Veganism Social

DemilenteCosplay: Arcane – Silco and Powder Cosplayer: Veelafreckles and Ashlyn Sincoe<a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/cosplay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#cosplay</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/ala" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#ala</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/animelosangeles" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#animelosangeles</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/cosplayer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#cosplayer</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/tokina" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#tokina</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/photography" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#photography</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/canon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#canon</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/5div" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#5div</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/arcane" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#arcane</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/arcanecosplay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#arcanecosplay</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/jinx" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#jinx</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/jinxcosplay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#jinxcosplay</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/viktorcosplay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#viktorcosplay</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#viktor</a>

Awesome Deals DeluxeThe Viktor Champion Deck is one of the three ready-to-play preconstructed decks launching with Riftbound: League of Legends TCG – Set 1: Origins. If you’re looking for a deck that doesn’t just hit hard but builds up and gets stronger every turn, this is the one to look at. 😎👌<a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/ViktorChampionDeck" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#ViktorChampionDeck</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Riftbound" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Riftbound</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/leagueoflegends" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#leagueoflegends</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Arcane" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Arcane</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/RiftboundTCG" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#RiftboundTCG</a> <a href="https://blog.awesomedealsdeluxe.com/tcg/riftbound-viktor-champion-deck-whats-inside/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://blog.awesomedealsdeluxe.com/tcg/riftbound-viktor-champion-deck-whats-inside/</a>

ArtiholicsPower, precision, and evolution — distilled into a single image! As Riot Games enters the realm of physical TCGs with Riftbound, a new kind of collectible emerges — one that isn’t just playable, but beautifully crafted. Among the early reveals, Herald of the Arcane stands out. It features none other than Viktor, one of League of Legends’ most ideologically intense characters! 🔥<a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/HeraldoftheArcane" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#HeraldoftheArcane</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> # <a href="https://artiholics.com/viktor-herald-of-the-arcane-from-riftbound-tcg-origins/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://artiholics.com/viktor-herald-of-the-arcane-from-riftbound-tcg-origins/</a>

Chuck DarwinMAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.America’s Future Is Hungary--By Anne ApplebaumFlashy hotels and upmarket restaurants now dominate the center of Budapest, a city once better known for its shabby facades. New monuments have sprung up in the center of town too. One of them, a pastiche of the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C., mourns Hungary’s lost 19th-century empire. Instead of war dead, the names of formerly “Hungarian” places —cities and villages that are now in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland —are engraved in long granite walls, solemnly memorialized with an eternal flame.But the nationalist kitsch and tourist traps hide a different reality. Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, -- Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom —which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025 —puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.Tourists in central Budapest don’t see this decline. But neither, apparently, does the American right. For although he has no critical mineral wealth to give away and not much of an army, Hungary’s prime minister, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Orb%C3%A1n" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Orbán</a>, plays an outsize role in the American political debate. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Orbán held multiple meetings with Donald Trump. In May 2022, a pro-Orbán think tank hosted CPAC, the right-wing conference, in Budapest, and three months later, Orbán went to Texas to speak at the CPAC Dallas conference. Last year, at the third edition of CPAC Hungary, a Republican congressman described the country as “one of the most successful models as a leader for conservative principles and governance.” In a video message, Steve Bannon called Hungary “an inspiration to the world.” Notwithstanding his own institution’s analysis of Hungarian governance, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation has also described modern Hungary “not just as a model for modern statecraft, but the model.”<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/viktor-orban-hungary-maga-corruption/682111/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/viktor-orban-hungary-maga-corruption/682111/</a>

N-gated Hacker NewsMarginalia scores a second <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/nlnet" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#nlnet</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/grant" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#grant</a> for 2025, because who doesn't love a search engine that nobody asked for? 🤷‍♂️ The <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/roadmap" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#roadmap</a> is as clear as a toddler's scribble, but hey, at least it secures more time for <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> to "work" on it full-time. 🕒💸 <a href="https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_116_grant_2.0/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_116_grant_2.0/</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Marginalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Marginalia</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/searchengine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#searchengine</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/funding" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#funding</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/HackerNews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#HackerNews</a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/ngated" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#ngated</a>

Chuck DarwinHours before Donald Trump was sworn in to begin his second term, promising a “golden age” for America, the leader of a Central European country was describing the years ahead in strikingly similar terms. Prime Minister <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Orb%C3%A1n" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Orbán</a> said Trump’s return would usher in Hungary’s own “golden age” and mark the “collapse” of liberal democracy.The messaging overlap was no surprise. Orbán’s strongman style has long served as an inspiration for U.S. conservatives, who have looked at Hungary as a possible model for a right-wing America with less immigration, fewer regulations and the removal of democratic constraints they see as unwieldy or inconvenient. Orbán has formed a close bond with Trump and has made multiple visits to the president’s Florida resort. This week, the prime minister praised Trump’s unilateral outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. During one of last year’s U.S. presidential debates, Trump praised Orbán as “a strong man. He’s a tough person." <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-orban-hungary-autocracy-authoritarian-republicans-dfdf6299a614ec4e364be37c1132e446" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://apnews.com/article/trump-orban-hungary-autocracy-authoritarian-republicans-dfdf6299a614ec4e364be37c1132e446</a>

Chuck DarwinIt’s fairly common for investigative journalists to be accused of being paid shills, or agents of a foreign power. Foreign dictators and kleptocrats do it daily. But becoming the target of a “deep state” conspiracy theory endorsed by the world’s richest man and supporters of the president of the United States is something else entirely.That’s what happened to me last week. It began because of a story, which a colleague and I wrote in collaboration with BuzzFeed News in July 2019. It shed light on Rudy Giuliani's attempts to dig up negative information on Donald Trump’s political opponents in Ukraine, where I was based at the time.The story made a small splash when it was published, mostly among politicos and Ukraine-watchers, but didn’t get a lot of traction. That was fine with me. As an Australian journalist working in Eastern Europe, I was just glad that I had published an interesting story that pushed forward what was known about Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine. But that September, it was cited in the footnotes of a report by a CIA whistleblower that sparked Trump’s first impeachment. This citation is now at the center of absurd claims that we, as professional reporters, were part of a “deep state” plot to bring down the president of the United States.The pretext for this is that, like scores of independent media outlets around the world, OCCRP had received grants from USAID, the United States’ foreign development agency, which has recently come under the crosshairs of the new Trump administration. (As with all of our donors, USAID is contractually obligated to stay out of editorial work.) One particularly excitable writer, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Michael" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Michael</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Shellenberger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Shellenberger</a>, who identifies himself as a free speech advocate, has gone so far as to label our story “highly illegal and even treasonous.” The irony of it all? The story started as an investigation into the same target that Giuliani was after: Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian gas company he worked for, Burisma. But the thing about objective reporting is that it can lead you to unexpected places.Here’s how it began. It was the middle of 2019, and I was relatively new to Ukraine, having moved there to live with my now-wife and work as an OCCRP editor helping local journalists with their investigations. I asked my Ukrainian colleagues what they thought we should be reporting on. -- They suggested we look into Hunter Biden and Burisma.There had already been a fair bit of reporting on the younger Biden's questionable relationship with the company. As an investigative reporter, I wondered if we could find something new to say about the situation. I came across a series of articles written for The Hill by <a href="https://c.im/tags/John" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#John</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Solomon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Solomon</a>, a conservative journalist, in which he made the explosive allegation that Joe Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire its former chief prosecutor, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Shokin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Shokin</a>, in order to bury a case against Burisma. To check this, I called up some anti-corruption experts in Ukraine who had been part of the effort to go after Burisma. They were friendly enough, but it was clear they thought I was a bit wet behind the ears.They explained that I had the story backwards. 👉Ukrainians, they said, had been out on the streets protesting against Shokin because he was the one protecting Burisma from investigation, not the other way around. In fact, Biden had called for Shokin’s firing even though Burisma was paying his son. This didn’t absolve Hunter of wrongdoing — but it showed that, while making a handsome salary, he had failed to deliver the level of insider access Burisma may have hoped for.My original story idea was dead, though I did ultimately work on another investigation that cast scrutiny on Hunter Biden’s business partner the following year. (Strangely, our detractors seem to overlook that one.) Meanwhile, I had a new mystery to unravel: how it came to be that a distorted version of the Hunter Biden/Burisma story had gained traction in the United States. I don’t usually cover the U.S., and I felt a little out of my depth. So my Ukrainian colleagues and I reached out to BuzzFeed News to collaborate.We scoured the internet and started making calls on both sides of the Atlantic. The upside-down story being told by Solomon (and Giuliani) had clearly come from the former prosecutor Shokin, and his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko.We thought the answer might lie with two mysterious Ukraine-linked figures who had grown close to Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Both born in the Soviet Union, the men pursued a colorful life in South Florida. <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fruman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Fruman</a> was a businessman with ties back in the Ukrainian city of Odesa to a well-known gangster, known as “The Lightbulb.” <a href="https://c.im/tags/Parnas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Parnas</a> was a former stockbroker with a history of unpaid debts.(1/2) <a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/feature/investigative-reporting-is-free-speech-not-treason" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://www.occrp.org/en/feature/investigative-reporting-is-free-speech-not-treason</a>

Chuck DarwinSince Donald Trump’s election victory, we have witnessed striking accommodations to his narrow win and mandate — what has been called anticipatory obedience.Are we sleepwalking into an autocracy? We hope not, and we would be glad if the threat does not materialize. But as close observers of people and places where democracy has come under pressure and occasionally buckled, we see creeping autocracy as a distinct and underdiscussed possibility. We know well other nations, including Hungary and Poland, where leaders have steered policies that lead to a backsliding of democracy. We see eerie similarities between what transpired in those countries and what Mr. Trump and his transition team have already done and promise to do.Fortunately, we also have examples of countries that have pushed back on threats to democracy, -- and we can learn from them.The Trump transition has featured the rapid-fire appointments of several cabinet officials who are both unqualified and potentially dangerous to the security and health of the American people. The transition has also included a flurry of actual and threatened libel actions against critics, followed by several media executives and owners caving in.Business leaders with economic interests dependent on the federal government have also made nice with the president-elect, who has threatened to use his regulatory power to pick favorites.In a second term, Mr. Trump’s actions may be even more dangerous because he is now following the playbook created by <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Orban" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Orban</a>, the prime minister of Hungary, who after losing and then regaining office moved his country from a democracy into an “<a href="https://c.im/tags/illiberal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#illiberal</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/state" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#state</a>,” as he put it. It was one of the faster collapses of a robust democracy on record.<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/opinion/trump-democracy-autocracy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/opinion/trump-democracy-autocracy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare</a>

Europe Says<a href="https://www.europesays.com/1736045/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.europesays.com/1736045/</a> Europäische Union: Ungarn verliert Anspruch auf EU-Hilfen in Milliardenhöhe <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Europa" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Europa</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Europ%C3%A4ischeUnionEU" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#EuropäischeUnionEU</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/europe" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#europe</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Newsteam" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Newsteam</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/orban" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#orban</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/texttospeech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#texttospeech</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/UngarnPolitik" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#UngarnPolitik</a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#viktor</a>

Chuck DarwinJohn Bolton rips into Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism chief Sebastian Gorka Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into <a href="https://c.im/tags/Sebastian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Sebastian</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Gorka" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Gorka</a>, the president-elect’s pick for 👉counter-terrorism chief, as a “<a href="https://c.im/tags/conman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#conman</a>” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.Trump praised Gorka, an immigrant from Hungary, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.But Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The arch-conservative, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran <a href="https://c.im/tags/Tulsi" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Tulsi</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Gabbard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Gabbard</a> for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the 💥worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.Bolton’s not alone in his criticism. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Alex Floyd called “a far-right extremist who is as dangerous as he is unqualified to lead America’s counter-terrorism strategy”.Gorka is outspokenly pro-Israel and supportive of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced allegations of Islamophobia for supporting Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban that barred travel to the US for 90 days for visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.Gorka also claimed that Islam is “not a religion of peace”. He’s come under fire for showing up at Trump’s 2017 inaugural ball wearing an honorary medal from the ⭐️Hungarian nationalist organization <a href="https://c.im/tags/Vit%C3%A9zi" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Vitézi</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rend" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Rend</a> and for a previous position serving as an adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Orb%C3%A1n" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Orbán</a>.Bolton said Gorka “needs a full FBI field background investigation” and his “education claims” need to be investigated.“I think he is a perfect example of somebody who owes his position purely to Donald Trump,” Bolton told the outlet. “He doesn’t display loyalty. He displays fealty. And that’s what Trump wants. … “He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinions, he wants Gorka to say ‘yes, sir’, and I’m fully confident that’s exactly what will happen no matter what it is Trump says.” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/23/john-bolton-sebastian-gorka-counter-terrorism-chief?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/23/john-bolton-sebastian-gorka-counter-terrorism-chief?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</a>

Chuck DarwinRussia 🇷🇺 has been engaged in a good deal of <a href="https://c.im/tags/dick" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#dick</a>-<a href="https://c.im/tags/wagging" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#wagging</a> with Trump since the election. After Trump won, Russia did not call to congratulate — at least as far as we know (though <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Orb%C3%A1n" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Orbán</a> seems to be Trump’s handler and he did).Putin did, on Thursday, butter up Trump, calling his response to being shot courageous and claiming interest in a deal.  Putin did what he always does with Trump: he played to his narcissism.On Friday, though, one of the most popular TV shows in Russia used a different approach (as made available by Julia Davis’ Russian Media Monitor) — airing <a href="https://c.im/tags/Melania" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Melania</a>’s nude photos in the guise of noting that she was years ago photographed with a US seal, as if someone knew she would be First Lady <a href="https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/11/12/russia-attempts-to-collect-its-winnings/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank">https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/11/12/russia-attempts-to-collect-its-winnings/</a>

Chuck Darwin⭐️The World Congress of Families -- From Idea to Movement⭐️One of the primary vehicles in building Moscow’s relations with the U.S. Religious Right is known as the "World Congress of Families". Founded in 1997, the <a href="https://c.im/tags/WCF" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#WCF</a> says its mission is to “respect, protect, and defend” the “natural family founded on marriage between a man and a woman.” A 2014 report in The Nation, looking at the WCF’s earliest days, detailed the close relationship between WCF founder <a href="https://c.im/tags/Allan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Allan</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Carlson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Carlson</a> and the Russian Orthodox Church. In fact, the partnership between the two actually predates the WCF: According to Jennifer Butler’s “Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized,” Carlson, speaking in 1995 at Moscow State University, determined with a representative from the Russian Orthodox Church that “they needed … to bring together scholars and leaders from ‘newly free Europe and Russia’ to meet with leaders from the West.”Further, as Stroop recently detailed, the WCF grew as the brainchild of Carlson and <a href="https://c.im/tags/Anatoly" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Anatoly</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Antonov" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Antonov</a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/Viktor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Viktor</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Medkov" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Medkov</a>, a pair of sociology professors at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The two Russians, according to Mother Jones, were casting about in the mid-1990s for a means to stave off their country’s looming “demographic winter” —the idea that progressive legislation, from birth control to LGBT rights, will precipitate civilizational collapse —and stumbled over Carlson’s prior work. Gathering in the apartment of a “Russian Orthodox mystic,” the trio outlined an organization that would help organize a global Christian right —and resurge Russia to a leadership position abdicated during the atheistic Soviet period.Some two decades on, the Illinois-based WCF has now morphed into one of the world’s foremost <a href="https://c.im/tags/antiLGBT" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#antiLGBT</a> organizations: Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, the WCF “is one of the key driving forces behind the U.S. Religious Right’s global export of homophobia.” The group hosts global and regional summits designed to share strategies and build connections among activists and policymakers. In 2016, the WCF hosted a conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, where speakers encouraged attendees to “stay firm against homofascists” and “rainbow radicals.” One of the keynote speakers at the event was <a href="https://c.im/tags/Alexey" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Alexey</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Komov" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Komov</a>, who, as the WCF’s primary representative in Russia, has not only helped facilitate Moscow’s efforts to woo and fund far-right groups across the West, but is also closely linked with those backing Moscow-supported separatists in eastern Ukraine.The WCF is now run by <a href="https://c.im/tags/Brian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Brian</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Brown" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Brown</a>, the co-founder and president of the vehemently anti-gay "National Organization for Marriage" and a man who has his own history of visiting Russia to lobby for anti-LGBT legislation. In December, Brown announced that the WCF will be run as a project of a new group, the "International Organization for the Family" ( <a href="https://c.im/tags/IOF" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#IOF</a> ). Komov was among the anti-LGBT activists from around the world who joined Brown in South Africa for the IOF’s launch. Komov said at the time that allies in the Russian parliament would be promoting the group’s anti-LGBT manifesto, which they are calling "The Cape Town Declaration." And it appears that they are wasting no time. In early February, Brown sent a fundraising email from Moscow, where he had gone to promote the declaration and build working relationships with lawmakers from Putin’s United Russia party.(7/N) <a href="https://c.im/tags/Religious" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Religious</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Right" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Right</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/American" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#American</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/missionaries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#missionaries</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/David" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#David</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Duke" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Duke</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Preston" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Preston</a> <a 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