Historical Influence and Links Between Russia and the US Christian Right

We observe in the Anglosphere resurgence in conservative Christian nationalism of the right, becoming a central issue in ageing electorates, more in the US, Russia and Central Europe; both an electoral and policy strategy, plus supporting beliefs.

Some of the Anglo links are former Australian PM and now UK Trade Advisor Tony Abbott with the ADF Alliance Defending Freedom, Donald Trump gaining support of Evangelical and ‘pro-life’ Christians, the fossil fueled Atlas or Koch Network and their influence on the conservative Christian CNP Council for National Policy, Koch influenced Federalist Society promoting ‘pro-life’ choices for SCOTUS on Roe vs. Wade, then sharing similar values with Orban et al. in Central Europe, and Putin in Russia too?

From Politico 2017:

‘How Russia Became the Leader of the Global Christian Right

While the U.S. passed gay-rights laws, Moscow moved hard the other way.

By CASEY MICHEL February 09, 2017

Casey Michel is a writer living in New York, and can be followed on Twitter at @cjcmichel. This article is adapted from a forthcoming report, entitled “The Rise of the ‘Traditionalist International’: How Moscow cultivates American white nationalists, domestic secessionists, and the Religious Right,” from People For the American Way.

In early April 2014, as the post-Cold War order roiled in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula—the first forced annexation in Europe since the Second World War—Pat Buchanan asked a question. Taking to the column-inches at Townhall, Buchanan wondered aloud: “Whose side is God on now?”

As Moscow swamped Ukraine’s peninsula, holding a ballot-by-bayonet referendum while local Crimean Tatars began disappearing, Buchanan clarified his query. The former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and intellectual flag-bearer of paleoconservatism—that authoritarian strain of thought linking both white nationalists and US President Donald Trump—wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today[.]” Despite Putin’s rank kleptocracy, and the threat Moscow suddenly posed to stability throughout Europe, Buchanan blushed with praise for Putin’s policies, writing, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”

Three years on, it’s easy to skip past Buchanan’s piece in discussing Russian-American relations, drenched as they are in mutual sanctions and the reality that Moscow attempted to tip the scales in Trump’s favor during the election. But Buchanan’s article crystallized a paradigm shift in religious relations between Moscow and Washington, and in Moscow’s role within the global Christian right. Before 2014 Russia was largely seen as an importer for Christian fundamentalists, most especially from the U.S. But as the Kremlin dissolved diplomatic norms in 2014, Moscow began forging a new role for itself at the helm of the global Christian right.

And Moscow’s grip at the tiller of a globally resurgent right has only tightened since. Not only have Russian banks funded groups like France’s National Front, but Moscow has hosted international conferences on everything from neo-Nazi networking to domestic secessionists attempting to rupture the U.S. Meanwhile, American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support—and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country.

“In the same sense that Russia’s [anti-LGBT] laws came about in 2013, we’ve seen similar sorts of laws proposed in Tennessee, for example,” Cole Parke, an LGBT researcher with Political Research Associates, told me. “It’s difficult to say in a chicken-and-egg sort of way who’s inspiring whom, but there’s definitely a correlation between the two movements.”

***

It’s no coincidence that Buchanan’s column, which outlined the players within the “cultural, social, moral war” between Russia and the “hedonistic” West, mentioned a semi-obscure group called the World Congress of Families. As Buchanan wrote, the WCF listed Russia’s emergence as a “Pro-Family Leader” as one of the “10 best trends” of 2013. Indeed, in order to outline how Russia challenged—and supplanted—the U.S. role as a clarion for Christian fundamentalists, you have to parse the WCF’s role, and the group’s attendant impact on Russian policy over the past few years.

Based out of Rockford, Ill., the WCF is an outgrowth of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. Claiming that it wants to “help secure the foundations of society” by, among other things, defending “the natural family founded on marriage between a man and a woman,” the WCF is run by Brian Brown, who also acts as the co-founder and president of the far right, and vehemently anti-gay, National Organization for Marriage. Just this week, Brown landed in Moscow to, as BuzzFeed reported, help continue constructing trans-Atlantic links between Russia and the American Religious Right.

In the two decades since its formal founding in 1997 the WCF has become one of the primary poles around which far-right U.S. evangelicals have exported their fundamentalism, as well as one of the world’s foremost anti-LGBT organizations. According to 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”—not that the WCF would necessarily take offense to the charge. In 2016, for instance, the WCF hosted a conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, in which, as Coda reported, speakers encouraged attendees to “stay firm against homofascists” and “rainbow radicals.” Conference topics ranged from how sexual education “undermine[s] the family and parental authority” to looking at how court systems push “Anti-family indoctrination.” (The WCF did not return multiple attempts for comment.)

But the WCF isn’t a wholly American export; this isn’t simply some effort to push Christian extremism alongside baseball and apple pie for foreign consumption. Rather, the WCF is a product of joint Russian-American homophobic ingenuity. As Christopher Stroop, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of South Florida, recently detailed, the WCF was the brainchild of Anatoly Antonov and Viktor Medkov, a pair of sociology professors at Lomonosov Moscow State University, and Allan Carlson, WCF’s current president emeritus. 

The two Russians, according to Mother Jones, were casting about 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 oversee a global Christian right—and restore Russia to a position abdicated during the atheistic Soviet period.

Indeed, while the West saw substantial progressive gains since the WCF’s inception, Russia underwent a stark lurch in the opposite direction. Not only has Moscow, most especially under Putin’s third term, grabbed the rudder of the global anti-gay movement, but it has further unraveled even the most basic abortion rights protocols. To wit, in 2011 the Kremlin enacted an anti-abortion bill that, as The Nation wrote, “many pro-choice activists regard as the first volley in an effort to ban the procedure altogether.”

But this legislation didn’t arise in a vacuum, especially when Moscow was the world’s first to legalize the procedure. Rather, those Russian legislators pushing a domestic abortion clampdown looked to their American colleagues—specifically, the WCF—for inspiration. 

After all, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Duma member Yelena Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF honchos, 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.”

***

Shortly after the summit’s close, Putin announced plans to return to the presidency, supplanting then-President Dmitry Medvedev. Buffeted by a flat economy, Putin shored up his support by tacking to a nativist, nationalist—and resentful—base. In the first 18 months after his return to the presidency in 2012, Putin corralled protesters, smothered many of the remaining independent media outlets, and dissolved the distance between the Kremlin and the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. All of his moves pointed toward a hard-right shift in outlook—to a return to Tsar Nicholas I’s triumvirate of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.”

America’s Christian fundamentalists followed Putin’s moves with glee—all the more after then-President Barack Obama earned a second term, and same-sex rights charged forward. In 2013, Moscow pushed an “anti-propaganda law” specifically targeting the country’s beleaguered LGBT population. Despite widespread condemnation throughout the West, members of America’s Religious Right tripped over themselves in supporting the Kremlin.

Likewise, as a Daily Beast report found, the “anti-propaganda law,” like the anti-abortion measures before it, didn’t arise in some kind of retrograde ether, but “had emerged from a years-long, carefully crafted campaign to influence governments to adopt a Christian-Right legal framework”—stemming from the efforts of both American and Russian WCF officials who had “successfully disseminated a U.S.-born culture war that’s wreaking havoc on women and queer folks all around the world.” Even Moscow’s ban on Americans adopting Russian children that year managed to gain support within the U.S.’s far right, with Christian fundamentalists praising Putin’s move as preventing children from living with same-sex parents.

And then, in early 2014, Russia began its invasion of southern Ukraine, claiming Crimea and sparking sanctions, animus and the downing of Flight MH17—the destruction of which almost certainly came at the hands of Russia-backed separatists. In the midst of the greatest breach between the Kremlin and the White House in decades, the WCF confirmed plans to host its annual September 2014 conference in Moscow. Suddenly, though, a pair of the WCF’s biggest boosters in Russia—Mizulina and former Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin—were placed on the U.S. sanctions list. Citing “uncertainties surrounding sanctions,” the WCF pulled its official imprimatur from the conference.

But that didn’t stop WCF higher-ups from attending the conclave, rechristened “Large Families: The Future of Humanity,” or from cementing further links with those close to the Kremlin. Not only have WCF fundamentalists continued building ties with ultra-Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, but, as Stroop told me, the conference “was pretty much what it was supposed to be.” (To get a taste of Malofeev’s views, he believes Orthodox Christians can’t be fascist because “Russians suffered from Nazis more than any other nation in the world.”) As journalist Hannah Levintova wrote in 2014, the conference went off with a “nearly identical title” and took place “in the same location, on the same dates, and with a similar schedule[.]” For good measure, Alexey Komov, the WCF’s official Russian representative, told a Russian media outlet the WCF was still helping organize the conference.

This time, though, something was different. Two years into Putin’s third term, and a few months after the Kremlin upended the post-Cold War order, Russia was coalescing support from far-right forces across the West, ranging from the white nationalists who would buoy Trump’s campaign to political groups bent on fracturing NATO and the European Union. While Washington pushed toward legalization of same-sex marriage, Russia, to Christian fundamentalists on both sides of the Atlantic, suddenly regressed into the world’s primary bulwark for nominally “traditional” values.

The 2014 conference, Stroop told me, was “a crystallization of this moment of nationalization and exporting [of nominally ‘traditional’ values] on the Russian side—of Russia taking the lead. … There was a moment when Mizulina was saying that it would be impossible for this kind of conference to take place in Europe or America right now.” Mizulina, of course, was mistaken; the 2015 conference took place in Salt Lake City, just a few months after the Obergefell decision legalized same-sex marriage across America. But in that milieu, in that broader political moment, Russia, to those following the threads of Christian fundamentalism, made a play at wresting control of the global Christian right from the U.S.

And Moscow may well have succeeded—and has now even surpassed its American counterparts in terms of regressive social legislation, recently pulling back criminal penalties for domestic violence. As Stroop added, recalling the aftermath of the 2014 conference, “Russia is taking on the mantle of leadership of global social conservatism. … [That conference] gave Russia the chance to say, ‘We’re the leaders here.’ And people have responded to that, and followed along.”

***

After all, it’s not as if it’s difficult to unearth the fundamentalists fawning over Putin’s putative turn toward God. For instance, according to Bryan Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the American Family Association, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Evangelical Franklin Graham has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity,” while Buchanan only continues praising Putin. Even recent frictions—see: Russia’s recent legislation against non-Orthodox proselytizing—have hardly dampened US fundamentalists’ newfound fervor for Moscow. And if Trump decides to deprioritize rolling back same-sex or abortion rights, the U.S. far right will look to Moscow even further support, ensconcing the Kremlin’s position that much more.

We might not know, per Buchanan’s early questions, whose side God is on. But those in Russia are happy to return the support from America’s radical Christian extremists—and clutch the mantle of Christian fundamentalist leadership as long as they can, even after Trump’s election. “They’re using the history of anti-communism as a means of making a point,” Stroop told me. “They’re saying: ‘We survived communism, and so we know how to resist it.’ And they’re playing right into this whole script, which is a Cold War script, that communism and secularism are the same thing.”

It remains to be seen how the trans-Atlantic relationships among socially conservative Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians shift under Trump, whose pockets, like Putin, are clearly far deeper than his godliness. For the time being, though, there’s a clear head of the global Christian right. As the WCF’s Jacobs said following the 2014 enclave in Moscow, “I think Russia is the hope for the world right now.”’

For related blogs & articles on Australian Politics, Conservative, Evangelical Christianity, Koch Network, Political Strategy, Russia & White Nationalism click through:

Anglosphere Conservatives Links – ADF Alliance Defending Freedom – Heritage Foundation

Russia and Anglosphere – Conservatives and Oligarchs – War vs EU and Future

Conservative Christian CNP – Council for National Policy in US – Influence in UK, Russia and Europe

Russia Report – Anglo Conservatives Compromised by Russian Interference on EU and Brexit

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship ARC and Anglo Right Wing Grifters

Abortion Reproductive Rights for Conservatives or GOP Evangelical Christian Support

Australian Migration Review 2023 – For Immigrants and Nation or a Nativist Trap?

The Australian Migration Review Report has been published, based on narratives and submissions, but little meaningful grass roots feedback or data to support any grounded analysis for good future reforms?

This post will focus on NOM Net Overseas Migration and major source or factor i.e. international education and students, but for now, not the other main factors including WHV Working Holiday Visas (2nd year) and temporary workers.

There are generic review report issues e.g. lack of direct support for many narratives and recommendations, does not explain budget issues of ageing i.e. more low or no tax payers in retirement as baby boomer bubble transitions vs. decline in working age cohort of PAYE taxpayers, to support more Australian retirees.

Further, barely references ‘black swan’ event Covid and the effect it had on Australia including closed borders, preceded by under-resourced and slow processing of most visa types onshore and then via the NOM education, tourism, travel etc. simply caught up?

The focus of this post is the potential reform of limiting or capping the NOM Net Overseas Migration which shows a suboptimal understanding i.e. it’s a ‘barometer’ not a visa or migration program that can controlled by any specific or exact measure, but only by capping education enrolments or Working Holiday Visas?

This would be a repeat of the Gillard government’s response to ‘wedges’ by media and right wing NGOs’ dog whistling of the NOM (quietly expanded in 2006 by the UNPD) spike, ‘Big Australia’, supposed environmental hygiene issues of modern ‘immigrants’, appointing a Minister for Sustainable Australia and giving higher education (higher value) advantage over the VET Vocational sector; but worse in the UK.

The UK also uses the same ‘nebulous’ UNPD defined NOM formula to quantify border movements, but also misrepresented as ‘immigration’, followed by media headlines and dog whistling in late ‘90s, ‘wedging’ UK Conservative PM Cameron into action on reducing ‘immigration’, from The Guardian (11 January 2010):

‘Tories would limit immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ a year, says Cameron. Conservative leader says net immigration of 200,000 people a year is ‘too much’…..”We would like to see net immigration in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands,” he told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.’

Cameron complained of the media ‘banging on about (EU) immigration’ then pledged to reduce the NOM dramatically, hence, immigration, but the numbers then rose and was compelled to call the European Referendum, that led to Brexit over immigration and identity, again by the media and far right; negative Brexit outcomes, not dividends, are still occurring with working age decline.

Summary through excerpts of the introduction and later focus upon NOM Net Overseas Migration:

‘REVIEW OF THE MIGRATION SYSTEM – FINAL REPORT 2023

The Reviewers

Dr Martin Parkinson AC PSM, Chair

Professor Joanna Howe

Mr John Azarias

Reviewers and the Department of Home Affairs Migration Reform Taskforce (containing 

secondees from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury, Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Jobs and Skills Australia, and Boston Consulting Group).

(inc. indirectly Prof. Peter McDonald, demographer at University of Melbourne who also made a one page submission that a media outlet, like most, misrepresented immigration and population data due to a lack of data literacy, but this has been occurring for decades?)

We identified five objectives, discussed in further detail in this report, on which to 

build the program:

1. Building Australia’s prosperity by lifting productivity, meeting labour 

supply needs and by supporting exports

2. Enabling a fair labour market, including by complementing the jobs, wages 

and conditions of domestic workers

3. Building a community of Australians

4. Protecting Australia’s interests in the world.

5. Providing a fast, efficient and fair system.

The unique complexities of migration and the gaps in our understanding of the 

effects of our migration system – on migrants and Australia – highlight the critical 

need for better data, more program evaluation and research to inform better 

program design. We can’t stay on track if we don’t know how we are going, nor can 

we drive improvement or share data with stakeholders who are trying to make a 

difference too.

Australia is not focused enough on capturing high potential international students. This chapter considers the success of the Student visa in supporting the export of Australian education, but also the missed opportunity to better support and select the best and brightest students as skilled migrants’ (motherhood statement?). 

Reform directions for Government to consider

Through the course of the Panel’s deliberations, we arrived at a set of reform 

directions that could be considered by Government as it decides on its approach to 

the migration system. These are set out below, and described in greater detail 

throughout the report.

Possible reform directions:

Redefine how  Australia determines the size and composition of the migration program

6. Plan migration based on net overseas migration (which accounts for both permanent and temporary residents), rather than simply relying on permanent migration caps (p. 8).

5. AUSTRALIA NEEDS LONG-TERM AND HOLISTIC MIGRATION PLANNING (p. 41)

Today, Australia mainly relies on the annual permanent migration cap to manage migrant numbers. This is a poor tool for driving predictability of overall migration flows. Government needs to consider the optimal size and composition of migrant intakes (temporary and permanent) over the medium to long term in the best interests of Australia.’

‘If the supply of infrastructure and housing does not keep up with demand created by migration, the quality of infrastructure and housing services may deteriorate, and prices may rise. As a result, material and non-material living standards of the local population and newly arrived migrants may be undermined (unsupported by any research evidence?)

Without appropriate policy responses, large and unanticipated increases in labour supply, or sharp falls in demand, can lead in the short run to both falling real wages and higher unemployment.

Social cohesion can also be undermined if the pace of migration is greater than the time it takes for migrants to settle, integrate and become part of the community. Costs imposed on local communities (housing, labour market impacts) can also reduce cohesion and have an impact on migrant integration and prosperity.’ (unsupported by any research evidence?)

There is no evidence provided, and apart from the media encouraging dog whistling to reinforce negative perceptions and attitudes, there isn’t any? In fact opposite, from Foster’s surveys in ‘Immigration and the Australian economy’ (2012):

‘William Foster’s surveys over 200 studies on immigration and wages. He found there was, “a marginally favourable effect on the aggregate unemployment rate, even in recession”.’

‘Migration planning needs to remain flexible to changing economic 

Environments (pp. 47-9):

‘During periods of high NOM, like 2006–09 and 2016–19 (Figure 15), there were 

increased concerns about congestion in cities, as infrastructure and other support 

did not keep pace with population growth in some areas. This led to falling support 

for the migration program (not supported by research evidence?).

This experience helps provide guidance for a recommended NOM level* relative to 

population growth, given the current levels of investment.’

Since when can the NOM be micromanaged, simply evidence of suboptimal understanding of the NOM and the multiple factors it’s derived from, acting as ‘barometer’? Neither Figures 14 or 15 etc. highlight a significant demographic event related to the NOM, i.e. UNPD’s expansion in 2006, which spiked the NOM, hence, estimated resident population. 

‘Reform directions

The Panel suggests Government consider moving beyond reliance on the permanent migration cap as the only tool for managing migration flows. Specifically, there might be value in developing ways of better managing temporary migration, alongside permanent migration. This likely means government would be attempting to manage NOM – which is the truer measure of migration’s impact on population growth, communities and the economy.’ 

On international education – indirect contribution from peak bodies or stakeholders via submissions, yet international education is the largest source of NOM captures or border movements 12/16+ months, but ignored the expansion and inflation in 2006?

Also largely ignored the impact of Covid and slow onshore visa processing by the previous LNP government, like the UK may have been to discourage those hoping for substantive residency visas.

Warning to the Australian government, be careful what you (are encouraged to) wish for, by trying to control population via the NOM they are falling into a ‘nativist trap’?

For more related post and blog on Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Demography, NOM Net Overseas Migration, Population Growth, Populist Politics and White Nationalism  click through:

Economic Research – No Negative Relationship with Immigration and Wages, Income or Employment

Population Pyramids, Economics, Ageing, Pensions, Demography and Misunderstanding Data Sets

Population Decline and Effects on Taxation, Benefits, Economy and Society

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics

Immigration Population Growth Decline NOM Net Overseas Migration

NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth

EU & Anglosphere – Refugees – Border Walls vs. Working Age Decline

EU & Anglosphere – Refugees – Border Walls vs. Working Age Decline

While media, governments, think tanks, NGOs and politicians highlight, stress about, gaslight and promote negative tactics to stop refugees e.g. British government’s policies on channel crossings and using Rwanda as an offshore detention centre, there are gaps growing in the working age cohort due to demographic decline.

Not only is much of agitprop this drawn from old ideology by right wing or nativist politicians, while holding libertarian views on much else, a clear need for temporary and/or permanent immigration to plug employment gaps, pay taxes and support budgets for more retirees and pensioners using social services, is apparent.

Good examples are Britain and other OECD nations which share below replacement fertility, fewer youth and demographic decline in working age i.e. has passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’, but more retirees and ever increasing old age dependency ratios.

In short, we need well and better supported budgets for more retirees needing the support but they vote against their own interests e.g. Brexit?

See OECD data here on working age trends.

OECD (2023), Working age population (indicator). doi: 10.1787/d339918b-en (Accessed on 20 March 2023) 

However, nativist politics and talking points, targeting older voters on refugees, immigration, population growth and purported negative issues, then precludes the solutions i.e.  increase net migration, temporary or seasonal workers as ‘net financial budget contributors’ and more modest numbers of permanent migrants, going onto citizenship. 

Following analysis explains immigration and employment issues for the EU, from The EU Observer:

‘On migration, Europe needs to pivot from walls to work

By MICHELE LEVOY   BRUSSELS, 16. FEB, 07:00

It’s not news that Europe wants fewer migrants reaching its borders. What is less visible is that at the same time Europe is scrambling to get more migrants — to fill dramatic labour shortages, with little consideration for workers’ and human rights. The approach so far has been hypocritical, harmful — and self-defeating.

EU migration policies have long been promoting a narrative of migration as a threat, and something that should be tackled with a defensive and punitive approach.

The 2020 EU Migration Pact, still under negotiation, is billed as overhauling the EU migration system, but instead just expands existing measures like detention for anyone coming to Europe via irregular routes, including children, and speeding up deportations, while lowering human rights safeguards.

The never-ending fight against irregular migration

Last week, the European Council asked the Commission to fund border surveillance technology and to step up the use of visa agreements as a tool to pressure other countries into accepting swifter and more deportations of their citizens. Throughout 2022, several agreements were struck to increase joint policing at common borders, including between France and the UK, Germany and Switzerland, and Czechia and Slovakia.

The proposed revision of the Schengen Borders Code would allow border guards to stop and check people crossing borders internally within the EU if they believe that the individuals can’t prove their right to enter the country. There is little doubt that this amounts to legitimising racial profiling.

The demand for workforce

While Europe cracks down on migration, it also discreetly tries to get more migrants to fill ever more dramatic labour shortages in key sectors from hospitality to construction, from transportation to health care.

In practice, this means granting residence permits to people already living in the country through ongoing or new regularisation mechanisms, and creating work permits for people to come to work in the EU from abroad. Yet many of these measures may be driven by the demand for workforce, with little attention for workers’ rights.

France is negotiating a regularisation scheme for shortage occupations — but it’s been criticised for focusing on workers employed in the most physically demanding professions, while leaving out other key sectors and skills.

In January 2023, the right-wing Italian government increased the number of available permits for non-EU workers from 69,700 in 2022 to 82,705 but more than half are for seasonal work, which is often extremely precarious and rife with exploitation.

The 2020 Italian regularisation was largely prompted by fears that the country’s fields would remain without workers due to COVID-19 restrictions on international travel. The regularisation kept workers dependent on their employers, and conditions to apply were extremely strict and burdensome. The result is that only a third of the applicants managed to regularise their stay….’

For more articles about Ageing Democracy, Demography, EU European Union, Immigration, Media, Pensions, Tanton Network and White Nationalism:

Immigration to Australia – More Opportunities for Temporary Residents?

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

Economic Research – No Negative Relationship with Immigration and Wages, Income or Employment

IDU Global Networking of Conservatives, Nativists, Libertarians and Christian Leaders

Repost of article by Lucy Hamilton about the IDU International Democratic Union, Australian conservatives and their global counterparts who liaise round think tanks and conferences including Danubius Institute in Budapest, Tufton Street London (Koch & Tanton), CPAC, Fox, GB News etc., all underpinned by sharing ideas and tactics based on radical right libertarian socio-economic ideology of Koch Network, the nativism of Tanton Network informing ‘the great replacement’, ‘western civilisation’, ‘Soros conspiracy’ and Evangelical Christians.

From Pearls & Irritations:

Morrison joins hard right IDU’s embrace of Viktor Orban

By Lucy Hamilton Sep 23, 2022

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has joined the advisory board of the International Democrat Union. It is an organisation that is much more radical than its self-declared defence of the “centre right” spin suggests.

The alliance that marked the transition to the hard right is the IDU’s embrace of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian leader now standing for “illiberal democracy” around the west.

This echoes Tony Abbott’s post-leadership embrace of the Orban right. In 2015, he was appointed director of the Ramsay Institute for Western Civilisation, a body that created years of controversy.

“Defending western civilisation” is Orban’s code for Great Replacement theory terrors: the ugliest version says that Jewish elites are importing immigrants to replace the white, Christian population; the polite version asserts that the “woke” left undervalues the western tradition and in its carelessness (or malignancy) is inviting in hordes of non-western immigrants to overwhelm their western superiors. Abbott too is on the IDU’s honorary advisory board alongside John Howard and Morrison.

Abbott is not the only Australian to join in with Orban’s fear mongering about immigration and “family values” (code for intolerance of anything not strictly enforcing marriage between man and woman). There is a posse, including Alexander Downer and Kevin Andrews, that joins the talking circuit spreading Orbanist intolerance.

The ugliness of adopting the Orban worldview is perhaps encapsulated in his most assiduous acolyte – Florida’s Governor. Ron DeSantis is described as inventing American Orbanism. DeSantis’s most recent stunt was to fly plane loads of immigrants to affluent and liberal Martha’s Vineyard where he abandoned them. Sky News’s James Morrow has described the dehumanising gambit as a “genius”move that “beat the left.” The fact that Martha’s Vineyard residents poured out to aid the victims of the gimmick is not mentioned in propagandist coverage.

Back when the IDU was founded in 1983, it declared as a founding principle that it was “committed to advancing the social and political values on which democratic societies are founded, including the basic personal freedoms and human rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; in particular, the right of free speech, organisation, assembly and non-violent dissent; the right to free elections and the freedom to organise effective parliamentary opposition to government; the right to a free and independent media; the right to religious belief; equality before the law; and individual opportunity and prosperity…”

Like so many figures and organisations on the ever more radicalised right, this is no longer the case. The decay of former conservatives’ belief in freedom (at least for the affluent) has become a solidifying certainty that societies must have “conservative” values enforced upon them.

Based in Munich, the IDU is currently helmed by former Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. In 2018 Harper tweeted the IDU’s support of Orban and in 2019, Harper showed how far his politics had hardened by spending Hungary’s national day celebrating with Orban and other IDU leaders. Harper intervened in Canadian politics this year to reassure his older centre right voters that the conspiracy-friendly leadership contender for the Conservative party was a safe bet. Pierre Poilievre is now “toying with paranoid populism.”

The IDU’s Deputy Chairman is Brian Loughnane, husband of News Corp voice, Peta Credlin. Loughnane has been also on the international advisory board of Orban’s primary “think tank” aiming to funnel his ideas to the west, the Danube Institute. He remains listed as an “Expert” to the affiliated Hudson Institute.

The IDU’s Honorary Chairman Michael (Lord) Ashcroft is a figure in several Tory controversies over the decades. He reportedly paid half a million pounds to have Isabel Oakeshott co-write an unauthorised biography about David Cameron airing lascivious gossip, to help undermine the faction of the party that would negotiate solutions. It is not only his impact on the media that has damaged the Tories. His large donations, made possible by his offshore domicile in Belize that enabled him to avoid taxes in Britain, are counted as a factor in driving Britain’s Conservative party further right. It now resembles a toxic clown car of figures that ought to be unelectable in any functioning democracy.

The Republican Party representative on the large leadership group is Mike Roman. He is notable as the man Trump employed to manage “election protection” in his 2016 campaign. Roman’s main role in American politics has been to foment propaganda to discredit the fairness of American elections, a key ploy in its democratic decay.

Ever more overtly, right wing organisations that embrace Orbanism while still spruiking freedom promote a particularly Christian Libertarian form of freedom. There should be freedom from taxation and regulation for the people considered entrepreneurial. Any tax burden to fund unavoidable infrastructure must fall upon the working and middle classes. There should be no freedom to protest. There should be no freedom to be feminist or LGBTQI or to promote multiculturalism.

Anne Applebaum wrote of the conservatives with whom she spent the New Year’s Eve that marked the transition into the new millennium in her work, Twilight of Democracy. In her account of what has since changed in her friends of that moment she sees two trends. One is a cynicism that capitalises on the riches available to the talking heads of the radical right. 

The other is a nihilism that despairs of the liberal democracy like America as a “dark nightmarish place, where God only speaks to a tiny number of people; where idealism is dead; where civil war and violence are approaching; where the ‘elite’ is wallowing in decadence, disarray, death.” This right dreads the colourful chaos of modern democracy, so unlike the version these former conservatives imagined themselves to support during the Cold War. Some desire to break it all; others want, somehow, to reverse change.

Turning to the authoritarian Orban signifies the despair of a former conservative. All the diversity of the modern world must be tidied away and the new voices silenced once again. Media polyphony is intolerable. If the uppity beneficiaries of the Civil Rights era won’t be humble, they must be forced back into their subordinate invisibility. There is no scope for human rights in this frightening world.

History too must be tamed to define the “conservative” present. Thus the Ramsay Centre disdains a lecturer “who is coming in with a long liturgy [did he mean litany] of what terrible damage Western civ had done to the world.” (Nick Riemer’s question about the verb used is illustrative.) Throughout the anglophone right, there is a violent antagonism towards the fact that history has warp and weft. No single story carries the truth, whatever the “history wars,” “war on woke” and Critical Race Theory campaigns would assert.

Christianity joins conservatism at the heart of the IDU’s mission, strongly allied to the Christian Democrat tradition. In the Orban model that not only excludes other faiths, including Judaism (despite disingenuous Budapest denials). It also excludes “non-traditional” ways of life.

The New Daily’s coverage of the radicalisation of the IDU, and Scott Morrison’s membership of its board, did Australians a service. It is important that we recognise what our “conservative” politicians represent and be wary.’

For related articles & blogs on Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Conservatives, Evangelical Christianity, Libertarian Economics, Political Strategy and White Nationalism click through and below:

Scott Morrison signs on with global political network home to ‘intolerant far right’.

Why Australia’s conservatives are finding friends in Hungary.

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy.

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism.

Nationalist Conservative Political Parties in the Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Ideology and Populism for Votes.

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

Conservative CPAC Event – Hungary – Who Pays for Influence?

Recently the infamous US GOP Conservative CPAC event was held in Budapest, Hungary, with a conference and meeting of minds whether related to the far right, Fox News, ‘the great replacement’, anti-semitism, anti-immigration, Christian nationalism, anti-EU, anti-human rights etc.

Then links to the Kremlin and Putin, from Politico: ‘In Hungary, whose government is overtly pro-Kremlin, documentaries made by state-owned (and supposedly banned) RT and Russia-1 media outlets about the war are being shared widely in multiple local Facebook groups, according to Szilvi Német, from Hungarian fact-checking organization Lakmusz.

CPAC questions of money may not be so relevant as many participants no doubt pay to participate but the other question is not just who may support financially, who is involved with spreading the paranoid white Christian nationalist message globally, from the US and/or Anglosphere through Europe, Russia and elsewhere? 

Further, the article misses fossil fueled libertarian Koch Network think tank links including Hungary e.g. Danubius Institute, and the influential US Tanton Network, while according to John Le Carre (David Cornwall):

‘“There are oligarchs in the West who are so far to the right that they make a kind of natural cause with those on the other side of the world. Both of them have in common a great contempt for the ordinary conduct of democracy.

They want to diminish it. They see it as their enemy. They see – they’ve made a dirty word of liberalism – one of the most inviting words in politics. …. so they’re closing in on the same target from different points of view.”’

From the article are excerpts from comments offering suggestions or a taste of the presumed global architecture of influence and usual suspects:

‘‘Just as far-right militant groups sought to internationalize their movements during those days, CPAC conservatives found new appreciation for international autocrats like Vladimir Putin’

‘they’re Christian dominionists who are only ‘pro-Israel’ because they want their savior to return & slaughter all the Jews’

‘Putin without question.’

‘‘ Viktor Orban is the same figure of revealing envy to the right of today that Augusto Pinochet was when he was ruling Chile with an iron fist.“No rubles” pledge, and demand Republicans do the same, starting with NRA’’

‘BIG OIL and MINING are promoting this crap’

‘Just depends on whether they rely on people like the self-loathing Peter Thiel or the late Sheldon Adelson for 💰💰💰 or believe 🇮🇱 is key to The Rapture as to whether 🇺🇸 is a Judeo-Christian or Christian nation’

‘Rupert Murdoch & family are major sponsors of the downfall of democracy. They have been re-globalizing fascism for decades through their media/propaganda outlets; CPAC is just another “live” astroturf media event (like the “Tea Party” or the truckers convoy) which they invest in to sell their products. Advertising for white supremacy.’

‘CPAC seems to be on-board with the rise of many “little-Hitlers:” Trump, Erdogan, Orban, Bolsinaro. They didn’t get Marine LePen to turn France. Apparently, Boris Johnson has been very much in bed with the Russians. Manafort was supporting Poroshenko, a Putin ally, in Ukraine. ‘

‘the international efforts of Steve Bannon, who links “conservatives” with a slightly different agenda:  Showing a bit of the split in the RWNJ universe, Bannon was once funded by the Mercers, helping them with Cambridge Analytica, and leading Breitbart’

The article starts here: CPAC is boosting the antisemitic Hungarian right. Who’s paying them to do it?

The people who run CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference meetups that feature top Republican elected officials intermingling with the movement’s most notorious conspiracy cranks—but I repeat myself—have been attempting to expand internationally with conferences in Brazil and Hungary in recent years. The premise has been to attach themselves, suction-eel style, to autocratic nationalists in other countries. Whether this is an earnest attempt to promote their hoax-dependent fascism abroad or just another very gaudy grift is debatable.

In either case, the American far right has been falling over itself with admiration for the emerging Hungarian autocracy, with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in particular promoting far-right nationalist Viktor Orban with a vigor that far eclipses his praise for any Republican here. CPAC Republicans are open in praising Hungary’s autocratic descent as being the road America itself should travel, but have been slightly vaguer in explaining why. That is because the Hungarian fascist movement is Extremely F–king Nasty, full of the same bigotries and conspiracy theories that animate neo-Nazi movements here and actual damn Nazis where they still exist elsewhere.

……Recent CPAC events in Budapest, Hungary, boasted a notorious Hungarian antisemite, one who has publicly declared Jews to be “stinking excrement,” among their featured speakers. “Stinking excrement” is just one of the xenophobic and genocide-supporting rants that Hungarian television screamer Zsolt Bayer is known for. As reported by The Guardian, Bayer was a featured speaker at the allegedly conservative conference, holding forth as part of a speakers list that included Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, Carlson, and others…

….That has been a pattern. Carlson and other Republican would-be strategists have been experimenting to find what human targets American conservatism can be most riled to panic over. It might be more surprising if Carlson and his writers were not looking to European fascist groups for a supply of new genocidal tropes…

…We previously speculated that CPAC’s new international push could be a genuine attempt to promote fascist thinking abroad; that is probably the most charitable interpretation of their moves, even if it isn’t the most likely one. Even before the Trump era, CPAC conferences were a dodgy blend between ultra-powerful Republican elected leaders and absolute conspiracy cranks. …

…..Just as far-right militant groups sought to internationalize their movements during those days, CPAC conservatives found new appreciation for international autocrats like Vladimir Putin. They allowed their existential panic over what would happen to suit-and-tie white racism in a nation in which white conservatives held less power than before to lead them to an obvious conclusion: We need to scrub out whatever parts of democracy are allowing that to happen. The international leaders willing to rewrite the rules of elections so that they always came out on top became the standard-bearers for American conservatives now increasingly convinced that such rewrites were now of dire American importance, and here we are….

….In short, a very large chunk of the top Republican party officials, strategists, and government officials have faced indictments of late for secretly working the levers of power available to them for their own personal profit. Being “important” in American politics has long been a way to make millions by going abroad to advise wealthy kleptocrats in other nations how they can best get what they want. Sometimes it’s election advice. Sometimes it’s access to United States government agencies or to lawmakers. Sometimes it’s help crafting propaganda messages to justify authoritarian moves that may or may not be killing people in the streets. You know: Money.

Sure, it is possible that the American right is now having a raging erection in the direction of Hungarian would-be dictator Orban because they just happen to all hate immigrants, Jews, and the ever-shifty Roma. But it’s more possible that top Republican strategists are being paid far more money than we know to promote Orban and Hungarian autocracy as The Natural Order of Things, and that promotion involves getting other top Republicans to trek all the way to Budapest to give a thin sheen of legitimacy to a bunch of well-heeled fascist monsters….

….What kind of conservatives make the trek to Budapest to hobnob with Europe’s own home-grown reactionaries? The kind who have money, and want more money. Everybody’s looking for a sponsor, after all, and American billionaire money isn’t that easy to come by.

Welcome to fascism, the franchise. You provide the money; we’ll provide the youthful and the ambitious, people more than willing to promote whatever message the propaganda machine has found to test best in order to boost your own power by stripping it from others. There’s nothing complicated going on here.

Oh, by the way: I am specifically not saying that Carlson specifically might have agreed to host a segment bashing “gypsies” in exchange for a check from one of the Hungarian racists he’s been so oddly promoting lately. That would be completely irresponsible of us and, after all, Carlson assuredly has plenty of money and would not cash such a check.

He just found himself having really, really strong opinions about gypsies and asked his team to put together a segment warning Americans that gypsies were coming to their towns to do crimes and poop in public places. As Fox News hosts sometimes do.

For more articles and blogs click through below:

US or UK Sanctions on Murdoch’s Fox News Support for Putin’s Russia?

Madison Grant – Eugenics, Heredity, Class, Immigration, Great Replacement, Conservation and Nazis

Koch Industries – Putin – Russia – Ukraine – Koch Network – Think Tanks

World Congress Of Families WCF, Russia, The Kremlin, Christian Conservative Nationalists, Dugin, Conservatives and US Evangelicals

Russian Dark Money – Influencing British Politics, the Conservative Party, the GOP and European Right

Trump’s White House Immigration Policies and White Nationalist John Tanton