Interview with Dominique Venner – Gérard

An Interview with Dominique Venner

Translated by Giuliano Adriano Malvicini

 

Translator’s Note: The following is an interview with Dominique Venner from 2001, originally published on the occasion of the release of his book Dictionnaire amoureux de la chasse. It seems fitting, as a last farewell, to let Dominique Venner himself speak.

***

Christopher Gérard: Who are you? How do you define yourself? A werewolf, a white falcon?

Dominique Venner: I am a Frenchman of Europe, or a European whose mother tongue is French, of Celtic and Germanic ancestry. On my father’s side, I am of old Lorraine peasant stock, but they originally emigrated from the German part of Switzerland in the seventeenth century. My mother’s family, many of whom chose military careers, is originally from Provence and Vivarais. I myself was born in Paris. I am a European by ancestry, but birth isn’t enough on its own, if one doesn’t possess the consciousness of being what one is. I exist only through roots, through a tradition, a history, a territory. I will add that I was destined to dedicate myself to arms. Certainly, there is a trace of that in the steel in my pen, the instrument of my profession of writer and historian. Should I add to this brief portrait the epithet of werewolf? Why not? A terror to “right-minded” people, an initiate of the mysteries of the forest, the werewolf is a figure in which I can recognize myself.

CG: In Le Cœur rebelle (The Rebellious Heart, 1994), you sympathetically evoke the memory of “an intolerant young man who carried within himself, as it were, the scent of a coming storm”: that was you when you fought first as a soldier in Algeria and then as political activist in France. So who was that young Kshatriya, where did he come from, who were his teachers, his favourite authors?

DV: That’s what the “white falcon” in your first question alluded to, the memory of intoxicating and dangerous times, during which the young man I was thought he could invert a hostile destiny through a violence that he had accepted as necessary. It may seem extremely presumptuous, but at the time, I didn’t recognize anyone as a teacher. Certainly, I looked for stimulus and recipes for action in Lenin’s What is to be Done? and in Ernst von Salomon’s The Outlaws. I might add that the readings of my childhood had contributed to forging a certain world-view that in the end remained rather unchanged. In no particular order, I’ll mention Military Education and Discipline Among the Ancients, a small book about Sparta that belonged to my maternal grandfather, a former officer, The Legend of the Eagle by Georges d’Esparbès, La Bande des Ayaks by Jean-Louis Foncine, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and later the admirable Martin Eden. Those were the formative books I read at the age of ten or twelve. Later, at the age of twenty or twenty-five, I had of course gone on to read other things, but the bookstores back then were poorly stocked. Those years were a time of intellectual penury that is hard to imagine today. The library of a young activist, even one who devoured books, was small. In mine, besides historical works, prominent works were Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel, The Conquerors by Malraux, The Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche, Service inutile by Montherlant, and Le Romantisme fasciste by Paul Sérant, which was a revelation for me in the sixties. As you can see, that didn’t go very far. But even if my intellectual horizons were limited, my instincts went deep. Very early, when I was still a soldier, I felt that the war in Algeria was something very different from what the naive defenders of “French Algeria” said or thought. I had understood that it was an identitarian struggle for Europeans, since in Algeria they were threatened in their very existence by an ethnic adversary. I also felt that what we were defending there — very poorly — were the southern frontiers of Europe. Frontiers are always defended against invasions on the other side of oceans and rivers.

CG: In this book, which is something of an autobiography, you write: “I am from the land of trees and forests, of oaks and wild boars, of vineyards and sloping roofs, of epic poems and fairy-tales, of the winter and summer solstices.” What sort of a strange fellow are you?

DV: Very briefly stated, I am too consciously European to in any way feel like a spiritual descendant of Abraham or Moses, but do I feel that I am entirely a descendant of Homer, Epictetus, and the Round Table. That means that I look for my bearings in myself, close to my roots, and not in faraway places that are entirely foreign to me. The sanctuary where I meditate is not the desert, but the deep and mysterious forest of my origins. My holy book is not the Bible, but the Iliad, [1] the founding poem of the Western psyche, which has miraculously and victoriously crossed the sea of time. A poem that draws from the same sources as the Celtic and Germanic legends, and manifests the same spirituality, if one goes to the trouble to decode it. Nevertheless, I don’t ignore the centuries of Christianity. The cathedral of Chartres is a part of my world as much as Stonehenge or the Parthenon. That’s the heritage that we have to make our own. The history of the Europeans isn’t simple. After thousands of years of indigenous religion, Christianity was imposed on us through a series of historical accidents. But Christianity was itself partially transformed, “barbarized” by our ancestors, the barbarians, Franks and others. Christianity was often thought of by them as a transposition of the old cults. Behind the saints, people continued to celebrate the old gods without asking too many questions. And in the monasteries, monks often copied ancient texts without necessarily censoring them. This continuation of pre-Christian Europe still goes on today, but it takes other forms, despite all the efforts of biblical sermonizing. It seems especially important to take into account the development of Catholic traditionalists, who are often islands of health opposing the surrounding chaos with their robust families, their numerous children and their groups of physically fit youths. Their adherence to the continuity of family and nation, to discipline in education, the importance they place on standing firm in the face of adversity are of course things that are in no way specifically Christian. They are the residue of the Roman and Stoic heritage which the church had more or less carried on until the beginning of the twentieth century. On the other hand, individualism, contemporary cosmopolitanism, and the religion of guilt are, of course, secularized forms of Christianity, as are the extreme anthropocentrism and the desacralization of nature in which I see a source of a Faustian modernity gone mad, and for which we will have to pay a heavy price.

CG: In Le Cœur rebelle, you also say that “dragons are vulnerable and mortal. Heros and gods can always return. There is no fatality outside of the minds of men.” One thinks of Jünger, whom you knew personally, and who saw titans and gods at work . . .

DV: Killing all fatalist temptations within oneself is an exercise from which one may never rest. Aside from that, let’s not deprive images of their mystery and their multiple radiations, let’s not extinguish their light with rational interpretations. The dragon will always be part of the Western imagination. It symbolizes by turns the forces of the earth and destructive forces. It is through the victorious struggle against a monster that Hercules, Siegfried, or Theseus attained the status of hero. In the absence of heroes, it isn’t hard to recognize – in our age – the presence of various monsters which I don’t think are invincible, even if they appear to be.

CG: In your Dictionnaire amoureux de la chasse (Plon, 2000), you reveal the secrets of an old passion and you describe in veiled terms the secrets of an initiation. What have those hours of tracking given you, how have they transformed, even transfigured you?

DV: In spite of its title, this Dictionnaire amoureux is not at all a dictionary. I conceived it as a pantheistic poem for which hunting is only a pretext. I owe my most beautiful childhood memories to hunting. I also owe it the fact that I have been able to morally survive the periods of ghastly despair that followed the collapse of the hopes of my youth, and reestablish a balance. With or without a weapon, in the hunt, I return to the sources that I cannot do without: the enchanted forest, silence, the mystery of wild blood, the ancient comradeship of the clan. To me, hunting is not a sport. It is a necessary ritual in which each participant, predator or prey, plays the part assigned to it by its nature. Together with childbirth, death and seeding, I believe that hunting, if it is performed in accordance with the right norms, is the last primordial rite that has partially evaded the disfigurements and the deadly manipulations of modernity.

CG: Elsewhere in this book, you evoke several ancient myths, several figures from still clandestine pantheons. I’m thinking of the myth of the Wild Hunt and the figure of Mithras. What do they mean to you?

DV: We could add to the list, most notably Diana-Artemis, the goddess of childbirth, the protector of pregnant women, of cows in calf, of vigorous children, of life in its dawn. She is both the great predator and the great protector of animality, which is what the best hunters also are. Her figure corresponds to the ancients’ idea of nature, which is the complete opposite of the saccharine notions of a Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of sunday strollers. They knew that nature was fearsome to the weak, and pitiless. It is through force that Artemis defends the inviolable realm of the wild. She ferociously kills those mortals who through their excesses put nature in danger. That’s what happened to two furious hunters, Orion and Acteon. By violating her, they had transgressed the limits beyond which the order of the world falls into chaos. That symbol hasn’t aged, on the contrary.

CG: If there is an omnipresent figure in your book, it is the forest, the refuge of outcasts and rebels . . .

DV: The whole literature of the Middle Ages – the chansons de geste or the Arthurian legends – saturated as it is with celtic spirituality, invariably embellishes on the theme of the forest, that dangerous world, that refuge of spirits and fairies, hermits and rebels, which is also a place of purification for the tormented soul of the knight, whether his name be Lancelot, Percival, or Yvain. In chasing a deer or a wild boar, the hunter penetrated its spirit. By eating the animal’s heart, he appropriated its strength. In the lay of Tyolet, by killing the roebuck, the hero gains the ability to understand the spirit of wild nature. I feel that very strongly. For me, entering the forest is much more than a physical need, it is a spiritual necessity.

CG: Could you recommend a few great novels about hunting still in print?

DV: The first that comes to mind is Les Veillées de Saint-Hubert by the Marquis de Foudras, a collection of short stories recently re-published by Pygmalion. Foudras was a marvelous story-teller, as was his countryman and successor Henri Vincenot — whose La Billebaude one of course has to read. He was to the world of castles and hunting with hounds what Vincenot is to that of thatched cottages and poaching. Among the great novels that initiate the reader into the mysteries of the hunt, one of the best is Le Guetteur d’ombres by Pierre Moinot, which transcends well-crafted literary narrative. In the abundant production of Paul Vialar, who was made famous by La grande Meute, I have soft spot for La Croule, a term that refers to the mating call of the woodcock. It’s a pretty novel, a quick read. The main character is a young woman, the kind one would like to meet once in a while, one who possesses a passion for the ancestral domain. I also suggest reading La Forêt perdue, a short and magnificent medieval poem in which Maurice Genevoix lets us re-experience the spirit of Celtic mythology through the impossible pursuit of a huge, invulnerable deer by a relentless huntsman, in whom we discover a young and daring Knight with a pure soul.

Vernal equinox MMI

Notes

[1] Dominique Venner adds that the harsh and rhythmical translation of Leconte de Lisle (from around 1850) is his favourite. This version of the Iliad and the Odyssey is available in two volumes from éditions Pocket.

 

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Venner, Dominique. “An Interview with Dominique Venner.” Interview by Christopher Gérard. Eurocontinentalism Journal, 5 October 2013. <http://eurocontinentalism.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/an-interview-with-dominique-venner/ >.

 

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Foundations of Russian Nationalism – Steuckers

Foundations of Russian Nationalism

By Robert Steuckers

Translated by Greg Johnson

 

Translations: Czech, Portuguese

Throughout its history, Russia has been estranged from European dynamics. Its nationalism and national ideology are marked by a double game of attraction and revulsion towards Europe in particular and the West in general.

The famous Italian Slavist Aldo Ferrari points out that from the 10th to the 13th centuries, the Russia of Kiev was well-integrated into the medieval economic system. The Tartar invasion tore Russia away from the West. Later, when the Principality of Moscow reorganized itself and rolled back the residues of the Tartar Empire, Russia came to see itself as a new Orthodox Byzantium, different from the Catholic and Protestant West. The victory of Moscow began the Russian drive towards the Siberian vastness.

The rise of Peter the Great, the reign of Catherine the Great, and the 19th century brought a tentative rapprochement with the West.

To many observers, the Communist revolution inaugurated a new phase of autarkic isolation and de-Westernization, in spite of the Western European origin of its ideology, Marxism.

But the Westernization of the 19th century had not been unanimously accepted. At the beginning of the century, a fundamentalist, romantic, nationalist current appeared with vehemence all over Russia: against the “Occidentalists” rose the “Slavophiles.” The major cleavage between the left and the right was born in Russia, in the wake of German romanticism. It is still alive today in Moscow, where the debate is increasingly lively.

The leader of the Occidentalists in the 19th century was Piotr Chaadaev. The most outstanding figures of the “Slavophile” camp were Ivan Kireevski, Aleksei Khomiakov, and Ivan Axakov. Russian Occidentalism developed in several directions: liberal, anarchist, socialist. The Slavophiles developed an ideological current resting on two systems of values: Orthodox Christendom and peasant community. In non-propagandistic terms, that meant the autonomy of the national churches and a savage anti-individualism that regarded Western liberalism, especially the Anglo-Saxon variety, as a true abomination.

Over the decades, this division became increasingly complex. Certain leftists evolved towards a Russian particularism, an anti-capitalist, anarchist-peasant socialism. The Slavophile right mutated into “panslavism” manipulated to further Russian expansion in the Balkans (supporting the Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks against the Ottomans).

Among these “panslavists” was the philosopher Nikolay Danilevsky, author of an audacious historical panorama depicting Europe as a community of old people drained of their historical energies, and the Slavs as a phalange of young people destined to govern the world. Under the direction of Russia, the Slavs must seize Constantinople, re-assume the role of Byzantium, and build an imperishable empire.

Against the Danilevsky’s program, the philosopher Konstantin Leontiev wanted an alliance between Islam and Orthodoxy against the liberal ferment of dissolution from the West. He opposed all conflict between Russians and Ottomans in the Balkans. The enemy was above all Anglo-Saxon. Leontiev’s vision still appeals to many Russians today.

Lastly, in the Diary of Writer, Dostoevsky developed similar ideas (the youthfulness of the Slavic peoples, the perversion of the liberal West) to which he added a radical anti-Catholicism. Dostoevsky came to inspire in particular the German “national-Bolsheviks” of the Weimar Republic (Niekisch, Paetel, Moeller van den Bruck, who was his translator).

Following the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad under the energetic direction of the minister Witte, a pragmatic and autarkical ideology of “Eurasianism” emerged that aimed to put the region under Russian control, whether directed by a Tsar or a Soviet Vojd (“Chief”).

The “Eurasian” ideologists are Troubetzkoy, Savitski, and Vernadsky. For them, Russia is not an Eastern part of Europe but a continent in itself, which occupies the center of the “World Island” that the British geopolitician Halford John Mackinder called the “Heartland.” For Mackinder, the power that managed to control “Heartland” was automatically master of the planet.

Indeed, this “Heartland,” namely the area extending from Moscow to the Urals and the Urals to the Transbaikal, was inaccessible to the maritime powers like England and the United States. It could thus hold them in check.

Soviet policy, especially during the Cold War, always tried to realize Mackinder’s worst fears, i.e., to make the Russo-Siberian center of the USSR impregnable. Even in the era of nuclear power, aviation, and transcontinental missiles. This “sanctuarization” of the Soviet “Heartland” constituted the semi-official ideology of the Red Army from Stalin to Brezhnev.

The imperial neo-nationalists, the national-Communists, and the patriots opposed Gorbachev and Yeltsin because they dismantled the Eastern-European, Ukrainian, Baltic, and central-Asian glacis of this “Heartland.”

These are the premises of Russian nationalism, whose multiple currents today oscillate between a populist-Slavophile pole (“narodniki,” from “narod,” people), a panslavist pole, and an Eurasian pole. For Aldo Ferrari, today’s Russian nationalism is subdivided between four currents: (a) neo-Slavophiles, (b) eurasianists, (c) national-Communists, and (d) ethnic nationalists.

The neo-Slavophiles are primarily those who advocate the theses of Solzhenitsyn. In How to Restore Our Russia?, the writer exiled in the United States preached putting Russia on a diet: She must give up all imperial inclinations and fully recognize the right to self-determination of the peoples on her periphery. Solzhenitsyn then recommended a federation of the three great Slavic nations of the ex-USSR (Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine). To maximize the development of Siberia, he suggested a democracy based on small communities, a bit like the Swiss model. The other neo-nationalists reproach him for mutilating the imperial motherland and for propagating a ruralist utopianism, unrealizable in the hyper-modern world in which we live.

The Eurasianists are everywhere in the current Russian political arena. The philosopher to whom they refer is Lev Gumilev, a kind of Russian Spengler who analyzes the events of history according to the degree of passion that animates a people. When the people are impassioned, they create great things. When inner passion dims, the people decline and die. Such is the fate of the West.

For Gumilev, the Soviet borders are intangible but new Russia must adhere to the principle of ethnic pluralism. It is thus not a question of Russianizing the people of the periphery but of making of them definitive allies of the “imperial people.”

Gumilev, who died in June 1992, interpreted the ideas of Leontiev in a secular direction: the Russians and the Turkish-speaking peoples of Central Asia were to make common cause, setting aside their religious differences.

Today, the heritage of Gumilev is found in the columns of Elementy, the review of the Russian “New Right” of Alexandre Dugin, and Dyeïnn (which became Zavtra, after the prohibition of October 1993), the newspaper of Alexander Prokhanov, the leading national-patriotic writers and journalists. But one also finds it among certain Moslems of the “Party of Islamic Rebirth,” in particular Djemal Haydar. More curiously, two members of Yeltsin’s staff, Rahr and Tolz, were followers of Eurasianism. Their advice was hardly followed.

According to Aldo Ferrari, the national-Communists assert the continuity of the Soviet State as an historical entity and autonomous geopolitical space. But they understand that Marxism is no longer valid. Today, they advocate a “third way” in which the concept of national solidarity is cardinal. This is particularly the case of the chief of the Communist Party of the Russuan Federation, Gennady Zyuganov.

The ethnic nationalists are inspired more by the pre-1914 Russian extreme right that wished to preserve the “ethnic purity” of the people. In a certain sense, they are xenophobic and populist. They want people from the Caucasus to return to their homelands and are sometimes strident anti-Semites, in the Russian tradition.

Indeed, Russian neo-nationalism is rooted in the tradition of 19th century nationalism. In the 1960s, the neo-ruralists (Valentine Raspoutin, Vassili Belov, Soloukhine, Fiodor Abramov, etc.) came to completely reject “Western liberalism,” based on a veritable “conservative revolution”—all with the blessing of the Soviet power structure!

The literary review Nache Sovremenik was made the vehicle of this ideology: neo-Orthodox, ruralist, conservative, concerned with ethical values, ecological. Communism, they said, extirpated the “mythical consciousness” and created a “humanity of amoral monsters” completely “depraved,” ready to accept Western mirages.

Ultimately, this “conservative revolution” was quietly imposed in Russia while in the West the “masquerade” of 1968 (De Gaulle) caused the cultural catastrophe we are still suffering.

The Russian conservatives also put an end to the Communist phantasm of the “progressive interpretation of history.” The Communists, indeed, took from the Russian past whatever presaged the Revolution and rejected the rest. To the “progressivist and selective interpretation,” the conservatives opposed the “unique flow”: they simultaneously valorized all Russian historical traditions and mortally relativized the linear conception of Marxism.

Bibliography

Aldo FERRARI, «Radici e prospettive del nazionalismo russe», in Relazioni internazionali, janvier 1994.

Robert STEUCKERS (éd.), Dossier «National-communisme», in Vouloir, n°105/108, juillet-septembre 1993 (textes sur les variantes du nationalisme russe d’aujourd’hui, sur le “national-bolchévisme” russe des années 20 et 30, sur le fascisme russe, sur V. Raspoutine, sur la polé­mique parisienne de l’été 93).

Gerd KOENEN/Karla HIELSCHER, Die schwarze Front, Rowohlt, Reinbeck, 1991.

Walter LAQUEUR, Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch. Der militante Nationalismus der russi­schen Rechten, Kindler, München, 1993.

Mikhaïl AGURSKI, La Terza Roma. Il nazionalbolscevismo in Unione Sovietico, Il Mulino, Bologne, 1989.

Alexandre SOLJENITSYNE, Comment réaménager notre Russie?, Fayard, Paris, 1990.

Alexandre DOUGUINE (DUGHIN), Continente Russia, Ed. all’insegna del Veltro, Parme, 1991. Extrait dans Vouloir n°76/79, 1991, «L’inconscient de l’Eurasie. Réflexions sur la pensée “eurasiatique” en Russie». Prix de ce numéro 50 FF (chèques à l’ordre de R. Steuckers).

Alexandre DOUGUINE, «La révolution conservatrice russe», manuscrit, texte à paraître dans Vouloir.

Konstantin LEONTIEV, Bizantinismo e Mondo Slavo, Ed. all’insegna del Veltro, Parme, 1987 (trad. d’Aldo FERRARI).

N.I. DANILEVSKY, Rußland und Europa, Otto Zeller Verlag, 1965.

Michael PAULWITZ, Gott, Zar, Muttererde: Solschenizyn und die Neo-Slawophilen im heutigen Rußland, Burschenschaft Danubia, München, 1990.

Hans KOHN, Le panslavisme. Son histoire et son idéologie, Payot, Paris, 1963.

Walter SCHUBART, Russia and Western Man, F. Ungar, New York, 1950.

Walter SCHUBART, Europa und die Seele des Ostens, G. Neske, Pfullingen, 1951.

Johan DEVRIENDT, Op zoek naar de verloren harmonie – mens, natuur, gemeenschap en spi­ritualiteit bij Valentin Raspoetin, Mémoire, Rijksuniversiteit Gent/Université d’Etat de Gand, 1992 (non publié).

Koenraad LOGGHE, «Valentin Grigorjevitsj Raspoetin en de Russische traditie», in Teksten, Kommentaren en Studies, n°71, 1993.

Alexander YANOV, The Russian New Right. Right-Wing Ideologies in the Contemporary USSR, IIS/University of California, Berkeley, 1978.

Wolfgang STRAUSS, Rußland, was nun?, Österreichische Landmannschaft/Eckart-Schriften 124, Vienne, 1993.

Pierre PASCAL, Strömungen russischen Denkens 1850-1950, Age d’Homme/Karolinger Verlag, Vienne (Autriche), 1981.

Raymond BEAZLEY, Nevill FORBES & G.A. BIRKETT, Russia from the Varangians to the Bolsheviks, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1918.

Jean LOTHE, Gleb Ivanovitch Uspenskij et le populisme russe, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1963.

Richard MOELLER, Russland. Wesen und Werden, Goldmann, Leipzig, 1939.

Viatcheslav OGRYZKO, Entretien avec Lev GOUMILEV, in Lettres Soviétiques, n°376, 1990.

Thierry MASURE, «De cultuurmorfologie van Nikolaj Danilevski», in Dietsland Europa, n°3 et n°4, 1984 (version française à paraître dans Vouloir).

Source: http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2010/06/14/fondements-du-nationalisme-russe.html

 

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Steuckers, Robert. “Foundations of Russian Nationalism.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 16 April 2014. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/04/foundations-of-russian-nationalism-2/ >.

 

Paganism & Vitalism in Hamsun & Lawrence – Steuckers

Paganism & Vitalism in Knut Hamsun & D. H. Lawrence

By Robert Steuckers

Translated by Greg Johnson

 

The Hungarian philologist Akos Doma, educated in Germany and the United States, has published a work of literary interpretation comparing the works of Knut Hamsun and D. H. Lawrence: Die andere Moderne: Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence und die lebensphilosophische Strömung des literarischen Modernismus [The Other Modernity: Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, and the Life-Philosophical Current of Literary Modernism] (Bonn: Bouvier, 1995). What they share is a “critique of civilization,” a concept that one must put in context.

Civilization is a positive process in the eyes of the “progressivists” who see history as a vector, for the adherents of the philosophy of Aufklärung [Enlightenment], and for the unconditional followers of a certain modernity aiming at simplification, geometrization, and cerebralization.

But civilization appears as a negative process for all those who intend to preserve the incommensurable fruitfulness of cultural matrices, for all those who observe, without being scandalized, that time is “plurimorphic,” i.e., the time of one culture is not that of another (whereas the believers of Aufklärung affirm that one monomorphic time applies to all peoples and cultures of the Earth). Thus to each people its own time. If modernity refuses to see this plurality of forms of time, it is illusion.

To a certain extent, Akos Doma explains, Hamsun and Lawrence were heirs of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But which Rousseau? The one stigmatized by Maurras, Lasserre, and Muret, or the one who radically criticized the Enlightenment but without also thereby defending the Old Regime? For this Rousseau who was critical of the Aufklärung, this modern ideology is in reality that exact opposite of the ideal slogan that it intends to universalize though political activism: it is inegalitarian and hostile to freedom, even as it proclaims equality and freedom.

For Rousseau and his proto-Romantic followers, before the modernity of the 18th century, there was a “good community,” conviviality reigned among men, people were “good,” because nature was “good.” Later, in the Romantics, who were conservatives on the political plane, this concept of “goodness” was quite prominent, whereas today one attributes it only to activists or revolutionary thinkers. Thus the idea of “goodness” was present on “Right” as well as on “Left” of the political chessboard.

But for the English Romantic poet Wordsworth, nature is “the theater of all real experience” because man is really and immediately confronted by the elements, which implicitly leads us beyond good and evil. Wordsworth is certainly “perfectibilist”: man in his poetic vision reaches for excellence, perfection. But man, contrary to what was thought and imposed by the proponents of the Enlightenment, is not perfected solely by developing the faculties of his intellect. The perfection of man happens mainly through the ordeal of elemental nature.

For Novalis, nature is “the space of mystical experience, which allows us to see beyond contingencies of urban and artificial life.” For Joseph von Eichendorff, nature is freedom, and in this sense it is a transcendence, as it allows us to escape from the narrowness of conventions, of institutions.

With Wordsworth, Novalis, and Eichendorff, the themes of immediacy, of vital experience, the refusal of contingencies arising from the artificial conventions are in place. From Romanticism in Europe, especially in Northern Europe, developed a well thought out hostility to all forms of modern social life and economics. Thomas Carlyle, for example, praised heroism and disdained the “cash flow society.” This is the first critique of the rule of money. John Ruskin, with his plans for a more organic architecture and garden cities, aimed to beautify the cities and to repair the social and urban damage of the rationalism that had unfortunately arisen from Manchesterism. Tolstoy propagated an optimistic naturalism that owed nothing to Dostoevsky, the brilliant analyst and dramatist of the worst blacknesses of the human soul. Gauguin transplanted his ideal of human goodness in the islands of Polynesia, to Tahiti, among flowers and exotic beauties.

Hamsun and Lawrence, unlike Tolstoy or Gauguin, develop a vision of nature without teleology, without a “good end,” without marginal paradisal spaces: they have assimilated the double lesson of pessimism from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Nature, for them, is no longer an idyllic excursion, as in the English Lake District poets. It is not necessarily a space of adventure or violence, or posed a priori as such. Nature, for Hamsun and Lawrence, is above all the inwardness of man; it is his inner springs, his dispositions, his mind (brain and guts are inextricably linked together). Therefore, a priori, in Hamsun and Lawrence, the nature of man is neither demonic nor pure intellectuality. It is rather the real, as real as the Earth, as real as Gaia, the real source of life.

Before this source, modern alienation leaves us with two opposing human attitudes: (1) to put down roots, a source of vitality, (2) to fall into alienation, a source of disease and paralysis. It is between the two terms of this polarity that we can fit the two great works of Hamsun and Lawrence: Growth of the Soil for the Norwegian, The Rainbow for the Englishman.

In Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, nature is the realm of existential work, where Man works in complete independence to feed and perpetuate himself. Nature is not idyllic, as in some pastoralist utopia. Work in not abolished. It is an unavoidable condition, a destiny, an essential element of humanity, whose loss would mean de-humanization. The main hero, the farmer Isak, is ugly in face and body. He is crude, simple, rustic, but unwavering. He is completely human in his finitude but also in his determination.

The natural space, the Wildnis, this space that sooner or later will receive the stamp of man, is not the realm of human time, that of clocks, but of the rhythm of the seasons, of periodic rotations. In that space, in that time, we do not ask questions, we work to survive, to participate in a rhythm that surpasses us. This destiny is hard. Sometimes very hard. But it gives us independence, autonomy; it allows a direct relationship with our work. Hence it gives meaning. So there is meaning. In Lawrence’s The Rainbow, a family lives on the land in complete independence on the fruits of its own crops.

Hamsun and Lawrence, in these two novels, leave us with the vision of a man rooted in a homeland (ein beheimateter Mensch), a man with a limited territorial base. The beheimateter Mensch needs no book learning, needs no preaching from the media; his practical knowledge is sufficient; thanks to it, he gives meaning to his actions, while allowing imagination and feeling. This immediate knowledge gives him unity with other beings participating in life.

In this perspective, alienation, a major theme of the 19th century, takes on another dimension. Generally, the problem of alienation is addressed from three different bodies of doctrine: (1) The Marxists and historicists locate alienation in the social sphere, whereas for Hamsun and Lawrence, it lies in the inner nature of man, regardless of social position or material wealth. (2) Alienation is addressed by theology and anthropology. (3) Alienation is seen as a social anomie.

For Hegel and Marx, the alienation of the people or the masses is a necessary step in the gradual process of narrowing the gap between reality and the absolute. In Hamsun and Lawrence, alienation is more fundamental; its causes are not socio-economic or political; they lie in our distance from the roots of nature (which to that extent is not “good”). One does not overcome alienation by creating a new socioeconomic order.

According to Doma, in Hamsun and Lawrence, the problem of the cut, of the caesura is essential. Social life has become uniform, tends toward uniformity, automation, excessive functionalization, while nature and work in the cycle of life are not uniform and constantly mobilize vital energies. There is immediacy, while everything in urban, industrial, modern life is mediated, filtered. Hamsun and Lawrence rebelled against this filter.

In “nature” the forces of interiority count, particularly for Hamsun, and to a lesser extent for Lawrence. With the advent of modernity, men are determined by factors external to them, such as conventions, political agitation, public opinion that gives them the illusion of freedom while it is in fact the realm of manipulation. In this context, communities are breaking up: each individual is content with his sphere of autonomous activity in competition with others. Then we arrive at anomie, isolation, the hostility of each against all.

The symptoms of this anomie are crazes for superficial things, for sophisticated garb (Hamsun), signs of a detestable fascination for what is external, for a form of dependence, itself a sign of inner emptiness. Man is torn by the effects of external stresses. These are all indications of loss of vitality in alienated man.

In the alienation of urban life, man finds no stability because life in the metropolis resists any form of stability. Such an alienated man cannot return to his community, his family of origin. For Lawrence, whose writing is more facile but more striking: “He was the eternal audience, the chorus, the spectator at the drama; in his own life he would have no drama.” “He scarcely existed except through other people.” “He had come to a stability of nullification.”

In Hamsun and Lawrence, Entwurzelung, Unbehaustheit, rootlessness and homelessness, this way of being without hearth or home, is the great tragedy of humanity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To Hamsun, place is vital for humans. Every man should have his place. The location of his existence. One can not be cut off from one’s place without profound mutilation. This mutilation is primarily mental; it is hysteria, neurosis, imbalance. Hamsun is a psychologist. He tells us: self-consciousness from the start is a symptom of alienation.

Already Schiller, in his essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung [On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry], noted that agreement between thought and feeling was tangible, real, interior for natural man, but it is now ideal and exterior in cultivated humans (“the concord between his feelings and his thoughts existed at the origin, but no longer exists except at the level of the ideal. This concord is no longer in man, but hovers somewhere outside of him; it is no more than an idea that has yet to be realized; it is no longer a fact of life”).

Schiller hoped for an Überwindung (overcoming) of this caesura, for a total mobilization of the individual to fill this caesura. Romanticism, for him, aimed at the reconciliation of Being (Sein) and consciousness (Bewußtsein), fighting the reduction of consciousness solely to rational understanding. Romanticism values, and even overvalues what is “other” to reason (das Andere der Vernunft): sensual perception, instinct, intuition, mystical experience, childhood, dreams, pastoral life.

The English Romantic Wordsworth deemed this desire for reconciliation between Being and consciousness “rose,” calling for the emergence of “a heart that watches and receives.” Dostoevsky abandoned this “rose” vision, developing in response a quite “black” vision, in which the intellect is always a source of evil that led the “possessed” to kill or commit suicide. In the same vein, in philosophical terms, G. E. Lessing and Ludwig Klages emulated this “black” vision of the intellect, while considerably refining naturalist Romanticism: to Klages, the mind is the enemy of the soul; to Lessing, the mind is the counterpart of life, born of necessity (“Geist ist das notgeborene Gegenspiel des Lebens”).

Lawrence, in some sense faithful to the English Romantic tradition of Wordsworth, believes in a new adequation of Being and consciousness. Hamsun, more pessimistic, more Dostoyevskian (hence his success in Russia and its impact on such ruralists writers as Belov and Rasputin), persisted in the belief that as soon as there is consciousness there is alienation. Once man begins to reflect on himself, he detaches himself from the natural continuum, in which he should normally be rooted.

In Hamsun’s theoretical writings, there is a reflection on literary modernism. Modern life, influences, processes, refine man to rescue him from his destiny, his destined place, his instincts which lie beyond good and evil. The literary development of the 19th century betrays a feverishness, an imbalance, a nervousness, an extreme complexity of human psychology. “The general (ambient) nervousness has gripped our fundamental being and has rubbed off on our feelings.” Hence the writer now defines himself on the model of Zola, as a “social doctor” who describes social evils to eliminate disease. The writer, the intellectual, and develops a missionary spirit aiming at a “political correctness.”

Against this intellectual vision of the writer, Hamsun replies that it is impossible to objectively define the reality of man, for an “objective man” would be a monstrosity (ein Unding), constructed in a mechanical manner. We cannot reduce man to a catalog of characteristics, for man is changing, ambiguous. Lawrence had the same attitude: “Now I absolutely flatly deny that I am a soul, or a body, or a mind, or an intelligence, or a brain, or a nervous system, or a bunch of glands, or any of the rest of these bits of me. The whole is greater than the part.” Hamsun and Lawrence illustrate in their works that it is impossible to theorize or absolutize a clear and distinct view of man. Thus man is not the vehicle of preconceived ideas.

Hamsun and Lawrence note that progress in self-awareness is not the process of spiritual emancipation, but rather a loss, a draining of vitality, of vital energy. In their novels, it is the characters who are still intact because they are unconscious (that is to say, embedded in their soil or site) who persevere, triumphing over the blows of fate and unfortunate circumstances.

There is no question, we repeat, of pastoralism or idyllism. The characters of Hamsun’s and Lawrence’s novels are traversed or solicited by modernity, hence their irreducible complexity: they may succumb, they suffer, they undergo a process of alienation but can also overcome it. This is where the Hamsun’s irony and Lawrence’s notion of the phoenix come in. Hamsun’s irony ridicules the abstract ideals of modern ideologies. In Lawrence, the recurrent theme of the phoenix indicates a certain degree of hope: there will be resurrection. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes.

The Paganism of Hamsun and Lawrence

If Hamsun and Lawrence carry out their desire to return to a natural ontology by rejecting rationalist intellectualism, this also implies an in-depth contestation of the Christian message.

In Hamsun, we find the rejection of his family’s Puritanism (that of his uncle Hans Olsen), the rejection of the Protestant worship of the book and the text, i.e., an explicit rejection of a system of religious thought resting on the primacy of pure scripture against existential experience (in particular that of the autarkical peasant, whose model is that of Odalsbond of the Norwegian countryside).

The anti-Christianity of Hamsun is rather non-Christianity: it does not give rise to religious questioning in the mode of Kierkegaard. For him, the moralism of the Protestantism of the Victorian era (in Scandinavia, they called it the Oscarian era) is quite simply an expression of devitalisation. Hamsun does not recommend any mystical experience.

Above all, Lawrence is concerned with the caesura between man and the cosmic mystery. Christianity reinforces this wound, prevents it from clotting, prevents it from healing. However, European religiosity preserves a residue of this worship of the cosmic mystery: it is the liturgical year, the liturgical cycle (Easter, Pentecost, Midsummer, Halloween, Christmas, Epipany).

But these had been hit hard by the processes of disenchantment and desacralization, starting with the advent of the primitive Christian church, reinforced by Puritanism and Jansensim after the Reformation. The first Christians clearly wanted to tear man away from these cosmic cycles. The medieval church, however, sought adequation between man and cosmos, but the Reformation and Counter-Reformation both clearly expressed a return to the anti-cosmism of primitive Christianity. Lawrence writes:

But now, after almost three thousand years, now that we are almost abstracted entirely from the rhythmic life of the seasons, birth and death and fruition, now we realize that such abstraction is neither bliss nor liberation, but nullity. It brings null inertia.

This caesura is a property of the Christianity of urban civilizations, where there is longer an opening to the cosmos. Thus Christ is no longer a cosmic Christ, but a Christ reduced to the role of a social worker. Mircea Eliade spoke of a “cosmic Man,” open to the vastness of cosmos, the pillar of all the great religions. From Eliade’s perspective, the sacred is reality, power, the source of life and fertility. Eliade: “The desire of the religious man to live a life in the sacred is the desire to live in objective reality.”

The Ideological and Political Lessons of Hamsun and Lawrence

On the ideological and political plane, on the plane of Weltanschauungen, Hamsun and Lawrence had a rather considerable impact. Hamsun was read by everyone, beyond the polarity of Communism/Fascism. Lawrence was labeled “fascistic” on a purely posthumous basis, in particular by Bertrand Russell who spoke about his “madness” (“Lawrence was a suitable exponent of the Nazi cult of insanity”). This phrase is at the very least simple and concise.

According to Akos Doma, the works of Hamsun and Lawrence fall under four categories: the philosophy of life, the avatars of individualism, the vitalistic philosophical tradition, and anti-utopianism and irrationalism.

1. Life-philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) is a polemical term, opposing the “vivacity of real life” to the rigidity of conventions, the artificial games invented by urban civilization to try to give meaning to a totally disenchanted world. Life-philosophy appears under many guises in European thought and takes shape beginning with Nietzsche’s reflections on Leiblichkeit (corporeity).
2. Individualism. Hamsun’s anthropology postulates the absolute unicity of each individual, of each person, but refuses to isolate this individual or this person from any communal context, carnal or familiar: he always places the individual or the person in interaction, in a particular place. The absence of speculative introspection, consciousness, and abstract intellectualism make Hamsun’s individualism unlike the anthropology of the Enlightenment.

But, for Hamsun, one does not fight the individualism of the Enlightenment by preaching an ideologically contrived collectivism. The rebirth of the authentic man happens by a reactivation of the deepest wellsprings of his soul and body. Mechanical regimentation is a calamitous failure. Therefore, the charge of “fascism” does not hold for either Lawrence or Hamsun.

3. Vitalism takes account of all the facts of life and excludes any hierarchisation on the basis race, class, etc. The characteristic oppositions of the vitalist movement are: assertion of life/negation of life; healthy/unhealthy; mechanical/organic. Thus one cannot reduce them to social categories, parties, etc. Life is a fundamentally apolitical category, because it subsumes all men without distinction.
4. For Hamsun and Lawrence, the reproach of “irrationalism,” like their anti-utopianism, comes from their revolt against “feasibility” (Machbarkeit), against the idea of infinite perfectibility (which one finds in an “organic” form in the first generation of English Romantics). The idea of feasibility goes against the biological essence of nature. Thus the idea of feasibility is the essence of nihilism, according to the contemporary Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino.

For Severino, feasibility derives from a will to complete a world posited as being in becoming (but not an uncontrollable organic becoming). Once this process of completion is achieved, becoming inevitably ceases. Overall stability is necessary to the Earth, and this stability is described as a frozen “absolute good.”

In a literary manner, Hamsun and Lawrence have foreshadowed such contemporary philosophers as Emanuele Severino, Robert Spaemann (with his critique of functionalism), Ernst Behler (with his critique of “infinite perfectibility”), and Peter Koslowski. Outside of Germany or Italy, these philosophers are necessarily almost unknown to the public, especially when they criticize thoroughly the foundations of the dominant ideologies, which is rather frowned upon since the deployment of an underhanded inquisition against the politically incorrect. The cells of the “logocentrist conspiracy” are in place at all the publishers in order to reject translations, keep France in a state of philosophical “minority,” and prevent any effective challenge to the ideology of power.

Vitalistic or “anti-feasibilist” philosophers like Nietzsche, Hamsun, and Lawrence, insist on the ontological nature of human biology and are radically opposed to the nihilistic Western idea of the absolute feasibility of everything, which implies the ontological inexistence of all things, of all realities.

Many of them — certainly Hamsun and Lawrence — bring us back to the eternal present of our bodies, our corporeality (Leiblichkeit). But we can not fabricate a body, despite the wishes reflected in some science fiction (and certain projects from the crazy early years of the Soviet system).

Feasibilism is hubris carried to its height. It leads to restlessness, emptiness, silliness, solipsism, and isolation. From Heidegger to Severino, European philosophy has focused on the disaster of the desacralization of Being and the disenchantment of the world. If the deep and mysterious wellsprings of Earth and man are considered imperfections unworthy of the interest of the theologian or philosopher, if all that is thought abstractly or contrived beyond these (ontological) wellsprings is overvalued, then, indeed, the world loses its sacredness, all value.

Hamsun and Lawrence are writers who make us live with more intensity than those sometimes dry philosophers who deplore the wrong route taken centuries ago by Western philosophy. Heidegger and Severino in philosophy, Hamsun and Lawrence in creative writing aim to restore the sacredness of the natural world and to revalorize the forces that lurk inside man: in this sense, they are ecological thinkers in the deeper meaning of the term.

The oikos and he who works the oikos bear within them the sacred, the mysterious and uncontrollable forces, which are accepted as such, without fatalism and false humility. Hamsun and Lawrence have therefore heralded a “geophilosophical” dimension of thought, which has concerned us throughout this summer school. A succinct summary of their works, therefore, has a place in today’s curriculum.

Lecture at the Fourth Summer School of F.A.C.E., Lombardy, in July 1996.

Analysis: Akos DOMA, Die andere Moderne. Knut Hamsun, D.H. Lawrence und die lebensphilosophische Strömung des literarischen Modernismus, Bouvier, Bonn, 1995, 284 p., DM 82, ISBN 3-416-02585-7.

————

Steuckers, Robert. “Paganism & Vitalism in Knut Hamsun & D. H. Lawrence.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 16-17 July 2012. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/07/hamsun-and-lawrence-part-2/ >.

Note: This article was originally published in French as “Paganisme et philosophie de la vie chez Knut Hamsun et David Herbert Lawrence ” (Synergies Européennes, Vouloir, August, 1997). It was republished online at Centro Studi La Runa, 26 March 2009, <http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/paganisme-et-philosophie-de-la-vie-chez-knut-hamsun-et-david-herbert-lawrence.html >.

 

Establish Multipolar World Order – Savin

Establish a Multipolar World Order

Interview with Mr. Leonid SAVIN of the International Eurasian Movement – by Euro-Synergies

 

Could you describe in a few key words the essence and goals of your movement? Does it place itself in an existing sociopolitical-historical trend of Russian politics? Does it lobby in Russian government circles to achieve its goals?

The main idea and goal of the International Eurasian Movement is to establish a multipolar world order, where there will be no dictatorship of the U.S. anymore or of any other country or actor of world politics. In the sector of ideology we strongly reject (neo)liberalism and the globalization process as its derivative. We agree that we (as well as other nations) need a constructive platform for our alternative future. In the search of it, our work is directed to dialogue with other cultures and peoples who understand the meaning and necessity of conservative values in contemporary societies. Speaking about Russian reality, we are heirs and assigns to the former Eurasianists (this ideology was born in the 1920s): Piotr Savitsky, Nikolay Trubetskoy, Nikolay Alekseev as well as Lev Gumilev — the famous Soviet scholar. They all studied historical processes and proposed a unique vision of our history, separate from the eurocentric science approach. The understanding that Russia is not part of Europe or Asia, but forms a very own unique world, named Eurasia, is also implemented in our political activity. In cooperation with members of parliament or the Council of the Federation or other governmental bodies, with our advices and recommendations, we always provide a strong basis linked to our history, culture, diversity and so on. And I must tell you that many people understand and support our ideas and efforts (in governmental structures, local and regional authorities, science and education, religious institutions and in society at large).

What is your vision on a multipolar world? Which role do you see for Western European nations? Do they have any future at all on the world stage of the 21st century? Will they surmount the actual crises on a demographic, metaphysical and mental level?

In my opinion, a multipolar world is the order with 5 or more centers of power in the world and this reality will keep our planet more safe and balanced with shared responsibility between the regions. But it is not just interdependence by the logic of liberalism: some regions might well exist in relative political and economic autarky. Beside that, there might exist a double core in one center (for example Arabs and Turks in a large Muslim zone or Russia and Central Asian states for Eurasia) and shifted and inter-imposed zones, because, historically, centers of power can be moved. Of course at the moment the most significant centers of power are described in terms of nuclear arms, GDP, economic weight/growth and diplomatic influence. First of all we already have more poles than during the Soviet-US opposition. Secondly, everybody understands the role of China as a ‘Bretton Woods-2’, as well as emerging countries under acronyms as BRICS or VISTA, “anchor countries” and so on. And, thirdly, we see the rise of popular and unconventional diplomacy and the desire of many countries (many of them are strong regional actors such as Iran, Indonesia and Brazil) to not follow the U.S. as satellites or minor partners.

Of course, Washington does not like this scenario and tries to make coalitions based on states with a neocolonial background or on dutiful marionettes. But even in the U.S., politicians and analysts understand that the time of unipolar hegemony has gone. They are trying to build a more flexible approach to international relations, called ‘multilateralism’ (H. Clinton) or ‘non-polarity’ (R. Haas), but the problem is that the U.S. do not have enough confidence in foreign actors united as joint, but who still have no strong alternative to the contemporary world order. So, they use another option for destabilization of rising regions, known as controlled chaos. Because of its military presence over most parts of the globe and its status of promoter of democracy and the protection of human rights, the White House can justify its own interests in these places. And cyberspace is also the object of manipulation, where the whole world is divided in two camps that remind us of the times of the Cold War (I call it ‘Cold Cyber War’).

We think that the contemporary West European nations are one of the poles (centers of power) in a forthcoming multipolar world order). But the problem for now is their engagement in U.S. pro-atlanticist politics, as manifested in the Euro-Atlantic chart of cooperation (common market, legislation and regulation mechanisms, including items of domestic politics), as well as NATO activity. The same we see on the other side of Eurasia – attempts of Washington to start trans-Atlantic cooperation with Asian countries. The contemporary crisis is neither good nor bad. It’s a fact. And the European nations must think about the way they’ll choose, because it will form the future (at least in Europe). It is not the first time in history: during the middle ages there was decline of population because of pestilence and wars. Religious schisms also occurred, so Europeans have some experience in metaphysics and ethics dealing with system failure too. The point is that now we have more interconnected reality and the speed of information sharing is fantastic, that was not possible, imagine, a century ago. And European society becomes more consumerist! But even in Europe, there are a lot of voices in respect of nature (organic greens), anti-grow movements (in economics) and traditionalists who try to keep and preserve ethnic and historical values and manners. Even the Soviet experience could be useful: after the Great Social Revolution there was a strong anti-church attitude promoted by the government, but after 70 years we’re back at our roots (of course during all this time not all people were atheists and the return to church happened during Stalin’s period when the institute of the Patriarchy was restored).

How do you see the dialogue of civilizations in the light of more than 10 years of wars between the West and the Muslim world? Where does Russia stand in this opposition? Are there fears of an islamization process within the Russian Federation, or are Russian authorities setting on long-time accommodation with Muslim minorities and actors?

At first we must bear in mind that the idea of Huntington (the ‘clash of civilizations’) was developed out of necessity of justifying the U.S.’s military and economic expansion. His book was issued when the first wave of globalization as the highest principle of Westcentrism just began its tide in the Third World. By the logic of neo-liberal capitalism it must be re-ordered and re-programmed in the search for new markets. All non-western societies must consume western products, services and technologies by this logic. And let’s remember that war against the Muslim countries originated from the neocons from Washington. So, these 10 years of wars that you to mention is nothing more than a provoked conflict by a small group that was very powerful in American politics at the beginning of the 2000s. By the way, all kinds of radical Islam (Wahhabism) were promoted by the United Kingdom. This version of Islam was founded in Saudi Arabia only with London’s special support. The Great Game in Eurasia was started many years ago and Britain has played here a most significant role. The U.S. took this role only after WW2, but many destructive processes were already unleashed. Of course, Russia is suspicious of radical Islam, because emissaries of the Wahhabis and al-Qaeda were already in the Northern Caucasus. And still now, there are different terrorist groups with the idea of the so-called “Emirate of the Caucasus.” There were also attempts to spread another sectarian belief promoted by Fetullah Gullen (Nurjular), but for now this sect is prohibited here. Actually Islam is not a threat to Russia, because, traditionally, a lot of people living here are Muslim. Regions like Tatarstan, the North Caucasus republics, Bashkortostan have an Islamic population. And our government supports traditional Islam here.

What do you think about the American/Western strategy of strategic encirclement of Russia? Can we see this as well in the process of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’? Is an open, Western-waged war against Syria and Iran possible and would it be the onset to a major world conflict, a ‘Third World War’? Where would Russia stand?

It works. Not only because of the reset of the Anaconda strategy for Eurasia by means of military presence. Sometimes it doesn’t manifest in classical bases. Logistics is the main element of contemporary warfare, as well as C4ISR – Command, Control, Computer, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance – works in the vein of smart engagement. Other tools are: economics, promotion of democracy and human rights, cyber politics. The Arab Spring is a very complex phenomenon – there are a couple of components, but you can see that the U.S. has a bonus anyway: Egypt has asked for a huge loan from the World Bank; Western companies go to Libya; Muslim extremists are being manipulated against moderate Muslims, because they are a threat to western interests and so on. Organized chaos is just another view on the socio-political reality in turbulence. As Steve Mann (famous theorist of the chaos principle in diplomacy) wrote: the state is just hardware and ideology is its soft version. It were better to use ‘virus’ (in other words ‘promoting democracy’) and not to break PC. Syria and Iran are interesting for many nations now. The hysteria of Israel is not good, because this country has nuclear weapons. What will come of Israel using it? The Palestinian question is also on the table. I think that Israel is a more serious problem than Syria and Iran. Russia firmly supports Syria and takes a moderate position on Iran. During the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia declined to provide the “S-300” rocket complex to Iran (we had already signed the contract) and the deal was canceled. You bear in mind that during the same time Russia supported resolution 1973 of UN Security Council and the West started operation “Odyssey Dawn” against Libya. So, even VIP politicians in Russia sometimes do wrong things! But Mr. Putin is actively pro-Syrian and I think that the position of Russia about Iran and about Western pressure will be more adequate than before. As foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told: “we got experience with Libya and don’t believe the West anymore”.

What do you think about the Western Europeans: should they remain loyal to their historical-political heritage of individualism and atlanticism, or should they rethink themselves and orient themselves towards Russia and continentalism? What about pro-Russian elements in European society? Can they be partners or are they, politically and socially spoken, too marginal for that?

John M. Hobson, in his brilliant work The eurocentric conception of world politics, made very clear that the West is rooted in the logic of immanence instead of the logic of co-development that is characteristic of non-western societies. He continues that the formula “the West and the Rest” is wrong, because without the rest there is no place for the West. Now we see one United Europe, but in real life we have two levels. The first one is presented by the bureaucratic establishment with its symbols, history, power projections and procedures. The second one is active publicity with movements, political parties and personal activists who are not interested in an Orwellian future with “Big Brother,” universal values and so on. Actually, in geography we have more than one substance. And where is the border between Southern, Western and Eastern Europe? It’s mostly in the minds. From history we remember the Celtic space, the Roman Empire, the Germanic and nomad invasions (Huns, Avars, etc.), that shows that the face of Europe permanently changed throughout the centuries. Now the European population includes people from Africa and Asia and soon the demographic balance will change. Political culture will change too. Without Russia, Europe is impossible. Not only because of geography (just look at the map and you will see that the EU is just the small, overpopulated western peninsula of Eurasia), but also because of the role of Russia in European history. Napoleon and Hitler – the two most significant unifiers of Europe – were stopped and defeated in Russia and, after that, new political orders were established. And for now in Europe we have so many Russian “prints”: in culture, history, the role of some persons and diasporas. I think that pro-Russian elements just now have a very good choice, because the window of opportunity is open. All these elements could form an avant-garde of a new kind of cooperation: in trade relations, science, art and education and public diplomacy. The last one is the tie for all activities. Actually Minister Lavrov just today (i.e. 26.02.2013) announced that, because of the Russia year in the Netherlands and vice versa, there will be more than 350 actions on state level. It is a good sign of mutual respect and it may be deeper.

What about key power Germany? Do you believe in, let’s say, an ‘Indo-European bloc’, an axis Berlin-Moscow-New Delhi, as a formidable counterweight to the atlanticist bloc of the axis Washington-London-Paris? Do the horrors of the Second World War still affect Russians’ views of Germany and the Germans, or is it possible to turn the page on both sides and look forward? What about the French: do they belong in the atlanticist bloc, or can they be won for the continentalist bloc without giving in to their chauvinism? And what about China: will it turn out to be an even more dangerous enemy than the USA, or will both Russia and China remain strategic partners, e.g. within the SCO?

Because the EU has two levels, the same is true for Germany. One Germany, represented by the political establishment, is pro-U.S. and cannot do anything without Washington. Another one (latent or potential) is looking for closer cooperation with Russia. At the time of the Russian Empire a lot of German people came to our country at the invitation of Empress Catherine the Great. Even before that, many foreigners were in Russia as military officers, teachers, technical specialists, etc. People’s potential can do a lot of things. We must keep in mind that, besides Sea Power and Land Power in geopolitics, we have Man Power, which is the unique and main axis of any politics. The problem is that, after WWII, there was in most European countries a strong influence of Britain and the U.S.. They used very black propaganda and the peoples of Europe were afraid of a communist invasion. The U.S. even started more horrible projects in Western Europe (for example Propaganda-Due and operation “Gladio” in Italy, as well as “Stay Behind” NATO secret armies, formed from right-wing extremist elements). Still now in the EU, we see anti-Russian propaganda, but our borders are open and any European can go to Russia and see what happens here. The case of Gérard Depardieu is just one example.

If we look at what happens in China we’ll understand that it is a very strong actor and that its power grows from year to year. In the UN Security Council China is an important partner of Russia (for the Syria voting too). Russia is a supplier of oil and gas to China and we have new agreements for the future. Besides that we provide military equipment to China, though they have good weapon systems of their own as well. In the SCO we had good results and I think that cooperation in this organization must be enlarged through strategic military elements with the entry at least of Iran, Belarus, India and Pakistan (they have an observer or dialogue partner status). Turkey is interested as well, but because of its NATO membership it will be difficult to join.

I know that some Russians and Europeans describe China as a possible enemy, a “yellow threat” (the Polish writer Ignacy Witkiewicz even wrote about it in his novel in 1929!!!) and so on, but in reality China has no intents of border pretence to Russia. We have had some incidents in Siberia with contraband, but these are criminal cases which do not deal with state politics. China will focus on Taiwan and on the disputed islands in the Pacific and it will take all geopolitical attention and may be some loyalty from Russia and SCO members.

Also China has the same view on the future world order – multipolarity. Actually this idea (duojihua) was born in China in 1986. And with the strategic cooperation with many other countries in Africa and South America, joint efforts against western hegemony will be fruitful.

So, I think China and Russia can do a lot for a reform of the forthcoming world order.

A lot of people now want to forget their own origins and the origins of other peoples. Bavaria, for example, was populated centuries ago by Avars from Asia (part of them still live in the Caucasus) during the Migration Period. Groups of Turkish origin also went to lands of contemporary Austria. So in contemporary Europe we have a lot of Asian elements. And vice-versa in Asia we have people of Aryan origin. Not only in the North of India, but also in Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iran (arya is the self-name of the people of Iran and India). And hybridization is continuing as we speak in Europe and in other regions. Just before Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union we had a pact with Germany and had been cooperating extensively in technologies and in the economy. And France was attacked first by Germany, but now relations between both countries are normal. I think that historical harms between Germany and Russia have been mostly forgotten. And I think that many Germans still remember that the most destructive attacks did not come from the Soviet army but from U.S. and British air forces (Dresden, Leipzig…). It was not a war, but a deliberate destruction of cities and non-armed refugees. Actually now Germans is mostly good businessmen for Russians, compared to representatives of other European nations (these facts have been confirmed by many friends who do business with Europeans).

I can not to speak with enough certainty of what happens with Russian-French relations, because I’m not very interested in this sector. During the XXth century we had many deals with France, and after WWII it was the idea of Stalin to give the winner status to France. Charles de Gaulle also was pro-Soviet in a geopolitical sense. But after the legalization of gay marriage in France, many Russians feel suspicious about this country. But every people and every country has its own specifics. We have had many interesting philosophers from France who have had influence on Russian thinkers too.

Turning to domestic Russian problems: Russia under President Putin has been able to make enormous progress in the social field, mainly due to energy sales during the 2000s. Has this changed the face of Russia? Has this period come to an end or is there stagnation? How will Russia cope with its domestic problems, such as the demographic crisis, which it shares with Western Europe? Should the Siberian land mass be ‘re-colonized’ by Russians and other Europeans, in order to make it an impregnable ‘green lung fortress’ for the white peoples?

The grand contribution of Mr. Putin is that he stopped liberal privatization and the process of separatism in Russia. Persons such as Chodorkovsky were representatives of the Western oligarchy, especially of powerful financial clans (for example, he is a personal friend of Rothschild) and he had plans to usurp power in Russia through the corruption of parliament. We still have the rudiments of predatory liberalism such as misbalances, corruption, fifth column, degradation of traditional values, etc. For now we see in Russia efforts to build a smarter kind of economics, but it must be done very carefully. The questions that must be at the center are: how to deal with the Federal Reserve System? What about a new currency order that may be represented by BRICS? How to start mobilization? What to do with the neoliberal lobby within the government? The demographic crisis is also linked with neoliberalism and consumerism. A century ago, there was a rise of population in Russia, but two world wars have cut it. Even during Soviet times we had a good demography index. Now the government has started supporting young families and the process of human reproduction. In addition to birth programs we have an initiative dealing with the return of compatriots to Russia and all people who were born in the USSR can come to Russia very easily and get certain funding from the state. But I think that, because the Russians were the state-forming people, there must be a preference for Slavonic origin, because migrants from Asian countries (who do not speak Russian and have other traditions) will flow to Russia for economic reasons. Many Russian activists who take a critical stance on Asian people are already disappointed by this program. I think that the attraction of Byelorussians and Ukrainians can equalize this disproportion. But, strategically, the state must support a system of child-bearing with all necessary needs (fosterage, education, working place, social environmental, etc.). In some regions governors personally start up that kind of programs dealing with local and regional solidarity. First of all, Siberia is still Russian. The Siberian type of Russian is different from citizens from the central or southern regions, but till now it’s still mainly Russian, not only institutionally, but also ethnically. Actually, according to our statistics, most labor migrants to Russia come from Ukraine! So, in spite of strange relations between both countries and with strong anti-Russian stances on the part of Ukrainian nationalists and pro-western “democrats,” people just make their own choice. Rationally speaking, Siberia is not only interesting, because of its virgin forests and natural resources, but also because of its neighbors — and China is one of them with an emerging economy. So Siberia could serve as a hub in the future. I think that Europeans would also go to Russia (not only to Siberia), but this migration must be done meticulously, because of the language barrier, with a period of adaptation to different social conditions and so on. Maybe it could be useful to organize towns of compact residence and also city-hubs for foreign people who come to live in Russia, where they can live and work in new conditions. New Berlin, New Brussels, New Paris (of course translated into the Russian language) will then appear on a new Russian map.

What is your opinion about the future of Putinist Russia? Will the government be able to enduringly counter Western propaganda and destabilization campaigns, and come to a ‘generation pact’ between the older generation, born during Soviet times, and the younger generation, born after 1991? What will be President Putin’s fundamental heritage for Russian history?

The key problem for Russia is a neoliberal group inside the Kremlin. Putin has the support of people who want more radical actions against corruption, western agents and so on. But a “colored revolution” in Russia is impossible, because the masses do not believe in the pro-western opposition. Ideas of democracy and human rights promoted by West have been discredited worldwide and our people understand well what liberalization, privatization and such kind of activities in the interest of global oligarchy mean. And because of the announcement of the Eurasian Customs Union Russia must work hard the coming years with partners from Kazakhstan and Belarus. As for counterpropaganda, the new official doctrine of Russian foreign policy is about softpower. So Russia has all the instruments officially legalized to model its own image abroad. In some sense we do this kind of work, just as other non-governmental organizations and public initiatives.You mention a “generation pact,” referring to different ideals of young and older people, especially in the context of the Soviet era. Now, you would be surprised that a figure as Stalin is very popular among young people and thinking part of the youth understands well that Soviet times were more enjoyable than contemporary semi-capitalism. As I told in my previous answer, Putin is important because he stopped the disintegration of Russia. He already is a historical figure.

Is there a common ‘metaphysical future’ for the whole of Europe after the downfall of Western Christianity (catholicism, protestantism)? Can Russian Orthodoxism be a guide? What do you hold of the modest revival of pre-Christian religious traditions across the continent? What about countering the influence of Islam on the European continent? Is there a different view concerning that discussion between Russia and Western Europe?

Russian Christian Orthodoxy is not panacea, because there are also some problems. Christianity in XIIth century, XVIth century and nowadays is very different. Now many formal orthodox Christians go to church two times a year, at Easter and at Christmas. But Orthodox Christianity is also a thesaurus of wisdom where you can find ideas from ancient Greek philosophy, metaphysics, cultural heritage, transformed paganism and psychology. In this sense, Russian Christian Orthodox old believers keep this heritage alive and may be interested as well in forms (ceremonies) as in the spiritual essence with its complex ideas. Speaking about paganism, 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. Actually Finno-Ugric peoples historically were very close to Slavonic people and assimilated together, so there is a good chance to research these traditions for those who are interested in Slavonic pre-Christian culture. But the postmodern version of a restored paganism in Europe or any other region to my opinion is just a fake and there is not so much from true paganism. As for Islam, as I told before, in Russia there exist a couple of versions of traditional Islam, which are presented by several law schools (mazhabs). In the Northern Caucasus, the regional government has tried to copy the idea of multiculturalism and to implement Euro-Islam as an antithesis to spreading Wahhabism. But it has not worked and now more attention is paid to traditional religious culture linked with education and the social sector. But the project of multiculturalism has failed in Europe as well, so all common Euro-Russian outlooks on Islam are finished. But, to be honest, I think that 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. As Gumilev explained, Russia became so large because Russians, during the expansion, looked on other people as on their own and understood them. This differs from the point of view (more specifically in ethnosociology) that all ethnic groups have the idea of “We are” against “The Other,” represented by another group. The imperial principle works with the idea of mosaics where every ethnos is a “We are.” And our famous writer and philosopher Fjodor Dostoevsky told about all-human (all-mankind) nature (not common to all mankind) that is represented by the Russians, because inside, you can find all radical oppositions. I think it is a good reason to turn to Russia and its people.

Thank you, Mr. Savin, for this very interesting and open-hearted interview.

 

—————-

Savin, Leonid. “Establish a Multipolar World Order: Interview with Mr. Leonid Savin of the International Eurasian Movement.” Interview by Synergies Européennes. Euro-Synergies, 25 March 2013. <http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2013/03/22/interview-with-mr-leonid-savin.html >. (See this essay in PDF format here: Establish a Multipolar World Order).

Notes: For another discussion of the theory of the multi-polar world, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Alexander Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >. See also Dugin’s essays: “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern” and “Multipolarism as an Open Project”. The full exposition of the theory of the Multipolar World was made in Russian in Dugin’s book теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012), which was translated into French as Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013). For the Eurasianist perspective on Japan in particular, we recommend reading Dugin’s essay “In the Country of Rising ‘Do’”.

 

Multipolarism as Open Project – Dugin

Multipolarism as an Open Project

By Alexander Dugin

 

1. Multipolarism and “Land Power”

Geopolitics of the Land in the Global World

In the previous part we discussed the subject of globalism, globalization, and mondialism in a view considered to be generally accepted and “conventional”. Geopolitical analysis of the phenomenon of the subject of globalism, globalization, and mondialism has showed that in the modern globalism we only deal with one of the two geopolitical powers, namely, with a thalassocracy, a “Sea Power” that from now on claims for uniqueness, totality, and normativeness and strives to pretend to be the only possible civilization, sociological and geopolitical condition of the world.

Therewith, the philosophy of globalism is based upon the internal surety with universalism of exactly the Western-European value system thought to be the summary of all the diverse experience of the human cultures on all stages of their history.

And finally, in its roots, globalization has an active ideology (mondialism) and power structures that spread and bring this ideology into use. If taking into account that the latter are the most authoritative intellectual US centers (such as CFR and neoconservatives), structures of the US Supreme Military Command and their analysts (Owens, Sibrowsky, Barnett, Garstka), international oligarchs (such as George Soros), a number of international organizations (The Bilderberg Club, Trilateral Commission, etc.), and innumerous amount of analysts, politicians, journalists, scientists, economists, people of culture and art, and IT sector employees spread all over the world, we can understand the reason why this ideology seems to be something that goes without saying for us. That we sometimes take globalization as an “objective process” is the result of a huge manipulation with public opinion and the fruit of a total information war.

Therefore, the picture of global processes we described is an affirmation of the real state of affairs just in part. In such a description, there is a significant share of a normative and imperative volitional (ideological) wish that everything should be quite so, which means, it is based upon wrenches and, to some extent, striving to represent our wishful thinking as reality.

In this part, we will describe an absolutely different point of view on globalization and globalism that is impossible from inside the “Sea Power”, i.e. out of the environment of the nominal “Global World”. Such a view is not taken into account either in antiglobalism or in alterglobalism because it refuses from the most fundamental philosophical and ideological grounds of Eurocentrism. Such a view rejects the faith in:

• universalism of the Western values, that Western societies, in their history, have passed the only possible way all the other countries are expected to pass;
• progress as an indisputable forwardness of historical and social development;
• that it is limitless technical, economical, and material development, which is the answer for the most vital needs of all humankind;
• that people of all cultures, religions, civilizations, and ethnoses are principally the same as the people of the West and they are governed by the same anthropological motives;
• absolute superiority of capitalism over other sociopolitical formations;
• absence of any alternative for market economy;
• that liberal democracy is the only acceptable form of political organization of the society;
• individual freedom and individual identity as the superior value of human being;
• liberalism as a historically inevitable, higher-priority, and optimal ideology.

In other words, we proceed to the position of the “Land Power” and consider the present moment of the world history from the point of view of Geopolitics-2, or the thalassocratic geopolitics as an episode of the “Great Continent War”, not as its conclusion.

Of course, it is difficult to refuse that the present moment of historical development demonstrates a number of unique features that, if desired, can be interpreted as the ultimate victory of the Sea over the Land, Carthage over Rome and Leviathan over Behemoth. Indeed, never in history the “Sea Power” was such a serious success and stretched might and influence of its paradigm in such a scale. Of course, Geopolitics-2 acknowledges this fact and the consequences included. But it clearly realizes that globalization can be also interpreted otherwise, namely, as a series of victories in combats and battles, not as the ultimate win in the war.

Here, a historical analogy suggests itself: when German troops were approaching to Moscow in 1941, one could think that everything was lost and the end of the USSR was foredoomed. The Nazi propaganda commented the course of the war quiet so: the “New Order” is created in the occupied territory, the authorities work, economical and political hierarchy is created, and the social life is organized. But the Soviet people kept on violently resisting – at all the fronts as well as in the rear of the enemy, while systematically moving to their goal and their victory.

Now, there is precisely this moment in the geopolitical stand of the Sea and the Land. Information policy inside the “Sea Power” is built so as no-one has any doubt that globalism is an accomplished fact and the global society has come about in its essential features, that all the obstacles from now on are of a technical character. But from certain conceptual, philosophical, sociological, and geopolitical positions, all of it can be challenged by suggesting an absolutely different vision of the situation. All the point is in interpretation. Historical facts make no sense without interpretation. Likewise in geopolitics: any state of affairs in the field of geopolitics only makes sense in one or another interpretation. Globalism is interpreted today almost exclusively in the Atlantist meaning and, thus, the “sea” sense is put into it. A view from the Land’s position doesn’t change the state of affairs but it does change its sense. And this, in many cases, is of fundamental importance.

Further, we will represent the view on globalization and globalism from the Land’s position – geopolitical, sociological, philosophical, and strategical.

Grounds for Existence of Geopolitics-2 in the Global World

How can we substantiate the very possibility of a view on globalization on the part of the Land, assuming that the structure of the global world, as we have shown, presupposes marginalization and fragmentation of the Land?

There are several grounds for this.

1. The human spirit (conscience, will, faith) is always capable to formulate its attitude to any ambient phenomenon and even if this phenomenon is presented as invincible, integral, and “objective”, it is possible to take it in a different way – accept or reject, justify or condemn. This is the superior dignity of man and his difference from animal species. And if man rejects and condemns something, he has the right to build strategies to overcome it in any, most difficult and insuperable, situations and conditions. The advance of the global society can be accepted and approved but it can be rejected and condemned as well. In the former case, we float adrift the history, in the latter one – we seek a “fulcrum” to stop this process. History is made by people and the spirit plays the central part here. Hence, there is a theoretical possibility to create a theory radically opposite to the views that are built on the base of the “Sea Power” and accept basic paradigms of the Western view on the things, course of history, and logic of changing sociopolitical structures.
2. The geopolitical method allows to identify globalization as a subjective process connected with a success of one of the two global powers. Be the Land ever so “marginal and fragmentized», it has serious historical grounds behind itself, traditions, experience, sociological and civilization background. The Land’s geopolitics is not built on a void place; this is a tradition that generalizes some fundamental historical, geographical, and strategical trends. Therefore, even on the theoretical level, estimation of globalization from the position of Geopolitics-2 is absolutely relevant. Just as well as there is the “subject” of globalization in its center (mondialism and its structures), the Land Power can and does have its own subjective embodiment. In spite of a huge scale and massive forms of the historical polemics of civilizations, we, first of all, deal with a stand of minds, ideas, concepts, theories, and only then – with that of material things, devices, technologies, finances, weapons, etc.
3. The process of desovereignization of national states has not yet become nonreversible, and the elements of the Westphalian system are still being partly preserved. That means that a whole range of national states, by virtue of certain consideration, can still bank on realization of the land strategy, i.e. they can completely or partially reject globalization and the “Sea Power’s” paradigm. China is an example of it; it balances between globalization and its own land identity, strictly observing that the general balance is kept and that only what consolidates China as a sovereign geopolitical formation is borrowed from the global strategies. The same can be also said about the states the US have equaled to the “Axis of Evil” — Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, etc. Of course, the threat of a direct intrusion of US troops hangs over these countries like the sword of Damocles (on the model of Iraq or Afghanistan), and they are continuously subject to more politic network attacks from inside. However, at the moment their sovereignty is preserved what makes them privileged areas for development of the Land Power. It is also possible to refer here a number of hesitant countries, such as India, Turkey and others, which, being significantly involved into the globalization orbit, preserve their original sociological features, getting out of accord with the official precepts of their governing regimes. Such situation is characteristic of many Asian. Latin-American and African societies.
4. And, finally, the most general. — The present state of Heartland. The world dominance, as we know, and thus, reality or evanescence of monopolar globalization depends on it. In 1980-90-s, Heartland fundamentally reduced its influence area. Two geopolitical belts – Eastern Europe (whose countries were within the “Socialist Block”, “Warsaw Pact», Comecon, etc.) and the Federative Republics of the USSR consistently withdrew from it. By the mid 1990-s, a bloody testing for a possibility of further breakdown of Russia into “national republics” had started in Chechnya. This fragmentation of Heartland, down to a mosaic of marionette dependent states in place of Russia, had to become the final accord of construction of the global world and the “end of history”, after which it would be much more difficult to speak about the Land and Geopolitics-2. Heartland is of central importance in the possibility of strategical consolidation of all Eurasia and, thus, the “Land Power”. If the processes that took place in Russia in 1990-s had moved in a groove and its disintegration kept on, it would be much more difficult to challenge globalization. But since late 1990-s — early 2000-s, a turning-point has taken place in Russia, disintegration was stopped; moreover, the federal authorities have restored control over the rebellious Chechnya. Then V. Putin implemented a legal reform of the Federation subjects (excision of the article about “sovereignty”, governors’ appointment, etc.) that has consolidated the power vertical all over Russia. The CCI integration processes have started gathering pace. In August 2008, in the course of the five-day conflict of Russia with Georgia, Russia took its direct control over territories beyond the borders of the Russian Federation (Southern Ossetia, Abkhazia), and acknowledged their independence, in spite of a huge support of Georgia on the part of the US and the NATO countries and pressure of the international public opinion. Generally, since early 2000-s Russia as Heartland has ceased the processes of its self-disintegration, has reinforced its energetics, has normalized the issues of energy supply abroad, has refused from the practice of unilateral reduction of armaments, having preserved its nuclear potential. Whereby, influence of the network of geopolitical agents of Atlantism and Mondialism on the political authority and strategical decision making has qualitatively diminished, consolidation of the sovereignty has been understood as the top-priority issue, and integration of Russia into a number of globalist structures menacing its independence has been ceased. In a word, Heartland keeps on remaining the foundation of Eurasia, its “Core” — weakened, suffered very serious losses, but still existing, independent, sovereign, and capable to pursue a policy, if not on a global scale, then on a regional one. In its history, Russia has several times fallen yet lower: the Domain Fragmentation on the turn of the 13^th century, The Time of Troubles, and the events of 1917-1918 show us Heartland in a yet more deplorable and weakened condition. But every time, in some period, Russia revived and returned to the orbit of its geopolitical history again. The present state of Russia is difficult to recognize brilliant or even satisfactory from the geopolitical (Eurasian) point of view. Yet in general — Heartland does exist, it is relatively independent, and therefore, we have both a theoretical and practical base to consolidate and bring to life all the pre-conditions for development of a response to the phenomenon of monopolar globalization on the part of the Land.

Such an answer of the Land to the challenge of globalization (as a triumph of the “Sea Power”) is Multipolarism, as a theory, philosophy, strategy, policy, and practice.

Multipolarism as a Project of the World Order from the Land’s Position

Multipolarism represents a summary of Geopolitics-2 in actual conditions of the global process evolution. This is an extraordinarily capacious concept that demands a through consideration.

Multipolarism is a real antithesis for monopolarity in all its aspects: hard (imperialism, neocons, direct US domination), soft (multilateralism) and critical (alterglobalism, postmodernism, and neo-Marxism) ones.

The hard monopolarity version (radical American imperialism) is based upon the idea that the US represents the last citadel of the world order, prosperity, comfort, safety, and development surrounded by a chaos of underdeveloped societies. Multipolarism states the directly opposite: the US is a national state that exists among many others, its values are doubtful (or, at least, relative), its claims are disproportional, its appetites are excessive, methods of conducting its foreign policy are inacceptable, and its technological messianism is disastrous for the culture and ecology of the whole world. In this regard, the multipolar project is a hard antithesis to the US as an instance that methodically builds a unipolar world, and it is aimed to strongly disallow, break up, and prevent this construction.

The soft monopolarity version does not only act on behalf of the US, but on behalf of “humanity”, exclusively understanding it as the West and the societies that agree with universalism of Western values. Soft monopolarity does not claim to press by force, but persuade, not to compel, but explain profits peoples and countries will obtain from entering into globalization. Here the pole is not a single national state (the US), but Western civilization as a whole, as a quintessence of all the humanity.

Such, as it is sometimes called, “multilateral” monopolarity (multilateralism, multilateralization) is rejected by Multipolarism that considers Western culture and Western values to represent merely one axiological composition among many others, one culture among different other cultures, and cultures and value systems based on some absolutely different principles to have the full right for existence. Consequently, the West in a whole and those sharing its values, have no grounds to insist on universalism of democracy, human rights, market, individualism, individual freedom, secularity, etc. and build a global society on the base of these guidelines.

Against alterglobalism and postmodern antiglobalism, Multipolarism advances a thesis that a capitalist phase of development and construction of worldwide global capitalism is not a necessary phase of society development, that it is despotism and an ambition to dictate different societies some kind of single history scenario. In the meantime, confusion of mankind into the single global proletariat is not a way to a better future, but an incidental and absolutely negative aspect of the global capitalism, which does not open any new prospects and only leads to degradation of cultures, societies, and traditions. If peoples do have a chance to organize effective resistance to the global capitalism, it is only where Socialist ideas are combined with elements of a traditional society (archaic, agricultural, ethnical, etc.), as it was in the history of the USSR, China, North Korea, Vietnam and takes place today in some Latin-American countries (e. g., in Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.).

Further, Multipolarism is an absolutely different view on the space of land than bipolarity, a bipolar world.

Multipolarism represents a normative and imperative view on the present situation in the world on the part of the Land and it qualitatively differs from the model predominated in the Yalta World in the period of the “Cold War”.

The Bipolar World was constructed under the ideological principle, where two ideologies – Capitalism and Socialism – acted as poles. Socialism as an ideology did not challenge universalism of the West-European culture and represented a sociocultural and political tradition that threw back to the European Enlightenment. In a certain sense, Capitalism and Socialism competed with each other as two versions of Enlightenment, two versions of progress, two versions of universalism, two versions of the West-European sociopolitical idea.

Socialism and Marxism entered into a resonance with certain parameters of the “Land Power”, and therefore they did not win where Marx had supposed, but where he excluded this possibility – in an agricultural country with the predominant way of life of a traditional society and imperial organization of the political field. Another case of an (independent) victory of Socialism – China – also represented an agricultural, traditional society.

Multipolarism does not oppose monopolarity from the position of a single ideology that could claim for the second pole, but it does from the position of many ideologies, a plenty of cultures, world-views and religions that (each for its own reasons) have nothing in common with the Western liberal capitalism.In a situation, when the Sea has a unified ideological aspect (however, ever more going to the sphere of subauditions, not explicit declarations), and the Land itself doesn’t, representing itself as several different world-view and civilization ensembles, Multipolarism suggests creating a united front of the Land against the Sea.

Multipolarism is different from both the conservative project of conservation and reinforcement of national states. On the one hand, national states in both colonial and post-colonial period reflect the West-European understanding of a normative political organization (that ignores any religious, social, ethnical, and cultural features of specific societies) in their structures, i.e. the nations themselves are partially products of globalization. And on the other hand, it is only a minor part of the two hundred fifty-six countries officially itemized in the UN list today that are, if necessary, capable to defend their sovereignty by themselves, without entering into a block or alliance with other countries. It means that not each nominal sovereign state can be considered a pole, as the degree of strategical freedom of the vast majority of the countries acknowledged is negligible. Therefore, reinforcement of the Westphalian system that still mechanically exists today is not an issue of Multipolarism.

Being the opposition of monopolarity, Multipolarism does not call to either return to the bipolar world on the base of ideology or to fasten the order of national states, or to merely preserve the status quo. All these strategies will only play in hands of globalization and monopolarity centers, as they have a project, a plan, a goal, and a rational route of movement to future; and all the scenarios enumerated are at best an appeal to a delay of the globalization process, and at worst (restoration of bipolarity on the base of ideology) look like irresponsible fantasy and nostalgia.

Multipolarism is a vector of the Land’s geopolitics directed to the future. It is based upon a sociological paradigm whose consistency is historically proven in the past and which realistically takes into account the state of affairs existing in the modern world and basic trends and force lines of its probable transformations. But Multipolarism is constructed on this basis as a project, as a plan of the world order we yet only expect to create.

2. Multipolarism and its Theoretical Foundation

The absence of the Multipolarism Theory

In spite of the fact that the term “Multipolarism” is quite often used in political and international discussions recently, its meaning is rather diffuse and inconcrete. Different circles and separate analysts and politicians insert their own sense in it. Well-founded researches and solid scientific monographs devoted to Multipolarism can be counted on fingers[1]. Even serious articles on this topic are quite rare[2]. The reason for this is well understood: as the US and Western countries set the parameters of the normative political and ideological discourse in a global scale today, according to these rules, whatever you want can be discussed but the sharpest and most painful questions. Even those considering unipolarity to have been just a “moment[3]” in the 1990-s and a transfer to some new indefinite model to be taking place now are ready to discuss any versions but the “multipolar” one. Thus, for example, the modern head of CFR Richard Haass tells about “Non-Polarity” meaning such stage of globalization where necessity in presence of a rigid center falls off by itself[4]. Such wiles are explained by the fact that one of the aims of globalization is, as we have seen, marginalization of the “Land Power”. And as far as Multipolarism can only be a form of an active strategy of the “Land Power” in the new conditions, any reference to it is not welcome by the West that sets the trend in the structure of political analysis in the general global context. Still less one should expect that conventional ideologies of the West take up development of the Multipolarism Theory.

It would be logical to assume that the Multipolarism Theory will be developed in the countries that explicitly declare orientation upon a multipolar world as the general vector of their foreign policy. The number of such countries includes Russia, China, India, and some others. Besides, the address to Multipolarism can be encountered in texts and documents of some European political actors (e.g., former French minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Vidrine[5]). But at the moment, we can as well hardly find something more than materials of several symposiums and conferences with rather vague phrases in this field. One has to state that the topic of Multipolarism is not properly conceptualized also in the countries that proclaim it as their strategical goal, not to mention the absence a distinct and integral theory of Multipolarism.

Nevertheless, on the base of the geopolitical method from the position of the “Land Power” and with due account for the analysis of a phenomenon called globalism, it is quite possible to formulate some absolute principles that must underlie the Multipolarism Theory when the matter comes to its more systemized and expanded development.

Multipolarism: Geopolitics and Meta-Ideology

Let’s blueprint some theoretical sources, on whose base a valuable theory of Multipolarism must be built.

It is only geopolitics that can be the base for this theory in the actual conditions. At the moment, no religious, economical, political, social, cultural or economical ideology is capable to pull together the critical mass of the countries and societies that refer to the “Land Power” in a single planetary front necessary to make a serious and effective antithesis to globalism and the unipolar world. This is the specificity of the historical moment (“The Unipolar Moment”[6]): the dominating ideology (the global liberalism/post-liberalism) has no symmetrical opposition on its own level. Hence, it is necessary to directly appeal to geopolitics by taking the principle of the Land, the Land Power, instead of the opposing ideology. It is only possible in the case if the sociological, philosophical, and civilization dimensions of geopolitics are realized to the full extent.

The “Sea Power” will serve us as a proof for this statement. We have seen that the very matrix of this civilization does not only occur in the Modem Period, but also in thalassocratic empires of the Antiquity (e.g., in Carthage), in the ancient Athens or in the Republic of Venice. And within the Modern World itself atlantism and liberalism do not as well find complete predominance over the other trends at once. And nevertheless, we can trace the conceptual sequence through a series of social formations: the “Sea Power” (as a geopolitical category) moves through history taking various forms till it finds its most complete and absolute aspect in the global world where its internal precepts become predominant in a planetary scale. In other words, ideology of the modern mondialism is only a historical form of a more common geopolitical paradigm. But there is a direct relation between this (probably, most absolute) form and the geopolitical matrix.

There is no such direct symmetry in case of the “Land Power”. The Communism ideology just partly (heroism, collectivism, antiliberalism) resonated with geopolitical percepts of the “ground” society (and this just in the concrete form of the Eurasian USSR and, to a lesser degree, of China), as the other aspects of this ideology (progressism, technology, materialism) fitted badly in the axiological structure of the “Land Power”. And today, even in theory, Communism cannot perform the mobilizing ideological function it used to perform in the 20^th century in a planetary scale. From the ideological point of view the Land is really split into fragments and, in the nearest future, we can hardly expect some new ideology capable to symmetrically withstand the liberal globalism to appear. But the very geopolitical principle of the Land does not lose anything in its paradigmatic structure. It is this principle that must be taken as a foundation for construction of the Multipolarism Theory. This theory must address directly to geopolitics, draw principles, ideas, methods and terms out of it. This will allow to otherwise take both the wide range of existing non-globalist and counter-globalist ideologies, religions, cultures, and social trends. It is absolutely unnecessary to shape them to transform into something unified and systematized. They can well remain local or regional but be integrated into a front of common stand against globalization and “Western Civilization’s” domination on the meta-ideological level, on the paradigmatic level of Geopolitics-2 and this moment – plurality of ideologies – is already laid in the very term “Multi-polarism” (not only within the strategical space, but also in the field of the ideological, cultural, religious, social, and economical one).

Multipolarism is nothing but extension of Geopolitics-2 (geopolitics of the Land) into a new environment characterized with the advance of globalism (as atlantism) on a qualitatively new level and in qualitatively new proportions. Multipolarism has no other sense.

Geopolitics of the Land and its general vectors projected upon the modern conditions are the axis of the Multipolarism Theory, on which all the other aspects of this theory are threaded. These aspects constitute philosophical, sociological, axiological, economical, and ethical parts of this theory. But all of them are anyway conjugated with the acknowledged – in an extendedly sociological way – structure of the “Land Power” and with the direct sense of the very concept of “Multipolarism” that refers us to the principles of plurality, diversity, non-universalism, and variety.

3. Multipolarism and Neo-Eurasianism

Neo-Eurasianism as Weltanschauung

Neo-Eurasianism is positioned nearest to the theory of Multipolarism. This concept roots in geopolitics and operates par excellence with the formula of “Russia-Eurasia” (as Heartland) but at the same time develops a wide range of ideological, philosophical, sociological and politological fields, instead of being only limited with geostrategy and application analysis.

What is in the term of “Neo-Eurasianism” can be illustrated with fragments of the Manifesto of the International “Eurasian Movement” “Eurasian Mission»[7]. Its authors point out five levels in Neo-Eurasianism allowing to interpret it in a different way depending on a concrete context.

The first level: Eurasianism is a Weltanschauung.

According to the authors of the Manifesto, the term “Eurasianism” “is applied to a certain Weltanschauung, a certain political philosophy that combines in itself tradition, modernity and even elements of postmodern in an original manner. The philosophy of Eurasianism proceeds from priority of values of the traditional society, acknowledges the imperative of technical and social modernization (but without breaking off cultural roots), and strives to adapt its ideal program to the situation of a post-industrial, information society called “postmodern”.

The formal opposition between tradition and modernity is removed in postmodern. However, postmodernism in the atlantist aspect levels them from the position of indifference and exhaustiveness of contents. The Eurasian postmodern, on the contrary, considers the possibility for an alliance of tradition with modernity to be a creative, optimistic energetic impulse that induces imagination and development.

In the Eurasianism philosophy, the realities superseded by the period of Enlightenment obtain a legitimate place – these are religion, ethnos, empire, cult, legend, etc. In the same time, a technological breakthrough, economical development, social fairness, labour liberation, etc. are taken from the Modern. The oppositions are overcome by merging into a single harmonious and original theory that arouses fresh ideas and new decisions for eternal problems of humankind. (…)

The philosophy of Eurasianism is an open philosophy, it is free from any forms of dogmatism. It can be appended by diversified areas – history, religion, sociological and ethnological discoveries, geopolitics, economics, regional geography, culturology, various types of strategical and politological researches, etc. Moreover, Eurasianism as a philosophy assumes an original development in each concrete cultural and linguistic context: Eurasianism of the Russians will inevitably differ from Eurasianism of the French or Germans, Eurasianism of the Turks from Eurasianism of the Iranians; Eurasianism of the Arabs from Eurasianism of the Chinese, etc. Whereby, the main force lines of this philosophy will, in a whole, be preserved unalterable.(…)

The following items can be called general reference points of the Eurasianism philosophy:

• differentialism, pluralism of value systems against obligatory domination of a single ideology (in our case and first of all, of the American liberal democracy);
• traditionalism against destruction of cultures, beliefs and rites of the traditional society;
• a world-state, continent-state against both bourgeois national states and “the world government”;
• rights of nations against omnipotence of “the Golden Billion” and neo-colonial hegemony of “the Rich North”;
• an ethnos as a value and subject of history against depersonalization of nations and their alienation in artificial sociopolitical constructions;
• social fairness and solidarity of labour people against exploitation, logic of coarse gain, and humiliation of man by man.»[8]

Neo-Eurasianism as a Planetary Trend

On the second level: Neo-Eurasianism is a planetary trend. The authors of the Manifesto explain:

«Eurasianism on the level of a planetary trend is a global, revolutionary, civilization concept that is, by gradually improving, addressed to become a new ideological platform of mutual understanding and cooperation for a vast conglomerate of different forces, states, nations, cultures, and confessions that refuse from the Atlantic globalization.

It is worth carefully reading the statements of the most diverse powers all over the world: politicians, philosophers, and intellectuals and we will make sure that Eurasianists constitute the vast majority. Mentality of many nations, societies, confession, and states is, though they may not suspect about it themselves, Eurasianist.

If thinking about this multitude of different cultures, religions, confessions, and countries discordant with “the end of history” we are imposed by atlantism, our courage will grow up and the seriousness of risks of realization of the American 21^st century strategical security concept related with a unipolar world establishment will sharply increase.

Eurasianism is an aggregate of all natural and artificial, objective and subjective obstacles on the way of unipolar globalization, whereby it is elevated from a mere negation to a positive project, a creative alternative. While these obstacles exist discretely and chaotically, the globalists deal with them separately. But it is worth just integrating, pulling them together in a single, consistent Weltanschauung of a planetary character and the chances for victory of Eurasianism all over the world will be very serious.»[9]

Neo-Eurasianism as an Integration Project

On the next level, Neo-Eurasianism is treated as a project of strategical integration of the Eurasian Continent:

“The concept “the Old World” usually defining Europe can be considered much wider. This huge multicivilization space populated with nations, states, cultures, ethnoses and confessions connected between each other historically and spatially by the community of dialectical destiny. The Old World is a product of organic development of human history.

The Old World is usually set against the New World, i.e. the American continent that was discovered by the Europeans and has become a platform for construction of an artificial civilization where the European projects of the Modern, the period of Enlightenment have taken shape. (…)

In the 20^th century Europe realized its original essence and had gradually been moving to integration of all the European states into a single Union capable to provide all this space with sovereignty, independence, security, and freedom.

Creation of the European Union was the greatest milestone in the mission of Europe’s return in history. This was the response of “the Old World” to the exorbitant demands of the “New” one. If considering the alliance between the US and Western Europe – with US domination – to be the Atlantist vector of European development, then the integration of European nations themselves with predomination of the continental countries (France-Germany) can be considered Eurasianism in relation to Europe.

It becomes especially illustrative, if taking into account the theories that Europe geopolitically stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals (Ch. de Gaulle) or to Vladivostok. In other words, the interminable spaces of Russia are also valuably included in the field of the Old World subject to integration.

(…) Eurasianism in this context can be defined as a project of strategical, geopolitical, economical integration of the North of the Eurasian Continent realized as the cradle of European history, matrix of nations and cultures closely interlaced between each other.

And since Russia itself (like, by the way, the ancestors of many Europeans as well) is related in a large measure with the Turkish, Mongolian world, with Caucasian nations, through Russia – and in a parallel way through Turkey – does the integrating Europe as the Old World already acquire the Eurasianism dimension to full extent; and in this case, not only in symbolic sense, but also in geographical one. Here Eurasianism can be synonimically identified with Continentalism.[10]»

These three most general definitions of Neo-Eurasianism demonstrate that here we deal with a preparatory basis for construction of the Multipolarism Theory. This is the ground view on the sharpest challenges of modernity and attempt to give an adjust response to them taking into account geopolitical, civilization, sociological, historical and philosophical regularities.

 

Notes

[1] Murray D., Brown D. (eds.)Multipolarity in the 21st Century. A New World Order. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2010; Ambrosio Th. Challenging America global Preeminence: Russian Quest for Multipolarity. Chippenheim, Wiltshire: Anthony Rose, 2005;Peral L. (ed.) Global Security in a Multi-polar World.Chaillot Paper. Paris: European Institute for Security Studies, 2009; Hiro D. After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World. Yale: Nation Books, 2009.

[2] Turner Susan. “Russia, China and the Multipolar World Order: the danger in the undefined.” Asian Perspective. 2009. Vol. 33, No. 1. C. 159-184;Higgott Richard, “Multi-Polarity and Trans-Atlantic Relations: Normative Aspirations and Practical Limits of EU Foreign Policy.” – www.garnet-eu.org. 2010. [Electronic resource] URL: http://www.garnet-eu.org/fileadmin/documents/working_papers/7610.pdf (дата обращения 28.08.2010); Katz M. Primakov Redux. Putin’s Pursuit of «Multipolarism» in Asia//Demokratizatsya. 2006. vol.14 № 4. C.144-152.

[3] Krauthammer Ch. “The Unipolar Moment.” Foreign Affairs, 1990 / 1991 Winter. Vol. 70, No 1. С. 23-33.

[4] Haass R. “The Age of Non-polarity: What will follow US Dominance?” Foreign Affairs, 2008. 87 (3). С. 44-56.

[5] Déclaration de M. Hubert Védrine, ministre des affaires étrangères sur la reprise d’une dialogue approfondie entre la France et l’Hinde: les enjeux de la resistance a l’uniformisation culturelle et aux exces du monde unipolaire. New Delhi — 1 lesdiscours.vie-publique.fr. 7.02.2000. [Electronic resource] URL: http://lesdiscours.vie-publique.fr/pdf/003000733.pdf

[6] Krauthammer Ch. “The Unipolar Moment.” Op.cit.

[7] Евразийская миссия. Манифест Международного «Евразийского Движения». М.: Международное Евразийское Движение, 2005.

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

 

——————-

Dugin, Alexander. “Multipolarism as an Open Project.” Journal of Eurasian Affairs, vol.1, no.1 (September 2013). <http://www.eurasianaffairs.net/multipolarism-as-an-open-project/ >. (See this essay in PDF format here: Multipolarism as an Open Project).

Notes: The above essay is the English translation of a chapter from Dugin’s major work on the Theory of the Multipolar World, originally published in Russian as теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012). This book is available in a French translation as Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013).

For a brief discussion of Dugin’s theories and also a listing of major translated works by him, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >.

 

Multipolar & Postmodern World – Dugin

The Multipolar World and the Postmodern

By Alexander Dugin

 

1. Multipolarism as a Vision of the Future and Land in the Postmodern Era

Multipolarism as an Innovative Mold-Breaking Concept

The Multipolar Theory represents a unique direction that cannot be qualified simply in terms of “progress/conservatism”, “old/new”, “development/stagnation”, etc. The unipolar and globalist view on history imagines the historical process as a linear motion from the worse to the better, from the underdeveloped to the developed, and so on and so forth. In this case, globalization is seen as the horizon of a universal future, and everything that impedes globalization is simply seen as the inertia of the past, atavism, or a striving to blindly preserve the “status quo” at all costs. In virtue of such a percept, globalism and “The Sea Power” are also trying to interpret Multipolarism as exclusively being a conservative position opposing the “inevitable change”. If globalization is the Postmodern (the global society), Multipolarism appears to be resistance to the Postmodern (containing elements of the Modern and even Pre-Modern).

Alas, it is indeed possible to consider things under a different visual angle and set aside the dogmatics of linear progress[1] or the “monotonous process”[2]. The idea of time as a sociological category of the philosophy of Multipolarism is based on interpreting the general paradigm of Multipolarism through the view of an absolutely different system.

Multipolarism, in comparison with unipolarity and globalism, is not just an appeal to the old or a call for preserving everything as it is. Multipolarism does not insist either on preserving national states (the Westphalian world) or on restoring the bipolar model (the Yalta world), nor on freezing that transitional state where international life is currently positioned. Multipolarism is a look into the future (that which has not yet been), a project of organization of the world order on absolutely new principles and elements, and thus, a serious revision of the ideological, philosophical, and sociological axioms that modernity rests upon.

Multipolarism, as well as unipolarity and globalization, is oriented towards the construction of that which has never been before it, to the creative strain of free spirit, the philosophical search and the striving for building a better, more absolute, fair, harmonious, and happy society. What is different, however, is that the character of this society, its principles and values, and also the methods to construct its foundation, are seen in a radically different way when compared to the globalists’ vision. Multipolarism sees the future to be multiple, full of variety, differentiated, dissimilar, and preserving a wide palette of collective and individual self-identification choices. There are also undertones of frontier societies that experience the influence of different identification matrices. This is a model of the “flourishing complexity” of the world, where a multitude of places combines with a multitude of times, where multiscale collective and individual actors engage in a dialogue, and thus figuring out and sometimes transforming their identity in the course of such a conversation. The West’s culture, philosophy, policy, economy, and technology are seen in this future world to be just one of many local phenomena, in no way excelling the culture, philosophy, policy, economy, and technology of the Asiatic societies and even the archaic tribes. All that we deal with in the form of different ethnoses, peoples, nations, and civilizations are equitable variations of “human societies” (“Menschliche Gesellschaft”[3]). Some of them are “disenchanted” (M. Weber) and materially developed, while others are poor and plain, though still “enchanted” (M. Eliade), sacred, and living in harmony and equilibrium with their ambient existence. Multipolarism accepts whichever choice society makes, but any choice becomes sensible only in the context of space and a historical moment, and hence, it remains local. The most that Western culture, perceived as something local, can do for others is be a source of admiration and arouse delight, but a claim for universalism and separation from the historical context turns it into a simulacrum, into a Quasi-West, into a cartoon and kitsch. To some extent, this has already happened in regards to American culture’s influence over Europe, where it is still easy to recognize Europe, but this Europe is hypertrophic, sterilized, and deprived of internal harmony and proportions, charm, and tradition. It is a Europe of the universalist project and it is no longer organic, taking on the characteristics of a complex, paradoxical, dramatic, tragic, and contradictory historical and spatial phenomenon.

Multipolarism as the Postmodern

If we refer to the past, we will easily find out that the Multipolar World, the international order based upon the principle of Multipolarism, never existed. Multipolarism is therefore a project, plan, and strategy of the future, not a mere inertia or sluggish resistance to globalization. Multipolarism observes the future, but sees it in a radically different way than the proponents of unipolarity, universalism, and globalization do, and it strives to bring its vision into life.

These considerations demonstrate that, in a certain sense, Multipolarism is also the Postmodern (not the Modern or Premodern), but simply different from the Postmodern visions of globalism and unipolarity. In this special sense, the Multipolar Philosophy agrees that the present world order, and also that of the past (national or bipolar), is imperfect and demands a radical alteration. The Multipolar World is not an assertion of K. Schmitt’s Second or Third Nomos of the Earth, but a battle for the Fourth Nomos that must come in place of the present and the past. As well, Multipolarism is not rejection of the Postmodern, but the establishment of a radically different Postmodern than the version suggested by the globalists and proponents of the unipolar world; different in relation to the neo-liberal dominating version, and in relation to the critical antiglobalist and alterglobalist position, it will be based upon the same universalism as neo-liberalism, but only with the reverse sign. The Multipolar Postmodern therefore represents something altogether different from the Modern or Pre-Modern, neo-liberal globalism or unipolar America-centric imperialism, or leftist antiglobalist or alterglobalist ideas. Therefore, in the case of the formalization of Multipolarism into a systemized ideology, the conversation drifts precisely to “The Fourth Political Theory”.

The Multipolar Idea recognizes that national states do not correspond with the challenges of history, and moreover, they are merely a preparatory stage for globalization. Therefore, it supports integration processes in specific regions, insisting so that their borders consider the civilizational peculiarities of the societies historically developed in these territories. This is a positive feature of postmodernism.

The Multipolar Idea posits that the significance of new non-state actors must increase in international politics, but these actors must be, first of all, original historically developed organic societies (such as ethnoses) having an established relationship to their space of activity. This is also a postmodernist feature.

The Multipolar Idea rejects the universal “Great Narratives” (stories), European logocentrism, rigid power hierarchies, and an assumable normative patriarchate. Instead of this, it supports the value of local, multifaceted, and asymmetrical identities reflecting the spirit of each specific culture, whatever it is and however alien and execrable it seems to the rest. This is yet another postmodernist feature.

The Multipolar Idea rejects the mechanistic approach to reality and the Descartes division into the subject and the object. It does this by affirming integrity, holism, and an integral approach to the world, one that is organic and balanced, based rather upon the “geometry of nature” (B. Mandelbrot) than on the “geometry of the machine”. This yields ecologism for the Multipolar World, rejection of the “subjugation of nature” concept (F. Bacon), and transition to “a dialogue with nature”. This is an even better postmodern feature.

The Multipolar Postmodern against the Unipolar (Globalist/Antiglobalist) Postmodern

When the conversation drifts to the measure of things in the future world, serious contradictions begin to arise between the Multipolar Theory and Postmodernism. Liberal and Neo-Marxist Postmodernism operate with the basic concepts of the “individual” and linear “progress”, conceived in the prospect of the “liberation of the individual” and, on the last stage, in the prospect of “liberation from the individual” and a transition to the post-man, be it a cyborg, mutant, rhizome, or clone. Moreover, it is the principle of individuality that they consider universal. Here, the Multipolar Idea sharply diverges with the main line of Postmodernism and posits the society[4], collective personality, collective consciousness (E. Durkheim), and the collective unconscious (K. G. Jung) as the center of things. Society is a matrix of existence; it creates individuals, people, languages, cultures, economies, political systems, time, and space. In the Multipolar Idea, there is not just one society, as societies are many, and they are all incommensurable with one other. An individual has become “the measure of things” in such an absolute and accomplished form only in one type of society (Western European), and in all other societies, he has not and will not become so. This is because they are structured in an absolutely different way. One must acknowledge the inalienable right for each society to be such as it wants to be and to create reality by its own means, be it through assigning an individual and man a superior value or not assigning them any.

The same idea concerns the issue of “progress”. Since time is a social phenomenon[5], it is structured in a different way in each society. In some societies, it bears in itself an increase in the role of the individual in history, while in others it does not. Therefore, there is no determining factor across societies concerning the concepts of individualism and post-humanity. The fate of the West will likely continue to proceed towards these aforementioned directions, as this path is connected with the logic of its history. The West’s embrace of individualism and post-humanity has the potential to inflict collateral damage to other societies and nations, as even if these ideas are already somewhat present in their culture, it is as a rule usually in the form of externally enforced colonial precepts that are align paradigms for the local societies themselves. It is this colonial imperialist universalism of the West that is the main challenge for the Multipolar Idea.

By using the terms of geopolitics, it can be said that Multipolarism is the land, continental, tellurocratic version of the Postmodern, whereas globalism (as well as antiglobalism) is its sea and thalassocratic version.

2. Multipolarism and Globalization Theories

Multipolarism against the Global Policy

From the position of Multipolarism, let us now consider the basic theories of globalization and how they relate to one another.

The World Polity Theory (J. Meyer, J. Boli, etc.) presumes the creation of an integrated global state, and with the support of individual citizens, it is maximally opposite to Multipolarism and represents its formal antithesis. It is similar to the theses of “the end of history” (rapid or gradual) by F. Fukuyama and all the other rigidly globalist unipolar projects that describe a desirable and probable future that completely contradicts the Multipolar one. In this case, between Multipolarism and the theory of globalization, there exists a relation of plus and minus, black and white, etc. As an example, there is a radical antagonism of ultimatums: either “The World Polity” or Multipolarism.

Multipolarism and the Global Culture (in Defense of Localization)

The case study of relations is more difficult to conduct with the World Culture Theory (R. Robertson) and “transformationists” concepts (E. Giddens, etc.). Critical appraisals of globalization in the spirit of S. Huntington can also be referred to here. In these theories, they analyze the balance of two trends – universalization (pure globalism) and localization (R. Robertson) – or the new appearance of civilization contours (S. Huntington). If the attitude of the Multipolar Theory to universalization is unambiguously antagonistic, a number of phenomena that manifest themselves as secondary effects in the course of globalization can, on the contrary, be appraised positively. The weakening of the sociopolitical context of national states in these theories is demonstrated from two sides: partially, their functions are transferred to global entities, and partially, they turn out to be in the hands of some new, local actors. On the other hand, due to the fragility and looseness of national states, civilizational and religious factors assume ever greater importance. It is this set of phenomena that accompany globalization, and they are consequences of the weakening of previous state and ideological world models that deserve positive attention and become elements of the Multipolar Theory.

The secondary effects of globalization return societies to a specific spatial, cultural, and occasionally, religious context. This leads to the reinforcement of the role of ethnic identity, an increase in the importance of the confessional factor, and increased attention to local communities and problems. In summarizing these phenomena, they can be realized as strategic positions of the Multipolar World Order that must be fixed, fastened, and supported. Within the “glocalization” described by Robertson, Multipolarism is interested in “localization”, being in complete solidarity with it. Robertson himself believes that the processes of “glocalization” are not predetermined and can sway to one side or another. Accepting this analysis, the supporters of the Multipolar World must consciously apply their efforts so that the processes sway to the “local” side and overweigh the “global” one.

Multipolar Conclusions from the Analysis of the World-System Theory

The World-System Theory by I. Wallerstein is interesting for the Multipolar Theory due to the fact that it adequately describes the economic, political, and sociological algorithm of globalization. Wallerstein’s “World System” represents the global capitalist elite as huddling around “The Core”, even if its representatives come from the “periphery” countries. “The world proletariat” that gradually transits from a national identity to a class-based (international) one personifies the “periphery” not just geographically, but also socially. National states are no more than sites where one and the same mechanical process takes place. This is the enrichment of oligarchs and their integration in the supranational (global) “Core” and the pauperization of the masses, which gradually interfuse with the working class of other nations in the course of migration processes.

From the point of view of the Multipolar Theory, this analysis does not consider geopolitics or the cultural and civilizational factor. The latter is the disregard for the topic inherent in Marxism as a whole, which is first of all focused on the disclosure of the economic mechanics of society’s organization. In the present world, “The Second World” (i.e. regional integration formations or “Great Spaces”) is situated between “The Core” and “the Periphery”. Under I. Wallerstein’s logic, their existence changes nothing in the general structure of the world-system, and they merely represent a step in the direction of complete globalization – the integration of the elites in “The Core” and the “internationalization of the masses” occur more rapidly here than in the context of national states. But under the logic of the Multipolar Theory, the presence of “The Second World” radically changes it all. Between the elites and masses existing in the various integration structures within the limits of “The Second World”, there can arise a model of relations other than the liberal or Marxist analysis forecast. S. Huntington called it “modernization without Westernization”[6]. The essence of this phenomenon is that, while obtaining a Western education and mastering Western technologies, the elites of the periphery countries often act in the following way: they do not integrate into the global elite, but instead return to their society, confirm their socialization and collective identity within it, and put their mastered skills to service for their own countries, thereby not following the West, and even opposing it. The factor of cultural identity (often religion) and civilizational affiliation turns out to be stronger than the universalist algorithm presented in the technology of modernization and the very medium that begot it.

The process of societies’ stratification and the elite’s Westernization as described by Wallerstein definitely takes place, but a different process may also take place – “modernization without Westernization”. Together with regional integration without global integration, these processes represent a tendency which I. Wallerstein himself ignores, but which his analysis ironically allows one to be able to clearly see and describe. This becomes a very important element and program thesis for the Multipolar Theory.

As for the global horizon, all societies now have to confront most of the theories of globalization firsthand, and the Multipolar Theory can propose the following principles.

The true completeness and integrity of the world is objectively real, but it can only be properly perceived once one removes the surrounding banality which obscures his pure understanding of it. Heidegger called this the “authentic existing of Dasein”[7]. Grasping the world as a whole can be only possible through the modification of existence, not through the accumulation of ever new data, expressions, meetings, conversations, information, and knowledge. According to Heidegger, man is spurred on to study new places and landscapes in order to escape from genuine existence, and this concept is personified in the figure of Das Man, i.e. an impersonal and abstract, yet concrete, living form that finds various substitutes to replace the true experience of existing. Das Man, having an inauthentic existence, dissolves the concentration of his own consciousness through “curiosity” and “gossip”, two of the various forms non-authentic existence[8]. The simpler that communications in the global world are, the more senseless they become. The more saturated the information flows are, the less people are able to reason and decode their meaning. Therefore, globalization in no way contributes to one acquiring experience of the whole world, but on the contrary, misleads from it by dispersing the attention in an infinite series of meaningless puzzles where the parts are not attributes of the unified whole, i.e. they exist as unrelated fragments of existence. The global horizon is not reached in globalization – it is comprehended in a profound existential experience of a place.

Therefore, different societies do not collide in the global horizon, but with the challenge of globalism as an ideology and practice that attacks every society and challenges all local communities, they could find a common ground in rejecting the enemy that menaces all peoples and cultures without discrimination. The Multipolar Theory recognizes the universalism of this challenge, but holds that it must be repulsed just as universally in order to stave off a forthcoming catastrophe, disaster, or tragedy.

The horizon of globalism is conceived as something that must be defeated, overcome, and abolished. Each society will do it in its own way, but the Multipolar Theory suggests generalizing, consolidating, and coordinating all the forms of opposition to the globalization challenge. As global as the challenge of globalization is, so too must be its rejection, but the structure of this rejection, so as to be full-fledged, independent, and prospective, must be multipolar and suggest a clear and distinct project of what should be put in place of globalization.

3. From a Poison to a Cure

Saddling the Tiger of Globalization: the Multipolar Network

The construction of the Multipolar World demands the developing of a special attitude to all basic aspects of the globalization process. We have seen that although Multipolarism opposes unipolarity and globalization, the question is not simply about the rejection of all the transformations that surround modernity, but about selecting the multipolar format for these transformations, to influence them, and to guide the process to the pattern seen as being the most desirable and optimal. Therefore, Multipolarism in certain situations is not so much meant to directly oppose globalization as it is to recapture the initiative and allow the processes to go along a new trajectory, thereby turning “a poison into a cure” (“to saddle the tiger”[9], to use a traditional Chinese expression). Such a strategy repeats the logic of “modernization without Westernization”, but on a more generalized and systemized level. Some separate societies in a regional culture borrow Western technologies so as to reinforce themselves and repulse the pressure of the West at certain times. Multipolarism suggests comprehending such a strategy as a system that can serve as a general algorithm for most different non-Western societies.

Let us give some examples of such a reinterpretation of separate aspects of globalism through the multipolar perspective.

Let us take the network and network space phenomenon. By itself, this phenomenon is not neutral. It represents the result of a series of gradual transformations in the sociological understanding of space in the context of “The Sea Power” on the path of ever greater information medium dilution – from the sea through the air to the infosphere. Along with it, the network represents a structure that perceives the presence of relations between the system elements not in the organic, but in the mechanic, way. The network can be constructed between separate individual elements that initially are not connect with each other and have no common collective identity. As it evolves, the network phenomenon presents the prospect of overcoming humanity and entering into the post-human age. This is because the centrality of man becomes ever more and more relative (N. Luhmann, M. Castells, etc.) in the very functioning of self-organizing systems like the network. From this point of view, the network represents a reality that is cardinally “Sea”, Atlantist, and globalist.

In classical geopolitics, we can see that the positions of the Land and Sea are connected not so much by the presence of one element or another, but with the sociological, cultural, philosophical, and only then, strategic conclusions different societies make from their contact with the Sea. K. Schmitt emphasizes[10] that in spite of creating a global empire based upon navigation, Spanish society continued preserving its strictly land-based identity, which also particularly manifested itself in the social organization of the colonies and in the difference between the future destinies of Latin and Anglo-Saxon America. The presence of developed navigation does not necessarily make a power a sea one in the geopolitical sense of this term. Moreover, the objective of the Land Power and, in particular, of the Heartland, is to obtain access to the seas, break the financial blockade on the part of the thalassocracy, and begin to compete with it in its own element.

The situation with the network space is the same. The Multipolar camp needs to master the structure of the network processes and their technologies, learn the rules and regularities of network behavior, and then gain a possibility to realize its objectives and goals in this new element. The network space opens new possibilities for smaller actors: after all, the locations of a huge planetary level transnational corporation, a great power, or an individual minimally mastering programming skills are in no way different from each other, and in a certain sense, they appear to occur in similar conditions. The same can be said for social networks and blogs. Globalization banks that code diffusion into a multitude of network participants will one way or another install them in a context, whose basic parameters will be controlled by owners of physical servers, domain name registrars, providers, and hardware monopolists. But in the antiglobalist theories by Negri and Hardt, we have seen how leftist-anarchist theorists suggest coopting this circumstance for their interests while preparing a “rebellion of multitudes” that is called for to overthrow the control of the “empire”[11]. Something analogical can also be suggested in the Multipolar prospect, but the question is not about conducting a chaotic sabotage of the globalists plans through the use of the “multitudes”, but about constructing virtual network civilizations tied to a specific historical and geographical place and possessing a common cultural code. A virtual civilization can be considered a projection of the civilization as such in the network medium, assuming that the lines of force and the identification perceptions that are dominant in a corresponding cultural medium are consolidated there. This is already used by different religious, ethnic, and political forces that are in no way globalist or even antiglobalist, and they coordinate their activities and propagate their views and ideas with the help of different instruments of the Internet Network.

National domains and the development of network communications in local language systems are another form. With effective operation in this medium, this can contribute to the reinforcement of the youth’s cultural identity, as they are naturally predisposed to the allure of new technologies.

The example of the “Chinese Internet” (where access is legally and physical limited) can, according to the opinion of some Chinese governmental experts, damage the security of Chinese society. On the reverse, in the political, social, and moral fields, this example demonstrates that purely restrictive measures can also exercise some positive effect for the reinforcement of Multipolarism.

The global network can turn into a multipolar one, namely, into an aggregate of intersecting but independent “virtual continents”. Thus, instead of the singular network, there will appear many networks, each being a virtual expression of a specific qualitative space. All together, these continents can be integrated in a common multipolar network, differentiated and moderated on the grounds of the multipolar network paradigm. Eventually, the content of what is in the network will be a reflection of human imagination structures[12]. If actualizing these structures in a multipolar way (i.e. as those just making sense in a specific qualitative historical space), it is not difficult to imagine what the Internet (or its future analogue) could be in the Multipolar World.

On a practical level, under the present conditions, a network can already be considered as a means of consolidating active social groups, personalities, and societies under the aegis of promoting Multipolarism, i.e. gradual multipolar network construction.

Network Wars of the Multipolar World

Network wars are one more phenomenon of the globalization period. One should also be armed with the methodology of network wars – both in the common theoretical and application aspects – in constructing the Multipolar World. In this sense, the Network-centric Principle adapted during the reorganization of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation represents an absolutely justified decision, addressed to reinforce the Heartland’s positions and increase the performance of the army that constitutes one of the main elements in the multipolar configuration.

The Network-centric Principle of warfare has some technical and principal aspects to it. The equipping of separate units of the Russian Army with network attributes (tracking devices, operative two-way communication devices, interactive technical means, etc.) is a self-evident side of the issue, demanding no special geopolitical grounds. What is much more important is in considering another more common aspect of network warfare.

A network war, as it appears from its theorists’ actions, is constantly waged in all directions – against enemies, allies, and neutral forces. In the same way, network operations must be evolved in all directions and on the part of the center (or some centers) for the Multipolar World construction to succeed. If we assume that the actor pursuing a network war is not a state, but a non-state entity targeting the creation of the Multipolar World (like those that the US network war targets in order to establish the unipolar world), we will see that waging this war by different poles (e.g. Russia, China, India, Iran, etc.) will create interference and resonances and multiply the reinforcement and effectiveness of network strategies. By constructing the Multipolar World, each pole is interested in reinforcing the other poles, but also in weakening the hyperpower’s global hegemony. Thus, a network war waged by the Multipolar World can represent a spontaneous convergence of effort with structural ramifications that can be extremely effective. The reinforcement of China is beneficial for Russia, just as the security of Iran is beneficial for India. The independence of Pakistan from the US will positively redound upon the situation in Afghanistan and Central Asia, among other places.

By directing networks, information, and image flows that are associated with the multipolar idea in each and every direction, a network war can become extremely effective, as the securing of the interests of one Multipolar World actor automatically furthers the interests of another. In this case, coordination must only occur on the highest level – on the level of the countries’ representatives in the multipolar club (as a rule, these are heads of states) where the common multipolar paradigm will be exactly coordinated. Network war processes will bring this common strategy into life.

The second important part of the Network-centric War theory is in emphasizing the increased sensibility to initial conditions. These initial factors that affect the end result are the point in which the possible conflict starts, the position that other participating countries take up, and the information medium that broadcasts the conflict’s developments. Therefore, higher priority attention should be paid to preparing the medium – the local and global one. If the correlation of forces, a computation of the consequences of the various steps taken in the information field, and the preliminary preparation of image presentation are made correctly, this can make a conflict situation impossible by persuading a potential opponent of the hopelessness of resistance or armed escalation. This concerns traditional warfare as well as information wars, where the fight is waged for influence upon public opinion.

Therefore, the countries declaring their orientation to Multipolarism can and must actively use the theories and practices of network-centric operations for their interests. The theorists of network wars fairly consider them to be a crucial strategic instrument of waging a war in the Postmodernist conditions. Multipolarism undertakes the challenge of the Postmodern and begins a battle for its direction. Network-centric operations represent one of the most important territories to wage this battle.

Multipolarism and the Dialectics of Chaos

Another example where a strategy of turning “a poison into a cure” can be found is in the chaos phenomenon. Chaos ever more frequently figures into modern geopolitical texts[13], as well as in globalization theories. Proponents of the rigid unipolar approach (such as S. Mann[14]) suggest manipulating chaos in favor of “The Core” (i.e., the US). Antiglobalists and postmodernists welcome chaos in its literal sense – as anarchy and disorder. Other authors try to see buds of order in the chaotic reality.

The Multipolar Approach treats the problem of chaos as follows:

First, the mythological concept of “chaos” as a condition opposing “order” is predominantly a product of Greek (i.e. European) culture. This opposition is initially based upon the exclusiveness of order, and subsequently, as philosophy develops and order is identified with rationality, chaos has entirely turned into a purely negative concept, a synonym of irrationality, darkness, and inanity. It is also possible to approach this problem in another way, however, in a less exclusivist sense, and then chaos will discover itself to us as an entity not opposing order, but instead preceding its strained logical expression. Chaos is not nonsense, but a matrix from where sense is begotten[15].

In Western European culture, chaos is an unambiguous “evil”, but this is not the case in other cultures. Multipolarism refuses to consider Western European culture as being universal, and hence, chaos itself loses its unambiguous negative image, and the order correlated with it attains a positive image. Multipolarism does not reason in terms of chaos or order, but it demands explanations every time – what chaos and what order, and in what sense does a specific culture hold one or another term? We approximately know how chaos and order are comprehended by Western culture, but how does the Chinese one comprehend it, for example? Indeed, the idea of “Tao” that is crucial for Chinese philosophy (“The Way”) is described in many texts in terms that strikingly remind one of the descriptions of chaos. Therefore, the multipolar approach states that the understanding of chaos and order is relative to civilizations, and the Western conception is not universal by any means.

Firstly, globalists often understand “chaos” in the geopolitical sense as being anything that does not correlate with their perceptions of ordered sociopolitical and economic structures and that counters the establishment of their subjective global and “universal” values. In this case, everything that is valuable for the construction of the Multipolar World, including the insistence on other forms of identity, consequently bears within itself the seeds of the Multipolar Order and thus falls within the class of “chaos”. Per this example, “chaos” supports the construction of the Multipolar World and is its life-bearing origin.

Finally, chaos, in the manner that it is understood as being pure disorder or weakly organized spontaneous processes taking place in a society, can also be considered from the position of Multipolarism. Whenever a chaotic situation (conflict, disturbance, collision, etc.) arises in a natural or artificial way, it is necessary to learn to control it, i.e. master the art of chaos moderation. Being against ordered structures by their very nature, chaotic processes do not lend themselves to a straightforward logic, but it does not mean they do not have it at all. Chaos does have logic, but it is more complex and comprehensive than the algorithms of non-chaotic processes. At the same time, it lends itself to scientific research and it is actively studied by modern physicists and mathematicians. From the point of view of geopolitical application, it can well become one of the most effective instruments for constructing the Multipolar World.

 

Notes

[1] Alain de Benoist. Protiv liberalizma. SPb, 2009.

[2] Dugin A. “Protiv modernizacii.” Odnako, 2010. № 10 (26).

[3] Thurnwald R. Die menschliche Gesellschaft in ihren ethno-soziologischen Grundlagen, 5 B. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931-1934.

[4] Dugin A. The sociology of the imaginary. The introduction into the structural sociology. M., 2010.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Huntington Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

[7] Dugin A. Martin Heidegger and philosopgiya drugogo nachala. M., 2010.

[8] Heidegger called globalism with the term “Planeter Idiotism” having in mind the original Greek meaning of the word idioteς that implies a polis inhabitant deprived of civil identity, i.e., of affiliation to a phyle, caste, trade, cult, etc. SeeDugin A. Martin Heidegger and philosopgiya drugogo nachala. Op. cit.

[9] Evola J. Cavalcare la tigre. R, 2001.

[10] Schmitt С. Die planetarische Spannung zwischen Ost und West (1959)/Schmittiana – III von prof. Piet Tommissen. Brussel, 1991.

[11] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, 2000.

[12] Dugin A. The sociology of the imaginary. The introduction into the structural sociology. M., 2010.

[13] Ramonet I. Géo-politique du chaos. Paris: Galilée, 1997; Idem. Guerres du xxie siècle – Peurs et menaces nouvelles. Paris: Galilée, 2002.

[14] Mann St. R. “Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought.” Parameters. 1992. Autumn. № 55.

[15] Dugin A. Martin Heidegger and the possibilty of the Russian Philosophy. Op. cit.

 

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Dugin, Alexander. “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern.” Journal of Eurasian Affairs, vol.2, no.1 (May 2014). <http://www.eurasianaffairs.net/the-multipolar-world-and-the-postmodern/ >. (See this essay in PDF format here: The Multipolar World and the Postmodern).

Notes: The above essay is the English translation of a chapter from Dugin’s major work on the Theory of the Multipolar World, originally published in Russian as теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012). This book is available in a French translation as Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013).

For a brief discussion of Dugin’s theories and also a listing of major translated works by him, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >.

 

Civilization as Political Concept – Dugin

Civilization as Political Concept

Interview with the leader of the International “Eurasian Movement”, a philosopher, and a professor at Moscow State University Alexander Dugin.

Interviewed by the Global Revolutionary Alliance’s own Natella Speranskaja (Natella Speranskaya).

 

Natella Speranskaja: The crisis of identity, with which we faced after the Cold War and the collapse of the communist world, is still relevant. What do you think is capable of lifting us out of this crisis – a religious revival or creation of a new political ideology? Which of the options are you inclined to yourself?

Alexander Dugin: After the collapse of communism came the phase of the “unipolar moment” (as Charles Krauthammer called it). In geopolitics, this meant the victory of unilateralism and Atlanticism, and because the pole was left alone, the West has become a global phenomenon. Accordingly, the ideology of liberalism (or more accurately, neo-liberalism) is firmly in place crushing the two alternative political theories that existed in the twentieth century – communism and fascism. The Global liberal West has now defined culture, economics, information and technology, and politics. The West’s claims to the universalism of its values, the values of Western modernity and the Postmodern era, has reached its climax.

Problems stemming from the West during the “unipolar moment” has led many to say that this “moment” is over, that he could not yet be a “destiny” of humanity. That is, a “unipolar moment” should be interpreted very broadly – not only geopolitical, but also ideologically, economically, axiologically, civilization wide. The crisis of identity, about which you ask, 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. Instead of a hierarchy of identities, which have traditionally played a large role in sets of collective identities, the “unipolar moment” affirmed a flat one-dimensional identity, with the absolutization of the individual singularity. One individual = one identity, and any forms of the collective identity (for example, individual as the part of the religious community, nation, ethnic group, race, or even sex) underwent dismantling and overthrowing. Hence the hatred of globalists for different kind of “majorities” and protection of minorities, up to the individual.

The Uni-polar Democracy of our moment – this is a democracy, which unambiguously protects the minority before the face of the majority and the individual before face of the group. This is the crisis of identity for those of non-Western or non-modern (or even not “postmodern”) societies, since this is where customary models are scrapped and liquidated. The postmodern West with optimism, on the contrary, asserts individualism and hyper-liberalism in its space and zealously exports it on the planetary scale.

However, it’s not painless, and has caused at all levels its own growing rejection. The problems, which have appeared in the West in the course of this “uni-polar moment”, forced many to speak, that this “moment’s” conclusion, has not succeeded in becoming “the fate” of humanity. This, therefore, was the cost of the possibility of passage to some other paradigm…

So, we can think about an alternative to the “unipolar moment” and, therefore, an alternative to liberalism, Americanism, Atlanticism, Western Postmodernism, globalization, individualism, etc. That is, we can, and I think should, work out plans and strategies for a “post-uni polar world”, at all levels – the ideological and political, the economic, and religious, and the philosophical and geo-political, the cultural and civilizational, and technology, and value.

In fact, this is what I call multi-polarity. As in the case of uni-polarity it is not only about the political and strategic map of the world, but also the paradigmatic philosophical foundations of the future world order. We cannot exactly say that the “uni-polar moment” has finally been completed. No, it is still continuing, but it faces a growing number of problems. We must put an end to it – eradicate it. This is a global revolution, since the existing domination of the West, liberalism and globalism completely controls the world oligarchy, financial and political elites.

So they just will not simply give up their positions. We must prepare for a serious and intense battle. Multi-polarity will be recaptured by the conquered peoples of the world in combat and it will be able to arise only on the smoking ruins of the global West. While the West is still dictating his will to the rest, to talk about early multipolarity – you must first destroy the Western domination on the ground. Crisis – this is much, but far from all.

Natella Speranskaja: If we accept the thesis of the paradigmatic transition from the current unipolar world order model to a new multi-polar model, where the actors are not nation-states, but entire civilizations, can it be said that this move would entail a radical change in the very human identity?

Alexander Dugin: Yes, of course. With the end of the unipolar moment, we are entering a whole new world. And it is not simply a reverse or a step back, but it is a step forward to some unprecedented future, however, different from the digital project of “lonely crowds”, which is reserved for humanity by globalism. Multi-polar identity will be the complex nonlinear collection of different identities – both individual and collective, that is varied for each civilization (or even inside each civilization).

This is something completely new that will be created.

And the changes will be radical. We cannot exclude that, along with known identities, civilizations, and offering of new ways … It is possible that one of these new identities will become the identity of “Superman” – in the Nietzschean sense or otherwise (for example, traditionalist) … In the “open society” of globalism the individual is, on the contrary, closed and strictly self-identical.

The multi-polar world’s anthropological map will be, however, extremely open, although the boundaries of civilizations will be defined clearly. Man will again re-open the measurement of inner freedom – “freedom for”, in spite of the flat and purely external liberal freedom – “freedom from” (as in John Mill), which is actually, not freedom, but its simulacrum, imposed for a more efficient operation of the planetary masses by a small group of global oligarchs.

Natella Speranskaja: Alexander Gelevich Dugin, you are the creator of the theory of a multi-polar world, which laid the foundation from which we can begin a new historical stage. Your book The Theory of a Multi-polar World (Теория многополярного мира) has been and is being translated into other languages. The transition to a new model of world order means a radical change in the foreign policy of nation-states, and in today’s global economy, in fact, you have created all the prerequisites for the emergence of a new diplomatic language. Of course, this is a challenge of the global hegemony of the West. What do you think will be the reaction of your political opponents when they realize the seriousness of the threat posed?

Alexander Dugin: As always in the vanguard of philosophical and ideological ideas, we first have the effect of bewilderment, the desire to silence or marginalize them. Then comes the phase of severe criticism and rejection. Then they begin to consider. Then they become commonplace and a truism. So it was with many of my ideas and concepts in the past 30 years. Traditionalism, geopolitics, Sociology of imagination , Ethnosociology, Conservative Revolution , National Bolshevism, Eurasianism, the Fourth Political Theory, National-structuralism, Russian Schmittianism, the concept of the three paradigms, the eschatological gnosis, New Metaphysics and Radical Theory of the Subject, Conspiracy theories, Russian Heideggerianism, a post-modern alternative, and so on – perceived first with hostility, then partially assimilated, and finally became part of mainstream discourse in academia and politics of Russia, and in part, beyond.

Each of these directions has their fate, but the diagram of their mastering is approximately identical. So it will be also with the theory of a multipolar world It will be hushed up, and then demonized and fiercely criticized, and then they will begin to look at it closely, and then accepted. But for all this it is necessary to pay for it and to defend it in the fight. Arthur Rimbaud said that “the spiritual battle as fierce and hard, as the battle of armies.” For this we will have to struggle violently and desperately. As for everything else.

Natella Speranskaja: In the “Theory of a multipolar world,” you write that in the dialogue between civilizations the responsibility is born by the elite of civilization. Do I understand correctly, it should be a “trained” elite, that is, the elite, which has a broad knowledge and capabilities, rather than the present “elite”? Tell me, what is the main difference between these elites?

Alexander Dugin: Civilizational elite – is a new concept. Thus far it does not exist. It is a combination of two qualities – deep assimilation of the particular civilizational culture (in the philosophical, religious, value levels) and the presence of a high degree of “drive,” persistently pushing people to the heights of power, prestige, and influence. Modern liberalism channels passion exclusively in the area of economics and business, creating a preference for a particular social elevator and it is a particular type of personality (which is an American sociologist Yuri Slezkine called the “mercurial type”).

The Mercurial elite of globalism, “aviakochevniki” mondialist nomadism, sung by Jacques Attali, should be overthrown in favor of radically different types of elites. Each civilization can dominate, and other “worlds”, not only thievish, mercurial shopkeepers and cosmopolitans. Islamic elite is clearly another – an example of this we see in today’s Iran, where the policy (Mars) and economics (Mercury) are subject to spiritual authority, of the Ayatollah (Saturn).

But the “world” is only a metaphor. Different civilizations are based on different codes. The main thing is that the elite must be reflected in the codes themselves, whatever they may be. This is the most important condition. The will to power inherent in any elite, shall be interfaced with the will to knowledge; that is, intellectualism and activism in such a multipolar elite should be wedded. Technological efficiency and value (often religious) content should be combined in such an elite. Only such an elite will be able to fully and responsibly participate in the dialogue of civilizations, embodying the principles of their traditions and engaging in interaction with other civilizations of the worlds.

Natella Speranskaja: How can you comment on the hypothesis that the return to a bipolar model is still possible?

Alexander Dugin: I think not, practically or theoretically. In practice, because today there is no country that is comparable to the basic parameters of the U.S. and the West in general. The U.S. broke away from the rest of the world so that no one on their own can compete with them. Theoretically, only the West now has a claim to universality of its values, whereas previously Marxism was regarded as an alternative. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it became clear that universalism is only liberal, capitalist. To resist Western imperialism there can only be a coalition of large spaces – not the second pole, but immediately multiple poles, each of them with its own strategic infrastructure and with a particular civilizational, cultural and ideological content.

Natella Speranskaja: How real is the sudden transition to a non-polar model? What are the main disadvantages of this model?

Alexander Dugin: Passage to a non-polar model, about which leaders are increasingly talking of in the Council on Foreign Relations (Richard Haass, George Soros, etc.), means the replacement of the facade of a uni-polar hegemony, the transition from the domination based on military and strategic power of the United States and NATO (hardware) to dispersed domination of the West as a whole (software). These are two versions – hard-hegemony and soft-hegemony. But in both cases the West, its civilization, its culture, its philosophy, its technologies, its political and economic institutes and procedures come out as the standard universal model. Over the long term, this will indicate the transfer of power to a “world government”, which will be dominated by all the same Western elites, the global oligarchy. It will then discard its mask and will act directly on behalf of the transnational forces. In some sense, non-polarity is worse than uni-polarity, though it would seem hard to believe.

Non-polarity itself, and even more sharply and rapidly, will not yet begin. For this, the world must go through the turmoil and trials until a desperate humanity itself cries for the world elite with a prayer for salvation. Prior to that, to weaken the power of the United States, world disasters occur, and war. Non-polar world under the control of a world government, consisting of direct representatives of the global oligarchy, is expected by many religious circles as the coming “of the kingdom of the Antichrist.”

As for the “shortcomings” of such a model, I believe that it is just “a great parody of” the sacred world empire, which Rene Guenon warned of in his work The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times. This will be a global simulacrum. To recognize these “deficiencies” will not be so easy, otherwise opposition to “the Antichrist” would be too simple a matter, and the depth of his temptation would be insignificant.

The true alternative is a multi-polar world. Everything else – evil in the truest sense of the word.

Natella Speranskaja: The “counter-hegemony” by Robert Cox, who you mention in your book aims to expose the existing order in international relations and raise the rebellion against it. To do this, Cox called for the creation of counter-hegemonic bloc, which will include political actors who reject the existing hegemony. Have you developed the Fourth Political Theory as a kind of counter-hegemonic doctrine that could unite the rebels against the hegemony of the West?

Alexander Dugin: I am convinced that the Fourth Political Theory fits into the logic of building counter-hegemony, which Cox spoke of. By the way, also in the proximity of critical theory in the MO theory, and multi-polar world is a wonderful text by Alexandra Bovdunova, voiced at the Conference on the Theory of a Multipolar World in Moscow, Moscow State University on 25-26 April 2012.

4PT is not a complete doctrine, this is still the first steps toward the exit from the conceptual impasse in which we find ourselves in the face of liberalism, today rejected by more and more people around the world, in the collapse of the old anti-liberal political theories – Communism and Fascism. In a sense, the need for 4PT – is a sign of the times, and really cannot be disputed by anyone. Another matter, what will be 4PT in its final form. The temptation appears to build it as a syncretic combination of elements of previous anti-liberal doctrines and ideologies …

I am convinced that we should go another way. It is necessary to understand the root of the current hegemony. This coincides with the root of modernity as such, and it grows from the roots of modernity in all three pillars of political theories – liberalism, communism and fascism. To manipulate them to find an alternative to modernity and liberalism, respectively, and of the liberal hegemony of the West, is in my view, pointless. We must move beyond modernity in general, beyond the range of its political actors – individual, class, nation, state, etc.

Therefore 4PT as the basis of a counter-hegemonic planetary front should be constructed quite differently. Like the theory of a multipolar world 4PT operates with a new concept – “civilization”, but 4PT puts special emphasis on the existential aspect of it. Hence the most important, the central thesis of 4PT that its subject is the actor – Dasein. Every civilization, its Dasein, which means that it describes a specific set of existentials. On their basis, should be raised a new political theory generalized at the following level into a “multipolar federation of Dasein” as the concrete structure of counter-hegemony. In other words, the very counter-hegemony must be conceived existentially, as a field of war between the inauthentic globalization (global alienation) and the horizon of authentic peoples and societies in a multipolar world (the possibility of overcoming the alienation of civilizations).

Natella Speranskaja: When we talk about cognitive uprising, however, first of all, should our actions be aimed at the overthrow of the dictatorship of the West?

Alexander Dugin: The most important step is the beginning of the systematic preparation of a global revolutionary elite-oriented to multi-polarity 4PT. This elite must perform a critical function – to be a link between the local and global. At the local level we are talking about the masses and the clearest exponents of their local culture (religious leaders, philosophers, etc.). Often, these communities do not have a planetary perspective and simply defend their conservative identity before the onset of toxic globalization and Western imperialism.

Raising the masses and the traditionalist-conservatives to a realized uprising in the context of a complex union of a counter-hegemonistic block is extremely difficult. Simple conservatives and their supportive mass, for example, of the Islamic or Orthodox persuasion are unlikely to realize the necessity of alliances with the Hindus or the Chinese. This will be the play (and they are already actively playing it) of the globalists and their principle of “divide and conquer!” But the revolutionary elite, which is the elite, even within a particular traditionalist elite of society, should take the heartfelt deep and deliberate feelings of local identity and correlate it within a total horizon of multi-polarity, and the 4PT.

Without the formation of such an elite, the revolt against the post-modern world and the overthrow of the dictatorship of the West will not take place. Every time and everywhere the West has a problem, he will come to the aid of anti-Western forces, which, however, will be motivated by narrow bills to specific civilizational neighbors – most often, just as anti-Western as they are. So it will be and already is the instrumentalization of globalists of various conservative fundamentalist and nationalist movements. Islamic fundamentalists to help the West is one. European nationalists – is another. So a “unipolar moment” extends not only to exist in itself, but also playing the antagonistic forces against him. The overthrow of the dictatorship of the West will become possible only if this strategy will be sufficient enough to create or make appear a new counter-hegemonic elite. An initiative like Global Revolutionary Alliance – the unique example of really revolutionary and effective opposition to hegemony.

Natella Speranskaja: You have repeatedly said that Eurasianism is a strategic, philosophical, cultural and civilizational choice. Can we hope that the political course chosen by Vladimir Putin (establishment of a Eurasian Union) Is the first step towards a multipolar model?

Alexander Dugin: This is a difficult question. By himself, Putin and, especially, his environment, they act more out of inertia, without calling into question the legitimacy of the existing planetary status quo. Their goal – to win his and Russia’s rather appropriate place within the existing world order. But that is the problem: a truly acceptable place for Russia is not and cannot exist, because the “uni-polar moment”, as well as the globalists, stand for the de-sovereignization of Russia, eliminating it as an independent civilization and strategic pole.

This self-destruction seems to suit Dmitry Medvedev and his entourage (INSOR), for he was ready to reboot and go for almost all of it. Putin clearly understands the situation somewhat differently, and his criteria of “acceptability” is also different. He would most of all psychologically arrange a priority partnership with the West while maintaining the sovereignty of Russia. But this is something unacceptable under any circumstances to the unipolar globalists – practically or theoretically.

So Putin is torn between multipolarity – where he leads the orientation of sovereignty – and Atlanticism – where he leads the inertia and the tireless work of a huge network of influence that permeates all of the structure of Russian society. Here is the dilemma. Putin makes moves in both directions – he proclaims multi-polarity, the Eurasian Union, to protect the sovereignty of Russia, even spoke of the peculiarities of Russian civilization, strengthening vertical power, shows respect (if not more) to Orthodoxy, but on the other hand, surrounds himself with pro-American experts (eg, “Valdai Club”), rebuilds education and culture under the globalistic Western models, has a liberal economic policy and suffers comprador oligarchs, etc.

The field for maneuver Putin is constantly shrinking. The logic of the circumstances pushes him to a more unambiguous choice. Inside the country this uncertainty of course causes growing hostility, and his legitimacy falls.

Outside the country, the West only increases the pressure on Putin to persuade him towards globalism and the recognition of “unilateralism”, specifically – to cede his post to the Westerner Medvedev. So Putin, while continuing to fluctuate between multipolarity and Westernism, loses ground and support here and there.

The new period of his presidency will be very difficult. We will do everything we can to move it to a multipolar world, the Eurasian Union and 4PT. But we are not alone in Russian politics – against us for influence in Putin’s circles we have an army of liberals, agents of Western influence and the staff of the global oligarchy. For us, though, we have the People and the Truth. But behind them – a global oligarchy, money, lies, and, apparently, the father of lies. Nevertheless, vincit omnia veritas. That I have no doubt.

 

—————–

Dugin, Alexander. “Civilization as Political Concept.” Interview by Natella Speranskaja. Euro-Synergies, 13 June 2012. <http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2012/06/09/civilization-as-political-concept.html >. The text of this interview was also found at the official Fourth Political Theory website: <http://www.4pt.su/en/content/civilization-political-concept >. (See this article in PDF format here: Civilization as Political Concept).

Notes on further reading: On the topics discussed in the above interview, one of Aleksandr Dugin’s most  well-known books is Четвёртая политическая теория (Санкт-Петербург & Москва: Амфора, 2009), which is available in English translation as The Fourth Political Theory (London: Arktos, 2012), in Spanish translation as La Cuarta Teoría Política (Molins de Rei, Barcelona: Nueva República, 2013), in German translation as Die Vierte Politische Theorie (London: Arktos, 2013), in French translation as La Quatrième Théorie Politique (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2012), in Portuguese translation as A Quarta Teoria Política (Curitiba: Editora Austral, 2012), in Romanian translation as A Patra Teorie Politică (Chișinău: Editura Universitatea Populară, 2014), in Greek translation as Η τέταρτη πολιτική θεωρία (Αθήνα: Έσοπτρον, 2013), and in Serbian translation as Четврта политичка теорија (Београд: MIR Publishing, 2013).

Also of note in English is Dugin’s book Eurasian Mission: Program Materials (Moscow: International Eurasian Movement, 2005 [2nd edition: London: Arktos, 2015]). For those who know French, an important book by Alexander Dugin has been published as  Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013), the French translation of the Russian original: теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012). There is also a Portuguese translation of this work known as Teoria do Mundo Multipolar (Iaeg, 2012). On the theory of the multi-polar world in German, see Dugin’s Konflikte der Zukunft: Die Rückkehr der Geopolitik (Kiel: Arndt-Verlag, 2014). Also worth noting in French is Dugin’s books Le prophète de l’eurasisme (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2006) and L’appel de L’Eurasie (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2013). A Spanish version of the latter has been published as ¿Qué es el eurasismo? Una conversación de Alain de Benoist con Alexander Dugin (Tarragona: Ediciones Fides, 2014). It should also be noted that a deeper clarification of the Fourth Political Theory has also been published by Dugin (in Russian), titled Четвертый Путь (Москва: Академический проект, 2014).

A good introduction to Dugin and his ideas in the Spanish language can be found in Sebastian J. Lorenz’s Elementos, N° 70, “Alexander Dugin y la Cuarta Teoría Política: La Nueva Derecha Rusa Eurasiática” (Mayo 2014), <http://urkultur-imperium-europa.blogspot.com/2014/05/elementos-n-70-alexander-dugin-y-la.html >. (We have made Elementos Nº 70 available for download from our site here: Elementos Nº 70 – Dugin). For Spanish readers, the book ¿Qué es el eurasismo? (previously cited) also serves as a good introduction to Dugin’s thought, which augments the Elementos publication.

For more information, see the official Fourth Political Theory website: <http://www.4pt.su/ >.

 

State and Society – Faye

State & Society

By Guillaume Faye

Translated by Greg Johnson

 

A nation, a people can have deficient state institutions while continuing to produce a great creative civilization. The example of France — among others — is quite eloquent. In many periods of its history, this country has experienced an unstable political state organization which cannot master endemic crises. However, society continued to function and create in all domains despite the ongoing crisis of the state. Because the society was the fertile population of vital people, who were never discouraged.

Take the case of the period from 1815-1848 (the Restoration and July Monarchy ) and that of the Third Republic (1875-1940). State institutions (the “constitutions” in Tocqueville’s words) were particularly fragile, poorly supported, and challenged by permanent crises. But, at the same time, in the arts, sciences, industry, the quality of education, economic and cultural influence, etc. the country was creative and effective. How to explain this paradox?

First of all, the sustainability and genius of a nation depends on the relationship between a masculine and organizing principle, the State, and a feminine and vitalistic principle, which gives birth to forms, Society. Stateless, Society becomes sterile, since a people without a state sink into folklore and lethargy. And without a structured and homogeneous Society, a State (even if very well-organized) becomes powerless and ineffectual: this is happening today, to which I’ll come back later.

Second, in the past, during countless crises of the State and its institutions, France still had a State, however imperfect. Crises of the “regime” were superficial and superstructural, but it was still a state and political infrastructure that framed and aided the creativity of society.[1]

Third, roughly likening the State to the brain and Society to the organic body, as in an individual, if the former can suffer a headache while the latter remains perfectly healthy, the Nation as a whole may continue to function. However, if Society disintegrates in its organic foundation, the best state can neither govern nor save the Nation. State crises are much less severe than Societal crises. Similarly, an individual who has an excellent brain but whose body collapses will end up paralyzed and powerless.

The “historical capital” of a nation, that is to say, its creative accumulated production (cultural and material) depends on the interaction between the State and Society, but also the awareness that it is a ethno-historical unity.[2]

Now let’s deal with some shocking facts. Currently, we can not say that the French State apparatus functions poorly compared to everything we have experienced in the past. The problem is that French Society, the organic and productive force of the nation, is slowly disintegrating. The responsibility is partly — but only partly — the State’s, which has allowed it and failed to correct it. But the sickness of Society precedes that of the State, since the latter originates as a biological production of the organic body of Society, just as man is born of woman. From a holistic and interactive perspective, Society produces the state which, in turn, regulates, directs, and protects Society.

Today, the entire French Nation (like many others in Europe) suffers from extremely serious pathologies that put its survival in the medium term in question, and which have nothing to do with “institutions.” To enumerate: the aging of the indigenous population and its demographic decline, a massive immigration invasion from below (caused by or accepted with fatalism or hostility but in no way imposed by force from the outside), domestication (the psycho-behavioral source of egotism), refusal of effort (lethargy), criminal sentimentality, emasculation, passive hedonism, indifference to one’s ancestors and lineage (the germen), etc.

Some offer explanations based on external political or ideological causes: the long-term influence of Christian morality, the Freemasons, the “Jewish spirit” of Americanism, consumerism , etc. The internal explanation, which has the support of sociobiology, is that the peoples, biological groups, age just like individuals and lose their vital energy and their collective will. In the long term, they become less capable of withstanding their environment, ideological or otherwise. The external reasons are sources of irresponsibility, the internal ones of fatalism.

Nobody will ever decide. But one should not be deterministic. One must always act as if fate is surmountable and as if quiet desperation is stupid.

There are four principles (or conditions) that determine the health and creativity of a Society:

1. Ethnic homogeneity in the broadest sense, with strong anthropological kinship.
2. Values, a culture, a shared historical consciousness without inner communitarianism — that is to say, the unity of Society and the State .
3. Internal solidarity beyond economic class differences, a sense of belonging more carnal than intellectual.
4. Its own genius, that is to say, intrinsic qualities, innate creativity in a large proportion of members. This is not the prerogative of all peoples.

The political role of the state is thus to organize this ensemble and to plan for the future, that is to say, for history. But the French republican ideology (taken over by Soviet communism) imagines, from Robespierre to the hallucinating Terra nova leftists who inspire the Socialist Party, that the State, equipped with its idealism (“make France!”) can harmoniously organize a society composed of anyone from anywhere. Utopianism torpedoes all common sense. Aristotle explained that the body of a city (that is to say Society) cannot be based on chance. The State needs a well-chosen Society as the sculptor needs quality marble. Society and the State must assemble and resemble one another, and weaker of the two is the state. Why?[3]

Conclusion: If the disintegration, the ethnic chaos of French Society continues, the State, which is its projection, will eventually collapse in turn. France will disappear. But the sun will continue to shine.

Notes:

1. Montaigne believed that if the head of the State apparatus disappeared, the country would continue to operate normally. In other words, Society has its own autonomy.

2. The very original concept of “historical capital” has been formulated by the Breton nationalist movement Emsav and theorist Yann-Ber Tillenon. It describes the interaction of Society and state to build, over time, the heritage, both material and spiritual, of a Nation.

3. Because Society finances the State. Even the physical force of the state (law enforcement coercion) depends on the financial consent of Society. So the balance of power is complex. The collapse of a nation always comes from breaking the pact Society/State. And Society always generates a new State, while the State cannot create a Society.

Source: http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2014/01/14/temp-2b6c3bf3a2b4d6cd4bd1be800b8d2a2f-5271290.html

 

—————

Faye, Guillaume. “State and Society.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 28 January 2014. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/01/state-and-society/ >.

The original French publication of this article, “État et Société”, can be found at Guillaume Faye’s official website (posted 13 January 2014): <http://www.gfaye.com/etat-et-societe/ >.

 

Interview with Tulaev – Devenir

Interview with Pavel Tulaev for «Devenir»

 

1. Pavel Tulaev, first a general question: the world of Russian nationalists seems totally obscure for a majority of us. It’s the same thing for the publications you are editing. What is the present situation for the nationalist forces and what is the place occupied by Athenaeum?

First of all I would like to thank you, Jean Francois, for this good opportunity to express my views on the pages of “DEVENIR”, the magazine I knew after your visit to Russia. In the latest issue of the ATHENAEUM I published an info on our meeting in Moscow and a translation of your article “Ce que nous ne voulons plus”. I hope it will help our readers to know more about situation in your region.

Russian nationalist movement has a very rich and long history. It was growing with the Russian Empire and came to the critical point in the civil war after the Bolshevick Revolution. Modern Russian nationalists are the followers of the White Army which opposed the Communist International. Of course today our movement has new ideas and contemporary strategy, but the fundament is the same. We fight for White ideals, aristocratic and traditional values. There are many nationalist parties, editions and institutions in today’s Russia including the President Putin’s circle, but I cannot describe them in this shirt interview.

Our ATHENAEUM is not a nationalist magazine. It is a white, panaryan, paneuropean and panslavic review in Russian language. We do our best to rise our mentality and publications to the world level.

2. « To touch the persons worried for our culture and to contribute to the formation of the elites of the future »…This definition, given by the association Synergies Européennes, reflects a very ambitious program for Athenaeum. Could you describe your editorial project and what has been achieved since the beginning of the parutions ?

Yes, we are maximalists. We want to be the leaders in our deal. And we are leaders. ATHENAEM is the best racial new right magazine in Russia. We have readers and friends in more then 20 countries, from Europe to South Africa and Chile. Our team that published before the review “NASLEDIJE PREDKOV’ (HERITAGE OF ANCESTORS) is not big but strong enough. Anatoly Ivanov, the head of Moscow Synergie deparment, is a very experience and well educated man, he works in 8 European languages. Vladimir Avdeyev is a talented writer who takes care of raciology and genetics. Serguey Yashin is a genius of Nordic poetry. I am a professional linguist and historian, author of more than 100 publications on Russia, Europe and Americas. Besides we invite specialists from the field we need. Our circle is growing and becoming more powerful.

In the ideology our “ATHENAEUM” does not imitate any of the anterior schools. We are conscious that returning to old religions and myths in their archaic forms is impossible in our age. However, it is desirable to continue this classical heritage. Tackling the problems of the contemporary world, we touch upon a wide range of topics dealing with science and technology, history and racial studies, religion and aesthetics, economics and politics, international relations, and the art of war. In our journal, one can find materials of the most divers genres: analytical forecasts, strategic researches, academic articles, literary essays, book and CD reviews.

I give you the content of #1 and #2 in French so you could have the idea what do we publish in concrete.

3. Beyond the fact that Athenaeum wants to cover all aspects of the knowledge necessary to apprehend the contemporary problems, it is obvious that the notion of race as well as the essential place of Russia in an authentic Europa are central themas of the publication…

Yes, racial problems are one of the very important in our programme. And please take to your consideration that race is not only the colour. We are not the party of blondies. Race means quality first of all. Good genetics, healthy way of life, family, strength and leadership – that is our aim.

Our geopolitical strategy is based on the obvious fact that Russia was, is and always will be the biggest European country. By our race, language, roots and civilization we are Europeans in spite of the communist dictatorship in the XX century.

4. The latest figures about Russian demography are catastrophic. In the coming decades, Russia is at risk of losing tens of millions of people by the simple and terrifying mechanism of a negative natural balance. Do you think that your articles about the importance of preserving the Russian ethno-cultural substract have a chance to be read and convert in political action ? And what are the causes of the decline in births combined with a rising number of deaths ?

The statistics of the demographical catastrophe in Russia is well known by specialists and politics. Every year our nationality is becoming 1,5 millions less. What are the main reasons of it?

The first is so called ‘communist heritage”. Bolshevik Revolution destroyed the institutes of family, property and country life. Millions of people died in wars and ‘labour camps’. Social hierarchy was eliminated and genetics was damaged.

Another one is modern standard of leaving, known as ‘consuming society’. Young men are working for money, comfort and empty life. Women don’t want to be isolated in the family. They want to be independent, to have their our business and personal interests. Many of families want to have only one or two babies and some don’t want children at all.

A big problem for Russia is new pauperization. Before Eltzin’s liberal reforms we were not rich, but there were no such contrasts as we have now. How can you hold a family if your salary is about two o even one hundred dollars?

The demographical situation can be changed only by revolutionary methods. This time we need genetic and eugenic revolution.

ATHENAEUM pays very much attention to this matter. The result is that we have some political support in nationalist parties and skinhead movement.

5. It’s become an habitude in rightist circles to speak about geopolitics on each line of every article. But for Russia, which is imperial by nature and history, it’s not a « fashion » word. Geopolitics is essential. What kind of status would you like to see for your country : the single C.I.S. ? A new Soviet Union ? A part of a mythical Eurosiberia ? Or simply a Russia in accordance to his precommunist imperial past ?

Geopolitics is very popular in today’s Russia. I should say that it’s kind of fashion. Every alternative you have mentioned has it’s own supporters in our country. To my opinion Russia must be a strong national state inside the frontiers of Slavic part of ex-impire. Russians compose more than 80% of the hole population of our state now, so we don’t need any “multi-culty’ version. Other Europeans and White people are our allies in the world struggle against liberal degradation.

6. An islamic party, which has 600,000 members has been founded at the beginning of 2001 in Russia. It’s the first time that muslims want to, deeply and so openly, influence the future of Russia since the great Tatar invasions. It happens at a time where you are confronting the Chechen fighters and the Ben Laden’s volunteers.

Islamic expansion has always been dangerous not only to Russia, but to the hole Europe. In the Middle Ages Muslim world surrounded white nations. The specific point of today’s situation is that NATO and other globalists provoke Islamic attacks for distabilization of European life. I am sure that Chechen war and new Afghanistan crisis were planed and calculated overseas.

7. When this interview will be published, the war between Anglo-saxon forces and Islamic fighters will certainly be a reality in Afghanistan and perhaps the neighbouring countries. What is your feeling about first the menace of radical Islam and secondly the intrusion of America on the Central Asian scene?

I feel that this war will take long time. It’s not easy to convert Muslims into Christians and to make Europeans from Asians. That is why we raise our Aryan heritage. It should help us to oppose Islamic invasion in the South East. American activity in the central Asia can provoke a big war in the heart of Eurasia. It is very dangerous. In this situation the role of Russian army is becoming super important. Nowadays European security depends on our White Warriors as in was in the period of anti-Turkish alliance.

8. Russia enjoys an unbelievable level of freedom of speech compared with the West European countries. The « ethnic » reference in Belgium for instance is considered almost as an abomination. Our politicians have only one political vision: multiculturalism. Where does come this specific freedom from? A compensation for 70-year of bolchevism ?

Today’s Russia enjoys much more freedom than modern western countries do. My correspondents from “occupied territories” prove that many items we discuss in our ATHENAEUM are “tabu’ for them. Freedom of speech is one of the achievements of the post-communist era. I agree that it’s a kind compensation for 70-year of dictature. The problem is that this freedom came too late. What kind of liberty can realize a person who was ignorant yesterday and is a semi-informed poor man today? The majority of modern people don’t want to analyze the tragedy of the Bolshevik Revolution, the real reasons of World War II and so called “perestroika’. They don’t want to read and to think at all. But there are always some strong, brave and educated leaders who live and fight for the truth. We work for them.

Pavel Tulaev, a great thank for your answers.

Ferg

—————

Tulaev, Pavel. “Interview for ‘Devenir’.” Официальный сайт: Тулаев Павел Владимирович [Official Website of Pavel Vladimirovich Tulaev], <http://tulaev.ru/html.php?150 >.

 

Review of Dugin’s 4th Political Theory – Pistun

The Fourth Political Theory – A Review

By Olivia Pistun

 

Professor Aleksandr Dugin is Head of the Centre of Conservative Researches at the Faculty of Sociology at Moscow State University and leader of the International Eurasian Movement.

What is perhaps initially most appealing about this publication – aside from the promise of an offer of a fresh, viable alternative to the present stagnant political void, this “end of history” in which we find ourselves – is the comprehensive critique of the prevailing liberal ideology from a perspective which neither wholly aligns itself with the traditional positions in opposition to liberalism, nor stations itself against these.

The principal aim of Professor Dugin’s work is not simply to deconstruct the previous failed political theories, which he lists as fascism, communism, and liberalism, but to fashion a new fourth theory, utilising what may be learnt from some of the previous models after their deconstruction rather than dismissing them outright on the basis of particulars worthy of rejection. That is not to say that the Fourth Political Theory is simply a synthesis of ideas that in their singular form have seen their day. Dugin is conscious of the necessity to bring something new to the table, with one of the principal of these novel ideas being the rejection of the subjects of the old ideologies, such as class, race, or the individual, in favour of the existential Heideggerian concept of Dasein (roughly Being or being-in-the-world. Literally da – there; sein– being) as the primary actor.

Arguably this is the greatest difficulty in Professor Dugin’s book. Whereby the subject of class or race may be conceived of on the scientific, quantifiable level, the metaphysical idea of Dasein as the cardinal actor in the Fourth Political Theory is significantly more difficult to grasp in an age which overvalues the scientific method. This said, the title of the book itself serves to suggest that the contents will not be free from abstract concepts. This is, after all, a work of theory.

Those hoping for a comprehensive outline of a route to salvation will be disappointed. At least initially. The Fourth Political Theory does not seek to form a rigid ideological structure founded on an exhaustive set of axioms, but rather to serve as an invitation to further build upon what is an initial guiding framework.

Traditionalists who ascribe to a more conservative world view need not be put off by Dugin’s avant-garde approach towards historically enemy ideologies. His boldly honest examination – unhindered by any concern of how he will be received – of the previous political theories is illustrative of the principle which is prevalent throughout his work, namely the opposition to the sort of reflexive reaction that stems from ingrained preconceptions, and advocating instead a willingness and ability to acknowledge the positive parts within an overall negative whole.

With this in mind, it may serve to benefit any to cast aside suspicions and scepticism towards this Russian thinker and to refrain from dismissing this innovating work on the basis of the presupposition that seemingly disagreeable notions act as principle maxims within the Fourth Theory.

Regardless of where one stands in relation to this seminal work, the Fourth Political Theory is a valuable contribution to the alternative political discourse and, I suspect, will be quick to gain even greater momentum.

Copies of Aleksandr Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory can be purchased from ARKTOS

 

—————

Pistun, Olivia. “Aleksandr Dugin: The Fourth Political Theory: A Review.” Traditional Britain Group, 26 May 2013. <http://www.traditionalbritain.org/content/aleksandr-dugin-fourth-political-theory-review-olivia-pistun >.

Publication notes: Aleksandr Dugin’s book The Fourth Political Theory (London: Arktos, 2012) is the English translation of the original Russian work Четвёртая политическая теория (Санкт-Петербург & Москва: Амфора, 2009). The book under review, The Fourth Political Theory,  has also been translated into many other languages. We will note that it is also available in Spanish translation as La Cuarta Teoría Política (Molins de Rei, Barcelona: Nueva República, 2013), in German translation as Die Vierte Politische Theorie (London: Arktos, 2013), in French translation as La Quatrième Théorie Politique (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2012), in Portuguese translation as A Quarta Teoria Política (Curitiba: Editora Austral, 2012), in Romanian translation as A Patra Teorie Politică (Chișinău: Editura Universitatea Populară, 2014), in Greek translation as Η τέταρτη πολιτική θεωρία (Αθήνα: Έσοπτρον, 2013), and in Serbian translation as Четврта политичка теорија (Београд: MIR Publishing, 2013). Other books or essays by Dugin may be available in these languages and many others. For more information, see the offical Fourth Political Theory website: <http://www.4pt.su/ >.

Notes on further reading: For a better summary of the Fourth Political Theory, see also especially “The Necessity of the Fourth Political Theory” by Leonid Savin and “The Fourth Political Theory and ‘Other Europe'” by Natella Speranskaya. We also recommend that our audience look at the other articles by Alexander Dugin on our website for a further clarification of the nature of his political philosophy (Fourth Political Theory, Eurasianism, Multipolar World Theory): <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/tag/alexander-dugin/ >.

Also of note in English is Dugin’s book Eurasian Mission: Program Materials (Moscow: International Eurasian Movement, 2005 [2nd edition: London: Arktos, 2015]). For those who know French, an important book by Alexander Dugin has been published as  Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013), the French translation of the Russian original: теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012). There is also a Portuguese translation of this work known as Teoria do Mundo Multipolar (Iaeg, 2012). On the theory of the multi-polar world in German, see Dugin’s Konflikte der Zukunft: Die Rückkehr der Geopolitik (Kiel: Arndt-Verlag, 2014). Also worth noting in French is Dugin’s books Le prophète de l’eurasisme (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2006) and L’appel de L’Eurasie (Paris: Avatar Éditions, 2013). A Spanish version of the latter has been published as ¿Qué es el eurasismo? Una conversación de Alain de Benoist con Alexander Dugin (Tarragona: Ediciones Fides, 2014). It should also be noted that a deeper clarification of the Fourth Political Theory has also been published by Dugin (in Russian), titled Четвертый Путь (Москва: Академический проект, 2014).

Further information on Dugin and his ideas in the Spanish language can be found in Sebastian J. Lorenz’s Elementos, N° 70, “Alexander Dugin y la Cuarta Teoría Política: La Nueva Derecha Rusa Eurasiática” (Mayo 2014), <http://urkultur-imperium-europa.blogspot.com/2014/05/elementos-n-70-alexander-dugin-y-la.html >. (We have made Elementos Nº 70 available for download from our site here: Elementos Nº 70 – Dugin). For Spanish readers, the book ¿Qué es el eurasismo? (previously cited) also serves as a good introduction to Dugin’s thought, which augments the Elementos publication.

Commentary: We should also note that Dugin’s position on the matter of race and racism is somewhat unclear and questionable. Some have interpreted Dugin’s works as implying the view that race is unimportant to ethnic identity, and that rejecting racism necessarily means rejecting belief in racial identity and difference. It is not yet clear whether this interpretation is valid or not, and Dugin himself may actually believe that race has some importance, but no clear position on the matter is expressed in either The Fourth Political Theory or his essays on Eurasianism that we have seen thus far. If the former interpretation is in fact true, then his position is partly incompatible with that of the New Rightists, Identitarians, and Traditionalists. Although Dugin respects Alain de Benoist and has published some of his essays in Russian (collected in Против либерализма: к четвертой политической теории [Санкт-Петербург: Амфора, 2009]), it is significant to note that Benoist holds a clear ethnic and racial separatist – although strictly non-racist – view, as expressed in many of his works, such as “What is Racism?” (available on our site along with more information through the hyperlink) and Les Idées à l’Endroit (Paris: Libres-Hallier, 1979). Furthermore, Julius Evola, another thinker whom Dugin respects, held a view of race in which the biological race and heritage still held a degree of importance among traditionalist values, as expressed in, for example, The Path of Cinnabar (London: Arktos, 2010) and Revolt Against the Modern World (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1995).