Aleksandr Dugin’s World of Particulars
Aleksandr Dugin’s World of Particulars
by Bert Olivier at Brownstone Institute
The Russian philosopher, Aleksandr Dugin, is an important voice among those reflecting, and commenting on, events in the contemporary world. He is a confidante of President Vladimir Putin, which suggests that the Ukrainian car bomb that killed his daughter, journalist Darya Dugina – who was driving her father’s car – was probably intended for Dugin himself.
Judging by his writing, Dugin – who was interviewed by Tucker Carlson not long ago – is well-versed in philosophy and related fields of thought, and has strong views on where humanity stands today, given the titanic battle between globalist, transhumanist forces, on the one hand, and those people of the world who cherish tradition and time-tested social and cultural values, on the other. The latter includes the Russian people.
In The Fourth Political Theory (Arktos, London, 2012) the Russian thinker offers an explanation for the ostensible disappearance of ‘politics’ from the contemporary world – at least, that was still the case in 2012, when this book appeared in English. I would argue that the advent of the Covid ‘pandemic,’ together with the still-growing reaction against the tyrannical measures imposed on the world’s nations over the past five years (including potentially lethal Covid jabs), has brought a noticeable change, which I have called ‘the return of the political.’
Nevertheless, Dugin’s account of the fate of politics in the era of the triumph of liberalism is noteworthy, because it explains why, when a concerted attack on civil liberties was launched in 2020, the vast majority of people were incapable of offering resistance.
Dugin argues that, by the conclusion of the 20th century, liberalism had overcome its political adversaries; namely, ‘conservatism, monarchism, traditionalism, fascism, socialism, and Communism’ (p. 9), but instead of politics ‘becoming liberal,’ and its rivals developing different strategies against it, a total transformation occurred on the part of the victor: liberalism moved from an understatement of politics to ‘abolishing’ it completely. In Dugin’s words (p. 9):
…liberalism itself has changed, passing from the level of ideas, political programmes and declarations to the level of reality, penetrating the very flesh of the social fabric, which became suffused with liberalism and, in turn, it began to seem like the natural order of things. This was presented not as a political process, but as a natural and organic one. As a consequence of such a historical transformation, all other political ideologies, passionately feuding against each other during the last century, lost their currency. Conservatism, fascism and Communism, together with their many variations, lost the battle, and triumphant liberalism mutated into a lifestyle: consumerism, individualism, and a postmodern manifestation of the fragmented and sub-political being. Politics became biopolitical, moving to the individual and sub-individual level. It turns out that it was not only the defeated political ideologies that left the stage, but politics itself, and even liberalism, in its ideological forms, exited. This is why it became nearly impossible to imagine an alternative form of politics. Those who do not agree with liberalism find themselves in a difficult situation — the triumphant enemy has dissolved and disappeared; now they are left struggling against the air. How can one engage in politics, if there is no politics?
This perspective, articulated by a relatively unknown thinker (in Western society, anyway), is compatible with Francis Fukuyama’s well-known claim, that ‘history had come to an end’ (see Dugin, 2012, p. 15) with the triumph of liberal democracy, and has the merit of unpacking the historical mechanisms behind this turn of events from a different angle. Is it at all surprising then, that most people living in what are supposedly modern ‘democracies’ had reached such levels of ‘compliance’ by 2020 that they were pushovers for the globalist conspirators?
Not only that; an argument could be made to the effect that today, particularly in European countries, those who think of themselves as being democratic (and liberal), fail to see the contradiction between this self-conception, on the one hand, and their fanatical opposition to what they term the ‘far-right,’ which, they believe, should be isolated behind a ‘firewall’ to neutralise it.
This is the case with the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland; Alternative for Germany) in Germany, despite the fact that it scored the second-highest level of support in the recent German election. Would citizens who have a keen understanding of democratic politics be blind to such a contradiction? In Romania, one witnesses the same phenomenon, where the person who is the frontrunner in the presidential election has been unceremoniously barred from the competition because he is perceived as being ‘undemocratic.’
Around 2012, Dugin saw ‘only one way out’ of the impasse that ensued with the disappearance of politics, and the metamorphosis of people into mere consumers (which I believe has since started to change because of resistance to the onslaught against our freedoms). For Dugin this amounts to the following (p. 10):
…reject the classical political theories, both winners and losers, strain our imaginations, seize the reality of a new world, correctly decipher the challenges of postmodernity, and create something new — something beyond the political battles of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Such an approach is an invitation to the development of the Fourth Political Theory — beyond Communism, fascism and liberalism.
What does this entail? According to Dugin (p. 10), it is essential to analyse and understand the novel structure of the global society in the making, and instead of opposing political ideas or strategies, confront the social reality of the ‘apolitical, fractured (post-) society’ left in the wake of the disappearing act of liberalism. Only then would one be able to penetrate the ‘recycling’ of the ‘same old things,’ or what Jean Baudrillard called ‘post-history’ (p. 10). Because there is as yet no ‘finished project,’ the political creativity required for the formulation of the ‘Fourth Political Theory’ does not depend on the work of a single author, but on the research, analyses, and ideas of a wide variety of philosophers, intellectuals, historians, and scientists.
It is clear that Dugin’s probing thought is motivated, at least in part, by his perspective as a Russian, more specifically by the majority of Russians experiencing their possible assimilation into global society as the spectre of a profound loss of their cultural identity. Symptomatic of this was their virtually complete rejection of liberalism in the 1990s (p. 11). The practical significance of the Fourth Political Theory for the Russian people therefore lies in its promise of offering an alternative, not only to liberal ideology, but also to the other two failed, defunct ideologies of the 20th century, let alone totalitarianism.
Is this also true for other nations today? Is another political approach possible, or desirable, which would supplant classical liberalism? Dugin frames the situation, as far as Russia is concerned, in terms of Hamlet’s paradigmatic existential question: ‘To be or not to be. That is the question.’ In other words, it is a question of life or death. Life equals the creation of the eponymous ‘fourth political theory’ for Russia, according to him, because if Russia – or any other country, for that matter – chooses to allow itself to ‘dissolve’ into a ‘global order,’ it would be tantamount to national death. The Russian (or any other) cultural identity would make way for globalist cultural homogenisation.
To grasp what all of this implies, it may be noted that Dugin constructs an argument about the necessity and the means to move beyond the present, given that what he appears to claim (through his use of the first person plural, ‘we,’) to be ‘our’ common enemy, namely globalism, decades ago launched a concerted effort to destroy the values held dear by billions of people all over the world. Dugin describes this foe as follows (in 2012, but arguably this is still largely the case today, although it is changing), in terms that have been used by Vladimir Putin as well (p. 157):
The current world is unipolar, with the global West as its centre and with the United States as its core.
This kind of unipolarity has geopolitical and ideological characteristics. Geopolitically, it is the strategic dominance of the Earth by the North American hyperpower and the effort of Washington to organise the balance of forces on the planet in such a manner as to be able to rule the whole world in accordance with its own national, imperialistic interests. It is bad because it deprives other states and nations of their real sovereignty.
When there is only one power which decides who is right and who is wrong, and who should be punished and who not, we have a form of global dictatorship. This is not acceptable. Therefore, we should fight against it. If someone deprives us of our freedom, we have to react…
He further (p. 161) characterises the unipolar power as follows:
Those who want to impose uniformity, the one (American) way of life, One World. And their methods are force, temptation, and persuasion. They are against multipolarity. So they are against us.
The obvious question is: what is to be done by those who are in favour of ‘multipolarity,’ in other words, of retaining the sovereignty of different states? Notably, this includes the United States under newly (re-)elected President Donald Trump, with his ‘America First’ policy and his economic mercantilism, both of which deal a blow to the globalism supported and promoted by the former Biden/Harris administration, as well as by the European Union.
Not that the affinity for globalism on the part of the latter two entities is at all surprising; it is well-known that both Biden and the European Union were/are in thrall to the globalism espoused by the WEF, the WHO, and the United Nations. Evidence for the link between their globalist ambitions and the ultimate goal of a one-world totalitarian government has existed for some time. In contrast, both America under Trump and Russia oppose globalism. Dugin argues that (pp. 160-161):
So we need to unite the Right, the Left and the world’s traditional religions in a common struggle against the common enemy. Social justice, national sovereignty and traditional values are the three main principles of the Fourth Political Theory. It is not easy to put together such a varied alliance. But we must try if we want to overcome the foe…
We could go further and try to define the subject, the actor of the Fourth Political Theory. In the case of Communism, the central subject was class. In the case of the Third Way movements, the central subject was either the race or the nation. In the case of religions, it is the community of the faithful. How could the Fourth Political Theory deal with this diversity and the divergence of subjects? We propose, as a suggestion, that the main subject of the Fourth Political Theory can be found in the Heideggerian concept of Dasein. It is a concrete, but extremely profound instance that could be the common denominator for the further ontological development of the Fourth Political Theory. What is crucial for consideration is the authenticity or nonauthenticity of the existence of Dasein. The Fourth Political Theory insists on the authenticity of existence. So it is the antithesis to any kind of alienation — social, economic, national, religious or metaphysical.
But Dasein is a concrete instance. Every individual and every culture possesses their own Dasein. They differ between each other, but they are always present.
Accepting Dasein as the subject of the Fourth Political Theory, we should progress toward the elaboration of a common strategy in the process of the creation of a future that fits to our demands and our visions. Such values as social justice, national sovereignty and traditional spirituality can serve us as the foundation…
The future world should be noetic in some way — characterised by multiplicity; diversity should be taken as its richness and its treasure, and not as a reason for inevitable conflict: many civilisations, many poles, many centres, many sets of values on one planet and in one humanity. Many worlds.
But there are some who think otherwise. Who are aligned against such a project? Those who want to impose uniformity, the one (American) way of life, One World. And their methods are force, temptation, and persuasion. They are against multipolarity. So they are against us.
Does this vision of the Russian thinker amount to a viable future for the world? The concept of Dasein (Being-there) need not be an obstacle here; Heidegger’s choice of this term simply emphasises that, first and foremost, every individual merely ‘finds itself there, in a world not of its choosing,’ before making any commitment to beliefs and affiliations, whatever they may be. The point is to resist alienation, which is achieved by stressing the existential qualities of Dasein: the fact that one exists, and that one chooses one’s affiliation freely, in relation to the social and cultural milieu within which one is born, instead of an alien, and alienating, impersonal, globalist non-culture.
As for myself, I believe that Dugin has accurately characterised the dilemma facing the people of the world today – ‘to be or not to be’ a member of an identifiable community, in its turn inserted in an environing culture and society of which one experiences oneself to be an integral part. It is clear from what he writes that this does not preclude an appreciation for the diversity of cultures and individuals in the world.
On the contrary, experiencing the diversity of the world’s cultures and social settings enables the traveller to savour the different shapes, colours, tastes, sounds, customs, and habits of Homo and Gyna sapiens, without thereby relinquishing the thought that, paradoxically, these all belong to humanity as a whole: universal and particular at the same time. No unipolar, globalistically homogeneous world could offer that, because it is predicated on the eradication of differences. The proposed Fourth Political Theory should accommodate all of these considerations.
Aleksandr Dugin’s World of Particulars
by Bert Olivier at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society