I think it would be interesting to hear your opinions on Leo Tolstoy's idea of Christian anarchy

Bakunin would've been a Star Fox speedrunner if he were born today.

I also think his criticism suffers from being limited to his conception of religion. There are some religions that don't have gods the same way westerners understand it, definitely not the way he described it

When Bakunin writes "in so far as the State is consecrated by the Church" it seems to leave open room for a perhaps more modern interpretation of religion which is more personal and less dependent on religious authorities, would this idea be consistent with his views?

Algorithm

Really wish I could support on Patreon because your content is awesome, Zoe. I think as anarchists we are necessitated to at some level be, "anti-organised-religion" and cult-like behaviour in any form. I, perhaps, am not as anti-theist as Bakunin as I do not think that belief in a supernatural being necessitates the evil that comes from organised religion. I think a person could believe in a supernatural being and live an anarchist life. However, the cult-like behaviour of all major religions is extremely damaging to both social and economic progress. Hence I believe as modern anarchists we must be in favour of the abolishment of these damaging structures. Unfortunately, I do not believe that this naturally coincides with an anarchist revolution, and hence we must keep this in mind as we develop both theory and praxis in this field.

There's a bit in the Old Testament where Israel was a kind of anarcho-theocracy (Judges). But everyone around them had kings and were a constant military threat so they thought they'd get a king for themselves. God was basically like "Kings suck actually. You're gonna hate them. You don't even need a proper army cause I got you. But if you really really want then go for it." Whether you think they were quoting a real God or not, it's interesting to see that even way back then, at least someone with a pen knew what's up.

Very good ideo, thanks for that. Bakunin is one of my absolute favorites. It's good to see that you didn't misinterpreted him there, like some other unfortunately do.

Excellent video, as always. Thanks a lot, both for the re-view of Bakunin's thoughts, and of your own commentary.

i think its amusing that hegelian dialectics is surely used by bakunin in describing how the absolute came from void, and is void in reality. a sort of negative dialectics way before adorno.

How did we get from this to Dawkins and Co?

"And the substitution of science for faith" 🤔

This is my Anarchopac video and I love it!

Brilliant. We appreciate the effort.

I don't really have a comment for this video but Twitter ordered me to leave one for the algorithm, so here we are.

Unceasing attack on organized, fundamentalist and hierarchical religion, unceasing defense of freedom of thought and speech for religious individuals (as long as it doesn't devolve into bigotry, violence, child indoctrination, etc.). This is the *the only* anarchist position to hold on the issue of religion.

I wish more people would realize how much power and wealth is concentrated within the institution of the church. People just automatically assume it's a good thing without clearly observing how the church 1) maintains subtle but powerful authority within the structures of government and 2) hoards the wealth of the community while not investing in the basic needs of people. This is a major reason why so many bad laws against transgender people, non-Christians and immigrants are passed on a routine basis, while much-needed socioeconomic reforms are left to collect dust.

What's your opinion on Cuba? I would like to know.

Interesting video! Never read him before! But yes, it seems to me that these “abolitionists” simply lack imagination in terms of how many forms religiosity can take.

Mikhail Bakunin viewed the Church and other religious institutions as fulfilling the same position as the state. Furthermore, he viewed that god could only serve the liberty of humanity in one way, through the cessation of his existence. Source: God and State

I am new to your channel because I discovered I kept retweeting you but hadn’t followed you. Looks exactly like the content I was looking for!

I'm a deist. I believe that a god or gods exists, but I hate how religions claim to know stuff about what gods are like and what they want, which no one can ever know. I do think that it's to our benefit to allow religious people into our movement. For example, there are many zapatists who are catholics and conservatives, but they still are in the movement.

Awesome video!

10:33 tho i don't agree with you there. Not that existential terror, mortality are things an anarchist revolution can solve, but i think we won't have time to ruminate on them when other aspects of life get transformed. And i think more life affirming forms of religions or things similar to religious practice may become more dominant, if not atheism.

I don't know. I've read Bakunin's work on religion, I love how you represented his arguments. Very Honest. However, I agree with Bakunin. Freedom of religion is the best way to combat religion, and God is a Fascist. I'm not going to let the Atheist KZfaq Community fuck with my convictions, American and European religious Patriotism is a thing that leads inevitably barbarism. It is that dogmatism that is bad, Anarchists are supposed to quarrel with such a danger. If we are so analytical to political forms of dogmatism to the point where we always double check ourselves to make sure wee don't fall victim to that, why not with religion? Like Bakunin states, the worst thing to do is to persecute the religious simply for being religious because thats not how you combat it. That is something you approach with care if we are to be consistent Anarchists. I think its nonsense to equivocate every anti theist to the likes of Dawkins saying racist shit against Muslims, or transphobic ThunderFoot. Churches will pimp out a city and you'll be lucky to find a church that actually tends to the poor, even though the Bible says otherwise. Yes, people are happy with their religion. Amazing! They may even build a stateless classless society with their religion in mind, I believe I remember Graeber talking about witnessing such a thing. But in the United States and Europe I'd argue if you don't keep a strong eye on that shit, you'll see the imperialism conducted by western religious crusaders and land conquerers we only read about in history books. Its engraved in right wing politics, and it will never go away because of what's written in those books in the first place. Every good in any Abrahamic religious texts I can find 10 bad's to counter it, and its so old you could interpret it however you want anyways. I feel like a lot of Leftists are angry at the term 'Anti Theist' or even 'Atheist' because of losers like Sargon of Akkkad attacking leftists on the internet, I am not letting Sargon of Akkkad or anyone like that take the non belief of a god and make it a poster child for appropriating bigotry.

Decided to give your videos a try

Oh yeah lol I came up surrounded by damn near every religion imaginable in the city and it fucked me up as a kid. I was never able to believe in any of it and I felt broken. Like something was badly wrong with me and I was terrified of going to hell. Caused me a lotta undud suffering on top of everything else I dealt with. But I can vividly remember hearing (anarchist, though definitely mostly in the individualist/egoist and even what would now be called "post-left" current more than anything) George Carlin shit on religion and finally meeting others who would admit to not being believers, as well as nerding out on biology and cosmology books and I finally got comfortable with the idea that there was almost certainly no gods. Then when I was 11/12 I met some anarchist squatter punks down the block and starting hanging with them and that's where I learned about anti-theism. So when I found the "skeptic" community online it seemed like a natural for given my lowkey love of science and history and my hatred for what religion put me through as a kid. But it didn't take me long to realize that these fools weren't even trying to apply skepticism to anything but the god question. My anarchism is largely the result of a lifelong application of broadly applied skepticism. So I exited that scene about as quickly as I found it. It's a shame though. While I definitely don't think we should be out making the religious feel bad or anything like that, I also hate this tendency I've noticed (especially lately) for some anarchists (and the left in general) to either just not mention religion at all or be mad hard on Christianity and then apologize for Islam as if it's not just Christianity 2.0 (or Judaism 3.0). One of the few things Sam "Thought Experiment" Harris was ever right about was "beliefs inform actions". Growing up in NYC most people lived like atheists as long as nobody was dying. Even then it was usually just prayers on top of whatever an atheist would do lol But then I moved south...and ho-ly-shit did I not understand the stranglehold Evangelical Protestantism had much of the population. I went from thinking we were winning that battle handedly to surrounded by absolute wingnuts and realized that some forms of religion at least were still a massive obstacle to any change in some places and as long as they can justify bigotry and oppression with a deity, try will. As I've gotten older I've realized that it wasn't as sweet back home either. In many ways ya do see religion desperately trying to stay relevant so it's a kinder, gentler version. But not entirely. Plenty of GSM kids still end up in the streets cause their families disowned em and plenty of genital mutilation happens all over, so it's never benign. We just have to be measured and know enemy from potential accomplice. I remember a video of yours that I watched years ago where ya spoke on Zerzan and primitivism, particularly about his talking refrigerator salmon lol But I can't seem to find it now. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on the non-primitivist side of the post-left/anti-civ thought as well as primitivism (something I have a difficult time seeing as related to anarchism at all). I think it's really lacking on YT, or anywhere really. I have my critiques and have taken their advice by "taking what I needed and composting the rest" from their material. But I see a lotta people falling into the cathartic adventurism and grandiose LARPing that seems to permeate that scene and has insured that anarchism stays as irrelevant as possible and achieves as little as possible. I feel it has a lot to offer but as a whole ends up incoherent, confused, self-contradictory, at times demonstrably full of shit and generally incapable of doing much of anything other than advocating for things that play right into the state's hands. I absolutely see a need for anarchism to grow and evolve instead of constantly having to go back to 100-170+ y/o sources and in many ways I think some of what the "critique of civilization" and "post-left" thought offers is useful and any anarchist would be wise to at least consider it so to avoid and minimize falling into the very things about the left that they love harping on. But the hipster wannabe vibe, the obsession with Stirner, and the number of times I've seen "these so-called anarchists" when talking about syndicalists or ancoms is mad cringe. As is their relationship with frauds like Zerzan, Tucker, Perlman, Jenson, etc, their anti-ideology ideology that is about as dogmatic and puritanical as a lotta ML's I've met, the countless essays where they all repeat the same bs about "attacking", being "feral", using the term "techno-industrial", the semi-religious ferver and borderline solipsistic way they talk about "the individual", etc, it's just not great. Bums me out too. Cause there's a lot of valid stuff their in my opinion. But it's lost in a sea of bs, rhetoric and cringe. Keep doing what ya do, sis! Stay up! ✊👊✌♥A///E

Thanks

I really liked this video. Very well explained, thank you.

Thank you for making this video. I really enjoyed all of the quotations. I have to say I'm unimpressed by Bakunin's analysis of religion, and I think he would fit right in with the New Atheists, save for his more tolerant attitude towards religious believers. Speaking about "the substitution of faith for science" already betrays a misunderstanding of the relationship between faith and science, or more broadly, faith and reason. For good theologians, it has never been a matter of either/or. I won't go into it, but the right view is that faith and reason work together to reveal the truth and do not exist in competition. I also can't get behind the statement that religions were made by people who had "not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties." It's frankly offensive to suggest that Averroes, St. Thomas Aquinas, and other pivotal figures who helped shape and define their religions were not fully developed or in control of their faculties as if they were children. Even if the people who created religions were all delusional idiots, that doesn't actually prove that religions are all false. You'd have to actually make metaphysical arguments to prove that. A running theme in Bakunin's analysis is that religion views people and the world as low and wretched. "God being everything, the real world and man are nothing." "God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence and death. God being master, man is the slave." This is not really in line with how Abrahamic religions think of the human person. Yes, man fails to see the truth, sins against God, is weak, and inevitably dies. But these truths are counterbalanced by claims that everyone is made in the image and likeness of God, that people can be saved despite all of their shortcomings, that God loves everyone endlessly as his children, that God is willing to forgive us for all of our shortcomings and betrayals if we just ask, that everyone was born to become a saint, and so on. Bakunin thinks religion reduces our status, and yes, it asks us to subordinate ourselves to God and to believe a number of negative things about ourselves and mankind. But it also asks us to believe many positive things, that there is a bright side to our existence, that there is hope despite all of this. So, no, religion does not "kill human pride and dignity." I'm most intrigued by "If God existed, he would need to be abolished" and, "They dishonor human labour, and make it a sign and source of servitude." I don't know if Bakunin ever expands on this, but he sounds committed to some kind of metaphysical egalitarianism where nothing, in principle, can be above humans, not even God, regardless of what the theistic metaphysicians say. Apparently, for Bakunin, a sentiment such as the one defended in my tradition, the Catholic tradition, the idea that by doing work we participate in God's continuous act of creation, makes human work about servitude. I think it clearly makes it about more than just us and our own designs. It situates us in a subordinate relationship, but a good subordinate relationship that we should rejoice we have the privilege of being a part of.

I love your content, keep it up!

Good Video!

Algo gang.

more than ever we need to reach out and radicalize the next generation

Yay i found a channel for anarchists!

"Death, heartbreak, and existencial terror" God why did you bring me into this world

The fedora was a nice touch

we should compare the power of science now with the power the church had at that time...

ALGORITHM! ALGORITHM! ALGORITHM! I love your work, but I have no intelligent comment, so I'm biopower to boost your views.

Big part of why I don't like reading Bakunin. I don't appreciate being talked down to as a rube that's been tricked, who will happily give up God once glorious revolution occurs and I come to my senses. Bakunin obviously didn't live to see liberation theology or the rise of revolutionary forms of the Abrahamic religions, (not to mention all the others from Hinduism to Neo-Paganism), but I cannot stand it when people who should be my comrades look down on me for my religious beliefs. I have plenty of other perfectly legitimate things to be criticized for, my belief isn't one of them. Religion as an organized structure may disappear, and that'd be cool, but it won't go away as a personal matter. Nice video, liked it.

Really love anarchist views on religion, Christianity especially, because it could be argued that Jesus is an anarchist. Even in the old testament, when Juda didn't have a king, God left it so until the populace pleaded to Him for one.

What did Bakunin think about leaving a comment for the algorithm?

While he may have been against religion he seems less bothered by occult societies being himself a 32nd degree mason and founding his own secret society. Whether he bought into the spiritual side of saw it as a good vehicle for the revolution (like a kind of precursor to the insurrectionary cell?) (Lagalisse, E. (2019), "Occult features of Anarchism" Pm Press, Oakland p. 51)

The algorithm thirsts for entergagement

how can i be your friend for real? discord?

I REALLY wish that Bakunin was not such a racist.

+

he is my Jesus

Bakunin was not in favor of a techocracy, nor "rule by science." He specifically spoke against the idea.

Non-religious people, with little experience of faith, always seem to declare that religion is a response to human suffering. As someone who used to be, but is no longer religious, I find this somewhat humorous.

nice

Bakunin failed to see the weakening of authoritarian religion and institutional religion.

Genuine question: isn't the anarchist opposition to hierarchy itself a contradiction in that the belief is viewed as an absolute? That is, the opposition is itself a projection of what one strives for, and it is this abstract status that we submit ourselves to replicant. No different than religion other than that it is not personified?

Comment :>

why is an antisemite's opinion on religion relevant?

If anarchists were to achieve everything they want to within my lifetime, I would find myself believing in God more not less.