The particular neckbeardy, fedora wearing, Sam Harris listening trend of atheism was a pretty clear reaction to the evangelical psychosis of the Bush administration.
Other geriatrics here can attest that the character of Christianity at the time was way different than it is now. These days, the fascists are more “culturally Christian” and avoid overt bible apologism. But back in the day, these people were constantly on TV spewing young earth creationism and other shit, and they were largely taken seriously. It’s hard to believe now how much time was spent “debating” evolution back then. The atheist backlash at least affected discourse aesthetically for some time, making these views laughable, which deplatformed a lot of evangelicals or made them hide their power levels on TV.
Some argue that this brand of atheism justifies imperialism. It does so really only in theory. There really is no material basis for atheists in the US to justify an invasion anywhere in the world. The truth is that Christianity is still a far more powerful force for imperialism. Bush said that God told him to invade Iraq. I don’t see any president saying anytime soon that the US needs to secularize a country through force.
If fundamentalist and political religiosity were defeated, then belligerent atheism would dissolve, but the reverse is not true.
Overall, it really does seem like people over emphasize this group of internet no-lifers because of the cultural cringe they manifested.
Yeah, I feel really bad for the incel lady. It must be horrible looking at that movement and thinking you had a hand in it, however small and well intentioned.
Yeah, another “No shit I was there” thing. I remember the very early days before it got coopted by GOP agents where it was sort of a hazy, vaguely libertarian protest against the clearly unjust and bogus bank bail outs, but no one present knew how to do street politics. That lack of any real movement, leadership, or theory was part of what made it so easy to coopt and turn in to the right wing circus it rapidly became.
Occupy had a lot of the same problems with lack of direction or theory, but I think it was less appealing to the capitalists and they didn’t try as hard to coopt it before having Obama bring the boot down.
Tea party were a bunch of chuds who thought electoralism solved things and they were angry at the “bankers” (wink, wink) got the bailout money and not themselves. They had no idea of organization and thought they were going to vote the bastards out and take over themselves and throw the “bankers” into concentration camps. Entryism was used to calmly dismantle them.
