Authored by Iben Thranholm, originally posted at The Saker,
Recently Marie Krarup, a member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish People’s Party – contacted me to say that the EU task force East Stratcom has placed me on a list branding me as a pro-Russian propagandist and is accusing me of spreading Russian disinformation.
This organisation was set up in March 2015 by the European Council to implement an action plan on strategic communication to address what it labels ”Russia’s on-going disinformation campaigns”, allegedly aiming to destabilize European democracy. To this end, East StratCom ”publishes two public weekly newsletters to stay up to date with the latest disinformation stores and narratives”. Have a look at EastStratcoms website.
This was shocking news to me. Marie Krarup requested a consultation with Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs Anders Samuelsen. She found that the task force accusation violated my constitutional rights under Danish law to exercise freedom of speech, and found this to be stark evidence of the EU usurping undemocratic and totalitarian privilege to list commentators, pundits and journalists that criticize EU policies and EU leaders.
The minister disagreed. He stated that Iben Thranholm deserved her listing as a pro-Russian agent and should remain so listed. He indicated that I was hired by the Kremlin to destabilize Europe. Despite the consultation, this remains his position. No action has been taken to amend the list. No further comment has been offered on the case in the media.
The consequences may be dire. If the conflict with Russia escalates, the state will have the right to imprison me as an enemy of the state. Already now I have been branded a traitor and unpatriotic. Many opinion leaders and colleagues have composed and published an open letter criticizing the ministry. Social media have been brimming with support, but my government remains stubborn in its accusation that I am a Russian agent. This means that I am no longer protected by the state of which I am a national.
For the last couple of years, I have used Russian English-language media like RT op-ed section and Russia Insider for publishing my thoughts on the way the Western elites’ hatred of Christianity weakens and undermines Western culture.
My choice of non-Western media like RT as a platform is certainly not motivated by any payment from Putin. No, it is rooted in the fact that as a conservative Christian Catholic, my thoughts and views are simply increasingly difficult to get published in Europe.
For years now I have had to work as an independent journalist. No editor will take on the risk of employing a person who is open and outspoken about his or her Christian faith, let alone Catholic faith, the way I am. Christians are socially marginalized, derided, and viewed with suspicion if not actually as mentally disturbed. The few Christians left are either secularized – gone native by agreeing with the establishment – or have taken a vow of silence for fear of the political correctness storm troopers. They have no impact on European culture. Their salt has lost its power to keep society from putrefaction.
The article that landed me on the East Stratcom list dealt precisely with the way the elite abused arguments of Christian charity to abandon registration of the identity of who entered which country and for adopting a blanket open-border policy when the tsunami of refugees and immigrants flooded across Europe’s borders in 2015. Their hatred of Christianity certainly does not keep them from abusing arguments of Christian charity divorced from its context when it suits their own agenda.
Allow me to quote some passages from the article, entitled “Misguided Compassion Threatens to Become the Downfall of Europe”
“Europe is like Judas, betraying its Christian tradition with the traitorous kiss of false compassion in order to obliterate the last vestige of Christian civilization in Europe. True charity always springs from a higher moral absolute, a clear distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. False charity offers compassion for the criminal and not the victim. No charity for the woman who is victimized by rape but pity for the perpetrator, the rapist. Such pity is a gross perversion.”
“In spite of their use – or rather abuse – of “loving one’s neighbor”, politicians are devoid of the Christian basis for distinguishing good from evil. Our politicians promote the forces of evil and utterly abandon their victims. This is merely an extension of the policies of the West in the Middle East since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Western politicians consistently identify evil as good, and good as evil. They unleash destructive forces to rampage unimpeded and oppress good wherever the West enters the scene with its military or economic warfare.”
“The fierce hatred of the Western political elite for Christianity has robbed Europe of its moral compass. Using Christian arguments for waging war on Christianity and Christian culture is a vile demonic parody. From a spiritual perspective, it is clear that Europe has made an unholy alliance with islamism in order to annihilate its Christian civilisation. This diabolical scam wears a cloak of goodness and humanitarianism, but it is really a manifestation of moral decay and false altruism that threatens to bring about Die Untergang des Abendlandes, the end of Christian Europe”.
At the consultation in the parliamentary committee meeting, the minister alleged that my article contained lies and myths that fitted into a Kremlin narrative of the decline of the West, and that my arguments bore no relation to reality.
One may agree or disagree with this interpretation. The question is whether this makes me a Russian agent or an enemy of the state. The task force offers no proof of an agreement between the Kremlin and me. For the good reason that no such contract exists. It is an allegation, pure and simple. At the consultation, the minister refuses to take a position on the matter of principle involved in placing participants in the social debate on the list. He merely dismisses my statements as lies.
It is highly revealing that the task force pounces on this article on this subject, because it deals precisely with distinguishing between the truth and lies, and points out that the political elite has entirely lost its ability to distinguish between the truth and lies. This abandonment of truth is far and away the greatest threat to world peace in this day. Russia is not.
Today’s politics are entirely beyond the irrelevant left/right and red/blue paradigm.The real issue is truth v lies, good v evil, right v wrong.
The American election campaign blew this truth wide open. There was hardly any real policy debate, but reams of lies were revealed as masquerading as truth. In its wake, the unspeak designers launched the phenomenon of “fake news” in order to regain control of the narrative. The EU task force has also been set up for achieving a monopoly for the EU version of acceptable reality. The war on truth rages on after President Trump’s inauguration, and the presstitute media now intensify their campaign to brand Trump as a liar.
What irony that a very long epoch of relativism of values, during which the political elite and intellectuals decided that there is no truth, has now ended abruptly with a frenzied claim that truth is all that matters. What immense irony that those who taught young people that there is no truth now exalt themselves as truth tellers, and then hurls accusations of lying against any who does not toe the line of their pragmatic version of truth. The pinnacle of sad irony is that generations reared on the absence of truth from reality now clamor for truth. They have lost faith in the assumption that the media they trusted blindly are telling them the truth.
The media have been roundly exposed as liars. Yet the media claim that the exposure of their lies is a lie and that people who want the truth are lying. Those who tell the truth are blamed as liars, while the media adamantly maintain that they are the truth tellers. Confused? The world has moved from the usual conflicts in the realm of geopolitics and economics to moral and spiritual warfare. The world now witnesses an epic confrontation between the truth and lies, light and darkness, that was kept invisible for so long. A spiritual war is raging between those who choose good and those who choose to call good what is evil.
Yet who is prepared and equipped for this epic battle of our day? Relativism of values has rendered many, if not most, completely without solid ground and the first idea of what is good and what is evil, utterly unable to recognize truth and defend themselves against lies. They have learned no rudiments on discerning because they have grown up with no spiritual foundation and no inkling of Christian truth. This is a big problem, as it is impossible to understand the world today if one has no spiritual eyes with which to see.
No one can fight for truth, which is spiritual without the ability to recognize truth and distinguish it from the lie. Without the spiritual understanding, no one has the weapons to fight against evil and lies. The chaotic struggle raging in journalism and social media today is a visible expression of this spiritual war.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that “godlessness is the first step to the Gulag”. When EU politicians adopt unconstitutional methods for listing political opponents or people who publish moral truth, they declare their godlessness before God and man, and wage war against Christianity and Christian culture. When the state and its ideology place themselves in God’s seat, all hell breaks loose. Democracy offers no guarantee: collectivism can exercise totalitarianism under democracy’s banner. The freedom of speech is now violated in Europe and there is now no freedom for journalists to speak the truth as they see it.
In the 1940s, George Orwell wrote “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” This is our precise position today. Journalists must therefore accept it as a badge of honor and courage when the establishment brands them as liars and pro-Russian propagandists, for this is the highest evidence that they are speaking the truth. They must see themselves as freedom fighters and find comfort and strength in the words of Christ in the Gospel: “truth will set you free.”