Posted on 06/14/2014 11:16:42 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
There is absolutely no evidence, aside from rhetoric, to suggest that Russia in general and Putin in particular have been converted to Christianity. Instead, what we are witnessing is a massive Russian “active measures” campaign that has ensnared many American conservatives, convincing them that Putin is somehow a legitimate alternative to President Obama’s decadent worldview. It is troubling to see some of these conservatives endorse Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine.
The term “active measures” refers to influence operations that use agents of influence, disinformation and propaganda. ....
Rather than embrace Christianity, the evidence shows Russia has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church, always a tool of Soviet intelligence. As we noted in an AIM Report back in 1984, John Barron’s authoritative book, KGB, said that the KGB’s Directorate 5 is assigned to “clandestinely control religion in the Soviet Union” and to “insure that the Russian Orthodox Church and all other churches serve as instruments of Soviet policy.” Barron added, “The directorate placed KGB officers within the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy and recruits bonafide clergymen as agents. Much of its work is accomplished through the Council on Religious Affairs, which is heavily staffed with retired and disabled KGB officers.”
Nothing has really changed. In fact, the Russian Orthodox Church is even closer to the regime these days, and is still so morally bankrupt that it published a 2014 calendar in honor of Soviet mass murderer Joseph Stalin. Former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky has called it “Putin’s Espionage Church,” and devotes a major portion of his book, KGB/FSB’s New Trojan Horse, to its use by the Russian intelligence service.
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
We don’t have to attack them, and that particular straw man is a favourite of the isolationists. There are plenty of other ways to use our influence abroad, and I haven’t seen a single person on FR who has advocated landing a single American boot into Ukraine, or flying a single warplane over the Donbass.
And Russia is a threat the same way Nazi Germany and the USSR were threats. They at no point were in a position to launch a full-scale invasion of America, but they had the potential to do so if we left the world for their taking. It’s possible that we could accept the potential rise of a new superpower if, and only if, it was a free and open democracy.
But Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and today’s Russia are not free and open democracies. They were and are controlled by unaccountable, indecipherable and aggressive strongmen with self-proclaimed revanchist and expansionistic leanings. Who knows what someone like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Putin have as their true ultimate goal? Being unaccountable and immensely powerful is a dangerous mix.
That is why America has an interest in suppressing the Russian revanchists, not to mention the knowledge that such strongmen have the capability to commit terrible crimes and kill mercilessly were we not there to stop them. I’m not saying the other countries shouldn’t shoulder a larger proportion of the defence burden, but we shouldn’t hang them out to dry either.
We are nowhere near 1984 either. Not even close. And the EU bureaucrats are appointed by elected representatives of the EU and by the national governments that are elected. That’s like saying America is controlled by unelected bureaucrats because Holder, Kerry and Hagel weren’t elected.
That would be a very bad case, not a very good case. And it's the case that communists all over the world continually try to make -- that you can't blame communism for what Stalin did.
But as Solzhenitsyn proved so eloquently in his writings and speeches is that Stalin took communism to its exact logical conclusion.
Communism in and of itself leads to mass murder body counts that dwarfed Hitler. Stalin + Mao caused many times more deaths than Hitler did. (Stalin killed 7 million in a single famine in a single confined region, Ukraine. Mao slaughtered 50 million Chinese.)
Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending Hitler and I'm not calling you a communist, I'm just saying beware of any argument that absolves communism of the deaths that it inevitably leads to.
I work with a Russian ex-military officer who always says "That was Stalinism, not Communism" and because I have to work with him I don't argue the point. But he is wrong. Just like the communists on the local college campus are wrong when they say "communism is great, it just hasn't really been tried yet".
Bull. It's been tried. Over and over again. And in every case: mass murder. In the case of Cambodia, mass murder on a scale (percentage-wise) that dwarfs even Stalin and Mao.
Don't absolve communism, please. Communism is the prime evil on the planet. Going just by pure body-counts, even more evil than Islam.
Putin’s nuclear weapons threaten the USA. His conventional force is a shadow of its former self. He can invade Ukraine, and then how long can he stay before the cost becomes prohibitive? The Ukrainians are not going to simply cower in fear of Great Russia.
The Russian Orthodox Church within Russia has been an arm of the Russian State since the Czars, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Cheka/NKVD/KGB. The Russian Orthodox Church isn’t the same as the Greek Orthodox Church.
The theology of the Russian Orthodox church is identical to the Greek orthodox church.
They are in communion.
I regularly attend a Russian Orthodox church.
The Russian Orthodox Church fiercely opposed the Communists, and was the victim of the greatest Christian martydom in world history for it. Overwhelming majorities of Bishops, Priests, Monks and nuns were butchered at the hands of the communists.
After 99% of the bishops were butchered, it’s true that a few cooperated with the state (other choice, death). Were they evil for doing so, or was it the best they could do to keep some christian teaching and services present with no end of the totalitarian state in sight? Many within the church condemn it, but isn’t it easy to judge from a comfortable place.
But for you and this author it is simple.
The Orthodox are just not Christians, and they happily were puppets of the communists without any prodding.
It is false judgement and false witness.
Shame on you both.
Far from being a Putin apologist, I would maintain that the Russian Orthodox Church has been under the thumb of the various internal security agencies. I know that Stalin was still shaking his fist at God, even on his deathbed. Krushchev, on the other hand, converted on his. Krushchev’s wife secretly took his children to church. I know the priest who met his son years back at a Carpatho-Russian Orthodox parish a number of years ago. However, it is true that most Russian Orthodox parishes separated from the Moscow Patriarch after the revolution.
Gay culture and gay politics and the idea of same-sex marriage as a civil right were pioneered in the US as much or more than in Europe, and our academic, media, political and economic elites aren't far from the European position. Even though the public doesn't share their way of looking at things there's been more acquiescence than protest.
I don't disagree with what you say, except to note that democratic capitalism, like "the West" seems to have made its peace with the idea. The things that people ascribe to Marxist plots don't usually make headway if they really threaten economic elites.
And Russia? They're at a point in history where older people embrace Russian nationalism as a substitute or successor to communism, middle-aged people have returned to Orthodox Christianity as a revolt or rejection of communism, and young adults have picked up Russian nationalism as revenge for the years of national weakness following the collapse of communism.
But there's a whole younger generation that grew up in post-communist Putin times and where they will end up is hard to say. Barring a collapse of the economy they may very well end up following their European neighbors, rather than Putin's or Pat Buchanan's way.
Indeed, that's what people are saying now about the "New Europe" in the East -- that countries like Poland, Hungary, Rumania and the Baltic nations, all now in the EU -- will end up following the "Old Europe" in attitudes, rather than what we once thought of as the American model.
However what you say depends almost entirely on static circumstances as they are now.
Take Hungary as an example. Since the recession ended the hegemony of the left wing government, authoritarian right wing strongman Viktor Orban has been in total control. One might expect young people to flock to the left wing in reaction, but as the article below tells it, young people are actually demanding the government to move furhter ‘right’, and are flocking to Jobbik. I put ‘right’ in quotes since I am referring to social policy exclusively rather than economic policy. A recession had an odd effect on young people here.
Or look at the popularity of Front National in France among young people, many of whom spearheaded the riots over same-sex marriage recently. Young people have an element of counter-culture in them instinctively, so the defeatist meme that young people in the west are doomed to become more progressive ad infinitum is too simplistic for me to accept. Progressivism simply isn’t radical anymore. It is the status quo.
Now with regard to Russia, I think any progressivization of the youth may be counteracted by the nationalism you suggest. Russia is once again moving away from the West to strike out on its own. People sense that, and the “us vs. them” paradigm is much easier to enforce when you’re not having to hide how poor everyone is compared to Americans. And it isn’t as if the Russian Orthodox Church is failing to make a concerted effort to connect young people with the faith.
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/A-new-army-of-young-people-for-the-Russian-Orthodox-Church-19089.html
Though it may be an extreme and uncomfortable example, I would also mention Muslims in the UK. Young Muslims in Britain today have much more social media access and modern media exposure than their parents or grandparents, and in spite of this, it is the younger Muslims in Britain who are the most radical in their views, and consequently the most socially illiberal. It’s not 80 year old Afghan immigrants who are enforcing ‘Sharia zones’ where they forbid alcohol and lewd clothing, its young Muslims.
There are many factors in play of course, but you should also bear in mind that where progressive attitudes are growing, in majority white populations, among young and middle aged individuals, these are also the places that are becoming less demographically relevant year-by-year in a global context. These groups are just not having enough progressive white youth to counteract the birth rates of other ethnicities in more conservative countries, even when taking into account the high risk of premature death in those places.
It is often championed by race-guilt liberals that “whites are dying out!”, but this has another effect, that being that “white liberals are dying out!”. Everyone knows that the vast majority of ethnic minority liberals are rarely ideologically literate, let alone committed. They enjoy what white liberals offer them, but that’s pretty much it.
Non-Hispanic Whites make up less than 20% of the global population from what I can see (and this is strangely hard to find). Okay, lets remove 6% who are either conservatives in liberal countries, or from conservative countries like Belarus and Hungary. That cuts the population down to less than 14%, maybe add another 2% for mixed race individuals who are culturally white liberal and also white liberals who like liberalism for the same reason most ethnic minorities do, they’re poor.
You end up with less than 16% of the world being truly liberal core material, give or take for members of other ethnic groups who are genuinely liberal.
That percentage is now on the shrink, decade over decade. How small would it have to get before its influence begins to wane?
I will put a finer point on your singling out of this...this...this most idiotic of statements, Lightman.
The author having said that is akin to certain of my classmates at a small baptist school in Mississippi trying to convince people that the wine in the scriptures didn’t contain alcohol...
Or those who have said things such as, “If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”
Lord, have mercy. Or, more appropriately for this subject, Gospodi pomiluj.
The number of Russian Orthodox Christians murdered - MARTYRED - because of their faith in Christ runs into the tens of millions.
Yet, somehow, the Orthodox aren’t really Christian.
Which has nothing to do with anything, except to strengthen my point in support of the original poster, which is: The criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church is not a criticism of Orthodox Christianity, but specifically of a Church which came under the complete domination of the Soviets.
Which, undeniably, it did.
The fact that Orthodox Churches are in communion on matters of doctrine and morals does not establish anything. The Soviet Constitution actually contained more explicit guarantees of personal liberty than the US Bill of Rights -- including, ironically, the freedom of religion. Does that mean that the Soviet Union was freer than the United States? No, because a hollow declaration of beliefs is not a living practice of beliefs.
By the same token, the condemnation of the Soviet Orthodox Church is not a blanket condemnation of either Orthodox Christianity nor even of Russian Orthodox Christianity. You will please note that I made specific reference to the Orthodox Church within Russia.
Since you know the history of your Church, you certainly cannot be unaware of the fact that Russian Orthodox believers themselves acknowledge this very fact, referring to the schism of their Church after Patriarch Tikhon died.
Most of the martyrdom you refer to happened before and during the time when Tikhon anathematized the Soviet State. Between 1925 and World War II, the Soviet secret police [under various names] aggressively infiltrated the Church; by the end of the war it was completely under their control. We know of at least one bishop who was a KGB agent. There are rumors of several. We know the clergy was thoroughly infiltrated.
On the other hand, nobody claimed that this makes Russian Orthodox laity "non-Christians." In Christian belief the Church exists in Eternity, not in the hands of a few men for a few decades or even centuries. Even corrupt priests [in all faiths] can correctly teach the catechism and administer the sacraments, in spite of themselves. This is a mystery in which Christians must believe, because we have it on apostolic authority that even the purest priest is not righteous in the sight of God.
So, to summarize: I didn't say Russian Orthodox [even within Russia] are not Christians. But I do say that the Russian Orthodox Church remains in state control, and that means that Putin and others may find it useful -- just as Stalin did during the Great Patriotic War -- but that doesn't mean that Putin and his former KGB goons who are attending church are Christians. Only they and God know what is in their hearts, but the rest of us are entitled to our suspicions.
This opinion piece is wrong all over the place. Misinformed...deluded.
Fact: Russia is far more Christian again today than the US is and probably ever was.
Fact: Russia’s “freedom” is inherently more intrinsic than the freedoms boasted of in the US especially in the last 20+ years.
Rewriting history are we? Russia has never attacked westward dummy...OTOH western powers have attacked Russia many times. Sweden...France...Germany...US/UK thru Communist Bolshevik funding...
If it weren’t for the Russian people and their strong Christian faith...Europe would have been lost to the darkness of Mongols Germans ad nauseum.
You might want to notify Poland and Finland and Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania and Germany and all the countries that I was hoping to liberate during my time in the military under Reagan when we were hoping to liberate nations from the Russians.
Millions of Europeans lived under the darkness of the backwards and barbaric Russians.
Idiot stands. The Soviets...mostly non Russians...and atheists did the westward ho in WWII. Upwards of 50 million Russian people most of whom Christians..were brutally genocided by the Soviets. As for manhandling the krauts...wholeheartedly deserved. Without the enormous sacrifice of the Soviets...the Nazis occultists would have prevailed. Barbarcj Rhssusns? Only a fantasy you’ve invested in to make your stint meaningful.
See post 113.
There is a reason that countries are seeking to join NATO to keep from suffering more Russian invasions, the allies of Hitler, and the biggest mass murderers in white history.
Since he pretty much believes the same thing, Buchanan's sympathy for Putin is unsurprising.
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