AHC: Fanatical atheist gov't/terrorism

Create a successful fanatical atheist (not Communist!) government and/or terrorist group (like Al-Qaeda or ISIS) that is considered either successful or at least as dangerous as Islamist terrorism is in OTL.

The government or terrorist group should follow someething like Jean-Jacques Hébert, Antoine-Francois Momoro, or something other that can be considered fanatical atheism - including Dechristianisation (or Demuslimisation etc., depending on region), not including fanatical communism.
 
Create a successful fanatical atheist (not Communist!) government and/or terrorist group (like Al-Qaeda or ISIS) that is considered either successful or at least as dangerous as Islamist terrorism is in OTL.

The government or terrorist group should follow someething like Jean-Jacques Hébert, Antoine-Francois Momoro, or something other that can be considered fanatical atheism - including Dechristianisation (or Demuslimisation etc., depending on region), not including fanatical communism.
North Korea, Khmer rouge, USSR
 
North Korea, Khmer rouge, USSR

Hm. Those are all - pro forma - communist. The closest would probably be the Khmer Rouge, but they were more fanatical stone-age agrarianists (if anything) than focused on Atheism.

I want the group(s) to be focused on atheism (just like Hébert was, what with all this "Cult of Reason" thingy).
 
Hm. Those are all - pro forma - communist. The closest would probably be the Khmer Rouge, but they were more fanatical stone-age agrarianists (if anything) than focused on Atheism.

Plus, I don't think the Khmer Rouge had much ability, or even interest, in spreading their ideology around the world, which would be a prerequisite for non-state terrorist activity.

But speaking of Maoists, Bob Avakian is an old 1960s holdover who has apparently developed a rather idiosyncratic fixation on attacking religion in the mode of Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens(see the article). It seems he was once involved with the Students For A Democratic Society, so maybe if his faction rather than Weather had been the ones to go armed-militant, they could have targeted a few houses of worship, along with military installations and government offices. (Though I'm not sure if his anti-religious obsessions overlapped with the era of political bombings).
 
Okay, on March 14 1993, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Of Whereverville USA is gunned down while leaving a restaurant. The next day, the following letter is received by the Conference Of Catholic Bishops and whatever umbrella group represents evangelical protestants.

"The execution of Archbishop Whomever was in response to the recent murder by anti-choice terrorists of Dr. David Gunn. If the violent attacks on doctors providing health-services to women continue, we will retaliate by executing one Catholic archbishop or evangelical Christian leader for every physician who is murdered."

The ostensible intention being to get the archbishops and evangelical leaders to go on TV and plead with the anti-abortion terrorrists to stop their activities. If they fail to dissuade the underground from killing more doctors, the retaliations continue.

Though in all likelihood, the person who shot the archbishop would be a lone-nut masquerading as an organized group, similar to the Unabomber claiming to be an environmentalist army. So he might actually want the doctor-shootings to continue, thus giving him the excuse to carry on with his own violence.
 
SPOILER ALERT

The movie Foul Play involves a conspiracy to assassinate the Pope, carried out by people seemingly motivated by nothing more than hatred of organized religion. But the conspiracy is pretty much a McGuffin, and you really have to suspend disbelief to imagine that you could have a group of people so obsessed with hating religion in and of itself that they would undertake the risks involved in such a scheme.
 

Insider

Banned
OTL Mexico came close to this at times. Some crisis that would be successfully resolved by violence, and you would have necessary radicalization. I case of Mexico the US Marines would roll in as soon as there is attempt to export terrorism to NATO states, but a government that would keep it inside while respecting rights of American citizens and companies could exist for decades.
 
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