We need more kindness in the world rather than centroism. Listen to all , take only the good bits and follow no one.

I'm sorry, but I don't consider Stalin and Mao Atheists. They worshipped themselves and believed they were in essence gods and forced their respective peoples to worship them. Same with Hitler or any other despot who manages to achieve unbridles power. They generally use the predominant religion (s) of their countries to help in their control of the people if they can and are quite willing to destroy them if they present a threat to their total control of their population. That hardly qualifies them as Atheists or Humanists or free thinkers in any normal sense.

I think that religion does make it much easier to exert control over others. It's not quite so easy to manipulate atheists, although it can be done.

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.” Thomas Szasz

Yes but religion is unique in that, its ability to provide justification for things that are hard to justify by logic, reason, or appeal to honest good judgment, is its main use, and the main appeal of it. In other words, it is not an institution which needs to be corrupted, or diverted from its main purpose, in order to facilitate the, "selfish human desire to exert power", but is rather the institution which exists mainly for that purpose. Since it is the only human thought system which inherently makes no provision for questioning, and indeed does not value questioning.

While I would also contend that Stalin, Mao, and don't forget Pol Pot were not strictly or mainly atheists, but were mainly Marxists, which is quite arguably another form of religion. Since it begins with several unsupported presuppositions, ( beliefs ) such as, class war is inevitable, the victory of the working class is inevitable, history is predictable etc. .

Yup, any human institution can be corrupted, and all of them have been at one time or another. The people who run them have feet of clay.