All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 31, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
47:17
3476 On The Brink of World War III | Iben Thranholm and Stefan Molyneux
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
I hope you're doing very well.
I'm here back, I would say, with Eiben Tranholm.
She is one of Denmark's most widely read columnists and is a former editor and radio host at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
She has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Italy, the United States and Russia to carry out research and interviews.
She has been awarded for her investigative research into Danish media coverage of religious issues.
Eiben, great to chat with you again.
How have you been?
Thank you for having me again.
So, I'm having these weird flashbacks these days, because I grew up in the Cold War.
And, you know, for a while, there was this argument, oh, it's the end of history, you know, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Generally, middle of the road, semi-capitalist democracies seem to have won the battle, and it's all over.
And now, in this weird, everything old is new again, it's sort of like, you know, if you hold on to these fashion items long enough, they come back into fashion.
And it's like, if you hold on to your relationship with Russia long enough, sooner or later, they go from enemy to frenemy, back to enemy.
And that seems to be what's going on at the moment.
And it's coming from the left.
left.
It's coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign in particular, which is weird to me, because when Russia was much less free, the left loved it completely and totally and thought it was the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, although you couldn't get sliced bread in Russia.
And now that it seems to be becoming more Christian, more nationalistic, and less socialist, they seem to be turning on it.
Can you give me a sense of, you know, of course, a lot more about Why does the West, in particular America, seem to be turning on Russia so quickly?
That's a very, very important question, because many have not understood yet what's really going on.
And I think you're completely right when you say we grew up in the Cold War, and so did I here in Scandinavia, where we constantly had the threat of nuclear weapons.
We were very afraid of the Russian invasion when I was a child.
And if anybody had told me at that time that in 30 years ahead, I would stand in the Red Square and I would feel more free as a Christian than I do in Scandinavia, I would have thought these people were mad, have gone out of their minds.
But this is actually what has happened within my lifetime.
And it is a sort of miraculous event because nobody could have foretold it.
And I think it's actually very strange that Obama and Hillary, they're so angry with Russia because they're socialists.
So, you know, if it was a Cold War thing going on here, they should be happy about Russia, but they're not.
And this is exactly the point.
Because when people are, or the Americans and also the Europeans are bashing against Russia and they are, you know, doing this warmongering, it's not some hangovers from the Cold War.
It's actually because Russia is becoming Christian.
And I think you need to understand it from a broader picture, or we have to see the broader picture here, because what's going on right now in the world, and especially with the US presidential election, it's not so much a political battle, it's a spiritual battle.
And because we're so secular, both in the US and also here in Europe, People have a very hard time to understand what is going on behind the curtains.
I would say that politics is only the means, the tools, but the real motivation, the driving force for all this is actually two spiritual forces colliding.
The world has been turned upside down, so now I mean, the West is similar to the USSR and Russia is actually the free West.
When I came back from Russia the first time, it's two years ago, I was there for the first time when the Ukraine crisis was peaking.
I wrote a column with the title, Moscow is the new Manhattan for Christians.
And then I got fired from my newspaper because they were so outrageous that I could I wouldn't say a thing like that because Russia had to be perceived like something evil.
But I think it's very important to understand that Russia is not anymore the godless, communistic society.
It's a very, very Christian society.
If you go to Russia, I was there just two weeks ago, and I visited a very famous monastery called Sretensky Monastery, which is next to the old KGB prison.
The bishop is very known He's called Bishop Tikhan.
He wrote a bestseller book, which is called Everyday Saints and Other Stories, where he tells about his life as a monk.
He was, during the communist time, he was educated a film director, and then he entered a monastery.
And he's set to be Putin's confessor.
He didn't confirm it, but he's very high ranking.
And I happen to know some of the clergy in this monastery.
And they said to me, you know what?
We are very concerned about what's happening in the West right now, because we see that the atmosphere, the way people, especially believers, are treated, that they are socially marginalized, they are mocked, things like this, is exactly the same as what happened in Russia up to the revolution in 1917.
So it's very, very similar.
We see that, I mean, the spirit that was in the Soviet Union It did not die, I mean, when the whole system collapsed.
It just escaped to the West and took on a different disguise.
So now it is disguised like freedom and freedom of speech and human rights and all these things.
But it is a very totalitarian spirit.
And unfortunately, Washington is actually the core of this spirit right now.
So you need to understand this from a spiritual perspective.
Point of view to understand what's going on because it's very irrational.
It's very irrational that the U.S. should be so angry with Russia because they should actually cooperate with Russia against terrorism.
But instead, they're trying to make a war with a nuclear power.
It's totally irrational.
And this is always the sign when something spiritual is going on is that it is irrational.
You don't understand.
I mean, there is no...
Sound reasoning is just pure hatred.
And I think that they are extremely afraid because evil is very weak in a way because it has no substance.
It's just perverting what is good.
So these evil powers, which is now in Washington, they're very fearful because they know that Russia would become a very strong nation because it's built on Christian foundation now, Christian values.
So actually they're very afraid.
But not really from a political point of view, but from a spiritual point of view.
And I know if you're secular, if you're even an atheist, it might be very difficult to see the world this way.
But to me, it's the only thing that really makes sense, because otherwise it's completely irrational.
Well, here's the thing that I find so surprising, and I think it's a great way to encapsulate things.
In the past, of course, communism was international in scope and international in nature.
It was, of course, designed to take root across the entire working class, entire proletariat, across the world.
And so the fact that it took root against the whole theory was supposed to be after industrialization and the fact that it took root in pre-industrialized countries like China and Russia and so on went against the theory.
But it was the international communist movement, which is why it was so heavily expansionist.
And there was nationalism and pride in one's own culture and a rejection of internationalism in the West throughout the early to mid part of the 20th century.
And so the West was Christian, was nationalist, was proud, and was against the sort of godless international open borders invasion mess of communism.
And these positions seem to have kind of reversed.
So now you have Hillary Clinton speaking to a private group of bankers in Brazil saying her dream is open borders and...
Open trade and this international aspect of things, which has also taken root in the EU. The EU is an international or at least supranational organization.
So at a time when collectivism in the Soviet Union was being fought rapidly by nationalism and individualism and Christianity within the Western powers, now, within a matter of a few decades, it seems to have completely switched to the point where now, The nationalism and the cultural pride and the Christianity and the staunch values that are pro-one's own people from one's own leaders is in Russia.
And this weird international soupiness has taken root in the West.
And as you point out, it's like it was not destroyed in the fall of communism, or you could say even in the fall of national socialism, but it rather escaped into the West where it's sort of been breeding in the minds of people ever since.
But you also have to keep in mind that communism is actually, or Marxism, is a Western idea.
It's not a Russian idea.
So it's coming back to the West now.
And I think globalism is actually a very anti-Christian movement because it's all about breaking down any kind of truth, any kind of order, the family, the gender.
I mean, society.
I mean, all stable, traditional structures is being destroyed.
So it is actually a fight against God because they want to sort of deconstruct, destroy all created order and even creation.
Because I think they know they cannot defeat God, but they can try to destroy his creation, which is humanity, the planet.
And this is what they're doing.
They are very abusive.
They're very evil.
And they hate.
I mean, they are driven by hate.
Look at Hillary.
She's driven by hate.
She's a very angry woman.
And you see, no matter what she says, there is some kind of, I would say, even diabolical hatred behind it.
And I think you really have to be very concerned about that, because you see that globalism is all about trying to, I would not say recreate, but at least to destroy, to destroy everything that is what we perceive as Normal, like a family unit.
And also because they know that they cannot control society if you have strong families.
So that's why you need to deconstruct the family.
You need to destroy the family.
And the way to change a society is through education.
So, for instance, many parents in the United States are perhaps not able anymore to do homeschooling.
It means that the state will take over and educate the children.
And from very early age, they will start to mix up the genders and tell the small children, well, it doesn't matter if you're a girl or a boy, you can decide yourself and all these things, you know.
So this is the way to completely destroy a human being.
You don't even have your gender identity anymore.
So, it's going to be a total collapse of the whole civilization.
And this is what they're aiming for.
It's a total chaotic, apocalyptic scenario because they simply want to destroy humanity.
And I think very few people have understood it because they're so zombified by this narrative that it is democratic, It's very anti-democratic because we don't have a democracy anymore.
We have an oligarchy and they're abusing democracy, but they're repeating this narrative because the media is so corrupt.
That this is a democracy.
And then they are turning against Russia to try to distract voters from the real problems that they have.
And I think that's why they are doing this Russian warmongering.
It's because they want to distract the voters from what's really going on.
So it's very easy to blame Russia for everything.
But it's also, I think, because of the hatred.
Because there is a spiritual dimension, which very few people are aware.
I think the story that Russia is, you know, is actually resurrecting as a Christian giant is the most untold story in the West.
And it should really be stressed that Russia is, I mean, if anybody would go to Moscow or to Russia, they would be so surprised to see that Russia is not at all this evil empire as it is depicted in our press.
Not at all.
You would feel very comfortable being there.
And there is a lot of freedom.
There's a lot of freedom of speech.
And there is a lot of spiritual freedom as well.
I was very surprised myself when I came back the first time.
This is what is so bizarre, Ibn, is that there's this topsy-turvy world where there's significantly, in many ways, there's significantly more economic freedoms in China and Russia, the former communist dictatorships, than there is in the West.
And there's a more sensible approach to society.
One of the things that I really respect about Christianity is the hard-won lessons that have evolved over thousands of years about, as you say, the importance of the family.
How should children be raised?
They should be raised in a nuclear family with a father and a mother, ideally, who stay together, who are invested in the moral and intellectual education of their children.
There should be relatively homogenous communities for more happy interactions and the gathering of community in a sort of like-minded synergy.
And all of these sort of hard-won lessons, also the degree to which human beings are tribal animals, indeed.
In other words, if you bring oppositional ideologies in close proximity, you're going to end up with conflict because human beings are tribal animals.
All of these sort of hard-won ideals of Christianity and other sort of traditional or conservative approaches to the world are all being scrubbed, and that is what reminds me of communism the most.
You remember under communism, of course, Self-interest, economic self-advantage, one's inclination to trade for mutual benefit, and so on.
All of these were going to be scrubbed and destroyed, and there was going to be the new Soviet man who would steadfastly march in lockstep with whatever the party wanted, and he would have no self-interest.
And the Nazis did the same thing.
The Nazis did the thing where everything for the state, everything defined by the state, you think of nothing but the state, your own individual personality doesn't exist.
And this idea that you can scrub out 150,000 years of human evolution and replace it with some ideological perfection...
It's a truly astonishing phenomenon.
And as you say, it destroys things.
Because there is no way to remake humanity in the image of your particular ideal.
We are a species that has evolved with particular characteristics and particular forms of beneficial social organization.
And if people say, well, you know, we can just wipe the slate clean and we can just start again and we can start from scratch and there'll be no negatives, no harm and so on.
It doesn't work.
Human beings have a nature.
We have a consciousness.
We have self-interest.
We have a preference for those who are closest to us, culturally or physically or whatever.
And these things can't simply be erased.
I mean, they can, but nothing arises to fill their place but emptiness and totalitarian conformity.
That's exactly true.
And I know that a lot of people in our generation is not very...
Religious or spiritual.
I know that you are not either Stefan, but anyhow, I think that Spirituality is very important for a society because there is a kind of groundedness When you admit that there are something that is more important than you or something that is higher than you I think it's very helpful for a culture and I you know it was very interesting because Last week,
Donald Trump and Hillary attended the Al Smith dinner, which is a very famous charity dinner in New York, where Cardinal Dolan was hosting it.
And when Trump gave his talk, he said something very, I mean, amazing.
He said, well, he said to the Cardinal, you and I live...
On the same street, because they both have their houses on the Fifth Avenue, which is a very prominent street.
And then he said to the Cardinal, but your house is built by God, and nobody can compete with God, he said.
And I was really astonished, because, I mean, I think it was a kind of humility.
Everybody says he has such a big ego and, you know, all these things.
But he admitted that there was something that was bigger than him.
And I think it's very helpful for a society to admit.
And that's why I think that Donald Trump actually has understood something that we have not understood yet what it means.
I think Donald Trump never said when he started his campaign that he would be a Christian, because normally all the candidates would speak about their relationship with the church and God.
But this year has been completely different.
They never talked about it.
I think he even said that he believed in God, but he had never asked God for any forgiveness.
And people was very, you know, upset about it, especially Christians.
And I think that something happened to Trump in this campaign, because I also read that before the second TV debate with Hillary, he was with, you know, Several pastors, and they told that he had asked God for forgiveness for his sins in the past.
Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but that's what they claim.
So it means that maybe he has understood to make society work, you need to connect with a higher divinity or with God.
And I think the problem for most of the nationalistic movement, at least here in Europe, is that they're only capable of defining themselves in a negative way.
They can only say, well, we don't like immigrants, we don't like refugees, we don't like this, we don't like that.
But they're not capable of, you know, trying to come up with some positive message and say, this is what we want, this is what we want to build on.
And that's because that society needs a spiritual foundation which we have lost.
So it's very difficult for us to define what is it that we really want in a positive way.
We can only say this is what we don't want.
And that's why I hope, because it seems that Donald Trump is on a kind of spiritual path.
And I really hope that he's going to stick to that, because I think that is what Western society lost in this secular, progressing society.
And if we don't come back to this kind of root we have, we're deeply rooted in our Christian values, I don't think we have many chances of surviving because when the revolution, I mean, the first days of this revolution where you want to overturn the government and you want to replace it with something else, well, you need to build on something that is solid.
And if you don't have that, you just have your own career or You know, better economics or whatever it can be.
It's going to fade out.
You need to have something that is stronger.
And this is the really weak point right now in the Western society because we have become so used to say, well, we don't need God.
And this is the kind of, you know, pride.
We don't need God.
We can make it on our own.
And now we see the consequences that everything is falling apart because we have no solid rock anymore to build on.
So I hope that this Trump movement would sort of, maybe they could start just with morality.
I mean, that there is good, there is evil.
Right now we see a huge titanic battle against good and evil in the world.
So at least to acknowledge that there is something that is the truth, there is something that is good, there is something that is evil, there is something that might even be satanic, which I really think that globalism is.
It is satanic because it really wants to destroy everything that is truthful, everything that is good, everything that is beautiful.
It just wants to destroy it, everything that is natural.
I do understand that it might be a hard message to swallow for agnostics and atheists that we need to come back to our Christian roots and our spirituality, but maybe for a start you can just consider that it would be healthy to connect with something that is bigger than us.
And that, I mean, if we go back in history, I mean, all cultures have had some kind of cult where they actually worship something that was bigger than them.
So we are the first civilization in the history, in the world history, in human history, that was so full of pride that we said, we don't really need anything that is holy, anything that is bigger than us.
And I think it is actually, that's why we are seeing this kind of cultural collapse.
Because we didn't believe that anything were bigger than us.
I think we need to come back to that.
We can discuss bigger than us, but it has to be something spiritual and not political.
Well, I certainly agree that one of the great offers that was made by the left to the modern generation of young people in the West was the great offer that there's nothing that you need to sacrifice.
There's nothing that is bigger than you.
There's nothing that you need to defend.
There's nothing that is a sort of precious inheritance that needs to be maintained and extended.
You don't need to make sacrifices.
You don't need to trouble yourself.
All of the good...
That was built up by your ancestors is just going to maintain and sustain itself of its own accord.
It's sort of like there's a wonderful car, but it takes a lot of maintenance.
And the father works to maintain the car and spends half his weekends on that rolling tray under the car, getting his hands all greasy and all that.
But then you get to drive this wonderful car, which is great.
But the younger generation inherits the car and they just drive the car.
And they feel free.
And the promise has been made that the car can drive free of maintenance.
You don't need to worry.
You don't need to get your hands dirty.
You don't need to be uncomfortable.
You don't need to have your back ached.
You don't need to turn wrenches or whatever.
It's just going to run on its own.
And what happens, of course, when you don't maintain the car is it dies.
It will eventually seize up and you don't even need to change the oil.
And this great momentum of history argument that was given to the young that don't worry, don't worry, everything's going to be fine.
You've won.
You don't need to be vigilant.
You don't need to guard the borders of the treasures that your ancestors gave you.
You don't need to maintain the treasures of your civilization.
It's all going to be.
And of course, that's a great relief.
I mean, who wants to be under the car getting their hands all dirty and their back aching and so on?
But the reality is that it has now become a prize because it is undefended.
Europe in particular has now become a prize for other groups and other cultures, even within Europe, the globalists and so on.
It has become a prize.
And because people have been offered a life free of the need to defend their freedoms, they have become lazy.
They have become inarticulate in the defense of those freedoms.
And whether it comes from philosophy, whether it comes from religion, I believe it's much more likely to come from religion than philosophy as it stands.
But the end of religion in the West had more to do with, I don't want to be told what to do.
I don't want to have any rules.
I don't want to have any obligations.
And I don't want to have any need for sacrifice.
And the reality is that to maintain a civilization requires vigilance, it requires sacrifice, and it requires that you be passionately in love with something much larger than your own mere mortal existence.
And all that has faded away from the West and we've become, in general, a bunch of hedonistic, narcissistic navel gazers who don't even see the approaching shadows because we're told the sun is going to hang high in the sky forever.
Yeah, I think right now people need to be informed about this because many are living in a sort of matrix, you know, the matrix where everybody's living in a different reality.
And I think this is what actually is going on right now.
A lot of people have this kind of narrative that everything's going to be alright, and democracy has actually been given the status of some kind of religion.
And I think that's very dangerous to make something that is political and relative into something absolute, which has happened.
And for Europe, I mean, with all the problems with migration and the refugees, which coming with a very clear religious attitude, Then you see the weakness of our society because we have lost Christianity.
So we are really very vulnerable because we have no spirituality.
And I think if we had been more Christians here in Europe, I think the whole integration process would have been completely different.
And we would have been more self-assertive.
We would have been more clear in our message about what do we think is right and what do we think is wrong.
Now everybody's just confused about what is right and wrong, and this is what is destroying us.
So it's not so much the strength of Islam that is the problem in the West, it's the weakness of the Christians.
And I think this message has to be repeated again and again and again.
Maybe people won't go back to Christianity, but then there is a consequence, I think.
I think, you know, I know a lot of political...
People here, people who are debaters and blubbers, and they're also agnostics.
But more and more come to me and say, you're right.
There is nothing...
There are no other solutions now than coming back to our Christian roots, because all political solutions have been tried and they failed.
So we need to build on something different than just politics.
Otherwise, we won't survive as a culture.
We're going to be dead, I mean.
And, you know, also because that we...
We're told not to make big families.
You see, maybe we have democracy, but the Muslims have the demography.
It means that they get a lot of children.
They still have a strong family unit.
And it means that they can outnumber us in a couple of decades if we don't stop the immigration and we don't start to get more children and base our lives on some other values.
So it's not about just having the right Politics about closing the borders.
It's also a matter of our own morals, our own values.
And I think this is the biggest battle at all.
And it also goes for the U.S. when it comes to this election.
Because this will, as you have said also in previous programs, that this will determine the future of the whole Western civilization.
Because otherwise we're going to have more Hillary, we're going to have more, you know, tearing down all traditions, everything that our culture was built on, or we're going to go back to something or restart something that used to be with Trump.
So, and I hope that, let's say that Trump is going to win this election, that it will have an impact in Europe as well, because then probably there will be a lot of Trump haters here, certainly.
But then it will be more legitimate to talk about, maybe we should go back to our roots.
Maybe we should start to have a moral.
And not only, you know, trying to speak in negative terms of all the people we don't like, we should clean up ourselves first.
And that's why I like that Trump says that, well, let's make America great again.
And he doesn't want to, you know, have all this endless war and trying to export democracy and the American way when it's so rotten inside.
You need to heal on the inside before you can go out and conquer again and make the world a better place, because right now it's just destruction that America is bringing to the world, not something that is healthy and good and prosperous.
And I think it has to do with the inner life of our nation.
It is like a body.
I mean, you need to be healthy to spread good vibes, and you need To have a spirituality, you need to have morals.
You need to be able to distinguish between good and evil.
And right now it has been reverted.
So good has become evil and evil has become good.
And people are seduced and they are betrayed.
So many people have a lot of difficulties to discern reality, to discern what is good, what is evil, what is right, what is wrong.
Because we have had this relativism.
So it's just a big disease.
So people have no idea.
What is the right direction?
And the media is telling lies all the time.
So it's very hard to find the right path actually.
There is this very strange thing where you have Hillary Clinton, who claims to be a Christian, who is arming and supporting Islamic radicals like ISIS in Syria in the fight against Russia, and is threatening war against a Christian country.
So arming ISIS, threatening war against a Christian country from a Christian.
This is shocking to me.
I mean, even by the standards of modern relativism, this is a deep inversal.
What is the view, Ivan, of Western Europe from Eastern Europe and Russia?
I mean, I've got to have the sense that they're looking across this and seeing as great a divide as there's ever been in history and as great a sense of risk as there's ever been in history.
They've got to just be looking at Europe and shaking their heads in wonder At what the Europeans, and in particular what Hillary in America, are even thinking in terms of their relationship to Russia?
Well, I mean, when I was in Moscow just two weeks ago and I talked to people, I had no sense of any aggression coming from the Russians.
They are just trying to protect themselves, and they think that the West has gone crazy.
Many Russians do not understand why we are so angry with them.
They simply don't understand.
Again, so I come back to the point of that this is irrational.
So many Russians are...
I don't know if they're afraid of the West because they're ready to fight for their values.
But they have just lost the idea right now that there is any kind of dialogue that is possible because the West is so aggressive.
So, you know, so Russia is not the aggressor.
They look at the West as very, very aggressive.
And I think more Russians have understood than the Westerners that this has to do with values.
It has to do with values more than just geopolitics.
And when you mention Islam, the reason why the West is sort of promoting and protecting Islam is actually because it is a way to destroy Christianity.
Because Islam, there has been a shift within those terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda and also Islamic State.
When 9-11 happened, it was very much the secular, godless society they were against.
But the recent year, there has been a kind of new development or shift, and now they're anti-Christian.
They go...
After Christians.
The last issue of Islamic State's online magazine called Dabiq, they explain, I think the title is Break the Cross, and they say they want to destroy Christianity in Europe.
And they're even accusing us of being very naive because we don't understand that this is a religious war.
They say, even though you did not bomb in Iraq and Syria, we would still...
You know, kill you because you're infidels and we want to destroy Christianity.
They even mock the Pope and they say Pope Francis is very naive.
He has not understood yet what is going on.
So to understand why the West and the left or the leftists sort of have made this kind of unholy alliance with Islam, the only thing that explains it is that they know that teaming up with those Islamic forces They can destroy the Christians.
And I think this is something that has not been understood yet because, of course, the press, which is also very anti-Christian, the mainstream media, they don't cover the story.
They just destroy Christianity.
And so I think that this is the reason why they're doing this.
And this is also the reason why that they are against Russia.
And I think the Russians understand because normally you would say the U.S. should Should cooperate with Russia to go against Islamism and terrorism.
But they don't.
I mean, in Syria, they're actually supporting Islamic State instead of cooperating with Russia because if they did that, they could destroy them in a minute.
But they don't want that because they want to destroy the Christian culture in the Middle East and then the next step is Europe and the third step is the US. But what I don't understand is that when those...
Islamic people, those terrorist people, when they have enough control and they can dominate enough, of course they will destroy the West and also the leftists.
So there is no deal for them in this alliance.
It's just really a bad choice.
And I don't understand that they are actually sleeping with the enemy just to destroy Christianity.
That's why there is so much hatred against Christianity globally.
That we have never seen Christian persecutions in the human history as we do in this century.
And Hillary also said that religious beliefs, it means Catholic traditional beliefs, has to change when it comes to abortion and LGBT rights.
So it means, and also WikiLeaks has actually revealed that Podesta were sort of mocking the Catholic faith and they wanted to make a revolution within the Catholic Church.
So when all these things have been put together, you see that this is a huge attack on the Christian civilization.
And I think it has not been...
I think it really should come more up to the surface that this is what is going on.
They're actually trying to destroy everything That Western culture built on.
And everything in the Middle East that is Christian is more or less destroyed right now.
So that's already happened there.
It's going to happen here.
It's going to happen in the United States.
And if Hillary will come to power, I'm sure that there will be persecutions in the U.S. against traditional Christians in a way you've never seen before.
Well, and I think that if it should come to pass that whether it's limited or nuclear, if there is an engagement between American forces and Russian forces, that is a Christian versus Christian battle because there aren't a lot of atheists and agnostics who end up in the military.
It's a lot of people who are Christians who end up in the military in America.
And of course, the same is true.
In Russia.
And the left, of course, has always hated Christianity because Christianity is a bulwark against the fairly unlimited totalitarianism that the left wants to impose.
It is where there is a strong Christianity, there is a strong opposition to an overly powerful state.
And there's less demand for it because the Christians stay married more stably.
They tend to raise their children with significant values that serve as a shield against dysfunctional, hedonistic, promiscuous, drug-addicted kind of behavior.
So there's less demand for the state.
And the Christians are very skeptical of any kind of secular state and strongly opposed And so if you end up with a war between America and Russia, it will be the left, if it's Hillary, it will be the left ordering Christians to kill other Christians.
And of course, if you have a hatred for Christianity, that's kind of what you'd want.
Well, I'm not sure how many Christian fighters you have left in the West, but surely on the Russian side, you will have a lot of Christian fighters.
I saw I watched a small video from the Russian military the other day where they were parachuting and they had a kind of a mobile church.
So when they landed, the first thing that they built was this church full of air and icons.
But it's really such a change everywhere in Russia.
And they built also a church on Antarctica.
So it's everywhere that they're spreading the gospel.
So I think you're right but I'm not sure whether the Christians in the West really want to fight because I think they have been so pacified by relativism and many people in the church are not anymore also have difficulties to discern what is really true Christianity and I think right now Christianity has been taken like a hostage to this political correct mercy philosophy.
So if you are a good Christian, you are for open borders.
And if you don't like it, you are a bad Christian.
And, you know, the last thing I saw was actually that I saw an article from Rome said that Putin is behind Catholics that oppose Pope Francis on these issues.
So now you see again that you can't Those, you know, Christian teachings without being connected with Putin.
So all the tensions are building up.
And I think you have to be aware that there is a spiritual dimension to it.
And it's everywhere.
But unfortunately, like I said before, because many Europeans and many Americans have been so secularized, it's very difficult for them to decode these kinds of, you know, all these kind of things that are going on on a spiritual level.
That's why I think we have to be reminded that this is really what's going on and all the political stuff is just the tool, just the kind of means, but behind it you have spiritual forces that are fighting.
So yeah, I think it will be a religious war and I think this is also the big irony that we were told that When I was a child that this was the age where there was no, I mean, it was the end of all religion.
And now religion is coming back with Islam and we see that Christianity suddenly is sort of waking up a little bit because it's so threatened.
So religion is very much alive and I think the 21st century is all about religion.
It's not about politics in a way.
It's all about religion and spirituality and this battle between good and evil.
Well, then I certainly view the left.
I've made this case before, but I view the left as a religion as well, just a very bleak and dark religion.
So, Ivan, perhaps you could...
This will, of course, go out to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people.
No pressure.
But perhaps you would like to...
Make the case of what you feel or what you believe is the most important thing for Europeans to focus on over the next couple of years.
A moment of crisis in Western civilization, I don't believe, has been seen since the fall of Rome.
What is it that you would like for Europeans to consider to think about what invitations would you like to extend to them in these difficult times?
I think there are so many people who give political messages for the time being, so I won't do that.
I will give a spiritual message because this is my field.
And I think the most important thing right now is try to discern your own life to be humble.
I think humility in the real sense that try to look at my past.
What did I do?
What did I do for others?
What kind of responsibilities do I have?
Like morals, I mean, and also I think it's very...
important for us to because I think there is going to be some kind of war.
I don't know if it's going to be the third world war but I think there's going to be some clashes also after the American election and also here in Europe it's really building up because a lot of people are very frustrated with the situation and with the political leaders and I think in times like this you need to turn to God.
You need to reconnect with God and maybe a lot of People who are watching this show don't have a relationship with God, but you can always say to God, well, I don't believe in you, but if you are there, I mean, just present yourself, say something to me, do something, and I believe that God will always answer any prayer.
So I think it's very important to have that kind of humility, because I think our culture is very full of pride, and pride is the cardinal sin.
Which will make you fall in the end because you are not the biggest or the most important thing in your life.
There are something that is bigger than you.
So try to come back to this kind of Christian heritage we have because it was not that bad.
It actually built a fantastic civilized culture.
With a lot of beauty, with a lot of intellectual thinking, art, music, I mean, architecture, and also the way our whole society is structured.
But it's not enough just to look at its, what do you call it, its products.
You need to go deeper and see what is the spirit in it, because this is what we lack.
We lack the spirit in things.
We have lost the spirit.
So I think the only way you can sort of come back to that spirit is to go through yourself.
It's not always the other ones that has to change.
You have to change yourself if you want to change society.
I think that's a very important message.
If you want to change the world, change yourself first.
Be humble.
Ask God for guidance because it's a very difficult time.
I know I may sound like a priest.
For me, this spiritual world is very real.
Ask for protection.
Ask for protection because we are dealing with very evil, aggressive powers.
So our culture, our families, and ourselves, we need protection.
So we should ask, at least you could ask, yeah, if you don't want to ask God, you can ask an angel, because I know in the New Age movement, angels are very popular.
You can ask an angel.
At least appeal to something higher than you.
Because I think, actually, what is very important is that, I think it's very important to remember that the patriarch, Kirill, He actually stretched out a hand to the Western Christians many times and said, we know where you are because we tried this for 75 years when we had the communism.
So we really want to help you because we see that you are struggling.
And don't take the same road as we did because it's leading to destruction, he said.
So I think it's very important right now for Christians in the West and Christians in Russia to try to unite because we need each other in this fight.
It's not so much about What kind of nation you come from?
What kind of denomination you come from?
But a battle between good and evil.
And I think the Russians in Russia, they really have this experience with trying to fight evil.
So we should team up with them.
We should actually unite.
And I think when this kind of tension between Russia and the West is over, The only place where we can meet or the only meeting point we have is Christianity because we have a Christian culture in common and that's why many Russians, they say, well, but still Europe is a Christian continent so that's where we can begin to try to come back to each other.
So I think it's very, very important for Christians in the West and Christians in Russia to try to unite and to fight together instead of Seeing each other as the enemy.
I think that will be my message.
Well, I appreciate that, and thank you so much for bringing the perspective from Russia in particular.
They appear to be very alarmed.
They're practicing their fallout shelter routines and stocking up food and water, and there is no cause, no need, no standard or practice that would justify any kind of war, in my view, between Russia and the West, particularly over Russia.
Conflicts in Syria.
And so I hope that, of course, everybody will recognize where that road can lead.
And that the last time that Europe got involved in internecine warfare, we talked about it as the First World War, 10 million dead, 20 million dead from the Spanish flu afterwards.
We've got the Second World War, 40 million dead, when Europe starts fighting amongst itself.
And I'm going to include Russia in this.
I know it's arguable, but We're good to go.
Leads to the decay of the future.
And if you find that in God, you find that in yourself, you find that in philosophy, we need to hook ourselves into something bigger than ourselves.
Because if we're not hooked into something bigger than ourselves, sacrifice always feels like self-destruction.
Whereas, of course, it can be the foundation of what we call civilization.
So thank you again so much for your time.
I appreciate it.
And we'll put links to where people can access your work below.
And I hope that we can talk again soon.
▲
Export Selection