FECRIS-connected anti-cult lawyer Alexander Korelov claims he has all the evidence: Russia will react and “destroy the United States, the spiritual garbage dump of humanity.”
by Massimo Introvigne
On October 13, during the conference “Religion, War and Peace” at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne’s Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Rosita Šorytė discussed a “sensational revelation” about a coup against the Putin regime that is reportedly under preparation in Russia.
The revelation was launched in Russia on October 11 by the website of 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), which is connected with the European anti-cult federation FECRIS. The graphic presentation of the article including the revelation is reminiscent of traditional Russian anti-Semitic iconography.
The statement is by a well-known Russian lawyer, Alexander Korelov, which regularly helps or represents leading anti-cultists such as Alexander Dvorkin or the same Novopashin when they are accused of defamation by groups they stigmatize as “cults.” Korelov introduces himself as “lawyer of RATsIRS.” In 2017, the Secretary General of the MIVILUDES, the French governmental anti-cult mission, Anne Josso, shared the stage in Brussels with both Dvorkin and Korelov at a conference organized at the Belgian Parliament by the FECRIS. To this very day, a text by Korelov appears on FECRIS’ official website.
Korelov claims that after it was “liquidated” and banned in Russia in 2017, “the extremist cult of the Jehovah’s Witnesses did not cease to operate. As we expected, they went underground, holding their meetings in safe houses, receiving instructions from the American center through instant messengers, blogs, and so on. But lately the picture has changed. From the leading centers located in the United States, instructions are sent to the illegal divisions of the cult in our country through ‘closed’ channels, which indicate an attempt by the cult to organize a coup d’état in Russia similar to the Maidan in the now former Ukraine.”
Not without noting the use of the expression “former Ukraine,” we can focus our attention on Korelov’s thesis that “in Russia, the Western intelligence services intend to repeat the already developed scheme, implemented in Kyiv in 2014. Its essence is this. To begin with, ‘peaceful protesters’ are being taken out onto the streets, the backbone of which is primarily adherents of cults,” among which the lawyer mentions also Pentecostals and Scientologists. Then, “all kinds of dissatisfied elements, the mentally ill, drug addicts, criminals and just curious people are drawn to them. Everything seems to start peacefully, under pacifist slogans. Gradually, the crowd begins to ‘warm up’ with specially trained provocateurs, as well as on social networks.” And finally, the government is reversed: “According to the information at our disposal, this is precisely what is being intensively prepared in the milieu of cults. Now we have absolutely certain data that Jehovah’s Witnesses are turning from an extremist organization into a terrorist one. We warned about this already several years ago.”
Perhaps overlooking the fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses moved their headquarters from Brooklyn to Warwick in 2016–2017, Korelov insists that “the leaders from the Brooklyn center are turning Russian adherents into cannon fodder to achieve their goals. Just like in Ukraine, the United States is fighting with the hands of Ukrainians and mercenaries, so in Russia they are ready to waste biomaterial they do not need in the form of adherents of this cult. The American leadership of Jehovah’s Witnesses is made of people unencumbered by moral standards. They are ready for anything. At the same time, ideological support is being launched among American-sponsored religious scholars, who have already started talking about the need for a ‘rehabilitation’ of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are accused of operating “‘sleeping’ extremist cells under the leadership of their center in the United States. And the fact that the Brooklyn [again] center of this cult is under the complete control of the American secret services is no longer a secret.” Pentecostals, Scientologists, and even “neo-Pagans” are also being prepared by the U.S. intelligence to support the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ coup, or so Korelov believes.
All these “cults” are described as “just puppet organizations in the hands of a behind-the-scenes puppeteer. This is an element of the socio-political structure of the United States, which they are trying to impose on the whole world. It is also obvious that all American cults are guided from a single center,” a claim also recently promoted by Novopashin.
“Cults” and the United States themselves are portrayed by the lawyer as “something vile, unworthy. Notice the stupidity of their leaders. The same Hubbard—the founder of Scientology—was a degenerate personality. What about the false prophecies of the Adventists? It clearly smacks of mental illness. Therefore, when mentioning American cults, you can twist your finger at your temple. The United States is the spiritual garbage dump of humanity. I have never taken their public-state matrix seriously. In their country there are no people capable of thinking globally, there is no knowledge of their own, everything is bought. Primitive, in a word. […] The United States has a very vulnerable socio-political system that can be destroyed in a few months. You just need to know their vulnerabilities and be able to influence them.” Russia had not destroyed the United States immediately, Korelov explains, “because too abrupt changes mean hundreds of millions of people who die from wars and upheavals in all countries. I doubt that anyone is ready to take responsibility for such sacrifices. Everything must be progressive and carefully thought out. This is the art of politics.”
However, the lawyer believes that the events in Ukraine and now the preparation of an anti-Putin coup through the Jehovah’s Witnesses represent the beginning of the end for the United States, as Russia could not fail to react. “Russia is not at war with Ukraine. Russia, in fact, is at war with the Satanists of the West FOR Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, to save people, to protect them from the arbitrariness of the United States and other pseudo-democratic states.” In Ukraine, he claims, “there are US bacteriological laboratories that spread the infections around the world, there are secret concentration camps where Ukrainians are tortured and killed, they organize the trade in Ukrainian children and much more. I have seen how the brainwashing technologies of the cults turn the people of the former Soviet republic into zombies. […] The once flourishing Soviet republic of Ukraine has been turned into a Nazi hell by the American occupiers. I can say with absolute certainty that the United States is carrying out genocide of the population of Ukraine. They methodically send Ukrainians to their death under the pretext of confrontation with Russia, they shoot and hang, or corrupt Ukrainian children in towns and villages. It is scary to watch when our troops enter the villages, and there are dozens of hanged children”—hanged by “the United States and NATO.”
One can regard these preposterous claims as the ravings of a lunatic. However, Korelov is really a well-known lawyer in Russia, and the web site that published his revelations is an official organ of both the Russian main anti-cult organization and the Russian Orthodox Church. He has even spoken at the Belgian Parliament, together with the crème of Western anti-cultists and the Secretary General of a French governmental agency. Accusing the peaceful and non-political Jehovah’s Witnesses of terrorism and of preparing a coup is obviously ridiculous. However, “revelations” of this kind serve as warrants for further persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses and devotees of other groups labeled as “cults.”
“I know that Russia, a country of believers and traditional values, has a much greater development potential than the entire ‘collective West’ put together,” Korelov concludes. Besides, “God is with us. We will win.”
