Patrick Simpson
14 min readMar 25, 2018

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One of the key chess pieces in the Russian Intelligence Operation that brought us Donald Trump is the Religious Right. In fact, the fascist alliance with the American Right goes back to the period after World War 2 where we allied ourselves with former Nazis to take down the Communists.

Soviet defectors came here in the 1980’s and told bold stories about how Russian intelligence services had infected everything and were playing the long game in several phases. They would target the schools, the government, the media, and our churches over decades until we had been demoralized and chaos would reign.

This also happens to have coincided with the rise of a new form of Conservatism in America.

Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB lieutenant Colonel wrote in his book “KGB/FSB’s New Trojan Horsethat the Russian Emigre Community is filled with agents of the Russian Government, and that the number of spies actually increased once the Soviet Union Collapsed. There are generations upon generations of Russians and ethnicities from former Soviet satellite States just waiting to be called into action.

The Alt Right and Russian Influence

The Alt-Right is a media created construct to convince people that White Nationalists and Republicans are different entities. This used to be correct, until the right was infiltrated by former Nazis in the Nixon years.

This is how the “New Right” was born. The people listed as part of the “New Right” went to the 1976 Convention of the segregationist American Independence Party and tried to secure the presidential nomination of fundraising magnate Richard Viguerie. The IAP was a party filled with KKK and Neo-Nazi members.

Richard Nixon united the far right with fascist elements in Eastern Europe, as pointed out in Russ Bellant’s brilliant 1991 book “Old Nazis, The New Right, and The Republican Party.” Nixon would go on to befriend Dimitri Simes from the Center for the National Interest and become a Russia apologist after the U.S.S.R fell.

The American religious right viewed the downfall of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to proselytize and create an alliance with the Russians. Phillip Yancy, in this story for Christianity Today and later the book he wrote based on this story, it is shown that the KGB welcomed this with open arms. I believe that, at some point, they came to realize that religion was a better way to control people and choose to take advantage of the religious right across the world.

With the financial backing of the notorious right-wing families Coors, Scaife, and Hunt, Paul Weyrich was able to create the Heritage Foundation in 1973. He would follow it up with A.L.E.C, The Moral Majority, the Free Congress Foundation and the Secretive Council for National Policy. Weyrich is also known for his belief that not everybody should be able to vote.

“Another one of Weyrich’s close associates at the Free Congress Foundation, Hungarian-American Laszlo Pasztor, is a convicted Nazi sympathizer who was active in the 1940s in the Hungarian Arrow Cross when it was collaborating with the Nazis (source).

Board member Charles Moser is an editorial advisor to Ukrainian Quarterly which once ran an article praising the Nazi Waffen SS and Ukranian collaboration against the Bolsheviks (source) while Weyrich has ties to neo-fascist and racist groups including the Nazi Northern League and the World Anti-Communist League via British eugenicist Roger Pearson.”

Roger Pearson was on the editorial board for the Heritage Foundation before he went on to work for the Pioneer Fund, a fund dedicated to funding eugenics studies. The Pioneer Fund was founded in 1937 and modeled after the Nazi’s breeding program.

Some of the directors of the Pioneer Fund were Tom Ellis — a former president of the Council for National Policy — and two other high-level Republican operatives — Senator Jesse Helms and Carter Wrenn. Both were members of the CNP, as well as being part of the same Eugenics society as far-right financier Nelson Bunker Hunt. Helms was also a member of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, a racist network out of Scotland tied to Joseph Coors.

Once considered the World’s richest man, he was a member of a Eugenics society. Hunt is rumored to have talked about starting death squads in order to assassinate his political opponents.

He was a Bircher who helped fund the Western Goals Foundation, an offshoot of the John Birch Society that served as a private intelligence service for the right until its role in Iran-Contra was blown. This sounds a lot like what the Trump administration is trying to organize out of Whitefish, Montana. When Gaddafi nationalized his oil fields, Hunt lost his entire fortune and disappeared from politics until his death in 2014.

Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn was a board member of the Western Goals Foundation, which had extensive ties to the Nazi-connected World Anti Communist League. The WACL has since renamed itself the World League for Freedom and Democracy, and boasts Trump backer Mike Huckabee on the board.

In 1979, Weyrich and his comrades convinced Jerry Falwell to form a new organization to promote theocracy, the Moral Majority. Meanwhile, Ed McAteer (Howard Phillips coworker) formed the Religious Roundtable with dozens of religious leaders including Rafael Cruz. McAteer also served on the board of the International Linguistics Center with Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Seeing this newfound power and broad alliances on the right, Paul Weyrich and his friend at Free Congress Robert Krieble decided to take on the Soviet Union themselves.

To do so, they enlisted the help of Soviet Émigré Edward Lozansky and other young Russians to spread right wing propaganda across Russia and Eastern Europe. Grant Stern and I have covered the origins of Lozansky’s ties to Russia in depth.

Russ Bellant explained this in his book about the New Right in 1991, but also missed the role fascist elements in Russia itself played the rise of fascism throughout the United States.

The evidence out there points to this The Krieble Institute’s goals being one of religious indoctrination rather than one of converting a nation from Communism to Capitalism. Two Months after this letter was sent, the Council for National Policy had its meeting in Moscow. In addition to this letter from 1991, Allen Carlson started the World Congress of Families when two Russian Professors at Moscow State University reached out to him with the idea.

Prior to his death, Paul Weyrich is described the World Congress’s purposes in the following terms; “to set up an international operation with the ability to combat the forces of darkness wherever they show themselves in whatever part of the world.”

While Weyrich was proselytizing to young Russian families and Allen Carlson was setting up the World Congress, Dr. John Bernbaum was founding the “Russian American Christian University” in Moscow. RACU was founded with money from Deyneka Ministries and Peter Deyneka Jr. Served on the board until his death. The University was supported by millions of dollars from the Prince and Devos family foundations and was just one of the ways the American Right fought a Culture War in a country it had no place being in.

In 2003, Russian Tax Student Yuri Mamchur traveled here from Russia to work as an intern for both the Philanthropy Roundtable and the Discovery Institute. The LaRussophobe blog covered the questionable resume Mamchur claimed to have on multiple occasions, but he has since gone into hiding with regards to politics.

By 2005, Mamchur had launched “Russia Blog” out of the religious right think tank, the Discovery Institute. Russia Blog’s launch and success coincided with the Edward Lozansky published Russia Journal closing up shop after being hacked and Ajay Goyal lost his archives. Goyal is a very active pro-Putin social media supporter, a friend of anti-semitic Duginite Charles Bausman, and recent contributor to Bausman’s Russia-Insider. Most of the Pro-Russian events sponsored by Russia Blog and the Discovery Institute are now missing or lead to dead links.

In early 2007, the Discovery Institute officially launched the “Real Russia Project” website with Edward Lozansky and two of the fellows at his fake University listed as advisors. In exchange, Yuri Mamchur became a fellow at the fake University. By the end of 2007, Mamchur announced on Russia Blog that he had to stop posting and allow time for fundraising activities.

Lozansky launched WorldRussiaForum.com in partnership with the Discovery Institute for a three year period starting in 2009. The World Russia Forum has historically been used to introduce unwitting Americans with Russian Spies and Propagandists. He has also used it to unveil Pro-Russian think Tanks in the US like the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in 2008 and the Fascist American Committee for East-West Accord in 2014.

Fusion GPS Co-founder and Former Journalist Glenn Simpson and others have confirmed over the past year that the Russian Orthodox Church is an extension of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Government. Russian Active Measures includes infiltration of every level of American society, whether it be the church, schools, or government.

According to the website, the SaviourFund was created in November 2008, with offices in New York City, to promote the Russian Orthodox Church and Metropolitan Hilarion.

Saviourfund co-Founder Kate Fioranda attended the 2009 World Russia Forum where she was able to mingle with many dignitaries, such as Reaganite and Pro-Russian Bud Macfarlane, himself a guest at the Mayflower during the infamous Trump speech. There are more pictures available on her flickr account.

She also attended the World Russia Forums in 2010 and 2011.

Tillerson’s Exxon #2, Ed Verona was there, giving a speech about business opportunities in Russia. There are pictures of other Savior Fund representatives talking to the director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, which drew up plans to swing the election to Trump.

Foronda and the first president of the Seychelles Islands , James Mancham, took pictures together at the 2011 forum. He wasn’t even listed as a guest, nor did he mention the event on Manchum’s website.

You might remember Seychelles as where Erik Prince held a secret back channel meeting with the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Prince is an associate of Putin’s favorite Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher and is well known for trying to engage in a crusade against the Muslims. He’s also known as a Christian Dominionist with a family history tied to the Council for National Policy. His sister is currently the Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos, also trying to advance God’s Kingdom through education.

James Mancham died suddenly three days before Trump’s infamous back channel communications meeting with the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

The Saviour Fund also posted multiple YouTube videos of some of the speeches at the World Russia Forum. There’s a video of Kislyak and several other Russians speaking (all in Russian), on the Youtube page.

The Saviour Fund was created as a bridge between the Russian Government and Conservatives within the United States. The SaviourFund has not hosted an event since just before the 2016 election, and the founder has since gone on to found a company involved with Bitcoin.

Hilarion’s first experience in the United States was when he was invited by the former Librarian Of Congress, James. H Billington to speak at an event in 2011.

Billington had unprecedented access to both Congress and Russian delegations as the Librarian of Congress. Like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he is one of the few Americans to have received Putin’s order of friendship award. Billington was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eurasia Center in 2007 during one of the World Russian Forums.

The “Grey Cardinal” Vladislav Surkov

In 2012, Putin’s top propagandist Vladislav Surkov became the Russian envoy to the orthodox church. As Surkov did almost a decade earlier with the Nashi, his first step was to create a Youth Movement within the Church to “fix” its image worldwide.

The Nashi formed part of what-Vladislav Surkov called “managed nationalism.” Concerned about a possible “Color Revolution” in Russia, Surkov hoped to simulate an opposition movement and keep the public under the Kremlin’s control. He first tested this out in the 2004 Ukrainian Elections.

“Managed nationalism” and Surkov’s analysis of “network structures” paved the way for a strategy penned in 2013 by Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Armed Forces of Russia. Now known as the Gerasimov Doctrine, The New York Times called it “RT, Sputnik, and Russia’s new theory of war.” In Gerasimov’s words, “The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures — applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population.”

Alexander Dugin and the “World Congress of Families”

Putin’s favorite fascist propagandist, Aleksander Dugin, has worked for most of his life to create a massive international network among the far right throughout the world. His involvement in, “managed nationalism” and the Gerasimov Doctrine is consistent with the work of Cambridge Analytica and the Internet Research Agency

Shortly after Gerasimov published his doctrine, Dugin’s efforts came to a head. He sent his associate Georgiy Gavrish a memo listing a number of pro-Russia political leaders on the European far right and left. Intent on making Moscow the “New Rome” of a new spiritual empire. Dugin’s main aspiration lay in consolidating support networks for the Kremlin and developing ideological unity for his “Eurasianist” geopolitics.

Dugin’s efforts produced a “think tank” called Katehon. At the helm of Katehon’s board sits Dugin’s associate Konstantin Malofeev. Known as the “Orthodox Oligarch” for his far-right political positions and proximity to the Russian Orthodox Church, Malofeev was sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly bankrolling the pro-Russia separatists in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Lozansky has a long and extensive relationship with Dugin, hosting him at influential conferences in 2004 and 2005, along with red-brown propagandist Aleksandr Prokhanov, Rodina leader Dmitri Rogozin, and other éminences grises of the U.S. and Russian far-right.

In September 2008, Lozansky joined Dugin for a conference with far-right figures such as fascist creator of the European New Right Alain de Benoist, Duginist Israeli far-right leader Avigdor Eskin and Israel Shamir, a holocaust denying antisemite who would later become the Russian emissary for Wikileaks. Within a few weeks, Dugin and Lozansky appeared together on the TV program “Three Corners” for a discussion on the merits of “soft power.”

“In our world (we are talking about the information space) ideas can also play a bigger role,” Lozansky cautioned, “even more important than guns and missiles.”

A week after the Crimea crisis touched off in April 2014, Lozansky’s was hunched over a long conference table across from Dugin in a cramped, stuffy conference room. They were discussing the role of media in the “New Cold War.”

William Murray, from the Religious Freedom Coalition, spoke at the June 2014 World Russia Forum. The RFC is part of the World Congress of Families, a virulently anti-gay organization bankrolled by Konstantin Malofeev and supported by Alexander Dugin.

Lozansky met with Dugin prior to his World Russia Forum in DC, and then scheduled the Russian version in September that year to coincide with the World Congress of Families Moscow Conference.

When Stephen Bannon delivered a speech on the merits of Dugin in June 2014 to high-level members of the World Congress of Families in the Vatican, he effectively endorsed the guiding “Eurasianist” spirit behind Katehon.

Bannon’s speech came in the middle of a four-year period during which Robert Mercer paid him to work for an anti-Clinton group. Also the primary funder of Breitbart News, Mercer was a member of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), which supported Trump staunchly during the 2016 elections and is heavily involved in the World Congress of Families.

While Bannon was speaking to the World Congress of Families, he was already involved with controversial psychological warfare company Cambridge Analytica — testing out phrasing for a presidential campaign that had yet to begin. An argument could be made that SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica are a form of 4th Generation Warfare — a theme promoted by the late Paul Weyrich and his holocaust denying associate William Lind in the book The Next Conservatism,” which promotes everything Trump is doing -from tariffs to a border wall.

Orthodox Christian Charles Bausman founded Russia-Insider.com the same month as the Moscow World Russia Forum with help from Gil Doctorow — who was in the process of recreating the American Committee for East-West Accord. They did this in the September 2014 — the same month that Lozansky held his Forum in Moscow. Paul Erickson and the NRA visited Moscow that month.

Konstantin Malofeev has a close friendship with Fox News employee Jack Hanick. Hanick left Foxnews in 2013 to join the 2014 World Congress of Families Planning Committee with CNP member Brian Brown.

Independent Journalist Scott Stedman broke the stories about Hanick’s ties to Konstantin Rykov — the Russian DUMA member who claimed to have helped Trump win the election.

Vice President Mike Pence — himself a member of the CNP — took a meeting with the Russian orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion at an event in Europe. The CNP wants to create a theocracy within the United States, as they’ve outlined in their vision statement below.

The secretive Council for National Policy plans on taking the country back permanently. Many of Trump administration and donors come from this group, Mike Pence himself actually joined the group after becoming Vice President, joining many other cabinet members. Members like Ed Meese and Jon Utley worked with the Russian Foreign Ministry in 2017 to unveil statues of Reagan and Gorbachev in Moscow, during the World Russia Forum.

The Council for National Policy are also the people behind the well funded push to buy off enough state legislatures in order to be able to call for a Constitutional Convention and turn us into a “Christian” nation.

Donald Trump is the culmination of decades of work from various actors ranging from American Conservative Icons to Russian Intelligence and it all seems to have been part of one large and well orchestrated coup by people who want to institute a worldwide authoritarian state.

The Evangelical Movement helped lead the charge to ensure Russia had a president they could control.

Note: Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State helped write part of this article.

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