️The ‘Traditionalists’ and Trump️

With the election of #Trump, Putin has found a potential ally in unwinding the trans-Atlantic networks that support the liberal democracies that flowered following the end of the Cold War.

Trump, like Putin, has made his disdain for groups like NATO and the EU clear,

and pushed a vision of Victorian-era spheres of interest,
in which regional powers are allowed something far closer to free reign in their respective regions than anything seen during the post-Cold War period.

While Trump falls back on fiscal arguments,
claiming that security relations with other NATO member-states aren’t worth the price of maintaining the U.S.’s participation,
his opposition to organizations like the European Union parallels arguments out of the Kremlin
—all while Trump continues defending Putin’s policies.

Any time he’s faced with questions of Putin’s probity
—of Moscow’s destruction of an independent press, say,
or of the Kremlin’s suffocation of opposition actors
—Trump deflects.

Not only has the former president continued casting doubt on the U.S. intelligence consensus that Moscow meddled in the American election to support Trump,
but he has further said Putin has been
“far more” of a “leader” than former President Barack Obama ever was.

Indeed, it’s within Trump’s outspoken praise for Putin that we can trace the contours of the reasons
white nationalists and members of the Religious Right continue to look to Moscow for support and inspiration,
and continue to admire and praise Putin’s policies.

For white nationalists, in their blinkered understanding of recent developments in Moscow,
Putin presents something of an ur-leader:

a head of state embodying an idealized view of masculinity,
undistracted by legal or cultural niceties in pursuit of his ultimate end-goals.

Rather than remaining within the understood boundaries of post-Cold War politics,
Putin has, to America’s white nationalists,
reclaimed the primacy of a white, Christian population within a multi-ethnic federation:

a model white nationalists envision as a possibility under Trump.

The Religious Right, meanwhile, stands enthralled with Putin’s willingness to bolster the church,
with the Russian Orthodox Church maintaining a clear, superior role both within the state and over other non-Christian religions.

Moscow is only too happy to provide both financial and organizational backing for sympathetic groups in the U.S. and elsewhere,
and is almost certain to do so for the foreseeable future.

And with Trump’s inauguration, Moscow has a man in Washington who, by all appearances,
has little interest in investigating these ties,
or of slowing these swelling links.

While Trump and his team occupy the White House, Russia will have an ally in attempting to roll back the liberal order,
with the American president acting as a partner,
witting or otherwise, of the Kremlin
—as well as the white nationalists and Religious Right cohorts on both sides of the Atlantic,
whose support for the Kremlin seems likely to accelerate for the foreseeable future.

(10/10)
#Yelena #Mizulina #Vladimir #Yakunin #dominionist #Bryan #Fischer #Franklin #Graham #WCF #Allan #Carlson #Anatoly #Antonov #Viktor #Medkov #antiLGBT #Alexey #Komov #Brian #Brown #IOF #Religious #Right #American #missionaries #David #Duke #Preston #Wiginton #Harold #Covington #Mike #Cernovich #Matthew #Heimbach #HailPutin #PutinForTsar #Novorossiya #Konstantin #Malofeev #TraditionalistWorkerParty #Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars

The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.

#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.

Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.

To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.

As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”

Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:

The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”

Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.

Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.

For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”

Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”

(8/N)

️The World Congress of Families
-- From Idea to Movement️

One of the primary vehicles in building Moscow’s relations with the U.S. Religious Right is known as the
"World Congress of Families".

Founded in 1997, the #WCF says its mission is to
“respect, protect, and defend” the
“natural family founded on marriage between a man and a woman.”

A 2014 report in The Nation, looking at the WCF’s earliest days,
detailed the close relationship between WCF founder #Allan #Carlson
and the Russian Orthodox Church.

In fact, the partnership between the two actually predates the WCF:

According to Jennifer Butler’s
“Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized,”
Carlson, speaking in 1995 at Moscow State University,
determined with a representative from the Russian Orthodox Church that
“they needed … to bring together scholars and leaders from ‘newly free Europe and Russia’ to meet with leaders from the West.”

Further, as Stroop recently detailed,
the WCF grew as the brainchild of Carlson and #Anatoly #Antonov and #Viktor #Medkov,
a pair of sociology professors at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The two Russians, according to Mother Jones, were casting about in the mid-1990s for a means to stave off their country’s looming “demographic winter”
—the idea that progressive legislation,
from birth control to LGBT rights,
will precipitate civilizational collapse
—and stumbled over Carlson’s prior work.

Gathering in the apartment of a “Russian Orthodox mystic,”
the trio outlined an organization that would help organize a global Christian right
—and resurge Russia to a leadership position abdicated during the atheistic Soviet period.

Some two decades on, the Illinois-based WCF has now morphed into one of the world’s foremost #antiLGBT organizations:

Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, the WCF “is one of the key driving forces behind the U.S. Religious Right’s global export of homophobia.”

The group hosts global and regional summits
designed to share strategies and build connections among activists and policymakers.

In 2016, the WCF hosted a conference in Tbilisi, Georgia,
where speakers encouraged attendees to
“stay firm against homofascists”
and “rainbow radicals.”

One of the keynote speakers at the event was #Alexey #Komov, who,
as the WCF’s primary representative in Russia,
has not only helped facilitate Moscow’s efforts to woo and fund far-right groups across the West,
but is also closely linked with those backing Moscow-supported separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The WCF is now run by #Brian #Brown, the co-founder and president of the vehemently anti-gay "National Organization for Marriage"
and a man who has his own history of visiting Russia to lobby for anti-LGBT legislation.

In December, Brown announced that the WCF will be run as a project of a new group, the
"International Organization for the Family" ( #IOF ).

Komov was among the anti-LGBT activists from around the world who joined Brown in South Africa for the IOF’s launch.

Komov said at the time that allies in the Russian parliament would be promoting the group’s anti-LGBT manifesto,
which they are calling "The Cape Town Declaration."

And it appears that they are wasting no time.

In early February, Brown sent a fundraising email from Moscow, where he had gone to promote the declaration and build working relationships with lawmakers from Putin’s United Russia party.

(7/N)

While white nationalists continue to pile praise on Putin’s policies,
so too has the U.S.’s #Religious #Right heaped approval on Moscow.

Indeed, at some point over the past few years, Russia stopped being one of the primary importers of legislation inspired by the American Religious Right,
and has instead begun exporting both rhetorical support and model legislation for social conservatives throughout the world.

“We’ve seen an interesting crystallization in Putin’s third term of this kind of … nationalizing the culture wars
—in part an American export
—and then re-exporting them,”
said Christopher Stroop, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of South Florida,
who has researched Russia’s links with the American Religious Right.

“Russia has begun explicitly branding itself as leader of the global right.”

As Stroop found, ties between Moscow and the U.S. Religious Right predate Putin’s presidency.

In a 2016 article for Political Research Associates, Stroop traced the burgeoning links among
“right-wing fellow travelers” in Russia and the U.S.
to the initial days of post-Soviet independence.

Combining a nationalized Christianity with
doses of anti-gay orthodoxy,
#American #missionaries sought to reprise their culture war successes in the West within Boris Yeltsin’s Russia.

Religious Right organizations such as the Co-Mission
“would go and talk to Russian government officials, Orthodox officials, and say,
‘We want to help you rebuild post-Communist Russia,’”
Stroop said,
adding that they would implement a
“hardline ethics curriculum, where the only way to live an ethical life is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

As the Soviet period receded, these groups found increasingly fertile ground in Russia.

To be sure, during Putin’s first two terms,
the Russian Orthodox Church, with the full-throated support of the country’s leadership,
regained its role as the dominant organized religion within Russia,
especially in terms of proximity to the state.

But any pushback within Russia against American-led evangelicalism toward a homegrown faith,
including recent legislation directed against Protestant proselytizing,
has hardly dampened the affinity with which the American Religious Right views Moscow

(6/N)

#David #Duke,
perhaps the most prominent face of outright white supremacy in the U.S.,
has described Russia as the
“key to white survival,”
and has added that,
“Of the many capital cities of Europe, it is accurate to say that Moscow is the Whitest of them all.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League,
Duke also views Russia as a nation that
“presents an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race.”

Duke
— who has claimed that he lived in Russia for five years, and saw one of his books sold in the Duma
— has praised Putin’s policies on Twitter,
including Russia’s actions in Syria,
and called for an “alliance” between the U.S. and Russia.

Duke has additionally met Dugin on at least one occasion, although the circumstances of this meeting remain clouded.

Meanwhile, Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand has reported that Duke maintains an apartment in Moscow,
one that he has sub-leased to #Preston #Wiginton, an American neo-Nazi who has helped host lectures from both Spencer and Dugin
—the latter, again, via video
—at Texas A&M University over the past two years.

Secondary figures within the American white nationalist movement have similarly expressed their admiration for Putin
while promoting propaganda from the Kremlin-funded media.

#Harold #Covington
—the head of the "Northwest Front",
an organization seeking to lead a white supremacist secession movement in the Pacific Northwest
—has described Russia as the “last great White empire.”

And #Mike #Cernovich, whom The New Yorker calls the
“meme mastermind of the Alt-Right,”
has repeatedly shared material from Kremlin-funded media on his popular Twitter account,
often accompanied by Kremlin-friendly commentary.

In October, Cernovich tweeted,
“Putin is a larger than life alpha male who loves his country and will fight to defend it.
Why *don’t* you admire him?
Brainwashing.”

A few weeks later, Cernovich shared a story from Kremlin-funded Sputnik News, commenting,
“American Media (terrorist organization) v. Putin.
I believe Putin!”

(5/N)