There may be more to the “errors of Russia” than first meet the eye. A new book by Dr. Douglas Haugen investigates the scope of those errors in the context of ten Catholic saints. Notably, Dr. Haugen’s findings correlate with those of other modern day Catholics researchers and writers.
by Jakob Soefting
For a website for “Current affairs and culture in light of the Fatima message”, a new book like The Saints of the Apocalypse: Escaping the Empire of Spectacle (2026) 1 by American political scientist Dr. Douglas Haugen ought to be of obvious interest.
Its concept is to see our own time and deformed world through the apocalyptic lens of ten saints spread out over a time span of two millennia, but here regrouped to offer us their assistance in calmly dealing with the current catastrophe. With this, Haugen brings a perspective to the table which is actually obvious in its essentials since it is Catholic, but which has somehow most often been left out in contemporary Catholic commentary. Surely a sign of our times.
As the back cover-text says: this is a book about becoming the kind of people who can bear the truth when the lights are always on.
With that, I’ll proceed. But, to stay strictly on topic, I’ll go directly to its last chapter, “Our Lady of Fatima.”
It is not so much on the apparitions themselves – just as the preceding chapters on “smaller saints” were not a detailed hagiographical account or textual analysis – as it is a discussion of Haugen’s viewpoint of the world as seen “in the light of” Fatima. I’ll limit myself to one aspect: the discussion on “[a Rússia] espalhará os seus erros”. What is the identity of these errors?
The common, simplified, stop-short line is to say: it was communism. “And,” as Haugen says, “it was.”
Yet, “… the message runs deeper”.
There is more to the errors of Russia
The errors are the “contagion of false messianism,” i.e., “Jewish messianism” – the attempt at cancelling out what Fr. Denis Fahey (1883-1954) called “the supernatural programme of Our Lord Jesus Christ” and supplanting it with a plan for a “natural messiah.”
Additionally, Haugen points to a crucial aspect of this messianism: dialectics. A way of thinking which we of course see flower out in an explicit version in the system of Marxism (dialectical materialism). Yet, its roots go deeper.
Realising this helps us understand the interconnection and interplay between the two most obviously erroneous systems that developed in Russia at this time, and which Our Lady surely intended on the first level: Communism and Zionism.
“[E]ach generation has not only failed to heed the warnings of Fatima but has failed to recognize unfolding the seed war between the Synagogue and the Church. Instead, Christians have yoked themselves to the errors of Zionism and Communism, the seemingly opposing forces that dialectically advance Jewish messianism [—].
Both ideologies, though different in form, were dialectically juxtaposed in order to advance Jewish messianism […].
Father Fahey […] highlights how Communism as an instrument of the Jewish agenda was never simply a political movement but rather a radical rejection of Christian metaphysics, which uses Marxism against Zionism, i.e., political religion, as a cover for the establishment of a Jewish world order. [—]
At the heart of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries lies […] the rise of Jewish messianism” (pp. 219-20, 222).
Haugen, for instance, quotes Behind Communism (1952) by American author, Frank L. Britton (1920-2010), to illustrate this fusion of Zionism into the Communist project:
“It was in this atmosphere that the twin movements of Marxism and Zionism began to take hold and dominate the mass of Russian Jewry. […]
Zionism […] took root in Russia in the 1880’s in competition with Marxism, whose high priest was Karl Marx, grandson of a rabbi […]. Eventually every Russian Jew came to identify himself with either one or the other of these movements.” (p. 223)
Haugen further relates how Fr. Fahey in The Rulers of Russia (1938) illustrates how the synthesis of these two seemingly opposing world-views camouflaged the enmity between Communism-Zionism and Christian Civilisation, and how this is symbolised by Viscount Léon de Poncins (1897—1975) when he, in Judaism and the Vatican (1967), points to both Bolsheviks and Zionists being not only overwhelmingly Jewish, but also inextricably linked to the same Jewish financial and intellectual networks.
This dialectical understanding of Zionism makes me think of the words spoken by American-Jewish lawyer and co-founder of AJC, Louis Marshall (1856–1929) in 1918:
“Zionism is but an incident of a far-reaching plan: it is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon.”
Support from other sources
Haugen’s claims are obviously controversial, but are they far-fetched? Aren’t they, in all honesty, obvious? Let me, for the rest of this article, mention a number of other voices who have in the past, to a lesser or greater degree, spoken in support of what Haugen is saying.
This little “list” is simply what of my lesefrüchte 2 I can draw back to mind.
Why not start with Abp. Lefebvre himself? The following quote might not be from a Fatima context, but it shows that he was aware of the significance of this Jewish messianism. It is Bp. Bernhard Tissier de Mallerais who quotes him in his Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography (2004):
“Since Israel refused the true Messiah, it would give itself another messianism that is temporal and earthbound, dominating the world by money, Freemasonry, Revolution, and social democracy. [—]
The worldwide designs of the Jews are being brought about in our time, but they started with the foundation of Masonry and the Revolution which has decapitated the Church” (p. 603).
Errors that are spreading throughout the world indeed. The intimate connections between globalism (Lefebvre’s “worldwide designs”) and Zionism – as well as the root they go back to, has been repeatedly elaborated upon by Fr. James Mawdsley (1973—), a priest who has often worked with the Fatima Center.
But I’ll move swiftly onto the Brazilian professor of history, Carlos Bezerra, who among other things runs Apostolado Glórias de Maria on Youtube and has written O Mistério da Irmã Lúcia – Fátima: a verdade por trás do véu (2005). He has explicitly discussed the errors of Russia in connection to Zionism and Jewish messianism. I recently saw a video of his (Sept. 25, 2025) in which he said to those who think that the various globalist agendas originates in a Communist agenda:
“No, my friends, this is not Communism. Although Communism is embedded within it. But in reality, the root of this is deeper and it is called Tikkun Olam.”
Communism is a mere tool which can be used in different ways within this project. The phrase “convenient peg” comes to mind again.
One who came close to pointing to Zionism as one of the “errors of Russia” – which he of course couldn’t do since it is a Catholic concept, and he was not a Catholic – is English journalist, Douglas Reed (1895—1976).
In his book The Controversy of Zion (1978), not the least in the chapter “The coming of Zionism,” he clearly shows that Zionism’s real origin is Russia – simultaneously with the growth of Communist thought there (in the Pale of Settlement not the least, and with the two not seldom mixed within the same families and individuals). And he, central to our previous discussion, interestingly identifies the dialectics:
“Thus, while Europe outwardly appeared to be slowly moving towards an improving future on the path which for eighteen centuries had served it well, in the Talmudic areas of Russia, Zionism joined Communism as the second of the two forces which were to intercept that process.
Communism was designed to subvert the masses; it was the ‘great popular movement’ foreseen by Disraeli, by means of which ‘the secret societies’ were to work in unison for the disruption of Europe. Zionism set out to subvert rulers at the top. Neither force could have moved forward without the other, for rulers of unimpaired authority would have checked the revolution as it had been checked in 1848.
Zionism was essentially the rejoinder of the Talmudic centre in Russia to the emancipation of Jews in the west. It was the intimation that they must not involve themselves in mankind but must remain apart. [—]
Neither of those groups [Zionists and Communists] could have taken shape, in those sternly ruled communities, against the will of the rabbinate. If the rabbis had given out the word that Communism was ‘transgression’ and Zionism ‘observance’ of ‘the statues and judgements’, there would have been no Communists in the ghettoes, only Zionists.
The ruling sect, looking into the future above the heads of the regimented mass, evidently saw that both groups were essential to the end in view; and Disraeli, in one of the passages earlier quoted, named the motive. From the middle of the last century the story of the revolution is that of Communism and Zionism, directed from one source and working to a convergent aim.”
To jump from an old Protestant to a recent Catholic in this context (i.e., to someone who has contributed to the discussion of Zionism as an error of Russia), I give you commentator, Louie Verrecchio (1961—).
In his article A Catholic View of Israel and the Jews (May 1, 2024) he says that “among those errors of Russia [..] is the scourge of Zionism.” Already a year earlier, in “Judaism, Zionism, and the Errors of Russia” (Ibid, October 18, 2023) he had at least wondered:
“With this […] historical review in mind, especially in light of current events, one might well wonder if Zionism – a movement founded in Russia and exported therefrom – is among the ‘errors of Russia’ about which Our Lady forewarned.”
I also recall an article by Timothy Fitzpatrick, “Soviets founded the state of Israel and Zionism” (Fitzpatrick Informer, March 8, 2024) which could be critically considered. It made clear the Zionist movement’s origin on Russian soil and in our context, the interesting role the Soviet Union came to play in the creation of the Jewish state.
Ret. Lt. Col. and writer Gary Taphorn discussed, in the article From the Vault: Christian Zionism – America’s Dance with the Devil, Part 3 (Catholic Family News, September 24, 2024) the issue under the heading “Twin Errors of Communism and Zionism” which finished:
“To the Catholic, Zionism is simply one of the ‘errors’ which Russia would spread around the world, as warned by the Blessed Virgin at Fatima.”
The Fatima Center’s own Fr. Nicholas Gruner (1942—2015) said in the interview-article The new Pope, the Church, and the Consecration (Fatima Crusader, Issue 105, Spring 2013) that Communism is “not the only error of Russia. Zionism is an error of Russia”.
Hugh Akins, whom I read earned the respect of Ab. Lefebvre, pointed explicitly, in Synagogue Rising: A Catholic Worldview of Antichristian Judaism and Counterrevolutionary Resistance (2011), not only to Zionism as an error of Russia, but also reaches Haugen’s baseline: the errors of Russia are “crypto-Judaic.”
Lawyer and writer Christopher A. Ferrera (1952—) writes, in his book False Friends of Fatima (2012): “The errors of Russia certainly include Communism […], but they […] also include […] Zionism”.
Numerous, of course, are the commenters who point to the defining Jewish aspect of the Russian revolutionary movements of Communism and zionism. Let’s just grab here Dr. E. Michael Jones (1948—), who in The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit (2015), says exactly that: “Jews played a leading role in the revolutionary movements that transformed Russia and Europe.”
Fr. Feeney on the Errors of Russia
If we lastly go back a bit in time, Fr. Leonard Feeney’s (1897—1978) article Our Lady of Fatima warned us (The Point, May 1957) simply has to be not only mentioned, but quoted at some length. Don’t worry, what follows is not tainted by “Feeneyism.” 3 The man definitely wrote some good things.
“Were Lucy, at the age of ten, puzzled at what Our Lady meant by the ‘errors’ of Russia, there would have been few in all of Europe to whom she could have turned in 1917 for an explanation. The Russian errors were then only beginning to assert themselves on the world’s stage.
1917 was, indeed, to be the big year for them — the big year for both of them, for they were two. And while these two were familiarly and conveniently called Russian errors, it must be remembered that they were Russian with reservation. By no means were they errors of the Russian people, propagated by them and bearing endemic Russian birthmarks. They were, rather, locationally Russian.
Russia was the place where, predictably, they first held forth. For Russia, at the time, was the chief populational home of world Jewry — and these two were errors of the Jews, preached by Jews, and everywhere taken to be Jewish. Their 1917 names were Bolshevism and Zionism, though the former, as is the fashion with Jews, was pleased to be known by more than one name, and has made its subsequent reputation as Communism.”
And here is a chunky middle section:
“A recent book by a former London Times correspondent provides this neat summary of the pair. ‘These two beanstalks, though neither is Russian, sprang from a common root in Russia. Before the first war they germinated in the cellars and ghettos of Russia. They appeared above ground in 1917, when the alien Communists were helped to usurp power in Russia and the Zionist ambition was espoused by the British government.’ (Somewhere South of Suez, Devin-Adair, New York, 1951) [—]
From the very moment that the sixth and final apparition at Fatima faded into the October sky, the twin errors of Communism and Zionism leaped forward, as it were, unleashed. Within a month, the government of the proud Russian Empire had effectively fallen before the plots of a roomful of Communist revolutionaries.
And at the other end of Europe, the Holy Land itself was being promised to the Russian Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, by no less an authority than His Majesty’s Government at London. This English promise, called the Balfour Declaration, was dated November 2, 1917.
The final message at Fatima was not yet three weeks old. Forty years later, the fantastic picture is this: Communism sits as the absolute lord of the East, with an empire stretching from Berlin to the China Sea, dominating one quarter of the land area of the world, and a third of the world’s people. Zionism, on the Western hand, stands arrogantly astride the remainder of the world’s powers, with every major head-of-state a self-professed defender of Zionism, every major city a Zionist fund-raising headquarters, and every major Western nation in sustained peril of seeing the cream of its youth killed-off to perpetuate the Zionist state in Palestine.
Spectacular as these political considerations are, however, they have been eclipsed in Catholic minds by the horrors which have beset the Church since Fatima. Nothing more pointedly reflects the Jewish inspiration of Communism and Zionism than the vengeance with which they have attacked Our Lord in His Mystical Body.”
Here is a passage which sure sound Haugenian:
“Still, for all its ferocity, the clash between the Mother of God and the Jewish twins, Communism and Zionism, is but one campaign in a greater, deeper, and more abiding struggle. ‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed,’ God said to Satan after Adam’s fall (Gen. 3:1 5).
And at the same time as He declared war between His Mother and the Devil, and between her children and his agents, God also disclosed how the war would end: ‘She shall crush thy head,’ He told Satan, ‘and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.’
Eventually, Our Lady must tread upon Communism and Zionism as she must prevail over every stratagem of the Devil and his army. Indeed, this final victory was plainly promised at Fatima.”
In the end …
“Only by complying with it [the devotion to the Immaculate Heart] can we smash the Communist-Zionist machine. [—] Only one remedy can save the world from the hell it is facing both here and hereafter: devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary: true devotion, flowering in the one true Faith.”
… my Immaculate Heart will triumph.
More support for the thesis
This makes me recall author and editor John Vennari’s (1958—2017) conference talk Fatima and the New World Order (2009):
“The errors of Russia, […] they are all part of what the great Fr. Denis Fahey called ‘the forces of organized naturalism’ and these forces […] are working […] to establish […] a new world order […] which […] is the sworn enemy of Our Lady of Fatima. The triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart I believe can only mean her triumph over these forces of organized naturalism.”
Hence, he is not explicit, but we can only assume he means what he references. The first force in Fr. Fahey’s The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism (1943) is the demons, the third one the masonic lodges which function as satellites to the second force, the Jewish Nation.
In his The kingship of Christ and the conversion of the Jewish nation (1953), Fr. Fahey expressed his belief that the future conversion of the Jewish people would be one of the great signs of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary foretold at Fatima. This is, in other words, an implicit, but surely strong support of Haugen’s discussion on “the errors.”
A last person I feel drawn to mention here is American Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh (1891—1949), and this even though I do not sit on any direct quote where he explicitly elaborates on the errors of Russia. But I think of his whole authorship, historically tracing and describing the origins of the Church’s historical enemy, and then crowned by his Our Lady of Fátima (1947), as such a comment in itself.
And this although he admittedly came to deal more with the Sephardic than the Ashkenazi side of things, so to speak. In his search for long-buried historical truths, he didn’t lose sight of the present scene or the future. It sharpened his vision. The book describing the apparitions in Fatima is his logical climax. The errors he had traced through centuries led him there.
These examples that have passed in quick review, will suffice. But to sum up: Haugen, backed up in various ways and degrees by those I’ve added in, has given the plain but full picture: not only that Communism and its twin-sister Zionism are heads of the errors of Russia which Our Lady spoke of, but also that if they are “sisters” they are also birthed by the same mother, and it is not Mother Russia, but what St. Hildegard of Bingen called Mater Synagoga. The mode of delivery was a process of dialectics. This was also the parenting method which shaped their behaviour.
Someone asked me recently, in effect; “If Zionism is an error of Russia, how do you explain that with Herlz being from Hungary?”
Yes, he was born in a German-speaking family in the Austrian Empire (now Hungary). But what of it? With that historical and logical take, one also have to say that Communism obviously cannot be an error of Russia either, since Marx was born in a German-speaking family in Prussia (now Germany).
Such arguments are superficial. The roots of the errors of “Russia” runs deeper than any temporary historical carrier of those ideas. Zionism is obviously not the problem. Communism is obviously not the problem. They are simply expressions of the problem, a problem that is now setting the world ablaze.
Endnotes
- Purchase at Amazon Australia or Amazon US ↩︎
- “gleanings from books” ↩︎
- See https://sspxpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Feeneyism.pdf ↩︎
by Jakob Soefting
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