️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)

#Matthew #Heimbach,

the Indiana-based head of the "Traditionalist Worker Party",
has been called the “Little Fuhrer” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Among the Traditionalist Worker Party’s goals:
revoking birthright citizenship,
creating a separate whites-only homeland,
and the removal of U.S. authority from “occupied territories” like Hawaii.

The 26-year-old Heimbach initially gained notoriety in 2013 when he founded a
“White Students Union” at Towson University,
and received further coverage for a 2016 incident in which
he was caught shoving an anti-Trump protester at a Trump rally in Kentucky.

Heimbach has gone to even greater lengths than Spencer or Kouprianova in praising Putin’s machinations.

On Twitter, Heimbach has referred to Putin as the
“best European leaders [sic] of the 21st century,”
claiming that Russia, under Putin, has demonstrated a
“rediscovered purpose of supporting Tradition, Christianity, and identity.”

Heimbach has peppered his tweets with #HailPutin and #PutinForTsar hashtags,
and, in 2015, led a rally in which Confederate and Russian Imperial flags flew side by side.

He has further tweeted out photos of Confederate and Russian flags paired together,
and has shared a photo of himself and a handful of “comrades” smiling in front of the flag of “#Novorossiya,”
the fanciful political entity Russian-backed separatists have attempted to create in eastern Ukraine.

Heimbach has even called Russia the white nationalist movement’s
“most powerful ally,”
as well as shared a photo of himself holding Dugin’s book and the flag of the neo-Confederate League of the South.

In 2016, Heimbach described Putin as both the “leader … of the anti-globalist forces around the world”
and the “leader of the free world,”
one that has now morphed into an “axis for nationalists.”

For good measure, Heimbach has also said that he’d prefer the U.S. fracture into multiple race-based enclaves,
citing the USSR’s dissolution in 1991.

(While it’s beyond the purview of this report, it’s worth noting that Moscow has also begun funding efforts to organize America’s domestic secessionists, who wish to rupture the U.S. on a state-by-state level.)

It is Heimbach’s conception of Russia as this “axis for nationalists” that has helped him collaborate with like-minded white nationalists in Europe.

He has conducted at least three tours of Europe,
meeting with far-right members of Greece’s Golden Dawn,
Romania’s New Right,
and Germany’s National Democratic Party, among others.

In the fall of 2016, Heimbach planned his first visit to Russia,
seeking to attend the World National Conservative Movement conference,
a reprise of the 2015 conference attended by Taylor and Dickson.

The organization behind the conference, again, was the "Russian Imperial Movement".

This group, an outgrowth of Rogozin’s efforts, describes its ideology as
“Christian Orthodox imperial nationalism.”

Its stated goals include dissolving both the EU and NATO.

(According to researcher Anton Shekhovtsov, the "Russian Imperial Movement" also maintains ties with former separatist leaders in Ukraine
—one of whom was funded by ultra-Orthodox oligarch #Konstantin #Malofeev,
who has maintained his own links with those building ties with the American Religious Right.)

Heimbach noted that the planned conference would include
“a broad coalition of all ethno-nationalists
—all nationalists that reject neoliberalism,
and reject globalism,
coming together as a united front, based out of Russia.”

That conference ended up being postponed, but Heimbach has continued piling on his praise for Moscow.

One person who has taken note of Heimbach’s work is, unsurprisingly, Dugin.

In 2015, at the official unveiling of the "Traditionalist Worker Party", Heimbach managed to host a Skyped-in speech from Dugin,
whose discussion was titled “To My American Friends in Our Common Struggle.”

(4/N)
#TraditionalistWorkerParty
#Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars

For those who have just discovered the increasingly visible white nationalist movement in the U.S.,
#Richard #Spencer is one name that generally rises to the fore,

thanks to the glut of press attention he received around Trump’s presidential candidacy.

Spencer, who splits his time between Montana and Virginia,
runs a “think tank” called the "National Policy Institute" ( #NPI ),
as well as the primary white nationalist periodical, "Radix Journal."

The Virginia-based NPI, founded in 2005, claims to be an
“independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.”

Spencer has used NPI to push both rank #antiSemitism and dreams of #monoracial #statehood in America,

stating that the creation of a whites-only state is his “grand goal.”

He’s said that such a state will be crafted through
“peaceful” ethnic cleansing, although he has admitted that such “peaceful” ethnic cleansing could involve bloodshed.

As a 2016 New York Times article described, Spencer spent a celebratory post-election rally in Washington
“rail[ing] against Jews” and declaring that
the U.S. “belonged to white people,
whom he called the ‘children of the sun.’”

At the same event, Spencer led supporters
—many of whom responded to Spencer with Nazi salutes
—in denouncing the “#Lügenpresse,”
a Nazi-era descriptor for the media,
before leading his followers in chants of “Hail, Trump!”

Spencer’s preferred policies also echo the Kremlin directly.

To wit, he has lifted language from Moscow in describing Ukraine’s 2014 EuroMaidan revolution
—which he has claimed was financed by liberal American philanthropist George Soros
—as a “coup,” and has called to break up NATO.

Spencer has also noted that he “admire[s]” Putin,
and has described Russia as the “sole white power in the world.”

Spencer has additionally begun writing for Dugin’s website,
including a recent article describing the

“purpose and meaning of the Alt-Right movement.”

Further, in 2014, Spencer attempted to organize a white nationalist conference in Budapest
featuring a number of European white nationalists and neo-fascists,
including members of Hungary’s #Jobbik party
—a party that supplied putative
“election observers” to the 2014 Crimean
“referendum” on joining Russia.

(The referendum, as mentioned above, was recognized by only a handful of autocracies and Russian client-states.)

Spencer invited none other than Dugin to speak at the conference,
but Western sanctions prevented Dugin from entering the country.

Spencer is also married to #Nina #Kouprianova, who was born in the Soviet Union and educated in Canada.
(The two are currently separated.)

Kouprianova, who writes under the nom de plume Nina #Byzantina
—and is occasionally identified as Nina Spencer
—has not only spent the past few years defending regressive Kremlin policies on her popular social media accounts,
but has additionally translated Dugin’s work into English.

Indeed, the only books Kouprianova lists among those she’s translated are those by Dugin.

While she says that she has never met Dugin, Kouprianova has called him a
“well-educated scholar” unfairly maligned by the “Western media.”

Kouprianova has been outspoken in defense of the Kremlin’s anti-liberal policies,
as well as her husband’s neo-fascist ideas,

and has defended Moscow’s militarized policies in both Chechnya and eastern Ukraine,
the latter of which she has consistently referred to as a “liberation war.”

(3/N)

#Millstones and #swords


In 2022, Kimber Glidden was fighting for her job as a library director in northern Idaho after refusing to cave to the book-banning demands of hard-right Christian parents who smeared her as a danger to children.


At one public meeting, Glidden recalled in a recent interview, a woman looked her in the eye while quoting
#Matthew 18:6, which describes a lethal punishment for anyone harming the young:

“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”


“It’s like, ‘I’m not actually threatening you
— I’m just quoting scripture at you,’” said Glidden,
who eventually resigned because of the attacks.

“You can threaten people and you can intimidate them, as long as you have a Bible tract in your hand.”

Religion scholars say Christian nationalists are skilled at plucking scripture out of context to justify intolerant or conspiratorial beliefs,
literalist readings that can be used to persuade worshipers that violence is a biblically sound response to perceived existential threats to their country and faith.

Such cherry-picking distorts the text to suggest that ordinary Christians should be carrying out punishments that traditionally are interpreted as being meted out by God, said Kaitlyn Schiess, a theologian at Duke University
and author of
“The Ballot and the Bible,”
which tracks how scripture is used in political speech.


“It gives them a sense of belonging to some kind of exciting drama
— the fight between good and evil,” Schiess said.
“And that can have really disastrous effects.”

To explain why it’s permissible to engage in fiery partisan fights
while simultaneously recounting the peaceful examples of Jesus,
some turn to #Mark 12:17:

“Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”

To legitimatize militancy against leftist opponents, Christian hard-liners quote a verse from #Matthew that proclaims,

“I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

#Millstone references pop up regularly in calls for retribution against librarians, teachers, abortion providers, racial justice activists, LGBTQ advocates and anyone else some members of the religious far right deem a threat to the project of a White Christian nation.

At a Proud Boys protest outside a drag event in Maryland last year,
one man wearing the far-right group’s yellow-and-black insignia
held a sign that quoted
#Matthew 18:6 above the words,
“It’s millstone time!”

In April, anti-fascist activists in Miami criticized the singer Jimmy Levy,
a MAGA favorite who has performed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida,
for warning President #Biden in lyrics that he was
“coming for your neck like a milly,”
a millstone reference.

Levy suggested the outrage was alarmist, writing on social media:
“I never threatened Biden. I referenced what God says about those who hurt little ones.”


Republican lawmakers in states including Oklahoma, Texas and South Carolina have introduced versions of what they call a
“Millstone Act,”
legislation seeking to ban gender-affirming care for young adults.

Civil rights groups say the proposals are part of a bigger right-wing campaign that uses religion to vilify transgender people with unfounded accusations of grooming and pedophilia.

Speaking in a small-town church last month, Mark #Robinson, the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, told the audience that
“some folks need killing.”

“It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful.
It’s a matter of necessity!” Robinson, the lieutenant governor, said, according to a video of the speech surfaced by the New Republic.


The recording shows Robinson shouting about
“wicked people,” including liberals, socialists and communists.

He was introduced at the event by a local pastor, the Rev. Cameron #McGill, who told the audience:
“Who’s behind President Biden, and that administration?
Is it Obama.
Is it Clinton?
Read your Bible.
It is the Devil.”

Mike #Lonergan, Robinson’s campaign spokesman, said on X that the candidate’s words referenced World War II enemies
and were taken out of context in a “gutless and dishonest smear.”

In Arizona, Jeff #Durbin, a far-right “abortion abolitionist”
and influential Christian nationalist,
has said that women deserve to be executed if they have an abortion
— a stance he recently reiterated is “the historical position of the Christian church.”

“You forfeit your right to live,” Durbin said last month in a New York Times podcast.

After receiving backlash for the remarks, Durbin doubled down in a post on X:

“We make no apologies for God’s Word and affirm that capital punishment is a just response from the state for the crime of murder