An interesting approach to the ideology that drives the Russian leadership today. and it makes a lot of sense to me en.wikipedia.org
Ideology
Dugin disapproves of liberalism and the West, particularly US hegemony. [28] He asserts: "Ware on the side of Stalin and the Soviet Union". [2 9] He describes himself as being a conservative: "We, conservatives, want a strong, solid State, want order and healthy family, positive values, the reinforcing of the importance of religion and the Church in society". He adds: "We want patriotic radio, TV, patriotic experts, patriotic clubs. We want the media that expresses national interests". [30] According to political scientist Marlène Laruelle, the thinking of Dugin, main manufacturer of a fascism à-la-russe, could be described as a series of concentric circles, with far-right ideologies underpinned by different political and philosophical traditions ( Esoteric Nazism, Traditionalism/ Perennialism, the German Conservative Revolution and the European New Right) at its backbone. [31]
Dugin supports Martin Heidegger's thought, notably the geo–philosophical concept of Dasein (Existence). [32] According to Dugin, the forces of liberal and capitalist Western civilization represent what the ancient Greeks called ?ß??? (hubris), "the essential form of titanism" (the anti-ideal form), which opposes Heaven ("the ideal form—in terms of space, time, being"). In other words, the West would summarize "the revolt of the Earth against Heaven". To what he calls the West's "atomizing" universalism, Dugin contrasts an apophatic universalism, expressed in the political idea of "empire". [32] Values of democracy, human rights, individualism are considered by him not to be universal but uniquely Western. [33]
In 2019, Dugin engaged in a debate with French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy on the theme of what has been called "the crisis of capitalism" and the insurrection of nationalist populisms. [34]
Eurasianism, fascism, and views on geopolitics[ edit]
Dugin has espoused fascist views, [35] [36] [37] [38] and has theorized the foundation of a "Euro-Asian empire" capable of fighting the US-led Western world. [35] [36] [39] In this regard, he was the organizer and the first leader of the ultranationalist National Bolshevik Party from 1993 to 1998 (along Eduard Limonov) and, subsequently, of the National Bolshevik Front and of the Eurasia Party, which then became a non-governmental association. Dugin's Eurasitic ideology therefore aims at the unification of all Russian-speaking peoples in a single country through the forced territorial dismemberment of the former republics of the Soviet Union. [40] [41]
In the early 1990s Dugin's work at the National Bolshevik Front included research into the roots of national movements and the activities of supporting esoteric groups in the first half of the 20th century. Partnering with Christian Bouchet, [42] [43] a then-member of the French Ordo Templi Orientis, and building on the national-fascist and migratory- integrative interest groups in Asia and Europe, they contribute in bringing international politics closer to Russia's Eurasian geopolitical concept.
Dugin spent two years studying the geopolitical, semiotic and esoteric theories of the controversial German scholar Herman Wirth (1885–1981), one of the founders of the German Ahnenerbe. This resulted in the book Hyperborean Theory (1993), in which Dugin largely endorsed Wirth's ideas as a possible foundation for his Eurasianism. [44] Apparently, this is "one of the most extensive summaries and treatments of Wirth in any language". [45] According to the Moldavian anthropologist Leonid Mosionjnik Wirth's overtly wild ideas fitted perfectly well in the ideological void after the demise of communism, liberalism and democracy. [46] Dugin also promoted the legend that Wirth had written an important book on the history of the Jewish People and the Old Testament, the so-called Palestinabuch, which could have changed the world had it not been stolen. [47]
Dugin's ideas, particularly those on "a Turkic- Slavic alliance in the Eurasian sphere" have begun to receive attention among certain nationalistic circles in Turkey, most notably among alleged members of the Ergenekon network, which is the subject of a high-profile trial (on charges of conspiracy).[ citation needed] Dugin's Eurasianist ideology has also been linked to his adherence to the doctrines of the Traditionalist School. (Dugin's Traditionalist beliefs are the subject of a book length study by J. Heiser, The American Empire Should Be Destroyed—Aleksandr Dugin and the Perils of Immanentized Eschatology. [48]) Dugin also advocates for a Russo-Arab alliance. [49]
In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution ... The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union.
—? The Basics of Geopolitics (1997)
The reborn Russia, according to Dugin's concept, is said by Charles Clover of the Financial Times to be a slightly remade version of the Soviet Union with echoes of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, where Eurasia was one of three continent-sized super states including Eastasia and Oceania as the other two and was participating in endless war between them. [20] In the Eurasian public discourse sphere, the totalitarian communist policy deployed in over three decades of works by various international groups that are part of the movement, is "a version of reintegration of the post-Soviet space into a "Eurasian" sphere of influence for Russia". [50] The North American program "works with a wide range of partners from all sectors of civil society" and "is advanced through grant making, advocacy and research, regional initiatives, and close engagement". [51]
Russian Orthodoxy and Rodnovery[ edit]Dugin was baptized at the age of six in the Russian Orthodox church of Michurinsk by his great-grandmother Elena Mikhailovna Kargaltseva. Since 1999, he formally embraced a branch of the Old Believers, a Russian religious movement which rejected the 1652–1666 reforms of the official Russian Orthodox Church. [52] Dugin's Eurasian philosophy owes much to Traditional Integralism and Nouvelle Droite movements, and as such it resonates with Neopaganism, [53] a category which in this context means the movement of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery), especially in the forms of Anastasianism and Ynglism. Dugin's Eurasianism is often cited as belonging to the same spectrum of these movements, [54] as well as also having influences from Hermetic, Gnostic and Eastern traditions. [55] He calls to rely upon "Eastern theology and mystical currents" for the development of the Fourth Political Theory. [56]
According to Marlene Laruelle, Dugin's adherence to the Old Believers allows him to stand between Paganism and Orthodox Christianity without formally adopting either of them. His choice is not paradoxical, since, according to him—in the wake of René Guénon—Russian Orthodoxy and especially the Old Believers have preserved an esoteric and initiatory character which was utterly lost in Western Christianity. As such, the Russian Orthodox tradition may be merged with Neopaganism and may host "Neopaganism's nationalist force, which anchors it in the Russian soil, and separates it from the two other Christian confessions". [52] |
