THE CRUSADE AGAINST US

Liberalism: A Totalitarian Ideology

What is the dominant ideology of the contemporary West and its geopolitical vanguard, the United States of America? This is an absolutely urgent question as it absolutely affects every one of us. Let us be frank: we have lost the global geopolitical conflict. We are defeated. Therefore, we have been obliged to precisely and rigidly know the answers to the following questions: who is the boss in the new planetary arrangement of forces? What are the basic features of his worldview? What does he think about the world, history, the fate of humanity, and about us? The latter question in particular is just as necessary for anyone who intends to reconcile with and humbly serve the new masters as it is for anyone who refuses to accept such a state of affairs and strives to rise up and reconquer newfound geopolitical freedom.

The belief has been instilled in us that there is no ideology in the West, that a pluralism of positions and convictions reigns there, and that everyone there is free to believe, think, speak, and do whatever they want. This is an absolute lie, a simple propagandistic ploy borrowed from the Cold War arsenal (a war against us). In fact, there is a dominant ideology in the West which is no less totalitarian or intolerant than any other ideology. Only its forms and principles are peculiar, its philosophical roots different, and its historical basis differing from those ideologies which are more familiar to us. This is the ideology of liberalism. It is based on the dogma of the “autonomous individual”, i.e., consistent individualism, “applied rationalism,” faith in technological progress, the notion of the “open society,” and the introduction of the “market” and “free trade” principle into not only the economic, but also the ideological, social, and philosophical absolute. 

Liberal ideology is “right” in a narrowly economic sense and “left” in the sense of humanitarian rhetoric. Moreover, all combinations of right with left, or simply right and left by themselves, are rejected, disassembled, marginalized, and are forced into the background by liberalism. Liberalism is totalitarian in its own way. Instead of the direct, physical repression of dissidents, it resorts to tactics of soft strangulation, gradually pushing opponents into the margins of society, the economic disadvantaging of dissidents and opponents, etc. But a fact is a fact: the dominant ideology of the West (Liberalism) actively fights against alternative political and ideological projects, using merely subtler, “softer,” and more refined methods to achieve its goals than other forms of totalitarianism. This does not mean that it is any less effective. Liberal totalitarianism is veiled, ghostly, and invisible rather than openly brutal, but it is no less cruel.

The existence of a “dominant ideology” in the West is gradually becoming more clearly recognized in our society. The reality of liberalism and liberal ideology has become obvious and, consequently, we have gained greater certainty as to its existence. The supporters of the West are now necessarily distinguished by their sharing of all the specific ideological premises of liberalism (and not merely some kind of vague “democracy” under which everyone is free to understand anything vague and uncertain), and its opponents are united by a simple hostility to this ideology. Yet liberalism has one more, more hidden layer: the distinct theological and religious assumptions which ultimately led the West to the ideological model which once took root in it and has now come to prevail. This layer is not as universally and unambiguously recognized as the vulgar cliches of the “open society” and “human rights,” but, nevertheless, it is precisely this part which is the basis and secret source of the liberal ideology which rules the planet, which itself is just the tip of the iceberg. 

The matter at hand is none other than Protestant eschatology.

The USA – the quintessence of the West

Today, there is no longer any doubt that the world is ruled by the only remaining, fully-fledged superpower, the United States of America. This is not only the most powerful state in the West in a military sense, but is also the product of the entire Western path of development, its peak, its maximum achievement. The USA was founded and built as an artificially constructed formation devoid of historical inertia, traditions, etc. measured by only the most radical recipes worked out over the course of Western civilization. The US is the pinnacle of Western civilization, the crown of its becoming.

The US is the sum of the West and its geopolitical, ideological, and religious vanguard. Only in the US have the principles of liberalism been so totally and consistently implemented. For quite some time, the West and liberalism have come to be authoritatively identified with the USA.

America is the hegemon of the modern world, a gigantic geopolitical, strategic, and economic empire which controls all of the most important processes on the planet not in the capacity as merely another, usual state, even a strong or developed one, but precisely as an ideological model, a path of development, and as the judge and shepherd of mankind which imposes its distinct system of ideological, philosophical, and political values. The US Empire is the empire of liberalism, the empire of capital, the empire of the post-industrial society as the highest stage of the bourgeois system’s development. 

Without a doubt, the US is the direct descendent of Europe and European history, but the uniqueness of this formation consists in that the US took from Europe only the most refined and purified trajectory of its civilization in the form of liberal rationalism, the theory of the “social contract,” individualism, dynamic technological industrialism, and the absolutized notions of the “trade system.” Earlier, these tendencies were concentrated in Protestant England, and the British Empire was the first (if we do not take into account Ancient Phoenicia) purely “trade civilization” model to which all of Western history logically led. It is no accident that the major theoreticians of Liberalism were Englishmen – Adam Smith, Ricardo, etc, as were the philosophers of individualism – Locke, Hobbes, Mandeville, etc. Max Weber and the even brighter Werner Sombart have shown how Western capitalism was born out of the Protestant ethic and just how essential the ethno-religious factor is to the emergence of particular socio-economic forms.

The baton of the “trade system” was gradually passed from England to the US whose leadership, since the second half of the 20th century, has become an indisputable historical fact in the general context of Western civilization. 

The USA is the epitome of the West, Western capitalism, and its center and axis, its essence. Now, from the standpoint of our experience, in which the US has become the sole boss of the entire planet, for which it had been striving for so long, we can easily recognize the logic of history as leading in focus up to a single point (which, for historical reasons, could not have been seen by those thinkers who did not live to see the dramatic turning point of the geopolitical, social, and economic Cold War confrontation). 

Thus, all of Western history leads up to the United States of America. 

The “West” as a geopolitical phenomenon actually emerged out of the schism of the Christian Church into Orthodoxy and Catholicism. The Catholic zone became the basis for what has since then been known as the “West” as a concept. From this point on, the people of the Catholic world identified themselves with all of humanity and identified their history with world history and their civilization with civilization in general. All remaining civilizations and traditions were contemptuously likened to “savages” and “barbarians.” It is telling that not only Christian nations but the entire Orthodox world, which in fact was the zone of real, undistorted, authentic Christianity, fell into such an “inhuman” category. In fact, the Orthodox countries – at first Byzantium and later Russia – were Christians and were the ones to challenge the Catholics’ aggressive hostility. Orthodoxy presented an example of a different Christianity, a universal, open, non-sectarian, radically alternative civilizational model which prevailed in the West prior to the time when it claimed to be the only form of Christian statehood. It follows that the seed of the dialectical development of civilization and geopolitical processes in the succeeding centuries is to be sought in Catholicism’s opposition to Orthodoxy.

The history of the West is to be accounted for only after the schism of the Church. At that time, Catholicism became the head of purely “Western” trends. After a certain period of time, however, certain elements of Catholic teachings retained from the heritage of the Orthodox unity of the Church came into contradiction with the main trajectory of the West’s development. The Reformation appeared as a fracture. At that moment, the most “Western” trends isolated themselves and became concentrated in the Protestant type. Protestantism spread precisely in those countries and among those peoples who moved in the direction dictated by the schism – estrangement from the East, arrogant contempt for “savage peoples,” the identification of themselves and their technological development with the peak of civilization, and the individualistic and rationalistic trends which were no longer satisfiable within the Catholic framework (although they, in turn, were an essential step away from the traditional and faithful spirit of the original teachings of Orthodoxy) 

The Protestant countries, and first and foremost England, represented the path of “sea civilization” and gravitated to the absolutization of the liberal model and the universalization of the “trade system.” Henceforth the English began to play the role of the vanguard of the West, the “Far West.” 

The most extreme and radical Protestant sects of England later formed the basis of American civilization and designed and realized the project of the United States of America. They went to the extreme West to the “promised land” to build a perfect society, the “ideal” and “absolute West.” The United States of America as a state was established by the consensus of fundamentalist Protestant sects, and the overwhelming majority of the American political class to this day remain unchanged as the representatives of these Protestant confessions. This, nevertheless, is quite logical. The country is still ruled by the legal, ideological heirs of those who created, organized, and led it to material prosperity and the rank of a planetary power. 

The Americans themselves call this “Manifest Destiny.” In other words, the Americans see their history as a consistent upward path towards civilizational triumph and the victory of this philosophical model upon which American civilization is founded as the quintessence of the entire history of the West. 

Protestantism as an Ideology

The following argument can be made: “Contemporary Western society, and especially American society, have already long been atheist, religion maintaining only a small number of followers. Thus, fundamentalism, such as of the Protestant type, can in no way be equated to the official ideology of the USA, much less to that of the West as a whole.” 

In fact, it is necessary to point out that religion is not obliged to act as a cult or as a set of doctrines. In the contemporary world, religion manifests itself implicitly as a set of psychological predispositions, as a system of cultural and existential cues, and as a semi-conscious geopolitical intuition. Religion can even be compared to ideology – some (the minority) master the entirety of the conceptual system, while others (the majority) merely intuitively grasp the ideology. More often than not, today religion functions more through the cultural background, family psychology, and the norm of social ethics. In this regard, the US is absolutely a Protestant country, and this “Protestantism” affects not only this confession’s open believers, but also the vast masses of people of other religious beliefs and even atheists. The Protestant spirit can be easily spotted not only among Puritans, Baptists, Quakers, Mormons, etc., but also in American Krishnaism, the Moon sect, among the American Jesuits, and even in the plainly non-religious American citizen. All of them are to a certain degree affected by “Protestant ideology” even though it may be recognized as a cult and dogma only by a relative minority. 

The second argument that could be made is that the political class in the US does not proportionally reflect all of society. In this view, it is sufficient to look at the negligible number of colored politicians and administrators. The traditional, “majority-type” American politician, after all, is a “WASP” – a “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” Consequently, a fully-fledged Protestant fundamentalism is more probable among the elites than among other layers of society. 

Finally, more concretely, the US Republican Party, one of the two parties possessing a de facto political monopoly, is openly and consistently guided by a Protestant, fundamentalist worldview fully in line with the axis of American civilization and the dogmatic religious incarnation of the US’ Manifest Destiny. An intermediate layer between the generally-accepted secular liberalism of the masses and the Protestant, eschatologically fundamentalism of the political elite is filled by geopolitical centers of analysts serving the government who employ a synthetic technique in their projects in which the main religious and philosophical postulates of Protestantism are taken  minus the details and the prophetic fanaticism of their preachers and combined with the more pragmatic sides of liberal doctrine, albeit freed from the pathetic demagogy of “human rights” and “democracy.” In other words, the geopolitical thinking which is extremely developed among the US political elite is non-antagonistically combined with eschatological fundamentalism which in turn forms the idea of the “US as the New Israel called to rule peoples at the end of history” as well as the idea of free trade as the maximal rationalization of social order based on the priority of “rational egoism” and the “atomic individual.” 

The Protestant messianism of American geopolitics is thus combined with the proposal of a universal market model of governance and the liberal system of cultural values. 

“The Evil Empire”

For many centuries, the main geopolitical and ideological opponent of the West has been Russia.

This is entirely natural. On a theological level, this is rooted in the confrontation between Catholicism (+ Protestantism) and Orthodoxy and the opposition of the Western Roman Empire to Byzantium. The Western and Eastern forms of Christianity represent two choices, two paths, two incompatible, mutually exclusive ideals. Orthodoxy is oriented towards the spiritual transformation of the world in the rays of the uncreated Tabor light, while Catholicism focuses on the material restructuring of Earth under the administration of the Vatican [40]. Orthodox Christians praise contemplation above all, while Catholics worship action. Orthodox political doctrine insists on the “symphony of authorities” which strictly delineates the secular (the Basileus, the Tsar) and the spiritual (the patriarch, the clergy). Catholicism strives to spread the Pope’s power into secure life, thereby provoking responsive usurpation on the part of secular monarchs who aspire to subjugate the Vatican. Orthodox Christians consider Catholics to be “apostates” breeding “apostasy” which Catholics consider the Orthodox to be a “barbarian spiritualist sect.”

The most anti-Orthodox traits – including the refusal of service and many dogmas – were stretched to their limit by Protestants. 

Rus was the direct and sole spiritual, political, and geopolitical successor to Byzantium after the fall of Constantinople. For this reason and this reason alone was it called “Holy Rus.” It was made “holy,” “God-bearing,” and “chosen by God” by the providential adoption of the Byzantine heritage and full faithfulness to the Orthodox tradition (including its socio-political and even economic aspects). It is especially important to emphasize that it is not merely a fact that Orthodoxy spread as a confession and lent this holiness. Orthodox churches exist in other countries and among other peoples. What is important is that the combination of the Orthodox faith with a powerful and free political empire, the Tsardom, and the Tsar in conjunction with the national Russian Patriarch ensured the dogmatic and theological, eschatological validity of its name. Strictly speaking, Rus ceased to be “holy” when the “symphony of powers” and the Orthodox political system was rejected firstly by the second Romanov (the split) and then by his son Peter the Great, the Westerner and liquidator of this sacred heritage.

Be that as it may, since the 16th century Rus acted as the main ideological and civilizational opponent of Europe. Later followed the prolonged geopolitical duel with England in the East, and, most recently, the Cold War. 

History is not linear. It often backtracks, sidetracks, projects nuances, and accentuates paradoxes and anomalies. But the central line is evident. Without a doubt, there exists some kind of “Manifest Destiny” in a broad sense. It led the West to the American model, the American way of life, and to being a superpower. The East, on the other hand (at least the Christian East), became embodied in Russia over the course of centuries. The socialist faith in the golden age of the Soviet Russians was an absolutely symmetrical antithesis to the market-based eschatologism of the Protestant Anglo-Saxons. There was the “end of the world” according to the liberal scenario and its opposite, the “end of the world” according to the Orthodox-Russian, social, Eurasian, Eastern scenario. For them, this means total enslavement and rationalization. For us, this means total transformation and liberation. 

The logic of history constantly highlights this fundamental dualism on many different levels, whether in the form of the USA vs. USSR, West vs. East, or America vs. Russia. In economics, politics, geopolitics, theology, and culture there is a frighteningly clear antithesis which has clearly unfolded in front of us, the plot of a global drama involving two poles of a physical and spiritual continental duel, a great war of continents. 

Dispensationalism 

Do Americans themselves recognize the theological background of their geopolitical confrontation with Eurasia and Russia? Undoubtedly, they do, and sometimes even more clearly than Russians.

There exists a particular Protestant eschatological teaching known as “Dispensationalism” (from the Latin word “despensatio” which can be translated as “plot”, “plan,” or “design”). According to this theory, God has one “plan” for the Anglo-Saxon Christians, another one for the Jews, and a third for all other peoples. The Anglo-Saxons consider themselves to be the “descendants of the ten tribes of Israel who did not return to Judea from Babylonian captivity.” These ten tribes “recalled their origins and adopted Protestantism as their main confession.”

According to the adherents of Dispensationalism, the “plot” for the Protestant Anglo-Saxons is the following: a troubling era will arrive before the end times (the “great tribulation”). At this moment, the forces of evil and the “Evil Empire” (when Reagan called the USSR the “Evil Empire,” he had in mind precisely this eschatological Biblical meaning) will attack the Protestant Anglo-Saxons (as well as other “born again” peoples), and a short period of “the abomination of desolation” will reign. The main villain of this “troubled epoch” (tribulation) is King Gog, and here lies a very important point: in Dispensationalist eschatology, this character has steadily come to be identified with Russia. 

This was first formulated most clearly during the Crimean War in 1855 by the Evangelist John Cumming when he identified Russian Tsar Nikolai II with the Biblical “Gog, the Prince of Magog” – the leader of the invasion of Israel foretold in the Bible [41]. This line was once again unleashed with particular force in 1917 and in the Cold War era when it became the virtually official position of the “moral majority” of religious America.

God has yet another “plan” for Israel according to Dispensationalist teachings. By “Israel” they understand the literal restoration of the Jewish state before the end times. Unlike Orthodox and all other normal Christians, Protestant fundamentalists believe that they are related to the Jews still practicing Judaism today and are convinced that the Biblical prophecies on the nation of Israel’s participation in the events of the “end times” are to be understood literally, strictly according to the Old Testament. In the end times, the Jews are supposed to return to Israel, restore their state (this “Dispensationalist prophecy” strangely enough was literally fulfilled in 1947) and then be subjected to the invasion of Gog, i..e, the “Russians,” the “Eurasians.” 

Then begins the strangest part of “Dispensationalism.” It is presumed that at the moment of the tribulation, the Anglo-Saxon Christians will be “taken up” (“raptured”) to Heaven as if on a “space ship or saucer” and there they will ride out the war between Gog (the Russians) and Israel. Then, the Anglo-Saxons, together with the Protestant “Christ,” will descend to Earth again where they will meet the Israeli victors over Gog, who will convert to Protestantism. Then begins the “thousand-year reign” and America, together with Israel, will dominate the stable paradise of the “open society,” the “one world.” 

This extravagant theory, if not for certain circumstances, would remain in the domain of marginal fanatics. But…

First of all, one such convinced “Dispensationalist”, a sincere believer in the literal fulfillment of such an eschatological scenario, was none other than Cyrus Scofield, famous for being the original producer of the popular English Bible, the “Scofield Reference Bible.” which has sold many millions of copies. In America, this book can be found in every corner, and it was Scofield who inserted his own historical commentary and prophecies on future events authored in the spirit of Dispensationalism into Biblical text, thus rendering it difficult for the inexperienced reader to distinguish the actual Biblical text from its treatment by Scofield. Christian propaganda in the Anglo-Saxon world, and particularly in the US, thus intrinsically presents such “patriotic” American education, Manifest Destiny, Russophobic eschatological indoctrination, and outright Zionism. In other words, the newest form of the centuries-old ideology that lies at the heart of the dualism of the West in opposition to the East which we have discussed is fully embodied in Dispensationalism.

In some contemporary Dispensationalist texts, such “plans” are connected to the newest technological advancements, which then gives rise to a “nuclear Dispensationalism,” i.e., the consideration of “nuclear weapons” as some kind of apocalyptic asset. Once again, Russia (and earlier the USSR) is presented as among the “forces of evil” of the “nuclear King Gog.”

The person responsible for popularizing this “atomic Dispensationalism” was the evangelist Hal Lindsey, the author of a book interpreting prophecies titled The Late, Great Planet Earth [42] which has sold 18 million copies (in its time, it was the second bestseller after the Bible itself). An ardent follower of Lindsey was none other than Ronald Reagan who regularly invited Lindsey to lecture nuclear strategists at the Pentagon [43]. 

Another “nuclear Dispensationalist” is the televangelist Jerry Falwell, who became Regan’s closest government advisor and participated in Reagan’s private meetings and top military consultations in which questions of nuclear security were discussed. Thus, archaic religious, eschatological notions perfectly coexist with secular and progressive ones in American society along with high technology, geopolitical analysis, and brilliantly efficient systems of political management. 

In fact, Dispensationalism itself remains inexplicable without considering the unconditional pro-Israeli position of the US which in fact quite often directly contradicts the geopolitical and economic interests of the United States. Protestant fundamentalists’ solidarity with the fate of earthly Israel as restored in 1947 – which in the eyes of Protestants was a direct and impressive confirmation of Scofield and his Bible’s interpretations – is founded on these deeply theological and eschatological tales.

For us, it is very important just how profound and sustained are the anti-Russian, anti-Eastern, and anti-Eurasian principles of American thinking. These are the depths of denial and hatred rooted in and carefully nurtured over the course of centuries. 

The Final Trick of the Antichrist

Putting all the pieces together, we obtain a quite frightening picture (for Russians). The forces, groups, worldviews, and state formations collectively called the “West”, which after victory in the Cold War became the sole rulers of the world behind the facade of “liberalism”, profess a concrete eschatological, theological doctrine in which the events of secular history, technological progress, international relations, social processes, etc. are interpreted from an apocalyptic perspective. The civilizational roots of this Western model date back to deep antiquity and, in some cense a certain archaism has been preserved in them up to the present day parallel to technological and social modernization. These forces consistently identify us, Russians, as the “spirits of hell,” demons of the “order of King Gog from the land of Magog”, and as the bearers of “absolute evil.” The Biblical reference to the apocalyptic “princes of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal” are revealed as an unambiguous identification of Russia – “Rosh” being Russia, “Meshech” being Moscow, and “Tubal” being an ancient name for the Scythians. In other words, the West, and particularly the United States’ Russophobia does not arise merely out of pharisaical care about the “victims of totalitarianism” or notorious “human rights.” Instead, we are dealing with a consistent and “rationalized” doctrinal demonization of Eastern European civilization in all of its aspects – historical, cultural, theological, geopolitical, ethical, social, economic, etc. 

Particular attention should be paid to the multi-dimensional coincidence of the remotely distant conceptual levels of “Western ideology,” i.e., the convergence of the supporters of capitalism in the economic sphere with the theoreticians of individualism in the socio-philosophical realm, geopolitics on the strategic level of continents, and the brand of theology operating with the eschatological and apocalyptic doctrines of Dispensationalism. All of these elements converge in an unambiguous and constant identification of Russia as the “Evil Empire”, as the historical negative, and as the repugnant villain of world drama.

This is all very, very serious. World wars, the collapse of empires, the disappearance of entire peoples and races, class conflicts, and revolutions are but episodes of a great conflict, the culmination of which is supposed to be the final, apocalyptic battle, the Endkampf, in which we will play the most important role. In the eyes of the West, our role is overall and entirely negative. The role assigned to us is that of the planetary scapegoat. 

The Western Antichrist is striving to convince the world that his planetary and spiritual enemy is the real “Antichrist,” that is, Continent Russia and its secrete pole: us. 

Footnotes:

[40] See F.M. Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor and The Brothers Karamazov

[41] Ezekiel 38-39

[42] Hal Lindsey, The Late, Great Planet Earth, New York, 1977

[43] See Gregory Krupey’s The Christian Right, Zionism, and the Nearing Penteholocaust in Adam Parfery’s Apocalypse Culture, New York,1988

Translator: Jafe Arnold

Chapter 7 of Mysteries of Eurasia (Moscow, Arktogeya: 1999)