When President Vladimir Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he did so by receding tropes that would be common across a Fox News broadcast or in the pages of the New York Post. His speech devoted a whole paragraph to the West’s assault on traditional values, saying, “they …  force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.”

There is no definition of global elite that does not meaningfully include Putin, but the familiar language of reaction he employed is part of a transnational strategy by conservatives — and those opposed to gender and reproductive freedoms. Thanks to the work of diligent reactionaries, there is a regressive international working to force people to live under an explicitly patriarchal order, one that punishes reproductive choice and gender expression.

In “Transcalar Activism Contesting the Liberal International Order: The Case of the World Congress of Families,” authors Sara Kalm and Anna Meeuwisse examine how one specific international organization was able to make the language of reaction transcend borders, despite so much of reactionary thought being linked to narrow expressions of local rule.

“Backlash politics in the gender field is now a broad political program, fought for by activists in many different countries,” write the authors. “On the anti-gender (or ‘pro-family’; we use the terms interchangeably) agenda are issues such as banning abortion and surrogacy, prohibiting sexual education in schools, stopping legislation on domestic violence, complicating divorce procedures, and disallowing sex change as well as same-sex marriage.”

To explore the shaping and sharing of this reactionary agenda, the authors focus on the World Congress of Families (WCF), which was founded in 1997, with both Americans and Russians having early prominent roles in creating and shaping the organization.

The WCF is at the center of global networking and unites different kinds of actors across most regions of the globe. These actors include evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox civil society organizations, the Holy See, religious leaders, scholars, aristocrats, and politicians, such as high-level ministers in countries like Hungary, Italy, and Brazil.

One major breakthrough of the WCF has been finding a common language for authoritarian leaders peripheral to the West, like former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil or President Viktor Orban in Hungary, as well as reactionary populists of western nations, like Italian leaders of the Lega Nord. In this, both groups share a framing that places reactionary politics as one that protects the natural family without having to confront different regional variations on family.

“The discourse on the natural family fits very well with the nationalist and ethnocentrist worldview of the right-wing populists who currently enjoy great success in many corners of the globe. The most obvious reason for this is the notion of a global left-liberal elite that tries to implement a radical agenda that is alien to the interests of the ‘common man/woman,’” write the authors.

Shirin Jaafari spoke with Syrians struggling to get by in the earthquake-rattled north of the country. “People [were] refugees before the earthquake. Now, they’re [living] in the roads, in hospitals, in schools,” photographer Karam Kellieh told Jaafari. Aid into the country is restricted by the government, which has only allowed one corridor for humanitarian relief, and by the difficulties of accessing people in areas not under government control. Sanctions placed on Syria, despite a temporary exemption from the US Treasury for relief aid, have prevented donations rapidly raised from being spent for the country.

Sophie Fergus defended the right of journalists to report without interference by governments, a right heavily infringed in Turkey. “Sema Çağlak, a reporter for Jinnews, told the [Coalition for Women in Journalism] that on Feb. 8, 2023, she and two of her colleagues were detained by Turkish police in Urfa, despite the fact that they all held valid press cards,” wrote Fergus. The police said only presidential-issued cards were valid for the press and confiscated the ones held by Çağlak and her colleagues. It’s a restriction on access and speech that makes it hard to accurately cover the news in detail, like visiting temporary morgues set up after the earthquake.

Manuel Rueda reported on the Indigenous protests sweeping Peru. While the protesters initially demanded the reinstatement of Peru’s ousted former President Pedro Castillo, they have moved on to demanding constitutional reforms to meet the needs of the country’s Indigenous population. “These precious resources belong to the state, and we are not getting benefits from them,” Juvenal Gil, a Quechua-speaking miner from the region of Puno, told Rueda. Gil has been at the protests in Lima for three weeks. He continued, “If these places where the gold is being mined had nice buildings and we were moving around in subways like in Dubai, I wouldn’t be complaining.”

War crimes are how Americans learn geography.

This is hardly the worst-managed retreat out of Afghanistan, but it might be close to the most embarrassing.

Sure, hundreds of thousands died, but the inexorable march of technology progressed along to where everyone could have cell phones, so who can say if the war was bad or not.

Surveillance balloons and U-2 spy planes are Cold War tech, but cockpit selfies with smartphones? That’s all 21st century.

They’re not just virtual chores, they’re obligations to uphold the Geneva Conventions.

And the oracle said: lol. lmao.

We call this move the Abraham Waldluigi.