Freedom of Conscience and National Security

Abstract

Freedom of conscience is currently understood as the right to profess any (not only religious) worldview, as a freedom of views, assessments and beliefs, which is associated with the loss of religiosity in developed civilizations. There is a possibility for abusing this right, which is expressed in the implementation of religious, extremist and terrorist activities related to the worldview; inducement to suicide; damage to the morality and health of citizens; the use of narcotic and psychotropic drugs, hypnosis; the commission of depraved and other illegal actions. The most dangerous are those teachings that clearly claim to replace the «old» religions with the new ones. Currently, they are promoted by pseudo-religious organizations of a destructive nature, which are also called totalitarian sects. The exponential growth of such organizations is characteristic during periods of social upheaval and turmoil. On the one hand, their multiplication is a kind of symptom of a serious disease of the state organism. On the other hand, this organism becomes an object of social influence by external forces and new religious teachings are often nothing more than the embodiment of these social projects. In this regard, it is important to highlight the main feature of destructive pseudo-religious organizations — they threaten national security in the near or long term. In terms of immediate goals, the use of pseudo-religious organizations as agents of Western intelligence community should be pointed out. From the long-term perspective, the goal is the indoctrination of a considerable number of Russian citizens with a zombie consciousness ranging from active adherents of pseudo-religious ideas to obedient executors of someone else's will. The authors use empirical research to analyze the destructive organizations most known to the citizens of Russia, and to show the dynamics of their development: from pseudo-religious to extremist and further to terrorist. This is especially clearly seen in the example of the totalitarian sect «White Brotherhood», whose experience was later used for the nazification of Ukraine.