The Nation-State & the Multipolar World – Dugin

The Nation-State and the Multipolar World

By Alexander Dugin

Translated from the Spanish by Lucian Tudor

 

One of the most important points of the Theory of Multipolarity refers to the nation-state. The sovereignty of this structure has already been challenged during the period of ideological support for the two blocs (the “Cold War”) and, in the period of globalization, the issue acquired a much sharper relevance. We see the theorists of globalization also talk about the complete exhaustion of the “nation-states” and about the necessity of transferring them to the “World Government” (F. Fukuyama, before), or about the belief that nation-states have not yet completed their mission and must continue existing for a longer time with the purpose of better preparing their citizens for integration into the “Global Society” (F. Fukuyama, later).

The Theory of Multipolarity demonstrates that nation-states are a Eurocentric and mechanical phenomenon, on a larger scale, “globalist” in their initial stage (the idea of individual identity, normative in the form of civility, prepared the ground for the “civil society” and, correspondingly, for the “global society”). That the whole of world space is currently separated into territories of nation-states is a direct consequence of colonization, imperialism, and the projection of the Western model over all of mankind. Therefore, the nation-state does not carry in itself any self-sufficient value for the Theory of Multipolarity. The thesis of the preservation of nation-states from the perspective of the construction of the Multipolar World Order is only important in the case that, in a pragmatic way, that impedes globalization (and does not contribute to it), and hides in itself a more complicated and prominent social reality. After all, many political units (especially in the Third World) are nation-states simply in a nominal form, and virtually represent diverse forms of traditional societies with more complex systems of identity.

In this case, the position of the defenders of the Multipolar World is completely the opposite of that of the globalists: If a nation-state effectuates the homogenization of society and assists in the atomization of the citizens, that is, implements a profound and real modernization and Westernization, such a nation-state has no importance, being merely a kind of instrument of globalization. That nation-state is not being preserved worthily; it does make any sense in the Multipolarist perspective.

But if a nation-state serves as an exterior support for another social system – a special and original culture, civilization, religion, etc. – it should be supported and preserved while it actualizes its evolution towards a more harmonious structure, within the limits of sociological pluralism in the spirit of Multipolar Theory. The position of the globalists is directly opposite in all things: They appeal to eliminate the idea by which the nation-states serve as an external support of something traditional (such as China, Russia, Iran, etc.) and, conversely, to strengthen the nation-states with pro-Western regimes – South Korea, Georgia, or the countries of Western Europe.

 

Translated from: El Estado nacional y el Mundo multipolar, Página Transversal, 25 January 2015.

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Dugin, Alexander. “The Nation-State and the Multipolar World.” Tankesmedjan Motpol, 29 March 2015. <http://www.motpol.nu/dugin2014/2015/03/29/the-nation-state-and-the-multipolar-world/ >.

 

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Eurasia – Dugin

Eurasia Above All: Manifest of the Eurasist Movement

By Alexander Dugin

Translated by Martino Conserva

 

Introductory Note: We should note to our audience that while the present text is among the manifestos of the Russian Eurasia Movement, it should not be taken as a sufficient view into either Alexander Dugin’s philosophy or the Neo-Eurasianist philosophy in general. For example, the ideas of organic, participatory democracy as well as the idea of the Reich or “Empire” in the non-imperialist sense are not represented here. Furthermore, it should be remembered that although it is not entirely clear from the present article, Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism can be seen as a Russian form of “Revolutionary Conservatism,” drawing its philosophical foundations not only from the original Eurasianist theorists, but also the philosophers of the German “Conservative Revolution” (Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Carl Schmitt, Werner Sombart, etc.), the Perennial Traditionalist school (Julius Evola, René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Mircea Eliade, etc.), and the European “New Right” (Alain de Benoist, Julien Freund, Armin Mohler, etc.). We urge our audience to read the other texts by or about Alexander Dugin on this site for a more complete understanding.  – Daniel Macek (Editor of the “New European Conservative”)

Crisis of ideas in contemporary Russia

In our Russian* society – especially in the social and political sphere – at the beginning of the new millennium a deficiency of ideas is painfully felt. The majority of the people – including governors, politicians, scientists, workers – are guided in life, in political choice by a set of momentary factors, casual concerns, transient ephemeral calls. We are quickly losing any general representation about the sense of life, about the logic of history, about the problems of man, about the destiny of the world.

Existential and social choice has been substituted by aggressive advertising. In the place of meaningful and accountable political ideology stands some effective (or ineffective) PR. The outcome of the struggle of ideas is defined by the volume of investments in entertainment. Dramatic clashes of peoples, cultures and religions are turned into shows inspired by transnational corporations and oil holdings. Human blood, human life, human spirit became statistical abstraction, consumer cost, at its best – demagogic figure of speech in mellifluous and ambiguous humanitarian lamentations, hiding a double standard.

In the place of totalitarian uniformity, a totalitarian indifference has come. The majority of political parties and formalised social movements pursue tactical purposes. Practically nowhere can be found an explicit and consequent ideology capable to snatch man from a state of sleepy indifference, to make life worth living.

Americanism and the need for an alternative

The most rigorous – but at the same time most harmful – world-view project has been formulated by consequent liberals. These forces, geopolitical oriented towards the US and the West, take as a sample for copying the American politics, American economy, American type of the society, American culture, American civilisation ideal. This camp has its dignity – their project is logical and consistent, its theory and practice are linked. But also logical are world evil, death, dissolving, division and loss of organic wholeness. The liberals say a decisive “yes” to that “uniform world”, confused, vain, individualist, oligarchic, deprived of any moral, spiritual and traditional orienting points, which the US – world superpower – strive to create on a planetary scale, understanding their technological and economic superiority as a mandate for a privately-owned hegemony on a planetary scale. This Americanisation of Russia, of the whole world, this slavish submission to the new world gendarme – gendarme of shows – obviously is not very much pleasant to many people. But this opposition more often appears only emotionally, fragmentarily, inconsistently. Peoples and whole socio-political movements are inertially satisfied with the old thongs, with the residuals of different, more harmonious and noble epochs, with anything at least in some way differing from the Atlantist tsunami which drags along the remains of our own Russian civilisation. The hostility to the American way of life, to the famous “new world order” is a fully positive quality, which should be greeted with favour anywhere we meet it. But it is not enough. An active counterproposal, a realistic, concrete and capable alternative is indispensable for us. Conditions at the beginning of the millennium are considerably new. And those who want a different future, rather than that controlled chaos and neon-light disintegration imposed on us by America, are compelled not only to say “no”, but also to formulate, to put forward, to demonstrate and to defend a different, our own, civilisation Plan.

The most massive, most generalising world-view offering such an alternative to the American hegemony, to the unipolar world, to the triumph of West, is Eurasism.

The founding-fathers of Eurasism

Historically, Eurasism existed for 20 years as an attempt to interpret to the logic of socio-political, cultural and geopolitical development of Russia as a uniform and basically continuous process from Kievan Rus to the USSR. The Eurasists have detected behind the dialectics of national destiny of the Russian people and the Russian State a unitary historical mission, differently expressed at the various stages. One major thesis of early Eurasists (count N.S.Trubetskoy, P. Savitsky) sounded like this: “The West against mankind ”, i.e. the nations of the world blossoming complexity of cultures and civilisations against the unitary, totalitarian Western pattern, against the economic, political and cultural domination of the West. Russia (both ancient, and orthodox-monarchic, and Soviet) saw the Eurasists as a stronghold and avant-garde of this world process, as a citadel of freedom against the unidimensional hegemony on mankind of an irreligious, secularised, pragmatical and egotistical excrescence – the Western civilisation, claiming for supremacy and for juridical, material and spiritual domination. On this basis the Eurasists accepted the USSR as a new – paradoxical – form of the original path of Russia. Disapproving atheism and materialism in the cultural sphere, they recognised behind the external facade of communism the archaic national features, behind Soviet Russia the legitimate geopolitical heritage of the Russian mission.

Being consequent and convinced Russian patriots, the Eurasists came to a conclusion about the inadequacy of the traditional forms, in which the National Idea in Russia was vested during the last centuries. The Romanov motto – “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” – was only a conservative facade hiding behind itself quite modern contents, basically copied from Europe.** Soviet patriotism expressed the national idea in class terms, which neither grasps the essence of the civilizational problem, nor did it recognise the meaning of the historical mission of Russia. The secular nationalism of the Romanov was but a formal imitation of the European regimes. Soviet patriotism ignored the national element, broke off the connection to traditions, swept aside the Belief of the fathers.

A synthetical new approach was indispensable. Such approach was also developed within the framework of Eurasist philosophy, within the social and political movement of the Eurasists. The founding-fathers of Eurasism for the first time gave the highest possible estimation to the multi-national (imperial) nature of the Russian State. They were especially attentive to the Turkish factor. The role of the heritage of Gengis-Khan, trustee of the Tatar statehood assimilated by Moscow in the XVI century, was seen as a decisive turn of Russia to the East, to its origins, to its own values. In the orthodox legend just this epoch is linked to the Sacred Rus, to the transformation of Moscow in the Third Rome (after the fall of Tsargrad and the end of the Byzantian Empire). The mission of the Sacred Rus was expressed in the self-assertion of its own Eurasian culture, of an original social system, distinct in its main features from that path followed by the countries of the Roman Catholic and Protestant West.

Russia was conceived by the Eurasists as the avant-garde of the East against the West, as a forward defence line of traditional society against modern, secular, ordinary, rationalised society. But in the centuries-old struggle for preserving a cultural “ego”, Russia differently from other Eastern societies actively acquired experience of the West, adopted the techniques it applied, borrowed some methods – but every time with the only purpose to confront the West with its own weapons. In modern language, this is called “modernisation without westernization”. Therefore Russia also managed longer than other traditional societies to effectively counter the pressure of the West.

From this the Eurasists came to a major conclusion: Russia needs not simply to go back to its roots, but to combining a conservative and a revolutionary new start. Russia must actively modernise, develop, partially open to the surrounding world, but strictly saving and hardening its own identity. Therefore some called the Eurasists as the “Orthodox Bolsheviks”.

Alas, historically, this remarkable movement was not appreciated in due measure. The impressing successes of Marxist ideology made the refined conservative-revolutionary perspective of the Eurasist ineffective, superfluous. By the end of the ‘30s, the original impulse of the Eurasist movement, both in Russia and among the Russian emigration, had definitively died away.

The relay race of the Eurasist idea was run henceforth not so much by politicians and ideologists, how much by scientists (first of all the great Russian historian Lev Gumilyov).

Neo-Eurasism

The dramatic events of the last decades in Russia, all over the world, have made again the Eurasists’ ideas urgent, essential. The West coped with its most serious civilizational opponent – the USSR. Marxist ideology suddenly lost its appeal. But a general new alternative to Westernism and liberalism (which today are embodied in their fullest development by the US and American civilisation – from which even the Europeans, the grandparents of the world monster, begin to feel nervous) has not appeared yet. And could not appear anyway.

The separate pieces – pre-Revolutionary nationalism, clericalism, the all-inertial Sovietism or the extravagant imagination of ecologism and leftism – could not turn into a united front. There was no common world-view base, no common denominator. The occasional rapprochement of positions of the opponents to globalism and Americanisation did not result in a true synthesis of world-views.

In this moment the most attentive minds, the purest hearts and the most flaming souls were converted too to the Eurasist heritage. In it they discerned a saving source, a germ of that doctrine, that ideology, which ideally met the requirements of the present historical moment.

Neo-Eurasism began to be built as a social, philosophical, scientific, geopolitical, cultural current since the end the ‘80s. Distancing from the heritage of the Russian Eurasists of the ‘20-30s, having incorporated the spiritual experience of the staroobryad tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, being enriched by the social criticism of Russian populists and socialists, having interpreted in a new way the achievements of the Soviet stage of domestic history, and at the same time having mastered the philosophy of traditionalism and conservative revolution, geopolitical methodology and original revolutionary doctrines of the “new left” (i.e. those intellectual currents, which were elaborated in the West, but directed against the dominant logic of its development) – Neo-Eurasism became the most serious world-view platform in modern Russian society, acquiring the form of complete scientific school, of a system of social and cultural initiatives.

Neo-Eurasism laid the bases of modern Russian geopolitics, gained a strong personnel potential of supporters in government structures and ministries and offices linked to the military sector, basing on Eurasist geopolitics many serious operational international, military and economic projects.

Neo-Eurasism influenced modern domestic politology, sociology, and philosophy.

Neo-Eurasism gradually became a relevant conceptual instrument of Russian state monopolies requiring a strategic pattern for developing a long-term strategy of macroeconomic activity, depending not from momentary political processes, but from historical, geographical and civilizational constants.

Neo-Eurasism laid the basis of the whole set of vanguard currents in youth culture, gave a vivifying impulse to creative, passionate development of the whole direction in art.

Neo-Eurasism had a strong impact upon political parties and movements in modern Russia – we find large borrowings from neo-Eurasist ideological arsenal in the programmatic documents of “Unity”, KPFR [Communist Party], OVR [Otetchestvo-Vsyo Rossiya], LDPR [Liberal-democratic Party], the movement “Russia” and of a series of smaller movements and parties. However these borrowings remain fragmentary, combined with other sometimes heterogeneous and even contradictory elements (all this makes large Russian parties rather tactical, de-ideologized formations created for the solution of short-term, local political problems).

The new social and political subject

The time has come to make the following step, to add Eurasism a concrete social and political dimension. Neo-Eurasist ideology gradually exceeded the level of pure theoretical elaboration. The new government of Russia is seriously engaged in the solution of strategic problems facing the country, and is obviously not satisfied with the primitive and destructive recipes imposed by the West and the bearers of Western influence in Russia: it needs a world-view and social and political support. The present authorities, their specificity, their social image, considerably differ both from the post-Soviet period and from the times of uncritical passion for reckless liberalism. A new state world-view, a new domestic pattern of polit-correctness have ripened. This is testified by that persevering search of a National Idea in which the authorities are today engaged.
If the usual political and party system is suitable for the decision of momentary problems (though we consider it as inadequate even in the narrow pragmatical sense), in an medium-term perspective (let alone a long-term strategic sight) it has no chance at all, and requires radical reforming. The existing system evolved during the process of demolition of the Soviet model and its substitution by a liberal-democratic pro-Western formation. But today neither the former, nor the latter is acceptable for Russia. And furthermore, it is inappropriate in the face of the very difficult situation the country is confronted to – a consequence of ludicrous policies previously followed. What we need are parties and movements based on a world-view, reflecting the interests of concrete strata of the population, merged with the people, educating, training and defending it, instead of exploiting the trust (and naivety) of the masses for the sake of private or group benefit.

All conditions have blossomed for the appearance of a rigorous Eurasist movement in new Russia. And those who stood at the origins of Neo-Eurasism, who formed the theoretical premises and bases of Russian geopolitics, Eurasist philosophy, conservative-revolutionary politology and sociology, who spent years fighting for the ideals of Eurasia, for the revival of the Russian people and our Great Power – those made the decision to form the new social and political movement “EURASIA”.

Who shall be the participants to the movement “Eurasia”?

To whom are we addressing the call to enter and to back our movement? To each Russian, educated and not, influential and the last of the dispossessed, to the worker and to the manager, to the needy and the well-off person, to the Russian and the Tatar, to the orthodox and the jew, to the conservative and the modernist, to the student and to the defender of the law, to the soldier and the weaver, to the governor and the rock-musician. But only to the one who loves Russia, who cannot think of himself without it, who has realised the necessity of a severe effort, which is required from all of us so that our country and our people remains on the map of the new millennium (from which they persistently attempt to erase us), to the one who wants, passionately wants, that all of us at last would raise in a mighty power, would cast away from our common organism its parasitic excrescence, would tear the veil of mental mist, would affirm above the country, the continent, the world our solar Russian ideals – ideals of Freedom, Equity, Fidelity to the Origins.

Radical Centre

The movement “Eurasia” is founded on the principles of radical centre. We are neither leftists nor rightists, we are neither slavishly compliant to the authorities, nor oppositionists at any cost, barking with a reason and without . We realise that today’s authority in Russia, the President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin requires help, support, solidarity, cohesion. But at the same time blind submission to the leaders, uncritical connivance to authority only because it is authority, are today not less (if not more) pernicious than straight rebellion. We are centrists to the extent that the President and the authority act for the sake of the Power, for the sake of the people. And not in a populist and transient way, but in a medium and long-term perspective. Here again we will be for the President fervently, radically, up to the end, not paying attention to small inaccuracies, accepting all hardships and difficulties, which will arise since Russia will seriously be set by the purpose of rescuing itself and all the rest of the world from the terrible threat creeping from the West. Anything more centrist than our unconditional and total support to the patriotic power-building of the authority (even in its most unpopular actions) simply could not be. So, our forerunners, the Eurasists, supported the hated orthodox fundamentalist and Marxist regimes because they confronted the West – the worst of evils. But our radical centrism is not passive. We clearly realise that the present authority in Russia according to the logic of things has no (and cannot have) clear representation of the fundamental strategic purposes, of the philosophical and spiritual dramatic problem which is born by the new millennium – terrible, risky, threatening, problematic, misunderstood during centuries of bloody battles and cruel sufferings … In this sense the authority today is lost and requires help, orienting points, landmarks, specifying which is the task of the people, its most active, strong-willed, clever, idealistic, patriotic side (this also should gather in our movement, to become its core).

Here the roles are changed, and now is the turn of the authority to listen to the voice of Eurasia. This voice is not the servile “yes, sir? ” of condescending and artificial parties, good for chairs and tv-screens. It is the mighty radical appeal of the earth, the vote of generations, the cry from the depths of our spirit and our blood.

Priorities of the Eurasia movement

Our movement spreads the Eurasist principles to all levels of life.

In the religious sphere it means constructive solid dialogue between the creeds traditional for Russia, – Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism.*** The Eurasian branches of world religions have many differences from those forms which have taken roots in other regions of the world. There is a common style of Eurasist spiritual view, which, however, does not eliminate at all differences and originality of tenets. This is a serious and positive basis for rapprochement, mutual respect, mutual understanding. Due to the Eurasist approach to religious questions many inter-confessional frictions can be bypassed or arranged.

In the sphere of foreign policy, Eurasism implies a wide process of strategic integration. Reconstruction on the basis of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] of a solid Eurasian Union (analogue to the USSR on a new ideological, economic and administrative basis).

The strategic integration of internal spaces of the CIS should be gradually spread also to wider areas – to the countries of the Moscow-Teheran-Delhi-Beijing axis. An Eurasist policy is invoked to open for Russia an exit to the warm seas, not through war and sufferings, but through peace and open friendly co-operation.

Eurasist policies towards the West implies prioritary relations with the European countries. Modern Europe – as opposed to the epoch when the founding-fathers of Eurasism acted – does not represent anymore the source of “world evil”. The quick political events of the XX century contributed to transfer this doubtful record even more westward – to Northern America, to the US. Therefore at a present stage Russia can find in Europe strategical partners interested in the revival of its former political power. Eurasist Russia should play the role of the deliverers of Europe, but this time from the American political, economic and cultural occupation.

The Eurasist policy of Russia is directed towards active co-operation with the countries of the Pacific region, first of all with Japan. The economic giants of this area should see in the Eurasist policies of Russia the orienting point for a self-supporting political system, and also for a strategic potential of resources and new markets.

At a planetary level Eurasism means active and universal opposition to globalisation, is equal to the “anti-globalist movement ”. Eurasism defends the blossoming complexity of peoples, religions and nations. All anti-globalist tendencies are intrinsically “Eurasist”.

We are consequent supporters of “Eurasist federalism”. This means a combination of strategic unity and ethno-cultural (in definite cases economic) autonomies. Different ways of life at a local level in combination with strict centralism in the basic moments, linked to State interests.

We should revive the traditions of the Russian people, contribute to the recovery of Russian demographic growth. And most important, awake in the people its intrinsic organic spirituality, morale, high ideals, living and fervent patriotism. Without the prioritary revival of the Russian nation, the Eurasist project has no chance to become a reality. Understanding this fact is the base of our world-view.

Eurasism in social sphere means the priority of the public principle above the individual, subordination of economic patterns to strategic, social problems. The whole economic history of Eurasia proves that the development of economic mechanisms here happens according to an alternative logic than the liberal-capitalist, individualist patterns of personal benefit which evolved in the West on the basis of Protestant ethics. The liberal logic of management is alien to Eurasia, and despite enormous efforts there is no way to break this deep-rooted feature of our people. The collective, communitarian principle of governing the economy, the contribution of the criterion of “equity” in the distribution process – all this represent a steady feature of our economic history. Eurasism insists on a positive account and evaluation of this circumstance, and on this basis gives preference to socially-oriented economic patterns.

Eurasism implies a positive re-evaluation of the archaic, of the ancient. It fervently refers to the past, to the world of Tradition. The development of cultural process is seen by Eurasism in a new reference to the archaic, to the insertion of original cultural motives in the fabric of modern forms. The priority in this area is given back to national motives, to the sources of national creativity, to the continuation and revival of traditions.

Being a new and fresh world-view, just having taken a definite form, Eurasism primarily addresses itself to the youth, to the people whose consciousness has not been spoiled yet by random jumps from one inadequate ideological pattern to another, even less adequate. The Eurasist ideal is the strong, passionate, healthy and beautiful man (instead of the bastard cocaine-addict of mondialist discos, the half-assed gangster or the slut for sale). We are in the condition to offer different, positive values, instead of the cult of ugliness and pathology, instead of the cynicism and servilism before the surrogates of world shows. We shall not allow our children to be killed, violated, degraded, perverted, sold or chained to a needle. Our ideal is a celebration of physical and spiritual health, force and worthiness, faith and honour.

The movement “Eurasia” can become a reality only in the event that many people will gather around it. Much can be done even by a single man, but, as Lautréamont said, everyone should care for poetry!

To an even greater extent – everyone should care for Eurasia!

Now everything depends on our efforts. Nobody is promising just victories, raise of welfare or entertainment industry shares. Ahead stays daily laborious work, often invisible from the outside.

Ahead stay difficulty and battle, loss and labours, but ahead also stay pleasure and Great Purpose!

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Added Notes:

* Rossiskiy, i.e. with reference to citizenship of the Russian Federation. – Tr.

** Dugin here uses the term “Europe” (and thus also “European”) in the common Russian sense – also used by many Westerners – which equates “Europe” with the “West” in the old-fashioned sense, and therefore excludes not only Russians but most Eastern Europeans as well. This must be distinguished from the meaning of Europe in the much broader sense as is commonly used by many other peoples, whereby Eastern Slavic peoples are also considered European. – Ed.

*** We can also add to this list Paganism, for, as Leonid Savin – a major leader of the Eurasia Movement – has pointed out, “Russia is the only country in Europe that still has authentic pagan societies (Republics of Mari-El, Mordovia, Komi) with very interesting rites and traditions” (quoted from his Euro-Synergies interview, “Establish a Multipolar World Order”). It is also significant that Russian Eurasianism – along with Kazakh Eurasianism – aims for a respect for and study of Pagan religions and therefore also the maintenance of surviving Pagan communities. As Savin further commented, “Europe must learn from the Russian experience of coexistence of different religions (not forgetting paganism and shamanism – this belief is widely found in Siberia). In Europe, they use the term tolerance but we, Eurasianists, prefer the term complimentarity, proposed by Lev Gumilev, meaning a subconscious sympathy between different ethnic groups.” – Ed.

 

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Dugin, Alexander. “Eurasa Above All.” Arctogaia, 1 January 2001. <http://arctogaia.com/public/eng/Manifesto.html >.

See also: “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy” by Alexander Dugin

 

The War on Russia – Dugin

The War on Russia in Its Ideological Dimension: An Analysis from the Perspective of the Fourth Political Theory

By Alexander Dugin

(Edited by John B. Morgan, Editor-in-Chief, Arktos Media)

 

The coming war as concept

The war against Russia is currently the most discussed issue in the West. At this point it is only a suggestion and a possibility, but it can become a reality depending on the decisions taken by all parties involved in the Ukrainian conflict – Moscow, Washington, Kiev, and Brussels.

I don’t want to discuss all the aspects and history of this conflict here. Instead I propose to analyze its deep ideological roots. My conception of the most relevant events are based on the Fourth Political Theory, whose principles I have described in my book under the same name that was published in English by Arktos Media in 2012.

Therefore I will not examine the war of the West on Russia in terms of its risks, dangers, issues, costs or consequences, but rather in an ideological sense as seen from the global perspective. I will therefore meditate on the sense of such a war, and not on the war itself (which may be either real or virtual).

Essence of liberalism

In the modern West, there is one ruling, dominant ideology – liberalism. It may appear in many shades, versions and forms, but the essence is always the same. Liberalism contains an inner, fundamental structure which follows axiomatic principles:

• Anthropological individualism (the individual is the measure of all things);
• Belief in progress (the world is heading toward a better future, and the past is always worse than the present);
• Technocracy (technical development and its execution are taken as the most important criteria by which to judge the nature of a society);
• Eurocentrism (Euro-American societies are accepted as the standard of measure for the rest of humanity);
• Economy as destiny (the free market economy is the only normative economic system – all the rest types are to either be reformed or destroyed);
• Democracy is the rule of minorities (defending themselves from the majority, which is always prone to degenerate into totalitarianism or “populism”);
• The middle class is the only really existing social actor and universal norm (independent from the fact of whether or not an individual has already reached this status or is on the way to becoming actually middle class, representing for the moment only a would-be middle class);
• One-world globalism (human beings are all essentially the same with only one distinction, namely that of their individual nature – the world should be integrated on the basis of the individual and cosmopolitism; in other words, world citizenship).

These are the core values of liberalism, and they are a manifestation of one of the three tendencies that originated in the Enlightenment alongside communism and fascism, which collectively proposed varying interpretations of the spirit of modernity. During the twentieth century, liberalism defeated its rivals, and since 1991 has become the sole, dominant ideology of the world.

The only freedom of choice in the kingdom of global liberalism is that between Right liberalism, Left liberalism or radical liberalism, including far-Right liberalism, far-Left liberalism and extremely radical liberalism. As a consequence, liberalism has been installed as the operational system of Western civilization and of all other societies that find themselves in the zone of Western influence. It has become the common denominator for any politically correct discourse, and the distinguishing mark which determines who is accepted by mainstream politics and who is marginalized and rejected. Conventional wisdom itself became liberal.

Geopolitically, liberalism was inscribed in the America-centered model in which Anglo-Saxons formed the ethnical core, based upon the Atlanticist Euro-American partnership, NATO, which represents the strategic core of the system of global security. Global security has come to be seen as being synonymous with the security of the West, and in the last instance with American security. So liberalism is not only an ideological power but also a political, military and strategic power. NATO is liberal in its roots. It defends liberal societies, and it fights to extend liberalism to new areas.

Liberalism as nihilism

There is one point in liberal ideology that has brought about a crisis within it: liberalism is profoundly nihilistic at its core. The set of values defended by liberalism is essentially linked to its main thesis: the primacy of liberty. But liberty in the liberal vision is an essentially negative category: it claims to be free from (as per John Stuart Mill), not to be free for something. It is not secondary; it is the essence of the problem.

Liberalism fights against all forms of collective identity, and against all types of values, projects, strategies, goals, methods and so on that are collectivist, or at least non-individualist. That is the reason why one of the most important theorists of liberalism, Karl Popper (following Friedrich von Hayek), held in his important book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, that liberals should fight against any ideology or political philosophy (ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and Hegel) that suggests that human society should have some common goal, common value, or common meaning. (It should be noted that George Soros regards this book as his personal bible.) Any goal, any value, and any meaning in liberal society, or the open society, should be strictly based upon the individual. So the enemies of the open society, which is synonymous with Western society post-1991, and which has become the norm for the rest of the world, are concrete. Its primary enemies are communism and fascism, both ideologies which emerged from the same Enlightenment philosophy, and which contained central, non-individualistic concepts – class in Marxism, race in National Socialism, and the national State in fascism). So the source of liberalism’s conflict with the existing alternatives of modernity, fascism or communism, is quite obvious. Liberals claim to liberate society from fascism and communism, or from the two major permutations of explicitly non-individualistic modern totalitarianism. Liberalism’s struggle, when viewed as a part of the process of the liquidation of non-liberal societies, is quite meaningful: it acquires its meaning from the fact of the very existence of ideologies that explicitly deny the individual as society’s highest value. It is quite clear what the struggle opposes: liberation from its opposite. But the fact that liberty, as it is conceived by liberals, is an essentially negative category is not clearly perceived here. The enemy is present and is concrete. That very fact gives liberalism its solid content. Something other than the open society exists, and the fact of its existence is enough to justify the process of liberation.

Unipolar period: threat of implosion

In 1991, when the Soviet Union as the last opponent of Western liberalism fell, some Westerners, such as Francis Fukuyama, proclaimed the end of history. This was quite logical: as there was no longer an explicit enemy of the open society, therefore there was no more history as had occurred during the modern period, which was defined by the struggle between three political ideologies (liberalism, communism and fascism) for the heritage of the Enlightenment. That was, strategically speaking, the moment when “unipolar moment” was realized (Charles Krauthammer). The period between 1991 and 2014, at the midpoint of which Bin Laden’s attack against the World Trade Center occurred, was the period of the global domination of liberalism. The axioms of liberalism were accepted by all the main geopolitical actors, including China (in economic terms) and Russia (in its ideology, economy, and political system). There were liberals and would-be liberals, not-yet liberals, not-liberal-enough liberals and so on. The real and explicit exceptions were few (such as Iran and North Korea). So the world became axiomatically liberal according to its ideology.

This has been the most important moment in the history of liberalism. It has defeated its enemies, but at the same time it has lost them. Liberalism is essentially the liberation from and the fight against all that is not liberal (at present or in what has the potential to become such). Liberalism acquired its real meaning and its content from its enemies. When the choice is presented as being between not-freedom (as represented by concrete totalitarian societies) or freedom, many choose freedom, not understanding it in terms of freedom for what, or freedom to do what… When there is an illiberal society, liberalism is positive. It only begins to show its negative essence after victory.

After the victory of 1991, liberalism stepped into its implosive phase. After having defeated communism as well as fascism, it stood alone, with no enemy to fight. And that was the moment when inner conflicts emerged, when liberal societies began to attempt to purge themselves of their last remaining non-liberal elements: sexism, politically incorrectness, inequality between the sexes, any remnants of the non-individualistic dimensions of institutions such as the State and the Church, and so on. Liberalism always needs an enemy to liberate from. Otherwise it loses its purpose, and its implicit nihilism becomes too salient. The absolute triumph of liberalism is its death.

That is the ideological meaning of the financial crises of 2000 and of 2008. The successes and not the failures of the new, entirely profit-based economy (of turbocapitalism, according to Edward Luttwak) are responsible for its collapse. The liberty to do anything you want, but restricted to the individual scale, provokes an implosion of the personality. The human passes to the infra-human realm, and to sub-individual domains. And here he encounters virtuality, as a dream of sub-individuality, the freedom from anything. This is the evaporation of the human, and brings about the Empire of nothingness as the last word in the total victory of liberalism. Postmodernism prepares the terrain for that post-historic, self-referential recycling of non-sense.

The West is in need of an enemy

You may ask now, what the Hell does all of this have to do with the (presumable) coming war with Russia? I am ready to answer that now.

Liberalism has continued to gain momentum on a global scale. Since 1991, it has been an inescapable fact. And it has now begun to implode. It has arrived at its terminal point and started to liquidate itself. Mass immigration, the clash of cultures and civilizations, the financial crisis, terrorism, and the growth of ethnic nationalism are indicators of approaching chaos. This chaos endangers the established order: any kind of order, including the liberal order itself. The more liberalism succeeds, the faster it approaches its end and the end of the present world. Here we are dealing with the nihilistic essence of liberal philosophy, with nothingness as the inner (me)ontological principle of freedom-from. The German anthropologist Arnold Gehlen justly defined the human as a “deprived being,” or Mangelwesen. Man in himself is nothing. It takes all that comprises its identity from society, history, people, and politics. So if he returns to his pure essence, he can no longer recognize anything. The abyss is hidden behind the fragmented debris of feelings, vague thoughts, and dim desires. The virtuality of sub-human emotions is a thin veil; behind it there is pure darkness. So the explicit discovery of this nihilistic basis of human nature is the last achievement of liberalism. But that is the end, and the end also for those who use the liberalism for their own purposes and who are beneficiaries of liberal expansion; in other words, the masters of globalization. Any and all order collapses in such an emergency of nihilism: the liberal order, too.

In order to rescue the rule of this liberal elite, they need to take a certain step back. Liberalism will reacquire its meaning only when it is confronted once more with non-liberal society. This step back is the only way to save what remains of order, and to save liberalism from itself. Therefore, Putin’s Russia appears on its horizon. Modern Russia is not anti-liberal, not totalitarian, not nationalist, and not communist, nor is it yet too liberal, fully liberal-democrat, sufficiently cosmopolite, or so radically anti-communist. It is rather on the way to becoming liberal, step by step, within the process of a Gramscian adjustment to global hegemony and the subsequent transformation this entails (“transformismo” in Gramscian language).

However, in the global agenda of liberalism as represented by the United States and NATO, there is a need for another actor, for another Russia that would justify the order of the liberal camp, and help to mobilize the West as it threatens to break apart from inner strife. This will delay the irruption of liberalism’s inner nihilism and thus save it from its inevitable end. That is why they badly need Putin, Russia, and war. It is the only way to prevent chaos in the West and to save what remains of its global and domestic order. In this ideological play, Russia would justify liberalism’s existence, because that is the enemy which would give a meaning to the struggle of the open society, and which would help it to consolidate and continue to affirm itself globally. Radical Islam, such as represented by al-Qaeda, was another candidate for this role, but it lacked sufficient stature to become a real enemy. It was used, but only on a local scale. It justified the intervention in Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the overthrow of Gaddafi, and started a civil war in Syria, but it was too weak and ideologically primitive to represent the real challenge that is needed by liberals.

Russia, the traditional geopolitical enemy of Anglo-Saxons, is much more serious as an opponent. It fits the needed role extremely well – the memory of the Cold War is still fresh in many minds. Hate for Russia is an easy thing to provoke by relatively simple means. This is why I think that war with Russia is possible. It is ideologically necessary as the last means to postpone the final implosion of the liberal West. It is the needed “one step back.”

To save the liberal order

Considering the different layers of this concept of a possible war with Russia, I suggest a few points:

1. A war with Russia will help to delay the coming disorder on a global scale. The majority of the countries that are involved in the liberal economy, and which share the axioms and institutions of liberal democracy, and which are either dependent upon or directly controlled by the United States and NATO, will forge a common front once more behind the cause of the liberal West in its quest to oppose the anti-liberal Putin. This will serve to reaffirm liberalism as a positive identity when this identity is beginning to dissolving as a result of the manifestation of its nihilistic essence.
2. A war with Russia would strengthen NATO and above all its European members, who will be obliged once more to regard American hyperpower as something positive and useful, and the old Cold War stance will no longer seem obsolete. Out of a fear of the coming of the “evil Russians”, Europeans will again feel loyal to the United States as their protector and savior. As a result, the leading role of the U.S. in NATO will be reaffirmed.
3. The EU is falling apart. The supposed “common threat” of the Russians could prevent it from an eventual split, mobilizing these societies and making their peoples once again eager to defend their liberties and values under the threat of Putin’s “imperial ambitions”.
4. The Ukraine junta in Kiev needs this war to justify and conceal all the misdeeds they carried out during the Maidan protests on both the juridical and constitutional levels, thus allowing them to suspend democracy, that would impede their rule in the southeastern, mostly pro-Russian districts and would enable them to establish their authority and nationalistic order through extra-parliamentary means.

The only country that doesn’t want war now is Russia. But Putin cannot let the radically anti-Russian government in Ukraine to dominate a country that has a population that is half-Russian and which contains many pro-Russian regions. If he allows this, he will be finished on the international and domestic levels. So, reluctantly, he accepts war. And once he begins on this course, there will be no other solution for Russia but to win it.

I don’t like to speculate regarding the strategic aspects of this coming war. I leave that to other, more qualified analysts. Instead I would like to formulate some ideas concerning the ideological dimension of this war.

Framing Putin

The meaning of this war on Russia is in essence the last effort of globalist liberalism to save itself from implosion. As such, liberals need to define Putin’s Russia ideologically – and obviously identify it with the enemy of the open society. But in the dictionary of modern ideologies there are only three primary iterations: liberalism, communism and fascism. It is quite clear that liberalism is represented by all the nations involved in this conflict except for Russia (the United States, the NATO member states, and Euromaidan/the Kiev junta). This leaves only communism and fascism. Therefore Putin is made out to be a “neo-Soviet revanchist” and a “return of the KGB”. This is the picture that is being sold to the most stupid sort of Western public. But some aspects of the patriotic reaction emanating from the pro-Russian and anti-Banderite population (i.e., the defense of Lenin’s monuments, Stalin portraits and memorials to the Soviet involvement in the Second World War) could confirm this idea in the minds of this public. Nazism and fascism are too far removed from Putin and the reality of modern Russia, but Russian nationalism and Russian imperialism will be evoked within the image of the Great Evil that is being drawn. Therefore Putin is being made out to be a “radical nationalist”, a fascist and an “imperialist”. This will work on many Westerners. Under this logic, Putin can be both “communist” and “fascist” at the same time, so he will be depicted as a “National Bolshevik” (although this is a little bit too complicated for the postmodern Western public). It is obvious that in reality, Putin is neither – he is not a Communist nor a fascist, nor both simultaneously. He is a political pragmatist in the realm of International Relations – this is why he admires Kissinger, and why Kissinger likes him in return. He has no ideology whatsoever. But he will be obliged to embrace the ideological frame that he has been assigned. It is not his choice. But such are the rules of the game. In the course of this war on Russia, Putin will be framed in this way, and that is the most interesting and important aspect of this situation.

The main idea that liberals will try to advance to define Putin ideologically will be as the shadow of the past, as a vampire: “Sometimes they come back.” That is the rationale behind this attempt to prevent the final implosion of liberalism. The primary message is that liberalism is still alive and vital because there is something in the world that we all must be liberated from. Russia will become the object from which it must be liberated. The goal is first to liberate Ukraine, and by extension Europe and the rest of humanity, who will likewise be depicted as being under threat, from Russia, and in the end Russia itself will be said to be in need of rescue from its own non-liberal identity. So now we have an enemy. Such an enemy gives to the liberalism its raison d’être once more. So Russia is being made out to be a challenger from the pre-liberal past thrown into the liberal present. Without such a challenge there is no more life in liberalism, no more order in the world, and everything associated with them will dissolve and implode. With this challenge, the falling giant of globalism acquires new vigor. Russia is here to save the liberals.

But in order for this to happen, Russia is being ideologically framed as something pre-liberal. She must be either communist, fascist or at perhaps National Bolshevist Russia. That is the ideological rule. Therefore, in fighting with Russia, or in considering to fight her, or in not fighting her, there is a deeper task – to frame Russia ideologically. It will be done from both the inside and the outside. They will try to force Russia to accept either communism or extreme nationalism, or else they will simply treat Russia as if it were these things. It is a framing game.

Post-liberal Russia: The first war of the Fourth Political Theory

In conclusion, what I propose is the following:

We need to consciously counter any provocation to frame Russia as a pre-liberal power. We need to refuse to allow the liberals to save themselves from their fast-approaching end. Rather than helping them to delay it, we need to accelerate it. In order to do this, we need to present Russia not as a pre-liberal entity but as a post-liberal revolutionary force that struggles for an alternative future for all the peoples of the planet. The Russian war will be not only be for Russian national interests, but will be in the cause of a just multipolar world, for real dignity and for real, positive freedom – not (nihilistic) freedom from but (creative) freedom for. In this war, Russia will set an example as the defender of Tradition, conservative organic values, and will represent real liberation from the open society and its beneficiaries – the global financial oligarchy. This war is not against Ukrainians or even against part of the Ukrainian populace. Nor is it against Europe. It is against the liberal world (dis)order. We are not going to save liberalism, per their designs. We are going to kill it once and for all. Modernity was always essentially wrong, and we are now at the terminal point of modernity. For those who rendered modernity and their own destiny synonymous, or who let that occur unconsciously, this will mean the end. But for those who are on the side of eternal truth and of Tradition, of faith, and of the spiritual and immortal human essence, it will be a new beginning, ABSOLUTE BEGINNING.

The most important fight at present is the fight for the Fourth Political Theory. It is our weapon, and with it we are going to prevent the liberals from realizing their wish of framing Putin and Russia in their own manner, and in so doing we will reaffirm Russia as the first post-liberal ideological power struggling against nihilistic liberalism for the sake of an open, multipolar and genuinely free future.

 

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Dugin, Alexander. “The War on Russia in Its Ideological Dimension: An Analysis from the Perspective of the Fourth Political Theory.” Open Revolt, 11 March 2014. <http://openrevolt.info/2014/03/11/alexander-dugin-the-war-on-russia-in-its-ideological-dimension/ >.

 

Interview with Dari Dougina – Porrazzo

“We Live In The Era Of The End”

A Interview with Dari Dougina by James Porrazzo

 

Open Revolt is very happy to present a conversation between the Eurasian Youth Union’s Dari Dougina and our own James Porrazzo. Dari, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, in addition to her work in the Eurasian Youth Union, is also the director of the project Alternative Europe for the Global Revolutionary Alliance.

James Porrazzo: Dari you are a second generation Eurasianist, daughter of our most important thinker and leader Alexander Dugin. Do you care to share with us your thoughts on being a young militant this deep into the Kali Yuga?

Dari Dougina: We live in the era of the end – that’s the end of culture, philosophy, politics, ideology. That’s the time without real movement; the Fukuyama’s gloomy prophecy of the “end of history” turns to be a kind of reality. That’s the essence of Modernity, of Kali Yuga. We are living in the momentum of Finis Mundi. The arrival of Antichrist is in the agenda. This deep and exhausting night is the reign of quantity, masked by the tempting concepts such as Rhizome of Gilles Deleuze: the pieces of the modern Subject changes into the “chair-woman” from the “Tokyo Gore Police” (post-modern Japanese film) – the individual of the modern paradigm turns into the pieces of dividuum. ”God is dead” and his place is occupied by the fragments of individual. But if we make a political analysis we will find out that this new state of the world is the project of liberalism. The extravagant ideas of Foucault seemingly revolutionary in their pathos after more scruple analyze show their conformist and (secretly) liberal bottom, that goes against the traditional hierarchy of values, establishing pervert “new order” where the summit is occupied by the self-adoring individual, atomistic decay.

That’s hard to fight against the modernity, but sure – it’s unbearable to live in it – to agree with this state of the things – where all the systems are changed and the traditional values became a parody – being purged and mocked in all spheres of controls of modern paradigms. That’s the reign of the cultural hegemony.

And this state of the world bothers us. We fight against it – for the divine order – for the ideal hierarchy. The cast-system in modern world is completely forgotten and transformed into a parody. But it has a fundamental point. In Plato’s Republic – there is very interesting and important thought: casts and vertical hierarchy in politics are nothing but the reflection of the world of ideas and higher good. This model in politics manifests the basic metaphysical principles of the normal (spiritual) world. Destroying the primordial cast system it in the society – we negate the dignity of the divine being and his Order. Resigning from the casts system and traditional order, brilliantly described by Dumezil, we damage the hierarchy of our soul. Our soul is nothing but the system of casts with a wide harmony of justice which unites 3 parts of the soul (the philosophical – the intellect, the guardian – the will, and the merchants – the lust).

Fighting for the tradition we are fighting for our deep nature as the human creature. Man is not something granted – it is the aim. And we are fighting for the truth of human nature (to be human is to strive to the superhumanity). That can be called a holy war.

What does the Fourth Political Theory mean to you?

That’s the light of the truth, of something rarely authentic in the post-modern times. That’s the right accent on the degrees of existence – the natural chords of the world laws. That’s something which grows up on the ruins of the human experience. There is no success without the first attempts – all of the past ideologies contained in them something what caused their failure.

The Fourth Political Theory – that’s the project of the best sides of divine order that can be manifested in our world – from liberalism we take the idea of the democracy (but not in its modern meaning) and liberty in the Evolian sense; from communism we accept the idea of solidarity, anti-capitalism, anti-individualism and the idea of collectivism; from fascism we take the concept of vertical hierarchy and the will to power – the heroic codex of the Indo-European warrior.

All these past ideologies suffered from grave shortcomings – democracy with the addition of liberalism became tyranny (the worst state-regime by Plato), communism defended the technocentric world with no traditions and origins, fascism followed the wrong geopolitical orientation, its racism was Western, Modern, liberal and anti-traditional.

The Fourth Political Theory is the global transgression of these defects – the final design of the future (open) history. It’s the only way to defend the truth.

For us – truth is the multipolar world, the blossoming variety of different cultures and traditions.

We are against racism, against the cultural and strategic racism of the USA’s Western modern civilization, which is perfectly described by professor John M. Hobson in The Europocentric Conception of World Politics. The structural (open or subliminal) racism destroys charming complexity of the human societies – primitive or complex.

Do you find any special challenges as both a young woman and a activist in this age?

This spiritual war against (post)Modern world gives me the force to live.

I know, that I’m fighting against the hegemony of evil for the truth of the eternal Tradition. It is obscured now, not completely lost. Without it nothing could exist.

I think that any gender and age has its forms to access the Tradition and its ways to challenge Modernity.

My existential practice is to abdicate most values of the globalist youth. I think we need to be different from this trash. I don’t believe in anything modern. Modernity is always wrong.

I consider love to be a form of initiation and spiritual realization. And the family should be the union of spiritually similar persons.

Beyond your father, obviously, who else would you suggest young militants wishing to learn our ideas study?

I recommend to make acquaintance with the books of Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, Jean Parvulesco, Henri Corbin, Claudio Mutti, Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein (traditionalism); Plato, Proclus, Schelling, Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, E. Cioran (philosophy); Carl Schmitt, Alain de Benoist, Alain Soral (politics); John M. Hobson, Fabio Petito (IR); Gilbert Durand, G. Dumezil (sociology). The base kit of reading for our intellectual and political revolution.

You’ve now spent some time living in Western Europe. How would you compare the state of the West to the East, after firsthand experience?

In fact, before my arrival to Europe I thought that this civilization is absolutely dead and no revolt could be possible there. I was comparing the modern liberal Europe to bog, with no possibility to protest against the hegemony of liberalism.

Reading the foreign European press, seeing the articles with titles as ”Putin – the Satan of Russia” / ” the luxury life of poor president Putin” / ” pussy riot – the great martyrs of the rotten Russia” – this idea was almost confirmed. But after a while I’ve found some political anti-globalist groups and movements of France – like Egalite & Reconcilation, Engarda, Fils de France, etc. – and everything changed.

The swamps of Europe have transformed into something else – with the hidden possibility of revolt. I’ve found the “other Europe,” the “alternative” hidden empire, the secret geopolitical pole.

The real secret Europe should be awakened to fight and destroy its liberal double.

Now I’m absolutely sure, that there are two Europes; absolutely different – liberal decadent Atlanticist Europe and alternative Europe (anti-globalist, anti-liberal, Eurasia-orientated).

Guenon wrote in the Crisis of the Modern World that we must divide the state of being anti-modern and anti-Western. To be against the modernity – is to help Occident in its fight against Modernity, which is constructed on liberal codes. Europe has its own fundamental culture (I recommend the book of Alain de Benoist – The Traditions of Europe [Les traditions d’Europe]). So I found this alternative, secret, powerful, Traditionalist other Europe and I put my hopes on its secret guardians.

We’ve organized with Egalite & Reconcilation a conference in Bordeaux in October with Alexander Dugin and Christian Bouchet in a huge hall but there was no place for all the volunteers who wanted to see this conference.

It shows that something begins to move…

Concerning my views on Russia – I’ve remarked that the bigger part of European people don’t trust the media information – and the interest to Russia grows up – it’s seen in the mode of learning Russian, of watching soviet films and many European people understand that the media of Europe are totally influenced by the hegemonic Leviathan, liberal globalist machine of lies.

So the seeds of protest are in the soil, with time they’ll grow up, destroying the “society of spectacle.”

Your whole family is a great inspiration to us here at Open Revolt and New Resistance. Do you have a message for your friends and comrades in North America?

I really can’t help admiring your intensive revolutionary work! The way you are working – in the media – is the way of killing the enemy “with its own poison,” using the network warfare strategy. Evola spoke about that in his excellent book Ride the Tiger.

Uomo differenzziato [“the differentiated man”] is someone who stays in the center of modern civilization but don’t accept it in his inner empire of his heroic soul. He can use the means and arms of modernity to cause a mortal wound to the reign of quantity and its golems.

I can understand that the situation in USA now is difficult to stand. It’s the center of hell, but Holderlin wrote that the hero must throw himself into abyss, into the heart of the night and thus conquer the darkness.

Any closing thoughts you’d like to share?

Studying in the faculty of philosophy and working on Plato and Neo-Platonism, I can remark, that politics is nothing but the manifestation of the basic metaphysical principles which lays in the fundament of being.

Making political war for the Fourth Political Theory we are also establishing the metaphysical order – manifesting it in the material world.

Our struggle is not only for the ideal human state – it is also the holy war for reestablishing the right ontology.

 

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Dougina, Dari. “‘We Live In The Era Of The End’: A Interview with Dari Dougina.” Interview by James Porrazzo. Open Revolt, 23 January 2013. <http://openrevolt.info/2013/01/23/we-live-in-the-era-of-the-end-a-interview-with-dari-dougina/ >.

 

Theory of Multipolar World – Morgan

Theory of Multipolar World: An Interview with John Morgan by Natella Speranskaya

 

Natella Speranskaya (NS): The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the cancellation of the Yalta system of international relations and the triumph of the single hegemon – the United States, and as a consequence, the transformation of the bipolar world order to the unipolar model. Nevertheless, some analysts are still talking about a possible return to the bipolar model. How do you feel about this hypothesis? Is there a likelihood of emergence of a power capable of challenging the global hegemon?

John Morgan (JM): I’m not certain about a return to the bipolar model anytime soon. While we have seen the rise of new powers capable of challenging American hegemony in recent years – China, India, Iran, and of course the return of Russia to the world stage – none of them are capable of matching the pervasive influence of the American economy and its culture, nor of projecting military power around the world as NATO has been doing. At the same time, we can plainly see now that America and its allies in Western Europe have already passed their economic limits, now racking up unprecedented debt, and their power is beginning to wane. This process is irreversible, since the post-1945 American lifestyle is unsustainable on every level. America may be able to coast for a few more years, or at most decades, but the “American century” that began at the end of the Second World War will probably be over by mid-century at the latest. Rather than the return of a bipolar world, I think we will see the emergence of the multipolar one, as Prof. Dugin has suggested, in which several nations wield significant power but none reigns supreme above all. In order to protect their interests, stronger nations will need to forge alliances with weaker ones, and sometimes even with other strong nations. But I think the era of the superpower is rapidly coming to an end.

NS: Zbigniew Brzezinski openly admits that the U.S. is gradually losing its influence. Here it is possible to apply the concept of “imperial overstretch”, introduced by renowned historian Paul Kennedy. Perhaps, America has faced that, what was previously experienced by the Soviet Union. How do you assess the current state of the U.S.?

JM: As an American, I have witnessed this firsthand. I don’t think the American era is over just yet; it still possesses awesome military might, and will most likely retain this advantage for a little while longer. But the persuasive powers of a country whose defense spending comprises nearly half of all global military expenditures each year are obviously on the wane. My understanding of the collapse of the Soviet Union is that it occurred more because of domestic economic problems rather than as a direct result of its military failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, even if that exacerbated the problem. Similarly, while the many wars the U.S. has engaged in over the past decade have unquestionably weakened it, it is the ongoing financial crisis, brought about by America’s reliance on debtor spending, that is the most important factor in the decline of American power. And actually, America’s military adventures have brought little in terms of benefits. The Iraq War has really only served to strengthen Iran and Syria’s position. Afghanistan remains a sinkhole in which America stands little to gain, apart from ongoing humiliation as the failure of its policies there is as plain as day. Nations like Iran and North Korea have been emboldened, since they know that America isn’t interested in challenging them militarily, at least for the time being. This has no doubt been a large factor in the increasing use of drones by the U.S., as well as its return to waging proxy wars against enemy regimes through concocted “rebel” movements, as it did during the Cold War against the Soviets, and as we have seen in Libya and now in Syria. Regardless, the primary factor in American decline is definitely its economic predicament. But if it returns to its earlier policies of attempting to spread democracy and the free market through war, this will only hasten its end. Obama seems to be aware of this and has sought to keep America from engaging directly in wars at all costs, but we don’t know who his successor will be.

NS: The loss of global influence of the U.S. means no more, no less, as the end of the unipolar world. But here the question arises as to which model will happen the transition in the nearest future? On the one hand, we have all the prerequisites for the emergence of the multipolar world – on the other, we face the risk of encountering non-polarity, which would mean a real chaos.

JM: This is an interesting question, but I think it is difficult to answer definitively at the present time. The United States as a whole has still not acknowledged the fact of its own inevitable decline, and for the time being I expect it to continue to attempt to maintain the unipolar world for as long as it possibly can. Once the fact of the death of the hegemonic system can no longer be denied, I can see several possible directions. The U.S. may adopt some sort of primitive, imperialistic nationalism and attempt to restore its position through military means. Or, it may become too overwhelmed with its own domestic problems, as they increase, and perhaps disengage from the world stage, opening up possibilities for new geopolitical orders that have been restricted by American power for nearly a century. But since we do not yet know how severe the coming economic and political collapse will be, or what its impact will be globally, we cannot know whether it will lead to multipolarity or non-polarity. We can only attempt to set the stage for the former and hope that circumstances permit it.

NS: The project of “counter-hegemony,” developed by Cox, aims to expose the existing order in international relations and raise the rebellion against it. For this, Cox calls for the creation of counter-hegemonic bloc, which will include those political actors who reject the existing hegemony. The basis of the unipolar model imposed by the United States is a liberal ideology. From this we can conclude that the basis of the multipolar model just the same has to be based on some ideology. Which ideology, in your opinion, can take replace the counter-hegemonic one, capable of uniting a number of political actors who do not agree with the hegemony of the West?

JM: I agree with Prof. Dugin that the three ideologies which dominated the twentieth century have already exhausted themselves as paradigms for the nomos of the Earth. What I imagine and hope to see will be the emergence of blocs which may be similar to the Holy Roman Empire and other ancient empires, in which there will be loose confederations of nations and communities where there is indeed an overarching central political authority (perhaps a monarchy, as Evola prescribed) that will defend the sovereignty of its subjects, but in which most of the political power will rest with local, communal authorities. They may not have a specific ideology in themselves. However, there may be variations in how this is realized within the various communities which comprise them. Some peoples may choose to return to some variant of socialism or nationalism, or perhaps even some sort of pre-modern form of social organization. And these communities should be free to choose the particular form of their social organization, in accordance with their unique traditions. Liberalism, however, which depends for its survival on the consumption of all attainable resources, will completely die, I believe, since before long everyone will understand that it only leads to short-term gains followed by total destruction on every level.

NS: If we project the multipolar model on the economic world map, then we’ll get the coexistence of multiple poles, and at the same time, will create a complete matrix for the emergence of a new economy – outside of Western capitalist discourse. In your opinion, is the concept of “autarky of big spaces,” suggested by List, applicable for this?

JM: I have not studied Friedrich List in any detail, so I’m not familiar with this concept, although of course I am in favor of the development of a new economic order to supplant the current, capitalist model. I do know that List opposed the justification of individual greed favored by the English liberal economists, in contrast to an economic model that considers the needs of the community/nation as a whole, as well as the impact one’s actions have on future generations. Given that the destructiveness of the current economic order is the result of its shameful neglect of these two factors, List’s conception is much better.

NS: We are now on the verge of paradigmatic transition from the unipolar world order model to the multi-polar one, where the actors are no more nation-states, but entire civilizations. Recently in Russia was published a book, Theory of Multipolar World [теория многополярного мира], written by the Doctor of Political and Social Sciences, Professor Alexander Dugin. This book lays the theoretical foundation, basis, from which a new historical stage can start, and describes a number of changes both in the foreign policy of nation-states and in today’s global economy, which involve a transition to the multipolar model. Of course, this also means the emergence of a new diplomatic language. Do you believe that multipolarity is the natural state of the world and that transition to the multipolar model is inevitable?

JM: Yes, and my company, Arktos, will soon be making an English edition of this vital text available. I absolutely agree that multipolarity is both necessary and desirable. If we survey human history, this was always how the world was ordered in ages which we, as traditionalists, consider to have been far superior to the way the world is today. It is only from the unique, and degenerative, conditions of modernity that unipolarity has emerged in recent centuries, first in the efforts of the European colonial powers to dominate the planet, and culminating, of course, in American hegemony, which is the direct heir to the European colonial project. As we can see with our own eyes, hegemony hasn’t been good for anyone, neither for those peoples who have enjoyed its ephemeral material benefits nor for those who have been dominated by it. The unipolar idea is what brought the “Third World” into existence and perpetuates it (since, today, it has even conquered these peoples culturally and psychologically). Simultaneously, it has deprived those nations which pursued it, both in America and Europe, of security, stability, sustainability, and most importantly, of any form of genuine culture or identity, replacing it with plastic consumer culture and identities. Ultimately, unipolarity has victimized everything in human civilization that is good while offering nothing apart from the purely material benefits temporarily reaped by those in charge of it in return, and even that will soon cease. We can only hope that multipolarity will re-emerge, since it is obvious to anyone who looks at the world with an open mind that unipolarity is rapidly coming to an end.

 

————-

Morgan, John. “Theory of Multipolar World: An Interview with John Morgan by Natella Speranskaya.” Interview by Natella Speranskaya. Global Revolutionary Alliance News, 28 May 2013. <http://granews.info/content/theory-multipolar-world-interview-john-morgan >. (See this article in PDF format here: Theory of Multipolar World – An Interview with John Morgan by Natella Speranskaya).

Note: See also the closely related interview with John Morgan on the Fourth Political Theory: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/interview-on-the-fourth-political-theory-morgan/ >.

Readers may also be interested in the overview of this theory provided by Lucian Tudor in the excerpt “The Vision of a Multipolar World” (which also cites the major sources on this theory): <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/vision-of-a-multipolar-world-tudor/ >.

 

On Japan – Dugin

In the Country of the Rising “Do”

By Alexander Dugin

Edited by Daniel Macek

 

Introductory Note: We have edited the following article to fix a number of significant errors and awkward translations made by the original translator (who was not specified by the original publishers). The reason we have chosen to republish this article is because the nature of Japan as it has been in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries is very significant for Europeans. It is not uncommon to find references to the practices of East Asian nations – Japan being the most prominent – among European cultural conservatives, who admire the successes of Japanese restriction of immigration (resulting in a nation that is retains its traditional ethnic types as the vast majority of the population, yet is still culturally rich) combined with its economic successes, as well as the creative combination traditional cultural and religious values with modern science and technology. We believe that this article by Alexander Dugin, despite being very limited, provides an important insight into the Japanese condition. – Daniel Macek (Editor of the “New European Conservative”)

Part 1. The Divine Wind

In this people’s language there is a special word for defining such a science as geo-politics – Chiseygaku, literally “teaching on the well-ordered land.” Such a people cannot be something ordinary.

In this people’s language there is the word Oshym (o-shima); it means “great island.” Such a people has access to the ultimately deep layers of dreams.

In this people’s language the “sovereign,” the “emperor,” is called Tenno, the “Heavenly one.” Such a people itself tastes of heavenly fish.

A gold carp had been rising along the waterfall, but because of its absent-mindedness it didn’t notice that the water had passed and it was moving to the sky. Higher, higher… The red carp is growing, wings come out of him, its scales are getting thicker… and it is now the great red dragon that is swimming in the sky.

Professor Tamotsu Murata [村田保] told that story in the ancient little restaurant in Asakusa residential area, explaining the canvas which hanged there on a wall. The slender old professor from a Samurai family was writing haiku poetry on a paper sheet, whose opposite side was dotted with mathematic formulas. He was finishing a book on the problem of continuality.

“I think we should seek the source of continuum in the mystery of a moment,” he had said not long before. “One day many years ago, when I was totally young, not such as I am now (the impenetrable visage, in which the smile is expressed by the unnoticeable movement of the hair), I was standing in a tiny yard, looking at the sky, and suddenly I understood, that I am; that there is I and only I. And not I as something which had occurred and is lasting, but as something momentary. Continuity is born from a revelatory moment.”

The Japanese read Western philosophy, but understand it in utterly their own way.

Professor Murata asked me to comment his views after his lecture about Kant. The gist of his report was reducible to the following. “Kant shouldn’t have separated the transcendent sphere of reason and empirical world of sensuality. There IS a connexion between them – language is the connexion.”

I answered: “It is an excellent idea, but then we arrive to the conclusion that language is a magical instrument, a magic hermetic means, with the help of which one can turn the rarefied to the dense and the dense to the rarefied.”

“Indeed, how exactly you understood me,” agreed old professor Tamotsu Murata. “And could you subject this approach to criticism?”

“Yes, I could,” I answered, “you have been reading Kant, who belonged to the context of modernity, as being a Japanese, who belongs to a context of non-modernity.”

All Japanese belong to the eternal present. And the fact that Japanese professors, refined and educated in an utterly European way, can treat the classics of rationalism in such a way, foretells that Japan will still shine over the world, like the bloody eye of the non-quantitative, momentarily continual goddess Amaterasu.

Que Japon vive et revive cent mille fois [That Japan lives and relives a hundred thousand times]! When I talked to Parvulesco after my return from Japan, he told the pity of my not letting him know of my trip beforehand. “Mon cher [my dear] Alexander, I would have organized your meeting with my daughter, who teaches French in Tokyo University, and she wouldn’t have had trouble with arranging for you to have audience with Tenno.”

“I will certainly go there again, Jean!”

A mask of the sacred theater “no” hanged on the canvas with the carp. Professor Tamotsu Murata suddenly leapt to his feet from the tatami – he seemed to be thrown up from below – and began to slightly stir the canvas and the mask. The mask revived, reflecting the entire range of emotions – sinister, merry, ironical, cruel ones.

“And if one looks from different perspectives, in it there will appear the entire life. One and the same, seen in different ways, it is no longer one and the same…”

And on other wall of the secret little restaurant of Asakusa there was a faded personage with small horns – the demon Anita, the keeper of hell. There are so many fish in hell…

Then a head of a fish was served to us. It was as big as a wheel of a wagon. I didn’t know that there could be such huge fish. The floor in the restaurant was black and earthen. Its roughness was a cipher key. I caught myself at the fact that I understand a lot more than I notice: All the evenness tries to get closer to death.

The Japanese are the keepers of life. That which is dense, that which can make you breathless, that which is underwater, which is aerial, made of a piece of red dingy cloth, from a dog’s side, from a porcelain cruel doll, from a house as big as a suitcase, from the tinkling of copper bells which notifies the spirits of peoples’ arrival to the jinja [sanctuary] and of their readiness to throw a coin. The jinjas were everywhere that I went along the way – to say little, I saw inside them a lot! One who wants to know what the pure substance of life is should visit Japan.

In the Japanese language, there is “no” and no word “I.” The roaring “hai” (“yes”) is said without voice inflexion, with gleaming black Japanese eyes, with unbelievable wild energy means all in aggregate. Yes – it is the great enthusiasm of sacred holography, when the Universe is focused upon the small piece of land. From the sacred geography to the sacred holography.

At the reception in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was Professor Masaru Sato [佐藤優], who looked like a sumo wrestler. A bit fractally, aggressively, being overfilled by the energy of the mountains, he spoke about Japanese Eurasianism, about necessity of Japan’s return to its former greatness.

“We had a national thinker – Okawa. He was a consistent advocate for the continental bloc – Tokyo-Moscow-Berlin. He foresaw the pernicious consequences of the anti-Russian attitude, and was persuaded that Japan would be able to maintain its influence in the Pacific region only through strategic partnership with Russia.”

“We Japanese,” Sato-san continued, “are in some sense communists, but only with the Emperor. We are for the collectivity, but a hierarchised, sacred one…” The communists of magic.

This is important: everything modernistic in Japan is extremely perfunctory. They have managed it! Yes, they have managed it. The modern is deactivated there, deprived of its metaphysics.

Just as professor Murata in utterly natural way adds to Kant a mere trifle, language as an instrument of operative magic, and the Catholic (!) professor Yoichiro Murakami [村上 陽一郎] operates with the concepts of Buddhism to describe main trends of the history of science, and translates Jung and Pauli (this is called the West!), so the ordinary Japanese turn McDonalds into a jinja. A lantern with hieroglyphs and a swastika, bringing luck, along with several comrades from two million “deities” of Shinto, momentarily turn a hamburger temple of the “New World Order” into the traditional Japanese snackbar. And Professor Toshio Yokoyama [横山 俊夫] from Kyoto interprets “civility” as the traditional attitude of the Japanese to gods, flowers, animals, and people. The civil society in such an interpretation is the society of a sacred rite.

In such case I am a supporter of civil society. A citizen is one who follows the “do”; he who does not follow the “do” is not. “Do” in Japanese is the immanent godliness, including the transcendent aspect as its natural extension. The spirit of Japan (“do”) is unbreakable.

In Japan they have a good attitude towards Americans. The motive? Americans were once able to defeat the godlike Japanese, so therefore they are godlike too. There is no concept of evil. There is only the concept of the path, “do.” In Japan they have a bad attitude towards America. The motive? How can one have a good attitude towards it?

In Japan one could leave a wallet with money on a street and return for it in a week. It would be just there. There is a sufi parable on how a wise sheikh, who knew everything and was a sultan’s chief adviser, left his purse in the market. He remembered that in a week and went to take it back. His murids were bewildered: “either the sheikh has gone out of his mind or there is something we do not understand.” In Asia, purses disappear in the bazaar even if they are firmly gripped in hand. Japan is not Asia, it is beyond Asia. It is the country where the ethical norms of the contemplative sheikh are made a reality.

Japan is unreal. It seems to me that there cannot be such a country.

Technology here is an element of “do.” Assembling electronic devices is an equivalent of the arts of making ritual ekibanas or of the tea ceremony. It is an electronic version of Yemoto, the “do” keepers.

There are no Japanese without “do.”

“Are there avant-garde artists here? Drug addicts? Transvestites? Those who inhabit the modern West?”

“They were here at one time, but disappeared somewhere with time.”

There are drug addicts among newcomers; the Chinese, the Taiwanese, the Filipinos. The Japanese cannot be affected by anything. Their customary everyday life is a continuous luxurious hallucination. Under Kyoto bridges people, who live in containers, watch TV. Even in garbage nooks, strange living aesthetics reigns.

Watch out: schoolchildren! They walk in the streets, in the Metro, in historic parks and mountain museums by well-shaped squares. All are in uniform. One ought get in their way. The divine wind once destroyed the Mongolian fleet: Kamikaze. People and wind are relatives. The Japanese schoolchildren are the relatives of the aimed divine wind.

Kami-kaze, the “Divine Wind.” By this one can find a clue to the fascinating figure of Rimbaud: “Le vent de Dieux jettait des glacons aux marres…”

Old Believers of the Beguny (“runners” or “escapists”) persuasion in previous times had a teaching about a secret “Oponskom Tsardom” [Опоньском царстве]. I then understood what was meant by that. It was Shinkoku – the doctrine of “Sacred Japan.”

Shinto priests teach: the ancient good spirits Izanagi-no-mikotu and Izanami-no-mikotu once married with each other and gave birth to the islands Honshu and Kushu. Those main islands resulted only from their lawful wedlock. Before that there appeared spiders and ghosts, and also the small islands. Then they bore also many good spirits and the first emperor Tenno. The brother islands drew out of themselves mountains, rivers, giant red-white fish, which swim in Japan in every pool, offering themselves to skillful cooks (Polyakov and I made friends with one of such fish – this was the fish-professor from Tokyo University), forests, tea, sacred narrow-muzzled dogs, which guard sanctuaries, spirits and conifers, sunbeams and soft clouds, which can be only over the Near-Moscow-Localities. The Emperor bore the Japanese. The Japanese and Japan constitute one kindred alliance. Heaven and earth, a rice sprout, clay, a stream, a stone, a vacuum cleaner, a peasant and a policeman are one kindred organism. In the Japanese the wind, the wind of sweet clouds flows through their veins instead of blood, nourishing the eyes by the flesh of dream. And it is always so. So has it always been and so will it always be.

Shinkoku – where there is nothing to exclude and to include.

Japan is a Eurasian esotericism. It is the clue to ourselves, Oponskom Tsardom. The altar of Eurasia.

In the garden of emperor’s palace, on the remains of a tower built by a Shogun – of which there was no higher in the world, but which was standing for only several years – we spoke with Polyakov about advantage of ontological reflections for heuristic solutions in modern physics, about the equation of Navier and Stokes, about prospects of development of the unified theory of substance on the basis of phase change analysis in works of the physicist called Sinai. Masuda dozed off on a sunlit bench. Suddenly a raven appeared before us. Without speaking, we understood that it was the Shogun’s warrior. It guarded the emperor’s garden, keeping vigilant watch over who was there, where they were, what they did and what they said. The raven was in the size of around two metres. In the eyes of two big-bellied tourists, who perspiringly ascended the tower’s remains with perspiration, the pupils were rolled unseeingly – it seemed they did not see the raven with a pointed coal-black beak. It disappeared noiselessly.

All partitions in Japan are opened, they are made of paper. The membranes between the dimensions have a special structure – very well-ordered, carefully fixed. The approximateness of metamorphoses is conceptualized here, permeated with mathematics.

Japanese cars have the snout of Shinto spirits.

Tetsuya Masuda pointed at an undistinguished, imperceptible stone, which lied at the entrance to a little restaurant on a narrow Kyoto street. “This is a garden.” By the Japanese a stone, a blade of grass, a stem, a little pool, is anyway a garden. They take a fragment of what is and penetrate it with their sacred Japanese attention, and a garden is born. The garden-bringing people.

In Kyoto we were served a fish whose sides were cut off and the raw meat laid beside. From the fish was left its snout, skeleton and caudal fin. It made gasping-for-breath movements by its mouth, blew a little bubble. In the half-dark room I counted nine levels – the floor, the “bar” stand, the table, the benches and so forth – which were at the different distance from an imaginary line. It was as if all the planes must have been shifting as in a multi-mirror elevator. Masuda told the story about his French friend, who had been so horrified by discovering the fact that a fish was breathing that he started to shout at him for him to urgently bring a knife and to “save a poor animal from misery.” Masuda obediently went for a knife, but he could not get it from the owner, who sincerely did not understand what was going on. When he still returned with a knife, the Frenchman with a great effort, in hysteric anguish, had already crushed fish skull with the wooden saucer and had been gazing round perplexedly. “He made the fish suffer rather than attentively observe its death-transfer and participate in it with all his being – the mouth, tongue, stomach…” We looked at the fish, at the small black bubble near its mouth… Polyakov touched its moist nose with a chopstick…

The city’s view was psychedelic. There was not a single direct line; the entire area consisted of a huge number of squares. The area is overflowing with meaning and symbolism, like a Russian cemetery. Everything is satiated with Being. Japan has ontological architecture.

With Polyakov, we founded a new teaching: the Kyoto-Helsinki ontological teaching, the second root of Eurasia.

Eurasia is Japan-centered in our geometry; so teaches Chiseygaku.

The last evening brought us to the Tokyo’s Near-Moscow-Localities. I noticed almost at once upon my arrival to Japan that it had a Russian sky. But only on the last day before my return did it became clear that near Tokyo there were the grasses and flavours of the Near-Moscow-Localities.

Profuse, abundant, black, bloody saps of the earth, a small island of grass and of Russ plus computer lights of Shinkansen, luminous sky-scrapers, twinkling highways, and neon hieroglyphs blink around. It seems to me, that when a Russian dies, he first finds himself in here and drinks the Japanese beer Kirin, until he understands what is what.

Nikolay-do. Before Whitsunday, Matins are served by the Metropolitan of All Japan himself. The icons are all Russian. On the right from the altar there is a picture: the Russian field, the forest, a Russian beauty stands in a crown, with a halo and with a cross in hand; the saint Olga. On the icon there is a fragment of Russian Shinkoku. The icon of Russian field, the Russian forest: two holographic realities. Somewhere in mediastinum of dream they are bound, interwoven by roots. The roots of Oponskom Tsardom, the construction of the Vladivostok-Hokkaido tunnel, Shinkansen from Tokyo to Berlin.

The words inter-flow in a whole, indivisible stream. In kanji one can not only read and write, but also think – think of a whole piece of world, which is indivisible, complete, pulsating from an over-richness of inner Being.

A thought on Japan is the thought about wholeness.
The red rising heart.
The light of the Orient.
They ought rule again and again.
For all the Pacific sphere to co-succeed.

Part 2. The Geonauts

I have been honoured by the visit of the Japanese professor Shukei Yamaguchi [山口 実]. One more of them. Now they visit me every day. That is the right way; if you start to go on visits, go on. Japanese like density very much, as we Russians do, but in another way.

He asked me to explain what “being a Russian” means.

I answered…

He studied Jung’s heritage, and the director of a Jungian college in Switzerland seemed to give his blessing to him to write a research paper on the classification of basic temperaments (introverted and extraverted ones) by different countries and nations. That is a very good idea.

Yamaguchi was coming to the conclusion that Western peoples are of an extraverted type, while Eastern ones are of introverted type, and in Europe the Germans are relatively introverted (“the thinking, reflecting introverted people”). In his classification, the Russians are the “intuitive introverted people,” the Hindus (like the Germans) are the “reflecting introverted people,” and the Japanese are the “sensual introverted people.”

It is clear that the sphere of “introvertedness” is the mental continent of Eurasia.

Introvertedness gravitates towards inner experience, towards “likeness,” towards “unity,” towards “interfusion.” “The inner world is the world of life,” Yamaguchi said. Speaking with him I made out that he worships Absolute Life. That is the essence of Eurasian worship; the Absolute Life. Hence follow some very important definitions:

“Therefore an introverted person, as he is concerned more with his inner life than with the outside material world, is liable to see reality in some form of all-including unity or interfusion. He likes to feel united with Nature. He would not assert himself, because that would mean that he should be independent or separated from the world or other people. He would try to form a group with friends and tends to submerge himself in it. He does not like to be different from other people. When he has to make judgment, he tends to see reality from the point of view of similarity, not from difference. Thus he is inclined to say first ‘yes,’ but later he often says ‘no,’ much to detriment of his credibility.” (Yamaguchi)

It is a description of us, me, the Russian people, the Japanese people, and all good and interesting people in this world.

Next Yamaguchi described the Japanese psychology. For instance, the O-tsuki-mi rite. It is when the Japanese silently, for hours, look at the moon. Their Unconscious bathes then in the moonlight, is cured and cleaned, as the land washes itself in ocean waters, removing scum. The Japanese thoroughly care for their Unconscious, clean, and nurse it.

Each Japanese sees the Moon from his own angle and it changes colour. This is the practice tamamushi-iro. Things change colour based on on how one looks at them; the colour is the voice of the Psyche. True distinctions arise where through different people the common mysterious beam of light of the Absolute Life, which was married to the nation, radiates.

The Japanese hate to subdue the surrounding world, because they do not distinguish themselves from it. And again professor Yamaguchi gives a surprisingly precise sentence: “The Japanese does not like clear distinction, but tends to leave things in ambiguity.” It is as if we are during the lectures of “the New University” [“Нового Университета”]…

At the lection “The Secret Mother” I gave a definition of the human being, which set the groundwork of new Eurasian anthropology: “A man is an inaccurate movement of the Possible.” By “a human,” I had meant a Russian. As it had become clear, the Japanese meet that definition ideally.

I retold Yamaguchi the story of professor Murata and Kant. He listened to me with the great interest. When I had come to the language, which bridges the abyss between the empirical world and the reason, he suddenly interrupted me, waving his hands in the air: “They are connected through the Absolute Life, which radiates through people and things… Kant is incomprehensible without Bergson and Jung!”

Everything is clear with you, I gave up. And that Japanese, who has been living in the West for more than 20 years, has not understood anything of the world in which he has found himself in. And he will never understand. And thank God! Thank you… This imparts to me great strength for my work. To him too, evidently.

Then the professor asked me to tell him about Russia. I answered: “The most important thing in Russia is geonautics, “land-floating,” the theory of liquid land. We conceive of it as a dense tea, not as a stone. Vapours of land rise and form the land ocean. These are multi-dimensional worlds, breathing in Being. The land, the Russian land, has its own Navier-Stokes equation. The Russians walk on land by their entire body, not by their heels. Therefore the Russians are the aerially introverted people. For them the land is not something firm, but something moist and viscous. The Russians drift on land, that is why they do not understand anything. Except for the Japanese; quite to the contrary, they have an understanding of the Japanese.”

Yamaguchi’s eyes were gleaming, double-gleaming, burning. “And how do the Russians make judgments? Logically? Intuitively? Emotionally? Egoistically?”

“No, none are correct. The Russians make judgments according to principle of maximum stupidity. They choose just what is least reasonable and it will bring them a lot of inconvenience. They evade the choice, sabotage it. Choosing absurdly and not to the point, not what is needed and not when it is needed, they make it clear: your proposal, your conditions of choice are idiotic by themselves. And it is proper to answer idiotism by idiotism. It is the active abstentionism. We just do not want to live along the imposed regulations. We are swimming. The essence of Russia is ironic seriousness; the ironic stupidity. Showing ourselves as fools, we laugh at those who do not consider themselves as such. When a Russian is reading Dostoyevsky, he is dying of laughter; Dostoyevsky is an amazingly laughable author.”

“You don’t say! His works are a distressing drama for us… And what about Russian messianism?”

“It is very important. That messianism is pointed towards the West. It is a messianism of the introvertedness. We, as well as other peoples of the East, are an introverted people, although not passive and natural, but aggressive and preternatural. We march under introvertedness as under a standard, extend it over the world, weigh heavily over the membranes of the West, which we do not like, but, by the way, understand. It may be just because of that, that we dislike it so much.”

“But the Russians are very gifted at the sphere of art, beauty…”

“Yes, but not out of aestheticism. When only three hundred years ago we were imposed upon by the Western culture, which was extroverted in its essence, we chose the least rational, least reasonable in it – the sphere of art, where there is more space for the Irrational. But that was a mere substitute for the real land-floating. Quite a poor one, but we succeeded in it, that is true.”

And then the professor couldn’t stand any more. Interrupting me, he said: “I would like to express my emotions by singing.” In his profile there was a phrase “professional whistler.” When I had first seen it I thought “they call probably flautists that.” No, he was a natural, literal “professional whistler.”

Professor Shukei Yamaguchi began to whistle. It was the autumn whistling, dedicated to the thin spider lines of evening, which noiselessly fly down from the sakura branches. The autumn whistling. He whistled the classic academic whistling, helping himself with his hand. The Japanese national whistling. It stays in my ears, that strange whistle…

 

—————–

Dugin, Alexander. “In the Country of the Rising ‘Do.'” Международное Евразийское Движение, 2001. <http://evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=522 >.

Note: The original Russian version of this article (titled “В стране восходящего ‘До’”) can be found here: <http://www.evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=683 >.

Notes on Resources for further reading:

See also Dugin’s speech at Tokyo University called “New Paradigm of Science,” which deals with religious, scientific, and ontological philosophy, partly addressing Asian perspectives: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/new-paradigm-of-science-dugin/ >.

For further research on Japanese religious beliefs, we suggest the books Shinto: Origins, Rituals, Festivals, Spirits, Sacred Places by C. Scott Littleton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and Shinto: the Kami Way by Sokyo Ono (North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1962).

For research on Japanese literature – which also gives good insight into Japan’s history, culture, and religion – we recommend the following two anthologies, edited by Donald Keene: Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1955), and Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day (New York: Grove Press, 1956).

On the Oskorei blog, Joakim Andersen had written an article titled “Lästips: Nationalism och manga” (“Suggested reading: Nationalism and Manga”, in Swedish),  which can also help understand the attraction that some Right-wingers have towards modern Japanese culture as a superior conservative Pagan culture.

On the idea of “Modernization without Westernization” in Japan and China, see the article “Modernization without westernization is the first step to reject imperialism” by Antonio Grego.

A starting point for further research on Japanese philosophies can be found on the website The Japanese Philosophy Blog.

The official website of Nichibunken (日文研), The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, can be used for research to find numerous resources in Japanese history, culture, religion, society, etc. See the publications search for resources readily available online.

 

Types of Conservatism – Dugin

Types of Conservatism

by Alexander Dugin

 

Introductory Note: While Alexander Dugin’s brief explanations of the various types of conservatism – as seen in this excerpt from his book on Putin – are arguably very limited and provide imperfect descriptions of their basic ideas, his exposition is useful for illustrating differences between the basic types of conservatism; that is, for setting down a basis for key distinctions. In addition, we should note that his explanation here of the basic formula of the Conservative Revolution – while valid to an extent – is not really the ideal formulation. Rather, “Revolutionary Conservatism” as defined by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Armin Mohler (among others) is best seen as the concept of maintaining eternal values and positive traditions, discarding all outdated, negative, and transient customs or values, and accepting positive new values and practices; essentially combining stability and dynamism and combining conservation and revolution. Finally, the full implications of Eurasianism are not entirely clear from Dugin’s brief comments in the final portion of this excerpt. Eurasianism – explained in its briefest form in Dugin’s essay “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy” – is essentially a Russian form of Revolutionary Conservatism (inspired by the original Eurasianists, the German Conservative Revolution, and the European New Right) and which will likely become increasingly important and influential not only in Russia, but in very many Asian and European nations. Furthermore, while some European cultual conservatives may initially be suspicious of Eurasianism on ethnic and cultural terms, its basic principle of recognising the mixed ethno-cultural foundations of Russia (in Slavic, Turkic, and Finno-Ugrian peoples) can be sympathised with from a European conservative perspective, for the majority of European nations are themselves rooted in ancient ethnic mixtures and many European nations have always been composed of multiple ethnic and sub-ethnic groups. At the same time, it is significant that both Eurasianists and European conservatives share in common their opposition to the unrestricted, cosmopolitan mixing of ethnic groups in modern liberal systems. – Daniel Macek (Editor of the “New European Conservative”)

The Essence of Conservatism

Conservatism in its most general sense means a positive attitude towards historical tradition. It holds up the political and social history of a state as a role model, striving to preserve the continuity of the people’s national and cultural roots. The past is viewed by all denominations of conservatism as a positive phenomenon. Not everything in the past is perceived as positive, but a consistent conservative will never deliberately tarnish any period in the history of his people and state.

Moreover, conservatism is based on the premise that the people and the state have a certain historical mission, which can vary from universalist religious messianism to humble awareness of the importance of their national identity. The present, the past and the future in the eyes of a conservative are tied together in a single integral project striving toward a clear national goal. In making any political or economic decision, a conservative always turns to the past and ponders the future. A conservative thinks in terms of landmarks and epochs, disregarding quick profit. His temporal, geographical, and value-related horizon is always broad.

A conservative is a dedicated bearer of national culture and seeks to comply with its norms. A conservative always over-exerts himself: from mandatory prayer to cold showers in the morning. A conservative consistently duty, honour, the public benefit, loyalty to tradition, and his good reputation over comfort, benefit, profit or popularity.

A conservative is reserved and prefers to speak prudently and thoughtfully. A conservative is civil and always has an extra pair of glasses, even if he has perfect eyesight.

A conservative is unsettled by objective reality and carefully selects books for reading. A conservative never considers himself as such.

A conservative smiles, turning up the corners of his mouth, and never expresses himself with his hands.

Anyone who does not comply with these requirements is not a proper conservative, he is just…

Fundamental Conservatism

Conservatism has an underlying philosophy. To be a conservative means to say ‘no’ to what we have now and to express one’s disagreement with the current state of things.

There is fundamental conservatism, which is called traditionalism.

Traditionalism is a form of conservatism that argues that everything is bad in its entirety in today’s world, not just in certain aspects. ‘The idea of progress, technical development, Descartes’ subject-object dualism, Newton’s watchmaker argument, contemporary positivistic science and the education based on it, pedagogics, and what we call modernism and post-modernism – they are all bad.’ A traditionalist likes only what had existed prior to modernism. In the twentieth century, when there seemed to be no social platform left for such conservatism, a constellation of thinkers and philosophers appeared out of nowhere and started to defend, radically and consistently, the traditionalist position: René Guénon, [1] Julius Evola, [2] Titus Burkchardt, [3] Leopold Ziegler [4] and all those known as traditionalists. They proposed a programme of fundamental conservatism, described traditional society as a timeless ideal, and the contemporary world (modernism) and its basic principles as a product of decline, degradation, the mixing of castes, the disintegration of hierarchy, representing a shift of focus from the spiritual to the material, from Heaven to Earth, and from the eternal to the transient. Fundamental conservatives exist today in both the Orthodox and Catholic milieus. They completely reject modernism and believe that religious laws are absolutely relevant, and that the contemporary world and its values are an embodiment of the Antichrist, and which cannot offer anything good in the first place. These tendencies are common among Russian Old Believers. There is still a Paraclete Union in the Urals which does not use electric lighting because it is ‘the light of Lucifer,’ and they use only pine splinters and candles; there are also sects which strictly prohibit coffee. When a group of young people in eighteenth-century Russia started to wear chequered trousers in accordance with the current fashions, the Fedosevans [5] summoned an assembly in the town of Kimry, sometimes called the ‘trousers assembly,’ and discussed whether wearing chequered trousers should be excommunicated. Part of the assembly insisted that they be separated from the community and the other part voted against it.

The US has its own conservative tradition that is naturally based on the priorities of America’s national interests. Marked by a significant degree of messianism (‘the American civilisation is the peak of human history’), American conservatism respects the past and strives to preserve and strengthen the positions of its great country in the future. American conservatives profess loyalty to patriotic values as well as to religious, political, social and cultural norms that were established throughout the course of their historical development. This is natural and, as a consequence, American conservatism is flourishing: the US has achieved incredible power internationally, which makes its citizens justifiably proud and convinced of the righteousness of their ways. In America, fundamental conservatism is professed by a significant share of the republication electorate, and TV programmes which feature Protestant fundamentalists criticising all things modern and postmodern and tearing them to shreds are watched by millions of people…

But the direct emulation of ‘Republican’ American conservatism by Russia yields absurd results: it turns out that what is to be ‘conserved’ are values that are not only foreign to the historical and traditional Russia, but which are basically absent from contemporary Russian society.

Russia is an ancient land-based empire with a strong collectivist spirit, traditionally tough administrative rule and a very specific messianism. The US is a relatively new sea-based entity, intentionally designed as a laboratory experiment for the introduction of ‘progressivist’ bourgeois democratic principles that matured among ultra-Protestant sects. What is valued in the American civilisation is a sin and a disgrace for the Russians. What they respect is disgusting to us, and vice versa.

Russia was moving towards the East and the US was moving towards the West. Yes, they have won and we have lost. They proved to be stronger. But, according to our logic, God is not power, God is the truth. This is what a proper and consistent Russian conservatism says. Obviously, American conservatism says exactly the opposite. Globalism can be both recognised and attacked in the US itself (this is their world domination project; some Americans agree with it and some do not). In Russia, globalism was imposed on us from the outside. We can put up with it and recognise our defeat, and join the American value system. This position is possible, as is collaborationism. But it would be the opposite of conservatism.

All peoples have their own conservatism because each nation develops its own value system, and this constitutes its national identity. The cultural outcome of American history does not have anything in common with the cultural outcome of Russian history. A conservative is always loyal to his traditions, his people and his ideals – not only in their heyday, but also when they are desecrated and despised by all.

Liberal Conservatism

The second type of conservatism is ‘status quo conservatism’ or liberal conservatism. It says ‘yes’ to modernism as today’s main trend, but at each stage of the trend’s implementation it tries to slow it down: ‘Please, slow down, let’s not do it today, let’s postpone it.’ The liberal conservative Fukuyama initially concluded that politics had disappeared and was about to be replaced by the ‘global marketplace’ where nations, states, ethnic groups, cultures and religions would vanish (this is liberalism in its purest form), but then he decided that we should slow down and introduce postmodernism quietly, without revolutions. He wrote that it was necessary to temporarily strengthen the nation-states (in this case, what he is proposing is liberal conservatism).

A liberal conservative is afraid that the accelerated dismantling of modernism, which is taking place within postmodernism, can release pre-modernism. For instance, the former Leftist turned liberal Jürgen Habermas [6] is afraid that postmodernism will destroy the subject, engulf humanity in chaos, and bring back the creepy shadows of tradition.

The Bin Laden character, irrespective of whether he actually existed or was invented by Hollywood, is a caricature of postmodernism collapsing into pre-modernism.

Right-wing Conservatism

If liberal conservatism is nonsensical and just another ‘refuge of a scoundrel’ (Samuel Johnson), [7] Right-wing conservatism, on the contrary, is quite acceptable and natural. In contemporary Russia, a Right-wing conservative is a person who seeks the revival of his motherland’s international imperial greatness, the nation’s economic prosperity and the revival of the moral values and spirituality of the people. He thinkers that this aim can be reached through a competent use of market mechanisms and the system of religious, monarchical, and centralist-leaning values.

Such Right-wing conservatism can focus on cultural-political issues (the consolidation of traditional denominations, the revival of national customs, the restoration of a segment of social, public and political institutions) or on economic aspects. When it comes to economy, a Right-wing conservative project must logically develop in line with the theory of a ‘national economy,’ summed up by the German economist Friedrich List [8] and implemented in Russia by Count Sergei Witte. [9] This project can be called ‘economic nationalism.’ Its extreme formula is roughly as follows: an absolutely free domestic market with a severe customs control system and thorough regulation of foreign economic activity in the interests of domestic entrepreneurship.

A national economy does not involve the nationalisation of large monopolies but insists on the consolidation of large businesses around political authorities with thhe transparent and clear aim of finding a collective solution to facilitate the nation’s mission, the strengthening of the country and the achievement of prosperity for all the nation’s people. It can be achieved via a certain ‘patriotic code,’ which implies the assumption of moral responsibility by national businessmen before the country, people and society. This model in today’s political spectrum roughly corresponds to what is usually called ‘the Right-wing centre.’ It seems that Putin himself prefers the ‘Right-wing’ centre of conservatism to any other type of conservatism.

Left-wing Conservatism

The notion ‘Left-wing’ is usually not associated with conservatism. The Left wants change and the Right wants to conserve the existing state of things. But in Russia’s political history the public sector, which is related to the ‘Left-wing’ value system, has always been extremely significant and developed, and communal factor, both in the form of Orthodox conciliarism [10] and Soviet collectivism, had long become a dependable political and economic tradition. A meaningful combination of socialism and conservatism was already evident in the Russian narodniki (populists) of the nineteenth century, who were devoted to national problems and strove for a fair distribution of material wealth. Left-wing conservatism also existed in other countries: as social Catholicism [11] in France and Latin America, and as German National Bolshevism (Niekisch, [12] Wolffheim, [13] Laufenberg, [14] etc.). A distinctive representative of social conservatism is Georges Sorel, [15] who wrote Reflections on Violence. [16] He argued that Leftists and Rightists (monarchists and Communists) were against one common enemy: the bourgeoisie. Left-wing conservatism is close to the Russian National Bolshevism of N. Ustryalov, [17] who identified Russian national myths in Left-wing Marxist ideology.

In contemporary Russian politics, social (Left-wing) conservatism is fully legitimate. Russian Left-wing conservatives seek to preserve Russia’s civilisational values, strengthen our geopolitical power and bring about a national revival. Left-wing conservatives believe that the best way to implement this mission is through the nationalisation of mineral resources and large private companies engaged in the export of natural resources, as well as by increasing government control in the spheres of energy, transport, communications, and so on. Such social conservatism can insist on the legitimacy and the natural character of the Soviet approach, viewing it as part of the general national dialectics. Another trend is so-called social conservatism, which can be considered as a sub-family of the Conservative Revolution. Both Left-wing and Right-wing conservatism, by definition, must have common ultimate aim: the revival of statehood, the preservation of national identity, the international rise of Russia, and loyalty to our cultural roots. The approaches toward achieving this common goal, however, differ between the two schools of thought.

Conservative Revolution

There is yet another, and very interesting, type of conservatism. It is usually referred to as the Conservative Revolution, and it dialectically links conservatism with modernism. This trend was adopted by Martin Heidegger, Ernst and Friedrich Jünger, [18] Carl Schmitt, [19] Oswald Spengler, [20] Werner Sombart, [21] Othmar Spann, [22] Friedrich Hielscher, [23] Ernst Niekisch, and others.

The philosophical paradigm of the conservative revolutionary stems from the general conservative view of the world as an objective process of degradation, which reaches its peak with modernism (a view shared by traditionalism). But, unlike the traditionalists, conservative revolutionaries think: why does God, who created this world, ultimately turn a blind eye to evil, and why do God’s enemies win? One might suspect that the beautiful Golden Age, which fundamental conservatives defend, already contained a gene that brought this degradation. Then the conservative revolutionaries say to the fundamental conservatives: ‘You propose to go back to the state when man only suffered from the initial symptoms of the illness, a hacking cough, and talk about how well-off man was back then, when today this same man is on his deathbed. You merely contrast a coughing man with a dying man. Conservative revolutionaries was to find out how the infection itself originated and why the man started to cough…’ ‘We believe,’ the conservative revolutionaries say, ‘in God and in Providence. But we think the original source, God Himself, the Divine Source, contains the intention to organise this eschatological drama.’ With this vision, modernism acquires a paradoxical character. It is not just an illness of today’s world, but a discovery in today’s world of a phenomenon which began to take root in the very same past that is so dear to traditionalists. Modernism is not improved as a result of this realisation by the conservative revolutionaries, while tradition loses its decisive positivity.

The basic formula of the Conservative Revolutionary Arthur Moeller van den Bruck is, ‘The conservatives used to try to stop the revolution, but now we must lead it.’ It means that in joining, modernism’s destructive tendencies, in part out of pragmatism, one must identify and recognise the germ that served as the initial cause of its destructive tendencies – namely, modernism itself. Then the conservative must carefully and permanently root it out of existence and, in doing so, bring about God’s secret, parallel, additional, and subtle design. The conservative revolutionaries want not only to slow time down as do liberal conservatives or to go back to the past like traditionalists, but to tear out the root of all evil in the world’s fundamental structure.

The Conservative Choice

Contemporary Russian conservatism must be simultaneously non-Communist (the Communist dogma has always denied the fact that the Soviet regime was a continuation of Tsarism and treated recent democratic reforms in an extremely negative light), non-liberal (liberalism is too revolutionary and insists on a radical break from both the Soviet past and the Tsarist legacy), and non-monarchic (monarchism wants to exclude both the Soviet and the recent liberal democratic periods from national history).

The peculiarity of Russian political life in the twenty-first century is that its main stages have been direct and severe opposition to each other and succeeded each other not through natural continuity, but through revolutions and radical disruptions. This seriously challenges the formula of contemporary Russian conservatism: the continuity and identity of Russia and the Russian people are not plainly visible on society’s surface; in order to establish consistent conservative views, one must make an effort that will raise us to the level of a new historical, political, civilisational and national consolidation. Contemporary Russian conservatism is not a given, but a task to be undertaken.

Consistent Russian conservatism must combine the historical and geographical layers of our national existence. I would like to remind you that, during the very first years of Soviet rule, the Eurasianists insisted on the civilisational continuity of the USSR in relation of the Russian Empire.

Contemplating contemporary Russian conservatism is basically contemplating Eurasianism, which is a synthesis of Russian political history on the basis of a unique geopolitical and civilisational methodology. Russia, viewed as Eurasia, reveals its permanent essence and its historical identity – form the mosaic of Slavic, Turkic and Ugrian tribes through Kievan Rus’ [24] and Muscovy to the great continental empire, first ‘white’ and then ‘red,’ to today’s democratic Russia, which is a little indecisive but is now pulling herself together for a new historical leap.

I am convinced that political history will very soon force us to clarify our positions and polish our rhetoric to make it more precise. We have no choice but conservatism: we will be pushed towards it from the outside, as well as from within. But what shall we do with the spirit of revolution, the will, the blazing flame of rebellion which secretly languishes in the Russian heart and disturbs our sleep, inviting us to follow it to faraway lands? I think that we should invest our continental strength in a new conservative project. And let ibe the new edition of our Revolution, the Conservative Revolution, the National Revolution in the name of a big dream…

Notes

[1] René Guénon (1886-1951) was a French writer who founded what has come to be known as the traditionalist school of religious thought. Traditionalism calls for a rejection of the modern world and its philosophies in favour of a return to the spirituality and ways of living of the past. His central works are The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. –Ed.

[2] Julius Evola (1898-1974) was the most important Italian member of the traditionalist school, which is to say that he opposed modernity in favour of an approach to life consistent with the teachings of the ancient sacred texts. His main work is Revolt Against the Modern World. –Ed.

[3] Titus Burkchardt (1908-1984) was a Swiss German art historian who also participated in the traditionalist school. –Ed.

[4] Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958) was a German philosopher. Although not strictly part of the traditionalist school, his thought did bear similarities to theirs, and he was in contact with representative of the school as well as with the Conservative Revolutionaries. –Ed.

[5] A congregation of Old Believers. –A.D.

[6] Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) is a German Marxist philosopher. –Ed.

[7] Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was an English poet and essayist. According to his friend and biographer James Boswell, Johnson once said, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.’ –Ed.

[8] Friedrich von List (1789-1846) was a German philosopher and economist. –Ed.

[9] Sergei Witte (1849-1915) was an advisor to the last two Tsars of Russia. He oversaw the industrialisation of Russia and was the author of the 1905 October Manifesto, which was written in response to the Revolution of 1905 and the subsequent need for democratic reforms, and was the precursor to the Russian Empire’s constitution. –Ed.

[10] Conciliarism in Orthodoxy refers to the belief that the Church should be governed by a council of bishops, rather by a single one. –Ed.

[11] Catholic social teaching addresses issues related to social justice, opposing capitalism and socialism in favour of distributism. It originated in Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum encyclical of 1891. –Ed.

[12] Ernst Niekisch (1889-1967) was a German politician who was initially a Communist, but by the 1920s sought to merge Communism with nationalism. He published a journal, Widerstand [Resistance], and applied the term National Bolshevik to himself and his followers. He rejected National Socialism as insufficiently socialist, and was imprisoned by them in 1937, and was blinded under torture. Upon his release in 1945, he supported the Soviet Union and moved to East Germany, but became disillusioned by the Soviets’ treatment of workers and returned to the West in 1953. –Ed.

[13] Fritz Wolffheim (1888-1942), a Communist, was one of the first o develop the idea of National Bolshevism in 1919. He later became involved with a nationalist organisation called the League for the Study of German Communism, which included some National Socialists, although Wolffheim, being of Jewish descent, was unable to make much of these connections. He was imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1936 and died there. –Ed.

[14] Heinrich Laufenberg (1872-1932) was a former Communist who was one of the first politicians to formulate National Bolshevism in Germany in 1919. –Ed.

[15] Georges Sorel (1847-1922) was a French philosopher who began as a Marxist and later developed Revolutionary Syndicalism. He advocated the use of myth and organised violence in revolutionary movements. He was influential upon both the Communist and Fascist movements. –Ed.

[16] Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). –Ed.

[17] Nikolai Ustrialov (1890-1937) was a professor and Slavophile who fled the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution and joined the anti-Soviet White movement. Originally opposed to Communism, he later sought a fusion of elements of Soviet Communism with Russian nationalism. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1935, believing that National Bolshevik ideas were becoming more acceptable, but was charged with espionage and executed in 1937, during the Great Purge. –Ed.

[18] Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was one of the most prominent of the German Conservative Revolutionaries, but that was only one phase in a long and varied career. He volunteered for and fought in the German Army throughout the First World War, and was awarded the highest decoration, the Pour le Mérite, for his service. After the war, he wrote many books and novels, was active in German politics, experimented with psychedelic drugs, and travelled the world. He remained ambivalent about National Socialism at first, but never joined the Party, and he had turned against the Nazis by the late 1930s. He rejoined the Wehrmacht at the outbreak of war, however, and remained in Paris as a captain, where he spent more time with Picasso and Cocteau than enforcing the occupation. His objections to the Nazis were influential upon the members of the Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, which led to his dismissal from the Wehrmacht. After the war, Jünger’s political views gradually moved toward a sort of aristocratic anarchism. His brother, Friedrich Jünger (1898-1977) was also a veteran of the First World War and participated in the Conservative Revolution, and also became a writer and philosopher. –Ed.

[19] Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) was an important German jurist who wrote about political science, geopolitics and constitutional law. He was part of the Conservative Revolutionary movement of the Weimar era. He also briefly supported the National Socialists at the beginning of their regime, although they later turned against him. He remains highly influential in the fields of law and philosophy. –Ed.

[20] Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) was a German philosopher who is regarded as one of the principal Conservative Revolutionary figures of the Weimar period in Germany. His most important work was his two-volume 1922/23 book, The Decline of the West, in which he theorised that all civilisations go through an inevitable cycle of ages of rise and decline in power, with the present age of the West currently entering its declining period. –Ed.

[21] Werner Sombart (1863-1941) was a German economist and sociologist who was very much opposed to capitalism and democracy. –Ed.

[22] Othmar Spann (1878-1950) was an Austrian Catholic philosopher and economist who held neoconservative views based on the ideals of German Romanticism. He is credited with developing the idea of the corporate state, which was soon to become so integral to Fascism, and which Spann believed could be applied everywhere for the benefit of humanity. In spite of this, he did not support National Socialism, and he was imprisoned after the Anschluss in 1938 and forbidden to teach at the University of Vienna (where he had taught since 1919). He attempted to return to teaching after 1945, but was again rejected. –Ed.

[23] Friedrich Hielscher (1902-1990) was a German thinker who was involved in the Conservative Revolution and who was an active neo-pagan throughout his life. He participated in the anti-Nazi resistance during the Third Reich. –Ed.

[24] Kievan Rus was a loose tribal confederation that had its capital in Kiev, and from which the modern-day states of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are descended. It last from the tenth until the thirteenth centuries. –Ed.

—————

Excerpts from: Dugin, Alexander. Putin vs. Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right, pp. 145-157. London: Arktos, 2014. (See this article in PDF format here: Types of Conservatism).

 

Roots of Identity – Dugin

Roots of Identity

By Alexander Dugin

Translated by Nina Kouprianova

 

Translator’s Note: Contemporary Russian philosopher and Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin is no stranger to controversy. He’s been labelled by the Western media as “Putin’s brain” as well as vilified as a “fascist,” a claim especially ironic given that Washington is actively supporting self-described fascists in Ukraine to advance its strategic agenda in Eurasia and considering the fact that his book, The Fourth Political Theory, explicitly renounces fascism (along with communism and liberalism). According to establishment commentators, anyone who rejects Enlightenment liberalism is somehow a dark-age fascist, except, of course, for jihadists in Syria and the Right Sector in Ukraine – they’re freedom fighters, we’re told. Far from exhibiting any “craziness,” Dugin’s following analysis is both incisive and sympathetic, showing a deep understanding of the gradations to be found in questions of identity between Russia and Ukraine.

***

In order to analyze a series of new tendencies in politics linked to the growth of the identity factor more accurately, I suggest the following methodological approach, which explains the three levels of collective identity in societies.

1. Diffuse identity. The overwhelming majority of society’s members possess this type of an identity as a vague and, most often, subconscious perception of one’s unity, belonging to a people, history, state, language, and religion. Diffuse identity almost never dominates daily life, being secondary or even tertiary as compared to an individual’s identity. For the carriers of diffuse identity, it is characteristic to prioritize one’s “I,” comfort, feelings, sentiments, and safety, followed by one’s family and friends. Only afterward comes vague comprehension of belonging to specifically this (and no other) society, people, etc. Under normal circumstances, diffuse identity does not call for any special actions, is perceived weakly, and its carriers may not even have any idea about its contents and structures. It awakens only in exceptional cases: wars, conflicts, political cataclysms, or, at times, in the form of successes in sporting events on the part of one’s homeland or some other significant achievements. Diffuse identity does not encourage one to belong to a certain party and can describe those with very different worldviews and ideologies.

2. Extreme identity. This form is characteristic of those that are focused on collective identity as a priority. They do not simply feel it acutely, but also attempt to grasp it and give it shape. The carriers of extreme identity form patriotic or nationalistic (identitarian) ideologies turning identity into the greatest value, use it as the basis for political programs and projects. Extreme identity is constructed over the diffuse version, but emphasizes only certain parts thereof in a rather exaggerated, intense form. Therefore, the carriers of diffuse identity often fail to recognize themselves in the carriers of its extreme variant: the structures are different in both cases. By exacerbating certain aspects of diffuse identity, the carriers of extreme identity (“nationalists”) often lose sight of other aspects thereof or distort them. Diffuse identity is natural and organic, whereas extreme identity is artificial, constructed, and mechanical. Extreme identity is more common during the times of collective stress, national catastrophes, war, and so on.

3. Deep-rooted identity. The third form of collective identity is a conscious intellectual paradigm of the kind of an identity that undergoes diffusion during its projection onto the masses. If diffuse identity is a product of dissemination, then deep-rooted identity is that which undergoes dissemination, the core of a people’s spirit, hieroglyph of history, existential center of a people’s and society’s Being. This deep-rooted identity may be discovered by philosophers, myths, prophets, focused not on construction, projection, and political manipulation (like the carriers of extreme identity), but on finding, releasing, and expressing a people’s spirit per se rather than the way it is imagined. Therefore, deep-rooted identity is not a structure over diffuse identity, but rather its basis, root (radix), its foundation. Deep-rooted identity is an Idea making a particular society into what it is, a people into what they are, a culture into a culture, and a civilization into a civilization. It fans out diffusely through generations and masses, always maintaining its uniqueness and freshness. Extreme identity is always relative, individual, and conditional. Deep-rooted identity is absolute, universal—within the framework of a particular society—and does not depend on individual expression. Extreme identity is a particular product of diffuse identity. Deep-rooted identity precedes diffuse identity and functions as a spiritual power constituting it.

This analysis is extremely relevant for developing an accurate comprehension of the growth of nationalism in today’s world.

In Russia, diffuse identity (patriotism) is currently on the rise. It is focused on the state and Putin, specifically, especially after Crimea. The Olympics helped cultivate and revitalize these particular forms.

A broad range of Russian nationalist movements represents extreme identity. They are disparate, offer their own particular formulation of nationalism, led by vain and incoherent leaders, fighting among themselves and having no support from those who possess diffuse identity.

Deep-rooted identity is at the center for those who are sincerely occupied by searching for the Russian Idea not as an artificial ideological construct but as a deeply spiritual foundation.

What we see in Ukraine is the opposite, i.e., the growth of extreme identity in the caricatured “Banderite” Western Ukrainian form. This model distorts natural diffuse identity completely—ignoring deep-rooted identity and attempting to impose this artificial construct onto all Ukrainians—despite the fact that the structures of diffuse identity and deep-rooted identity at its base have little in common with it. This remark prioritizes the following question: what is the Ukrainian Idea? It is not a Banderite caricature, not vague, diffuse nationalism, but neither is it the Great Russian Orthodox-Imperial or nostalgic Soviet understanding of the Ukrainian problem. In the face of the catastrophic events and the ongoing schism in Ukraine, this may seem like an excessively abstract observation. The search for the deep-rooted identity in Ukraine, the comprehension of the Ukrainian Idea, its “evocation” are, on the contrary, a paramount challenge.

The same applies to Europe, in which we witness the rise of the identitarian wave. Diffuse nationalism of European communities is growing despite the anti-national Liberal politics of European elites. As a result, there is also a rise in extreme identity represented by nationalist and, at times, openly neo-Nazi groups and movements. But amid all this, we cannot overlook the greatest problem: the question of Europe’s deep-rooted identity. After all, Ukraine revealed an entire series of problems, questions, and challenges of colossal historic importance. They stand far beyond the framework of Ukraine’s situation specifically or Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Today, it is identity that is at the center of all most acute contemporary problems in Europe and beyond.

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Dugin, Alexander. “Roots of Identity.” The Soul of the East, 16 May 2014. <http://souloftheeast.org/2014/05/16/roots-of-identity/ >.

 

Vision of a Multipolar World – Tudor

The Vision of a Multipolar World

(Excerpt from “The Philosophy of Identity”)

By Lucian Tudor

 

The theory of a multipolar world has been increasingly popularized in recent times by Alexander Dugin, to whom it is widely attributed.[61] However, it should be remembered that this concept has a longer history, and can be found not only in the thought of other Russian thinkers, but also explicitly in the works of Carl Schmitt and Alain de Benoist, and more implicitly in the works of certain Identitarians such as Pierre Krebs.[62]

The theory of a multipolar world is grounded, in great part, in Carl Schmitt’s ideas in The Nomos of the Earth. In this work, the first nomos refers to the pre-colonial order which was marked by the isolation of nations from each other. The second nomos was the global order of sovereign nation-states established upon the Age of Discovery. The third nomos was the “bipolar” order established after World War II, where the world was divided into two poles (Communist or Soviet and Western or American). With the end of the Cold War, the “unipolar moment” occurred in history, where the United States became the only dominating superpower, and in which the “Western” liberal model spread its influence across the entire Earth. The fourth nomos has not yet developed: it is an open question where, increasingly, the options become either the hegemony of a single power and model (currently the Western one) or the creation of a multipolar world.[63]

The theory of the multipolar world is marked by a rejection of the “West,” which, it must be emphasized, is not a reference to Western European civilization as a whole, but a specific formulation of Western European civilization founded upon liberalism, egalitarianism, and individualism. Alexander Dugin and the present-day Eurasianists, in a manner almost identical to that of the Identitarians, distinguish the liberal “West” from true European culture, posing Europe and the West as two antagonistic entities.[64] Due to globalism and Western cultural imperialism, the system of the liberal “West,” in contrast to traditional European culture, has increasingly harmed not only the identities of European peoples, but also numerous non-European peoples: “The crisis of identity . . . has scrapped all previous identities—civilizational, historical, national, political, ethnic, religious, cultural, in favor of a universal planetary Western-style identity—with its concept of individualism, secularism, representative democracy, economic and political liberalism, cosmopolitanism and the ideology of human rights.”[65] Thus, both the Western European Identitarians and Eurasianists advocate the idea of a genuine Europe which allies with non-Europeans to combat the “Western” system:

Both the French New Right as well as the Russian one advocate a decentralized federal Europe (to a Europe of a hundred flags) and, beyond the Westernized idea of Europe, for a Eurasian Empire formed by ethnocultural regions, putting a view on countries of the Third World which supposedly embody the primitive and original communities, traditional and rooted, which are ultimately conceived as natural allies against the New World Order homogenizer of the universal, egalitarian, and totalitarian liberalism.[66]

The vision of the multipolar world means combating and putting an end to the ideological hegemony of liberalism (as well as its concomitants, individualism, egalitarianism, universalism, and globalism) and to the economic and political hegemony of the West. Multipolarity means that each country and civilization is given the right and freedom to choose its own destiny, to affirm its own unique cultural and ethnic identity, to choose its own form of politics and economics, and to possess its own sovereign existence, free from the hegemony of others. This means that in the multipolar world, each nation has the right to determine their own policies and to join or remain independent from a federalist or imperial state, just as it also means that larger and more powerful states (superpowers) do not have the right to interfere in the affairs of other countries and civilizations.

According to Dugin, “Multi-polarity should be based on the principle of equity among the different kinds of political, social and economic organisations of these nations and states. Technological progress and a growing openness of countries should promote dialogue amongst, and the prosperity of, all peoples and nations. But at the same time it shouldn’t endanger their respective identities.”[67] Part of multipolar theory is the importance of a process called “modernization without Westernization,” whereby the various non-Western peoples of the world scientifically and technologically advance without combining progress with the adoption of the cosmopolitan liberal Western model and without losing their unique cultural identity. Thus, the values of traditional society can be reconciled with what is positive in modern progress to create a new social and cultural order where the basically negative “modernity” is overcome, thus achieving the envisioned “postmodernity.” This model is, of course, also offered to Western European nations as well.[68]

In the multipolar scheme, the true Europe (grounded in the heritage of Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Latin, Slavic, and other traditions) rises to take its place among the other cultures of the world. Each culture will overcome the individualist, cosmopolitan, and universalist West, reassert its own identity, and establish a secure world order where each respects the identity of the other; the universum will be vanquished to create a pluriversum. At its foundation, the theory of the multipolar world means the restoration and defense of ethnocultural identities in the world and defending the values of tradition, ethnos, spirituality, and community.

Therefore, it implies allowing different peoples (ethnic groups, cultures, races) to live autonomously in their own territories and to resist mixing. This further means encouraging the cooperation between all peoples to achieve this world order and to resolve the problems caused by the liberal-egalitarian and globalist system (such as the problems of immigration and “multiculturalism”) in the most practical and humane way. For that reason, the theory of the multipolar world is not only compatible with Identitarianism, it is an essential part of it; Multipolarism and Identitarianism are two sides of the same coin. The ultimate international mission of the Identitarian movement is the creation of a multipolar world order—a world in which, as Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier declared, we will see “the appearance of thousands of auroras, i.e., the birth of sovereign spaces liberated from the domination of the modern.”[69]

Notes:

[61] Alexander Dugin’s most famous work in this regard is Теория многополярного мира (Мoscow: Евразийское движение, 2012). We should note that this work is currently more accessible to a Western European audience through its French translation: Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013). Explanations of the theory of the multipolar world can also be found in German in Dugin, Konflikte der Zukunft: Die Rückkehr der Geopolitik (Kiel: Arndt-Verlag, 2014), and in Spanish in ¿Qué es el eurasismo? Una conversación de Alain de Benoist con Alexander Dugin (Tarragona: Ediciones Fides, 2014), which is the Spanish translation of L’appel de l’Eurasie (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2013).

[62] See for example Alain de Benoist, Carl Schmitt Today: Terrorism, “Just” War, and the State of Emergency (London: Arktos, 2013), 104, and Krebs, Fighting for the Essence, 20–30. Concerning other Russian thinkers, see Leonid Savin’s comments on multipolar theory in the interview with Robert Steuckers’s Euro-Synergies: “Establish a Multipolar World Order: Interview with Mr. Leonid Savin of the International Eurasian Movement,” Euro-Synergies, March 25, 2013, http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2013/03/22/interview-with-mr-leonid-savin.html.

[63] See Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos, 2003).

[64] Concerning the views of the Identitarians, see: Alain de Benoist, “The ‘West’ Should Be Forgotten,” The Occidental Observer, April 21, 2011, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/04/the-%e2%80%9cwest%e2%80%9d-should-be-forgotten/; Guillaume Faye, “Cosmopolis: The West As Nowhere,” Counter-Currents Publishing, July 6, 2012, http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/07/cosmopolis/; Tomislav Sunic, “The West against Europe,” The Occidental Observer, June 2, 2013, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/06/the-west-against-europe/; Krebs, Fighting for the Essence, 31ff. Concerning Dugin’s views in particular, see his approving reference to Benoist’s distinction between Europe and the West in “Counter-Hegemony in Theory of Multi-Polar World,” The Fourth Political Theory, n.d., http://www.4pt.su/en/content/counter-hegemony-theory-multi-polar-world.

[65] Alexander Dugin, “Civilization as Political Concept: Interview with Alexander Dugin by Natella Speranskaya,” Euro-Synergies, June 13, 2012, http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2012/06/09/civilization-as-political-concept.html.

[66] Jesús J. Sebastián, “Alexander Dugin: la Nueva Derecha Rusa, entre el Neo-Eurasianismo y la Cuarta Teoría Política,” Elementos: Revista de Metapolítica para una Civilización Europea, no. 70 (May 2014): 7. http://issuu.com/sebastianjlorenz/docs/elementos_n___70._dugin.

[67] Alexander Dugin, “The Greater Europe Project,” Open Revolt, December 24, 2011, http://openrevolt.info/2011/12/24/the-greater-europe-project/.

[68] A good overview of the theory of the multipolar world can be found in English in Alexander Dugin, “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern,” Journal of Eurasian Affairs 2, no. 1 (2014): 8–12, and “Multipolarism as an Open Project,” Journal of Eurasian Affairs 1, no. 1 (2013): 5–14. This journal is issued online at http://www.eurasianaffairs.net/.

[69] Benoist and Champetier, Manifesto for a European Renaissance, 14.

 

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Excerpt from: Tudor, Lucian. “The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 108-112.  This essay was also republished in Lucian Tudor’s book, From the German Conservative Revolution to the New Right: A Collection of Essays on Identitarian Philosophy (Santiago, Chile: Círculo de Investigaciones PanCriollistas, 2015).

 

Organic Democracy – Tudor

Identity and Politics: Organic Democracy

(Excerpt from “The Philosophy of Identity”)

By Lucian Tudor

 

Translations: Ελληνικά

Identitarians distinguish between different forms of democracy, some of which can be said to be more validly democratic than others. Alain de Benoist has distinguished between three forms of democracy corresponding to the French Revolutionary motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” The first, “liberal democracy,” is based on liberal, egalitarian, and individualist ideology; it is focused on the individual as a self-interested being, is inseparable from the individualist ideology of human rights, and is characterized by the principle of “one person, one vote.” The second form is “egalitarian democracy” or “popular democracy,” based on the principle of equality and manifested itself in the totalitarian regimes of the nationalist or socialist (particularly Marxist) type. The third form of democracy is based on the principle of fraternity and is known as “organic democracy,” which, as we shall see, is regarded by Identitarians as being the only true democracy.

Organic democracy is primarily defined not by fraternity as a “universal brotherhood” (which is impossible and is based on a false, egalitarian notion of humanity), but on fraternity in the sense of ethnic solidarity and a sense of collective meaning grounded in a shared heritage: “The only ‘families’ in which genuinely ‘fraternal’ relations may be entertained are cultures, peoples and nations. Fraternity, therefore, can serve as the basis for both solidarity and social justice, for both patriotism and democratic participation.”[54] Because true democracy is essentially non-totalitarian and is based on respecting the principle of liberty, it is also, in a sense, pluralistic, allowing the existence of groups representing differing opinions and ideas. However, as Benoist points out, this does not at all justify the notion of establishing a “pluralist” society in the ethnic sense (the liberal multiculturalists’ conclusion):

The way in which the political rights assigned as a guarantee to the opposition are commonly assimilated to the rights from which social minorities wish to benefit is itself problematic: for political categories cannot always be transposed on a social level. This may lead to a serious failure to distinguish between citizen minorities and non-citizen groups installed—whether temporarily or not—in the same land as the former. “Pluralism” may here be used as a rather specious argument to justify the establishment of a “multicultural” society that severely threatens national and folk identity, while stripping the notion of the people of its essential meaning.[55]

Alongside the foundation in ethnic community, organic democracy is also defined by participation: “Democracy is a people’s [Volkes] participation in its own destiny,” to reference Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s words.[56] For that reason, a purely representative democracy is regarded as an incomplete democracy: only a participatory democracy in which the entire citizenry can take part in decision-making is a true democracy. Finally, addressing the anti-democratic arguments made by most Traditionalists, Benoist has also pointed out that democracy does not necessarily reject hierarchy. Political equality among citizens of a state does not mean regarding each of them as equal in any other sense, and organic democracy, at its essence, is perfectly reconcilable with the values of hierarchy, aristocracy, and authority, although in a unique manner differing from absolute monarchies.[57]

To support their advocacy of democracy and to counter the claim that democracy is a modern invention, a common theme in Identitarian and New Right works is the reference to ancient democracy, which has taken on participatory, representative, and various mixed forms. It is typical for Identitarians to reference examples of democracy specifically from Western European history, such as that of the ancient Germans or Greeks, although historical examples could also be found in many Eastern societies, even in entirely non-European societies (ancient Asiatic, Native American, etc.). Democracy clearly has a solid historical basis, for, to quote Benoist once more,

Democratic regimes or tendencies can be found throughout history. . . . Whether in Rome, in the Iliad, in Vedic India or among the Hittites, already at a very early date we find the existence of popular assemblies for both military and civil organisation. Moreover, in Indo-European society the King was generally elected.[58]

Alexander Dugin has also cited the history of organic democracy in Russian and “Eurasian” history, including the examples of the ancient Slavic Veche (equivalent to the Germanic Thing) and Orthodox priestly democracy.[59] Whatever the example, ancient democracy has almost always taken on organic forms based on respect for ethnic differences. Thus, Benoist rightly denounces liberal and egalitarian democracies as being only pseudo-democratic or entirely undemocratic:

Democracy means the power of the people, which is to say the power of an organic community that has historically developed in the context of one or more given political structures—for instance a city, nation, or empire. . . . Every political system which requires the disintegration or levelling of peoples in order to operate—or the erosion of individuals’ awareness of belonging to an organic folk community—is to be regarded as undemocratic.[60]

Notes:

[54] Alain de Benoist, The Problem of Democracy (London: Arktos, 2011), 99.

[55] Ibid., 66.

[56] See Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Germany’s Third Empire (London: Arktos, 2012), 15.

[57] See Benoist, The Problem of Democracy, 17. See also the chapter “A Defence of Democracy” in this same work.

[58] Ibid., 14–15.

[59] See the chapter “Органическая демократия” in Alexander Dugin, Консервативная революция (Moscow: Арктогея, 1994). We have especially relied on the online version for this research, published at Арктогея, December 1, 2002 (http://www.arcto.ru/article/38; accessed September 1, 2014). We could add to these examples the democratic practices of many of the ancient peoples of the Baltic, including the Scythians, the Sarmatians, and the Dacians (in modern-day Romania); see Ion Grumeza, Dacia: Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2009), 46, 129, 132.

[60] Benoist, The Problem of Democracy, 103.

 

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Excerpt from: Tudor, Lucian. “The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 106-108. This essay was also republished in Lucian Tudor’s book, From the German Conservative Revolution to the New Right: A Collection of Essays on Identitarian Philosophy (Santiago, Chile: Círculo de Investigaciones PanCriollistas, 2015).