Why would CHRISTIANS be pro-Putin ... even after he invades Ukraine?
Is it true? Are there really Christians, and members of the far right, and even new age 'conspirituality' folks, who are now pro-Putin?
Well ... apparently so.
In this post, I try to explain why.
In short ... it's because this diverse cohort of people do have one thing in common ... they've consumed a heck ton of troll farm disinformation over the past several years ... without realizing Putin was behind much of it.
As
a Christian, I would like to apologise for all my co-religionists who
think that health care, affordable housing and a living wage is
"Communism", but that Putin invading Ukraine is totes fine coz Trump
likes him.
We
now have evangelical Christian Nationalists in USA who think the proper
way to 'Christian' is to worship Trump, support Putin invading Ukraine,
get USA to invade Canada - and even Australia - to "save" the people
there from their "Socialist" governments and let the USA devolve into
all-out civil war.
How
do people who profess to hate Communism and think that taxing
billlionaires or gun reform or CRT anti-racism theory or even childcare,
is "Marxism", end up adulating an actual Communist authoritarian?
Putin has been waging a soft invasion via troll farm disinformation campaigns for years now.
Cyber warfare is his preferred tactic.
That's
how he sucked so many into believing that Trump was electable, that
the US election was "stolen", that Qanon was "military intelligence",
that Covid wasn't real and that vaccines & masks are bad etc etc.
All
the folks - far too many of whom were evangelical Christians - who've
been consuming Russian-deployed disinformation for years now, are all
too willing to applaud the bullying, aggression and truth-warps of an
authoritarian imperialist like Putin.
ASPI,
ASIO and ISD have been warning repeatedly about Russian 5th generation
warfare for years, but consumers love the addictive algorithmic
delusions churned out by the troll farms more.
It's like they said in The Social Dilemma: disinformation sells. Truth is boring.
Putin knows it.
How
can Christian Nationalists be so sure that Communist authoritarian
Russia is the path to a Christian internationalist supremacy: a
"supra-national neo-Christendom, bulwark against the "evils" decadent"
secularism, China as a rising world dominating power, and Islam?"
- as described in Diana Butler Bass's article, "Next Year in Kyiv".
This is a matter of democracy versus authoritarianism.
I
never thought I would see my fellow Christians come out in strong
support of a authoritarian like Putin, willing to tear down moderate
democracy with their own hands, convinced that he/Trump are the pathway
to the establishment of "God's Kingdom on earth".
These
people promise "freedom" from the "tyranny" of the "New World Order"
and the "Deep State" .... but what they will deliver will be Gilead.
It started with patriarchy.
It always, always, always ends with patriarchy.
I've
been a bit concerned about Russian state-sponsored troll farm
disinformation campaigns for a while now. You might have noticed?
I see New Age alternative health types posting such content as well.
What do conservative Christians and New Agers have in common?
A steady diet of conspirational thinking stoked by Russian troll farm disinformation campaigns over the past few years.
Putin's tactics are clear:
Stage 1: DISINFORMATION. farm algorithmic disinformation attacks to disorient the population and destabilize democracy
Stage 2: CYBER WARFARE. Cyber attacks to take down government and commercial websites & infrastructure
Stage 3: INVASION. Military aggression, incursions and invasion
Stage
4: OCCUPATION, which in his case means imposing a culture war also. He
will destroy democracy by accusing them of being 'Nazis', he will
destroy actual Christianity by imposing a politicized "Russian orthodox"
version (really just his co-opting of the Russian Orthodox Church.)
USA has been at Stage 1 for a few years now - plus a little of Stage 2.
Stage 1 is the most critical and dangerous phase.
Because
if you can get 70 million people to consume political and pandemic
disinformation from Russian state-sponsored troll farms, then it is very
easy to go right ahead with an actual invasion and still get all those
people to believe that:
"Putin is smart" and
"Putin is saving Ukraine from Nazis" and
"Putin is only invading to save us all from the evil Deep State New World Order" and
"Putin
is going after the bio-labs in Ukraine, he's going to prove that Covid
was manufactured there, that's why the West want to stop him" and
"Putin
is going to find the proof that Ukraine flipped the 2020 U.S. election -
that's why they dont want him to invade Ukraine".
etc etc.
They've been consuming Russian-deployed troll farm disinformation for a while now.
(Note: Marise Payne has previously warned that China has been up to a bit of algorithmic troll farming too)
Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers says, “I stand with Christians worldwide and not the global bankers who are shoving godlessness and degeneracy in our face” she added that Ukrainian president Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, is “a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons”.
So, do Christians *really* think that Putin is the good guy, saving us all from the evil Deep State?
Am I making stuff up?
I did actually see a post explaining that Putin is the 'good guy' because he's going after "bio labs" in Ukraine. Posted by someone caught up in "Conspirituality" in the natural health community.
There are clear links to Christian nationalism in the USA and elsewhere too.
"Putin, the leader of Russian Christian nationalism, has come to view
himself as the global leader of Christian nationalism, and is
increasingly regarded as such by Christian nationalists around the
world, including in the United States. Putin has emerged as a leader of
this movement in part because of the global reach of recent Russian
fascist thinkers such as Alexander Dugin and Alexander Prokhanov who
laid its groundwork."
It's
hard to tell if this was from a bot, or a bot-bamboozled real person.
But this is the sort of content the Christian Right are being exposed
to:
"VLADIMIR PUTIN IS A GREAT LEADER!
I love Putin and I love the Republican party.
What Putin understands is action, not english grammar.
Putin is the last degree of Great leadership.
The man you don't know his wife and children.
Putin didn't destroy Libya.
Putin didn't destroy Afghanistan.
Putin didn't destroy Iraq.
Putin is not destroying Africa.
Putin is not the one destroying and taking the lands of the Palestinian people.
Putin is not enslaving and killing Black people.
The west can't survive without supplies from Russia.
Putin is the only reason the west don't want to enslave Africa again in the 21st century.
Putin is not the one threatening Iran and putting sanctions on nations globally.
What is happening is because of the weak leadership and bad negotiations from the Biden/Harris administration.
It's
about interest, Putin is protecting his interest just like any other
nation. If it is another nation everything is alright, but if it's putin
he is evil. PUTIN IS A GREAT LEADER!"
~ Sulley Kone
So, is the religious right in USA *really* plotting a 'Christian Empire' with Putin??
Well, read this:
While the U.S. passed gay-rights laws, Moscow moved hard the other way.
"After
all, it’s not as if it’s difficult to unearth the fundamentalists
fawning over Putin’s putative turn toward God. For instance, according
to Bryan Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the American Family
Association, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Evangelical Franklin
Graham has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional
Christianity,” while Buchanan only continues praising Putin. Even recent
frictions—see: Russia’s recent legislation against non-Orthodox
proselytizing—have hardly dampened US fundamentalists’ newfound fervor
for Moscow. And if Trump decides to deprioritize rolling back same-sex
or abortion rights, the U.S. far right will look to Moscow even further
support, ensconcing the Kremlin’s position that much more."
[Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham, so USA "Christian Royalty" in the eyes of some]
And this:
Putin is after more than land — he wants the religious soul of Ukraine
"Make no mistake, Putin is seeking full capitulation from Ukraine — both physical and spiritual.
And if Russia occupies the country, religious freedom will be one of the many casualties."
And this:
Next Year in Kyiv?
When it comes to Russian Orthodoxy, Kyiv is essentially Jerusalem.
"The
world is witnessing a new version of an old tale — the quest to
recreate an imperial Christian state, a neo-medieval “Holy Roman Empire”
— uniting political, economic, and spiritual power into an entity to
control the earthly and heavenly destiny of European peoples.
The
dream gripping some quarters of the West is for a coalition to unify
religious conservatives into a kind of supra-national neo-Christendom.
The
theory is to create a partnership between American evangelicals,
traditionalist Catholics in western countries, and Orthodox peoples
under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church in a common front
against three enemies — decadent secularism, a rising China, and Islam —
for a glorious rebirth of moral purity and Christian culture.
In the United States, Trumpist-religion is most often framed as “Christian nationalism.” It is, indeed, that.
But it is also more — it is the American partner of this larger quest for Christian internationalism."
Here is a man from Texas actively involved in Putin's disinformation war:
"At
a NATO summit in Wales in September 2014, U.S. general Philip Breedlove
described Russia’s actions as “the most amazing information warfare
blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare.”
The
Russian propaganda campaign employs what political scientists from the
nonpartisan RAND Corporation have termed the “firehose of falsehood”
model: basically, an overwhelming number of half-truths and outright
lies are spewed across a dizzying array of media channels. The goal is
to sow confusion and exploit existing rifts inside Western democracies."
Do westerners realize that absolute bombardment of disinformation they have been targeted with over the past 4-5 years?
"In the inaugural episode, Bentley explained that he hoped to bring communism 2.0 to Donbass.
But
unlike the Soviet Union, he claimed, this new state would be friendly
to religion. “We’ve got Lenin and we’ve got God on our side and cannot
be defeated,” he said.
...
he routinely promotes false stories. For instance, he once created a
ten-minute video “investigation” about Malaysia Airlines flight MH17,
which was shot down in July 2014 near the town of Hrabove, in
separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
Bentley claimed that the plane was downed by Ukrainian fighter jets “in
an act of premeditated mass murder.”
However,
a Dutch-led joint investigation team concluded that it was shot down
from a territory controlled by pro-Russian fighters by a missile
launcher trucked in from Russia.
Bentley’s
theory is among at least eight conspiracies disseminated by pro-Russian
outlets in an attempt to distract from the untidy truth."
