A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #14-26 - Let us break the gods of heaven. Resuming the anti-religious struggle (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On the anniversary of Giordano Bruno's martyrdom, on February 17th, we, 
as the Livorno Anarchist Federation, held a public initiative. The 
following reflections aim to explain the reasons for the current 
relevance of the anti-religious struggle, reiterating and expanding on 
what was stated on that occasion. ---- To understand the nature of the 
anti-religious struggle, it is useful to illustrate the role that the 
Anarchist Program assigns to religion in society. ----  In the passage 
addressing this issue, the Program refers to that gigantic increase in 
production, achieved throughout history, which allowed a minority of 
humanity to live without working at the expense of the immense majority 
who produced for all, crystallizing privilege through the relationship 
of private property. This process also saw the emergence of another 
special class, the clergy, who "with a series of fables about God's 
will, the future life, etc., seek to persuade the oppressed to meekly 
endure oppression, and like the government, in addition to serving the 
interests of the owners, also serves its own." From this perspective, 
religion does not respond to a supposed "religious spirit" present in 
people's minds, but to the conscious action of a minority who intend to 
continue to live off the backs of the working masses by spreading 
religious fables.

The Anarchist Program's definition of the clergy and its function refers 
to the division between manual and intellectual labor, which is worth 
considering.

With the division between intellectual and manual labor, the internal 
unity of labor activity, as a deployment of energy directed toward and 
achieving a goal, is lost. A particular class of people takes upon 
itself the task of directing practical activity toward its own ends, 
leaving the task of manual labor to the subordinate class. In this way, 
the end is separated from manual activity and transferred to the social 
organization, which operates as a natural force, impersonal and 
incomprehensible to actual producers. Manual labor becomes increasingly 
mechanical, requiring the development of special skills to the detriment 
of others, preventing the full realization of individual faculties. 
Under these conditions, work becomes a constrained and extrinsic 
activity, which brings with it the distortion and one-sidedness of the 
individual, giving rise to the phenomenon known as alienation.

Hand in hand with economic and social alienation is the alienation of 
social consciousness, which sees the separation between the empirical, 
everyday consciousness of individuals and, on the other hand, the 
evolution of intellectual, abstract thought, of science. In this way, 
this everyday, empirical consciousness becomes captive to fetishistic 
representations that provide a false picture of reality.

Just as in prehistoric times, humanity was dominated by impersonal 
natural forces that it did not understand and could not control, so 
today the root causes of social suffering are incomprehensible to the 
majority of humanity and take the form of uncontrollable natural forces.

It is on this basis that the capture of consensus operates, developed 
through an inverted vision of reality, so-called ideologies. By this 
term, we mean those conceptual structures that reflect the domination of 
social conditions over individuals, of ideas over material conditions. 
It makes little difference whether the formation of social consciousness 
is controlled not only by the privileged classes but also by specific 
centers of privilege and power, such as universities, international 
research centers, or ecclesiastical hierarchies; it simply articulates 
and diversifies this domination.

Within the context of these ideologies, religion presents itself as a 
product of social and historical alienation. Religious ideologies, 
throughout the ages, have allowed dominant social groups to curb 
rebellion with promises of a better tomorrow in the afterlife. At the 
same time, the specific form of religious alienation, which projects 
human qualities onto a god created by human imagination, convinces the 
oppressed masses to accept their subordination to earthly power, just as 
they accept the guidance of an omnipotent and omniscient god, who will 
reward those who submit and accept daily suffering.

Religion, therefore, is a consequence of the hierarchical organization 
of society; overcoming religion is therefore not possible without a 
profound social transformation that eliminates the causes of religion. 
At the same time, this social transformation is not possible unless it 
begins with the direct action of the exploited classes themselves, 
through self-management and self-organization. In turn, this 
self-emancipation of the exploited classes is not possible without 
simultaneously spreading critical reflection on the material conditions 
of the current social formation and critique of the ideological 
apparatus, of which religion is a part, justifying its existence.

Alongside struggles for concrete objectives, which challenge specific 
aspects of oppression and exploitation, the fight against ideologies 
must advance: it is not simply a matter of pitting one ideology against 
another, but of defeating the underlying mechanism that generates them: 
the separation between manual and intellectual labor, and the role 
assigned to ideas in defining the world. In this sense, counterposing 
revealed truth with the search for truth through horizontal debate and 
verification by experience is far more important than memorizing the 
reflections of this or that thinker. This practice and this method, 
along with that of verification by experience, must replace trust in 
experts and sacred texts, essential characteristics of every religion.

In this sense, the development of critical thought, based on the 
practical critique of conditions of exploitation, is inseparable from 
the fight against religion.

How is critical thought possible in a society dominated by private 
property, a society divided into classes, a society where the state and 
institutions control the media? Official information possesses a 
firepower that seems capable of destroying every form of dissenting opinion.

Precisely for this reason, today more than ever, the battle for free 
thought is absolutely essential. We need critical thought, a thought 
capable of exposing the contradictions of this society and providing the 
exploited classes with the tools that, through the critique of ideology, 
prefigure the expropriation of the means of production that is the 
essential premise for building a new society. The anti-religious battle 
is part of this journey. There have been times when this has been very 
clear.

The anti-religious battle has fallen into disuse because the issue has 
been monopolized by bourgeois interests, taking on a conservative and 
elitist connotation. But also because, among the forces that more or 
less clearly call for social transformation, obscurantist tendencies 
have been given space.

One of these tendencies stems from the idea that to free the exploited 
masses from bourgeois influence, it is necessary to use the same tools 
employed by the privileged classes to exert that influence. It is in 
this perspective that thinkers like Gustave Le Bon and Georges Sorel are 
being rediscovered. Their studies on the dynamics of mass movements 
provided the tools for those seeking to exercise ideological control 
over them. The reflections of these thinkers have returned to relevance 
with research on the effects of social media conditioning on users' 
political choices. These reflections, however, contradict an effective 
process of awareness, overestimating the unconscious mechanisms of 
control and orientation. They essentially aim to dull rational 
processes, rather than develop them.

Another obscurantist tendency has somehow formed within the critique of 
Western culture and colonialism. Within this critique, a reevaluation 
has developed of those religions, churches, and dogmas that do not 
belong to the Judeo-Christian worldview. In light of this approach, the 
critique of Islam-which is a religion in every respect, like 
Catholicism-is assimilated to a form of supremacist prejudice, born of a 
misunderstood concept of "privilege" against the peoples who 
predominantly follow this religion, as if the peoples oppressed by the 
Islamic religion did not have the same tendencies, the same drives to 
forge their own path to liberation. Undoubtedly, state-imposed 
secularism or even atheism has allowed Islamic clerical-fascist 
movements to present themselves as liberating from government 
authoritarianism and confounding revolutionary forces themselves. At the 
same time, the defense of tradition, from Hinduism in India to Buddhism 
in Tibet, takes on an anti-imperialist function. It's worth noting that 
behind the defense of tradition lies, above all, the defense of the 
traditional privileged classes.

These interpretations, which are frequently found even within 
antagonistic and revolutionary movements, necessitate a clear and lucid 
position. This is also why it is necessary to resume the fight against 
religion.

Tiziano Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/spezziam-gli-dei-del-cielo-riprendere-la-lotta-antireligiosa/
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