Here is the latest in articles quoting Sarah Riccardi. Always they single out Rocor-MP for scare- mongering ! Clearly the fear must be great that American citizens will join Rocor or any other conservative Orthodox jurisdiction.
Surely articles like this - crazy as they are linking every last strange group to Russian Orthodox Church machinations from Moscow - will ONLY serve to attract MORE American and other Western converts ! [ Sorry that spacing is not working too well here ]
Crisis of masculinity': The American Right’s bromance with Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently stage-managed an election to cement his control over his country, facilitated the death of political opponents, wrongfully detained American citizens, launched an unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and most recently failed to protect his citizens from a brutal terrorist attack that multiple countries—including the U.S.—warned would take place.Nevertheless, a growing number of right-wing Americans view Putin as an attractive leader and a symbol of moral purity. And some are even converting to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, known as ROCOR. This phenomenon was on display when popular right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson traveled to Russia in February to conduct a fawning interview with Putin, allowing the Russian leader to pontificate about Moscow’s imperial ambitions for hours. Carlson’s interview might be the most high-profile example of the Right’s adoration of Putin. But a growing body of research suggests that admiration for the Russian leader’s brand of authoritarian Christian nationalism is proliferating among the American Right.“The Russian church has become this instrument of soft power for Russia around the world. It really sought to position itself as a global moral leader,” said Katherine Kelaidis, a research fellow at the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge who focuses on Western approaches to Eastern Christianity. “It’s meant as this tool to bring conservative people and traditionalists, particularly on the issues of gender and sexuality, in North America and Western Europe onto the Russian side. And it’s been super effective.“I’m shocked, when I listen to Fox News or talk radio, the extent to which there is a reflexive sympathy for Russia that I don’t think you would have seen even five years ago,” Kelaidis added. “The amount of chatter you can see online of the vilification of Ukraine among American conservatives is also fascinating.”In her recent book Holy Russia? Holy War? Why the Russian Church is Backing Putin Against Ukraine, Kelaidis argues that Putin’s brand of religious nationalism is increasingly attractive to those on the American Right, who fear and resent the so-called “woke agenda” of the liberal Left.While the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage, Russia labeled the LGBTQ movement as an extremist group and banned any mention of homosexual rights in public. Such moves are aspirational for segments of the Right in the United States.In Florida, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s so-called “Don’t Say homosexual” bill echoed similar legislation from Hungary, which itself was modeled on a Russian law banning what it deemed LGTBQ propaganda. There are also clear similarities between Russia’s embrace of certain “family values,” including disdain for a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, and the position of some Republican political leaders. Among Christian nationalists in the United States, especially Evangelical groups, researchers have discovered a growing affinity with authoritarian figures like Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and French far-right politician Marine Le Pen. Conservative religious figures like Franklin Graham have also expressed a deep affinity with Putin personally and with the Russian Orthodox Church because of its approach to sexuality and gender norms. Graham even traveled to Moscow to meet Patriarch Kirill, a Russian Orthodox bishop.Many new American converts to Eastern Orthodoxy similarly believe that, unlike the United States, Putin is defending traditional values.Researchers such as Kelaidis argue that the number of converts to Russian Orthodoxy in the U.S. is small compared to the ballooning number of Christian nationalists who share a general admiration for Putin and his brand of hyper-masculine, authoritarian politics. Figures like Putin and Orbán are also attractive to the Far Right because they demonstrate an alternative to liberal democracy.“It’s a crisis of masculinity,” Kelaidis said. “Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church very self-consciously style themselves as this very muscular, masculine Christianity. But I think the thing underneath that is a deeper disaffection with Western civilization’s relationship with itself. … They’re dissatisfied with what liberalism has wrought, philosophically speaking.”Still, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz—an anthropologist at Northeastern University in Boston who spent a year with a group of far-right converts to the Russian Orthodox Church in the Appalachian region—noted that converts are worth paying attention to because ROCOR is a satellite of the Russian Orthodox Church. ROCOR has deep financial and spiritual ties to the Moscow Patriarchate, which itself is inextricably linked to the Kremlin.And despite declining church attendance in both the U.S. and Russia, the number of ROCOR churches in the American South and Midwest is growing, giving Putin a foothold among potential converts. Most of the attendees of these churches are white male converts to Russian Orthodoxy who follow some form of right-leaning politics, Riccardi-Swartz noted.“They’re at least right-wing, but largely far-right, with views ranging from fascist to authoritarianism to monarchism,” she told National Journal. “They’re all over the spectrum in terms of their political ideologies, but they’re all linked by the idea that the United States is morally corrupt and Russia is no longer morally corrupt because of the Moscow Patriarchate and Vladimir Putin.”Riccardi-Swartz conducted quantitative research looking at Christian nationalists and their relationship with Russia, particularly after Moscow invaded Ukraine. She and her colleagues discovered that nearly all U.S.-based Christian nationalists felt a connection with the Russian leader.“What we found is that even if Christian nationalists were ambivalent toward Russia or saw Russia as a threat, they still felt an affinity towards Putin,” Riccardi-Swartz told National Journal.“As Christian-nationalism scores got higher, they were less interested in Russia. They saw Russia as a threat because they were loyal to the United States. But they still found Putin to be an admirable figure,” she added, describing her research. “If they were low on the Christian-nationalism scale, they absolutely found Putin interesting as a potential savior figure but they also found Russia compelling because of its moral turn in the post-Soviet moment.”Meanwhile, former President Trump’s political movement, MAGA, has embraced Putin. Public figures who identify with MAGA have amplified the messages of people like Nicholas Fuentes, a young white supremacist who actively engages on the live streams and podcasts of Russian Orthodox leaders. Jay Dyer, a YouTuber and conspiracy theorist who identifies as an Orthodox Christian philosopher and directs would-be converts to ROCOR, makes frequent appearances on the show of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.An article published this month in Texas Monthly noted that so-called “OrthoBros” are on the rise in Texas. The article details how a Houston-area Orthodox priest attracts followers interested in conspiracy theories and authoritarian governance. Many of these new adherents are inspired by the history of Czarist Russia and the American Confederacy.The World Congress of Families, an umbrella organization that opposes LGBTQ rights and brings together conservatives from around the world, began in Moscow. And as researcher Casey Michel wrote for Politico Magazine in 2017, “Moscow has hosted international conferences on everything from neo-Nazi networking to domestic secessionists attempting to rupture the U.S.”Meanwhile, blogs like Dissident Mama, run by a neo-Confederate convert to Russian Orthodoxy, espouse the belief that Russia’s imperial expansion would help usher in a new American confederacy.Terrell Jermaine Starr, a foreign policy expert and founder of the media group Black Diplomats, noted that the ties between Russia and American white supremacists have a long history.“People like David Duke and the Far Right have gone over to Russia precisely because they feel like Putin embodies the Christian authoritarian values that they would want to assert in the United States,” Starr told National Journal. “The only difference is that [U.S.] structures of governance won’t allow them to.“Putin and Trump have in common what I call the political trinity. It’s the church, the Far Right, and the state,” Starr added, noting that Trump enjoys the backing of Evangelical religious leaders just as Putin has the support of Russian Orthodoxy.The similarities haven’t escaped the attention of some members of Congress. Speaking on the Senate floor in February, Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called attention to the ideological links between Putin and Trump’s political movement.“Trump's admiration for Putin—it's turned into a collective right-wing obsession. Turn on Tucker Carlson virtually any night, and you're going to hear him lionizing Putin and pushing often line-for-line Russian disinformation,” Murphy said. “Elon Musk uncritically blasts out Russian propaganda about the war to his 120 million-plus followers. Steve Bannon says that Putin is the leader of the anti-woke fight globally. Donald Trump Jr.—I follow him on social media—he's relentlessly making fun of [Ukrainian President Volodyrmyr] Zelensky online.”He noted that the conspiracy group QAnon says “that Russia’s war in Ukraine is righteous because it's just the next front of the war against these global sex traffickers that apparently are operating out of pizza parlors in Northwest D.C. and Ukraine.”“There's literally a wing of the Republican Party that is lifting up Putin as an example to follow, is claiming that he's involved in a righteous fight. That same element of the Republican Party is trying to destroy American democracy,” Murphy said. “Some of the most influential thinkers on the Right today are literally monarchists.”For Starr, the American Right’s attraction to Putin is simple. That’s why people in the U.S. should be concerned about the prospects of a second Trump presidency, he said.He described the American Far Right’s attitude toward Putin as, “‘We wish that we could do what you do.’”“Trump’s supporters are going to definitely be very enthusiastic about helping him get what he wants, and that is a more Putin-esque White House.”
https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/72466 ... 73K879TT1B
