Idk about a pure marxist take on new atheism written by a scholar or theorist but my take is that the whole thing is repackaged white supremacy. In its time (and now too) it has functioned so as to facilitate islamophobia, chauvinism, and dogmatic hatred of anything traditional.

What is curious about New Atheism is that it pretends that atheism generally is separate from Christianity. I am laughing at the thought as I type this. IMO this is an intentionally undialectical view that either ignores history, or cynically tries to create a new imperial religion. Atheism is better understood as a tradition of doubt that has manifested differently throughout the history of the Christian world. Expressing doubt is actually a deeply religious, Christian, expression that is part of the unity and struggle of opposing experiences within Christianity. This is how I view my own Atheism. It is directly related and inseparable from the culture, languages, environments, histories, and socio-political economies that have thrived or survived within the context of Christianity. It is not necessarily a proclamation against religion, it’s not a chauvinist’s callous hatred for anything traditional or “backwards,” it’s not a dogmatic disposition towards “science,” it is a very spiritual expression of deep doubt.

IMO to understand New Atheism you have to understand that modernity is the apocalypse. It is the systematic destruction of traditional ways in favor of capitalist social relations. The celebration of this apocalypse is the context New Atheism flourishes under because it is inherently colonial, imperial, and racist. I will touch more on that soon.

Of course, there are many responses to the apocalypse that problematize it, Marxism being a part of it (though many in the academy will disagree–a post for another time), Indigenous methods being another, and still there are even right-wing perspectives that are concerned about the death of the aristocracy. However, others laud the apocalypse of modernity as a new heaven, as civilization, as development.

The liberals promote “modernity” and scientism rather routinely (Liberals will say marxists do it too-- again, a post for another time). But indeed, marxists are not incapable of getting sidetracked by teleological fallacies regarding development, I certainly did early on anyway. Interestingly enough, I think Trots and the left (derogatory) are also quite capable of doing it with performative non-christianity, dogmatic or virtuous veganism, unquestionable concern over human rights, accommodationist politics directed at the third world and indigenous people, even environmentalism… the list goes on. All of these things can reinforce colonialism, imperialism and thus capitalist social relations.

Bringing all this back to New Atheism, one of its biggest proponents was Christaphor Hitchens. This guy was a raging islamaphobe, a genocidal American exceptionalist, that played a role in bringing about and justifying the war on terror. This fucker is the shining example of the Trotskyist to Neoliberal/Neocon pipeline. He is a perfect example of how the “left” is a cultivation of empire that is seasonally harvested to better equip itself against the world.

Allow me to quote Allan Rosenbaum on Hitchens:

And in the person of Christopher Hitchens, writing in The Nation, the political left then sounded its voice. To Hitchens, anyone who refused to join him in celebrating with “great vim and gusto” the annihilation of the native peoples of the Americas was (in his words) self-hating, ridiculous, ignorant, and sinister. People who regard critically the genocide that was carried out in America’s past, Hitchens’ continued, are simply reactionary, since such grossly inhuman atrocities “happen to be the way history is made.” And thus “to complain about [them] is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift.” Moreover, he added, such violence is worth glorifying since it more often than not has been for the long-term betterment of humankind–as in the United States today, where the extermination of the Native Americans–the American Indians–has brought about “a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation.”

One possible exception Hitchens allowed to his vulgar social Darwinism, with its quasi-Hitlerian view of the proper role of power in history, was the Euro-American enslavement of tens of millions of Africans. But even then, Hitchens contended, those centuries of massive brutality only “probably left Africa worse off than they found it.” Clearly, however–as with Krauthammer’s and Schlesinger’s moral codes–if it could be shown to Hitchens’ personal satisfaction that Africa was in fact “better off” following the enslavement and simultaneous mass killing of 40 - 60 million of its people, he would celebrate the abominations of the slave trade with the same vim and gusto that he did the genocide against the native peoples of the Americas.

New Atheism is a hatred of any traditional thinking. It hates Christianity because Christianity is seen as unable to advance the destruction of traditional ways. Colonialism is so deeply developed that certain sections of it have come to see its tools as outdated and many of its leaders to be caught up in “superstitions” that will not efficiently advance and maintain the empire. It will choose its Christian neighbors over its Islamic, or Tribal enemies, but it seeks to fully destroy the parts of the colonial system that itself have failed to bow down to capitalist social relations totally. It has nothing to do with the tradition of doubt that is dialectically instrumental to Christianity. Rather it is a parody of it that is designed to aid imperialism.

Edit: words, syntax