27 February 2014

Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin's dreams of dictatorship in Russia

The newly acquired independence of the democratic Ukrainian state is now under attack from the most imperialistic and war-mongering circles in Russia who are backing pro-Russian ultranationlists in the Crimea and are forming Russian terrorist troops for subversive operations in Ukraine.

One of these circles is the neo-Eurasianist movement headed by Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin who is openly calling for killing Ukrainians and annexing parts of the Ukrainian state to Russia to build a fascist Eurasian Union.

American anti-Semite and former leader of Ku Klux Klan David Duke with his Russian colleague Aleksandr Dugin
Dugin and his followers in Georgian South Ossetia occupied by the Russian troops in 2008

While Dugin is sometimes associated with Putin's regime, Dugin himself hates Putin as he considers Russian president too liberal. Dugin's plan is to exert ideological influence on Putin's authoritarian state and provide it with the fascist ideological underpinnings disguised as Eurasianism.

For a number of years already, Dugin has been pushing forward an idea of Eurasianism being a "fourth political theory" with communism, fascism and liberalism being the first three. Some people fall for this trick and genuinely believe that Dugin's neo-Eurasianism is different from fascism. It is not, and a great number of academic studies acknowledge the fascist nature of neo-Eurasianism; check some of these studies:
  • Stephen Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2001).
  • Markus Mathyl, “The National-Bolshevik Party and Arctogaia: Two Neo-Fascist Groupuscules in the Post-Soviet Political Space,” Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2002), pp. 62-76.
  • Andreas Umland, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Transformation from a Lunatic Fringe Figure into a Mainstream Political Publicist, 1980-1998: A Case Study in the Rise of Late and Post-Soviet Russian Fascism”, Journal of Eurasian Studies, Vol. 1 (2010) 144-152.
  • Alan Ingram, “Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neo-Fascism in Post-Soviet Russia”, Political Geography, Vol. 20, No. 8 (2001), pp. 1029-1051.
  • Anton Shekhovtsov, “The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin’s Worldview”, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2008), pp. 491-506.
Furthermore, Dugin himself does not believe in the existence of four political ideologies. For him, there have always been only three ideologies - communism, liberalism and fascism - and Dugin puts neo-Eurasianism in the latter category.

Thanks to the informants among the neo-Eurasianists, I have a video of Dugin's private meeting with the activists of his Eurasian Youth Movement where he explains why Putin's non-ideological United Russia should turn Russia into a fascist dictatorship and what role the Eurasianist youth should play in this process. Here's an excerpt:


If you don't understand Russian, here are major points of Dugin's talk:

1. Three elements of the coming dictatorship:
(1) the United Russia party whose weak ideology shall be replaced by neo-Eurasianism, i.e. fascism;
(2) the Public Chamber (Общественная палата) that will, on "people's request", demand from the United Russia to introduce anti-democratic, anti-constitutional measures;
(3) a youth movement that will form a "commissar corps of illegitimate authority" to crackdown on all those who oppose the dictatorship.

2. "We had a liberal dictatorship, so the coming dictatorship will be illiberal. We had a Soviet dictatorship but it's now long gone. What will be next? Guess from three".

3. Neo-Eurasianists shall control two elements of the coming dictatorship: the ideology of the United Russia party and the youth movement.

4. As fascism is considered a bad thing in Russia, the neo-Eurasianist youth movement should avoid calling themselves "Hitlerjugend", and use names like "oprichnina", a name for the secret police under Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

Obviously, neo-Eurasianists are planning to get rid of Putin and establish a full-fledged totalitarian fascist state. As Andreas Umland argues, Putin’s current project for the Eurasian Union is authoritarian and restorationist, while Dugin's project is fascist and revolutionary. However, even if their goals are different, Dugin sees Putin as a temporary ally. Moreover, “the first step to Dugin’s new empire is the restoration of the old empire sought by Putin”. In this sense, Putin, even if not directly pursuing Dugin’s plan, does perform steps which may – in the long run – lead to the implementation of Dugin’s project.

This project is meaningless without at least some parts of Ukraine integrated into the Eurasian Union. Already in the 1990s, Dugin wrote that Ukraine's sovereignty should be removed and the country should be dismembered into several "zones":
The sovereignty of Ukraine represents such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that it can, in principle, easily provoke a military conflict. [...] Ukraine as an independent state with some territorial ambitions constitutes an enormous threat to the whole Eurasia, and without the solution of the Ukrainian problem, it is meaningless to talk about the contitental geopolitics. [...] Considering the fact that a simple intergration of Moscow with Kyiv is impossible and will not result in a stable geopolitical structure [...], Moscow should get actively involved in the re-organisation of the Ukrainian space in accordance to the only logical and natural geopolitical model.

Russian fascism - whether disguised as neo-Eurasianism or anything else - should be stopped, and the free nations of Europe must help Ukrainians to preserve their democracy.

15 comments:

  1. shekhovstov...stop disputin the Putin!

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  2. Funny, Dugin agrees with Brzezinski on Ukraine-Russia geopolitics.

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  3. Dear Mr. Shekhostov,

    Dugin had a long and detailed written debate with a philosopher two years ago. The topic was "The USA and the New World Order." I think you will be interested in reading it: http://theinteramerican.org/blogs/olavo-de-carvalho/286-olavo-de-carvalho-debates-alexandr-dugin-iv

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  4. quanta mentira!!! creio que o autor não sabe o que é o fascismo nem leu Dugin... eu não estou defendendo as idéias do autor... só estou afirmando que o Sr. Anton mente, o Sr. Anton não é um buscador da verdade.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://www.academia.edu/194083/The_Palingenetic_Thrust_of_Russian_Neo-Eurasianism_Ideas_of_Rebirth_in_Aleksandr_Dugins_Worldview

      https://www.academia.edu/197900/Aleksandr_Dugins_Neo-Eurasianism_The_New_Right_a_la_Russe

      https://www.academia.edu/197910/Is_Aleksandr_Dugin_a_Traditionalist_Neo-Eurasianism_and_Perennial_Philosophy

      Delete
  5. Lies and lies... I've read Dugin, he is not facist, stupid western liberals call facist evetyhing thats different from what they can understand.

    Im not saying I support Dugin, but I will always support the truth.

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    Replies
    1. Call me anything you want.

      For now let me thank you for giving me the opportunity to post in your blog and manifest my opinion about this, even if you dont agreed.

      Besides, good try with the propaganda, the two images of him with the weapons are scary but... these images are in his facebook, it was kind of a summer camping with kids, people smiling and all. You better find really scary ones!

      And... " - While Dugin is sometimes associated with Putin's regime, Dugin himself hates Putin as he considers Russian president too liberal."

      wow!

      !!! Dugin has a lot of "fanboy" photos of Putin in his facebook profile! Is he trying to fool us then?

      (The profile seems to be legit)

      Come on europe...even liberals are starting to see what is happening to europe, all that moral decay, abortion, drugs, atheism, materialism, liberal heroes are transvestites, monsters, bizarre people. Is that honest people wants?

      Thats what Dugin is against for. Thats why he talks about tradition, religion.

      But well... europeans forgot what is this about a long long time ago.

      He says we should look at the good points about facism (and there is, in fact, as any honest historian knows) and condemn bad things like materialism and atheism in communism, or even the racism in facism.

      Russians know what means to be against facism, europe only knows what means beeing facist. All that lies about russia make me sick.

      The actual obsession of europeans (leaded by german capital/money, is try to hide their sins by pointing another's ones, so they choose russia as the scapegoat for this. Now allow me to be such a religious man, karma never fails, what europe did, is done, and we all know what Im talking about.

      Not right about who you are Anton (your profile does not says much except your professional occupations). But I have seen so much european propaganda against russians that I lean to belive you're following the russophobic/anti-communist/liberal agenda.

      Delete
    2. I suggest you read at least some of the academic works on Dugin and his ideology:

      - Stephen Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2001).
      - Markus Mathyl, “The National-Bolshevik Party and Arctogaia: Two Neo-Fascist Groupuscules in the Post-Soviet Political Space,” Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2002), pp. 62-76.
      - Andreas Umland, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Transformation from a Lunatic Fringe Figure into a Mainstream Political Publicist, 1980-1998: A Case Study in the Rise of Late and Post-Soviet Russian Fascism”, Journal of Eurasian Studies, Vol. 1 (2010) 144-152.
      - Alan Ingram, “Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neo-Fascism in Post-Soviet Russia”, Political Geography, Vol. 20, No. 8 (2001), pp. 1029-1051.
      - Anton Shekhovtsov, “The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo-Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin’s Worldview”, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2008), pp. 491-506.

      Delete
  6. Dobrej den, prostite mne poshalusta. Pisat i rasgowariwat po russki ja pochti sowsem ne umeju bolshe. Nu umenja jest ochen(!) washni wopros i ja belbe ochen rad esle we mne mogli bi otwetit.
    Ja paru dnej nasad nachel chetat knigu Vladimira Ivanova ''Dugin und die rechtsextremen Netzwerke''. Kniga 2007a goda. Kak w eto wrme isminilas wlijanio Dugina na russki narod i samojo glawnojo na russkuju politiku? Nedawno widel Dugina w peredache posnera. Eto obosnachajet shto u nego ushe jest dostup k bolshoi masse publiki?

    I w kanze etot wopros. Moshet takojo bet, shto Putin sam ushe prosto lico duginski idologii? Ja sam student philosophii i nachel chetat dugina, u mena koneshno belsheii probleme s russkim isikom, nu jego metaphysika prjam ideologia katoroju ja i samichjau w nemezkem obshistwe.
    Ja kaneshna ne snaju, nu predpologaju shtobe ponjat russkujo politiku, nado nechenat panimat i dugina.

    Kak washa tochka srenija?

    Bsego choroshego.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good day,
      Would you prefer an answer in Russian or English?

      Delete
    2. Thank you.
      I think it would be better when you answer in English, so other readers may also have access to your point of view.

      Delete
  7. Petition by students at Moscow State University against neo-fascist Dugin: http://goo.gl/uKPrcl

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  8. Thank you for posting this critical information about a most disturbing "Eurasian" movement. Seeing the ugly David Duke of the USA teamed up with Mr. Dugin is very sobering indeed.

    ReplyDelete

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