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GNCADecember 1 2022, 16:06 pm

Russian Attempts to Gain Leadership of Global National Conservative Alliance Running Into Snags

Inde­pen­dent Russ­ian media has post­ed an arti­cle ana­lyz­ing the impact of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine on the coun­try’s attempts to posi­tion itself as the leader of the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA). Accord­ing to the arti­cle. titled “How Rus­si­a’s War in Ukraine Has Impact­ed its Chris­t­ian Image,” “cracks’ have emerged in Rus­si­a’s mes­sag­ing strategy:

Novem­ber 16, 2022 Over the past decade, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has tak­en pains to present itself as a bas­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty and tra­di­tion­al val­ues. The Krem­lin has used this image of reli­gios­i­ty and its close rela­tion­ship with the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church as a mech­a­nism to pro­mote its inter­ests domes­ti­cal­ly, as well as cul­ti­vate ties with sim­i­lar­ly fun­da­men­tal­ist-mind­ed sup­port­ers abroad. Since the out­break of the war in Ukraine, how­ev­er, there have been notice­able cracks in the recep­tiv­i­ty of this mes­sag­ing strat­e­gy. Tra­di­tion­al reli­gious allies of Rus­sia in the West have begun speak­ing out against the war and, in par­tic­u­lar, the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church’s sup­port of it. This recent trend of crit­i­cism, and declin­ing glob­al sup­port for both Moscow and the Church, presents a sig­nif­i­cant and under-appre­ci­at­ed chal­lenge for Russia’s abil­i­ty to pro­mote its inter­ests and influ­ence. In the U. S., Rus­sia has long gar­nered sup­port from var­i­ous groups and fig­ures in America’s con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties. In these com­mu­ni­ties, Putin and the Church have suc­cess­ful­ly cast them­selves as cham­pi­ons of Chris­t­ian val­ues, will­ing to do bat­tle with what many parish­ioners per­ceive as a moral decay in the West. Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da has bol­stered this per­cep­tion, as well as the sup­posed dan­ger of lib­er­al­ism pushed by West­ern gov­ern­ments, which Rus­sia por­trays as a threat to con­ser­v­a­tive ideals. In 2013, after Putin signed a law that banned the pro­mo­tion of “non­tra­di­tion­al rela­tion­ships” among minors, many promi­nent reli­gious fig­ures in the U. S. applaud­ed the effort. Franklin Gra­ham III, a well-known evan­ge­list, praised the law as evi­dence of Russia’s ded­i­ca­tion to tra­di­tion­al val­ues while the U. S. “abdi­cat­ed” its “moral lead­er­ship.” In fact, Florida’s recent­ly passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill echoes Russia’s 2013 law. In the lead­up to the war in Ukraine, the Russ­ian strat­e­gy of court­ing West­ern sup­port through reli­gious means appeared to be pay­ing off. Tuck­er Carl­son asked live on air why Amer­i­cans should hate Rus­sia; Steve Ban­non, on his show, argued we should be prais­ing Putin for his anti-LGBTQ poli­cies and for being “anti-woke.” Even after the onset of war, reli­gious fig­ures such as Amer­i­can lead­ers of Russ­ian Ortho­dox Cathe­drals in the U. S. have repeat­ed Russ­ian talk­ing points that assign blame to both Ukraine and the U. S. for the war.

Read the rest here.

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) is described in a GIOR report as follows:

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent PUTIN has expressed an inter­est in Rus­sia becom­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of a new glob­al con­ser­v­a­tive alliance, and Euro­pean far-right lead­ers have tak­en pro-Russ­ian posi­tions based on a sim­i­lar ide­ol­o­gy. Hun­gary is at the cen­ter of a devel­op­ing alliance between Euro­pean far-right nation­al­ists and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives that Rus­sia could poten­tial­ly exploit for use in infor­ma­tion war­fare. This alliance oper­ates under the rubric of “Nation­al Con­ser­vatism,” cen­tered on nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions and rep­re­sent­ing a poten­tial­ly rad­i­cal change for the US con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment away from long-held Rea­gan-era philosophies.

Read the full report here.

The GNCA has become the major focus of GIOR cov­er­age of Russ­ian influ­ence operations.