The Most Dangerous Philosopher in the World
The work of Kremlin-approved philosopher Alexander
Dugin provides key insights on the longterm strategy behind Russian hacks of
the American elections.
Paul Ratner
DECEMBER
18, 2016
The
revelations about Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic Party
officials, intending to vault Trump over Clinton, have added more fuel to an
already-explosive and exhausting election cycle. Why would Russia do this,
especially as it’s been revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was
likely personally directing the operation? Enter Alexander Dugin, the political
scientist known as “Putin’s Rasputin” or “Putin’s Brain”, as well as an occult
fascist. He is also a sociology professor at the highly prestigious Moscow
State University, a prolific writer, an advisor to key political and military
figures and an articulator of a Kremlin-approved nationalist philosophy.
He has also
been on the U.S. sanctions list following Russia’s takeover of Crimea for
advocating the murder of Ukrainians, among other things.
It’s not
that Dugin is personally responsible for the hacks that are currently being
explained as Putin’s personal vendetta against Clinton. But Dugin’s influential
philosophy aligns very well with what seems to have happened and provides a
stunning window into this and future conflicts with Russia. There are likely
much deeper motives behind Russian actions.
Alexander
Dugin is at once a sociologist, historian and a philosopher. You can find many
of his lectures online on Youtube, although it would help to know Russian. He
himself speaks ten languages. Among his many controversial opinions, he has
expressed deeply anti-scientific views, calling for the ban of chemistry and
physics. He would also get rid of the Internet, an anti-technological view that
actually stems from his his desire to ultimately upend the world as we know it.
What he
proposes is that there have been three leading political theories that impacted
the world in the relatively recent past – liberal capitalism or “liberalism”,
communism and fascism. According to Dugin, the United States is the world’s
leader of liberalism, which offers individual liberty, a rationalist approach
and market competition.
Even though
liberalism has been the winning ideology so far, triumphing over fascism in
1945, and communism in 1991 (when the Soviet Union dissolved), Dugin thinks
that it is now also experiencing a fatal crisis. He believes liberals
themselves would the first to claim that. Dugin regards liberalism nearing a
dead end, mired currently in a “nihilistic post-modern stage” because it is
trying to liberate itself from rational thought and the oppression of the
brain, which to a liberal is “something fascist in itself”. Dugin takes this a
step further, describing liberalism as now trying to free the organs of the
body from the brain’s control, alluding to its acceptance of the LGBT community.
Here’s how
he explains this rationale:
“The liberalism insists on the freedom and liberation
from any form of collective identity. That is the very essence of the
liberalism. The liberals have liberated the human being from national identity,
religious identity and so on. The last kind of collective identity is gender.
So there is time to abolish it making it arbitrary and optional.”
What Dugin
proposes instead of what he sees as three dead and dying ideologies is his
“Fourth Political Theory”. It would create an entirely alternative political
model, set against “progress” of world history as is. It would not be based on
the issues of individualism, race or nationalism. He sees this theory to be
partially based on the work of the existential German philosopher Martin
Heidegger, controversial for his association with Nazism. His philosophy calls
for a root of a human being’s self-awareness (called dasein by Heidegger) to be
saved in the world, as it has been diluted in the modern space by essentially
dehumanizing technology.
Since this
root of being differs from person to person and from culture to culture, the
world should feature a multipolar power division, instead of one superpower in
the United States. Finding a way to implement such a new way of looking at the
world would, per Dugin, return a sense of identity to humans who have been
losing it all around the world.
Dugin
contrasts this theory of a multipolar world with what he (and conspiracy
theorists worldwide) see as the movement towards creating a “world government,”
led by disingenuous “globalist elites” who are out to deprive people of a sense
of identity and to subjugate them to their corporate needs.
In this
world of a number of regional superpowers, what role would Russia play? Dugin
sees Russia to be the leading nation in the Eurasian Union and has founded the
International Eurasia Movement to make that happen.
What is Eurasia?
Basically, it’s the territory of the former Soviet Union. Dugin thinks the
Soviet Union just took over the boundaries of a historical union of people and
ethnicities that was there from the Russian Empire. As Russia is a country of a
unique culture and destiny, it is its mission to create a center of power that
has elements of both Europe and Asia, the two continents straddled by the
expansive country.
“The West knows little or nothing at all about the
real history of Russia. Sometime they think that the Soviet Union was purely a
communist creation and the States as Ukraine, Kazakhstan or Azerbaidjan were
independent before the USSR and conquered by Bolsheviks or forced into Soviet
State,” says Dugin. “The fact is they never existed as such and represented but
administrative districts without any political or historical meaning inside
Russian Empire as well as inside USSR. These countries were created in their
present borders artificially only after the collapse of USSR and as the result
of such collapse.”
So the goal
of establishing the Eurasian Union would be essentially to right a historical
wrong and bring back a successful empire that existed even before the Soviet
Union. Russia’s recent takeover of Crimea and further designs on Ukraine seem
to be a logical part of such a plan.
Dugin digs
even deeper into his very controversial historical analysis, claiming Eurasia’s
current opponent is not just the United States, but Atlanticism, the axis of
cooperation between Europe, US and Canada that crosses the Atlantic Ocean.
These maritime, liberal nations value individuality and market forces.
Eurasia, on
the other hand, represents the conservative philosophy of land-locked
continentalism, which according to Eurasians, has among its values a hierarchical
structure, law and order, traditionalism and religion.
Thus we
have Atlantis vs Eurasia. In fact, Dugin claims all history can be viewed as a
battle between maritime and land-based nations.
What does
Dugin think about Trump’s victory? He has been quite enthusiastic about Trump
throughout the whole election process, to say the least, describing him this
way to point out why Trump is a “sensation” that can stand up to globalist
elites:
“[Donald Trump] is tough, rough, says what he thinks,
rude, emotional and, apparently, candid. The fact that he is a billionaire
doesn’t matter. He is different. He is an extremely successful ordinary
American…”
Dugin
thinks Trump’s victory is a monumental strike against the “globalists”, whose
candidate was Hillary Clinton – the same language that you can easily find
peppering conservative American websites like Breitbart News, Drudge Report and
conspiracy king Alex Jones (a particular favorite of Dugin’s). He thinks
Trump’s victory was a kind of “revolution” started by American people and
should lead to worldwide defeats of the globalist agenda, draining the
proverbial “swamp” the world over.
Dugin
doesn’t stop there, however. His visions of what Trump’s victory means go into
the apocalyptic and civilization-changing:
“We need to return to the Being, to the Logos, to the
foundamental- ontology (of Heidegger), to the Sacred, to the New Middle Ages –
and thus to the Empire, religion, and the institutions of traditional society
(hierarchy, cult, domination of spirit over matter and so on). All content of
Modernity – is Satanism and degeneration. Nothing is worth, everything is to be
cleansed off. The Modernity is absolutely wrong — science, values, philosophy,
art, society, modes, patterns, “truths”, understanding of Being, time and
space. All is dead with Modernity. So it should end. We are going to end it.”
This
certainly would not be the first time in recent history a Russian thought that
everything is wrong and the world needs to be completely uprooted. We know how
that turned out. And the occult-sounding elements of some of what Dugin is
saying, along with his beard, perhaps earn the comparison to Rasputin. But does
Dugin believe concrete measures should be taken to bring about his vision of
the world?
Interestingly,
prior to Trump’s victory, influential American conservative outlets like the
National Review were warning about Russian intentions, specifically singling
out the threat Dugin’s ideology posed, calling Eurasianism “a satanic cult”.
Now that Trump won and Russia was implicated in election meddling, they are not
so keen to bring that up.
Does Putin
really listen to Dugin? Scholars and commentators say his ideas are taken
seriously by people in Putin’s circle and their growing popularity matches up
with Putin’s evolving authoritarianism and actions. Notably, Dugin came out in
2008 in support of Russian troops taking over Georgia and very much fanned the
flames during the 2014 Russia-Ukraine conflict, calling for massacring
Ukrainians and annexing the Ukrainian lands that were part of the former
Russian Empire.
To see what
Dugin might advocate specifically, we can look in his bestselling book “The
Foundation of Geopolitics” from 1997, which had particular success among
Russian military and according to Foreign Policy (and Dugin’s own words), is
assigned as a textbook at Russian military universities.
The book
outlines a vision for Russia in the 21st century that would lead to Eurasia’s
formation, but also includes specific strategies for defeating or neutralizing
the United States. These include destabilization and disinformation campaigns
using Russian special forces and asymmetrical warfare, splitting alliances
between U.S. and countries like Germany and France, as well as fermenting
division within the country itself, specifically singling out race relations.
On Page 367 of the first edition of the book, Dugin explains:
“It is especially important to introduce geopolitical
disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism
and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident
movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing
internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense
simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics…”
After our
hyper-divisive elections, full of calamities described above, facing an
increasingly eye-opening investigation into Russian interference in our most
cherished democratic institution, it’s hard not to take Dugin’s ideas seriously.
With Trump’s victory, Dugin has backed off somewhat from painting the U.S. as
enemy number one. It’s also been reported that the relationship between Dugin
and Putin might have cooled off recently, with Dugin criticizing Putin for
being “too slow” in bringing about his vision of the world. But looking at the
facts on the ground it’s possible to conclude that Putin may still be playing a
Eurasia-oriented long game that is not going to end only at Wikileaking
embarrassing emails. Especially in light of the fact that the United States now
finds itself in a vulnerable position, looking for a unifying philosophy and a
way forward of its own.
Here’s a
paper on Dugin and his book by Hoover Institution’s John B. Dunlop. If you know
Russian, you can read the book here.
Cover
photo: Alexander Dugin in South Ossetia, before the Russian-Georgian war,
August 2008.
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