The Invisible Empire: Introduction to Alexander Dugin’s “Foundations of Geopolitics”, pt. 2
In the second part of the series on Alexander Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics we analyze the political program of creating the “Empire of empires” and why it excels in being the ultimate exercise in nihilism, taking the lead into contest for the most ominous globalization project of our times, although it could very well remain just an image in the head of its author and his followers.
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Read/listen to: Part 1
Transcript with notes/references:
Previously we established the fundamental principles of Dugin’s geopolitical eschatology, while noting in passing its crypto-evolutionary character. Before we proceed to the exposition of outlines of the concrete plan for creating the Eurasian Empire – “the Empire made of many empires” (FG, 216) – we’ll first have to expound on this point some more in order to provide a clear insight into the method by which Dugin constructs the concrete map of the Eurasian world order of his dreams.
Geopolitics evolves as its subject evolves – we’ve already seen how Dugin portrays the development of the primordial Land/Sea conflict from the Ancient world down to its final fulfilment and totality in the global or, at least, globalizing world.
This means that, if we are to understand the “laws of geopolitics”, we have to contemplate their historical genesis, because, save for the fundamental principle of bipolar conflict, all of those “laws”, by their very nature, “evolve” as the inevitable final conflict is getting near.
As we already noted, in a somewhat different context, this is quite a Hegelian notion of “system of sciences” which includes both knowledge of object and the subject as they create one unified reality through their interactions.
It is the unfolding of an absolute – if essentially self-contradictory – idea, devouring everything in its path – from religion and culture to concrete individual persons (especially them) – and then dissolving it all into an absolute system of a geopolitical world empire that has to be constructed consciously, which was hitherto not the case with the empires of previous times.
In this sense, Dugin’s geopolitics provides the notion of ideology with a new meaning: by basing everything on conflict as an absolute idea, he constructed an absolute ideology of conflict; and, as we shall see in the following, if this monstrosity should ever come to pass in historical reality, its anthem would surely have at least one verse saying something along the lines of “big is beautiful”.
In the Foundations of Geopolitics Dugin provides a detailed history of the genesis of geopolitics as a science, from the “founding fathers” to contemporary theories, i.e. those from the second half of 20thCentury (FG, 39 – 147).
Now we’ll proceed to extract the original notions that stand at the foundations of Neo-Eurasian empire-building programme, that he took from his predecessors.
Lebensraum, Raumsinn, Weltmacht, Grossraum – expansion and great spaces
One of the main problems for Dugin is to establish the reason why the Russians are destined to lead a world empire and, in more general terms, why empires are necessary at all.
To be sure, we won’t see him cringe much about it. Yet throughout the FG the attentive reader can’t overlook this problem.
An absolute ideology requires an absolute foundation – which is after all the very purpose of Dugin’s book – but awkwardly enough it doesn’t seem to “organically” pop up before the reader’s eyes as something self-evident or at least demonstrated by the musings of its author. Although we are treated with the standard “Third Rome” fare somewhere along the way (FG, ) and with numerous declarations of the “messianic character” of the Russian people, which fit neatly into the Neo-Eurasian system, provided we allow ourselves to get entangled into its ideological net, when everything makes sense in the head of the infected Duginoid anyway – there’s no clear answer as to why all of this would reflect the eternal and all encompassing truth.
To an extent Dugin already answered this question when he squarely placed the exercise of geopolitics in the sphere of the will and imagination of the elites. This more or less settles the matter for him, because the whole point is not the truth but the Empire building, yet, as with all good sons of modernity, he needs the founding myth clothed in scientific garb to make the whole thing appear to be intellectually coherent and ticking along smoothly.
On the one hand, his “myth of origins” of world conflict and its nature is founded on a peculiar occultist teaching, laid out at the very end of FG, but elaborated more thoroughly in his earlier books Hyperborean Revelation and Conspirology. This aspect of Neo-Eurasianism we’ll treat separately in an addendum to the present analysis.
On the other hand, however, there’s a far less picturesque, yet fairly familiar modern thought model he employs – Darwinism.
When writing about Friedrich Ratzel, a student of the famous German Darwinian Ernst Haeckel and the founder of German geopolitik, Dugin is quite unequivocal about his foundational significance in the evolution of geopolitics:
“(…) Ratzel demonstrates that soil is the fundamental, immutable given around which the interest of the people revolves. The flow of history is being conditioned by soil and territory. (…) From Ratzel’s ‘organicist’ approach it is clear that he understands spatial expansion as a natural process of life, analogous to the life of a living organism (…) Ratzel’s ‘organicist’ approach manifests itself (…) in relation to space (Raum). The ‘space’ is shifting from a quantitative material category into a new quality, becoming ‘the sphere of life’ – ‘the living space’ (Lebensraum) (…). Hence follow two other important Ratzel’s notions: ‘the meaning of space’ (Raumsinn) and ‘life energy’ (Lebensenergie). (…) All these theses represent the fundamental principles of geopolitics (…). Moreover, the state understood as the living spatial organism rooted in soil is the main thought and the focal point of the geopolitical method.” (FG, “Founding fathers of geopolitics”, pg. 39 – 40.)
Dugin takes Ratzel’s notions as the nucleus out of which geopolitics evolved into a full system during the hundred odd years of its history. It is essential to stress once again that he is unequivocal about this – equivocation otherwise being his trade mark: the fundamental geopolitical subject is the expanding collective organism founded in the soil, i.e. circumscribed into individuality by geographical vectors. This is its Lebensraum circumscribed by its own peculiar Raumsinn.
In this sense, a quite unequivocal form of Darwinism is deeply seated at the foundation of Dugin’s project, although obscured by fanciful occultist theories and extreme Russian Orthodox filetism thrown in for good measure. This is not only because the founding father of geopolitik was accidentally the student of one of the most prominent German Darwin’s zealots, but also because the foundation of the subject of geopolitics – the one that makes it an apocalyptic theology – must be expansive by its nature.
Ratzel’s answer to a Darwinist riddle, i.e. bridging the gap between biology and everything else, is, of course, the analogy – a strictly non-empirical method beloved by extreme empiricists when they start losing it – and Dugin accepts it wholeheartedly. The fact that it is not really applicable as a means of scientific demonstration in the modern sense of the word doesn’t bother him – as it didn’t bother any Darwinist luminary from Charles Darwin himself to our own day and age – because the purpose is the creation of a theology of the below: absolute deification of the lowest common denominator, where its spontaneous evolution transmutes “quantitative material category into the new quality”.
To anyone in the know, it is also obvious why Dugin says that one should read “Rene Guenon as Karl Marx” – the quantity giving birth to quality or mass acting upon itself and giving birth to individuality is the foundational principle of dialectical materialism.
What is most important is that the authentic ‘living spatial organism’ has to expand and the main problem of geopolitics then becomes the answer to a question: where does this expansion end?
Well, it depends on what individuum we are exactly talking about: is it a small amoeba that popped out of primordial slime at the wrong time and place or the Holy Amoeba providentially excreted from the soil to synthesize Holy Bacteriological Empire into existence with a carte blanche to assimilate everything in its way. After all:
“The understanding of the state as a living organism presupposed the rejection of the notion of ‘inviolability of the borders.’” (ibid.)
Oddly enough, Dugin praises Ratzel’s discovery of the nature of the subject of geopolitics that took place in North America, of all places. It is interesting that Ratzel,
“(…) noted that the Raumsinn of Americans is developed to the greatest extent, because they were confronted with the task of conquering the ‘empty’ spaces, and were in possession of the considerable ‘politico-geographical’ experience of European history. Therefore, Americans consciously realized what the Old world was building only intuitively and by degrees. In this way we find in Ratzel the first formulations of the second most important geopolitical concept – the notion of ‘world power’ (Weltmacht). Ratzel noticed that development of big countries displays the urge to increase the geographical expansion that gradually reaches the planetary level. Hence, sooner or later, geographical development has to reach its continental phase.” (FG, 42-43)
It is obvious how the notions at the foundations of geopolitics “organically evolve” and pulsate as one “body”: Raumsinn of the great people necessitates the expansion of its Lebensraum to continental and, Natural Selection willing, global Lebensraum, which in turn calls for becoming a Weltmacht.
It is also obvious how the crude mind can get ensnared into this mentality simply by following an apparently necessary – “organic” – nexus binding everything together and, dazed by Dugin’s illusionism, dub it even an “integral traditionalism” or “resurgence of Christianity through ‘Christ-bearing’ people”, while it is essentially anything but. The reason for this is intellectual coherence of ideology, not an accurate reflection of the Truth – a creation of an ideological magic mirror which reflects to everyone precisely what he wants to see; something that is apparently a trade mark of the capable geopolitician if we reflect upon the fact that Dugin’s American counterpart, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, was apt in pulling off the same trick in an opposite guise. And we all know how much monkeys, or at least their descendants, love their own reflections in the mirror.
Well, if Ratzel brought out the nucleus of geopolitics it is only fitting that he also anticipated the fundamental mitosis in this epistemological amoeba:
“In his book The Sea, Source of Power of the People (1900.), Ratzel pointed out the need of every powerful state to focus its attention to the development of the military navy because it is demanded by the planetary scope of the legitimate expansion (sic!). What some peoples and nations (England, Spain, Holland, etc.) created spontaneously, the land based nations (…) have to do consciously: the development of the fleet is a necessary condition for reaching the status of the Weltmacht. The sea and ‘superpower’ are already congenial for Ratzel, although only with the later geopoliticians (Mahan, Mackinder, Haushofer and especially Schmitt) will this subject become the center of gravity. Ratzel’s work is a necessary foundation of all geopolitical investigation.” (FG, 43)
The formation of the ultimate form of land power’s Lebensraum has to be brought about consciously, i.e. it has to be a definite programme or strategic plan. The successful implementation of this plan would give expression to the fundamental geopolitical formation of ‘big space’ (Grossraum).
The concept was developed by German jurist Carl Schmitt, who in Dugin’s eyes, along with Ratzel and Karl Haushofer, represents a decisive figure in the development of continental geopolitics:
“Schmitt developed (…) a theory of the ‘great space’ (Grossraum). This concept observes the process of development of states as an urge to increase the territorial expanse. The principle of imperial integration represents the expression of the logical and natural tendency towards synthesis, inherent to all human beings. In this sense the periods of the state expansion correspond to the periods of the human spirit’s movement towards universality. (…) The development of the ‘Nomos of the Land’ (…) has to lead to the emergence of the state-continent. (…) The emergence of the land based ‘state-continent’, a continental Grossraum, is a historical and geopolitical necessity.” (FG, pg. 77 – 78)
Nomos of the Land signifies ‘the disposition of the land-based state’ as opposed to the Nomos of the Sea which is ‘the disposition of the sea faring nation’. Both terms correspond to vague notion of Raumsinn and are not to be understood as legal terms in the modern sense of the word, but as approximations to something that cannot be laid out in a formalized system but that is nevertheless objectively binding.
How then, one might ask, do we know, when some Grossraum building neighbour comes knocking on our door, does the Nomos der Erde he invokes really oblige us to let him in without going for the gun?
Why, that’s easy:
“(…) Schmitt affirmed that the creation of the new ‘big space’ does not depend on the scientific value of some doctrine, cultural excellence, economical development of its constituents or even the territorial or ethnic centre which provided the first impulse for integration. Everything depends solely on the political will recognizing the historical necessity of such a geopolitical step. With this doctrine Schmitt had foreseen the foundation of the contemporary politics of integration.” (FG, 78)
So, we are provided with all the lego-cubes needed to construct the “invisible empire” for all the family. It is a global expansion of several integrated ‘big spaces’ (empires) built around the continental axis of the Eurasian landmass, fulfilling the Raumsinn of the land based civilization and winning the geopolitical Endkampf by transforming entire Earth into an ideocratic global Empire, rectifying and thus fulfilling the wayward but geopolitically correct plan of the “Planetary rule of the Third Reich”. The foundational cube, that is supposed to make the whole construction stick, is the fact that this time its center cannot be Germany, or any other nation state, but the axis of the land based empires lead by Russia: an “Empire of the End” or the Berlin-Moscow-Tokyo geopolitical axis.
Russian people and their geopolitical Covenant
The subject of geopolitics is the Russian people – not the Russian state or Russian culture. All the foundational concepts we laid out beforehand serve only to make this fact clear. This means that Russians for Dugin, as we pointed out in the first part of this analysis, are a messianic people destined to bring about the “gathering of the Empire”.
In this sense Dugin is neither a Russian nationalist nor even an Imperialist in the sense of rejuvenating the Russian Empire. In his eyes, Russians are the people of the World Empire because they are not the subject of nation but of the “universalist civilization”, i.e. the civilization that is capable of bringing about the Empire of the End:
“Russian people had moved step by step towards this goal. At each phase of their national expansion they were reaching another level of messianic universalism – first by uniting East Slavs, then incorporating the Turko-Tartar flood from the Siberian steppe, then moving towards South, into deserts and mountains, and finally they ended up creating a giant political block that in Soviet times controlled literally half of the world. If we realize that the Russian people are in their essence precisely a representation of this empire building process, a decisive vector in creating the ‘State of the Absolute Idea’, then it will also become clear that the existence of the Russian people depends on continuing this process (…) If we limit or suppress that vector, we’ll hit the Russians in their very heart, deny them of national identity, transform them in the historical rudiment and we’ll ruin the global teleological eschatological planetary process.” (FG, “Russia and the Space”, ch. 3 “Russia is unthinkable without the Empire”, pg. 175)
Dugin considers Russians to be a civilization-building, which is in his eyes converted to, empire-building people. Moreover, the civilization that they’re destined to build is a universal one in a very peculiar sense of the word, i.e. it is the expression of the Eurasian Raumsinn and the relationship Russians have towards it. This “meaning of the Russian space” consists in the fact that Russian Grossraum cannot be contained and must encompass the whole world, analogous with how Russians throughout history assimilated various peoples into their dominion:
“Namely, the uniqueness of Russian nationalism lies precisely in its global character – it is not so much related to blood but to space, soil and land. Russians will lose their identity and vanish as a nation, outside of the Empire”. (FG, ch.5 “The destiny of Russia in Imperial Eurasia”, 5.1. “Geopolitical magic in the interest of the nation”, pg. 219)
We must stress – as Dugin himself does on numerous occasions – that this is not nationalism in the sense of the concept of Greater Russia. Yet, and somewhat to the contrary, it is the globalism of Global Russia.
Therefore, when Dugin’s defenders point out that he’s not really a nationalist, they fail to see – usually deliberately – that he only mutated into something far greater. He’s not a small time chauvinist not because he has qualms about chauvinism but because he has qualms about being small time. His chauvinism is merely, quite literally, of cosmic proportions and is capable – indeed it is compelled – to welcome and absorb all other chauvinisms.
And you can’t pull something like this off by forbidding your partners to wave their own imperial flags. Eurasian Empire is meant to be an Empire of empires, the global empire encompassing power blocks or Grossraumen, not sovereign nation states or indeed any political formation that is not steered by the geopolitical universalism of the Land power.
For this reason Dugin is always open to support any kind of nationalism provided it is expansive, because in his eyes this is only the natural process of creating big spaces that is essentially teleological and will inevitably lead to creation of the rejuvenation of axis powers which this time around won’t lose the world war.
The only essential thing is that Russia does not lose its imperial destiny:
“Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the West is trying to impose a different geopolitical function on Russia, to turn it into a political structure incapable of direct participation in international politics and the fulfilment of its civilization building mission. (…) Russia is being offered the role of regional state (…) the regional state has greater political ambitions than the common state, but it always remains less than a superpower or an Empire. At the same time the regional state has a certain freedom towards its immediate (weaker) neighbours and can always exercise political and economical pressure upon them (…). For Russia, becoming a regional state would mean renunciation of the deepest national impulse which is at the foundation of its deepest identity.” (FG, 3.3. “The trap of ‘regional state’”, pg. 176 – 178)
This would be, one might add, the image of Russia projected by RT et al, and approved more or less by their Western audiences as its right to exercise ‘pressure’ on its neighbors and thus provide media consumers sitting on their couches far away from the zones of conflict with the sense of realpolitik coming back onto the world scene.
However, as most of the imbeciles among this demographic don’t have a clue about what it means to be ‘under geopolitical pressure’ and how being big does not at the same time mean being morally justified, this sense of reality provided by the Russian self-image projected in the West is a rather fragile one; almost as fragile as the puffed up egos of those who fall for it.
Dugin rejects the notion of a ‘regional state’ even as a transitional phase in the empire building process. Russia must be squarely on its way to creating the empire and being a regional state can perhaps only be used as a ruse, while the continuity of the process has to be maintained.
However, the real and legitimate, albeit unfulfilled, expression – and premonition – of Eurasian Empire is to be found in the Soviet Union:
“It is impossible to deny the fact that the axis of the Soviet Empire was precisely the Russian people who realized (albeit only partially) its unique universalism through the Soviet ideological and socio-political model.” (FG, ch. 3.4. “The critique of Soviet statehood”, pg. 178)
This short passage can provide us with some glimpse of what exactly this “unique universalism” is and what it does to those who are being “universalized” by it, bearing in mind that Dugin seeks something far more radical than the Soviet model.
And, if there’s still some uncertainty as to why the Russians and why Russia, Dugin explains it quite succinctly:
“The New Empire has to be built as an Empire right now (…) this process cannot be laid aside for some future perspective, while hoping for better circumstances in the future. (…) The mere state practically never developed into Empire. The Empires were built immediately, as an expression of the unique civilization-building will (…).” (FG, 187)
So it’s all about decision of the Sovereign, as Schmitt would have it, disregarding everything else, except the decision that:
“The existence of Russian people as an organic historical community is inconceivable without empire-building, continental creativity. Russians will remain the people only in the framework of the New Empire. This Empire must, in accordance with the logic of geopolitics, strategically and spatially surpass its antecedent (Soviet Union). Therefore, the New Empire has to be Eurasian, continental and – in perspective – a World Empire. The battle for global rule by the Russian people is not finished.” (FG, 188)
The Axis
“At the foundations of the geopolitical construction of this (Eurasian, KT) Empire there must be laid a fundamental principle – the principle of a common enemy.” (FG, ch. 4 “Remodelling the world”, 4.1. “Land and Sea. Common enemy”, pg. 191)
The Empire of the End is a strategic consolidation of the continental world, not a mere national expansion of the Russians. It is the multipolar phase of the final, quite unipolar, advent of the “global rule by the Russian people”.
Quite similarly to Hobbes’ idea of sovereignty coming to pass as a spark of reason popping out spontaneously from the chaos of bellum omnium contra omnes, the Eurasian Empire is to be consolidated from the common “enemy image” of various ‘great spaces’, i.e. on the basis of total negativity creating respective identities of the future empires subjected to the “Third Rome”.
All talk about preserving the cultural, ethnic and religious identities Dugin frequently repeats in his books, articles and lectures is to be observed exclusively from this point of view, because this plurality is tolerated only insofar as it is being formed out of the reaction to the threat of the Sea power.
As Dugin’s geopolitics is an ideology of absolute conflict all other unique features of peoples other than Russians would necessary be discarded as ‘inconvenient facts’ distorting the perfect system of the absolute idea. Truly, in his view war is the father of all things and in order to resolve the destiny of the Earth, one needs a global war – a Third World War.
The Endkampf will be waged between USA led Sea power and the Land power consolidated around the geopolitical axis stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
The lynchpin in this “Empire of empires” destined to rectify the mistakes of the Axis powers in the WWII would be an alliance of Russia and Central Europe consolidated around Germany in its ideocratic, presumably Fourth Reich, incarnation, free from the corruptive influence of maritime civilization:
“All strivings towards the European consolidation around Germany will have a positive meaning only insofar they fulfil one fundamental condition – the creation of an enduring geopolitical and strategic axis Moscow – Berlin. (…) Moreover, it is hard to expect the genuine geopolitical and national awakening of Europe without the revolutionary influence of the Russian factor.” (FG, 195)
So the alliance of Germany and Russia in their ideocratic incarnations – the fulfilment of National-Bolshevik dream from Niekitsch and Yockey to Dugin himself – would lie in the reversal of the Ribbentrop-Molotov into the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact whereby Russia would play the leading role in detaching Central Europe from the pesky Atlantean influence in all its forms.
This consolidation, however, would require a “scapegoat”:
“In the Eurasian project England will inevitably become the ‘scapegoat’ because the European process of continental integration will necessarily develop not only with utter disregard of British interests, but precisely contrary to them. In this context no small role will be played by European and, generally, Eurasian support to Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationalism, all the way to inciting separatist initiatives and the political destabilization of Great Britain.” (FG, 194.)
This “scapegoat” role is neatly present in all three areas of the Eurasian axis and, of course, it corresponds to countries designated by Dugin as formed upon “Atlanticist” principles.
So, in Europe the postmodern, asymmetrical simulacrum of WWII will be decided by Germany lead Europe winning the battle of Britain, not only without repeating Hitler’s fatal mistake of simultaneously attacking Russia, but waging it under the thumb of Russia. Surely, then, the postmodern Sieg will be accomplished to everybody’s satisfaction.
As the Eurasian East-West axis is meant to ensure the strategic consolidation of geographical space in collision with the Sea power, and only that, it has to project the meridian vectors in order to create buffer zones, or geopolitical outposts, in the direction of the South while the North is already covered by the Russian landmass and the relative inaccessibility of the cold seas.
The North-South meridian cutting from Europe to Africa would in perspective come to be dominated by German Europe and Africa would become an appendix to Europe:
“The European Empire, vitally interested in an ever deeper thrust to the south of the African continent, must in perspective establish full control of Africa all the way to the Sahara, relying on the pan-Arab bloc, and, in the future, it must strategically penetrate the entire African continent.” (FG, 215)
The Middle East, however, is to have a large degree of autonomy of a relatively individual Great Space on the meridian axis of Moscow-Teheran. There too, as stakes are high because the South is the “soft belly” of Eurasia, we meet another scapegoat. It is Turkey:
“It is also important (…) to bear in mind the need for imposing the role of ‘scapegoat’ on Turkey, because the interests of this country in the Caucasus and Middle Asia will not be considered at all. Moreover, support should probably be given to Kurdish separatism in mainland Turkey, as well as to the Turkish Armenian’s calls for autonomy (…)” (FG, 214)
The easternmost stretch of the Eurasian Empire will be controlled by Tokyo:
“At first sight China is a landmass and civilization of traditional authoritarian (…) character, and the very fact of it preserving the communist ideology throughout the liberal reforms should, apparently, contribute to the choice of China instead of capitalist, insular Japan. However, history shows us that precisely China represents geopolitically the foremost beach head of Anglo-Saxon forces on the Eurasian continent, while Japan supported the alliance with Central European countries of opposite outlook. (…) Only at the time of active Maoism did China display the original Eurasian striving, when it was motivated by projects of ‘peasant socialism’, Greater Chinese nationalism and pronounced Sovietophilia. (…) Generally speaking, China fulfils all requirements for becoming the geopolitical ‘scapegoat’ in the course of realizing the Pan-Asian project. This can be accomplished by inciting inner separatism in China (Tibetans, Mongols, Muslims) as well as by playing the card of regional oppositions (…)” (FG, 202 – 208)
This passage, aside from pinpointing the ‘scapegoat’, displays admirably a key aspect of Dugin’s ideology: the “traditionalist” for him equals “ideocratic”. And what ideocratic really is becomes obvious from him designating communism, most notably its Maoist form, to be precisely that.
In this sense he has no qualms about it being on the same level with Shia Islam and Russian Orthodoxy as indeed with National Socialism and Bolshevism. The only essential thing is that it is opposed to – that is: negatively defined by – the correspondingly simplified “liberalism” of the Sea Power.
We will dwell on this some more later, but let us note in passing how Dugin’s absolute ideology completely eradicates all qualitative differences between religions, cultures and, more or less, everything else, submitting it all to the geopolitical imagination operating with absolutely simplistic quantitative operands of the Land vs. Sea duality.
This is the “absolute idea” Dugin wants to see absorbing everything else in one conscious swoop across the planet, creating a world detached from its cultural diversity, not by liberal eradication of the same, but by replacing it with ideologically driven simulacra of Traditions, religions, cultures, etc.
At the centre of it all, however, remains the Russian people,
“In the framework of (…) the Empire, Russians won’t gain their own nation state as an expression of ethnic community but instead they’ll achieve national unity and the gigantic continental state in running of which they’ll play the central role.” (FG, 221)
In order to accomplish this, Dugin needs one more, ultimate, sacrificial lamb:
“In due course, on the global level of the process of building the New Planetary Empire, the ultimate ‘sacrificial lamb’ will be precisely USA, and the undermining of its power (all down to total demolition of that geopolitical construction) will be methodically and uncompromisingly enacted by all participants in the New Empire. The Eurasian project (…) presupposes Eurasian expansion into South and Central Americas in order to release them from the influence of the North (…), as well as inciting all kinds of instability and separatism inside the USA borders (the forces of Afro-American racists could be relied upon in this respect). The ancient Roman formula ‘Carthage must be destroyed’ will become the absolute slogan of the Eurasian Empire because it encompasses the essence of the geopolitical planetary strategy of a continent that is awakening to its mission.” (FG, 218)
We can be sure that American White Nationalist Dugin groupies would be able to find some excuse for him initially choosing the black racialists instead of them – after all, who would have figured in the Nineties that the main Neo-Eurasianist Anglophone outlets would be the American ones – but the simple fact is: he doesn’t care for consistency outside of the consistency of his absolute ideology of conflict. All means are sanctified by the end of bringing about the Endkampf and the victory of Russian-led rejuvenated Axis powers.
The Absolute Idea and Eurasian Globalization
A huge part of the Foundations of Geopolitics has been devoted to the details of the construction of the internal structure of the (still) Invisible Empire and, for the sake of brevity, we’ll refrain from going in depth into it.
Instead we’ll draw conclusions from the principles we outlined in this two part analysis and they are fairly sufficient to provide insight into the nature of this globalist project.
Dugin is a special kind of ideologue, i.e. he’s an absolute ideologue or, an ideologue of absolute ideology. This means he’s a system builder both in a philosophical and a political sense, because every detail of the “absolute idea” has to be consciously made manifest in reality; to be more precise: it has to be imposed upon the world.
This is blatantly obvious from his insistence that geopolitics is a matter for a self-conscious elite and its ability to make sovereign decisions based on their imagination, not on the existence of some supposedly geopolitical laws. In fact those laws are a compendium of all imperial strivings of the past synthesized into one ideological melting pot of Neo-Eurasianism.
Strangely enough – if only at the first sight – it’s ideological Atlanticist counterpart is at the same time its efficient cause. Land power mirrors the Sea power perfectly. For example, Dugin recognizes the importance of the Trilateral Commission:
“The Trilateral Commission was formed by the members of the highest circles of American political establishment as the new configuration of the planet presupposes strategic consolidation of three geopolitical zones (…) Three sides of this Commission pretending to function as the ‘world government’ are American, European and Pacific zone.” (FG, 208)
This is Dugin’s answer to its existence:
“The Eurasian project offers something precisely opposite to the plans of Trilaterals. The new Empire is an anti-Trilateral, its inverted model. It is a consolidation of the three geopolitical zones centered in Russia and directed against America. Following the same logic by which the USA seeks to keep Europe and Japan under its geopolitical control (…) Russia must, in building the New Empire, in every conceivable way strive to create a lasting strategic alliance with Europe and Japan (…) In principle we are talking about creating our own Eurasian Trilateral Commission(…)” (ibid.)
Everything this man is capable of doing is to invert something already existing into its polar opposite. It doesn’t matter at all that Trilateral Commission is in all certainty precisely what he says it is. What matters is that he doesn’t want to abolish it, evade it or denounce it, but re-create it for himself. Implicitly, this means that Dugin considers all the vectors of Western globalism completely relevant and true, only he wants to see the globalism in which his side of the globe will run the world on inversion of the Sea power principles.
This is usually the gateway drug leading Westerners deeper into chronic Duginitis. Most people take only his more or less correct observations about their part of the world in the context of Western globalization and consider him a sort of independent thinker denouncing globalization in general. He is anything but, however. He is a proponent of a different, inverted globalization, founded, among other things, upon the idea that the outcome of WWII can be rectified and reversed.
And the choice, of course, is either – or.
This is a hallmark of a world class liar. The dialectical geo-metaphysics we covered on the previous pages is a complete and utter lie because it can be defined as conscious creation of the world encompassing illusion. It is as illusory, and as coherent, as the dialectical materialism or the liberal free market ideology Dugin compared it to, and – most importantly – it is a mirror image of what it supposedly fights. It has to be an illusion, because the reality without a middle ground does not exist on this ball of mud and water we call planet Earth. Either-ors are not feasible outside of the self-contained ideological system of an Absolute Idea. But once a gullible person gets into this system, everything starts to make sense in his own mind.
As we pointed out at the outset of this analysis, Dugin explicitly proposes that geopolitics should be used in this way to influence the masses and, judging by the almost complete meltdown of the Western alternative media into a Neo-Eurasianist semantic system, he’s absolutely right. The allure of simplistic coherence, served with a cynical smirk, is something that’s not so easy to resist, especially for people who are far removed from immediate contact with the crisis zones they’re observing from the safety of their couches or armchairs.
The problem is that the reality of history is by its nature not a coherent system and the unity of Providence it may contain – and indeed in my opinion does contain – is not something that can be modelled into an absolute idea or coherent system.
One does not know the last day and the hour, that’s the whole point …
And Dugin wants to bring them about on his own accord.
Therefore, from the religious point of view he really seems to be more or less an eligible tenant of the nether regions he occasionally invokes in his more occultist writings.
These writings will be the subject of an addendum to this analysis.
In conclusion, we can only stress once more the nature of Dugin’s apocalyptic geography: it is an ideology of absolute conflict and as such – that is, by being absolute – it seeks to subvert every conceivable traditional model of both politics and spirituality by dissolving it into its own image, while discarding its real essence. This is the reason why this bearded patriarch of Chaos is an acid test for people who adhere to some kind of traditionalism. The mindless clinging to Dugin as some kind of representative of Tradition, Christianity, etc. clearly displays the fact that people enraptured by him share his absolute superficiality. Dugin is perfectly able to coherently demonstrate that Rene Guenon was right as well as at the same time proving that Karl Marx was right. He can do this, because he – as a person and thus the subject of knowledge he mediates – is absolutely deprived of any substance.
This is not a moral observation. It is an ontological fact symptomatic of modern man: no matter how intelligent or erudite one can be, he can still at the same time be completely detached from the reality of what he’s talking about. The only firm ground Dugin recognizes is the ground itself: the soil and its expansion. He’s gaze is firmly and deliberately focused downwards. That way he can take various teachings, from Rene Guenon, Russian Orthodox dogma to Marxism and proto-Nazism, as coherent systems he can expound and manipulate. He merely takes the conceptual framework and works with it, not even minding the contradictions, because he can always pass onto a new one and still remain true to his own nihilistic principle. This kind of subversion, that is, creating the simulacra of religion, metaphysics, tradition, etc. is in my opinion potentially far worse than anything Western “ingenuity” has to offer, because it is the intentional corruption of what is good and not merely its rejection. Moreover it is perilous for anyone coming into intellectual contact with it, because it requires the emptying of one’s soul of any real spiritual content in order to seamlessly interiorize the counterfeit.
To put things plain and simple for aspiring traditionalists among the readers:
The world of Tradition sank below the horizon long time ago. This does not mean that it doesn’t exist anymore.
And Dugin is not trying to revive it.
He’s trying to erase the horizon itself.
These musings lead us out of the sphere of geopolitics towards its occultist roots in the myth of Arctogeia. And this story deserves to be told separately and in its own right.
Branko Malić
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What do you make of the Marian revelation of Fatima among other things telling the Catholic Church to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart? Has Dugin any take on the meaning of this?
I believe in revelation but I don’t claim to understand it. I apologize, but what I think of it, I chose to keep to myself. Never heard Dugin speak about it, but as he considers Catholics to be vermin and Soviet Union as a legitimate expression of “Christ-bearing” destiny of Russia, I don’t think he would see any point to message of Fatima. However, some of his mentors had a lot to say about it but not in English:
Abellio and Parvulesco
Putin and the end times
I suggest reading this because Dugin himself approves of author’s musings.
Thank you.
Do you know if René Guénon had anything to say about the Miracle of the Sun and the Fatima Message?
Not that I know of.
To understand Duginism, Vladimir Karpets the man who was Dugin’s spiritual mentor into Edinoverie Old Believer Orthodoxy must be considered. Considers church reform of 1653-1666 a Papal attempt to demolish pure orthodoxy and get Russia to go on a crusade against the Turks. Karpets and Dugin support Lenin and Stalin as closer to the path to restore pre-1666 Raskol Schism Eurasian Russia over the Romanovs who persecuted the Old Belief.
A good intro in Russian to Karpets thinking, http://www.pravaya.ru/look/16652&usg=ALkJrhgn42zonVPt7WGGOUGJwwWTan4mHA
There are few ways to approach Dugin and one of them is through his Western inspirations, which I take. The “pure Orthodoxy”, Russian messianism as Dugin’s inspiration, etc. are for various reasons not in the focus here. However, thank you for your note.
You’re welcome, Old Believer Russian Messianism is more hardcore and little studied. Wanted eternal war with West (catholic western europe/UK/US) and peace with Islamic world believing Russia is Third and final Rome totally, in contrast to mainstream Russian Messianism which was concentrated on liberating Constantinople and restoring Byzantine Empire.
That is what I am talking about! Real KaliTribune quality! This type of text can not be find anywhere else!
You nailed it in these two paragraphs:
” We will dwell on this some more later, but let us note in passing how Dugin’s absolute ideology completely eradicates all qualitative differences between religions, cultures and, more or less, everything else, submitting it all to the geopolitical imagination operating with absolutely simplistic quantitative operands of the Land vs. Sea duality.
This is the “absolute idea” Dugin wants to see absorbing everything else in one conscious swoop across the planet, creating a world detached from its cultural diversity, not by liberal eradication of the same, but by replacing it with ideologically driven simulacra of Traditions, religions, cultures, etc.”
Keep it up Branko!
Fuck CNN! Fuck RT!