Luigi Corvaglia
Abridged edition of the 12-part study ‘Fascists, Spies and Gurus. Psychological warfare and the geopolitics of cults' by Luigi Corvaglia. Part I here:
V- Attack on Secularism
Pre-trial acquittals
On July 8 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a long-time right-wing politician, was assassinated during a rally in the city of Nara. The assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, claimed to have killed him because he blamed him for the spread of the Unification Church in Japan, an organisation to which his mother had allegedly donated so much that it ruined the family. As the Financial Times reports, the link between the Unification Church and members of Abe's political party is an old one. Nobusuke Kishi, father-in-law of Abe's father, who was prime minister of Japan in the second half of the 20th century, supported the church as an instrument in the anti-communist struggle. Over time, the Unification Church served as a safe reservoir of votes for the Liberal Democratic Party, Abe's nationalist party.
According to the founder "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon, humanity fell from grace when Eve fornicated with the fallen angel Lucifer, who later became Satan. As a result of this perversion of God’s love, all of Adam’s descendants inherited a contaminated bloodline and were alienated from God. Eventually, God sent Jesus as the Messiah to redeem humankind, but God’s plan to purify mankind’s sinful bloodline by having Jesus marry and start a family did not work out. As Plan B, God sent the Messiah Sun Myung Moon, who embodied the Second Coming. Mass weddings are part of the plan. The idea is that two believers, chosen and brought together by the Messiah, will be united as husband and wife with the blessing of the Messiah and their children will be born free from sin.
The church is a business empire that includes a car factory, a huge manufacturing company, several hospitals, and major property investments around the world. Among other things, it owns one of the largest seafood export companies in the world and has helped to popularise sushi in the USA and from there to the rest of the West. He also owns the conservative newspaper Washington Times. Naturally, he plays a major political role. In 2003, Moon caused a stir with a sermon in which he claimed that the Holocaust was the just punishment inflicted on the Jews for the murder of Jesus.
Figure 51 - Shinzo AbeSun Myung Moon and Hyung Jin 'Sean' Moon
The founder's son, Hyung Jin 'Sean' Moon, is no less right-wing. He founded The Rod of Iron Ministries in the USA. The 'rod of iron' is the AR-15 submachine gun; in fact, the church worships firearms, which it describes as 'religious equipment'. The leader wears a crown of bullets and the faithful participate in ceremonies armed with this equipment. The church has strong ties to American Identititarian and far-right movements.
Back in Japan, the links between the Liberal Democratic Party and the church became clear after the death of the former prime minister. Since then, dozens of party members, including those in top positions, have admitted their links to the church or other related organisations.
The government subsequently launched an investigation into Moon's church and on 12 October 2023 declared its intention to request the dissolution of the church.
However, the church has many friends. When the US Congress cut off funding to the Reagan administration in 1985 to support the Nicaraguan 'Contras' terrorists against the Sandinista regime, Reverend Moon's Unification Church became involved in providing food and money for the guerrillas (see further ahead). Ford Greene reports that CAUSA, a company of the Moonies, provided thousands of dollars and tonnes of food, medicine and clothing to the guerrilla forces. In 1985, the Moonies' newspaper, the Washington Times, set up a private fund for the Contras and announced that Bo Hi Pak, the paper's official publisher, had contributed $100,000 to raise $14 million. When asked how the paper could afford this, the publisher explained that the paper's owners (the Moon organisation) were willing to provide extraordinary help on important moral issues (i.e. the fight against communism).
The extensive ties between Paul Weyrich's Council for National Policy (CNP), closely connected with the Brazilian Family and Property Tradition, and the Unification Church were discussed at length in an AFN radio interview by Kelleigh Nelson with Chey Simonton. In 1978, the Fraser Commission, a subcommittee of the US Congress, investigated the South Korean government's political interference in US policy, known as Koreagate. The commission published a report in which Moon's involvement in activities with the US government was also listed.
It was recently revealed that former US President Donald Trump received around 2.5 million dollars from the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), the new denomination of the Unification Church, to make video appearances on three occasions between 2021 and 2022, while former Vice President Mike Pence received 550,000 dollars to speak at a UPF event. This was confirmed by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper by obtaining official US documents and comparing them with court documents in Japan. The event took place in 2022, and the director of CESNUR Massimo Introvigne, who gave a talk at the meeting, was also funded by the UPF (Fig. 53).
Obviously, CESNUR immediately came to the aid of the Unification Church after the murder of Abe. The prompt intervention of a group of Westerners in defence of a controversial religious movement reminded someone in Japan of what happened in 1995 after the Tokyo underground attack by the Aum Shinrikyo (The Supreme Truth) cult. The religious group's followers had punched plastic bags of sarin gas, a nerve agent, into underground cars in Tokyo, killing 13 people and poisoning over 6,200. Gordon Melton of CESNUR USA was paid by the group responsible for the terrorist attack even before he arrived in Japan with another pair of experts to defend the cult. A preemptive payment for a prejudicial defence. Melton has in fact written several books that were directly commissioned and paid for by various groups, including the Ramtha School of Enlightenment; the same groups then ensured the distribution of his books. This was also done years ago by the Unification Church of Moon in Italy with a book by Introvigne. In any case, this funding appears to be just the crumbs of a much larger loaf.
Returning to the Abe case, Introvigne writes in an article in the 'Journal of CESNUR' that “While the weak mind of the assassin had clearly been excited by anti-Unification-Church campaigns by militant lawyers and anti-cultists, the latter succeeded in persuading most media, both in Japan and internationally, that rather than being a victim the Unification Church was somewhat responsible for the homicide, in a spectacular reversal of both logic and fairness” (bold mine).
In other words, Shinzo Abe was killed by the 'anti-cult movement'. Regardless of the reader's assessment of where the 'spectacular reversal of logic' lies, this blanket defence exemplifies a tendency towards prejudicial absolution of the cults under criticism, which is hardly consistent with the claims of a rigorous study centre. Some examples of this same prejudged absolution sometimes border on the ridiculous.
In March 2020, at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, a Korean religious movement called Shincheonji Church of Jesus was accused of contributing to the spread of the virus in the Asian country by preventing its believers from adhering to government regulations and organising crowded prayer meetings without social distancing or masks. More than 60% of those infected in the country were church members. The propaganda machine for new religious movements immediately rushed to the sect's aid and published a 'white paper' titled Shincheonji and the Coronavirus in South Korea: Separating Facts from Fantasies. A few days later, the head of the church, along with 12 other members of the sect, apologised on his knees in front of television cameras for causing the outbreak.
Timing does not seem to be CESNUR's strong point. The year before, CESNUR had already shown how difficult it is to deal with the absolving impulse - with disastrous results. In May 2019, the study centre presented the FIRMA awards (International Festival of Religions, Music and Arts) at the Turin book fair. This prize was created by the Introvigne think tank to honour those who have distinguished themselves in promoting peace through interreligious dialogue.
In this edition, Apostle Naasón Joaquín García, leader of the Luz del Mundo church, was among those honoured. A few weeks after being honoured as an advocate of human rights and author of charitable works, Naasón Joaquín García was arrested in Los Angeles on 26 charges, including human trafficking, production of child pornography and rape of minors. The trial ended with a plea by the apostle and his sentencing to 17 years in prison.
I admit that I have occasionally mocked the director of CESNUR for this unfortunate faux pas. I was answered verbatim: 'I would - and I do not rule this out - give Luz del Mundo in the person of its legal representative pro tempore an award for charitable activities, because I know them and they are admirable', and then concluded: 'The intention was to reward charitable activities, not the apostle's private life'.
I invite the reader to watch the documentary film about Garcia and the Luz del Mundo on the Netflix platform (The Darkness within la Luz del Mundo) and then read Introvigne's sentence again. However, it should be mentioned that Introvigne's wife claims that there is a conspiracy between the anti-cult movement and Netflix. This is not a joke (see here).
Although a character as colourful as the Mexican apostle can steal the show with such theatrical plot twists that are not devoid of irony, it is another award winner, Greg Mitchell, who deserves our attention. We have already met him. He is the chief lobbyist for Scientology and founder of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable. (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The cult apologists). The activities of this loyalist of the American religious holding company are not only regularly reported on institutional websites, but Mitchell himself explained in an interview with 'Business Insider' that the church's lobbying work with the US government is currently not focussed on promoting Scientology, but on 'religious freedom". This work 'often involves working with other religious organisations to encourage the United States to put pressure on foreign countries that persecute religious groups'. In other words, Scientology, along with 'other religious groups," encourages the U.S. government to 'exert pressure' on foreign countries.
Thus, exerting pressure on other countries for their actual or perceived interference or restraint in religious affairs is not a conclusion based on circumstantial evidence, but a stated intention pursued by a variety of actors who, even if they have different motivations, consider such action congruent. A convergence of interests, even if they pursue theoretically opposing goals. Here it is useful for Christian fundamentalists to defend movements that are far removed from Christianity.
This activity is already provided for by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, regardless of the spur of Scientology and other cults. Or not?
Attack on secularism
In 1995, a French government parliamentary committee of enquiry into cults produced a report, the so-called Guyard report, which expressed great concern about the phenomenon. Similar initiatives followed in Belgium (1996), Germany (1997) and Italy (1998).
in 1996, France adopted a series of laws to protect the victims of 'cults' and, above all, an inter-ministerial mission to combat cults (MILS, later MIVILUDES), whose first president was the socialist MP Alain Vivien. This made the country of laicité the spearhead of the resistance against the infiltration of totalitarian groups in Europe and triggered a process that led to the creation of the Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d'Information sur le Sectarisme (FECRIS), the 'umbrella organisation" bringing together dozens of anti-cult associations from various European countries, and the adoption of the About Picard law, which criminalised the 'abuse of weakness' in 2001.
On June 6 1997, the interior ministers of the federal and state governments in Germany agreed to place the Scientology organisation under surveillance. This was just one of the measures taken by the German government to crack down on Scientology (a 1998 report emphasised the destructive aspects of this "commercial institution disguised as a religion" and a 2007 report by the Ministry of the Interior described the organisation as "incompatible with the constitution"). This was followed by the Scientology campaign against Germany (which is conceivable), but also a series of strong statements in defence of the cult by the US government (which is less conceivable). Other actions included a document by the Beareau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (BDHRL), an agency of the US State Department, in which Germany is listed alongside countries such as China among the countries that violate religious freedom.
In 1998, the International Religious Freedom Act was promulgated, making the defence of religious freedom in the world US foreign policy. This act established a new department of the US government, which emerged from the Department of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour. Thus was born the Office of International Religious Freedom (OIRF). In practise, this was a specialised body designed to combat 'discriminatory' policies towards alternative spiritual groups. It was decided that the office would be headed by an authorised ambassador, flanked by no fewer than five officials from the State Secretariat. The Commission even had its own representative in all American embassies. Its first chairman was Robert A. Seiple. The curious thing is that this former marine was for more than 11 years the head of World Vision Inc., the world's most important evangelical association promoting ultra-conservative views (and rumoured to be controlled by the CIA). One would have expected a department concerned with religious freedom to bear the traits of secularism, or at least not to have dogmatic traits that clash with a mission that could be labelled 'ecumenical', i.e. giving equal dignity to all religions and allowing them to coexist.
The fact is that the Commission's first report in September 1998 accused France, Germany, Austria and Belgium of violating religious freedom. The OIRF was soon joined by a new organisation, the Commission on Religious Freedom. This commission was made up of American parliamentarians who made representations to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). During a meeting of the OSCE in 1999, these parliamentarians were the protagonists of a fierce attack on France, which was accused of the nefariousness of the 'Vichy regime', of witch-hunting and persecution. A diplomatic incident almost occurred. The delegation from the Religious Freedom Commission was led by Benjamin A. Gillman, whose election campaign was financed by Scientology (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The cult apologists). The session was moderated by Massimo Introvigne.
In September 1999, the OIRF published an even harsher report against the European countries, forcing French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine to write to his American counterpart Madeleine Albright to denounce the intolerable aggression that was calling into question the fruitfulness of the dialogue. This led to the termination of diplomatic dialogue on the issue.
To complete the picture of the forces on the ground, a third body of the US government was added, this time directly linked to the White House. It is the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Yes, the commission that wrote the report advising Trump to obstruct the work of the FECRIS spokesman at the OSCE (c'est moi!). It's worth taking a closer look.
An American commission
The United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an advisory body to the US government that produces an annual report on religious freedom in the world. It consists of only 9 members, 5 from the President's party and 4 from the largest opposition party. It was established with the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which promotes religious freedom as part of US foreign policy.
The report produced by this commission in 2020 was very tough on the so-called "anti-cult movement', in particular the Federation of European Anti-Cult Associations, the Fédération européenne des centres de recherche et d'information sur le sectarisme (FECRIS).
According to the responsible USCIRF in 2020, scientists, activists and associations that campaign for the rights of cult victims would carry out 'hate campaigns' and restrict civil rights. The 2020 report also contains a recommendation to the US President to
[...] combat the propaganda against the new religious movements disseminated by the European Federation of Research and Information Centres on Sectarianism (FECRIS) at the OSCE's annual Human Dimensions conference by sharing information regarding the continued involvement of individuals and entities, operating as part of the anti-sectarian movement, in the suppression of religious freedom (sic).
In practise, it is proposed that individuals (!!) and organisations active in the fight against abusive cults should be monitored...
The most worrying thing for me is that I am one of these people! In fact, I was - and still am - the one who carries out the 'propaganda against new religious movements' at the OSCE.
At the time the 2020 report was written, the President was Donald Trump. If you know how the commission that drafted this document was composed, there are some surprises and curiosities.
The vice president was Tony Perkins. He is also chairman of the Family Research Council, a fundamentalist Protestant organisation. The Family Research Council is against pornography, embryonic stem cell research, abortion, divorce and LGBT rights. The FRC believes that "homosexual behaviour is harmful to the people who practise it and to society in general and can never be affirmed. It is therefore a vice and a sin. Paedophilia would be a problem related to homosexuality. Questionable but legitimate positions, of course, but not the ones one would expect from those who have to pass judgement on discrimination and 'hate speech'. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center classified the FRC as an anti-gay hate group in 2010 because the group "makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science" to block LGBT civil rights.
Now, the Family Research Council is among the organisations cited in a study by OpenDemocracy for sending money to Europe to fund the activities of associations that aim to prevent the affirmation of individual rights.
As if that was not enough, Opendecracy itself had previously found the Family Research Council among the religious right associations in the US that have funded campaigns against sex education, contraception, abortion and LGBT rights in Africa.
Another component of the USCIRF was Gary L. Bauer, the former president of the FRC. In November 2009, Bauer signed an ecumenical statement called the "Manhattan Declaration" in which he called on Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox Christians to disregard government regulations and laws that they felt would force them to support or simply allow abortion, same-sex marriage and other issues that go against their religious conscience.
It seems odd, to say the least, that someone who calls for defiance of the law and is adamantly opposed to recognising the rights enshrined in the Constitution is a member of a commission that oversees respect for civil rights and liberty.
Another component was Johnnie Moore. The latter is Trump's 'evangelical advisor' and advocate of American hegemony. He is president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, a group monitored by Right-Wing Watch, an independent body that monitors all right-wing subversive groups.
Nadine Maenza, another member of the committee, is executive director of Rick Santorum's Patriot Voices PAC for the Defence of Conservative Values. He apparently opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and has adopted the image of the 'culture warrior' in the war on civil liberties during his tenure in the Senate. Santorum is a supporter of the group Regnum Christi, which is affiliated with the Legionaries of Christ, a highly controversial group at the centre of a major scandal. During his tenure as senator, Santorum authored the Santorum Amendment, which promoted the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in schools and opposed the teaching of evolutionary theory.
Another component is Nury Turkel , Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative-oriented US think tank.
Figure 60 - Tony Perkins, Gary L. Bauer, Johnnie Moore, Nadine Maenza
If we expand the search for the components that have alternated over the years in the USCRIF, we find that the relationships between them and the associations of the Atlas Network are very frequent. We know that these Christian-pro-free market organizations are “a ‘silent extension of US foreign policy.’” In USCIRF we find representatives of the Federalist Society (such as Leonard Leo, Chairman of USCIRF in 2009), the American Enterprise Institute (such as John R. Bolton, former appointee) or organisations linked to them such as the Hudson Institute (such as Nury Turkel, appointee). In 2018, USCIRF endorsed international Senator Sam Brownback as a religious freedom ambassador, who was among the speakers at a Brussels conference along with Scientology and Eurosceptic politicians. His election campaign in Kansas was financed by Koch Industries, one of the founders of the anarcho-capitalist organisation Americans for Prosperity, which is linked to Amway (see the next chapter).
However, the first president is enough to raise doubts about the USCIRF. He is Elliott Abrams, a leading representative of the neoconservatives, who was sentenced to a year in prison for his involvement in the Iran-Contras scandal. This involved the notorious financing of the war in Nicaragua against the democratically elected Sandinista government through the illegal sale of weapons to Iran. Among the crimes committed in connection with this sordid operation was the importation of cocaine by the CIA from the Contras, the anti-Sandinista guerrillas, and the subsequent obstruction of justice in the US Department of Justice. Abrams was one of the men involved in this affair and is also accused of being involved in the massacres in Guatemala and El Salvador when he was in charge of Latin America under Reagan. He has often accused the Israeli Likud of excessive tenderness towards the Palestinians. This champion of rights and ecumenism was chairman of the Commission on Religious Freedom International until 2000 and was still a member in 2022!
In 2023, the Parlament of the World's Religions was held in Chicago with representatives from USCRIF, Scientology and the director of the Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR) Massimo Introvigne (fig. 62).
This is not about the ideas of the USCIRF majority commissioners who wrote the 2020 report, but about the paradox that those who advocate these ideas want to pose as defenders of civil liberties. So it seems clear that this commission, which was unsurprisingly created as an additional arm (there were already three US government bodies for religious freedom) at the promulgation of the International Religious Freedom Act, has the function of reacting to the contrary policy put into practice by France and which hinders the geopolitical vision underlying that policy document.
Appendix: Taiwan as Tortuga pro-cult
For years, numerous conferences and seminars on respect for religious freedom have been held in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. CESNUR, but also representatives of various cults, such as the Church of Providence, the Luz del Mundo, the yoga school from Buenos Aires and the Unification Church, always take part. The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) plays a central role. Taiwan, an island off the coast of China that is disputed by China, is not legally recognised by most countries in the international community and is not represented in the UN in accordance with Resolution 2758 of 1971, which was also signed by the USA and European countries.
This makes it a useful free harbour for conducting political and media campaigns that would be embarrassing in the US. This avoids potential diplomatic misunderstandings with Tokyo, which now holds diametrically opposed positions on the issue of new religious movements but is an important ally of the US. In practise, Taiwan has become what the island of Tortuga was to the pirates of the 17th century: a filibuster port that is not subject to the same rules as most other countries.
VI - The Libertarian Network
The Theory of Religious Economy
Rodney Stark is an American know-it-all scientist who vehemently advocates Darwinism in all fields except the one that is its own, biology (in his opinion, evolution is an invention to discredit religion).
This is how blogger Miguel Martinez sums up this character. An effective and keen synthesis that's enriched in the following lines:
Rodney Stark's main concern is to justify neoliberalism theologically, as is evident from the triumphant title of one of his books, The Victory of Reason. How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. A concept we might translate as, "If they foreclose on your house, it's because Jesus wanted it that way".
The author is witty and shows very well the conditions under which the "American know-it-all" works. However, to say that Stark merely "justifies neoliberalism theologically" falls short; in fact, his main concern is to justify theology on "neoliberal" grounds. We should proceed in order. We can say it better. Rodney Stark can be considered the founder of the theory of religious economy. This is the notion that the religious is a "market' equal in all respects to the commodity market. As in all markets, different consumers buy goods, which in this case are the "religious goods" (the various creeds) of competing religious enterprises (the more or less organized religions) [La Vittoria della ragione: Come il cristianesimo ha prodotto libertà, progresso e ricchezza; traduzione di Gabriella Tonoli, Torino, Lindau, 2006, Ed. It.]. Consistent with this paradigm, the theory states that.
[...] as in any other market for material or symbolic goods, and contrary to what some theorists of secularization think - also in (institutional) religion competition is good for the market and within certain limits supply feeds demand.
from Introvigne, M., Mercato religioso, fondamentalismo e conservatorismo islamico: il caso della Turchia, La Critica Sociologica, 152, 10 Febbraio 2005, pp. 43-56, p. 43
As evidence of this, authors working in the wake of this mercantilist conception point out that.
The countries with the greatest religious pluralism - that's, with the greatest competition among religious enterprises - such as the United States [...], are also the countries where the total number of religious practitioners remains stable or increases.
Whereas,
Where, on the other hand, the state obstructs religious pluralism and, in particular, opposes the entry into the market of new entities branded as "cults" or enemies of national identity, there - as in France and Russia - the number of religious practitioners generally declines spectacularly.
In other words, the conclusion is "more market and less state," according to the classic Lassiz-Faire paradigm. This position is based on two premises and an implicit assumption. The first presupposition is that the increase in the number of people practicing religions is a positive and desirable fact; the second presupposition is that the "consumer," the actor who makes his choice in the market of religions, is "rational" and knows what he's buying, in short, that this person is the 'homo oeconomicus' imagined by neoclassical economics, who tends to maximize his own utility; the implicit assumption of the theory is that the various religious "firms" compete with each other and try to satisfy the buyers they compete for better than the others.
The consequences are manifold. If the basic assumptions are accepted, it follows that there's a need for strong "deregulation" of the religious market. Stark and Iannaccone write:
To the extent that a religious economy is competitive and pluralistic, overall levels of religious participation will tend to be high. On the contrary, to the extent that the religious economy is monopolized by one or two state-supported enterprises, participation tends to be low.
from Stark, R., Iannaccone, L.R., A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the “Secularization” of Europe, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 230-252, Settembre 1994, p. 233
In short, it appears that the enemy of the religious market, as with any other market, is the state; for it's natural for state institutions to favor monopolies to the detriment of free competition and to brand new potential competitors as "sects" or destructive cults. The attraction that the Theory of Religious Economy has for some cult apologists is obviously due to this ideological notion, which relabels criticism of abusive cults as an attempt to suppress the free market in favor of monopolistic religions protected by a planning state that seeks to protect them from competition. The implication, then, is that anti-cult activism is interested work carried out by people who are somehow connected to the state and/or the religious apparatus. In other words, a conspiratorial idea. Of course, only the large organized religions can claim a monopoly, certainly not the secular states of the West, whose founding value is precisely secularism. Nevertheless, the anti-cult movement has no relation to institutional religions, to the point of being accused of "secularism"...
The profane reader of religious economics, however, is still unsatisfied with the curiosity of how the various religions can compete with each other to satisfy customers better than their competitors. The answer is simple: the religions that satisfy customers the most are the most demanding and restrictive. One of the proponents of this mercantile view is Massimo Introvigne, president of CESNUR, the best example of what I call the differentialist apologists. He places great emphasis on this aspect of competitors improving the quality of the offer. He writes, for example:
[...] there is a kind of Darwinian struggle even in the religious field. The most demanding religious proposals tend to prevail: among Jews, the Orthodox, in Islam the fundamentalists, and among Catholics, the most strict movements and congregations.
from Beretta, R., Contrordine: non siamo più atei. Intervista con Massimo Introvigne, Avvenire, 8 Ottobre 2003
Competition would select the faiths that are more rigid and strict in demanding adherence, in short, the more integralist and fundamentalist versions. Competition, then, selects the fundamentalisms. This selection of extremist versions can be explained by the phenomenon of 'free riders' who literally 'travel cheap.' Those who want to enjoy the benefits of a collective enterprise, but don't want to bear the costs, travel without a ticket. In the religious realm, the collective enterprise is a church or faith community. An organization can tolerate a few free riders, i.e., uncommitted members, but not too many. Introvigne writes:
In the realm of religions, the less strict and rigorous organizations, which charge low admission fees and unobtrusively check that members have paid their admission ticket, i.e., that they're sufficiently committed, take on board such a high number of free riders that they offer their faithful a diluted and unsatisfying religious experience, [...] The more rigorous organizations charge a more expensive admission ticket and check that everyone pays for it: In this way, they allow fewer free riders, and the symbolic goods of a group where there are no free riders are usually perceived as more satisfying by consumers.
from Introvigne, M., Mercato religioso, fondamentalismo e conservatorismo islamico: il caso della Turchia, La Critica Sociologica, n. 152, inverno 2004-2005 [10 febbraio 2005)], pp. 43-56, p. 43
One concludes that the outcome of this beneficial competition between religions is an increase in religious zeal and commitment, i.e., an increase in what is most hostile to competition (in this case, other commitments and zeal). This competition feeds the monopolistic claims of fundamentalisms, which are by definition incompatible. A free market that generates hostility to the free market! This is an incompatibility that cannot be reconciled and cannot harmonize in an ecumenism precisely because of the rigidity chosen by the market.
In conclusion, any representative of a conservative spiritual vision who wanted to strengthen it would have to work to ensure the continued existence of all other faiths on the market and to defend even the most controversial spiritual groups (e.g. Scientology) with all their might. This would have the double effect of strengthening their own incontrovertible "truth" and at the same time - paradoxically - becoming a defender of religious freedom.
Defending the indefensible: the crypto-paleolibertarianism of apologists
This free market, with its less than liberal results, is very reminiscent of the "paleolibertarian" strain of a doctrine known as anarcho-capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism is one of the directions of contemporary political and legal philosophy that proposes the abolition of the state and replaces it with market relations. The main intellectual reference for anarcho-capitalism is the economist Murray Rothbard, who in the 1960s proposed a political theory that focused on the inviolable sovereignty of the individual. Based on the non-aggression axiom, an ethical principle of natural law that states that it's not legitimate to attack the person and property of an individual, all forms of taxation that constitute a theft of individual property and all coercive measures by the state, which is seen as inherently authoritarian, should be abolished. In this society, every service would be provided by private individuals on a voluntary basis. A less extreme version is called mini-archism, and its proponents want to maintain a "minimal state" whose only function is to legitimize the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Both versions agree on the central idea that the state would not be authorized to use its monopoly to interfere with free transactions between individuals. Every transaction between individuals is a "market" transaction, even those that cannot be monetized in a concrete sense, such as the choice of friends or partners, because they are based on incentives and disincentives, on costs and benefits. Freedom and economic prosperity can therefore only be guaranteed by universal laissez-faire, in the economy as in any other sphere. The state, even minimalist mini-archism, therefore has no right to interfere in individual choices such as sexual orientation, drug use, lifestyle, and religious affiliation.
When using European political categories, American libertarianism is usually considered "right-wing" in economic terms and "left-wing" in rights terms, because of its radical advocacy of individual liberties. However, many of those who held this view were culturally conservative and considered total freedom in the area of personal choices to be libertine excess. Therefore, in 1990, an article by Lew Rockwell (The Case for Paleo-libertarianism, Liberty, January 1990, 34-38) gave rise to a conservative current called "paleolibertarianism" which traces its origins to the old American paleoconservative right of Ludwig von Mises and Albert J. Nock. What distinguishes it from classical anarcho-capitalism, especially in its "left-wing" version, is the strong defense of traditional values and customs, especially those associated with Christian morality. This creates a correspondence with the European criteria of the "right", since paleolibertarianism combines economic conservatism and cultural conservatism. This current is historically associated with the Von Mises Institute, an academic organization that sponsors hundreds of conferences and meetings to combat etatism and promote conservative moral values. Von Mises, the Austrian economist to whom the institute is dedicated, based his 'praxeology' (the science of human action) on the assumption that "human action is always rational."
The results of this logic may astound the prophane of market libertarianism. In a classic of anarcho-capitalist thought entitled Defending the Indefensible, Walter Block goes so far as to exonerate and justify behavior deemed reprehensible on the basis of the individual's free and consensual choice. "The 'blackmailer,' the 'filthy male chauvinist,' the 'employer of minors,' the 'garbage distributor,' the 'loan shark,' the 'homeless man,' the 'corrupt policeman,' even the 'person who yells 'fire' in a crowded club,' and other unsympathetic figures are defended on the basis of the principle of non-aggression. To give an example of the otherwise brilliant argumentative style that characterizes this provocative book, this excerpt from the speech in favor of the blackmailer is worthwhile:
What exactly is blackmail? Blackmail is the offer of trade. It is the offer to trade something, usually silence, for some other good, usually money. If the offer of the trade is accepted, the blackmailer then maintains his silence and the blackmailed pays the agreed-upon price. If the blackmail offer is rejected, the blackmailer may exercise his rights of free speech and publicize the secret. There is nothing amiss here. All that is happening is that an offer to maintain silence is being made. If the offer is rejected, the blackmailer does no more than exercise his right of free speech.The sole difference between a gossip and a blackmailer is that the blackmailer will refrain from speaking — for a price.
Among the 28 figures that benefit from Block's defense, the one of "guru" or "leader of a coercive group" is missing, but it can be argued with reasonable certainty that the arguments used would be based on the non-aggression principle and on free intercourse between individuals. Moreover, it is the same defense that Block voices with respect to the "capitalist pig exploiter of labor." These arguments overlap with those of cult apologists of all kinds, who are generally also extremely pro-free market. Suffice it to look at the Acton Institute, an American think tank with a Christian and ultra-lassez-faire matrix founded by
Robert Sirico and Amway. Sirico is a Catholic priest with a background as an evangelical Pentecostal pastor and founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, a church that advocates for the rights of homosexual believers. At the age of 19, he joined the 'Jesus People Army', founded by Linda Meissner, which later merged into the 'Children of God'. The Jesus People Army, like the Children of God, emerged in the context of the hippie Christian revival movement, which grew out of the counterculture and mysticism of the 1960s. In 1976, Sirico was arrested after a police raid on a Hollywood club equipped with rooms with leather ropes and iron chains where an auction of young nude male slaves was taking place. Charges against Sirico, who was the organizer of the event and the financial beneficiary of the auction, were dropped because it turned out that the slaves were all consenting adults who were members of a sadomasochistic organization called the 'Leather Fraternity'. Sirico joined the libertarian ideology in 1977 and became a spokesman for 'Libertarians for Gay Rights'. He later converted to Catholicism and paleolibertarianism. He was subsequently ordained to the priesthood. In 1990, he co- founded the Acton Institute with Betsy DeVos, from the family that owns Amway. The latter organization and others associated with it fund the Acton Institute, which, incidentally, is located in the same city as Amway, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Amway is a multinational multi-level marketing (MLM) company that sells various soaps and detergents and whose executives are evangelical activists closely associated with the American economic, political and military right who claim to speak directly to God. According to many scholars, MLM organizations are themselves cults, though not religious ones, based on the Ponzi scheme.
This multinational Ponzi scheme, in turn, is part of a vast network of Christian free-market organizations called the Atlas Network, controlled by the Atlas Institute. The organisation has been described as a “self-replicating think tank that creates think tanks”. Major US think tanks that belong to the network include the Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute (which is dedicated to refuting climate change), the Heritage Foundation (which is particularly opposed to abortion and LGBT rights) and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The connections and sometimes the overlaps between the characters and institutions of the various environments considered here, i.e., the conservative Christian environment, that of promoting aggressive economic laissez-faire, and that of the cults, are consistent, even if little known. The whole world of Christian fundamentalists and enemies of sexual freedoms and self-determination is strangely interested in the defence of cults that are furthest removed from Christian orthodoxy. To give an example, the Conservative Summit 2024 held in Bratislava, Slovakia, featured OndřejDostàl among the speakers. He is a Czech politician who sympathizes with the Creative Society, a project of the AllatRa cult. Another speaker was Mrs. Konecna, a communist politician. Both are quite openly pro-Russian. Ján Figeľ is a Slovakian politician with links to CitizenGo, a Spanish fundamentalist association, which is particularly committed to the defence of religious freedom and is close to both Scientology and the Unification Church. He is a key figure of Agenda Europe, an informal network of associations that came together in January 2013 with the aim of building a Christian-inspired European think tank and supporting the “pro-life” movement in Europe. This was reported by the EPF in a report summarising documents from this network, which were kept secret until 2017 and published following a leak from a still anonymous source.
In 2022, Figel' participated in the symposium "Religious Freedom: A Human Right Under Attack," co-organized by Figeľ's 'Tunega, Púčik and Tesár Foundation' with the Universal Peace federation (Unification Church). Aaron Rhodes (Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe) was among the speakers. Aaron Rhodes served as Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) that is said to be infiltrated by Scientology. Rhodes is also a member of the Common Sense Society, an organisation full of pro-Russians.
This is interesting, because even if TFP has opted for the Atlanticist camp, the Polish organisation that refers to TFP, Ordo Iuris, obviously has ties to Russian circles, and conservative christians like Figel do not disdain working with Kremlin-affiliated figures. In 2017, Figel was at a conference of the All Faith Network (i.e. Scientology) with prominent Scientologist Eric Roux, pro-Western Introvigne and Leonid Sebastianov, a Russian ultranationalist, leader of the "Old Believers" and representative of the Kremlin's informal diplomacy. That was before the war, of course. Those were years in which the director of CESNUR could write things like the following:
That Russia behaves well towards the LGBT lobby and fundamentalist Islam does not justify its aggressive and expansionist policies in the West, and at the same time, condemning these expansionist policies does not diminish appreciation for the fight against the gay lobby and fundamentalist Islam that Russia is waging.
A strange statement for an advocate of civil rights and ecumenism, but one that can be summarised in the idea that the Federation's domestic policy was good, but its foreign policy was not.
Anyway, in 2023, Ján Figeľ together with Willy Fautré (HRWF), Massimo Introvigne (CESNUR) and Aaron Rhodes (Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe), signed a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Kishida in defence of the Unification Church. A month earlier, together with Massimo Introvigne, he had already spoken out in favour of this issue at the International Summit for Religious Freedom (as stated on the church's own website).
The Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR), a well-known Scientology front organisation, funded Paul Weyrich's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to a letter from CCHR board member Carol Steinke.
A branch of Paul Weyrich's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) also honoured the wife of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church, Hak Ja Han Moon. The award was presented by Robin Brunelli, president of the National Foundation for Women Legislators and wife of Sam Brunelli, ALEC director and long-time CNP member. In an AFN radio interview by Kelleigh Nelson with Chey Simonton, the far-reaching connections between the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church were discussed at length.
As we have seen in (Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. Attack on secularism), Moon's Unification Church helped the Reagan administration fund the Nicaraguan Contras as part of the secret plan for which former USCIRF Chairman Abrams was convicted.
Follow the money
From 2008 to 2020, the major Christian conservative associations in the United States spent more than $280 million abroad. At least 90 million of that went to Europe, while the rest went to Africa and Asia. This is according to an analysis by the US investigative website OpenDemocracy, in which authors Claire Provost and Nandini Archer analysed thousands of financial records from 28 mostly Christian extremist and ultra-pro-free market US groups with strong links to the conservative, sometimes far right.
In recent years, thanks in part to these investments, these groups have become increasingly influential in American and international politics. Indeed, the funds have the explicit purpose of supporting both initiatives and other satellite organisations around the world, which in turn work to influence public opinion, laws and national policies to prevent the enforcement of sexual and reproductive rights. But that is not all. Among the aims of all these organisations, the protection of “religious freedom” is of great importance
The list of 28 groups under consideration includes the Acton Institute, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, the Federalist Society, the American Center for Law and Justice, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property. The latter is nothing other than the American branch of the Brazilian organisation for the defence of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), which was founded by Plinio Correa de Oliveira and to which the Italian traditionalist Catholic associations Alleanza Cattolica and Fondazione Lepanto refer, as we have seen (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. The black network). From the first part of this report, we know that the main objective of this organisation since the mid-1980s has been to defend religious freedom and thus promote an anti-secular vision of society. It is therefore likely that the funds of this society - 3,123,131 dollars between 2008 and 2020 - will flow to European organisations pursuing the same goal. In Italy, the most important organisation of this kind is the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR), which has emerged from a rib of Alleanza Cattolica, with which it has long shared a top figure. On the other hand, De Mattei, the head of the Lepanto Foundation, is a member of the expert panel of the Heritage Foundation and the Acton Institute, both of which are included in the list analysed by Open Democracy. This flow of money to Europe is driven primarily by two groups that focus their battles on the courts. One is the organisation American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), led by Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The latter boasts Betsy DeVos's family among its founders. Both groups are part of Agenda Europe
VII - Cults and Soft Power
Religious polarisation
On 8 January 2023, thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro raided the Congress building and also stormed the Federal Court in Brasilia to protest against the election of his rival Lula. In part a repeat of the storming of Capital Hill two years earlier by Donald Trump supporters. While in Washington many of the rioters were fundamentalist Christians and many also adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory who flaunted their affiliation on T-shirts and signs, in Brasilia most of the participants in the storming were evangelical Pentecostals who gathered and prayed amid the devastation. Some turned their rosaries towards the police riot squad. This shows how important religion is when it comes to determining the moves of the masses on the geopolitical chessboard.
Religious soft power
The term soft power was coined in the 1990s by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Nye sees it as a form of exercising power that represents an alternative to the use of military force and aims to influence public opinion, primarily through mass culture and the media. Such operations are a low-intensity but effective strategy for influencing public opinion. This is a strategy of hybrid warfare. The use of religion as a tool of influence has a long history.
The CIA's first religious tool was Catholicism, which “became the model through which intelligence agencies could understand and manipulate other world religions” (Michael Graziano coined the phrase). Under the guise of the Church's profound power of persuasion, the OSS, the CIA predecessor, mobilised the European population against its Nazi (and later Soviet) occupiers.
However, the primacy of Catholicism, so great that the CIA was nicknamed the “Catholic Intelligence Agency", has waned over time. In Latin America, the Catholic continent par excellence, the Roman Church is increasingly losing ground to the various evangelical denominations. One reason for this is the fact that the position of the more conservative Evangelicals was directly supported during the Cold War by the United States, which saw the religious group as a useful bulwark against communism in Latin America, an area where liberation theology had given Catholicism a dangerous flavour.
The Rockefeller Report of 1969 and the Santa Fe Declaration of 1980 illustrate the use of religion by North American intelligence in defence of American interests in South America.
The Rockefeller Report states that the US must strive to win the battle for the hegemony of consciousness by exposing Latin America to the influence of the American way of life “through the control of the traditional socializing apparatuses of civil society: family, school and church”.
The Santa Fe document, prepared for the Council on Inter-American Security and presented to the Republican Platform Committee in 1980 by a team of ultra-conservative advisors, states that “US foreign policy must begin to counter (and not react to) liberation theology as used in Latin America by liberation theology clergy.” The paper refers to the work already done in this direction:
The experience gained in Vietnam through programmed population control was exported by many A.I.D. agents and other U.S. services to Latin America, particularly Guatemala. Some cults were founded by psychological warfare specialists who had been entrusted with the control of political space and hegemony over consciences. (emphasis mine)
The Santa Fe document is clear and does not mince its words. Through the National Security Agency (NSA), the United States is creating “cults” “ that are able to "control the political space and the hegemony of consciences”. In charge are “specialists in psychological warfare.”
Jesus Garzia Ruiz writes in a text entitled “La notion relative aux sectes en Amérique latine” that in Latin America " all cults are work of the United States and are financed from abroad." A note from the Mexican Ministry of the Interior states that
Sects carry out the most subtle part of the process of domination and North Americanisation of underdeveloped societies by using religious preaching, which is part of the ideological struggle, within civil society.
To support this policy, the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), an interfaith organisation, was established in 1981 and funded by right-wing institutions, including the Smith Richardson and the Mellon Scaife Family Foundation. Both served as financial conduits for the CIA. The IRD unleashed a propaganda campaign against church activists who were at the forefront of opposing US aid to the government of El Salvador and other repressive regimes in Latin America.
The project was successful. Today, the influence of evangelicals on society in these countries is enormous in terms of electoral potential. The expansion of evangelical churches in Latin America, especially the neo-Pentecostal churches, which have considerable fundings that make them more “competitive” with the Catholic Church, has contributed to the rise of “right-wing” personalities and political forces close to the interests of the economic-financial powers, especially the American ones. Behind these phenomena there seems to be a very specific strategy, which consists of replacing “left-wing Catholic” Christians (because they are interested in social issues) with “right-wing evangelical” Christians (who are very interested in moral issues, but little in social issues).
There is ample evidence of US funding of all kinds of churches, Christian and non-Christian. For example, the CIA funded churches in Kerala, India, and this interference in Indian politics came to light in 1978 when the former ambassador to that country, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published the information in his book “A Dangerous Place” In addition to the interference in Kerala, the American churches also supported the terrorists in Nagaland on a large scale. These terrorists received blatant help from the American establishment in the form of so-called human rights reports and public statements of support from high-ranking politicians like Jimmy Carter.
The CIA worked with agents of DINA, the Chilean secret police, to build a very sophisticated intelligence system in Chile that utilised the Pentecostal “Message” cult and the Colonia Dignidad facility, founded as a Nazi refugee colony and run by Pastor Paul Shafer, for covert operations. Paul Shafer, a former Nazi and security agent for Pastor William Branham in Germany, worked with the DINA (Chilean secret police) to interrogate, torture and murder opponents of the Pinochet regime.
Religion plays a very powerful role in culturally influencing and orienting the masses. Religions are an extraordinary instrumentum regni because they can dilute the religious identity of some population groups by creating new forms of mutual recognition (in-group) that become manoeuvrable constituencies when they are not useful for processes of social polarisation that can lead to uprisings or real revolutions. For example, Carl Gershman, director of the National Endowment for Democracy (Ned), told the US Congress in 2018 that Ned had spent $3,381,824 on programmes prior to the 2014 popular uprising in Ukraine, which took place under the name “Euromaiden”, including support for those non-governmental organisations that fuelled the uprising. The role of the various churches and cults in the Euromaiden affair was significant. Among them were the Greek Catholics. This does not mean that Euromaiden was carried out by “sects” or “Satanists",” as has been claimed, but only that the religious element played a role in social polarisation.
Two Chinese cults
In 2019, the television channel NBC revealed that Donald Trump's most important advertising supporter - after his election committee - was the newspaper The Epoch Times. This is a multilingual, far-right newspaper run by the Chinese religious movement Falun Gong. Much of the newspaper's efforts are dedicated to promoting the right in America, but also in Europe, a work that has included the dissemination of false data about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 US elections. The Epoch Times is also one of the main disseminators of conspiracy theories. The most important is that of QAnon, the bizarre theory that sees Trump as the possible saviour of the world from the satanic-pedophile dome that secretly rules it.
In 2020, the New York Times called the paper a “disinformation machine of global scale.” According to Media Matters for America, the main goal of the Epoch Times - which is now published in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profit organisations - is not to make a profit, but to organise a long and extensive “influence operation” The aim of this influence operation, in turn, is to “foment anti-Chinese Communist Party sentiment". The cult is actually being persecuted in its own country.
It has been said that The Epoch Times was the main financier of Donald Trump's election campaign. However, it is not clear where Falun Gong's funding came from. Steve Bannon, the guru of Trump's New Right, has collaborated with Falun Gong in the production of a documentary for New Tang Dinasty TV (NTD), a channel owned by the cult's holding company, and said that in conversations with these interlocutors he was under the impression that they had unlimited resources.
The conclusions frequently drawn over the years, not only during Trump's presidency, about a connection between the Chinese cult and the CIA in an anti-Chinese capacity are based on sporadically filtered and reported press reports. As early as 2010, the Washington Post reported $1.5 million in funding from the US State Department for the Global Internet Freedom consortium, which is based in the US but linked to the Falun Gong spiritual movement. More recently, in 2021, the US media reported on a State Department grant to a software development team owned by Falun Gong. Oddly enough, Steve Bannon himself is involved.
In June 2024, the finance director of Epoch Times, Weidong Guan, was arrested for alleged involvement in a multi-year money laundering scheme involving at least 67 million dollars in illegally acquired funds. According to the indictment, Guan allegedly used a cryptocurrency platform to purchase prepaid cards with illicit funds, including unemployment benefits, at a discount. Interestingly, following the arrest of the finance director, Falun Gong spiritual leader Li Hongzhi wrote two articles that appear to be aimed directly at the media company's leadership and were published prominently on the Epoch Times homepage:
You were thinking that it’s hard to fight the CCP’s persecution without funds, and wanted to make money for this cause; and that the U.S. government would be understanding if something wasn’t handled quite right - Li wrote in an article published on 5 June -But that was your own thinking.
The Falun Gong leader, who apparently distances himself from the newspaper's leadership, which allegedly orchestrated the scam without his knowledge, describes the publication's mission (to fight the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong) and refers to the complacency that this leadership would have expected from the U.S. government in case the illicit operation became known.
On what premise should a money laundering activity conducted by a Chinese cult would have met with such complacency? So the New York District's investigation was embarrassing.
However, in order to understand how a work of influence takes place, I am reporting here on a fact that is small (but perhaps not even that small) but extremely significant from the point of view of international political relevance: In 2022, the main international, but mainly Italian and Canadian newspapers published an alarming news story about the proliferation of secret Chinese police stations scattered around the world, tasked with monitoring compatriots abroad. This alarm was based on a report by the Madrid-based non-governmental organisation Safeguard Defenders, whose leading figure is Peter Dahlin, who co-founded it with Michael Caster. A quick Google search was all it took to find out that Dahlin writes for the Epoch Times (Figure 71).
Does this mean that the issue of the Chinese police stations is a fake? We cannot say. It may very well be true as far as a person outside of this intelligence dynamic could know. However, it should be noted that national and supranational agencies and bodies are also acting on the basis of information coming from organisations linked to a cult that has been described as a disinformation machine on a global scale.
However, another Chinese cult has come to the fore undermining Falun Gong. This is the Church of Almighty God, also known as the Lightning of the East, which is considered the most persecuted religious movement in the world. The financing of this cult, too, is also unknown. It must be much larger than that of Falun Gong, because this movement, which worships the reincarnation of Jesus Christ in a Chinese woman, is known for an intense artistic production that includes films, songs, ballets, musicals and various shows of dizzying quantity and outstanding quality.
It is unclear where the Church of Almighty God, a minority and persecuted cult, gets the huge sums of money needed to produce such a large amount of artistic material, produced with great professionalism (among other things, translated into almost every language in the world, in which it is dubbed with equal professionalism). This is an immense commitment from people such as directors, actors, scriptwriters, set designers, authors, dancers, choreographers, costume designers, singers, translators, dubbing actors, cameramen, editors, etc. The money required is enormous and the organisation complex: logistical difficulties, studios, rehearsal times that are incompatible with the daily work of a non-professional, etc.
Video 2 - One of the thousands of ballets and musicals produced by the Church of Almighty God
One of the stars of these films is Li Yanli, who staged a suicide attempt at Madrid airport on 3 November 2023 to avoid being deported to China. Although she was a follower of a cult that was far from Catholicism, she was supported by a broad front of Catholic extremism that managed to collect over 60,000 signatures to present a petition to the judges to grant the actress political asylum. Part of this broad front was the association “Abogados Cristianos”, an ultra-Catholic lobby closely linked to the far-right party Vox, but also to such fundamentalist lobbies as CitizenGo, HazteOir or El Yunque, of which HazteOir appears to be only a screen-organization.
In 2021, Wikileaks published “The Intolerance Network", ” consisting of 17,000 documents revealing the relationships between CitizenGO, HazteOir, the far-right party Vox and the occult organisation El Yunque. The latter is a Mexican secret society organised as a paramilitary corps with the aim of restoring the Kingdom of Christ. Basically the same agenda as Tradition, Family and Property. It is therefore interesting to read what is written about the situation in Spain in the report “Modern-Day Crusaders in Europe", prepared for the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights:
[...] in 2003 a new organisation called Hazte Oir appeared which seems to fit many of the characteristics often associated with TFP (see section 5), including: grass-roots mobilisation combined with fundraising, multiplicity of branding, youth outreach, the same US contacts, intense contact with other TFP organisations and, finally, exercising traditionalist pressure on the Catholic Church. It diverges from TFP characteristics primarily in its branding, and, while Catholic-inspired, Hazte Oir is by no means a religious movement, and there are no references to Corrêa de Oliveira. Hazte Oir (literally, ’make yourself heard’) plays a watchdog role on Spanish political life and launched a social mobilisation platform “CitizenGo” which would appear to be a 21st century digital version of the direct mailing techniques TFP pioneered in the 1970s (see section 8). Hazte Oir may be the reincarnation of TFP-Covadonga (name of the Spanish branch of TFP, ed.) under a new set of circumstances where there are limits as to how openly it may display its affiliations in Spain26 (see section 6). Whether Hazte Oir is formally part of the TFP family or not, it shares many of the characteristics of TFP organisations and occupies the same niche. (Bold mine)
After all, representatives of another organisation that is closely linked to the TFP via Alleanza Cattolica (see the fourth part of this report), namely the Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR), expressly apologise to CitizenGo and also describe it as a “meritorious organisation".
We know about the persecution to which the Church of Almighty God is subjected by the Chinese Communist Party mainly thanks to an Italian publication issued by the think tank CESNUR, which emerged from Alleanza Cattolica. It is called Bitter Winter. Not that the backers of Bitter Winter, a daily magazine in eight languages with news from China, a country from which it is not easy to export news, and which is published by a non-profit organisation based in Turin, CESNUR, are clear either. But the news about religious persecution in China used by the US State Department is that of the Turin-based magazine. The Department, whose documents represent the official US position and are supposed to guide US policy, openly admits in its report on religious freedom that much of the information comes from Bitter Winter. Its editor, Massimo Introvigne, rightly boasts of this and writes
Readers of Bitter Winter will forgive us if we mention that, in the section on China, Bitter Winter remains, as it was in the report of last year, the single most quoted source. We were quoted 74 times in 2020. The quotes became 85 in 2021.
It is evident that the sources accessed by the Catholic Lawyer's magazine are more reliable than those accessed by the US intelligence services.
In an exchange on Facebook between a member of the Italian “anti-cult” community and Introvigne, faced with the paradox that Bitter Winter could have more information than the American services, Introvigne commented with a short text containing the following statements: “I have known the people who produce these reports for decades" and “there are people in China, but not only there, who prefer to pass on information to scholars who do not work for American government agencies or those of other countries”. With this, the editor of CESNUR and Bitter Winter confirms both the direct and long-standing knowledge of the report writers and that his magazine actually knows more than the CIA because Chinese citizens are willing to talk to its editors rather than the agencies the magazine will later report to anyway. The post lasted the minutes it took the author to realise that it was inappropriate to leave it online and delete it. However, the screenshot was photographed before it was deleted (Fig. 72). A few days later, returning to the same topic on the same social network, the director of CESNUR had a new fit of unbridled self-congratulation, going so far as to boast that “a small magazine published in Turin has become the main source of official documents on religion in China from the most important country in the world” (Fig. 73).
It is therefore ironic that a magazine and an organisation capable of such intelligence capabilities should fall for a hoax such as the one perpetrated on it by a Ukrainian pseudo-scientist: Oleg Maltslev. This is the leader of an Odessa-based organization with whom CESNUR developed an instant affectionate relationship and for whom it gave in to an exculpatory impulse after this organization came under heavy criticism in 2014 from Russian and Ukrainian anti-cult associations.
According to a well-known script, the exchange of cordiality and appreciation then began between CESNUR and the leader of the group vilified by the evil anti-cultists, Maltslev. A monographic issue of CESNUR's magazine was dedicated to him in 2018. The monographic issue was preceded by an exchange of courtesy visits in 2016. Malstlev had first been invited to the CESNUR headquarters in Turin, and then the CESNUR director had returned the favour with a visit to Odessa, where he gave a lecture to Maltslev's supporters on the blatantly discriminatory actions of the anti-cult movement. The CESNUR director reportedly called Meltslev “a scientist whose scientific research deserves much attention”; the Ukrainian instead referred to the Italian as a star of great magnitude that “shining in the sky of Odessa”.
In 2024, things took a turn for the worse: Ukrainian law enforcement and security services gathered evidence of psychological abuse, blackmail, threats and harassment against supporters and journalists after a lengthy investigation. Those who questioned Maltslev's authority, his titles (which were apparently all fake) and his merits were harshly persecuted on social networks, for example by spreading accusations of paedophilia accompanied by edited audio and video files. In addition, many people who were persecuted by Maltslev's organisations were bombarded with calls with threatening content from unknown numbers. One person died of a heart attack as a result. But that's nothing.
On 1 September, almost six months late, the Ukrainian press reported that on 5 March law enforcement officers had arrested the closest associate of the “guru'”, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Unsolved Crimes” (one of the organisation's productions) Konstantin Slobodyanyuk, and taken him to a pre-trial detention centre. The latter was accused of an impressive series of crimes. These include the payment of bribes to an official, criminal conspiracy and illegal burglary of computer equipment, but above all high treason under martial law (Part 2 of Article 111 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code). For the latter offence, he and Malstlev himself, who was on the run, face a life sentence.
The intelligence investigation revealed that Oleg Maltsev had set up a spy organisation that worked for the Russian enemy. It was a full-fledged sabotage unit consisting of 23 people, including an assault group, a sniper, a reconnaissance group, an operational support group and even a communications officer.
This story is ironic for two reasons. The first reason is that the “anti-cult movement” have been accusing them of being close to Russia by cult apologists for years. So being caught by the Ukrainian security services in the vicinity of a traitor working for the Russian enemy is just as embarrassing as a conservative being caught red-handed with a tranny. This guy will of course be able to say: “I did not know that",” and if he is not particularly bright, there is also a risk that it is true.
The second element that makes me smile is that the director of CESNUR, who likes to describe me as “sometimes funny but not brilliant” - as is common among academics - said that CESNUR's magazine, Bitter Winter, would be able to gather much more information about the misdeeds of the Chinese Communist Party than the CIA. However, it had failed to realise that the group they were exchanging mutual appreciation, besides being (it seems) a criminal syndicate, was also working for Russia. They also were betrayed. Funny, but not brilliant.
If you want a little amusement, you can read Willy Fautré's (HRWF) heartfelt defence of Maltslev, who is allegedly the victim of a conspiracy. Among the hilarious things expressed in his article, Fautré cites as the most likely of the hypotheses about the architects of the plot against poor Maltslev the martial arts schools, which would have been very concerned about the new form of fighting invented by the Ukrainian “scientist”. No kidding. It is written here: Ukraine, Suspicion of Fabrication of a Criminal Case. The less authoritative newspaper publishing this piece of journalism is an old acquaintance, The European Times, the publication linked to Scientology (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue).
Back to China. One of the most horrific accusations levelled at the Chinese Communist Party is that it harvests organs from living people (or kills them to harvest their vital organs), especially from “prisoners of conscience” such as followers of Falun Gong and the Church of Almighty God. According to a 2017 Washington Post report, investigations and reports have refuted the claim that China is currently secretly performing 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants per year. Data compiled by US-based Quintiles IMS showed that China's demand for immunosuppressant drugs, which are needed to prevent patients' bodies from rejecting transplanted organs, was roughly equal to the number of transplants China said it was performing. On 14 November 2018, Mark Field of the UK Foreign Office responded to a specific question in a debate on the issue in the House of Commons in London: “We disagree with claims of systematic organ harvesting from political prisoners of conscience, assessing that the evidence they present does not substantiate that claim.” A similar position was taken by Australia. However, a London-based independent tribunal called the China Tribunal - Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China has confirmed the veracity of organ harvesting. This body was founded by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC). However, if you look at ETAC's website, you will find that many members of its “management” have close ties to the Epoch Times, the Falun Gong newspaper! If you go through the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections appear in almost all of them. ETAC is clearly a Falun Gong front organisation. Of course, this does not mean that the findings and conclusions of this tribunal are necessarily false, but its vaunted independence does. The problem is that it is the judgement of this tribunal that Bitter Winter refers to in his articles on this subject. Let us remember that Bitter Winter is the main source of information on China for the US State Department.
Meanwhile, the influence of Bitter Winter also seems to be having an effect in Italy. This is evidenced by the fact that, as Introvigne himself writes on the website of HRWF, the Belgian organisation chaired by Willy Fautrè, more and more followers of the Church of Almighty God (CAG) are finding asylum in Italy precisely because of the magazine. Interestingly, Italy is the main refugee country for the Chinese cult. Introvigne writes:
On June 14, in an exemplary decision judging a CAG asylum seeker, represented by specialized lawyers Amalia Astory and Laura Bondi, as deserving “the higher level of protection” in Italy, the Tribunal of Rome answered the question by mentioning as “reliable sources” “Bitter Winter,” reports by the U.S. and other governments that quote “Bitter Winter,” and a statement by the late sociologist PierLuigi Zoccatelli, who was deputy director of CESNUR, “Bitter Winter”’s parent organization.
Reference is made to the case of a woman who was refused asylum at first instance in 2018. The author speculates that the court was influenced by Chinese propaganda. That may be, but the real objection was that it was not credible that in a closed, non-democratic, high-tech surveillance country, an influx of believers from a church persecuted by the government into Italy, all of whom with their proper passports, was possible. It was Bitter Winter's men who made it clear to the court that corruption of officials is extremely widespread in China and therefore it is not very difficult even for members of the Church of Almighty God to obtain a passport to leave the country. On what basis did they prove this? Introvigne says:
Quoting Italian government sources, which in turn refer to “Bitter Winter,” “a study by sociologist Pier Luigi Zoccatelli,” and the U.S. State Department reports on religious liberty (which also quoted “Bitter Winter”) […]
Oh, okay then...
Bitter Winter not only informs the West about China's persecution of spiritual minorities, but also campaigns vigorously against the “anti-cult narrative” promoted by organisations it assumes are linked to the governments of France, Russia and China. Another conspiracy the editors are keen to address is the artificial origin of the coronavirus, which allegedly escaped from a Chinese laboratory.
It may be a coincidence, but a recent study conducted by the University of Urbino has shown that most of the nodes of the disinformation network about the Covid 19 pandemic in Italy lead directly to the website of the Church of Almighty God.
Certainly, some doubts about the reliability of Bitter Winter, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not have it, have instead been expressed by sources that have no connection with the Chinese government, which could have an advantage in discrediting the magazine. For example, from a Korean Protestant publication (see screenshot below) and from the website BZBriefs, which is affiliated with China Source, a non-profit Christian “ministry” based in the U.S. that seeks to reduce the CCP's pressure on Christian churches. These critics speculate about a connection between Bitter Winter and the Church of Almighty God. It must be said that China Source later rectified its claim by publishing that it understood that Bitter Winter is not connected to the Church of Almighty God in private discussions with Bitter Winter .
However, no one dares to speculate with whom this church is in turn connected.
We only know that the persecutions of the CCP, real and alleged, are absolutely useful in demonstrating the godlessness of the Chiana government. There is one small problem, however: what is going on in China is hard to know. But that's not a problem for Bitter Winter. The magazine is a useful megaphone of persecution. Ifit did not exist, the American services would have had to invent it.
Video 3 - Massimo Introvigne on TV 2000 (Italy) in October 2023. The journalist hints at his relationship with the secret services
VIII - The Double Truth
The strange case of the 'Group of Thebes"
Paris, June 3 1990: In a hall of the Grand Orient de France (GOF), the most important Masonic observance beyond the Alps, the official founding of an occult esoteric group took place. It was called the Group of Thebes, but will only become known three years later thanks to a press release revealing its name and composition. The latter is very interesting because it involved a peculiar acolyte. The lynchpin of the group was Rémi Boyer, a representative of the magical Order of the Rosicrucians (AMORC). Boyer had already founded 'Arc-en-ciel', an association of occult and New Age groups (including Sri Chinmoy, the Grande Loge indépendante des rites unis, the Institut pour une synthèse planètaire, the Ordre Chevaleresque de la Rose-Croix, the Brahma Kumaris Spiritual University). The Group of Thebes was thus Boyer's second creation, dedicated to a smaller and presumably higher group of 'initiates'. It is therefore noteworthy that among the latter was the very Catholic Massimo Introvigne, a prominent figure of Alleanza Cattolica and founder and director of the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) for two years. The lawyer, who was caught in this embarrassing situation by a French magazine, will claim to have been admitted as a scholar. A claim that might convince those who are not familiar with the workings of an esoteric society. Indeed, initiatory orders proceeds for hierarchical levels of knowledge sanctioned by special rites of passage. It is therefore unlikely that an initiatory group would accept an uninitiated scholar among its high-ranking esotericists. Among other things, the group was even secret from the Freemasons of the Grand Lodge, and also from the "Alexandria Group", which acted as a nursery to attract new members to the more occult circle. Introvigne, who had only been involved with spiritual movements for two years, would have entered this circle directly, and the high initiates, who did not break secrecy even with "brothers" of the high degrees, would have welcomed him to be studied by a profane. In response to the criticism levelled at him by the traditionalist magazine 'Sodalitium', our man finally let it be known that he was one of the founders of the Group of Thebes. However, it is not untrue that the Thebes Group was a study group. The various esoteric realities there should have been compared in order to define which groups really fulfil the criteria of the Tradition.
This of course requires advanced knowledge, in the initiatory sense, from all members.
Introvigne was not the only Italian; there were others. One of them was a no less anomalous presence. It was Paolo Fogagnolo, a former member of the 'Brigate Rosse' (Red Brigades), a communist terroristic organisation, to whom the "Madonna", or rather the Sefira, the equivalent of the Virgin in the esoteric tradition, had appeared. He had therefore turned to esotericism and founded the group 'Prometheus', which was dedicated to the Egyptian mysteries. The group was recognised by various magical orders, including the Ordo Templi Orientis). This is the hermetic order made famous by Aleister Crowley, who called himself "the Beast 666" and is regarded as the founder of modern occultism and a source of inspiration for Satanism. Crowley had sympathies for the Nazis.
In addition to the traditionalist Catholic and the former terrorist who saw the Mother of God, there were some interesting personalities. One of the pillars of the group of Thebes was Jean-Pierre Giudicelli. He is a Corsican independentist, right-wing extremist and former member of the neo-fascist groups Ordre Nouveau (inspired by the Italian group Ordine Nuovo, responsible for the massacres in Italy) and Troisieme Voie (disbanded by the Council of Ministers). The latter, former head of the French section of the Order of Myriam, an organisation dedicated to sexual magic, later became bishop of the Church of the New Alliance. Other members were Jean-Marie Vergerio of the Order of the Templars of Circe, Robert Amadou, parapsychologist and occultist, Rosicrucian, Triantaphyllos Kotzamanis, Freemason, Bishop of the Gnostic Apostolic Church and Rosicrucian, Gérard Kloppel, Freemason and Martinist, Jean-Pascal Ruggiu, Grand Hierophant of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (a magical order also linked to Aleister Crowley), Georges Magne de Cressac and Jean-Marie D'Asembourg, well-known right-wing extremists.
So far, the most presentable members have been listed. According to some French outlets, one of the members was the historian Robert Faurisson, the most famous Holocaust denier. However, Massimo Introvigne scornfully and firmly denies this claim, stating that he never saw him at the group's meetings (and adds that if Faurisson had been there, he would have left). Introvigne is keen to express his opposition to holocaust denialism. The Italian does not show the same contempt for a member whose presence is instead certain: Christian Bouchet. The latter is a Nazi-Maoist (or, as they say in France, a Mao-Maurrassien). He was active in several neo-fascist groups and joined the Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE) in the early 1980s. GRECE is an anti-Christian and neo-pagan group in favour of identity and sovereignty. An expert on the English magician Aleister Crowley, Bouchet was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). He is also a member of the white supremacist cult World Church of the Creator, also known as the Creativity Movement. He is also the editor of several magazines. These include 'Lutte du Peuple', which can be categorised as 'neo-Nazi'. Remy Boyer replied to a journalist who asked him how he could include a character like Bouchet in the group
when adventurers, the great travellers, set off to tackle the Himalayas, they know that above 4000 metres, everyone they meet is inevitably their friend. No matter what they were in the valley.
Bouchet was a speaker at the international CESNUR conference in Santa Barbara in 1991 and four times in France in 1992. CESNUR and Bouchet were clearly above 4000 metres.
Figure 77 - Jean-Pierre Giudicelli, Christian Bouchet and Robert Faurisson
Surprisingly, 'Secrets et sociétés', a small confidential newsletter specialising in the life of cults, reported in great detail on a disagreement between Bouchet and Ruggiu (the two had clashed because Bouchet had published part of the Golden Dawn ritual in his magazine 'Thelema'). Rémi Boyer picked up the phone and called the editor-in-chief of Secrets et sociétés, Arnaud d'Apremont. It is not known what the two talked about or how the newsletter learnt of the internal disagreements within the group, but the two became friends. Behind d'Apremont, however, was Arnaud Dupont, a militant right-wing extremist, as well as the director of the newsletter, Philippe-André Duquesne. The aim of the two men was to build bridges between right-wing extremist networks and the small world of esoteric groups and secret societies. The project stemmed from Duquesne and Apremont's shared experience in the ranks of GRECE, the same neo-pagan group as Bouchet. The extreme right has indeed appropriated the pagan tradition to make it the basis of a new fascist thought. The idea is to destroy the concept of equality associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition. The plan of the two editors of the newsletter to infiltrate the group to make it a node of the fascist network was certainly successful since D'apremont revealed to the journalist Serge Faubert that he and Massimo Introvigne were planning to create an esoteric magazine together.
Agostino Sanfratello, one of the founders of Alleanza Cattolica (see the Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. The black network), explains perfectly how it is possible for seemingly opposing souls such as Catholic traditionalism and neo-paganism to coexist. We remember that he is close to the neo-fascist Franco Freda. The latter, a self-proclaimed 'Nazi-Maoist', was convicted for the explosives attacks of 25 April 1969 and those on trains the following summer, which were carried out as part of the so-called strategy of tension. He was later convicted of subversive association for founding the Gruppo di Ar. Freda is also the editor of 'Edizioni Ar'. In the manifesto of the Ar Group he writes:
We are for an Aristocracy that is a radical rejection of the egalitarian model [...] We are for a traditional concept of existence in which the exaggerated and abnormal suggestions of society and the economy give way to the heroic values of the spirit understood as Honour, Hierarchy and Loyalty'.
In 1983, to mark the 20th anniversary of the publishing house, Freda published 'Risguardo IV', a special edition of his journal containing numerous contributions, including one by Sanfratello. In this text, the ultra-Catholic, founder of Alleanza Cattolica and one of the main protagonists of the Confraternity of St Pius X, turned against the comrades rebelling against the neo-pagan current of the New Right by invoking the "plurality of traditions' and the 'convergence in the common struggle'.
Marco Pasi commented on Introvigne's speech at a conference on the "roots and development of contemporary paganism" in Lyon in the right-wing magazine "Orion" with these words:
Thus, in his first speech, Introvigne explicitly said that accepting an invitation to a conference on neo-paganism, where a confrontation with 'neo-pagans' was planned, was 'not only a pleasure but also a duty', at a time when the report of the commission of enquiry [of the French parliament] described neo-paganism as socially dangerous because it was widespread in racist and anti-Semitic far-right circles."
(in 'Esoterismo e nuova religiosità', in Orion, Milan, March-April 1996, p. 51 ff.)
Figures 78 and 79 - Agostino Sanfratello and Franco Freda
Tradition, perennialism and Far Right
We have said that in the group of Thebes different esoteric realities should have been compared in order to define which groups really fulfil the criteria of Tradition. It is therefore necessary to briefly explain the relationship between traditionalism, esotericism and right-wing political thought, i.e. the constituent elements of the group just analysed.
Traditionalism assumes the existence of a perennial wisdom or philosophy, of original and universal truths that are the source of and shared by all major world religions. According to the representatives of traditionalism, all major world religions are based on common original and universal metaphysical truths. The perspective of their authors is often referred to as "philosophia perennis" (perennial philosophy). There would then exist a perennial wisdom (sophia perennis) and a perennial religion (religio perennis).
According to the traditionalists, this truth has been lost in the modern world due to the rise of novel secular philosophies dating back to the Italian Renaissance and led to the to the Enlightenment, and modernity itself is seen as an abnormality. The breakdown of natural hierarchies, egalitarianism and disregard for the sacred are part of this abnormality. This constitutes reactionary thinking and gives rise to a first link between the political right and traditionalism. In addition to right-wing culture, the traditionalists' perennialism is closely linked to esotericism. Indeed, esotericism refers to the supposed ability to access the intimate and unified core of a truth that transcends external appearances. Every religion would have an esoteric component from which it emerges.
By transitive relation, right-wing culture is linked to esotericism.
The access to truth permitted by esoteric research involves an initiation and a step-by-step discovery. Exoteric (external) and esoteric (internal) characters can coexist in the same doctrine: instead of excluding each other, they can complement each other. The same doctrine may have an esoteric and an exoteric component; or the same teaching may be given an exoteric interpretation, open to all, and a deeper esoteric one, the preserve of the initiated only. The most famous example of an esoteric order in the West is Freemasonry.
The best known exponent of traditionalism was the French René Guénon, but for the purposes of our discourse the Italian Julius Evola is more important. He was influenced by Guénon but from whom he departed on many points. In fact, he was the one who exerted the greatest influence on the far right-wing movements in France and Italy, especially in the "years of lead". The terrorists of Ordine Nuovo were devoted to pagan-type rituals with animal sacrifices. Some fringe slipped into magic and occultism (You can read Stefania Limiti, Potere Occulto. Dal fascismo alle stragi di mafia la lunga storia criminale italiana, Milan, 2022).
After Evola, Traditionalism provided the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces, also in post-Soviet Russia. So, Steve Bannon, former Donald Trump adviser and Aleksandr Dugin, informal adviser to Vladimir Putin, can both be included in the same club, that of Evola's admirers, and have therefore interacted with each other on the basis of their common interests.
CESNUR in action
The Group of Thebes is undoubtedly very heterogeneous. Despite its obvious exoteric diversity (there is the Catholic, the neo-pagan, the sovereignist, the terrorist, the red-brown, etc.), the members of the Group of Thebes are nevertheless united, because they are representatives of reaction and traditionalism. In practise, it is a group of extreme right-wing esotericists.
Indeed, the composition of the Group appears to be similar to that of the French branch of CESNUR, now extinct. The board of the Introvigne study centre included Antoine Faivre, right-wing Freemason, occultist, martinist and editor-in-chief of the esoteric magazine "Cahiers Villard de Honnecourt", Olivier-Louis Séguy, Freemason and right-wing extremist with links to the Front National, Roland Edighoffer, Freemason and Rosicrucian, and Jean-Francois Mayer, a militant right-wing extremist in Lyon, former sales manager of the denialist newspaper 'Défense de l'Occident', member of the neo-fascist movement Nouvel Ordre Social, a contributor to the esoteric magazine 'Politica Hermetica' and 'Panorama des idees actuelles', a magazine of the neo-pagan group GRECE, as well as an agent of the Swiss military secret service. Régis Ladous, a historian with occult interests, was also a member of CESNUR's board of directors. The latter was at the centre of a scandal involving the University of Lyon when student Jean Plantin received an excellent grade from Ladous in 1990 for a thesis denying the Holocaust.
In 1992, the conference 'Magical Challenges' took place in Lyon, organised jointly by the University of Lyon II and CESNUR. Regis Ladous did not speak as a representative of CESNUR, but as a professor at the University of Lyon III. Other speakers included the indefatigable Massimo Introvigne, Bruno Geras, Rector of the University of Lyon III, and other emblematic figures of CESNUR. Among them was Christian Bouchet, the neo-Nazi who is also a member of the Thebes group.
In 2001, Serge Garde wrote in 'L'Humanité':
Massimo Introvigne's CESNUR acts as a bridge between the sects and the far right, starting from their university bases. In Lyon, but also in Paris. The president of CESNUR-France, Antoine Faivre, is a professor at the École pratique des hautes études en sciences religieux at the Sorbonne. This small world knows each other, works together, publishes and helps each other. This is how the activist Christian Bouchet became a doctor of ethnology in 1994, after defending his dissertation with Robert Amadou, professor at Paris 7, chronicler of '"Original", an esoteric series in which Massimo Introvigne and Christian Bouchet are rampaging. Régis Ladous is published by Jean-François Mayer, among others.
'L'originel' is the magazine of Charles Antoni, who claims to specialise in 'traditional sciences' but is in fact an occultist. It was around this magazine that the group was reformed in practise. In short, CESNUR , some esoteric groups and the Group of Thebes overlap. The structures have different functions, but the characters are often the same.
To better understand the role of CESNUR, let us begin with the testimony of criminologist Jean-Marie Abgrall before the Belgian parliamentary committee of enquiry into cults (1997):
A few years ago, the cults joined together in FIREPHIM, the International Federation of Minority Religions and Philosophies, a kind of mutual assistance treaty between the cults in the event that one of them is incriminated or threatened. Just as FIREPHIM (NDR: association created in 1992 on the initiative of Scientology, the Unification Church and the Raelian Movement to 'defend new religious movements') was quickly exposed, the cults have created a parallel structure, the CESNUR, the Centre for the Study of New Religions, whose director, Massimo Introvigne, is a professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, which belongs to the Vatican. This Athenaeum was founded by the Legionaries of Christ, a movement that is close to the European far right, or more precisely to a fundamentalist Catholic extreme right. At this moment, all European cults are trying to obtain a kind of moral, public and political guarantee. Introvigne himself is also responsible for a structure called Alleanza Cattolica, the Roman equivalent of TFP Tradition-Family-Property, a far-right cult.
(Bold mine)
Abgrall's statement is imprecise in its temporal definition, since CESNUR was founded in 1988 and FIREPHIM in 1992, so that the Italian organisation cannot be considered as the answer at the end of the French one, but the description of their functions is valid.
The 1999 report of the French commission of enquiry on sects states:
The presence of dominant characteristics in different organisations raises the problem of the existence of a "cross-sectoral" structure that would be responsible for ensuring the defence and coordinating the different movements. Several examples of co-operation between cults have been brought to the Commission's attention. Several organisations play an open role in the coordination of the cults. The Centre for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) - under the direction of Mr Massimo Introvigne - has been a platform for the defence of sectarianism for several years... In particular, CESNUR has launched a campaign to denigrate the work of the former [parliamentary] commission of enquiry.
Traditionalist Catholics defending cults...no stranger than Catholics who ally themselves with neo-pagans...
According to Stephen Kent of the University of Alberta, CESNUR is "the highest-profile lobbying group for controversial religions" and its director is said to be "[a] fierce critic of any rational attempt to identify or restrict so-called 'cults,' who has spoken out against what he sees as intolerance towards 'minority religions,' particularly in Belgium, France and Germany.
CESNUR at the scene of the crime
In October 1994, 48 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple were found dead in the villages of Cheiry and Salvan in Switzerland. When the bodies were discovered, a self-appointed ‘religious affairs adviser from the Central Defence Office’ appeared at the scene of the crime and collaborated with the investigators by questioning the witnesses alone, ignoring all procedural rules.
He was Jean-François Mayer, a former far-right activist in Lyon and a contributor to the magazine Panorama des idees actuelles, a publication of the GRECE, the right-wing, neo-pagan think tank we have already met. By 1976, however, he had converted to orthodox Christianity. The most interesting thing, however, is that this person was a leading member of CESNUR, the Centre for the Study of ‘New Religious Movements', which grew out of an Alleanza Cattolica offshoot. In a BBC documentary on the Solar Temple suicides case, Mayer is portrayed as a representative of Swiss military intelligence.
After the discovery of the bodies of 16 other followers of the Solar Temple in December 1995 in Vercors, France, Jean-François Mayer was one of the 300 privileged people who received a cult file containing the posthumous writings of the sacrificed.
In her book ‘Ordre du Temple Solaire, en quête de vérité’, Rosemarie Jaton reports on the content of an interview with J.F. Mayer, in which he admits to having been in contact with Luc Jouret, one of the two leaders of the Order of the Solar Temple. Luc Jouret was a former Belgian far-right military officer who was associated with Gladio, a branch of the secret anti-communist NATO organisation known as Stay Behind.
The supposed ‘mass suicides’ of the Solar Temple still remain shrouded in mystery. Certainly, the facts recounted suggest a connection between intelligence, the far right and cults.
Double truth and noble lie
It is well known that Alleanza Cattolica has followed the doctrine of the Tradition, Family and Property from the very beginning (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. The black network). According to the historian Orlando Fedeli, who has been a member for thirty years, Tradition, Family and Property would be a millenarian and gnostic cult. There would be an external doctrine and a secret teaching reserved for the highest levels of knowledge.
De Oliveira's 'esoteric' teachings, which can also be read in the magazine 'Dr Plinio', directed by Monsignor João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, focused on the 'metaphysical superiority' of the nobility, especially the South American landed gentry. One can see how this faithfully traces both the Platonic hierarchy of human beings and the Gnostic idea that salvation is reserved solely for the 'spiritual' (and condemnation partly for the 'psychic' and entirely for the 'ilical'). The TFP's anti-egalitarianism engenders in its activists a contempt for class, a taste for luxury and idleness.
In the Joyeux report on the TFP school in Saint Benoit, France, we read that hardness of heart and undisguised hatred of ordinary people characterise the daily behaviour of the majority of TFP activists. Everything that has to do with luxury, glamour and idleness is seen as counter-revolutionary and triggers a sense of pride that stems from the feeling of belonging to a destined elite. Since the revolutionary mentality is characterised by a virulent glorification of pauperism, the TFP acts by systematically claiming the opposite.
A TFP activist once said to a young Frenchman visiting Brazil: 'It's good to get up late in the morning because it goes against the revolutionary spirit that drives activism'. Since most TFP activists do not have to keep a schedule and do not have a job, they can lead a sweet life (p. 46 of the report).
To understand De Oliveira's elitism, it is enough to know that he never supported 'integrism', the Brazilian version of fascism, because he considered it too 'interclassist' and 'socialist' and not open to the demands of the metaphysical superiority of the landed aristocracy.
The result of this thinking is authoritarian-conservative in politics, pro-free market in economics and gnostic-millenaristic in the spiritual realm.
Its Italian expression Alleanza Cattolica was originally propagated by the Veronese magazine 'Carattere'. The Catholicism of 'Carattere' had its points of reference in Papini, Attilio Mordini, Domenico Giuliotti and Silvano Panunzio; it was a Catholicism that pursued the 'chivalrous path of an aristocratic and Ghibelline Christianity'. In short, it was well prepared to embrace the vision of Dr Plinio. Not only that, it pursued a 'traditionalism' that we might call ' Christian esotericism" (see here), i.e. not even in opposition to those who seek "tradition" in the myth of the heights of the spirit that preceded the Fall, i.e. the decadent era, the "Kali Yuga" described by Julius Evola, who is indeed among those who are appreciated by Alleanza Cattolica. The fact that Evola was pagan and anti-Christian did not seem to bother the founder of Alleanza Cattolica, Giovanni Cantoni, as he praised him as one of "the "prophets of the crisis of the modern world"; immediately afterwards he added, among other things: "In our opinion, only one person has said what needed to be said and could be said: René Guénon". Evola and Guenon were both esotericists and expressions of a traditionalism that is a "revolt against the modern world" and an anti-egalitarian differentialism. The convergence in the above-mentioned common struggle.
It has been seen that Tradition, Family and Property embraced American neoconservatism in the 1980s (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. The black network). At the suggestion of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Paul Weyrich founded the International Policy Forum (IPF), an alliance of conservative associations that laid the foundations for the emergence of a transnational New Right. Paul Weyrich also founded the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, which he chaired, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). We know that these organisations, along with dozens of other 'libertarian' organisations that see religious freedom and economic freedom as inseparable - paradigmatically, the Acton Institute calls itself "for the Study of Religion and Liberty" - form an important operational arm of the US soft power. The tactic is that of 'entryism', i.e. the colonisation of the media, the academy, and the parties, in order to steer the masses in a counter-revolutionary direction. Alleanza Cattolica (and CESNUR) is participating in this strategy.
Emanuele Del Medico writes:
The goals set by this 'counter-revolutionary apostolate' relate above all to the struggle against secularism, the rewriting of historical memory and the control of the ideological production of the Italian right through the creation of a narrow intellectual elite from which the future ruling class would emerge. The 'establishment of the kingship of Christ also over human societies' would be expressed in the restoration of traditional hierarchies within the framework of a society of order in which religion would once again assume a predominant role in social control and the legitimisation of political and economic power. The access of representatives of AC to the upper echelons of Berlusconi's coalition does not appear to be a novelty: the politicians Riccardo Pedrizzi, Alfredo Mantovano and Michele Vietti are part of it. The underlying project is not so much to uphold the banner of Catholic traditionalism, but to establish a hyper-conservative neoliberal right wing on the model of that in the United States.
(Bold mine)
As a critic "from the right" of the TFP's epigones, Luigi Copertino, writes, "The thought and above all the financial resources of American neoconservatism, which reach as far as Europe, have succeeded where flowery theological and philosophical treatises have failed: namely, the feat of converting to Americanism, with extreme and suspicious rapidity, large sections of Catholic traditionalism that until yesterday resisted anything that seemed modern and liberal and therefore American," underestimating that the Catholic neoconservative who espouses the reasons for Euro-American cultural unity "accepts to move ideally in a Protestant rather than a Catholic context." In truth, this acceptance of moving in a Protestant context had already manifested itself in the TFP in the 1970s, when one of the organisation's top figures, José Lùcio de Araùjo Correa, suggested to a fierce anti-Catholic, the Reverend Carl McIntire, that they work together to "fight progressive Christianity, secular modernisation and communism" (Cowan, 2001, p. 154). This deep aversion to progressive drift enabled McIntire to overcome his deep aversion to Catholicism, and TFP to overcome McIntire's anti-Catholicism. Overcoming theological and ideological differences in pursuit of a common goal is thus the hallmark of the counter-revolutionary network and will indeed be the hallmark of the work of Introvigne and CESNUR, an organisation born from a rib of an ultra-Catholic group and ready to protect non-Catholic cults from the criticism of those who carry the values of modernity.
The same conversion from anti-Americanism to Atlanticism that we have seen in the TFP had taken place in European neo-fascism through the OAS and the Aginter presse (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network).
It is therefore interesting to look at the roots of the idea that Alleanza Cattolica and the board of CESNUR have embraced so passionately, namely the neoconservative movement of America. Leo Strauss is considered, rightly or wrongly, to be their inspiration. Strauss believed that all great writers wrote in a form distorted for the common people, an 'exoteric' form, and that the clues to the 'esoteric' truth had to be found between the lines. This truth was reserved for those who could bear it, such as the disciples chosen by the Master, whom he called "hoplites". This truth consisted of the nihilistic realisation that the only truth is nothingness and that all moral principles are empty and meaningless. The 'exoteric', external message, on the other hand, consisted precisely in these 'natural moral values'. The authentic philosopher must despise the beliefs of the people, but in public he must pretend to believe in the myths and illusions concocted for the use of the masses, he must conceal this contempt and in reality be the spokesman of moral values suitable for the masses: religion, democracy, justice.
Once again, lessons reserved for the elect, elitism, counter-revolution.
Strauss, who, like de Oliveira, adopts an anti-egalitarian and aristocratic perspective, enters into polemics with modernity and democratic concepts by explicitly resorting to the "noble lie" and affirming the need to use religion as a rhetorical device to manipulate and control the masses. It is the doctrine of "double truth", the first legitimisation of which comes from a thinker very dear to certain elitists, Plato. In his 'ideal city', the aristocracy of spirit and thought is legitimised to use deception for moral, educational and political purposes:
[...] God, when he created you, mixed gold into the generation of those among you who can exercise power, so that they are the most valuable; into that of the guards silver; iron and bronze into that of the farmers and craftsmen.[...] the city will perish when it is protected by a defender of iron or bronze.
As it turns out, the members of TFP feel like they are made of gold, probably their epigones too. The TFP, its Italian sister organisation and the study centre derived from them, in the wake of the overlapping elitist thinking of Correa de Oliveira and Strauss, seem to have embraced the duplicity that every Platonic builder of 'caretaker governments' recommends.
So when we highlight the duplicity of CESNUR, since it is the front office of a traditionalist Catholic organisation and at the same time a centre that produces studies for the benefit of the cults furthest removed from Catholicism, we are not talking about logical paradoxes or personality splits, not even the banal lie of mercenaries hired by the cults, but about double truth and noble lies.
It is not surprising that it is considered morally acceptable to resort to lying 'ad usum populi', to profess the values of a democratic and liberal society that one inwardly despises. The fact that these values are despised by the CESNUR leadership is clear from the much-cited genealogy of the study centre. That it is a 'legitimate' imposture to pose as defenders of religious freedom becomes clear when one considers the Platonism inherent in this genealogy.
When a law against mental manipulation was passed in France in 2001, Introvigne wrote a "manifesto" with advice on how to defend oneself against it. Point 1 was entitled "Trying to understand the law in the French context" and made it clear that the defence of religious freedom that CESNUR proposes is still perfectly embedded in the counter-revolutionary project. Indeed, the author wrote that a good starting point for understanding the French law is to realise that "the French are truly convinced that the eradication of religious belief is desirable and possible". It is this theoretical conspiracy that CESNUR is responding to. Yes, the enemy is still Robespierre.
Point 2 is entitled 'Supporting internal and European litigation'. In other words: Intervention in the media, in the courts and even in supranational bodies such as the OSCE and the UN to protect the rights of 'new religious movements' from persecution by a phantom 'anti-cult movement'. In practise, this is an action of institutional lobbying and cultural influence.
This is precisely the mission of the international network of associations for the defence of 'religious freedom", made up of non-governmental organisations linked to Scientology and other cults, but also American neo-conservative foundations, very reminiscent of the Birch Society, which acted as a link for the Aginter presse, including that of the aforementioned Atlas Network or the Rutherford Institute, with which CESNUR has a historical acquaintance. The 'cult apologists' form a network of interest groups that are active in international bodies such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe. These organisations include Human Rights Without Frontiers - HRWF, the European Federation for Freedom of Belief - FOB (which we met in the prologue to this dossier) and Coordination des associations et des particuliers pour la liberté de conscience - CAP LC. The mutual contacts between these organisations, CESNUR, Scientology, the American 'libertarian' foundations and sectors of neocon politics are so close that the distance between one node of the network and another is hardly greater than two intermediate nodes. In fact, there is often complete overlap.
CESNUR seems to play the same role in this network that the Aginter Presse played in the subversive work, namely that of a control room.
In point 4 of the manifesto ('Don't feed the wolves') Introvigne writes:
[...] even the less pleasant movements, accused of pseudo-crimes such as 'brainwashing' or 'cult', should be vigorously defended. No matter how much we dislike them, [...]
The benevolence even towards abusive cults therefore seems somewhat hypocritical and the call for tolerance and ecumenism seem to be actions that only acquire a morally positive connotation when they follow the justifying logic of the 'double effect' that was of Ousset and the OAS militants. In short, if it serves to combat subversion and secularism (and enforce the global hegemony of conservative America), anything goes. St Thomas takes care of that. With the help of Uncle Sam.
Figure 81 - Paul Weyrich, Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Leo Strauss
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