the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jan 19, 2015
The heads of the Catholic Church weren’t slow to join those rendering homage to the murdered journalists of Charlie Hebdo–those who were outspoken and militant atheists.
The weekly magazine has had to defend itself with lawyers and money at least 15 times in the past 20 years for cartoons poking fun at religion, “14 of which were instituted by the Catholic far right and one lawsuit by Muslims,” as they summed up in an article in 2012.
They meant they had to defend themselves against a Catholic minority in France and likewise, among some fundamentalist Muslims, both sides with reactionary ideas. The fundamentalists of the Catholic Church try to impose their views on all of French society, even sometimes on its victims.
For example, in 1988, one group of religious Catholics protested against a film called The Last Temptation of Christ, one group going so far as to firebomb a cinema in Paris, seriously wounding four people. The same current tried to stop the production of a play in 2012 called Golgotha Picnic. In fact in March of 2012, the director of that theater was attacked by two fundamentalist Catholics, who threw a bowl full of shit at him. And the cause most dear to the heart of Catholic fundamentalists is the fight against the right to abortion.
So it’s a bit too much hypocrisy when these same Catholic institutions want to proclaim their solidarity with the murdered journalists of Charlie Hebdo. At the same time, they drag in their wake their fanatical dreams of imposing their order on all of society, and have done nothing to call in question their own history.