#and they can seem *really appealing* to people who’ve been subjugated without understanding that the solution is not becoming
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golvio · 7 months ago
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I wonder how much of the practice of banning other faiths, especially Judaism, had to do with the newly Christianized Roman Empire not wanting to own up to crucifying Jesus? It’s all about finding convenient scapegoats to distract the populace from the government’s hypocrisy and various screwups, and modern ethnonationalist governments with ambitions of Empire keep up this “proud” tradition of Blaming Somebody Else.
Fun fact about the early Catholic church is that, despite spending generations being persecuted by the Roman empire, it took less than 15 years under Theodosius I to go from “the empire is Catholic now” to “and also every other religion is banned.” You can literally read St. Augustine move from “state religious persecution is unacceptable” to “state religious persecution is cool actually” over his lifetime as Catholicism came to power. I’m sure there’s no broader lessons to be learned there
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