Halo Halo (2025)

The Halo Halo! column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The negative and potentially fatal effects of belonging to a cult are well documented. There are many accounts written by those who escaped from the clutches of a cult. Within a cult subordination to another’s will can result in handing over total life control, including financial assets, essentially being a slave, to whom anything might happen, including sexual abuse, and at worst being forced into mass suicide.

History is littered with individuals who claimed some sort of ‘divine’ right or ‘divine’ spirit to coerce others into providing them with wealth and power, from Indian gurus influencing people in the music industry to American and other evangelists who offer not just ‘afterlife’ but material wealth in the here and now. Just send us twenty dollars or more…

Among Wikipedia definitions of cults is a comparison to ‘miniature totalitarian political systems’. A 2021 piece in Psychology Today says ‘no one joins a cult; they are recruited by systematic social influence processes’ and ‘destructive individuals and cults use deception and undue influence to make people dependent and obedient’. Also, ‘cult leaders are typically malignant narcissists and want people who will be obedient to them’. On vulnerability it says, ‘no one joins a cult voluntarily; they are recruited into it. There is lack of informed consent. Everyone has vulnerabilities’.

The best way to highlight the dangers of cults is to shine a light on them. In late July/early August the BBC ran a two-part documentary on the Jesus Army – Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army. They also ran a piece related to the documentary entitled Investigating one of the UK’s most abusive cults. The effect that membership can have upon an individual’s mental health is highlighted by the comment of an ex-member of the cult: ‘One contributor, Nathan, “despite struggling to come to terms with the fact he was groomed and sexually assaulted, admitted he would likely return to the Jesus Army if it reopened”’. A documented aspect of cults is the sexual abuse that takes place within them: ‘About one in six was sexually abused, according to a review of the damages claims of some 600 individuals’.

Around the same time The Guardian ran an article called The rise and fall of the British cult that hid in plain sight. It’s a long piece by an ex-member of the Jesus Army, a woman who, when quite young, was forced into the Jesus Army by her ‘normal’ family joining it. She echoes Nathan’s comment by explaining that the reason people stay in cults is due to ‘the thought of leaving a domestic relationship, with the additional anguish of abandoning one’s family, friends, money, job, and support system, along with the inherent threat of going to hell’.

The only ‘hell’ that exists is the current social system which encourages predation on people who are alienated from their fellow human beings because capitalism encourages the pursuit of wealth and power by whatever means possible.

DC

Letter: Speaking out against religious fanatics (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speaking out against religious fanatics

Dear Editors,

First of all, may I congratulate you on your fine work and struggle against this capitalist regime. I have voted Labour all my life, but only recently have become more involved with proper socialist organisations as yourselves and the SWP.

I read with much interest your short article about “Socialism versus Islam" (July Socialist Standard) and may I say that I couldn’t agree with you more. Islam is a very oppressive religion depriving women, gays and other minority groups of fundamental rights. In fact it is a well known fact that Muslim countries have a record of abusing human rights.

I am Asian and, although an atheist, it does not stop people associating me with this religion. Thank goodness that organisations like yourselves have no fear in speaking out against these fanatics.

A. Ditta,

Wolverhampton

Reply:

Thanks for your support - though it must be said that Leninist organisations like the SWP are similar to fanatical religious cults and their heroes in the Bolshevik Party knew a thing or two about human rights abuse.

Editors.

Religious fanaticism kills in Uganda (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tragedy that befell Uganda in the month of March this year is worth analysing and talking about. This was in South Western Uganda in the village of Kanungu. Over 500 religious believers, belonging to a sect (cult) called The Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, set themselves ablaze and all perished in the inferno. Worse still, as police continue to search, mass graves of believers of the same cult were found in different places in the homes of the followers’ leaders and elsewhere.

The impact of religion on people especially in Africa is that of doom. The principles of religion are all similar and only differ on the surface. First, there is a belief in supernatural power. Second, there are prayers and rituals. And third, there is a belief in life after death.

The belief in supernatural powers, a god and a spirit world arose out of people’s lack of understanding of the universe and their own particular limited environment. This was coupled with their own curiosity, desires and needs. Humans have been the creator and inventor of God in their own image. In fact, it’s not a case of God creating Man but of Man creating God. God and all gods exist in people’s minds only.

The Kanungu incident is a case of religious fanatics whose leaders had predicted the end of the world come December 31 1999; they believed that there was not to be a year 2000 with the old generation but a new generation with they, believers of this cult, going to heaven. So they made their heaven.

Their mass graves at Kangunu, like any other graves, are an indication that there is no life after death. There is only death after life. Their testimony was based on biblical extracts. However, as usual, false testimony always testifies against itself. It is an easy thing to tell a lie but it’s difficult to support a lie after it has been told.

By extracting verses from the bible and relying on them in addition to trying to put them into practice, some religious groups have gone as far as destroying fruit trees, having free sex and not accepting family planning methods, refusing medical treatment, and selling their possessions.

Christians marching ‘the way of the cross’ in Uganda

The bible, which claims to be a holy creation and the foundation for christianity and several other religions, was of course a human creation and there is still a minority today who would accept it word for word. Yet it is inconsistent and self-contradicting. In fact it would stand no favour had it to face a court of law. It’s a book of lies. Today numbers of “educated” and “artistic” people are employed to blend truth and lies in whatever proportion they calculate is most effective in misleading the public. The big lie being that people should be contented with the life which the market system imposes on us while waiting for “a paradise life” after this life.

From childhood people are mentally conditioned into religious beliefs, superstitions and the like. And as people sense a lack of control in an increasingly complex and alienating world, they are more susceptible to beliefs in the supernatural whether religion, magic, dreams, creatures from other planets or whatever. People who have religious beliefs replace faith for reason and logic.

We live in a harsh, competitive society where everyone’s hand is turned against everyone else. Yet human beings need social contact and companionship. The harsher the reality the more fantastic the solace offered by religion. It is no accident that early christianity spread amongst the slaves of the Roman empire, nor that in Africa and Asia where poverty is so harsh, we have the devout religious zealots.

The religious view sees workers as incapable of solving the problems that confront them. The consolation they offer is one beyond the grave. They believe that human beings should adapt a slavish attitude, be humble, be grateful and not attempt to abolish the ills that afflict them.

We socialists see humans as an animal species that has succeeded in adapting the natural world to meet its needs. We view with wonder and astonishment its magnificent accomplishments in the fields of science, medicine, agriculture and advanced technology. We place our faith not in gods and supernatural forces, but in the intelligence and knowledge of the working class.

The transformation of society will not be brought about by the action of gods, but by real men and women determined to end capitalism and establish socialism.

Weijagye Justus 

(Uganda)

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The age of austerity is over, as the well-heeled splash out on Porsches and Dom Pérignon champagne, according to retailers of luxury goods....Porsche, the luxury carmaker, said this week that orders for its new Cayenne sports utility vehicle, due to arrive in European showrooms next month with a €55,400 ($75,000) price tag, were stronger than expected . . . LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury goods group by sales, said sales of its Dom Pérignon champagne and premium Hennessy XO cognac in the first three months of the year had been “much better” than last year:

(Dead Link)

“This man has been sacrificed to propitiate the gods,” said local official Kalyan Mukherjee. “This is a shame for Bengal where the ruling Left coalition claim they have eradicated social evils and combated superstition,” an opposition leader Samir Kumar Ray said.

(Link)

Have you ever wanted to put yourself in the place of someone detained by KGB officers during Soviet times? Well now you can. While Soviet museums and parks across Central and Eastern Europe have proved popular over the past decade, tourists are now seeking first-hand experiences of life behind the Iron Curtain at Lithuania’s newest Soviet attraction. Welcome to Deportation Day, a “live history lesson” based on the accounts given by victims of Stalin’s gulags. Complete with KGB guards, doctors barking orders in Russian and muscled interrogations, the four-hour dramatization takes tourists to a replica of one of the camps where millions of residents of the Soviet Union were detained:

(Link)

Mike Huckabee, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, says the effort to allow gays and lesbians to marry is comparable to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use:

(Dead Link)

The Vatican’s second-in-command has linked child sex abuse by priests to homosexuality. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone denied celibacy was to blame for the sex scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, homosexuality and paedophilia were inextricably linked, the Vatican’s Secretary of State declared:

(Link)

The UK too is now more unequal—in incomes, wealth, health, education, and life chances—than at any time since the 1920s. There are more poor children in the UK than in any other country of the European Union. Since 1973, inequality in take-home pay increased more in the UK than anywhere except the US. Most of the new jobs created in Britain in the years 1977–2007 were at either the very high or the very low end of the pay scale:

(Dead Link)

Halo Halo!: Born in Sin … or Living in Fantasy? (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s only one thing worse than being cornered in the pub by a drunk Sun reader who insists on explaining, in detail, his personal analysis of the weakness in the defence at Arsenal’s last away game, together with the meaning of life and his recommendations for dealing with ISIS; and that’s being cornered by a bible thumper who recognises you as someone who needs, urgently, to be assured that Jesus is your Lord and Saviour.

At least with the Sun reader it’s obvious, right from the start, what he is. He doesn’t kick off by exchanging pleasantries about the weather and then start introducing Jesus into each sentence after twenty seconds. With the Sun reader you make allowance for the fact that the images tumbling around in his brain, formed by years of exposure to page 3 and lurid accounts of the private lives of footballers and models, will transform themselves into a stream of verbiage which can then be gushed out to explain any topic under discussion.

With the born-again believer it’s more difficult. What explanation is there for their surreal view of the world? OK, they may also be Sun readers which won’t help, but what other nightmares shape the fantasies of the self-confessed ‘sinner’? What is it that makes them ashamed of being human, convinced that their only purpose in life is to prepare for another, future one, in which an invisible tyrant will reward, or punish them, for every thought or action taken now?

This month we’re taking you on a guided tour of a bible-thumper’s brain, or rather the ideas on which it is fed, courtesy of a couple of religious websites. Fasten your seat belts and hold on tight: First, the titles of a selection of articles showing what’s important to Christian Post readers:

‘Muslims Will Continue Beheading Non-Believers Until Jesus Slays the Antichrist’. … ‘If Islamic Terrorists Are Devout Muslims, Why Are They Hooked On Porn?’… ‘This Pastor Chose Against Acting on His Same-Sex Attractions’. … ‘Former Megachurch Pastor Tells Oprah the Church Is “Moments Away” From Embracing Gay Marriage’. … ‘3 Reasons You Must Not See Fifty Shades Of Grey’. … ‘I Witnessed Men With Size 13 and 14 Shoes Kissing Each Other’.

A selection of well-balanced articles there, clearly making the point that Jesus loves you. Now, what can the Charisma News add to that?

How about –‘Evil Empire: The 10 Plagues, Islam and the Judgement of God’. … ‘Psychopathic Porn: The X-Rated Path of Destruction’. … ‘9 Prophetic Keys For Binding the Homosexual Spirit’. … ‘Have You Committed the Unpardonable Sin? … ‘Pop Evil Rocker Casts Demon Out of Brother’. … ‘Sex Trafficking Expert Has 5 Alarming Concerns About ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. … ‘Franklin Graham Speaks Bluntly About Transgender Bathrooms’.

Having digested these, and now safely in the arms of Jesus, you may now like to add: ‘Jeb Bush to Make Case for Stronger U.S. Role in World’. And don’t miss ‘Dilemma for Jeb: How Bush 3 Would Deal With Iraq’.

Ah well, it could be worse. At least it’s not just pointless tabloid sex and violence is it? Oh, hang on  . . .

NW

Crucified workers (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ruben Enaaje did not enjoy his Easter week-end. The 28- year-old sign painter was nailed to a cross on Good Friday to thank god for his sufvival after a fall from the third floor of a building. He also wanted to ask for an end to his family's poverty, and vowed to be crucified twelve years in a row. The nails were driven in by doctors and the volunteer sent to hospital after hanging for a few minutes.

For the first time this year, the Philippine Department of Tourism donated P20,000 for the crosses and costumes. The crucifixions are an annual tourist attraction which earn the government loads of money, which is used to pay workers to smash picket lines and kill shop stewards. This keeps wages down and ensures a supply of workers to be crucified next year.

(Source: Malaya and Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 March.)

Guyana horror (1980)

TV Review from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

On two Sunday evenings in July we watched in fascinated horror a reconstruction of the career of an American called Jim Jones.

Born in 1931, he “caught religion” at an early age. While studying to become a Unitarian Minister, he worked as an auxiliary in the local hospital where he met and married a qualified nurse who, despite everything, stuck to him to the end. After his ordination he was appointed to a church whose congregation never topped twenty. He built this up until the church was filled. However, he displeased his Elders as the faithful were predominantly negro in a city where segregation was fact if not law, and the Ku Klux Klan reigned. Dismissed from his post, he took to the streets and founded his own church, the People’s Temple.

At first his reputation rested on fiery oratory and the provision of welfare facilities for his deprived flock. However, soon he started to use his personal magnetism as well as fake miracle cures to dominate his flock completely. Absolute obedience and the making over to the church of all worldly goods was required. Part of the money so obtained was used for bribes and deals to buy into the city administration. Disobedience was published with public disgrace, beatings and even death.

Eventually his financial chicanery made it too hot for him and, with the law on his tail, he and 1,000 of his congregation went to Guyana to found their own community. His vanity and ruthlessness led him from excess to excess. From claiming to represent God, he progressed to proclaiming himself to be God. His sexual excesses with young people of both sexes multiplied yet his hold was such that the majority of his community continued to adore and obey him. In 1978 after the coldblooded shooting of a visiting Senator and accompanying newsmen, the end came. It is difficult to credit that his domination was still such that, when he ordered everyone to take poison — making his young son set the example all but three obeyed.

Those who saw the programme could not understand how so many could be duped into parting with all they had and, without question, obeying this man, even into death itself.

There is a far greater continuing tragedy than the one which happened in Guyana. The vast majority of the world’s population, the working class, are similarly deprived. They also accept without question the fact that they should spend the greater part of their lives working for the enrichment of others. They obey, with hardly a murmur, the edicts of their masters; in times of war even to death itself; and accept gratefully the crumbs from the rich man’s table. However, whereas everyone outside Jim Jones’ claustrophobic society recoils in horror at his merciless domination, only socialists appear to realise what is wrong with the capitalist world we live in today, and try to change it. 

Eva Goodman

Yawn in the USA (1992)

Editorial from the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

If it was not tragic it would be funny. With a mixture of anguish and amusement, socialists look on as the multi-million dollar campaigns to elect the most important political leader in the world drip down the middle of our TV screens.

The US Presidential contest is a sick, slick manipulation of what is declared to be a democratic election. To begin with, only millionaires or those backed by millionaires can afford to run televised, mass-appeal campaigns. Most US states have laws designed to prevent small parties from even being on the ballot paper: tens of thousands of nominations must be collected before you can even appeal to voters as an electoral contender. The TV networks and the press are subsumed by the petty irrelevancies of which candidate has the most extra-martial liaisons, whose wife looks cutest and which party can provide the catchiest ten-second sound bite.

The election is a farce. Rarely was this more clearly seen that at the Republican Convention when Bush and Quayle accepted their nominations; their speeches were of the emptiest rhetoric, but crowds of media men were placed in the audience to cheer at their every empty promise, laugh uproariously at their every semi-witty jest and, most sinister of all, burst into pre-arranged "spontaneous" bouts of slogan-chanting, Goodbye Gorbachev, but Stalinism is still alive and well in the Houston Astrodome.

The differences between the two big parties are negligible—more minute than ever. Like the British Labour Party, the US Democrats have adopted the view that the only way they might beat the Republicans is by kidding the voters that they are the Republicans. Bush or Clinton—who in their right mind cares? Certainly tens of millions of American workers don't, for it is anticipated that half the electorate will not vote next month.

As in Britain, liberal reformists are tempted by what they see as the lesser evil. The Nation, that journalistic symbol of wishy-washy niceness, hopes that Bush will lose, but its editorial of 14 September shows just how pathetic the case for the Democrats is: "in almost every category of capitalist economic growth—income, profit, gross domestic product, employment—Democratic administrations do better than Republican ones". As if that were a reason why workers, whose exploitation is the source of capitalist economic growth, should vote for their most efficient fleecers.

The truth is that US capitalism is in trouble, and social problems which they thought they could avoid are exploding all over the place. Vast numbers of homeless, a drug epidemic, 12 million hungry, over 20 million illiterates, riots in LA and more brewing in other deprived city areas, a multi-trillion dollar budget deficit and the collapse of welfare, huge numbers of bankruptcies. What American workers need to hear is the case for an alternative to the profit system: the case for production for use and not profit. There will be no Land of the Free until we have a world where all have free access to the abundant wealth that we can produce.

But instead of the voice of sanity, the Republicans have been infiltrated by crazy Christians, no more in possession of their reason than the Muslim fundamentalists. Their leader, and a definite Republican hopeful for 1996, is Pat Robertson who told the Convention in Houston that feminism "encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians". With God on their side these loony leaders are asking the millions to put their faith in them.

A reconstruction (1980)

Book Review from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French village, 1294-1324, by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Penguin Books.

It is the turn of the 14th century; a small French village high in the mountains continues a tradition of life that has been rolling on for as long as anyone knows. There is a closely knit community of priests, minor nobility and peasantry, the latter free from the worst restrictions of feudal servility. Most peasants live as farmers, the poorer members being either shepherds (the men) or servants (the women). They are connected to, yet also cut off from, the mainstream of French social life.

The priesthood is more concerned with its own sexual appetites than any pretence at religion. Social values, which clearly predate capitalism, include freer sexual relations and a lack of the sexual prejudices which beset 20th century society. To take one obvious example, an unmarried mother is in no way discriminated against, either in terms of marriage prospects or generally. There is a lack of commitment to time keeping (other than by the seasons); little regard for money (very few money transactions took place); different social classes mix easily (the lady of the village sleeping with priest and peasant). But there is also a new and potentially subversive religion, Catharsism, the Albigensian heresy that threatens to undermine the Catholic Church by accepting a deity but rejecting the established priesthood.

Into this easy going, almost timeless, community descends Bishop Fournier, a fanatical Catholic who rounds up the Cathars in a series of inquisitions between 1318 and 1325. His enthusiasm for burning and imprisoning the Cathars knows no bounds. But the inquisitions are also meticulous and carefully document, incredibly lengthy statements from all the inhabitants of the village. These statements, painfully transcribed into Latin, have survived, and allow Ladurie to recreate the life of the community in minute detail.

It is a remarkable record and Ladurie's patient reconstruction allows one to see into the very minds of the people of Montaillou. It is one of the most detailed pictures of the rhythms of pre-capitalist life of the non-privileged classes to have been published.

There are, however, problems with Ladurie's work; no historian is neutral and Montaillou does suffer from contradictions. Ladurie seems to make no allowances for the potential distortion (conscious or otherwise) in the depositions of the rounded up villagers. He tends to be repetitive; the same story about the same love affair will appear in different contexts on several occasions. But perhaps this was almost deliberate; life was repetitive and the minutiae of the "sophisticated" peasant world of Montaillou needs time to appreciate. This book's length may be part of its own structure. Anyone who wants to find evidence of the stupidity of the arguments about "greedy human nature" or the inevitability of conflict could do worse than get on the time machine and pay a visit to Montaillou.

Ronnie Warrington

Prods vs Papes in Glasgow (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1878 the City of Glasgow Bank crashed to financial ruin. In the same year the Scottish Roman Catholic Hierarchy was restored by the Pope and Charles Eyre became Archbishop of Glasgow. Protestant extremists, such as members of the Orange Lodges (who even today see almost every calamity as part of a global papist conspiracy), probably saw some connection between the two events. Whatever they thought they were certain of one thing: the restoration of Catholic Hierarchy was nothing less than "papal aggression". In response they protested in Glasgow Green. The Army was sent to prevent rioting but fortunately, for Glaswegian working-class skulls, the troops were not called into action.

The main factor leading to both the restoration of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and the religious intolerance in Glasgow was the vast influx of Irish immigrants who, since the 1840s, had been entering the industrial areas of Britain to escape the famine. From December 1847 to March 1848 alone, about 43,000 Irish arrived in Glasgow, "a mass of broken wretches".

These immigrants were generally unskilled workers who had been forced to live in conditions even more squalid and degrading than those of the indigenous proletariat. They were able, therefore, to subsist on lower wages and consequently occupied the worst slums in the city.

It is a matter of fact that competition for employment between the Irish and the similarly unskilled Glaswegian workers led to a fall in wages for the latter. The native workers did not fail to notice this and, in their brutalised ignorance, blamed the Irish. That the majority of these unfortunate Irish workers adhered to the Roman Catholic brand of religious superstition, instead of the Protestant, was yet another focal point for hatred. The presence, too, of immigrants from the North of Ireland led to violent feuds of the Orange and Green variety among the Irish themselves. Added to this was the quarrelsome nature of the various Scottish Protestant sects who were already squabbling among themselves and were quite prepared to enter into hostilities with the adherents of the "one true church".

Nowadays, in Glasgow and the South of Scotland in general, fewer people are committed to any form of religious superstition; "of 20,000 Roman Catholics registered in Clydebank, only about a third attend church regularly" (Current Account, BBC1 Scotland, 25 February, 1982). Similarly an even greater proportion of those describing themselves as Protestants will only be seen inside a church at their funeral.

This decline in church attendance may seem encouraging, but unfortunately "religious" bigotry still flourishes among many of these non-churchgoers in the form of allegiance to certain football teams" Glasgow Rangers ("Prods") and Glasgow Celtic ("Papes"). These unfortunate and bigoted workers blame each other for all manner of social problems and it is almost incumbent upon Socialist Party of Great Britain speakers in Glasgow to criticise King Billy, the Queen, the Pope and the Catholic church in one breath lest, by reference to one alone, it is assumed by one side that we are in alliance with the other. Sellers of the Socialist Standard in Glasgow pubs must beware of the occasional IRA-supporting Catholics and UDA-supporting Protestants, neither of whom will hesitate to kick one's head in if given the chance; and there are certain pubs, particularly in the East End, into which we dare not go. Regular readers of the Standard will recall that our propaganda meeting of 29 July last year (the Day of the Nonsensical Nuptials) was disrupted by a frenzied gang of Orange thugs and it is a likely attack upon us by some papal-jerseyed hooligans which will prevent us from holding a similar meeting on June 1 (the day of the mumbo-jumbo at Bellahouston Park).

A woman from Livingston, West Lothian, told us (Current Account, BBC1 Scotland, 25 February 1982) that she has no need to think about anything she finds too complicated " . . . the priests, the bishops, the archbishops and the Pope are better equipped to deal with this kind of thing. To advise me". An old man, asked what his religion meant to him, was not quite sure except that he knew it was "great"  . . . "You must go to the chapel". When asked if he had ever rebelled against the church he replied: "No! Rebel? No! No!", as though shocked that anyone could conceive of such a thing.

A widow then informed us that her wayward husband's death-bed return to the faith convinced her of the existence of god. Although she was prepared to listen to other people's opinions, she was not prepared to change her ideas in any way: "I do respect other people's religions . . . I am willing to listen to other people, but I feel, basically, we were all Catholics at one time and . . . it's more the pity that they lapsed from our faith, for maybe good reasons, but basically we should all be Catholic and there's nothing in our religion that I want to give up." ("No Surrender!" seems to be a Catholic slogan as well as a Protestant one.)

The above examples of Catholic "thought" clearly illustrate the harmful effects of religious belief. The Catholic church and the Orange Lodge are very good at producing ignorant, docile and fervently religious wage-slaves, and so long as workers remain in these organisations so long will they neglect to deal with the cause of their poverty.

A leaflet, issued by the Orange Lodge in protest against this month's Papal visit and the Catholic Church's insistence on having its own schools, declares: "As absolute ruler of the Roman Church, Pope John Paul II bears the ultimate responsibility for this disgraceful school "apartheid" (Leaflet: Why Should We Welcome This Man?—He is no Friend of Ours). But responsibility for this lies with those workers who believe the superstitious twaddle preached by the Pope and who therefore find it necessary to obey his instructions to send their children to schools which specialise in the Catholic form of indoctrination. The Protestant variety of religious indoctrination is carried out, not only by their churches and the state schools, but by the juvenile section of the Orange Lodge.

Pastor Jack Glass (who thinks even Ian Paisley is "pro-romanist") also sees the Pope's visit as a major problem, so much so that he stood in the recent Hillhead by-election as the candidate for the Protestant Crusade Against the Papal Visit (388 votes—lost deposit). Another group of religious maniacs has been holding a series of meetings with titles such as "The Papal Visit Examined Doctrinally; the Papal Visit Examined Politically" (Glasgow Evening Times, 6 march 1982). They say: "Does not the sacrifice of our martyred forefathers suffer a grave insult by the permitting of the Pope to come . . . ". On March 24, in Bellahouston Park, about 20 Protestants tried to prevent the uprooting of some trees for the Pope's visit and one woman was arrested while trying to chain herself to a tree. It is most regrettable that so many members of the working class consider it worthwhile to waste so much of their time. It is also regrettable that so many others are eager to see the Pope and will pay £5.00 each to hear his inane incantations.

Socialists hope that the Pope's visit will fail; we hope the lapsed will stay away from the church and that believers will continue to decrease in number. There are no reasonable grounds for belief in the supernatural, or in gods, just as there are no grounds for belief in the existence of pink elephants, leprechauns, fairies or flying pigs. Socialists actively oppose all forms of religious superstition not only because such beliefs are unscientific and act as a barrier to understanding the society in which we live and its historical development, but also because of the socially divisive nature of religion. Workers who suffer from the delusions of religion are prepared to kill their fellow-workers in time of war; there are churches in America where blacks are not allowed; women are often considered subordinate to men and the Catholic Church will neither allow its women to become priests nor decide how many children they will have (although many Catholics now ignore the Pope's ruling on the latter).

The Catholic Church, with its roots in feudalism and its still feudal structure, has adapted very well to capitalism. It has shareholdings in many major companies throughout the world including those producing armaments. Nowadays the Vatican is a major financial institution and it is not surprising that the Pope is such a vehement supporter of capitalism. Only three years ago Pope John II warned his priests in South America against a too injudicious support of workers and peasants in their struggles against poverty.

Had not the Catholic Church an appalling record as a force against social progress, were not the Pope a pedlar of reactionary views and religious nonsense, socialists would still not welcome him. Like his opponents in the Orange Lodge, he is no friend of ours.

Johnny Cadillac

God's Own Copper (1987)

From the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

God works in mysterious ways. Given my love of God and my belief in God and in Jesus Christ, I have to accept that I may well be used by God in this way. (James Anderton, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, 18 January 1987)

It has been quite a while since God has chosen a human prophet to inform us mortals what is going on in his supernatural mind. A couple of thousand years ago he chose a popular illusionist (virgin birth, turning water into wine, making the blind able to see: the usual tricks) who told the oppressed to submit to their masters and wait for eternal happiness in a paradise beyond the grave. The meek shall inherit the earth, said Jesus. The meek are still waiting for the inheritance to occur. The wise have more sense than to accept a morality of meekness. According to his evidence in the dock at The Old Bailey, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper (mass murderer of women) heard a voice from God telling him to commit the murders. The Judge was unimpressed and tried to decide whether the defendant was insane. Odd really, when you consider the Judges accept evidence in courts as being more likely to be truthful because it is sworn on oath to this invisible Big Man called God. The latest recipient of God's message is Chief Constable Anderton, who by his own account was on his way to a seminar on AIDS when God forced his words into his mind, leaving the poor copper no alternative but to make a fool of himself repeating them in public, Said the divinely-inspired officer,

Why do these people freely engage in sodomy and other obnoxious sexual practices knowing the dangers involved? As the years go by I see ever increasing numbers of them swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making. I worry intensely about the real possibility of whole generations being wiped out and nations decimated.

He may worry intensely about this curious vision of increasing numbers of human beings creating their own cesspits with a view to wiping out future generations. He would however do better to worry intensely about the whole generations who stand in immense risk of being blown to pieces by capitalism's bombs and the chemical and biological weapons which are sick and murderous, but which have received no condemnation to date either from God or his specially picked, uniformed messengers. Needless to say, the moral totalitarians who are ready and waiting to tighten the chains on the recently too-permissive wage slaves were quick to bow down to the newly-discovered prophet, The Sun, the paper printed by scabs and read by dummies, quoted Anderson's words and declared that

All these words were exactly right. Mr Anderton was merely giving voice to what every reasonable man and woman feels. (Editorial, Top Cop's Words of Wisdom, 22 January 1987).

So you either agree with God's top cop or you are by definition unreasonable. According to the Gospels (a confused assortment of unhistorical stories and reported hallucinations), Christ said that those who did not agree with his every word would be eternally damned — left to burn in Hellfire forever. It seems as if Jesus had a conception of compassion and tolerance similar to that of the Sun. Indeed, the paper which is so crazy that it has to be printed behind barbed wire was not slow to point out the similarity between Christ and Anderton:

There are suggestions that James Anderton is mad. The same charge could just as easily have been brought against Jesus Christ when He came to Earth.

Indeed, it could. Let us for a moment entertain this religious fantasy that the world and all of us who inhabit it are the children of a Holy Father — never seen, but ever feared — who rules over us and must be obeyed to the letter of his commandments. Now, it tells us something about the condition of millions of workers if they can be persuaded that they are little children in need of an invisible Father, but let us examine the Christian-Anderton conception of fatherhood. God, The Father (he also works as a Son and a Holy Ghost) tells us that certain forms of behaviour are wrong. Some of his children disobey the God-Father and do what is "wrong". His fatherly response is to invent a fearful, painful disease which will wipe out vast numbers of his children, thus teaching them to obey him in future. In recent years we have read in newspapers like the Sun about fathers who have acted in this way: they have beaten their children, put out cigarettes on their bodies, locked them in drawers. These constitute a small minority of fathers but we all know of these cases and our response is that of horror and outrage. How can a parent, however frustrated they might be at the behaviour of their children, be so cruel and vicious and crazy? But according to the Christians like Anderton, this is precisely what we should expect a father to do: the only way to teach workers the right way to behave is to kill off a few of them for behaving the wrong way. If God was a father he would need to be given help by others less deranged than himself; his children would need to be taken into care. That is what those who think they are God's children need: to be taken into care — not the care of another phoney god-image or of the state or of offensive and fascistic police chiefs but of themselves. Transcending religious folly means learning that we are not little children destined to obey a Master, but that we are capable of controlling our own lives. As a devout Christian prophet and as a leader of uniformed state coercion, James Anderton will not like the sound of that: people making their own decisions — no gods, no cops, no bosses? That will give him something to worry intensely about.

In the USA, where the God Squad make plenty of dollars out of screwing up workers' minds, there is no shortage of Anderton-style fanaticism. Last October seven Christian families won a case against the State of Tennessee on the grounds that books used to teach children to read were "heathen". They argued that letting children read Goldilocks and the Three Bears encourages breaking and entering. Other objections — upheld by the court — were to a picture of a boy cooking and a story of a wife challenging her husband's authority, both of which were held to be contrary to God-made Nature. The State of Louisiana has a law, passed in 1981, forcing schools to teach the theory of creation to the exclusion of other, scientifically based,  theories. It seems that the current moral backlash in the USA is leading to a number of cases being brought to court by Christians aiming to censor ideas from state education. According to a report in the People (22 November 1986)

Thirty-nine per cent of the (legal) attacks occurring in the last year have led to the actual removal or restriction of the "offending" material.
Curricula dealing with subjects like nuclear war and the Nazi holocaust have been attacked. Literature from Homer to Hemingway has been attacked and sometimes removed from library shelves. Texts mentioning evolution have been vetoed by school boards. Some science text publishers are already practising "self-censorship". One study found that half of all biology texts today don't cover evolution adequately and one-sixth don't cover it at all.

So much for The Land of the Free.

Religion and morality have always been about forcing people to conform in their ideas. The conformity required is that which meets the needs of the profit-stealing ruling class. From James Anderton to the anti-scientific Christian bigots of the USA "God's word" is the sermon of ignorance and unconsciousness. No self-respecting worker will fall for it for long. Let us banish the Gods from our minds and the capitalists from the earth. Without such impostors on our freedom to live as brothers and sisters, humankind will discard our bosses' stinking morals as we learn to live together as a human family of equals.

Steve Coleman 

American Noahs (1982)

TV Review from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

For those who keep lists of the terrors the future might bring (as if the suffering of the present were not enough), it seems a new prospect has arisen: nuclear war, followed by the survival only of some vicious Christians.

We live in a time of rapid social change; contradictions inherent in the present form of society make social revolution even more urgent. As in previous such periods of heightened class conflict and questioning of old prejudices, there is a polarisation of ideas. On the one hand, the force for creative production, democracy and the removal of the barrier of private property; and on the other, the desperate and conservative reaction against it. One manifestation of this desperation, the American Survivalists, was the subject of a documentary on BBC 1 on 29 June.

The Survivalist movement consists of some two million Americans who fear some impending disaster and are taking steps to arm themselves against this often vague threat. Generally higher-paid workers or capitalists — white, patriotic and Christian — they speak of the threat of nuclear war, earthquakes, social breakdown, riots, marauders and the "coming hard times". What unites the Survivalists is the religious idea that the relations formed between humans in society are beyond our control. For them, war and conflict cannot be dealt with by conscious, democratic co-operation, but must be "accepted" and prepared for. Like CND, the Survivalists have not recognised that war and poverty are direct consequences of the capitalist social system, so that they struggle in vain with the effects while leaving the cause intact. Unlike CND, however, some Survivalists have a moral preference for, rather than against, nuclear war.

Kurt Saxon, for example, writer of many "survival" manuals, stated in an interview:

We have over eighty million social dependents and if I could press a button and they would all be gone, then everything gets straightened out; but I can't find the button . . . the culling is coming.

An army general who runs courses in self-defence and fire-arms use at 3000 dollars per course, spoke of the "have-nots preying on the haves":

Our country depends on individuals, and yet there are a lot of socialists, communists, all which I class as idiots . . . there are more idiots in the world than there are non-idiots.

How, then, do these people propose to survive the coming "hard times"? By asking why the interests of "haves" and "have-nots" do not harmonise, or considering the possibilites of human co-operation? No, as Christians they stand by the holy writ of Romans, chapter 13, and oppose socialism. One of their bookshops stocks a "source book" called How To Kill, Volumes 1-5. (What would happen of the imaginary assailant had also read this?) One isolated group of armed Christians hiding in the hills pray to "God" to teach them how to hate, and one of the fresh recruits told how his real fear was not so much of nuclear destruction, but of destruction of the nuclear family:

When homosexuality is on open view and not hidden anymore, you know it's getting bad. When witchcraft and communism is everywhere you know it's getting bad.

Survivalism has become a market with a turnover of billions of dollars. But this is clearly a reflection of the wider class divide between poverty and property, and of the increasing war and violence arising out of the development of world capitalism generally. One man had gone to live with just his immediate family, in total isolation. He was trying to cut himself off from the complications of life in modern America, and moaned that

The situation where people want things is happening now. If they can't get it one way or another they'll get it another way.

But there is no need to try to run way from living together as part of society, to become cut off from all of the potential benefits of modern technology. The power struggle between the two classes is inherent in capitalism, not in human society itself. Future society can function without classes and property. One of the instructors in the secret military training school for "survival" urged his pupils to remember that there had never been peace "since the world began" because people fight, for example, over jobs. But before the advent of private property people did live in peace, and the competitive struggle over jobs is itself an integral feature of the capitalist market system.

These Christians taking up arms against the "threat" of communism and chaos believe that "God" has called them together and that it is their duty to "survive", however many infidels they may have to kill. Such a philosophy might suit the last ruling class in history, threatened on its last legs by social sanity breaking out across the world. But in reality, as soon as a majority are willing democratically to reject class rule, all the guns and prayers in the world cannot hold them back.

Clifford Slapper