Christian white nationalists have their eyes on Ukraine.
Yesterday House Speaker Mike Johnson avoided a vote to remove him as speaker with the help of 163 Democrats.
Chicago Democrats Jesse Jackson Jr. and Delia Ramirez voted no. Jan Schakowsky and Chuy Garcia voted present.
The vote to declare the Speaker’s seat open was brought by the wing nut congresswoman from north west Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Green, after Johnson succeeded in passing funding for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan at President Biden’s request.
A small group of right-wing Republicans voted against Johnson. He survived only with the help of the Democrats.
Why was Johnson willing to risk losing the Speaker position over the funding bill?
An article in Salon and Jonathan Larsen’s The Fucking News suggests one reason.
Johnson is a Christian nationalist.
Among his buddies is another Christian nationalist, Pablo Unguryan.
Unguryan is an evangelical from Ukraine who Larsen reports is “conducting shadow diplomacy with Johnson and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It was only a few days after conferring with Unguryan that Johnson agreed to push through Congress Biden’s war funding bill.
What is Unguryan’s agenda here.
It seems that if Zelensky can hold on against the Russians Unguryan hopes to turn Ukraine into a bastian for anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion and other Christian nationalist policies.
Salon:
Unguryan is well known to his fellow Ukrainians for opposing LGBTQ+ rights. Reportedly, he has called gay people pedophiles and homosexuality “a treatable disease.” Right Wing Watch has chronicled Unguryan’s anti-LGBTQ+ track record, including blocking protections against workplace discrimination.
He’s also been a member of the European Political Christian Movement (ECPM), a theocratic-leaning organization opposed to LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. And both Right Wing Watch and Bellingcat have reported on Unguryan’s extensive ties to a well-financed network of anti-LGBTQ American conservatives.
That includes Ralph Drollinger’s Capitol Ministries, which seeks to inject Christianity into governments around the world. (It was Drollinger who engineered the appearance of Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry at Unguryan’s Bible study in the weeks before Trump’s “perfect” Zelenskyy call.)
Apparently Marjorie didn’t get the memo.