amounts).

Ethnicity is not grounds for preference or dismissal in civilised society.

When your neighbour is an abusive bastard, your home can be greatly affected. Just ask any of his neighbours, and you’ll hear stories of damage to property and psychological well-being.

This is the story of Russian imperialism, and its elements that helped found today’s “Jihad of the northeast”.

When the Age of Enlightenment came about, some states/empires delegated these instruments of thought to the masses. This action planted the first stepping stones toward societies that understood what it is to think empirically. Other empires tried to have Enlightened despots, royal leaders that would do the thinking for the masses. This is what happened in the Russian Empire.

Despite the efforts of the USSR, the citizenry of those lands, particularly the majority of the Russian Federation, regardless of having an impressive understanding of the fields of mathematics, physics, etc., still maintain the residual parts of Romantic thinking, a system of thought that was propagated counter and parallel to Enlightenment thinking. Romanticism was exclusive in how it centralised emotions and wishful thinking into a mass-movement, often led by visual art, poetry, and music, all to relieve what were actually material ills, that required material solutions such as better allocation of resources, or at least easier access at the attempt of obtaining them.

The assurance here is that the average Russian citizen maintains the sense of Russian ultranationalism that the Soviet Union perpetuated under a different banner (“Soviet Socialist Patriotism”), one which is tied in with a former Imperial glory, implying supremacy over subject-states and their citizens. This position, when held, pacifies the Russian population against its current kleptocratic dictatorship. It instead teaches them to worship the state, no matter what the material circumstances are and will be. When one of them steps out of line, the state utilises merciless violence to remind the rest that the ideology is not to be questioned. The citizenry, in a state of Stockholm Syndrome, takes the fear and turns it into an aggressive pride. Totalitarianism takes over, and the people begin to love the words of their oppressor, priding themselves that he is Their oppressor, who hurts them because he loves them, and because he will eventually provide the material abundance they crave but cannot articulate.

Russia, today, is a large boiling pot, cooking up a Holy War. Ever since the Black Hundreds, coupled with the anti-Enlightenment mindset of the average person from 200 years ago to present day, Russia has been on the path to purer and purer clerical Fascism. They had a left-leaning version under Stalin, and, since his rule, a long-lasting period of ultra-conservatism and practical anti-Marxism. Today, they supplement their poverty with Eastern Orthodox Christianity, particularly a Fascist brand held by the Moscow Patriarchate, whose clergymen wear expensive wristwatches and drive luxury vehicles, courtesy of their loyalty to people who obtained power through “sinful” means.

It must be strongly stated that there are many Russians who do not suffer from this religious disease, this worship of Russia and being Russian. Far too many Russians throughout the history of the country’s existence in its various forms have suffered everything from imprisonment to state-sanctioned murder. This piece is dedicated to them. It is also true that much of the criticisms in this article are toward those who are poorly educated, who can be found throughout all social classes.

We all want to feel like heroes, as this is the basis of self-esteem. It just so happens that totalitarian means have been how Russians felt a sense of self-esteem, when whomever was in charge failed to provide them the luxuries that the average person could afford in the Western world. This is why they hate the West. They are jealous, but they are also exhausted and fatalistic.

What it could come down to is loyalty to one empire over another: the Western world, with its own ideological failings and flaws, nevertheless offers a much more practical system of giving its people a dignified life, and an offer of a meritocratic social mobility that is impossible in Russia through “clean”, non-criminal means. Despite that, there are many Russians in the Western world who have maintained a loyalty to their “Motherland”, refusing to assimilate and self-segregating, holding on to psychological fragments of their homeland, including morals and values that rendered their past home unproductive and incompetent, like anyone else who holds what can be accurately put as religious law above the legal system of their host country. Good news, however: it does not last longer than two generations, because assimilation overcomes sentimental attachments, all thanks to better material conditions, as well as the surrounding culture breaking through their parents’, or their parents’ parents’ attempts at self-segregation.

A toxic element is how a significant portion of them proverbially throws the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to objective facts generated by research in the West, for they “have [their] own truth”. This is certainly not shared by every last Russian, but far too many have been indoctrinated to believe that the West is bent on trying to undermine Russia as an imperial entity through deception, which is in reality facts and knowledge that contradicts the incompetent and counter-productive parts of the Russian way of life. Russia is not the only place in the world where cosmopolitan culture challenges and erodes irrational and anti-pragmatic cultures, only to absorb the most practical parts, but Russia is one of the most religiously militant aggressors against this philosophical struggle, which they are losing — the source of their aggression in the first place. It isn’t NATO’s defence systems that poses any risk, it is a battle of information: international facts, versus the comfort zone that is turning them further and further to open “Holy War” Fascism.

They are free to live whatever lifestyle they want, with the same applying to their mindset, but Not when it comes to the violence to which they subject their neighbours, or any significant internal element (region, province, or territory) that wishes to secede from them.

Comrades in my town we are having an issue with being attacked by nazi motorcycle gangs at our protests. I am part of a group called the Conneaut Communist Millitia. We have armed ourselves with shovels, pitchforks and hammers. We are developing a neighborhood watch to prevent more attacks on us and the local chapter of the communist party.

PS: Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I’ll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of identity politics. I’ll rephrease that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying “The Personal is Political.” It began as a sort of reaction to the defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they felt, not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for.

It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of small difference, because each identity group begat its subgroups and “specificities.” This tendency has often been satirised – the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs – but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.

Anyway what you swiftly realize if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighborhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn’t change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that “humanity” (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, this way.”

Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

Christopher Hitchens