Erich Fromm on Organized Religion and Christian Values

"We need to take a deeper look at politics. This is where most people stop; they only see the political ideologies. What they don’t understand is that these things are not just political mentalities—they are religions. I want to say this unequivocally: Nazism and Communism are religions. This is something that is very much not known by the general public. They don’t see it that way, they don’t view it that way, because they’ve been conditioned not to see it that way. But make no mistake—behind these political ideologies lies religion. What I want to get to is the religion that they share in common, because they have a common root religion, and that’s the thesis of this whole presentation. Nazism and Communism are political masks that are presented to the public as diametric opposites, but at their ideological core lies a common root religion which created and controls them both as systems of human slavery. That’s the whole takeaway of this entire body of research. You have to understand that there is a common puppeteer hand that ultimately controls both of these political masks, and that is a religious system. It is a covert religious system, but it is a religious system nonetheless." Mark Passio