Catholicism’s Powerful Far-Right Perpetuates the Great Reset Conspiracy Ideology on a Special Edition of German Magazine COMPACT
A golden statue of the Archangel Michael standing over Satan, his sword lifted to deal a final blow, with an urban skyline in the background. This was the cover page of a special edition of the German extreme-right magazine COMPACT in December. Entitled “The Great Awakening - The spiritual fight against the Great Reset,” this “spiritual-political educational pamphlet for Christmas” features contributions from Catholic, Protestant, Russian Orthodox and anthroposophical figures on their struggle against vaccines and an alleged world totalitarian regime. Despite being reprimanded by higher religious authorities, these figures are part of a small but vocal group of Christian leaders who are points of reference for far-right nationalists in Europe, fanning the flames of anti-vaccine conspiracy ideologies with strong antisemitic and anti-Muslim components.
Among the contributions featured in COMPACT is a series of articles, both online and in print, entitled “The Great Reset: The Last Great Lie” by Catholic archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, as well as an online three-part interview with him. While some other Catholic clergymen have used Sunday masses to turn worshippers against the Covid-19 vaccine, Carlo Maria Viganò is not a local parish priest. He is a high-profile religious figure (he served as a Secretary General of the Vatican City Governorate from 2009 and 2011, subsequently becoming the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States until 2016) and the conspiracy narratives that he proclaims are particularly dangerous.
Both the contributions and the interviews focus on the pandemic and the public health measures, which are interpreted as actions to establish a New Order totalitarian regime. In other words, Viganò is proposing and spreading the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy ideology, and its more recent variation ‘the Great Reset’ according to which, a powerful elite is controlling the global politics and the economy in order to enslave humans and establish a global totalitarian regime. Within the conspiracy narrative, key actors such as Klaus Schwab and George Soros, or more generally the World Economic Forum, are working to turn society and the state into a socialist eco-dictatorship. Those who believe in this ideology tend to interpret major world events as part of an orchestrated effort to bring about the Great Reset, or as repercussions of it.
The Catholic archbishop adds religious elements to this conspiracy narrative, framing it in biblical terms, as Satan’s quest against God’s providential plan. For Viganò, those who support the vaccination programme and take the pandemic seriously are part of the Great Reset, and therefore Satan. Drawing a parallel with the “deep state” in the QAnon conspiracy narratives, Viganò talks about the existence of a “deep church” that infiltrated the Catholic Church and is making it obey the “official narrative of the pandemic”.
The three-part interview is full of antisemitic tropes and dog-whistles. The claim that “the globalists are pulling the strings in the background”, the references to the “Freemansonry”, the “scurrilous plans of Soros, Schwab and the rest” are all coded language which refers to Jewish people. As reported by Belltower.news, “Vigano does not limit himself to anti-Semitic codes, either, instead building in an anti-Islamic narrative with references to the “inversion of ethnicity [Umvolkung]” and the “Great Replacement” of Europe’s population.” According to this, there is a plan for Muslim migrants to replace white Christian Europeans.
In the same special edition, COMPACT also featured the views of the German cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, as expressed in a video interview by the Catholic St. Boniface Institute in Austria. In line with Viganò’s antisemitic remarks, the Catholic leader said that “the people are now brought in line to establish a surveillance state with total control” and attacked Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and George Soros for flying with their private jets to Glasgow while forcing the majority of people to abide to covid-19 measures and restrictions.
Like bishop Athanasius Schneider, who condemned the acceptance of vaccines as a way to “normalize the horror of genocide of abortion,” and cardinal Raymond Burke, who also warned against controlling microchips, Gerhard Ludwig Müller and Carlo Maria Viganò are leading critics of Pope Francis. The current head of the Catholic Church is in fact seen as one of the globalists who “moved the Church to align itself with a counterfeit kind of theology inspired by godless atheism” according to LifeSiteNews, a Canadian, Catholic, far-right news website that features the opinion of the staunchest conservative Catholics.
Describing itself as the “strongest German-language political medium in the fight against the New World Order pursued by the global elite”, it is not a surprise that the COMPACT magazine defends and supports the statements of Müller and Viganò, who are both presented as fighters against the “global Corona dictatorship” who are only “guilty of speaking the truth.” This rhetoric attempts to establish a broad right-wing coalition. As Belltower.news reported, “its content is chosen with the aim of appealing to as many different target groups as possible: young, old, Christians, esoteric minds, anti-democratic enthusiasts, climate change deniers and far-right supporters.”
The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has recently categorised COMPACT as “demonstrably extremist” with “clear far-right aspirations” but it is up to media wholesalers to stop stocking and selling the magazine. Most pressingly, its content should be challenged and exposed for what it is: a regurgitation of historical antisemitic and Islamophobic narratives, created to maintain the hegemony of conservative Christianity and White nationalism.
