Aleksandr Dugin has lengthy been a supply of controversy each in his homeland of Russia and all through the West. Though he appears extra like Rasputin than Halford Mackinder, it’s the latter after whom Dugin fancies himself. Over the final a number of years Dugin, who’s a political theorist and an advocate of a potent Russian ideology often called “neo-Eurasianism,” has change into a fixture in Vladimir Putin’s regime.
While it could sound like a planet within the latest incarnation of Star Trek, neo-Eurasianism is a harmful and noxious ideology that takes probably the most harmful elements of nationalism, fuses it with quasi-fascistic concepts, is fueled by conventional ideas of Russian autocracy in addition to militarism, masks these notions behind a skinny veneer of Russian mysticism for home consumption together with superficial anti-globalism to achieve overseas help – notably from a loud however in the end small component of the American proper – and is shrouded behind an virtually impenetrable layer of Marxist dialectic.
As Dostoyevsky as soon as noticed of the Russian soul, neo-Eurasianism is a “dark place.”
Yet in the end, “neo-Eurasianism” is merely an opaque time period to explain classical Russian geo-strategy.
According to Dugin, there’s a struggle between the continentalist, intolerant autocracies of Eurasia – as led by Russia – in opposition to the liberal, globalist maritime powers of (primarily) the Anglosphere (together with the United States). It is right here that Dugin’s theories draw closely on the works of classical geopolitical theorists, such because the turn-of-the-Twentieth-century British thinker Sir Halford Mackinder.
It was Mackinder who believed that his beloved British Empire, as a primarily seafaring energy closely reliant on maritime commerce, needed to problem the rising militaristic, autocratic powers of Eurasia. Because these Eurasian nations had been within the middle of what Mackinder known as the “world-island,” if one or an alliance of those Eurasian states coalesced, they might overwhelm the maritime democracies of the world.
In essence, Eurasia is the house of the world’s largest inhabitants and probably the most arable land, potable water provides, and pure assets. If it fell underneath the sway of Eurasian powers, this “world-island” may come to dominate the complete world by sheer mass. Thus, whether or not or not it’s Britain of yesteryear or the United States of in the present day, it was important for these maritime democracies to forestall such a coalescence of Eurasian autocracies.
Taking his cues from these theories, Dugin created his personal concept, tailored for Russia, that has gained nice affect among the many siloviki, these Soviet-era intelligence and army officers who now rule the Russian Federation, notably Vladimir Putin.
Many influential figures on the precise within the United States have come to view Russia as led by Putin as a potential ally within the struggle in opposition to the decadent, postmodern liberalism that has come to dominate the West because the finish of the Cold War.
If the secular, democratic-globalist elite who purport to rule Western nations symbolize all the things that’s mistaken with the West – all the things we conservatives are preventing in opposition to – then Vladimir Putin’s traditionalist, nationalist Russia is a pure ally.
Sadly, nonetheless, this isn’t an correct evaluation of both Vladimir Putin or Russia as led by the neo-Eurasianist siloviki. In reality, neo-Eurasianism is nothing greater than the identical form of globalist claptrap that Western leftists are threatening abnormal Americans with – solely it’s a globalism with an imperialistic, autocratic, Russian aptitude.
Most Americans wouldn’t discover life underneath both the democratic-globalist elite who fancy themselves as our betters in Washington and Brussels or underneath the Duginists who dominate Moscow palatable.
If one had been to go looking “Alexandr Dugin” on YouTube, invariably one can be inundated with lengthy movies of the gonzo Russian theorist describing the essence and nature of his concepts. In reality, Dugin explicitly – repeatedly – describes the roots of his ideology as being against Western-style liberalism.
It can be straightforward to imagine that Dugin refers merely to the leftists whom Western conservatives have lengthy opposed. Dugin is describing, although, philosophical liberalism. Both the postmodern leftists who’re, frankly, destroying Western society in addition to the conservative proper against these leftists – regardless of being ideological enemies – are nonetheless Westerners.
Dugin and his followers in Russia not solely detest the liberal traditions of the West however in addition they resent the West in its entirety – together with the right-wingers who’re making an attempt to forge a standard trigger with the Duginists of Russia.
Private property rights, democracy, equality within the eyes of the regulation, particular person liberty, these are notions that the American proper has lengthy cherished and advocated. They are the presents imparted to us fashionable Westerners from the heroes and thinkers who got here earlier than us; the legacy of these earlier generations of Westerners that we may by no means repay.
None of those ideas of liberty are appreciated or desired by those that march beneath the banner of neo-Eurasianism underneath the iron-fisted rule of Vladimir Putin and his siloviki. On the opposite, the Russian regime is immediately threatened by the philosophical liberalism which undergirds the Western, Judeo-Christian civilization we on the American proper have struggled to protect and defend.
As Whittaker Chambers, one of the consequential males of the Twentieth century, stated, “Political freedom is a political reading of the Bible.” Under Vladimir Putin, the normal Russian faith of Eastern Orthodox Christianity has as soon as once more taken root (it had been shuttered by the previous Soviet regime).
Although the Eastern Orthodox Christianity as practiced in Russia will not be the identical because the decentralized Christianity of the United States. And Putin’s regime embodies the reverse beliefs of the “political freedom” that you just and I cherish.
What’s extra, the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion has been hijacked by the militant autocracy of Vladimir Putin, making it little greater than a superficial artifice behind which the totally un-Christian actions and beliefs of Putin and the neo-Eurasianists disguise.
This explains how Putin, a purported defender of Western civilization and conventional Christian values, can wantonly interact in struggle crimes in opposition to fellow Eastern Orthodox Christians and Slavs in neighboring Ukraine with out batting a watch.
And why is Putin’s regime slaughtering the Ukrainians?
Because Ukraine was experimenting with democracy, and if the experiment proved profitable (an enormous “if”), then the prospects of a profitable, dynamic, free Ukraine simply throughout the border from Putin’s sclerotic Russian Federation would show a direct risk to his continued strongman rule.
Thus Moscow needed to crush the Kiev authorities in any respect prices; to kill the potential affluent child within the womb – and to push away undesirable American affect so near Russia’s borders.
Setting apart the difficulty of democratic governance, for the American proper, nationwide sovereignty – self-determination – has been a pillar of Western civilization because the Treaty of Westphalia. Further, nationwide self-determination has been a cornerstone of the worldwide order. And a respect for sovereignty was the essence of the Trump motion in 2016.
Even although each Putin and his ideological svengali, Dugin, declare they’re merely defending Russian sovereignty they’re, actually, defending Russia’s conventional empire – on the expense of different nations’ proper to self-determination.
This must be an affront to nationalists in every single place.
There is not any frequent worth set that the American proper shares with the neo-Eurasianists of Russia. For the Duginists, corresponding to Putin, Russia is a “civilization-state” that exists separate from and atop each European and Asian cultures.
According to those Russian imperialists, Russia should restore its empire to guide the land-powers of Eurasia in a last struggle of world dominance in opposition to the maritime democracies, as led by the United States. The American proper and all that they’ve struggled to defend are additionally underneath risk.
It is, due to this fact, incumbent upon all Americans, no matter political affiliation, to acknowledge the actual risk that the Dugin-loving Putin regime poses to the West. Supporting Ukraine is the least we may do to make sure that Putin’s and Dugin’s imaginative and prescient for Eurasia (and the world) at America’s expense goes unrealized.