.jpg)
Reaction
An international anti-fascist show run by a Scandinavian nerd, a Slavic alcoholic and an American unc that takes you to the darkest corners of the internet to help you understand the footsoldiers of online right-wing mobilization - content creators.
Reaction
Episode 20 - Dugin
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
As Mike goes missing to start his grind set arc, Wifeguy Yugopnik and Regularguy Fredda decide to take upon themselves a magical journey into the mind of Aleksandr Dugin.
Be amazed as they uncover incredible twitter crashouts and mystical bunk politics, from the mind that has been called 'Putin's brain'.
Is Dugin pulling the strings or is he simply an expedient chess piece in the global game of ideology?
Breta, I come to you today not as the Yugopnik you once knew. I come to you no longer as a simpleton engaged to a woman, a simpleton, a bachelor. I come to you as an elevated member of the male species, one who is tied in eternity to a female.
SPEAKER_04No, no, I gotta stop you.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god, you're not supposed to say the evil, racist, sexist shit that we say when we're offline, okay? You're not supposed to like indirectly show people that the main reason we created the reaction podcast is because we are reactionaries. Yeah, just more reactionary than anybody we talk about. So we want to this we we consider all of them libs, okay? Every single person we talk about on this show is not Nazi enough for us.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, they're not extreme enough. That's why we're critical. Yeah, we yeah, they're like I uh there is there's a guy who keeps uh popping up my chat every now and then who like calls it the reactionary podcast, and I think it's funny every time I'm like, Yep, that's us.
SPEAKER_03There's always levels to this thing, and you never know how meta somebody's particular pitch is. Which includes which includes like the different perspectives on how reactionary marriage as a whole is. And since I've gotten married, which literally was like five fucking days ago, I keep having people in my different communities or whatever come to me and joke about how like, you know, I did the ultimate reactionary thing, uh, defining, you know, gender norms, doing the cis straight thing, man and woman. And I have a very adequate and violent response to this. Okay, listen, uh, I don't believe that there is reverse discrimination in any field except the motherfucking marriage field. What do I mean by this? If there is one field on planet Earth, it is organizing weddings, and in that field, it is either women or homosexual men. There is not a single straight white guy to be found in a million fucking miles. So how about we do some D fucking high in this field as well? So I can walk in when I'm paying crazy money, where I'm playing crazy money for this shit that can be there and be an ally, okay? Everybody's on the side of the woman when or or whoever when it comes to a fucking marriage. Oh, you want flowers, oh fucking, oh, you want it all pink, all amazing. Oh, you want the fluffy fucking glass mirrors that cost 7 million euros? Of course, you're the princess, you deserve it. I want the brother sitting over there. At least one, at least one in an army of women and gay dudes that can be like, brother, do you want unlimited tap beer placed on every single table and a dispenser of cigarettes while heavy metal music plays every time you press a button? I want one guy! Okay, we need representation on the field of the marriage industry. We need representation. This, this, like I am, I am literally starting a coup of every world government because me, a a kind of white fucking cis straight male, have finally felt discriminated, and the world is about to feel the wrath of this, okay? I am losing my mind. The podcaster has become angry, and the world will feel it.
SPEAKER_04I I think it's so fucking funny that you went with like the most like kitschy, like like stupid idea of like what a male or man likes, like the sort of man cave vibe with your your wedding idea. You're like, I want my fucking like race car bed and shit at my wedding. You laugh.
SPEAKER_03And yet, like we kind of almost started like you imagine you imagine like you we wake up in a race car, and like you can press a button, and immediately draft beer starts pouring into your mouth, and you stand up, and the second you uh like walk through the entrance door to your bedroom, like metal music starts playing, and then like there's just uh a pyramid of sandwiches that you never but there's just a pyramid of sandwiches in your living room, and there's there's like a whole like there's a projector projecting on an entire building of your favorite first-person shooter toxic video game that you have like seven prestige levels in. Like, come on, like like we are basic, but there's a beauty to basic. There's a beauty to basic.
SPEAKER_04I do think that like there is something very like spiritually Homer Simpson and like George Costanza and like what you're saying right now. Like, there's something I'm learning something about deeper in your being.
SPEAKER_03There's no one pretend like I feel like I'm so self-ironic sometimes that that it allows you motherfuckers, you and Mike, tear into you, present yourself. No, no, no, to present yourself as somehow superior in one or better.
SPEAKER_04Well, you're not like you would well that's I just I just do that because I'm Norwegian, that's what we do, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you you're like well, it wouldn't be a race car uh bed, it would be a sled bed. It wouldn't be beer, it would be IPA. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and we would never waste so much energy as to make a whole tower, a whole pyramid of uh of sandwiches. We would make a building of sandwiches.
SPEAKER_04First, I thought you were gonna like go in a different route. You were basically kind of leading uh into what I thought was gonna be like you know, the most oppressed people in the world, husbands or something like that, which I think would have been fucking funny too. No, that's gamers. I can't no, no, no. Yeah, true, true, yeah, yeah, yeah. The most oppressed class aside, uh, we probably should mention the elephant in the room, which is that Mike isn't here.
SPEAKER_03Um, why is that you got like he is on his grindset, okay? Yeah, like I have friends that are into crypto, okay, and I'm like, Jesus, these guys are really on the grind set. And Mike is one of them. I have I have friends that wake up at 4 a.m. and then do ice baths. And I'm like, okay, everything is for for people, you know. I have friends that unronically have a beer dispenser right next to their bed or wake up next to uh a vodka bottle.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you say friends, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, you're literally racist right now. Jesus fucking tell. That's insane. That's actually insane. That's like, okay, whatever. Uh keep this hidden, and just so everybody knows what kind of people I work with. But then there's people that are on the internet grind set, on the content grindset. And you see, when it comes to leftist Twitch, everything is like planets revolving around a star. And that star is a guy who logs in and then has 20,000, 30,000 viewers, and sometimes he logs out. And when he logs out, that star dies and there's planets flying around everywhere, leading to other stars trying to co-opt those planets. And Mike right now is trying to be one of those stars, and successfully at that by utilizing the absence of the Turk to grow his online presence, which in the long term is probably good for the show as well. You know, we get yeah, we get shit flowing down from you, from me, from him, and so on and so on. But it is very, very American of him. Like, like there's a Slav and there's a Norwegian.
SPEAKER_04Now, yeah, we've got the European edition now.
SPEAKER_03All of us, also streamers that you know could be like, oh hey, the fucking Hassan is not here. I can make some dinero, brother. I can get some flack. And and you don't do it, but uh, but only the American has the entrepreneurial spirit to actually follow through on it.
SPEAKER_04So Would you say the exceptional entrepreneurial spirit, you got Nick?
SPEAKER_03The American exceptional entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah. Alexander Dugin reached the roadside minutes after the explosion, following the same route his daughter had taken out of the festival called Tradition near Moscow. He saw his SUV burning, his daughter inside. Earlier that evening they left the nationalist event separately. They had reportedly planned to travel in the same Toyota Land cruiser, but at the last moment Dugin took another car, and Dario drove the SUV alone. Five to ten minutes after departure, the bomb fixed under the vehicle detonated while she was driving, killing her at the scene. Witnesses later described the blast as strong enough to shatter nearby windows and spread fragments across the road. Videos circulating on Russian social media show the man identified as Dugin standing near the wreck, visibly distressed as the car burned on. Investigators quickly opened a murder and then terrorism case, stating that an explosive device had been planted underneath the driver's seat of the land cruiser. An unimportant decision at the time to take separate cars had left Dugin alive, as alive as a man can be without a daughter. This is a story of a contestedly influential meme turned global philosophy powerhouse, Alexander Dugin, his ideas and worldviews born out of a post-Soviet system struggling to find purpose. A man full of contradictions, driven by a restless need to find his place in a world shaped by shifting global power. Was he someone who saw the inevitable decline of Western imperialism and instead of rejecting it outright, tried to build an Eastern alternative in its place? Or was he simply a useful idiot whose ideas happened to align with the priorities of the current Russian status quo? Well, let's try and find out. Welcome to the Reaction Podcast. This is Alexander Duv.
SPEAKER_04Before then, he was just a far-right anti-communist activist. There's quite a bit of uncertainty about his early life. Quote, most reports agree that Dugin grew up in a privileged family as the son of a Soviet military intelligence officer. That was from Andreas Umlen's 2008 article on him in the Journal of Eurasian Studies. One report says that after finishing high school, with mediocre results, mind you, Dugin was arrested due to dissident activities, and therefore interrupted his education at the Moscow Aviation Institute. After this, he started working as a street sweeper, or so the report alleges. Another biography contradicts this, and says he started working in the KGB archive after his expulsion, where he reportedly got access to lots of quote forbidden literature on masonry, fascism, and paganism. Around this time, he became a part of the Yushinski circle, a mysticist esotericist group that dabbled in so-called esoteric Nazism. They believed that dissent towards the Soviet government wasn't to be found in the formation of a coherent competing ideology, but in the search for another reality. At least according to the French historian Marlene Lorel.
SPEAKER_03If this is true, this is the lore of every single fucking bored white woman housewife. This sounds like you having no background on how class works, on how material conditions work, on how social relations between different aspects of society work, but you end up reading like a book about crystals and energy and the way that uh particular peoples and nations might have a deeper connection to some sort of esoteric uh notion of uh uh I don't know, out of space uh cultures and uh underground culture, blah blah blah blah blah. It's it's it's he like the this particular aspect of his background uh is so it's so absurdly basic. Again, if it is true, because a lot of this is speculation, but if this is true, it explains some of the later developed uh perspectives that we're gonna learn about.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean it's it's it's hippie Nazism, basically. But this part, specifically the part of him being part of the circle, is well documented. What isn't well documented is pretty much everything before this. I think it works to his appeal that so much of his life is shrouded in mystery and that we don't really know that much about him because a lot of people find it appealing, I think, that he as a man is this sort of like renegade philosopher, this you know, the world's most dangerous philosopher they call him. I think Sneeko, who I think is barely literate and hasn't read anything of it of his works, brought him onto his stream because again, he's meant to be this like dangerous, scary philosopher guy, and that's gonna give him clout. I don't think it was you know, out of Sneeko having any sort of like affinity for Evola or Dugan's works, because again, I don't think he really can read.
SPEAKER_01How are you doing? Alexander. Hello, hello. Hi, great to hear from you. Yes, you hear me? Hear loud and clear. Can you hear us? Great, great, great. Perfect. Excellent. All right. Just want to make sure that we have everything set up here. Uh Professor Jang, should I have the uh the uh document you sent me earlier?
SPEAKER_04Then after this, in a visit to Western Europe in 1989, he met Alan de Benoit, founder of the French New Right. By the eighties and nineties, Dugin was trying to influence nationalist politics towards his fascist traditionalism. In the same way, quote, Eliada had hoped to use a legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania, and Evola had hoped to use the fascists, the Hedden Club, and the SS. While this early attempt by Dugin of the late 1980s was unsuccessful, the record in the 1990s is a mixed one. End quote. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he established the journal Elements, Eurasian Review, which was modeled on Alain de Benoit's pan-European network of journals of the exact same name. Again, it always ties back to the French right. Despite co-founding the National Bolshevik Party in 1993-94, according to Umland, Dugin was a regular contributor to the quote, highbrow liberal daily independent newspaper. I'm translating the name of the newspaper because it's in Russian and I would rather not embarrass myself. In 1997, he had a weekly hour-long radio program on the popular music station FM 101, which was suspended after sixteen programs, because, you know, he was promoting fascism. Some reports even allege he gave lectures at the Russian Academy of the General Staff. He rubs shoulders with heads of major corporations. He's embraced by so-called civil society to at least some extent. And this has allowed him to expand his reader base and his influence. But what is he actually peddling?
SPEAKER_03His life before he actually enters some sort of political mainstream or before he allows people to try and understand what he believes in, or what at least he wants other people to believe in, signals an active search towards some sort or form of originality, which tries to find some sort of space between what at that time in post-Soviet Russia or even during his like Soviet days is everything but mainstream, but at the same time somehow compatible with said mainstream. So kind of kind of like an attached hook to become a sort of intelligentsia rebellious figure while not terrifying anyone enough. As you said, for example, he he would become a part of the Nazbols while at the same time rubbing shoulders with liberal newspapers and even writing for them. He would fail uh during his particular academic pursuits and while being like this this agitator against Soviet internationalism and socialism, while at the same time accepting particular privileges that his highly placed Soviet family could provide to him. Almost at every instance of his younger life, at least the one that we have access to, shows us that this is a person that is proactively politicking and proactively searching for his spot, not a necessarily true believer who is trying to change the world according to his beliefs, but quite to the contrary, is constantly trying and very often failing, by the way, to figure out hey, what is the current mainstream so that I fit myself into it exactly at the outskirts of said mainstream.
SPEAKER_04I think you're onto something like there's something to the uh what I consider a lack of originality in some of his writing as we get into his ideology. I think that to an extent, him trying to find a spot, him trying to fit in kind of into what the moment calls for, to me, reads as him being sort of like a salesman. He's he's using uh people like Evola and all these like uh ideas, the traditionalism, these old fascist ideas from uh Alain de Benoit and so on and so forth, to become the you know the Russian guy for this. He sees that this happened in various countries, that there there was a space for it, and he wants to be the guy. That's at least how I think of it. I don't think he's like necessarily using Evola and all these people because I think it is a coherent political ideology that leads to the outcomes he wants. I think that it is a little bit more nebulous and confusing and annoying than that. He is uh using them kind of just like I guess you use uh Captain America to get you to watch the next Marvel movie. It's a crossover event.
SPEAKER_03It is a crossover event. And often we we tend to think that this only happens in the United States because blah blah blah. We all we're all living in America, America is Wunderbar, Rammstein uh quote uh in the in the description. We often, not often, we always identify that a particular thought leader or philosopher or writer identifies um uh particular perspectives that have existed throughout the decades, sometimes throughout the centuries, and he adjusts them to the uh let's say American status quo, and that's what makes him famous, right? Countless, countless, countless examples, especially in the Eurocentric concept context, in the American centric context, with all due respect to many, many great thought leaders, like 60% of it is taking shit that comes from Asia, from the Middle East, from uh North Africa and so on, and then repatenting it and just uh giving it a French flair or a British flair or an American flair or whatever. But in a strange kind of eternal self-criticism, very often as uh Westerners, okay, me to an extent, but okay, let's say I'm a Westerner as well. We we sometimes in a strange way orientalize the East and uh uh say that this same thing does not happen there, even uh because most of those ideas come from there that we orientalize over here. But no, it can happen uh in reverse as well. And Western ideas can go to the East and can also buy uh particular figures either out of good intent or very often because there's a lot of money or political power to be made out of it, can be uh contextualized again for the local conditions, which can make them extremely popular, extremely famous, or uh extremely wealthy. And uh everything that from from the the the first uh segment of of today's episode that Dugan kind of seems to show, as you beautifully said, is a guy constantly squabbling, constantly searching, constantly like like I want our viewers to and listeners to imagine a guy sitting in a library with a hundred books in front of him, not a hundred books that he wants to read so that he can create a new thesis out of all of this knowledge that he just managed to acquire. No, this is a guy. As Freda said, trying to read 10 books, 50 books, 100 books on Captain America so that he can make Captain Russia. Right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. It's it's that. And he's he's he's he's trying to find he's trying to find like his Avengers, basically. He's trying to find the things he needs to combine in order to create the thing that will make him important. You know, I I'm not trying to say that his his aspirations are exclusively fame or clout or that kind of stuff, but I'm saying that he's trying to find the things that he has to combine in order to create the thing that catches on. And in that way he is uh quite more cynical and more like practical and pragmatic than I think many other fascist thinkers when we're talking about the sort of intellectually minded ones. Because obviously you have people like Mussolini, or you have people like Nick Fuentes, or you have you know Hitler, these guys. They're pragmatism to the core. Um that that's all they do. But uh Dugin is among the more intellectually minded fascists like Evola and stuff, but unlike Evola, he's far more pragmatic and he knows his place and he he knows how to fit into that.
SPEAKER_02We are dealing now with uh the a new kind of totalitarianism. We know in the history communist totalitarianism. That was communist totalitarianism, that is uh obvious. And there was there was a fascist nation national socialism, uh national socialist totalitarianism, the second one. And now we are dealing with the third form of uh totalitarianism. This this time it is liberal totalitarianism.
SPEAKER_04Quoting from Titelbaum's book, War for Eternity, quote, Steve Bannon responded, I think it's a little bit more complicated. When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of his underpinnings of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism. He's got an advisor who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century, who are really the supporters of what's called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism. End quote. Steve Bannon is a bit wrong here, of course. Evola is not really the forerunner to Italian fascism, but more so an inspiration for post-war neo-fascism. We've talked about this at length in our earliest episodes, about the fascist hobbit camp and the endless LARP of the Italian Cold War fascists, echoes of which you can see on Twitter today from Terminally Online Fascist Accounts. Just calling Alexander Dugan's political philosophy fascism and moving on would be a disservice. There's quite a bit to it. Much of it owing to theories or multipolarity, but also Evolian occult gobbledigook. Speaking of terminally online fascist accounts, here's an example from Dugan's Twitter account, when he crashed the fuck out after binge watching the Netflix show Euphoria, which is such a fucked up sentence to be saying to begin with in regards to an incredibly dangerous fascist thinker. Like it's I when I saw that I was like, what the fuck man? What is what were what are we doing? Like I I was watching uh clips of this like British panel show with like David Mitchell, a funny comedian, crashing the fuck out over some bullshit and saying like we used to make steel. Like I feel like that right now. Like what what what is this? But let me quote Dugan. This is what he had to say after watching Euphoria. Quote, you are not the people. You are stupid slaves of Epstein's menu of cruel cannibal elites. You are eaten, your brains are. It is why you watch Euphoria, because all of you are perverts, disgusting civilization, no reason to exist. Please, comma, die.
SPEAKER_03Agreed, based ass dungeon, okay.
SPEAKER_04You're going to start to hear some of his appeal to some people, why some people on the left, uh ostensibly anti-imperialists and such, get sucked in. People who read this, they might retweet it and think this is funny. It's like when Nick Fuentes says some shit about his followers.
SPEAKER_03This same tweet being unironically tweeted by somebody who calls himself an anti-fascist or a communist would also make numbers. That's yeah, that's that's the brilliance of his appeal. It's because he does understand, he fully, fully understands the righteous anger that comes from agitating and fighting against Western imperialism. But the trick and the hook is that he leads you to conclusions that aren't supposed to simply say imperialism bad, that aren't supposed to simply say the conservative viper conservative conclusions that Euphoria the show wants to give you are bad. He will tell you the Western conservative conclusions that Euphoria gives you are bad. Ours unironically just have, I don't know, a more a more Siberian vibe to them. You shouldn't end up in a commune in a American desert with an American flag and a Christian family. You should end up in a commune in a Siberian plane with a traditionalist, semi-pagan, but deeply orthodox family. It's it's it's a constant re-co-opting and co-opting, but we might be confusing our audience by going now, making it too complicated before explaining the basics. But yes.
SPEAKER_04Oh, don't worry about it. It's gonna get even more complicated and confusing and stupid.
SPEAKER_03I mean, because it is intentionally it is the ultimate fake deep to ever fake deep.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah, absolutely. Uh so to uh quote him again in another follow-up tweet about this, which again is gonna make some of his sort of fascism and what one would presume would be also racism a little confusing to some people. Quote Whites, they are destroyed the world and themselves. To be white means to be nihilist. It is self-hatred race. It caused so many troubles to others and to itself. It lost the right to be something, no arguments to support their existence. Which is also a funny as fuck quote. I don't know if you played Disco Elysium.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. It's the guy.
SPEAKER_04Yep. It's the guy, it's Meshurad. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Look at my chronology. I am the pinnacle of my Aplo group. The pink blob is a bad example, even of yours. It saddens me. You were once a noble and powerful race. You gave the world eugenics, electricity, and powerful weapons of war like missiles and aerostatic aircraft. You made great gains in metallurgie, race theory, and statecraft. You dominated lesser cultures, like the deformed Hymnians and the inexplicably potato-obsessed Quakers. But now your ascent to the genetic summit has halted. You are obsessed with sadness and with frivolous pop culture. You will be superseded. Isn't that right, babe? It is, baby, yeah, you know it.
SPEAKER_03It's like Adolf Hitler before they reached the bunker, which uh think there's theories I haven't researched enough, but I think there's theories that as as the Soviets, as the Slavs, pretty much, and also our are our uh more quote unquote Asian brothers are reaching Berlin, Hitler unironically goes like, okay, I don't think maybe I maybe the Nordics were in the closest to the Aryan uh like lost civilization. Maybe maybe the Slavs and the Asians were actually closer. And that is that is exactly in my opinion what what uh Mr. Dugan kind of exemplifies here. It is not it is not a criticism of racial categories as a whole, right? He is No, it's not no uh uh instead he is saying uh the whites tried to be the big G's, but you got over it so many times, it's time They degenerated, they got they got captured by capitalism and modernity, they became these weak, feeble uh men, this weak, feeble race.
SPEAKER_04Exactly, exactly. Yeah, they're not they're not the true uh Aryans that Hitler spoke about. Exactly, exactly. Now now speaking of which, I would like to read a final tweet. Quote I am more white than almost all of you. I am Indo-European, parenthesis Aryan, and proud to be it. You are wrong Aryans, liberal, weak, pervert, you are modern. This kind of whiteness is shame. Real whites are Iranians, Indians, Evolians. All the rest is a trash.
SPEAKER_03See, see, this is this is like it, you know, we like to make fun of him as fake deep, and he to an extent very much so is. But this in my opinion carries some particular weight because it's it's it's racialization that's uh left to pure honesty. Where like you know, when when you create racial castes, when you when you try to create a uh hierarchy of peoples who uh deserve to inherit the earth instead of those who are weak and deserve to be left in the dustbin of history, you kind of very often like like you imply that some are just better because they are better. Dugan here by saying, you know, I'm more white than you, Iranians, Indians, Eurasians, and so on are more white than you, says the following. He says, You have been given the chance so many times, again and again and again, to crush the rest of us. You did not succeed in doing so. And again, this is this is a repeat that we're gonna repeat throughout the whole episode, and we have been repeating. And instead of learning the lesson from this and saying, hey, maybe this hierarchy shit is bullshit, he says, No. The fact that you have been losing so often, you Western subhumans come, implies that we are the actual Ubermensch. Instead of questioning the concept of the Ubermensch, he says, No, you are not one, but the world needs one, and we in Eurasia and so on are going to fill that particular hole. It's that classic, like, your mom's a whore, uh, no, your mom's a whore that he's doing. You know, your mom's got a saggy ass, no, your mom's got a saggy ass. He is replying to Western white supremacism, which implies that of course they are genetically superior and so on and so on, by saying no, we are genetically superior.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I want to say this is also from a guy who kind of rejects fascism, at least he what he calls like fascism, like Italian fascism and national socialism because of racism. He thinks racism is like a sort of narrow, stupid idea. And at the same time, he's speaking in these very racist terms. He's full of contradictions.
SPEAKER_03Yes, he is, he is, but but there's there there is an aspect to him in this particular case, which is to an extent not contradictory because he is attempting to speak in the language of those who he is considering in this case as as uh more filled with fallacies than what his definition of his people actually is. So when he tells, when he speaks, I am more white than you are, he is trying to communicate, you define being white as power, and yet you are weak scum. If white is power, we are more white, Tehran is more white, Delhi is more white, Moscow is more white.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's the kind of thing me and you probably have to like catch ourselves from doing when we see like a a guy from Latin America who's like a an actual like Nazi talking about like you know how the white race is going to like win and all this shit. And we're me and you are sat here, like, bro, like we can't we can't say anything because we don't talk like that, but like we look at him like, what do you mean? Like yeah, you're not you're not in the gang, bro.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Yeah, bro, thinks he's on the team. Absolutely, but but here but here Dugan is interesting because he doesn't think he's on the team. That's what the point I'm trying to make. He's making a new team. He's making a new team, he's redefining it. This episode should be extra interesting for our dear listeners because this is this is like a meta reactionary, because he is he is creating a reaction to reaction, which is reactionary, right? He is directly looking at, for example, Western supremacist, very often racist perspectives, and he's acknowledging them, he's absolutely in your face, completely acknowledging them, right? He's looking at them in their face, and he's completely acknowledging them, and you feel really good. You're like, oh my god, this guy makes a lot of sense. He's got this guy might even be a progressive, and so on. But the answer to the uh contradictions of Western superiority complexes that he acknowledges are not those based in materialist analysis, not those based in hey, all of this is bad. How about we eliminate all of these systems of us versus them? No, he takes all of that and he creates a reactionary response to reaction. Yeah, it's magic, it's magic, it's contradictory as fuck, but it is magic and it triggers a very, very, very primal kind of thing that a lot of people unfortunately uh and this might hurt some people to hear, but uh hey, it's coming from a Balkan, bro, right? A lot of people in the so-called developing world for a very long time really wanted to hear. A lot of us hope to hear that all of these systems are just uh problematic and it should be annihilated and so on and so on. But a lot of us wish to hear that these systems are correct, but that it is us who are the superior ones.
SPEAKER_04And that shit sells like fucking oil. Or sometimes also, uh even if like you don't take the last party said that like real whites are Iranians, Indians, and so on, uh if even if you don't subscribe to that, you can subscribe to the top part of his tweet easily, but just focusing on the critique of the racists and not necessarily the critique of racism. If you hate the white people, the you know, the Americans, the British, whatever, these people who, of course, have made your life fucking misery through history and who have looted your country and uh destroyed any sort of basis of like, you know, building a good developed society uh where you live. If you hate those people, you might be satisfied to hear someone say that they are, you know, they're shit, they're not actually all that and all that stuff. You might be satisfied with a critique of them and not necessarily care so much for the deeper systemic critique, which would also include all other people, because you're just looking at the enemy.
SPEAKER_03It's a fascist response to fascism. That's why I find him fucking not brilliant but incredibly fascinating. Would you agree? Yeah, it's a fascist response to fascism.
SPEAKER_04It is. He's because he's obviously he he doesn't consider himself a fascist. He critiques fascism, which he calls uh the sort of like the third way, and and also like Ebola and and this stuff. There's a critique to that, and he says it himself, because I I've been of course reading his dog shit works. The way he looks at it, he he talks about like who are most susceptible to these ideas, and the people who are least susceptible to these ideas are the liberals. Because they have the longest path to travel to get to him, is in uh his his ideology, at least in his own words. But the people most susceptible, the the ones that have the shortest path are the fascists, and the ones that have the slightly longer path than the fascists in his mind are the communists. Because in his mind, uh they already have his sort of like critique of the Americans and the critique of imperialism and capitalism, like they've learned that already. The liberals haven't, so they need to learn that too. But the communists need to abandon their materialist and scientific understanding of the world, is what he says. So basically, like he says they're a little bit too liberal because they, you know, they've got some like humanist stuff, they got some holdovers from the French Revolution that we don't like. Whereas the fascists, they don't have that stuff. They're they're all they've they've hopped off the recent train a long time ago, and they're a little bit easier to get on board. But still, there's some work to be done there because he needs to get them to about uh abandon the old old narrow nationalism, uh the idea that like your nation is important because he considers that a part of modernity, a thing that came out of liberalism, which is correct, by the way. It's it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_03It is absurdly fascinating. He has a response to almost every single anti-status quo pitch that we have, which is very interestingly, incredibly friendly to the status quo itself.
SPEAKER_04Yes, we'll talk about that. But anyways, all this was a discussion of his fucked up tweets where he ended up sounding like Meshuhead from Disco Elysium, all because he watched a Netflix show made by conservative Turbo Christian perverts marketed at young adults. It's pretty clear Dugin has an interesting mind. So let's try to get to grips with it. Quoting assistant professor of political science Matt McManus at Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia. The two most important books for understanding Dugin as a political philosopher are his The Fourth Political Theory and Martin Heidegger, The Philosophy of Another Beginning. McManus says that Dugin's constructive proposals are a combination of what Dugin calls the three major political traditions of the twentieth century. He seeks to synthesize fascism, communism, and liberalism. From communism, he takes the Marxist critiques of capitalism and American imperialism. However, quote, but he chucks the integral materialism, scientific epistemology, and the egalitarian humanism Marxists share with a liberal tradition. From fascism, he takes almost everything else. Dugin's synthesis of all this, the irreverent plunder of ideas and arguments, as McManus puts it, all comes together to form Dugin's ideology and philosophy, which he calls Neo-Eurationism, or the fourth position. Of course, Dugin didn't invent the term, or ideas, of Eurasianism. Like most elements of Dugin's philosophy, it was invented by someone else, a Russian anti-communist, historian, linguist, and nobleman, by the name of Trebetskoy, who died in Nazi-aligned Austria in 1938. Dugin takes this man's structuralist ideas relating to language and applies it to what he calls the world's different civilizations. Dugin believes the world consists of not one human civilization, but many different human civilizations, which are incompatible with one another. Quoting Dugin himself from Euratian Mission The plurality of human societies, each one of which represents a specific kind of semantic structure that is entirely unique and incomparable with any other, is the basis of Eurasian philosophy in general. That book, like most of his books, is published by Arctos Media. Arctos Media has published virtually every book that forms the basis of the ideology of the guys that we discuss on this podcast. They're the go-to publisher for far right or neo fascist literature. Dugin's conception of a plurality of human societies, which are entirely unique, is what leads him to the conclusion that liberalism, communism, and also fascism are Western, European or American ideas belonging to that particular civilization, and thus are incompatible with Russian or Eurasian society. In order for these ideas to function in Russia, Russia would have to no longer be Russian.
SPEAKER_03I have heard Arab nationalists say the same thing. I have heard uh Taiwanese nationalists say the same thing. He he he has a a brilliant ability of co-opting very real critique of very western-centric perspectives and philosophies against them. I'm serious about the state. The guy who woked himself into becoming a fascist. Literally Zionism. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad uh twist of events where very real trauma, when it comes to especially the the beautiful Russian people after the fall of the Soviet Union, don't even get me started about World War I and World War II, where you take that true trauma. True materially based not materially blood based uh suffering and instead of again taking that continuous uh suffering and instead of criticizing suffering as a whole, just saying that it is not us who are supposed to suffer, it is them. Again, spiritually Israeli as fuck. Yep. This guy's awesome. No, I mean he's not awesome. I get my point.
SPEAKER_04He's but yeah, uh no, it's I love talking about him and reading about him. It's so like it's it's fun, it tickles something in my brain. I don't know what the fuck it is, but like this this stuff, like the Evola shit, dude. You're gonna fucking love the What if Alt Hist episode when you do it? Oh god it's got it's he what if old Tist is this guy, like they are the same. Wow, yeah, but what if all this is an American, so it's a lot more like I don't know, it's it's fucked up, it's weird. I mean, again, he's on the rec on record as saying like Odin spoke to him and stuff. That that you taught me about. Yeah, yeah, he's talk told him about uh or told him to list off every woman he's jerked off to or some shit. It's it's it's it's yeah.
SPEAKER_02Everything is relative, and we need, we in Russia, we could use postmodernity in order to explain to the West that if any truth is relative, so we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept as something that maybe is not your truth. Even if it's not true. But if the truth is relative, it that doesn't mean that the truth doesn't exist. That means that absolute truth, one for all, uh doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_04Quoting Dugan, thus Eurasianists view Western European civilization as one concrete structure with its own understanding of time, space, history, human nature, values, and goals. But there are other civilizations, namely Asian, African, Latin American, and Russian. I do find it kind of funny how he says there are other civilizations like, you know, this continent, this continent, and then Russia.
SPEAKER_03Ah, okay. Now I'm gonna sound like a rusophile, but like Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, go on, go on. Yeah. Russia's the only country that actually connects too, right? So it's you know. So it kind of makes sense. Yeah, he because they are kind of the the true bridge. Because every country says, ooh, I'm a bridge, I'm a bridge, but Russia actually is a bridge.
SPEAKER_04Like it No, but he could have said like Eurasian or something, but yeah, no, like a lot of his ideology is yeah, yeah. But a lot of his ideology is all about how like Russia was this sort of bridge between um you know, quote unquote different civilizations. It is the place where ideas met, where things met, and they have synthesized to create basically like the superior thing. Um, like in the West, you just have the West, in Asia you just have Asia, but in you know your race, you have both.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you could and you could make like a very decent point of like, hey, because this country is so vast and so expansive and connect so many cultures that if you go from one end to another, they would, under the premise of a closed-minded Western perspective, be too different to be compatible, and yet in Russia they are compatible, therefore, the ideas of incompatibility between cultures is bullshit and mute, and Russia proves it, but of course he doesn't do that.
SPEAKER_04He just says No, no, he's like no, he's like everyone is different, and they all should get their own little yard to play in.
SPEAKER_03Except in Russia. In Russia, actually, they should all get along because they're like metaphysically Russian.
SPEAKER_04It's exactly, yeah, yeah. Like Ukrainians are metaphysically Russian, like uh, you know, some of these people, like pro maybe like Estonians aren't, but like some of the other Baltics, and you know, he he finds like weird ways of like saying this stuff. Um, like elements, some people in Finland are metaphysically Russian, but like some people aren't. It's it's and that has very materialist reasons of why he says this, which we will cover. Of course, yeah. He calls the sort of ideological developments that have occurred in the West a kind of implicit cultural imperialism, which has been forced on other civilizations. This doesn't just apply to things like democracy, feminism, socialism, and so on. He also says the principles we consider self-evident and take for granted in quote European modernity, such as quote, progress, linear time, homogeneous space, materialistic physics, and capitalism as the universal social development, and so on, end quote, are weird Western inventions. And I I do want to like stress the linear time thing, and I guess progress of course is like its own like whole thing we could get into with like wig history and all that kind of stuff, but like linear time I think is so fascinating because this shows how uh much of like I guess a a break with like the sort of like stuff that came after the French Revolution he's trying to make. Uh, the idea that like time moves in one direction itself is offensive because what if like you know we are actually metaphysically spiritually linked to elements of the past? Like, why should we consider that stuff to be in the past and something in the future is kind of like his argument. And to us, obviously, we think that's stupid. But that's a kind of like reality or the worldview he's trying to sell, like this this weird gobbledygook, the esoteric occultist weird shit.
SPEAKER_03It is, and it applies like it applies only on certain periods. Yeah, yeah, right? Because if you would say, like, let's say you're talking to Alexander Dugan, and you say, Okay, like there's quality of equal measure to be applied to the way people lived in 1435, you would say, Yes, absolutely. And then you would say, There is quality of equal measure with how we live today to be applied to the way people lived right before Rome fell. You were like, Yes, okay. And then if you said the same thing about, I don't know, 1952, Soviet Union. Yeah, you'd be like, are you insane?
SPEAKER_04Are you fucking you know? No, that's Western degeneracy, yeah. Because the communists broke with uh the metaphysical chain. Yeah, because yeah, because the communists imported this weird Western way of life, which by the way had not existed in the West at all. At all, yeah. I would like to note. But uh but because like the the the origin of the ideas are not in uh what he calls Eurasia. That all stems from like how he believes that the soil itself, the earth itself, like there's something alive in it that impacts us and the way like we live in whatever space we live in that causes uh uh the develop Yeah, exactly. No, it is, but like it causes like development of like ideology and the people and the culture and everything to go in a certain way. And he believes that that has been interrupted by the West exporting their stuff through capitalism, colonialism, globalization, etc. And so he thinks that like these like humanist or universal principles, egalitarianism, these ideas that you know we hold dear that we should strive for a society where everyone is equal, etc. That's something that the West invented and he wants no fucking part in it. Because he wants something organic to sprout from the soil in Russia, or anywhere else, like yeah, he doesn't want to see it carried on the wind, he wants something that just comes out of the earth from yeah, nowhere.
SPEAKER_03Anyways, literally literally, yes, yes, yes, yes. He he will unironically outwoke you. He will say, Why are you pitching this Western idea? Why are you forcing it upon someone who might be from New Delhi?
SPEAKER_04He will literally he will literally make that out of your yeah, and and he'll be like, you know, maybe they have their weird like backwards caste system uh which uh depresses a bunch of people like economically and like sort of suffocates them from the city. It comes from the soil, bro.
SPEAKER_03It comes from the soil, you don't understand it's from the soil.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's he's like, like, who are you to say like with your fucking Western superiority that they can't be doing that kind of stuff? Like, who are you to come in here and fuck with their culture? And I'm gonna be like, Well, I guess I've been fucking uh outwoked by like the weird fucking fascist Rasmutant.
SPEAKER_03He would I he would literally, and I'm pretty sure he already has, for example, argued that the worst thing about the the the annihilation of the Native American was not the fact that he was literally physically annihilated, like actually genocided, almost brought to extinction, but that the Westerners imported and forced a Western way of life upon a people whose way of life just came from the earth. The soil, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or the soil, etcetera, etc. The Westerner is devoid of the soil, is devoid of true metaphysical connection with life as a whole, and therefore constantly tries to destroy that very same thing in every culture and people that he meets. Which by the way, I I think that I think I triggered all the points that you that he was a brilliant historian. Oh no, yeah, I'm a it's the Jew, but it's the Jew. I'm not saying he he rarely talks about the Jew, it's not really interesting to him, but it's it's cliche, it's not original because that's what uh the Jew is for the Westerner that he criticizes, because the Jew also is not connected to culture, to blood, to nation. The Jew doesn't have any of it, the Jew just exists for exactly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the American is the stand-in for the Jewish person, like it is the exact same thing. Uh he describes him as rootless and cosmopolitan.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, using the um sort of framework of I think Benedict Anderson of imagined communities, the like the ideology of uh Alexander Dugan isn't blood and soil nationalism, it's blood and soil ultra-nationalism. It's it's not an actual like like it's not the nation the in the modern sense, it's whatever like the imagined community that he's kind of like inventing, I guess. Uh the ultra nation, the the fascist ultra nation, which we've talked about at length before. It's that kind of blood and soil ultra-nationalism. Yeah, because he rejects narrow nationalism instead of, of course, ultra-nationalism, Eurasianism, Asianism, Africanism, whatever, like Pan-Africanism, those things, that's what he likes. And it's fascinating. It is, it is.
SPEAKER_03I would put my head on the on a on a pine and say that like if there if the there's a like a second generation African Russian, he would say, No, that's a Russian. Second generation Iranian, he would say that's Russian. I uh we need to fight to preserve the way of life of this particular person in an insane way. He deracializes the identity of the nation that needs to be protected, but in doing so, he creates kind of this this this hyper-racialized idea of the of the opponent.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, you know what what's fucking fascinating about like the uh you mentioned like him with Americans and uh you know the indigenous uh in the Americas. Uh he uh says that the solution to the American problem or the the American question, I guess you could say, is for the Americans to embrace their Europeanness and to stop considering themselves European, like American and instead be Europeans living outside of Europe. Which is like again, a little racialized, I would say. Like like he's trying because European culture and Europeanness has a a direct uh root to the soil in or like a link to the soil in Europe. So they're just like, yeah, Europeans living abroad. But like when they're American, all that stuff, that's just like this, you know, this product of modernity, the product of liberalism, of capitalism, and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_03It is, but it's also like that's why I keep going back, because I think that's the most fascinating part about his contradiction. He in his pitch, I don't say that this is what he actually wants, but okay, let's imagine in the best world, this is actually what he wants, and he wants to introduce as much pacifism to the world as possible, and as less violence as possible, and so on. So when he says the European needs to consider himself a European, uh he's talking about the white American, right? He needs to be he should consider himself European and not American. His idea is by going back to the root soil of Europeanism, he will no longer consider the land that he is infringing upon or even without infringing upon, living in America as one that belongs completely to him, which could potentially allow him to co-habitate with uh with others in this particular region, etc. etc. etc. Yeah. He's like like there's there's this again very esoteric and almost borderline hippie notion that if we all uh hyper-racialize ourselves and to an extent segregate from the other, we would be able to limit uh limit conflict when it comes to the Western question. When it comes to the Eurasian question and African question, their intermingling is kind of more allowed, right? Because we've always been intermingling, right?
SPEAKER_04But also he doesn't really like consider them as much as he does the Americans. Like there's there's stuff, I'm I'm sure there's like a lot of stuff that he's completely unfamiliar with uh in the dynamics of these countries in Asia and Africa and so on and so forth, uh, where uh if you were to apply the exact same logic, he would have to make sort of similar you know sort of uh statements and uh and assessments of this, but he doesn't because I think he's just thoroughly unfamiliar with all of it. He just sees you know the great American Satan and focuses on that.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, which again crazy that we are criticizing someone who sees the great American Satan for obvious reasons, but it uh like it's also so funny we're doing this episode without Mike Present. Without the Great American Satan, but it is Yeah, without the Great American Satan in our own. But if we but if we look at we look at that's why and this is gonna maybe hurt some some of our friends to to hear almost every hyper successful organized reactionary movement, and I'm not just talking about uh modern reactionary movements that we deem as fascist because of the relationship to capitalism, so on. I'm talking throughout history, did very often come from very real grievances that came from very real moments of great suffering. And it is exceptionally important to uh contextualize this so that we don't do this fucking stupid shit time and time again, and that we realize that patterns exist for a reason, and when they are noticed, they should be destroyed as patterns systematically instead of just being led to hey, a guy steals shoes every day. The problem about that is that it's not me who's stealing shoes every day. Yeah. Instead of I I gotta get in on that, right? Throughout history, we kept fucking repeating this shit. I know it's a cliche. Oh my god, who threw the first stone? Blah blah blah. It's a massive fucking cliche, but it's a cliche for a fucking reason.
SPEAKER_04Get rid of the fucking stones, I'm kidding. But yeah.
SPEAKER_03What fake comrade Dugan is uh offering us is just to keep stealing shoes and keep throwing fucking stones and keep call like redefining each other in uh okay, sure, more progressive and more inclusive definitions of in groups and out groups, but still in groups and out groups. I'm sorry, it's still in groups and outgroups, bro. It really is, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Quoting further from the book The Western spiritual and material colonization of the rest of mankind is a negative phenomenon. Every people and culture has its own intrinsic right to evolve according to its own logic. Russia is an original civilization. She is called not only to counter the West in order to safeguard its own path, but also to stand at the vanguard of the other peoples and countries of the earth, in order to defend their freedom as civilizations. You can see from this how Dugin's philosophy may be seductive to many who consider themselves anti-imperialist. The difference between Dugin and say a liberal or a Marxist's critique of imperialism is that the latter stems from a sort of universalist egalitarianism, whereas Dugin's stems from a sort of ethnic egoism. Though in a sense there's also an element of universalism to Dugin, in that he asserts the universal right of these civilizations, who may define themselves on their own terms, to develop also on their own terms. Analyzed from a materialist lens and taken to its logical conclusion, this sort of world is one without any universal brotherhood or kinship between peoples, only between people of a particular ultra nation. He imagines this broader community of ultra nations in peaceful coexistence and respect for one another's identity. Every confession, ethnicity, and culture have their own truths. We have all the reason to share our truth with others, but we must never impose it by force. All the other nations, ultra nations, imagined communities, or whatever you want to call them, are to be kept at a respectable distance, everybody kind of coexisting in their own little spaces. It's a complete and total rejection of modernity as much of this style of fascism tends to be. But in such an absurd manner that it, in very literal terms, calls for the total breakdown of the world into little domains to be ruled by monarchs or theocrats. It's such I think an odd and narrow vision. And of course, it is also full of contradictions. At least it seems that way to me, and I think to you too. The call for a nebulous community of nations who respect one another's differences is implicitly a call to a sort of universal value that he identifies as Eurasian. There's a liberal cultural relativism and universalism here that Dugin should be principally opposed to. But this is nothing new when it comes to fascism. It is full of contradictions. Even Julius Evola, the self-described superfascist, whom Dugan lifts much of his intellectual tradition from, revolts against the modern world by constructing a new fascist modernity. While it harkens to primordial or mystic elements of a mythic past, the feeling of an acute need for a radical transformation of society to wash away the oppression of the American Antichrist and its imposition of globalization around the world, is profoundly a modern idea when you think about it. I can't see any reasonable way in which this sort of revolutionary fascism, with its ideas of redemption, purification, and renewal, are in any way different from the manner in which we as people in liberal modernity view the French Revolution's place in history. But where we, through our lens of materialism or enlightenment reason, see contradictions within Dugan's fourth political theory and his national Bolshevism, they see things through a mystic or spiritual lens.
SPEAKER_03To make it even more meta-ironic as hell, doesn't it sound exceptionally American?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Doesn't it sound like a culture and a people and most importantly a philosophy that says hey, people of different colors, of different religions, of different backgrounds, of different nationalities living together never worked except here the idea that uh we are exceptional in the manner through which we reinterpret the many vast understandings of the world back into the in this case particular American way of life, for you can be Italian American, you can be Nigerian American, you can be Brazilian American, Mexican American, or fifth generation forgotten what kind of American I am, American. Doesn't the Eurasian pitch while still being a very nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties American in its in its soul, separate but equal without the whip, represent the very same idea of exceptionalism for Russia and not to be, I don't know, rusophobic or whatever, fuck, not just only Russia, but whatever. The alternative to the West has the ability, exactly because it connects to the land as much as it does to kind of offer something that no other place on planet earth, especially the West, can offer. It is in its criticism of the hypocrisy of the Western project, especially the American project, offering basically to an extent the same thing. That is what annoys me. That is what annoys me. I would love I love to jerk off to this, but I'm just hearing I'm just hearing another American, and the dick is very circumcised.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. Obviously, have to bring that up every fucking time. The I think like um to me, uh, one of the like like the ways I I guess in my mind envision this society is basically an America with its states being, I guess, the kind of like boundaries of uh whatever the fucking racial or national community that Dugan sees belonging to that land um is. So like you've got uh all these states with their own ways of doing things like you have in America. And of course, like everybody kind of just singing kumbaya and hanging out and being chill, like all the American states are to one another, of course. Because we you know, that's that's of course how it works.
SPEAKER_03And that and the The reason this kumbaya sounds like a kumbaya is for is because it has a particular purpose.
SPEAKER_04We've cited Roger Griffin's definition of fascism in the past, and Griffin's understanding of fascism has been applied by many scholars to Dugin, which sparked a debate in the mid 2000s with other scholars in the field. One scholar in the debate by the name of Anthony James Gregor, don't look up his thoughts on race science, by the way, said Dugin commits himself to the same occult notions found in Evola's works. He speaks of the centrality of the Hyperboreans, infilled with the Gnostic knowledge of transcendental spirituality, as the Aryan ancestors of today's Russians. Dugin's rejection of narrow nationalism and his call to Eurasian Empire, together with his appeal to the creation of a traditional state, are, he tells us, all inspired by Evola. Dugin's convictions that world history is shaped by supranational forces and a transcendental idea, an unrealizable dream of a community of heroes and supermen, are all borrowed from Evola. None of it is fascist in any meaningful sense of the term. I obviously vehemently disagree with Anthony James Greger on this. This is fascism. This is the exact kind of mystic gobbledygook you see from many of the other more ideological fascists out there. It's their revolt against modernity and reason, their retreat into the LARP, with the hobbit camps and ancient hyperboreans. I'd like to quote Dugin on his version of blood and soil nationalism. Deep identity is linked to the soil. It is the dimension of eternity, of everlasting stability and immutability. America has no soil, or rather, the soil it has doesn't belong to Americans. The soil is essentially premodern. American society was constructed while completely neglecting the soil. The real living space belongs to those who inhabited the continent before the whites. To the Indian. To them, the soil does matter. It is the basis of the Indian soul. This was not the case with the white settlers. Now, I don't know if like you agree with me, but I think there is a somewhat level of like self-orientalizing in this ideology that he espouses, and of course, here he um orientalizes um the native population of the Americas quite a bit. He others them in ironically a very characteristically white settler fashion.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but he also links it with uh self-orientalization. For example, you know, the Russian people have always been on this land, the Russian people have never gone and conquered uh in this particular fashion, they've never colonized in this particular fashion.
SPEAKER_04And we have like our our unique ways, and yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I relate as a Russian to that of uh of the Native American, which which could be a decent argument, right? Like it could be a decent argument if it did not go the extra length and say that everything that we've that we've said up until now, which you know ruins the point that it is not it is not the act of conquest itself which is bad, but the fact that they did it and not us.
SPEAKER_04While playing on your usual tropes, he views most people in this matter. There's a pre-modern soul to all peoples except except Americans, who are a people who have no mythic roots to the land they inhabit, but whose existence was brought about by modernity, early capitalism, and colonialism. The cultural relativism that he purports to extend to all peoples is not extended to Americans. It also, of course, doesn't extend to Ukrainians. And that's a whole other thing. This is yet another contradiction that really only is resolved by understanding this cultural relativism as a farce. Dugin considers the European New Right as a manifestation of his fourth political theory. The European New Right is what we've previously on this podcast identified as the nexus of post-war fascism or neofascism. Dugin doesn't call himself a fascist because he has a much narrower definition of what fascism is. But by applying scholar of fascism Roger Griffin's more generic definition, we can, in my mind, correctly call Dugan a fascist. Most of his intellectual output is just a reframing or rewording of the same stuff that underpins every fascist out there. Quoting again from McManus, Dugan irreverently plunders whatever ideas and arguments happen to be available in these earlier traditions, because he is incapable of saying anything truly original.
SPEAKER_03And with that quote, I think you get an inch away from defining exactly what Dugan is. And that inch is exactly how much it takes to fill up a space in a Word document before fascist. And it is a convenient fascist, arguably the only thing worse than a principled fascist. So let's finish off by actually addressing the big bad elephant in the room. Is Alexander Dugin Putin's real philosopher? As so many articles have claimed.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's like a whole book calling him Putin's brain and stuff, which by the way, I don't it' i Yeah, the book is like it kind of jerks off Alexander Dugan. I don't think it's a very good one.
SPEAKER_03It's the the the situation is much more interesting than all of that. But the question still remains. Is he a man who synthesized an idea, a worldview, so powerful that the very strong executive body of the Russian state adjusted to it and began following it? Is there a world at all today in which things like this even happen? Do leaders even follow ideas or do they simply just adjust to shifting power dynamics? Based on my research and a conversation with like ten of my Russian buddies from the entire political spectrum, both those in support and fervently against the current war in Ukraine, the situation is seemingly a bit more complicated and maybe we'll answer and kind of wrap together what you are supposed to understand and view Dugin as. But to understand the influence on the Russian people and the Russian leadership that he had, we must go back to 2008. During the global economic crisis, which rocked every corner of the world, many movements from Occupy Wall Street in the US to countless red and brown upstart parties started forming in every corner of the world, offering an alternative to liberal capitalism. Some, of course, blamed the system. Others, minorities, Jews, and the usual big bad cultural enemy. In Russia, at the time, a burgeoning nationalist movement wanted to explain away the ills of the people without digging into Soviet pride or taking it up in any way, shape, or form. They were the new Russians. They perceived a third, later fourth way, one which does speak on class, but also understands that Russia itself must clean its halls of power from foreign interference, both Western and domestic. This included a war against liberal degeneracy, multiculturalism, homosexuality, Jewish influence, all things that to an extent can be subsumed by a neoliberal status quo, the way it is with many reactionaries in the halls of power in Paris, London, Washington, or Rome. But these reactionaries dared to take a step further, to point the finger at the current Russian executive body, at Vladimir Putin, at his party, at his approach to governance. This, of course, would not stand. A statewide crackdown on nationalist, fascist, and so called radical elements sweep through the entire country. Battalions of ethnic minorities were intentionally formed to bolster motivation against these crazy ethno-nationalist fascists. Rhetoric of a Russia for everyone was now in the mouth and banners of the government. I, for one, leave it to you to judge whether this came out of true internationalist almost Soviet solidarity or because it was now finally a useful hammer against the nationalist threat. Everyone of consequence was either detained, arrested, a few even killed or thrown into exile. But and this is the genius of the current Russian state, too many Westerners miss. The Russian kicks doors, throws out of windows, sure, but then replaces who sits behind those doors and those windows. They understand ideas do not die, especially in a system as consistently looping from crisis to crisis as capitalism so often does. So they build acceptable nationalists, acceptable communists, acceptable philosophers.
SPEAKER_04Exactly.
SPEAKER_03So was Dugin recruited to be one of them? Or was he always a true believer in the compatibility between the current leadership and the great future Freda explained to you was waiting for the Eastern world? We will probably never know. But our thesis here is that Dugin formed nothing in the Russian Federation. Nothing. He was formed by it. The fall of the USSR, the search for purpose, and a interesting loyalty to the state formed in him a perfect catch all figure for the compatible Russian far right. A Russian right that can be utilized for military gain as a domestic pacifier, and as a tool of some sort of unity allowed to step out of its bounds only when necessary and called for. Some call it controlled opposition from my friends, some call it loyalty. Call it whatever you want. The fact on the ground is Mr. Dugin has become an international pariah in the West, a weird freak for most Russians, a traitor to the old nationalist guard, to the true, true nationalists, and a father to the state loyal Russian right, which should not be undermined at all. The main lesson to learn from his entire story in this twentieth episode is a rather complicated one. We always tend to link capitalist decay to a rise in fascist ideas, thinkers, and of course, organized political movements. These are often co-opted by the status quo, but also, and this is what it gets complicated, they sometimes overturn current politically established organizations because they deem them not radical enough in the way they protect said status quo. This is usually when liberals either join the right or are this is usually when liberals are this is usually when liberals either join the right or are consumed by it. Whoever large capital, big money, billionaires, oligarchs, call them whatever you want, choose as their representative is who wins. In the Russian Federation, though, capital has already found its most efficient cutthroat mode of self preservation. It loves the current way things are. And that is why it actively combats fringe right wing elements or of course co-opts them. Because the conditions are not yet there to render them more useful than how things are right now. This happens in the States when you see Republicans or Democrats speak out against fascists, they probably agree with behind the scenes, or in any other country. The Russians, my friends, the Russians are just more aggressive at finding Dugans and letting them fulfill their role while thinking they matter whatsoever. Especially those writing for The Guardian. Oh my god, they're so good. They're so fun. They play chess while everybody plays checkers. On this, they really do. The ideology is is power. They they're they're kind of they you know you know what's uh what's uh Russian feminism? You know what this means.
SPEAKER_04Uh oh, maybe you don't. You know what it is. Uh I I all I know is like the fucking like uh pussy riot people and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's that's nothing. That's it's there's 12 people that follow that. No, no. Russia Russian feminism as a as a kind of like meta-joke, because Russians were one of the first people on planet earth that actually like uh followed feminism under the banner of the red banner, blah blah blah blah blah. So so you have the Soviet Union, you have the most uh integrated into the workforce women on planet earth, Soviet Union follows apart, you have the 90s, and you have a lot of mothers, multi-generational parents, female parents, uh now interacting with their daughters that uh live outside of the Soviet system, and uh for multiple generations, they uh funnily enough, only experienced being working women. So, because of those conditions, they actually tell them no, don't be a working woman, marry rich because the only thing I know is working, and that shit kind of low-key sucks. So it's unironically, like from a woke perspective, unironically, like like I'm being very serious about this, uh, out of like a protest perspective, it became a protest perspective to choose not to work but get married, because it was no longer a liberation to be employed. They unironically had it too good to be now this might sound reactionary, but they did. Absolutely, absolutely it's fascinating, and that's why the Russian state can do this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, to be fair, like we we we see that shit, like that's that's the the core uh of that phenomena, I think. We see that in like the welfare state in countries like Britain and Norway and so on and so forth, like the the idea that like you know things have been going so well in terms of like for for the people here in what we call the Imperial Corps, and at a certain point, like they're like, Well, it's it's awesome, but like it's not awesome enough. Let's just fucking change course, you know? Let's just let's just do a 180 and go the opposite direction for no fucking reason because maybe like you know, sometimes things slow down and so on and so forth. It's the um the stupid like pendulum of like uh I guess uh sometimes popular opinion. And I think in a way, kind of like the way that like Dugan and some other of these like ultra-conservative people view the world, um, because we kind of even though we don't subscribe to the idea of like steady constant progress in the way that like I guess some uh liberals uh do, we believe that you know there is such a thing as like things moving in the right direction. Whereas uh a lot of these like ultra-conservatives um and people like Dugan, who's obviously a fascist, they don't like that liberal conception of uh time. They don't or what they call the liberal conception of time, they don't like the linear conception of time. They don't like the idea that like maybe something improved because they think that it's not really about a constant improvement, a constant like bettering of our position. It's uh it's not that. That that seems like to them modern. What uh what it boils down to is uh something else, something v nebulous, something esoteric.
SPEAKER_03But it's always esoteric and nebulous and hard to define and then never fucking define it.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. It's never anything, yeah. Because we've emphasized several times the need to understand fascism on its own terms. But sometimes, however, the contradictions, the ideas, their stated goals, and what the real role in the broader struggle is, are not the same. We are not reaching Agatha. The Eurasian co-prosperity sphere is never coming to pass. The fourth political theory is rehashed bunk and mystic gobbledygook. But in Russia and elsewhere, anti-imperialist energies, the growth of radical movements seeking to stand against oppression or replace them with their own oppression, are blunted by the ideological dead end of Dugin, Evola, and others. Sometimes the purpose of a thing is not its stated purpose, but to quote Professor Anthony Stafford Beer, who worked on Chile's never finished Cybersyn economic planning system, quote The purpose of a system is what it does. Thank you for listening.
