CESNUR at the scene of the crime In October 1994, 48 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple were found dead in the villages of Cheiry and Salvan in Switzerland. When the bodies were discovered, a self-appointed ‘religious affairs adviser from the Central Defence Office’ appeared at the scene of the crime and collaborated with the investigators by questioning the witnesses alone, ignoring all procedural rules. He was Jean-François Mayer , a former far-right activist in Lyon. Mayer was responsible for the distribution of the Holocaust denial newspaper Défense de l'Occident , a member of the Nouvel Ordre Social (a national-revolutionary movement based in Geneva), a contributor to the magazine Panorama des idees actuelles, a publication of the GRECE , the Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne, a right-wing, neo-pagan think tank. By 1976, however, he had converted to orthodox Christianity. The most interesting thing, however, is that this person was a leading member of CESNUR , the Centre for the Study of ‘New Religious Movements', which grew out of an Alleanza Cattolica offshoot. I n a BBC documentary on the Solar Temple suicides case, Mayer is portrayed as a representative of Swiss military intelligence. After the discovery of the bodies of 16 other followers of the Solar Temple in December 1995 in Vercors, France, Jean-François Mayer was one of the 300 privileged people who received a cult file containing the posthumous writings of the sacrificed. In her book ‘Ordre du Temple Solaire, en quête de vérité’, Rosemarie Jaton reports on the content of an interview with J.F. Mayer, in which he admits to having been in contact with Luc Jouret , one of the two leaders of the Order of the Solar Temple. Luc Jouret was a former Belgian far-right military officer who was associated with Gladio , a branch of the secret anti-communist NATO organisation known as Stay Behind . The supposed ‘mass suicides’ of the Solar Temple still remain shrouded in mystery. Certainly, the facts recounted suggest a connection between intelligence, the far right and cults. Spirituality and espionage Neither the connection between Western intelligence and the far right nor that between secret services and minority spiritual cults is strange. The alliance between Western security services and neo-fascism was the subject of the a previous chapter of this report ( Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network ). The matter of the Order of the Solar Temple now gives us the opportunity to assess the influence of the secret services on spiritual and esoteric groups. It should be said at the outset that the preference for "cults" in no way excludes mainstream religions. In fact, Allen Dulles, who headed the CIA in its early years, had already used the Catholic Church as a cover for intelligence operations when he was in charge of the Office for Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner organisation of the CIA. In his book ‘ Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors ’, Michael Graziano writes about the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War: ‘American analysts often assumed that Catholic interests - and those of the Vatican more specifically- were perfectly aligned with US objectives’. The agency also worked with the Catholic international press through the Belgian priest Felix Morlion in what it called ‘ Operation Pilgrim's Progress ’. When the agency encountered other world religions during the Cold War - Shintoism in Japan, Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and especially Islam in Iran - it took it for granted that " the United States and world religions [were] natural allies " in the fight against atheistic communism. After the end of the war, former OSS agents joined the newly founded Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), bringing with them the experience and networks needed to use religion as a tool for clandestine activities. In the early years of the Cold War, James Angleton organised an elaborate spy network that enabled the CIA to receive intelligence reports sent to the Vatican from papal nuncios stationed behind the Iron Curtain and other "closed" areas. At the time, this was one of the few means available to the CIA to penetrate the Eastern Bloc. CIA officials such as Allen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Miles Copeland, William Eddy and James Jesus Angleton did not hesitate to use religion as a transactional tool . American clergymen, missionaries and the evangelical Billy Graham worked secretly with the CIA. In 1975, a US Senate report revealed the use of various American priests and missionaries for counterintelligence in various countries. a) New religious movements and minority religions However, if majority churches are in some cases useful for espionage purposes and clandestine operations, minority cults - especially if they have their own intelligence structures, such as Scientology - are even more useful, especially in countries where majority religions are difficult to infiltrate or are closely linked to governments. This is the case in Russia or China. For example, when in 1985 the Reagan administration's Congress cancelled funding for support of the Nicaraguan ‘ Contras ' terrorists against the Sandinista regime, effectively funding for an anti-communist proxy war in Latin America , the Reverend Moon's Unification Church participated in providing food and money for the guerrillas. The facts are well presented by John Gorenfeld in his book ‘ Bad Moon Rising ’. In 1978, the Fraser Commission, a subcommittee of the US Congress, investigated the political influence of the South Korean government on US policy, the so-called Koreagate . The commission published a report that also listed Moon's involvement in these activities. This 80-page report covered the efforts of Moon's movement to influence US institutions and US foreign policy, partly in its own interests, partly in the service of the South Korean government and partly, of course, on its direct orders. Lobbying activities to obtain the renewal of an arms production licence for one of Moon's companies and many other things were also investigated. Moon's church political organisation, the Confederation of Associations for the Unification of the Societies of Americas (CAUSA) , financed Le Pen's ‘National Front’ in France, whose member of the European parliament Pierre Ceyrac was also head of the French section of CAUSA. In Germany, CAUSA board member Ursula Saniewski was personal assistant to Franz Schönhuber of the far-right ‘Republicans’. As mentioned in a previous chapter ( Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists ) , in 1989  the memoirs of  Miles Copeland ,  a former  CIA officer were published. In his book ' The Game Player ' , Copeland revealed that the Agency used many religious groups as means of influence and espionage. Among the was Scientology . Unsurprisingly, the church founded by Ron L. Hubbard was seen as an excellent means of influencing people who were themselves influential. Copeland claims that a pact was also made between the CIA and Scientology, but without providing evidence or revealing the content. The use of the Mormons  also seems to have been remarkable, as Alain Gillette points out in his book ‘Les mormons. De la théocratie a Internet’. In the early 1980s, the Nicaraguan government accused the Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses of being involved in a CIA plot to overthrow the Sandinista government . It has been proven that many Mormons in Finland have been connected to the CIA since the 1950s . In 1978, two journalists, Jorraa Lindfors and Jukka Rislakki, wrote in a book about the CIA's alleged links to the Mormon Church . According to the authors, "many of the young missionaries in Finland had been trained as military officers and the head of the Mormons’ international missionary work, Apostle Neal A. Maxwell , was a former CIA agent'. b) Intermezzo: a few words about Freemasonry and Gnosticism For a long time, people have sought elevation or enlightenment through knowledge. Access is gradual, from an outer to an inner circle, through a series of ritual initiations. This approach, as mentioned in the previous chapter, is characterised by esotericism. It refers to a series of spiritual teachings of a secret nature whose occult meanings are only accessible to followers who proceed according to different degrees of initiation. The best known and most influential esoteric society is Freemasonry . Modern Freemasonry, also known as speculative Freemasonry, originated in Great Britain in the 17th century and in France and other European countries in the 18th century. It sees itself as the heir to the ‘operative’ Freemasonry of the Middle Ages, i.e. the guilds of journeymen that built cathedrals. Its aim is to build the ‘Temple of humanity’. This perfection of humanity goes beyond individual perfection (in Masonic symbolism, this process is compared to the smoothing of the ‘rough stone’ until the ‘cubic stone’ useful for the construction of the temple is achieved). This process involves an initiation and a journey in stages that follow precise rites. The first three degrees (blue Freemasonry) are those of ‘Entered Apprentice', ‘Journeyman' and ‘Master Mason' and are under the control of various ‘grand lodges'. In Italy, for example, these are the ‘ Grand Orient of Italy (GOI) ’ or the ‘ Grand Lodge of Italy of the ALAMs ’. Then there are the ‘perfection rites’, which are not regulated by the various obediences, but by special international organisations. The Scottish Rite , for example, provides for 33 degrees. Soon many grand lodges in the Latin countries diverged from the main British organisation, mainly because of the obligatory Christian reference (which was rejected by the more secular, if not anti-clerical, Latin obediences). But this so-called liberal Latin Freemasonry carries far less weight than Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. The Anglo-Saxon denominations are dominant. Of the approximately seven million Freemasons in the world, four are American. Gnosticism is the main variant of this search for enlightenment and meaning and was carried on by Christian movements in the first three centuries, which were branded as heresies. It was a very sophisticated and complex system of thought that has often been simplified and vulgarised in recent times. One of the central themes of this modern Gnosticism is that salvation is achieved through a higher form of knowledge (Gnosis) and that the material world is not the work of God, but of a demiurge, a sub-god. Man could escape the imperfection of the material world by rediscovering the divine spark within himself through the enlightenment of esoteric knowledge. These scattered movements gave rise to a very complex family tree, including the Knights Templar, certain orders of chivalry and even Freemasonry. Hence the constant references to the Temple, the Orders and the Knights, and to the Sun of Enlightenment in modern Western esotericism. As they use the same vocabulary, the boundaries between Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and the numerous Templar and solar orders are not always entirely clear. In the 18th century, some streams of Freemasonry invented a connection to the Knights Templar. The Rosicrucians inspired the highest degrees of the Grand Lodge of France (GLF). The most widely practised Masonic rite in the world is called Rosicrucian in England. The organisation known as Scientology , which was founded by a representative of the Ancient and Mystical Rosicrucian Order (AMORC) , the science fiction author Ron L. Hubbard , is no stranger to this lineage. According to journalists Ottenheimer and Lecadre, the Grand Orient de France (GOF) and the Grande Loge Nationale Francaise (GLNF) are " notoriously infiltrated by Scientology ". c) Neo-templarism Numerous journalistic and judicial investigations in both Italy and France have highlighted the frequent links between certain Masonic ‘lodges, parts of the NATO secret services and far-right movements, which have often influenced each other at different times in the political life of the two countries. The best example is the strategy of tension in Italy . For their part, the French journalists Ottenheimer and Lecadre, in their book ‘ Les Fréres Invisible ’, have well described the situation in France, where all the obediences, especially the GLNF, seem to be infiltrated by both the extreme right and members of the secret services involved in Stay Behind , the anti-communist paramilitary organisation created by the US secret services. The French authors are very helpful when it comes to understanding the colourful panorama painted by the nebula of neo-templarian and paramilitary movements, which are predominantly French-speaking and have proved very useful to the intelligence services. The case of the Order of the Solar Temple shows how useful chivalric and neo-templar groups are. These are associations that, generally without having any title or authority - invoke a form of direct derivation from religious orders of chivalry that existed during the Crusades, particularly from the Knights Templar . Today, there are thousands of official and unofficial chivalric organisations. Of the official ones, the Knights of Malta are the best known. Martin A. Lee writes that the American branch of the Order is one of the most important channels of communication between the CIA and the Vatican . In fact, the Order of Malta is able to transfer money to and from countries to which neither the CIA nor the Vatican have access. Among other things, the Order is authorised to issue diplomatic passports and, although it has no territorial connection, has diplomatic representations or its own embassies in 112 countries. The Order is full of military and intelligence agents. The head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA's predecessor, William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, was a member of the Order of Malta, as was James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's head of counterintelligence. Among others, William Casey, Director of the CIA during the Reagan administration, who is considered the main organiser of the Gladio network in Italy, i.e. the network to which the members of the Order of the Solar Temple belonged and which maintained close relations with the Italian P2 Masonic Lodge, was also a Knight of Malta. If this is the nature of an official organisation such as the Knights of Malta, the contours of the countless unofficial or sideline orders of Masonic obediences, which are often ‘spurious’, seem even more obscure. The link between neo-Masonic orders and Freemasonry is due to the fact that the legend has spread in Freemasonry, especially in France and Germany, that the Knights Templar, who were officially suppressed in 1307, continued their activities until the 18th century. The persecuted knights allegedly ‘hid’ in the English and Scottish guilds of Freemasons, from whose ‘guilds‘ 'speculative’ Freemasonry would later emerge. In other words, Freemasonry would be the Order of the Temple continuing in disguise. This is also the origin of the so-called ‘Templar degrees’ of the York Rite , a classic American rite of "perfection" as well as various neo-templar associations open only to Freemasons. In 1805, Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat, a freemason of the Parisian lodge ‘Knights of the Cross’, decided to rebuild the Order of the Knights Templar and had himself proclaimed its Grand Master. In practise, the idea was born that the Knights Templar should be independent of Freemasonry. Neo-Templarism's estrangement from Freemasonry was finalised in 1811, when the Order officially distanced itself from the Grand Orient de France and at the same time abolished religious freedom by refusing membership to Protestants. in 1814, Fabré-Palaprat finally decided to merge the order with a new church with esoteric characteristics, the Johannite Church . The Gnostic creed of this new church was based on the idea - which Palaprat would have discovered in some texts that had come into his possession - that Jesus Christ would choose St John the Evangelist as his earthly successor and not St Peter; therefore the Catholic Church would be illegitimate. This led to various schisms, such as the Grand Priory of Italy, which decided not to follow Palprat‘s 'new positions’ and declared its independence and continuity with the Catholic tradition. After Palprat's death in 1838, such splits became more frequent and countless new orders emerged, claiming direct descent from the original mediaeval order. Towards the end of the century, the various orders were attracted by the revival of occultism that characterised this period. Templar-like concepts, symbolism and rituals were incorporated into various organisations of magic and occultism , the most important of which was the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), founded by the Austrian industrialist Carl Kellner, but whose fame was mainly due to the English magician Aleister Crowley , an agent of the British services who also founded an Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica . in 1932, the Order of the Temple, which had been "sleeping" according to Masonic terminology, was revived in Belgium under the name Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (OSMTJ) . In 1970, General Antoine Zdrojewski, former leader of the Polish resistance and now a French citizen, was elected Grand Prior of the OSMTJ. He was responsible for the mass admission of representatives of the Service d'Action Civique (SAC) to the Order. The SAC began as the security guard of the Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (RPF), the right-wing party founded by General de Gaulle in the immediate post-war years. This type of private police force was made up of former members of the Resistance and soldiers who had been active in the Algerian War, police officers and secret service agents, all loyal to the General, and its main task was to protect Gaullist candidates and provide security at RPF meetings and rallies. Over time, the SAC began to lead an autonomous life, forging links with organised crime and engaging in obscure trafficking. in 1970, the SAC created an even more clandestine organisation to be used for tasks that required greater secrecy and to make it easy to deny their involvement if something went wrong. This new organisation was named Études Techniques et Commecials (ETEC) . The head of the ETEC was Charly Lascorz, a right-wing extremist. The ETEC worked closely with various police departments, the Ministry of the Interior and the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST). The reasons for the infiltration of the self-proclaimed Templars were manifold. As the order generally appealed to the highest levels of society, it could be used to infiltrate the police, the army, the media and so on. According to Francois Audiger, author of a study on the SAC, the OSMTJ already had links to various secret services. Moreover, the new Templars were wealthy contributors to ETEC's activities, as they paid substantial membership fees and donations. The main objective of this operation, which does not exclude personal financial gains for its main actors, was to use the order to create an international neo-fascist network through neo-Templar connections around the world. In 1971, Lascorz founded the Union pour la Défence des Libertés e de Doits , which Audiger described as "a kind of explosive mixture of an extreme right-wing party and Templar Freemasonry" and which used the existing OSMTJ network to forge links with other right-wing groups throughout Europe, particularly in Germany. The OSMTJ issued diplomatic passports to SAC figures without any legitimisation. In 1972, the police raided the ETEC because it was involved in drug and arms trafficking with the organised underworld. in 1973, Zdrojewski had the French priory OSMTJ ‘put to sleep’. With the election of Giscard d'Esteing in 1974, the power of the SAC diminished considerably. On the night of 17-18 June 1981, a former SAC member and police inspector, Jacque Massié (probably also an OSMTJ Templar), was murdered in an internal feud with his wife, his eight-year-old son and three other people at his home in Auriol in Provence. This led to a commission of enquiry, which led to the closure of the SAC the following year on the orders of Mitterrand. The subsequent trial revealed that Zdrojewski had continued his activities even after the official dissolution in 1973, issuing passports in the name of the OSMTJ and - according to journalistic sources - maintaining relations between the neo-Templars associated with the SAC and the P2 . It must be said that the opaque intertwining of neo-templarism, far right and the intelligence did not begin with the takeover of the OSMTJ by the SAC in 1970. In fact, Gèrard de Sède notes in his book ‘ L'Occultisme dans la politique ’ (1994) that in the 1950s, a very important figure in French intelligence, Constantin Menlik , was part of the original Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple (SOTS) , the forerunner of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) . In 1960, the news leaked out and ‘France Observatoire’ wrote on 17 March (quoted in Enquête sur les extrémistes de l'occulte : de la loge P2 à l'ordre du temple solaire by Renaud Marhic, pages 201-202) that the group's activity consisted of coordinating Franco's fundamentalist Catholics in an anti-communist capacity, together with the psychological warfare department of George Sauyers' army. Melnik was the mastermind of La Main Rouge (‘the Red Hand’), a state-sponsored terrorist group that operated in particular during the Algerian War in the 1950s. Several terrorist attacks were attributed to this organisation, which operated under ‘ false flags ’, i.e. attacks that appeared to be directed against France but were actually carried out by the French state itself. Constantin Melnik had received his training at the Rand Corporation , a company whose main customer is the Pentagon. By his own admission, François de Grossouvre , a right-wing politician and SDECE agent (Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage), was decisive in his return to France in 1983. De Grossouvre was responsible for Gladio in the Lyon region. De Grossouvre later committed suicide in his office at the Elysée Palace, the residence of the French president, although many believe that he was ‘suicided’. For the purposes of our discourse, the Renewed Order of the Temple (ORT) deserves a mention among other neo-Templar groups. It was founded by Julien Origas , a representative of the AMORC , the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis , a magical movement founded in the United States but predominant in French-speaking countries, along with Raymond Bernard . Origas had neo-Nazi ideas and connections and was also in contact with the SAC. in 1981, Origas came into contact with Luc Jouret , a naturopath and neo-Hindu guru, a former paratrooper, right-wing extremist and former infiltrator of left-wing movements on behalf of the Belgian secret service. He joined the ORT in 1981. After the death of Julien Origas, Luc Jouret tried unsuccessfully to have himself recognised as the leader of the ORT. This led to a split in 1984, which resulted in the birth of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) , which was founded together with Joseph Di Mambro , an occultist and close associate of the French secret service. The story of the Order of the Solar Temple, which led to three massacres in Switzerland, France and Canada in 1994, 1995 and 1997 with a total of 74 deaths, remains opaque. The web, which includes the infiltration of the Canadian company Hydro-Québec , the arrest of two members for arms trafficking and even the connection to an alleged terrorist group called Q-37 , which wanted to assassinate Québec Interior Minister Claude Ryan because he was too sympathetic to the Indians' demands, is too inextricable and it would go beyond the scope of this dossier to unravel it. What is interesting instead is that there is a broad consensus among those who have looked into the case that the OTS was controlled by Western intelligence services. Among others, Jean-Marie Abgrall , an expert involved in the investigation of the massacres, declared in statements to ‘Le Point’ and ‘Nice-Matin’ in February 2003 that the sect of the Renewed Order of the Temple (ORT), the forerunner of the OTS, had links to the Gladio network. Abgrall added that there were other links between AMORC and French networks in Africa, the so-called ‘Foccart network’. According to journalist Maurice Fusier, Abgrall concluded that " the Order of the Solar Temple as well as AMORC and ORT, was created and controlled by French and foreign intelligence services ". This position is also defended by François-Xavier Verschave , who claims that the ‘collective suicides’ are linked to Gladio. Bruno Fouchereau, author of ‘ La mafia des sectes ’, wrote that Luc Jouret collaborated with the Belgian far-right activist Jean-François Thiriart . In the 1970s, the two founded an organisation whose aim was to organise a split from the Belgian Communist Party and found the Parti Communautaire Européen, which later became the Parti Communautaire National-Européen . Foucherau claimed that this Belgian "Nazi-Maoist group" was in fact controlled by the SDRA8 , the Belgian branch of Gladio. Based on its own investigations, Radio Canada claimed that Joseph Di Mambro used the Solar Temple for arms trading and money laundering activities via an Australian bank. Also linked to the Order of the Solar Temple was a ‘mythical’ figure, Yves Guérin-Sérac , the grey eminence of black terrorism in Europe, one of the masterminds of the strategy of tension in Italy and founder of Aginter Presse , the fake Portuguese press agency that functioned as the organisational centre of the subversion of democracy on a planetary scale (see Fascists, spes and gurus. 3. The black network ). This mainly francophone excursus confirms that spiritual groups are a useful instrument of intelligence. Even before the social polarisation processes we have seen (in Fascists, spies and gurus. 6. CIA cults ) and the use of these for strategies of shaping public opinion through disinformation (as we have seen in Fascists, spies and gurus. 7. East Wind ), these groups can serve the secret services as a transactional tool, i.e. for the mediation, a delegation of clandestine operations, espionage, money transfer and money laundering. Another element that this Francophone overview provides us with is the confirmation of a black lace that binds together minority cults, especially those of an esoteric nature, and the intelligence services, that of the political right. If we had focused on Italy, we would have found a stronger involvement of deviant Freemasonry in this right-wing network thanks to the CIA-P2 axis (via Frank Gigliotti , as in Fascists, Spies and Gurus. 6. CIA cults ). In France, this network was mainly based on the orders of chivalry. From the end of the Second World War until the 1990s, in the Atlantic Pact, these efforts seem to have been focused on fighting communism. Now that communism has collapsed, this covert work is being directed towards other goals, and these seem to include the defence of ‘religious freedom’, not as an ultimate goal, but as a goal that serves to achieve other geopolitical objectives. Indeed, "religious freedom" enables new tools of psychological warfare. Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. Attack on secularism Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. The libertarian network Fascists, spies and gurus. 6. CIA cults Fascists , spies   and   gurus . 7 . East   wind Fascists, spies and gurus. 8. The double truth Next   chapter   coming   soon

The strange case of the 'Group of Thebes" Paris, June 3 1990: In a hall of the Grand Orient de France (GOF), the most important Masonic observance beyond the Alps, the official founding of an occult esoteric group took place. It was called the Group of Thebes , but will only become known three years later thanks to a press release revealing its name and composition. The latter is very interesting because it involved a peculiar acolyte. The lynchpin of the group was Rémi Boyer , a representative of the magical Order of the Rosicrucians (AMORC) . Boyer had already founded 'Arc-en-ciel', an association of occult and New Age groups (including Sri Chinmoy, the Grande Loge indépendante des rites unis, the Institut pour une synthèse planètaire, the Ordre Chevaleresque de la Rose-Croix, the Brahma Kumaris Spiritual University). The Group of Thebes was thus Boyer's second creation, dedicated to a smaller and presumably higher group of 'initiates'. It is therefore noteworthy that among the latter was the very Catholic Massimo Introvigne , a prominent figure of Alleanza Cattolica and founder and director of the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) for two years. The lawyer, who was caught in this embarrassing situation by a French magazine, will claim to have been admitted as a scholar. A claim that might convince those who are not familiar with the workings of an esoteric society. Indeed, initiatory orders proceeds for hierarchical levels of knowledge sanctioned by special rites of passage. It is therefore unlikely that an initiatory group would accept an uninitiated scholar among its high-ranking esotericists. Among other things, the group was even secret from the Freemasons of the Grand Lodge, and also from the "Alexandria Group", which acted as a nursery to attract new members to the more occult circle. Introvigne, who had only been involved with spiritual movements for two years, would have entered this circle directly, and the high initiates, who did not break secrecy even with "brothers" of the high degrees, would have welcomed him to be studied by a profane. In response to the criticism levelled at him by the traditionalist magazine ' Sodalitium ', our man finally let it be known that he was one of the founders of the Group of Thebes . However, it is not untrue that the Thebes Group was a study group. The various esoteric realities there should have been compared in order to define which groups really fulfil the criteria of the Tradition . This of course requires advanced knowledge, in the initiatory sense, from all members. Introvigne was not the only Italian; there were others. One of them was a no less anomalous presence. It was Paolo Fogagnolo , a former member of the ' Brigate Rosse ' (Red Brigades), a communist terroristic organisation, to whom the "Madonna", or rather the Sefira, the equivalent of the Virgin in the esoteric tradition, had appeared. He had therefore turned to esotericism and founded the group 'Prometheus', which was dedicated to the Egyptian mysteries. The group was recognised by various magical orders, including the Ordo Templi Orientis ). This is the hermetic order made famous by Aleister Crowley , who called himself " the Beast 666 " and is regarded as the founder of modern occultism and a source of inspiration for Satanism . Crowley had sympathies for the Nazis. In addition to the traditionalist Catholic and the former terrorist who saw the Mother of God, there were some interesting personalities. One of the pillars of the group of Thebes was Jean-Pierre Giudicelli . He is a Corsican independentist, right-wing extremist and former member of the neo-fascist groups Ordre Nouveau (inspired by the Italian group Ordine Nuovo , responsible for the massacres in Italy) and Troisieme Voie (disbanded by the Council of Ministers). The latter, former head of the French section of the Order of Myriam, an organisation dedicated to sexual magic, later became bishop of the Church of the New Alliance . Other members were Jean-Marie Vergerio of the Order of the Templars of Circe , Robert Amadou , parapsychologist and occultist, Rosicrucian, Triantaphyllos Kotzamanis , Freemason, Bishop of the Gnostic Apostolic Church and Rosicrucian, Gérard Kloppel , Freemason and Martinist, Jean-Pascal Ruggiu , Grand Hierophant of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (a magical order also linked to Aleister Crowley), Georges Magne de Cressac and Jean-Marie D'Asembourg , well-known right-wing extremists. So far, the most presentable members have been listed. According to some French outlets, one of the members was the historian Robert Faurisson , the most famous Holocaust denier. However, Massimo Introvigne scornfully and firmly denies this claim, stating that he never saw him at the group's meetings (and adds that if Faurisson had been there, he would have left). Introvigne is keen to express his opposition to holocaust denialism. The Italian does not show the same contempt for a member whose presence is instead certain: Christian Bouchet . The latter is a Nazi-Maoist (or, as they say in France, a Mao-Maurrassien ). He was active in several neo-fascist groups and joined the Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE) in the early 1980s. GRECE is an anti-Christian and neo-pagan group in favour of identity and sovereignty. An expert on the English magician Aleister Crowley , Bouchet was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) . He is also a member of the white supremacist cult World Church of the Creator, also known as the Creativity Movement . He is also the editor of several magazines. These include 'Lutte du Peuple', which can be categorised as 'neo-Nazi'. Remy Boyer replied to a journalist who asked him how he could include a character like Bouchet in the group when adventurers, the great travellers, set off to tackle the Himalayas, they know that above 4000 metres, everyone they meet is inevitably their friend. No matter what they were in the valley. Bouchet was a speaker at the international CESNUR conference in Santa Barbara in 1991 and four times in France in 1992. CESNUR and Bouchet were clearly above 4000 metres. Figure 96 - Jean-Pierre Giudicelli, Christian Bouchet and Robert Faurisson Surprisingly, 'Secrets et sociétés', a small confidential newsletter specialising in the life of cults, reported in great detail on a disagreement between Bouchet and Ruggiu (the two had clashed because Bouchet had published part of the Golden Dawn ritual in his magazine 'Thelema'). Rémi Boyer picked up the phone and called the editor-in-chief of Secrets et sociétés, Arnaud d'Apremont . It is not known what the two talked about or how the newsletter learnt of the internal disagreements within the group, but the two became friends. Behind d'Apremont, however, was Arnaud Dupont , a militant right-wing extremist, as well as the director of the newsletter, Philippe-André Duquesne . The aim of the two men was to build bridges between right-wing extremist networks and the small world of esoteric groups and secret societies. The project stemmed from Duquesne and Apremont's shared experience in the ranks of GRECE , the same neo-pagan group as Bouchet. The extreme right has indeed appropriated the pagan tradition to make it the basis of a new fascist thought. The idea is to destroy the concept of equality associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition. The plan of the two editors of the newsletter to infiltrate the group to make it a node of the fascist network was certainly successful since D'apremont revealed to the journalist Serge Faubert that he and Massimo Introvigne were planning to create an esoteric magazine together. Agostino Sanfratello , one of the founders of Alleanza Cattolica (see the Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network ), explains perfectly how it is possible for seemingly opposing souls such as Catholic traditionalism and neo-paganism to coexist. We remember that he is close to the neo-fascist Franco Freda . The latter, a self-proclaimed 'Nazi-Maoist', was convicted for the explosives attacks of 25 April 1969 and those on trains the following summer, which were carried out as part of the so-called strategy of tension . He was later convicted of subversive association for founding the Gruppo di Ar . Freda is also the editor of 'Edizioni Ar'. In the manifesto of the Ar Group he writes: We are for an Aristocracy  that is a radical rejection of the egalitarian model [...] We are for a traditional concept of existence in which the exaggerated and abnormal suggestions of society and the economy give way to the heroic values of the spirit understood as Honour, Hierarchy and Loyalty'. In 1983, to mark the 20th anniversary of the publishing house, Freda published ' Risguardo IV ', a special edition of his journal containing numerous contributions, including one by Sanfratello. In this text, the ultra-Catholic, founder of Alleanza Cattolica and one of the main protagonists of the Confraternity of St Pius X , turned against the comrades rebelling against the neo-pagan current of the New Right by invoking the "plurality of traditions' and the 'convergence in the common struggle'.   Marco Pasi commented on Introvigne's speech at a conference on the "roots and development of contemporary paganism" in Lyon in the right-wing magazine "Orion" with these words:   Thus, in his first speech, Introvigne explicitly said that accepting an invitation to a conference on neo-paganism, where a confrontation with 'neo-pagans' was planned, was 'not only a pleasure but also a duty', at a time when the report of the commission of enquiry [of the French parliament] described neo-paganism as socially dangerous because it was widespread in racist and anti-Semitic far-right circles."  (in 'Esoterismo e nuova religiosità', in Orion , Milan, March-April 1996, p. 51 ff.) Figures 97 and 98 - Agostino Sanfratello and Franco Freda Tradition, perennialism and Far Right We have said that in the group of Thebes different esoteric realities should have been compared in order to define which groups really fulfil the criteria of Tradition. It is therefore necessary to briefly explain the relationship between traditionalism, esotericism and right-wing political thought, i.e. the constituent elements of the group just analysed. Traditionalism assumes the existence of a perennial wisdom or philosophy, of original and universal truths that are the source of and shared by all major world religions. According to the representatives of traditionalism, all major world religions are based on common original and universal metaphysical truths. The perspective of their authors is often referred to as " philosophia perennis" (perennial philosophy). There would then exist a perennial wisdom (sophia perennis) and a perennial religion (religio perennis). According to the  traditionalists , this truth has been lost in the modern world  due to  the rise of novel secular philosophies  dating back  to the Italian Renaissance and led to the to  the Enlightenment, and  modernity  itself is  seen as  an abnormality. The breakdown of natural hierarchies, egalitarianism and disregard for the sacred are part of this abnormality. This constitutes reactionary thinking and gives rise to a first link between the political right and traditionalism. In addition to right-wing culture, the traditionalists' perennialism is closely linked to esotericism . Indeed, esotericism refers to the supposed ability to access the intimate and unified core of a truth that transcends external appearances. Every religion would have an esoteric component from which it emerges. By transitive relation, right-wing culture is linked to esotericism. The access to truth permitted by esoteric research involves an initiation and a step-by-step discovery. Exoteric (external) and esoteric (internal) characters can coexist in the same doctrine: instead of excluding each other, they can complement each other . The same doctrine may have an esoteric and an exoteric component; or the same teaching may be given an exoteric interpretation, open to all, and a deeper esoteric one, the preserve of the initiated only. The most famous example of an esoteric order in the West is Freemasonry . The best known exponent of traditionalism was the French René Guénon, but for the purposes of our discourse the Italian Julius Evola is more important . He was influenced by Guénon but from whom he departed on many points. In fact, he was the one who exerted the greatest influence on the far right-wing movements in France and Italy, especially in the " years of lead ". The terrorists of Ordine Nuovo were devoted to pagan-type rituals with animal sacrifices. Some fringe slipped into magic and occultism (You can read Stefania Limiti, Potere Occulto. Dal fascismo alle stragi di mafia la lunga storia criminale italiana, Milan, 2022 ). After Evola, Traditionalism provided the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces, also in post-Soviet Russia. So, Steve Bannon , former Donald Trump adviser and Aleksandr Dugin , informal adviser to Vladimir Putin , can both be included in the same club, that of Evola's admirers, and have therefore interacted with each other on the basis of their common interests. CESNUR in action The Group of Thebes is undoubtedly very heterogeneous. Despite its obvious exoteric diversity (there is the Catholic, the neo-pagan, the sovereignist, the terrorist, the red-brown, etc.), the members of the Group of Thebes are nevertheless united, because they are representatives of reaction and traditionalism. In practise, it is a group of extreme right-wing esotericists. Indeed, the composition of the Group appears to be similar to that of the French branch of CESNUR, now extinct. The board of the Introvigne study centre included Antoine Faivre , right-wing Freemason, occultist, martinist and editor-in-chief of the esoteric magazine "Cahiers Villard de Honnecourt", Olivier-Louis Séguy , Freemason and right-wing extremist with links to the Front National , Roland Edighoffer , Freemason and Rosicrucian, and Jean-Francois Mayer , a militant right-wing extremist in Lyon, former sales manager of the denialist newspaper 'Défense de l'Occident', member of the neo-fascist movement Nouvel Ordre Social , a contributor to the esoteric magazine 'Politica Hermetica' and ' Panorama des idees actuelles ', a magazine of the neo-pagan group GRECE , as well as an agent of the Swiss military secret service. Régis Ladous , a historian with occult interests, was also a member of CESNUR's board of directors. The latter was at the centre of a scandal involving the University of Lyon when student Jean Plantin received an excellent grade from Ladous in 1990 for a thesis denying the Holocaust . In 1992, the conference 'Magical Challenges' took place in Lyon, organised jointly by the University of Lyon II and CESNUR. Regis Ladous did not speak as a representative of CESNUR, but as a professor at the University of Lyon III. Other speakers included the indefatigable Massimo Introvigne, Bruno Geras, Rector of the University of Lyon III, and other emblematic figures of CESNUR. Among them was Christian Bouchet , the neo-Nazi who is also a member of the Thebes group.   In 2001, Serge Garde wrote in 'L'Humanité' :   Massimo Introvigne's CESNUR acts as a bridge between the sects and the far right , starting from their university bases. In Lyon, but also in Paris. The president of CESNUR-France, Antoine Faivre, is a professor at the École pratique des hautes études en sciences religieux at the Sorbonne. This small world knows each other, works together, publishes and helps each other. This is how the activist Christian Bouchet became a doctor of ethnology in 1994, after defending his dissertation with Robert Amadou, professor at Paris 7, chronicler of '"Original", an esoteric series in which Massimo Introvigne and Christian Bouchet are rampaging. Régis Ladous is published by Jean-François Mayer, among others. (Bold mine) 'L'originel' is the magazine of Charles Antoni, who claims to specialise in 'traditional sciences' but is in fact an occultist. It was around this magazine that the group was reformed in practise. In short, CESNUR , some esoteric groups and the Group of Thebes overlap. The structures have different functions, but the characters are often the same.  To better understand the role of CESNUR, let us begin with the testimony of criminologist Jean-Marie Abgrall before the Belgian parliamentary committee of enquiry into cults (1997):   A few years ago, the cults joined together in FIREPHIM , the International Federation of Minority Religions and Philosophies, a kind of mutual assistance treaty between the cults in the event that one of them is incriminated or threatened. Just as FIREPHIM (NDR: association created in 1992 on the initiative of Scientology , the Unification Church and the Raelian Movement to 'defend new religious movements') was quickly exposed, the cults have created a parallel structure, the CESNUR , the Centre for the Study of New Religions, whose director, Massimo Introvigne, is a professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, which belongs to the Vatican. This Athenaeum was founded by the Legionaries of Christ , a movement that is close to the European far right, or more precisely to a fundamentalist Catholic extreme right. At this moment, all European cults are trying to obtain a kind of moral, public and political guarantee. Introvigne himself is also responsible for a structure called Alleanza Cattolica , the Roman equivalent of TFP Tradition-Family-Property , a far-right cult. (Bold mine)   Abgrall's statement is imprecise in its temporal definition, since CESNUR was founded in 1988 and FIREPHIM in 1992, so that the Italian organisation cannot be considered as the answer at the end of the French one, but the description of their functions is valid.   The 1999 report of the French commission of enquiry on sects  states: The presence of dominant characteristics in different organisations raises the problem of the existence of a " cross-sectoral" structure that would be responsible for ensuring the defence and coordinating the different movements. Several examples of co-operation between cults have been brought to the Commission's attention. Several organisations play an open role in the coordination of the cults. The Centre for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) - under the direction of Mr Massimo Introvigne - has been a platform for the defence of sectarianism for several years... In particular, CESNUR has launched a campaign to denigrate the work of the former [parliamentary] commission of enquiry. Traditionalist Catholics defending cults...no stranger than Catholics  who ally themselves  with neo-pagans... According to  Stephen Kent  of the University of Alberta, CESNUR is " the highest-profile lobbying group for controversial religions " and its director is said to be "[a] fierce critic of any rational attempt to identify or restrict so-called 'cults , ' who has spoken out against what he sees as intolerance towards 'minority religions,'  particularly  in Belgium, France and Germany.   Double truth and noble lie It is well known that Alleanza Cattolica has followed the doctrine of the Tradition, Family and Property from the very beginning (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network ). According to the historian Orlando Fedeli , who has been a member for thirty years, Tradition, Family and Property would be a millenarian and gnostic cult. There would be an external doctrine and a secret teaching reserved for the highest levels of knowledge. De Oliveira's 'esoteric' teachings, which can also be read in the magazine 'Dr Plinio', directed by Monsignor João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, focused on the ' metaphysical superiority' of the nobility , especially the South American landed gentry. One can see how this faithfully traces both the Platonic hierarchy of human beings and the Gnostic idea that salvation is reserved solely for the 'spiritual' (and condemnation partly for the 'psychic' and entirely for the 'ilical'). The TFP's anti-egalitarianism engenders in its activists a contempt for class, a taste for luxury and idleness.   In the Joyeux report on the TFP school in Saint Benoit , France, we read that hardness of heart and undisguised hatred of ordinary people characterise the daily behaviour of the majority of TFP activists . Everything that has to do with luxury, glamour and idleness is seen as counter-revolutionary and triggers a sense of pride that stems from the feeling of belonging to a destined elite. Since the revolutionary mentality is characterised by a virulent glorification of pauperism, the TFP acts by systematically claiming the opposite. A TFP activist once said to a young Frenchman visiting Brazil: 'It's good to get up late in the morning because it goes against the revolutionary spirit that drives activism'. Since most TFP activists do not have to keep a schedule and do not have a job, they can lead a sweet life (p. 46 of the report). To understand De Oliveira's elitism, it is enough to know that he never supported 'integrism', the Brazilian version of fascism, because he considered it too 'interclassist' and 'socialist' and not open to the demands of the metaphysical superiority of the landed aristocracy. The result of this thinking is authoritarian-conservative in politics, pro-free market in economics and gnostic-millenaristic in the spiritual realm. Its Italian expression Alleanza Cattolica was originally propagated by the Veronese magazine 'Carattere'. The Catholicism of 'Carattere' had its points of reference in Papini, Attilio Mordini, Domenico Giuliotti and Silvano Panunzio; it was a Catholicism that pursued the 'chivalrous path of an aristocratic and Ghibelline Christianity '. In short, it was well prepared to embrace the vision of Dr Plinio. Not only that, it pursued a 'traditionalism' that we might call ' Christian esotericism " (see here ), i.e. not even in opposition to those who seek "tradition" in the myth of the heights of the spirit that preceded the Fall, i.e. the decadent era, the " Kali Yuga " described by Julius Evola , who is indeed among those who are appreciated by Alleanza Cattolica. The fact that Evola was pagan and anti-Christian did not seem to bother the founder of Alleanza Cattolica, Giovanni Cantoni, as he praised him as one of "the "prophets of the crisis of the modern world"; immediately afterwards he added, among other things: " In our opinion, only one person has said what needed to be said and could be said: René Guénon ". Evola and Guenon were both esotericists and expressions of a traditionalism that is a "revolt against the modern world" and an anti-egalitarian differentialism. The convergence in the above-mentioned common struggle. It has been seen that Tradition, Family and Property embraced American neoconservatism in the 1980s (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network) . At the suggestion of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Paul Weyrich founded the International Policy Forum (IPF) , an alliance of conservative associations that laid the foundations for the emergence of a transnational New Right . Paul Weyrich also founded the Heritage Foundation , the Free Congress Foundation , which he chaired, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) . We know that these organisations, along with dozens of other 'libertarian' organisations that see religious freedom and economic freedom as inseparable - paradigmatically, the Acton Institute calls itself "for the Study of Religion and Liberty" - form an important operational arm of the US soft power. The tactic is that of 'entryism', i.e. the colonisation of the media, the academy, and the parties, in order to steer the masses in a counter-revolutionary direction . Alleanza Cattolica (and CESNUR) is participating in this strategy.   Emanuele Del Medico writes: The goals set by this 'counter-revolutionary apostolate' relate above all to the struggle against secularism , the rewriting of historical memory and the control of the ideological production of the Italian right through the creation of a narrow intellectual elite from which the future ruling class would emerge. The 'establishment of the kingship of Christ also over human societies' would be expressed in the restoration of traditional hierarchies within the framework of a society of order in which religion would once again assume a predominant role in social control and the legitimisation of political and economic power . The access of representatives of AC to the upper echelons of Berlusconi's coalition does not appear to be a novelty: the politicians Riccardo Pedrizzi, Alfredo Mantovano and Michele Vietti are part of it. The underlying project is not so much to uphold the banner of Catholic traditionalism, but to establish a hyper-conservative neoliberal right wing on the model of that in the United States (Bold mine)       As a critic "from the right" of the TFP's epigones, Luigi Copertino, writes, "The thought and above all the financial resources of American neoconservatism, which reach as far as Europe, have succeeded where flowery theological and philosophical treatises have failed: namely, the feat of converting to Americanism, with extreme and suspicious rapidity, large sections of Catholic traditionalism that until yesterday resisted anything that seemed modern and liberal and therefore American," underestimating that the Catholic neoconservative who espouses the reasons for Euro-American cultural unity " accepts to move ideally in a Protestant rather than a Catholic context ." In truth, this acceptance of moving in a Protestant context had already manifested itself in the TFP in the 1970s, when one of the organisation's top figures, José Lùcio de Araùjo Correa, suggested to a fierce anti-Catholic, the Reverend Carl McIntire , that they work together to "fight progressive Christianity, secular modernisation and communism" ( Cowan , 2001, p. 154). This deep aversion to progressive drift enabled McIntire to overcome his deep aversion to Catholicism, and TFP to overcome McIntire's anti-Catholicism. Overcoming theological and ideological differences in pursuit of a common goal is thus the hallmark of the counter-revolutionary network and will indeed be the hallmark of the work of Introvigne and CESNUR, an organisation born from a rib of an ultra-Catholic group and ready to protect non-Catholic cults from the criticism of those who carry the values of modernity. The same conversion from anti-Americanism to Atlanticism that we have seen in the TFP had taken place in European neo-fascism through the OAS and the Aginter press e (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network) . It is therefore interesting to look at the roots of the idea that Alleanza Cattolica and the board of CESNUR have embraced so passionately, namely the neoconservative movement of America. Leo Strauss is considered, rightly or wrongly, to be their inspiration. Strauss believed that all great writers wrote in a form distorted for the common people, an 'exoteric' form, and that the clues to the 'esoteric' truth had to be found between the lines. This truth was reserved for those who could bear it, such as the disciples chosen by the Master, whom he called "hoplites". This truth consisted of the nihilistic realisation that the only truth is nothingness and that all moral principles are empty and meaningless. The 'exoteric', external message, on the other hand, consisted precisely in these 'natural moral values'. The authentic philosopher must despise the beliefs of the people, but in public he must pretend to believe in the myths and illusions concocted for the use of the masses, he must conceal this contempt and in reality be the spokesman of moral values suitable for the masses: religion, democracy, justice. Once again, lessons reserved for the elect, elitism, counter-revolution. Strauss, who, like de Oliveira, adopts an anti-egalitarian and aristocratic perspective, enters into polemics with modernity and democratic concepts by explicitly resorting to the " noble lie " and affirming the need to use religion as a rhetorical device to manipulate and control the masses . It is the doctrine of " double truth ", the first legitimisation of which comes from a thinker very dear to certain elitists, Plato . In his 'ideal city', the aristocracy of spirit and thought is legitimised to use deception for moral, educational and political purposes: [...] God, when he created you, mixed gold into the generation of those among you who can exercise power, so that they are the most valuable; into that of the guards silver; iron and bronze into that of the farmers and craftsmen.[...] the city will perish when it is protected by a defender of iron or bronze. As it turns out, the members of TFP feel like they are made of gold, probably their epigones too. The TFP, its Italian sister organisation and the study centre derived from them, in the wake of the overlapping elitist thinking of Correa de Oliveira and Strauss, seem to have embraced the duplicity that every Platonic builder of 'caretaker governments' recommends. So when we highlight the duplicity of CESNUR, since it is the front office of a traditionalist Catholic organisation and at the same time a centre that produces studies for the benefit of the cults furthest removed from Catholicism, we are not talking about logical paradoxes or personality splits, not even the banal lie of mercenaries hired by the cults, but about double truth and noble lies. It is not surprising that it is considered morally acceptable to resort to lying 'ad usum populi', to profess the values of a democratic and liberal society that one inwardly despises. The fact that these values are despised by the CESNUR leadership is clear from the much-cited genealogy of the study centre. That it is a 'legitimate' imposture to pose as defenders of religious freedom becomes clear when one considers the Platonism inherent in this genealogy.   When a law against mental manipulation was passed in France in 2001, Introvigne wrote a " manifesto " with advice on how to defend oneself against it. Point 1 was entitled "Trying to understand the law in the French context" and made it clear that the defence of religious freedom that CESNUR proposes is still perfectly embedded in the counter-revolutionary project. Indeed, the author wrote that a good starting point for understanding the French law is to realise that "the French are truly convinced that the eradication of religious belief is desirable and possible". It is this theoretical conspiracy that CESNUR is responding to. The enemy is still Robespierre. Point 2 is entitled ' Supporting internal and European litigation '. In other words: Intervention in the media, in the courts and even in supranational bodies such as the OSCE and the UN to protect the rights of 'new religious movements' from persecution by a phantom 'anti-cult movement'. In practise, this is an action of institutional lobbying and cultural influence. This is precisely the mission of the international network of associations for the defence of 'religious freedom", made up of non-governmental organisations linked to Scientology and other cults, but also American neo-conservative foundations, very reminiscent of the Birch Society , which acted as a link for the Aginter presse, including that of the aforementioned Atlas Network or the Rutherford Institute , with which CESNUR has a historical acquaintance. The 'cult apologists' form a network of interest groups that are active in international bodies such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe. These organisations include Human Rights Without Frontiers - HRWF , the European Federation for Freedom of Belief - FOB (which we met in the prologue to this dossier) and Coordination des associations et des particuliers pour la liberté de conscience - CAP LC . The mutual contacts between these organisations, CESNUR, Scientology, the American 'libertarian' foundations and sectors of neocon politics are so close that the distance between one node of the network and another is hardly greater than two intermediate nodes. In fact, there is often complete overlap. CESNUR seems to play the same role in this network that the Aginter Presse  played in the subversive work, namely that of a control room. In point 4 of the manifesto ('Don't feed the wolves') Introvigne writes:   [...] even the less pleasant movements, accused of pseudo-crimes such as 'brainwashing' or 'cult', should be vigorously defended. No matter how much we dislike them , [...]   The benevolence even towards abusive cults therefore seems somewhat hypocritical and the call for tolerance and ecumenism seem to be actions that only acquire a morally positive connotation when they follow the justifying logic of the 'double effect' that was of Ousset and the OAS militants. In short, if it serves to combat subversion and secularism (and enforce the global hegemony of conservative America), anything goes. St Thomas takes care of that. With the help of Uncle Sam. Figure 99 - Paul Weyrich, Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Leo Strauss Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. Attack on secularism Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. The libertarian network Fascists, spies and gurus. 6. CIA cults Fascists , spies and gurus . 7 . East wind Next chapter : Fascists, spies and gurus. 8. Neo-Templarism

Despicable me In October 2024, within days, countless people began posting articles and videos on social media labeling me as an agent of a global conspiracy consacrated to genocide and the establishment of a new Nazi Reich on the planet . I had not felt so important since the USCIRF report advised President Trump to obstruct my work at the OSCE (see the prologue to this report ). But this time it went too far. Dozens of strangers flooded the computer network every day with videos calling me, in various languages, a direct agent of the Russian Orthodox Church, a threat to democracy and human rights, even one of the three contemporary ideologues of the anti-cultist plan for world domination (see figure 77). Without irony but with contempt for the ridiculous. Not only would I be a leading exponent of " anti-cult terrorism " sponsored by a Russian association that has real power in Russia and aims to seize absolute power on the world by controlling the media and persecuting dissidents, but I would even be only three degrees of separation from Adolf Hitler, as can be seen from the screenshot shown in the image below (figure 78). If this sounds crazy to you, you should know that this is not the crazy part. I quote the attack of an article  on the main page that spreads this interesting myth: Without anticultism, billions of people would have been spared from suffering, persecution, and pain, and millions would have remained alive.[...] It was anticultism that fueled the brutal rise of Nazism as we know it in history. Moreover, were it not for anticultism, even Jesus Christ would not have faced execution. In short, the "anti-cultists" have been causing damage for more than two millennia.   All these people harassing me are exponents of a mysterious organization that bears the name AllatRa and is described in a now conspicuous literature as an apocalyptic cult linked to Russian interests and bearing a pan-Slavic mysticism. To get an idea of what AllatRa professes one should look at an insane eight-and-a-half-hour “documentary” (so, insane also in terms of duration), in which a truly grotesque conspiracy theory is outlined. In short, the world is ruled by an anti-cult hydra that, at the behest of the Russian Orthodox Church , which holds the real power in the motherland of former Sovietic Union through its anti-cult association, wants to unleash a world war and is preparing the genocide of all those who do not comply with its wishes, just as the Nazis did with the Jews. In the thousands of articles and posts written with great use of artificial intelligence, the action of scientists and activists working to protect the victims of destructive cults is labelled as “terrorism”. This hydra would be behind the attacks on Shinzo Abe, Donald Trump, and Robert Fico ( see here ). One of the aims of the anti-cult campaign would be to induce the Kremlin to use nuclear weapons (the connection is not entirely clear, but you can see it here ). The phantom “anti-cult movement” would also be the director of the mass shootings in public places that are so common in the US. The system by which this kind of international “Spectre”, of which I would be one of the leaders, drive the population into slavery, make them shoot innocent masses and head for nuclear war, would be a subliminal manipulation operated by the media in the service of the organization and that AllatRa called ' Puzzle Piece Coding '. All very interesting and curious ideas, but which, if uttered by just one individual and not by a community of “believers”, would be branded as delusions and require psychiatric intervention of some significance. One of the delusional claims repeated thick and fast by the Allatra trolls is that I, like this whole fantastical anti-cult movement, are Russian agents. It is hilarious an excerpt in which also my friend Janja Lalicih , professor emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, is labeled as a Russian agent (see here ). The fact is that the smear campaign against me started precisely because I said in an interview with a collective of investigative journalists of the project ' Firehose of Falsehood' t hat AllatRa is seen as a pro-Russian organisation (I did not even claim that it actually is) and that pro-Putin rhetoric is evident in their narrative. Saying this about Allatra does not sound like something that is advisable if you are a person with a large audience. Someone has had it worse than me. On 25 September, the regional prosecutor’s office in Žilina, northern Slovakia, opened an investigation against Kristina Ciroková , a reporter for the Czech newspaper Seznam Zprav, for allegedly “ supporting and promoting anti-cult movements ”. The accusation is original. Since when is it a crime to disseminate critical information about cults? The accusations are vague but worrying. It appears that the journalist “promoted the ideology of anti-cult movements and organisations, thereby committing the crime of founding, supporting and promoting a movement aimed at suppressing fundamental rights and freedoms ”. Basically, these are the charges that Allatra supported against the anti-cult movement! In December of the previous year, Ciroková made a scoop. He had tracked down Igor Danilov , the fugitive leader of this Ukrainian organisation, that is a group that promotes conspiracy and pseudo-science theories, in  northern Slovakia. Ukrainian counterintelligence and police cracked down on the AllatRa movement because they suspect that the organisation's members are working for Russian special services. Danilov is suspected of several crimes. Above all, treason, leading a criminal organisation and justifying and denying aggression against Ukraine. According to the police, the leaders of the movement face 15 years or up to life in prison. Danilov was there with some “ heavenly birds ”, his harem that includes as its most prominent exponent the supposed alien of the Anunnaki lineage who calls herself Zhanna . Zhanna comes from Vamfi, an artificial planet created by the Anunnaki. Due to this and other articles and television appearances on Allatra, a criminal investigation has been opened against the journalist for involvement in the dissemination of ideas of an anti-human rights movement and for participating in subliminal manipulation to bring about massacres . Also Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK) reporter Karolína Kiripolská was interrogated as a witness by the prosecution due to her reporting on AllatRa and Creative Society . The Creative Society is an outgrowth of Allatra and represents its presentable face in public. No pan-Slavic rhetoric, no Nazi anti-cult conspiracy, no massacres controlled by subliminal manipulation, but “only” the premonition of a coming apocalypse based on volcanic explosions. It is presented as “an association concerned with the geophysical analysis of the effects of climate change on the Earth”, but is in fact engaged in the active promotion and dissemination of climate disinformation on a global scale. Naturally, journalists' organisations in the Czech Republic and abroad have fought back against this massive attack on press freedom . It was later discovered that the prosecutor of the Žilina Regional Prosecutor's Office, Lucia Pavlaninová, was associated with the cult . The case was dismissed. However, Pavlaninová was not the only one to bow to the movement's ideas. Slovak television reporters have uncovered that another Žilina prosecutor, Jana Vajzerová, is also in favour of the movement. It is expected that the Creative Society also has supporters among the employees of the Ministry of the Interior. A look into the rabbit hole The roots of the AllatRa movement go back to 2011, when the international organisation ‘Lagoda’ was founded in Russian-speaking Ukraine and Halyna Alexandrivna Yablochkina launched the AllatRa publishing house. These two organisations then jointly founded the ‘international public movement AllatRa’ in 2014, the year of the Maidan uprising. The organisation is headed by chiropractor Igor Mikhailovich Danilov. Its main goal seems to be the promotion of Anastasia Novykh 's book series, which promises readers “unique scientific evidence of the existence of the soul” and “exclusive information about self-knowledge and secrets hidden by society”. It therefore appears to be another New Age sect. Due to the recognisability of the concepts and style, some experts conclude that Anastasia Novykh is in fact Marina Tsvihun, the former leader of the infamous " Great White Brotherhood of Yusmalos " cult. It is interesting that the White Brotherhood seems to have been a project of the KGB to influence large parts of the Ukrainian population. Anyway, in 2016, Kiev Theological Academy associate professor Konstantyn Moskalyuk published a research paper stating that the author or co-author of Anastasia Novykh's books is actually AllatRa guru Igor Danilov. The central work of AllatRa's teachings is the book 'Crossroads'. Its main character is Nomo . In the story told in this book, two of the main character's brothers die. However, he will rise to success by gaining public recognition at the Bergedorf Forum in St Petersburg and reaching the peak of his career in 2000. These events clearly coincide with the life story of Russian President Vladimir Putin . AllatRa claims that in the future all Slavic peoples will be united, mainly thanks to a magical saviour (is it Nomo-Putin?). As taught by the cult leader and his alien girlfriend, the world is ruled by " archons " who impose animal life on humanity. Rather, the Anunnaki aliens, who are spiritual, are our friends and will come to our aid when the world collapses. As the spiritual leaders of the cult teach, it was the archons who created history, established the existing world order, divided and rule nations, introduced religions and spread disease. And now the archons are preparing the third world war. The UN and the League of Nations serve the interests of the archons, and NATO is their whip; the centre of these archons is the USA. The members of "Allatra" believe that the unification of the Slavs will certainly take place and then the unification of the world. A crackpot theory would suggest a bunch of post-hippie wackos, while the anti-scientific ideas propagated by the Creative Society about a climate catastrophe that is not man-made but the result of natural cycles and cosmic rays would remain just one phenomenon among many in the rampant climate misinformation. We would be wrong to think so. The effect of this pervasive disinformation within the conspiratorial ‘echo chambers’ is well known, but the intrusion outside these chambers via the Trojan Horse of the Creative Society, which even appeals to bona fide volunteers concerned about ecological catastrophe, has an even more dangerous impact on people's psychological and socio-cultural structures. The cultural and political infiltration by Allatra is now obvious. Allatra's cultural and political infiltration is now evident. In January 2024, AllatRa was able to boast that it discussed the climate crisis with the Pope . In September of the same year, the president of AllatRa, Maryna Ovtsynova, said she had attended a “ high-level meeting with representatives of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom ” - yes, the very USCRIF that, in its report on religious freedom in the world, called on the US president to obstruct FECRIS (see the Prologue of this dossier ). We do not know if this is true, because in the photo that Allatra's website publishes as proof of this (Figure 81), there is no indication that she was at USCIRF headquarters, and the stranger seen next to her is not a USCIRF commissioner, however, a certain Egon Cholakian , who claims to be a former US secret agent and a scientist at CERN (where nobody knows him), has become AlltRa's official lobbyist in the US Congress. In his presentation, he introduces himself as a person who has carried out an investigation into the conspiracy against Allatra carried out by Russian and Ukrainian secret services, the Moscow Patriarchate and the European Federation of Centres for Research and Information on Sectarianism (FECRIS). (figure 83). They pay him $150K per year to spread climate lies and cospiracy propaganda in the US, and globally (figure 84). There is even a comic about this character in which he fights the anti-cult Hydra in the guise of Captain America and wins (Figures 85 and 86). Figure 85 and 86 - Egon Cholakian as Captain America in the comic "Captain America Vs Hydra" In the second story of the saga , Elon Musk calls old Egon Cholakian back into service to fight the Hydra that wants to bring America a civil war. Egon and Elon will save the planet (Figure 87). Strangely enough, in the same saga, we see a panel on which Hydra tells his followers to ignore "that democratic pawn’ and not to let him "believe that he is the king". It is referring to the silhouette of a man who is clearly Putin. This is to convey the idea that Putin is not really in control of the country. The democratic pawn is under the thumb of the anti-cult hydra (figure 88). Another panel is even more explicit, as it presents poor, disconsolate Putin and Patriarch Kirill declaring that democracy (probably represented by Putin himself) must be got rid of (Figure 89). While the use of  religion  as  a tool  of influence has a  long  history (think US funding of neo-Pentecostal evangelical churches in Latin America to counter liberation theology and generate voting masses favourable to US interests), the use of religious-based conspiracy theories seems to have exploded in recent years thanks to the ‘ hive mind ’ of the telematic network. Trump, for example, winked at the QAnon conspiracy during his first presidency. The structure of these networked disinformation cells, which are non-hierarchical and voluntary, can evade traditional state control. This structure of AllatRa makes it possible to use it as an instrument for possible strategies of “public opinion formation”. It is interesting to note that such organisations are mainly active in crisis regions or strategically important regions such as Central and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the idea of uniting the Slavic peoples under the leadership of Russia is particularly suitable for promoting the concept of a Russian world, i.e. as a strategy aimed at restoring Russian influence and power in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. Comics are not the only channel of influence AllatRa uses in pop cultural production. They also have a rap artist, one RoyStar SoundSick, who espouses the cult's conspiracy theory in his songs ( here an example ). He also dedicated a mocking song to me about a fashion brand that I could open with my name so ‘cool’ instead of continuing my anti-cult activity. The Ukrainian secret service (SBU) claims that AllatRa hides this propaganda under a religious or cultural cloak and combines it with “psychological operations” (psy-ops). This configures a hybrid warfare strategy. Such operations are a low-intensity but effective strategy to manipulate public opinion. Exploiting people's fears in times of global uncertainty and using fear to channel emotional reactions for or against certain goals is a psychological operation in the context of "soft power". The infiltration of institutions in Slovakia, the registration of a lobbyist in the US Congress and the other things we have described show that Allatra ideas also penetrate institutions. In November 2024, representatives of the ALLATRA International Public Movement took part in a major global event — the UN Climate Change Conference COP29 in Baku. This event brought together representatives from over 190 countries to address the key issue of overcoming the climate crisis and protecting our planet. Egon Cholokian was there. AllaTra as a litmus test of pro-cult influence All this confirms that both in the East and in the West, the creation of alternative cults that are not bound by territorial borders and are protected by the principle of “religious freedom” is an excellent instrument of influence that is functional for geopolitical objectives. The only obstacle seems to be the “anti-cult movement". The solution is to propagate its danger to civil rights and emphasise its power to the point of grotesqueness. Cult apologists in the West do the same. However, while the conspiracy theory there is that the anti-cults are secularists driven by the pseudo-scientific theory of “brainwashing", the conspiracy theory in the East is that the anti-cult movement is part of an evil “pro-religious” organisation (i.e. controlled by people in the Russian Orthodox Church) that practices a kind of global “brainwashing.”! The appearance on the scene of a bursting actor like Allatra, that has the same enemy as the Western cult apologists, but with divergent motives and conflicting wills of influence, upsets the cards and produces logical paradoxes. Indeed, CESNUR , which never flinches when it comes to defending the worst cults that have fallen into disrepute, has not said a word in defence of AllatRa. CESNUR and its magazine Bitter Winter have always taken an Atlanticist and anti-Russian position. The situation is embarrassing. However, this does not seem to embarrass some classic friends of the Italian study center. For example, a Scientology bigwig, Fabrizio d'Agostini ( see the prologue of this dossier ) , has rushed to the cult's defense with a kind of masterful lecture on religious freedom and the vulnus that the anti-cult movement would cause to it on Alltra TV . D'Agostini is one of the founders of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief ( FOB ), which has published many articles by Bitter Winter and by CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne and that has his wife on its scientific committee . In October 2024, Allatra took part in a forum in Vienna  organised by the Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP) , an organisation of another historical companion of the Western cult apologists, the Unification Church . Barbara Grabner, a "respected historian and journalist" who is the wife of the president the Universal Peace Federation (read Unification Church ) in Slovakia, gave an interview to AllatRA in which she reproduced almost verbatim what we could read in the indictment of AllatRA's close accuser Pavlanina. Among the speakers at Moon's church events in that country and in Slovakia, we can easily find Ján Figeľ , a conservative politician close to AllatRa (see Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. The libertarian network ). It is therefore not surprising that the only newspaper to publish an article that is a hagiography of Igor Danilov ("innovator in medicine, advocate of the Earth") is ‘ The Washington Times ’ (figure 92), i.e. the newspaper of the church founded by Moon (see the prologue of this report ). The mutual relationships of the AllatRa-Scientology-Moonies triad are well established. There are various proofs of this. For example, the Slovak Universal Peace Federation has held several events with AllatRa, as you can see, for example, here . The same can be said for Scientology ( here ). Here you can see AllatRa with Scientology and Moon's followers together. According to the Allatra case in Slovakia, Allatra asked the the prosecutor's office to get testimonies about anticult terrorism from these groups: Falun Gong, Scientology, Waldorf school, Slovak Yoga Association, Mormons and Jehova Witnesses (figure 93). The prosecutor in his indictment makes extensive use of the literature produced by CESNUR to denigrate the anti-cult movement (Figure 94). Ultimately, the AllatRa case is a real litmus test. First of all, it demonstrates the effectiveness of the use of spirituality as a geopolitical means. It can often hide behind disputes that are ostensibly about scientific controversies or human rights advocacy (as outlined in the previous chapter of this report ). This case also shows the creation of a logical short-circuit and reveals a double standard, but also makes evident where consolidated alliances diverge and allows us to understand why; in other words, the observation of the presences and absences next to Allatra shows which associations regard the action of cultural influence as primary (the absentees) and which regard it as secondary and instrumental to the advantage of their own organisation (the present ones). If we were to apply to the organisations that do not publicly flank AllatRa the same logic that AllatRa applies to me, namely that of degrees of separation, we could say that CESNUR or HRWF are only one degree of separation away from a pro-Russian organisation. Finally, Allatra is a litmus paper also because the accusations against the anti-cult movement, taken to extremes, appear as grotesque as a caricature, and as a caricature they better show the most characteristic aspects of the original "face". The accusations were already ridiculous. In fact, AlltRa uses the same arguments already used by western cult apologists in the context of an even more absurd conspiracy. For example, take a look at the video that you will find in the main body of this text (Video 4). It is an excerpt from a kind of talk show dedicated to me, in which an expert on my person uses exactly the same arguments that have been used for years by the network of cult apologists (CESNUR, Scientology & C.) to denigrate me. Video 4 - an expert in "Corvagliology" speaks As mentioned above, the AllatRa trolls claim that it's not them who are pro-Russian, but me and all the other anti-cult activists. As evidence, they cite the news published in the newspaper “ The European Times ” that 15 non-governmental organisations have asked UN Secretary Blinken to expel the FECRIS Federation. Apparently they did not think it worth mentioning that 1. “The European Times” newspaper is one of the emanations of Scientology ( as shown in the prologue of this report ); 2. the signatories to that letter were mostly expressions of cult apologist organisations, such as CESNUR and HRWF, or organisations linked to Scientology, such as the International Religious Freedom Roundtable and its chairman, the White House Scientology lobbyist Greg Mitchell ( see the chapter on the apologetic network ) and other shady characters; neither Blinken nor anyone else at the United Nations thought to attach the slightest importance to such a letter. Further evidence are the “interesting pictures” of various FECRIS members eating together in a restaurant in Riga. Of course, they would be interesting if any of us had ever denied eating together and, more importantly, if eating together was evidence of a conspiracy. It is then mentioned that the congress in Latvia was organised by a person who would later turn out to be pro-Russian. Not only did that person turn out to be pro-Russian years after the opening of the congress as a political representative, but the event was also organised by a Latvian anti-cult association whose members are against Putin's policies and Russian aggression against Ukraine. The video ends with this question, which should be rhetorical. ‘And who is Luigi Corvaglia, on whose side is he? Is he on side of democracy or is he just another pawn, another agent of the Russian RACIRS (a Russian association)?’ The guy who asks seems to know the answer. I address the same question to him. Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. Attack on secularism Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. The libertarian network Fascists, spies and gurus. 6. CIA cults Next chapter: https://www.luigicorvaglia.com/en/post/fascists-spies-and-gurus-8-the-double-truth

Luigi Corvaglia Religious polarisation On 8 January 2023, thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro raided the Congress building and also stormed the Federal Court in Brasilia to protest against the election of his rival Lula. In part a repeat of the storming of Capital Hill two years earlier by Donald Trump supporters. While in Washington many of the rioters were fundamentalist Christians and many also adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory who flaunted their affiliation on T-shirts and signs, in Brasilia most of the participants in the storming were evangelical Pentecostals who gathered and prayed amid the devastation. Some turned their rosaries towards the police riot squad. This shows how important religion is when it comes to determining the moves of the masses on the geopolitical chessboard. Religious soft power The term soft power was coined in the 1990s by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Nye sees it as a form of exercising power that represents an alternative to the use of military force and aims to influence public opinion, primarily through mass culture and the media. Such operations are a low-intensity but effective strategy for influencing public opinion. This is a strategy of hybrid warfare. The use of religion as a tool of influence has a long history. The CIA 's first religious tool was Catholicism, which “became the model through which intelligence agencies could understand and manipulate other world religions ” ( Michael Graziano coined the phrase). Under the guise of the Church's profound power of persuasion, the OSS, the CIA predecessor, mobilised the European population against its Nazi (and later Soviet) occupiers. However, the primacy of Catholicism, so great that the CIA was nicknamed the “ Catholic Intelligence Agency ", has waned over time. In Latin America, the Catholic continent par excellence, the Roman Church is increasingly losing ground to the various evangelical denominations. One reason for this is the fact that the position of the more conservative Evangelicals was directly supported during the Cold War by the United States , which saw the religious group as a useful bulwark against communism in Latin America, an area where liberation theology had given Catholicism a dangerous flavour. The Rockefeller Report of 1969 and the Santa Fe Declaration of 1980 illustrate the use of religion by North American intelligence in defence of American interests in South America. The Rockefeller Report states that the US must strive to win the battle for the hegemony of consciousness by exposing Latin America to the influence of the American way of life “ through the control of the traditional socializing apparatuses of civil society: family, school and church ”. The Santa Fe document , prepared for the Council on Inter-American Security and presented to the Republican Platform Committee in 1980 by a team of ultra-conservative advisors, states that “US foreign policy must begin to counter (and not react to) liberation theology as used in Latin America by liberation theology clergy.” The paper refers to the work already done in this direction: The experience gained in Vietnam through programmed population control was exported by many A.I.D. agents and other U.S. services to Latin America, particularly Guatemala. Some cults were founded by psychological warfare specialists who had been entrusted with the control of political space and hegemony over consciences. (emphasis mine) The Santa Fe document is clear and does not mince  its  words.  Through the  National SecurityAgency (NSA) ,  the United States is creating  “cults”  “ that are able to "control the  political space and the hegemony of consciences ”. In charge are “specialists in psychological warfare.” Jesus Garzia Ruiz writes in a text entitled “La notion relative aux sectes en Amérique latine ”   that in Latin America " all cults are work of the United States and are financed from abroad ." A note from  the  Mexican  Ministry of the Interior  states that Sects carry out the most subtle part of the process of domination and North Americanisation of underdeveloped societies by using religious preaching, which is part of the ideological struggle, within civil society. To support this policy, the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) , an interfaith organisation, was established in 1981 and funded by right-wing institutions, including the Smith Richardson and the Mellon Scaife Family Foundation. Both served as financial conduits for the CIA . The IRD unleashed a propaganda campaign against church activists who were at the forefront of opposing US aid to the government of El Salvador and other repressive regimes in Latin America. The project was successful. Today, the influence of evangelicals on society in these countries is enormous in terms of electoral potential. The expansion of evangelical churches in Latin America, especially the neo-Pentecostal churches, which have considerable fundings that make them more “competitive” with the Catholic Church, has contributed to the rise of “right-wing” personalities and political forces close to the interests of the economic-financial powers, especially the American ones. Behind these phenomena there seems to be a very specific strategy, which consists of replacing “left-wing Catholic” Christians (because they are interested in social issues) with “right-wing evangelical” Christians (who are very interested in moral issues, but little in social issues). There is ample evidence of US funding of all kinds of churches, Christian and non-Christian. For example, the CIA funded churches in Kerala , India, and this interference in Indian politics came to light in 1978 when the former ambassador to that country, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published the information in his book “A Dangerous Place” In addition to the interference in Kerala, the American churches also supported the terrorists in Nagaland on a large scale. These terrorists received blatant help from the American establishment in the form of so-called human rights reports and public statements of support from high-ranking politicians like Jimmy Carter. The CIA worked with agents of DINA, the Chilean secret police, to build a very sophisticated intelligence system in Chile that utilised the Pentecostal “Message” cult and the Colonia Dignidad facility, founded as a Nazi refugee colony and run by Pastor Paul Shafer , for covert operations. Paul Shafer, a former Nazi and security agent for Pastor William Branham in Germany, worked with the DINA (Chilean secret police) to interrogate, torture and murder opponents of the Pinochet regime . Religion plays a very powerful role in culturally influencing and orienting the masses. Religions are an extraordinary instrumentum regni because they can dilute the religious identity of some population groups by creating new forms of mutual recognition (in-group) that become manoeuvrable constituencies when they are not useful for processes of social polarisation that can lead to uprisings or real revolutions. For example, Carl Gershman, director of the National Endowment for Democracy (Ned) , told the US Congress in 2018 that Ned had spent $3,381,824 on programmes prior to the 2014 popular uprising in Ukraine , which took place under the name “Euromaiden”, including support for those non-governmental organisations that fuelled the uprising. The role of the various churches and cults in the Euromaiden affair was significant. Among them were the Greek Catholics. This does not mean that Euromaiden was carried out by “sects” or “Satanists",” as has been claimed, but only that the religious element played a role in social polarisation. Two Chinese cults In 2019, the television channel NBC revealed that Donald Trump's most important advertising supporter - after his election committee - was the newspaper The Epoch Times . This is a multilingual, far-right newspaper run by the Chinese religious movement Falun Gong . Much of the newspaper's efforts are dedicated to promoting the right in America, but also in Europe , a work that has included the dissemination of false data about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 US elections . The Epoch Times is also one of the main disseminators of conspiracy theories. The most important is that of QAnon , the bizarre theory that sees Trump as the possible saviour of the world from the satanic-pedophile dome that secretly rules it. In 2020, the New York Times called the paper a “ disinformation machine of global scale .” According to Media Matters for America , the main goal of the Epoch Times - which is now published in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profit organisations - is not to make a profit, but to organise a long and extensive “ influence operation ” The aim of this influence operation, in turn, is to “foment anti-Chinese Communist Party sentiment". The cult is actually being persecuted in its own country. It has been said that The Epoch Times was the main financier of Donald Trump's election campaign. However, it is not clear where Falun Gong's funding came from. Steve Bannon , the guru of Trump's New Right, has collaborated with Falun Gong in the production of a documentary for New Tang Dinasty TV (NTD) , a channel owned by the cult's holding company, and said that in conversations with these interlocutors he was under the impression that they had unlimited resources. The conclusions frequently drawn over the years, not only during Trump's presidency, about a connection between the Chinese cult and the CIA in an anti-Chinese capacity are based on sporadically filtered and reported press reports. As early as 2010, the Washington Post reported $1.5 million in funding from the US State Department for the Global Internet Freedom consortium, which is based in the US but linked to the Falun Gong spiritual movement. More recently, in 2021, the US media reported on a State Department grant to a software development team owned by Falun Gong . Oddly enough, Steve Bannon himself is involved. In June 2024, the finance director of Epoch Times, Weidong Guan, was arrested for alleged involvement in a multi-year money laundering scheme involving at least 67 million dollars in illegally acquired funds. According to the indictment, Guan allegedly used a cryptocurrency platform to purchase prepaid cards with illicit funds, including unemployment benefits, at a discount. Interestingly, following the arrest of the finance director, Falun Gong spiritual leader Li Hongzhi wrote two articles that appear to be aimed directly at the media company's leadership and were published prominently on the Epoch Times homepage: You were thinking that it’s hard to fight the CCP’s persecution without funds, and wanted to make money for this cause; and that the U.S. government would be understanding if something wasn’t handled quite right - Li wrote in an article published on 5 June  - But that was your own thinking. The  Falun Gong leader,  who  apparently  distances  himself from the  newspaper's leadership ,   which  allegedly  orchestrated  the scam without his knowledge, describes the publication 's  mission (to  fight  the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong) and refers to the complacency that this leadership would have expected from the U.S. government in case the illicit operation became known.  On what premise should a  money  laundering activity  conducted  by a Chinese cult would have met with  such  complacency?  So the  New York  District 's investigation  was embarrassing. However, in order to understand how a work of influence takes place, I am reporting here on a fact that is small (but perhaps not even that small) but extremely significant from the point of view of international political relevance: In 2022, the main international, but mainly Italian and Canadian newspapers published an alarming news story about the proliferation of secret Chinese police stations scattered around the world, tasked with monitoring compatriots abroad. This alarm was based on a report by the Madrid-based non-governmental organisation Safeguard Defenders , whose leading figure is Peter Dahlin, who co-founded it with Michael Caster. A quick Google search was all it took to find out that Dahlin writes for the Epoch Times (Figure 71). Does this mean that the issue of the Chinese police stations is a fake? We cannot say. It may very well be true as far as a person outside of this intelligence dynamic could know. However, it should be noted that national and supranational agencies and bodies are also acting on the basis of information coming from organisations linked to a cult that has been described as a disinformation machine on a global scale . However, another Chinese cult has come to the fore undermining Falun Gong. This is the Church of Almighty God , also known as the Lightning of the East , which is considered the most persecuted religious movement in the world . The financing of this cult, too, is also unknown. It must be much larger than that of Falun Gong, because this movement, which worships the reincarnation of Jesus Christ in a Chinese woman, is known for an intense artistic production that includes films, songs, ballets, musicals and various shows of dizzying quantity and outstanding quality. It is unclear where the Church of Almighty God, a minority and persecuted cult, gets the huge sums of money needed to produce such a large amount of artistic material, produced with great professionalism (among other things, translated into almost every language in the world, in which it is dubbed with equal professionalism). This is an immense commitment from people such as directors, actors, scriptwriters, set designers, authors, dancers, choreographers, costume designers, singers, translators, dubbing actors, cameramen, editors, etc. The money required is enormous and the organisation complex: logistical difficulties, studios, rehearsal times that are incompatible with the daily work of a non-professional, etc. Video 2 - One of the thousands of ballets and musicals produced by the Church of Almighty God One of the stars of these films is Li Yanli, who staged a suicide attempt at Madrid airport on 3 November 2023 to avoid being deported to China. Although she was a follower of a cult that was far from Catholicism, she was supported by a broad front of Catholic extremism that managed to collect over 60,000 signatures to present a petition to the judges to grant the actress political asylum. Part of this broad front was the association “ Abogados Cristianos ”, an ultra-Catholic lobby closely linked to the far-right party Vox , but also to such fundamentalist lobbies as CitizenGo , HazteOir or El Yunque , of which HazteOir appears to be only a screen-organization . In 2021, Wikileaks published “ The Intolerance Network ", ” consisting of 17,000 documents revealing the relationships between CitizenGO, HazteOir, the far-right party Vox and the occult organisation El Yunque . The latter is a Mexican secret society organised as a paramilitary corps with the aim of restoring the Kingdom of Christ. Basically the same agenda as Tradition, Family and Property. It is therefore interesting to read what is written about the situation in Spain in the report “ Modern-Day Crusaders in Europe ", prepared for the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights: [...] in 2003 a new organisation called Hazte Oir appeared which seems to fit many of the characteristics often associated with TFP  (see section 5), including: grass-roots mobilisation combined with fundraising, multiplicity of branding, youth outreach, the same US contacts, intense contact with other TFP organisations and, finally, exercising traditionalist pressure on the Catholic Church. It diverges from  TFP  characteristics primarily in its branding, and, while Catholic-inspired, Hazte  Oir is by no means a religious movement, and there are no references to Corrêa de  Oliveira. Hazte  Oir (literally, ’make yourself heard’) plays a watchdog role on Spanish political life and launched a social mobilisation platform “ CitizenGo ” which would appear to be a 21st century digital version of the direct mailing techniques TFP pioneered in the 1970s (see section 8). Hazte Oir may be the reincarnation of TFP-Covadonga (name of the Spanish branch of TFP, ed.) under a new set of circumstances where there are limits as to how openly it may display its affiliations in Spain26 (see section 6). Whether Hazte Oir is formally part of the TFP family or not, it shares many of the characteristics of  TFP  organisations and occupies the same niche. (Bold mine) After all, representatives of another organisation that is closely linked to the TFP via Alleanza Cattolica (see the second part of this report ), namely the Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR), expressly apologise to CitizenGo and also describe it as a “ meritorious organisation ". We know about the persecution to which the Church of Almighty God is subjected by the Chinese Communist Party mainly thanks to an Italian publication issued by the think tank CESNUR, which emerged from Alleanza Cattolica. It is called Bitter Winter . Not that the backers of Bitter Winter, a daily magazine in eight languages with news from China, a country from which it is not easy to export news, and which is published by a non-profit organisation based in Turin, CESNUR, are clear either. But the news about religious persecution in China used by the US State Department is that of the Turin-based magazine. The Department, whose documents represent the official US position and are supposed to guide US policy, openly admits in its report on religious freedom that much of the information comes from Bitter Winter. Its editor, Massimo Introvigne, rightly boasts of this and writes Readers of Bitter Winter will forgive us if we mention that, in the section on China, Bitter Winter remains, as it was in the report of last year , the single most quoted source. We were quoted 74 times in 2020. The quotes became 85 in 2021. It is evident that the sources accessed by the Catholic Lawyer's magazine are more reliable than those accessed by the US intelligence services. In an exchange on Facebook between a member of the Italian “anti-cult” community and Introvigne, faced with the paradox that Bitter Winter could have more information than the American services, Introvigne commented with a short text containing the following statements: “I have known the people who produce these reports for decades" and “there are people in China, but not only there, who prefer to pass on information to scholars who do not work for American government agencies or those of other countries”. With this, the editor of CESNUR and Bitter Winter confirms both the direct and long-standing knowledge of the report writers and that his magazine actually knows more than the CIA because Chinese citizens are willing to talk to its editors rather than the agencies the magazine will later report to anyway. The post lasted the minutes it took the author to realise that it was inappropriate to leave it online and delete it. However, the screenshot was photographed before it was deleted (Fig. 72). A few days later, returning to the same topic on the same social network, the director of CESNUR had a new fit of unbridled self-congratulation, going so far as to boast that “a small magazine published in Turin has become the main source of official documents on religion in China from the most important country in the world” (Fig. 73). It is therefore ironic that a magazine and an organisation capable of such intelligence capabilities should fall for a hoax such as the one perpetrated on it by a Ukrainian pseudo-scientist: Oleg Maltslev . This is the leader of an Odessa-based organization with whom CESNUR developed an instant affectionate relationship and for whom it gave in to an exculpatory impulse after this organization came under heavy criticism in 2014 from Russian and Ukrainian anti-cult associations. According to a well-known script, the exchange of cordiality and appreciation then began between CESNUR and the leader of the group vilified by the evil anti-cultists, Maltslev. A monographic issue of CESNUR's magazine was dedicated to him in 2018. The monographic issue was preceded by an exchange of courtesy visits in 2016. Malstlev had first been invited to the CESNUR headquarters in Turin, and then the CESNUR director had returned the favour with a visit to Odessa , where he gave a lecture to Maltslev's supporters on the blatantly discriminatory actions of the anti-cult movement . The CESNUR director reportedly called Meltslev “a scientist whose scientific research deserves much attention”; the Ukrainian instead referred to the Italian as a star of great magnitude that “shining in the sky of Odessa”. In 2024, things took a turn for the worse: Ukrainian law enforcement and security services gathered evidence of psychological abuse, blackmail, threats and harassment against supporters and journalists after a lengthy investigation. Those who questioned Maltslev's authority, his titles (which were apparently all fake) and his merits were harshly persecuted on social networks, for example by spreading accusations of paedophilia accompanied by edited audio and video files. In addition, many people who were persecuted by Maltslev's organisations were bombarded with calls with threatening content from unknown numbers. One person died of a heart attack as a result. But that's nothing. On 1 September, almost six months late, the Ukrainian press reported that on 5 March law enforcement officers had arrested the closest associate of the “guru'”, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Unsolved Crimes” (one of the organisation's productions) Konstantin Slobodyanyuk, and taken him to a pre-trial detention centre. The latter was accused of an impressive series of crimes. These include the payment of bribes to an official, criminal conspiracy and illegal burglary of computer equipment, but above all high treason under martial law (Part 2 of Article 111 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code). For the latter offence, he and Malstlev himself, who was on the run, face a life sentence. The intelligence investigation revealed that Oleg Maltsev had set up a spy organisation that worked for the Russian enemy . It was a full-fledged sabotage unit consisting of 23 people, including an assault group, a sniper, a reconnaissance group, an operational support group and even a communications officer. This story is ironic for two reasons. The first reason is that the “anti-cult movement” have been accusing them of being close to Russia by cult apologists for years. So being caught by the Ukrainian security services in the vicinity of a traitor working for the Russian enemy is just as embarrassing as a conservative being caught red-handed with a tranny. This guy will of course be able to say: “I did not know that",” and if he is not particularly bright, there is also a risk that it is true. The second element that makes me smile is that the director of CESNUR, who likes to describe me as “sometimes funny but not brilliant” - as is common among academics - said that CESNUR's magazine, Bitter Winter, would be able to gather much more information about the misdeeds of the Chinese Communist Party than the CIA. However, it had failed to realise that the group they were exchanging mutual appreciation, besides being (it seems) a criminal syndicate, was also working for Russia. They also were betrayed. Funny, but not brilliant. If you want a little amusement, you can read Willy Fautré's (HRWF) heartfelt defence of Maltslev, who is allegedly the victim of a conspiracy. Among the hilarious things expressed in his article, Fautré cites as the most likely of the hypotheses about the architects of the plot against poor Maltslev the martial arts schools, which would have been very concerned about the new form of fighting invented by the Ukrainian “scientist” No kidding. It is written here: Ukraine, Suspicion of Fabrication of a Criminal Case . The less authoritative newspaper publishing this piece of journalism is an old acquaintance, The European Times , the publication linked to Scientology (see the prologue ). Back to China. One of the most horrific accusations levelled at the Chinese Communist Party is that it harvests organs from living people (or kills them to harvest their vital organs), especially from “prisoners of conscience” such as followers of Falun Gong and the Church of Almighty God. According to a 2017 Washington Post report , investigations and reports have refuted the claim that China is currently secretly performing 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants per year. Data compiled by US-based Quintiles IMS showed that China's demand for immunosuppressant drugs, which are needed to prevent patients' bodies from rejecting transplanted organs, was roughly equal to the number of transplants China said it was performing. On 14 November 2018, Mark Field of the UK Foreign Office responded to a specific question in a debate on the issue in the House of Commons in London: “We disagree with claims of systematic organ harvesting from political prisoners of conscience, assessing that the evidence they present does not substantiate that claim.” A similar position was taken by Australia. However, a London-based independent tribunal called the China Tribunal - Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China has confirmed the veracity of organ harvesting. This body was founded by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) . However, if you look at ETAC's website, you will find that many members of its “ management ” have close ties to the Epoch Times, the Falun Gong newspaper! If you go through the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections appear in almost all of them. ETAC is clearly a Falun Gong front organisation . Of course, this does not mean that the findings and conclusions of this tribunal are necessarily false, but its vaunted independence does. The problem is that it is the judgement of this tribunal that Bitter Winter refers to in his articles on this subject. Let us remember that Bitter Winter is the main source of information on China for the US State Department. Meanwhile, the influence of Bitter Winter also seems to be having an effect in Italy. This is evidenced by the fact that, as Introvigne himself writes on the website of HRWF , the Belgian organisation chaired by Willy Fautrè, more and more followers of the Church of Almighty God (CAG) are finding asylum in Italy precisely because of the magazine. Interestingly, Italy is the main refugee country for the Chinese cult. Introvigne writes: On June 14, in an exemplary decision judging a CAG asylum seeker, represented by specialized lawyers Amalia Astory and Laura Bondi, as deserving “the higher level of protection” in Italy, the Tribunal of Rome answered the question by mentioning as “reliable sources” “Bitter Winter,” reports by the U.S. and other governments that quote “Bitter Winter,” and a statement by the late sociologist  PierLuigi Zoccatelli , who was deputy director of  CESNUR , “Bitter Winter”’s parent organization. Reference is made to the case of a woman who was refused asylum at first instance in 2018. The author speculates that the court was influenced by Chinese propaganda. That may be, but the real objection was that it was not credible that in a closed, non-democratic, high-tech surveillance country, an influx of believers from a church persecuted by the government into Italy, all of whom with their proper passports, was possible. It was Bitter Winter's men who made it clear to the court that corruption of officials is extremely widespread in China and therefore it is not very difficult even for members of the Church of Almighty God to obtain a passport to leave the country. On what basis did they prove this? Introvigne says: Quoting Italian government sources, which in turn refer to “Bitter Winter,” “a study by sociologist Pier Luigi Zoccatelli,” and the U.S. State Department reports on  religious liberty (which also quoted “Bitter Winter”) […] Oh, okay then... Bitter Winter not only informs the West about China's persecution of spiritual minorities, but also campaigns vigorously against the “ anti-cult narrative ” promoted by organisations it assumes are linked to the governments of France, Russia and China. Another conspiracy the editors are keen to address is the artificial origin of the coronavirus , which allegedly escaped from a Chinese laboratory. It may be a coincidence, but a recent study conducted by the University of Urbino has shown that most of the nodes of the disinformation network about the Covid 19 pandemic in Italy lead directly to the website of the Church of Almighty God. Certainly, some doubts about the reliability of Bitter Winter, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not have it, have instead been expressed by sources that have no connection with the Chinese government, which could have an advantage in discrediting the magazine. For example, from a Korean Protestant publication (see screenshot below) and from the website BZBriefs , which is affiliated with China Source, a non-profit Christian “ministry” based in the U.S. that seeks to reduce the CCP's pressure on Christian churches. These critics speculate about a connection between Bitter Winter and the Church of Almighty God. It must be said that China Source later rectified its claim by publishing that it understood that Bitter Winter is not connected to the Church of Almighty God in private discussions with Bitter Winter . However, no one dares to speculate with whom this church is in turn connected. We only know that the persecutions of the CCP, real and alleged, are absolutely useful in demonstrating the godlessness of the Chiana government. There is one small problem, however: what  is going  on in China is hard to know. But that's  not a problem for Bitter Winter. The magazine is a useful megaphone of persecution. Ifit  did  not  exist ,  the  American services would have had to invent it. Video 3 - Massimo Introvigne on TV 2000 (Italy) in October 2023. The journalist hints at his relationship with the secret services Appendix: Italy and the fabulous Frank Gigliotti In an article that appeared in the ‘San Diego Union' on 23 January 1947, it was reported that the evangelical pastor Frank Gigliotti , who lived in La Mesa near San Diego, had received a letter from the Italian government informing him that the commission charged with drafting the constitution of the new republican state had adopted the 'religious freedom' amendment he had proposed on 19 December 1946. The thing did not stop there. In March of the same year, Gigliotti travelled to Italy to work personally on the articles of the Italian constitution concerning religious freedom. The ‘San Diego Union reported on 17 July that the respected citizen had returned home after drafting the articles of the Italian constitution. It is very strange that an American citizen, who holds no institutional position, would lay his hand on the constitution of a foreign country. And yet it was again the San Diego Union that reported on 6 October 1970 that the Italian state had awarded Gigliotti the Republic's Medal of Merit for his help in founding the Republic itself. In the article, Gigliotti stated: "I helped to draft Articles 17, 18 and 19 of the Italian Constitution, which deal with freedom of assembly, religion and association". But who was the man who was called ‘ the fabulous Frank Gigliotti ’? Antonio Nicaso , an essayist and expert on organised crime, explains this in an interview with journalist Ferruccio Pinotti for the book ‘Fratelli d'Italia’ (BUR, 2007): Frank Bruno Gigliotti was a Protestant pastor of Calabrian origin, but grew up in the United States. He first came into contact with the OSS, the Office of Strategic Service, and then with the CIA. in 1942, Gigliotti and the OSS founded the American Committee for Italian Democracy, which was supported by the Sons of Italy, an organisation of Mafiosi and secret agents who were preparing the landing in Sicily. Lucky Luciano also hired the very young Michele Sindona to connect the OSS with Sicilian mafia bosses. Gigliotti had so much influence that he forced Italian Freemasonry - which had just been resurrected after the hostilities of Fascism - to accept the secret lodge of Prince Alliata di Montereale from Palermo into its ranks in exchange for the return of Palazzo Giustiniani [the palace, the historic seat of Freemasonry, had been acquired by the state after Freemasonry had been banned under Fascism. Author's note]. Prince Alliata di Montereale was investigated for the Portella delle Ginestre massacre - and acquitted in a preliminary trial. In 1947, Gigliotti was the architect of the first recognition of the Grand Orient of Italy of Palazzo Giustiniani, which was to become the mother house of Lodge P2 , by the prestigious Northern Circumscription of American Freemasonry. In other words, Frank B. Gigliotti was a CIA agent and Freemason who was active in Italy in the immediate post-war period. He became famous among historians for his reconstruction of Italian Freemasonry as an organisation subordinate to the American one. It is widely agreed that this work was part of the US plan to combat communism. In fact, the American secret services had found in Freemasonry, the Catholic Church, the Mafia and the ex-fascists the ideal allies to fight communism in the Western country with the largest communist party (and bordering the Soviet bloc). As Nicaso says, "some American lodges had been active in Italy since 1941, in association with the OSS, whose leaders were all Scottish Rite Freemasons and members of knightly orders". In 1960, Gigliotti promoted the union of the masonic obedience Grand Orient of Italy (GOI) with the Supreme Council of the Most Serene Grand Lodge of the ALAM of the Sicilian Prince Giovanni Alliata di Montereale (whose name would be associated with the events of the Borghese coup , the Rosa dei venti and the Mafia organisations, in addition to the Portella delle Ginestre massacre ), which later ended in the P2 lodge . The commission on P2 led by Tina Anselmi wrote: It seems that the union of the Grand Orient with the strongly conservative Freemasonry of Alliata was the condition that Gigliotti, fuelled by a visceral anti-communism, set in exchange for American intervention in the negotiations with the Italian government over Palazzo Giustiniani [... from these events it is clear not only that the project of unifying Italian Freemasonry does not seem to correspond only to domestic interests, but also that Gelli appeared on the scene after Gigliotti's disappearance, in a chronological order and with an identity of functions that are not without significance. This is not enough. Sergio Flamigni  writes in ‘ Trame Atlantiche ’ that Among the conditions that Frank Gigliotti dictated to Italian Freemasonry in order to gain the recognition of US Freemasonry and thus obtain American support for the recapture of Palazzo Giustiniani was permission to establish extraterritorial American lodges in Italy [...] Daniele Ganser writes in his book ‘ Nato's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe ’, that Licio Gelli , the later Venerable Master of the P2 lodge , was personally recruited by Gigliotti to fight the communist front with the support of the CIA. The relationship between P2 and the strategy of tension in Italy and the involvement in the operations of Gladio , NATO's secret anti-communist structure, is history. All this is acquired knowledge. Instead, Gigliotti's in some ways even more disturbing work as ghostwriter of the articles of the Italian Constitution concerning religious freedom remains rather obscure. Here too, it is difficult to imagine that the interests at stake were exclusively ‘domestic', that Gigliotti's work was aimed solely at defending the rights of Italian citizens. The commitment seems inappropriate, out of scale for a simple pastor and characterised by an exaggerated and ostentatious zeal. Thus we read in ‘L'Unità’ of 15 January 1950 that the Reverend Frank Gigliotti, Presbyterian pastor of Lemon Greve (California), declared that 'American Protestants will declare war on the Italian government if the persecution of Italian Protestants is not curbed". The issue of ‘religious freedom’ is used in politics as a weapon of blackmail and intimidation. This allows to retrodate the decision to regard religious freedom as a fundamental objective of American foreign policy, as enshrined in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The CIA's contiguity with the Vatican, which went so far as to nickname the agency ‘Catholic Intelligence Agency’, was not convenient for it to remain exclusive, just as it was not favourable for it to remain exclusive with the political parties of the far right. It was no coincidence that Gigliotti was responsible for the split of Giuseppe Saragat 's Socialist Party of Italian Workers (PSLI) , later the Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI) , from the Italian Socialist Party in 1947. The PSI, led by Nenni, represented maximalism with a revolutionary matrix close to the PCI, while the wing represented by Saragat was reformist. The fact that Frank Gigliotti was behind this split is confirmed by many. Penny Lernoux writes in ‘ In Banks We Trust :Bankers and Their Close Associates: The CIA, the Mafia, Drug Traders, Dictators, Politicians and the Vatican ’ that ‘according to a former prominent Italian Freemason, the split in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), from which the Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI) emerged, "was “entirely provoked by the Freemasons in the United States and Italy”' (p. 201). Giuseppe Casarrubea , a scholar of relations between the Mafia and the secret services, whose father was killed by the gang of the bandit Salvatore Giuliano , the author of the Portella delle Ginestre massacre, says that Frank Gigliotti was the architect of the socialist split in Palazzo Barberini under the leadership of Saragat’ ( Storia segreta della Sicilia. Dallo sbarco alleato a Portella delle Ginestre , Bompiani, 2007, p. 146). The support of the parties of the moderate left enabled those behind Gigliotti to have a variety of anti-communist forces and possible alternatives at their disposal when the facts had rendered the forces of the right useless. A good example of this was the situation that arose when President Truman supported the De Gasperi government on condition that the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was excluded. However, an eventual Christian Democrat-led government would have created a Catholic supremacy that would have been poorly tolerated by various Protestant circles overseas and would have led to a polarisation between secular and clerical forces. As Roberto Faenza and Marco Fini rightly note in ‘ Gli Americani in Italia ’, many figures such as Truman, Marshall and Welles, who were known as representatives of Freemasonry and therefore tended to defend the secularism, would have reacted to excessive clerical influence. Therefore, Gigliotti's influence - once again - helped bring Saragat into government by stemming the clerical tide to appease the US government of the day. Saragat did indeed enter the 4th De Gasperi government. The function of religious diversification is probably similar. Relying solely on the Vatican and the network of parishes is not advisable, and sometimes it may be necessary a work of influence that clash with Catholic interests. The Assemblies of God In Italy (ADI) , a Pentecostal congregation founded in 1947, to which Gigliotti and his associate Charles Fama , also a Freemason, were very close and which had links with the American Assemblies of God , benefited most directly from this. And not only that. Go to the next chapter: Fascists, spies and gurus. 7. East wind Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. Attack on secularism Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. The libertarian network

Follow the money From 2008 to 2020, the major Christian conservative associations in the United States spent more than $280 million abroad. At least 90 million of that went to Europe, while the rest went to Africa and Asia. This is according to an analysis by the US investigative website OpenDemocracy , in which authors Claire Provost and Nandini Archer analysed thousands of financial records from 28 mostly Christian extremist and ultra-pro-free market US groups with strong links to the conservative, sometimes far right. In recent years, thanks in part to these investments, these groups have become increasingly influential in American and international politics. Indeed, the funds have the explicit purpose of supporting both initiatives and other satellite organisations around the world, which in turn work to influence public opinion, laws and national policies to prevent the enforcement of sexual and reproductive rights. But that's not all. Among the aims of all these organisations, the protection of “ religious freedom ” is of great importance The list of 28 groups under consideration includes the Acton Institute , the Alliance Defending Freedom , the Family Research Council , the Federalist Society , the American Center for Law and Justice , the Heritage Foundation , the Cato Institute and the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property . The latter is nothing other than the American branch of the Brazilian organisation for the defence of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), which was founded by Plinio Correa de Oliveira and to which the Italian traditionalist Catholic associations Alleanza Cattolica and Fondazione Lepanto refer, as we have seen ( see second chapter ). From the first part of this report, we know that the main objective of this organisation since the mid-1980s has been to defend religious freedom and thus promote an anti-secular vision of society. It is therefore likely that the funds of this society - 3,123,131 dollars between 2008 and 2020 - will flow to European organisations pursuing the same goal. In Italy, the most important organisation of this kind is the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) , which has emerged from a rib of Alleanza Cattolica, with which it has long shared a top figure. On the other hand, De Mattei, the head of the Lepanto Foundation, is a member of the expert panel of the Heritage Foundation and the Acton Institute , both of which are included in the list analysed by Open Democracy. The Acton Institute calls itself an “Institute for Religion and Liberty” and was founded in 1990 by Robert Sirico and Betsy DeVos . Sirico is an original personality. He is a Catholic priest, former member of David Berg's “ Children of God ” (notorious for sexual promiscuity and paedophilia scandals), former evangelical Pentecostal pastor, and an advocate of conservative anarcho-capitalism . he is now well established in the Vatican and in 2004, he was even one of the editors of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, the very doctrine that Sirico, a rampant anarcho-cpitalist, has fought against all his life. He was arrested in 1976 for auctioning young naked male slaves. The charge of reduction to involuntary servitude   fell  a few days later, when it was discovered that the slaves were all consenting adults who were members of a sadomasochistic organization called Leather Fraternity . Betsy DeVos is part of the family that owns Amway . Amway is a multinational multi-level marketing (MLM) company that distributes various soaps and detergents and whose executives are militant evangelicals closely aligned with the American economic, political and military right who claim to speak directly with God. The Acton Institute is headquartered in the same city as Amway, Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Institute is a member of the Atlas Network , a large network of Christian pro-free market organisations. The organisation has been described as a “self-replicating think tank that creates think tanks” Major US think tanks that belong to the network include the Cato Institute , the Heartland Institute (which is dedicated to refuting climate change), the Heritage Foundation (which is particularly opposed to abortion and LGBT rights) and the American Legislative Exchange Council . This flow of money to Europe is driven primarily by two groups that focus their battles on the courts. One is the organisation American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) , led by Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) . The latter boasts Betsy DeVos 's family among its founders. “Although both the ACLJ and the ADF” ”present themselves as simple human rights organisations," says IRPI Media , " their aim is actually much more political: they protect conservative positions similar to the ultra-Catholic world. The ability to intervene in European and international courts is in reality a tool for lobbying and influencing national regulations.” Both groups are part of Agenda Europe , an informal network of associations that came together in January 2013 with the aim of building a Christian-inspired European think tank and supporting the “pro-life” movement in Europe. This was reported by the EPF in a report summarising documents from this network, which were kept secret until 2017 and published following a leak from a still anonymous source. It is interesting to note that while the foundations listed are an expression of the neo-conservative world of the USA, Agenda Europe's donors include Alexey Komov , a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, who is supported by the far-right Russian multimillionaire and oligarch Konstantin Malofeev , who was also officially responsible for the foundation's international projects. Malofeev is the chairman of the board of directors of Tsargrad (Imperial City), a platform used by such people as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and far-right political analyst Aleksandr Dugin . Since 2014, Malofeev and his companies are designated to the lists of individuals sanctioned during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine maintained by the European Union, United States, and Canada. In September 2019, the Bulgarian government banned him from entering the country for ten years over an alleged spying conspiracy aimed at turning the country away from its pro-Western orientation and further toward Moscow. On the visible level, there is currently probably a rift between CESNUR and other groups, that nonetheless come from the same root of TFP, about Russia. CESNUR director Introvigne told the Catholic magazine ' La bussola quotidiana ' the following: The fact that Russia behaves well towards the LGBT lobby and fundamentalist Islam does not justify its aggressive and expansionist policies in the West, and at the same time condemning these expansionist policies does not diminish the appreciation for the fight against the gay lobby and fundamentalist Islam that Russia is waging. The closeness to the US government repeatedly professed by Introvigne places CESNUR in an undeniable Atlanticism. It is surely to be found in this that the well-known study centre, which always presents itself as the defender of whatever cult is the subject of public disrepute, has not said a word about the pro-Russian cult AlltRa : At the level of deep dynamics, however, the situation is far less clear. The close links between this world and Russia are obvious. It seems that some American freedom foundations serve as a clearing house for interests that converge despite the diversity of ideologies. It has been said that TFP has taken a strong Atlanticist position, followed by its Italian sisters, such as AC and its offshoot CESNUR. From this position, its representatives allow themselves to accuse the FECRIS of collaborating with Russia simply because a Russian, Alexander Dvorkin, was its vice president for a long time (and there is photographic evidence of my acquaintance with him! ). Yet, it seems quite certain that the Polish branch of TFP, the Ordo Iuris Association, has regular dealings with and is funded by the Kremlin . The World Congress of Families (WCF) , in which the Polish section of TFP has participated so often, is a cyclical event that brings together an international group of ultra-conservative organisations opposed to women's rights and LGBT rights. It was initiated in 1995 by a Russian and an American, Anatoly Anatov and Allan Carlson. The World Congress of Families acts as a platform for far-right religious and social groups. On its website, Ordo Iuris presents a list of “partner organisations” including, for example, the ' Catholic Institute for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) '. C-Fam is headed by Austin Ruse. Thanks to a hacker group called Shaltai Boltai, which hacked the inbox of Alexey Komov and his boss, the oligarch Malofeev, we know that Ruse was on the guest list for the Kremlin congress known as the "Black International”. The following scan comes from the list of 357 guests invited by Russians to the Kremlin congress: According to the BuzzFeed News portal , the list shows that “Russian nationalists and social conservatives appear to be working together to use connections with ‘pro-family’ organizations in the United States and around the world to promote Russia's geopolitical agenda. The Guardian writes that Austin Ruse has praised Malofeev for “ working to bring Russian Orthodox and US Christianity closer together ”. Despite the stance of some organizations close to parts of the US government, the positions in the culture war become more nuanced when the goals coincide. Religious right and the defense of cults This whole world of Christian fundamentalists and enemies of sexual freedoms and self-determination is strangely interested in the defence of cults that are furthest removed from Christian orthodoxy. To give an example, the Conservative Summit 2024 held in Bratislava, Slovakia, featured OndřejDostàl among the speakers. He is a a Czech politician but also a representative of the Creative Society , a project of the AllatRa cult. Ján Figeľ is a Slovakian politician with links to CitizenGo , a Spanish fundamentalist association, which is particularly committed to the defence of religious freedom and is close to both Scientology and the Unification Church . He is a key figure of Agenda Europe . In 2022, he participated in the symposium " Religious Freedom: A Human Right Under Attack ," co-organized by Figeľ's Tunega, Púčik and Tesár Foundation with the Universasl Peace federation (Unification Church). Aaron Rhodes  ( Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe) was among the speakers. Aaron Rhodes  served as Executive Director of the   International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights   (IHF)  that is said to be infiltrated by Scientology . Rhodes is also a member of the Common Sense Society , an organisation full of pro-Russians. I n 2023, Ján Figeľ together with Willy Fautré (HRWF), Massimo Introvigne (CESNUR) and Aaron Rhodes ( Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe) , signed a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Kishida in defence of the Unification Church . A month earlier, together with Massimo Introvigne, he had already spoken out in favour of this issue at the International Summit for Religious Freedom ( as stated on the church's own website ) . The Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) , a well-known Scientology front organisation, funded Paul Weyrich's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) , according to a letter from CCHR board member Carol Steinke. A branch of Paul Weyrich's American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) also honoured the wife of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church , Hak Ja Han Moon. The award was presented by Robin Brunelli, president of the National Foundation for Women Legislators  and wife of Sam Brunelli, ALEC director and long-time CNP member. In an AFN radio interview by Kelleigh Nelson with Chey Simonton, the far-reaching connections between the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church  were discussed at length. As we have seen in part four of this report , Moon's Unification Church helped the Reagan administration fund the Nicaraguan Contras as part of the secret plan for which former USCIRF  Chairman Abrams was convicted. In 2020, Figel' founded the Clementy Group LTD . It is based in London and its sole purpose is to fund the Clementy Foundation. Their mission? "Youth mindset enhancement", "Forstering a sustainable peace in Europe" and "Nature preservation". Here are the members of the board besides Figel': Pierre Louvrier . Belgian. Investigations by journalists revealed that he was involved in business with the Russian oligarch Malofeev. Sigmar Gabriel . German. Former Vice-Chancellor of Germany, former SPD Minister for Economic Affairs and Foreign Affairs. He is considered a Gazprom lobby. Mick Mulvaney. US Citizen. Former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump administration, then Trump's Chief of Staff . He was involved in the Trump-Ukranian scanda l , cospirationist reguarding COVID. Domenico Giani . Italian. Ex Vatican's longtime security chief and Pope Francis' with a past for the Italian secret services. He  resigned in 2019 over leaks related to an investigation into alleged financial wrongdoing in the Vatican. Nothing is known about the LTD's economic activities, nor how they intend to implement the "youth mindset"and "nature preservation". At the 2014 summit of Agenda Europe, Gudrun Kugler and Paul Coleman of Alliance Defending Freedom International emphasised the need for network organisations to accredit themselves with all relevant institutions and to keep each other informed about what is happening at the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OECD) and the European Court of Human Rights. All of this sounds very familiar to those involved in the fight against totalitarian cults. Those who, like the author, are involved in combating organisations that defend totalitarian cults on the international stage, observe the coordinated lobbying of associations “in defence of religious freedom” at the OSCE and the Council of Europe. This coordination “strangely” includes “study centres",” which should be theoretically avalutative and scientifically aseptic, and even the Church of Scientology . The photo below (Fig. 69) was taken in October 2023 at a meeting of the OSCE Human Rights Office in Warsaw and shows a briefing attended by high-ranking representatives of Scientology and the directors of two of the best-known European associations for the defence of religious freedom, namely the Belgian organisation Human Rights Without Frontiesr (HRWF) and the French Coordination of Associations and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience (CAP LC) . This is roughly the same line-up that took part in a meeting on religious freedom at the European Parliament in Brussels about a month later (see Fig. 22). Lee Fang writes that the “libertarian” network that funds European organisations is itself subsidised by the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy . The latter is an essential arm of American soft power. It is therefore “a silent extension of US foreign policy” The prototype of all these associations is the John Birch Society , which was already mentioned in the third part of this dossier . It was the channel that made it possible to avoid the direct financing of “dirty” operations by the secret service to the Aginter press. It is likely that the organisations linked to Atlas and the DeVos family perform the same functions in relation to spiritual groups, study centres and non-governmental organisations involved in the defence of “religious freedom", aimed at reorienting public opinion by creating a benevolent view of minority cults and lobbying powerfully in supranational contexts to prevent the law of modern secular states from interfering with the actions of these cults. The Vicar Regent of Alleanza Cattolica himself, Introvigne, wrote in his book “Una battaglia nella notte” (2008) about the TFP that the American TFP maintains close relations with the world of conservative foundations in the USA (page 210). To understand that there is more than just mutual appreciation between conservative foundations and think tanks and organizations of cults and their apologists, one only has to think of the network at the centre of which was the late Paul Weyrich . The latter, an Austrian-born traditionalist Catholic, founded both the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation , of which he was president, the International Policy Forum (IPF) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) , described as “the largest bipartisan organization of legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism” Above all, however, Weyrich was one of the founders and one of the most important members of the Council for National Policy (CNP) . This is a secret organisation described by the New York Times as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the country's most influential conservatives” who meet three times a year behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference. Weyrich and other CNP members actively collaborated with Plinio de Oliveira 's Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) . It was at the suggestion of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira and inspired by the example of the TFP, that Paul Weyrich founded the International Policy Forum (IPF). This alliance of conservative associations was conceived by Paul Weyrich and chaired by Morton Blackwell. “The construction of a transnational New Right,” writes Bemjamin A. Cowan , "took place through organizations specifically created for this purpose. [...] The International Policy Forum (IPF) was one such organization, perhaps the paradigmatic example. [...)]. Representatives of TFP were pioneers in networking with similar organisations in Northern America, a collaboration that laid the foundations for the establishment of a transnational New Right . To summarise, there is an intricate international network, including US government commissions, controversial cults and conservative think tanks, which appears to work in synergy and whose members appear to support each other, albeit discreetly and behind the useful fig leaf of “religious freedom. Geopolitics consists of three forms of action: a) a hard and visible action, which consists of political or economic antagonism up to and including war; b) a hard but less visible action, because it is carried out in secret or clandestinely, and finally c) a ‘soft’ and invisible action, which consists of disinformation and the orientation of public opinion. The first is carried out by politicians, the second by the intelligence services and the third by ‘agents of influence’, i.e. people who produce cultural products to disseminate ideas that are in line with a particular geopolitical project. This is a form of unconventional warfare known as soft power , which also includes the issue of religion. Organisations defending "religious freedom" play an important role in this. Next chapter : Fascists spies and gurus . 6 . CIA cults Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists   Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. Attack on secularism

Luigi Corvaglia Pre-trial acquittals On 8 July 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,  a long-time right-wing politician, was assassinated during a rally in the city of Nara. The assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, claimed to have killed him because he blamed him for the spread of the Unification Church  in Japan, an organisation to which his mother had allegedly donated so much that it ruined the family. As the Financial Times reports , the link between the Unification Church and members of Abe's political party is an old one. Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather, who was prime minister of Japan in the second half of the 20th century, supported the church as an instrument in the anti-communist struggle . Over time, the Unification Church served as a safe reservoir of votes for the Liberal Democratic Party, Abe's nationalist party. Founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon , the church is a business empire that includes a car factory and a huge manufacturing company, several hospitals and major property investments around the world. Among other things, it owns one of the largest seafood export companies in the world and has helped to popularise sushi in the USA   and from there to the rest of the West. He also owns the conservative newspaper Washington Times . Naturally, he plays a major political role. In 2003, Moon caused a stir with a sermon in which he claimed that the Holocaust was the just punishment inflicted on the Jews for the murder of Jesus. Figure 48 - Shinzo AbeSun Myung Moon and Hyung Jin 'Sean' Moon   The founder's son, Hyung Jin 'Sean' Moon , is no less right-wing. He founded The Rod of Iron Ministries  in the USA. The 'rod of iron' is the AR-15 submachine gun; in fact, the church worships firearms, which it describes as 'religious equipment'. The leader wears a crown of bullets and the faithful participate in ceremonies armed with this equipment. The church has strong ties to American Identititarian and far-right movements.   Back in Japan, the links between the Liberal Democratic Party and the church became clear after the death of the former prime minister. Since then, dozens of party members, including those in top positions, have admitted their links to the church or other related organisations. The government subsequently launched an investigation into Moon's church and on 12 October 2023 declared its intention to request the dissolution of the church . However, the church has many friends. When the US Congress cut off funding to the Reagan administration in 1985 to support the Nicaraguan ' Contras ' terrorists against the Sandinista regime, Reverend Moon's Unification Church became involved in providing food and money for the guerrillas (see further ahead). Ford Greene reports that CAUSA , a company of the Moonies, provided thousands of dollars and tonnes of food, medicine and clothing to the guerrilla forces. In 1985, the Moonies' newspaper, the Washington Times , set up a private fund for the Contras and announced that Bo Hi Pak, the paper's official publisher, had contributed $100,000 to raise $14 million. When asked how the paper could afford this, the publisher explained that the paper's owners (the Moon organisation) were willing to provide extraordinary help on important moral issues (i.e. the fight against communism).   The extensive ties between Paul Weyrich's Council for National Policy (CNP) ,   closely connected with the Brazilian  Family and Property Tradition,   and the Unification Church  were discussed at length in an AFN radio interview by Kelleigh Nelson with Chey Simonton. In 1978, the Fraser Commission, a subcommittee of the US Congress, investigated the South Korean government's political interference in US policy, known as Koreagate . The commission published a report in which Moon's involvement in activities with the US government was also listed.   It was recently revealed that former US President Donald Trump received around 2.5 million dollars from the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) , the new denomination of the Unification Church , to make video appearances on three occasions between 2021 and 2022, while former Vice President Mike Pence received 550,000 dollars to speak at a UPF event. This was confirmed by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper  by obtaining official US documents and comparing them with court documents in Japan. The event took place in 2022, and the director of CESNUR Massimo Introvigne, who gave a talk at the meeting, was also funded by the UPF  (Fig. 50). Obviously, CESNUR  immediately came to the aid of the Unification Church after the murder of Abe. The prompt intervention of a group of Westerners in defence of a controversial religious movement reminded someone in Japan of what happened in 1995 after the Tokyo underground attack  by the Aum Shinrikyo   (The Supreme Truth) cult. The religious group's followers had punched plastic bags of sarin gas, a nerve agent, into underground cars in Tokyo, killing 13 people and poisoning over 6,200. Gordon Melton  of CESNUR USA was paid  by the group responsible for the terrorist attack even before he arrived in Japan with another pair of experts to defend the cult . A preemptive payment for the defence of prejudice. Melton has in fact written several books that were directly commissioned and paid for by various groups , including the Ramtha School of Enlightenment ; the same groups then ensured the distribution of his books. This was also done years ago by the Unification Church  of Moon in Italy with a book by Introvigne. In any case, this funding appears to be just the crumbs of a much larger loaf. Returning to the Abe case, Introvigne writes in an article in the 'Journal of CESNUR ' that “ While the weak mind of the assassin had clearly been excited by anti-Unification-Church campaigns by militant lawyers and anti-cultists , the latter succeeded in persuading most media, both in Japan and internationally, that rather than being a victim the Unification Church was somewhat responsible for the homicide, in a spectacular reversal of both logic and fairness ” (bold mine). In other words, Shinzo Abe was killed by the 'anti-cult movement'. Regardless of the reader's assessment of where the 'spectacular reversal of logic' lies, this blanket defence exemplifies a tendency towards prejudiced absolution of the cults under criticism, which is hardly consistent with the claims of a rigorous study centre. Some examples of this same prejudiced absolution sometimes border on the ridiculous.   In March 2020, at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, a Korean religious movement called Shincheonji Church of Jesus  was accused of contributing to the spread of the virus in the Asian country by preventing its believers from adhering to government regulations and organising crowded prayer meetings without social distancing or masks. More than 60% of those infected in the country were church members. The propaganda machine for new religious movements immediately rushed to the sect's aid and published a 'white paper' titled Shincheonji and the Coronavirus in South Korea: Separating Facts from Fantasies . A few days later, the head of the church, along with 12 other members of the sect, apologised on his knees in front of television cameras for causing the outbreak. Timing does not seem to be CESNUR's strong point. The year before, CESNUR  had already shown how difficult it is to deal with the absolving impulse - with disastrous results. In May 2019, the study centre presented the FIRMA awards ( International Festival of Religions, Music and Arts ) at the Turin book fair. This prize was created by the Introvigne think tank to honour those who have distinguished themselves in promoting peace through interreligious dialogue. In this edition, Apostle Naasón Joaquín García , leader of the Luz del Mundo  church, was among those honoured . A few weeks after being honoured as an advocate of human rights and author of charitable works, Naasón Joaquín García was arrested in Los Angeles on 26 charges, including human trafficking, production of child pornography and rape of minors . The trial ended with a plea by the apostle and his sentencing to 17 years in prison.   I admit that I have occasionally mocked the director of CESNUR for this unfortunate faux pas. I was answered verbatim: 'I would - and I do not rule this out - give Luz del Mundo in the person of its legal representative pro tempore an award for charitable activities, because I know them and they are admirable', and then concluded: 'The intention was to reward charitable activities, not the apostle's private life'. I invite the reader to watch the documentary film about Garcia and the Luz del Mundo on the Netflix platform ( The Darkness within  la Luz del Mundo ) and then read Introvigne's sentence again.   However, it should be mentioned that Introvigne's wife claims that there is a conspiracy between the anti-cult movement and Netflix. This is not a joke ( see here ).    Although a character as colourful as the Mexican apostle can steal the show with such theatrical plot twists that are not devoid of irony, it is another award winner, Greg Mitchell , who deserves our attention. We have already met him. He is the chief lobbyist for Scientology  and founder of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable . (see previous episode ). The activities of this loyalist of the American religious holding company are not only regularly reported on institutional websites, but Mitchell himself explained in an interview with 'Business Insider' that the church's lobbying work with the US government is currently not focussed on promoting Scientology, but on 'religious freedom". This work 'often involves working with other religious organisations to encourage the United States to put pressure on foreign countries that persecute religious groups' . In other words, Scientology, along with 'other religious groups," encourages the U.S. government to 'exert pressure' on foreign countries. Thus, exerting pressure on other countries for their actual or perceived interference or restraint in religious affairs is not a conclusion based on circumstantial evidence, but a stated intention pursued by a variety of actors who, even if they have different motivations, consider such action congruent. A convergence of interests, even if they pursue theoretically opposing goals. Here it is useful for Christian fundamentalists to defend movements that are far removed from Christianity. This lobbying is already provided for by the International Religious Freedom Act  of 1998, regardless of the spur of Scientology and other cults. Or not?   Attack on secularism   In 1995, a French government parliamentary committee of enquiry into cults produced a report, the so-called Guyard report , which expressed great concern about the phenomenon. Similar initiatives followed in Belgium (1996), Germany (1997) and Italy (1998). in 1996, France adopted a series of laws to protect the victims of 'cults' and, above all, an inter-ministerial mission to combat cults  (MILS, later MIVILUDES ), whose first president was the socialist MP Alain Vivien. This made the country of laicité the spearhead of the resistance against the infiltration of totalitarian groups in Europe and triggered a process that led to the creation of the Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d'Information sur le Sectarisme (FECRIS) , the 'umbrella organisation" bringing together dozens of anti-cult associations from various European countries, and the adoption of the About Picard law , which criminalised the 'abuse of weakness' in 2001. On 6 June 1997, the interior ministers of the federal and state governments in Germany agreed to place the Scientology organisation under surveillance. This was just one of the measures taken by the German government to crack down on Scientology (a 1998 report emphasised the destructive aspects of this "commercial institution disguised as a religion" and a 2007 report by the Ministry of the Interior described the organisation as " incompatible with the constitution "). This was followed by the Scientology campaign against Germany (which is conceivable), but also a series of strong statements in defence of the cult by the US government (which is less conceivable). Other actions included a document by the Beareau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (BDHRL) , an agency of the US State Department, in which Germany is listed alongside countries such as China among the countries that violate religious freedom.   In 1998, the International Religious Freedom Act  was promulgated, making the defence of religious freedom in the world US foreign policy. This act established a new department of the US government, which emerged from the Department of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour. Thus was born the Office of International Religious Freedom (OIRF) . In practise, this was a specialised body designed to combat 'discriminatory' policies towards alternative spiritual groups. It was decided that the office would be headed by an authorised ambassador, flanked by no fewer than five officials from the State Secretariat. The Commission even had its own representative in all American embassies. Its first chairman was Robert A. Seiple . The curious thing is that this former marine was for more than 11 years the head of World Vision Inc ., the world's most important evangelical association promoting ultra-conservative views (and rumoured to be controlled by the CIA). One would have expected a department concerned with religious freedom to bear the traits of secularism, or at least not to have dogmatic traits that clash with a mission that could be labelled 'ecumenical', i.e. giving equal dignity to all religions and allowing them to coexist.   The fact is that the Commission's first report in September 1998 accused France, Germany, Austria and Belgium of violating religious freedom. The OIRF was soon joined by a new organisation, the Commission on Religious Freedom . This commission was made up of American parliamentarians who made representations to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) . During a meeting of the OSCE in 1999, these parliamentarians were the protagonists of a fierce attack on France, which was accused of the nefariousness of the 'Vichy regime', of witch-hunting and persecution. A diplomatic incident almost occurred. The delegation from the Religious Freedom Commission was led by Benjamin A. Gillman, whose election campaign was financed by Scientology (see previous episode ). The session was moderated by Massimo Introvigne.   In September 1999, the OIRF published an even harsher report against the European countries, forcing French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine to write to his American counterpart Madeleine Albright to denounce the intolerable aggression that was calling into question the fruitfulness of the dialogue. This led to the termination of diplomatic dialogue on the issue.   To complete the picture of the forces on the ground, a third body of the US government was added, this time directly linked to the White House. It is the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) . Yes, the commission that wrote the report advising Trump to obstruct the work of the FECRIS spokesman at the OSCE (c'est moi!). It's worth taking a closer look. An American commission   The   United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)  is an advisory body to the US government that produces an annual report on religious freedom in the world. It consists of only 9 members, 5 from the President's party and 4 from the largest opposition party. It was established with the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act  of 1998, which promotes religious freedom as part of US foreign policy . The report produced by this commission in 2020 was very tough on the so-called "anti-cult movement', in particular the Federation of European Anti-Cult Associations, the Fédération européenne des centres de recherche et d'information sur le sectarisme (FECRIS) . According to the responsible USCIRF in 2020, scientists, activists and associations that campaign for the rights of cult victims would carry out 'hate campaigns' and restrict civil rights. The 2020 report also contains a recommendation to the US President to   [...] combat the propaganda against the new religious movements disseminated by the European Federation of Research and Information Centres on Sectarianism (FECRIS) at the OSCE's annual Human Dimensions conference by sharing information regarding the continued involvement of individuals and entities, operating as part of the anti-sectarian movement, in the suppression of religious freedom  (sic).   In practise, it is proposed that individuals (!!)  and organisations active in the fight against abusive cults should be monitored... The most worrying thing for me is that I am one of these people! In fact, I was - and still am - the one who carries out the 'propaganda against new religious movements' at the OSCE. At the time the 2020 report was written, the President was Donald Trump. If you know how the commission that drafted this document was composed, there are some surprises and curiosities.   The vice president was Tony Perkins . He is also chairman of the Family Research Council, a fundamentalist Protestant organisation. The Family Research Council  is against pornography, embryonic stem cell research, abortion, divorce and LGBT rights. The FRC believes that "homosexual behaviour is harmful to the people who practise it and to society in general and can never be affirmed. It is therefore a vice and a sin. Paedophilia would be a problem related to homosexuality. Questionable but legitimate positions, of course, but not the ones one would expect from those who have to pass judgement on discrimination and 'hate speech'. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center  classified the FRC as an anti-gay hate group  in 2010 because the group "makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science" to block LGBT civil rights. Now, the Family Research Council is among the organisations cited in a study by OpenDemocracy  for sending money to Europe to fund the activities of associations that aim to prevent the affirmation of individual rights. As if that was not enough, Opendecracy itself had previously found the Family Research Council among the religious right associations in the US that have funded campaigns against sex education, contraception, abortion and LGBT rights in Africa .   Another component of the USCIRF was Gary L. Bauer , the former president of the FRC. In November 2009, Bauer signed an ecumenical statement called the " Manhattan Declaration " in which he called on Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox Christians to disregard government regulations and laws  that they felt would force them to support or simply allow abortion, same-sex marriage and other issues that go against their religious conscience. It seems odd, to say the least, that someone who calls for defiance of the law and is adamantly opposed to recognising the rights enshrined in the Constitution is a member of a commission that oversees respect for civil rights and liberty .   Another component was Johnnie Moore . The latter is Trump's 'evangelical advisor' and advocate of American hegemony. He is president of the Congress of Christian Leaders , a group monitored by Right-Wing Watch , an independent body that monitors all right-wing subversive groups.   Nadine Maenza , another member of the committee, is executive director of Rick Santorum's Patriot Voices PAC  for the Defence of Conservative Values. He apparently opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and has adopted the image of the 'culture warrior' in the war on civil liberties during his tenure in the Senate. Santorum is a supporter of the group Regnum Christi , which is affiliated with the Legionaries of Christ , a highly controversial group at the centre of a major scandal . During his tenure as senator, Santorum authored the Santorum Amendment, which promoted the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in schools and opposed the teaching of evolutionary theory.   Another component is Nury Turkel ,  Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute , a conservative-oriented US think tank.   Figure 57 - Tony Perkins, Gary L. Bauer, Johnnie Moore, Nadine Maenza If we expand the search for the components that have alternated over the years in the USCRIF, we find that the relationships between them and the associations of the Atlas Network  are very frequent. We said (in the previous chapter) that these Christian-pro-free market organizations are “a ‘silent extension of US foreign policy.’” In USCIRF we find representatives of the Federalist Society  (such as Leonard Leo , Chairman of USCIRF in 2009), the American Enterprise Institute  (such as John R. Bolton, former appointee) or organisations linked to them such as the Hudson Institute  (such as Nury Turkel , appointee). In 2018, USCIRF endorsed international Senator Sam Brownback  as a religious freedom ambassador , who was among the speakers at a Brussels conference along with Scientology and Eurosceptic politicians. His election campaign in Kansas was financed by Koch Industries , one of the founders of the anarcho-capitalist organisation Americans for Prosperity , which is linked to Amway . However, the first president is enough to raise doubts about the USCIRF. He is Elliott Abrams , a leading representative of the neoconservatives, who was sentenced to a year in prison for his involvement in the Iran-Contras scandal . This involved the notorious financing of the war in Nicaragua against the democratically elected Sandinista government through the illegal sale of weapons to Iran. Among the crimes committed in connection with this sordid operation was the importation of cocaine by the CIA from the Contras, the anti-Sandinista guerrillas, and the subsequent obstruction of justice in the US Department of Justice. Abrams was one of the men involved in this affair and is also accused of being involved in the massacres in Guatemala and El Salvador when he was in charge of Latin America under Reagan. He has often accused the Israeli Likud of excessive tenderness towards the Palestinians. This champion of rights and ecumenism was chairman of the Commission on Religious Freedom International until 2000 and was still a member in 2022 ! In 2023, the Parlament of the World's Religions was held in Chicago with representatives from USCRIF , Scientology  and the director of the Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR) Massimo Introvigne (fig. 59). This is not about the ideas of the USCIRF majority commissioners who wrote the 2020 report, but about the paradox that those who advocate these ideas want to pose as defenders of civil liberties. So it seems clear that this commission, which was unsurprisingly created as an additional arm (there were already three US government bodies for religious freedom) at the promulgation of the International Religious Freedom Act, has the function of reacting to the contrary policy put into practice by France and which hinders the geopolitical vision underlying that policy document.   Appendix: Taiwan as Tortuga pro-cult For years, numerous conferences and seminars on respect for religious freedom have been held in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. CESNUR, but also representatives of various cults, such as the Church of Providence, the Luz del Mundo, the yoga school from Buenos Aires and the Unification Church, always take part. The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)   plays a central role. Taiwan, an island off the coast of China that is disputed by China, is not legally recognised by most countries in the international community and is not represented in the UN in accordance with Resolution 2758 of 1971, which was also signed by the USA and European countries. This makes it a useful free harbour for conducting political and media campaigns that would be embarrassing in the US. This avoids potential diplomatic misunderstandings with Tokyo, which now holds diametrically opposed positions on the issue of new religious movements but is an important ally of the US. In practise, Taiwan has become what the island of Tortuga was to the pirates of the 17th century: a filibuster port that is not subject to the same rules as most other countries. Next chapter: Fascists, spies and gurus. 5. The libertarian network Fascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists   Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network

Luigi Corvaglia A strange religious expert   The 'Foro Espiritual' in Estella, Spain, is, as it says on the city's website , 'a workshop of fraternity where different religious communities coexist in an atmosphere of harmony, peace and joy, seeking meeting points with the aim of the world finding peace'. In short, an ecumenical festival with clear New Age connotations. At the first edition in 2006, the speakers included a certain Ives Guillou, who was presented as an 'expert on religions'. Anyone who knows enough about the ' strategy of tension " and the italian 'anni di piombo' ( years of lead ) will wince when they read this name. It is the real name of the man who went down in history as Yves Guérin-Sérac . He was the founder of the Aginter Presse   agency, a covert terrorist structure that was financed by Salazar's secret police and had links to Western intelligence services. Aginter Presse functioned as a control room for right-wing subversion from 1966 to 1974. Through the neo-fascist organisation Ordine Nuovo , Aginter Presse was involved in terrorist attacks in Italy, starting with the massacre in Piazza Fontana , and in Operation Condor , a CIA plan to eliminate opponents of South American dictatorships in the 1970s. It is somewhat unusual for the grey eminence of international black terrorism to speak about universal love and the 'human family' at a religious festival, especially given the fact that he had been in hiding for decades when he was listed at the festival under his real name. Interestingly, however, this was not the first time Guérin-Serac had participated in events related to the world of alternative spirituality. The journalist Andrea Sceresini inform us  that in 2002 Guérin-Sérac took part in a meeting of the Women's Federation for World Peace, an emanation of the Unification Church . What makes it all even more incomprehensible is that Guérin-Serac was anything but ecumenical, not only politically but also religiously. One man who knew him very well was the lifelong Vincenzo Vinciguerra , who was a member of the neo-fascist groups ‘Ordine Nuovo’ and ‘Avanguardia Nazionale’. He claimed that what struck him most about the figure who called himself Ralf at the time was his religiosity: 'Ralf was very Catholic. Fundamentalist Catholic!' In other words, he was not the type to attend new age festivals.         Vinciguerra, however, added a further notation :   Christian civilisation was built on millions of dead and he had no qualms about doing the same to preserve it! The traditionalist matrix   (a) the doctrine of double effect The twisted logical and moral entanglements that characterise a particular environment in which the political right combines with religious radicalism are difficult to see through. For example, there are two glaring contradictions in the lines above. The first relates to the coexistence of the fundamentalist Catholic and the mass murderer in one and the same person - specifically in Guérin-Serac. The second contradiction is that of one who professes a form of Catholicism that is hostile to ecumenism, because he is fundamentalist, and actively participates in events organised by other cults. To solve these apparent puzzles, we need to unravel the skein and start where the thread of the story begins. Following it will take us to unimaginable places.  The proximity of Catholic traditionalism to murders and terrorist attacks was already evident during the Algerian war. The OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète)  was a French clandestine paramilitary organisation with the slogan 'French Algeria or death'. It was founded in Madrid in 1961 under the protection of Francisco Franco's fascist government and had as its main political reference the Catholic counter-revolutionary organisation La Cité Catolique , which supplied the OAS with numerous fighters. In fifteen months, the OAS caused around 1,500 deaths through terrorist attacks of unprecedented cruelty. After the Evian Agreement between the French government and the Algerian Liberation Front, which laid the foundations for Algerian independence from France, became known, the OAS decided to carry out an assassination attempt on de Gaulle, who was considered a traitor. This failed and the organisation disbanded. As anomalous as it may seem, it should be noted that in Catholic circles linked to the military hierarchies, the practise of torture and murder was considered worthy of absolution. This was based on the ideas of Aristotle, St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine of Hippo. Louis Delarue, chaplain of a unit deployed in Algeria, said that one had to choose between two evils, and letting a bandit temporarily suffer the death penalty was the lesser.   Probably the best justification for the nefarious deeds of Catholic activists was provided by St Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of the double effect : 'The evil caused by an action directed towards the good does not invalidate the morality of the action itself'.   Among the OAS volunteers was Yves Guérin-Sérac , who apparently based his mission on the logic of St Thomas, as he was later prepared to kill millions of people in order to achieve the goal of protecting traditional Christian society. b) Subversion and revolution   After the defeat in Algeria, Guérin-Sérac and other OAS veterans fled first to Franco’s Spain and then to Salazar's Portugal in order to avoid being sentenced for desertion and treason. It was here that the idea of founding an international anti-communist organisation took shape. This structure was to consist of specialists in the fight against ' subversion '. This concept is of central importance. An important reference for the OAS fighters is said to have been La Cité Catolique . It is therefore appropriate to say a few words about this organisation. It was a Catholic counter-revolutionary organisation led by Jean Ousset . He saw the root of all evil in 'subversion'. By this he meant the distortion of the Christian order, natural law and the Creator's plan, a distortion that had been given its greatest impetus by the French Revolution. It was no coincidence that the organisation's journal, 'Verbe', described itself as a civic training organ for the counter-revolution. Ultimately, what the military called 'counterinsurgency' had its roots in Catholic radicalism. So although Ousset had fully followed Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime during the German occupation of France and later said that he had nothing to apologise for in this regard, the Cité Catolique cannot be described as a fascist organisation, but rather as reactionary. Similarly, the structure developed by Guérin-Sérac, who was primarily a Catholic traditionalist, was geared towards the defence of 'Western values' threatened by communism and related subversive forces, rather than fascist ideology.   From the 1960s onwards, this fight against subversion also took the form of the defence of the 'white presence' in the few African territories that remained in European hands.   Ousset was not alone in this battle. The same struggle against modernity and the disruption of the natural order was waged in Brazil by Plinio Correa de Oliveira  and his association Tradition, Family and Property . What Ousset called 'subversion', Correa de Oliveira called 'revolution'. De Oliveira argued that Christianity had suffered a dramatic spiritual decline since the 15th century due to the spread of social egalitarianism and moral liberalism, which had put an end to the righteousness that had characterised mediaeval society.   He therefore considered it necessary to fully restore Christian civilisation through the reintroduction of social hierarchies and aristocratic titles, as well as the dissolution of socialist parties . De Oliveira was the advocate of a programme for the 'restoration of order', which was described as a return to a   Christian civilisation, austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacred, anti-egalitarian and anti-liberal. TFP has remained true to this goal by actively participating in the efforts of reactionary forces to depose democratically elected presidents in Latin America, beginning with the coups in Brazil in 1964 and that of Pinochet in Chile in 1973. Margareth Power writes  that the TFP maintained a "mutually supportive relationship" with Pinochet's dictatorship for seventeen years, justifying the violation of human rights with the overriding need to fight communism. This is the same logic used by the Catholic OAS military in Algeria.   Penny Lernoux points out  that the actions of the TFP were in line with the goals of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) , which not only supported the coup but even seems to have financed the TFP for its work against democracy in Chile  (page 297). There are even reports of martial arts training camps in Rio de Janeiro for members of the TFP, the army and the police. In those years, the TFP forged links with the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) , which, according to Benjamin A. Cowan , was "a secretive and often questionable organisation whose activities in the second half of the 20th century ranged from spreading panic to overt or covert support for right-wing terrorism“ (page 156). The fifth WACL congress, held in Manila in 1971, was hosted by dictator Ferdinand Marcos and was attended by the Brazilian and Argentinian delegations of the TFP (Power, op.cit., p. 98). In the 1980s, the TFP extended its reach further by joining forces with and co-founding the International Policy Forum  of the US New Right theorist Paul Weyrich .   Plinio Correa de Oliveira and Jean Ousset did not like each other because the Brazilian found the Frenchman too socialist and because of his allusions to the French counter-revolutionary culture of the 19th century, which always harboured a certain hostility towards the ruling bourgeoisie, as he considered it to be secular and Masonic. However, the two lessons are composed in an Italian counter-revolutionary association that has both Ousset and de Oliveira as cultural references: Alleanza Cattolica .   c) Aginter Presse   In May 1974, after the 'Carnation Revolution' had brought democracy back to Portugal, a group of soldiers stormed the premises of a press agency at Rua des Pracas 13 in Lisbon on the orders of an official from the PIDE, Salazar's secret police. The agency was Aginter Presse , founded by Guérin-Sérac. Analysis of the documents found revealed that the fake press agency was an international centre of subversion, the control and coordination room of an unconventional war, capable of carrying out espionage operations, organising attacks, training mercenaries and infiltrating revolutionary movements. The agency consisted of   - an espionage centre linked to the Portuguese secret services and other Western intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and the West German Gehlen network ; - a recruitment and training centre for mercenaries and terrorists specialising in attacks and sabotage, especially in Third World countries;    - a political organisation called 'Orde et Tradition ', flanked by a military arm called 'Organisation d'Action Contre le     Communisme International' (OACI) .   In the Rua des Pracas archives, evidence was found of active cooperation between Aginter Presse and the security services of major Western countries, which commissioned the agency to carry out 'dirty' operations that were not officially allowed to be carried out by government agencies of democratic countries. The American services supported the agency, for example, in the anti-communist plan Stay Behind , in which the Italian paramilitary secret organisation Gladio  was also involved. Relations with the American intelligence were conducted via intermediary organisations that avoided directly financing the Aginter Presse. One of these organisations was the John Birch Society . This organisation of the economic and religious right is the prototype of a galaxy of conservative foundations and think tanks that form the backbone of American soft power . We will see later what role they play in supporting 'religious freedom" in the world. This paradoxical struggle against subversion through subversion experienced its greatest stage in Italy with the so-called strategy of tension , which began with the Piazza Fontana bombing  in 1969. The documents of Judge Salvini, who was in charge of investigating the massacre, clearly show that the agency and Guérin-Sérac himself were involved in the attack. In June 2005, the Court of Cassation ruled that the massacre was the work of a "subversive group founded in Padua within the Ordine Nuovo' , a neo-fascist group founded by Pino Rauti, whose links with Guérin-Sérac have been proven, as Judge Salvini also stated in the parliamentary commission of enquiry into the massacres . The relations between Ordine Nuovo and parts of the Italian secret service were so close that one cannot speak of a simple infiltration of the organisation into the security services  , but of two parallel and coordinated structures. Ordine Nuovo was also referred to as the ' prosthesis of the deviated services' . The Ordine Nuovo also consisted of young people who were fascinated by mystical and esoteric cultures. Rauti himself had them practise magical rituals. The culture of the Ordine Nuovo was permeated by an anti-modern, hierarchical and spiritualist attitude (see Stefania Limiti, Potere Occulto, ChiareLettere, 2022, p. 278). Through the OAS and Aginter Presse, European neo-fascism underwent a strategic and fundamental change: from an anti-American and anti-Soviet stance to a defence of the West, even becoming a force defending Atlanticism.   d) Alleanza Cattolica During the trial for the massacre in Piazza Fontana, Giancarlo Rognoni, the leader of the terrorist group Ordine Nuovo  in Milan in the 1960s, who was accused of helping Delfo Zorzì to smuggle the suitcase containing the explosives into the bank where the massacre took place, was defended by Benedetto Tusaan, a representative of the traditionalist association Alleanza Cattolica . Another representative of Alleanza Cattolica, Mauro Ronco, defended Carlo Maria Maggi, one of the most important representatives of the Ordine Nuovo in northern Italy, who is considered a 'theorist of massacres'. As the insider Roberto De Mattei , who was one of the first activists, writes, 'Alleanza Cattolica was the backbone of Catholic reaction in Italy in the decade 1970-1980 '. The organisation was founded in 1968 by Giovanni Cantoni  together with Agostino Sanfratello . Italian traditionalism, which saw its fulcrum in AC, was also always very critical of the “ Risorgimento ” , the political  and  social movement   that led to the unity of Italy in 19th century,   which was seen as the Italian version of the French Revolution. Alleanza Cattolica was therefore dedicated to spreading revisionist interpretations of the history of the Risorgimento and the apologetics of the various 'insurrections', i.e. the Catholic popular uprisings against the liberal and democratic revolutions (Vendée in France, Sanfedistas in Italy, Cristeros in Mexico, etc.). Sanfratello is close to the neo-fascist terrorist Franco Freda  and was the mentor of Roberto Fiore , the founder of the extreme right-wing movement Terza Posizione . Freda was convicted for the 1969 bombings in Italy, then for incitement to racial hatred and subversive association. Fiore, on the other hand, was sentenced by the Italian judiciary in 1985 for the offences of subversive association and armed gang. During his years as a fugitive, Fiore was protected by MI6 as an 'agent of British intelligence'.  In 1991, the European Commission of Inquiry into Racism and Xenophobia confirmed his association with MI6  since the early 1980s. Fiore and Sanfratello are also the founders of the political movement " Forza Nuova ", on whose lists Sanfratello himself stood as a candidate in 2003. President of Forza Nuova was another representative of Italian catholicism, the jurist Piero Vassallo,  author of an essay in defence of the Nazis in court in Nuremberg. There are many lawyers in the AC. Among them is Alfredo Mantovano , who at the time of writing is Undersecretary of State in the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and responsible for the secret services.   However, the most influential lawyer in AC is Massimo Introvigne . He joined Alleanza Cattolica in 1972, Introvigne soon became the most active member of the association and one of the main signatories of the magazine "Cristianità", the official organ of AC. in 2008, he even succeeded founder Cantoni, who had suffered a stroke, in the official role of 'Reggente Vicario', but effectively at the head of the organisation (Cantoni only retained the position of Regent in an honorary capacity). Introvigne continued the tradition of insurrectionary apologetics by founding the Centre for Counter-Revolutionary Studies (CESCOR)   in Turin. But what is Alleanza cattolica? The organisation says it is committed to defending the 'social doctrine of the Church', where 'social doctrine' has nothing to do with a commitment to solving social problems, but rather with the instructions that believers should follow in the public sphere according to the principles of 'natural morality'. De Mattei writes :   Giovanni Cantoni's encounter with Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, whose major work Revolution and Counter-Revolution became the basic text for the training of young fighters, was decisive for him.   However, Introvigne writes in an article  in 'Cristianità' on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jean Ousset's magnum opus "Pour qu'Il règne" that the founder of Alleanza Cattolica chose Correa de Oliveira's text as a "reference manual" because it was a simpler compendium of counter-revolutionary doctrine than Ousset's texts, whose lavish complexity did not make them easily accessible. Nevertheless, Ousset remains an important reference for the members. As Introvigne himself told me in a private communication, "Alleanza Cattolica has always 'navigated' between Correa de Oliveira and Ousset, recognising that there was also a pluralism within the counter-revolutionary world, participating in Ousset's famous Lausanne congresses and maintaining no less friendly relations with this world than with the TFP."   Ultimately, the Alleanza Cattolica moves between the organisation that was dear to the OAS fighters (and whose veterans flowed into the Aginter Presse) and the Brazilian association that collaborated with the South American caudillos protected by the CIA.   Alleaanza Cattolica has produced two new entities, one by secession and one by budding. The Lepanto Foundation  was born through secession. This split was allegedly the result of a disagreement that arose during the referendum campaign on the repeal of the law on voluntary abortion in 1981 between those who held a 'maximalist' position, who wanted to prevent abortion even for therapeutic reasons, and those who, on the other hand, for reasons of expediency, had bowed to a position that agreed with a minimalist goal, i.e. maintaining the possibility of abortion in the event of the mother's death. The maximalists, including Sanfratello and De Mattei, therefore decided to leave the association and found the  Lepanto Centre .   The two realities, which later diverged more and more on various issues, especially with regard to Bergoglio's magisterium, instead pursued in a singular synchrony in following the development of 'Tradition, Family and Property' towards a US-style neoconservatism. It is necessary to dwell on this development for a moment.   (e) neocon slip   From the mid-1980s, Tradition, Family and Property came under considerable fire from the institutions. A scandal had already shaken the image of the TFP in France at the end of the 1970s. The Saint Benoit school, founded by the TFP in Chateauroux in 1977, hit the headlines when former members of the association and concerned family members denounced the indoctrination of children that took place there through manipulative pressure and led to negative effects on their relationships with their families. This indoctrination allegedly led the children to fully identify with the organisation and its goals, which had a negative impact on their family relationships. In particular, many students were made to see their parents, especially fathers with prestigious professional positions, as an expression of the 'revolutionary' values that the organisation was supposed to combat. A report on the school's aberrations entitled ' Tradition, Family, Property. Catholic association or millenarian sect? " was compiled by anonymous writers. Among the other accusations made in the dossier was the excessive veneration of the founder's mother, Mrs Lucilia, whose locks of hair were elevated to the status of relics. Following this report, the school was closed. At a court hearing in 1982, it was established that the students had been subjected to psychological measures to make them members of the organisation. In 1984, following a parliamentary investigation, Venezuela banned the TFP, accusing it of practising forms of psychological conditioning of its followers. The following year, the Brazilian Bishops' Conference declared that the TFP was incompatible with the Church 'because of its esoteric character, its religious fanaticism, the cult reserved for the personality of its founder and his mother and the improper use of the name of the Virgin Mary' (XXIII National Assembly of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference, Itaici, 18 April 1985). Two things then happened. Firstly, the TFP published a haphazard pamphlet destined, however, to inaugurate a fortunate thread and entitled Brainwashing. A Myth Exploited by the New 'Therapeutic Inquisition . Its central theme was that mental manipulation was a myth used to combat religion by a fictitious and conspiratorial 'anti-cult movement' made up of psychiatrists and communists . in 1991, TFP reiterated this by publishing in French "The New Atheist and Psychiatric Inquisition Calls Those They Wants to Destroy 'Cults'", by Gustavo Antonio and Luís Sérgio Solimeo, ed. Société Française pour la Defence de la Tradition, Famille et Propriété, Paris 1991, translation of a Spanish text from 1985), which already makes the concept clear in the title.   The second event was that Correa de Oliveira and his followers suddenly developed a vision in which they saw Christian America as the only counter-revolutionary force capable of responding to European secularism, the fruit of the French Revolution, and the 'Marxisation" of the Latin Church, which had gone so far as to criticise Tradition (and even TFP).   Tradition, Family and Property has collaborated with representatives and associations of American conservatism such as Paul Weyrich  and the Council for National Policy (CNP) . This is a secret organisation described by the New York Times as 'a little-known club of a few hundred of the country's most influential conservatives' that meets three times a year behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference.   Their European sister organisations of TFP, such as Alleanza Cattolica and the Lepanto Foundation, have taken the same stance, allying themselves with American neoconservatism in the fight against secularism and defending 'religious freedom". De Mattei (Lepanto Foundation) is a member of the board of experts of the Heritage Foundation  and the American Enterprise Institute  as well as the Acton Institute    - some of the most active think tanks in the American neoconservative galaxy. Introvgne himself writes in his book on Plinio Correa de Oliveira ( Una battaglia nella notte , 2008) that TFP has succeeded in linking with the American right " a set of interests involving the major foundations around which conservative culture revolves " (p. 210).   All of these associations are part of a vast network of Christian pro-free market organisations called the Atlas Network , which is known to operate [...] as a silent extension of US foreign policy, [...] think tanks associated with Atlas receive silent funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, an essential arm of American soft power. American soft power.   Lee Fang writes this in Sphere of influence: How American libertarians are remaking Latin American politics , The Intercept, 9 August 2017 In view of this change in political perspective, the foundation of a new institution from the AC in 1988 seems to follow the same logical sequence. This was the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni ( Centre for the Study of New Religions ), CESNUR. Its founder and director is Massimo Introvigne .   f) CESNUR, the counter- revolution with the mask CESNUR is a well-known research centre for 'new religious movements' that claims to be 'independent of any religious or denominational organisation'. Although Introvigne has often responded to criticism of the dubious neutrality of a centre for the study of religions whose main representatives are members of Alleanza Cattolica (e.g. Pierluigi Zoccatelli, Marco Respinti and Andrea Menegotto) by pointing out that CESNUR has nothing to do with Alleanza cattolica and works in an avalutative and scientific manner, it was Introvigne himself who declared in 1993 :   Thus, the activists of Alleanza Cattolica, together with others, have founded and run CESNUR, the Centre for the Study of New Religions, [... ...]  within the context of an apologetic response that does not fail to return to the broader framework of the dramatic struggle between evangelisation and anti-evangelisation, and thus, in the language of the Catholic counter-revolutionary school from which Alleanza Cattolica draws its inspiration, between revolution and counter-revolution, a framework whose thematic presentation constitutes one of the main objectives of the association.   In ‘La questione della nuova religiosità’ by Massimo Introvigne, published by Cristianità, 1993 (ISBN 88-85236-14-6).   "The Catholic counter-revolutionary school from which Alleanza Cattolica draws its inspiration' and which forms the backbone of CESNUR's activities is that of Ousset and Correa de Oliveira. Over the years, CESNUR has emerged as the main actor in favour of 'religious freedom", presenting itself as a scientific authority entitled to defend the cults criticised by the so-called 'anti-cult movement', which is hostile to free belief. This includes spreading the idea in publications and at congresses that spiritual manipulation does not exist. We are once again faced with the paradox from which we started, namely that Catholic traditionalism thunderstruck by ecumenism on the road to Damascus. Perhaps it was not Damascus. The dark side of politics   Jeffrey M. Bale  of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies , arguably the foremost international expert on political and religious extremism, terrorism, unconventional warfare and covert political operations, does not hesitate to write in the second volume of The Darkest Side of Politics  that unconventional warfare play a role organisations, promote " political and religious agendas that, in the name of religious and democratic freedoms, actually aim to defend extremist, totalitarian and anti-democratic groups from investigation, criticism and possible state repression, and more generally to resist or even drive back secular humanism, liberalism and modernism in the West ". The expert adds that 'perhaps the most important case of these organisations is CESNUR '.. The 'sub rosa' agenda of defending religious freedom with paradoxical 'liberal' arguments (since its director is a 'right-wing Catholic activist'), the "sub rosa" agenda of this centre is to fight against secularism. Seen this way, CESNUR appears as the “cognitive” version of the Aginter Presse. That was the control and coordination room of a physical and psychological war against communism; CESNUR is the control room of a cultural and cognitive influence war against secularism. Indeed, Massimo Introvigne still describes French secularism today as a consequence of the Jacobin terror (revolution, subversion), whose heirs would be the government agency Mission interministérielle de vigilance et de lutte contre les dérives sectaires (MIVILUDES )  and the Fédération Européenne des Centres de Recherche et d'Information sur le Sectarisme (FECRIS) , a French organisation that brings together European associations for the defence of and information on the sectarian phenomenon. He writes in an article dated 9 May 2023: France, even more than Germany, has always been the European country that has made intolerance of religion almost a national sport. Article 2 of the French constitution consists of the famous motto liberté, egalité, fraternité. [...] Not everyone knows that the full text originally contained the closing words 'ou la mort'. [...] After 240 years, the anti-religious mentality of a certain France has still not completely disappeared. [...]   In short, the enemy is still Robespierre.    Go to Fascists, spies and gurus. 4. Attack on secularism   F ascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff) Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists

Luigi Corvaglia A very powerful religious holding company "The good news is that thanks to the intervention of the CIA, the department of the Greek secret service that deals with new religious movements has been closed and the staff dismissed!!!". So says one of the numerous documents found by Greek police in the mid-1990s when they stormed Scientology's headquarters in Athens and seized a variety of internal material   from the cult some of which was made public. Some of the documents contain references to CIA support for Scientology's foreign branches.   Investigators also found thousands of pieces of information about the private lives of citizens and evidence of actual espionage activities. Scientology does indeed have its own highly efficient intelligence structure: the Office for Special Affairs (OSA) . The former head of the local FBI office in Los Angeles said that Scientology has 'one of the most effective intelligence services, rivaling even the FBI'. To better understand what we are talking about, an interlude is necessary to introduce the reader to the Scientology doctrine and its 'ethics'.   a) Scientology doctrine in a nutshell   Scientology was founded by Ron L. Hubbard a year and a half after the success of his 1950 book " Dianetics : The Modern Science of Mental Health ", which formed its basis. According to Hubbard, the mind is divided into three parts: the analytical mind, the reactive mind and the somatic mind and most physical and mental problems are nothing more than problems caused by traumatic  events stored in the reactive mind and called engram s . It is possible to   eliminate engrams, and thus eliminate the reactive mind, in order to reach the state of “ clear”, a state in which the individual is able to realise their full potential. This is possible through a therapy described as auditing   in which the pre-clear confronts the engrams of their reactive mind with the help of an auditor. The process is a one-to-one technique in which the auditor asks questions and the pre-clear searches their mind and provides answers. These levels of auditing, called "degrees”, are fee-based,  like all Scientology courses and services. The E-meter  is an indispensable tool for auditing. This is an artefact that resembles a skin conductivity meter and records what Hubbard calls the "electronic structure of the reactive mind”. Fluctuations in the needle of the E-meter indicate the presence of a 'mental mass' that acts as a resistance to the flow of the E-meter's electrical energy, indicating the presence of engrams and the untruthfulness of the adept's confessions, which are obviously blocked by spiritual problems. Once the state of "clearness" is reached, one witnesses the disappearance of a multitude of diseases, an increase in intelligence and a decrease in accidents, 'for engrams predispose to accidents' (p. 122). All this was already described in Dianetics in 1950. Hubbard further developed his doctrine on this basis and founded the Hubbard Association of Scientologists in 1952, from which Scientology emerged in 1954. Apart from the many 'technologies' for achieving incredible advantages, the doctrine is based on the Gnostic idea of an immortal soul that can free itself from the prison of matter through knowledge. Hubbard calls it thetan . In Scientology, thetans are believed to be reborn in new bodies from time to time through a process called 'assumption', a concept equivalent to reincarnation. The expression   Body thetan  refers to a disembodied thetan that is stuck in, on or next to a human body. All human bodies are said to be infested with these disembodied thetans, or groups of them, known as 'clusters', which are formed in a hierarchy with a leader, a deputy leader and other members of the group. This has its origins in the story of Xenu . This mythical story deserves a description. According to "Scientology's Advanced Technology", Xenu was the extraterrestrial ruler of a "Galactic Confederacy" who 75 million years ago brought billions of inhabitants of his overcrowded empire to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") to kill them after rounding them up with the help of psychiatrists under the pretext of a tax audit (that's funny). Psychiatrists play the same role in the Scientology narrative as Jews do in anti-Semitic doctrines. Then he had them loaded into spaceships that resemble the Douglas Company's DC-8 aircraft in every way (that's funny too), had them brought to Earth and stacked around volcanoes, then killed with hydrogen bombs. The official Scientology writings claim that the thetans of these aliens were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic tape" and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to some kind of cinema (weird, huh?) where they were forced to watch a "super colossal 3D movie" for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard called "various misleading data" (collectively referred to as the R6 implant ) into the unfortunate thetans' memories, memories that "have to do with God, the devil, space enterprises, etc." These included all world religions; Hubbard attributed Roman Catholicism and the image of the crucifixion in particular to Xenu's influence. The two 'implantation stations' mentioned by Hubbard, i.e. 'cinemas', were allegedly located in Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. These disembodied thetans then infested the bodies of people on Earth, causing mental damage that can only be repaired by Scientology auditing. For a fee. These events are known in Scientology as " Incident II" , and the traumatic associated memories as " The Wall of Fire "or, as mentioned, " R6 Implant ". The Church of Scientology normally only reveals the story of Xenu to members who have completed a long series of courses (which cost a lot of money). After reaching the 'state of Clear', the individual is supposed to be able to ascend through 8 further spiritual levels, called OT levels ( Operating Thetan ) , from OT I to OT VIII. Hubbard described Xenu's history in 1967 in Operating Thetan Level III (OT III) and warned that the "R6 implant" was designed to kill anyone who revealed it or "attempted to dislodge it". Despite this, much material about Xenu leaked to the public through court documents and copies of Hubbard's notes circulated over the internet, and it appears that no one died as a result. A peculiarity of Scientology is therefore the concept of the 'misunderstood word ' . Progress on the 'bridge to total freedom' (as Scientology defines itself) can come up against an obstacle if one encounters terms in the study that one does not understand. This, according to Hubbard, would lead to a dangerous process of introversion, abandonment of study and the commission of ' overts ', i.e. those 'contrary' acts that prevent the release of true spiritual potential. Scientology has a so-called "Study Technology" to which it devotes a veritable religious/professional course and has invented no less than nine different methods of "clarifying words". These are essentially the ideas that Scientology followers believe in. What they do has mainly to do with so-called Ethics . To uphold right action, the movement has an 'Ethics Section' to which the follower turns or is sent when sub-optimal situations arise in his personal life or in the group. The Section, headed by an 'Ethics Officer', develops special programmes (often for a fee) to bring their 'ethics' back 'in' . Situations that may involve the Ethics Section are: Homosexuality; family members who are critical of the follower's membership, but especially criticism of the organisation, its founder, the doctrine by suppressive persons  that is, i.e. persons whom Scientology perceives as its enemies, whose "pernicious' actions are intended to suppress the progress of individual Scientologists or the Scientology movement. The 'attack the attacker' policy was codified by Hubbard in the late mid-1960s in response to government investigations into Scientology. In 1966, Hubbard wrote down the correct procedure for attacking the enemies of Scientology:     (1)  Spot who is attacking us.   (2)  Start Investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies.   (3)  Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them.   (4)  Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press.   Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us.  Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.(…)  Never wait.  Never talk about us - only them.  Use their blood, sex, crime to get headlines.  Don't use us .   I speak from 15 years of experience in this.  There has never yet been an attacker who was not reeking with crime. All we had to do was look for it and murder would come out.  (from Attacks on Scientology , "Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter," 25 February 1966 ) . The most important management tool for suppressive people is the Office for Special Affairs (OSA ), Scientology's secret service.     Scientology and the CIA Examples of state intervention in support of Scientology are certainly not limited to the above-mentioned protection provided by the CIA to the Church in Greece. Among the documents published on Wikileaks is a report that after the arrival of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Germany, German Scientologists were invited to a briefing at the US embassy. With the US Secretary of State! Wikileaks has published cables  showing that the American consulate in Hamburg received information about the German task force against Scientology and in particular the well-known church opponent Ursula Caberta  from Christoph Ahlhaus , who later became mayor of the city. When Gerry Armstrong , who is regarded as Scientology's greatest enemy, arrived in Russia, the authorities were informed of his arrival by the American embassy in Moscow  so that they could take detention measures against him. In short, not only does Scientology seem to have more than cordial relations with the US government, but it even seems that the US authorities are doing everything they can to help the church get rid of its enemies.   Greg Mitchell , the founder of The Mitchell Company, is the Commissioner of the Church of Scientology in Washington D.C.  and a member of the Church of Scientology himself. According to insiders, his job is to help the Church gain credibility with influential decision-makers. He has been at home in various US governments since the 1990s. According to disclosure reports from the US House of Representatives and Senate, the controversial religious group has paid more than 1 million dollars to Greg Mitchell since 2003 to carry out his lobbying work. According to White House visitor logs, Gregory Mitchell participated in a 'Criminal Justice Working Group" with political advisor David Pope in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House on 28 September 2009. The Church of Scientology is an informal member of the NGO International Religious Freedom Roundtable , which Mitchell chairs. According to the IRFR's official website, "the IRFR "works to engage the United States government and urge its leaders to make religious freedom a higher priority in foreign policy and national security'. This goal appears to have been absolutely achieved with the passage of the   International Religious Freedom Act  in 1998.   In 1989, the memoirs of Miles Copeland , an ex- CIA officer representing the 'libertarian' far-right (i.e. strong supporters of the free market), current associated with the magazine National Review , were published in London . A curiosity: he is the father of 'Police' drummer Stewert Copeland. In his book ' The Game Player ' , Copeland tells of a plan hatched by his colleague Bob Mandelstam in the first half of the 1950s. The operation was called 'Occultism in High Places'. The idea was simple: since some heads of state and government were in the habit of consulting astrologers and occultists, American intelligence officers were to 'co-operate' with these occultists in order to turn them into channels of influence for the agency.   The plan worked, for example, when a "clairvoyant" sent by the agents convinced the president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah to make a visit to China, during which a CIA-inspired coup d'état overthrew the absent leader. According to Copeland, US intelligence also influenced Indonesian President Sukarno 'quite significantly' through 'psychics" and 'fortune tellers". But the agency also allegedly utilised spiritual movements. This applies to the political-religious movement Moral Rearmament , founded by Lutheran pastor Frank Buchanan, which, according to Copeland, offered agents the opportunity to influence not only African and Asian politicians but also European leaders via secret channels. At one point Copeland mentions Scientology. Unsurprisingly, the church founded by Ron L. Hubbard  was seen as an excellent means of influencing people who were themselves influential. In fact, Scientology's persuasion techniques are well known and are strikingly similar to those of the CIA. Copeland then reports an interesting fact:   We sent into the Scientology cult our agent, who under the direction of Ron Hubbard himself became “clear,” but then he demanded and started to receive ever more “monetary compensation for operational expenditures,” which together with his savings he gave over to  Dianetics . [2]   Dianetics is, as I said, the registered trademark that describes the 'technology' developed by L. Ron Hubbard and the fundamental principles of mind and spirit on which Scientology is based. In other words, it is not clear whether the CIA was trying to infiltrate and influence Scientology or whether the opposite was the case. It probably went both ways. What is certain is that the process known in Scientology as auditing  is very similar to the polygraph-based interrogation in the Kubark Counter-Interrogation Manual . Kubark is a code name used by the CIA to define itself. It was used at the 'School of the Americas' , a US military training facility in Panama, among other places. The students included some of the most bloodthirsty personalities in Central and South America, including Manuel Noriega  and Omar Torrijos   (Panama), Leopoldo Galtieri  and Roberto Eduardo Viola  (Argentina), Hugo Banzer Suárez  (Bolivia).   Scientology literature is full of code names and acronyms that correspond to the use of intelligence documents, and some of the Church's training routines appear to have been taken directly from the Kubark manual. Scientology's training routine, TR-1, is called "Dear Alice". In this routine, the trainee is asked to read random sentences from Lewis Carroll's book "Alice in Wonderland" without showing any reaction to the book's whimsicality. The Kubark manual describes an interrogation technique called 'Alice in Wonderland'. Hubbard quotes the Kubark manual almost verbatim when he says that   Detention in a controlled environment and perhaps for a lengthy period is frequently essential to a successful counterintelligence interro- gation of a recalcitrant source. Of course, none of this is proof of an overlap between Scientology and the CIA, but it is certainly evident that L. Ron Hubbard was aware of these techniques and intended to use them for the same purpose that the CIA used them: to gain control and power over others. In truth, Copeland claims that a pact was also made between the CIA and Scientology, but without providing evidence or revealing the contents. However, we are certain that there was another agreement, in 1993. This is a story that needs to be reconstructed.   Operation Snow White Relations between Scientology and the American government were not always cordial. In the 1970s, Scientology carried out an infiltration and espionage of American institutions, known as Operation Snow White , which ended with an FBI raid on the organisation's headquarters. In this operation, Scientology's intelligence service (then the Guardian's Office, now the Office for Special Affairs - OSA ) illegally gained access to 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, and private organisations critical of Scientology in order to obtain information and delete compromising documents. This was the largest infiltration in US history. At the same time, a bitter 25-year war began between the Church and the Internal Revenue Service, the famous IRS. We are talking about the government agency that managed to put Al Capone in jail for tax evasion, while it failed to do so for murder and drug trafficking. for 25 years, Scientology claimed tax exemption as a religious corporation. More than 50 lawsuits were filed by the organisation against the IRS. In 1993, the IRS unexpectedly capitulated and granted the exemption. Four years later, the New York Times revealed some interesting background to the affair . A private investigator told reporters that he and several other colleagues had been hired by Scientology to gather information on IRS officials, particularly about misconduct at work, alcohol and drug use, and extramarital affairs. Irregolarly, the tax exemption came about at the express request of the IRS director, so the normal approval process was skipped.   It was after this agreement, that the US State Department began to lobby internationally to defend Scientology's interests in all countries of the world. For example, when the German government became involved against Scientology (a 1998 report emphasised the destructive aspects of this 'commercial enterprise disguised as a religion' and a 2007 report by the Ministry of the Interior described the organisation as ' incompatible with the Constitution ' ), a series of firm statements by the US government in defence of the cult followed. For the US, Scientology is a religion and must be protected in the name of 'religious freedom'. Other measures include a document by the Beareau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (BDHRL) , an agency of the US State Department, in which Germany is listed alongside countries such as China as one of the countries that violate religious freedom. The Clinton administration has been very friendly towards Scientology. In November 1996, the President himself wrote an 'exclusive' article on 'what we can do about drugs' for the Scientology magazine 'Freedom', which was later translated into several languages.   His wife Hillary Clinton received members of the Scientology front office ‘ Hands of   Hope ’ in the White House and received a quilt with a quote from L. Ron Hubbard as a gift [ here ] .  This event was later aptly labeled in the media as Clearwatergate  (a cross between Watergate, which engulfed Nixon, and Clearwater, the headquarters of the Church of Scientology). In 1997, Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger met with actor John Travolta , a believer in the Church, and other Scientologists to discuss the German government's stance on Scientology (TIME 22September 1997). According to "George" magazine in March 1998, President Clinton met personally with John Travolta. Clinton praised the 'educational' materials of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to the 'George' report, he said: 'Your programme sounds great' and added: “I would like to help you with your problem in Germany with Scientology”.   On March 21 1997, the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service reported that President Clinton had complied with the requests of Scientologist Tom Cruise  by instructing his newly confirmed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to arrange talks with German Foreign Minister Kinkel about Scientology's claims of religious persecution in Germany (Berliner Morgenpost, 23 November 1998).   In a letter of 'warm greetings' dated December 22 1999, Clinton thanked Scientologists for 'all your efforts to promote and build just communities united in understanding, compassion and mutual respect".   The official reason given for the Clintons' interest in Scientology was that the President had a Scientology sympathiser as a roommate when he was a student. The US government's interference in Scientology outside US territory has been even more serious. At the end of 1998, for example, the US State Department sponsored a concert by jazz pianist and Scientology loyalist Chick Corea  in Berlin because he was allegedly not allowed to perform in Germany due to 'religious discrimination'. Just how far the US government's administrative support of cults can go is shown by the advice of the US State Department spokesman, who recommended that Germans watch the film 'Mission Impossible' starring Tom Cruise. The Hollywood star is Scientology's ambassador in Europe. In a letter to the State Department, he spoke seriously and openly about his lobbying work for Scientology: ... I appreciate the valuable assistance the State Department has given to members of my Church in protecting their rights, especially in Europe. It is even known an intervention by the US Consulate General in Hamburg  about the building permit issued by the city's technical authority for the establishment of the new Scientology Centre  in the city, which concerned, among other things, the number of toilets and showers.   Many influential politicians in the United States have been recruited by Scientology. Some of them can be shown to be dependent on Scientology campaign contributions. An outdated list  can be found on the Internet.   The agreement between the government and Scientology was accompanied by a secret protocol that has not yet been made public. What could be the content? Surely we can guess the potential of a planetary organisation like Scientology, whose main objectives include collecting and storing a large amount of information so that it can blackmail and compromise anyone, from the ordinary member who has gone astray to the powerful of Earth. To name one example: Arseny Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, who probably attended several courses in Scientology many years ago as director of the Aval Bank of Kiev, is an example of a man whose personal information would be extremely interesting not only to Scientology but also to the American intelligence services. Certainly, the weight of the Church founded by L. Ron Hubbard seems to have grown disproportionately in the political sphere since the mid-1990s, when a powerful lobbying effort was initiated that has been meticulously described by Stephen A. Kent  of the University of Alberta. The church funded politics and its celebrities (Tom Cruise, John Travolta and others) personally financed election campaigns. According to Bruno Foucherau, Scientology paid $725,000 to a political lobbying firm in 1997 and $420,000 the following year. Greg Jensen, one of the church's most respected leaders, allegedly sponsored the campaign of Senator Benjamin A. Gillman, who would later become chairman of the OSCE's Commission on Religious Freedom , an organisation that nearly led to a diplomatic incident over its attacks on France's anti-cult policies at the OSCE meeting (in the section moderated by Introvigne, director of CESNUR ).   Emblematic of Scientology's closeness to the US government is the affair surrounding the dismissal of Arnaud Palisson , who headed the "Sects and Cults" department of the French secret service for ten years when Sarkozy was in government, who received Tom Cruise at the Elysée Palace and was very accommodating towards the Church. Asked about the affair, Palisson, who now lives in Canada, replied: " Sarkozy is the American. He does not want to do anything that displeases him' . Operation Snow White is now just a memory.   Scientology and the network of 'cult apologists' The Cult Awareness Network (CAN)  was the most important organisation to emerge from the anti-cult movement in America. In 1991, Time magazine quoted the then director of CAN, Cynthia Kisser, in the article 'The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power ' . Kisser stated that: "  Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members” . These comments and other forms of criticism from CAN caught the attention of the Church of Scientology and ‘Landmark Education’, which separately took legal action against the organisation. in 1996, Scientology sued "deprogrammer" Rick Ross  and CAN for violating the civil rights of Jason Scott , a member of a Pentecostal church who was abducted by Ross and two other associates to undergo "deprogramming" at the behest of his parents. CAN was involved because a contact person in the organisation had referred Scott's mother to Rick Ross. In the trial, Jason Scott was represented by Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientologist lawyer. Ross and CAN lost the case, which drove CAN into bankruptcy. The puzzling thing is that the association's phone numbers, name, logo and real estate were acquired by Mr Hayes - a member of the Church of Scientology - who gave them away for free to a Californian group whose board includes several Scientology members ( see here ).  In other words: Scientology has formed an anti-cult organisation on its own! Basically, it's like the Mafia founding an anti-Mafia organisation. The new CAN is, as one might suspect, much softer on alternative groups. The new CAN's list of experts includes Gordon Melton  and Massimo Introvigne . The latter is the director and founder of the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) , the former is the director of the American section of the same CESNUR . CESNUR’s benevolence towards Scientology has led some to speculate that the two organisations have a mercenary relationship. The director of CESNUR, who sent me a cease and desist notice on the matter, says this is not true. To be honest, I don't believe it either. It would be wrong to reduce CESNUR's activities to a mean form of intellectual prostitution. The study centre and Scientology seem to have the same goals and pursue them through cultural influence. It is not about buying a service. Right in the middle of the 1990s, when anti-cult campaigns were being activated in Europe and religious freedom control institutes were proliferating in the US, Scientology seemed to become the rallying point for many other minority cults, forming more or less formal and more or less open alliances supported by America's Christian fundamentalist organisations and, by osmosis, by their political credentials. Organisations like the Institute on Religion and Public Policy  are an interesting hodgepodge of diverse people, from ultra-conservative senators to Moonies (the followers of Reverend Moon's Unification Church ) and the followers of Guru Sri Chimmoy. However, this does not prevent the Institute from describing itself as ' fundamentalist Catholic' . The founder and president was Joseph K. Griebosky . In 2004, a former employee of Griebosky's, Daniel Chapman, contacted the well-known activist Gerry Armostrong to inform him that Griebosky received $8,000 per month from Scientology when he founded the IRPP  in 1999. It is possible that Scientology itself paid for the founding of the IRPP. In December 2011, Mark ("Marty") Rathbun, a former high-ranking Scientologist, published on his blog  a Scientology document  titled "Grieboski Programme" dated 29 January 2007, which described "goals" or actions that church leaders believed Grieboski had to take to solve Scientology's problems in Europe and facilitate its entry into Muslim countries.   The Institute on Religion and Public Policy opens up the phenomenon of incongruent aggregations and paradoxical ecumenism. This will become particularly evident in the coming years with the explosion of associations and federations whose declared aim is to lobby national and supranational political bodies to oppose the actions of organisations protecting the victims of cults. The action is best known in Europe, a continent where the anti-cult policies of some countries, notably France, but also Germany, which has imposed significant restrictions on Scientology, pose a threat to those who consider it useful to defend 'religious freedom". The most important organisations of the so-called 'cult apologists' are the Belgian Human Rights WIthout Frontiers (HRWF) , the French Coordination des associations et des particuliers pour la liberté de conscience (CAP LC) and the Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) . Then, of course, there is the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR) , a scientific think tank that supports the demands of the above-mentioned associations with the supposed authority of academic knowledge. Let us briefly examine them. The president of the HRWF is Willy Fautrè , a regular visitor to the US embassy in Brussels and a long-time correspondent for News Network International , an evangelical US publishing group that is fiercely anti-communist (communism meaning anything that deviates from right wing views) and extremely conservative (against abortion, against recognising same-sex couples, etc.). He was also a member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) , an organisation that apparently had links with Scientology . Indeed, the Greek correspondent of the Federation contributed to publications of the church founded by Ron Hubbard and the Moscow delegation published a book in collaboration with Scientology. The French CAP LC  has Thierry Valle  as its president, who is pictured in the photos below (Fig. 29) together with Françoise Morel, a leading Scientology figure, in front of the headquarters of the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) , a front office of the Church of Scientology. The photos were taken by a group of French 'ethical hackers' who were active against Scientology in 2015. The Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) describes itself on its website as 'an interest-led non-governmental organisation registered in the official register of lobbies at the EU Parliament and the Commission in Brussels and Strasbourg, representing six nations' . The current president is Alessandro Amicarelli, who accused me of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party on organ harvesting (see the prologue to this dossier). Incidentally, one of the founding members was Fabrizio d'Agostini , who is still a member of the scientific committee. His form of presentation  is missing a basic piece of information that is, however, easy to find in Scientology publications: he is a high-ranking Scientologist . It would even be OT VIII. One of the founding organisations is Soteria International , an emanation of Atman Yoga  (formerly MYSA Yoga) by Gregorian Bivolaru , the ' sex guru '  who is currently in prison in France  after being on the run for many years. He is facing charges of sexual abuse, human trafficking and more. Rosita Šorytė , the wife of CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne , sits on the FOB's scientific committee.   These organisations work through coordinated lobbying of supranational bodies (UN, OSCE, Council of Europe, ECHR), just as envisaged in the manifesto  written by Introvigne in response to the French law against cults.  We will come back to this.   In 2019, the Scientology front group Fundación para la Mejora de la Vida, la Cultura y la Sociedad  was granted Special Consultative Status by the United Nations . The foundation is headed by Ivan Arjona Pelado  , a high-ranking member of the Church's secret service, the Office for Special Affairs (OSA) . This status will enhance Scientology's ability to speak to the United Nations and will also enable it to organise conferences under the UN umbrella and thus gain new political allies from around the world. The previous year, Ivan Pelado, Greg Mitchell and Eric Roux, a top Scientology figure in Europe and head of the OSA, took part in a summit on religious freedom   in Brussels organised by ACRE, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe. This is a Eurosceptic political group in the European Parliament. The most renowned participants were Ahmed Shaheed , Special Rapporteur on Human Rights at the UN Human Rights Council, and Sam Brownback , former Governor of Kansas and, until Biden's election, US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Brownback's office published the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom . Brownback's selection as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom  in 2018 was made by USCIRF . USCIRF is the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom , the commission that advised the US President in 2020 to obstruct the work of the anti-cult federation FECRIS at the OSCE (see the prologue to this report). Other speakers included the aforementioned Willy Fautrè , President of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) , and Patricia Duval , a French lawyer who is rarely absent from Scientology panels. She is a member of the scientific committee  of the Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) and is one of the authors of the CESNUR magazine on religious freedom Bitter Winter  and the Journal of CESNUR . Also present was Bashy Quraishy  from EMISCO, an association that fights against anti-Islamic prejudice but, strangely enough, fights against the anti-cult movement. This is just one example of the diverse lobbying activities of the network of “cult apologists” at the level of transnational politics.   The actions of Scientology organisations and the cult apologists at European level are facilitated by the benevolence of various French-speaking personalities. For example, the French far-right MEP Maxette Pirbakas  (2019-2024) and the Moroccan businessman Lahcen Hammouch , CEO of Brussels Media , the holding company that publishes the European Times . The former is the organiser of the conference on religious freedom, whose speakers are pictured in Figure 22 (see below), with the MEP third from the left. Lahcen Hammouch  (second from left in the picture) is an entrepreneur who is committed to the cause of the Moroccan Sahara. He is running for mayor of Brussels for the ‘Les Engages’ party, which, according to the newspaper 'Blast', emerged from an ufological cult . Two photos taken at the OSCE Human Rights Meeting in Warsaw in different years give an idea of how coordinated this action is. The first (fig. 32) shows in the front row, from the left, the Scientology delegate Ivan Arjona Pelado , next to him Massimo Introvigne , the director of CESNUR  and Bitter Winter , then Willy Fautrè from Human Rights Without Frontiers  and finally Alessandro Amicarelli  from the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) . In the second row, behind the Scientology representative, Christine Mirre , Vice-President of the Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC) . The first thing the viewer notices is that, apart from the Scientology representative who had not noticed, everyone is smiling at the same camera, even the CAP LC representative in the second row. Like a school group on a field trip, they are one group.     This photo is proudly displayed on the banner of the website of the European Federation for Religious Freedom (FOB). It shows, among other things, the arrival of Bashy Quraishy , the man with the black beret on his head and a colourful scarf, who is just taking his place. Practically all the members of the Brussels Committee for Religious Freedom mentioned a few lines above. The second photo (Fig. 33) is even more telling and shows a briefing with high-ranking representatives of Scientology meeting with representatives of organisations defending "religious freedom". So we are not talking here about a simple 'conflict of interest', but about blatant complicity. It is evident that this is a coordinated and planned action by some Scientology executives (including those of the OSA) and the leaders of the NGOs in defence of religious freedom. The photo was taken shortly before the start of the session in which I would have attended. Go to Fascists, spies and gurus. 3. The black network Back to F ascists, spies and gurus. 1. Prologue (funny stuff)

Luigi Corvaglia The Italian Job   In July 2020, my self-esteem flinched. The annual report on religious freedom in the world  by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) closed with recommendations to U.S. President - then Trump - on how to protect this fundamental right; among the recommendations was to obstruct the work of FECRIS, the European Federation of Centers for Research and Information on Sectarianism, at the annual OSCE Meeting in Warsaw. Well, representing FECRIS at the annual OSCE Human Dimension Conference to denounce abuses in totalitarian cults is exactly the humble person who signs this writing . So began my dossier on the geopolitics of cults  (2022). The incipit was with effect. Trump should have taken care of obstructing me (with all the busyness he's had fighting the " deep state "). This grotesque revelation plunged the stunned reader right onto the scene. Like a shrewd director, after surprising him with other equally grotesque revelations, I led him into an orderly historical reconstruction. It was a story about cults, espionage and psychological warfare. Basically, it was the chronicle of a "spy story" That report would be translated into English, French and Dutch and then published in 2023 in the Fogli di Via series by the de Ferrari Foundation . Jeffrey Augustine , an investigator who is among the best known critics of Scientology in the world, has written on the subject : Corvaglia offers the most accurate description yet read of what is, essentially, a multinational religious-based intelligence operation. Arnaud Palisson , the analyst who headed French intelligence service's "cults and sects" department  for ten years, said: The dossier on geopolitics of is a unique model. [...] I would not have thought that a work that is, after all, a hodgepodge written with a light hand and ironic wit, would be so well received. Internationally renowned researchers and academics began ask me for advice to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of the dynamics I described, especially  with regard to the Italian side. I therefore believe that the time has come to transform the material, which was deliberately presented in a "filmic" way at the time, into a more straightforward and organic treatment, supplementing it with new information and, above all, placing it better in the ideological and political framework. In this prologue, however, I take the liberty of resuming the spirit of that first dossier so that the reader, unfamiliar with the dynamics of the obscure world I am going to discuss, can be introduced to it with the right attitude, i.e. with the curiosity of the incredulous. In order to attract the attention that everyone has for the incongruous, I report some grotesque things that are useful for this purpose. The first is the fact that my narcissism has been tickled not only by the fact that a US government agency has advised the President to obstruct the little person writing here, but also by the further fact that immediately afterwards a non-governmental organisation called the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) proposed that Italy be placed on the list of countries at risk in terms of religious freedom because of my presence. You may be surprised at this by reading the article " Also Europe in the Special Watch List? " (Figures 2 and 3). Figure 2-3 - Excerpt from FOB article saying that all countries where FECRIS operates should be monitored for risks to religious freedom (fig.2) because no French or Russians are going to the OSCE - that is, an Italian is going... (fig.3) To make matters worse, the president of this organisation, Alessandro Amicarelli , accused me in a public Facebook post  of colluding with the Chinese communist regime in the commission of various nefarious acts, including the forced removal of organs  from dissidents (fig.4). The statement is at least original, so the person who doesn't mind uttering it must also be interesting. Let's get to know him. Alessandro Amicarelli , Alex to his friends, is a lawyer practicing in London. His correspondence address, as stated on the U.K. Business Register page , 78 York St, London W1H 1DP, gives the appearance of being  the headquarters of a company with the sympathetic name of "Billy the Duck Ltd" and which  deals in video production and lists only one employee ).In truth, the same address, a small corner room, is home to a dozen other companies  (but no law firm). They will fit in. On his personal page , Amicarelli describes himself as a "lawyer, lecturer and philanthropist" He therefore loves his neighbour, as the etymology of the word suggests. This is made even clearer by the fact that he describes himself as the "Founder and President of the Embassy of Love International " on the aforementioned page. The fact that the name is reminiscent of an ambiguous nightclub inspired me to find out more. The European company search engine North Data  creates interesting networks by connecting companies and individuals together based on their business connections. The tab dedicated to Amicarelli  contains the pattern of connections shown in Figure 6.  If you click on the link to "Embassy of Love Ltd" you will learn that it has its registered office on none other than Regent Street (Figure 7) . Those who know London know that it is a truly exclusive address. However, a simple search for that address reveals an interesting fact. The elegant building is known for harbouring fake addresses for bogus companies, i.e. a virtual address used by thousands of fraudsters (Figure 8). In fact, the address is used by around 4,000 companies, some of which are known to have scammed their investors . However, North Data is an engine that only censuses European companies, while Amicarelli, on his page, claims to have established his embassy of love in the US. In fact, In addition to the company that appears to be registered in Cardiff, Wales, on 16 February 2021, there is another one in the USA that was registered on 6 February 2023 (he likes February) under the name Embassy of Love International Ministries ,   with its registered office in Washington state . The U.S. address corresponds to the Fidelity Building in Spokane (below in a photo - fig. 10 - taken from Google's Street View  where part of it appears blurred at the request of some of the businesses located there). It is not known what the two sister companies are involved in. Even the UK company register  entry does not reveal the purpose of the company, although it does mention duties and remuneration. If we look at the other nodes directly linked to the lawyer, we see Roma Nation Embassy , a company based at, you guessed it..., yes, 207 Regent Street! Activity? Unknown. We also see that he is connected with Obaseki & Co Ltd , the law firm run by Nigerian lawyers where he runs his practise. In the team photo, you can catch a glimpse of Amicarelli peeking out from behind the heads in the front row (Figure 11). You can recognise him because he is the only "Caucasian." Surprisingly, this studio is actually at the address given in the records, Bentley Road, a far less cool neighbourhood than Regent Street, where he prefers to have his correspondence sent (Figure 12). Poking around the other nodes in the network reported by North Data, we see a direct connection to the All Faiths Network for the United Kingdom . This is one of the multiple organizations under the umbrella of Scientology . This religious holding, whose credo is a mixture of Gnosticism, magic and science fiction (you can read a summary of its doctrine in the first chapter of this report), is an organism with many faces and many manifestations. One of these is the All Faiths Network , whose director is William Martin Weightman , not coincidentally another direct node of Amicarelli, as North Data reports. It's easy to find out who Weightman is. He is a proud member of the Church of Scientology and, as he states on his Linkedin page , former director of the church's human rights office (Figure 13). This is no surprise. In fact, Amicarelli, Weightman and a certain Rabbi Jeff Berger of the church of Scientology in London, have co-signed a book   on Covid 19  published by the All faiths Network. There is a picture of me on page 25. The photo of the philanthropist speaking at a meeting of the All faiths Network under the effigy of Scientology founder Ron L. Hubbard  was also not lost on me (Figure 14).   The All Faiths Network  is one of the members of the European federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB ), of which Amicarelli is President. Other constituent associations of the federation  include Soteria International , an expression of the Atman Yoga organisation of Gregorian Bivolaru , the guru who has been wanted by Interpol for years and finally arrested in France  in 2023 on charges of criminal conspiracy, human trafficking and sexual abuse; then there is the European Interreligious Forum For Religious Freedom , whose president is the "Rev." Eric Roux , President of the United Churches of Scientology in France and vice-president of the European Office of Public Affairs and Human Rights of Church of Scientology (and probably head of the OSA, the Church's intelligence) and the European Coordination for Freedom of Conscience (CAP LC) , whose president is Thierry Valle , also a rapresentative of Scientology . Figure 14 bis - Eric Roux e Thierry Valle One of the founding members , and still a member of the  Federation's scientific committee , is Fabrizio d'Agostini , who in the Scientology magazine "Ethics and Truth," expressed his satisfaction at having achieved OT 6 certification, one of the highest levels in the Scientology hierarchy (Figure 15). It almost suggests that FOB has something to do with Scientology. Incidentally, Amicarelli is also the surname of the historical spokesman for Scientology in Italy, Fabio Amicarelli . Of course, it does not mean anything, it could be a name match, but there is a third Amicarelli, the hypnotist Michele Amicarelli , who also sits on FOB's scientific committee. Three people with the same last name all connected to the same world. It may be, although Amicarelli is not a very common surname in Italy. Below (Figures 16 and 17) you can see a comparison between the prevalence of that surname and mine, which is also not very common except locally. What is FOB about? As you can read on their website, it promotes and protects religious freedom. FOB is in the register of lobbyists  at the European Parliament and the European Commission. In January 2016, I reported all this to the ‘Linkiesta’ newspaper, which published an article   by Carmine Gazzanni that included an interview with me. The FOB's immediate reaction was a response in the same magazine, threatening to sue the author of the article and me for defamation. I responded on the same page:   I don't think anyone, inside or outside FOB, would have the temerity to say that Scientology, for one, is not at least a "controversial" organisation. Yet the FOB board writes that this statement is "damaging." Why? If being part of even controversial organizations is the right that FOB defends to the hilt, why should the statement  that its members are also part of such organizations be injurious! Perhaps an association that defends gay rights would be offended if it were accused of some of its members being homosexuals? A curious logical wrapping up that can only be explained by the FOB board's fear that this might cast doubt on the Federation's true aims. Of course, no lawsuit followed. Most of the articles published on the organisation's website website are taken from   the magazine Bitter Winter . This is the magazine of the Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR) of the well-known Massimo Introvigne , whose wife is herself on the scientific committee of FOB ). This prolific author is also the president of a strange company called E-religion SNC , which claims to have only one employee. The company was founded in 2001 (the employee was hired 20 years later). Between embassies of love and electronic religion, the various societies that can be linked to the cadre of defenders of "religious freedom" appear increasingly intriguing and mysterious. What will all these entities with registration numbers, mailboxes and emails ever be used for? We will not be told. What is certain is that inferences, rumors and, the more time passes, interesting clues are circulating on the subject.... The latest grotesquerie is the use of a photo taken on 29 September 2017 in Salekhard, Siberia. I am reposting it here (Figure 19):   The one on the far right is me. The picture was used as definitive, "smoking gun" evidence of a connection between FECRIS, or at least me, and the Russian regime. Indeed, the second from the left is Alexander Dvorkin, a Russian anti-cult activist close to the Orthodox Church (and the one in the centre is, of course, an Orthodox bishop). The now iconic image has served its purpose on the main websites of anti-cult movement opponents and has enjoyed an honourable career spanning many years. It even enjoyed the honour of being presented as part of a scholarly dissertation at the international congress of the famous Centre for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR).  An example of high conceptual elaboration and rare scholarly rigour was the speaker's comment: "I was told that this person - she was referring to me  - is strongly atheistic - who told her that?  - but you can see he has no problem hanging around with clergy." Indeed, the bishop at the centre was not exactly incognito. You can see the irrefutable argument in Video 1 (further down in the text). Video 1 - Rosita Soryté Caught the author of this report in awkward company The refined scholar who presented this sophisticated argument at the CESNUR international congress is Rosita Soryté , the wife of CESNUR director Introvigne and a member of the scientific committee of the FOB federation mentioned above.   The image was even quoted by Massimo Introvigne  himself   in an article in Russian , in which the scholar claims to have seen a picture in which I, a so worldly person, appeared "almost overwhelmed by priests" (the gentleman with the beard next to me is a Lutheran pastor). The director of CESNUR of this blessed image has made it a highlight of his repertoire for years. In the photo below, for example, he illustrates the image at the 2018 American Academy of Religion conference in Denver (Figure 20). The photo has since also appeared in such unlikely circles as a book on the Covid 19 pandemic published by the All Faith Network  (but now we know what it is. It is the photo on p. 25 that I alluded to above). The photo later appeared several times in the magazine Bitter Winter , published by CESNUR, once even with a funny but sibylline caption  that read "Luigi Corvaglia on the far right (which is not his political position)." However, the most incredible of the reuse of this photo, took place in The European Times , an obscure online newspaper which claimed that the anti-cult movement was responsible for the anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia and, therefore, morally co-responsible for the ongoing war (!). The author of this and other articles in that magazine is a certain Jan Leonid Bornestein, of whom there is no trace on the Web. His only available photo, entered into the prompt on the Facecheck.id website, an identity verification tool using facial recognition, returned zero results. It cannot be ruled out that this person does not exist and that the photo is an artificial intelligence achievement. "The European Times" is a strange publication registered in Spain but whose editor is a Bulgarian, a certain Petar Gramatikov . He claims to be a hierodacon of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, although his ordination took place  in violation of the canons (he has been married and divorced several times, which makes him ineligible for ordination). In any case, he was ordained by the Metropolitan of Tyrnovo, even though he lives in Plovdiv. So, in all likehood, his diaconate and monasticism are simply decorative. The only things that are certain are that he publishes the newspaper of a wellness center, the Orpheus Club Wellnes , in Plovdiv, and that he has a very good relationship with Scientology, as evidenced by his presence at the 46th anniversary celebration of the founding of the organization's Belgian headquarters . The photo below shows him in the centre during said celebration. The one on the far right (whether this corresponds to his political faith is not known) is Ivan Arjona Pelado , one of the leading representatives of Scientology and a component of church’s secret service. Tout se tien. In October 2024, the French investigative newspaper 'Blast' published a dossier revealing that The European Times is part of an international Media Center called Brussels Media , whose executive director, Lahcen Hammouch , is very close to Scientology. Incidentally, the contact address of The European Times is that of a satellite association of Scientology in Spain, the Fundazion para la Mejora de la Vida, la Cultura y la Sociedad , whose director is that Ivan A. Pelado who can be seen on the far right of the previous photo (fig. 21).  The Blast article also publishes a photo taken in the European Parliament on November 30, 2023  showing an interesting clique that includes Pelado, curiously always last on the right of the picture, the aforementioned Eric Roux, Scientology's highest rapresentative and FOB federation member, in the centre, and Brussels Media director Lahcen Hammouch, second from the left (fig. 22). Then, there is no doubt about the link between The European Times, Scientology and associations defending "religious freedom," such as FOB and others, like Human Rights Without Frontiers , whose director is Willy Fautré , first from the left in photo 22, or the Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC ), whose vice-president Christine Mirre is third from the left in photo number 22, next to Roux.  At the end of the same month that saw the publication of the 'Blast' article on the network linking Brussels Media, Scientology and NGOs in defence of "religious freedom," my Siberian photo also returned to the limelight after a brief period of eclipse. The reason for this was that the Ukrainian parareligious cult AllatRa had not liked my statement to a collective of investigative journalists  that their movement was a conspiracy theory with obscure origins and that it exhibited pro-Putin rhetoric. An incredible smear campaign  followed in which various AllatRa "trolls" accused me,  not them,  of being a "Russian agent" or an "agent of the Russian Orthodox Church." That photo helped (see Figure 23). The arguments used against the anti-cult movement, taken evenly from Bitter Winter's publications, also served them well. Apart from that, there seems to be no doubt about AllatRa's pro-Russian political goals, as several journalistic investigations  have also shown.  In early November 2024, Ukrainian security services even raided around 20 cult’s headquarters , confiscating material that confirmed the findings of investigations into the cult' s " subversive activities on behalf of the Russian Federation ." Strangely enough, the only expert from outside the organisation who was willing to be interviewed for Movement TV about the alleged persecution of AllatRa and other cults was an FOB member, and not just any FOB member, but top Scientologist Fabrizio D'Agostini . I thought I understood that I was the friend of the Russians and that FOB stood for democracy and freedom instead. Evidently there is something wrong with this representation.   This introduction has thus enabled the reader to familiarise themselves with the actors (CESNUR, Scientology, FOB, USCIRF, etc.), to get an idea of their relationships with each other and their modus operandi, and to learn how the author uses open resources to investigate the network of "cult apologists"." The reader can now immerse themselves in the neat treatment of the history, ideological framework and geopolitical context in which the hybrid warfare operations we have just discussed are embedded. Go to Fascists, spies and gurus. 2. The cult apologists

Luigi Corvaglia In early September 2024 I was the first one in the West to tell a strange story. I had written it in an article for my blog (read it here ) and it was about what could be described as the mutual infatuation between the controversial leader of a Ukrainian cult, Oleg Maltslev , and the well-known Centre for the Study of New Religions ( CESNUR).  Readers familiar with the controversy surrounding ‘new religious movements’ may wonder why this liaison  merits an article, as the Turin-based centre is no stranger to the loving care of such characters, so this affair does not seem to have the originality to make it news. Instead, the reasons for interest in this affair are manifold. To understand them, a brief summary of the facts is necessary. In 2014, the ‘ Association of Applied Sciences ’, Maltslev's umbrella organisation comprising the three branches that carry on his complex mystical and pseudo-scientific system, came under heavy criticism from Russian and Ukrainian anti-cult associations. They had in fact collected complaints about abuses committed against followers of the self- proclaimed scientist. According to an abused script, the accusations of being a dangerous ‘cult’ that exploits its followers led to the immediate intervention of CESNUR to rescue the organisation. It works like Pavlov's dog with the bell. Replace ‘bell’ with ‘allegations of abuse’ and ‘salivation’ with ‘a priori acquittal impulse’. The leaders of the most controversial groups can then cheer with the cry 'here come ours!'. The fact that the mutual outpouring in this case was even more evident than usual is perhaps because it was the Russian organisations that accused Maltslev. In fact, the traditionalist organisation from whose rib CESNUR emerged, Alleanza Cattolica , and the anti-Chinese magazine that the study centre publishes, Bitter Winter , have a strong Atlanticist, or perhaps better pro-American and neoconservative connotation. Meltslev and Introvigne in Odessa, 2016 Thus, in 2016, Malstlev was invited to Turin to the CESNUR headquarters ; shortly afterwards, the favour was returned with a reception by the CESNUR director in Odessa , a visit that included a lecture to Maltslev's followers on the grim discriminatory actions of the ‘anti-cult movement ’ .  It was all an exchange of bowing and scraping. The director of CESNUR, Massimo Introvigne , called Maltslev ‘a scientist whose scientific research deserves a lot of attention’, although it was quite clear that Maltslev's formulations were manifestly lacking in scientific validity. Take for example one of his scientific proposals, the so-called ‘ analysis of fate ’. The idea is, to put it bluntly, that ‘the genes of our ancestors of many generations are also present in our subconscious’ and influence our destiny, but Malstlev knows the system to change this destiny. The Ukrainian returned the compliment, calling him a star of great magnitude that ‘shines in the sky of Odessa’. The following year, CESNUR invited one of Maltslev's associates, Olga Panchenko, to a round table on religious freedom  in Rome. The year after that, in 2018, the Journal of CESNUR even published a monographic issue dedicated to Maltslev  whose apologetic and absolving tones were not the subject of much effort at concealment. In 2024, however, the unexpected happened: the Ukrainian press published the news ( here ) that, after a lengthy investigation, the police had gathered evidence of psychological abuse, blackmail, threats and harassment of followers and critics. This included the spread of pedophilia allegations, accompanied by edited audio and video files. One person even died of a heart attack. The reader above, who did not see where the news was, may say that this is nothing new either, since CESNUR has already found itself in embarrassing situations of this nature before. Perhaps even worse, as when in 2019 it presented the FIRMA ( International Festival of Religions, Music and the Arts ) award to the already more than controversial Apostle Naasón Joaquín García , leader of the Luz del Mundo  Church .  A couple of weeks after receiving the award as a champion of human rights and author of charitable works, Naasón Joaquín García was arrested in Los Angeles on 26 charges, including human trafficking, production of child pornography and rape of minors .  The trial ended with the apostle's plea bargain and his sentence of 17 years in prison.  The Ukrainian one would therefore seem to be just a repetition of a bad one. In  reality, the situation here is different. In fact, the real twist is not that the charges against Maltslev were true, but that the Ukrainian secret service arrested Maltslev's closest associate, Konstantin Slobodyanyuk on charges of ‘ high treason ’. In fact, the investigation had discovered that    Oleg Maltsev had set up a spy structure working for the Russian enemy , and even a military strike group operating in war territory.  Maltslev was a fugitive. At this point, it becomes clear why this was news. However, nobody in the West talked about it. That is why I wrote about it, highlighting the irony inherent in the fact that CESNUR and its offshoots - and the like - have for years been waging a smear campaign against the community of scholars and activists working to expose cult abuse by claiming that the ‘anti-cult’ - as they call them - were hiding " embarrassing links to the Russian regime". The discovery that CESNUR was, arguably unwittingly, exchanged thoughtful attention with an organisation engaged in guerrilla warfare and espionage on Russia's behalf was thus an example of how mocking fate can be. It was also a great and effective opportunity to highlight the counterproductive effects of CESNUR's  prejudicial  acquittal logic. Indeed, we are not talking here about the unfortunate situation of those involved in an inappropriate affair (‘ heavens , my husband!’),  but the far more serious one of those who do not care about this eventuality ("don't worry, he's my husband"), but above all of those who only look for their alcove companions among controversial people. Defending someone is always good, provided you are sure of their innocence. Doing so simply because the object of one's care is accused by "personae non gratae" is not something that would do credit to a celebrated 'study centre'; even taking sides is fine, but it is not what one expects of scientists guided by scholarly avalutativity; indeed, this logic carries risks, including that of falling into ridicule, as we have seen. To  make  a long story short : the article was published. Then the following things happened: ( a) My text was posted on Facebook by what Introvigne would call an 'anti-cult activist'. Introvigne himself replied to the post with numerous comments that were wisely tangential and skilfully avoiding addressing the merits of the remarks I had made, following the time-honored technique of smokescreens. I allowed myself a single comment, which can be summarised as the highlight of this method. My interlocutor replied briefly, confirming the shrewd tendency to avoid a real reply with few sentences that had little to do with the substance of my comment, and took his leave. b) Within a few hours, the post was deleted on the recommendation of someone who denounced that it was not in line with social networking standards. It was not clear what these were. c) The Kiev Security Services (SBU) announced that Malstlev had been arrested and gave details of the operation. The situation was far more serious than previously known. Malstlev's ‘combat units’ prepared the violent takeover of state institutions in Odessa by storming administrative buildings and attacking the Ukrainian defense forces from behind when the occupiers approached the port city. I understand that many people do not want this story to be known. Of course, you can not blame anyone for being deceived. However, if there is a moral to this story, it is that uncritically and a priori defending a group simply because it is under suspicion or criticism is not a good guiding principle if you want to maintain your reputation as a serious and rigorous scholar. Today, those who flirted with the Ukrainian traitor find themselves in the same position as those who have to hide the tattooed names of old loves that have now become signs of their gullibility.

Ai primi di Settembre 2024 sono stato il primo in Occidente a raccontare una strana storia. L'avevo scritta in un articolo per il mio blog (leggibile qui ) e parlava di quella che potremmo definire la reciproca infatuazione fra il discusso leader di un culto ucraino, Oleg Maltslev , ed il noto Centro Studi Nuove Religioni ( CESNUR) . Il lettore che abbia una qualche dimestichezza con la controversia sui "nuovi movimenti religiosi" potrà chiedersi perché questa liaison meritasse un articolo, visto che il centro studi torinese non è nuovo al prestare affettuose cure a personaggi di tale fatta; questa vicenda non sembrerebbe quindi godere dell'originalità che ne potrebbe fare una notizia. I motivi d'interesse di questa vicenda sono invece vari. Per comprenderli è necessario un breve riassunto dei fatti. Nel 2014 l' Associazione di Scienze Applicate ", l'organizzazione ombrello di Maltslev che racchiude le tre articolazioni che portano avanti il suo complesso sistema mistico e pseudoscientifico, era stata oggetto di forti critiche da parte delle associazioni anti-sette russe ed ucraine. Avevano infatti raccolto denunce circa abusi commessi ai danni di seguaci del sedicente scienziato. Secondo un canovaccio abusato, le accuse di essere una "setta" pericolosa che sfrutta i propri adepti comportò l'immediato intervento del CESNUR in soccorso dell'organizzazione. Funziona come con il cane di Pavlov con il campanello. Sostituite "campanello" con "accuse di abusi" e "salivazione" con "impulso assolutorio apriori". I leader dei gruppi più controversi possono così esultare al grido di "arrivano i nostri". Che in questo caso le reciproche effusioni siano state più evidenti del solito dipende forse dal fatto che ad accusare Maltslev fossero le associazioni russe. Infatti, l'organizzazione tradizionalista dalla cui costola il CESNUR è nato, Alleanza Cattolica , e la rivista anti-cinese che il centro studi pubblica, Bitter Winter , sono connotate in senso fortemente atlantista, o forse meglio, filo-americano e neoconservatore. Così, nel 2016, Malstlev fu invitato a Torino presso la sede del CESNUR ; poco dopo, il favore fu ricambiato con l'accoglienza del direttore del CESNUR ad Odessa , una visita  che includeva una lezione ai seguaci di Maltslev sulle bieche azioni discriminatorie del "movimento antisette " . Fu tutto uno scambio di salamelecchi. Il direttore del CESNUR, Massimo Introvigne , d efinì Maltslev " uno scienziato la cui ricerca scientifica merita molta attenzione”, benché fosse ben chiaro che la formulazione di Malstlev fosse palesemente priva di validità scientifica. Prendiamo ad esempio una delle sue proposte scientifiche, la cosiddetta " analis i del destino ". L'idea, per intenderci, è che "i geni dei nostri antenati di molte generazioni sono presenti anche nel nostro inconscio", influendo sul nostro destino, ma Malstlev conosce il sistema per modificare questo destino. L'ucraino ricambiò i complimenti definendolo una stella di grande magnitudo che "brilla nel cielo di Odessa". L'anno dopo il CESNUR invitò una socia di Maltslev, Olga Panchenko, ad una tavola rotonda sulla libertà religiosa   che si tenne a Roma. L'anno dopo ancora, nel 2018, il Journal of CESNUR pubblicò addirittura un numero monografico dedicato a Maltslev i cui toni apologetici ed assolutori non sono stati oggetto di grandi sforzi di occultamento. La spia che mi amava Nel 2024 è però accaduto l'inaspettato: la stampa ucraina ha pubblicato la notizia ( qui ) che, a seguito di lunghe indagini, le forze dell'ordine avevano raccolto prove di abusi psicologici, ricatti, minacce e vessazioni nei confronti degli adepti e dei critici. Queste comprendevano la diffusione di accuse di pedofilia corredate da file audio e video modificati. Una persona ne sarebbe anche morta d'infarto. Il lettore di cui sopra, quello che non vedeva dove fosse la notizia, potrà dire che neppure questa è una novità, visto che il CESNUR si è già trovato in situazioni imbarazzanti di questo tipo. Forse anche peggiori, come quando nel 2019 consegnò il premio FIRMA ( Festival Internazionale delle religioni, musica e arti ) al già più che discusso apostolo Naasón Joaquín García , guida della Chiesa Luz del Mundo. Un paio di settimane dopo aver ricevuto il premio come paladino dei diritti umani e autore di opere di carità, Naasón Joaquín García era stato arrestato a Los Angeles con 26 capi di imputazione, fra cui traffico di esseri umani, produzione di materiale pedopornografico e stupro di minori . Il processo si concluse con il patteggiamento dell'apostolo e la sua condanna a 17 anni di carcere . Quella ucraina sembrerebbe quindi solo la riedizione di una brutta figura. In realtà, qui la situazione è diversa. Infatti, il vero colpo di scena non è che le accuse a Maltslev fossero vere, ma che i servizi segreti ucraini avessero arrestato il più stretto collaboratore di Maltslev, Konstantin Slobodyanyuk con l'accusa di " alto tradimento ". Infatti, l'indagine aveva scoperto che Oleg Maltsev aveva creato una struttura spionistica che lavorava per il nemico russo , e perfino un gruppo militare d'assalto che operava in territorio di guerra . Maltslev era latitante. A questo punto diventa chiaro perché questa era una notizia. Nessuno però ne parlava in Occidente. Pertanto ne scrissi, mettendo in luce l'ironia insita nel fatto che il CESNUR e i suoi derivati - e consimili - portano avanti da anni una campagna denigratoria contro la comunità degli studiosi e degli attivisti che operano per denunciare gli abusi nei culti affermando che gli "anti-sette" - così li chiamano - celerebbero imbarazzanti legami con il regime russo. Scoprire che il CESNUR scambiava, si immagina inconsapevolmente, premurose attenzioni con una organizzazione che operava guerriglia e spionaggio a favore proprio della Russia era quindi un esempio di quanto possa essere beffardo il destino. Era anche una occasione ghiotta ed efficace da sfruttare per rimarcare gli effetti controproducenti della logica pregiudizialmente assolutoria del CESNUR. Infatti, la situazione qui non è quella incresciosa di chi viene colto in una relazione sconveniente ("cielo, mio marito!"), ma quella ben più grave di chi di questa eventualità non si cura ("tranquillo, è mio marito"), ma soprattutto di chi i propri compagni di alcova li va a cercare solo fra personaggi discussi. Infatti, difendere qualcuno è sempre un'ottima cosa, ammesso che si abbia la certezza della sua innocenza; farlo solo perché l'oggetto delle proprie cure è accusato da persone non grate non è cosa che possa far onore ad un celebrato "centro studi"; anche parteggiare va bene, ma non è quello che ci si aspetta da studiosi guidati dalla avalutatività scientifica; Infatti, questa logica comporta rischi, compreso quello di cadere nel ridicolo, come abbiamo visto. Per farla breve, l'articolo fu pubblicato. Successero quindi le seguenti cose: a) Il mio testo è stato riportato su Facebook da quella che il direttore Introvigne definirebbe una "attivista anti-sette". Introvigne stesso ha commentato il post con numerosi interventi sapientemente tangenziali ed accorti nell' evitare di entrare nel merito dei rilievi che avevo posto, secondo l'usata tecnica della cortina fumogena. Io mi sono prodotto in un unico commento che può sintetizzarsi nell'aver messo in luce tale metodo. Il mio interlocutore ha replicato brevemente confermando con un paio di sentenze scarsamente attinenti al tema del mio commento la oculata tendenza a evitare una vera risposta e si è congedato. b) Nel giro di poche ore il post è stato cancellato su segnalazione di qualcuno che ne denunciava il non rispetto degli standard del social network. Non si è capito quali. c) I servizi di sicurezza di Kiev (SBU) hanno comunicato dell'avvenuto arresto di Malstlev e fornito i dettagli della operazione. La situazione era ben più grave di quella fino ad allora nota. Le "unità di combattimento" di Malstlev si stavano preparando a sequestrare con la forza le istituzioni statali a Odessa prendendo d'assalto gli edifici amministrativi e avrebbero dovuto attaccare le forze di difesa ucraine dalle retrovie se gli occupanti si fossero avvicinati alla città portuale. Comprendo che molti non vogliano che questa storia sia conosciuta. Ovviamente non si ha colpa nell'essere stati ingannati. Se però questa storia ha una morale è che la difesa acritica e apriori di qualunque aggregazione purché oggetto di sospetto o critica non è un buon principio guida se si vuole salvaguardare la propria reputazione di studiosi seri e rigorosi. Oggi chi si è trovato a flirtare con il traditore ucraino è nella medesima condizione di coloro i quali devono nascondere i nomi tatuati dei vecchi amori, ora divenuti i segni della loro dabbenaggine.

Oleg Maltslev è talmente grasso che un bambino con gli occhi chiusi avrebbe difficoltà a mancarlo lanciandogli un righello. Tra l'altro, quest'uomo ansima dopo pochi passi, anche perché fuma sigarette a ripetizione. Diciamo che gli mancano fisico, agilità, eleganza e resistenza necessarie alla scherma. Ciononostante, questo pseudo accademico ucraino è riuscito a farsi passare come maestro di scherma di livello mondiale. Se ha avuto successo in questo inganno non è sorprendente che sia stato anche in grado di attribuirsi una lunga sfilza di titoli che non necessitano neppure di un particolare "fisique di role". Maltslev sarebbe infatti psicologo, avvocato, accademico delle scienze dell'Ucraina, criminologo, etnologo, fotografo, esperto di finanza e giornalista investigativo. Egli si è costruito una fama regionale come studioso del misticismo europeo, della memoria, delle abilità di "coping", del "maneggio delle armi" (visto in una prospettiva spirituale), di arti marziali, di fotografia, di organizzazione aziendale, di organizzazioni criminali e, soprattutto di "analisi del destino". Quest'ultimo campo di interesse deve molto alla lezione dello psicoanalista ungherese Leopold Szondi . Di cosa si tratti ce lo spiega Massimo Introvigne in un articolo dedicato a Maltslev: Freud si è concentrato sull'inconscio individuale e Jung su quello collettivo. Szondi ha privilegiato l'inconscio familiare, sostenendo che i geni dei nostri antenati di molte generazioni sono presenti anche nel nostro inconscio. In un certo senso, i nostri antenati sono presenti e determinano molte delle nostre scelte. [...] Per Maltsev, l'importanza pratica dell'Analisi del destino di Szondi risiede nello studio di una metodologia che può che può aiutare a cambiare il destino dell'uomo. E' chiaro a chiunque che si tratti di una concezione che dista dalla scientificità quanto un obeso dal fiato corto dalla scherma. Szondi è infatti screditato ed il suo test di personalità, utilizzato anche da Maltslev, è considerato privo di validità scientifica . Nel suo articolo, Introvigne passa in rassegna un po' tutte le teorie di Maltslev, da quelle sulla memoria, a quelle sulla "spiritualità segreta" legata al maneggio delle armi, la cui tradizione si può ancora oggi ritrovare nelle organizzazioni criminali - ma che sarebbe stata sviluppata anche dagli ordini religiosi e cavallereschi italiani del medioevo e del Rinascimento - fino alle complesse idee mistiche sui tre Dei, le rispettive tre tradizioni all'opera nelle vicende umane (Athos, Reno e Venezia) e le nozioni di Loggia Minore e Gran Loggia. Chi fosse interessato a queste elucubrazioni troverà nel testo Introvigne un ottimo compendio. La cosa curiosa è che l'interesse del centro studi di Introvigne per la " Associazione di Scienze Applicate " di Maltslev nasce dal fatto che nel 2014 questa organizzazione era stata oggetto di forti critiche da parte delle associazioni anti-sette russe ed ucraine. Avevano infatti raccolto denunce circa abusi commessi ai danni di seguaci del sedicente psicologo. Secondo un canovaccio noto, iniziò quindi lo scambio di cordialità ed apprezzamenti fra il CESNUR e il leader del gruppo vilipeso dai malvagi antisette, Maltslev appunto. Nel numero monografico del Journal of CESNUR dedicato a Maltslev , nel 2018, si può leggere un contributo di Pierluigi Zoccatelli secondo il quale le critiche verso le organizzazioni del maestro di Odessa derivavano (anche?) dal fatto che Le arti marziali e l'insegnamento delle tecniche di maneggio delle armi sono campi altamente competitivi, e i concorrenti hanno cercato di usare l'accusa che Maltsev operi un "culto" per avvisare gli studenti di non iscriversi ai suoi corsi". Un altro contributo è di Raffaella Di Marzio , la quale commenta un documentario di Maltslev sul bandito siciliano Salvatore Giuliano notando come l'analisi del destino e il metodo di Szondi possano "effettivamente aiutare a districare il vero Giuliano da quello mitologico". Il film, sostiene Di Marzio, insiste sul fatto che "il Giuliano mitologico esibisce tratti tipicamente americani non compatibili con l'inconscio di una famiglia siciliana" e dichiara i tratti "siciliani" genuini e quelli "americani" spuri (benché ad un certo punto si dica che Giuliano presentava più tratti psicologici calabresi che siciliani). Il numero monografico è stato preceduto nel 2016 da uno scambio di cortesi visite. Prima, Malstlev era stato invitato a Torino presso la sede del CESNUR , poi il direttore del CESNUR aveva ricambiato con una visita ad Odessa che includeva una lezione ai seguaci di Maltslev sulle bieche azioni discriminatorie del movimento antisette . Nel primo incontro, il direttore del CESNUR avrebbe definito Meltslev " Uno scienziato la cui ricerca scientifica merita molta attenzione”; commentando invece il secondo incontro, l'ucraino ha definito l'italiano una stella di grande magnitudo che "brilla nel cielo di Odessa". Nel 2017 il CESNUR ha invitato una socia di Maltslev, Olga Panchenko, ad una tavola rotonda sulla libertà religiosa che si è tenuta a Roma. In quella occasione la Panchenko ha ricostruito la vicenda della ingiusta persecuzione della loro organizzazione ad opera dei malvagi ed interessati attivisti antisette esattamente nello stesso modo in cui verrà ricostruita un anno dopo nel contributo di Willy Fautrè nel citato numero monografico, quasi come se la relazione della Panchenko ne fosse la "velina". Nel 2024 avviene un colpo di scena: le forze dell'ordine ucraine ed i servizi di sicurezza di quello stesso paese, a seguito di lunghe indagini, hanno raccolto prove di abusi psicologici, ricatti, minacce e vessazioni nei confronti di adepti, ma anche di giornalisti. Chi metteva in dubbio l'autorità, i titoli (sembra, tutti farlocchi) e i meriti di Maltslev era sottoposto a una dura persecuzione sui social network, tramite la diffusione, per esempio, di accuse di pedofilia corredate da file audio e video modificati. Inoltre, molte persone prese di mira dalle organizzazioni di Maltslev sono state subissate di telefonate dai contenuti minacciosi da numeri sconosciuti. Una persona ne è morta d'infarto. Questo non è però ancora niente. Il primo settembre, con quasi sei mesi di ritardo, la stampa ucraina ha reso noto che il 5 marzo le forze dell'ordine hanno arrestato e collocato in un centro di custodia cautelare l'assistente più vicino del "guru", il redattore capo del quotidiano "Unsolved Crimes" (una delle produzioni dell'organizzazione) Konstantin Slobodyanyuk. Questi è stato accusato di una serie impressionante di crimini. Fra questi il pagamento di una tangente a un funzionario, associazione a delinquere e effrazione illegale di mezzi informatici, ma, soprattutto, alto tradimento commesso sotto la legge marziale ( parte 2 dell'articolo 111 del codice penale ucraino). Per quest'ultimo reato lui, e lo stesso Malstlev, attualmente latitante, rischiano l'ergastolo. Infatti, l'indagine dei servizi segreti ha scoperto che Oleg Maltsev aveva creato una struttura spionistica che lavorava per il nemico russo. Si trattava di un'unità di sabotaggio a pieno titolo costituita da 23 persone , che comprendeva un gruppo d'assalto, un cecchino, un gruppo di ricognizione, un gruppo di supporto operativo e persino un ufficiale delle comunicazioni. Quasi la metà del personale era costituito da stranieri provenienti da Russia, Kirghizistan e Bielorussia. Anche dopo l'inizio della guerra su vasta scala, il plotone personale di sabotaggio e ricognizione di Maltsev si recava regolarmente sul campo di addestramento e sui poligoni di tiro, dove praticavano azioni tattiche di combattimento urbano. Secondo la SBU, i servizi di sicurezza ucraini, Konstantin Slobodyanyuk ha acquistato informazioni riservate su persone di interesse per Maltsev, una settantina di individui fra cui un giudice del tribunale di Odessa, da agenti del Servizio di frontiera statale e dalla polizia. Le informazioni sarebbero state prese dal database elettronico ufficiale del Servizio statale della guardia di frontiera "Gart-1" e dal database della polizia "Armor". Per quanto possa sembrare incredibile, sembra appurato che nel 2023 Konstantin Slobodyanyuk e altri membri dell'organizzazione di Maltslev abbiano organizzato una visita a uno dei campi di addestramento delle Forze di Difesa nella regione di Odessa per i dipendenti dell'Ambasciata della Repubblica popolare cinese, un paese piuttosto vicino alla Russia. I cinesi hanno effettuato lì riprese video non autorizzate. Quando i servizi di sicurezza ucraini hanno effettuato le perquisizioni negli appartamenti dello "scienziato" e dei suoi più stretti assistenti, hanno trovato elementi interessanti. Ne elenco alcuni: 64 fucili con munizioni, uniformi militari, ingenti somme di denaro. una cartella con 59 fogli che descrivono le tecnologie di intelligence e controspionaggio; documenti su trasferimenti di denaro dall'estero, inclusa la Russia; Gli screenshot di 440 fogli su azioni tattiche militari, principali tipi di combattimento in diverse aree, tipi di sabotaggio e lavori di demolizione, compresa l'estrazione di veicoli e la difesa in spazi ristretti; quaderni con istruzioni per la gestione del personale; Dossier corredate di foto di 377 persone; guida didattica e metodologica “I segreti della polizia segreta ucraina”; una selezione di schermate su 47 fogli sulle tattiche di sabotaggio e l'uso di metodi per distruggere veicoli corazzati con illustrazioni; una copia del “Manuale del patriota russo”; Descrizione sui metodi di registrazione in incognito delle informazioni; descrizione dei principi di crittografia e decrittografia; Un testo sui metodi di fortificazione; materiali per la formazione su “Cosa dovrebbero utilizzare i manager per la causa della rivoluzione”; istruzioni su “Come comportarsi con il contingente di mantenimento della pace della Federazione Russa”; 17 pagine di istruzioni per il reclutamento di persone. Non una parola di commento è stata pronunciata a seguito di ciò da alcuno degli apologeti di Maltslev, pur essendo questi noti per la solerzia nel rilevar pagliuzze negli altrui occhi. Questa storia è ironica per due motivi. Il primo è che per anni le organizzazioni degli studiosi dei "nuovi movimenti religiosi" e quelle di lobbying contro il "movimento anti-sette" hanno accusato quest'ultimo di vicinanza alla Russia. Farsi quindi sorprendere dai servizi di sicurezza ucraini vicino a un traditore che lavora per il nemico russo è imbarazzante quanto per un conservatore essere scoperto fra le frasche con un trans. Certo, ovviamente questi potrà dire "non lo sapevo" e, se non è particolarmente brillante, si rischia anche che sia vero. Il secondo elemento che stimola il sorriso è che recentemente il direttore del CESNUR, solito definirmi persona "talvolta divertente ma non brillante" - come si usa fra accademici -, ha affermato che il giornale del CESNUR Bitter Winter sarebbe in grado di raccogliere molte più informazioni sulle malefatte del Partito Comunista Cinese di quanto riesca a fare la CIA; va detto che la rivista, che ha una posizione filo-atlantista senza esitazioni, si dimostra capace di accedere, a suo dire, anche ad informazioni su quanto viene detto in aule chiuse in remoti luoghi della federazione russa. Insomma, i nostri hanno delle capacità di intelligence niente male. Gli è però sfuggito che il gruppo con cui si scambiavano reciproci apprezzamenti, oltre ad essere, pare , una associazione per delinquere, lavorava per la Russia. Traditi anche loro. Divertente, ma non brillante.