Jonathan Boulden

Bill Maher: [Extra] This is the Anne Frank house, when you see it you really understand how true that phrase "The banality of evil" really is. One of the common arguments in defence of religion is that Hitler wasn't religious and neither was Stalin or Mao and they were bad so religion is good. But like religion itself it's an argument that really depends a lot on not thinking too deeply. For one Hitler himself didn't eliminate anyone personally he had a lot of footsoldiers most of whom were good Christians and they pushed people into the ovens. Religion has done a bad job of stepping up and preventing violence-prone bullies from doing their thing. If anything it usually justifies acts of madness. And 20th Century Fascism and Communism while not strictly religions as we've come to think of religion, really were religions. They were state religions. Hitler was seen as infallable and Godlike. Hirohito was absolutely a God on Earth to the Japanese people. We shouldn't get too hung up on the word religion. The bottom line is whether people think and act rationally or not and whenever they organise their lives around something that could best be described as groundlessness bad things happen. Even if the central story seems harmless like there's a God who loves you so much that he had his only Son whacked so that you could keep on sinning. Still, doesn't matter, once reality has left the building, once it's up there in the ether then anything can be extrapolated or tacked on by Preachers and Priesthoods and delusionals and power-hungry pricks. It's not that big a step from "your God is the only God and he loves you very much" to "you really should get out there and start killing for him" Whenever people believe in something utterly groundless because they were told it by a charismatic preacher and Hitler was nothing if not that, all bets are off. Nazism was a religion, a religion based on the insane fiction that Jews were subhuman vermin who did not deserve to live, but people and people not from a primitive society believed it because A they liked the preacher, B the other sheep around them were buying into it even though it was crazy and C it was inextricably tied to their view of a glorious Valhalla-like future. A, B, C. Religion.