Dr. Franz J.T. Lee: If the Arabs would have stayed longer in Spain, we would shout today: 'Uh, Ah, God is Great!'

VHeadline commentarist, University of Los Andes political sciences professor, Dr. Franz J. T. Lee writes: It is the Christmas Season! ... this is what our colonial masters have taught us across half a millennium.

We criticize everything about them, their horror and terror ... but, "you communist, atheist and Marxist, please, do not touch, do not mess around with MY religion, my Christianity, my Christmas!"

Especially in the South, in Venezuela, and elsewhere on the American continent ... in politics, in real life, religious critique still is taboo. Why?

Individually, by playing around with our innocent emotions and minds and by manipulating our fear of physical death, our colonial missionaries and overlords did a fine, everlasting, formal logical job. They created the best weapon of intellectual mass destruction and loaded it with fraudulent democratic ballots and radio-active bullets of mass consumption, with white angelic and red bloody capitalist Christmas gifts. Hence, the global mental holocaust, for which there is no redemption or reparation, is becoming perfect, is globalized. Internationally, in sophisticated technological forms, like Scientology, modern religion and fascist ideology more and more form the front lines of the global 'war of ideas', of 'full spectrum dominance' of corporate Dark Age obscurantism. In this field there is currently raging a full force attack on Venezuela.

It even tries to swallow the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, even to devour Marxism, that is, scientific, philosophic, sapient socialism on a global scale. Currently we have a boom of all kinds of inventions of the meanings of our revolution and socialism sui generis.

Uncle Sam, Father Coca Cola and Murdoch are working over time.

Jingle bells, jungle bells, yes: Joy to the World, our Saviors are born ... for the 2008th time ... and yet we, and our planet, are more god-forlorn than ever before.

* Was Epicurus right? Do the gods really live in the lagoons of our minds? Have they only created the world and then went on eternal holiday and forgot all about the poor, and their aristocratic kingdom in heaven?

* Did Aristotle rightly protest that after creating nous, god, Anaxagoras simply forgot all about him? Essentially he never used it in his philosophy? He told the Greek Olympic lords that Selena, the Moon, was no goddess but simply a rock, for that he was accused of blasphemy of the gods and was ostracized from Athens.

* Why did the French natural scientist Pierre Laplace tell Napoleon Bonaparte that as scientist he does not need the hypothesis 'god'?

* What does the video film 'Zeitgeist' tell us about the greatest ruling class hoax of all times? When are we going to free ourselves from the chains of religious illusions, of divine alienation?

* When will the real, true socialist world revolution begin?

Christmas is not just a holiday; it is a holy day, it is not part of a personal or individual religion. It is a social reality, an intrinsic part of mind and thought control, of a carefully stoked colonial and imperialist mental holocaust. It is an intellectual weapon of mass destruction of scientific and philosophic reason. Next to ideology, patriarchal, monotheist religion is the guardian of the earthly paradise of capitalist parasites, it forms part of the process of exploitative production, of the accumulation of capital, of official, universal history, of his story. Historically we know that religion was burning women at the stake, declared wars, even supported German Nazism. Also, religion is religion, like there is no good capitalism, also there is no good religion. All capitalism, all religion are 'good', because they are the goods, the goodies of the respective ruling conquering classes.

If the Arabs would have stayed longer in Spain, all of us would shout today: 'Uh, Ah, God is Great!'

• Of course, we would not celebrate Christmas, but would be on our way to Mecca.

Beyond any doubt, on the globe, there are wonderful and nice religious and Christian peoples, who do not know the horrendous dimensions of manipulation and indoctrination. Unknowingly and innocently they are being used and abused for inhumane purposes. This comment is dedicated to them, to encourage them to study their historic reality a bit more profoundly.

Today, in reality, billions have no reason whatsoever for celebration. Rather, we have to launch the Marxist critique of ruling class religion, of the sigh of the oppressed creature, of the soul of soulless conditions, of the heart of a heartless world and of the mental strychnine of the majority of mankind.

The very bourgeoisie in its merciless class battle against the feudal God, replaced him with Reason, separated State and Religion.

Hence, the socialist revolution begins with the social critique of religion, otherwise the socialist revolution against capitalism cannot commence. It gets stuck in liberation theology, in the theology of revolution.

President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela said it in a speech to the nation ... he thinks that no heaven exists above, otherwise the astronauts would have sighted it; no hell exists below, otherwise the oil company of Venezuela, PDVSA, would have discovered it under the earth.

Franz J. T. Lee
franz@franzlee.org.ve