Exactly this. But we have to understand that their distaste for moderate religion is due to the perceived failure of moderates to stand up against and stamp out the rise of extremism among their ranks.
I actually share that feeling. A perfect example could be the state church of my country. The church itself is officially progressive by any standards of Christian churches, but they simply fail to take a stance against the elements in their own ranks who participate in some pretty ugly spiritual abuse.
I get it that it's not that easy to go to fight against ones own kind, as there are plenty of ways how it can be counterproductive for the community or the cause, but that exact dynamic is one of the reasons why I reject organized religion as a concept and prefer more individualistic approach to spirituality. I have too much self-respect for accepting of being pressured to speak nicely of harmful religious elements, in the name of unity and common cause.
In fact moderate religion is viewed as only disagreeing with the methods of extremism rather than its principles (and there probably is some truth to this). A good example is the way moderate Islam is commonly viewed in the west, moderates and extremists are identified as being part of the same system and thus all Islam is viewed with suspicion. What you will usually find is that if pressed these anti-religious atheists actually value tolerance and religious freedom which are enshrined principles of modern secularism. You put it best yourself when you said:
The new atheism crew is not promoting just atheism, but rather more specific philoshophy. Scientific naturalism, or w/e the exact name for it is, I'm not sure.
There is bit of a contradiction in their rhetoric, when on one hand there is strong emphasis on atheism being nothing but lack of faith in gods, and on the other hand promoting the assumption that atheism is always formed by the philosophical system they have. Only some decades ago, standard atheists in Europe were not secularists, but Marxist communists.
I have bit of a problem with automatically mixing up atheism and scientific naturalism, but I guess atheism is the catchy part of it to sell the whole package.
The real problem they have is religion holding any power in society. They are happy for religion/spirituality to exist as a personal expression but will fight to the death to remove religion from holding any power or influence in the public sphere. And thus we have this gut-feeling backlash against all religion, because they view it all in overly simplistic terms of either being extremist or enabling.
I realize this is a nuance, but I would say that plenty of new atheists see nothing positive in religion, but as long as religion doesn't hold any power, that's not enough to trigger them to take a very strong stance.
Agree. I view him as more of a political leader of the movement. He is very gifted at taping in to the anger and frustration of his constituency and giving them a vocabulary and voice to express these frustrations. People who do this well can find themselves in positions of great power and influence. Trump does this extraordinarily well, and unfortunately so did Hitler in 1930's Germany.
Yup. I think populism and charismatic leaders have a bit too much of a bad name though, because historically it's usually the horribly remarkable ones that get well known. There have been, and still are, loads of charismatic religious, ideological and political leaders who might have decent intentions. For example, president Obama is/was a rather charismatic person and good at rallying people.