First words on Lithuania

First words on Lithuania

Conversation with Alexandr Dugin (I)

Let‘s start our conversation from the image you are granted by the mainstream Western media as well as local Lithuanian politicians, including so-called nationalists: the common stereotype of you is that of a particularly aggressive agent of the Russian president Vladimir Putin and a proponent of  Russian chauvinism and imperialism. It is also a common notion here, in our country, that you are particularly anti-Lithuanian, calling for the occupation, subjugation and assimilation of our country and nation into Russia. How much of this is true?

First of all… First of all, I would like to say that I have never said one single word concerning Lithuania. No word at all… That doesn‘t mean that I am great friend of modern Lithuania, but that doesn‘t mean absolutely that I am enemy of Lithuania or that I have smallest form of hostility toward your people.

To say the truth, I love Lituanian identity and Baltic identity in general, I am fan of Marija Gimbutas‘ works, concerning all European identity and I think that the Baltic ethnic groups are descendents of the ancient European tribes with very particular ant very original cultural identity.

So in general I have a very positive relation towards Lithuania. So never, nowhere, not once have I mentioned any negative comment toward Lithuania, including the fact tht(that is difference from many political patriots of Russia) I have nver criticized modern Lithuania.

So it is an important thing. This fact demonstrates that there is no smallest part of the truth of the image of myself, given by the Western media. So if with such certitude they affirm that I have hostility, that I am calling to invade or subjugate Lithuania, that is completely false. Absolutely false.

I have never said the smallest thing that could be interpretated in such sense because I have nver said one word concerning my political position towards Lithuania.

I have never mentioned Lithuania and that is first time that I am pronouncing name „Lithuania“ in my discourse that will be published and translated. So it is  very funny thing: to be regarded as the enemy of Lithuania, but never mentioning the name of Lithuania, never speaking about it, never giving some positive or negative comments on the subject.

So that is how Western propaganda works. They accuse all the enemies of American hegemony to be devils, to be cannibals, to be criminals… And they simultaniously support the most negative, the worst kind of racism and chauvinism in the world to promote their proper interest.

So, the West is a lie. And the example of Lithuania and my attitude towards Lithuania is, I think, very clear.

It is rather strange – you could misinterpret my words, you could take them from the context – that would be manipulation, yes I agree, and it is more or less normal in the ideological struggle…

But to regard me as the enemy of Lithuania, without me mentioning the name of this country in all my discourse during 30 years … Amazing… Its really amazing…

What are my positions?

What is my attitude toward Putin ant to Russian revival… Yes I am a patriot, I think that Western civilization is decadent, I am an enemy of modern Europe, but I‘m a partisan of ancient Europe, of Indo-European Europe, European heritage of Greek, Roman, pre-modern time, I am an enemy of modernity, I am a traditionalist, I am conservative, I share the idea of regaining this heritage, shared by Rene Guenon, French traditionalist, and Julius Evola, Italian traditionalist.

So I am partisan of traditionalism, I despise the modernity, I think that modernity is degradation, I think that the real values were abandoned by Europe on the eve of the modern era and I think that we need to return to the new Middle-ages as Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev has put it.

So, I am a traditionalist, I‘m a Russian patriot, but I‘m not chauvinist, not racist, because I‘m anti-chauvinist and anti-racist.

I think that modernity and European modernity is basically racist. Not just in biological sense (racial supremacism), but, most of all, in the cultural sense – it is kind of subliminal racism that regards European values as universal ones.

But that is a completely racist attitude. You could share modern European values if you are a European man, it is up to you what values to choose. But if you regard your values, that I defined limited by  history, by time, by geography, and if you import these values on other humanity, for example, Russia, or on Asian people and so on…  Then you commint the act of racism.

So, I‘m anti-chauvinist, I am a partisan of greater Europe project (but of traditional Europe, not modern Europe). I‘m anti-modernist, and patriot, I am partisan of Russian, traditional Biziantian style empire, I am Christian orthodox and I support Vladimir Putin.

All that how I could define myself. I am not fascist, not liberal, not mommunist. I am a representative of the Fourth political theory as a very particular kind of political ideology that tries to give up all the links with modernity, to be completely counter, anti, post or pre-modern… To be outside of the political modernity, which I consider to be evil.

One thing that I would like to stress is that all that, completely all these positions, have nothing to do with Lithuania. It is the first time in my life that I am speaking like this with a represantative of Lithuania.

In my youth I was in Kaunas and Vilnius two times, I was very impressed with the culture of your country. But that was when I was young. And after that I am not a supporter of Lithuania being a NATO state, abolutely, because I hate NATO, but not Lithuania.

I dont think that European Union in its actual form is something really valuable. I think that it‘s rather an anti-European body, Atlantist, pro-American, but I think at the same time I would say that it has nothing to do with the particular Lithuanian identity that I admire.

Concerning your real ideas and position, perhaps you could provide us with a brief outline of the project of the Fourth political theory as well as the geopolitical paradygm of analysis („Great war of continents“)? Why does the world need an anti-liberal, anti-postmodern revolution?

I think that the world should have a choice. I consider man being with a particular gift, the gift of freedom. So I strongly believe in the freedom of the human soul and human being. And always when the freedom is concerned, there is the posibility of choice. There is no freedom, where there is no choice.  Now we are living in a world where post-modernity and liberal ideology have won. They are installed at a unique contextual frame of semantic filth.

So we are liberal because we are all for free market, because we have parlamentary democracy, because we share the ideology of human rights, and we are liberal unconsciously, we are obliged to be liberals without our choice, without knowing of it.

In the 20th century there was an ideological choice – there was a great struggle of three political theories: of liberalism, of communism, of fascism. Three options were available to choose ones political identity. Some aspects of identity were defined by the birth, by geographical position, but you could make a choice, you were politicaly free to choose some political identity: First, Second or Third political theory.

But now, after the victory of liberalism over communism and joined victory of liberalism and communism over the fascism, now we have lost any posibility of political choice. Now we are obliged to be liberals, we can only be BUT liberals… we cannot be  non-liberal.

That is very important, because it is a kind of global planitarian dictatorship of one way of thinking, one thought. It is the kind of one thought civilization, where you could not choose your proper position, you are obliged  to be liberal by the force, by the power of the market and the liberal dictatorship.

But this limit limit must be anhialated, or it will completely destroy the human liberty. So, you could say to liberalism YES, you could say to liberalism NO. You can accept it, you could deny it.

But what is going on when we accept it?

That is very clear, everyone is the example how we are accepting liberalism without understanding that we are doing it, how we are used and manipulated by the liberalism that it enters in our subconcsiousness, transforming us into progressive liberals without choosing it.

But if we deny liberalism, if we are not in the agreement with its individualistic values, gay mariages, gender politics, cosmopolitanism, anti-nationalism, technical development, instead of a spiritual one, agressive secularization and so on… capitalist economy and all the globalism, then we should search for an alternative.

If you are against all that you should have the alternative values and in nature we, if we refuse liberalism, then we are obliged to accept communism with its critical position towards liberalism, or to accept nationalism or fascism, Second position or Third position.

But these two forms of modern political thought are not enough, they have lost their battles, not because they were more modern than liberalism, but because they were more traditional, less modern than liberalism.

And communism wasn‘t the result of capitalism but was more of the struggle against capitalism as the kind of alternative direction. All that was lost. And now we are in form of global liberalism as the unique thought and, if we want, if we choose to refuse liberalism, we need something else, something new.

And my idea is that we need a Fourth political theory outside of all political modernity, because the liberalism that won political struggle of the heritage of the modernity is the kind of synthesis of all political modernity that is the basic cristalization of the spirit of the modernity.

And I consider this spirit to be nihilistic spirit, to be a kind of global degradation of the spiritual conception of man. So it is the kind of devils, an anti-Christ parody of real civilization, so in order to overcome the liberalism we need to overcome much more than liberalism, than all modernity.

So, my idea is to create the Fourth political theory outside of modernity mixing up to certain point post-modern critique of modernity and critique of liberalism with the pre-modern traditional approach.

So this is not only the modernity that we need to restore, because to restore somehing artificially its something more than to return to the past. It is impossible to return to the past.

We could and we should create a new future starting from the priciples that are antithetic, that are opposite to the principles of political modernity and to the principles of liberalism.

So that is more or less the ideological frame of my position but it is also the geopolitical aspect of this battle against liberalism and modernity represented in two camps, geopolitically defined as the civilization of the sea,  „sea power“ and the civilization of the earth, „earth power“.

Modern american hegemony is geopolitically, strategically speaking, the represantation of liberalism and Eurasia, the heartland „Earth power“, „land power“, is its strategical opponent and the heartland of the land power is obviously according to all classical geopolitics – Russia.

So the struggle of the Russian Federation againt American hegemony inside of Russia, against the fifth column of liberals and around Russia, for example, in Ukraine, is not only the struggle for egoistically conceived national interest, but it is also a wider struggle for human freedom.

The rejection of chauvinism and racial supremacy of course is absolutely agreeable but how should nationalism of the healthy variety integrate into the wider project of the Fourth political theory on in international basis?

The problem (it is a very interesting question, a really important question)… I have explained that in my lectures and work on ethno-sociology.

So we need to distinguish three things: ethnic group (1), people (2) and political nation (3). Three things are quite different.

Ethnos is organic community with special kind of values (1), people is a historic community with some position in world history (2) and the political nation  is an artificial creation of capitalist modernity that came instead of traditional organization of middle ages as well as the society based on the empire, on the sacred values and on different castes of the society (3).

So the political nation is an artificial capitalist creation that is not organic, not historic, it is completely technical. The people is the community of the destiny. Ethnic group is a kind of organic little community sharing some concrete, not historical, eternal values. So the ethnos is based on the idea of the returning times, cyclic time, it is an ethnic time, so the eternal return of the soul of the dead. It is the kind of ever repeating process, cyclic time.

The people lives in the historical, eschatological time. Christian tradition fits here very well: limited process oriented to some end. To the end of the times. So it is a kind of historical tragic existence because ethnic group doesn‘t know tragic dimension. It is more or less paradise, ethnic paradise: without death, without history, without the tragedy of limited existence.

And the political bourgeois nation is is a kind of completely a-historical concept, combined and artificially created by the modern concept based on the technical necessity to unite individuals in the kind of artificial frames.

So the political nation was created by the bourgeois in order to affirm individual identity, because the political nation is constructed on the basis of individual identity that is completely modern, bourgeois and capitalist and after that identity, individual identity being appropriated by the society the political nation now is disbanded, it is destroyed by the same forces that have created the nation.

So the capitalism gave birth to the modern political nation and now the capitalism, in its globalistic, liberal, ultra-liberal stage, is destroying nations and peoples. So the same forces are behind it.

So I am a partisan of the tragic community of the people in front of the history that should incorporate, that should constitute a common historical project.

And that was precisely the destiny of Greek civilization, of the Roman empire – to gather, to put together different ethnic groups and to install them into one common historical project.

So, I‘m absolutely, not chauvinist or racist, not the partisan of  such [bourgeois] „nationalism“. I don‘t like the usual modern notion of nation, because it was a capitalist, liberal and bourgeois creation.

So, our idea of Eurasianists, of partisans of the Fourth political theory, is to center around the people, the people as a historic entity that is super-ethnic, but historic and tragical.

It is sacred, the people is sacred but its sacrality – historic sacrality, not ethnic sacrality. It is not easy to harmoniously put together different ethnic groups within a common historical project. It means it is not easy to form a people from ethnic groups but it is precisely what we need to do to create Europe, to create Eurasian union, to create Islamic civilization on a new level.

We should understand the concept of the holy, sacred empire. Empire as the creation, as the highest form of historical deed. I think that Lithuanian history in its beginning was also oriented towards the creation of such an impirial entity.

And the Lithuanian kingdom with many different ethnic groups inside, with a tolerant pagan princes. Before joining Poland (that was a completely different civilization) that was a kind of nucleus of a possible Baltic empire. And I think that now Lithuania is a capitalist nation, artificially created.

Ethnically Lithuania is something different, ethnic dimension is incompatible with liberalism, with globalization, with modernist and post-modern European values, because these values, these attitudes destroy the family, destroy the ethnic spirit, tradition, ethnic culture and so on.

So, ethnos is killed here in the process of creation of bourgeois modern liberal nation, but the problem of empire, empire is the highest rise of the people. So they set forth to create the empire.

Lithuanian empire  was in the past and now a very important historical heritage of deep Lithuanian identity. But now we need to choose (you need to choose, not we, we have no choice, in this sense we are the partisans of the revival of  the Russian empire), but you Lithuanians – you have the choice: you could choose a Eurasian empire (I don’t think it will be the case, you hate us too much…) but if not us, you could choose a European empire it is the other possibility, other solution – not European Union – but a post-liberal, traditional European civilization.

For the sake of clarity for our readers– perhaps you could provide us with a more concrete definition of the word “Empire” in the sense used above?

So, we need to make some precisions, corrections concerning the use of the word “Empire”. There are different words with the same meaning, where there are different same to same words with different meanings. So the problem is to correctly understand the problem of synonyms and antonyms.

We could accept the sense of the empire in the context of Michael Hardt and Anthony Negri. And the books with the same name orthe concept of empire as negative globalist, capitalist, liberal Americano- centric, Atlantist form of world domination.

In this sense one speaks not about empire in its traditional, sacred sense, but the kind of anti-empire, because the Anglo-Saxan empire or Carthage empire were both anti-empires.

They were based on the markets values, on money. And that is the kind of globalisation of these. What we call anti-Empire, Negri and Hardt call Empire. So that is obviously not what we are defending.

But there is other sense of the empire, traditional meaning of the empire. The meaning that was explicitly used by Julius Evola in his book Pagan Imperialismas well as use of this word „empire“ by Carl Schmitt, German political scientist and Alain de Benoist,the chief of the school of the modern New right, French new right and the most important thinker of European traditionalists.

So, I understand under “Empire” this second sense. For me empire is a traditional organisation of strategic unity with the conservation of difference and multiplicity of ethnic identities. So Empire is not a political nation because it is sacred, because it doesn’t destroy local identities but integrates them or lets them be as they are.

So empire is strategic unity with ethnic plurality. I would define this word in such terms. I understand another empire, the strategic unity and centralization with ethnical plurality and with the sacred mission. That is the traditional empire as the Roman empire, Greek empire, Medieval empire, Byzantine empire or Russian empire.

The Anglo-Saxon empire or Britain empire or modern globalistic Americano-centric empire are anti-Empires in that sense.

So there is the problem of the use of the word as well as “nationalism”.

Mainstream “nationalism” is a bourgeois concept of some artificial political entity based on individual identity and the destruction of ethnic communities.

So the liberal bourgeois nation is the death of ethnic groups. But at the same time many nationalists don’t understand the capitalist and bourgeois roots of this ideology and struggle for a false cause, not for Europe as the community of tragedy in the Heiddegerian, Nietzschean sense.

So you have the choice above nation and above ethnical identity – to choose European empire. And in this sense you will also be not enemies of the Russians, but the friends of Russia.

Because we, Russians, we are now constructing our sacred empire, we are trying to revive it. It is not so easy. But it is our task, it is our destiny, it is our mission.

And in Europe now there is something that is badly needed to save the Europe from the modernity. And to save the Europe from modernity, the only way to do so is to bring forth a European sacred empire as a post-liberal, post-capitalist project – not the “European Union”. And here, you Lithuanians, as a Catholic, as a European ethnic group, could participate in this, also being the friends of Russia.

Another solution is to be completely destroyed as an ethnic identity in the process of liberalism and globalisation in which there would be no such thing as Lithuania because everybody would be individuals integrated into cosmopolitan societies. There would be no such thing as Lithuanian identity in the process of civilizations.

But you can’t save yourselves by yourselves alone. You could only choose some imperial future and to struggle in favour of this future. But to do that you to help and struggle with other ethnic group of Europeans: Germans, Hungarians, French, etc. If you opt for a future, post-liberal European empire, it is up to you to cooperate, to be friend of other partisans of European revival and also that will mean that you could have a very good relationship with us, Russian traditionalists and Eurasianists.

So this is a question of vocabulary and understanding. But we could not easily put aside this problem because if we understand very clearly that every term should be contextually defined so we could use this word with the precise meaning we give it.

What about your attitude toward and relationship with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin and his policies (foreign policy in particular)?

I consider Putin as the most European leader from any other chiefs of European states. He is better, he has also some negative points (it is obvious), but he is simply the best from all existing ones. He is the clearest partisan of sovereignty, he has made the revival of Russia possible, he has restored Russia that has been disappearing from the historical scene after the 90′s.

So for us he is a political saviour. Not religious, but political saviour. Saviour – that he has restored the chance for our historical existence, so he is very, very popular precisely because of that.

Ideologically he is rather a “realist” in the sense of the field of international relations, where “realist” means one who considers national statehood as the highest point of the law. So there is nothing above the national state. So that is the idea of a political realist in international relations in this sense Putin is a political realist.

He considers international relations as the field of the play of the free forces represented by the sovereign nation states. And he is playing on the side of the Russian state trying by to make it bigger, trying to make it more powerful and to prevent its destruction and in that sense he is very sequent.

And he is loved for that and he is hated for that. So him being a realist is very good for us and very bad for our enemies. On the other side, he is a Russian and he is very authentic to the Russian identity and little by little he becomes more and more Eurasianist, more and more close to the Fourth political theory.

So he evaluates, he develops his ideas, he enlarges his understanding of the process of the world. He has the talent to understand the historical events better and better and, I think, he is now at the highest point of his career.

After Crimea he has shown to every Russian and to every person outside of Russia what can be the real Russian revival. So he is hated and he is loved precisely for his strength.

Ideologically he becomes more and more close to fourth political theory, because he is not liberal, he is not communist and never mentions communism in a positive or negative way, and he is absoletely and clearly not fascist and now he leads the struggle against the chauvinist Ukrainian neo-nazis (“Pravy Sektor”), who fight in favour of United States against Russia.

So being not liberal, not communist and not fascist, Putin quite logically is close to the Fourth political theory and that is why he is supported by groups such as the Jobbik party or Marine Le Pen. But the majority of European nationalists who are also very interested in the Fourth political theory represented by me in the Russian sphere of influence, and by Alain de Benoist in Europe.

Putin is regarded as the chance, as the kind of hope for all anti-liberal forces, who refuse to collaborate with NATO, with the United States of America, with American hegemony and to be useful idiots as for example the so-called third position in Kiev, who by being Ukrainian nationalists also lost the part of their state and they will be the other very important zone of Ukraine, this is inevitable. So it is completely contradicting to be on the side of the atlantists and to be on the side of enemies of Russia being nationalists and losing territories of own national state. So it is a problem for everybody now in Europe to be not with Russia, to be with fourth position or to be with atlanticism. And I think that for example in France, in Hungary, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, all over the Europe the works of Alain de Benoistand myself are read by those forces, who refuse liberalism and I think it is very important to have a theoretical basis for the anti-liberal struggle and anti-American hegemony.

But I think that Putin in this sense could be taken as a symbol of our struggle and I am the partisan of him, I enjoy his evolution that goes directly in our sense.

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