Inciting hatred towards the UOC: heading for pogroms?

On April 10, Bishop Nikita of Ivano-Frankivsk was beaten. The crime was committed at the entrance to the St. Nicholas Church in Chernivtsi. A red Mazda (its license plate was recorded) slowly passed by the bishop, who was returning to the eparchial administration with two deacons, and then returned – apparently, the culprit recognized the hierarch. He got out of the car, hit the bishop in the face twice, and then the deacon.

It could be assumed that the bishop became a random victim of a street thug, but that is not the case. The hierarch was beaten precisely because he is a bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, moreover, defamed by a number of media outlets. Now we are beginning to reap the fruits of a wild campaign of hatred against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It has been going on since 2014, but the last six months have been particularly unrestrained. And there are good reasons to believe that this campaign was deliberate and well-planned.

PR campaign of searches in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

The current stage of the struggle against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church began with a harmless singing of the song "Mother Rus’, awakens" at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Some women sang it after the service was over. This served as a reason for massive searches in hundreds of UOC churches in many eparchies. After each such check, the SBU press service announced the discovery of pro-Russian literature and other materials that allegedly were supposed to prove a connection with the aggressor country. But in reality, the evidence presented by the security forces did not withstand any criticism. For example, after searches in the Chernivtsi Eparchy, the SBU showed stacks of children's Bibles and prayer books, claiming to have found "wholesale batches of pro-Kremlin literature glorifying the aggressor country".

Nevertheless, such formulations were broadcast in the media and after each search, viewers were told about the "evidence" of collaborationism in the UOC.

Of course, it is not suitable for prosecution (provided that the courts are unbiased), but it is perfect for a PR campaign against the UOC and for inciting hatred in society against those citizens of Ukraine who are UOC believers.

At a time when Russia is bombarding peaceful Ukrainian cities with Iranian drones and cruise missiles, when our defenders are killed daily at the front, publishing a photo, for example, of a brochure "Russian Ideology" with an appropriate commentary is enough to lead people to UOC churches with anti-church slogans. But if these so-called independent media and social networks published a photo next to the brochure, in which the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, other monasteries and parishes hand over cars, food, trench candles and so on to the AFU, the public reaction would be quite different. But the truth is not needed, it is necessary to incite aggression and hatred of some Ukrainian citizens against others as much as possible. And this hatred has been stirred up at a rapid pace.

Quarter 95 performance

On December 10, 2023, a video containing direct insults, threats and calls for violence against UOC believers and priests was published on the Youtube channel “Studio Quarter 95 Online”. Quote: "You f*@king donkeys, you goat-faced f*@ks, you sons of bitches, you Putin's c@nt, you scumbags. May you f*@king die... Say, to spit in a priest of UOC MP – 20 hryvnias, to leave the Holy Scripture with a nail on an SUV – 50 hryvnias, to strike on the left cheek and automatically on the right – 100 hryvnias, to expel the Moscow Patriarchate from Ukraine – priceless".

This video publication contained material that, as in the case of the findings from the searches, did not warrant legal prosecution, but being presented from an appropriate angle and with appropriate comments it evoked in the viewer contempt, hatred and aggressive feelings towards the UOC. In other words, it was a quite deliberate and professionally executed denigration of the Church and an insult to millions of faithful Ukrainian citizens. It is impossible not to notice that following the publication of this video the number of cases of violence against believers and clergymen increased.

After repeated attempts by the UOC clergy and ordinary believers to draw the attention of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to such a clear violation of the law and incitement of inter-religious hatred, the Investigative Department of the Pechersk Office of the Directorate of Investigations in Kyiv has launched a pre-trial investigation into the case.

Attacks with a knife and razor

On 25 December 2022, an attempt was made to murder a UOC priest at the Holy Transfiguration Church in Chornomorsk. The parishioners managed to disarm the attacker, who attacked the priest with a knife but failed to finish the job.

On January 2, 2023, a real tragedy happened at the Protection of the Holy Mary Church in Vinnytsia. When the priest, Fr. Antony Kovtoniuk was preparing for the funeral service, a man burst into the church and started smashing everything around him: he knocked over a crucifix, tore icons from the walls, etc. When Fr. Antony came out of the altar and spoke to the man, trying to calm him down, the man attacked the priest and slit his throat with a dangerous razor.

Fr Antony ended up in intensive care in a serious condition. And it would seem that a normal person, who has not lost the most basic understanding of good and evil, should feel nothing but sympathy for the victim. But the black propaganda against the UOC is doing its work. Here are some of the comments on the social networks under this news: "What's the man for? I feel sorry for him, not for the priest...", "I think UOC MP priests should not be in Ukraine", "It is very sad when the first and only cut Russian priest could be cut only by some guy with a certificate from the madhouse.”

In other words, there is a conscious dehumanization of Ukrainian citizens who remain faithful to their Church in the consciousness of Ukrainian society. It turns out that they can be treated with indifference, insulted in every possible way, and be faced with violence against them, and all this will not only be unlawful and reprehensible from the point of view of basic human morality, but on the contrary, it is praiseworthy.

Attack on the bishop

Is it possible to rejoice in the beating of a bishop? For a healthy society, no. For the current Ukrainian society, yes. Anti-church media and social networks have openly mocked Bishop Nikita and other clerics of the UOC, justifying the violence committed against them. Here is a fairly typical post from Sonya Koshkina on Telegram: "Oops... What's going on? Barefoot Nikita was beaten in Chernivtsi. Well, beaten. They gave him a few good blows, nothing fatal. The reason – he continues to hang out with young choir singers." And as an experienced person in her field, S. Koshkina finishes her post by saying that she is generally not tolerant of violence.

In other words, the public justifies the beating of Bishop Nikita on the basis of the fact that during the searches of the Chernivtsi eparchial administration, he and a church choir member were stripped and lined up against the wall, and then the photos were leaked to the media with nasty comments. In other words, they first set up a blatant provocation, made false accusations, and then beat him, calling it a light correction.

Bishop Nikita of Ivan-Frankivsk stated that he had filed a lawsuit against the media that published slander against him and corresponding photos. It is likely that in court (again, assuming the court is unbiased) it will be proven that this is slander, but no one will be interested anymore.

What's next - pogroms?

We see how aggression against the UOC is growing. We repeat this is happening in conditions when the authorities cannot destroy the UOC legally (there are no legitimate grounds), and moreover, such destruction would be a clear violation of the fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens. In these conditions, it may seem quite logical and convenient to resort to violence against the UOC by the hands of an "outraged crowd".

By the way, it is precisely the "outraged crowd" that is currently seizing churches in Khmelnytskyi and the region after a provocation called "beating of a soldier".

We now see how this crowd is being incited and fueled to hate the UOC on various charges. We see how under the influence of this propaganda, society is gradually maturing to the idea of physically destroying the "wrong" social group, i.e., UOC believers. What was unthinkable yesterday is happening now. The expulsion of the Church from western regions and the physical destruction of churches. Now – the beating of a bishop and the justification of it. All of this did not arise suddenly; it was ripening and continues to ripen. Perhaps we are only at an intermediate stage. Seizures of churches by mobs are already balancing on the brink of pure pogroms. And similar processes have already happened throughout history. And more than once.

The "Night of Broken Glass"

"Kristallnacht" or "Night of Broken Glass" is the name given to a series of anti-Jewish pogroms that took place on the night of November 9-10, 1938 in Germany, as well as in occupied Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

This pogrom was provoked by the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938, by Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan, who was desperate because his parents had been sent to a concentration camp. In response to this, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who is now recognized as the main instigator of the pogrom, declared that "the world Jewry" was conspiring against the Germans, and that "the Führer has decided that... demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered". In other words, the government began to deal with the Jews not with its own hands, but with the hands of an incited crowd.

As a result, hundreds of synagogues were burnt down, approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned shops were looted and destroyed, and thousands of Jews were beaten. According to police records, at least 91 Jews were killed, and there were also numerous reports of rape and suicide. Firefighters were ordered not to save synagogues from the fire, but to extinguish fires only if they threatened German homes. Instead of protecting Jews from the attackers, the police began to arrest Jewish men who tried to resist the violence. In the end, up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, and later sent to concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and others.

"St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre"

"St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre" was a slaughter of Huguenots by Catholics that occurred on the night of August 24, 1572, on the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day. According to historians' estimates, about three thousand people were killed in Paris alone, and about 30,000 Huguenots were killed in pogroms throughout France.

A large number of victims and the fierce hatred of the common people towards the Huguenots can largely be explained by a well-conducted PR campaign. The Catholic's hatred towards the Protestants was caused by the fact that those in power were able to blame the Huguenots for bad harvests, constant tax increases, rising prices of goods, and so on.

Hutu and Tutsi

Unlike St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda occurred quite recently, in 1994. The Hutu people, who made up the political and military elite of Rwanda, declared the Tutsi people to be "wrong Rwandans" and accused them of wanting to remove the Hutu from power and enslave them. These accusations were spread among the Hutu population through propaganda and led to a wave of strong hatred towards the Tutsi. The solution was very simple – physically eliminate the "wrong Rwandans", which the Rwandan army, police, and extremist groups called Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi did for several months.

As a result of these bloody reprisals, according to various estimates, between 500,000 and 1.1 million people were killed, and the total number of victims reached up to 20% of Rwanda's entire population.

As we can see, all of these reprisals were preceded by preliminary information brainwashing of the population, of course, using the means that existed at that time. It is believed that the task of everyone, including politicians, those in power, journalists, and religious leaders, should be to prevent the situation in Ukraine from developing in a similar direction. After all, this could threaten the civilization collapse of our entire nation. And to do this, one simple thing needs to be done – to stop dividing the citizens of Ukraine into "Aryans" and "Jews", into "Hutu" and "Tutsi", into "right" and "wrong". It is necessary to recognize the right of every citizen of our country to belong to the Church he/she has chosen, and the right to go to the temples he/she wants.