Counter-Currents
1,228 words
On August 20th, Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian geopolitical thinker Alexander Dugin, was killed when her vehicle exploded as she was leaving a festival where her father spoke. The bomb was probably meant for her father, who was expected to depart in the same vehicle but apparently changed his mind at the last minute.
My first thought was that in Russia, some people take ideas very, very seriously. But in truth, Dugin was probably targeted because of his real or imagined role in Kremlin politics.
I have always been skeptical of Dugin. Based on his books The Fourth Political Theory (satirized here) and Heidegger: The Philosophy of Another Beginning (reviewed here), as well as his articles and interviews, I concluded that Dugin and I have read a lot of the same writers and detest many of the same things, but on the most essential points we have reached diametrically opposite conclusions. I am a White Nationalist. Dugin is anti-white and anti-nationalist. He is an advocate of Russian imperial revanchism and thus a cheerleader for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which I oppose on ethnonationalist grounds. Ukraine is the homeland of the Ukrainian people, and Russia needs to stay out.
I am also skeptical of Dugin’s influence. He has been touted as the philosophical and geopolitical mastermind behind the Putin regime. Dugin has been called “Putin’s brain” (as if Putin had no brain of his own) and “Putin’s Rasputin” (as if he were pious and weak-minded). Dugin is definitely part of Russia’s late Communist and post-Communist political establishment, but I suspect that his outsize reputation is largely his own creation, since it first issued from his various publishers and platforms, whereupon it was eagerly repeated both by those who wished to deify or diabolize him.
But there’s no solid evidence that Dugin has any special influence on the Kremlin. Despite their extremism and esoteric embroideries, Dugin’s ideas on geopolitics and Russian foreign policy are rather commonplace. Dugin occupies no prestigious positions. His primary patron is the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. There’s a real possibility, however, that he was targeted and his daughter was killed because of the mastermind reputation that he so carefully crafted.
One’s reaction to the Dugin assassination depends, of course, on who did it. But we don’t know who did it, and we may never know. There are plenty of suspects with means and motive, but they fall into three major categories. First, there are Dugin’s rivals and enemies in the Russian establishment, including his own Eurasianist movement. Second, there are Dugin’s enemies in Ukraine. Third, there are other foreign intelligence services.
Alexander Dugin and Darya Dugina a few hours before the assassination.
The latter two options seem the least likely. It is expensive and risky to assassinate one’s enemies on foreign soil, and if the Ukrainians or other foreign intelligence services were willing to undertake such an escalation, surely they could have found a more significant target than Dugin. Of course, they may have believed Dugin’s own hype. But targeting cabinet ministers, military brass, or industrialists would inspire more fear and create more problems for the regime. Perhaps such people have better security than Dugin. But there may have been more tempting targets at the very festival Dugin was leaving. Thus it seems more likely that Dugin was targeted by domestic enemies, who would have had easier access to him. Dugin would seem like a small target for foreign actors, but he might loom much larger for people closer to home, especially rivals within his own camp.
Of course, mere ignorance of who perpetrated this crime won’t stop people from commenting on it. Why let a spectacular murder go to waste? The Kremlin, predictably, has accused the Ukrainians. Dugin himself has accused them. Surely he believes this, since otherwise he would be a monster to exploit his own daughter’s death for cheap political points. The Ukrainians, just as predictably, have blamed the Russians.
The reactions on the Internet fall into two broad camps: hopes and prayers vs. jeers and sneers. Generally speaking, the people who are mourning Darya Dugina are far from Russia and anti-Ukraine. Those who are celebrating her death tend to be closer to Russia and pro-Ukraine. I can’t fault people who actually knew Darya Dugina from sharing their feelings. But when vast numbers of strangers chime in on either side, it is a tasteless spectacle of social signaling.
You can buy Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence from Imperium Press here.
People who view Dugin and his daughter simply as intellectuals react to this assassination the same way that they reacted to the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie: as an attempt to use brute force rather than reason to deal with intellectual opposition.
Those who view Dugin and his daughter as primarily political actors who have been cheerleaders for the Ukraine war have reacted much as Iraqis or anti-war Americans would react if Liz Cheney were blown up by a bomb meant for her father. The Dugins, both father and daughter, cheered on the deaths of countless Ukrainian fathers and daughters, so it is hardly surprising that some people return the sentiments.
What do I think of this assassination? It’s complicated. It depends on who did it and why, which we will probably never know for sure. If Dugin was being targeted for his ideas, I am outraged, since I believe that intellectual disagreements should be settled by reason, not force. If Dugin was targeted as a political player by his fellow Russians, that’s obviously no way to run a country, but it was a game that Dugin himself chose to play. If Dugin was targeted as a warmonger by Ukrainians or their allies, well, that’s also part of war. Wars are no way to live with your neighbors, but that too was a game that Dugin chose to play, and his daughter chose to follow him. If this is too horrible for you to contemplate, don’t blame the messenger. Blame the war. You are getting only a taste of the horrors that have been unleashed upon Ukraine for the last six months.
How should our movement handle this assassination? Those who knew the victim should have their say. But I wish the rest of us had maintained a dignified silence rather than exploit this event for novel “hot takes” or to launch embittered attacks on rival camps.
Personally, I think compassion rather than mockery is the proper response to this horror, although I understand those who prefer to save their compassion for the Ukrainians. As I put it in my essay on David Lynch’s The Elephant Man:
We are all curious about bad things that befall other human beings: accidents, illnesses, deformities. If we satisfy our curiosity, the result is horror. At this point, however, there are two basic ways to deal with horror: mockery or compassion.
As Anthony M. Ludovici argued in The Secret of Laughter, laughter is glorying in one’s superior fitness. Forced or nervous laughter, however, is an attempt to reassure oneself that one really is more fit.
But the horror we feel is ultimately based on the recognition that misfortune can befall us all. . . . none of us is immune to misfortune of one sort or another. Compassion is the recognition of this fact: one sees oneself in the other and feels for him as one feels for oneself. Mockery is a lie and evasion, compassion an admission of the truth.
* * *
Like all journals of dissident ideas, Counter-Currents depends on the support of readers like you. Help us compete with the censors of the Left and the violent accelerationists of the Right with a donation today. (The easiest way to help is with an e-check donation. All you need is your checkbook.)
For other ways to donate, click here.
74 comments
Seems like amateur night, an incompetent, non state actor. Simply to target such a soft target as dugin and then to screw up and get his daughter suggests nonprofessionals imho. I hope for you guys’ sake this targeting of thinkers does not become a trend.
Indeed, killing journalists is a past time in Russia, they killed so many and got away with it for so long and so many times that they got sloppy and unprofessional.
It was a state actor. Otherwise the cameras in the parking lot were not switched off, and the movies were already aired relentlessly.
Whoever did this infiltrated a secure VIP car park, disabled its cameras for 2 hours and evaded camera detection in one of the most heavily surveilled areas of Moscow (which is a heavily surveilled city in general) while carrying a potent explosive device.
I’m 100% sure it is a state actor.
Well, also you said that the daughter could well have been the primary target, so probably.
Guess you are overrating them. That was a phone call, and a short order. “Shut it down and see nothing for two hours”.
Follow the money, as the smart detectives in the TV series say. There is a version that through Dugin, the money allocated by the state was distributed, part of which went to pro-Russian “pet” pseudo-rightists in Europe. And not all this money reached the recipients, someone stole it. It would be impossible to punish the thieves legally, through the courts, since the transfers were secret and unofficial. So the punishment followed. But since the organs of the State Security Service in Russia are crooked, instead of annihilate Dugin himself, they bang his daughter. This, of course, is only a version, one of many, and we will never know the truth. But those who say that the Russian authorities protect the right-wingers or defenders of the white race, for some reason forget how many Russian nationalists were killed or imprisoned already under Putin, they do not remember either Professor Khomyakov, who was killed in a concentration camp, or Martsinkevich, or many others.
There are a million theories on the internet, and like this one, most of them are more or less plausible speculation. Since we will surely never know the truth about this event, such speculation is a waste of time.
Yeah, it will probably go down like who poisoned Yushenko. Many plausible theories, no certainty.
Exactly!
Some money are trickling down to some high profile or very promising individuals. The greatest part is stolen.
What people do not what to understand is the simple fact that the KGB/FSB/SVR/GRU are trying to manipulate all the parts in the game. Blacks, Whites, Greens, Reds and Blues.
Right now a big Green NGO is in the middle of an scandal in Germany, for taking big money from the Russian government. Amnesty International is compromised for taking money sonce Breshnev times. I bet there many others. Including BLM and Tucker Carlson. Because it is not about the truth but about Russia trying to replace US, not for a better world but for a world of abject slavery – Ruskii Mir.
I don’t understand, and never will understant Duguin’s fanboys. As far as I know, they are present mainly in Spain and spanish speaking countries (like Argentina), and they treat Duguin’s ideas like the new revolutionary gospel.
Duguin’s ideas, like Greg pointed out, are not on our side. Duguin is not a friend of the white race and the white people. Duguin is not aware of the Jewish Question. Duguin uses postestructuralist and postmodernist ideas that are wrong and false.
He is a father who lost a daughter, and I feel sorry for him, but he is NOT on our side.
*understand
Ridiculous comment about Dugin. https://www.unz.com/ejones/who-killed-daria-dugina/
The reaction of the Online Right has been predictable and of course when another potential friction point appears many jump on it to fan the flames of divisiveness. Telegram is a particularly potent platform for this.
We should forever focus on victory conditions.
Everything else is just a distraction or just reveals the keyboard warriors who are unserious degenerates who should be shunned and shooed away.
I figure it was the Ukrainians. I support Russia bc Ukraine is part of Russia has been since the Kieven Rus days, circa 800 Ad.
I suppose that makes me biased against the dumb thugs in Kiev
Nah, you are not biased. You’re a russian thug.
Kieven Rus was a complex of colonial trading posts of Baltic pirates and slave-traders (Varyagians), which sold the ancestors of both Ukrainians and Russians all over European and Mediterranean lands.
Actually, if these sort of historical arguments matter, Russia is merely an offshoot of Ukraine and should be ruled from Kiev.
When we dig deep enough in the history, we can find any arguments for any theory, which you wish to propagate. For example Lev Gumilyov, great Russian historian of Spengler´s scale (and Dugin, when he write about Gumilyov and his ideas, only shows that he either did not read his books or did not understand them), thought, that the Russians since the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later had little in common with “Kievan Rus”, but much more with the Türkic-Mongolian states of Cingizids like Ulug Ulus and others.
Thus Russia can be called an offshot of Tatar states and be ruled either from Tatar Qazan or even from Qazaq Astana (Nur-Sultan).
This quote is as stupid as the MGTOW fringe claim that Lauren Southern is a Jew and that she has a mulatto child. Why post bullshit?
I do not know what you speak about. What is MG TOW? Tow is an anti-tank missile and not a machine gun.
The Ukraine is a Judeocracy with a Jewish president elected with money from a sickening Jewish oligarch, a largely Jewish cabinet, and at the beginning of Zelensky’s rule a Jewish prime minister. Jews are the worst enemies of the White race. If you stand with the Ukraine, then you are one of two things: uninformed or an enemy of the White race.
There is no such thing as the “Ukrainian people” ethnically. Besides the ruling Jewish elite, the Ukraine is comprised of Galicians and other closely related unaccomplished and uncultured ethnicities and of captive Russians.
And regardless of whether his ideas are good or bad, the fact is that Dugin is the Lyndon Larouche of Russia, which is to say, he has very little influence except in some marginal circles. Far from being “Putin’s brain”, as claimed by the lying American jewsmedia, he was even fired from his professorship at Moscow State University.
But I thought they were all Nazis? That is what Mr Putin has been saying …
In any case, the murder of this young woman will only make a settlement harder to achieve. No matter how wrongheaded Mr Dugin may or may not be over geopolitics, he is not a combatant, nor was his daughter. Yet is it not bitterly ironic, indeed tragic, that Daria Dugin, a scholar of Plato, met her end in the bloody arena of Russian politics?
“Generally speaking, the people who are mourning Darya Dugina are far from Russia and anti-Ukraine.”
That’s me. From this point of view, there is something that should be said: Darya Dugina should have married young and had children. Her father should have grandchildren to comfort him now. Her nation should include her children. Darya Dugina should not have put aside her real life for her father’s cause, for Russia, or for anything else.
Young White people are idealistic, and quick to sacrifice their own good for wider ideals that they believe in, but when these young idealists are gone they are bitterly missed.
“Idealism now, family later,” is often a bad bargain, especially for women.
She was too busy asking to genocide every peoples not happy to be occupied by the Russian Empire. Men need women not cheerleaders of doom.
Anyway, haven’t seen you decrying the death of little girls and boys killed by the Russians at Mariupol Theater. You know, that building with a huge “children” graffiti that was savagely bombarded by the Russian Air Force.
Yeah, poor Daria. She brought out all the compassion.
I’d rather not comment this pseudo-moral argument (Darya was killed because she was somebody’s enemy – yeah we know that), but rather note that according to all credible sources, Dugin evaded death through mere ‘chance’, by swapping cars at the last moment. The significance of these ‘coincidences’ is in how they defy the vainglory of intent – what was supposed to be a knife in the heart of Russian nationalism ended in infamy, and what was supposed to be a daring operation turned out a botched PR disaster.
Decency prevents me from expressing full contempt of those who propagate the completely nebulous and implausible claim that a person like Dugin had enemies in the Russian deep-state who wanted him dead. (Propagated by complete ignoramuses on Russian affairs).
Dugin is too old to come out of this as a stronger man, but the fact of his providential survival certainly aches those bitter, unforgiving pedants who hate in the way mediocrities hate – with great and shameless deliberation
“with great and shameless deliberation”
Like Daria used to hate everybody sickened by all the Russian atrocities?
Dugin is part of a certain group that considers Putin as weak and pushes for total war. Dugin is too crazy even for Putin. He had to be muzzled and a clear message had to be sent to the Dugin’s boss.
Stop gaslighting. Putin killed her, as he killed a countless number of other journalists. In the most atrocious ways usually. Why they never found any killer of other journalists but they are so sure in 24 hours who done it in this case?
Stop gaslighting. It’s ridiculous.
It does not surprise me that you cannot tell the difference between say, British bombers bombing German cities, and MI6 sending an agent to assassinate a Nazi sympathizer intellectual who nonetheless, does not hold any office.
It does not surprise me because it is in the nature of the modern mind not to understand it’s own absurdity and pettiness. One does merely fight the enemy who opposes him – one must hate and put on a hit list every person who has ‘opposing thoughts’ (even if such thoughts are normal part of in-group behavior) – even if it be a woman and a non-combatant. Everything is ideological – great value is attached to ‘symbolical victories’, loyalties of disinterested parties, battles are being fought for hearts and minds, scores are being settled with everyone who makes the ‘person’ angry.
All this very much stinks to every decent person.
Frankly, Russian nationalists too think along these lines. ‘Why isn’t Putin bombing the presidential palace! Why isn’t Putin sending a cruise missile to X person’s home!’ They can’t fathom that Putin does not share their obsession and that he has better things to do. For this too he deserves respect, for he is above the level of the average Russian, as all leaders should be. The same cannot be said of the Kiev leadership (a glance at their social media reveals their level), much less of its Western partners. Hence these sad displays.
Russian nationalists
Sorry, here you better should use correct words. Not Russian NATIONALISTS, but Russian IMPERIALISTS. Sometimes they wear masks of nationalists, but they are not.
I use this term with its common meaning in mind, to mean those people who support their nation’s ambitions, or alternatively, those individuals who oppose the political status quo in their society, whatever it may be, with an idea based on national or ethnic particularism. I don’t use in the sense of ‘Adherents of the ideology called ‘Nationalism’, whose key tenets and moral dictums depend on which author you ask’ which would be an impossible way to use this phrase to begin with. All proprietary speech, unless it has some artistic purpose, sucks and serves no other purpose but to create confusion and win contests in verbal Jesuitism.
So what are you implying here?
That a genocidal maniac, killed by Putin, is more important than some kids killed recently by the Russian Air Force? Because I don’t get you. Putin killed hundreds of intellectuals during his tenure.
Also, because of Harris’ psychopaty, because of Dresden, or Bucharest and Ploiesti for that matter, 68 years ago, we should let the Russians occupy us once again?
Yes, Churchill was a drunkard, Roosevelt a communist spy. It took 3-4 decades to remove some of the Russian spies from US government. Yet, Germany kept the Russian spy Angela Merkel (no, what’s wrong with you good people? De Mezieres were proved as Russian spies and their protege is not) as head of goverment for almost 2 decades time enough to weaken Germany, and import millions of racial foreigner. But somehow is UK and US fault.
So what is you moralistic proposal. To surrender in mass so Churchill and Harris would die again by mere spite, or what?
78 years ago.
Greg, what’s your policy proposals regarding the war, for Ukraine, for the U.S. and for Russia?
If you had the magical ability to dictate the policy of one of these countries, what would this policy be in each of the three cases?
To Russia: remove all troops from Ukraine, including Crimea; pay war reparations in the form of oil and gas for a set period of time; release all Ukrainian prisoners; punish all war criminals in their ranks; move Russian separatists from Ukraine to Russia proper.
To Ukraine: release Russian prisoners; punish war criminals in their ranks; do not station NATO troops or missiles on their territory, the threat of which is one of the pretexts for this war.
To the US: withdraw from NATO, but do so in five years, to give Europe a chance to rebuild its armies and defense industries that have atrophied under NATO; leave American nuclear weapons in European hands.
To the Central and Eastern European countries: build an Intermarium defensive bloc, because the West is on the road to total ruin.
1. Russians are not going anywhere if not thrown out. They will not stop till Lisbon and Dublin.
2. Russia never punished its War Criminals. Made statues for them.
3. In the real world without American nuclear umbrella and HIMARS and satellites, you are already a Chinese or Russian slave. Lived that, saw it with my own eyes.
4. The Occident is not on his deathbed. It will rebound. The causes of the sickness is exposed today. And it has much to do with Russian and Chinese propaganda and bribe money.
5. We all love the Occident. US, Germany, Britain, France, Italy or Spain. Order the list as you like and add anything you like. We love them all.
Russia never punished its War Criminals. Made statues for them.
Not only. Sometimes they declare them SAINTS. Now they want to canonize Suvorov, the genocidal murderer of Nogay People, and alike of Poles, the deportator of Crimean Tatars, Greeks and Armenians, who also suppressed the uprising of the Cossacks, Bashkirs and Kalmiks under the leadership of Pugachev.
Suvorov and Kutuzov, two psychopaths that did so many atrocities in Romania too. Ermolov the butcher of Circassia. Russia should start with them.
Primarily it’s a disgusting cowardly crime. I don’t see a value in trying to establish the weight of the crime with how much we specifically align/don’t align with Dugin’s ideas individually or which side we lean toward to in this war.
Should every white person be killed who has strident racialist views towards blacks ?
It’s true, you can’t rule out state actors or Ukraine. And unfortunately the further East you go in the white world the dumber things get and the more corrupt and unstable things become.
But I’m not really persuaded that Dugin is a significant enough, sufficiently high profile political target for internal grudges within Russia to point of murdering him.
I could be totally wrong, but I suspect Ukraine are not routinely thinking that much about Dugin either.
So I find myself disagreeing with the notion that foreign intelligence agencies are less plausible suspects.
The parallel of say Liz Cheney is interesting and helps create context when we think of war, but in other ways it’s not exact. Cheney himself is hardly a thinker. He’s a business republican and was VP. Cheney had much direct political power. Dugin has none. He’s purely a symbolic target.
It would really be something akin to an attempt on an American philosophical figure with a following, particularly a following outside of the US and that had some dissident ideas and appeal. Although he’s anti war, I’m tempted to say someone like Noam Chomsky, but the reason Chomsky was, as far as I know, never targeted like this is because although Chomsky acts (or sees himself) as a kind conscience to the US system, he never presents any threat to it. Rather he actually reinforces many of the problems the system inflicts as they suit him.
But Dugin has a following outside of his own country with European dissidents, with the Latin American world, with the Islamic world and so on, like Chomsky.
I’ll bite on the conspiracy stuff on this one.
If I had to put money on somebody I would say Jews did it for Jewish reasons. And as usual the blame will fall very naturally on other ‘obvious’ suspects.
I don’t accept, as E Michael Jones has suggested, that this was because of an article Dugin wrote recently that mentioned Jews as a hostile elite in America.
It’s been clear that Jews have hated Dugin for an extremely long time.
We might not find Dugin’s ideas adequate, but to rootless cosmopolitan neocons they are obviously deeply problematic and he’s routinely framed as a nazi, a fascist, a threat to civilization and all kinds of other things. And the hatred of Dugin seems to converge with a Jewish historical hatred of Russia more generally.
I don’t think that is something he’s created himself. He may have chose to roll with it, accept these labels, but clearly the Western and Jewish elites don’t like Dugin and have hysterically established him as a dangerous figure to the normie public.
So in my view Dugin was killed for his rejection of liberalism by Jews, not specifically for his positions on Ukraine. Ukraine gives the opportunistic cover though.
Duh… bit tired when I wrote that, I meant the attempt on Dugin’s life that killed his daughter was to do with these ideas.
I know Nick knows what I’ll be talking about (many East Europeans do), but some other reader might find my two cents interesting. Or not, anyway, for what is worth, here we go.
On March 23 US formally accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine. What’s the difference between war crimes and terrorism ? I am sure the experts will explain the difference, but for the regular Joe (regular Ivan to be more precise) it’s all semantics. So what do you do when you are called a terrorist state ? Let’s see how they might have thought. Ukraine’s independence day is coming ( August 24th, moment to mark) , internally Russians are not that happy with the fratricide war (pardon me, special operation) we are carrying out, the fatigue due to economic restrictions is growing, what do we do ? You have to be proactive, you can’t just react, that’s not a winning strategy. We need a martyr for the internal market propaganda and mobilization, but it must also look good externally. It cannot be someone really important in the apparatus, because it will weaken the resolve and confidence of the leadership. It has to be someone marginal who the opposition will be shy to dismiss (like he/she deserved it), but also someone who will enrage and inspire our supporters. Someone like Dugina, who lived in her father’s shadow all her life, someone with a pleasant PR image who never killed anyone and no one listened to , just repackaged her father’s words (that’s all she ever knew). She’ll take one for the team, whether her father knows it or not, doesn’t matter. And we’ll make sure we preemptively plant some Ukrainian shadow figures around her in order to match our narrative. Or maybe we’ll just invent them, either way, who’s going to fact check and how ? We’ll also invent the National Republican Army (or whatever they call themselves), so that those who oppose the regime will not feel the urgency to do anything, look someone is already doing something (fighting for you), you don’t have to take the risk. By the way, in Russia you can have your car seat under your ass sending you to Heaven just for being friends with the guy running against the mayor of Moscow in the local elections it’s not that uncommon, but it’s uncommon in the West. If you think that a farting fly buzzes from shit to shit minding its own business, and the FSB or GRU are not aware of its flatulence, then you don’t understand Russia.
RIP Dugina, may the brave souls of the ancestors of all the Mongoloids and Muslims grateful to Russia for giving them the opportunity to kill as many white European Christians as their rotten hearts desire, may they give you the comfort that you seek.
What’s more to be said, I wish this kind of boolshit happens only in Russia, but unfortunately every great power (smaller too ) has the means and motivation to destroy lifes for their “greater good”, the stakes are simply too high. Only some do it more elegantly than others.
I spent 15 years trying to unlearn all of the assumptions of an Easterner so that I could learn the grammar of the Western world and turn my commentary to Western matters, only to frantically reach back into them when this war broke out. You’re 100% right about it, from the absolute surveillance, to the tight control, to the frequency of political assassination and of “minor” figures as well. To Western ears, this sounds paranoid, but it’s exactly how the East works.
I have to step over the threshold of courtesy here and state flatly that the Balkan society has nothing to do with ‘Eastern Europe’, and that having lived in a Balkan country, you learned nothing about life in Russia, Poland, or even Hungary, if you base your judgment upon the experiences of your own society. This is maybe something Americans can be confused or misled about. The cultures are flatly dissimilar – one can find similarities with Greek or Italian cultures, but with Eastern Slavic or Western Slavic cultures, not at all. Crossing the borders of Croatia and Slovenia, or Serbia and Hungary is like crossing from Mars to Venus – cultural separation is all too apparent. Not to speak of such a distant and alien world as Russia! There is no ‘Eastern Europe’ of which Balkans are a cultural part. To begin with, ‘tight control’ over the society is something that simply does not exist in the Balkans (sadly, because in the Balkans it is actually needed), much less general paranoia.
So you got gas…lighting, so everybody else is a moral idiot, not worthy enough to comment. Only you are allowed.
So what did you say? It was the Brits?
There´s no such thing as “Eastern Europe” now. There was “Eastern Europe” since 1945 and untill 1990, when the Central Europe, occupied by Soviet Union and ruled by communists, was called so. Now there is Central Europe, from the Oder-Neisse line to the East to the former SU borders, but including Baltic States. And there is North-Western Asia, lying to the east of the former Soviet border, here including Russia and Ukraine. And they are not Europeans, but EuroAsians, as heirs of medieval Türkic-Mongolian states.
Control in the former Yugoslav states is indirect, relying more on mindfuck than the physical control preferred by the Warsaw pact, but it was there nevertheless. In many ways, it was worse because it shredded away the capacity of the intellectual classes for forming ideological structures of opposition.
This is not “two cents”. This EE wisdom. Anyway, curious how the Dugins behaved at the funerals. Odd.
I am definitely not a fan of this anti-white commie, but his pretty daughter will be missed.
A petty observation, but why is she doing that black-people thing with her hand in the photo with her father?? Am I seeing that correctly? Wasn’t that hand thing originally some sort of black people gang affiliation gesture? WHY does every White person under 40 (under 50?) now do this in photos?
Questions, questions.
I wondered about that as well.
Well, if some White or Europeans see in Dugin some kind of defender of the White race or of European traditions, I, knowing something about his backgrounds and views, can only congratulate White and Europeans with such defender. And I would say here that I am glad, that I am not an European.
Dugin is a great accelerationist influence on the west, if anything.
I really have no idea about this, but that isn’t a “hang loose” symbol, is it? Does anyone know what that hand flash is supposed to signify?
Yep! AFAIK it doesn’t have anything to do with blacks. It’s the Hawaiian/surf culture hang loose symbol which replaced the peace sign as the-thing-to-do-with-your-hands because the peace sign is associated with hippie boomers, Asians, and Nixon.
Hawaian, surf culture, that’s all is so spiritless and so Western, and anti-traditionalist and unorthodox and russophobic.
It looks like the hand gesture of Hawaiian surfers, meaning “hang loose.”
@Eric Novak – Thank you for letting me know; although why the “hang loose” sentiment is so universal, I guess that shall remain a mystery! To me, it simply looks silly and ridiculous; one of those “monkey-see, monkey-do” type of behaviors.
Apparently people here don’t understand Dugin.
Dugin belongs in the tradition of integral traditionalism, which in simple form can be understood as mysticism. Some people here misunderstand Dugin, because he is diametrically opposed to modernity.
First, Dugin is not against ethnocentrism, this is what he said on fascism:
“It was eurocentric. Any ethnic group (we-group) is ethnocentric. It is quite normal. But to be eurocentric in the Modern Europe is the same as to be anti-European, because the european Modernity is not European at all. Being eurocentric in Modern Europe and against all other (non-European) societies judged retarded and sub-human means to be anti-traditional. The appeal to the return to the european (German, indo-aryan) roots was quit legitimate and good. But opposition of the deep identity of Europe to the identities of other societies (much less modernized than Germany of XX century) was absolutely wrong and unjustifiable.”
Basically his problem with fascism is that it’s modern and not truly traditional. Fascism, although being in many ways opposed to the liberal tradition, still evolved from liberalism.
Second, Dugin takes the traditionalist line on race, he thinks the spiritual race is more important, just like Evola did. He despises materialism. Evola’s criticism of nazism was that it was too focused on biology.
Third, he rejects nationalism because it is western, it is part of western universalism, it is modern, and it is within the framework of western, modernist, liberal individualism. He wrote:
“The Fourth Political Theory rejects racism and any form of nationalism precisely because it is an anti-traditional bourgeois Western and modernist construct. And operating with the concept and theory of nationalism to explain the political and social processes of non-Western and especially in traditional societies is an act of the same universalist – essentially colonial – strategy. This is where racism and the claim that the West and its political science have the last word in explaining all socio-political processes in any peoples and societies lies. Once we agree to use the three theories (liberalism, communism and nationalism), we are already under the direct ideological control of Western hegemony.
The Fourth Political Theory strongly disagrees with the basic premises of nationalism –
with the inevitability of the dismemberment of an organic (whole) society into atoms, that is, with the Western interpretation of “modernity”;
with capitalism as a necessary stage in the development of mankind,
with linear and copied from Western history social progress, which consists in more and more individualism, comfort, technical development, fictitious dispersion of power on the atomized masses and a real increase in control from the hidden oligarchic clans and their monopolies.
· with citizenship in its European modernist interpretation,
· with mandatory secularity (essentially anti-religious),
· with the abolition of estates and
· with the destruction of rural communities in favor of urbanized “lonely crowds” – both bourgeois and proletarian.
And since these phenomena belong to the history of the West, the Fourth Political Theory considers them a local, regional case. Other civilizations do not necessarily have to go through this stage – Modernity, capitalism, secularism, industrialization and urbanization – may or may not go through. And neither capitalism nor its nationalistic or racist phases represent any universal law of development.”
Nationalism and racism are understood in the west in relation to liberalism, and Dugin wants to have absolutely nothing to do with liberalism. Also, his idea was that America, being a profoundly and fundamentally liberal construct with no tradition (the tradition in USA is understood as liberalism), is something so terrible that it should be destroyed. It would be better if the individual ethnicities forming USA formed their own states and maintained their identities, Germans, Spanish, etc. Let’s not forget that other states were formed on the basis of soil, there is Russian soil, German soil, Turkish soil, and that soil is part of a state, that concept of connection between the people and their soil. There is no such thing when it comes to the USA, it is profoundly modernist.
The biggest achievement of Dugin is not being a Putin’s advisor. His ideas are his greatest achievement, national bolshevism, eurasianism, geopolitics, occultism, 4th political theory, these are the areas he was interested in and he greatly contributed to.
Forgot about one more thing. Dugin’s ideas about geopolitics are commonplace because HE introduced them to eurasianism. He alone is responsible for merging of eurasianism with geopolitics.
Where to begin? Eurasianism was from its start a century ago a geopolitical concept.
Of course, the Eurasianism of the early twentieth century was also a geopolitical theory. But basically it was a culturological and intellectual teaching of humanitarian scholars and jurists. And it was not at all like modern Dugin’s pseudo-Eurasianism.
Yes, the Eurasians of the past did not like Europe and the West, but they were hostile not so much to Europe and the West as such, but to the Europeanization and Westernization of Russia. They believed that the Russians were not Europeans, that they should not be Europeanized, and that the Europeanization carried out by the usurping Romanov dynasty did the Russians more harm than good. The most hated historical character for the Eurasians was Peter I, aka the Great.
The Eurasianists were not aggressive, and had absolutely no intention of capturing Europe, moreover, they believed that the western expansion of the Russians was erroneous and brought only harm to both the Russians and the peoples annexed by them, who remained a hostile and alien body inside Russia. They were complete opponents of the idiotic Pan-Slavism.
They believed that Russia should expand only to the East, and also find a symbiotic understanding with the Asian and Caucasian peoples of Russia.
But it must be said that the Eurasians were not Turanists and Pan-Türkists, and that for the Asian, Caucasian, Siberian and other peoples, Altaic or Uralic or Paleoasian, the Eurasianism was merely the same colonial ideology as Westernism, but only formulated in more benign words.
Repeating this ideological mishmash hardly constitutes a defense.
Dugin is rather a secondary thinker, not an original one. He is more interpreter and populiser, than scholar. He has no really new concepts (in contrast to Gumilyov, but Gumilyov died 30 years ago, and I do not think he is much famous in the West), but uses and updates concepts, created by other peoples.
He despises materialism.
Poor idealistic Darya, daughter of idealist and traditionalist Dugin, was blown up in Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. Well, it is not Rolls Royce or Maybach. But a real idealist, who despise materialism, should walk, and a real traditionalist has to, well, ride a horse. To me, the use of the word idealist when applied to these power-fed people here sounds almost insulting. Türkish idealist and nationalist Nihal Atsiz was imprisoned more than once by Türkisch authorities. Russian nationalists, such as Dobrovolsky or Ivanov, were imprisoned by Soviets. Ukrainian nationalist poet Stus was killed in Soviet concentration camp. Great Russian historian Gumilyov was in camps and then his works were not published almost 15 years. Qazaq poet and scholar Oljas Suleymenov could not publish his work “Az i ya” for 20 years. Those were idealists. But I have never heard of any government repression against Dugin and his company, neither in SU, nor in Russia, or banning of his books or articles.
“Idealist” doesn’t mean a fanatic living in a shed. And you won’t gain any political power being a fanatic living in a shed, you will starve and won’t achieve anything. Integral traditionalism doesn’t mean a blind respect for tradition either. Dugin was part of opposition to the communist government during the later days of the Soviet Union. Being a statist is not inherently discrediting either, all the better that the Russian government is sympathetic towards some of his ideas.
Was the young idealist really a mule that stole some FSB propaganda money?
Come on, Dugin was awashed in FSB money. The books no ones reads, the conferences with hundreds of shady figures and traitors, former politicians eager for revenge, high ranking Orthodox priests, all over Europe every year, access to the most important TV channels.
All these do not come for nothing. This means money, big big money.
Maybe you have o a different sense for the words like idealist and traditional. Looks like in Russia it means also to steal some government money and export revolutions where no one wants them.
It is amazing, that nobody in the West has worried about the death of Russian nationalist and anti-imperialist Prof. Pyotr Khomyakov, died (killed?) in Putin´s camp in 2014. Nobody worried about the death of Russian nationalist Maxim Marcinkiewicz, killed in Putin´s prison 2 years ago. What is with mysterious deaths of some Russian writers, editors and scholars, which could be interpreted both as death of “natural” causes or of hidden murders. Lev Prosorov, Slavonic-neopaganist author. Alexander Pyzhikov, antiglobalist and anti-Western historian. Vladimir Avdeyev, racologist, writer, publisher, translator and editor. Nikolay Abayev, Buryatian historian, scholar of Tengrism, driven to suicide in the autumn of 2020. Those are whom I have remembered without Googling, and this is only in three last years.
And in the last years of the Soviet Union, when Dugin has got every support of the authorities, Russian nationalist (half-Georgian) Konstantin Smirnov-Ostashvili was imprisoned, and then killed in jail (1991). He was an idealist.
Excelent Kok Bori. Very informative. You gave here material for tens of nationalist articles.
Putin is an imperialist who wants to supplant the West, Putin wants to exterminate every nationalist, no matter his color, and enslave races and peoples.
Thank you.
Dugin was a son of GRU general, but not of an operator (spy), but of Politruk (commissar), thus he was a part of Nomenklatura. Of course he could not be “opposition”, because the opposition,incl. Russian nationalist opposition was either in Gulag, in exile, or in internal self-exile (silenced and banned from publication). But he was a part of one of many ideological groups, which some parts of KGB have from early on formed for the future, already knowing that the communism has lost, and the CPSU should lose the power.
Maybe for British readers here it would be interesting to know, that Dugin in one of his works has written, that the official (state) religion of the UK is CALVINISM. Well, it means that Queen Liz is Supreme Governer of the Calvinist Church.
Also, he confuses the Young Türk Revolution of 1908 with the Kemalist revolution and the proclamation of the Republik by Atatürk 15 years later.
As Russian writer and historian Sergey Belyakov writes in his book Gumilyov, the son of Gumilyov, biography of Lev Gumilyov (2013),
“For a quarter of a century, Dugin has been propagating a doctrine that completely rejects modern civilization with all its attributes. The goal of the traditionalists, Dugin formulates, is “a complete and uncompromising return to the values of the traditional sacred civilization, whose absolute negation is modern, materialistic and secular civilization.” Of course, this traditionalism also denies modern science. Criticism of the scientific worldview is entirely devoted to one of Dugin’s books – “The Evolution of the Paradigmatic Foundations of Science”. Dugin is a principled opponent of scientific knowledge, which may be why his books are full of amusing factual errors.
While he talks about symbols, signs and secret meanings, everything goes well, but as soon as Dugin turns to history or physical (and not “sacred”) geography, the professor turns into a loser. Dugin forgot the name of the killer of Russian princes Boris and Gleb, confusing the prince Svyatopolk the Accursed with the prince Yaropolk. The destroyer of Jerusalem Titus Flavius Vespasian Dugin confused with the famous Roman historian Titus Livius, the Kemalist revolution – with the Young Türks. Dugin seriously believes that Calvinism is the state religion of England.
In the Fundamentals of Geopolitics, the philosopher made an outstanding geographical “discovery”, telling the reader that “a continuous zone of northern forests stretches from Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, gradually and imperceptibly turning into tropical forests.”
No, Dugin is not an ignoramus at all. Judging by his writings, Alexander Gelievich is a highly erudite person. Just historical and geographical realities, as well as other phenomena of the material world, do not matter to him. For Dugin, the “holy, sacred background” is more important: “… the sacred worldview understands everything as a symbol, as something unequal to itself, as something pointing to other, spiritual, metaphysical spheres, to transcendent modalities of Being”.
… All this is impossible to either disprove or prove, because conspiracy theories are a kind of religion. Conspiracy theories and total traditionalism are beyond the scope of scientific knowledge”.
I’ve found another nice citation:
Alexander Dugin: I’m for the blacks. The White civilization – its cultural values, deceitful, inhumane model of the world, built by it – did not justify itself. Everything goes to the beginning of white pogroms on a planetary scale. Russia is saved only by the fact that we are not pure whites. Predatory transnational corporations, the oppression and suppression of everyone else, MTV, blue and pink – these are the fruits of white civilization that must be got rid of. Therefore, I am for the reds, yellows, greens, blacks – just not for the whites. I wholeheartedly support the people of Zimbabwe.
This fake quotation has been posted by the same troll in several places. Yawn.
Yes, of course, fake. Published on the site of Dugin himself, ARCTOGAEIA, and before in the Russian newspaper Kommersant-Vlast, 20 years ago.
Here’s an interesting piece on the supposed assassin of Darya Dugina:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11137853/Who-Natalia-Vovk-Ukrainian-spy-accused-killing-Darya-Dugina.html
Assuming that the photograph is genuine and has not been photoshopped, the woman whom the FSB has identified as the assassin, Natalia Vovk, has a “black sun” tattoo on her calf (good disguise, that, for an Ukrainian Nazi sympathiser, and not at all a clue to her political orientation!) and travelled to Moscow, the capital of a paranoid surveillance state at war with the Ukraine, taking her daughter, her cat and her Azov regiment identity card with her!
Then, having blown up the car of a high profile Russian nationalist thinker just outside Moscow, she makes good her escape to Estonia, with her daughter and the cat, without being caught, but carelessly leaves her Azov regiment identity card at the crime scene.
That is pretty well the official Russian narrative. It reminds me of some lines from the “Producers”: “I believe you, thousands, wouldn’t, but I believe you anyway”!
It’s okay, we can drop the meme that Dugin is an irrelevant crank now, Putin himself is using Dugin’s importance as a talking point:
“Putin claimed the ‘collective West is afraid of our philosophy and that’s why they try to assassinate our philosophers'”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19965603/putin-officially-declares-ukrainian-regions-are-russian/
It does not prove your point. Putin is simply using Dugina’s assassination for propaganda purposes. Her own father had the bad taste to do that, so why not Putin? It doesn’t prove that Dugin is influencing Kremlin policy.
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access
Edit your comment