FURRIES

Fur flies as Russia takes on young fans of ‘quadrobics’


By AFP
November 8, 2024

Quadrobics is a fitness and social media trend that involves imitating the movements of four-legged animals - Copyright AFP Natalia KOLESNIKOVA

Yana, a 12-year-old Moscovite, is worried she will have to give up her hobby of quadrobics — a fitness and social media trend that involves imitating the movements of four-legged animals.

Russian officials, Orthodox clergymen and pro-government intellectuals have harshly criticised the trend in recent weeks, portraying it as a dangerous import from a decadent West.

In line with a hardening of Russia’s ultra-conservative social agenda since the start of the offensive on Ukraine in February 2022, lawmakers have recently proposed to ban quadrobics.

The proposal comes after similar interdictions against the LGBTQ movement and even against couples that don’t want to have children — moves touted by Moscow as necessary to defend Russia’s “traditional values”.

“We are being told how many children to have and how they should play? Seriously?” said Yana’s 38-year-old mother, Yulia, a travel agent.

Yulia spoke on condition of anonymity fearing potential repercussions in Russia’s increasingly repressive environment.

In their upmarket Moscow apartment, Yulia helped her daughter sort through the various bushy tails and cat and fox masks she has made.

Yana, who prefers to do quadrobics at home or in a park with friends, said it is “too cool”.

“Physically, I have become stronger. I can walk on my hands!” she said.

The emerging trend has raised hackles in some circles.

It was the subject of a roundtable in Moscow in July on “the struggle against Satanism” and is debated at length on state television news.

– Quadrobics and LGBT ‘hydra’ –



Irina Volets, the commissioner for children’s rights in the Russian republic of Tatarstan, said recently she had received “numerous complaints” from people concerned about “the dehumanisation of children” as a result of the trend.

“Quadrobics” and “furries” — a similar community of people who like to dress up as animals — “are heads of the same hydra along with the LGBT movement,” she said.

Russian Orthodox Church official Fyodor Lukyanov said that quadrobics “is not a child’s game or sport but a subculture… which prepares children to adopt anti-values like those of a plurality of genders and LGBT.”

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said last month: “We are at a stage where we are being pushed not only to renounce our gender identity but also our human identity.”

He called quadrobics a trend “from the United States and the West”.

Russian pro-Kremlin singer Mia Boyka drew attention to the trend in September when she humiliated a young fan dressed as a cat with a series of questions in an on-stage interview.

“Today it’s a cat, tomorrow a dog. The day after tomorrow she will decide she has become a boy… and we will have Mother 1 and Mother 2 in our families,” she said.

– ‘Nefarious foreign influence’ –



Yana’s mother Yulia dismisses this saying: “Horrible! Where do they get this from?

“It’s just our children having fun. There will come a time when they will all become boring adults,” she said.

But ultra-nationalist lawmaker Andrei Svintsov, who is behind a bill that would fine people for practising quadrobics, said it was “disgusting”.

The trend was one of several “imposed by the West” which “aim to destroy our demographics”, he said, referring to a steep demographic crisis in Russia which President Vladimir Putin has promised to address to no avail after more than a quarter century in power.

Konstantin Kalachev, an analyst, said Russian authorities were “driving this debate to create a division between Russians and the West”.

And it seems to be having an effect.

A survey by the pro-Kremlin polling institute VTsIOM found that 35 percent of Russians agreed quadrobics was a “nefarious foreign influence” and a third want to ban it.

Furry fandom - Wikipedia

Invisible Rulers: An Establishment Liberal Reads Chomsky, Fights Taibbi and Viral Disinformation

Review of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality by Renee DiResta

By Chris Green

September 8, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Until recently, Renee DiResta–author of the book under review–was the research manager at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory. She has served as a consultant to social media platforms about fighting disinformation relating to Covid vaccines and 2020 election fraud claims. During the Trump years she worked as an advisor to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the topic of Russian disinformation campaigns in the United States.

Her academic research interests have focused heavily on studying how viral disinformation–particularly from MAGA quarters–spreads. She became interested in the topic of viral disinformation while fighting anti-vaxxers as a leader in the successful fight in 2015 to remove the religious faith loophole from the legal requirement that all California school children be vaccinated.

She writes for such forums as The Atlantic and has spoken before the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to entering academia, she spent many years working on Wall Street. As a college undergraduate she interned at the CIA. The blurb page for her new book Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality includes praise from such luminaries of the anti-Trump, neoliberal establishment as Professor Francis Fukuyama, Anne Applebaum of the The Atlantic and Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army (Ret).

If this background is unlikely to inspire congenial feeling in a radical leftist, it is highly likely to make the blood of MAGA partisans boil. For some of the latter, DiResta–with her connections to the CIA, Wall Street, Big Tech and academica–has been the embodiment of a sinister anti-Trump establishment conspiring to suppress righteous MAGA populism.

DiResta’s Claim to Fame

Invisible Rulers is mostly a scholarly work exploring the phenomenon of viral disinformation but it also gives space to an account of DiResta being personally targeted by disinformation from MAGA-friendly quarters. When Elon Musk launched a propaganda campaign called the Twitter Files in late 2022–seeking to show that Twitter’s pre-Musk owners had collaborated with academics like DiResta and federal government agents in suppressing MAGA-friendly speech on Twitter–DiResta was presented as a primary villain in the alleged conspiracy. She argues convincingly that Matt Taibbi–one of the journalists Musk handpicked to publicly present Twitter Files documents–seriously misrepresented her work and actions in an effort to prove the conspiracy. Taibbi and his Twitter Files colleague Michael Shellenberger focused on DiResta as a lead villain in the Twitter Files when they testified about them before the US House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in March 2023.

After this testimony went viral in right-wing quarters on social media, a wave of harassment and threats followed against DiResta, her academic colleagues, and students. More importantly from DiResta’s perspective, the testimony spurred the subcommittee chairman, MAGA Republican Jim Jordan, to launch a congressional inquisition into academic anti-disinformation research institutions. It also spurred a major lawsuit against researchers at such institutions (including DiResta) by Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s America First Legal organization, scaring off potential funders and in other ways leading to academic anti-disinformation research currently largely grinding to a halt in the United States.

Question Raised

Viral disinformation can create serious public disturbances: for example, lies about electoral fraud led to the riots of January 6th. Academics like DiResta, election officials, librarians, physicians, scientists, and others have faced extensive campaigns of harassment, threats, doxing and other abuses as a result of online disinformation about issues ranging from the 2020 election to LGBTQ books in school libraries. Viral disinformation can also create serious public health problems as we saw during the Covid pandemic. In her book, DiResta references how viral disinformation launched by the anti-vaccine guru Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his followers played a nefarious role in a measles outbreak that killed 83 children in American Samoa in 2019.

Is there anything that can–or should–be done about viral disinformation spread by MAGA demagogues, anti-vax quacks, or any other source? Is it possible to encourage people to stop believing in stupid things and to encourage them to learn to think critically about information presented to them? How exactly does disinformation go viral? These are questions explored in DiResta’s book although I don’t think she answers them satisfactorily.

Problematic Analysis

DiResta’s book, in multiple places, offers respectful words towards the 1988 classic Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and the late Edward S. Herman. She writes that the book accurately described “colossal deceits” and “unjust wars…Chomsky’s critique of manufacturing consent was trenchant–and true.”

But DiResta holds that while the Chomsky/Herman analysis was true in the 1980s, its portrait of corporate media working to shape the views of the general population in the interests of the ruling class has lost much of its relevance in the social media era. She claims that in the current age, information distribution has been “democratized” through social media and other online platforms. Any ordinary person with charisma, storytelling ability, and, in many cases, a talent for grift–or in some cases people acting collectively in online groups–can manipulate online platform algorithms and go viral. Enormous sources of information–whether credible or not–are at everyone’s fingertips with a simple Google search.

Many people no longer trust traditional establishment sources of information, whether it be the New York Times or an infectious disease expert like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Instead, people are increasingly drawn to online influencers for analysis of the world around them. Many ordinary people find the speaking and writing of online influencers charismatic and relatable in ways they don’t with the “shifty pundits and elite academics” of the traditional establishment. For DiResta it is this dynamic that explains why countless numbers of well-intentioned people have believed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump; that Covid vaccines contain snake venom; and that sex-trafficked children are locked in the cabinets pictured in Wayfair furniture catalogs.

She believes that, as a nation, it would be wise for us to consider the expertise and knowledge of academics in the social and hard sciences as American society confronts a dizzying array of serious problems. She suggests that academics organize themselves and have the more charismatic among them jump into the online fray and present information in ways that can appeal to ordinary folk and counter the viral stupidity peddled by certain influencers. She allows that establishment academics and other traditional sources of expertise have been implicated in serious abuses of power and made serious mistakes. However, she asks, is it any better to have demagogic online influencers prey on the “doing my own research crowd” amongst the general population?–the sort of people who think they have incontrovertible evidence to destroy the established scientific consensus on Covid after watching a few YouTube videos and reading one or two articles the algorithms present to them on social media feeds.

It is not totally unreasonable for DiResta to argue for the ideal of foregrounding people who know what they’re talking about in the amplification and distribution of information–however, it is absurd for her to argue that US mass media has been in any way “democratized” since the publication of Manufacturing Consent. It seems to me that while the forms of distribution and amplification of information and opinion have changed significantly since the advent of the internet and social media, the fundamental dynamic described by Chomsky and Herman is still very much in play. In the social media era, the control of the distribution and amplification of information and opinion remains largely set by the interests of different factions of business elites and ruling class politicians. It seems to me that the tools of Marxist political economy might have allowed DiResta to present an infinitely more robust analysis of mass media in the social media age. However, she is an establishment liberal and radical analysis is clearly not much present in her field of vision (her praise of Manufacturing Consent notwithstanding).

Solutions

A problem she mentions constantly throughout the book is what she and others have called “bespoke realities:” Online algorithms process our data to understand our preferences and provide our social media feeds with content that reaffirms our existing prejudices, politically speaking and in other areas of life. Less than ever before are we exposed to alternative points of view in our information consumption. In the case of something like adherence to QAnon, this can have destructive consequences. She worries about Americans walling themselves off into groups of ideological niches, having no contact whatsoever with groups of other niches. She does not offer a clear solution to this problem: except, perhaps obliquely, when she writes that social media companies have already taken numerous reasonable steps to control the dissemination of extremist disinformation. She uses the words “economic inequality” to describe a source of the increasing extremism of American political rhetoric in recent years; she also suggests that online extremism is driven by legitimate grievances at real societal injustices. However, she does not elaborate on these references to structural sources of online political extremism.

In the last third of her book, she presents several solutions to the problems her book presents that are at least on the right track. She praises the decentralized, open-source social media platforms Bluesky and Mastodon: companies that while privately owned are run differently than typical corporate social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. She suggests people fighting extremist disinformation today can learn from the fight in the 1930s to de-platform Father Charles Coughlin, the Nazi-sympathizing talk radio demagogue. She also harkens back to the New Deal era when she praises the work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA). Founded in the 1930s by journalists and academics, the IPA–before it was redbaited out of existence during the McCarthy era–sought to impart to the general population methods of seeing through propaganda directed at them by powerful forces. The IPA’s ideas about critical thinking skills are sound enough; however, DiResta provides no insight as to specific mechanisms through which the general population might be encouraged to practice those skills.

Final Words

It seems to me that DiResta’s book would have been better if it dropped its pretensions to academic scholarship and instead was a piece of straight reporting about and debunking prominent pieces of viral disinformation. When she adopted the latter course in parts of her book, the results were excellent: for example her dissection of a salient piece of disinformation launched by Dr. David McCullough, a prominent anti-Covid vaccine quack–or going back to the pre-internet era, a belief among evangelical Christians in the 1980s that a particular nuance in Procter & Gamble’s company logo indicated the company’s alignment with satanism. In contrast, in the first half of the book, she spends many words–sometimes ponderously–trying to present a framework for how information spreads and how people trust information sources. It is not always clear in the book’s first half where she is going with her arguments. On the plus side, she does have an engaging writing style (simple and lucid) that kept me reading the book even when I occasionally found the content a little thin.

I personally believe that solutions to the fight against viral disinformation–from MAGA or any other source–have to be predominantly bottom-up in nature as opposed to the top-down solutions offered by DiResta, with all her obsession about academic expertise. One solution might be a revitalized labor movement where unions offer labor education classes that can teach critical thinking skills about propaganda. Another solution could be the removal of all segments of mass media from corporate control. Mass media democratization–not in the bizarre sense that “democratization” is used by DiResta–implies ordinary people thoroughly controlling media institutions at the local level. In exploring steps about how society might reach mass media democratization, I encourage readers to explore such works as Victor Pickard’s 2020 book Democracy Without Journalism and Ben Tarnoff’s 2022 book Internet for the People.

In spite of her book’s limitations and its focus on top-down solutions to viral disinformation, it is clear that DiResta is an intelligent and deeply informed person–and, no doubt, a highly decent one as well. Significant parts of her book present thoughtful analysis. She is clearly nowhere near as villainous as she has been portrayed by Matt Taibbi and Jim Jordan.

In reference to her antagonist Taibbi, Diresta does vaguely at one point in her book give credit to Taibbi and his Twitter Files colleagues for raising a few legitimate concerns about government monitoring of social media content relating to Covid vaccines and alleged 2020 election fraud. Otherwise, she implies that he has become a mere grifter: he was once a progressive, populist investigative journalist but has now moved to the right politically, peddling MAGA-friendly populist nonsense to a large online audience that is receptive to it.

Whatever Taibbi’s exact motivations, it is relevant to note certain things. Both he and DiResta seemingly share the assumption that it is legitimate for all parts of American mass media to be under corporate control. While Taibbi grandstands before right-wing audiences as a free speech warrior defending MAGA’s constitutional liberties against deep state machinations–and Renee DiResta wrings her hands about declining trust in academic experts–the dynamic of bipartisan ruling class oppression carries on in much the same way as Chomsky and Herman described it in the 1980’s. Social movements representing traditionally oppressed communities continue to bear the brunt of state surveillance and repression. We have seen this recently with activists opposing Cop City in Atlanta–and also activists on college campuses opposing Israel’s Gaza genocide. Earlier this year independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on how Biden’s intelligence community was surveilling anti-genocide student protestors; he also reported that the Biden administration was pressuring social media platforms to censor “pro-Hamas” i.e. anti-genocide social media posts.

The work of Renee DiResta contains value but it is going to take people much more radical than her–and much more serious than Matt Taibbi–to seriously address the issues raised by her writing.

ANALYSIS: Russian Orthodox Church Hails Moscow’s Imperialist Expansionism as a ‘Holy War’

Moscow Patriarchate calls for the conquest and absorption of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations into an ultranationalist ‘Russian world'.

By ISW
March 30, 2024, 

President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. AFP

The Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP), a Kremlin-controlled organization and a known tool within the Russian hybrid warfare toolkit, held the World Russian People’s Council in Moscow on March 27 and 28 and approved an ideological and policy document tying several Kremlin ideological narratives together in an apparent effort to form a wider nationalist ideology around the war in Ukraine and Russia’s expansionist future.

ROC MP Head Patriarch Kirill, reportedly himself a former Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) officer and a known staunch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, chaired the congress of the World Russian People's Council that approved the document, and Kirill likely coordinated the document’s ideological narrative and policy recommendations with the Kremlin.

The document, "The Present and Future of the Russian World,” addresses Russian legislative and executive authorities with specific calls to amend Russian policy documents and laws. These calls are likely either attempts to socialize desired Kremlin policies among Russians before their implementation or to test public reactions to policies that Kremlin officials are currently considering.

Putin and Kremlin officials have gradually attempted to elaborate on amorphous ideological narratives about the war in Ukraine and their envisioned geopolitical confrontation with the West since the start of the full-scale invasion, and the ROC MP appears to be offering a more coherent ideological framework for Russians.

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The ROC MP released the document a week after the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack and roughly a month before the start of the Orthodox Easter Holy Week, and likely aims to seize on heightened anxieties following the terrorist attack and increased Russian Orthodoxy observance to garner support for its desired ultranationalist policies and ideological vision.

The ROC MP intensified Kremlin rhetoric about Russia’s war in Ukraine and cast it as an existential and civilizational “holy war,” a significant inflection for Russian authorities who have so far carefully avoided officially framing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as any kind of “war.” The ROC MP called Putin’s “special military operation” a holy war (Svyashennaya Voyna) and a new stage in the Russian people’s struggle for “national liberation...in southwestern Russia,” referencing eastern and southeastern Ukraine.

The ROC MP claimed that the Russian people are defending their lives, freedom, and statehood; their civilizational, religious, national, and cultural identity; and their right to live within the borders of a single Russian state by waging Putin’s war of conquest in Ukraine.

The ROC MP argued that the war in Ukraine is a holy war because Russia is defending “Holy Russia” and the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism.

The ROC MP asserted that the war in Ukraine will conclude with Russia seizing exclusive influence over the entire territory of modern Ukraine and the exclusion of any Ukrainian government that the Kremlin determines to be hostile to Russia.

The ROC MP’s description of Russian goals is in line with repeated Kremlin statements indicating that Putin retains his objective to destroy Ukrainian sovereignty and statehood. The ROC MP’s use and description of the holy war in Ukraine is also consistent with Kremlin efforts to frame the war as an existential national struggle against Ukraine and the collective West but notably expands the alleged threats that defeat in Ukraine poses for Russians.

The term “holy war” may also conjure allusions to the Great Patriotic War (the Second World War), as the Soviet Union’s unofficial war anthem shared the same name, and the Kremlin has routinely invoked the mythos of the Great Patriotic War to generate domestic support for the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has continued to stress that the war in Ukraine is a “special military operation,” however, and the ROC MP’s direct acknowledgment of the conflict as a holy war may elicit support from Russians who have found the Kremlin’s comparatively restrained rhetoric uninspiring. The ROC MP did not define the holy war as a purely Orthodox concept and instead tied it to the Kremlin’s purposefully broad conception of who is a part of the Russian nation and Russkiy Mir (Russian World).

Ukrainian victory does not pose these existential threats, however, as Ukraine’s struggle to restore its territorial integrity, return its people, and defend its national identity does not infringe on Russian identity, statehood, or territorial integrity.

The ROC MP called for the codification of elements of the Russkiy Mir and may be gauging public support for the formal inclusion of ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in the Kremlin’s concept of the Russian nation. The ROC MP stated that Russia is the “creator, support, and defender” of the Russkiy Mir and that the Russkiy Mir is a “spiritual, cultural, and civilizational phenomenon” that transcends the borders of the Russian Federation and historical Russian lands and encompasses everyone that values Russian traditions and culture.

The ROC MP claimed the Russkiy Mir’s mission is to destroy and prevent efforts to establish “universal hegemony in the world” and that the reunification of the “Russian nation” should be one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy.


The ROC MP stated that Russia should return to the “trinity doctrine” of the Russian nation, which falsely asserts that the “Russian nation” is comprised of sub-groups of ethnic Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians whom Russia should reunify.

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The ROC MP called on Russia to codify the “trinity doctrine” in law, make it an “integral part” of the Russian legal system, include it in the “normative list” of Russian spiritual and moral values, and give the concept legal protection.

Putin and other Kremlin officials have consistently invoked similar claims about the “Russian people” and Russkiy Mir since before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine as a means to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine while undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and denying the existence of a Ukrainian ethnic identity. The ROC MP may be gauging the response to the idea of codifying the “trinity doctrine” on the Kremlin’s orders. The Kremlin may codify this doctrine as official Russian policy.

The ROC MP heavily emphasized Russia’s need for traditional family values and an updated migration policy to counter Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis. The ROC MP labeled Russia’s demographic crisis as Russia’s main existential threat and characterized steady demographic growth as a critical national security priority. The ROC MP asserted that Russia should aim to grow its population to 600 million people (a roughly 450 million increase) in the next 100 years and laid out a series of measures that it envisions would allow Russia to achieve this monumental task.

The ROC MP called for the revival of the “traditional large family” and traditional family values in Russia – echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s emphasis on 2024 as the “Year of the Family” in recent major national addresses. The ROC MP claimed that the Russian government should recognize the family and its well-being as Russia’s “main national development goal” and a “strategic national priority” and should amend Russia’s main strategic planning documents to reflect this. The ROC MP called on Russian popular culture to create a “cult of the family” in society and suggested various economic benefits the state should enact to encourage larger families.

The ROC MP claimed that a new state migration policy is also key to an “effective” demographic policy. The ROC MP complained that migrants who do not speak Russian, do not understand Russian history and culture, and cannot integrate into Russian society are “deforming” Russia’s unified legal, cultural, and linguistic space. The ROC MP alleged that the “uncontrolled” influx of migrant labor decreases the “indigenous” population’s wages and access to jobs and that “closed ethnic enclaves” are “breeding grounds” for corruption, organized crime, extremism, and terrorism.

The ROC MP offered a series of policy recommendations that Russia should prioritize in a new migration policy, including “significant” restrictions on low-skilled foreign laborers, guarantees of employment and high incomes for Russian citizens, protections of the rights and interests of ethnic Russians, and other indigenous peoples of Russia, the mass repatriation of "compatriots” to Russia, and the relocation of highly-skilled foreign specialists who are loyal to Russia and ready to integrate into Russian society.

The ROC MP’s demographic and migration policy suggestions continue to highlight how the Kremlin struggles with inconsistent and contradictory policies concerning migrants and the interests of its ultranationalist population. Select Russian officials and ultranationalist voices have recently called for Russia to enact anti-migrant policies following the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, but ISW continues to assess that Russia is unlikely to introduce any restrictions that would reduce the number of migrants in Russia given that Russia continues to heavily rely on migrants to offset domestic labor shortages and for force generation efforts.

Putin asserted in December 2023 that Russia’s “compatriots abroad” are those who have historical, cultural, or linguistic ties to Russia, and the ROC MP appears to suggest that the repatriation of such “compatriots” to Russia could be a large resource Russia could tap into to solve its demographic crisis. Some of the ROC MP’s other policy recommendations, however, contradictorily seek to restrict some of the very migrants that would fall under Putin’s definition of “compatriots abroad.” The ROC MP’s approach to the Russkiy Mir appears to be at odds with Putin’s previous definition of Russkiy Mir which posits a diverse and inclusive Russian civic nationalism.

The ROC MP appears to be combining previously parallel Kremlin narrative efforts into a relatively cohesive ideology focusing on national identity and demographic resurgence that promises Russians a period of national rejuvenation in exchange for social and civic duties.

The ROC MP highlighted that “the restoration of the unity of the Russian people” through the war in Ukraine is a key condition for Russia’s survival and successful development throughout the 21st century. This call for restoration amounts to the full-scale destruction of the Ukrainian nation and its envelopment into Russia.

The ROC MP aims to also envelop ethnic Belarusians into the Russian nation through its conception of the “trinity doctrine” while also massively repatriating other “compatriots” abroad. The ROC MP’s calls for Russians to assume the responsibility for steadily increasing birth rates and averting demographic catastrophe similarly promises Russians that Russian sovereignty and identity will persist in the 21st century.

These efforts to expand Russia’s control over those it considers to be a part of the Russkiy Mir, whether through mass repatriation or forceful means like Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, serve the same purpose as the calls for Russians to increase birth rates — increasing Russia’s overall population with people that ultranationalists consider to be “Russian.”

The ROC MP argued that the establishment of a stable and sovereign Russkiy Mir under the Russian state will lead to economic opportunity and Russia’s role as one of the leading centers of a multipolar world order. The ROC MP stated that the typical embodiment of the Russkiy Mir after the promised national rejuvenation would be a Russian family with three or more children and their own single-family home, offering ordinary Russians future socioeconomic benefits in exchange for sacrifices made now in backing the ROC MP’s suggested ultranationalist ideology and achieving Russia’s “unification” with Ukraine and Belarus.

The ROC MP’s suggested ideology explicitly ties Russian national security to the preservation of an imagined and disputed Russian nation and Russian demographic growth, offering the Kremlin expanded justifications for acts of aggression against neighboring countries and the West in the name of protecting the overall size and growth of the imagined Russkiy Mir.

The Kremlin may choose not to fully align itself publicly with the ultranationalist ideology that the ROC MP has proposed at this time but will highly likely borrow from and leverage it to generate support for the war effort in Ukraine and any future acts of aggression against Russia’s neighbors and the West.

See the original here.

Russian Orthodox Finding Ways to Break with Increasingly Bellicose Moscow Patriarchate, Zanemonets Says

 

Russian Orthodox Finding Ways to Break with Increasingly Bellicose Moscow Patriarchate, Zanemonets Says

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – This week, the World Russian Popular Assembly, which is led and controlled by Moscow Patriarch Kirill, declared Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “a holy war in which Russia an its people, in defending the single spiritual space of Holy Rus is fulfilling the mission of defending the world from globalism and satanism.”

            Moreover, Kirill’s group declared that “the possibility of the existence on this territory of a Russophobic regime hostile to Russia and its people and one run from an external center hostile to Russia must be completely excluded” (vrns.ru/news/nakaz-xxv-vsemirnogo-russkogo-narodnogo-sobora-nastoyashchee-i-budushchee-russkogo-mira/).

            Such a call represents a call for the destruction of the Ukrainian state and certainly is what Kirill and his bosses in the Kremlin want, but Aleksandr Zanemonets, a Finnish Orthodox churchman, says that it doesn’t reflect what many in the Russian Orthodox Church believe and that its members have options (theins.ru/opinions/alexander-zanemonets/270112).

            Given Russian tradition and the tendency of others to follow it, many assume that whatever the top person says in any Russian hierarchy is what everyone below him or her believes, but that is not the case in any of these, the priest, who is subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constaninople and who follows Russian Orthodoxy from the Netherlands, says.

            Many people in the ROC MP do not accept what Kirill and his like are saying. As in Soviet times, it is dangerous for them to speak out; but many of them do what they can by acting to help Ukrainians who have fled the war and by discouraging young Russians from going there to fight.

            Some Russian Orthodox churchmen have fled the country where they find it far easier to express their views, Zanemonets says, because Orthodox leaders in other countries including Finland don’t follow Moscow’s line. But while they have greater freedom of speech, they have less influence in practical ways than those who remain inside Russia.

            He concludes his commentary by quoting the observation of the late émigré churchman, Father Aleksandr Shmeman, who observed that “there is one path for those who leave and another path for those who remain” but who also insisted that in either situation, Orthodox Christians must strive to remain human.

Fewer Russians Now Identify as Orthodox Christians than Did Seven Years Ago but a Larger Share of Those who Do are Active, VTsIOM Finds

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – During a period when the Kremlin has been promoting Orthodox Christianity, the share of Russians who identify as followers of that denomination has fallen from 75 percent in 2017 to 66 percent now, according to a VTsIOM poll. But of those who identify as such, the share who say they keep fasts has risen.

            According to surveys from 2017 to 2022, 71 to 75 percent of Russian Orthodox said they did not keep the fast; but now, only 56 percent say they don’t. And this change has been especially great in the last two years: in 2022, 74 percent said they ignored the fast t; now only 56 percent do (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=65FF23B07DC10&section_id=50A6C962A3D7C).

            At the same time, VTsIOM finds that only four percent of those who identify as Russian Orthodox observe all fasts, with somewhat higher percentages simply restricting their consumption of alcohol or meat or avoiding using foul language. More generally, only 22 percent regularly attend church services, and only 13 percent pray on a daily basis.

            A large portion of all these developments reflect generational change: Only 38 percent of Russians between the ages of 18 and 24 identify as Orthodox (and only 52 percent of those between 25 and 34 do so) while among those 35 and older, the percentage doing so is 69 to 75 percent.

            Commenting on these results, Moscow analyst Aleksey Makarkin says that “with the change of generations, the number of believers is contracting as among young people atheism has become “fashionable” just as three decades ago it was “fashionable” to identify oneself as Orthodox.”

            But “at the same time, among the Orthodox is observed a trend toward following the rules, albeit selectively, with people themselves defining” which ones they will observe and how rather than blindly following what the ROC MP declares.

ANALYSIS:

 Russian Orthodox Church Hails Moscow’s Imperialist Expansionism as a ‘Holy War’

Moscow Patriarchate calls for the conquest and absorption of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations into an ultranationalist ‘Russian world'.

By ISW
March 30, 2024

President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. AFP

The Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP), a Kremlin-controlled organization and a known tool within the Russian hybrid warfare toolkit, held the World Russian People’s Council in Moscow on March 27 and 28 and approved an ideological and policy document tying several Kremlin ideological narratives together in an apparent effort to form a wider nationalist ideology around the war in Ukraine and Russia’s expansionist future.

ROC MP Head Patriarch Kirill, reportedly himself a former Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) officer and a known staunch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, chaired the congress of the World Russian People's Council that approved the document, and Kirill likely coordinated the document’s ideological narrative and policy recommendations with the Kremlin.

The document, "The Present and Future of the Russian World,” addresses Russian legislative and executive authorities with specific calls to amend Russian policy documents and laws. These calls are likely either attempts to socialize desired Kremlin policies among Russians before their implementation or to test public reactions to policies that Kremlin officials are currently considering.

Putin and Kremlin officials have gradually attempted to elaborate on amorphous ideological narratives about the war in Ukraine and their envisioned geopolitical confrontation with the West since the start of the full-scale invasion, and the ROC MP appears to be offering a more coherent ideological framework for Russians.

The ROC MP released the document a week after the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack and roughly a month before the start of the Orthodox Easter Holy Week, and likely aims to seize on heightened anxieties following the terrorist attack and increased Russian Orthodoxy observance to garner support for its desired ultranationalist policies and ideological vision.


The ROC MP intensified Kremlin rhetoric about Russia’s war in Ukraine and cast it as an existential and civilizational “holy war,” a significant inflection for Russian authorities who have so far carefully avoided officially framing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as any kind of “war.” The ROC MP called Putin’s “special military operation” a holy war (Svyashennaya Voyna) and a new stage in the Russian people’s struggle for “national liberation...in southwestern Russia,” referencing eastern and southeastern Ukraine.

The ROC MP claimed that the Russian people are defending their lives, freedom, and statehood; their civilizational, religious, national, and cultural identity; and their right to live within the borders of a single Russian state by waging Putin’s war of conquest in Ukraine.

The ROC MP argued that the war in Ukraine is a holy war because Russia is defending “Holy Russia” and the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen into Satanism.

The ROC MP asserted that the war in Ukraine will conclude with Russia seizing exclusive influence over the entire territory of modern Ukraine and the exclusion of any Ukrainian government that the Kremlin determines to be hostile to Russia.

The ROC MP’s description of Russian goals is in line with repeated Kremlin statements indicating that Putin retains his objective to destroy Ukrainian sovereignty and statehood. The ROC MP’s use and description of the holy war in Ukraine is also consistent with Kremlin efforts to frame the war as an existential national struggle against Ukraine and the collective West but notably expands the alleged threats that defeat in Ukraine poses for Russians.

The term “holy war” may also conjure allusions to the Great Patriotic War (the Second World War), as the Soviet Union’s unofficial war anthem shared the same name, and the Kremlin has routinely invoked the mythos of the Great Patriotic War to generate domestic support for the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has continued to stress that the war in Ukraine is a “special military operation,” however, and the ROC MP’s direct acknowledgment of the conflict as a holy war may elicit support from Russians who have found the Kremlin’s comparatively restrained rhetoric uninspiring. The ROC MP did not define the holy war as a purely Orthodox concept and instead tied it to the Kremlin’s purposefully broad conception of who is a part of the Russian nation and Russkiy Mir (Russian World).

Ukrainian victory does not pose these existential threats, however, as Ukraine’s struggle to restore its territorial integrity, return its people, and defend its national identity does not infringe on Russian identity, statehood, or territorial integrity.

The ROC MP called for the codification of elements of the Russkiy Mir and may be gauging public support for the formal inclusion of ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in the Kremlin’s concept of the Russian nation. The ROC MP stated that Russia is the “creator, support, and defender” of the Russkiy Mir and that the Russkiy Mir is a “spiritual, cultural, and civilizational phenomenon” that transcends the borders of the Russian Federation and historical Russian lands and encompasses everyone that values Russian traditions and culture.

The ROC MP claimed the Russkiy Mir’s mission is to destroy and prevent efforts to establish “universal hegemony in the world” and that the reunification of the “Russian nation” should be one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy.

The ROC MP stated that Russia should return to the “trinity doctrine” of the Russian nation, which falsely asserts that the “Russian nation” is comprised of sub-groups of ethnic Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians whom Russia should reunify.

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The ROC MP called on Russia to codify the “trinity doctrine” in law, make it an “integral part” of the Russian legal system, include it in the “normative list” of Russian spiritual and moral values, and give the concept legal protection.

Putin and other Kremlin officials have consistently invoked similar claims about the “Russian people” and Russkiy Mir since before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine as a means to justify Russian aggression against Ukraine while undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and denying the existence of a Ukrainian ethnic identity. The ROC MP may be gauging the response to the idea of codifying the “trinity doctrine” on the Kremlin’s orders. The Kremlin may codify this doctrine as official Russian policy.

The ROC MP heavily emphasized Russia’s need for traditional family values and an updated migration policy to counter Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis. The ROC MP labeled Russia’s demographic crisis as Russia’s main existential threat and characterized steady demographic growth as a critical national security priority. The ROC MP asserted that Russia should aim to grow its population to 600 million people (a roughly 450 million increase) in the next 100 years and laid out a series of measures that it envisions would allow Russia to achieve this monumental task.

The ROC MP called for the revival of the “traditional large family” and traditional family values in Russia – echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s emphasis on 2024 as the “Year of the Family” in recent major national addresses. The ROC MP claimed that the Russian government should recognize the family and its well-being as Russia’s “main national development goal” and a “strategic national priority” and should amend Russia’s main strategic planning documents to reflect this. The ROC MP called on Russian popular culture to create a “cult of the family” in society and suggested various economic benefits the state should enact to encourage larger families.

The ROC MP claimed that a new state migration policy is also key to an “effective” demographic policy. The ROC MP complained that migrants who do not speak Russian, do not understand Russian history and culture, and cannot integrate into Russian society are “deforming” Russia’s unified legal, cultural, and linguistic space. The ROC MP alleged that the “uncontrolled” influx of migrant labor decreases the “indigenous” population’s wages and access to jobs and that “closed ethnic enclaves” are “breeding grounds” for corruption, organized crime, extremism, and terrorism.

The ROC MP offered a series of policy recommendations that Russia should prioritize in a new migration policy, including “significant” restrictions on low-skilled foreign laborers, guarantees of employment and high incomes for Russian citizens, protections of the rights and interests of ethnic Russians, and other indigenous peoples of Russia, the mass repatriation of "compatriots” to Russia, and the relocation of highly-skilled foreign specialists who are loyal to Russia and ready to integrate into Russian society.

The ROC MP’s demographic and migration policy suggestions continue to highlight how the Kremlin struggles with inconsistent and contradictory policies concerning migrants and the interests of its ultranationalist population. Select Russian officials and ultranationalist voices have recently called for Russia to enact anti-migrant policies following the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, but ISW continues to assess that Russia is unlikely to introduce any restrictions that would reduce the number of migrants in Russia given that Russia continues to heavily rely on migrants to offset domestic labor shortages and for force generation efforts.

Putin asserted in December 2023 that Russia’s “compatriots abroad” are those who have historical, cultural, or linguistic ties to Russia, and the ROC MP appears to suggest that the repatriation of such “compatriots” to Russia could be a large resource Russia could tap into to solve its demographic crisis. Some of the ROC MP’s other policy recommendations, however, contradictorily seek to restrict some of the very migrants that would fall under Putin’s definition of “compatriots abroad.” The ROC MP’s approach to the Russkiy Mir appears to be at odds with Putin’s previous definition of Russkiy Mir which posits a diverse and inclusive Russian civic nationalism.

The ROC MP appears to be combining previously parallel Kremlin narrative efforts into a relatively cohesive ideology focusing on national identity and demographic resurgence that promises Russians a period of national rejuvenation in exchange for social and civic duties.

The ROC MP highlighted that “the restoration of the unity of the Russian people” through the war in Ukraine is a key condition for Russia’s survival and successful development throughout the 21st century. This call for restoration amounts to the full-scale destruction of the Ukrainian nation and its envelopment into Russia.

The ROC MP aims to also envelop ethnic Belarusians into the Russian nation through its conception of the “trinity doctrine” while also massively repatriating other “compatriots” abroad. The ROC MP’s calls for Russians to assume the responsibility for steadily increasing birth rates and averting demographic catastrophe similarly promises Russians that Russian sovereignty and identity will persist in the 21st century.

These efforts to expand Russia’s control over those it considers to be a part of the Russkiy Mir, whether through mass repatriation or forceful means like Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, serve the same purpose as the calls for Russians to increase birth rates — increasing Russia’s overall population with people that ultranationalists consider to be “Russian.”

The ROC MP argued that the establishment of a stable and sovereign Russkiy Mir under the Russian state will lead to economic opportunity and Russia’s role as one of the leading centers of a multipolar world order. The ROC MP stated that the typical embodiment of the Russkiy Mir after the promised national rejuvenation would be a Russian family with three or more children and their own single-family home, offering ordinary Russians future socioeconomic benefits in exchange for sacrifices made now in backing the ROC MP’s suggested ultranationalist ideology and achieving Russia’s “unification” with Ukraine and Belarus.

The ROC MP’s suggested ideology explicitly ties Russian national security to the preservation of an imagined and disputed Russian nation and Russian demographic growth, offering the Kremlin expanded justifications for acts of aggression against neighboring countries and the West in the name of protecting the overall size and growth of the imagined Russkiy Mir.

The Kremlin may choose not to fully align itself publicly with the ultranationalist ideology that the ROC MP has proposed at this time but will highly likely borrow from and leverage it to generate support for the war effort in Ukraine and any future acts of aggression against Russia’s neighbors and the West.

See the original here.

INTERVIEW
Trump's mobilizing his "prayer warriors": Religion scholar on what MAGA means by "spiritual warfare"

Professor André Gagné explains that MAGA's "adoption of aggressive spiritual warfare language" is a warning sign

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA

Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JANUARY 31, 2024

Audience members cheer as Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally on January 05, 2024 in Mason City, Iowa.

 (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Donald Trump may control the Republican Party — but his power is not 100 percent absolute.

As shown in New Hampshire and Iowa – and throughout most of his time in public life – the ex-president is unpopular among “traditional Republicans” and many right-leaning independents. Public opinion and other data show that Trump’s popularity among those outside of the MAGAverse will likely continue to decrease in the months before the election in November.

But Trump and his neofascist MAGA movement have grown in popularity with one group: the Christian right. These White Christian Supremacists are among Trump’s most loyal group of voters and increasingly the base of power not just for him and his MAGA movement, but the Republican Party and American right-wing as a whole.

"Trump continues to enjoy unwavering support from a faction of Christian voters characterized by their adherence to spiritual warfare, dominion, modern-day prophecy, and conspiratorial ideas."

Democrats, centrists, mainstream liberals and progressives (and “the left” more broadly) are quick to mock, dismiss, and make fun of the Christian right and their plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy by labeling it as “just” the “culture wars" and some type of sideshow distraction. In reality, today’s Christian right is a very real and very well-funded and highly organized institutional movement to end real democracy and create a White Christian theocracy in America and then around the world.

Their weapons to accomplish such a revolutionary project includes such things as “spiritual warfare” and “prayer warriors” who are fighting an existential battle between “good” (Republicans, "conservatives", Donald Trump and the Christian right) and "evil" (Democrats, “liberals”, “secularists” and those who do not believe in White Christian Supremacy). The Christian right (the Christofascists) also increasingly support the use of violence to advance their goals as seen on Jan. 6 of creating a White Christian authoritarian regime.

In an attempt to better understand the relationship between the Christian right, Trumpism and the larger American neofascist movement, I recently spoke with André Gagné. He is Professor and Chair of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and author of "American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times."

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Gagné explains the role of “prayer warriors” and “spiritual warfare” and “the Seven Mountains Mandate” in the imagination and mythology of the Christian right and how they understand power, politics and society. He also reflects on the role of White Christian nationalists and Christofascists in the horrible events of Jan. 6 and the larger coup attempt, and why it has not been more widely discussed by the American news media and political class.

Gagné warns that Donald Trump is viewed by many members of the Christian right as being a type of blessed and prophetic figure in their hopes and dreams of an End Times Armageddon and final battle that will then usher in “god’s kingdom” on Earth.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:

How are you feeling given the country’s democracy crisis and other great problems?

In my view, the current era is fraught with peril, particularly with the looming prospect of a Trump re-election in 2024 posing a threat to democracy in the U.S. Trump's past actions offer unmistakable insights into his intentions. His eagerness to pardon individuals involved in the January 6 Capitol attack underscores a concerning disregard for the rule of law. Furthermore, his proactive pursuit of those who oppose him, whether politically or within the judiciary, is indicative of a vengeful disposition highlighted by his political slogan centered on "retribution." This vindictive nature, coupled with his apparent belief in being beyond legal constraints, undermines the foundations of democracy.

Furthermore, the reverberations of Trump's 2016 election have been globally felt, leading to severe crises in numerous democracies. While the causes may be multifaceted, Trump's presidency has substantially catalyzed these challenges. Consequently, we must stay vigilant and proactively implement measures to avert any additional harm to the foundations of democracy.

Given the anniversary of Jan. 6 and the continuing plot against democracy by Trump and his forces – which includes “White Christians,” to use scholar Anthea Butler’s term – what do you better understand now about that horrible day?

During Trump's presidential tenure, a discernible trend emerged among his staunch supporters, marked by an embrace of ideas centered around spiritual warfare. Notably, a significant portion of this demographic subscribed to Trump's unsubstantiated claim, commonly referred to as the “Big Lie,” alleging the theft of the election. This belief, perpetuated and endorsed by many, laid the groundwork for a narrative where divine intervention was intricately woven into political events.

The fusion of spiritual warfare rhetoric and prophetic declarations predicting an imminent second American Civil War added a distinctive dimension to this ideological landscape. This amalgamation fostered a climate where fervent adherents felt compelled to resist the certification of the election results on January 6, driven by an unwavering conviction that Trump's defeat was inconceivable. The core tenet of their belief rested on the notion that Trump was divinely chosen, a sentiment fortified by many Neocharismatic-Pentecostal (NCP) prophets foretelling a second term for the former president.

The credibility bestowed upon these prophets made it relatively straightforward for Trump's supporters to embrace the “Big Lie” wholeheartedly. The inherent trust in the prophetic messages rendered the idea of Trump's defeat incompatible with their worldview. Consequently, the incessant amplification of spiritual warfare rhetoric, coupled with the demonization of political adversaries, created a climate where certain Christians, swayed by the convictions of these spiritual warfare advocates, found themselves entangled in a plot to subvert the democratic process in the United States. The convergence of fervent beliefs and political machinations underscored the profound impact of these ideologies on the unfolding events surrounding the certification of the election results.

Why has there still been such little sustained discussion by the mainstream news media and responsible political class – and I would even include the Jan. 6 hearings – about the role of Christian nationalists in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and larger coup plot?

In the aftermath of the Jan 6 hearings, there has been a concerning lack of coverage and political discussion about the role of White evangelicals in the events that unfolded. The reason behind this inadequacy is the highly privileged position that Christianity enjoys in the U.S. A significant portion of Americans, in one way or another, identify themselves as Christian, and many are part of the political class.

The reluctance to hold accountable some of the influential Christian leaders who stoked the fires of spiritual warfare and promoted the “Big Lie” has resulted in the insufficient reporting of the events that took place on Jan 6. This issue calls for a more critical and inclusive approach to reporting and political discussions that can help bring more transparency and accountability to the political system.

For too long these very dangerous forces have been treated as some type of curiosity or joke by those outside of that world and the larger “conservative” movement.

Many people do not take some of the more exotic beliefs and practices of certain Christians seriously because they seem strange. For instance, ideas about demons and the type of spiritual warfare prayers made in public seem ridiculous to many people as they don't resonate with the way we generally perceive the world.

The concept of spiritual warfare has always been a part of Christianity. It refers to the battle that Christians face against the forces of good and evil in their lives. Unlike the physical battlefields, this battle is mainly internal, against sinful attitudes and actions. It involves the idea of supernatural invisible evil forces, known as demons, who seek to inspire evil attitudes or actions. In early Christianity, spiritual warfare meant one was to resist the Devil by engaging in forms of ascetic behavior, mastering fleshly desires, and cultivating Christian virtues like humility, self-control, and love of enemies.

However, some Trump-loving charismatic supporters engage in imprecatory prayers for the downfall of their political enemies. Many of these leaders prefer to uncharitably highlight the shortcomings of their political adversaries and discredit them. Didn’t Jesus say to pray for your enemies, not against them? Therefore, these spiritual warfare prayers that serve as a way to demonize political adversaries seem contrary to the spirit of Christianity.

What is the role of “demons” and “Satan” and the supernatural and other fantastical forces in the thinking and belief system of the Christian right? For them, what does it mean to be a “prayer warrior” and to engage in “spiritual warfare”?

The brand of spiritual warfare to which many of these NCP Trump-supporting leaders adhere was popularized by C. Peter Wagner, a missiologist and professor of Church Growth who passed away in 2016.

Wagner promoted the idea that demonic forces were responsible for conflicts between people, daily life problems, political tensions in the world, etc. He devised a framework to describe what he believed to be demonic activity in society. According to Wagner, spiritual warfare is evidently present at three distinct levels of engagement. The first level, termed “ground-level spiritual warfare,” involves practices like exorcism and the empowerment of select individuals to expel demons. Wagner then introduced a second tier, labeled “occult-level spiritual warfare,” wherein he identified what he believed to be demonic influences in occult practices, including New Age rituals, yoga, sorcery, satanism, and shamanism. The third tier, conceptualized by Wagner, is known as “strategic-level spiritual warfare.” This level describes the battle against a hierarchy of high-ranking demonic spirits appointed by Satan, which are thought to exert control over nations, regions, cities, tribes, groups of people, neighborhoods, and influential networks worldwide. Among many Neocharismatic-Pentecostals (NCPs), these entities are referred to as “territorial spirits,” acting as chief demons overseeing the activities of lower-ranking demons in their designated territory with the aim of thwarting God's will.

According to those who embrace this brand of spiritual warfare, malevolent spirits are believed to wield a substantial influence over a nation's political, social, and cultural spheres. These demonic forces are thought to exert a potent sway over the inhabitants of their designated territories, impeding the advancement of God's Kingdom. Practitioners of spiritual warfare contend that entire countries, regions, cities, and even political parties can be subjected to a process termed “demonization.” The practice of “territorial exorcisms” frequently involves the application of spiritual warfare prayers.

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Theological ideas can be powerful tools for understanding the world around us. However, we must be careful not to let it lead to the demonization of people, cultures, and political communities. Unfortunately, this can happen when some NCP Trump-supporting leaders engage in spiritual warfare against perceived demonic forces. In the process of translating spiritual entities into tangible entities, non-believers, and individuals from different political or cultural backgrounds, such as Democrats, Muslims or those identifying as LGBTQ+, become assimilated into evil spirits. It underscores the importance of scrutinizing spiritual beliefs critically, as uncritical acceptance can transform these beliefs into a weapon against certain groups of people.

What of the End Times and its influence on how the Christian right views their role in American society?

The discourse around the "End Times" or eschatology can be quite varied among evangelical supporters of Trump. There are multiple scenarios that fall under the "End Times" category, and this can be confusing for those who are unfamiliar with the underlying theological language. In my book, I have dedicated an entire chapter to explaining some of the main eschatological ideas that are popular among Trump’s evangelical supporters. For example, some people still hold on to an interpretative framework known as dispensationalism, which includes the popular concept of the “Rapture.” According to this belief, Jesus will come back on the clouds and take all true Christians to heaven (hence the term “Rapture”), while God will punish those who refused to repent by sending judgment on Earth. On the other hand, some people, like the late C. Peter Wagner, the key leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, believe in another idea called “Victorious Eschatology.” According to this belief, the Church (i.e., Christians) will rise in power, unity, and glory before the return of Christ on Earth. Victorious Eschatology is about the visible expansion of God's Kingdom on Earth through the actions of Christians.

For Wagner, this sort of eschatological outlook “fits Dominion Theology like a glove.” A good definition of dominionism is one by Frederick Clarkson, senior researcher at Political Research Associates. Dominionism “is the theocratic idea that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.” For me, evangelical Trump supporters hold to “dominion” as their political theology of power. Now for Christians to exercise “dominion,” they need to be mobilized to action. This is the purpose of the “7 Mountain Mandate,” a marketing strategy popularized (but not invented) by Lance Wallnau, a Pentecostal Christian businessman, regarded as a prophet, an apostle, and a teacher, to mobilize Christians into action and occupy top roles in the spheres (or mountains) of government, education, business, family, arts & entertainment, media, and religion. Dominion will be implemented, when “kingdom-minded” Christians are positioned at the head of these cultural mountains.

Now, spiritual warfare is another key component to “dominion” and the “7 Mountain Mandate.” In order to “occupy,” one needs to neutralize and displace “the enemy.” Practitioners of spiritual warfare are in the business of removing the obstacles to “dominion.” What exactly are these obstacles? They are primarily understood as demonic forces seeking to hinder God’s Kingdom through various means, such as politics. This potentially leads to the demonization of political opponents, individuals and social groups seen as obstacles to “dominion.”

Many among the Christian right believe that Trump was “chosen by god”. Trump is now using that narrative to promote himself as some type of messiah and Chosen One who exists outside of human laws and the Constitution. How can someone like Donald Trump, who is clearly not a Christian role model, be “chosen by god”? How do these White Christians and others who believe in such absurdities make sense of Trump, the man and symbol?

Wallnau emerged as an early proponent of the notion that Donald Trump was divinely chosen to lead the United States. He drew a comparison between Trump and Cyrus the Great, the King of Persia. Six months prior to the election, Wallnau forecasted Trump's triumph, attributing his conviction that God had disclosed to him Trump's role as a "wrecking ball" against the prevailing spirit of “political correctness” in America. Wallnau asserted that God had revealed to him a connection between the biblical passage Isaiah 45 and Donald Trump’s providential role as the 45th President of the United States. Isaiah 45, found in the Hebrew Bible, narrates the mission of King Cyrus of Persia, portrayed as a savior (a messiah) of the Jewish people. Wallnau connected the rise of Cyrus, a pagan king, to that of Trump's ascension to leadership. Trump would be a modern-day Cyrus figure on a mission to safeguard the American people and rejuvenate the nation to its past grandeur.

According to this way of thinking, there is no need for Trump to be an upstanding Christian, since God chose in the past sinful individuals to do his bidding. One other example is that of famous Christian preacher, Franklin Graham, who argued that God could use Trump like he used King David. Graham's rationale concerning Trump included references to biblical figures to highlight the concept that even revered individuals in Scripture had their flaws and sins. For instance, King David's adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband, Uriah, as narrated in 2 Samuel 11–12. Despite these transgressions, God forgave David's sins (2 Samuel 12:13), and there are biblical passages that present David as “a man after (God's) own heart” (1 Samuel 13:13–14; 1 Kings 14:8; Acts 13:22). The problem with this example is that David repented from his sins; what can be said of Trump?

In any case, Trump continues to enjoy unwavering support from a faction of Christian voters characterized by their adherence to spiritual warfare, dominion, modern-day prophecy, and conspiratorial ideas. One man and his supporters have been undermining the very foundations of American democracy. Has the U.S. reached a point of no return? The next election will determine if whether or not American democracy will survive the pressure of their aggression.

What is “the rod of iron” in relation to spiritual warfare? How do spiritual warfare practitioners use this biblical imagery in the context of politics?

One recent example of the use of this biblical imagery and its use in spiritual warfare was seen following Trump’s defeat in the 2020 elections. Most are familiar with Paula White-Cain, Trump’s spiritual advisor. After the election, she organized prayer gatherings, hoping God would overturn the election. During these meetings, imprecatory prayers were made against the enemies of God, a reference to Trump's political adversaries. During one of the meetings, prayers were directed at God asking that enemies be crushed with a “rod of iron.” The “rod of iron” is a means of divine judgment. In biblical terms, the "rod of iron" is a symbol of violence and force to subjugate God’s enemies. The biblical imagery is used in the context of a theocratic rule, where it is believed that one day Jesus and his followers will rule over nations with a "rod of iron" (see Revelation 2:26-27; 12:5; 19:15). The use of biblical language in the aftermath of Trump's defeat is alarming, as it implied a refusal to accept Biden's victory.

What will it mean for those not deemed to be "the right type of Christians" and other non-believers, never mind Black and brown folks, the LGBTQ community and marginalized people more broadly, if Trump wins and the Christofascists are fully empowered under his dictatorship?

Those who adhere to this political theology of power are often vague when pressed about this question. They attempt to conceal the fact that the notion of "dominion" is centered around Christian dominance. Certain leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation which I discuss in my book try duplicitously to exchange the language of “dominion” for that of “influence.” For instance, they try to present the “Seven Mountain Mandate” as a strategy for “influence,” intended to find solutions to contemporary social problems. Any "dominion" they claim to have is supposedly a benevolent one, where the "light" of Christianity overcomes the "darkness." They even argue that people will rejoice when Christians exercise dominion!

But there are people (Christians and non-Christians) who do not share the values and vision of New Apostolic Reformation leaders. Despite their claims of simply wanting to “influence” culture, their societal project differs significantly from the values of equality, pluralism, and tolerance typical of liberal and democratic societies. Their adoption of aggressive spiritual warfare language and vilification of political opponents is concerning. This strongly suggests that those who do not support their vision of a Christian-dominated America may be at risk.


Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

 The ‘ravening wolf’ priest who led a doomed revolution

Daniel Brooks
Mon, January 22, 2024 

A 19th-century engraving of Thomas Müntzer’s marauding peasants - Alamy

The decisive battle of the German Peasants’ War was fought on May 15 1525, upon a hilltop outside Frankenhausen, a small town in the central state of Thuringia. An army of around 8,000 peasants, gathered under rainbow banners, were demanding the overthrow of the existing social order. Their leader, the radical preacher Thomas Müntzer, pointed to the sky – where a rainbow-like halo seemed to have formed around the Sun – and reassured his troops that they should “fight with their heart and be of courage”. Within hours, the artillery-equipped army of the Saxon and Thuringian nobles had crushed the rebels’ flimsy fortifications and killed some 5,000 of them.

Andrew Drummond’s history steals its outstanding title, The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer, from a pamphlet printed, soon after Müntzer’s execution, by his rival Martin Luther. The men were both important figures in the Protestant reformations that swept Europe at the start of the 16th century but, while Luther remained an ally of the aristocracy, Müntzer was a true revolutionary who demanded nothing less than the dissolution of feudal and religious structures and the full emancipation of the peasantry. As Drummond puts it, the latter approach was “playing with fire in an age of theological arson”.

It’s easy to understand why some were drawn to such lofty ambitions. Drummond begins by outlining the miserable state of your average Holy Roman peasant, and the apocalypticism that had taken root in Germany at the end of the 15th century. Müntzer too believed the world was ending, and that only the spiritually pure “Elect” were equipped to change the tide of history. There was a feeling – it may be familiar to those who remember the turn of 2000 – that some great but unknown change was on the horizon, accelerated by the emergence of a new form of communication technology: in their case, the Gutenberg printing press.

The echoes of the present day are not accidental. While Drummond conjures a sense of historical place – with credit due for capturing the religious lives of his subjects while largely dodging the dense mire of theology – The Dreadful History and Judgement… is very much a book in the New Left tradition of materialist history. We get a tightly narrativised case study of local conditions from which we can draw easy parallels to modern social movements, but we sometimes lose sight of history’s specific power-centres. The figure of the “early capitalist”, for instance, receives more frequent mention than Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

Printing allowed for the spread of ideas by prominent intellectuals, but it also became a vehicle for some impressive mudslinging. In the various tracts that emerged, Müntzer was branded a “ravening wolf” and a “false prophet”, while a fellow firebrand, Heinrich Pfeiffer, was said to want “to introduce murder, riot, overthrowing of authority”. Müntzer’s ripostes laid into the “lavish mimicry of the Godless” and painted the nobility as a “dribbling sack”. Luther, he claimed, couldn’t have drawn crowds as big as his “if he were to burst”.

An 18th-cenutry engraving of Thomas Müntzer - Hulton Archive

When he wasn’t writing, Müntzer’s career took him from town to town, preaching and agitating. His first real controversy arose in Zwickau in 1520, where he, along with a weaver named Nicholas Storch, incited a series of riots against the local Catholic clergy. He was firmly told that he had to leave. In Prague in 1521, things continued in much the same way, and he fled under a hail of stones. He was run out of several other towns, climbing over the walls of Allstedt in August 1524 after a warning from local leaders, and slipping out of Mühlhausen a month later after the townsfolk voted to get rid of him. In both of the latter cases, Müntzer left his wife Ottilie and his young child behind.

And that’s the thing. Even accounting, as Drummond does, for the fact that the historical record was largely written by Müntzer’s enemies, Müntzer at no point comes across as a pleasant man, much less one who lives up to the ideals he ignites in the peasants whom he’ll eventually send to their deaths. The reformist Philipp Melanchthon, whose second-hand account no doubt reflects plenty of Lutheran bias, presented him as a charlatan who told the peasants that he would “catch all the bullets in his sleeves”.

After the massacre, Müntzer somehow escaped the hill and was captured at a nearby inn; he would be executed soon after, but not before sending a final letter to his remaining acolytes. Here he claimed, in the tone of all failed revolutionaries, that his enterprise collapsed because it didn’t go far enough – that those who had died “only considered their own profit and thus destroyed God’s truth”.

Drummond has written a blisteringly good book about personal enmity, and the difference between revolution and reform. Müntzer’s head ended up on a spike outside of the gates of Mühlhausen, but Luther changed Christendom forever. The Frankenhausen hilltop was flattened in the 1970s by the East German government. They built a museum there, with a panoramic mural dedicated to the more-than-100,000 peasants killed in the war. Under the rainbow, defiant to the last, stands Thomas Müntzer.

The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer is published by Verso 

Marxists.org

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/index.htm

The Peasant War in Germany by Frederick Engels 1850

Jun 6, 2023 ... The Peasant War in Germany was the first history book to assert that the real motivating force behind the Reformation and 16th-century peasant ...

Libcom.org

https://libcom.org/article/third-revolution-popular-movements-revolutionary-era

The Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary... 

Jun 15, 2020 ... pdf (17.78 MB). ThirdRevVol2Pt1.pdf (12.23 MB). ThirdRevVol2Pt2.pdf (28.3 MB) ... Audiobook of Murray Bookchin's Ecology and Revolutionary Thought.

The Snow Queen, by Edmund Dulac [1911] (Public Domain Image)
The Sorceress (La Sorcière)
by Jules Michelet
tr. by Afred Richard Allinson
[1939]

But the greatest revolution the Sorceress brought about, the chief movement of all in contradiction, in direct contradiction to the spirit of the Middle Ages, is what we might well call a rehabilitation of the belly and its digestive functions. They boldly proclaimed the doctrine that "nothing is impure and nothing unclean." From that moment the study of physical science was enfranchised, its shackles loosed, and true medicine became a possibility.--p. 86

This is a translation of Jules Michelet's La Sorcière, originally published in Paris in 1862. I have titled this text The Sorceress because that is a literal translation of the original French title. The original title of this translation was Satanism and Witchcraft, and it was later retitled Witchcraft, Sorcery and Superstition. However there is no need to sensationalize this book; the material is already sensational enough. And women are at the center of this book: peasant healers, aristocratic noblewomen, and nuns; we get an unparalleled look at the misery that medieval women faced, and some of the ways they rebelled.