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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   23443 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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However cynically Putin may use Christian rhetoric he's 10x more Christian than the average Western leader who's mentally redefined Christianity to mean 'more leftism but with cross aesthetics'.

Vladimir Putin who swore he was an Atheist to join the KGB for decades and is on record (via hot mike) of hoping tech not Jesus will make him immortal? That Vladimir Putin? He's against western Liberalism and LBGTQ+ sure but that doesn't make someone a Christian. By that standard Joseph Stalin was a Christian.

I will take 50 Stalins before the rule of Big Red and Greta Thunberg or whichever stand in with the politics of Merkel/Jean-Claude Juncker

He's a Hirsi Ali Christian: i.e. Christian because it's the only thing they see that can push back against liberalism (and, in Hirsi Ali's case, Islam and the alliance it's made with the left) and provide an alternate civilizational narrative.

This is obviously very different from communists, who think they already have said narrative.

He makes the same cultural noises every European leader does. But he's no more Christian then the liberal Western Europeans. Nor are Russians anymore religious then Western Europeans. Putin suppresses quite a bit of Christianity as well, Evangelical missionaries are not welcome in Russia。 America is a far more religious society then Russia.

Making the noises and then doing globohomo stuff seems worse than making the noises and keeping globohomo out/maintaining some semblance of Christian values.

But YMMV I'm not a Christian so maybe I don't value enough the value it places on the spirit rather than the form.

But, if you were a (Orthodox) Christian seeing your faith fade who would you rather support you? A leader like Putin or someone like Talarico that'll come up with some doctrine about how Genesis 1 means transing kids? Or a Stalin who just outright wants you gone?

Better an emperor driven purely by pragmatism than an outright heretic Buffalo Bill-ing your religion or someone hostile to the concept entirely, surely?

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