"The Soviet Union (1922–1991) had a long history of state atheism, whereby those who were seeking social success generally had to profess atheism and stay away from places of worship; this trend became especially militant during the middle of the Stalinist era, which lasted from 1929 to 1953."

"The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism".[55][56] It sought to make religion disappear by various means.[57][58] Thus, the USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of the existing religion, and the prevention of the future implanting of religious belief, with the goal of establishing state atheism (gosateizm)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I've went through that personally so I'm very well aware but still I don't think its very much of the same thing. It's less due to atheism per se and more to do with the fact that people groups were just dangerous to the regime and this extended way beyond religion.

[–] drinkwaterkin@lemm.ee 1 points 9 hours ago

And when the Cathars, or the Templars were eradicated, or when Protestants and Catholics went to war, do you really think it's because of sincerely held beliefs regarding their God, or because one group threatened the hegemony and material wealth of the other? In the case of the Protestants, the single most critical doctrine they went after was the Catholic belief that doctrinal authority came in part from the Bible, and in part from the Church; whereas Protestants argued for Sola Scriptura - the belief that doctrinal authority came from the Bible alone. And even the 95 theses clearly had the goal of ending a system of exploitation and financial parasitism by the Catholic church. Welcome to real politics.

None of this does anything to change that cases of church authority are still functionally the same as those of state atheism and anti-theism. In the case of Christian churches, you have the view that only Christianity is the truth and everything else is both the result of the devil, and leads to evil, and therefore all other beliefs are invalid and ultimately must be eradicated.

In the case of these varying state atheist groups you have governments expressing that atheism is the only valid belief system, and again, all others must cease. And anti-theists are explicit about their view of all other religious beliefs being invalid and needing to be eradicated.

If persecutions and executions against religious people by governments that are saying everyone has to be atheist isn't killing in the name of atheism, then what the fuck is?

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Finally someone who can think