Another W for secular society and Womens rights. Stay mad barbarians.
Yeah, forcing an effective ban on Muslim women swimming is a real victory. Wouldn’t want them to think you had respect for them as people or basic human decency, now would you?
/s
Brother, trying to ban things you don’t like doesn’t work. It just makes the world a worse place to live. This isn’t a win, it’s a loss. You accept people as they are and make the world safer for everyone, not fucking ban a bathing suit because you disagree with a religion.
It’s nothing to do with religion and everything to do with French pool hygiene. Atheist men are typically not allowed to wear baggy shorts for example, the only reason I own a few pairs of jammers.
No, it fucking isn’t. The burkini is made out of the same fabrics as all other swimwear. The amount of fabric doesn’t magically make it a hygiene issue. Stop spouting racist nonsense, my guy.
I hope you’re not stupid enough to actually buy the dumbest excuse in world history to enforce Apartheid against Muslims.
You are delusional. This hygiene law is very old. I think it is a weird law but it has nothing to do with Apartheid or discrimination against Muslims. It is just a weird law. If a non muslim woman visits a Muslim country she also needs to dress accordingly. Which is just their law or is that white christian/atheist Apartheid to you?
You should look up when France colonized Algeria (and other African countries). This stuff all goes back quite a while. France also tried banning Burkinis at beaches recently (but failed).
You think these people take swimming hygene seriously?
Colonization and what happened in colonies is a tragedy. That should never have happened. But I don’t think they came up with their pool hygiene law to discriminate against Muslims.
And for the Seine… Atleast they tried and put more than 1 billion euro into getting it cleaned for the Olympics. Before that, there was a ban to swim there.
It happened around laicite so I can imagine that it was used against Christians as well. The laws were also not universally applied until much later around the 80’s.
Maybe in the 1900’s people jumped into the pool with the same pants they wore all day but that certainly isn’t happening these days. Swimwear is specifically put on before going into the pool and people can take showers beforehand. Archaic laws like this have no real reason to exist other than enforcing Apartheid. You can find plenty of other archaic laws like it which aren’t enforced at all
According to a 1910 law, again technically still in place in France, it is illegal to kiss on train platforms.
While it remains in place no formal penalty exists so you should be safe to share a goodbye kiss before catching the train.
The actual solution to the problem is obviously for people to take a shower before entering the pool and to wear clothes for swimming. Not to ban certain types of swimwear.
Why would “muslim” women be singled out here unless there were some other aspect that you are intentionally trying to link to being muslim. Is there some kind of inherent quality of muslim women that require them to wear a particular style of swim garment that non-muslim women don’t wear?
Yeah, their religion you dense hippo. Congrats! You’ve learned that some things are haram. Like women showing their hair to men that aren’t family.
Cool sounds like exactly the kind of thing a secular society should be marking as “haraam,” and passing laws against. Ideally it would be even stronger mandating that “religion” isn’t welcome in a modern society and all markers of that relgion should result in the followers being deported.
Also we should probably be deporting racists like you that associate “muslims” with Islam, along with Jewish Zionists.
You can see how mandating that a woman doesn’t wear a particular garment is a pretty poor example of a “women’s rights win”, right?
We outright need to get rid of these financially obese people.
Don’t France have a law where you have to wear skin tight swimwear (regardless of gender) because they see it as being more hygienic as it’s much more likely you aren’t going to walk around in that swimwear and all get changed into it significant for swimming so it’s more likely to be clean or some shit?
Yes, that is what they say. They still chlorinate the shit out of their pools so I guess if they had to account for (gasp) swimming trunks everyone would come out blonde.
Honestly, the Danish (Scandi?) approach of “hey everyone, take an actual shower before getting in” makes more sense and makes a more pleasant pool experience.
That’s how it is in the uk too, you shower before and after going in.
The framing of this suggests that this is only against women, men also have swimwear codes in France. It’s crazy
Mandatory speedo?
Correct, shorts are also banned. The same city tried to change that to but got shot down there too.
Since state and religion are separated, public pools cannot make an exception based on religion. France had fairly strict hygienic rules for public swimming pools, which prohibit loose fitting garments.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not
It’s true. Some people wore surf shorts all day and didn’t change. So… That’s the current situation.
I’m not, this has nothing to do with women’s rights
Of course not it’s just Apartheid against Muslims. France tried doing this even for beaches. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/burkini-ban-france-overturned-1.3736823
The thing they said about this ridiculous mandatory speedo rule is true. But this here is still all about racism. They could just make an exception. This would not be an issue at all if it weren’t an opportunity for politicians to spew anti-Muslim hate.
Looks like they have em in the USA too
Time to jail this repugnant dress code violator!
We don’t need to go that far. It’s not like he’s wearing a tan suit.
I bet this despicable elitist eats Dijon mustard on a regular basis!
I agree that Zohran is not sufficiently naked to be swimming in a public pool. Zohran, shame on you! Take off your clothes!
Come on now, they just wanna see Zohran without his clothes on! Now we can’t blame them for that…
The insane part of this would be if Zohran didn’t wear a suit. The New York Post would be like “MAYOR ATTENDS OFFICIAL EVENT NOT IN A SUIT!!!1!!!11!!!”
This made me afraid for his shoes, but obv he took them off.
Okay i’m both dumb and uninformed but I dont have enough context to be confident I understand the bottom part. Somewhere they outlawed swimwear that muslim women would wear to a pool?
Yes
Why though? Like what is the problem?
Racism
I legit cannot understand how someone can hate like that. Like it just does not make sense to me. Hate and anger is so exhausting. There aren’t many folks I truly hate, but those I do hate are individuals who have wronged me in profound ways and/or have made certain parts of my life Hell.
I can’t imagine how tiring hating entire demographics is.
It’s often not blind hate but something more like “we need to save them from themselves” or “actually they’re the hateful ones we’re just protecting Our Kind”
I think that’s just the dishonest justification, not the actual feeling behind it.
I mean the feeling comes from somewhere right? You don’t just wake up hating people, there has to be some propaganda effort that gives a reason to hate groups of people.
I suppose it comes down to ingroup/outgroup psychology and the ability to dehumanize your opponents. It’s a shame we still haven’t made it past such basic barriers as a species
Framing racism in purely biological terms misses the historic component: lived reality in capitalism makes people alienated, destroys solidarity and communal structure and instills the feeling, that life is a zero sum game, where someone has to lose for you to win. Racists are suffering from economic contradictions and make the conscious choice to not turn against those powerful people and structures responsible. They feel too weak for that. In a deplorable step, for which they are fully accountable, they rather go after those most marked as targets by the very powers that oppress them too. To this end and insulting their own intellect, they readily accept the most obvious lies and propaganda.
In a communist societies, communal structure would exist, where people encounter each other, experience true solidarity and feel powerful to confront any injustice (because they would be). Solidarity, empathy and working together in groups is far more fundamental to human nature than ingroup/outgroup thinking. It’s the historically contingent economic structure around us that severely punishes and criminalizes the former, while strongly pushing the latter.
Thanks, I had the feeling that societal and economic characteristics also influenced it but didn’t know how to express it
France used the “enlightenment” to justify colonialism and they’re going at it till this day. https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/203/france-loves-couscous-but-hates-me
Not quite. In 2022, the city of Grenoble passed a law which allowed women to wear their bathing suit of choice rating than mandating a specific style of dress.
In 2025 there was been a successful court challenge which forces the law be retracted and to be brought back in line with national regulations. On the basis that the rule change was made to accomidate a religious group, which I guess is illegal in France.
In France you are not allowed to wear loose or long swimwear in pools for “hygiene”. It is also banned for men to wear boardshorts. They have to wear speedo style garments.
tbh going to a public pool with a full veil is fucking wild - who would even enjoy this. It’s stupid.
I don’t care. You’re stupid.
You have a habit of not respecting what women want. Interesting.
You’re defending a garb of oppression in the name of women’s rights. Unreal how some people think
I shouldn’t have to explain to my son that other cultures exist, think of the children! /s
why is the comment section talking about muslims lol
Burkini’s are primarily worn by Muslim women. France tries to enforce Apartheid against Muslims by making rules which don’t specifically mention them but are clearly targeted against their culture.
France also tried banning Burkini’s at beaches but didn’t get their way because they didn’t make up a sufficiently arbitrary rule for it and just called all Muslims terrorists. France’s burkini ban overturned by highest court
Active twitter community events I have discovered this week:
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whether people who are late are bad
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whether it is okay for religious people to be communists
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when putin will be overthrown by a less hawkish leader since russia is, as usual, on the verge of collapse
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whether muslims should be slaughtered for their innate anti-womanness, lack of promiscuity, & being too sexy
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how awesome this new progressive guy to the right of Graham Platner is
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vietnam & cuba betraying communism (none of the people discussing this are even communists)
It is as wonderful as it sounds I get live updates from my spouse while driving!!
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Seems they don’t want anyone wearing too much clothing in the pool.
deleted by creator
To be fair more clothes weigh you down and produce more drag and potential for entanglement so it would be fair for the lifeguards to not deal with that.
That is probably the most sensible argument I’ve heard in favor of this ban but I don’t think any single french politician ever used it. Usually it’s some lukewarm argument about secularism, seemingly entirely forgetting the fact that only public servants in service are forbidden from showing any signs of religious affiliation.
Both men and women are required to cover their hair in pools?
In most public pools yes. Prevents hair from clogging filters. Or that is the official line.
Yeah, you don’t properly shower before a pool in France normaly. You change into your swiming gear, then shower (all gendered areas) with gear on, then pool. The swimming gear is suppose to keep the filth in, so only tight enough gear is allowed. In Sweden for example it is a bit opposite. Get naked, shower (gender separated areas), put on gear, pool. You have showered and washed your hair out, you are good to go.
Until you’ve swum in a public pool that requires full body wash and shower, naked, you don’t realise the difference it makes to the chlorine amount required to keep the pool clean. Denmark has explicit instructions about where to wash, pre-soaped single use sponges that must be used, but hardly any chlorine in the pool water.
Humans are filthy, yo. I’d rather everyone cleans properly before I have share pool water with you.
Yeah, the issue here in France is that you absolutely can’t trust people to do the right thing. A lot of them would skirt the rules and not wash properly.
And even then, I’ve been a competition swimmer and am from Denmark and our training slots were mostly in the evening after public access hours. The pools were filthy as fuck. And that’s with the higher hygiene standards here. People are just filthy animals.
I know it was absolutely a thing in the past, my parents talked about it for example, but I’ve never seen all-gender changing rooms in a French swimming pool. Though I’ve seen the obvious signs of the retrofit in a few places, where you can clearly see that it used to be one big room that got separated in two.
I think you’re right that they don’t trust us to properly shower before going into the pool though, because to this day, I still see like ~40% of people barely showering enough to rinse their sweat off. A lot more people are actually showering than when I was a kid though (myself included)
Edit : actually, I’ve been in some pools that were constructed more recently that have mixed changing rooms, but these have individual stalls and the showers are still gendered
TLDR : the showers aren’t all-genders as far as I know. The “changing rooms” sometimes are but in this case it’s just a big room with stalls and lockers so privacy isn’t really an issue.
…here in the states its like a before and after thing. We are allowed to take two showers lol
So when kids pee in the pool all the pee stays inside their pants I’m sure…
I guess they have not solved that one.
Mandatory underwater heat camera’s it is.
you don’t shower in France normally
FTFY
The fact that this comment section is full of “removed by mods” but still has so much racist nonsense… this topic really makes the scratched liberals come out of the woodwork.
Or the mods are right winger
racists.Edit for redundancy
Bullshit.
Please report those comments so we can get to them.
From my very limited understanding, this comes down to the difference in how France treats religion. In the US we have a “freedom of religion” where people are supposed to be allowed to practice whatever religion they want. In France they have a “freedom from religion” where people’s religion are not supposed to br demonstrated or encroach on others. So the mentality becomes you can go to the pool, but you can’t wear that religious garment.
If Iran said they were providing “freedom from Atheism” everyone would realize how incredibly stupid this sounds
That would be pretty stupid, agreed.
Atheism isn’t oppressing and brain washing people.
Have you ever seen “atheist” and “sceptic” community and their talking heads?
This, and it doesn’t have any symbols or practices associated with it in the first place, so what would one even ban? Atheism isn’t a religion, it’s the lack thereof.
Marxism does not mean blanket hostility towards religion in all situations
That is true and isn’t what I would support, but the comment above wasn’t blanket hostility, not in this context anyway. Pointing out the often prevalent cases of religion being used as a tool of oppression and that it’s all based on indoctrination is absolutely valid when discussing the motivation for France’s measures. You can of course disagree with it and with the measures discussed here, independently of each other even, but if this is already “blanket hostility” to some people, they should stop viewing religions through rose-colored glasses. I mean, do you genuinely believe that religions are NOT used for this purpose at all? I have a hard time believing that any actual Marxist would see religions uncritically, even with the understanding of them being the way they are as the result of material conditions, and even less so as Marxists-Leninists if one has actually read Lenin’s “Socialism and Religion”.
And even if you were to consider it blanket hostility, why would this be worthy of a ban and comment removal instead of simply engaging with the comment in an intellectually honest way and possibly providing the commenter a different perspective?
You do realize that atheism is an ideology like any other, prone to the same manipulations?
And that the issue taken here is weaponisation of said atheism by bourgeoise, wielded by rabid libs against whomever empire deems an enemy, uncritically due to internalized chauvinism?
And that you can’t argue that republic “kill all algerians” of france is suddenly having safety and prosperity of muslim women in mind, let alone that they’e realizing whatever piss dreams of seculairity they have?
Atheists can of course also be manipulated, but not based on their atheism. There’s no organisation behind atheism, there are no specific set of beliefs that you could be indoctrinated with, etc.
I know what the issue is and as I said in another comment, I also disagree with it. But that doesn’t make the statement by the commenter above wrong.
It seems like religion really is the opiate of the masses…
Marx did not consider illterates who conviced themselves they could read…
These laws exist for colonialist purposes so you couldn’t be more wrong.
I could be actually wrong instead of made up wrong.
Umm so what atheist garmets would they be banning in this case exactly?
Mandatory hair coverings for women “to protect them against the weather outside.”
Nowhere is any kind of hair covering mandatory because of atheism, nor to protect for the weather outside which wouldn’t be because of atheism in any case.
No there’s mandatory hair-uncoverings. In France. Because of “Atheism” as a shield for colonialism.
I’m just pointing out that Iran wouldn’t ban atheism, it would ban every other religion except its own. Banning atheism doesn’t make sense in a way, it would mean forcing everyone to have a religion. Like the state would demand you wear religious symbols and pray once a day? Doesn’t matter which tho, as long as you have at least one religion.
I think these kinds of laws (though not this one) is more about setting boundaries and keeping a proper separation than outright banning.
That being said, I see the headscarf and bikini as a cultural symbol more than a religious one. I agree this law is more about plain old xenophobia.
I think a better example would be the uproar there would be if the kippa was banned in public or at the pool.
Tbh though, I’m very anti religion and I’m for banning the lot of it in public (crosses, kippas, etc), just not the headscarf because there’s nothing actually religious about it imo. The burka is a bit intense and strikes me as clear oppression of women, but I don’t see anything wrong with the burkini really.
By banning all religions the defacto position would be Atheism which would make it a competing “religion”. That would make it no different than forcing your own ideology on others in the same way of religions doing forced conversions.
Iran has crosses and kippa’s by the way.
Even Stalin’s crackdown of religion is often defended from the angle of destroying the power of the Church. But religious institutions already don’t hold much significant power these days so you’d just be destroying people’s cultures.
Congratulations on creating a secular theocracy, Quebec and France. Really valuable contribution.
Don’t know about Quebec. But the “freedom from religion” French attitude is just being weaponised against Muslims at the moment. That Wauquiez is very close to far right.
In 2019 Quebec passed a law prohibiting public workers who are in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. The law violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly rights around freedom of religion and expression. But there’s a fancy little mechanism called the “notwithstanding clause” that allows you to pass unconditional laws under some circumstances, which Quebec invoked and allowed the law to pass and withstand court challenges.
Seriously. Do they ban Catholic priests, monks, and nuns from wearing their religious attire? Or, let me guess, is there some broad exemption for “tradition” or some such bullshit?
The ban is effective only for civil employees at work and such. So depending on where you live you can even see hijabs, priests in cassoks, and topless ladies suntanning at the same city park.
Also kids in school IIRC. Did you forget about that whole shitshow where a girl got in trouble for wearing some dress (from a fast fashion brand that was extremely popular with girls her age) because someone declared it was a burqa… then they were more or less forced to recognize that her skin color was the issue since hundreds of white french girls wore that dress to school with no issues.
I mean, I would like to live in a world without religion. Sounds a whole lot better than our current Christo Fascism.
“I want secularism but I still want overbearing authority figures telling people what to wear” is the silliest version of secularism. I want secularism but not the good parts, basically.
I agree that these measures are a bit over the top, but I don’t really get your points.
Which good parts of secularism do you think are missing here?
And “secular theocracy” is an oxymoron. Theocracies require the belief in at least one deity as a supreme ruling authority to guide the state, which is not the case at all here, completely the opposite even. So what makes you think that it’s a “secular theocracy”?
Which good parts of secularism do you think are missing here?
The part where you have enough social liberty that you don’t have government officials telling you how to dress.
And “secular theocracy” is an oxymoron. Theocracies require the belief in at least one deity as a supreme ruling authority to guide the state, which is not the case at all here, completely the opposite even. So what makes you think that it’s a “secular theocracy”?
Putting aside that ‘secular theocracy’ is wordplay making fun of their attempts to secularize in such a way that they take on features of a theocracy, such as dress codes. It’s absolutely not an oxymoron. You could presumably have a Buddhist theocracy without any sort of belief in a supreme ruling deity.
Can and in fact have!
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation–including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation–were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”[21] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.[22]
The whole Parenti essay is fascinating https://redsails.org/friendly-feudalism/
Buddhism is not a theology?
This is a concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religion
The part where you have enough social liberty that you don’t have government officials telling you how to dress.
That would be good indeed, but isn’t really an aspect of secularism.
‘secular theocracy’ is wordplay making fun of their attempts to secularize in such a way that they take on features of a theocracy, such as dress codes.
Fair point.
You could presumably have a Buddhist theocracy without any sort of belief in a supreme ruling deity.
I think that wouldn’t make it a theocracy, as it’s more of a philosophy or way of life rather than a belief in a higher being that has a strict set of rules that a state could enforce. But I don’t really know that much about buddhism, so I might be wrong.
That would be good indeed, but isn’t really an aspect of secularism.
I would say it’s an aspect of secularism when done in a sane way.
I think that wouldn’t make it a theocracy, as it’s more of a philosophy or way of life rather than a belief in a higher being that has a strict set of rules that a state could enforce. But I don’t really know that much about buddhism, so I might be wrong.
Well, I would say that ultimately all theocracies are that. In my view there aren’t any deities, so all theocracies which claim to base their legitimacy on a supreme being are, well, wrong. They are really enforcers of cultural norms that just happen to have a belief in a particular deity as one of those norms.
Yeah, I agree with you there. This is a bit of a weird way to go about what they’re trying to do.
When you create your utopia that ruthlessly purges all religion, do not be surprised when the definition of “religion” expands to politically unpopular things that have no relation at all to faith. Right wingers already call being pro-LGBT “a cult” or “a religion.”
Except that’s not how this work. What you described is specifically for representatives of the state (the french nation does not have a religion and it’s representatives should not show theirs either) the citizens are free to do whatever they want and be as visibly religious as they want. Now, theright (including wauquiez) have a problem with Muslims having the same rights as the others but that’s another story
Comments section validating my hatred for France.
There are many people in France, you know. Some people accepted black French poets who wrote in French as French poets. If you walk around France you will see people of all races working in all jobs. I don’t know why this burkini thing triggers some of them that much.
This is G *rmany erasure
Great, this answers the question:
What stupid thing will people fight over next?
Need to hear the arguments on boths sides iterated 1000 different ways to truly understand the issue.
At least it will give trans a break.
This perfectly divisive issue, brought to you by people with too much time and distributed by your friendly oligarch.
Killlllllll meeee
The amount of Reddit Atheists showing up here who would wish China was actually putting Uyghur Muslims in extermination camps is off the charts.
In my view, one isn’t really an atheist if they are a liberal (or conservative, but I repeat myself) as it is effectively another religion, with Capital as it’s “god”, it is kind of like those liberals that call themselves “socialist” and support controlled opposition, compatible “leftist”, and friend of epstein, bernie sanders.
Edit: for some reason I can’t see the rest of the comments while logged in, so I’ll put it here: I think a more accurate and inclusive phrase would be “freedom of religion or atheism”, as it would be shitty if one had to declare some religion or another without just “none” as an option.
If I said that in my view, one isn’t really an atheist if they are a communist as it is effectively another religion with Historical Materialism as it’s “god”, you’d probably consider that a pretty brain-dead take.
Can we leave the no true Scotsman fallacies to the religion defenders, please?
The problem with that is that it is a false equivalence, Dialectical and Historical Materialism is a part of the Socialist Scientific method, where as Liberalism is not Scientific or based on it, using those who are incorrectly treating Marxism Leninism as dogma to argue that it is a religion is the same as pointing to Scientologists pseudo-science cult as proving that Science is a religion. The biggest difference between a religion and a science, such as Marxism Leninism, is one is at odds with reality and the other explains it and has been proven through experimentation (putting Theory into Practice and refining the Theory based on the results in MLs case).
For Lukács, liberalism is the more dangerous ideology because it is hypocritical: it promises emancipation while delivering exploitation. But calling it a “religion” is analytically sloppy. Religion, for Marx, is the “sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world.” Liberalism offers no such sigh; it offers a rationalization of the heartless world.
I admit it may be sloppy, it is something my mind came up with long before I ever started reading Marxist Leninist Theory. I am almost certainly also biased on the topic as a result of childhood trauma that screwed me over for life. (I’ve made massive progress on overcoming it with help from my Therapist, but it isn’t fully resolved.)
Sorry to hear that. I hope you will feel better as time goes by.
I agree, that liberalism is more dangerous than religion, but for a different reason: liberalism is by definition pro-capitalist. Religious institutions are only actually almost always pro-capitalist in our time, but they don’t need to be this way for ever and some have been revolutionary, but were quickly crushed or dismantled, because of their attachment to hegemonic religious hierarchy (liberation theology in Brazil).
Historical materialism tells us, that offering a rationalization of existing power structures is the historic reason religious institution were allowed to exist and to grow and to incorporate into state structures. It’s their whole thing. Those that tended to be counter hegemonic were destroyed.
Also, most organized religious institutions are deeply liberal: pro-capitalist, reformist at best, tending towards fascism at worst. The big weakness of the Islamic political movements like in Iran, Lebanon, India and Pakistan is their liberalism and idealism that continuously causes them to make mistakes in judgement and seek alliances with western imperialism. They are still anti-imperialist because they represent national capitalist interests. Those capitalists are the ones who lead the religious political movements. They couldn’t do that without drawing power from unorganized proletarian interests, but those tend to be divided and they mostly fail at uniting the proletariat across concessional lines. Yes, it’s a fight for national liberation (which is good), but not a national front with organized communist forces, because those aren’t allowed / are to weak to organize at scale.
Especially western religious communists in the imperial core have a duty to try and build independent institutions of worship that are truly revolutionary, rather than rest on the laurels of the Islamic revolution, that they did nothing to contribute to. The Catholic Church, the protestant and evangelical mega churches, those are powerful and influential institutions that are entirely in reactionary hands. Western comrades who are religious need to demonstrate their ability to build alternative institutions or capture the current ones or, if they fail to do so, reject any participation in organized religion (which does not mean become atheist).
Unfortunately, most organized religions are evil. Exceptions are very rare and include Liberation Theology in Latin America in 1960s and Islamic socialism from 1930s to 1990s.
There was also a progressive religious movement in Vietnam, though maybe not revolutionary. In medieval times, some of the hussites and later, during the reformation the movement around Thomas Müntzer was revolutionary. During the Arab spring, there were Islamic anarchist currents. The original historic movement around figures like John the Baptist, Jesus and others was anti Roman occupation, anti taxation (that benefited only a tiny urban minority) and anti collaboration. But they didn’t reject the main contradictions of their time: slavery and tribalism. It remained a movement for only Jewish, free men. Slaves and non-jews were excluded on racist, religious and conservative grounds, thus they couldn’t build a large enough base and were crushed.
I see your point, but it is important to realise that humans in general are creatures of belief. A person can make claim to have no beliefs, but it only takes a moment of observation to see through and identify what a person revolves their lives around.
Secular states, as I’ve noticed, are prone to falling into identity cults, whether it be Nazi Germany, North Korea or even modern day America, just to name a few.
The underlying problem to me, isn’t religion but cultism itself and I identify cultism as an obsession to the point of causing harm to oneself and others.
Cults can exist in every religion but not every cult has a religion.
We live in an age of material cults, or profit cults as I call them. They won’t stop their behaviour even when the graph rising doesn’t make any sense nor as their companies fall apart because that’s where their instinctive obsession lies.
So they, like. Passed a law saying women can wear whatever they feel comfortable in while swimming. And then, people got mad that women were wearing burkinis, so they de-funded the city until they banned them?
I mean, I see big dudes that wear long sleeve shirts into the pool to hide their man-boobs. They could also be doing it to limit sun exposure, which seems reasonable. I don’t judge. I figure these burkinis are kinda like that? Like, as long as nobodies wearing so much clothing that it becomes a drowning risk… What’s the BFD?
According to this site; they established these rules of only wearing tighter fitting swimwear because then people don’t wear them out and about, so they stay cleaner, thus don’t introduce as much dirt into the pool. (Makes sense since my public pool growing up wanted us to shower in the gym showers immediately prior to getting in so… I guess this is a valid concern at most pools)
However, they say that when they changed the rules to allow for burkinis, it was done as a religious exemption. So now the court says that changing the rules just for one random religion goes against the spirit of French law, so they changed it back.
I mean, I’m all for not giving a fuck about random religions and their weird draconian rules, but… Couldn’t they just have them shower at the pool prior to swimming? And think of all the poor fat men that desperately want to hide their shame 😞
Couldn’t they just have them shower at the pool prior to swimming?
The French right now
Sometimes you just need an ignorant American to explain things 🙂
What exactly is going on in this? Fumigation?
aaaaah, covid shit, got it
