FSTDT

Marco Rubio #wingnut #racist religiondispatches.org

“We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.”

An end to guilt—these words have a very specific and clear meaning to ears attuned to the German far-right discourse. Politicians of the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) have repeatedly called for an end of what they call the “guilt cult”—by which they mean Germany’s remembrance of the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities. The phrase (“Schuldkult” in German), originated in the neo-Nazi scene of the 1980s, although the attempt to downplay Nazi crimes and put a stop to their remembrance was certainly not limited to neo-Nazis. Those who use it today seek to trivialize Nazi crimes and believe that memorials only exist to oppress today’s Germans under collective guilt, which prevents them from achieving national greatness.

Steven Cheung #wingnut #dunning-kruger religiondispatches.org

And when the Washington Post reached out to the Trump campaign to respond to criticisms that these comments echoed the rhetoric of Nazi and fascist leaders, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, replied defiantly, “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” [Note [[in original]]: In a puzzling move, the Trump campaign later tried to amend the statement to replace the phrase “entire existence” with “sad, miserable existence.”]

Patriarch Kiril #wingnut #fundie #racist religiondispatches.org

[Full sermon on Russian here: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5914188.html?fbclid=IwAR37VW4l-JKWsxj16MhepsDlU2K0kIRX__18KQNoA9IJRoJ78Ja8PjlkFP8]

But then, about halfway through, the sermon took a turn for the shocking and dangerous. It was at about the point that he acknowledged where he stood: in a cathedral built not so much for the glory of God as for the glory of Russian military might. Here the Patriarch said he had come to address the leaders of their Russian forces, and through them, their troops. He reminded the assembled congregation of Vladimir Putin’s favorite propaganda point in this war: that Russia was fighting fascism in Ukraine just as it had in the Second World War.

And then the Patriarch, whose office was just a few centuries ago (a blink of the eye in the memory of the Christian East) located not in Moscow, but Kyiv, offered up a version of history that simply erases Ukraine from the map. Kirill blames “various forces” (i.e. outsiders, including—one would imagine—the West) that emerged in the Middle Ages for what he regards as a false division between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, he doesn’t even acknowledge there are such people as Ukrainians, referring to all involved parties (including, perhaps, one could speculate, Belarusians) as “Holy Russians.”

Disregarding for a moment how simply, factually wrong Patriarch Kirill’s history is, this sermon does mark a dangerous escalation in the rhetoric coming from the Moscow Patriarchate—and, we can assume, by extension the Russian state. This rhetorical advance is made all the more dangerous by the fact that most in the West won’t even know the sermon happened, let alone be aware of its pernicious implications.

Dauren Babamuratov #fundie religiondispatches.org

Blood test for gay invented in Kazakhstan.

“We have stooped so low that LGBTs no longer hide their orientation. One can see a lot of people in the city’s malls and other public places — these are young people in coloured pants. This means they no longer hide their (sexual) orientation. I think it is very easy to identify a gay person by his or her DNA. A blood test can show the presence of degeneratism in a person,” Dauren Babamuratov, the leader of the Kazakh national movement, said—