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Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

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Home / From the World / News Global

Russian Anti-Cultist: The “Operation” in Ukraine Is a Crusade Against Satanism

09/30/2022Massimo Introvigne |

Alexander Novopashin, Vice President of the largest Russian anti-cult organization, insisted that Russian troops are fighting “Satanists.”

by Massimo Introvigne

Archpriest Alexander Novopashin. From Telegram.
Archpriest Alexander Novopashin. From Telegram.

On September 23, Archpriest Alexander Novopashin, the Vice President of the Russian national anti-cult umbrella organization Russian Association of Centers for Religious and Cultic Studies (РАЦИРС/RATsIRS), later shortened as “Center for Religious Studies,” met with students at the Novosibirsk Regional College of Culture and Arts.

Novopashin presented the trailers of his anti-cult films “It Doesn’t Concern Me” and “Next to Us.” He said that he perceives his activity with the movies as part of President Putin’s 2020–2025 five-year “Strategy for Countering Extremism in the Russian Federation.” This strategy, Novopashin believes, implies that “the state recognizes that without spiritual and moral education it is impossible to rally the people and fill them with the sacred spirit of patriotism.” However, to “protect the traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” in Russia the state should cooperate with “the bearer of these values for more than two thousand years, i.e., the Russian Orthodox Church. So, the Church, is assigned a special role in countering extremism and terrorism.”

Novopashin then discussed the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine. He said that of course it is “about saving the long-suffering residents of Donbas from the Ukronazis,” thus “protecting the entire Russian world.”

However, this interpretation is true but partial. The Russian Orthodox Church and its experts on “cults,” Novopashin insisted, are in a position to explain what is the much deeper reason for the Ukrainian campaign. It is “about counteracting the Evil that dissolves societies like a hydra with its many tentacles.” Anti-cultists know that “evil is not some metaphorical phenomenon.”

Novopashin meeting the students on September 23. From Telegram.
Novopashin meeting the students on September 23. From Telegram.

Like a horrific animal, “real evil” has absorbed the dirt of “radical liberalism, Nazism, paganism, and occultism,” all ideologies professed by Ukrainian leaders according to Novopashin. When the four ideologies come together, he said, they reveal their true essence, “Satanism.”

Why most young Russians do not perceive the “operation” in Russia for what it is, a crusade of Christianity against Satanism? Novopashin answered that they spend too much time on social media, where fake news are easily spread by foreign agents.

However, even if they follow the news on official media, the anti-cultist warned, they get “reliable, but fragmentary information, according to which it is difficult, almost impossible, to judge what is happening.” Novopashin asked the students to rely on the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the only agency capable of offering the real, metaphysical interpretation of the events in Ukraine.

Tagged With: Anti-Cult, Russia, Satanism, Ukraine

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

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