Freedom is not the preserve of the "Christian" West
How Trump and Putin are destroying our comfortable myths.
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The Freethinker asked me to write about how badly the clash of civilisations hypothesis that the Western Christianity is the source of freedom has fared in the age of Trump and Putin. The answer to their question was very badly indeed!
VLADIMIR PUTIN IN PATRIOT PARK WITH MEMBERS OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND THE ARMED FORCES, SEPTEMBER 2018. IMAGE: WWW.KREMLIN.RU VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
Amid all the horror, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had one cleansing effect. The self-satisfied notion that the West is Christendom and that our democratic and liberal values are rooted in Christianity is taking one hell of a beating.
As it turns out, the greatest threat to the ‘Christian’ West comes from Russia, whose imperialist expansion into historically Christian Ukraine and the attendant crimes against humanity are supported with ghoulish enthusiasm by the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia’s contempt for the supposedly religiously inspired values of democracy and freedom depends for its ultimate triumph on evangelical Christian voters returning Donald Trump to power in the 2024 US presidential election. Once in the White House, Trump has made it very clear that he will cut off support for Ukraine and leave ‘Christian’ Europe to fend for itself.
Carry on reading at the Freethinker
Coming up on writing from London I have a piece on Donald Trump and the power of humiliation, and another on the right and the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed.
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