July 14, 2022 11:10 pm JST
Posted in: Abe shooter's plan to target religious head thwarted by COVID See in context
HBJ
Kishi didn't want the religious aspect of it, he wanted the method of control and monetization.
I am skeptical that money was the reason that created a coalition between the two groups (anti-communist politics and religions). A very simple fact that communisim is anti-religion and religion therefore is anti-communism - that was the reason for the coalition between the two. Religion and Communism are philosophically incompatible.
During the Cold War, communist governments implimented state atheism against churches and religions.
Karl Marx, the founder and primary theorist of Marxism, viewed religion as "the soul of soulless conditions" or the "opium of the people".... In the Marxist–Leninist interpretation, all modern religions and churches are considered as "organs of bourgeois reaction" used for "the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class". A number of Marxist–Leninist governments in the 20th century such as the Soviet Union after Vladimir Lenin and the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong implemented rules introducing state atheism. (Wikipedia)
The spread of communism was a threat to religions:
The Khmer Rouge, under its policy of state atheism, actively imposed an atheistic agrarian revolution, resulting in the persecution of ethnic minorities and Buddhist monks during their reign from 1975 to 1979. Buddhist institutions and temples were destroyed and Buddhist monks and teachers were killed in large numbers. A third of the nation's monasteries were destroyed along with numerous holy texts and items of high artistic quality. 25,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime. (Wikipedia)
The Communist government in Prague tried to destroy all organized religion in Czechoslovakia, especially the Roman and Greek churches. It emulated many practices of the anti-religious campaign in the Soviet Union, such as creating bodies to control religious activities and punishing priests who failed to comply with the many laws on religion... [The state labeled] Catholic clergies as enemies of the people. (Wikipedia)
Naturally, religions became defensive against communism. And this resulted in various coalitions between religions and anti-communist politics.
The Catholic Church has a long history of anti-communism.... Pope John Paul II was a harsh critic of communism as was Pope Pius IX, who issued a Papal encyclical, entitled Quanta cura, in which he called "communism and Socialism" the most fatal error. Popes' anti-communist stances were carried on in Italy by the Christian Democracy (DC), the centrist party founded by Alcide De Gasperi in 1943, which dominated Italian politics for almost fifty years, until its dissolution in 1993, preventing the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from reaching power. (Wikipedia)
Cult or not, religions in general are anti-communism. And that creates such a coalitions between the two groups.
