russiainsider--2020-02-11--Atheist President of Montenegro, a US Lapdog, Tries to Seize Churches, Enraging Serbs (Russian TV Ne

Atheist President of Montenegro, a US Lapdog, Tries to Seize Churches, Enraging Serbs (Russian TV News)

Christians protesting a godless dictator who wants to destroy the Orthodox church Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic signed a bitterly contentious legislation on religion and faith into law that will allow Montenegro state to confiscate Orthodox churches .
Djukanovic , who has ruled Montenegro for most of the nearly three decades has long sought to curb the influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church .
The troubled times has come to Montenegro .
This is the territory of the canonical Serbian Orthodox Church .
However , President Djukanovic , following the example of the Ukrainian oligarch - intended to build his own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ centuries-old brotherly bond of Serbian-Montenegrin people .
On January 8th , Law on Freedom of Religion and Belief and the legal position of religious communities entered into force in Montenegro which not only leads to a split within the country , but also toward a confiscation / general redistribution of church property .
Daria Grigorovna reports how Orthodox believers have welcomed the holiday of Christ 's birth in Montenegro The branches of the young oak , the Christmas trees Badnjak , stand on fire with prayer It is a symbol of a fire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which Jesus Christ was born .
It looks like a bright night on the Christmas Eve in the Balkans but even on holidays , the thoughts and prayers of believers in Montenegro are focused on the future of their Mother Church .
We fight with peaceful walks and peaceful protests against the law and we will not betray our church and our Serbo-Russian fraternity .
WE WILL NOT GIVE OUR HOLY SHRINES - those words are on the posters today and said by believers throughout the country .
There is only one true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Church .
since it nationalizes all temples and monasteries built before December 1 , 1918 .
There are more than 600 Orthodox temples on the territory of Montenegro and 60 monasteries .
Most of them will go from being Church property to state control according to the law .
It is essentially a law against Orthodoxy .
They do not recognize the Orthodox Church because it is called Serbian .
The soul of Orthodoxy in Montenegro is the Cetinje Monastery .
One of the greatest holy relics is in this casket of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of St. John the Baptist .
In a modest side room where relics of priceless value are stored worshipers from all over the world come to worship the holy relics .
The right hand of St. John the Baptist arrived in Montenegro from Russia after the revolution The right hand with a particle of the Holy Cross came to us from Russia The Maltese Order presented them with gratitude to Emperor Paul I Romanov The spiritual relationship with Russia is also strong here , Imperial martyrs icon is in the central temple of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is traditionally the Metropolitan of Montenegro .
The town of Cetinje is also the old capital of Montenegro and by the 19th century , it was a theocratic state they ruled bishops , who at the same time had the title of princes and a church title Their residence was precisely the Cetinje monastery .
This means that under the new law , the regime will want to take it over first .
The sound of the monastery bells is well heard in a house in the suburbs of Cetinje where , according @ @ @ @ @ @ @ HQ of an organization called `` Montenegrin Orthodox Church '' .
The tenants of the house often look to the holy monastery .
`` ... about 500 meters .
But it will be even shorter .
Less , in no time . ''
The adopted Religious Law who will improve his living conditions , alluded to by Miras Dedeic , In his office , there is a portrait of the Ukrainian schismatic Mikhail Denisenko : He is a wonderful man .
The state plans to hand over temples and monasteries to Dedejić 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Milo Djukanovic , publicly supports the so-called autocephalous church , but it is not recognized by any of the 15 Orthodox churches , including the Patriarchate of Constantinople .
That is why Montenegrin `` autocephalists '' do not rule out even abandoning Orthodoxy .
For example , if you are not recognized by other Orthodox churches , then you can move from Orthodoxy to another religion , like in Roman Catholic ?
- Not only me , but any bishop also can ...
There is no law So does the Russian patriarch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do n't want to be a Russian patriarch , I want to be in another church .
But , the self-proclaimed metropolitan speaks of politics most willingly .
What is your relationship with the president , Milo Djukanovic ?
Well , I can say , that people say that he is the greatest politician in Europe '' Do you recognize Kosovo as an independent state ?
Look ...
The Montenegrin Orthodox Church is following in the footsteps of the state I ca n't be against my state .
Currently , the so-called the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many believers there are , we can judge from this building in the city cemetery .
According to the banner , services are held once a week .
There are strange icons inside and also the strange wooden dragons on the iconostasis .
We can only assume what the Orthodox shrines will look like under the management of such a `` church '' .
Trapped in the rock , at an altitude of 900 m above sea level , Ostrog monastery is one of the most revered and most visited shrines in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the monastery , St .
Basil the Wonderworker of Ostrog consider the patron saint of Orthodoxy in the Balkans .
He managed to preserve the Orthodox faith during the Turkish rule , and believers hope that this particularly Serb revered saint will also now help to defend the Church .
According to attendance , this monastery is comparable to Golgotha , and the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem .
The state ( regime ) is very much tempted to take this and other holy places for itself .
In general , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authorities ?
It 's for the authorities .
You know , our government what it does ... during the communist era , there were many factories built-in Montenegro .
All that was destroyed .
The only organism to regenerate and who has preserved his property is - the Church .
Now the property and temples should be taken away from the church .
Procession on the streets of Podgorica is a special prayer service as support from the church and the faithful .
At the beginning of the procession , they bear the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believers from the Serbian Orthodox Church participate in the processions .
Tens of thousands of people participate in the prayer service .
That 's a lot of people for Montenegro .
In addition , parliamentary elections will be held in the country this year and it is precisely with them that they link the emergence of a new law on religion .
This is essentially an attack on the Serbian people in Montenegro which occurs in an election year .
In this way , this law is intended to preserve power .
President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to being an atheist , became the main initiator of the law that creates the church schism .
He took the country out of the federal state with Serbia and set Montenegro on a Euro-Atlantic course .
Now the president has taken a stand for his own church .
Darija Grigorovna , Anton Cigajev and Vlad Radojicic , News of the Week from Montenegro .

Christians protesting a godless dictator who wants to destroy the Orthodox church
Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic signed a bitterly contentious legislation on religion and faith into law that will allow Montenegro state to confiscate Orthodox churches. Djukanovic, who has ruled Montenegro for most of the nearly three decades has long sought to curb the influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Full transcript below.
* . *
Transcript:
The troubled times has come to Montenegro.
This is the territory of the canonical Serbian Orthodox Church.
However, President Djukanovic, following the example of the Ukrainian oligarch -
- President Poroshenko
intended to build his own "pocket church"
thus breaking the centuries-old brotherly bond of Serbian-Montenegrin people.
On January 8th, Law on Freedom of Religion and Belief and the legal position of religious communities entered into force in Montenegro
which not only leads to a split within the country,
but also toward a confiscation / general redistribution of church property.
Daria Grigorovna reports how Orthodox believers have welcomed the holiday of Christ's birth in Montenegro
The branches of the young oak, the Christmas trees Badnjak, stand on fire with prayer
It is a symbol of a fire that was lit in a cave in which Jesus Christ was born.
It looks like a bright night on the Christmas Eve in the Balkans
but even on holidays, the thoughts and prayers of believers in Montenegro
are focused on the future of their Mother Church.
We fight with peaceful walks and peaceful protests against the law
and we will not betray our church and our Serbo-Russian fraternity.
WE WILL NOT GIVE OUR HOLY SHRINES - those words are on the posters today
and said by believers throughout the country.
There is only one true church in Montenegro - the Serbian Orthodox Church.
"Freedom of Religion" law has shocked Orthodox believers
since it nationalizes all temples and monasteries built before December 1, 1918.
There are more than 600 Orthodox temples on the territory of Montenegro
and 60 monasteries. Most of them will go from being Church property to state control according to the law.
It is essentially a law against Orthodoxy.
They do not recognize the Orthodox Church because it is called Serbian.
The soul of Orthodoxy in Montenegro is the Cetinje Monastery.
One of the greatest holy relics is in this casket
of the whole Christian world - the right hand of St. John the Baptist.
In a modest side room where relics of priceless value are stored
worshipers from all over the world come to worship the holy relics.
The right hand of St. John the Baptist arrived in Montenegro from Russia after the revolution
The right hand with a particle of the Holy Cross came to us from Russia
The Maltese Order presented them with gratitude to Emperor Paul I Romanov
The spiritual relationship with Russia is also strong here, Imperial martyrs icon is in the central temple of the monastery.
The Cetinje Brotherhood Archimandrite is traditionally the Metropolitan of Montenegro .
The town of Cetinje is also the old capital of Montenegro
and by the 19th century, it was a theocratic state they ruled
bishops, who at the same time had the title of princes and a church title
Their residence was precisely the Cetinje monastery.
This means that under the new law, the regime will want to take it over first.
The sound of the monastery bells is well heard in a house in the suburbs of Cetinje
where, according to the board in front, are HQ of an organization called "Montenegrin Orthodox Church".
The tenants of the house often look to the holy monastery.
"... about 500 meters. But it will be even shorter. Less, in no time."
The adopted Religious Law who will improve his living conditions, alluded to by Miras Dedeic,
self-proclaimed metropolitan.
In his office, there is a portrait of the Ukrainian schismatic Mikhail Denisenko: He is a wonderful man.
The state plans to hand over temples and monasteries to Dedejić's organization
confiscated from the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Today, Dedejić receives € 50,000 a year from the budget,
and the president of the country, Milo Djukanovic, publicly supports the so-called autocephalous church,
but it is not recognized by any of the 15 Orthodox churches, including the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
That is why Montenegrin "autocephalists" do not rule out even abandoning Orthodoxy.
For example, if you are not recognized by other Orthodox churches,
then you can move from Orthodoxy to another religion, like in Roman Catholic?
- Not only me, but any bishop also can...
There is no law
So does the Russian patriarch Kirill
He can say tomorrow: I don't want to be a Russian patriarch, I want to be in another church.
But, the self-proclaimed metropolitan speaks of politics most willingly.
What is your relationship with the president, Milo Djukanovic?
Well, I can say, that people say that he is the greatest politician in Europe"
Do you recognize Kosovo as an independent state?
Look ... The Montenegrin Orthodox Church is following in the footsteps of the state
I can't be against my state.
Currently, the so-called the autocephalous church has 11 priests
and how many believers there are, we can judge from this building in the city cemetery.
According to the banner, services are held once a week.
There are strange icons inside and also the strange wooden dragons on the iconostasis.
We can only assume what the Orthodox shrines will look like under the management of such a "church".
Trapped in the rock, at an altitude of 900 m above sea level,
Ostrog monastery is one of the most revered and most visited shrines in the Orthodox world,
and the founder of the monastery, St. Basil the Wonderworker of Ostrog
consider the patron saint of Orthodoxy in the Balkans.
He managed to preserve the Orthodox faith during the Turkish rule,
and believers hope that this particularly Serb revered saint will also now help to defend the Church.
According to attendance, this monastery is comparable to Golgotha, and the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
The state (regime) is very much tempted to take this and other holy places for itself.
In general, is this a financial issue for the authorities?
It's for the authorities. You know, our government what it does...
during the communist era, there were many factories built-in Montenegro.
All that was destroyed. The only organism to regenerate and who has preserved his property is - the Church.
Now the property and temples should be taken away from the church.
Procession on the streets of Podgorica is a special prayer service
as support from the church and the faithful.
At the beginning of the procession, they bear the icon of Saint Basil Ostroski
Thousands of believers from the Serbian Orthodox Church participate in the processions.
Tens of thousands of people participate in the prayer service.
That's a lot of people for Montenegro.
In addition, parliamentary elections will be held in the country this year
and it is precisely with them that they link the emergence of a new law on religion.
This is essentially an attack on the Serbian people in Montenegro
which occurs in an election year.
In this way, this law is intended to preserve power.
President Djukanovic, although he has repeatedly confessed to being an atheist,
became the main initiator of the law that creates the church schism.
He took the country out of the federal state with Serbia
and set Montenegro on a Euro-Atlantic course.
Now the president has taken a stand for his own church.
Darija Grigorovna, Anton Cigajev and Vlad Radojicic, News of the Week from Montenegro.


russiainsider--2020-02-11--I Marched with Nationalists in Belgrade to Protest the Seizure of Orthodox Churches - a Letter from

I Marched with Nationalists in Belgrade to Protest the Seizure of Orthodox Churches - a Letter from Serbia

For recent articles with good background on this , see : Western Campaign Against Orthodox Church Turns to Montenegro by Jim Jatras Atheist President of Montenegro , a US Lapdog , Tries to Seize Churches , Enraging Serbians ( Russian TV News ) “ The Clintons can blow us !
” hundreds roar as we pass the US embassy in Belgrade .
One of the Serbians marching turns to me with a proud smile : “ this is our traditional saying since the war.
” Although the topic of NATO 's aggression against Serbia is a common topic among its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different kind of attack , a cultural one , with the left-liberal government of Montenegro as the catalyst .
They were passing a cleverly camouflaged “ freedom of religion ” law that was anything but , a legislation that will allow the government to seize control of century 's old Serbian Orthodox churches and use them in whatever way they see fit .
As with most things in the Balkans it 's a complicated situation that requires taking a look at the ruling party of Montenegro to get a better understanding of why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the streets .
The president of Montenegro is Milo Djukanivic from the DPS ( Democratic Party of Socialists ) which is just “ facelift ” of its original name , “ Montenegrin League of Communists , ” who have been in power since 1945 .
Unlike all its neighbors the Montenegrin League of Communists were never truly removed from power when the Soviet Union collapsed , they simply changed the name of their party and swore new allegiances to American capitalism .
While they have put on a new costume , the petty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The DPS has been accused of everything from voter fraud and blackmail to embezzlement , not to mention a slew of car bombings , driveby shootings and various other acts of terror used against those who dissent against the ruling class .
That the controlling DPS has set its sights on the Serbian Orthodox Church is no surprise , with 7 out of 10 citizens saying they are a member of the Church , making it a major populist rallying point preventing the total omnipotence of big business , globalist interlopers and corrupt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Following the arrest of 18 parliament members who tried to veto the law , the responsibility to protect this sacred institution has fallen on the people , who agree more with the ideology and values of the Orthodox church than they do the technocrats .
Many consider the Orthodox church the last true bastion of Christianity for its heavy emphasis on traditional values and its hard rejection of the LGBT and liberal degenerate culture that many other sects of Christianity have readily embraced .
This religious barrier to the cultural liberal maximalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Serbs in regions where they are under attack ( Kosovo , Montenegro , etc ) has continuously put the government at odds with the church .
We continue our march through the busy center of Belgrade , blocking streets off .
I 'm lucky to have one of the best seats in the house for this demonstration being one of 12 in front holding up the banner that reads ' 'REJECT '' in cyrillic .
It 's not being in the front of the march that makes this a great experience but the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ initial expression on the crowds of people that stop whatever they 're doing to watch us pass by .
Many just pull out their phones , the much older ones look on with a smile of approval as hundreds of Serbain flags wave above a determined people .
Not everyone was a fan .
There were a few older people that shook their heads and turned away .
Neither of these groups had an impact on me as both are too old or to set in their ways to make any meaningful change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the younger generation , some spilling out of the cafes to watch the flare lit march only to give us the 3-finger Serbian salute and then join in !
The more we marched , the more young lads felt compelled to drop everything and join our ranks .
The march ended at a 200 year old church where priests came out blessing a range of white radicals to more ordinary Serbian patriots .
Sharing this blessing with a large group with one mind was a spiritually powerful moment .
After the demonstration I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nationalist organization Kormilo .
We spoke for a while , getting the uncensored history of Serbia and the revival of Chetnik sentiment ( Chetnik is a term for radical nationalists who waged a guerrilla wawr against Ottoman invaders and continued to defend the Serbian people until 1945 through fighting partisans and invading Soviets ) .
We talked about what the nationalist scene Serbia is like and its tumultuous history .
All the guys in the Casapound-style pub were either students or young working class men : “ today the Chetnik spirit is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be more for soccer hooligans or fringe personalities , but as you see today many of us are from the university or regular backgrounds '' although quickly another smooth faced younger kid chimed in “ although some of us are still ultras ! ''
as he grinned and let me know which team he supported .
Political organizations like Kormilo are relatively new along with their ideas in the globally isolated country of Serbia .
As one of the founders put it , “ all people in Serbia are patriots for Serbia but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West as a whole is becoming more common.
” That night was just one of many demonstrations taking place throughout Serbia and Montenegro , with some turning violent in Montenegro where riot police have been brutally beating protesters , including an Orthodox priest .
The events going on in Serbia represent a fairly recent reawakening , but it 's easy to see how this can be a flame the reignites proud nationalist sentiment in the Serbian youth .
I saw it that night .

For recent articles with good background on this, see:
Western Campaign Against Orthodox Church Turns to Montenegro by Jim Jatras
Atheist President of Montenegro, a US Lapdog, Tries to Seize Churches, Enraging Serbians (Russian TV News)
“The Clintons can blow us!” hundreds roar as we pass the US embassy in Belgrade. One of the Serbians marching turns to me with a proud smile: “this is our traditional saying since the war.”
Although the topic of NATO's aggression against Serbia is a common topic among its people. This demonstration was for a different kind of attack, a cultural one, with the left-liberal government of Montenegro as the catalyst.
They were passing a cleverly camouflaged “freedom of religion” law that was anything but, a legislation that will allow the government to seize control of century's old Serbian Orthodox churches and use them in whatever way they see fit. As with most things in the Balkans it's a complicated situation that requires taking a look at the ruling party of Montenegro to get a better understanding of why Serbian patriots are compelled to take to the streets.
The president of Montenegro is Milo Djukanivic from the DPS (Democratic Party of Socialists) which is just “facelift” of its original name, “Montenegrin League of Communists,” who have been in power since 1945. Unlike all its neighbors the Montenegrin League of Communists were never truly removed from power when the Soviet Union collapsed, they simply changed the name of their party and swore new allegiances to American capitalism. While they have put on a new costume, the petty and draconian totalitarianism remains in tact. The DPS has been accused of everything from voter fraud and blackmail to embezzlement, not to mention a slew of car bombings, driveby shootings and various other acts of terror used against those who dissent against the ruling class. That the controlling DPS has set its sights on the Serbian Orthodox Church is no surprise, with 7 out of 10 citizens saying they are a member of the Church, making it a major populist rallying point preventing the total omnipotence of big business, globalist interlopers and corrupt politicians dictating the terms of Montenegrin liberalism .
Following the arrest of 18 parliament members who tried to veto the law, the responsibility to protect this sacred institution has fallen on the people, who agree more with the ideology and values of the Orthodox church than they do the technocrats. Many consider the Orthodox church the last true bastion of Christianity for its heavy emphasis on traditional values and its hard rejection of the LGBT and liberal degenerate culture that many other sects of Christianity have readily embraced. This religious barrier to the cultural liberal maximalist project along with its defense of ethnic Serbs in regions where they are under attack (Kosovo, Montenegro, etc) has continuously put the government at odds with the church.
We continue our march through the busy center of Belgrade, blocking streets off. I'm lucky to have one of the best seats in the house for this demonstration being one of 12 in front holding up the banner that reads' 'REJECT'' in cyrillic. It's not being in the front of the march that makes this a great experience but the fact that I got to see the initial expression on the crowds of people that stop whatever they're doing to watch us pass by. Many just pull out their phones, the much older ones look on with a smile of approval as hundreds of Serbain flags wave above a determined people.
Not everyone was a fan. There were a few older people that shook their heads and turned away. Neither of these groups had an impact on me as both are too old or to set in their ways to make any meaningful change. What I did find captivating was the younger generation, some spilling out of the cafes to watch the flare lit march only to give us the 3-finger Serbian salute and then join in! The more we marched, the more young lads felt compelled to drop everything and join our ranks. The march ended at a 200 year old church where priests came out blessing a range of white radicals to more ordinary Serbian patriots. Sharing this blessing with a large group with one mind was a spiritually powerful moment.
After the demonstration I went back to a pub owned by the nationalist organization Kormilo. We spoke for a while, getting the uncensored history of Serbia and the revival of Chetnik sentiment (Chetnik is a term for radical nationalists who waged a guerrilla wawr against Ottoman invaders and continued to defend the Serbian people until 1945 through fighting partisans and invading Soviets).
We talked about what the nationalist scene Serbia is like and its tumultuous history . All the guys in the Casapound-style pub were either students or young working class men: “today the Chetnik spirit is growing in Serbia, nationalism used to be more for soccer hooligans or fringe personalities, but as you see today many of us are from the university or regular backgrounds'' although quickly another smooth faced younger kid chimed in “although some of us are still ultras!'' as he grinned and let me know which team he supported.
Political organizations like Kormilo are relatively new along with their ideas in the globally isolated country of Serbia. As one of the founders put it,“all people in Serbia are patriots for Serbia but now the idea of being patriots for the West as a whole is becoming more common.” That night was just one of many demonstrations taking place throughout Serbia and Montenegro, with some turning violent in Montenegro where riot police have been brutally beating protesters, including an Orthodox priest.
The events going on in Serbia represent a fairly recent reawakening, but it's easy to see how this can be a flame the reignites proud nationalist sentiment in the Serbian youth. I saw it that night.


russiainsider--2020-02-11--German Nationalists (AfD) Surge to 2nd Place (23%) in Regional Election after Being Called 'Nazis'

Germany ’ s Christian Democrats , the ruling party of Angela Merkel , are in fresh crisis after members in the state of Thuringia defied party instruction to avoid working with the anti-migrant AfD party .
Alternative for Germany ( AfD ) got 23.4 % against 22 % for the Christian Democrats ( CDU ) .
The AfD more than doubled its vote , from 10.6 % five years ago .
The political mayhem stems from the election in eastern Germany ’ s Thuringia region last October , when the Alternative for Germany party ( AfD ) more than doubled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ruling Left Party .
Back then , Chancellor Angela Merkel ’ s Christian Democratic Union ( CDU was left red-faced , losing 13 seats in regional parliament and finishing third .
After months of quarrels , the Left , Social Democrats ( SPD ) and the Greens agreed to form a minority government .
Spectacular fail : With considerable over confidence the Leftists expected to easily re-elect the Left ’ s incumbent Bodo Ramelow as Thuringia ’ s minister-president .
Their plans hit the buffers on Wednesday when the AfD sided with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic Party ( FDP ) to outvote Ramelow ’ s candidacy and elect FDP ’ s Thomas Kemmerich instead .
The move and outcome sent shockwaves across Germany , creating a rift between Thuringia ’ s CDU branch and its leadership in Berlin .
CDU ’ s chief and Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer accused her cohorts of breaking rank by violating the party ’ s policy of avoiding any cooperation with the anti-establishment and anti-migrant AfD .
Angela Merkel , dubbed The Beast from the East , slammed the election of Kemmerich @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s results must be reversed .
The Thuringia AfD is led by Björn Höcke , 47 , who heads a nationalist group called Flügel .
He is often accused by leftists and their journalist cronies of using inflammatory rhetoric ( arguments that win ) .
During the campaign , his CDU rival in Thuringia , Mike Mohring , called him a Nazi .
Mr Höcke has expressed strong views about the National Socialist period ( 1933 – 1945 ) : he deplored Berlin ’ s Holocaust memorial as a monument of shame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ significant setback for the central government .
It is expected to intensify leadership battles in both ruling parties .
Until 2014 , Thuringia was a CDU stronghold .
But on Sunday the party came third , beaten by the far-left and the far-right .

Germany’s Christian Democrats, the ruling party of Angela Merkel, are in fresh crisis after members in the state of Thuringia defied party instruction to avoid working with the anti-migrant AfD party.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) got 23.4% against 22% for the Christian Democrats (CDU). The AfD more than doubled its vote, from 10.6% five years ago.
The political mayhem stems from the election in eastern Germany’s Thuringia region last October, when the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) more than doubled its support and came in second after the ruling Left Party. Back then, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU was left red-faced, losing 13 seats in regional parliament and finishing third.
After months of quarrels, the Left, Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens agreed to form a minority government. Spectacular fail: With considerable over confidence the Leftists expected to easily re-elect the Left’s incumbent Bodo Ramelow as Thuringia’s minister-president.
Their plans hit the buffers on Wednesday when the AfD sided with the CDU and also the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) to outvote Ramelow’s candidacy and elect FDP’s Thomas Kemmerich instead.
The move and outcome sent shockwaves across Germany, creating a rift between Thuringia’s CDU branch and its leadership in Berlin.
CDU’s chief and Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer accused her cohorts of breaking rank by violating the party’s policy of avoiding any cooperation with the anti-establishment and anti-migrant AfD. Angela Merkel, dubbed The Beast from the East, slammed the election of Kemmerich as unforgivable, saying that the vote’s results must be reversed.
The Thuringia AfD is led by Björn Höcke, 47, who heads a nationalist group called Flügel. He is often accused by leftists and their journalist cronies of using inflammatory rhetoric (arguments that win). During the campaign, his CDU rival in Thuringia, Mike Mohring, called him a Nazi.
Mr Höcke has expressed strong views about the National Socialist period (1933 – 1945): he deplored Berlin’s Holocaust memorial as a monument of shame.
The result is seen as a significant setback for the central government. It is expected to intensify leadership battles in both ruling parties. Until 2014, Thuringia was a CDU stronghold. But on Sunday the party came third, beaten by the far-left and the far-right.


russiainsider--2020-02-11--Multiple Green Berets Dead After Afghan Policeman Turns His Gun on US Soldiers

Yesterday , a Special Forces team was ambushed in Afghanistan by a rogue Afghan policeman .
Two American commandos have been killed and six wounded .
In addition , at least eight Afghan commandos have died as a result of the attack .
Sources with intimate knowledge of the incident told SOFREP that the Greens Berets of Operational Detachment Alpha ( ODA ) 73 # # and the company command team of # Company , 3rd Battalion , 7th Special Forces Group ( # /3/7 ) had just finished a Key Leader Engagement ( KLE ) with local leaders when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which was accompanied by a partner force of Afghan Special Operations Forces ( ANSOF ) had moved to a nearby field to wait for extraction by helicopter .
While they were in a Pickup Zone ( PZ ) posture , the rogue Afghan policeman attacked .
The individual essentially mowed down the Special Forces operators and their partner force element with a heavy machinegun .
A Green Beret and a Special Operations Team-Alpha ( SOT-A ) soldier , who was attached to the team , were killed on the spot .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chest and is in critical condition ; the company Sergeant Major was shot in the head .
The rest of the American WIAs have gunshot wounds to the legs .
All casualties have been evacuated to U.S. medical facilities .
Colonel Sonny Leggett , the spokesperson for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan ( USFOR-A ) said that “ an individual in an Afghan uniform opened fire on the combined U.S. and Afghan force with a machine gun .
The motive behind the attack is unknown at this time .
The incident is under investigation.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) incident took place in the Sherzad district of Nangarhar Province , which is located in eastern Afghanistan .
SOT-A soldiers are attached to Special Forces ODAs and provide tactical Signals Intelligence ( SIGINT ) and Electronic Warfare ( EW ) capabilities .
ODAs are comprised of 12 Green Berets and specialize in Unconventional Warfare ( UW ) , Foreign Internal Defence ( FID ) , Direct Action ( DA ) , and Special Reconnaissance ( SR ) , among other things .
Colonel John W. Sannes , the commanding officer of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ press statement that “ several 7th Special Forces Group ( Airborne ) Soldiers were injured or killed during combat operations in Afghanistan on February 8 , 2020 .
The 7th Special Forces Group Headquarters is poised to support the Service Members and their families during this difficult time.
” Adding that “ the families of the deceased and wounded are being notified .
In accordance with DoD policy , the names of the causalities are being withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin notification is complete .
”

The two KIA are named as Javier Jaguar Gutierrez and Antonio Rey Rodriguez
Yesterday, a Special Forces team was ambushed in Afghanistan by a rogue Afghan policeman. Two American commandos have been killed and six wounded. In addition, at least eight Afghan commandos have died as a result of the attack.
Sources with intimate knowledge of the incident told SOFREP that the Greens Berets of Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 73## and the company command team of # Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (#/3/7) had just finished a Key Leader Engagement (KLE) with local leaders when they were ambushed. The American element, which was accompanied by a partner force of Afghan Special Operations Forces (ANSOF) had moved to a nearby field to wait for extraction by helicopter. While they were in a Pickup Zone (PZ) posture, the rogue Afghan policeman attacked. The individual essentially mowed down the Special Forces operators and their partner force element with a heavy machinegun.
A Green Beret and a Special Operations Team-Alpha (SOT-A) soldier, who was attached to the team, were killed on the spot. The company executive officer was shot in the chest and is in critical condition; the company Sergeant Major was shot in the head. The rest of the American WIAs have gunshot wounds to the legs. All casualties have been evacuated to U.S. medical facilities.
Colonel Sonny Leggett, the spokesperson for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) said that “an individual in an Afghan uniform opened fire on the combined U.S. and Afghan force with a machine gun. The motive behind the attack is unknown at this time. The incident is under investigation.”
The Green-on-Blue (friendly forces attacking U.S. troops) incident took place in the Sherzad district of Nangarhar Province, which is located in eastern Afghanistan.
SOT-A soldiers are attached to Special Forces ODAs and provide tactical Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities.
ODAs are comprised of 12 Green Berets and specialize in Unconventional Warfare (UW), Foreign Internal Defence (FID), Direct Action (DA), and Special Reconnaissance (SR), among other things.
Colonel John W. Sannes, the commanding officer of the 7th SFG, said in a brief press statement that “several 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Soldiers were injured or killed during combat operations in Afghanistan on February 8, 2020. The 7th Special Forces Group Headquarters is poised to support the Service Members and their families during this difficult time.” Adding that “the families of the deceased and wounded are being notified. In accordance with DoD policy, the names of the causalities are being withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin notification is complete.”
Source: SofRep


russiainsider--2020-02-11--How Today's America Resembles the Last Decades of the Russian Empire

Along with this Promethean idealism of the early 20th century came “ a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.
” He says that “ the increasing preoccupation with sexual matters was a logical development of the romantic preoccupation with the will that had become characteristic of the emancipated aristocratic intelligentsia.
” “ You know what they say about Russia , ” said my Moscow translator and guide .
“ Once you ’ ve been here , you ’ re going to come back .
You can ’ t get it out of your head.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russia for about a month , and I ’ m starting to understand what he means .
Or rather , I don ’ t understand it ( yet ) , but I feel it , and feel it with more strength the more distance there is between me and that country .
This weekend I ’ ve been reading , for my research purposes , The Icon and the Axe , James Billington ’ s revered 1966 history of Russian culture .
Billington was a distinguished Russia scholar and Librarian of Congress from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He died last year at 89 .
It has been a revelation to read in his work about the culture of Russia between 1890 and the 1917 revolution .
It seems eerily like our own in some pretty fundamental ways .
I want to tell you a little bit about this .
According to Billington , in the 1890s , younger Russian elites became frustrated with the country ’ s long struggle towards constitutional liberalism , especially when the reactionary Tsar Alexander III took over from his assassinated father , a ( relative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The new generation of intellectuals and artists moved into two different directions : dialectical materialism ( that is , Marxism , whose leading exponent at the time was Gyorgi Plekhanov ) , and transcendental idealism , along the lines of the visionary Christian thinker Vladimir Soloviev .
Plekhanov , the father of Russian Marxism , wanted to revitalize society through working-class revolution .
Soloviev , an Orthodox Christian , but one strongly influenced by Western Christianity , sought social renaissance through a return to a kind of religious mysticism .
Writes Billington , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heirs to the traditions of the iconoclastic Sixties [ 1860s ] ; the idealists claimed to be developing the traditions of Dostoevsky ’ s aesthetic and religious reaction to iconoclasm.
” What drove them was “ the exasperation of a new student generation with the subjectivism , pessimism , and introspection of the age of small deeds.
” Writes Billington , the “ new radicals of both right and left ” were both seeking “ some new philosophic bedrock on which to stand.
” Reading this , I thought about how old-fashioned liberalism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and how the younger generations on both the Left and the Right want something more radical .
I shouldn ’ t have to say this , but I ’ ll do it : obviously there are massive differences between a liberal constitutional republic , as the US has been since its founding , and an autocracy , as Russia always had been .
The parallel , though , is that in 1890s Russia , the kind of people who were young liberals a generation earlier were now becoming young radicals .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among the young is with increasingly illiberal versions of Left and Right .
We may all miss liberalism once it ’ s gone , but it ’ s hard to find convinced , persuasive defenders today .
Anyway , back to Russia .
Billington says that three forces shaped Russian culture and society from 1890 until the 1917 Revolution and just beyond : Prometheanism , sensualism , and apocalypticism .
Prometheanism , the author says , is “ the belief that man – when truly aware of his true powers – is capable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he lives.
” The intellectual and artistic elites really did believe that anything was possible through the exercise of man ’ s will , through the use of science and technology .
Orthodox Christianity was a dry husk .
In St. Petersburg , an intellectual movement known as “ God-building ” arose .
It was a form of the social gospel , transferring the “ God-seeking ” of Christianity to concrete action on earth , and to revolution .
The God-Builders figured out that religion , in which they didn ’ t believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead of God , they began worshipping the People , and , like the Jacobins before them , tried to create a humanistic pseudo-religion .
Anatoly Lunacharsky , one of their leaders ( and later a Soviet official ) , taught that Marxists should think of their project in explicitly religious terms .
( As I blogged not long ago , in talking about Yuri Slezkine ’ s recent history of the Russian Revolution , the Bolsheviks , materialists to the marrow , all thought in quasi-religious ways . )
Maxim Gorky @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this prayer to “ the almighty , immortal people !
” : Lenin hated all religion , and thought that any talk of religion weakened the Marxist position .
The God-Builders ’ thought didn ’ t survive the Revolution .
Still , it is interesting to think of God-Building as a version of the this-worldly Social Gospel of progressive Christianity , or of the human-centered Moralistic Therapeutic Deism common even in non-progressive churches , or of any of the new forms of self-generated spirituality arising among the post-Christian generation .
( The religion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book coming out next year about this spirituality , which is extremely diverse , but united by the shared belief that religion is something Man generates within himself to meet his felt spiritual needs , including a desire for transcendence . )
Billington says along with this Promethean idealism of the early 20th century came “ a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.
” He says that “ the increasing preoccupation with sexual matters was a logical development of the romantic preoccupation with the will that had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In other words , in the first half of the 19th century , liberal Russian aristocrats had drunk deeply of European Romanticism , which emphasized individual passion and experience over abstract rationalism .
It makes sense that they would turn to the individual ’ s sexual experiences as a source of wisdom and spiritual revival .
The abolition of censorship in Russia after 1905 opened the door to erotic literature .
There began to appear among intellectual and social elites the idea that utopia would come into being through sexual permissiveness .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ totally debauched , but the aristocrats who murdered him were possibly even more sexually corrupt .
The dominant role that sensualism of our own age , and the role pornography , widely distributed and easily available on the Internet , plays in advancing it , hardly needs to be established .
It is interesting , though , to think of how Silicon Valley — the epicenter of 21st century Prometheanism — is ruled by a fantastically wealthy elite that is also notably debauched ( see Emily Chang ’ s Vanity Fair piece , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Orgiastic Dark Side ” ) .
It is not difficult to see the parallels between the Prometheanism and sensualism of pre-revolutionary Russian culture , and our own Homo Deus techno-utopianism .
Here ’ s something different , though .
The “ the third ideological current of the age ” was apocalypticism – and , at the 1917 revolution , the most relevant of all .
Yes , religious apocalypticism was strong with the Orthodox peasantry , but a different kind of apocalypticism entranced elites .
It ’ s stunning to read this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russian artists and intellectuals of that era for Satan .
The devil was the ultimate Romantic , self-willed figure , after all , giving the sensualism — the sexual permissiveness , and the general craving for sensual experience , a strong grounding in the demonic .
“ This sense of the satanic presence led to a brooding and apocalyptic mentality .
Apocalypticism , the third key characteristic of the era , was in many ways the by-product of the unresolved psychological tension between the other two : Prometheanism and sensualism .
How , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expectations with petty preoccupations ?
an intellectual belief in a coming utopia and a simultaneous personal involvement in debauchery ?
One way of holding on to both commitments was to convince oneself with a certain amount of Schadenfreude that apocalyptical change was in the offing , that the sensualism of today forebodes the transformation of tomorrow .
As Diaghilev put it during the revolutionary year of 1905 ( in a toast delivered in connection with the exhibit of three thousand Russian historical portraits which he organized at the Tauride Palace ) : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of summing-up in history , in the name of a new and unknown culture , which will be created by us , and which will also sweep us away .
That is why , without fear or misgiving , I raise my glass to the ruined walls of the beautiful palaces , as well as to the new commandments of a new aesthetic .
The only wish that I , an incorrigible sensualist , can express , is that the forthcoming struggle should not damage the amenities of life , and that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illuminating as the resurrection.
” Diaghilev , a renown Russian art critic ( and founder of the Ballets Russe ) , had spent the previous summer going through old Russian palaces and aristocratic mansions selecting canvases for the exhibition .
That experience , plus his awareness of what was going on in the country — mass upheaval in 1905 caused a significant weakening of Tsarist autocracy — taught Diaghilev that something truly revolutionary was on its way .
It is characteristic of the time , and of the faith people then had in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that toast at a banquet at Moscow ’ s Hotel Metropol , was certain that it was bound to be something great .
What he , and Russia , got was the Bolshevik yoke — state-induced famine , the gulag archipelago , the Terror , the destruction of country .
But they didn ’ t know that was coming .
Billington says that many intellectuals welcomed the Revolution as the advent of a New Jerusalem .
Andrei Bely even wrote a novel celebrating the Revolution , and titled it , Christ Is Risen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services , and through the Paschal season .
Billington emphasizes that the late imperial period ’ s obsession with Prometheanism and sensualism was “ essentially anti-Christian.
” Mind you , he ’ s writing as a scholar of history and culture , not as a Christian polemicist .
It ’ s simply true .
And our own 21st-century American obsession with the same since at least the 1960s is a sign that we have passed into the post-Christian period .
Again and again , I say unto you : the secular prophet Philip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book The Triumph of the Therapeutic , which came out the same years at The Icon And The Axe .
Rieff knew that Christianity , as the narrative that bound and inspired the West , was over — and that the Sexual Revolution , which was just beginning , thanks in large part to the technological innovation of the birth control pill , was the handwriting on the wall declaring the new order .
Billington says that Prometheanism and sensualism were equally strong in Europe , but apocalypticism was a Russian thing .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerfully about that final point , in his book The House Of Government .
He quotes from Bolshevik sources , writing in the pre-revolutionary period , talking about the coming revolution as an apocalypse that will settle accounts with the rich through apocalyptic violence .
In our situation , what we lack at the present moment is a strong apocalypticism .
It ’ s certainly present to some degree .
Pop Christianity goes through periodic ruminations on End Times prophetic scenarios .
For Evangelicals , it was the best-selling Late Great Planet Earth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Behind series in the 1990s .
For Catholics , the abiding interest in visions of the Virgin Mary ( e.g.
, Medjugorje ) both stokes and expresses this sentiment .
More recently , my own Benedict Option is apocalyptic , not in a Jesus-is-coming way , and certainly not in prophesying epochal violence , but rather in diagnosing an end to the Christian era parallel to the demise of paganism in fourth-century Rome .
It ’ s a gentle apocalypse , but from a spiritual point of view , an apocalypse it certainly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advance , which is why I propose that a Christianity that has been preserved through the long night of decline and decay can provide the seeds of resurrection .
In fact , if post-communist Russia is going to have a chance at thriving , it ’ s going to have to go deep into its Orthodox Christian roots .
Still , Christian apocalypticism has not reached a fever pitch , or had any meaningful political expressions , not that I can see .
Secular apocalypticism is present among the more extreme environmental activists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice is “ an agonizing , often masochistic clinging to the Judeo-Christian idea of retribution ” by those who are unable to believe in forgiveness , or to believe in a world to come in which God will deliver ultimate justice .
If you have seen the Sexual Revolution , and the women ’ s movement , and the Civil Rights movement , and you have observed that people remain broken and unhappy , you can either rethink your premises in light of human fallibility , or you can double down .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in some version of the Judeo-Christian idea of Original Sin , and insist , despite experience and evidence , that Man is born good , but corrupted by society , then the only path left to you is to get radical about punishing the evildoers whose presence among us prevents Utopia .
It is clear to me that progressivism is moving more and more towards social-justice apocalypticism , but until reading that passage in Billington today , I had not quite made the connection that the hysteria of the SJWs is connected inextricably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and homo coitus , to bring about the New Jerusalem in this life .
I intuited the connection , but Billington knitted together the reading I ’ ve been doing about the pseudo-religious dimension of the Bolshevik revolution with the exalted stance we moderns take toward technology , sexuality , and the choosing individual .
What event or events do you think would raise apocalypticism — religious and secular — to the same level of influence that Prometheanism and sensualism have in our society today ?
A sustained period of catastrophic weather , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be plausibly connected to global warming could do it .
A deadly global pandemic might .
So could a new Great Depression .
My point is , apocalypticism is present but latent — for now .
The book I ’ m working on , which doesn ’ t yet have a title , is intended to make conservatives ( and others ) aware of the present dangers of slipping into a soft version of the totalitarianism that overtook Russia , and the countries it occupied after the Second World War .
The Bolsheviks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was amazing to me , though by now it shouldn ’ t be , to realize that we haven ’ t learned a damn thing from the history of the 20th century .
It is hard to imagine anybody of Diaghilev ’ s stature making that kind of toast today , but then again , there might be some tech billionaire sitting at a dinner party in Mountain View tonight , raising his glass to the Brave New World being born from the Valley ’ s creative destruction .
Yeah , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russia out of my head , all right .
To me , the most striking similarity between U.S. society now and that of late imperial Russia is the general anxiety and anger with which has taken over people .
I do believe it was much the result of radical ideology which proved to be the harbinger that turned human beings into animals ; the anger and resentment of the elites and monarchy by the peasant and working classes was indeed incredible if you read Orlando Figes ’ account of revolutionary Russia .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be said about the role of the Russian intellectuals during the fin du siecle which helped to bring out this viciousness .
I think these are real similarities to our present time .
Namely the cultural and socio-economic gaps in this country are beginning to manifest itself in a certain type of reactionary anger or “ cancel culture ” , to borrow a term from Obama , which is real .
Even in the sense of how one individual on the street perceives another .
For instance , if you read Figes ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with 1905 , he describes the appalling amount of random acts of violence which were occurring daily .
Any semblance of higher socio-economic status – often times simply the way a person was dressed when walking down the street – could be met with violence , or conflict at the minimum .
That revolutionary anxiety and the fanatical desire to destroy all hierarchy and tradition began to steadily eat away at society , much like it is today .
And in the process the cultural erosion of Russian society shifted into overdrive .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , however his heart wrenching accounts of how revolutionary angst and anger ( from all ideological sides ) began to envelop the everyday Russian going about his or her day , and the consequences which it subsequently had on the traditional forms of Russian culture definitely ring true in our present time .
I don ’ t think it ’ s simply a coincidence that our society is so broken , divided and has such difficulty in finding commonality with one another as we perhaps once did .
Every little slight , nasty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I mean the word “ trigger ” is now commonly used to describe this phenomenon ( again no coincidence that much like the Bolsheviks did the left now regularly attempts to inject brand new words into our lexicon . )
Fortunately , I think ( and hope ) that civilized society has evolved over the past century enough that this anxiety or anger will not graduate into open violence or anarchy like it did in fin du siecle Russia .
Yet I truly believe there is an animalistic rage which burns beneath @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this country today that may have nowhere to suffocate until it is too late .

Along with this Promethean idealism of the early 20th century came “a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.” He says that “the increasing preoccupation with sexual matters was a logical development of the romantic preoccupation with the will that had become characteristic of the emancipated aristocratic intelligentsia.”
“You know what they say about Russia,” said my Moscow translator and guide. “Once you’ve been here, you’re going to come back. You can’t get it out of your head.”
I’ve been home from Russia for about a month, and I’m starting to understand what he means. Or rather, I don’t understand it (yet), but I feel it, and feel it with more strength the more distance there is between me and that country.
This weekend I’ve been reading, for my research purposes, The Icon and the Axe, James Billington’s revered 1966 history of Russian culture. Billington was a distinguished Russia scholar and Librarian of Congress from 1987 until his retirement in 2015. He died last year at 89. It has been a revelation to read in his work about the culture of Russia between 1890 and the 1917 revolution. It seems eerily like our own in some pretty fundamental ways. I want to tell you a little bit about this.
According to Billington, in the 1890s, younger Russian elites became frustrated with the country’s long struggle towards constitutional liberalism, especially when the reactionary Tsar Alexander III took over from his assassinated father, a (relative) liberal who had ended serfdom. The new generation of intellectuals and artists moved into two different directions: dialectical materialism (that is, Marxism, whose leading exponent at the time was Gyorgi Plekhanov), and transcendental idealism, along the lines of the visionary Christian thinker Vladimir Soloviev. Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, wanted to revitalize society through working-class revolution. Soloviev, an Orthodox Christian, but one strongly influenced by Western Christianity, sought social renaissance through a return to a kind of religious mysticism.
Writes Billington, “The materialists claimed to be the heirs to the traditions of the iconoclastic Sixties [1860s] ; the idealists claimed to be developing the traditions of Dostoevsky’s aesthetic and religious reaction to iconoclasm.” What drove them was “the exasperation of a new student generation with the subjectivism, pessimism, and introspection of the age of small deeds.” Writes Billington, the “new radicals of both right and left” were both seeking “some new philosophic bedrock on which to stand.”
Reading this, I thought about how old-fashioned liberalism in our own polity is in decline, and how the younger generations on both the Left and the Right want something more radical. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’ll do it: obviously there are massive differences between a liberal constitutional republic, as the US has been since its founding, and an autocracy, as Russia always had been. The parallel, though, is that in 1890s Russia, the kind of people who were young liberals a generation earlier were now becoming young radicals. In the US, all the ideological energy among the young is with increasingly illiberal versions of Left and Right. We may all miss liberalism once it’s gone, but it’s hard to find convinced, persuasive defenders today.
(One important aspect of our own situation is that the liberal elites who run the institutions, especially academic and media, often cave to left-wing illiberalism, showing that they don’t have the courage of their professed convictions. And yet, they are worried to death about right-wing illiberalism! I don’t blame them for their concern, given what they say they believe, but their blindness to their weakness on their own left flank also blinds them to a force — leftist illiberalism — that drives the same thing on the Right. I was listening today to an NPR host talk about the baffling menace of right-wing illiberalism, and wanted to shout, “You moron, you don’t even understand how you people are oxygen to its fire!”)
Anyway, back to Russia. Billington says that three forces shaped Russian culture and society from 1890 until the 1917 Revolution and just beyond: Prometheanism, sensualism, and apocalypticism.
Prometheanism, the author says, is “the belief that man – when truly aware of his true powers – is capable of totally transforming the world in which he lives.” The intellectual and artistic elites really did believe that anything was possible through the exercise of man’s will, through the use of science and technology. Orthodox Christianity was a dry husk. In St. Petersburg, an intellectual movement known as “God-building” arose. It was a form of the social gospel, transferring the “God-seeking” of Christianity to concrete action on earth, and to revolution. The God-Builders figured out that religion, in which they didn’t believe, was a powerful force for change. Instead of God, they began worshipping the People, and, like the Jacobins before them, tried to create a humanistic pseudo-religion. Anatoly Lunacharsky, one of their leaders (and later a Soviet official), taught that Marxists should think of their project in explicitly religious terms. (As I blogged not long ago, in talking about Yuri Slezkine’s recent history of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, materialists to the marrow, all thought in quasi-religious ways.) Maxim Gorky wrote in his 1908 novel A Confession this prayer to “the almighty, immortal people!”:
“Thou art my God and the creator of all gods. … And there shall be no other gods in the world but thee, for thou art the one God that creates miracles!”
Lenin hated all religion, and thought that any talk of religion weakened the Marxist position. The God-Builders’ thought didn’t survive the Revolution. Still, it is interesting to think of God-Building as a version of the this-worldly Social Gospel of progressive Christianity, or of the human-centered Moralistic Therapeutic Deism common even in non-progressive churches, or of any of the new forms of self-generated spirituality arising among the post-Christian generation. (The religion writer Tara Isabella Burton has a good book coming out next year about this spirituality, which is extremely diverse, but united by the shared belief that religion is something Man generates within himself to meet his felt spiritual needs, including a desire for transcendence.)
Billington says along with this Promethean idealism of the early 20th century came “a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.” He says that “the increasing preoccupation with sexual matters was a logical development of the romantic preoccupation with the will that had become characteristic of the emancipated aristocratic intelligentsia.”
In other words, in the first half of the 19th century, liberal Russian aristocrats had drunk deeply of European Romanticism, which emphasized individual passion and experience over abstract rationalism. It makes sense that they would turn to the individual’s sexual experiences as a source of wisdom and spiritual revival. The abolition of censorship in Russia after 1905 opened the door to erotic literature. There began to appear among intellectual and social elites the idea that utopia would come into being through sexual permissiveness. As Billington points out, Rasputin was totally debauched, but the aristocrats who murdered him were possibly even more sexually corrupt.
The dominant role that sensualism of our own age, and the role pornography, widely distributed and easily available on the Internet, plays in advancing it, hardly needs to be established. It is interesting, though, to think of how Silicon Valley — the epicenter of 21st century Prometheanism — is ruled by a fantastically wealthy elite that is also notably debauched (see Emily Chang’s Vanity Fair piece, “Inside Silicon Valley’s Secret, Orgiastic Dark Side”). It is not difficult to see the parallels between the Prometheanism and sensualism of pre-revolutionary Russian culture, and our own Homo Deus techno-utopianism.
Here’s something different, though. The “the third ideological current of the age” was apocalypticism – and, at the 1917 revolution, the most relevant of all. Yes, religious apocalypticism was strong with the Orthodox peasantry, but a different kind of apocalypticism entranced elites. It’s stunning to read this august historian writing about the enthusiasm of Russian artists and intellectuals of that era for Satan. The devil was the ultimate Romantic, self-willed figure, after all, giving the sensualism — the sexual permissiveness, and the general craving for sensual experience, a strong grounding in the demonic.
Billington writes: “This sense of the satanic presence led to a brooding and apocalyptic mentality. Apocalypticism, the third key characteristic of the era, was in many ways the by-product of the unresolved psychological tension between the other two: Prometheanism and sensualism. How, after all, can one reconcile great expectations with petty preoccupations? an intellectual belief in a coming utopia and a simultaneous personal involvement in debauchery? One way of holding on to both commitments was to convince oneself with a certain amount of Schadenfreude that apocalyptical change was in the offing, that the sensualism of today forebodes the transformation of tomorrow. As Diaghilev put it during the revolutionary year of 1905 (in a toast delivered in connection with the exhibit of three thousand Russian historical portraits which he organized at the Tauride Palace): “We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing-up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away. That is why, without fear or misgiving, I raise my glass to the ruined walls of the beautiful palaces, as well as to the new commandments of a new aesthetic. The only wish that I, an incorrigible sensualist, can express, is that the forthcoming struggle should not damage the amenities of life, and that the death should be as beautiful and as illuminating as the resurrection.”
Diaghilev, a renown Russian art critic (and founder of the Ballets Russe), had spent the previous summer going through old Russian palaces and aristocratic mansions selecting canvases for the exhibition. That experience, plus his awareness of what was going on in the country — mass upheaval in 1905 caused a significant weakening of Tsarist autocracy — taught Diaghilev that something truly revolutionary was on its way. It is characteristic of the time, and of the faith people then had in Progress, that Diaghilev, in giving that toast at a banquet at Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, was certain that it was bound to be something great.
What he, and Russia, got was the Bolshevik yoke — state-induced famine, the gulag archipelago, the Terror, the destruction of country. But they didn’t know that was coming. Billington says that many intellectuals welcomed the Revolution as the advent of a New Jerusalem. Andrei Bely even wrote a novel celebrating the Revolution, and titled it, Christ Is Risen — the traditional exclamation at Orthodox Easter services, and through the Paschal season.
Billington emphasizes that the late imperial period’s obsession with Prometheanism and sensualism was “essentially anti-Christian.” Mind you, he’s writing as a scholar of history and culture, not as a Christian polemicist. It’s simply true. And our own 21st-century American obsession with the same since at least the 1960s is a sign that we have passed into the post-Christian period. Again and again, I say unto you: the secular prophet Philip Rieff got it all right in his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic, which came out the same years at The Icon And The Axe. Rieff knew that Christianity, as the narrative that bound and inspired the West, was over — and that the Sexual Revolution, which was just beginning, thanks in large part to the technological innovation of the birth control pill, was the handwriting on the wall declaring the new order.
Billington says that Prometheanism and sensualism were equally strong in Europe, but apocalypticism was a Russian thing. He writes:
Each of the three attitudes of the age was an extension of an idea already present among the anguished aristocratic philosophers of the nineteenth century: Prometheanism made explicit the transfer from God to man of the title to dominion over the external world; sensualism brought to the surface their secret fascination with the world of immediate physiological satisfaction and with its demonic patron; apocalypticism represented an agonizing, often masochistic clinging to the Judeo-Christian idea of retribution by those unable to believe in salvation.
Historian Yuri Slezkine writes powerfully about that final point, in his book The House Of Government. He quotes from Bolshevik sources, writing in the pre-revolutionary period, talking about the coming revolution as an apocalypse that will settle accounts with the rich through apocalyptic violence.
In our situation, what we lack at the present moment is a strong apocalypticism. It’s certainly present to some degree. Pop Christianity goes through periodic ruminations on End Times prophetic scenarios. For Evangelicals, it was the best-selling Late Great Planet Earth in the 1970s, and the Left Behind series in the 1990s. For Catholics, the abiding interest in visions of the Virgin Mary (e.g., Medjugorje) both stokes and expresses this sentiment. More recently, my own Benedict Option is apocalyptic, not in a Jesus-is-coming way, and certainly not in prophesying epochal violence, but rather in diagnosing an end to the Christian era parallel to the demise of paganism in fourth-century Rome. It’s a gentle apocalypse, but from a spiritual point of view, an apocalypse it certainly is. History is not determined in advance, which is why I propose that a Christianity that has been preserved through the long night of decline and decay can provide the seeds of resurrection. In fact, if post-communist Russia is going to have a chance at thriving, it’s going to have to go deep into its Orthodox Christian roots.
Still, Christian apocalypticism has not reached a fever pitch, or had any meaningful political expressions, not that I can see. Secular apocalypticism is present among the more extreme environmental activists. I think the cult of Social Justice is “an agonizing, often masochistic clinging to the Judeo-Christian idea of retribution” by those who are unable to believe in forgiveness, or to believe in a world to come in which God will deliver ultimate justice. If you have seen the Sexual Revolution, and the women’s movement, and the Civil Rights movement, and you have observed that people remain broken and unhappy, you can either rethink your premises in light of human fallibility, or you can double down. If you cannot or will not believe in some version of the Judeo-Christian idea of Original Sin, and insist, despite experience and evidence, that Man is born good, but corrupted by society, then the only path left to you is to get radical about punishing the evildoers whose presence among us prevents Utopia.
It is clear to me that progressivism is moving more and more towards social-justice apocalypticism, but until reading that passage in Billington today, I had not quite made the connection that the hysteria of the SJWs is connected inextricably to the inability of homo Deus, and homo coitus, to bring about the New Jerusalem in this life. I intuited the connection, but Billington knitted together the reading I’ve been doing about the pseudo-religious dimension of the Bolshevik revolution with the exalted stance we moderns take toward technology, sexuality, and the choosing individual.
What event or events do you think would raise apocalypticism — religious and secular — to the same level of influence that Prometheanism and sensualism have in our society today? A sustained period of catastrophic weather, and resulting mass suffering, that can be plausibly connected to global warming could do it. A deadly global pandemic might. So could a new Great Depression. My point is, apocalypticism is present but latent — for now. The book I’m working on, which doesn’t yet have a title, is intended to make conservatives (and others) aware of the present dangers of slipping into a soft version of the totalitarianism that overtook Russia, and the countries it occupied after the Second World War. The Bolsheviks didn’t come from nowhere.
It was amazing to me, though by now it shouldn’t be, to realize that we haven’t learned a damn thing from the history of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine anybody of Diaghilev’s stature making that kind of toast today, but then again, there might be some tech billionaire sitting at a dinner party in Mountain View tonight, raising his glass to the Brave New World being born from the Valley’s creative destruction.
Yeah, I haven’t been able to get Russia out of my head, all right.
UPDATE: Really good comment by reader Aleks:


russiainsider--2020-02-11--Russia to Start Developing Its Own 5G Equipment

Subsidiaries of Russian state technology agency Rostec will start jointly developing equipment for 5G networks , Vedomosti daily reported on February 3 citing representatives of the agency and unnamed industry sources .
As reported by bne IntelliNews , the Kremlin chose unpopular frequencies for 5G rollout to drive home-made infrastructure development and could enforce the use of domestically produced servers only .
Reportedly GlobalInformService ( GIS ) and Sozvezdie have already designed and produced 4G network equipment under Rostec ’ s patronage .
However , state funding for the companies currently amounts to only RUB224mn ( $ 3.5mn ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Trade estimated the total cost of 5G and IoT ( internet of things ) roll-out at RUB28bn ( RUB16bn of federal funding and RUB12bn of non-budgetary funds ) .
The total cost of all network equipment could amount to up to RUB650bn .
Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti stress that until the question of 5G frequencies is decided , it is not clear how the developers could start producing the necessary equipment .
The competitiveness of Russian solutions developed from scratch is also questioned .
As analysed by bne IntelliNews , the introduction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a lack of clear policy , decisions on framework frequency allocation , rollout strategy and the lack of co-operation within and with the private sector .

Subsidiaries of Russian state technology agency Rostec will start jointly developing equipment for 5G networks, Vedomosti daily reported on February 3 citing representatives of the agency and unnamed industry sources.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, the Kremlin chose unpopular frequencies for 5G rollout to drive home-made infrastructure development and could enforce the use of domestically produced servers only.
Reportedly GlobalInformService (GIS) and Sozvezdie have already designed and produced 4G network equipment under Rostec’s patronage. However, state funding for the companies currently amounts to only RUB224mn ($3.5mn).
By comparison, the Ministry of Industry and Trade estimated the total cost of 5G and IoT (internet of things) roll-out at RUB28bn (RUB16bn of federal funding and RUB12bn of non-budgetary funds). The total cost of all network equipment could amount to up to RUB650bn.
Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti stress that until the question of 5G frequencies is decided, it is not clear how the developers could start producing the necessary equipment. The competitiveness of Russian solutions developed from scratch is also questioned.
As analysed by bne IntelliNews, the introduction of the 5G network has been impeded by a lack of clear policy, decisions on framework frequency allocation, rollout strategy and the lack of co-operation within and with the private sector.


russiainsider--2020-02-11--Our Military Is Clashing With Russians While 'Defending' Syrian Oil. Why?

Trump seems to think it 's okay to choose who controls resources and who does n't in other people 's countries .
Last month , American military forces physically blocked Russian troops from proceeding down a road near the town of Rmelan , Syria .
U.S. troops were acting on orders of President Trump , who said back in October that Washington would be “ protecting ” oil fields currently under control of the anti-Assad , Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces .
Meanwhile , the Russians are acting on behalf of Syrian president Bashar Assad , who says the state is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While no shots were fired in this case , the next time Moscow ’ s forces might not go so quietly .
U.S. officials offered few details about the January stand-off , but General Alexus Grynkewich , deputy commander of the anti-ISIS campaign , said : “ We ’ ve had a number of different engagements with the Russians on the ground.
” Late last month the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported : “ Tensions have continued to increase significantly in recent days between U.S. and Russian forces in the northeastern regions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with neither domestic nor international legal authority , American personnel risked life and limb to occupy another nation ’ s territory and steal its resources .
What is the Trump administration doing ?
American policy in Syria has long been stunningly foolish , dishonest , and counterproductive .
When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011 , Washington first defended Assad .
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even called him a “ reformer.
” Then she decided that he should be ousted and demanded that the rest of the world follow Washington ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama administration implemented a confused mix of contradictory policies .
The U.S. sought to oust Assad and destroy the Islamic State , which the Damascus government opposed .
The administration sought to find and aid an ever-diminishing pool of “ moderate ” insurgents while cooperating with an al-Qaeda affiliate and watching substantial U.S. materiel end up in the hands of other radical groups .
American officials maintained the fiction that Turkey shared Washington ’ s objectives , even as it aided ISIS and focused its ill attention on Syrian Kurds , which Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its primary ground force against the Islamic State .
Both Moscow and Tehran aided Syria against ISIS , yet the administration sought to expel Russia from a country with which it had been allied throughout the entire Cold War and turn Syria into another front in the “ maximum pressure ” campaign against Iran , also long allied with Damascus .
President Obama ’ s only serious objective was reversing the Islamic State ’ s geographic advance .
However , the group was an outgrowth of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opposed by most every regional power backed by Russia , Europe , and America .
The “ caliphate ” would have been defeated even without Washington , though not as quickly .
Obama ’ s policy , which kept U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq , left the latter particularly dependent on America , which is proving dangerous for both Baghdad and Washington .
Candidate Trump criticized “ endless wars ” in the Middle East , and as president he has repeatedly indicated his determination to bring home U.S. forces from Syria .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ been defeated—it no longer rules any territory as a “ caliphate ” —Washington continues to occupy Syrian territory without legal warrant , U.S. or international .
Nevertheless , the president has continuously faced determined resistance to his withdrawal demands from his own appointees as well as the Pentagon and the Washington foreign-policy establishment .
Last year his staff convinced him to swap deployments in the name of withdrawal , removing troops from Kurdish-held territory in the north and deploying units to guard Syrian oilfields seized by the Kurds .
This new presence could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , America ’ s Mideast commander , stated : “ This is an area where we made a commitment .
I think we ’ re going to be here for a while.
” The president has long had a fixation on oil .
As a candidate he complained that Washington should have kept Iraq ’ s petroleum reserves , and he continued to talk about the possibility of seizing the oil after becoming president , to Baghdad ’ s extreme discomfort .
As for Syria , after he approved the Department of Defense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeping the oil.
” It seemed natural to him : “ I ’ ve always said that—keep the oil .
We want to keep the oil , $ 45 million a month.
” The president apparently believed that the U.S. would make back the money spent on the occupation : he said he hoped to “ make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly.
” That isn ’ t going to happen—no legitimate company is likely to develop stolen resources in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ petroleum were developed , the resulting revenue collected from Syria ’ s wells , limited even before the conflict exploded , would hardly justify the occupation expense , let alone the military risk .
And the latter is real .
President Trump seemed ready for war : “ Either we ’ ll negotiate a deal with whoever is claiming it , if we think it ’ s fair , or we will militarily stop them very quickly.
” A bit less clear was Defense Secretary Mark Esper , who minimized the role of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond with overwhelming military force against any group who threatens the safety of our forces there.
” Since some 500 Americans are currently occupying the oil fields , that effectively means they will defend them with deadly force .
Unfortunately , potential conflict is not limited to Syria , the recognized government of the territory occupied by America and the legal owner of the oil the president threatens to sell .
As noted earlier , Washington is prepared to confront nuclear-armed Russia , a Damascus ally , over Syrian oil .
What conceivable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
The president appears to realize that the standard reasons for entanglement do not just justify America ’ s ongoing military presence , but his officials see the oil mission as a stalking horse , an excuse to keep the U.S. entangled in the region .
Admiral William D. Byrne , Jr. , vice director of the Joint Staff , opined that protecting the stolen Syrian oil was merely a “ subordinate task.
” The president may reign , but he does not govern .
What and why do Washington ’ s war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Syria does not matter and never has much mattered to America .
The Assad regime obviously poses no military threat to the U.S .
Although Washington labeled Damascus a state sponsor of terrorism , the latter does not engage in terrorism as commonly understood .
That designation is political , reflecting Syria ’ s support for quasi-states , such as Hamas , which are antagonistic to Israel .
But the latter is well able to protect itself , having destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor and more recently launched routine strikes against Iranian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response from Damascus .
Throughout the Cold War , Syria was allied with the Soviet Union , so Russia ’ s current involvement changes nothing .
Washington , meanwhile , retains overwhelming influence in the Middle East , being allied with virtually every other state and possessing multiple bases , military relationships , and deployments .
What happens in Syria simply isn ’ t important for the U.S. , other than as a humanitarian tragedy , which can not justify military intervention .
Why else occupy roughly a third of Syrian territory with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against ISIS ?
As a quasi-state , the group is dead .
But its remnant forces will remain a problem , promoting a malignant theology and perhaps undertaking insurgent attacks .
However , that is likely to be the case for years if not decades : the U.S. still worries about al-Qaeda nearly two decades after 9/11 .
A permanent U.S. occupation of Syria is not necessary .
The Islamic State ’ s other enemies , Iraq , Iran , Israel , Jordan , Syria , Saudi Arabia , other Gulf States , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever remains of the group .
The Syrian Kurds cooperated with America out of their own interest—defeating ISIS forces that threatened their population and territory—not for humanitarian reasons .
Washington has no cause to offer a permanent defense commitment , especially one that Congress has never voted on .
The Kurds ’ best option is to make a deal with Syria , within which their territory is located .
Desiring to defenestrate Russia is a fantasy objective , given Moscow ’ s long ties with Damascus .
Attempting to exclude Iran , invited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an even less realistic objective .
Pushing these two governments out would be convenient for Washington , but in practice would offer little meaningful benefit .
America will retain its long-standing military dominance throughout the Middle East in either case .
Indeed , the wreckage known as Syria may prove more liability than asset for both Moscow and Tehran in the foreseeable future .
Finally , some Washington policymakers still dream of ousting Assad .
Indeed , that objective likely underlies Esper ’ s October announcement that Washington would “ maintain a reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to oil revenue.
” Since the Islamic State has been largely destroyed , in reality , Washington is denying Syria ’ s oil to the Syrian government and its allies , such as Russia , as we recently saw .
Weakening the Assad government is supposed to allow its ouster , or force it to follow other U.S. dictates , such as the expulsion of Russia and Iran .
Assad deserves to be overthrown , but that does not make him unique .
Nor does the Trump administration have the ability to oust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has survived years of bitter warfare and is on the cusp of victory over the remaining rebels in Idlib .
He has no reason to quit or abandon allies that sustained him against myriad insurgents backed by America , Europe , and the Gulf States .
Moreover , removing Assad would not answer the vital question : who comes next ?
Washington has dramatically bungled regime change in both Iraq and Libya , leaving behind greater carnage and instability .
Nor can the promotion of democracy justify the human and financial cost of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reasons .
American military personnel are not pawns for Washington ’ s ivory tower crusades ; 9/11 demonstrated that misguided foreign intervention puts even America ’ s homeland at risk .
The president wants to seize Syrian oil but his appointees have very different agendas .
Such contradictory objectives could lead to confusion and worse .
At the same time , the president ’ s well-publicized focus on resources feeds the traditional Mideast meme that all the U.S. government cares about is oil .
Today that is not just a conspiracy theory ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ official pronouncement .
A policy of America First should be Americans First .
Two months ago the president declared that “ we left troops behind , only for the oil.
” Last month a 22-year-old North Carolina soldier , Antonio Moore , was the latest death in the illegal , counterproductive Syria mission .
Washington policy should focus not on collecting cash for the federal government but protecting the lives and liberties of the American people .
That means not risking them for interests that are fundamentally frivolous—like grabbing Syria ’ s oil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should fulfill his promise and bring home the U.S. military from Syria .
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and currently scholar-in-residence at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney .
He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the author of several books , including Foreign Follies : America ’ s New Global Empire .

Trump seems to think it's okay to choose who controls resources and who doesn't in other people's countries.
A US military armoured vehicle drives in a patrol past an oil well in Rumaylan (Rmeilan) in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on November 6, 2019. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Last month, American military forces physically blocked Russian troops from proceeding down a road near the town of Rmelan, Syria. U.S. troops were acting on orders of President Trump, who said back in October that Washington would be “protecting” oil fields currently under control of the anti-Assad, Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces.
Meanwhile, the Russians are acting on behalf of Syrian president Bashar Assad, who says the state is ultimately in control of those fields. While no shots were fired in this case, the next time Moscow’s forces might not go so quietly.
U.S. officials offered few details about the January stand-off, but General Alexus Grynkewich, deputy commander of the anti-ISIS campaign, said: “We’ve had a number of different engagements with the Russians on the ground.” Late last month the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported: “Tensions have continued to increase significantly in recent days between U.S. and Russian forces in the northeastern regions of Syria.”
Stationed in Syria illegally, with neither domestic nor international legal authority, American personnel risked life and limb to occupy another nation’s territory and steal its resources. What is the Trump administration doing?
American policy in Syria has long been stunningly foolish, dishonest, and counterproductive. When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, Washington first defended Assad. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even called him a “reformer.” Then she decided that he should be ousted and demanded that the rest of the world follow Washington’s new policy.
For years the Obama administration implemented a confused mix of contradictory policies. The U.S. sought to oust Assad and destroy the Islamic State, which the Damascus government opposed. The administration sought to find and aid an ever-diminishing pool of “moderate” insurgents while cooperating with an al-Qaeda affiliate and watching substantial U.S. materiel end up in the hands of other radical groups. American officials maintained the fiction that Turkey shared Washington’s objectives, even as it aided ISIS and focused its ill attention on Syrian Kurds, which Washington, in turn, relied on as its primary ground force against the Islamic State. Both Moscow and Tehran aided Syria against ISIS, yet the administration sought to expel Russia from a country with which it had been allied throughout the entire Cold War and turn Syria into another front in the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, also long allied with Damascus.
President Obama’s only serious objective was reversing the Islamic State’s geographic advance. However, the group was an outgrowth of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and would not have existed otherwise. ISIS was opposed by most every regional power backed by Russia, Europe, and America. The “caliphate” would have been defeated even without Washington, though not as quickly. Obama’s policy, which kept U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, left the latter particularly dependent on America, which is proving dangerous for both Baghdad and Washington.
Candidate Trump criticized “endless wars” in the Middle East, and as president he has repeatedly indicated his determination to bring home U.S. forces from Syria. Despite his cheerful announcement that ISIS had been defeated—it no longer rules any territory as a “caliphate”—Washington continues to occupy Syrian territory without legal warrant, U.S. or international. Nevertheless, the president has continuously faced determined resistance to his withdrawal demands from his own appointees as well as the Pentagon and the Washington foreign-policy establishment.
Last year his staff convinced him to swap deployments in the name of withdrawal, removing troops from Kurdish-held territory in the north and deploying units to guard Syrian oilfields seized by the Kurds. This new presence could be essentially permanent. General Frank McKenzie, America’s Mideast commander, stated: “This is an area where we made a commitment. I think we’re going to be here for a while.”
The president has long had a fixation on oil. As a candidate he complained that Washington should have kept Iraq’s petroleum reserves, and he continued to talk about the possibility of seizing the oil after becoming president, to Baghdad’s extreme discomfort. As for Syria, after he approved the Department of Defense plan he said America would be “keeping the oil.” It seemed natural to him: “I’ve always said that—keep the oil. We want to keep the oil, $45 million a month.”
The president apparently believed that the U.S. would make back the money spent on the occupation: he said he hoped to “make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly.” That isn’t going to happen—no legitimate company is likely to develop stolen resources in a war zone. Even if the petroleum were developed, the resulting revenue collected from Syria’s wells, limited even before the conflict exploded, would hardly justify the occupation expense, let alone the military risk.
And the latter is real. President Trump seemed ready for war: “Either we’ll negotiate a deal with whoever is claiming it, if we think it’s fair, or we will militarily stop them very quickly.” A bit less clear was Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who minimized the role of oil while announcing that Washington would “respond with overwhelming military force against any group who threatens the safety of our forces there.” Since some 500 Americans are currently occupying the oil fields, that effectively means they will defend them with deadly force.
Unfortunately, potential conflict is not limited to Syria, the recognized government of the territory occupied by America and the legal owner of the oil the president threatens to sell. As noted earlier, Washington is prepared to confront nuclear-armed Russia, a Damascus ally, over Syrian oil.
What conceivable stakes could be worth taking such risks?
The president appears to realize that the standard reasons for entanglement do not just justify America’s ongoing military presence, but his officials see the oil mission as a stalking horse, an excuse to keep the U.S. entangled in the region. Admiral William D. Byrne, Jr., vice director of the Joint Staff, opined that protecting the stolen Syrian oil was merely a “subordinate task.” The president may reign, but he does not govern.
What and why do Washington’s war partisans want America to do in Syria?
Syria does not matter and never has much mattered to America. The Assad regime obviously poses no military threat to the U.S. Although Washington labeled Damascus a state sponsor of terrorism, the latter does not engage in terrorism as commonly understood. That designation is political, reflecting Syria’s support for quasi-states, such as Hamas, which are antagonistic to Israel. But the latter is well able to protect itself, having destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor and more recently launched routine strikes against Iranian forces located in Syria, without any response from Damascus.
Throughout the Cold War, Syria was allied with the Soviet Union, so Russia’s current involvement changes nothing. Washington, meanwhile, retains overwhelming influence in the Middle East, being allied with virtually every other state and possessing multiple bases, military relationships, and deployments. What happens in Syria simply isn’t important for the U.S., other than as a humanitarian tragedy, which cannot justify military intervention.
Why else occupy roughly a third of Syrian territory with American troops? To continue the fight against ISIS? As a quasi-state, the group is dead. But its remnant forces will remain a problem, promoting a malignant theology and perhaps undertaking insurgent attacks. However, that is likely to be the case for years if not decades: the U.S. still worries about al-Qaeda nearly two decades after 9/11. A permanent U.S. occupation of Syria is not necessary. The Islamic State’s other enemies, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States, and Russia, are capable of countering whatever remains of the group.
The Syrian Kurds cooperated with America out of their own interest—defeating ISIS forces that threatened their population and territory—not for humanitarian reasons. Washington has no cause to offer a permanent defense commitment, especially one that Congress has never voted on. The Kurds’ best option is to make a deal with Syria, within which their territory is located.
Desiring to defenestrate Russia is a fantasy objective, given Moscow’s long ties with Damascus. Attempting to exclude Iran, invited in by the Assad government, is an even less realistic objective. Pushing these two governments out would be convenient for Washington, but in practice would offer little meaningful benefit. America will retain its long-standing military dominance throughout the Middle East in either case. Indeed, the wreckage known as Syria may prove more liability than asset for both Moscow and Tehran in the foreseeable future.
Finally, some Washington policymakers still dream of ousting Assad. Indeed, that objective likely underlies Esper’s October announcement that Washington would “maintain a reduced presence in Syria and deny ISIS access to oil revenue.” Since the Islamic State has been largely destroyed, in reality, Washington is denying Syria’s oil to the Syrian government and its allies, such as Russia, as we recently saw. Weakening the Assad government is supposed to allow its ouster, or force it to follow other U.S. dictates, such as the expulsion of Russia and Iran.
Assad deserves to be overthrown, but that does not make him unique. Nor does the Trump administration have the ability to oust him. On the contrary, he has survived years of bitter warfare and is on the cusp of victory over the remaining rebels in Idlib. He has no reason to quit or abandon allies that sustained him against myriad insurgents backed by America, Europe, and the Gulf States.
Moreover, removing Assad would not answer the vital question: who comes next? Washington has dramatically bungled regime change in both Iraq and Libya, leaving behind greater carnage and instability. Nor can the promotion of democracy justify the human and financial cost of promiscuous war-making, even for allegedly humanitarian reasons. American military personnel are not pawns for Washington’s ivory tower crusades; 9/11 demonstrated that misguided foreign intervention puts even America’s homeland at risk.
The president wants to seize Syrian oil but his appointees have very different agendas. Such contradictory objectives could lead to confusion and worse. At the same time, the president’s well-publicized focus on resources feeds the traditional Mideast meme that all the U.S. government cares about is oil. Today that is not just a conspiracy theory; it is the president’s own official pronouncement.
A policy of America First should be Americans First. Two months ago the president declared that “we left troops behind, only for the oil.” Last month a 22-year-old North Carolina soldier, Antonio Moore, was the latest death in the illegal, counterproductive Syria mission. Washington policy should focus not on collecting cash for the federal government but protecting the lives and liberties of the American people. That means not risking them for interests that are fundamentally frivolous—like grabbing Syria’s oil for fun and profit. President Trump should fulfill his promise and bring home the U.S. military from Syria.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and currently scholar-in-residence at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.