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talkpoliticsBulgarian Foreign Minister: Bulgaria Will be the Reason why the EU Will Not to Apply the Istanbul Convention
Bulgaria’s National Strategy for the Child 2019-2030 withdrawn following disinformation campaigns
What a reactionary society, you'd say! One of many across Europe lately, I'd add. Have people paradoxically become stupider and more misinformed as the age of total and instant information advances, you'd ask? Well, partly so. But there's more to that story. It could all actually be a result of a well coordinated effort. So do bear with me, as we delve deeper into the backyard shenanigans of populist right-wing NGOs. (You didn't think only Soros and his liberal NGOs were calling the shots, did you? How naive of you!)
What could the opponents to the Istanbul Convention here in BG have in common with those opposing the National Children Strategy, and then with a Mexican billionaire, and a handful of Austrian aristrocrats, and a Russian "Orthodox oligarch"? Well, Agenda Europe, that's what. That's a network of 100-150 individuals and organizations from 30+ countries (mostly European), who all work for rolling back already established human rights, women's rights and LGBT rights. Formally, the group was founded in January 2013, and it's being supported by the Vatican, and is funded by a number of conservative Protestant and Orthodox circles. It has a well formulated strategy, and it actively lobbies for laws, nationwide strategies, initiatives and protest rallies that serve their interests.
To avoid criticism of pursuing religious principles and motivations, they cite "the natural order of things" as an argument, and their end goal is to change not just nationwide laws, but occupy positions in various organizations of international importance, including the UN, the EU and the European Council, and set the agenda of those institutions. In the meantime, their agents systematically try to pass resolutions and legislation that would stretch and expand the definition of religious discrimination and tolerance (against Christians in particular), and criminalize any criticism of their views that favor abortion bans, banning sex education in schools, limiting LGBT rights, reversing gender equality, and promoting "home-schooling" as a legitimate alternative form of education.
Don't believe me yet? Just take a look at this recent EPF research (pdf)...
https://www.epfweb.org/sites/epfweb.org/files/rtno_epf_book_lores.pdf
It shows interesting details about the opposition to the Istanbul Convention in my country in particular, specifically that it's largely been the doing of local organizations coordinated by the Austria-based Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF), chaired by one Paul Coleman.
One example. This organization has successfully represented one Petya Dimitrova of the Word For Life group before the European Court of Human Rights, aided by a couple of lawyers from Freedom For All, a legal and book group defending "traditional family values". This group has declared the National Strategy for the Child 2019-2030 "a product of a totalitarian mindset". Their argument is that my country (and others) are being pressured by "gay propaganda" and gay activism from abroad, aiming for "a total moral and sexual dismantling of society, and establishing a perverse interpretation of the theory and practice of human rights". They insist that "East Europeans seem to be more ardent defenders of the last remnants of Christian European civilization than their Western counterparts", and my country shouldn't "budge to the hysterical attempts of influential and well-funded minority groups to introduce yet another anti-utopian and tyrannical social experiment upon our good nation and its children" (yes, the Think About the Children argument).
The above mentioned ADF boasts a huge support among ultra-conservative circles in Europe, it has funded thousands of cases (worth a total of about 40 million euro), and helped finance various causes and projects across the world. It defines itself as a "faith-based organization", adding that they recognize the fact that without financial support, many of the problems that they deem important would remain bypassed and unnoticed.
Naturally, such a nice community can't operate smoothly without some Russian involvement. The 2014 Agenda Europe summit was attended by one Alexey Komov, then program director of the Russian foundation St. Vasily the Great, founded by Konstantin Malofeev, probably the best-known among the wealthy Russian supporters of various Orthodox causes and media, known for his recent activities on the Balkans. Today, Komov is advisor to the Chairman of the Committee For Family Issues And Maternity and Childhood Protection at the Russian Orthodox Patriarchy, and director of a program supporting homeschooling in Russia.
He's member of the World Congress of the Family (WCF), which had its latest summit in Italy a couple months ago, where Komov called it "the number one platform for the global conservative movement and best defender of traditional family values in more than 80 countries around the world". The Russian delegation included at least 20 envoys, and their main subject was "the precedence of the parents' right to choose such education and upbringing that they deem most appropriate for their children". This mostly means "home education" and fighting "the state's dominance over the family", opposing "the dominance of secularism", pushing for the introduction of religious education in state and municipal schools, and opposing all initiatives for sex education and tolerance to people of "unorthodox sexual orientation and lifestyle".
Initially, they didn't even attempt to hide their agenda, and the corresponding local associations and organizations here in my country didn't even shy away from displaying the WCF logo on their website - only to later have it removed, once the story started circling too much around the online media.
Komov has been particularly active in Italy in recent years, attending various "pro-family summits", including those of Matteo Salvini's right-wing and Euroskeptic party Lega Nord. What they mean by "traditional values" is a list of things you may find interesting: opposition to "juvenile justice" (ie presumably the government having the power to take children away from their parents), opposition to "liberal globalism" and "the blurring of national tradition and identity", and promoting "more vigorous control on immigration", because you see, a society cannot possibly save its conservative values and support traditional family values if the government "values migrants more than its own citizens and tax-payers".
Komov also happens to be a trusted advisor to high-ranking priest Dimitry Smirnov, and currently heads the Patriarchal Committee on Family Issues, he has been chair of the synodic PR department of the Moscow Patriarchy, particularly coordinating its relations with the police and secret services, and is currently the dean of the Faculty of Orthodox Culture at the Military Academy by the Missiles Defense Army.
But if you thought this ultra-conservative, right-wing upsurge and all its agents and organizations were mostly a European creation, with the usual pinch of Russian involvement, you were wrong. America has contributed a good deal to the story as well (and I'm not just talking about fundamentalist NGOs doing their weird social experiments in Third-World places like Uganda, with dire consequences that have been painfully known to us all at this point).
The already mentioned Verona summit also featured guys like Ed Martin, one of the staunchest advocates for various ultra-conservative causes within the Republican Party, co-author of The Conservative Case for Trump, released in September 2016 and urging the fence-sitters to trust in Trump's extraordinary qualities and capacity to unite the party toward victory. His words at the summit that "the Bible, strong borders, and Brexit will make Europe GREAT AGAIN" received standing applause at the conservative summit in Italy.
Now, some commentators might question the real capacity of the European right wing to act as a united bloc, given its nationalist (ergo, inherently selfish, independent) priorities and manners. But this omits an important factor: nowadays very little attention is given to the level of dependence of these European groups on Russian and/or American aid. Together, they're trying to re-define individual rights and liberties in a way that would affect the majority of people in every single European country. No one would remain unaffected.
It's now a well documented and established fact that US fundie organizations and individual donors from the Christian right wing have been sponsoring such causes in Europe for decades, pouring tens of millions of dollars into their coffers.
Their goals are actually clearly stated in the Agenda Europe manifesto, entitled Restoring The Natural Order - An Agenda for Europe. The language it uses could easily be recognized in the main positions and methods of communication of the "traditional family values" supporters here in my country as well, which shows that their talking points have been dropped from above, well memorized, and are now duly being regurgitated back at the public in tremendous volumes. The text features such things like a call for a total ban on prenatal diagnostics, "because the child, whom it should be helping, has almost no use of it" (huh!?) What's more, the authors believe it's absurd that health insurance should be paying for medically assisted procreation, because that includes the removal of embryos. The latter also applies to in vitro procedures, which, they believe, should in principle be all banned because they're... wait for it... "unnatural", "inherently immoral", and "they undermine the dignity of both the sexual act and marriage itself", and they "promote extramarital sexual relations, unwanted pregnancy, and ultimately, abortions".
But how does the whole structure actually work? The EPF report that I linked in the beginning attempts to make sense of the whole Agenda Europe structure, and it groups that organization's activities into 5 general areas: organizers, inside people, ideologues, foot soldiers, and sponsors.
Although that network includes Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians, the analysis does acknowledge that Catholic priests and institutions have the central role, especially ones related to the top hierarchy of the Vatican. Like two of the main organizers of the 2013 London summit of the group, or the next one in Fuerstenried in Bavaria (one of the spiritual centers of the Bishop of Munich).
The so called "inside people" are generally sympathizers and supporters who attend the meetings of the network, including MPs and senators, deputy ministers of the interior, EMPs, members and chairpersons of party groups in the European Parliament, even Jan Figel of Slovakia, himself a former EU Commissioner and special EU envoy on the issues of religious freedoms and faith.
As for the "ideologues" (and any groups needs those), they forge the original ideas and talking points, they act at the international level and they develop and adapt the overall strategies to match the national specifics of the particular country where they operate. They formulate national subjects for each country for that purpose. For instance, the five main strategies that Agenda Europe presented at its 2015 summit were euthanasia, religous freedom (read: Christian freedom), marriage and family, disrimination, and surrogate maternity.
Since the US has decades-old experience in this domain, you'd often see Americans helping their European counterparts in this work, like one Brian Brown of the National Marriage Organization, or Layla Rose of Live Action, Marie Smith of Priests for Life, Sharon Slater of Family Watch International (some texts originating from FWI or commissioned by them were featured in our local Society and Value activities as well). Mind you, we Europeans have our own experience in connecting political structures with Christian fundaments. Others, like the ADF, whose presence extends way beyond Vienna and other European cities, or Ordo Iuris, another prominent such group, regularly advise national institutions and parties on conducting their campaigns against the Istanbul Convention and other such human and civil rights documents.
As far as their methods, Agenda Europe are saying their operatives shouldn't be worried if their goals seem "unrealistic" and their means "extremist". And if you wonder what those methods and tactics are, turning the opponent's arguments against them is one. For instance, they can often be seen questioning the methodology of various reports on homophobia, arguing that those are just meant to waste taxpayer money. The next phase is to have the supporters of "traditional values" present themselves as persecuted victims of "Christianophobia", always so oppressed by the intolerant "cultural revolutionaries".
Another frequent tactic is to present their demands as if they're rights, and re-define already existing rights. For example, "the right of fathers to prevent the abortion of their children, the right of parents to be primary educators of their children, the right of children to receive correct information rather than the propaganda of sodomy", etc. Part of this strategy is to influence the academic circles in favor of alternative interpretations of basic human rights so they could become legislative mainstream.
Another strategy is to smear and discredit the opponents, and shift the essence of the debate through soundbites and labels like "abortion lobby", "gay lobby", "radical feminism", "militant atheism", etc.
As one might expect, the official position of Agenda Europe regarding the EPF report is that it's "fiction", and includes many "falsehoods" about their network. They also state that "as Europeans, our members share the Christian philosophical and intellectual foundations of our continent". Can't argue with that, can you?
They're citing human rights like "the right to life" and "the right of religious freedom" (not mentioning a word about Muslims, though) as their motivation. They're arguing the EPF and other institutions are trying to "quash dissent, and silence any opinions that do not match their extremist liberal agenda". The network also denies having anything to do with the Agenda Europe blog, or the Restoring The Natural Order document to that matter, itself authored by someone with no links to the Agenda Europe organization.
They claim to be an informal network, not an organization that's funded from outside, although they don't deny having held secret strategic summits, "as is the right of any organization working on a common cause". Paradoxically, in the same breath they also claim the report on their activities has been based on information that was acquired illegally, through hacking computers - which makes one wonder why they'd have any problem with information that they've just claimed was incorrect in the first place. Oh, and they also have a court decision prohibiting the dissemination of said documents - even though they've already said the documents have nothing to do with them. Weird, huh?
But none of this really matters at the end of the day. It's the results that matter. And they're currently winning hearts and minds, and changing both the face and essence of European politics for decades ahead with their bullshit, potentially setting back our presumably advanced, modern societies, with all the dire long-term consequences that come with this.
Bulgaria’s National Strategy for the Child 2019-2030 withdrawn following disinformation campaigns
What a reactionary society, you'd say! One of many across Europe lately, I'd add. Have people paradoxically become stupider and more misinformed as the age of total and instant information advances, you'd ask? Well, partly so. But there's more to that story. It could all actually be a result of a well coordinated effort. So do bear with me, as we delve deeper into the backyard shenanigans of populist right-wing NGOs. (You didn't think only Soros and his liberal NGOs were calling the shots, did you? How naive of you!)
What could the opponents to the Istanbul Convention here in BG have in common with those opposing the National Children Strategy, and then with a Mexican billionaire, and a handful of Austrian aristrocrats, and a Russian "Orthodox oligarch"? Well, Agenda Europe, that's what. That's a network of 100-150 individuals and organizations from 30+ countries (mostly European), who all work for rolling back already established human rights, women's rights and LGBT rights. Formally, the group was founded in January 2013, and it's being supported by the Vatican, and is funded by a number of conservative Protestant and Orthodox circles. It has a well formulated strategy, and it actively lobbies for laws, nationwide strategies, initiatives and protest rallies that serve their interests.
To avoid criticism of pursuing religious principles and motivations, they cite "the natural order of things" as an argument, and their end goal is to change not just nationwide laws, but occupy positions in various organizations of international importance, including the UN, the EU and the European Council, and set the agenda of those institutions. In the meantime, their agents systematically try to pass resolutions and legislation that would stretch and expand the definition of religious discrimination and tolerance (against Christians in particular), and criminalize any criticism of their views that favor abortion bans, banning sex education in schools, limiting LGBT rights, reversing gender equality, and promoting "home-schooling" as a legitimate alternative form of education.
Don't believe me yet? Just take a look at this recent EPF research (pdf)...
https://www.epfweb.org/sites/epfweb.org/files/rtno_epf_book_lores.pdf
It shows interesting details about the opposition to the Istanbul Convention in my country in particular, specifically that it's largely been the doing of local organizations coordinated by the Austria-based Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF), chaired by one Paul Coleman.
One example. This organization has successfully represented one Petya Dimitrova of the Word For Life group before the European Court of Human Rights, aided by a couple of lawyers from Freedom For All, a legal and book group defending "traditional family values". This group has declared the National Strategy for the Child 2019-2030 "a product of a totalitarian mindset". Their argument is that my country (and others) are being pressured by "gay propaganda" and gay activism from abroad, aiming for "a total moral and sexual dismantling of society, and establishing a perverse interpretation of the theory and practice of human rights". They insist that "East Europeans seem to be more ardent defenders of the last remnants of Christian European civilization than their Western counterparts", and my country shouldn't "budge to the hysterical attempts of influential and well-funded minority groups to introduce yet another anti-utopian and tyrannical social experiment upon our good nation and its children" (yes, the Think About the Children argument).
The above mentioned ADF boasts a huge support among ultra-conservative circles in Europe, it has funded thousands of cases (worth a total of about 40 million euro), and helped finance various causes and projects across the world. It defines itself as a "faith-based organization", adding that they recognize the fact that without financial support, many of the problems that they deem important would remain bypassed and unnoticed.
Naturally, such a nice community can't operate smoothly without some Russian involvement. The 2014 Agenda Europe summit was attended by one Alexey Komov, then program director of the Russian foundation St. Vasily the Great, founded by Konstantin Malofeev, probably the best-known among the wealthy Russian supporters of various Orthodox causes and media, known for his recent activities on the Balkans. Today, Komov is advisor to the Chairman of the Committee For Family Issues And Maternity and Childhood Protection at the Russian Orthodox Patriarchy, and director of a program supporting homeschooling in Russia.
He's member of the World Congress of the Family (WCF), which had its latest summit in Italy a couple months ago, where Komov called it "the number one platform for the global conservative movement and best defender of traditional family values in more than 80 countries around the world". The Russian delegation included at least 20 envoys, and their main subject was "the precedence of the parents' right to choose such education and upbringing that they deem most appropriate for their children". This mostly means "home education" and fighting "the state's dominance over the family", opposing "the dominance of secularism", pushing for the introduction of religious education in state and municipal schools, and opposing all initiatives for sex education and tolerance to people of "unorthodox sexual orientation and lifestyle".
Initially, they didn't even attempt to hide their agenda, and the corresponding local associations and organizations here in my country didn't even shy away from displaying the WCF logo on their website - only to later have it removed, once the story started circling too much around the online media.
Komov has been particularly active in Italy in recent years, attending various "pro-family summits", including those of Matteo Salvini's right-wing and Euroskeptic party Lega Nord. What they mean by "traditional values" is a list of things you may find interesting: opposition to "juvenile justice" (ie presumably the government having the power to take children away from their parents), opposition to "liberal globalism" and "the blurring of national tradition and identity", and promoting "more vigorous control on immigration", because you see, a society cannot possibly save its conservative values and support traditional family values if the government "values migrants more than its own citizens and tax-payers".
Komov also happens to be a trusted advisor to high-ranking priest Dimitry Smirnov, and currently heads the Patriarchal Committee on Family Issues, he has been chair of the synodic PR department of the Moscow Patriarchy, particularly coordinating its relations with the police and secret services, and is currently the dean of the Faculty of Orthodox Culture at the Military Academy by the Missiles Defense Army.
But if you thought this ultra-conservative, right-wing upsurge and all its agents and organizations were mostly a European creation, with the usual pinch of Russian involvement, you were wrong. America has contributed a good deal to the story as well (and I'm not just talking about fundamentalist NGOs doing their weird social experiments in Third-World places like Uganda, with dire consequences that have been painfully known to us all at this point).
The already mentioned Verona summit also featured guys like Ed Martin, one of the staunchest advocates for various ultra-conservative causes within the Republican Party, co-author of The Conservative Case for Trump, released in September 2016 and urging the fence-sitters to trust in Trump's extraordinary qualities and capacity to unite the party toward victory. His words at the summit that "the Bible, strong borders, and Brexit will make Europe GREAT AGAIN" received standing applause at the conservative summit in Italy.
Now, some commentators might question the real capacity of the European right wing to act as a united bloc, given its nationalist (ergo, inherently selfish, independent) priorities and manners. But this omits an important factor: nowadays very little attention is given to the level of dependence of these European groups on Russian and/or American aid. Together, they're trying to re-define individual rights and liberties in a way that would affect the majority of people in every single European country. No one would remain unaffected.
It's now a well documented and established fact that US fundie organizations and individual donors from the Christian right wing have been sponsoring such causes in Europe for decades, pouring tens of millions of dollars into their coffers.
Their goals are actually clearly stated in the Agenda Europe manifesto, entitled Restoring The Natural Order - An Agenda for Europe. The language it uses could easily be recognized in the main positions and methods of communication of the "traditional family values" supporters here in my country as well, which shows that their talking points have been dropped from above, well memorized, and are now duly being regurgitated back at the public in tremendous volumes. The text features such things like a call for a total ban on prenatal diagnostics, "because the child, whom it should be helping, has almost no use of it" (huh!?) What's more, the authors believe it's absurd that health insurance should be paying for medically assisted procreation, because that includes the removal of embryos. The latter also applies to in vitro procedures, which, they believe, should in principle be all banned because they're... wait for it... "unnatural", "inherently immoral", and "they undermine the dignity of both the sexual act and marriage itself", and they "promote extramarital sexual relations, unwanted pregnancy, and ultimately, abortions".
But how does the whole structure actually work? The EPF report that I linked in the beginning attempts to make sense of the whole Agenda Europe structure, and it groups that organization's activities into 5 general areas: organizers, inside people, ideologues, foot soldiers, and sponsors.
Although that network includes Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians, the analysis does acknowledge that Catholic priests and institutions have the central role, especially ones related to the top hierarchy of the Vatican. Like two of the main organizers of the 2013 London summit of the group, or the next one in Fuerstenried in Bavaria (one of the spiritual centers of the Bishop of Munich).
The so called "inside people" are generally sympathizers and supporters who attend the meetings of the network, including MPs and senators, deputy ministers of the interior, EMPs, members and chairpersons of party groups in the European Parliament, even Jan Figel of Slovakia, himself a former EU Commissioner and special EU envoy on the issues of religious freedoms and faith.
As for the "ideologues" (and any groups needs those), they forge the original ideas and talking points, they act at the international level and they develop and adapt the overall strategies to match the national specifics of the particular country where they operate. They formulate national subjects for each country for that purpose. For instance, the five main strategies that Agenda Europe presented at its 2015 summit were euthanasia, religous freedom (read: Christian freedom), marriage and family, disrimination, and surrogate maternity.
Since the US has decades-old experience in this domain, you'd often see Americans helping their European counterparts in this work, like one Brian Brown of the National Marriage Organization, or Layla Rose of Live Action, Marie Smith of Priests for Life, Sharon Slater of Family Watch International (some texts originating from FWI or commissioned by them were featured in our local Society and Value activities as well). Mind you, we Europeans have our own experience in connecting political structures with Christian fundaments. Others, like the ADF, whose presence extends way beyond Vienna and other European cities, or Ordo Iuris, another prominent such group, regularly advise national institutions and parties on conducting their campaigns against the Istanbul Convention and other such human and civil rights documents.
As far as their methods, Agenda Europe are saying their operatives shouldn't be worried if their goals seem "unrealistic" and their means "extremist". And if you wonder what those methods and tactics are, turning the opponent's arguments against them is one. For instance, they can often be seen questioning the methodology of various reports on homophobia, arguing that those are just meant to waste taxpayer money. The next phase is to have the supporters of "traditional values" present themselves as persecuted victims of "Christianophobia", always so oppressed by the intolerant "cultural revolutionaries".
Another frequent tactic is to present their demands as if they're rights, and re-define already existing rights. For example, "the right of fathers to prevent the abortion of their children, the right of parents to be primary educators of their children, the right of children to receive correct information rather than the propaganda of sodomy", etc. Part of this strategy is to influence the academic circles in favor of alternative interpretations of basic human rights so they could become legislative mainstream.
Another strategy is to smear and discredit the opponents, and shift the essence of the debate through soundbites and labels like "abortion lobby", "gay lobby", "radical feminism", "militant atheism", etc.
As one might expect, the official position of Agenda Europe regarding the EPF report is that it's "fiction", and includes many "falsehoods" about their network. They also state that "as Europeans, our members share the Christian philosophical and intellectual foundations of our continent". Can't argue with that, can you?
They're citing human rights like "the right to life" and "the right of religious freedom" (not mentioning a word about Muslims, though) as their motivation. They're arguing the EPF and other institutions are trying to "quash dissent, and silence any opinions that do not match their extremist liberal agenda". The network also denies having anything to do with the Agenda Europe blog, or the Restoring The Natural Order document to that matter, itself authored by someone with no links to the Agenda Europe organization.
They claim to be an informal network, not an organization that's funded from outside, although they don't deny having held secret strategic summits, "as is the right of any organization working on a common cause". Paradoxically, in the same breath they also claim the report on their activities has been based on information that was acquired illegally, through hacking computers - which makes one wonder why they'd have any problem with information that they've just claimed was incorrect in the first place. Oh, and they also have a court decision prohibiting the dissemination of said documents - even though they've already said the documents have nothing to do with them. Weird, huh?
But none of this really matters at the end of the day. It's the results that matter. And they're currently winning hearts and minds, and changing both the face and essence of European politics for decades ahead with their bullshit, potentially setting back our presumably advanced, modern societies, with all the dire long-term consequences that come with this.
(no subject)
Date: 13/6/19 12:15 (UTC)Of course, none of it matters; the Soros narrative is so firmly established you can't unpin it from Western culture - and the extreme right won't let you. The likes of the WCF will spread whatever information they want to, and a large percentage of folk will believe it.
Interesting times. Should it ever come to the point where folk have to stand up and be counted I guess no-one will be Spartacus and we will all go along with whatever the populists decide.
Right up until ethnic cleansing, obvs. Then a few folk's consciences might get a bit prickly. Or not.
(no subject)
Date: 13/6/19 13:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/6/19 14:37 (UTC)You would be putting yourself in the crosshairs in a number of countries. Being gay in some places is even worse for your health than being black or female. (Obviously in places like Uganda or Jamaica, but less obviously in other places.)
I mean even in the UK if you are a (female) gay couple travelling on late-night transport you can get beaten pretty severely; as recent news has shown.