Hackers linked to Russia’s government tried to target the websites of two right-wing U.S. think-tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, Microsoft said.

The software giant said it thwarted the attempts last week by taking control of sites that hackers had designed to mimic the pages of The International Republican Institute and The Hudson Institute. Users were redirected to fake addresses where they were asked to enter usernames and passwords.

There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities, but the Kremlin was expected to address the report later on Tuesday. It has regularly dismissed accusations that it has used hackers to influence U.S. elections and political opinion.

Casting such allegations as part of an anti-Russian campaign designed to justify new sanctions on Russia, it says it wants to improve not worsen ties with Washington.

“We’re concerned that these and other attempts pose security threats to a broadening array of groups connected with both American political parties in the run-up to the 2018 elections,” Microsoft said in a blog post overnight.

The International Republican Institute has a roster of high-profile Republican board members, including Senator John McCain of Arizona who has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s interactions with Russia, and Moscow’s rights record.

The Hudson Institute, another conservative group, has hosted discussions on topics including cybersecurity, according to Microsoft. It has also examined the rise of kleptocracy, especially in Russia and has been critical of the Russian government, the New York Times reported.

“They (the Russians) are pursuing attacks that they perceive in their own national self-interest,” Eric Rosenbach, the director of the Defending Digital Democracy project at Harvard University, told the New York Times.

“It’s about disrupting and diminishing any group that challenges how Putin’s Russia is operating at home and around the world.”

CYBER-TENSIONS

Microsoft’s report comes amid increasing cyber-tensions between Moscow and Washington ahead of the congressional votes in November.

A federal grand jury in the U.S. indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in July on charges of hacking the computer networks of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 election and whether Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russians during the vote. Russia denies meddling in the elections while President Trump has denied any collusion.

Microsoft said its digital crimes unit (DCU) had acted on a court order to take control of six internet domains created by a group known variously as Strontium, Fancy Bear and APT28, which it said was associated with the Russian government.

As well as the two think-tanks, other home pages had been set up to mimic the websites of the U.S. Senate and Microsoft’s own Office software suite, it added.

The type of attack is known as “spear fishing,” in which the hackers trick victims into entering their username and password into the fake site in order to steal their credentials.

“To be clear, we currently have no evidence these domains were used in any successful attacks before the DCU transferred control of them, nor do we have evidence to indicate the identity of the ultimate targets of any planned attack involving these domains,” Microsoft said on the blog.

Facebook said late last month it had removed 32 pages and fake accounts from its platforms in a bid to combat foreign meddling ahead of the U.S. votes.

The company stopped short of identifying the source of the misinformation. But members of Congress who had been briefed by Facebook on the matter said the methodology of the influence campaign suggested Russian involvement.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien; Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Andrew Heavens)

Their slogan is Orthodoxy or Death. They are convinced Russia should be ruled by an autocratic monarch. They believe the coming of a new tsar may be imminent.

The Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers is a small fringe group of Russian nationalists with no political power that stages processions, rallies and even burns books to promote their views.

Clad in all-black and marching with their Orthodox banners, the group pairs a biker club’s aesthetic with the gold of religious icons.

“We are striving for the restoration of an autocratic monarchy. Like the one we had under our tsars,” Leonid Simonovich-Nikshich, the group’s white-bearded leader, said.

“It is only possible through the church. In no way is this possible in a political secular way because that would be a dictator,” he said.

Its leaders say they are unsure how a shift to a monarchy might come about, with some members seeing the change emerging from a bloody social convulsion and others simply praying for it to happen.

Ultra nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky has referred to Putin as a modern-day tsar, but the Orthodox group’s political allegiances are unclear and it is not suggesting that the Russian president head an autocratic monarchy.

The group held a religious procession at a monastery in Moscow last month to mark one of the most important recent dates in their calendar: the 100-year anniversary of the murder by the Bolsheviks of Russia’s last monarch, Tsar Nicholas II.

The tsar, his wife and five children were shot on the night of July 16-17, 1918, in the basement of a merchant’s house in the city of Yekaterinburg, 1,450 km (900 miles) east of Moscow.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state atheism it espoused, the church canonised the tsar and his family, and his popularity as a historical figure has grown amid a Russian Orthodox Church resurgence under President Vladimir Putin.

Russian religious conservatives last year waged a campaign to block the release of Matilda, a Russian movie the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers described as blasphemous for its depiction of a romance between the tsar and a young ballerina.

The group did not attend the main memorial event in Yekaterinburg to mark the centenary of his murder however.

It was told it would not be allowed to raise its standards – some of which feature skulls and radical slogans like Orthodoxy or Death – at the event, Igor Miroshnichenko, a member of the group, said.

Instead, the group gathered at the Andronikov Monastery of the Saviour in Moscow on July 17 where they marched with tall crosses and standards depicting Russia’s last tsar.

More than 40 Syrian rebel factions have condemned the Russian involvement in a war that almost brought President Bashar al-Assad a “crushing defeat”. The United States views the Russian bombing of CIA-backed rebel forces as an intentional act.

Nor can Russia stop ‘volunteers’ fighting in pro-Assad ranks. For some, this is a continuation of an old alliance. Russia’s ties with Syria deepened when the Soviet Union forged a military alliance with Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez. As Charles Lister argued “Russia’s claim that its forces are there only to target Islamic State should be taken with a large grain of salt”.

In spite of this continued crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to draw support from the British far-right. Britain First wrote “We say well done Russia and good luck!” when news of the first airstrikes broke.

The party accepts the Russian narrative without question – including the annexation of Crimea. Britain First extends a measure of support to Assad’s regime as a buffer against the competing totalitarianism of ISIS.

A recent pro-Assad Facebook post read “TYRANTS DON’T VOLUNTARILY OFFER TO STEP DOWN. ASSAD HAS BEEN FIGHTING ISIS AND AL-NUSRA FROM DAY ONE. THE WEST’S ACTIONS IN SYRIA HAVE ONLY FACILITATED TERRORISM”.

In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that totalitarian ideologies seek “the transformation of human nature itself”. Jasmine Roman observed this transformation in Syria when writing for The National in Australia.

In recent weeks, Britain First has used its online echo chamber to promote Russian intervention in Syria. Fascist movements seek consensus by exploiting a fear of difference. Facebook allows consensus to grow through ‘likes,’ which pushes pro-Putin or extreme messages upwards. The ‘asynchronicity‘ of the online world helps individuals steer discussions towards toxic disinhibition. This toxicity often drowns out alternative voices.

But this pro-Putin stance is not born from a violent desire to eradicate ISIS. Britain First published an article in July headlined “Vladimir Putin: the man who could save the west?”

Putin’s moralistic anti-Western rhetoric mirrors that of the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who warned that “Having lost our bond with God and the Christian tradition, mankind has been morally blinded, gripped by materialism, irrationalism and nihilism”.

Ur-Fascist psychology requires a plot to ensure supporters feel besieged and threatened. That threat concerns Islam and multiculturalism. Under Ur-Fascism the only uniting social privilege is that of the nation state. Yet, Christianity transcends any traditional notion of the nation state. A fusion of religion and nationalism creates a pan-European identity for the far-right. It must also appeal to racist and xenophobic sentiments. Hence why Britain First argue that:

“the biggest problem for our western, leftwing elites, hell bent as they are on imposing “multiculturalism” on Europe and North America, is a patriotic Christian Russia still existing when the fabric of our societies is destroyed by immigration and Islamification”.

Britain First believe that “Putin and Russia will be a major source of help when civil strife breaks out in Europe”.

The British National Party (BNP) took a similar line last year: “The anti-British, anti-Christian, wealth obsessed elites and Establishment apparatchiks that rule us, hate Christianity and Christians. But most of all they hate Russian Putin because he is a tough, strong, God-fearing Christian – and because he stopped a gaggle of Zionist oligarchs from looting Russia”.

At a far-right conference in March of this year, Jim Dowson, who founded and later quit Britain First, praised Putin’s hyper-masculinity. He told the audience in St Petersburg that “Obama and America — they’re like females! They’re feminized men. You have been blessed by a man who is a man! And we envy that.”

The ex-leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, also attended the conference. He argued that “the survival of Christendom” is “impossible without the rise of the Third Rome: Moscow”. Other attendees included representatives from Forza Nuova in Italy, Gold Dawn in Greece, and the German neo-Nazi NPD.

Participants later signed a resolution which took a pro-Kremlin line on NATO and the Ukraine. The resolution also stated that “every effort will be made to protect our conservative values, that are based on Christian traditions and the common ideals of humanism”.

In a separate pro-Putin article, Britain First lifted large chunks of text from to the Washington Times. The final paragraph read “All hail Mother Russia, the new beacon of nationhood and Christianity!”

On two occasions last month, Britain First shared a hoax Vladimir Putin quote. Hoax Slayer exposed the fraud in April 2013; yet it did not prevent the BNP from sharing it a month later.

Others have documented the pro-Kremlin connections of various European far-right parties.

Eco understood that the cult of heroism underpins Ur-Fascism. For the European far-right, Vladimir Putin embodies this heroism. He remains their hyper-masculine, moral, cultural and patriotic vanguard against Islam.

This post first appeard on Byline.

The post Why the far-right consider Vladimir Putin their Christian vanguard against Islam appeared first on Religious Reader.