Theocracy really isn't the problem. Check the history books for how well atheist ideological authoritarian regimes worked out in Stalin's U.S.S.R., North Korea, etc., etc. (Or Churchill's famous quote on how poor a form of government democracy is, for that matter.)
Unfortunately, humans are far too obsessed with talking about gods & religions to pay much attention to the things that really matter.
Wahabism is an ideology. Saudi Arabia sucks because the owner of the country (yes the coutnry is owned by a family) made it a state ideology.
Atheism is not an ideology, it's an absence of one. You can be atheist and anything, including a huge arsehole like Stalin, or including the exact contrary of that.
Irony of history is that young Stalin enrolled in the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis and apparently was very good at that, writing poetry and everything. But obviously being power hungry, he couldn't stay there.
[Quip: But if you compare the social behaviors of the loudest self-professed atheists and the comparable theists...]
I was thinking that Marxism-Leninism was the Official Ideology of the U.S.S.R. under Stalin. Atheism was merely one of M-Lism's (many) points of doctrine - probably buried a fair number of slides down in the PowerPoint deck.
It's not very buried, Mars'x quote that "religion is the opium of the people" is famous. But it's also misquoted.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The complete quote shows that Marx sees religion as playing an ambiguous role. For him religion is often used to preach resignation "it doesn't matter what you suffer in this world, the next one is good". But sometimes it's at the center of the rebellion of the "oppressed creature". Think the black civil right movement in the US or the Liberation Theology in South America. So it's not blanket hostility.
Unfortunately, humans are far too obsessed with talking about gods & religions to pay much attention to the things that really matter.