Atheists can of course also be manipulated, but not based on their atheism. There’s no organisation behind atheism, there are no specific set of beliefs that you could be indoctrinated with, etc.
I know what the issue is and as I said in another comment, I also disagree with it. But that doesn’t make the statement by the commenter above wrong.
Any ideology can be hijacked and changed to serve an agenda. Atheism is a prime recent example with the “New Atheist” cult which turned out to just be a bunch of unprincipled Islamophobes who are on the Epstein list and have recently turned “culturally Christian”.
I’d say that’s not related to atheism as a whole. Atheism doesn’t have some requirement of being an Islamophobe, in fact it doesn’t have any ideological requirements at all. There’s no guiding book or organisation giving atheists any ideas, it’s just a subset of people who are atheist and mixed that with intolerant beliefs of their own making. You could compare it to Islam and ISIS, where one certain group within this whole set of beliefs made up their own BS, but that doesn’t make their ideology the basis for Islam. [Theistic] religions however already have harmful beliefs baked into their scriptures (i.e. Quran, Bible, Tanakh, etc.), which are the basis for the religion as a whole instead of just for a subset of people making up their own stuff, as well as an established culture independent of those scriptures that is often anything but tolerant and open-minded, fueled by the, generally speaking, religiously inherent lack of critical thinking.
So as I said, atheists can be manipulated and whatnot, for which you provided a great example, but their beliefs do not stem from atheism.
Atheists can of course also be manipulated, but not based on their atheism. There’s no organisation behind atheism, there are no specific set of beliefs that you could be indoctrinated with, etc.
I know what the issue is and as I said in another comment, I also disagree with it. But that doesn’t make the statement by the commenter above wrong.
Any ideology can be hijacked and changed to serve an agenda. Atheism is a prime recent example with the “New Atheist” cult which turned out to just be a bunch of unprincipled Islamophobes who are on the Epstein list and have recently turned “culturally Christian”.
I’d say that’s not related to atheism as a whole. Atheism doesn’t have some requirement of being an Islamophobe, in fact it doesn’t have any ideological requirements at all. There’s no guiding book or organisation giving atheists any ideas, it’s just a subset of people who are atheist and mixed that with intolerant beliefs of their own making. You could compare it to Islam and ISIS, where one certain group within this whole set of beliefs made up their own BS, but that doesn’t make their ideology the basis for Islam. [Theistic] religions however already have harmful beliefs baked into their scriptures (i.e. Quran, Bible, Tanakh, etc.), which are the basis for the religion as a whole instead of just for a subset of people making up their own stuff, as well as an established culture independent of those scriptures that is often anything but tolerant and open-minded, fueled by the, generally speaking, religiously inherent lack of critical thinking.
So as I said, atheists can be manipulated and whatnot, for which you provided a great example, but their beliefs do not stem from atheism.