The Struggle Against Religious Fascism A recent item of news coming out of Nya Aland regarding state persecution of religious minorities has been picked up by international news outlets raising once again the Mundus wide issue of religious fascism. The article from the authoritarian, self-described "Odinist State" reports with apparent glee the arrest and prosecution of six foreign Christians for the alleged crime of desecrating a holy site, their actual crime? Cutting some mistletoe.
If found guilty of the charges they face the possibility of 40 hours of community service, a 6,000Kr fine and a two year suspended jail sentence. While the Nya Aland News reports that the more likely outcome will be a milder sentence of a 3,000Kr fine and deportation it is difficult for any progressive, right thinking human being in the 21st century to believe that any sort of punishment for collecting a wild plant is in any way acceptable.
While in Nya Aland non-Odinists are permitted to reside within the nation those that do are faced with perpetual persecution at the hands of a state which viciously imposes Odinist religious diktat on all within its borders. This has resulted in a brutally oppressive state in which it is against the law to publicly display non-Odinist religious symbols, engage in non-Odinist public prayer, preaching or distribution of religious material among a host of other repressive measures meted out to the 5% of the population who do not belong to the official state religion.
One may be perplexed at the apparent need of the state to forbid in its entirety the free public expression of religion by a 5% minority, could the granting of equality to such a small proportion of society really be that much of a threat to the religious belief of the 95% of the population that are ostensibly followers of Odinism?
The truth of course is that the non-Odinist population pose no serious ideological threat to the belief of the majority of Nya Alanders, instead the minority are victims of the Alandish ruling class' need to enforce their iron rule over the society for the sake of their own enrichment. By wedding Odinist belief to their authoritarian regime they provide themselves with an easy lever of control over the hearts and minds of their people. By whipping up religious-national passions and directing it against outsiders they seek to isolate, and immunise their own suffering masses against the penetration of foreign concepts such as liberty, justice and socialism; Odinism has become a cage in which they have imprisoned the minds of their people, blinding them to their own state of exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie.
It must be recognised however that Nya Aland and Odinism are not the sole manifestation of religious fascism on Mundus. The Kingdom of Lodja and its Cult of the Goddess, Ecclesiastical States, Rhandic Orthodox Christianity and the theocratic state of Ahkabnil to mention but a few all to a lesser or greater extent practice a form of religious fascism, collectively subjecting hundreds of millions of people to the arbitrary dictates of their respective religions while additionally robbing religious minorities of their own rights.
Despite the marked differences in religious doctrines between these faiths all of them share a commonality in function. Originating as a means to achieve social organisation in the earliest years of human civilisation religions played a significant role in starting man along the path to modernity. However just as certain animals will shed and cast off their skins as they mature so do societies, for most of the civilised nations on Mundus this leads to the abandonment of the political role of religion in the political life of society. The march of human progress and the arrow of history have always pointed towards the increasing emancipation of man whether it be from the effort involved in production of life's necessities, the burden of ignorance or lack of political representation, in all cases history has shown that the trend of modernity in inexorably towards greater freedoms for greater numbers.
The tendency for obsolete social forms to be discarded by the growing society in the same way a butterfly discards its cocoon is a result of previous social forms bringing about their own destruction. Why then do such forms persist today in ostensibly developed nations? The reason is simple to deduce from historical precedent. It is a fact that the ruling class of every previous period has attempted to resist the transfer of power to the class that is rising up to replace it, often times this has resulted in violent suppression which either fails or succeeds, if only for a time.
The religious fascist states we see are products of this class struggle. The ruling classes of the respective countries recognise the unnatural and anachronistic nature of their existence in the modern world. Their societies having sufficiently developed to transform into a higher form of social organisation strain against the privileges that their respective rulers have secured for themselves. The recruitment of religion and its fusion with the state apparatus is a means to strengthen their unnaturally prolonged rule and hold together with iron bands societies that would otherwise be torn apart by their own internal contradictions.
Thus it is that we can find, in the 21st century, states where the vast majority of citizens are condemned to serfdom, stripped of any form of political, economic or social rights. This situation is a travesty of justice, but one which cannot last forever. The iron law of history demands that such structures fall, the task for socialists and civilised peoples across Mundus is to fight ceaselessly until they do so.