The media are digging into the philosophical foundations of Putin, and have singled out the Russian philosopher Alexandr Dugin for special criticism. He, as detailed below, is portrayed as a type of neo-Nazi thinker, which is absurd. Dugin is a critic of Western liberalism and wokeness, and sees these diseases as destroying the West. He views the present Ukrainian War as a confrontation with Western globalism, which Russia, he believes, opposes. I see some truth in this, but would apply the same critique to Russia, which as many have argued at the Alor.org blog, has its own globalist agenda for an illiberal New World Order, under communist China.
“Every emperor needs a whispering Rasputinesque mystic and in the case of Russian President Vladimir Putin that figure is intellectual and self-styled philosopher Alexandr Dugin.
It fits the narrative of evil that the bearded Dugin once followed the occult and belonged to a Satanist group.
But as Russian tanks and artillery trundle across Ukraine, his influence over Mr Putin’s plot to take the neighbouring country cannot be underestimated.
Like Putin’s vision for a recreated USSR prior to its 1991 collapse, Dugin’s ambition is to reform eastern Europe and erase what he sees as the global order influence of the United States and more broadly the West and its democratic ideals.
So exactly how much influence has this former dissident turned Kremlin powerbroker had on the crisis engulfing Europe?
The brutal assault on Ukraine and through it Western ideals, plot to kill off democracy and a new Cold War, would suggest a lot.
Russia and Mr Putin particularly has searched since 1991 for a grand strategy to restore the nation to its former glory and in Dugin’s anti-West musings Mr Putin found what he liked and massaged it as doctrine to reassert itself, promote and elevate himself and alter the global order.
With his Moscow-based military officer father and doctor mother, Dugin was born into a comfortable life and while it became a broken home from an early age, wealth allowed him to pursue a variety of career paths before he settled on philosophy.
He was a radical dissident and ultranationalist that embraced Nazism but had a powerful intellect that allowed him to successfully teach himself multiple languages while he studied sociology in Moscow State University before becoming a prolific author, including creating a doctrine on reforming communism.
Today he is considered by both backers and detractors, one of modern Russia’s most important conservative thinkers.
Human rights and individualism he considered were values and creations for exclusive use of the West and would be its downfall.
Liberalism and other Western choice, he believes, should not be allowed to be universally adopted.
The outbreak of coronavirus he said pointed to the decay of the global liberal system and its inability to halt the virus on a global scale.
“This economic crisis, the fall of general demand, the crash of oil prices and the beginning of a real civil war in the US, represent a clear sign of the end of the western-centred world,” he said two years ago.
But his influence on the Kremlin and particularly Mr Putin began years earlier when in 1997 he wrote a 600-page manifesto – Foundation of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia – that has virtually predicted every significant foreign policy by Mr Putin every since, including the 2014 annexing of Crimea and war in Donbas and today invading Ukraine and challenging the West’s world order.
It was Dugin who wrote, and hoped for Russia, of a desired weakening of the European Union which would naturally break up taking with it the membership and arrangements of NATO that today is at the heart of Mr Putin’s Ukraine quest.
America too had to be weakened first in the eyes of the EU then the rest of the world. He is anti-globalism and the US’s super power status and through it anti-democratic.
His imperialist views and even his look saw him branded as a Rasputinesque type character aided by his declared love and respect for Mr Putin and vice versa.
Critically his tome said Russia had to be bold, and he saw Putin as the right man to carry his vision, and should look to reverse the Cold War that saw the end of the Soviet Union by invading Georgia and Ukraine after exploiting ethnic rifts, encouraging Britain to break from the EU and sow divisive seeds in the US to watch it tear itself apart.
All of this has happened, which only adds to his evil visionary mystique reputation. Yes his association with Mr Putin is possibly overstated, publicly the men are not seen together. But he was critical to the invasion of Ukraine’s east, to the point of speaking directly with separatists and his role and importance was met in 2014/15 with US sanctions against him.
But it is a Star Trek type melding of minds between these two men – and yes Dugin has been called “Putin’s Brain” – that sees one man think and the other act in concert which should be a real concern and should have predicted the crisis in Europe today.”
https://occidentaldissent.com/2022/03/07/aleksandr-dugin-this-is-not-a-war-with-ukraine/