KGB Christianity and the Woke Right

 

Part 1:

After the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917, an open campaign of terror was launched against all religions, and particularly against the Russian Orthodox Church.

One of the targeted groups was the clergy, especially those of the Russian Orthodox Church. Priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, drowned in holes in the ice, given Communion with melted lead. In the summer of 1918 in one diocese, 47 clergymen were shot, drowned, or axed to death. An estimated 3,000 were put to death in that year alone.

Seven decades later, the situation was different. Soviet communism, unable to compete with the West economically and ideologically bankrupt, was in crisis. In 1991, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union was officially dissolved. The Soviet Union disbanded, but did it disappear, or did it take on a new form?

As described by Charles Glover in his book, Black Wind White Snow, in 1987 the Moscow Communist Party leader, and later Soviet Politburo member, Yuri Prokofiev led a team seeking to rebrand secular communism “by imbuing it with a theological meaning” in order to create a “fusion of communism, nationalism and Orthodox Christianity.” Prokofiev later co-founded the Strategic Culture Foundation and led it until 2015. Still active today, it has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for being a front for the Russian SVR intelligence service.

In 1987 Moscow Communist Party leader Yuri Prokofiev led a team seeking to rebrand secular communism “by imbuing it with a theological meaning” in order to create a “fusion of communism, nationalism and Orthodox Christianity.”

The Soviets had long employed “active measures” to infiltrate and subvert western institutions, especially religious institutions like the World Council of Churches. Yuri Bezmenov, who defected from the KGB in the 1980s, wrote in Love Letter to America that religious leaders affiliated with the World Council of Churches gave an “air of legitimacy and ‘holiness’ to the junta of the Soviet mass murderers and oppressors of religion.”

Father Gleb Yakunin, a former Orthodox priest who was excommunicated in 1997 due to his criticism of what the church had become, states that “the Church was so thoroughly infiltrated by the KGB that ‘virtually the entire episcopate were recruited as informers’.” Glover explains:

Instead of purging the former collaborators, it is those who have raised the issue, like Father Yakunin, who have been purged. Yakunin believes that as a result of the Soviet period, the Church needs ‘a new protestant reformation’, in which the entire episcopate would be replaced. Anything short of that would leave the Church, and its immense moral weight, in the hands of the KGB, which once infiltrated it and now (in its new incarnation) runs it as a bastion of a new version of imperial nationalism – a ‘virus’, as he put it – which is eating Russia from within.

Russia’s Christian Church, as the organization that suffered most from communism, had a chance to be the nation’s conscience. With its moral weight, it could have guided Russia beyond its Soviet nightmare, by helping the country confront its past, accept it and heal itself. Instead, it has become a hive of former collaborators, who see the Orthodox Church not as a way to remember, but as a way to forget.

The 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’, Patriarch Kirill, the Primate and supreme spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, was a KGB intelligence officer in Switzerland in the 1970s and officially represented Moscow at the World Council of Churches (WCC). In 2012, Kirill called the 12 years of ex-KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin’s rule a “miracle of God” and depicted him as an almost messianic figure.

The Patriarch has preached a doctrine called Russkiy Mir, meaning the “Russian World.” It embodies the idea that Russia has a spiritual duty to unify all Russian populations under its leadership, including those living outside its borders. He broadened the term to include non-Russians who adopt the Russian World’s ideology.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Russian Orthodox Church preached to its 100 million adherents that the West is “Satanic” and that the invasion is a “holy war,” reminiscent of how Islamists declare jihad as a synonym for “holy war.” The Church also mirrors Islamism’s doctrine that dying in “holy war” guarantees entry into heaven. Kirill ruled, “We believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins they have committed,” referring to Russians who die in the war in Ukraine. 

KGB Christianity’s Alliance with Islamism

Patriarch Kirill said in 2016, “Together we have to defeat the propaganda machine directed against our moral values, and to counter the demonization of Islam.”

Russia’s KGB Christianity sees Islamism as not just an ally of convenience against a common enemy but more as its permanent partner in a joint “holy war” against the West. Putin says the Russian Orthodox Church is closer to Islam than to the Protestant Christianity that prevails in the West.

Alexander Dugin, a top Russian political theorist sometimes referred to as “Putin’s Brain” and advisor to the Iranian regime, preaches that the Christian and Islamic End Times prophecies are compatible. During a 2015 visit to Teheran, Dugin referred to modernity as “Satan,” the West as “the hereditary house of Satan,” and Iran as “the main base of war against modernity.” He said that Russia must follow Iran as “the model for returning to tradition.” He proposed the construction of a “bridge” between Iranian religious thinkers and Russian traditionalists.

This shared vision of returning to “tradition” apparently includes generous portions of state violence against its own population. When the Islamic Republic of Iran murdered an estimated 30,000 protesters in January 2026, with arrests and disappearances of many more, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei did not utter a single word condemning the blood-soaked crackdown. He merely reiterated that nothing could change the fundamentals of the relationship between Russia and Iran.

Dugin has advocated “Russian fascism” as the means to establish a “Russian order of things.” He was an advocate of “Novorossiya,” or a New Russia, that would grow by annexing southern and eastern Ukraine. Following the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of conflict in the Donbas in 2014, he was widely reported to have said, “Kill, kill, and kill again!” regarding officials of the Ukrainian government. This provoked protests in Russia. He was fired from his teaching position at Moscow State University, but was later rehabilitated as a thinker whose ideas were welcomed by Putin’s government. As discussed by BBC News Russian, his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics:

found an audience among hardliners in power. It was on the reading list at the Military Academy of the Russian General Staff, where the philosopher himself taught, conducted research, and lectured. The textbook on geopolitics recommended by the Russian education ministry also quotes him at length. He called Ukraine’s independence an existential threat to Russia.

Russia’s strategy against the West includes “active measures” to demoralize, divide, and weaken America, the leading defender of the concept of universal, God-given rights. As explained by Dugin in Foundations of Geopolitics:

[Russia must] weaken, demoralize, deceive, and ultimately, defeat the enemy as much as possible. It is especially important to bring geopolitical turmoil into the US domestic reality by encouraging all kinds of separatism, various ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, and actively supporting all dissident movements of extremist, racist, and sectarian groups that destabilize internal political processes in the USA.

Foundations of Geopolitics favorably profiled several geopolitical theorists who had close ties to Nazism, including:

Karl Haushofer, a prominent German general whose geopolitical theories were adapted by the Nazi regime. Dugin adopted his concepts of Grossraum (large space) and land vs. sea power as pillars for his anti-Western worldview.

Julius Evola, an Italian philosopher who espoused “spiritual racism” and worked closely with the Nazi SS. Dugin translated his work into Russian and embraced his vision of a a highly stratified, traditionalist society mobilized against modernity. Evola and French traditionalist René Guénon argued that the world had once been hierarchical and pure. Now, we live not in an age of mythic heroes but rather in the “Kali Yuga”: an age of chaos and mediocrity, that could only be transformed through the power of “secret wisdom” and “purifying bloodshed.”

The natural order of things — in which everyone knew and respected their natural and social function — had been overturned by the false promise of democracy. “Nobody any longer occupies the place that he should,” Guénon lamented. But a secret truth, available to occult initiates and handed down to those spiritual aristocrats wise enough to transcend their era, could re-enchant our alienated modernity through the power of secret wisdom and purifying bloodshed, an apocalypse that presages a return to a more pristine state of being.

Carl Schmitt, a German Nazi jurist, anti-semite, and political theorist whose ideas about “friend/enemy” distinctions and the creation of a conservative, continental international order shaped Dugin’s anti-Atlanticist positions.

Dugin advocated the reconstitution of the Soviet/Russian empire and a new alliance with Japan, Iran and Germany to form a geopolitical ‘axis’ that would eject the United States and its “Atlanticist” minions from the continent.

The key to creating ‘Eurasia’ is to reject a narrow nationalistic agenda which could alienate potential allies. He quoted New Right theorist Jean-François Thiriart, who said ‘the main mistake of Hitler was that he tried to make Europe German. Instead, he should have tried to make it European.’ Russia, it followed, would not be making a Russian Empire, but a Eurasian one. Dugin explained, “The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.”

Dugin charges Western modernity with creating slavery and for the devastation and the economic exploitation of millions of people on the planet. His views ignore the following facts:

1) slavery has existed in virtually every society since the beginning of humanity,

2) at the behest of Abolitionist Christians, Great Britain abolished the slave trade in the Commonwealth in 1807 and then slavery in 1833, and used its Navy to fight against the Arab/African slave trade for more than 5 decades. After a bloody Civil War, the United States ended the institution of slavery in 1865.

Regarding his charge of the West’s economic exploitation of millions of people around the world, Dugin ignores the track record of free market capitalism pioneered in Great Britain, Europe and the United States in liberating billions of people around the world from grinding poverty.

In 1820, due to grinding poverty 94% of the world’s population struggled to survive. One hundred seventy years later, in 1990, 35% lived in poverty, and by 2015, that declined to under 10%. During the 70 years, between 1950 and 2020, the average global income per person rose by 307%, something never seen before in all history. These were the consequences of countries adopting aspects of western (Judeo-Christian) concepts of universal human rights, the right to private property, and the rule of law.

* * *

Part 2: 

It’s true that material progress and opportunity, if detached from a sense of meaning and attachment to one’s community, faith or nation, cannot solve the problems of modern alienation. One can see why Russians and those who have lived in the Russian/Soviet sphere could be attracted to Dugin’s/Putin’s ideas for a Eurasian Empire centered on Russian identity and allegiance to the Orthodox Church, but how to explain the promotion of Dugin’s ideas in America by segments of the MAGA Right?

The fact that western conservative influencers like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones and others have offered Russian/Eurasian theorist/propagandist Alexander Dugin repeated opportunities to spread his views to millions of Americans, often with little to no pushback, has to be considered one of the great triumphs in Russian information warfare. The strategy of exploiting American conspiracy theorists who echo Russian disinformation is called “narrative laundering” and is a key component of Russia’s cognitive warfare in the 21st century.

Ryan Mauro, senior fellow for counter extremism for the Capital Research Center asks how can these prominent influencers who once espoused an America First patriot narrative now praise a Putin style of repressive government? In June 2026, Candace spoke at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Russia, participating in a “Family Values” panel, where she praised Russian values.

Mauro warns that, “SPIEF is a hotspot for Russian intelligence and is organized by the senior-most levels of the Russian government. Putin’s top advisors and the First Deputy Director of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, are on the Organizing Committee. Investigative documents show that SPIEF activities, specifically including its panels, are “recruitment pipelines” for “state-directed soft power programs” to enlist “foreign influencers” in projects such as “media partnerships.”

Russia’s “comprehensive ecosystem” complements its state-directed media and the media work of those on the panel. RT (formerly Russia Today), for example, frequently amplifies Owens’s content. The network posted over a dozen clips of her interview with Hunter Biden in May, 2026.

Dugin, Owens, Jones and many others refer to the U.S. and Israel as the “Epstein Class” and claim that Jeffrey Epstein’s operations were a front for Israeli intelligence. In reality, Epstein’s ties to the Russian government and China are far more extensive than any evidence linking him to Mossad or the CIA. One of the “Epstein files” available at the U.S. Department of Justice shows that in 2013 Epstein tried to relay a message to Putin offering to help Russia “leapfrog the global community by reinventing the financial system of the 21st century.”

Ryan Mauro has also reported on Epstein’s ties to the above-mentioned St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). His close friend, Sergey Belyakov, an FSB (successor to the KGB) Academy graduate who led SPIEF, spoke at the 2026 forum along with Candace. SPIEF helped Epstein get a Russian visa. In return Epstein helped SPIEF recruit attendees.

Mauro notes that:

The Epstein files revealed that Epstein asked for the SPIEF official’s help in dealing with a Russian model who was blackmailing powerful businessmen in New York. The SPIEF official provided him with information about her. Epstein appears to have threatened her life by warning her that he’d send the FSB after her as an “enemy of the [Russian] people.” SPIEF is widely reported to swarm with Russian models & escorts who target affluent men. Many of them are likely doing so as part of honeypot intel operations to acquire “kompromat.”

The New York Times also reported on Epstein’s connection with Belyakov and commented:

The Kremlin has seized on the latest release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, saying the lurid details of his ties with leading American and European figures in business, politics and culture underscore the moral depravity of the West.

Yet the files also detail Mr. Epstein’s contacts inside similar circles in Russia, where he cultivated officials and traded favors, including with those he hoped might facilitate a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin.

Another speaker at SPIEF 2026 was Scott Ritter, a former UN inspector and convicted pedophile, who is under FBI investigation for illegally acting as a foreign agent of Russia. He constantly appears on anti-American media platforms to declare that victory is imminent for Russia, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. He openly roots for the U.S., Israel and the West to be defeated.

Dugin explicitly explained the important role of “right-wing republican” influencers like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones in his agenda to promote American isolationism and to support dissident movements in the USA when he wrote in Foundations of Geopolitics:

It makes sense to support isolationist tendencies in US politics, the theses of those (often right-wing republican) circles that believe that the US should confine itself to its domestic problems. This state of affairs is highly advantageous to Russia, even if ‘isolationism’ is carried out within the original Monroe doctrine wording, i.e. if the US limits its influence to two Americas. This does not mean that Eurasia should give up on destabilizing the Latin American world by seeking to remove certain regions from US control. All levels of geopolitical pressure on the US must be engaged.

Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Alex Jones repeatedly espouse such isolationist themes, often quoting directly from Kremlin-backed sources, not only arguing against American involvement or support for the wars in Ukraine and Iran, but also expressing outright admiration for Putin’s Russia, which has been ranked by Freedom House as one of the worst nations in the world in terms of abusing human rights, criminalization of anti-war dissent, detention of political prisoners, and heavy restriction of independent media. Their online broadcasts have repeatedly been featured on Russian media outlets. 

Russian state media (@RT_com) has posted about Candace Owens 119 times since the start of 2026. That’s roughly one Candace Owens post every 1.3 days - or 5–6 posts per week, from January through early June.

Carlson has been quoted, clipped or broadcast literally hundreds of times since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Leaked Kremlin memos instructed Russian state media to use his segments as much as possible since his talking points aligned with Moscow’s agenda.

In mid-2024, the Russian state network Rossiya 24 began regularly airing voice-over dubbed versions of Tucker’s internet broadcasts as a dedicated segment called “TUCKER. Rossiya 24,” featuring hundreds of individual episodes. He has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Russia, including multiple broadcasts from that country as well as a fawning 2-hour interview with Putin in 2024.

Other Carson statements about the Russian president and defending Russia’s war in Ukraine include: “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”

So you can only criticize Putin if he personally attacked you or tried to get you fired? What about the Russian dissidents who were not fired, but rather poisoned to death during Putin’s presidency? Several Russian defectors, exiled intelligence officers, journalists and prominent opposition leaders fell victim to state-linked assassinations. Here are brief descriptions of five of them: 

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent anti-corruption opposition leader survived a 2020 Novichok nerve agent attack. Following that he was imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony where he died in February 2024. An international inquiry and multiple European nations concluded he was killed using the deadly toxin epibatidine.

Boris Nemtsov. The reformist former regional governor and deputy prime minister was a rising political star in the 1990s but became one of Putin’s most vocal opponents was shot dead on February 27, 2015 in a gangland-style killing on a bridge near the Kremlin, at age 55.

A liberal lawmaker early in Putin’s presidency, Nemtsov helped lead protests against stacked parliamentary elections and Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012. He staunchly opposed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, calling it “despicable,” “impudent,” and “harmful for Russia.” At the time of his killing, he and associates had been working on a report detailing evidence of the extent of Moscow’s interference in the neighboring country.

Natalya Estemirova. On July 16, 2009, the body of the renowned human rights activist, with bullet wounds to her head and chest, was found in Ingushetia, hours after her abduction near her home in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny. Natalya Estemirova had been investigating hundreds of suspected rights abuses in Chechnya, including kidnapping and murder. The rights group she worked for, Memorial, said the initial investigation pointed to the possible involvement of local law enforcement officers.

Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s most prominent journalists and a persistent chronicler of rights abuses in Chechnya. On October 7, 2006, Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment building, in an execution-style killing. Two men were sentenced to life in prison and three others to long prison terms in 2014 for their involvement, but relatives, colleagues, and Western governments suspect that Russian authorities will never pinpoint or punish the masterminds of her killing because a thorough investigation would lead too close to Putin’s government or the Kremlin-backed leadership in Chechnya.

Alexander Litvenko, a former KGB and FSB officer who defected to the United Kingdom, died in a London hospital in 2006 after ingesting radioactive polonium-210, which was slipped into his green tea at an upscale hotel.

Since Russia’s initiation of war against Ukraine, it has engaged in routine kidnapping, hostage-taking, and violence against civilians. Occupying authorities under orders from the Kremlin have been particularly harsh toward Protestant Christians and institutions, often painting them as agents of the United States.

Russia’s 2016 Yarovaya Law (named for the law’s political champion, Irina Yarovaya) claims to counter terrorism and secure public safety, but the law restricts Christians’ freedom of worship and evangelism. The law and its amendments characterize Christians and churches outside the Russian Orthodox Church as religious extremists, criminalizing the speech and activities of Russian Christians who faithfully witness for Christ.

Russia, which shows little tolerance for independent belief systems within its own borders, has exported its worst practices to the territories it occupies in Ukraine. The Helsinki Commission has documented that Russia has engaged in routine kidnapping, hostage-taking, and violence against Ukrainian civilians. The Commission found that occupying authorities under orders from the Kremlin have been particularly harsh toward Protestant Christians and institutions, often painting them as agents of the United States.

More recently, Dugin has suggested that the apocalyptic final battle will feature a Zionist and Western coalition led by a Jewish Antichrist facing off against a coalition consisting of the Muslim world led by the Mahdi (Islam’s messianic figure) and the Orthodox Christians led by a mysterious figure or entity called Katechon that is prophesied to resist the Antichrist. Dugin believes Russia is Katechon.

Woke Right Dugin/Putin acolytes in the West might want to reflect on what kind of world the Muslim/Orthodox alliance would spread if they were victorious. It would be a world of theocratic dictatorships where government power is used to silence dissent and punish “infidel” religions, precisely what already exists in Iran and Russia today.

Considering Russia’s partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran, I wonder if Woke Right enthusiasts have considered that, unlike Mohammed and his disciples, Jesus and his disciples did not spread their faith with a sword. History has shown that the embrace of state violence to impose religious beliefs and practices does not lead to a Kingdom of Heaven, but rather to a kingdom of hell.

It’s true that the democratic West is not perfect. Its freedoms have been used to promote self-destructive addictions and lifestyles, but those same freedoms allow citizens to pursue truth as guided by their own conscience. The Russian KGB “Christian” state claims to defend the moral, traditional, and even Godly foundations of civilization, while conducting active measures to exacerbate racial and other social divisions as well as LGBTQ rights including pedophilia in the U.S. Meanwhile it has successfully enlisted leading woke right influencers, who should be defending American founding principles, to launder its narratives.

 

Sources:

Part 1: https://genderwars.substack.com/p/kgb-christianity-and-the-woke-right

Part 2: https://genderwars.substack.com/p/kgb-christianity-and-the-woke-right-b69

 

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