>>17868484
>It took a LOT of rhetorical might to make it believable and every atheists I've seen since has failed to pull it off.
I think the crux of the matter is that it was both godless and totalizing. I'm talking about the USSR or communist Albania here. They tried to build a social order on a single philosophy. People say other ideologies try to do that and every ideology is intolerant, but communist states really went beyond just about everybody in trying to control people's thoughts and repressing people for thinking the wrong things. And then in the course of the party concentrating power, the philosophy and ideology became more and more like a dogma which resembled dogmatic religious believers.

>>17868046
>I hesitate to call it a cult, but it’s an ideology that lights up the same neural path ways in the brain as religion does in certain people.
There's a tendency for some communists today to form little cults, adopt religious practices and try to mix it in with their group, or give up communism and convert to a religion.

Maybe one way of explaining what happened in the early 20th century is that traditional religious structures (tied hook-and-crook to the state like in Russia) collapsed. And in that void came a rush of new "isms." Religion provides a kind of metaphysical canopy that shelters people from feelings of existential dread. When that collapses, you get nihilism and staring into the void, which feels bad. And that canopy collapsed in many societies during World War I. At least one aspect of communism (and other isms like national socialism) was to construct a new canopy of meaning and purpose for people:
https://youtu.be/oYZjNdKH6s8

In our day, there are a lot of people feeling deep ennui. It's like the "nothing ever happens" guy. So they LARP.