Vladimir Moss – Orthodox Christianity Author

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APOCALYPSE NOW

Written by Vladimir Moss

APOCALYPSE NOW

 

     The final warning bell for western civilization sounded on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Twin Towers in New York were destroyed in a terrorist attack. It is still not known for certain who perpetrated the catastrophe. But that question is less important than the disaster’s symbolical – indeed, eschatological – significance. 

     For New York today is the city that most closely symbolizes the Babylon of the Apocalypse, not only in its nature, but also in its final destruction. Not only is it the true capital of modern Jewish-Masonic civilization: as Denis Geoffroy points out, it "so resembles the description of Babylon in the Apocalypse of St. John that it is hard to believe that this is a simple coincidence." As for its destruction, the destruction of New York’s twin towers both looks back to God’s destruction of the Towers of Babel and forward to the coming destruction of the whole of contemporary western civilization.

     The date of this tragedy, September 11 – August 29, according to the Orthodox calendar – highly significant. It is the feast/fastday of the Beheading of St. John the Forerunner. St. John is the prophet of repentance, and his beheading signified the attempt by Herod to cut off his preaching of repentance. And so the time of repentance for the apostate Herodian West is near to being cut off…

*

     In his magisterial work, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntingdon showed that since the end of the Cold War the underlying structure of World Order has changed from being bipolar and ideological to being multipolar and civilizational. In his view, which he backs up with a very impressive array of data and argumentation, the ideological liberalism vs. communism struggle was a comparatively superficial “blip” in the tide of history. After all, both liberalism and communism are products of western civilization, and the Cold War can be seen as a civil war between two outcomes or stages of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Both systems offer a utopian vision for mankind based on rationalism, science and education, in which religious belief has no place. Liberalism is relatively more individualistic than Communism, gives more place to individual initiative in economic and social life, and is more tolerant of individual differences and idiosyncracies, such as religion. But the similarities between them are more striking than their differences. And from the point of view of traditional Christianity, the main difference is that while the one destroys faith slowly, the other does it relatively quickly. Thus Stuart Reed writes: “In the Cold War, an unworkable revolutionary creed, communism, yielded to a workable revolutionary creed, liberal capitalism. Now liberal capitalism has replaced communism as the chief threat to the customs, traditions and decencies of Christendom…” World politics, argued Huntingdon, has now reverted to the more traditional, long-term pattern of struggles between civilizational blocs based on profound differences in values and religion. 

     Huntingdon identified the following main contemporary civilizations: Western, Orthodox (Russian), Islamic, Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Buddhist, Hindu, Latin American and African. Of these the most powerful were, in his opinion, the Western, Islamic and Sinic civilizations.

     Accepting the thesis on the clash of civilizations in principle, and agreeing that the ultimate aim of the western globalists is evil, we may ask: to what extent are they succeeding in coming close to their goal? Or are they in fact being thwarted by the revival of older, clashing civilizations? And the surprising answer is: since the end of the Cold War, in spite of some tactical successes, the goal of the globalists appears to be receding away from them; three rival centres of power that explicitly reject western ideology and the West’s NWO are rapidly growing in power and influence: China, the Islamic world and Russia. Like the horsemen of the Apocalypse, these four civilizations are set to clash and set the world ablaze…

1. The West

     Let us begin with the West, the common “bogey” of the other three… As the world turned into the third millennium AD, it was clear that to speak of “the End of History” in the shape of the complete, global triumph of democracy and free trade was premature to say the least, and that opposite tendencies were developing fast. True, there were more nominally democratic countries than ever before, - “by 2000, 60 per cent of the world’s population lived in democracies, a far higher share than in 1974,” - and the Chicago-school-style liberalization of the financial and commodity markets had proceeded apace. But on the horizon, like clouds that gradually draw nearer, becoming larger and darker all the time, several distinct threats to the New World Order, some old and some relatively new, were emerging. America’s emphatic but pyrrhic and costly victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 was a turning point; thereafter, her prestige has plummeted… 

     Moreover, the western way of life as a whole does not seem to be making people significantly happier; it is no longer something that people from other countries strive for – if we exclude the higher income levels and security, which are still envied. Thus “one well publicized finding,” writes Peter Watson, “is that although the developed Western nations have become better off in a financial and material sense, they are not any happier than they were decades ago. In fact, in The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard to Be Happy (2010), Michael Foley argues that modern life has made things worse, ‘deepening our cravings and at the same time heightening our delusions of importance as individuals Not only are we rabid in our unsustainable demands for gourmet living, eternal youth, fame and a hundred varieties of sex, we have been encouraged – by a post-1970s “rights” culture that has created a zero-tolerance sensitivity to any perceived inequality, slight or grievance – into believing that to want something is to deserve it.’ Moreover, ‘the things we have are devalued by the things we want next’…” Of course, this begs the question whether “happiness” should be the aim of life. The right to happiness is enshrined in the American Constitution, but western civilization before the Masonic eighteenth century had a far higher ideal: eternal life in Christ, which is as much higher than “happiness” as heaven is higher than the earth. But even if we judge the West by its present, base and purely secular ideals, it has obviously failed. 

     The sins of the West in relation to the peoples it once colonized are generally recognized – which is not to say, forgiven. Among the most serious death-tolls were those of the Indians of North America at the hands of the White Americans, and the Mayans and Incas of Central and South America at the hands of the Spaniards. Several western nations had a hand in the slave trade from Africa to America. In Africa itself, the Congolese suffered horrific genocide at the hands of the Belgians, and the Hereros of South-West Africa at the hands of the Germans. Later slaughters in Africa included the Ethiopians at the hands of the Italians, the Mau-Mau of Kenya at the hands of the British and the Algerians at the hands of the French. The British killed millions indirectly: through neglect of the Irish famine, through the destruction of the native Indian textile industry, and through the imposition of the opium trade on China at the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The Europeans were supposed to bring Christianity to the pagans. But the reality was that the non-European civilizations were sacrificed on the altar of European profit. It was not so much Christianity as revolutionary teachings such as socialism and nationalism that the West instilled into its colonies – which, by the Justice of God, would later be turned against them.

     The West reached its peak just before the First World War; Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West was published in 1918. Though disguised and to some extent reversed by the dominance of America from 1945 to 1991, this decline is now a fact that cannot be denied. The tired, aging and debt-ridden populations of North America and Europe still retain a lead over the rest of the world in military and economic terms. But the gap is narrowing very fast, especially in relation to China, but also in relation to Russia. Thus “NATO defence spending is falling fast, but Russia’s military budget rose by 26% this year [2013]”. Just recently President Trump has raised American military spending, but the Europeans, with the partial exception of the British, remain mired in apathy and appeasement, preferring to blame the Americans – while relying on American blood and money – rather than defend themselves…

     Let us look more closely at the figure of the whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation: “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast... The ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire” (17.12-13, 16). In the next, eighteenth chapter there follows a detailed description of the fall of Babylon, hailed by the inhabitants of heaven but bewailed by the merchants of the earth because the enormous possibilities for enrichment that she had provided have now vanished...  

     One vivid detail immediately strikes us: “Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What is like this great city?” (Revelation 18.17-18). Evidently, insofar as Babylon can be identified with a geographical place or city, it is situated on the sea. The hypothesis, therefore, is that Babylon is western civilization as a whole, and that what we see here described in the Sacred Scripture is the destruction of its most potent symbol, the Twin Towers of New York, which, of course, is situated on the sea… That the West in general and New York in particular should be identified with Babylon is confirmed by several facts. First, New York’s street-plan is modeled on that of ancient Babylon. Secondly, it is in New York that the United Nations is situated with its declared purpose of uniting all nations in one world government, a cardinal aim of which is a reduction and “leveling” down of all religions to a lowest common denominator. And thirdly, New York, together with other great cities of the West – Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, London and Chicago – has taken the lead in hosting and promoting the ecumenical movement in such institutions as the World Council of Parliaments (first meeting: Chicago in 1893) and the World Council of Churches (first meeting: Amsterdam in 1948).

     St. John Maximovich said that America was a great nation, but was threatened by the sins of greed and sensuality. These are the “Babylonian” sins of a society that permits every kind of abomination. Of course, America is not alone in this: her parent-civilization of Western Europe is no less debauched. However, the popular imagination – and especially the imagination of non-western peoples – has seized on America in particular because of her size, wealth, and military and technological superiority over every other nation. America for many around the world is the Antichrist.

     The effect of 9/11 was electrifying. On the one hand, it reinforced the trend of American governments to intervene pre-emptively in any region of the world where democracy was under threat – President Bush’s scepticism about overseas interventions changed overnight into a “global war on Terror”. But on the other hand, those interventions became increasingly pyrrhic and counter-productive. Thus the Second Iraq war in 2003, while overthrowing a real tyrant, brought to the surface Sunni/Shiite divisions that the tyrant had suppressed. Again, the intervention in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi’s regime exposed divisions in NATO and does not appear to have united Libya itself. Again, while the “Arab Spring” appeared to promise a new wave of pro-western democratization, it also produced an Islamist president in Egypt, the biggest country in the Arab world, and instability in America’s monarchical allies in the Persian Gulf, while the governments of America’s main enemies in the region, Iran and Syria, remain in power in spite of the pressure of sanctions and war... 

     As for “soft power”, the West’s lead here is also declining. Even in the field of Human Rights, in which it always took the lead, it has surrendered influence to the most illiberal of countries. Thus the Human Rights Council of the United Nations is chaired by a Saudi Arab, and has representatives from China, Cuba and Russia – none of them countries noted for their championship of Human Rights! “The ‘Washington consensus’ of democracy and free markets has given way to the Beijing consensus of authoritarian modernisation. America’s self-confidence has been battered first by George Bush’s clumsy war on terror, which gave democracy a bad name, then by the economic crisis of 2008, which did the same for Western finance, and finally by the dysfunctionality of Congress, which shut down the American government in 2013 [and 2018]. China become bolder about asserting its rights in Asia, Russia began rearming and reconquering parts of the former Soviet Union, while Barack Obama has seemed a defensive president, retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan, unwilling to guide the Arab awakening and keen to ‘outsource’ responsibility in other regions to local powers.”

     Although a resurgence of the West cannot be ruled out, it looks increasingly unlikely that it can survive the next global financial crisis, let alone a war with either Russia or China. Moreover, when the fall comes it is likely to be rapid. Japanese philosopher Takeshi Umehara might well be right when he says: “The total failure of Marxism… and the dramatic break-up of the Soviet Union are only the precursors to the collapse of Western liberalism, the main current of modernity. Far from being the alternative to Marxism and the reigning ideology at the end of history, liberalism will be the next domino to fall…”

2. China

     Huntingdon believed that China was the country most likely to challenge the West in the role of global hegemon… China acquired both cultural and political unity at about the same time as Rome – in the late third century BC. In spite of changes of dynasty, Chinese despotism lasted for another 2100 years and more! 

     However, between the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 and Tiananmen Square in 1989, it looked as if western civilization in one or another of its forms might overcome the older Chinese civilization. First came the Taiping rebellion led by a man claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, which caused between 20 and 40 million deaths and ended with the fall of the Taiping capital of Nanking in 1864. Then came the long period of western capitalist dominance, beginning with the sack of Peking by an Anglo-French force in 1860 and punctuated by failed rebellions such as that of the Boxers in 1900 and the intervention of other civilizations such as that of the Japanese in the 1930s. Finally, from 1949 China adopted another variant of western civilization, communism, which after the death of Mao began to liberalize and seemed on the verge of falling to a worldwide wave of democratization.

     But in 1989 the Chinese communist leaders, unlike their colleagues in Russia, held their nerve and held on to power. However, the result was not a return to old-style Marxist communism, nor liberalization except partially in the economic sphere. Rather, China seems to be returning in essence to the old empire-civilization, the Confucian Middle Kingdom, an intensely nationalist and despotic civilization that extends its power over neighbouring lands not so much by war as by sheer demographic and economic dominance. 

     Thus the Far Eastern province of Russia is already overrun by Chinese, with little resistance from Putin (in fact he has given huge concessions and grants of territory to the Chinese), while Chinese entrepreneurs are outshining their Russian colleagues. In almost every other economy in the Far East, with the exception of South Korea and Japan, a small Chinese elite seems to hold the economic cards. Chinese investment in Africa is already huge. As for the West, large chunks of western industry, commerce and real estate are being taken over by the Chinese, and European governments go cap in hand to the Chinese asking for loans and investment. 

     This increasing influence of China abroad sometimes causes resentment among the indigenous populations (for example, in Indonesia). But the Chinese overseas have always stressed their dutiful obedience to their adopted countries. The Chinese are extending their influence by “soft” rather than “hard” power – for the time being, at any rate… 

     “China’s soft power,” predicted Jonathan Friedland in 2014, “will make itself felt in every aspect of Western lives. Business may slow during late January, thanks to the Chinese new year. The seasonal habit of hanging lanterns from the trees may cross the Pacific, the way Halloween masks travelled back to Europe across the Atlantic. The Olympic games and football World Cup will have to adjust their timetables to accommodate the world’s largest television audience.

     “The classiest hotels will have signs in English and Mandarin, welcoming the new rich. Western politicians will all but beg for Chinese investment. And American Lord Granthams, eminent men without money, will marry Chinese Cobras, women without lineage but with plenty of spare cash.

     “American and European elites will pride themselves on knowing the names of the rising stars of Chinese politics, the way they used to know the early field for Iowa and New Hampshire. They will follow China for the same reason Willie Sutton said he robbed banks: ‘Because that’s where the money is’.”

     And if this seems very superficial and short-term, we must remember that fashions in important ideas, too, tend to follow the money. Societies that are perceived to be powerful and successful in material terms are usually imitated in more profound matters. So the growth in Chinese soft power, backed up as it is by increasing hard power, will most likely continue to erode the prestige of western democracy and humanrightism throughout the world. The greater emphasis of the Chinese on the collective as opposed to the individual appeals to many who see the absurdities of the selfish, individualistic western obsession with human rights. And if Chinese civilization seems at first too China-centred to have a truly universal appeal, we could have said that with even greater conviction of western civilization in the nineteenth century with its barely-concealed racism. 

     In view of the rapid growth of its economy, China is sometimes seen a s a modern state that must eventually become a member of the NWO. But only a fantasist could think that the globalists control China as they control the West! Moreover, while modernizing its economy, China has not modernized its political system: while jettisoning Marxism, it is still despotic and therefore part of the Old World Order (OWO) of antichristian despotism. Nor has this changed under China’s new leader, Xi Jinping. As Jonathan Fenby writes, “there is no doubting his complete attachment to the party state he heads. This year [2013] has seen a toughening of the clampdown on dissent and an insistence by Mr. Xi on the need for absolute loyalty to the regime. He has resurrected Maoist ideology on party power. Western ideas of plurality and democracy have no place in his people’s republic…” 

     This strengthening of the despotic power of the Great Leader was reinforced at the Party Congress in 2017… Now, while overt repression is far less than in Mao’s time, covert surveillance and the control of all forms of information (especially about Mao’s time) has reached record heights. Unlike the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, glasnost’ has been decoupled from perestroika in China. The authorities retain a formidable power over the people, and China remains one of the few major countries that have made determined efforts to control even the internet. But western media and politicians, usually so quick to seize on human rights violations in weaker countries, turn a blind eye to the far greater threat from still-Communist China.

     China’s main weaknesses are the instability and corruption inevitably created by rapid economic growth and the monopoly power of the party over that growth. The party’s corruption and the increasing gap between rich and poor are causing increasing tension. Thus “the show trial of Mr. Xi’s erstwhile rival, Bo Xilai, opened many Chinese eyes to the opulence of the country’s princelings. Americans may moan about money politics, but the wealth of the richest 50 members of Congress if $1.6 billion, compared with $95 billion for the richest 50 members of China’s People’s Congress. More such revelations will surely come.” 

     Riots and strikes are common in China today – contrary to the common opinion, there is a tradition of protest in Chinese history. Thus “in the last five years,” wrote Misha Glenny in 2009, “the number of peasant riots has risen spectacularly to roughly 80,000 per year and they continue to proliferate. These outbursts of discontent can be serious, involving the wrecking of local government offices and the lynching of officials.” Thus a “Chinese Maidan” remains a real possibility.

     Another weakness of China is the possibility that events in neighbouring North Korea, with its megalomaniac nuclear ambitions, could get out of control. By July, 2017, North Korea had developed nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States. And President Kim Il-Jun had repeatedly threatened to use them against America, thereby bringing the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. In September, the country exploded a hydrogen bomb 17 times as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima. This is the price of the failure finally to defeat communism in the twentieth century – never-ending and ever-escalating evil in the twenty-first…

     Paradoxically, China may be in greater danger from North Korea than the United States. Even without nuclear war, the collapse of the regime there for whatever reason could lead to a major exodus of refugees over the border into China – with serious destabilizing consequences. “In the event of an escalation,” writes Oriana Skylar Mastro, “China will likely attempt to seize control of key terrain, including North Korea’s nuclear sites. The large-scale presence of both American and Chinese troops on the Korean peninsula would raise the risk of a full-blown war between China and the United States.” As for Russia, North Korea’s main ally and provider of technology, she could hardly keep out of the conflict…

     Another weakness of China is her aging population, which was caused by the communist government’s one-child policy. This is now in the process of being abandoned, but it still leaves a disastrous legacy: a vast excess of males over females. Now masculine energy that cannot be directed towards employment or the building of families can easily be redirected towards another traditional occupation of young males – war. 

     This brings us to the question of China’s “hard” power, her military, into which very large resources have been poured of late. How is China likely to use her enormous military power, second only to that of the United States?

     In Revelation the army of “the kings of the East” numbers 200 million (9.12-19, 16.12), and marches to the River Euphrates. By “coincidence”, the Chinese military is reported to be able to put 200 million men into the field…Their heading for the River Euphrates, the heart of the Islamic world, points to a phenomenon that is already clearly evident: the aggiornamento of China and Islam, especially Pakistan and Iran, which, though not a natural partnership since they constitute different civilizations, nevertheless makes sense as an alliance against American hegemony. Such an alliance can also count on two other resources that could bring America to her knees even without a shot being fired: Arab oil and Chinese purchases of American bonds. And although America’s “fracking” revolution has lessened her dependence on Arabic oil, and the symbiosis between the Chinese and American economies – Niall Ferguson has called it “Chimerica” - means that the Chinese would suffer almost as much as the Americans if they sold American bonds, the fact remains that western civilization is uniquely vulnerable to these two threats. 

     A third threat related to the first two is that oil and gas will begin to be paid for in euros or some other currency rather than the dollar – which might well bring down the dollar. Iran, with the support of Russia and China, has suggested creating a petroeuro market. It has been suggested that this threat, rather than that of the building of a nuclear bomb, is the real reason why America has been trying to bring about regime change in Iran and in its close ally, Syria… Be that as it may, a Eurasian bloc consisting of Russia, China and Iran – among others – would be a huge threat to NATO and the West. Russia supplies Iran with nuclear technology and S-300 surface-to-air missiles. At the time of writing, Aleppo has just fallen to Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces; this may not be the last victory of the bloc.

    All political and economic analysts predict that China will overtake America as the world’s most powerful nation in the near future. This is the country that combines the cruelty and atheism of communism with the luxuriousness and immorality of capitalism. In spite of that, most political and business leaders appear to contemplate this prediction with equanimity, having resolved to appease the new Führer, come what may… 

3. The Islamic World

     If the main difference between the western and Chinese civilizations is that China places the rights of the collective over the rights of the individual, thereby giving the state a despotic power and discouraging freedom of thought, whereas the West gives the individual the right to rebel against both the collective and against Christian civilized norms, the main difference between the Islamic civilization and the other two is that it places religion above the state, and religious (sharia) law above state law. Having this essentially negative attitude to politics, the Muslims have had difficulty in establishing stable, loyal attitudes to political authorities, whether Islamic or western. Since the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1918, no political regime, whether nationalist or secularist (Baathist or Kemalist), has arisen in the Middle East that commands the loyalty of all the Islamic peoples. And yet there is no doubt that the Muslims long for a Caliph that will unite them and crush the infidel…

     The Islamic religious resurgence can be said to have started with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. But in accordance with its religious nature, the revolution in Iran did not remain like Stalin’s “socialism in one country”, with its cruel, but cool-headed political calculation. It was much closer to Trotsky’s wildly fanatical concept of world revolution. Thus in December, 1984 Ayatollah Khomeini said in a speech: “If one allows the infidels to continue playing their role of corrupters on Earth, their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger. Thus, if we kill the infidels in order to put a stop to their [corrupting] activities, we have indeed done them a service. For their eventual punishment will be less. To allow the infidels to stay alive means to let them do more corrupting. [To kill them] is a surgical operation commanded by Allah the Creator… Those who follow the rules of the Koran are aware that we have to apply the laws of qissas [retribution] and that we have to kill… War is a blessing for the world and for every nation. It is Allah himself who commands men to wage war and kill.”

     After citing these words, Roger Scruton writes: “The element of insanity in these words should not blind us to the fact that they adequately convey a mood, a legacy, and a goal that inspire young people all over the Islamic world. Moreover,… there is no doubt that Khomeini’s interpretation of the Prophet’s message is capable of textual support, and that it reflects the very confiscation of the political that has been the principal feature of Islamic revolutions in the modern world…

     “… Even while enjoying the peace, prosperity, and freedom that issue from a secular rule of law, a person who regards the shari’a as the unique path to salvation may see these things only as the signs of a spiritual emptiness or corruption. For someone like Khomeini, human rights and secular governments display the decadence of Western civilization, which has failed to arm itself against those who intend to destroy it and hopes to appease them instead. The message is that there can be no compromise, and systems that make compromise and conciliation into their ruling principles are merely aspects of the Devil’s work.

     “Khomeini is a figure of great historic importance for three reasons. First, he showed that Islamic government is a viable option in the modern world, so destroying the belief that Westernization and secularization are inevitable. Second, through the activities of the Hizbullah (Party of Allah) in Lebanon, he made the exportation of the Islamic Revolution the cornerstone of his foreign policy. Third, he endowed the Islamic revival with a Shi’ite physiognomy, so making martyrdom a central part of its strategy.”

     The Islamic Revolution gathered strength during the successful war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in 1979-89. Many of the Mujaheddin who fought against the Russians in Afghanistan then went on to fight the Croats and the Serbs in Bosnia in the early 1990s. And then NATO in Afghanistan…

     The Revolution suffered an apparent setback in the First Iraq War of 1990. However, the result of that war in military terms proved to be less important than its effect in galvanizing Muslim opinion throughout the world against the western “crusaders”, who had once again intervened on sacred Muslim soil for purely selfish reasons (oil). 

     These feelings were greatly exacerbated by the Second Iraq War, and by the NATO intervention in Afghanistan. It was not that most Muslims could not see the evil of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. But such notions as political freedom and human rights mean little to the Muslim mind. Much more important to them is the principle that the followers of the true faith should be able to sort out their own problems by themselves without the help of the corrupt infidels. True, in the Kosovan war of 1998-99 the West overcame its internal differences and hesitations to intervene decisively on the side of the Albanian Muslims against the Serbs. But this also annoyed the Muslims, who would have preferred that Muslim interests should have been defended by Muslims...

     The Islamist threat was brought into vivid and terrifying relief by 9/11. However, the essential failure of the West’s military response in Iraq and Afghanistan has reinforced its traditional (in recent times) defeatist attitude towards the threat. Thus so frightened was Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, by Islamism in Britain that he suggested the introduction of sharia law in parallel with British common law…

     The chaos created by the Syrian war pushed millions of Muslim refugees towards “Christian” Europe. However, while many of these are like the traditional kind of cowed and grateful refugees Europeans have been familiar since the post-1945 period, many others were quite different. Overwhelmingly young and male, infiltrated by ISIS terror cells and egged on by the KGB, they were aggressive and contemptuous of the civilization giving them shelter, ready to defecate in public and rape white women. Large parts of urban Scandinavia are now no-go areas for white women, while honest reporting on this evil is more or less banned.

     Meanwhile, Turkey threatens to invade a fellow NATO member, Greece – but receives no fitting rebuke or counter-threat from the West… In fact, Turkey is increasingly turning into a liability, rather than an asset for the West. Just recently, it has sent troops into Northern Syria to attack the Kurds – the West’s most effective ally in the struggle against ISIS.

     In spite of this, and her own previous assertion that multiculturism was not working, German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the floodgates to them in 2015, causing great ructions among other European governments and providing a major stimulus to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Now there is a clear schism between the “old” Europe of France and Germany and the “new” Europe of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and even Austria on how to deal with the Muslim migrant. Not only is there no real resistance to the Islamist threat from most western governments: the liberals’fear of offending Islamists has become so strong that open platforms are given to the preaching of the most illiberal Islamism. Thus “Islamic Studies professor Jonathan Brown recently lectured at the International Institute of Islamic Thought, where he shared his alarming beliefs with students in attendance in his lecture, ‘Islam and the Problem of Slavery.’ Freelance writer Umar Lee expressed his shock over the 90-minute lecture, which included explicit endorsements of rape and slavery.”

     Whether the liberal elite will ever be able to solve the ideological challenge posed by the Islamic Revolution seems unlikely – liberalism is powerless in the face of real religious zeal, whether true or false. At the time of writing a reaction to the Islamic threat appears to be developing in Europe, not from the liberals, but from grass-roots anti-liberal forces, as is witnessed by the rapid rise of anti-immigrant parties such as UKIP in Britain. So the near civil war that we see between Islamists and secularists in Egypt in the midst of an officially Muslim culture may be reflected in similar civil war conditions in several countries of the officially secularist West. Western leaders, while offering no solutions to the largely justified Muslim condemnation of western decadence and its devastating effects on family life and social solidarity, have similarly offered no solutions to the no less justified complaints against Muslim migrant aggression against the native population. They speciously argue that the “real” Islam is peaceful, and that it is only contemporary Islamic “fundamentalists” who commit terrorist acts. However, a reading of the Koran and of early Islamic history proves the opposite. As Huntingdon showed, most inter-civilizational conflicts today involve Islamists on one side. 

     The greatest weakness of Islamism lies in the bitter division at its centre between the Sunnis (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt) and the Shiites (Iran). Proxy wars between the Sunnis and Shias are taking place in Syria and Yemen. Russia and China appear to have lined up on the side of the Shias, while the West supports the Sunnis.

4. Russia

     Traditional Russian civilization stands equidistant from European civilization to the west, Chinese civilization to the east and Islamic civilization to the south. Russia inherited her Orthodox Christianity and Romanity from Byzantium in the tenth century after St. Vladimir quite consciously rejected the western, Jewish and Islamic religions. In spite of two hundred years under the Mongol yoke (the same Mongols who conquered China), Russia remained relatively uncontaminated by foreign civilizational influences until towards the end of the seventeenth century. In this period she retained the classically Byzantine “symphony of powers” between Church and State that distinguished her both from the engulfment of religion by politics that was common in the West and China, and from the engulfment of politics by religion that was common in the Islamic world. 

     But then Peter the Great adopted western-style absolutism, opened “a window to the West”, and a century later the governing elite was only superficially Orthodox… At the same time the first peaceful contacts were being made with the Chinese empire, and the first warlike encounters with the Ottoman empire, as the Russians strove to liberate their fellow-Orthodox in the Balkans and the Middle East from the Muslim yoke and replace the crescent with the Cross on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. 

     This noble aim came very close to being achieved in 1916 as Russian Orthodox armies defeated the Ottomans in the east and the Austrians in the south. But then came the revolution, and Russia fell under a yoke that was western in its ideological inspiration but thoroughly Asiatic in its despotic cruelty. Hardly less cruel, however, was the disappointment felt by all True Orthodox after the fall of communism in 1991, when True Orthodoxy was not restored to Russia. Instead, we witnessed a decade of anarchical democratism in the 1990s under Yeltsin, and then, from January 1, 2000, the “sovereign democracy” of the KGB under Putin. 

     In accordance with his anti-Americanism, and his fondness for the Eurasian ideology, Putin is seeking an alliance with China and selected Muslim countries in order to counter America’s hegemony. But this alliance is even more unnatural than one with the West, for Russia’s traditional enemies have included invaders from across the Eurasian steppe no less than from the Central European plain. Moreover, Russia has major problems with its large and growing Muslim minorities, which have already led to wars in Chechnya and Tadjikstan and may cause further conflicts if, for example, the Tatars seek independence. Putin recently congratulated the authorities in Tatarstan for the vast increase in the building of mosques – a strange thing for a supposed champion of Orthodoxy to do, but not strange at all from a purely political point of view. Again, Russia could easily get involved in war with Islamic countries just beyond her boundaries, particularly the traditional enemy of Turkey, with which she came into conflict over Armenia in 1992-93 and again just recently over Syria. 

     Putin is now quite openly preparing his country for war. His airforce is getting good target practice in Syria, where a major naval base has also been constructed. The civilian population is being prepared for the coming of war on the public media, while factories manufacturing civilian goods are being warned that they must be ready to convert to wartime production. In 1917 there was huge war game in Western Russia and Belorus’ which was clearly aimed at the far smaller NATO forces in Eastern Europe. Called “Zapad” (the West), its aim was clearly to threaten the West. But it seems more likely that Putin’s first target will be in the Middle East. 

     As for China, we have seen that whatever pious words of friendship the two former communist allies may mouth, the Chinese already have vast demographic and commercial power in Siberia, over parts of which they have territorial claims. The Chinese see Siberia as a critical part of their worldwide drive for reliable energy supplies. In view of this, Russia’s cheap sale of military technology and energy to the Chinese must be regarded as very short-sighted, ignoring as it does the fact that China’s very rapid military build-up is directed as much against Russia as against anyone else...

     To all Orthodox peoples, the spiritual and physical health of Russia is a matter of the most vital concern. The Balkan countries are too wrapped up in their nationalist egoisms to take up the banner of Universal Orthodoxy, and are in any case too weak to have a wide influence – except insofar as a conflict in, say, Bosnia-Herzegovina, could start another world war… Only Russia, with her relatively recent imperial past and her hundreds of thousands of new martyrs, has the spiritual potential to unite the Orthodox and revive the Orthodox faith worldwide. 

     The root cause of the failure of Orthodox civilization to revive since 1991 has been the failure to repent of the sins of the Soviet period – ecumenism and sergianism. In Russia there has been no desovietization process, no renunciation of ecumenism, no trials of communist leaders, and no true repentance in any but a few individuals. Moreover, the organ that might have been expected to lead the process of national repentance, the official church of the Moscow Patriarchate, has been adept only at justifying the crimes of the past.

     As a direct result, on almost every index of social health, from the level of material inequality (higher in Russia than in any other major nation) to child mortality, drug abuse, organized crime and corruption, Russia figures among the most wretched countries in the world. The lack of repentance has led to a deeply depressing picture of moral and social degradation. And the picture is not dissimilar in the other “Orthodox”, formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe.

     It is possible to believe in a special messianic role for Russia only if she completely rejects the accursed Putin regime and all its works, both within and outside the country. Indeed, the complete rejection of the Russian revolution in all its phases and incarnations, including the present one, is an absolute condition of the resurrection of Russia as a truly Orthodox state. For in no other way can the curse of 1613 and the anathema of 1918 be lifted from the Russian people. 

     Before the revolution, St. John of Kronstadt said that Russia without a tsar would be “a stinking corpse”. His prophecy has proved accurate, not only for the Soviet period, but also for the post-Soviet period, which should more precisely be called the neo-Soviet period. St. John’s opinion was echoed by the last true elder of the Russian Church Abroad, Archimandrite Nektary of Eleon (+2000): “Everywhere and at all time he remained devoted to Tsarist Russia. The Russian autocracy was for him the only lawful and God-established power. All later governments in Russia after the overthrow of the Tsar on March 2, 1917 – whether the February-democratic government, the Bolshevik, or another – were enemies of God. He used to say that every republic and even every constitutional monarchy was clearing the path to the coming of the Antichrist. By contrast with certain Russian emigres, he was not deceived when, in the expression of Fr. Konstantin (Zaitsev), ‘the communists put church gloves on their nails’. Later, Fr. Nektary ‘did not swallow the bait’ of the perestroika NEP. ‘No,’ said Fr. Nektary, ‘”perestroika” is a great trap of the dark powers. They are preparing something new, something more terrible. Russia is on the threshold of the Antichrist.’ But in the last few years he more and more often began to say that, in spite of the clear signs of the end, and in spite of the fact that the rulers of Russia have already entered into the world government, the regeneration of Russia, according to the forecasts of St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. John of Kronstadt and Bishop Theophan of Poltava, is still possible, albeit for a short time…”  

     Is it too much to hope that the stinking corpse of Lenin (which Putin has shockingly compared to the relics of the saints!) may finally be cast out of its mausoleum on Red Square, as that of the false Dmitri was cast out (through the barrel of a gun) in 1612? Could a real regeneration then take place, as it did in 1613, so that the renewed and reinvigorated body of Orthodox Russia will shine forth again in all its splendour, as the holy elders of Russia said that it would? Could we be on the eve of that radical searching and repentance of Russian minds that, as the holy elders said, is the essential prerequisite of the resurrection of Holy Rus’ – and through her of the whole world? 

     It is indeed possible, but only if we remember that cancer remains dangerous and life-threatening even when only a few cancerous cells remain in the body; it has to be thoroughly extirpated even at the cost of the thorough exhaustion of the rest of the body. In the same way, the present recommunization led by Putin has to be extirpated completely. “Do you now know,” asks the Apostle Paul, “that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are truly unleavened” (I Corinthians 5.6-7). For, as Metropolitan Anastasy (Gribanovsky), first-hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, wrote in 1938: “There is nothing more dangerous than if Russia were to want to assimilate anything from the sad inheritance left by degenerate Bolshevism: everything that its corrupting atheist hand has touched threatens to infect us again with the old leprosy.”

Conclusion

     Military experts, they say, are too often obsessed with reliving the battles of the last great war, as a result of which they fail to predict the new strategies and new technologies that will be decisive in the future great war. Thus in the 1930s some were still thinking about cavalry attacks and trenches, when they should have been thinking about blitzkrieg tank offensives and carpet bombing… The opposite is the case in the spiritual war that is being waged today: we Orthodox are obsessed with fighting what we think is the war of the future without having drawn the lessons of the past. Worse than that: we have not even finished fighting the last war, but live under the wholly mistaken illusion that we were then the victors, when in fact the old enemy is alive and well and laughing at us for our naivety! Thus on innumerable forums and websites we talk a great deal and with great fervour about the New World Order, the evil of America and the Jews, globalization, 666, etc., while the Old World Order is preparing to deliver us a final, knock-out blow!

     So what are the old unfinished wars? First of all, the war against Soviet communism. The old foe has changed his appearance and strategy so successfully that many Orthodox now think of Putin as a new St. Constantine or St. George come to deliver Orthodox civilization from the American dragon! 

     Putinist propaganda appears to have penetrated even into the most traditionalist corners of the Orthodox world, such as Mount Athos. An example is the DVD distributed by Esphigmenou monastery’s journal, Boanerges, but made by the Moscow Patriarchate and presented by Fr. (now Bishop) Tikhon Shevkunov, Putin’s reputed spiritual father. The subject is an analysis of the Fall of Constantinople in which much emphasis is laid on the roles of evil aristocrats within and western barbarians without. However, the real purpose of the DVD is not historical analysis, but contemporary political allegory: for “the Fall of Constantinople, the Second Rome”, read “the possible Fall of Moscow, the Third Rome”; for evil Greek aristocrats then, read evil Jewish oligarchs now; for western barbarism then, read NATO expansion now; for the absolute need for a powerful and independent autocrat then, read the same need in Russia now…

     The grim fact that almost the whole of the Orthodox world appears to ignore is that Soviet communism was not destroyed in 1991: it suffered a defeat which allowed it to reculer pour mieux sauter – that is, change form in order to deceive its adversaries and successfully re-establish its grip over the heartland of Orthodoxy. The final defeat of communism is still in the future. According to the prophecies of the Russian elders, this will take place, not through some kind of peaceful evolution, but in war, and the final knock-out blow will be administered, paradoxically, by – China…

     Secondly, there is the war against Islam. Many hundreds of years, and many millions of martyrs later, some Orthodox appear ready to forgive or at least condone the sins of the Islamic world simply because it opposes Israel, America and the West! As if the martyrs of Islam hate the Christianity of the East any less than that of the West! But Islam is still a formidable enemy, and its final defeat is also still in the future. Again, this will take place in war, a “general [world] war”, according to St. Cosmas of Aitolia, after which “the Hagarenes [Muslims] will learn the mysteries [of the faith] three times faster than the Christians”.

     Thirdly, there is the war against paganism. Paganism was, after Judaism, the earliest enemy of the Church, and we see it today in three forms. First, the traditional old-style paganism of Hinduism, which is still dominant in the increasingly powerful state of India. Secondly, the new-style paganism evident in the West’s evolutionism and the LGBT revolution. And thirdly, Chinese paganism, which is present in both ancient and modern forms. The Chinese empire represents the latest and by far the most powerful representative of pagan culture to survive in the modern world, even if western technology and to some extent western ideology have disguised its pagan essence. Some Orthodox seem prepared to respect China if only for its opposition to America. But the Chinese, too, will be finally defeated in war. They will be destroyed, according to the elders, during the same war in which the Chinese conquer Siberia and destroy the old power structures in Russia…

     The revival of old threats to Orthodox Christianity does not mean that the New World Order, Western civilization headed by America, is not an evil, soul-destroying reality that must be combatted. At the same time this evil must be combatted intelligently. Which means, first of all, that we must not attempt to combat the evil of the NWO by supporting the no less evil evil of the OWO – evil is not overcome by evil, but by good. Neither Putin nor Xi Jinping nor any sheikh or ayatollah is going to save Orthodoxy. Nor, unfortunately, will loyalty to any of the patriarchs of World Orthodoxy; for they are as much in thrall to the NWO or OWO as any politician.

     We should follow the path of the early Christians, who, while living under a corrupt and anti-Christian despotism, engaged in no political activism or agitation of any sort (apart from occasional calls on the emperors to be merciful to the Christians), but obeyed the authorities to the limit that their conscience allowed them, sincerely praying for all their enemies. The reward of their patience and love was the final overthrow of the pagan Roman system through civil war and its replacement by Christian Romanity under St. Constantine. If we imitate their patience and faith, then we shall witness, first, the division of the whore of Babylon, western civilization, “into three parts” (Revelation 16.19) (America, Europe and Japan?), then her destruction by a coalition of ten states headed by the beast (Russia? China?) who “will burn her with fire… in one day” (Revelation  17.17, 18.8). But that will not be the end; for then the beast will be destroyed by the Word of God Himself (Revelation 19.20-21), making possible the resurrection of Orthodoxy (Revelation  20). For as the Lord Himself declared in a prophecy that, as St. John Maximovich pointed out, has not yet been fulfilled: “This Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come…” (Matthew 24.14).

 

January 9/22, 2018; revised January 24 / February 6, 2018.

 

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