oscarstrok

18 Jun 2012, 02:40 PM

"How to lie on the internet, a rough guide with anonymity on the internet"
~Thomas Jefferson

Taelôk

27 Jun 2012, 06:39 AM

Yes you can. Like anything, you can demand sources.

Nemesis

27 Jun 2012, 06:42 AM

Taelôk

27 Jun 2012, 06:39 AM

Yes you can. Like anything, you can demand sources.

Source?

Taelôk

27 Jun 2012, 06:51 AM

Nemesis

27 Jun 2012, 06:42 AM

Taelôk

27 Jun 2012, 06:39 AM

Yes you can. Like anything, you can demand sources.

Source?

Here is the source.

http://forum.thatfatatheist.com/topic/9583716/2/#new

Nemesis

 

That links to the last post in the thread, not to your specific post.

Taelôk

27 Jun 2012, 07:20 AM

OMG, I do feel noobish now. Well, at least I've learnt something today.

Quote:

 

5.6 Totalitarian communism in Munster
North-western Germany in that era was dotted by a number of small ecclesiastical states, each run by a prince-bishop. The state was run by aristocratic clerics, who elected one of their own as bishop. Generally, these bishops were secular lords who were not ordained. By bargaining over taxes, the capital city of each of these states had usually wrested for itself a degree of autonomy. The clergy, which constituted the ruling elite of the state, exempted themselves from taxation while imposing very heavy taxes on the rest of the populace. By 1532, however, the guilds, supported by the people, were able to fight back and take over the town, soon forcing the bishop to recognize Munster officially as a Lutheran city.
It was not destined to remain so for long, however. From all over the northwest, hordes of Anabaptist enthusiasts flooded into Munster, seeking the onset of the New Jerusalem. From the northern Netherlands came hundreds of Melchiorites, followers of the itinerant visionary Melchior Hoffmann.

In 1533, Melchior Hoffmann, sure that the Second Coming would happen any day, returned to Strasbourg, where he had had great success, calling himself the Prophet Elias. He was promptly clapped into jail, and remained there until his death a decade later.
[...]
Hoffmann's imprisonment, and of course the fact that 1533 came and went without a Second Coming, discredited Melchior, and so his Munster followers turned to far more violent, post-millennialist prophets who believed that they would have to establish the Kingdom by fire and sword.
[...]
Another apostle soon arrived, a young man of 25 who had been converted and baptized [...] Jan Bockelson.

[...]In February 1534, Bockelson won the support of the wealthy cloth merchant Bernt Knipperdollinck, the powerful leader of the Munster guilds, and
shrewdly married Knipperdollinck's daughter. On 8 February, son-in-law and
father-in-law ran wildly through the streets together, calling upon everyone
to repent. After much frenzy, mass writhing on the ground, and the seeing of
apocalyptic visions, the Anabaptists rose up and seized the town hall, winning legal recognition for their movement.

In response to this successful uprising, many wealthy Lutherans left town,
and the Anabaptists, feeling exuberant, sent messengers to surrounding areas
summoning everyone to come to Munster. The rest of the world, they proclaimed, would be destroyed in a month or two; only Munster would be
saved, to become the New Jerusalem. Thousands poured in from as far away
as Flanders and Frisia in the northern Netherlands. As a result, the Anabaptists
soon won a majority on the town council, and this success was followed three
days later, on 24 February, by an orgy of looting of books, statues and
paintings from the churches and throughout the town. Soon Jan Matthys
himself arrived, a tall, gaunt man with a long black beard. Matthys, aided by
Bockelson, quickly became the virtual dictator of the town. The coercive
Anabaptists had at last seized a city. The Great Communist Experiment could
now begin.

The first mighty programme of this rigid theocracy was, of course, to
purge the New Jerusalem of the unclean and the ungodly, as a prelude to their
ultimate extermination throughout the world. Matthys called therefore for the
execution of all remaining Catholics ~nd Lutherans, but Knipperdollinck's
cooler head prevailed, since he warned Matthys that slaughtering all other
Christians than themselves might cause the rest of the world to become edgy,
and they might all come and crush the New Jerusalem in its cradle. It was
therefore decided to do the next best thing, and on 27 February the Catholic
and Lutherans were driven out of the city, in the midst of a horrendous
snowstorm. In a deed prefiguring communist Cambodia, all non-Anabaptists,
including old people, invalids, babies and pregnant women were driven into
the snowstorm, and all were forced to leave behind all their money, property,
food and clothing. The remaining Lutherans and Catholics were compulsorily rebaptized, and all refusing this ministration were put to death.
The expulsion of all Lutherans and Catholics was enough for the bishop,
who began a long military siege of the town the next day, on 28 February.
With every person drafted for siege work, Jan Matthys launched his totalitarian communist social revolution.

The first step was to confiscate the property of the expelled. All their
worldly goods were placed in central depots, and the poor were encouraged
to take 'according to their needs', the 'needs' to be interpreted by seven
appointed 'deacons' chosen by Matthys. When a blacksmith protested at
these measures imposed by Dutch foreigners, Matthys arrested the courageous smithy. Summoning the entire population of the town, Matthys personally stabbed, shot, and killed the 'godless' blacksmith, as well as throwing
into prison several eminent citizens who had protested against his treatment.
The crowd was warned to profit by this public execution, and they obediently
sang a hymn in honour of the killing.

A key part of the Anabaptist reign of terror in Munster was now unveiled.
Unerringly, just as in the case of the Cambodian communists four-and-a-half
centuries later, the new ruling elite realized that the abolition of the private
ownership of money would reduce the population to total slavish dependence
on the men of power. And so Matthys, Rothmann and others launched a
propaganda campaign that it was unchristian to own money privately; that all
money should be held in 'common', which in practice meant that all money
whatsoever must be handed over to Matthys and his ruling clique. Several
Anabaptists who kept or hid their money were arrested and then terrorized
into crawling to Matthys on their·knees, begging forgiveness and beseeching
him to intercede with God on their behalf. Matthys then graciously 'forgave'
the sinners.

After two months of severe and unrelenting pressure, a combination of
propaganda about the Christianity of abolishing private money, and threats and
terror against those who failed to surrender, the private ownership of money
was effectively abolished in Miinster. The government seized all the money
and used it to buy or hire goods from the outside world. Wages were doled out
in kind by the only remaining employer: the theocratic Anabaptist state.
Food was confiscated from private homes, and rationed according to the
will of the government deacons. Also, to accommodate the immigrants, all
private homes were effectively communized, with everyone permitted to
quarter themselves anywhere; it was now illegal to close, let alone lock,
doors. Communal dining-halls were established, where people ate together to
readings from the Old Testament.

This compulsory communism and reign of terror was carried out in the name of community and Christian 'love'. All this communization was considered the first giant steps toward total egalitarian communism, where, as Rothmann put it, 'all things were to be in common, there was to be no private property and nobody was to do any more work, but simply trust in God'. The workless part, of course, somehow never arrived.

A pamphlet sent in October 1534 to other Anabaptist communities hailed
the new order of Christian love through terror:

Quote:

 

For not only have we put all our belongings into a common pool under the care of
deacons, and live from it according to our need; we praise God through Christ
with one heart and mind and are eager to help one another with every kind of
service.

And accordingly, everything which has served the purposes of selfseeking and
private property, such as buying and selling, working for money, taking interest
and practising usury ...or eating and drinking the sweat of the poor. .. and indeed
everything which offends against love - all such things are abolished amongst us
by the power of love and community.

With high consistency, the Anabaptists of Munster made no pretence about
preserving intellectual freedom while communizing all material property. For
the Anabaptists boasted of their lack of education, and claimed that it was the
unlearned and the unwashed who would be the elect of the world. The
Anabaptist mob took particular delight in burning all the books and manuscripts in the cathedral library, and finally, in mid-March 1534, Matthys
outlawed all books except the Good Book - the Bible.

Triplock

25 Jul 2012, 03:11 AM

I hate women writers.
I truly do.