It's called Rokor, that's R-O-C-O-R. The Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia. It's a faith tradition rooted in Russia, but recently it's been seeing growth in parts of the U.S. where it's never been. Mostly from American converts with no links to Russia at all.

It's typically an immigrant faith, so I was really interested in that experience and why it's both to converts. Anthropologist Sarah Ricardi Swartz has been studying the community for years. In 2017, she sat down in a tiny Appalachian town in West Virginia, where she got to know white American Christians who felt unmoored by change in the U.S. displaced by the erosion of social and gender boundaries of the past. They are anti-abortion, they're pro-heteronormative.

Families, they're anti-trans, their identity rooted in tradition, hierarchy, and notably, whiteness. Sarah remembers one, she calls him Dina.

And he said, I'm so angry. And I said, well, why are you angry? And he said, I'm a white guy, I've been pushed to the margins in this diverse society. And he said, my whole neighborhood is changing. There's all of these gays, and there's all of these different people.

And you can't even get a job now as a white guy because you're oppressed. He also talked about how much he supported Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Consider this. America recently had a president who appealed openly to white racial grievance. Russia still has a leader who's been happy to stoke racial divisions in the U.S.

And some who track extremism say American followers of the Russian Orthodox Church should not be ignored.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly, it's Tuesday, April 10th.

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It's considered this from NPR. In Russia, this week, a celebration 77 years old.

At 10 AM, the gigantic parade starts. A last Red Army band is first in line. As Soviet Russia hails the dawn of victory.

In May of 1945, Russians celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany. And they have continued to do so every year on May 9th. Victory day.

That is sound from Monday, a military band in Moscow's Red Square, where tanks and thousands of soldiers paraded.

With Russia occupying a very different position on the world stage than it did at the end of World War II. In the third month of Russia's attacks on Ukraine, international observers braced for Russian President Vladimir Putin might say in his big speech.

There was speculation Putin might use the day to claim victory in Ukraine or signal Russian plans to mobilize for a larger conflict. In the end, Putin did neither. Though he acknowledged Russian deaths in Ukraine, there were no claims of victory, no signal of widening action.

Instead, Putin, addressing Russian soldiers, committed to stave a course in Ukraine, and he tied Russian action there to the fight against fascism 77 years ago.

You are fighting for our motherland, he said. It's future, so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II.

Now Putin has used false claims of Nazism in Ukraine to justify Russia's invasion. In a speech this week, he said there's no place in today's world for Nazis.

And he also made reference to cancel culture. He bemoaned the loss of so-called traditional values.

That political playbook attacking opponents as fascists, decrying cancel culture, appealing to traditional values. It's not new for Putin, and it echoes rhetoric from former US President Donald Trump and his political allies.

That connection interested anthropologist Sarah Ricardi Swartz, you heard a bit from her earlier, she set out to understand why the Russian Orthodox Church was appealing to Americans with no links to Russia.

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