Putin’s Russia – Dugin – Alt Right – White Christian Nationalism – the Anglosphere and Europe

Beyond the focus of Ukraine, Russia and influences in the former, Alexander Dugin has featured strongly.  

What does Russia’s Alexander Dugin represent? 

He represents conservative nationalist traditionalism described by some as fascist, new European right, deeply white nativist, promoting autocratic Christian nationalism and Eurasianism.

Furthermore, these sentiments are shared within the Anglosphere and Europe by many politicians, influencers and citizens, mostly of the alt or nationalist Christian right, and some of the left who believe in Kremlin agitprop e.g. ‘the great replacement’.

However, behind the noise including linking Xi-China to Putin-Russia and Ukraine, and desire for Belarus and Northern Kazakhstan to fortify Russia, it belies the dire demographics of Russia (Slavic decline & increasing numbers of Muslim citizens) with antipathy towards Asia and Chinese culture.

In fact for Putin, and his inner circle, citizens et al. have far more in common and shared interests with the NATO, US, EU, ‘west’ or Anglo Saxons which are dog whistled by Russian media and Putin supporters, including ageing left and alt right.  Many sympathisers can be linked to the network of deceased white nationalist John Tanton e.g. Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings, also behind Brexit and leaving the EU to avoid constraints in business and e.g. green transitions away from fossil fuels. 

Following are two articles on Dugin, first from Miletic in Independent Australia, then followed by Liyanage from the CARR Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right:

‘Alexander Dugin: A Russian fascist who helped to convince Putin to invade

By Branko Miletic | 13 March 2022, 12:00pm 

The name Alexander Dugin is not known to most outside Russia, but millions are now openly dealing with the consequences of this man’s strange ideas.

According to his biography, Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin was born in Moscow on 7 January 1962. Dugin is a Russian philosopher, professor, political analyst and strategist and the main organizer of the National Bolshevik Front and is a leading member of Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party.

But Dugin is far more than just a political philosopher turned politician. Since 1999, he formally embraced the Old Believers, a Russian religious movement that rejected the reforms of the official Russian Orthodox Church.

In her book, Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right? , political scientist Marlene Laruelle writes Dugin is the inventor of a form of Russian fascism that harbours far-right ideologies underpinned by esoteric Nazism, Traditionalism, the German Conservative Revolution and the European New Right as its backbone.

And when not reinventing ‘fascism with a Russian soul’, he has also dabbled in Satanism, via the “Yuzhinsky group”, a dissident group that played with Satanism and the occult.

Dugin is the author of more than 30 books, among them Foundations of Geopolitics and The Fourth Political Theory.

But it’s Foundations of Geopolitics that is the cause of much of the world’s and now Ukraine’s angst.

It was Vladimir Putin who insisted this book become the official textbook for the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military and in some ways, is the Russian version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

In 1997, in his article, ‘Fascism – Borderless and Red‘, Dugin described “national capitalism” as pre-empting the development of a ‘genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism’ in Russia.

For Alexander Dugin, Ukraine is just the first step in reinventing humanity in some bizarre Neopagan, Slavic Nativist, Eastern Orthodox, anti-Capitalist “New World Order”, which ironically is an accusation both Dugin and his useful idiots in Anglo and European Far-Right movements accuse everyone else of trying to conceive.

How this will eventually play out no one knows, but one thing is for sure: millions of innocent Ukrainians have already paid dearly for Dugin’s “Slavo-Nazi” perversity with their homes, their livelihoods and even with their lives.’

Branko Miletic is a journalist, editor, historian and author who has written extensively on the wars in the Balkans and post-Yugoslavia politics for the past 20 years

From CARR Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right:

‘Aleksandr Dugin’s Ideology Echoes Through the Alt-Right

CHAMILA LIYANAGE    OCTOBER 29, 2019

Despite the challenges of occasional religious extremism, will liberal ideals continue to enjoy their indisputable status? Not anymore. Radical-right ideologues argue that traditional cultural identities can be used to develop an overarching thesis that can resonate with people across the globe in an attempt to defeat liberal values. By an accident of history, a relatively unknown man, a Russian named Aleksandr Dugin, has come to the fore as one of the key proponents of this ideology, with the intention of safeguarding cultural traditions, the Eurasian identity and the collective loyalties of homogenous communities.

The Eurasian Movement

Aleksandr Dugin is on a mission. He is a philosopher, credited with formulating Russian nationalism in the post-Soviet era that aimed to put Russia back “on the map.” Dugin is the leader of the Eurasian Movement, and his neo-Eurasianism ideology is often said to influence the Kremlin’s geopolitical outlook. At the movement’s launch in 2003, the then-Russian deputy foreign minister, Victor Kalyuzhny, and the deputy speaker of the Russian senate, Alexander Torshin, were listed as members of its higher council.

This is where neo-Eurasianism strikes, offering what Dugin sells as a complete package: a cause, an ideology and a strategy for a revolution to reclaim one’s identity and tradition. In essence, Dugin proposes “an alternative model of a conservative future.” Neo-Eurasianism includes such conflicting notions of “fundamental conservatism (traditionalism), social-conservatism and conservative revolution.” Such palingenesis in Dugin’s ideas intertwine with the ideas of Julius Evola, an Italian fascist traditionalist, who venerated traditional society and considered modernity as corruption.

A Guide to the Alt-Right

Dugin is on a crusade against liberal values to strengthen traditional collectives, such as racial and cultural identities. Can we see such ideas already at work within the wider radical right? Well, yes. Dugin envisages “an alternative model of conservatism,” which includes fundamental conservatism and a socially conservative revolution against current mainstream conservatism. There is a parallel here between Dugin’s idea and the alt-right movement that denounces conservatives of the establishment as “cuckservatives.” The alt-right embraces “natural conservatives” — people who are naturally self-conscious of their race, creed and color — an idea that is similar to Dugin’s fundamental conservatism.

In their article, Yiannopoulos and Bokhari highlight the alt-right assault on Western liberalism and democracy. In its place, the alt-right wants “natural instincts, tribal psychology, and identity politics: the preservation of tribe and its culture.” This overall idea can be found in Dugin’s work: “liberal individualism is destructive and criminal. It separates individuals from their collective identities.” According to Yiannopoulos and Bokhari, the alt-right aims to build “homogenous communities to preserve traditional identities: a separation from liberal cultures.” Dugin’s outrage over neoliberalism underlines all of these ideas.’

Dr Chamila Liyanage is a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at CARR and Researcher/Content Developer at Radical-R: Radicalisation Research. See her profile here.

For more articles and blogs on alt right, Brexit, dark money, fossil fuels, great replacement, Koch Network, Trump, white nationalism and populist politics click through:

Neo Conservative Rasputins? Putin and Dugin – Trump and Bannon – Johnson, Brexit and Cummings

Past Literature & Ideas on Roots of Radical Right, Nativism & the Great Replacement Today

Ecosystem of Libertarian Think Tanks and White Nativism in the Anglosphere

John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press

Anglosphere Libertarianism in US, Australia and UK Tories with Dominic Cummings

55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists