The new religion

Don't get me wrong. I am more than aware of the power of beliefs. I may say that these are "simply" things that some folks believe, but "mere" beliefs have been the root of some of the most heinous atrocities in the history of humankind.

The problem is that it is an extremely small step from "belief" to "true belief", from "believers" to "true believers". True believers are not be questioners. By that I mean that they are not renowned for questioning those beliefs. Not only are they believed, they are accepted as true, they are taken as fact, and, in the end, it becomes heresy (or some kind of crime) to call them into question at all, to even hint that they may, well, questionable. And that's where we are with neoliberalism these days.

It would seem that we are confronted with a new religion. Neoliberalism, as currently advocated and practiced, has all the trappings of religion and its power is comparable, if not in excess, of its religious predecessors, be it the Islamic Expansion after the death of the Prophet Mohammed or the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. More specifically, it exercises its power through violence.

How many infidels were converted by the sword? How many non-believers were brutalized, tortured and executed for challenging the authority of the Church? And today, be it through the outright dictatorial oppression that the peoples of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Poland, Russia, Southeast Asia, and post-Colonial Africa were (and in many cases still are) forced to endure, or the ravaging of whole economies by the World Bank and IMF, as is happening to Greece, or the militaristic corporate state that has taken root in the United States, how many of been beaten, arrested, imprisoned and persecuted for resisting the Power of the Market?

No, the pattern, the motivations, the modus operandi, the justifications, the argumentation ... it is all the same. Whereas the victims of religious zeal were at least promised a life of peace and happiness in the hereafter, in the New Dispensation you are condemned to Hell on Earth: insecurity, fear, pain, poverty, illness and arbitrary violence as the preferred means of control.

Or, as the new High Priests like to proclaim: or so have you chosen. Only you are to blame for your plight.

Oh, how far we have come.