THE MYSTERIOUS PUTIN'S RUSSIA FACTOR
INTRODUCTION
An essay titled EVANGELICAL FUNDAMENTALISM AND CATHOLIC INTEGRALISM: A SURPRISING ECUMENISM, written by Antonio Spadaro SJ, and Marcelo Figueroa, a Protestant pastor, described the main right-wing Roman Catholic-Evangelical Alliance as the "ecumenism of hate." The authors of the essay are described in Two associates of Pope Francis accuse right-wing American Christians of practicing 'apocalyptic' politics, as "close associates" of the Pope, and Figueroa as "a Protestant pastor who worked closely with Francis in Buenos Aires." The link is quite clear. This appears to reveal a conflict between the Francis papacy and the right-wing Roman Catholic-Evangelical Alliance. The Alliance is enigmatic in more than one respect. There is the established fact that the Alliance is the product of an activist plan of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and there is credible evidence that it had the blessing of Pope John-Paul and probably Pope Benedict as well. Is this no longer the case under Pope Francis, or is there now a clever concealment of the continuing favor of the Papal See?
Here it is important to note that among the Roman Catholic Secret Societies Opus Dei is in the ascendancy at the Vatican under Pope Francis. This contradicts the image portrayed of Pope Francis as opposed to the "ecumenism of hate." The secret society Opus Dei wields tremendous influence in the corridors of power in America's capital city (Opus Dei’s Influence Is Felt in All of Washington’s Corridors of Power.)
The enigma deepens with the involvement of Vladimir Putin's Russia in American politics. He is the darling of the Religious Right, as will be seen later in this document. Donald Trump's Russia connections have been well documented, and yet remain shrouded in mystery. Trump's Russia connections were exposed during the 2016 presidential election campaign. However, Putin's influence in American politics had existed long before. It involved such significant Roman Catholic personalities as the ubiquitous "evil genius" Paul Weyrich. His involvement in the Russia conspiracy raises the question of papal approval. Moreover, there is evidence that Weyrich was associated with known fascists. The personality featured in the following hyperlinked report is revealed to have connections at the highest levels of government in America and Russia, and to have had a close relationship with Weyrich when he was alive. The information about his relationships with leading Republican politicians is startling:
The GOP’s Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow
Dr. Edward Lozansky is a key figure in the Trump-Russia scandal, despite his name being a mystery to you.
Meet Eduard Dmitrievich Lozansky, a US citizen and potentially an unregistered foreign agent for the Russian Federation.
He is prolific Putin propagandist.
A citizen of America.
And he is the key man who introduced the Republican Party’s conservative movement to Russia. . .
Dr. Lozansky’s Unlikely Relationship With Paul Weyrich — A Hungarian Nazi Sympathizer Who Reshaped The GOP
Dr. Lozansky was very involved in advocating for the issues of Russian Jewry, which is how he became friends with men like Sandy Gradinger in Rochester.
Startlingly, Dr. Lozansky’s most important political relationship was with a conservative activist whose connections to Hungarian Nazis have only been equaled by Donald Trump.
Edward Lozansky teamed up frequently with Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, a man whose right-hand man was a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross, and whose groups were politically active in European far-right politics.
For example, here’s just one article Lozansky and Weyrich co-authored in 2001.
In 2008, Paul Weyrich wrote an op/ed on Newsmax (since removed) where he stated that it was Ed Lozansky who 20-years prior brought up to him the idea of Russia joining NATO.
Wikipedia sums up Paul Weyrich’s Nazi connections thusly:
Weyrich founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC),[5] an organization that trained and mobilized conservative activists, recruited conservative candidates, and raised funds for conservative causes.
The CSFC, founded by Weyrich, “became active in eastern European politics after the Cold War. Figuring prominently in this effort was Weyrich’s right-hand man, Laszlo Pasztor, a former leader of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in Hungary, which had collaborated with Hitler’s Reich. After serving two years in prison for his Arrow Cross activities, Pasztor found his way to the United States, where he was instrumental in establishing the ethnic-outreach arm of the Republican national Committee.”
In addition to his Nazi activities, Paul Weyrich coined the term the “Moral Majority” . . . (Italics in the original; underscored emphasis added.)
Without getting involved in the intricacies of Lozansky's influential activities in the USA, which are not included above, it can reasonably be deduced from two facts that the papacy does approve of the conspiracy. These are (1) Weyrich's involvement, and (2) Lozansky's role as "the key man who introduced the Republican Party’s conservative movement to Russia." The Republican Party has been taken over by the Roman Catholic Church.
The following report provides an even more expansive view of Russian Intelligence involvement in American politics in collusion with well-known Religious Right personalities. It also again brings Paul Weyrich into the picture in a very interesting way:
Evangelicals and the Kremlin: A history of collusion
One of the key chess pieces in the Russian Intelligence Operation that brought us Donald Trump is the Religious Right. In fact, the fascist alliance with the American Right goes back to the period after World War 2 where we allied ourselves with former Nazis to take down the Communists.
Soviet defectors came here in the 1980’s and told bold stories about how Russian intelligence services had infected everything and were playing the long game in several phases. They would target the schools, the government, the media, and our churches over decades until we had been demoralized and chaos would reign.
This also happens to have coincided with the rise of a new form of Conservatism in America. . .
The American religious right viewed the downfall of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to proselytize and create an alliance with the Russians. Phillip Yancy, in this story for Christianity Today and later the book he wrote based on this story, it is shown that the KGB welcomed this with open arms. I believe that, at some point, they came to realize that religion was a better way to control people and choose to take advantage of the religious right across the world.
With the financial backing of the notorious right-wing families Coors, Scaife, and Hunt, Paul Weyrich was able to create the Heritage Foundation in 1973. He would follow it up with A.L.E.C, The Moral Majority, the Free Congress Foundation and the Secretive Council for National Policy. Weyrich is also known for his belief that not everybody should be able to vote.
“Another one of Weyrich’s close associates at the Free Congress Foundation, Hungarian-American Laszlo Pasztor, is a convicted Nazi sympathizer who was active in the 1940s in the Hungarian Arrow Cross when it was collaborating with the Nazis. . .
Board member Charles Moser is an editorial advisor to Ukrainian Quarterly which once ran an article praising the Nazi Waffen SS and Ukranian collaboration against the Bolsheviks . . . while Weyrich has ties to neo-fascist and racist groups including the Nazi Northern League and the World Anti-Communist League via British eugenicist Roger Pearson.”
Roger Pearson was on the editorial board for the Heritage Foundation before he went on to work for the Pioneer Fund, a fund dedicated to funding eugenics studies. The Pioneer Fund was founded in 1937 and modeled after the Nazi’s breeding program.
Some of the directors of the Pioneer Fund were Tom Ellis — a former president of the Council for National Policy — and two other high-level Republican operatives — Senator Jesse Helms and Carter Wrenn. Both were members of the CNP, as well as being part of the same Eugenics society as far-right financier Nelson Bunker Hunt. Helms was also a member of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, a racist network out of Scotland tied to Joseph Coors. . .
In 1979, Weyrich and his comrades convinced Jerry Falwell to form a new organization to promote theocracy, the Moral Majority. Meanwhile, Ed McAteer (Howard Phillips coworker) formed the Religious Roundtable with dozens of religious leaders including Rafael Cruz. McAteer also served on the board of the International Linguistics Center with Nelson Bunker Hunt.
Seeing this newfound power and broad alliances on the right, Paul Weyrich and his friend at Free Congress Robert Krieble decided to take on the Soviet Union themselves.
To do so, they enlisted the help of Soviet Émigré Edward Lozansky and other young Russians to spread right wing propaganda across Russia and Eastern Europe. Grant Stern and I have covered the origins of Lozansky’s ties to Russia in depth.
Russ Bellant explained this in his book about the New Right in 1991, but also missed the role fascist elements in Russia itself played the rise of fascism throughout the United States.
The evidence out there points to this The Krieble Institute’s goals being one of religious indoctrination rather than one of converting a nation from Communism to Capitalism. Two Months after this letter was sent, the Council for National Policy had its meeting in Moscow. In addition to this letter from 1991, Allen Carlson started the World Congress of Families when two Russian Professors at Moscow State University reached out to him with the idea.
Prior to his death, Paul Weyrich is described [sic] the World Congress’s purposes in the following terms; “to set up an international operation with the ability to combat the forces of darkness wherever they show themselves in whatever part of the world.”
While Weyrich was proselytizing to young Russian families and Allen Carlson was setting up the World Congress, Dr. John Bernbaum was founding the “Russian American Christian University” in Moscow. RACU was founded with money from Deyneka Ministries and PeterDeyneka Jr. Served on the board until his death. The University was supported by millions of dollars from the Prince and Devos family foundations and was just one of the ways the American Right fought a Culture War in a country it had no place being in. . . (Italics in the original; underscored emphasis added.)
It is noteworthy that the author attempts to provide two source hyperlinks in verification of the information about Paul Weyrich's Nazi connections, which is an indication of the veracity of the facts. The hyperlinks do not work. It seems likely that the data has been suppressed. Weyrich's fascist associations help to understand the current direction of the Republican Party, and the segment of the voting population which supports fascist authoritarianism. This is a voting bloc which has been conditioned by decades of sophisticated propaganda. Were it not for this voting bloc fascism would not pose the menace that it now does to what remains of democratic principles in the government of America.
This report demonstrates that the Russia conspiracy is driven by, or linked to, all of the diabolical network of evil that is hell-bent on destroying, America's democracy with its constitutional separation of church and state.
Two assertions are open to question. The first is a qualification on the Religious Right's activities in Russia. While it is probably correct that one objective was proselytizing, given the super wealthy personalities involved they must also have been intent on advancing capitalism. The other assertion is found in the phrase "While Weyrich was proselytizing." Proselytizing was never his primary goal in any context. He was a political animal; and his objective was absolute authoritarian power. Moreover, his masters in the Roman Catholic hierarchy are not interested in proselytizing in the proper sense of the term. They simply demand obedience, voluntary or involuntary, to their edicts. Paul Weyrich and his cohorts were happy to oblige with an accomodating program.
DONALD TRUMP'S DEEP INVOLVEMENT WITH PUTIN AND RUSSIA
From the very beginning of his 2016 campaign for the presidency of the United States Donald Trump's relationship with Russia came under suspicion by the FBI. The result was an investigation which lasted for two years:
Special counsel: What is it and what did Robert Mueller investigate?
The special counsel was put in place to oversee the investigation looking into alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election, and if Trump campaign figures were complicit.
Robert Mueller, who headed the FBI for more than a decade, was appointed in May 2017. He concluded his inquiry nearly two years later. . .
Why was he appointed?
The special counsel was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. He made the decision as "acting attorney general" because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had stepped aside from the Russia inquiry.
Mr Rosenstein said that given the "unique circumstances", it was in the public interest for a special counsel independent "from the normal chain of command", to lead the investigation.
By placing authority for the probe into the hands of Mr Mueller, the idea was that it would be able to proceed without any interference, including from the White House.
What was he looking at?
Mr Rosenstein's order allowed Mr Mueller to look into:
The Russian government's efforts to interfere in the election
Any links or co-ordination between Russia and Trump campaign-linked individuals
Any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation
His investigation ventured into work done by former Trump advisers and Russian nationals. Thirty-four people have been charged with wrongdoing.
What did he find?
Mr Mueller's 448-page report said it had not established that the Trump campaign criminally conspired with Russia to influence the election.
However, it did detail 10 instances where Mr Trump had possibly attempted to impede the investigation and stated the report did not exonerate Mr Trump.
Mr Mueller reiterated that in a rare statement following the end of the inquiry and said legal guidelines prevent the indictment of a sitting president. He said if his team had had confidence that Mr Trump "clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so".
Note that the report did not find that there was "no collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Russians, yet many respected publications, including PBS, have perpetuated the myth that there was such a finding:
The Mueller Investigation, Explained
It dominated headlines for two years, but in March 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election came to an end. The investigation, which President Donald Trump continually called a “witch hunt,” found no evidence that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, but fell short of completely exonerating the president.
This was one of many myths arising out of the Mueller investigation, and this was due to the deliberate corruption of the investigation report by newly appointed Attorney-General Bill Barr, a Roman Catholic theocrat; (N.B. Bill Barr, warrior for theocracy: Why didn't we know this until now?#William Barr, the attorney general of the United States.) Barr was on a nefarious mission.
The following article by two law professors debunks eleven myths about the Mueller Investigation report. The quotation below is confined to the issue of collusion:
These 11 Mueller Report Myths Just Won’t Die. Here’s Why They’re Wrong
By Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance
June 24, 2019 9:57 AM EDT
McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst.
Vance is distinguished professor of the practice of law at the University of Alabama, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst.
When we joined other legal experts earlier this month to testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding lessons from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, it became apparent from the questioning that a number of misconceptions continue to exist regarding Mueller’s findings. The narrative was shaped by Attorney General William Barr, who issued his description of Mueller’s conclusions three weeks before the public saw the full 448-page report. In a letter to Barr, Mueller complained that Barr’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance” of his team’s work and conclusions, and created “public confusion.” Here is our effort to dispel some of those myths.
Myth: Mueller found “no collusion.”
Response: Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.
While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. One of the underlying criminal offenses that Mueller reviewed for conspiracy was campaign-finance violations. Mueller found that Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian nationals in Trump Tower in New York June 2016 for the purpose of receiving disparaging information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email message arranging the meeting. This meeting did not amount to a criminal offense, in part, because Mueller was unable to establish “willfulness,” that is, that the participants knew that their conduct was illegal. Mueller was also unable to conclude that the information was a “thing of value” that exceeded $25,000, the requirement for campaign finance to be a felony, as opposed to a civil violation of law. But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable. Trump campaign members welcomed foreign influence into our election and then compromised themselves with the Russian government by covering it up.
Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”
The confusion about the investigation report's finding about conspiracy arises because many people think that conspiracy and collusion are synonymous. They are not. Conspiracy is a crime requiring specific elements. Collusion is collaborative behavior that nevertheless lacks all of the legal elements required to prove the crime of conspiracy.
As the Trump presidency was preceded by reprehensible conduct in his election campaign involving Russia, it continued with an unacceptable connection to Russia and its President Putin. There were also constant breaches of the law that it is unnecessary to include in this paper. In the connection to Russia he was acting in concert with the Religous Right consisting of both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics:
All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts
These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts, while dotted ones represent speculative or unproven connections.
There’s nothing inherently damning about most of the ties illustrated below. But they do reveal the vast and mysteriously complex web behind a story that has vexed Trump’s young presidency from its start—and is certain to shake the White House for months to come.
The seven charts which follow the above introduction fill in the details of the complex web.
INVOLVEMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
What is most significant about the influence of Vladimir Putin's Russia in American politics is the Religious Right's connection with it. The first citation under this section reveals a role being played by the Russian Orthodox Church as well as Putin:
Russia's lasting grip on Christian conservatives [A 2019 article]
Russians are using Christian fundamentalist groups as a conduit to influence lawmakers
Prominent Russian nationals and members of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) continue to build bridges with American right-wing politicians and may be influencing policy.
Despite being sanctioned by the US Department of Treasury and the European Union for crimes in Ukraine, the same Russians under investigation for meeting with National Rifle Association (NRA) members are using Christian fundamentalist groups as a conduit to influence lawmakers.
Russians continue to skirt around sanctions by penetrating American churches and “family values” nonprofit organizations, and by manipulating IRS 501(c) loopholes, which do not require these groups to disclose their donations.
This is similar to the way members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle infiltrated the NRA.
Recently disclosed documents reveal that, over the last decade, at least $50 million has been dumped into fascist European fundamentalist groups. The list of donors includes former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon; Trump legal advisor, who converted from Judaism to become a Christian televangelist, Jay Sekulow; US Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and DeVos’s brother, former Blackwater mercenary founder turned Virginia cattle rancher, Erik Prince.
Another top donor is one of Russia’s richest men, oligarch Konstantin Malofeev — Putin’s most effective Eurasianism lobbyist. Malofeev’s stature catapulted him to the center of America’s growing Christian fundamentalist syndicate, with a healthy boost from Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. In 2011, together with Jack Hanick, a former producer of Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, Malofeev launched an Orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad.
Hanick and Malofeev successfully modeled their propaganda network after Fox News. Hanick moved to Russia in 2012; four years later he, his wife, and his kids converted to the Russian Orthodox faith. Malofeev is currently the subject of six US criminal investigationsinto Russian ties to the NRA. Not only is Malofeev suspected of laundering money into the NRA’s coffers, he has bankrolled and hosted events for the World Congress of Families (WCF), a right-wing Christian coalition based in Rockford, Illinois. Hanick serves on the WCF planning commission. . .
Over the past few years, the WCF has hosted its conferences in former Soviet countries and was scheduled to host its 2014 event in Russia — but the event was canceled due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea that year. But according to recently hacked and published emails, Russian and American representatives met in Moscow anyway, just a few months after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. . .
A growing political force in Putin’s Russia, the ROC operates as a large corporation tainted with corruption, bribery scandals, money laundering, and tax evasion. Putin has shaped the Orthodox ideology, which parallels that of extreme Christian fundamentalism in the US. . .
Russia’s long history of courting US politicians dates back to the Reagan era — Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. But so-called family values nonprofit organizations have dramatically proliferated under the Trump administration, fueled by right-wing radio and cable news. Last November, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., who advised Trump to forge stronger ties with Russia, helped produce a film titled The Trump Prophecy that claims the president has been anointed by God. One in four Fox News viewers believe Falwell’s notion, according to a recent poll.
Last month, evangelical leader Franklin Graham traveled to Moscow for a “sit down” with Russian Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who has been sanctioned by the US since 2014for his involvement in Ukraine. Graham told Russian media that Vice President Mike Pence had “signed off” on his Kremlin trip, and that he and Volodin had discussed developing stronger ties with members of US Congress. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Here is evidence that Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC,) and the American Religious Right, Evangelical and Roman Catholic, have been working together to undermine America's democracy. Here is also evidence of support from Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. The following are further samplings from the numerous reports of the strange collaboration between Putin's Russia and American right-wing Evangelicals. The extent of this collaboration is startling:
The unexpected relationship between U.S. evangelicals and Russian Orthodox
Under Trump and Putin, a strange alliance gets stranger.
Well before special counsel Robert Mueller started investigating possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, American evangelicals had formed an odd alliance of their own with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. American evangelicals are led to make common cause with Russian Orthodoxy—and with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin—because of a deep and shared suspicion of Western liberal elites.
Evangelical leaders in the United States and Orthodox hierarchs in Russia have accused the Western liberal establishment of being secular, antireligious, and committed to undermining traditional religious and moral values. In recent years, Barack Obama’s comments about “bitter” people “who cling to guns or religion” and Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of the “deplorables” backing Trump have added fuel to the flames. Sexual and gender politics have generated the most heat, but “traditional values” have also included patriotism, respect for the military, and the celebration of historic religious national identities, as in “Christian America” or “Holy Russia.”
In both countries, evangelicals and Orthodox have actively opposed legalized abortion and have called for protection of the “traditional” family. They have turned to leaders who support their causes—American evangelicals to the Republican Party and now Trump; Russian Orthodox hierarchs to Putin.
On this basis, for more than a decade, Russian Orthodox hierarchs—especially Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Hilarion—have explored cooperation with American evangelicals and other conservative religious forces both in Russia and internationally. Metropolitan Hilarion, the church’s top diplomat, recently asserted that Russian Orthodox believers and Russian Baptists agree on the need to preserve “traditional Christian values and the institution of the family.” At a gathering of religious leaders in England last year, Patriarch Kirill appealed for a united effort to counter the “oppression” of “power groups” that propose ideas “incompatible with the traditional views of Christian morality. . . . Christians in Europe must strive to defend their values on which the continent was built.” This language echoes that of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who also called for preserving the Christian foundations of Europe.
Metropolitan Hilarion has traveled regularly to the United States to meet not only with Orthodox counterparts but also with conservative evangelical and Catholic leaders. On a 2011 trip, he delivered a speech at the Catholic University of America, perhaps the most conservative of America’s large Catholic universities, and then at Dallas Theological Seminary, one of the country’s most prominent conservative evangelical institutions. While in Dallas, he preached at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, a 4,000-member congregation that has since left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) over its liberal social stances.
Metropolitan Hilarion also met privately with politically conservative Texan business leaders and visited former president George W. Bush on his ranch near Waco. In 2014, Metropolitan Hilarion returned to the United States to speak at a conference of Christian leaders organized by Franklin Graham (now head of the Billy Graham organization), after which he attended Billy Graham’s 96th birthday party and met with Tim Keller, the evangelical pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.
The alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has been especially significant. In 2015, Metropolitan Hilarion invited Franklin Graham to Moscow, where he had private audiences with Patriarch Kirill and Putin. Graham later thanked the patriarch for the Russian Orthodox Church’s “strong voice in the defense of moral values” and lauded Putin for defending biblical values “from the attacks of secularism.” Graham further asserted that many Americans wished that someone like Putin could be their president, and he praised Russia for passing antigay propaganda laws.
The alliance between the ROC and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association before and since Graham's retirement is significant. Billy Graham laid a foundation for both the spiritualism manifested by the Pentecostal movement and the modern ecumenism now rampant the Protestant world. This history puts into perspective the activities of Franklin Graham. Here we see clear evidence of the spirits of Rev. 16:13-14 at work. Franklin Graham appears prominently in reports of the Russian Orthodox Church-Evangelicals alliance. The following article provides detailed evidence, of which a limited portion is quoted:
The Russian connection: When Franklin Graham met Putin
When President Donald Trump stood beside Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July and said, "I don't see any reason why it would be" Russia who attempted to influence the 2016 election, the subsequent firestorm of criticism included liberals as well as prominent Republicans. . .
But there was one group that kept uncharacteristically quiet: the president's evangelical advisers. . .
There are good reasons why some Christian right leaders are less than eager to address Trump's attempts to warm relations between the U.S. and Russia. For years, American evangelicals have cultivated ties with Russia, highlighted by a 2015 meeting between Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, and Putin in Russia.
Those ties are now facing scrutiny as, the day that Graham tweeted, news broke that the Department of Justice had charged Mariia Butina, a Russian national, for allegedly lobbying without registering as a foreign agent with the U.S. government. Authorities claim religion was a part of her scheme: Among the channels she was attempting to exploit, according to her indictment, was the National Prayer Breakfast.
Founded in 1953, with help from Billy Graham, the prayer breakfast has since become the mother of all Washington power breakfasts, with thousands of attendees packed into a ballroom at the Washington Hilton and a customary address by the U.S. president. Butina had been allegedly using the breakfast as a back channel for contacts between Russian and American faith leaders and politicians.
But it was hardly the only religious connection said to be targeted by Russian actors. Among Butina's contacts was a Russian politician named Alexander Torshin, and together the pair allegedly attempted to broker a meeting between Trump and Putin before the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The meeting never happened, but its proposed site was a "World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians" in Moscow, organized by Franklin Graham.
Representatives for Franklin Graham said he was unavailable for an interview with Religion News Service, despite multiple requests. . .
Relationships between Russians and American evangelicals extend back more than three decades to Billy Graham's well-publicized visit to Russia in the mid-1980s. The World Congress of Families, a largely evangelical Christian group based in Illinois, was the brainchild of an American historian and a Russian Orthodox mystic, who met in Moscow in 1995, according to Mother Jones.
But the ties have escalated in recent years, due in part to leadership changes within the Russian Orthodox Church, but also because of political shifts that began in Russia in the early 2010s. . .
"It's only since 2012, since Putin's third term as a president, that traditional values have become the center focus point of the Kremlin," she said. "Presenting Russia as the stronghold of traditional family values, (arguing) the West wants to change the definition of the family by giving rights to gay people and so on."
But by the time Trump was inaugurated in 2017, the Kremlin had become what Politico described as "the leader of the global Christian Right," largely based on an alliance with Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill — who has been accused of being a former agent of the KGB, or the main security agency of the Soviet Union — in an effort to deploy religion to exert spiritual and possibly political influence across Europe. . .
Meanwhile, Putin's ideological influence over parts of the American religious right dates back to at least 2014.
In March of that year, Putin was featured on the cover of Decision Magazine, a publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in an issue that included an opinion article by Franklin Graham that offered cautious praise for the Russian president. The evangelical leader pointed to Putin's decision to sign a law barring the dissemination of "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" to children.
"It's obvious that President Obama and his administration are pushing the gay-lesbian agenda in America today and have sold themselves completely to that which is contrary to God's teaching," Graham wrote. He later added: "In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation's children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda."
Eight months later, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, a Russian Orthodox Church official, visited the United States and met with Graham and his father to celebrate the elder evangelist's 96th birthday in Montreat, North Carolina.
Hilarion was no stranger to conservative religionists in the U.S. According to The Christian Century, Hilarion had visited America in 2011 to deliver a speech at the Catholic University of America, one of the most conservative Catholic schools in the country, and Dallas Theological Seminary, a prominent conservative evangelical institution. He also reportedly met with business leaders in Texas as well as former President George W. Bush. . .
The mention in the last two cited articles of Hilarion's meeting with George W. Bush, and his speech to the Catholic University of America hints at the Roman Catholic connection to Russian influence in the United States. George Bush took advantage of the alliance of the Evangelicals with the Roman Catholics politically; but his primary commitment was to the papacy.
Delving more deeply, there is strong evidence of probable connivance between the Vatican and the Russians. The evidence begins with a critical role played by prominent Roman Catholic activist Pat Buchanan in spearheading the Religious Right alliance of Catholics and Evangelicals. This began in the late 1960s during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
A SEGMENT ON THE ALLIANCE OF CATHOLICS AND APOSTATE PROTESTANTS
(And the continuing Russia factor)
The article hyperlinked below is from the publication Religion News Service, a non-denominational organization. It recognizes the critical role of the abortion issue in the Religious Right religio-political alliance; nevertheless, whether intentional or inadvertent, the "religious freedom" referred to here is the Roman Catholic concept of religious freedom. Perhaps this is a reflection of ecumenism:
How abortion unified Catholics and evangelicals to become a power on the right
Abortion politics thawed relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants and indirectly strengthened religious freedom in the United States.
Abortion politics thawed relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants and indirectly strengthened religious freedom in the United States. . .
The evangelicals’ ambivalence on abortion, an issue they now consider to be at the sacred heart of their morality, is striking. Francis Schaeffer, an evangelical professor who later became a major anti-abortion activist, at first refused to get involved. After his son, Frank, pushed him to join the anti-abortion movement, Schaeffer exasperatedly blurted out, “They’re Catholics!” . . .
Abortion politics, however, would come to thaw relations between conservative Catholics and Protestants and powerfully affect American politics in general. . .
At first, abortion politics only served to cement the divisions between the two groups, with Evangelical protestants taking the more pro-choice position. The year after California’s Therapeutic Abortion law passed, Billy Graham declared that he supported loosening the laws so rape and incest victims could get abortions, and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina took no position.
Other Bible Belt states behaved similarly. “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” said the fundamentalist minister W. A. Criswell, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Some Protestants doubted there was biblical justification for the Catholic view that human life began at conception. . .
The evangelical-Catholic political alliance over abortion began in the late 1960s with Richard Nixon. Nixon aides Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips made the case that abortion was potentially a wedge issue that could separate Catholics from the Democratic Party. Abortion, Buchanan wrote in a private memo, was “a rising issue and gut issue with Catholics.” . . .
The canniest leaders understood that abortion politics could help conservatism, and vice versa. Weyrich explained to his fellow conservatives that abortion should be “made the keystone of their organizing strategy, since this was the issue that could divide the Democratic Party.”
During the Jimmy Carter administration, what came to be known as the religious right began to take shape. A key impetus was the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to remove Bob Jones University’s tax exempt status because it banned interracial dating. In 1979, Weyrich joined together with a Baptist minister named Jerry Falwell to form a new multifaith religious group to advocate conservative cultural issues. They called it the Moral Majority.
The prevalence of Catholics in the leadership of this religious right, little noticed by the press at the time, helped elevate abortion as an issue and bridge the Catholic-Protestant divide. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
This article was published by the non-denominational Religion News Service (RNS,) so its association of Kevin Phillips with the Nixon presidency's use of abortion as a wedge issue to separate Catholics from the Democratic Party may simply be an unintentional error. However, Phillips did publicize a cynical analysis of race relations in the American South which was used by the Nixon White House to turn the South into a bastion of of the Republican Party. He was not the one who had a religious agenda, and he divorced himself from the theocratic agenda of the Republican Party:
In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. . . As the civil rights movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. It also helped to push the Republican Party much more to the right. . .
Although the phrase "Southern Strategy" is often attributed to Nixon's political strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it. . . but popularized it. . . In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, Phillips stated his analysis based on studies of ethnic voting:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
While Phillips sought to increase Republican power by polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level.
Undoubtedly Kevin Phillips was a brilliant political strategist, but not religio-political in his inclinations. Indeed, he was not as deeply involved in formulating the political (and religio-political) strategy of Richard Nixon as has been represented:
Kevin Phillips is that rarest of creatures, a reverse neocon, a Republican who has seen the light. As a young politics wonk poring over voting figures in the mid-sixties, he realized that the Democratic Party was growing estranged from many of its traditional constituents, and that the South was ready for a shift. His 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority got him a job in the Nixon White House (he languished in John Mitchell’s Justice Department, and quit in 1970).
In due course Phillips made his position on theocratic governance very clear:
The infusion of religion into American politics has become the GOP's Achilles' heel, turning the Republican Party of Lincoln into the party of theocracy.
By Kevin Phillips
April 13, 2006
Is theocracy in the United States (1) a legitimate fear, as some liberals argue; (2) a joke, given the nation’s rising secular population and moral laxity; (3) a worrisome bias of major GOP constituencies and pressure groups; or (4) all of the above? The last, I would argue.
The characteristics are not inconsistent. No large nation–no leading world power–could ever resemble theocracies like John Calvin’s Geneva, Puritan Massachusetts or early Mormon Utah. These were all small polities produced by unusual migrations of true believers.
As a great power, a large heterogeneous nation like the United States goes about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it meets the unfortunate criteria on display in George W. Bush’s Washington: an elected leader who believes himself in some way to be speaking for God; a ruling party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the nation’s churches; the conviction of many rank-and-file Republicans that government should be guided by religion and religious leaders; and White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.
The Growth of Theocratic Sentiment
The essential US conditions for a theocratic trend fell into place in the late 1980s and ’90s with the growing mass of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christianity, expressed politically by the religious right; and the rise of the Republican Party as a powerful vehicle for religious policy-making and eventual erosion of the accepted degree of separation between church and state. This transformation was most vivid at the state level, where fifteen to twenty state Republican parties came under the control of the religious right, and party conventions in the South and West endorsed so-called “Christian nation” platforms. As yet nationally uncatalogued–a shortfall that cries out for a serious research project–these platforms set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, ranging from the Bible as the basis for domestic law to an emphasis on religious schools and women’s subordination to men. The 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party is a case in point.
So are the political careers of Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft, two presidential aspirants whose careers were milestones in the theocratization of the Republican Party. Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid brought huge numbers of Pentecostals into the Republican Party. Missouri Senator Ashcroft, who explored a presidential race in 1997-98, got much of his funding from Robertson and other evangelicals. Picked as Attorney General by Bush after the 2000 election, Ashcroft was the choice of the religious right. Earlier in his career Ashcroft had decried the wall between church and state as “a wall of religious oppression,” and his memoir describes each of his many electoral defeats as a crucifixion and every important political victory as a resurrection, and recounts scenes in which he had friends and family anoint him with oil in the manner “of the ancient kings of Israel.” . . .
The upshot of this escalating religiosity on the part of the Republican national leadership has been an escalating and parallel religiosity on the part of the Republican rank and file. Those voting Republican for President since 1988 have become increasingly religious in motivation. After 9/11 pro-Bush preachers described Bush as God’s chosen man while hinting that Saddam Hussein, whose Iraq was the biblical “New Babylon” of fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye’s eerie Left Behind series, was the Antichrist or at least the forerunner of the Evil One. In 2004 a further wave of evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal turnout helped to cement the Republican transformation, even as moderate mainline Protestants shuddered and turned in a small Democratic trend between 2000 and 2004. . .
The Bible, Theology and American Politics
This is a bit of a chicken-versus-egg situation. Have the issues that matter most to Americans become more theological because religion has become more of a political force–or has the growth of issues with a religious dimension spurred the increasing religious divisions? Probably some of each, but the list is frighteningly long.
First and foremost are the issues involving birth, life, death, sex, health, medicine, marriage and the role of the family–high-octane subject matter since the 1970s. These are areas where perceived immorality most excites stick-to-Scripture advocates and the religious right. Closely related is the commitment by the Bush White House and the religious right to reduce the current separation between church and state. . .
Controversies over life and death–often pivoting on precise definitions of each–can only continue to burgeon. The arguable rights of women (or parents) are being displaced by the rights of embryos or by the prerogative of sperm and egg to join, decisions rooted largely in theology, not science. Perhaps the preoccupation involves maximizing the potential soul count for the hereafter, in the manner of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors who ordered that heretics must die even if they repented, yet pursued repentance to save their souls first. . .
The next throbbing cluster of issues involves church-state relations. The nonradical theocon wing of the GOP demands a more conservative judiciary and an expanded role for religion in education, social services and the constraining of what they consider to be immoral behavior–abortion, homosexuality, pornography and contraception–but avoids spelling out any grand revolutionary mandate. The Christian Reconstructionist movement, by contrast, proclaims ambitions that range from replacing public schools with religious education to imposing biblical law and limiting the franchise to male Christians.
The federal judiciary is the arena in which the battles most critical to incipient theocrats will be fought out judge by judge, court by court. Signs of their anxiety to control the federal judiciary burst into view in an early 2005 meeting at which conservative evangelical leaders were addressed by Tom DeLay and Senate majority leader Bill Frist. The focus of the strategy session was how to strip funding or jurisdiction from federal courts, or even eliminate them. James Dobson of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family named one target: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court,” Dobson commented. “All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.” A spokesman for Frist said he did not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, but DeLay, who had once said, “We set up the courts. We can unset the courts,” declined to comment. . .
Three prominent Republicans have staked out the boundaries. Former Republican Senator John Danforth of Missouri complained in 2005 that “the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in a womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.” Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee suggested that George W. Bush’s “I carry the word of God” posture ought to be a 2004 election issue. And Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut regretted that “the Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy.”
Unhappily, that’s the direction in which it’s been trending.
Thus Kevin Phillips has made his aversion to religion in politics quite clear.
By contrast, for decades Pat Buchanan has been a fire and brimstone crusader for just the transformation of the Republican Party and America deplored by Kevin Phillips:
When Pat Buchanan Tried To Make America Great Again
If you're wondering how Donald Trump happened, all you have to do is let Pat Buchanan, the founding father of Republican insurrection, beguile you with a history no one else can tell.
It's impossible to say exactly when the rehabilitation of Patrick Buchanan began, partly because his banishment from polite company was never total. MSNBC rather publicly fired him in 2012—over the protests of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski—after the publication of Suicide of a Superpower, the latest, though by no means the shrillest, in the series of duck-and-cover, they're-coming-for-us screeds he's been writing since 1998. With chapter titles like "The Death of Christian America," "The End of White America," and "The White Party," it sounded the alarm of demographic apocalypse, offering pungent observations such as: "U. S.-born Hispanics are far more likely to smoke, drink, abuse drugs, and become obese than foreign-born Hispanics."
And yet two years later, there he was again on Morning Joe, serenaded with the Welcome Back, Kotter theme song. On camera, Buchanan plugged his new book, The Greatest Comeback, which tells how he helped Nixon get elected president, a three-year siege that raised a repeat loser from the dead. Buchanan is a vivid storyteller, and his account draws amply on his personal archive of briefing papers, letters, and notes. The book also illuminates the Nixon years' atmosphere of cultural embattlement, a political mood that looks more relevant than ever in the Age of Donald Trump.
So do Buchanan's three long-shot attempts, in 1992, 1996, and 2000, to become president himself. He never came close to winning, but each time he nagged at something, rubbed a nerve in just enough voters of a particular kind—what he called "peasants" and we call the white working class—to send ripples of panic through the Republican party. The echoes of Buchananism in Trump's campaign were a pet theme during the election and its aftermath. But if anything, the debt has been understated. Put most simply, Buchanan begat Trumpism as his former ally William F. Buckley Jr. begat Reaganism. The also-ran of the Republican hard Right is the intellectual godfather of our current revolution. . .
It's true that Trump found his own way, as early as 1987, to the America First platform he ran on almost thirty years later. But it was Buchanan who sounded, or brayed, the message we all now know by heart: anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, anti-Asia, anti-free-trade, anti more or less anything that inches America away from the splendors of the 1950s. . .
He remembers it all today, as he remembers much else in his half-century of national politics, as a quasi-joke. "Somebody said, 'Pat, he called you a Nazi, a Hitlerite.' I said, 'With Trump, you have to realize, these are terms of endearment.' " Sitting in the living room of his big Georgian house in McLean, Virginia, just after the inauguration, Buchanan lets out a soft roar, his eyes disappearing into his still-meaty face. He turned seventy-eight in November, and the thousands of hours on the road, the layers of TV pancake, have wrinkled his pug features, while his hair has faded toward apricot and is thinning in back. But his laughter is alive and happy. And why not? He did in 2000 what sixteen Republicans couldn't do in 2016, despite the best efforts of William Kristol, the halfhearted pushback of the Koch brothers, and the whole machinery of "Conservatism, Inc." Not only that: The platform from which Buchanan once exuberantly ranted is now GOP doctrine and is fast becoming the law—or the multiplying illegalities—of the land. . .
In fact, Buchanan has been plugging Trump for months in the column he writes on Mondays and Thursdays for his website. Trump has his share of defenders—including a handful of intellectuals—but it's safe to say that only Buchanan would defend the president's directive about transgender access to bathrooms by citing Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical.
"How can such a fanatic be so likable?" Garry Wills, a Buchanan watcher since the 1968 campaign, has wondered. Wills, no pushover, isn't alone. Michael Kinsley has Buchananitis. George Packer has it, too. "Pat Buchanan is a nativist, an isolationist, and an armed-to-the-teeth culture warrior," he wrote in 2008, after interviewing Buchanan in McLean. "He's also a very nice man and a wonderful raconteur." . .
Buchanan's slogan, "America First—and Second, and Third," coined in 1990, signaled that his was a politics of protest. So did another notorious eruption, his fiery oration at the Houston convention in 1992. "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America," he declared. "It is a cultural war." At the time, this sounded like the bitter cry of intolerance. And it was, with its denunciations of "homosexual rights" and "radical feminism." But when Buchanan said that the election was "about who we are" and "what we believe," he was delivering a raw message, a shout from a distant shore, that even now many seem unable to hear. Our delicate moral antennae are attuned to the faintest dog whistle, but they filter out the deeper rumbles through which democracy makes its urgent claims. . .
The real battle, as usual, was over history. Liberals said the cold war had been about the march toward a globalized civil society. But for Buchanan and others like him, it had been a war against godless communism. Their heroes weren't diplomats and Davos attendees. They were brutalists, like McCarthy, MacArthur, and Franco. Wills was right: Buchanan is a fanatic, though he has his own term for it. "We are conservatives of the heart," he says of paleo-conservative America Firsters like himself. "This is one reason the New World Order, the whole idea, is gonna come down. It doesn't engage the heart. Who's gonna put on a bayonet and charge for some Brussels bureaucrat?" . . .
Buchanan had been expanding his case in books with grabby doomsday titles, each a renewed cry to take America back: The Great Betrayal, State of Emergency, The Death of the West, Day of Reckoning. Some verged on learned crackpottery. "Here is a difference between Patrick Buchanan and David Irving," the historian John Lukacs wrote of Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, the revisionist history that Buchanan published in the last year of George W. Bush's presidency. Irving, the notorious Holocaust denier, "employs falsehoods; Buchanan employs half-truths. But, as Thomas Aquinas once put it, 'a half-truth is more dangerous than a lie.' " The review ran in The American Conservative. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
The passages quoted above present a portrait of a fascist and a raging culture wars religious fanatic, qualities now recognized in the Religious Right. It is also manifestly a "devils' brew," the evil work of the "spirits of devils" (Rev. 16:14.) Note the lighthearted reference to fascism in connection with exchanges between Donald Trump and Buchanan. The accusation is serious, and substantiated in articles written by respectable authors. A sampling is justified in view of the image of the Religious Right that has emerged and underscores the menace now confronting America:
Pat Buchanan's Fascist Underpinnings
Mar 2, 1992
Charles Krauthammer [Prominent conservative political columnist, now deceased.]
The Washington pundits have worked themselves into a tizzy over whether some of Pat Buchanan's TV colleagues - "Crossfire" co-host Michael Kinsley in particular - have been too soft on Buchanan's anti-Semitism. Washington is a city where turning policy into gossip is an art form. But even by Washington standards this is ridiculous, a sideshow to a sideshow.
The issue is not Kinsley. Nor is it principally Buchanan's anti-Semitism. Now that Buchanan's media-inflated New Hampshire "victory" has made him a national political figure, the anti-Semitism debate is beside the point, or more accurately, obscuring the far larger point. The real problem with Buchanan (as Jacob Weisberg suggested two years ago in The New Republic) is not that his instincts are anti-Semitic but that they are, in various and distinct ways, fascistic.
First, there is Buchanan's nativism. "What happened to make America so vulgar and coarse, so uncivil and angry?" he asks. After serving up the usual suspects ("a morally cancerous welfare state," etc.) he finds "another reason": "Since 1965, a flood tide of immigration has rolled in from the Third World, legal and illegal, as our institutions of assimilation . . . disintegrated." "If present trends hold," he warns, "white Americans will be a minority by 2050."
"Who speaks for the Euro-Americans?" (read: white Americans) asks Buchanan. Guess. "Is it not time to take America back?" Guess for whom and from whom.
Then there is Buchanan's open admiration for authoritarian politics. Press profiles of Buchanan recall colorfully his father's worship of Franco and (Joe) McCarthy. But this is more than mere family lore. Buchanan fils has quite cheerfully expressed his own esteem for Franco and Pinochet (both "soldier-patriots") and for the "Boer Republic," Buchanan's quaint and sympathetic euphemism for white racist South Africa.
As for democracy, Buchanan disdains the principle of "one man, one vote" as "democratist ideology," a locution as contemptuous as it is peculiar. In particular, he scorns the idea of spreading democracy abroad, the cornerstone of Reagan's foreign policy, as "democracy worship" and "liberal idolatry."
Nativism, authoritarianism, ethnic and class resentment. A good start. But Buchanan was long missing an essential feature of the fascist world view: its economics. He had contempt for "democracy worship," but he was still a parishioner at the church of capitalism, free trade and limited government. . .(Underscored emphasis added.)
Buchanan Flirting With Fascism
Thu., Feb. 22, 1996
More people should have spoken out when Adolf Hitler was rising to power. And more people should speak out now that Patrick Joseph Buchanan is rising to power.
Buchanan attracts Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, militia nuts, skinheads, anti-Semites, racists, sexists, homophobes, religious zealots and garden-variety bigots just like garbage attracts flies. Why not? Buchanan has devoted his life to releasing just the right scent to attract extremists and fanatics.
Buchanan is intelligent, a gifted speaker and a precise writer. He knows what he is doing.
And so should Americans who foolishly praise Buchanan for his willingness to say exactly what he believes.
As a writer, pundit, commentator and Washington insider, Buchanan carefully pushes his angry rhetoric just to the exact edge of outright racism or bigotry. He always leaves himself a tiny toehold from which he can claim that he is not an outright bigot.
But Americans should consider the evidence before they are beguiled by Buchanan’s lifetime of calculated innuendo.
Recently, Buchanan told a reporter how much he has been influenced by his father. “My father imbued in us that life was a battle,” he said.
It’s likely, however, that William Baldwin Buchanan imbued in his son even more. The elder Buchanan was a devoted backer of the America First Committee, a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic, nativist and isolationist movement.
The elder Buchanan also was an admirer of fascist dictator Francisco Franco of Spain and of this nation’s disgraceful redbaiter Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
When he ran for president in 1992, the young Buchanan dubbed his campaign “America First.” As it turned out, former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke also called his presidential campaign “America First.” The messages from Buchanan and Duke were the same. Buchanan said Duke had stolen his ideas.
Like his father, Pat Buchanan has expressed his admiration of fascist dictator Franco. In addition, Buchanan has described Hitler as “an individual of great courage, … extraordinary gifts.” (Underscored emphasis added.)
BUCHANAN OFFERS U.S. FASCISM WITH A HAPPY FACE
October 27, 1999
Patrick Buchanan, in his own words:
“Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core … he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him.”
– In the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Aug. 25, 1977
“Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory.”
– On “The McLaughlin Group,” Aug. 26, 1990
“I believe Christianity is the true faith.” . . .
Lately, we’ve hollered until we’re hoarse over the handful of crazies who’ve managed to grab the microphone in our midst. In the meantime, Buchanan – a racist who scapegoats Jews for leading America down a path of destruction – has been skulking in the daylight of America’s mainstream.
He may never be elected president. But his insidious rise in stature, despite – or because of – a consistent record of Jew-bashing and Holocaust denial, is certain to make a dent in the political process. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Buchanan exults that his ideas have become prevalent in the religio-political world, and is proud to have been the forerunner of Donald Trump:
‘The Ideas Made It, But I Didn’t’
Pat Buchanan won after all. But now he thinks it might be too late for the nation he was trying to save.
May/June 2017
. . . He invaded America’s living rooms and pioneered the rhetorical combat that would power the cable news age. He defied the establishment by challenging a sitting president of his own party. He captured the fear and frustration of the right by proclaiming a great “culture war” was at hand. And his third-party candidacy in 2000 almost certainly handed George W. Bush the presidency, thanks to thousands of Palm Beach, Florida, residents mistakenly voting for him on the “butterfly ballot” when they meant to back Al Gore.
If not for his outsize ambition, Pat Buchanan might be the closest thing the American right has to a real-life Forrest Gump, that patriot from ordinary stock whose life journey positioned him to witness, influence and narrate the pivotal moments that shaped our modern world and changed the course of this country’s history. He has known myriad roles—neighborhood brawler, college expellee, journalist, White House adviser, political commentator, presidential candidate three times over, author, provocateur—and his existence traces the arc of what feels to some Americans like a nation’s ascent and decline. . . Now 78, with thick, black glasses and a thinning face, Buchanan looks back with nostalgia at a life and career that, for all its significance, was at risk of being forgotten—until Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States. . .
“Pat was the pioneer of the vision that Trump ran on and won on,” says Greg Mueller, who served as Buchanan’s communications director on the 1992 and 1996 campaigns and remains a close friend. Michael Kinsley, the liberal former New Republic editor who co-hosted CNN’s “Crossfire” with Buchanan, likewise credits his old sparring partner with laying the intellectual groundwork for Trumpism: “It’s unclear where this Trump thing goes, but Pat deserves some of the credit.” He pauses. “Or some of the blame.”
Buchanan, for his part, feels both validated and vindicated. Long ago resigned to the reality that his policy views made him a pariah in the Republican Party—and stained him irrevocably with the ensuing accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia—he has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.
“I was elated, delighted that Trump picked up on the exact issues on which I challenged Bush,” he tells me. “And then he goes and uses my slogan? It just doesn’t get any better than this.” (Underscored emphasis added.)
The foregoing reports present a portrait of the man Pat Buchanan as menacing, but masked by affability. The ugly traits exposed are related to the religious intolerance and anti-democratic activism which are inherent in all that Buchanan represents, especially his Catholicity. See how he challenges Pope Francis on Roman Catholic doctrines:
Pat Buchanan: I'm more Catholic than the pope
The right-wing pundit clutches his pearls amid signs that the pope seeks a more inclusive church
Don't count paleoconservative pundit Pat Buchanan as a friend of Pope Francis.
In his latest syndicated column, the longtime social conservative scold lambastes Francis for sowing "confusion among the faithful" with his criticism of the "hostile rigidity" of "so-called traditionalists" in the Roman Catholic Church. The pope's remarks came at the close of a Vatican synod on the family last week. The original draft of the synod's report made waves by stating that the church should be "welcoming" of gay people, who, the document said, have "gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community." But following a conservative uproar, the final document omitted the reference to "welcoming" gays and instead stated that they should be treated with "respect and sensitivity." Francis' sharply worded closing remarks suggested to many observers that he lamented the change.
And that's why Buchanan is up in arms. Responding to the pope's jab at "hostile" traditionalists, Buchanan writes, "That is one way of putting it. Another is that traditionalists believe moral truth does not change, nor can Catholic doctrines be altered."
"Even a pope cannot do that," Buchanan adds, in what reads more like a threat than an interpretation of theology.
So what if Francis throws his weight behind a fundamental shift in doctrine at next year's synod?
"Should such be attempted, the pope would be speaking heresy," Buchanan declares. "And as it is Catholic doctrine that the pope is infallible, that he cannot err when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals, this would imply that Francis was not a valid pope and the chair of Peter is empty." . . .
Should Pat's beloved Catholic Church start to go wobbly, however, he may have an alternative. Last year, Buchanan lavished praise on Russian President Vlaidmir Putin for his country's draconian anti-gay crackdown, lauding Putin for "trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation." (Underscored emphasis added.)
Of course the Bible condemns homosexuality; however, the Pope and Buchanan are not arguing Bible doctrine but Roman Catholic dogma. The last paragraph above allies Buchanan with the Evangelicals who are looking to Russia for leadership of the so-called "Christian" world, and introduces a larger global dimension. This is confirmed by Buchanan himself as well as other reports:
God and Putin: Pat Buchanan's startling insight
"Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world," says author Masha Gessen, who has written a book on Russian President Vladimir Putin. "But the war to be waged is not with rockets," writes conservative columnist Pat Buchanan. "It is a cultural, social, moral war where Russia's role, in Putin's words, is to 'prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.'"
Buchanan says he was "startled to read" recently that among the World Council of Families' "'ten best trends' in the world in 2013, number one was 'Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader.'"
"While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view," Buchanan quotes the WCF's Allan Carlson, "Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values. During the Soviet era, Western communists flocked to Moscow. This year, World Congress of Families VII will be held in Moscow, Sept. 10-12."
"Will Vladimir Putin give the keynote?" asks Buchanan.
It is a stunning possibility. The West, says Buchanan, has capitulated to "a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values."
"In the new ideological Cold War," he asks, "whose side is God on now?" . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Now as written by Buchanan himself:
By Patrick J. Buchanan|August 31st, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Pat Buchanan, Russia
In his Kremlin defense of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older deeper bond.
Crimea, said Putin, “is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.”
Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying.
This speech recalls last December’s address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:
“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
Heard any Western leader, say, Barack Obama, talk like that lately?
Indicting the “Bolsheviks” who gave away Crimea to Ukraine, Putin declared, “May God judge them.”
What is going on here?
With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.
In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah.
Western leaders who compare Putin’s annexation of Crimea to Hitler’s Anschluss with Austria, who dismiss him as a “KGB thug,” who call him “the alleged thief, liar and murderer who rules Russia,” as the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins did, believe Putin’s claim to stand on higher moral ground is beyond blasphemous.
But Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he is doing, and his new claim has a venerable lineage. The ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers who exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, was, at the time of his death in 1964, writing a book on “The Third Rome.”
The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today’s Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was—Moscow.
Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Putin is plugging into some of the modern world’s most powerful currents.
Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America’s arrogant drive for global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR disintegrated.
He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.
In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a “culture of death.”
What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes?
The West’s capitulation to a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
The following provides more on Pat Buchanan and his cohorts in American right-wing politics, as well as a critical examination of their misconceptions:
American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.
December 12, 2019
But in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.
The pioneer of this search was Patrick Buchanan, the godfather of the modern so-called alt-right, whose feelings about foreign authoritarians shifted right about the time he started writing books with titles such as The Death of the West and Suicide of a Superpower. His columns pour scorn on modern America, a place he once described, with disgust, as a “multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual ‘universal nation’ whose avatar is Barack Obama.” Buchanan’s America is in demographic decline, has been swamped by beige and brown people, and has lost its virtue. The West, he has written, has succumbed to “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.”
This litany of horrors isn’t much different from what can be heard most nights on Fox News. Listen to Tucker Carlson. “The American dream is dying,” Carlson declared one recent evening, in a monologue that also referred to “the dark age that we are living through.” Carlson has also spent a lot of time on air reminiscing about how the United States “was a better country than it is now in a lot of ways,” back when it was “more cohesive.” And no wonder: Immigrants have “plundered” America, thanks to “decadent and narcissistic” politicians who refuse to “defend the nation.” You can read worse on the white-supremacist websites of the alt-right—do pick up a copy of Ann Coulter’s Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole—or hear more extreme sentiments in some evangelical churches. Franklin Graham has declared, for example, that America “is in deep trouble and on the verge of total moral and spiritual collapse.”
What a terrible place all of these people are describing. Who would want to live in a country like that? Or, to put it differently: Who wouldn’t sympathize with the enemies of a country like that? As it turns out, many do. Certainly Buchanan does. Russian cyberwarriors work with daily determination to undermine American utilities and electricity grids. Russian information warriors are trying to deform American political debate. Russian contract killers are murdering people on the streets of Western countries. Russian nuclear weapons are pointed at us and our allies.
Nevertheless, Buchanan has come to admire the Russian president because he is “standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.” Once again, he feels the shimmering lure of that elusive sense of “unity” and purpose that complicated, diverse, quarrelsome America always lacks. Impressed with the Russian president’s use of Orthodox pageantry at public events, Buchanan even believes that “Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.”
He is not alone. The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders, as well as their colleagues on the European far right. Among them, for example, are the movers and shakers behind the World Congress of Families, an American evangelical and anti-gay-rights organization that Buchanan has explicitly praised. One of the WCF’s former leaders, Larry Jacobs, once declared that “the Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world.” The WCF even has a Russian branch, which is run by Alexey Komov, a man in turn linked to Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who has hosted far-right meetings all across Europe. At the WCF’s most recent meeting, in Verona, senior Russian priests mingled with leaders of the Italian far right, the Austrian far right, and their comrades from the American heartland. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The linkage between the Religious Right alliance of both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics to Russia is established beyond all reasonable doubt.
GLOBAL DIMENSION OF THE PUTIN AND RUSSIA INFLUENCE
Putin's extraordinary deception now extends beyond the boundaries of America to global proportions:
How Russia Became the Leader of the Global Christian Right
While the U.S. passed gay-rights laws, Moscow moved hard the other way.
By CASEY MICHEL
February 09, 2017
In early April 2014, as the post-Cold War order roiled in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula—the first forced annexation in Europe since the Second World War—Pat Buchanan asked a question. Taking to the column-inches at Townhall, Buchanan wondered aloud: “Whose side is God on now?”
As Moscow swamped Ukraine’s peninsula, holding a ballot-by-bayonet referendum while local Crimean Tatars began disappearing, Buchanan clarified his query. The former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and intellectual flag-bearer of paleoconservatism—that authoritarian strain of thought linking both white nationalists and US President Donald Trump—wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today.” Despite Putin’s rank kleptocracy, and the threat Moscow suddenly posed to stability throughout Europe, Buchanan blushed with praise for Putin’s policies, writing, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”
Three years on, it’s easy to skip past Buchanan’s piece in discussing Russian-American relations, drenched as they are in mutual sanctions and the reality that Moscow attempted to tip the scales in Trump’s favor during the election. But Buchanan’s article crystallized a paradigm shift in religious relations between Moscow and Washington, and in Moscow’s role within the global Christian right. Before 2014 Russia was largely seen as an importer for Christian fundamentalists, most especially from the U.S. But as the Kremlin dissolved diplomatic norms in 2014, Moscow began forging a new role for itself at the helm of the global Christian right.
And Moscow’s grip at the tiller of a globally resurgent right has only tightened since. Not only have Russian banks funded groups like France’s National Front, but Moscow has hosted international conferences on everything from neo-Nazi networking to domestic secessionists attempting to rupture the U.S. Meanwhile, American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support—and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Moving very close to the heart of Roman Catholicism, the Holy See, note what is happening in Italy:
Italian Catholics increasingly embrace Vladimir Putin
by Stefano Magni • July 16, 2018
As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki, the world seems concerned about the rise of Vladimir Putin. However, Putinism is on the rise in Italy – in fact, it is now in the political majority. More distressingly, Putinism enjoys growing support among faithful Roman Catholic adherents.
Both governmental parties, the League and the Five Star Movement, are directly or indirectly linked to the Kremlin. The League formally signed an agreement with United Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, on November 28, 2016. . . The Five Star Movement has a long voting record on Russian issues reflecting the Kremlin’s views opposing EU sanctions and NATO. And prominent members of the Five Star Movement met with Putin’s party in 2016. Russian “eurasiatist” philosopher Aleksandr Dugin has a very close relationship with several Italian politicians, the League in particular. After the new government was installed, Dugin personally praised Matteo Salvini as the initiator of a “great populist revolution.”
Putin’s closest friend in Italy outside the Italian government is still Silvio Berlusconi, who has had close ties to the Russian leader since the early 2000s. And Berlusconi’s sometime-partner, Giorgia Meloni (the leader of the Brothers of Italy Party), publicly hailed the results of Putin’s disputed re-election in 2018, stating: “The people’s will, in this last Russian election, is apparently undisputable.”
But the political face of Putinism is just the surface. Below it, there are years of cultural penetration of Russian ideas and values.
Catholic public opinion is one of the main drivers of Putinism. It’s difficult to find the origin of this undeniable reality. The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has nothing to say about Russia and Putinism, aside from the pope’s prayers for peace in Ukraine and the recent breakthroughs in the ecumenical dialogue with the Moscow Patriarchate (which culminated in the meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill). . .
Putin is not a Catholic and he was not even a Christian. He’s now a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, although he became notorious as a former KGB officer during the time when one of the KGB’s top missions was to crush religion in the Soviet Union and in its satellite regimes. Putin never expressed remorse about his past. Despite this, Putin is generally seen by the pro-Russian press as the main promoter of the rebirth of Christian values. . .
In the traditionalist Catholic cultural environment, Putin is exceedingly popular. Traditionalist Catholic priest Curzio Nitoglia defines Putin as the katechon, holding on against the “forces of subversion,” i.e., the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Putin's speech at the Valdai Forum of 2013, in which he stressed Christian values against the secularism and materialism of the West, is one of the most popular speeches of recent times among Italian Catholics. It was published by the online newspaper Imola Oggi with the title, “A Putin Speech to be Carved in Stone.” It then went viral on Catholic blogs. (Underscored emphasis added.)
What is going on here?! Could this possibly mean that Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church are displacing the papacy in her role as prophesied in Rev. 13 and Daniel 11:45? This cannot be! There has to be more to Russia's activities in America and globally than meets the eye.
(To those who are quick to embrace theories that contradict or twist Bible prophecy, Russia is not "the King" of Daniel 11:45, who is directly traceable back to the "king of fierce countenance and understanding dark sentences" (Daniel 8:23.) In turn the king of Daniel 8:23 is clearly the same power as that identified in 2 Thess. 2:1-12, Rev. 13:1-10, and Rev. 19:19-20.
Barnes' Bible Commentary on Daniel 8:23 quotes Gesenius, "And understanding dark sentences" - Gesenius (Lexicon) explains the word here rendered "dark sentences" to mean artifice, trick, stratagem." Are we witnessing dark sentences here which are yet to be exposed?
It is not beyond the realm of possibility, or even probability, that we are witnessing a shadowy Hegelian dialectic, or a modification of it, in action. Time will tell.