Not all of them obviously, but this is something I'm starting to see more and more of, starting with the 2016 Utah Primary and continuing up to today. I find it very odd how succdems, progressives, and D-S-A types would be putting so many of their eggs in the basket of a notoriously right-wing demographic in hopes of turning several red states (Utah, Nevada, Idaho) blue in 2020, simply because they were on the fence for so long about Trump.
Let's be real here: Joseph Smith was a conman, the Book of Mormon was a total hoax, the LDS has a history of extreme racism, the LDS today is extremely misogynistic and homophobic, and the Church functions like a business. The Mormons also never practiced "communism" or "socialism" in Nauvoo; they practiced a kind of semi-feudalism whereby Smith attempted to establish a theocracy where all money went to the Church and he was a little Pope. They were never /ourguys/ and never will be in large numbers.
Hey buddy, I think you have the wrong door. /r/socalism is two blocks down.
Ryan Powell
>>>/leftpol/
The "cool religion" trend amongst petite-bourgeois socdems. Thank the Catholic fash entryists for this shit. It's only gonna get worse.
Hudson Johnson
I mean, do they really believe they can convince a fucking corporate church to join in with their succdem bullshit?
Jason Torres
Mormons are NAZBOL
Isaiah Ward
Basically yeah.
Nicholas Cook
nazbol loli when?
Justin Harris
never, stop masturbating to cartoons of little girls you freak
Lincoln Perry
Why not? They're already convinced that the world's largest financier of fascism will do so.
Angel Gonzalez
I just think it's bizarre. Why the Mormons of all people? They weren't just huge supporters of the Religious Right but they're also huge supporters of Israel (and Israeli apartheid), plus they are way too family-oriented and believe in superstition (realize the left's new trend is re-claiming the Enlightenment and going back to reason as opposed to feels).
Juan Roberts
To add: to Mormonism's defense, the idea that God was once a rational man (rather than a spirit "out there"), and that a man can *become* God through adhering to a strict set of rules and intellectual development, is very much in-line with the Enlightenment. However, in practice the LDS is anything but progressive.
Aaron Torres
Fuck you
Michael Reyes
It's not just Enlightenment fetishism, it's that the new wave of progressives, "Justice Democrats", "Berniecrats", etc. desires so desperately to be the party of middle America. Instead of pandering to college kids, academics, bourgie PoC and women, they want to pander to the white working man and his homemaker wife.
Bernie may have been the best choice in 2016, but he was by no means someone who socialists should stand behind. Michael Parenti hit the nail on the head when he said Bernie's MO is more about making the rich pay their fair share, than it is about dismantling the system which created the class division in the first place. Bernie seldom mentioned American imperialism throughout his entire campaign, snubbed those who called him out on it, has spoken largely against pro-Palestine activists, supported US imperialism in Kosovo, all of which is highly suspect.
Logan Bennett
It's outright condemning.
Luke Smith
You can't be a Zionist and a socialist, which makes pandering to Mormons even worse given as to how they're more pro-Israel than your average American Jew. They even own land in Occupied Palestine FFS.
Caleb Hill
I have difficulty seeing LDS supporting socialists without abandoning secularism. In the states where LDS has become dominant, they dismantled the welfare functions of the state for the express purpose of allowing the Mormon Church to fill that role, allowing them to coerce proles into their religion by being the only real social safety net as well as the primary mode of social advancement. In this sense, socialist parties run contrary to the aims of Mormonism unless they embrace them to such an exent that they effectively become the political wing of LDS and victory under them essentially means the church taking over the state. bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-28/how-utah-keeps-the-american-dream-alive
I don't think their specific beliefs mean much, religions can and often do compromise on their doctrine to advance their interests (though people have gotten used to it now, the Republican Party and Evangelical Christianity were originally very strange bedfellows), it's more that socialists and Mormons butt heads on really the only point that matters, the question of secular society.
I always felt Mormons were basically Christian Taliban
And the similarities go on. The biggest difference would be the wealth levels, which is a huge factor whycthe Mormons dont go ape-shit like the Talibans.
Mormons right now are a part of the stablishment and they benefit from the statu quo, you just wait until they feel the situation no longer benefit them anf you will see a fucking crazy insurrection in the Rockie Mountains.
Jaxon Martinez
Yes, this is something I've noticed as well.
So not /ourguys/.
Jose Wright
Who cares? That doesn't make the Mormons any less reactionary. And who the fuck takes philosophy lessons from succdems?
Jackson Baker
Well plus they almost had one of their own in the White House in 2012.
Hudson Wood
Liberation Theology is a real thing though. I've never heard of Mormonism inspiring a left-wing revolt.
Jayden Murphy
Of course the Mormon religion is reactionary, it's a religion. But this is the same place we're stuck organizing everywhere that isn't overwhelmingly atheist.
Is Mormonism really worse than (or, for that matter, meaningfully different than) Catholicism or Islam? Yet this didn't always stop revolutions in Cathollic or Muslim countries, even when church hierarchies and religious zealots tried.
Typically, abandonment of religion follows successful revolution, not the other way around. Opiate of the masses and all.
Mormons were BioShock villains before that was cool.
Levi Rodriguez
Absolutely. Mormonism has racism written into its doctrine which the Church still tacitly practices.
The LDS is a billion-dollar industry and has its followers by the balls. It's not going to change in our direction anytime soon.
Xavier Young
And Islam has slavery written into its doctrine, and a divinely ordained set of laws, and Catholicism has monarchy, and both have historically embraced execution for apostasy.
I don't expect to flip the LDS church itself anymore than I expect to flip the Vatican - but I know the people praying there (in both cases) are subject to the same material forces as you and me.
Juan Howard
Mormonism isn't even so much a "religion" as it is a straight-up cult. The "church" rules over every aspect of its members' lives, Mormons have to give at least 10% of their income to the "church", bishops frequently pry on members' personal lives, and so on.
Catholicism and Islam have had revolutionary movements within them. The LDS never has and doesn't. Trying to recruit Mormons into socialism is a waste of time.
Eli Stewart
Plus, it's not even comparable to any mainstream religion. It wasn't a religious movement which emerged organically or as a movement of the oppressed, but out of one man's attempt to trick a bunch of people.
So did most historic religions We don't get the word "tithe" from Joseph Smith, user; you're objecting to an old historic Christian practice
You're projecting a rosy-eyed interpretation of early Christianity onto every world religion, not that it matters; any religion with genuine revolutionary content in its early history inevitably gets coopted… or crushed.
Dominic Edwards
Most religions today don't. And again, Mormonism isn't even close to any other religion. It's much more analogous to a cult like the Moonites or Scientology (which borrows a lot from the Mormons FYI).
I'm also talking about genuine acts of religious rebellion which have occurred throughout history. None of them were like the Mormons. Even if you believe all the leaders of the "rebel religions" were false prophets, their aims weren't to con a plethora of people like Joe Smith. There's a mile of difference between claiming you have a new religious interpretation vs. claiming you've discovered a "secret holy book" which you pulled entirely out of your ass.
