️The ‘Traditionalists’ and Trump️

With the election of #Trump, Putin has found a potential ally in unwinding the trans-Atlantic networks that support the liberal democracies that flowered following the end of the Cold War.

Trump, like Putin, has made his disdain for groups like NATO and the EU clear,

and pushed a vision of Victorian-era spheres of interest,
in which regional powers are allowed something far closer to free reign in their respective regions than anything seen during the post-Cold War period.

While Trump falls back on fiscal arguments,
claiming that security relations with other NATO member-states aren’t worth the price of maintaining the U.S.’s participation,
his opposition to organizations like the European Union parallels arguments out of the Kremlin
—all while Trump continues defending Putin’s policies.

Any time he’s faced with questions of Putin’s probity
—of Moscow’s destruction of an independent press, say,
or of the Kremlin’s suffocation of opposition actors
—Trump deflects.

Not only has the former president continued casting doubt on the U.S. intelligence consensus that Moscow meddled in the American election to support Trump,
but he has further said Putin has been
“far more” of a “leader” than former President Barack Obama ever was.

Indeed, it’s within Trump’s outspoken praise for Putin that we can trace the contours of the reasons
white nationalists and members of the Religious Right continue to look to Moscow for support and inspiration,
and continue to admire and praise Putin’s policies.

For white nationalists, in their blinkered understanding of recent developments in Moscow,
Putin presents something of an ur-leader:

a head of state embodying an idealized view of masculinity,
undistracted by legal or cultural niceties in pursuit of his ultimate end-goals.

Rather than remaining within the understood boundaries of post-Cold War politics,
Putin has, to America’s white nationalists,
reclaimed the primacy of a white, Christian population within a multi-ethnic federation:

a model white nationalists envision as a possibility under Trump.

The Religious Right, meanwhile, stands enthralled with Putin’s willingness to bolster the church,
with the Russian Orthodox Church maintaining a clear, superior role both within the state and over other non-Christian religions.

Moscow is only too happy to provide both financial and organizational backing for sympathetic groups in the U.S. and elsewhere,
and is almost certain to do so for the foreseeable future.

And with Trump’s inauguration, Moscow has a man in Washington who, by all appearances,
has little interest in investigating these ties,
or of slowing these swelling links.

While Trump and his team occupy the White House, Russia will have an ally in attempting to roll back the liberal order,
with the American president acting as a partner,
witting or otherwise, of the Kremlin
—as well as the white nationalists and Religious Right cohorts on both sides of the Atlantic,
whose support for the Kremlin seems likely to accelerate for the foreseeable future.

(10/10)
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The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.

#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.

Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.

To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.

As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”

Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:

The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”

Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.

Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.

For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”

Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”

(8/N)