VOX: the Global Right and Condor 2.0

https://today.in-24.com/News/499825.html

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/22/spai-o22.html

In the Madrid Forum are found the seeds for Operation Condor 2.0, a reiteration or reincarnation of the Right-wing campaign launched during the Cold War to dominate the politics of the Latin world (or Iberosphere), and to crush (by means of political maneuvering and violence), the forces of the Left.

And as before, the new iteration of the project finds its essential ally in the American Right.

It's no coincidence that this project is emerging at the same time Far Right politics have re-entered in the Spanish political spectrum. Spain's overall influence in the Iberosphere is significant to say the least. Vox is the first ultra-nationalist party to contend on the national stage since the death of Franco and Spain's transition to democracy in the 1970's.

It's also no surprise that we find both ideological and actual ties to the Washington DC based Heritage Foundation – long an arm of the Right-wing agenda and foreign policy within US politics. During the Cold War, Heritage was the virtual architect of the Reagan-era rollback policy and was deeply involved in orchestrating and fomenting the administration's proxy wars in Latin America and Africa and in providing academic cover to these actions. The activist think-tank played no small role in producing the propaganda to accompany these campaigns and worked cheek by jowl with those lobbying for these causes. It legacy is one of deceit and blood in the quest for power.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) is another relic of the Cold War that has worked with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), well known instruments of regime change and in other cases anti-democratic scheming. Ostensibly established by the US government to help young and struggling democracies, these organisations have spent just as much time working to subvert them and in some cases overthrow them. As others have pointed these arms of the US state are engaged in activities the CIA once pursued on a clandestine basis. The NED and USAID (for the most part) work in the open and their activities are whitewashed and covered up by US media – the same 'liberal' media that in this case collaborates with the aims of America's capitalist and militarist empire.

The IRI is more of an implementation arm, part of the alphabet soup of organisations, bureaucracies, and the pool of assets and agents that help bring the empire's policies to bear – and yet do so in a fog of disinformation and propaganda. Journalists and other observers can (by means of research and deduction) figure out what's happening but their activities are obscure enough to provide the cover of plausible deniability and their actions are largely outside the purview of mainstream media reporting.

The American Conservative Union is a lobbying organisation probably best known for its CPAC conference which is extremely popular with Evangelicals and the Christian Right. This, along with the Heritage Foundation represents a key point of contact between these Far Right political entities in the Iberosphere and the American Evangelical Right. Truly – truly a fitting sequel to events that took place in the 1980's.

In the Reagan era these groups represented violence. They allied with and promoted paramilitaries and death squads. They funded wars and sought allies among any powers that would resist and fight their enemies on the international stage – which were always identified as communist, whether they actually were or not. Their propaganda tugs at the heartstrings of the Evangelical Right and people get out their checkbooks, and urge their congressmen and senators to support these agendas.

It's no different today as Vox, Brazil's Bolsonaro, and the growing cadre of Right-wing movements in the Iberosphere and the United States are preparing for violence and revisiting the same propaganda mechanisms – amplified by the Internet and social media age.

Under Trumpism in the United States, and similar movements in places like Brazil and Spain, these organisations seek to appropriate the anger of the working class and funnel it into fascistic politics and support for extreme measures. In other respects it's also a repeat or sequel to the fascistic-populist appeal in the 1920's and 1930's and the growth of those movements. Appearing not just in Germany, Italy, and Spain, these movements also gained robust support in nations like Croatia, Romania, Hungary, Austria, the US, and elsewhere. Economic distress and social angst among the middle and working class generated anger that was projected onto immigrants, minorities, academics and liberals. And because of the economic chaos and the moral breakdown in the aftermath of WWI, many social conservatives supported these Right-wing fascist movements. They were crushing individualist decadence, getting the economy working, and waging war against communism and the left. History repeats itself as no one learns its lessons, and as always people manipulate it and re-write it.

And today we see Evangelicals not only at work among the Far-Right in the Iberosphere but across Europe the allies of these same parties in places like Hungary and Italy are finding Evangelical support. It's no coincidence that growing numbers of Evangelicals are praising Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party in Hungary and openly collaborating with the efforts of Matteo Salvini's Lega Party in Italy.

There is a long history of Sacralist Christians (both Protestant and Catholic) collaborating with fascists and warlords and it's clear that preparations are being made for a new phase of culture war. We're already seeing the fruits of this in the United States and the next decade in both Europe and the Americas will be telling and likely transformative.

Those committed to the Christianity of the New Testament had better be aware and vigilant concerning these developments. The tidal wave is coming and in some respects is already upon us. We can either be swept away and see our children either caught up in this pseudo-Christianity or fall away from it entirely. Inaction or doctrinal and ethical passivity is not an option.

As the Christian Right is sounding the alarm and aggressively seeking to expose and destroy detractors in any capacity as 'woke' – we're witnessing fascism and actual fascists moving from the back door into the back pews and in very short order into the pulpits.

Evangelicalism has long been on the road to apostasy. This is the same functional apostasy that we see on the pages of the Old Testament. Christ, the true faith and Biblical ethics aren't openly denied, they're redefined and replaced – in some respects similar to what we witnessed with theological liberalism over a century ago. It's every bit as pernicious. Evangelicalism has at last gone to seed and we're in the midst of crisis though few know it and those that sense a crisis are more likely than not to misidentify it and lead people even further astray in response. It's as if Orwell has entered the Church.

In some respects (as mentioned) this episode in Spain represents a repeat of events in the 1980's. But in another regard it's quite different. The Cold War possessed a kind of stability (as strange as that may seem) that does not exist today. The geopolitical situation is more volatile and the overall stakes are higher. There is the threat of catastrophic war to be sure but there are more day-to-day consequences that are increasingly drastic – amplified by sheer populations, limited resources, and the like. This is all part of this larger struggle. The Church sold out to politics loses its identity and its way and ends up struggling not for the causes of the Kingdom but for the goals of whatever Babel it has aligned itself with. It ends up (like the world) fighting the wars of Mammon and on the basis of the ethics of Mammon. It's incompatible with the Kingdom as our Lord made all too clear. This message has been all but lost at the moment.

The influence of power and money within Evangelicalism has increased exponentially since the end of the Cold War. And yet, cultural standing and respect for Evangelicals is at an all time low but the leadership no longer seeks these things as they once did. There's a race, a war, taking place. All that matters is winning. Either way it's a disaster for the faithful remnant. If they win, then we face chaos, mass defection and apostasy, and ultimately persecution. If they lose, the backlash against Christianity will be fierce and we'll see ecclesiastical chaos, compromise, apostasy, and persecution.

Either way for those that would remain faithful to New Testament Christianity – the Christianity of the Early Church and the First Reformation – difficult and lonely days lie ahead.

It's as if a thousand puzzle pieces are coalescing and the resulting picture is not a good one. The Madrid Forum is just part of this, a piece of the larger puzzle. To understand, we need to know history and the Scriptures – two spheres of knowledge that most Christians seem to know very little about.

See also:

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2019/08/american-evangelicals-and-european.html

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2017/02/american-dominionism-and-europes.html

http://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/search/label/Heritage%20Foundation

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-role-of-conservative-think-tanks-13.html

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2014/01/propaganda-mills-think-tanks-and-ivory.html

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2014/08/demints-dream-and-reality.html