Monthly Archives: April 2022

By Charlene Badasie| 18 seconds ago

Its been 25 years since Kevin Smith introduced audiences to Holden and Alyssas comedic love story. Now, to commemorateChasing Amys milestone anniversary, the director shared a heartfelt message with fans on social media. After getting a standing ovation at her Sundance debut,Amyopened in NYC and LA before moving to 500 screens nationwide two weeks later, he wrote about the sleeper hit. In the lengthy post, alongside a photo of the young cast, the comic book writer also credited Chasing Amy with reviving his career afterMallratsdidnt make the best impression with Hollywood bosses.

Check out Kevin Smiths post celebrating the 25th anniversary ofChasing Amybelow:

Written and directed by Kevin Smith,Chasing Amywas released in 1997. The story follows a comic book artist named Holden McNeil, played by Ben Affleck. He falls for fellow artist, the bisexual Alyssa Jones. But his hopes are dashed when he discovers that his best friend doesnt like her. Although some parts ofChasingAmydidnt age well in terms of political correctness, it is still one of Smiths best films. It showcases his skills as a filmmaker with brilliant dialogue, humor, and storytelling. At its core,Chasing Amyserved as an emotional examination of two people who love each, while knowing their relationship will never work out.

In the Instagram post, Kevin Smith also talked about howChasing Amyhelped its stars find fame in other big movies. Jerry Bruckheimer cast Ben Affleck inArmageddon, Adam Sandler handpicked Joey for Big Daddy, and Jason Lee landed a role inEnemy of the State. Following its success, Smith was also hired to do some rewrites on theCoyote Uglyscript. The romantic comedy also introduced fans to theJay and Silent Bobalter egos ofBluntman and Chronic,drawn by comic book legend Michael Allred.

AfterChasing Amysresounding success, Kevin Smiths career experienced several highs and lows.Dogma,his 1999 American fantasy comedy was a hit, butJersey GirlandZack and Miri Make a Pornofailed to impress. But over the years, Smith created his own identity as a filmmaker with loyal fans who have stuck with him for the epic ride. Hisunique careerwas also highlighted in the 2021 documentaryClerk, which examined the life and career of the indie filmmaking icon.

Meanwhile, the comedians career continues to blossom. He is currently serving as writer and producer onMasters of the Universe: Revelationsand has been hard at work onClerks III.Directed, written, and produced, by Kevin Smith, the highly anticipated movie will serve as a sequel to the 1994 and 2006 movies. The story begins when Randal Graves survives a heart attack and decides to make a movie with his best pal, Dante Hicks about their lives at the Quick Stop.Clerks IIIwill star Brian OHalloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jason Mewes, and Smith. The film is set to be released later this year.

Read the original:

Kevin Smith Remembers His Best Movie On Its 25th Anniversary - Giant Freakin Robot

Desperate Remedies: Psychiatrys Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness, by Andrew Scull, (Harvard University Press: 2022), 512 pages.

If youre one of the millions of depressed or anxious Americans who assume that the interests of psychiatry and your mental health are the same, then chances are youll change your mind after reading sociologist Andrew Sculls Desperate Remedies.

This is not Sculls first publication on the history of psychiatry. When he began publishing in the 1980s, he possessed an infatuation with neo-Marxist ideas, in his own words. As the years have gone by, his work has tended to focus on the impact of professionalizationthe process of licensing and credentialismon the history of psychiatry and how those factors affected the growth of the field. Scull has consistently challenged what he calls the rhetoric of reform in mental health care, meaning he has asked searching questions about the periodic waves of change that have swept through psychiatry and psychology in the last two centuries.

Sculls story begins after the Civil War with what he calls the empire of asylumdom, when the many state mental hospitals built earlier in the nineteenth century began their steady decline. Constructed at a time when optimism about institutionalization reigned, by the end of the century these asylums had become places where patients with mostly chronic, incurable diseases resided. The redefinition of asylums as places for custodial care rather than cure set the stage for the desperate remedies of Sculls title, employed to treat patients with senility, dementia, syphilis, severe depression, or full-blown psychoses such as schizophrenia. Ovariotomies, tubal ligation, vasectomy, malarial fever therapy, focal infection surgery, prefrontal lobotomy, and insulin, camphor or metrazol shock therapyone after another, psychiatrys stabs at effective treatments fell far short of success. Scull spends a full three chapters on lobotomy when one might suffice, but his point stands: all of these therapies, with the possible exception of electroconvulsive therapy, were dead ends that severely damaged countless Americans lives.

Psychiatrys resort to dubious treatments was not restricted to physicalist methods. In retrospect, the dominance of Freudian psychoanalysis from roughly the end of World War II to the early 1970s is as shocking as any cutting of the nerve connections in the frontal lobe of the brain. Psychoanalysts did not just run up bills on wealthy Manhattanites over years of treatment. They dominated academic psychiatry to the point where professors asserted with a straight face that schizophrenia was a neurosis due to unfeeling mothers. Freuds ideas dovetailed with the fashionable liberal notion that nervous and mental disorders were due to poverty, injustice, faulty schooling, bad parenting, unsafe neighborhoods, or combat experience. Freudianism showed up in Dr. Benjamin Spocks popular theories about child psychology as well as Hollywood movies such as Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho (1960). The neo-Freudian emphasis on bad environments also appeared in The Snake Pit, the highest-grossing Hollywood film of 1948, signaling the beginning of the end of state hospitals with their overcrowding and oftentimes horrendous conditions.

In the 1960s, states discharged tens of thousands of hospital inmates under the fashionable view that the mentally ill would recover their wits once they were normalized by care in the community. It was amazing, a Canadian psychiatrist said at the time, how hospitals screw people up. The discovery that certain drugs muted the symptoms of chronic psychosis without sedating patients reinforced the idea that hospital residents could live outside the institution. But, as Scull writes, both the community and the care were chimeras. In the annals of social policy, deinstitutionalization ranks as one of the most catastrophic failures of law-making in American history.

The early returns on deinstitutionalization in the 1970s hastened the end of Freudianism in medicine. A new movement, called brainspot psychiatry by Scull, arose aiming to revise the fields diagnostic system and purge it of psychoanalytic language and concepts. It was based on the notion that mental diseases are as natural as any other physical disease, that they are due to biochemical changes in the brain, and that for each diagnosis there ought to be a specific drug for treatment. In retrospect, much of biological psychiatrys approach actually made sense, but under pressure from insurers and the pharmaceutical industry psychiatry began multiplying the list of conditions in psychiatrys bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. When the fifth edition of the DSM appeared in 2013, 947 pages long, it listed 157 separate disorders that qualified for insurance. In Sculls words, Rather than diseases calling forth remedies, remedies called forth new diseases.

Which brings us to the present day, when, according to Scull, psychiatry is mired in a crisis. Todays mental health system pushes medications on growing numbers of Americans while largely abandoning the chronically mentally ill to the euphemistically named board-and-care homes, to the gutter, and to the jail. According to Scull, psychiatrys claims to diagnostic competence seem increasingly threadbare. Scull concludes by observing that it would help enormously if psychiatry were to be more honest about the limits and imperfections of its knowledge Psychiatrists have no way of knowing which response any given patient will have when a particular pill is described. Taking antipsychotics or antidepressants is thus a game of craps.

Sculls revelations in particular about what he calls psychiatrys incestuous relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the intimate connections among Americas psychiatrists, medical schools, insurance companies, and the federal Food and Drug Administration, recall the sordid story of the Sackler familys role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans addicted to opioids. Indeed, Arthur Sackler, himself a psychiatrist, played a big role in the history of psycho-pharmacology with his pioneering methods of medical advertising. His advertising campaigns for the tranquilizers Valium and Librium (Arthur called them emotional aspirin) were perhaps his greatest marketing triumph and brought him a fortune, Scull writes. According to Arthurs brothers, only his death in 1987 kept him from getting into the business of advertising for Prozac and other antidepressants.

Though he does not say so directly, one of Sculls important accomplishments in Desperate Remedies is to demolish the notion that political correctness is destroying medicine in general and psychiatry in particular. It is surely true, as psychiatrist Miriam Grossman has argued, that intersectional ideology and woke activism have taken over campus counseling and mental health services and harmed the health of countless young people. Similarly, the American Psychiatric Association itself shows all the signs of going woke. In 2020, the APA publicly lamented its ingrained racism both in the low numbers of black psychiatrists and its failure to promote equity in mental health for all.

Yet Scull rightly argues that psychiatrys current crisis is due to a neoliberal consensus shared by both Democrats and Republicans. Historically, neither political party has questioned the reigning consensus about mental illness, articulated back in 1999 by former Second Lady Tipper Gore, who argued that she got depressed because her brain need[ed] a certain amount of serotonin, and when you run out of that, its like running out of gas. Heated debates over whether or not terms such as crazy, psycho, or looney stigmatize people with mental disabilities, or the strategy of boosting the numbers of African-American psychiatrists, may be distractions from the otherwise powerful and systemic problems that plague the discipline. Saying political correctness is destroying psychiatry is like saying Covid killed a 93-year-old patient with cancer and heart disease.

None of this means that there are no compassionate American psychiatrists with integrity today, nor does it mean that there havent been advances made by previous generations of clinicians and researchers who, often under appalling working conditions, made some remarkable discoveries about the nature of the mind. It is simply to say that psychiatrys past has culminated in a current profession riddled with massive conflicts of interest and operating under a set of circumstances that block most reasonable hopes for success in fighting mental illness.

Ian Dowbiggin teaches history at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is the author of The Quest for Mental Health: A Tale of Science, Medicine, Scandal, Sorrow and Mass Society (2011).

Read more:

Empire of Asylumdom - The American Conservative

By General (Rtd) Corneliu Pivariu*

On February 24 2022, around 5 AM Moscow time, onVladimir Putins order the Russian army launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine.

There is no chance for us to fall into Kremlins propagandistic trap and accept circumventing the term war for this aggression and use Moscows expression.

The re-invasion Russia launched on ground, from the air and from the sea is the largest attack of a state against another state in Europe after the WWII. The 2014 invasion should not be forgotten and that is why we used the term re-invasion which is, otherwise, coming across in the international media.

From its military dimension, the conflict became manifest in the economic, diplomatic, media and social fields in the countries directly involved, yet with reverberations in almost all of the worlds countries.

The present approach will deal predominantly with the military aspects while not neglecting the essential aspects in other fields.

Ever since president Putin delivered his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, it was quite obvious that Russia would not accept the geopolitical developments that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and will try to re-establish its lost sphere of influence especially in Europe. Soon, in August 2008, the conflict in Georgia followed with almost no reactions from the Western democracies and that encouraged Moscow to annex Crimea in 2014 and to partially occupy regions in eastern Ukraine, regions which were later on declared as separatist Donetsk and Lugansk republics. That time too, the international communitys reaction was rather feeble, with superficial sanctions against the said aggression.

It is possible that encouraged by that reaction and most probably miscalculating the consequences of launching the war against Ukraine, as well as of Ukraines internal situation, Putin believed he could replicate in the whole of Ukraine the situation he was met with in Crimea and could set up a pro- Muscovite puppet regime within days from launching the offensive.

Putin made the decision to attack Ukraine seeing the demarches the country has made to join the EU and NATO, although they were already provided for in the 2019 Ukrainian constitution.

However, after the first day of war, the Russian ground forces missed the initial moment of the offensive due to lack of fuel (some unconfirmed enough sources speak of the Russian military bartering fuel for alcohol), of ammunition and even of food supplies. It is also assessed that the first echelon of the Russian troops included not only poorly trained military but also an equally poor leadership.

The offensive was simultaneously launched on four directions:

The land offensive started simultaneously with the launching of 160 missiles from the ground, from the air and from the sea as well as with two aviation attack waves (around 80 bombers and escort fighter jets), namely in total 400 attacks in the first 24 hours which targeted 15 commandments and command centers, 18 air defense units, 11 airfields and six military bases.

At the end of the first fighting day, the Snake Island (0,15 Km2), which is 45 km far from the Romanian sea shore, was occupied. The Ukrainian garrison there (some 15 military) was captured and it was initially announced that the military there were killed. This very action proves the importance Russia attaches to the tiny island. The satellite images show that a Russian military navy entered the islands tiny port.

From unofficial sources, I can say that before the invasion started, there was a proposal to the American side that NATO set up radar and a symbolic garrison on the island in order to protect it and avoid its occupation, a proposal which was rejected by the US.

The Russian Special Forces in uniforms and civilian clothes have been spotted in Kyivs center while paratroopers landing from helicopters tried to occupy the Hostomel airport situated to the north-west of the capital. Initially, the Russian forces succeeded in occupying the airport, but at the end of the fighting day the Ukrainian forces resumed the control of the objective.

With the exception of long-distance missiles strikes, almost all the initial targets of the invasion were missed. Ukraines air defense was not totally annihilated and not all of the airfields were disabled. The Ukrainian forces maintained, to a large extent, their freedom of movement and kept their positions.

The Ukrainian reserves and its territorial defenses mobilized in no time. The Russian landing troops and the special forces placed deeply into the Ukrainian territory were isolated from the troops deployed on the front and re-supplying the former, especially with ammunition, was made more difficult.

From the way the operations were unfolding, it was clear that Russia did not succeed to integrate in the best circumstances some modern warfare instruments electronic, cyber and outer space ones into the terrestrial offensive.

Around 150,000 Russian military took part initially to the invasion (almost 200 battalions), i.e. an important force, but launching operations on 15 different directions meant diminishing the strength on each and every offensive direction. Most probably, the Russian planers underestimated the resistance of the Ukrainian army.

We present below the situation and the evolution of the Russian controlled territory two weeks after the invasion started:

We will not enter the details concerning the military operations and especially the losses mentioned by each side as we keep in mind a quotation saying thattruth is the first to die in case of war, but from the way the operations were carried out to date, some important conclusions may be drawn:

An interesting issue that is worth mentioning is that of the foreign mercenaries. Early as February 27, Ukraine appealed to foreign fighters to join a so-called Foreign Legion. An important number of volunteers crowded the Ukrainian embassies abroad and around 20,000 people of 52 countries offered their services. Their status within the Ukrainian army is not known and Kyiv promised them Ukrainian citizenship, social incentives and an unrevealed salary. It seems that 3,000 Americans, 1,000 Canadians, 600 Czechs, 100 Scots as well as Georgians, Polish, Germans, Israelis and others enlisted already. According to certain sources, after March 20, the number of candidates decreased sharply and almost no new volunteers applied.

On March 11, President Vladimir Putin asked the minister of defenseSergei Shoiguto facilitate the transit of the military from the Middle East wishing to fight in Ukraine on Russias side. 16,000 Syrian paramilitary volunteers and members of the 5th Corps are mentioned among those wishing to enlist. It is possible that fighters of the Lebanese Hezbollah and of Hamas join the Syrian volunteers. Some other mercenaries as well could have been recruited from Libya according to an understanding reached during the recent visit to Moscow of the Libyan GeneralKhalifa Haftar. The average payment of these fighters is estimated between 300 and 500 $/month and is to be paid from the Russian budget.

We do not believe that the mercenaries participation, on either side, could have an important influence on the way the military operations are carried out as they are disadvantaged by the fact they do not know the ground, the language and will have probably major logistical and cultural problems.

From the information and the stands taken by the two sides, from the assessments and analyses of as objective as possible sources, it is clearer and clearer that at the end of the first month of the invasion Russia will finish the invasion and will withdraw from most of the occupied territories, an operation that will be completed the latest around May 7 2022. A first signal to that end was conveyed on March 25 2022 by the speech of the head of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Army, Colonel Gen. Serghei Rudskoy.

It is likely that in the coming weeks, the Russian forces will focus on surrounding the Ukrainian group of forces situated close to the west of the separatist regions and securing a terrestrial connection of the Sea of Azov shore and Crimea. General Rudskoys speech offers already a first glance on the Russian justification for the coming to an end, in a near future, of the invasion of Ukraine indeed by proclaiming the victory the achievement of the objectives set at the beginning of the conflict.

Russias military actions had nevertheless effects and repercussions that we believe the Kremlin did not assess to their full magnitude and that lead to a reinforcement of the democratic Europes cohesion and unity and of the transatlantic relations.

a) Sanctions and their economic impact

The sanctions are penalties imposed by a country to another country to stop the latter to act aggressively or to break the international law. In this case, the sanctions Russia is subject to are the most severe among those applied so far to Moscow and a great number of countries imposed them. We mention some of them:

It is worth mentioning that information coming recently from Great Britain stresses that if Russia withdraws its invasion troops, London (Londongrad as it is also named due to the presence there of a great number of Russian oligarchs) will lift the sanctions imposed on Moscow.

President Putin declared that the unfriendly nations will be obliged to pay for gas imports from Russia in rubles in order to help the recovery of the national currency.

Russia banned the export of around 200 goods till the end of 2022 including telecom and medical products, vehicles,food and agricultural produce, electric equipment and timber. Other retaliatory steps have been also taken in the financial and banking fields.

We do express our hope that Europe drew the real conclusions and will succeed in escaping the Russian energy trap and do not repeat the Nabucco experience, a project initiated in 2002, agreed upon in 2009 and then abandoned in 2013 mainly due to political reasons.

b) Peace negotiations

The peace negotiations started on February 28, a few days after the attack begun, initially in physical form and continued on March 3 and 7 on the Belarusian territory, and after that on line at experts level. A breakthrough was Turkeys facilitating a meeting at the level of the foreign ministers of the two countries and the negotiations took place in Antalya under the auspices of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on March 10 with the participation of the Turkish minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu. Although no progress was registered this time, it was very clear from the Russian minister of Foreign Affairs Serghei Lavrovs answers at the press conference organized after the meeting thatin the Kremlins opinion, it is not about a Russia-Ukraine conflict but about a Russia conflict with the West in which the invasion of Ukraine is just a stage.

A peculiarity of these negotiations is that the Russian side never accepted any cease fire during the talks.

The Ukrainian PresidentVolodimir Zelenskyexpressed repeatedly his readiness of meeting and negotiating with President Vladimir Putin, a proposal the Russian side did not accept. The Kremlins reply was, of course, that such a meeting would take place when Kyiv accepts Moscows conditions. An interesting nuance included in the Ukrainian presidents offer for negotiations is his statement that any agreed upon understanding which will include possible territorial or of other nature important alterations contradicting the provisions of the constitution in force should be subject to a referendum in order to be enforced.

Russias main four conditions are: An Ukraine declaration of neutrality; the formal agreement that the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, is Russian territory and that the Donbas region controlled by the Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine is independent; Ukraines demilitarization; lifting the Western sanctions imposed on Russia. As far as Ukraine is concerned, it seems the country is ready to accept some of these requests including giving up to joining NATO and some territorial compromises.

A new round of negotiations took place in physical form in Istanbul on March 29 and 30. Both Turkey and Israel hope of being able to successfully mediate the negotiations, but I think that probably the informal negotiations among the Russian and the Ukrainian oligarchs will be much more effective.

Ithink Putin overestimated the possibilities of the Russian army of achieving the established strategic political objectives while underestimating, at the same time, Ukraines capacity of resisting Russias plans. Concomitantly, it could be about a mistake in managing the relation between the political leadership and the intelligence services agencies, although it is unlikely that the Russian intelligence services were so wrong in their getting acquainted and reporting the situation in Ukraine.

The military conclusions will be indeed interesting especially after the war operations end, yet it is already obvious that a particular higher attention will be paid to cyber actions and UAVs, to a greater interaction between terrestrial and spacial, to an increased role of the missiles to the detriment of artillery, to the importance of small forces possessing a high fire power and mobility, to decentralizing the command and so on. Not in the least, the psychological training of troops should gain more and more in importance.

Coming back to a wider framework, the conflict in Ukraine highlights the fact that in what concerns the dispute betweenSamuel HuntingtonandFrancis Fukuyamaon the humankinds future, it seems that the former (with whom I had long discussions at Harvard in the summer of 2001) was right, less in what concerns the border he traced between the two civilizations and which, I believe, is much farther to the east of Romania. We are living into a world of ethnical conflicts and civilizational confrontations which is shaping the future otherwise than the much more optimistic way (liberty, democracy, market economy and secularization of cultures) foreseen by Fukuyama.

I further conclude that social media become an active player in geopolitics. Brexit, Trump, pandemic and now the war in Ukraine, all had a big component of influencing, via the platforms of the big tech companies which were clearly positioned on a certain side. I remind that the Big 5, who are governing the world now are: Pharma, Defense, Oil, Tech, and Banks. Let us not forget about the banks as someone has to lend/manage trillions. Look for who are those who fund the conflicts for a better understanding.

An old proverb says that when two quarrel, the third wins. Such is now the case in the fight between Kyiv (which, it should be made clear, is historically the cradle of the Russian civilization, something which, in equally clear terms, cannot represent in any case a justification for the Russian invasion) and Moscow, as neither of the two belligerents will win, nor the EU, but the US and China.

I think that under such complex circumstances, we have to position ourselves in such a way that we capitalize best our advantages, to stress our possibilities and prove loyalty towards the strategic partners, without neglecting the national interests. Politically, as it is the case in the military field, one should act rapidly, decisively and especially in a clever way. The political correctness, a much used and dear term of today politicians, has proved its limits and the return to Real Politic could represent a clever solution of the contemporary political world.

A presentation done at the Braov Military Circle Romania, on March 29, 2022 and posted on the authors blog, corneliupivariu.com

About the author:

Corneliu Pivariuis a highly decorated two-star general of the Romanian army (Rtd). He has founded and led one of the most influential magazines on geopolitics and international relations in Eastern Europe, the bilingual journal Geostrategic Pulse, for two decades. General Pivariu is a member of IFIMES Advisory Board.

View original post here:

The War In Ukraine Or 'The Special Military Operation In Ukraine'? Analysis - Eurasia Review

There is a very good reason why we here in America, Jews especially, should fear Vladimir Putin. He is the poster boy for white Christian nationalism worldwide, and especially so here in the United States.

Asked if the far right here is influencing Russia in any way, or if Russia is influencing the far right, Johns Hopkins University Prof. Thomas Rid said, they are influencing each other. They are pushing the same narratives.

Putin speaks their language. The world must be turned into a Christian world as he and they define that. Anyone elseJews and other non-whites especiallyare to be put down to the lowest rungs of the social ladder, or simply put down.

Get The Jewish Standard Newsletter by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up

This white Christian nationalism Putin promotes was graphically on display at the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection. Many of the insurrectionists carried large portraits of Jesus and chanted about how his blood would cleanse Congress sins. They saw in the date Congress must certify presidential elections as an omen from heaven: January 6 was once believed to have been the real date of Jesus birth. It is celebrated today as the day the Three Wise Men who heralded Jesus as the messiah.

A video taken by a New Yorker magazine reporter showed the bare-chested QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley, he with the Viking horns, offering this prayer after occupying the Senate chamber: Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity to send a message to all the tyrants, the Communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs. Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.

According to the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, who chairs the board of the ecumenical Christian organization Sojourners, Putin claims to be preserving Christian civilization against the secular decadence of the West.

The University of California Riverside history professor Georg Michels, a Russia specialist, notes that Christian nationalism in the 19th century was used as a weapon to fight revolutionaries many of them women demonize civil liberties and parliamentarism, and suppress non-Russian minorities. This Christian nationalism is what motivates Putin, Michels says.

Putin, he notes, [flaunts] his religious faith; he is often seen on television praying, crossing himself, kissing icons, and lighting candles. Priests have held ceremonies to bless Putin, and [the Russian Orthodox] Patriarch Kirill has called Putin a miracle of God.

Michels also notes that Putin models himself after the Russian Orthodox saint Vladimir the Great, whose statue he ordered erected outside the Kremlin. Vladimir laid the moral foundations on which our lives are still based today, Putin said in dedicating the statue. It was a strong moral bearing, solidarity, and unity which helped our ancestors win victories for the glory of the fatherland, making it stronger and greater with each generation.

That such a victory is Putins goal is clear from what his Russian supporters assert openly. For example, Konstantin Malofeev, who heads a Russian Orthodox group known as the St. Basil the Great Foundation, said that with Putin at the helm, Christian Russia can help liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma.

Putin said as much in a televised speech on February 24, the day the invasion of Ukraine began. Using code words and phrases that resonate with the white Christian nationalists, he accused the West of trying to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.

As Michels puts it, Putin and the white Christian nationalists are motivated by the belief in a mythologized Christian realm, the rejection of democratic values, the attack on gay rights and feminism, and the popularity of authoritarian strongmen.

According to Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, far right white Christians see Putin as conserving white Christendom in Europe. This grouping is opposed to globalism, multiculturalism, promoting what they see as modernist values like promoting the LBTGQ community, diversity, and allowing liberalism to dominate.

Some years ago, the American Family Associations Bryan Fischer began his radio program by declaring Putin to be the lion of Christianity, the defender of Christian values.

Most Republicans today are anti-Putin, but it took some time for many of them to get there. They had two fears: Donald Trumps support for Putin in the run up to the invasion (he has since walked back some of his comments) and the very vocal support for Putin and the invasion coming from the partys extreme right.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, long a Putin booster, was unapologetic in his support before the invasion. Although he has since changed his tune somewhat, Russian media consider Carlson a strong supporter. In mid-March, for example, a Russian television commentator said of his Ukraine waffling, obviously [he] has his own interests. But lately, more and more often, theyre in tune with our own.

Others continue to be Putin-boosters, including far-right icons Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter. Another icon, Pat Buchanan, has called Putin a God-and-country Russian patriot who pits Christianity against the Western progressive vision of what mankinds future ought to be. The Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating onetime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke once described Russia under Putin as the key to white survival.

On March 22, as Russias atrocities in Ukraine were mounting, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) blamed Ukraine for poking the bear, which is Russia. She then crowed that Russia is being very successful in their invasion, even though we hear different things on television. In other words, reports that Ukrainian forces are pushing back on the invaders are all fake news.

The white supremacist America First Political Action Conference was held on February 25, the day after Ukraine was invaded. AFPAC was founded in 2020 by the antisemitic Holocaust denier Nicholas Fuentes. Greene was one of its featured speakers. She began her remarks with these words. My name is Marjorie Taylor Greene, I am the daughter of the King, the one true living God, the Alpha, the Omega, our Father in heaven, and I am a forgiven sinner washed in the blood of our savior, Jesus Christ.

The crowd responded with a favorite chant of the white Christian nationalists crowd: Christ is king! To this, Greene responded: Praise God. Amen. Christ is king.

In his speech, Fuentes praised Putins invasion of Ukraine. Said he, Can we give a round of applause for Russia? When the crowd responded with chants of Putin, Putin, Fuentes responded by saying, Absolutely, absolutely.

Here is something else Fuentes told the gathering in his speechand please recall what the neo-Nazi white supremacist thugs shouted in Charlottesville in 2017: Jews will not replace us. Said Fuentes, To the people that [sic] have thrown out and disrupted our country, we are coming for you. You think you can replace us? You are wrong. We will replace you!

Lauren Witzke, who ran as the Republican nominee for Senate from Delaware in 2020, was euphoric in praising Putins Christian nationalism. After all, as Witzke told her AFPAC audience, Russia is a Christian nationalist nation.

Another speaker was Andrew Torba, the CEO of a social networking platform called Gab, which serves as an Internet hangout for the white nationalist/neo-Nazi/white supremacist/QAnon crowd, virulent antisemites all. America is a Christian nation, he said, and it is in need of a great restoration.

Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, warns that some extremist rightwing militias even see Putins invasion as their model for what has to happen here. They see a societal collapse and need to prepare for an impending civil war, and their focus is on preparing for the battles of that here in the U.S., he says.

Torba would seem to be one of them. Echoing Jesus advice to his apostles on the morning before the so-called Last Supper, Torba told his AFPAC audience, If you dont have a sword, then sell your cloak and buy one. Whatever Jesus meant by those words, what Torba was saying was that it is time for the American people to rise up in force against what he calls the Synagogue of Satan.

Along the route of Bostons St. Patricks Day Parade a week ago Sunday, a group of roughly 20 members of the neo-Nazi Nationalist Social Club brazenly unfurled a banner that read, Keep Boston Irish. The message should be clear to everyone because Boston has a Midwest-born mayor of Chinese descent, Michelle Wu. Said Dave Falvey, commander of the South Boston Allied Veterans Council, the group that sponsored the parade, As a Jewish American, it hits especially close to home for me.

White Christian Nationalist support for Vladimir Putin should hit all of us close to home.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is http://www.shammai.org.

View post:

Putin, the haters White Knight - The Jewish Standard