I've always seen the New Atheists as a kind of very thin intellectual cover to spread Islamophobia. It wasn't a reaction to something oppressive so much as a lurching, malformed twisted response to 9/11 as a way to get the fundamentalist Christians and the more cosmopolitan liberal types in the same side. New Atheism was the by product. They spent so much focus on Christianity because that's who they were around, but their main focus of hatred was always Islam. Now so many of these same people are overt reactionaries I'd say the intellectual cover worked well. It did what it was supposed to do.
Also there is genuine oppression perpetrated by religious groups in the USA, largely cults and evangelical groups brainwashing LGBTQ kids or destroying their lives. You'll notice that was hardly ever the focus for the new atheist currents. They were more focused on wacky creationists or justifying imperialist invasions.
I've always seen the New Atheists as a kind of very thin intellectual cover to spread Islamophobia. It wasn't a reaction to something oppressive so much as a lurching, malformed twisted response to 9/11 as a way to get the fundamentalist Christians and the more cosmopolitan liberal types in the same side. New Atheism was the by product. They spent so much focus on Christianity because that's who they were around, but their main focus of hatred was always Islam. Now so many of these same people are overt reactionaries I'd say the intellectual cover worked well. It did what it was supposed to do.
Also there is genuine oppression perpetrated by religious groups in the USA, largely cults and evangelical groups brainwashing LGBTQ kids or destroying their lives. You'll notice that was hardly ever the focus for the new atheist currents. They were more focused on wacky creationists or justifying imperialist invasions.