The Belt and Road Initiative: A Eurasian Road

“We need to liberate ourselves, all the peoples, Turkish people, Russian people, Chinese people, European people, American peoples, from this international liberal swamp. We need to liberate ourselves from the totalitarian discourse constructed on the ‘self-evident’ dogma that only liberalism can be accepted as a universal ideology, that only Western values should be assimilated as something universal. With the growth of China and Putin’s insistence on defending and strengthening  Russian sovereignty, the Belt & Road Initiative was transformed into something new in the last two years. It now represents a strategy to secure Chinese and Russian independence, working together, in alliance. Now, we can speak about the Russian-Chinese alliance as a geopolitical alliance opposed to the Atlanticist world order. Nation-states cannot independently establish, secure and keep real sovereignty. We need to oppose this global pressure together. Above all, on the present stage, we need to establish a multipolar alliance between all the powers, all the states, all the countries and civilizations fighting for their independence. That is the logical continuation of decolonization. Decolonization is not finished; it has just started.”

Alexander Dugin answers the questions of Fikret Akfırat, Editor-in-Chief of BRIQ.

Fikret Akfırat: The July 19 edition of the Turkish newspaper Milliyet features an op-ed by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, where he expresses the following view: “Above all, we cannot return to the system that has caused the current crisis. What we need is to build a better system that allows for the growth of societies and economies with greater sustainability, inclusivity, and gender equality”. What kind of a New World Order do you think humanity needs? What is to be done to achieve such a goal?

Alexander Dugin: I think that these are purely senseless words. Not real thoughts. The current crisis is a logical result of the decay of the global liberal system, clearly under the leadership of the West. That is the way it all unfolds. It is a kind of liberal hegemony doubled by geopolitical unipolarity. So, the crisis is caused by Western liberalism and the unipolar Western system.

We are all in some sense “the West”. In a sense, the modern western liberal civilization was a path to follow for all other societies. And I think that the problem with this present-day crisis is precisely the direct consequence of the impossibility to overcome the coronavirus on a global scale through the western-liberal international institutions that have proved utterly ineffective.

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. It is a double-faced crisis. On one side, we see liberalism as a historical social vision, as a philosophy. It is not only economic liberalism, the defense of free market or political liberal democracy,  parliamentarianism and so on. It is also the metaphysical understanding of the nature of humankind as a mass of individuals. For liberalism, the man is equal to the individual. That is the basis of all liberal ideology as well as progress, understood as accumulation of liberty. More and more liberty, more and more progress in the eyes of liberals themselves is just the same as the progress and growth of liberalism. With this growth of liberalism, the West affirmed its own hegemony, its own domination.

In order to be more modern, developed and prosperous you are obliged to be more liberal, more liberal democratic, to have more open society, more civil society. In that global context, the West itself has secured or thought to secure for itself a kind of leading role, a pattern to follow. The history of the West is presumed to be equivalent to the universal destiny of humanity. On this ideological level liberalism is thought of as a necessary universal ideology that must be adopted by all. If you resist you will be put among “rogue countries” with all the consequences, war and regime change operations.

The political ideology of globalist liberalism is paired with other aspects, with the geopolitical, economic and political leadership of Western countries and above all that of the US. So, we have on one side ideological unipolarity with the domination of liberals. On the other side, we have the geopolitical, military, political, strategic and economical unipolarity of the West.

The Crisis of Unipolar System

The crisis, which we are speaking of, is precisely the crisis of this unipolar geopolitical/ideological system. When United Nations Secretary-General Guterres says that “we should build a better system” and immediately after refers to the “growth of societies and economies”, he rests totally inside the liberal paradigm. Economic growth is the key measure to define the success of economic activity in liberal theory. The concept of economic growth is thus purely liberal. That is the system we already have. But Guterres, just one line before, affirmed that “we need to build a better system”. Guterres proposes to cure the crisis, created by liberalism, with more liberalism, with “more growth of economy” On the other hand, the concept of “greater sustainability” is the thesis developed by the Club of Rome1.  The very idea of sustainable development is promoted by left liberalism and it means that the rich should take care of the poor in order to avoid proletarian revolutions and all kinds of social protests. That is the Fabian society2 style of political agenda. Finally, the same Club of Rome who pretended to promote sustainable development insisted on the reduction of human population on the planet, stressing the limits of growth. So Guterres should choose either economic growth (the classical liberal thesis) or the Club of Rome’s brand of sustainability.

LIBERAL ANTI-RACISM ITSELF IS WESTERN-CENTRIC AND PROFOUNDLY RACIST. THE OTHER FOR THE WEST BELONGS TO ITS OWN UNCONSCIOUSNESS. IT IS PATHOGENIC AND PATHOLOGICAL.

Next point: inclusivity. The main problem with inclusivity is the fact that Western culture cannot imagine an “Other” outside of itself. The Western Cartesian subject3 considers the “Other” as its own unconsciousness. According to Lacan4, it is some entity, some unconscious subject5 that lives inside the Western man. So, when we speak about inclusivity with western man, he naturally means precisely this kind of inclusivity – i.e. concerning his own unconscious self. This psychoanalysis helps us to understand why the West is so deeply racist. It is racist including when it obliges all to fight racism – it is obligatory because of the fact the West itself has decided to do that… So liberal anti-racism itself is Western-centric and profoundly racist. The Other for the West belongs to its own unconsciousness. It is pathogenic and pathological.

Finally, gender equality, which is perhaps the most senseless point. To obtain to real gender equality, we need to destroy the gender as such. Because the relations between man and woman are based on asymmetry, i.e. precisely on the absence of the equality, on the non-equality, and non-equivalence, to use the terms of Jacques Lacan. To proclaim gender equality is to destroy man and woman as such. It was realistically described in the “Cyborg manifesto” of the famous modern feminist Donna Haraway.

So, what do we have in Guterres’ statement that “We need the better system” That means we need more liberalism for economic growth, and at the same time we need to impose more limits on economic growth in line with the Club of Rome’s concept of sustainability, more inclusivity of the unconscious Other (that means we need a more ego-centric, western-centric racism, that totally absorbs its own psychic diseases – capitalist neurosis or post-modernist psychosis) and we need to destroy the gender. The words of UN Secretary-General, Guterres, are thus extremely senseless and deeply contradictory. That is an idiotic speech of someone who does not understand a bit of the meaning of the concept of words. People like that try to build a better system based on the premises of the existing one. How can one cure liberalism in decay with more liberalism, adding with elements of Deleuzian6 far-left post-modernism and cyberfeminism7?

The problem is not Guterres, personally. The problem is the global liberal elite desperately insisting on curing all the logical disasters and crises proceeding from liberalism with more liberalism, mixed with extravagant post-modernist concepts.

It follows that we need to mix liberalism with elements of Fabianism, anarchism and cultural Marxism. To hear Guterres is the same as to be put in some psychiatric clinic. What he describes is the symptom, not correctly formulating the problem or speaking of a diagnosis or cure.

The problem is not Guterres, personally. The problem is the global liberal elite desperately insisting on curing all the logical disasters and crises proceeding from liberalism with more liberalism, mixed with extravagant post-modernist concepts.

I think we are already in this new world order if we follow the description of Guterres. If we understand the new world order as the continuation of liberal globalization, we need not to improve and embellish it, but instead to get out of it, get rid of it – of all these idiots: Guterres, United Nations officials, and global liberal elites. They try to cure us with poison, to cure all the crises made by domination of liberal ideology with more liberalism. We need to liberate ourselves, all the people, Turkish people, Russian people, Chinese people, European people, American peoples, from this international liberal Swamp.

We need to liberate ourselves from the totalitarian discourse constructed on the “self-evident” dogma that only liberalism can be accepted as a universal ideology, that only Western values should be assimilated as something universal. They try to improve technical functional problems of their system with the same approach. We need real alternatives to Guterres, to the United Nations, to liberalism, to western modern technological civilization. It is the civilization of hell. We need to find the way out of it, not to go deeper in it.

The Belt & Road Initiative: United Eurasianist Initiative

Fikret Akfırat: Your portrayal of Eurasia and Eurasianism connotes something more than a mere geographical description. It also extends to the political alliance of all those opposed to the Atlanticist world order. In this regard, how would you interpret the China-proposed Belt & Road Initiative from a Eurasianist perspective?

Alexander Dugin: The Belt & Road Initiative had started as a kind of Atlanticist project, conceived by the Chinese elite with the help of American globalists. Initially, the idea was to create a direct tie between China and Western Europe, linking together all coastal areas in order to avoid Russia, to encircle it and cut its access to the warm seas. This is traditional geopolitics of Atlanticists. The Belt & Road Initiative started precisely as such. China considered it a very good opportunity to develop and secure its markets as well as to promote its own political and economic interests outside of China. Western globalist elites supported that, because the project excluded Russia.

But many things have changed in recent years. First, China became so powerful, so independent, so sovereign that it began to represent a new challenge to the globalists themselves, to the West. China became the second pole. Observing China becoming more and more independent, a part of the globalist/western elite started to oppose China. We see this with Huawei, with Trump’s campaign to get all Chinese assets out of the US, with the mutual closure of consulates in USA and in China. We see economic war with China. These changes have reshaped the Belt & Road Initiative in a new geopolitical context.

LITTLE BY LITTLE CHINA CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT RUSSIA IS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE BELT & ROAD INITIATIVE, MAKING IT A UNITED EURASIANIST INITIATIVE. SO, THE WHOLE PROJECT STARTED TO BECOME A “EURASIAN ROAD”.

Little by little China came to the conclusion that Russia is to be included in the Belt & Road Initiative, making it a united Eurasianist initiative. So, the whole project started to become a “Eurasian road”. Initially it was conceived as an Atlanticist project, trying to encircle with a “cordon sanitaire”8 – in geopolitics a “cordon sanitaire “ is viewed as an important tool to separate Russia from neighboring countries – but with the growth of China and Putin’s insistence on defending and strengthening  Russian sovereignty, the Belt & Road Initiative was transformed into something new in the last two years. It now represents a strategy to secure Chinese and Russian independence, working together, in alliance. That was confirmed by a recent Russian and Chinese agreement.

So, the meaning of the Belt & Road Initiative has drastically changed and we can now speak about the Russian-Chinese alliance as a geopolitical alliance opposed to the Atlanticist world order, to its unipolarity.

Initially the BRI was supported by the West, but now, it is rather under attack. The West tries to use Japan and India in order to reduce the importance of the project, and even by trying to directly sabotage it sometimes.

Cooperation Is the First Against Atlanticist Globalization, Rivalry Is Secondary

Fikret Akfırat: Many of your publications point to the need for Russia to cooperate with China, Turkey and Iran against Atlanticist globalization. However, there are also those, from various circles, who argue against your view that: “Historically speaking, Russia, Turkey, Iran and China are geopolitical rivals. They all possess contradicting national interests and geostrategic goals.” How can one accommodate these countries’ interests and reconcile their diverging goals?

Alexander Dugin: Every State, taken as such, is a rival to other States. That is the very foundation of the Nation-State, an egoistic and realistic attitude. So, from the realist point of view, rivalry, competition and conflicts are always possible. We could never exclude them a priori. They are a logical consequence of the very principle of sovereignty.

On the other hand, Atlanticist globalization and Western hegemony are not a realist paradigm at all. Liberalism insists that western values, the western system should dominate the world and that all national countries, nation-states should recognize international organizations led by liberals, as higher authorities. Liberalism in International Relations is precisely the idea that each country should overcome its national interests and follow a liberal agenda. Otherwise, liberals affirm that there will be war. Using the argument of rivalry, liberals try to impose their own rule on all countries.

When states such as Russia, Turkey, Iran and China wanted to oppose this liberal pressure, to this model of globalization led by the West, they initially failed to rely only on the realist paradigm – competing with each other or trying to avoid liberalism alone. That strategy to secure sovereignty is doomed.

RUSSIA, TURKEY, IRAN, CHINA AND OTHER COUNTRIES INCLUDING INDIA, PAKISTAN AND MANY OTHER ARAB COUNTRIES, AFRICAN COUNTRIES, AND EUROPE ITSELF CAN SECURE REAL INDEPENDENCE ONLY BY WAY OF CREATING A KIND OF GEOPOLITICAL EURASIAN ALLIANCE, A MULTIPOLAR ALLIANCE.

No single nation-state can effectively resist the Atlanticist globalization alone. Russia, Turkey, Iran, China and other countries including India, Pakistan and many other Arab countries, African countries, and Europe itself can secure real independence only by way of creating a kind of geopolitical Eurasian alliance, a multipolar alliance in order to liberate all countries from this Atlanticist globalization, resisting the pressure of liberal hegemony.

Russia alone could not play the role of an alternative pole to globalization and neither can China, not to mention Turkey and Iran who are regional powers. They are very strong, but regional. I think that only by working together can Russia, Turkey, China, Iran and other great countries establish a truly multipolar world order.

Currently, we are still in a unipolar world order. People like Guterres, when they are recognizing today’s growing problems, are still in the same globalist liberal unipolar hegemonic paradigm. They still think in terms of a unipolar world.

Alone we could not put an end to unipolarity. When there is a unipolar liberal world order, there is no real sovereignty for nation-states. Nation-states cannot independently establish, secure and keep real sovereignty. We need to oppose this global pressure together. Maybe, Turkey, Russia, Iran and China are geopolitical rivals, but that is of secondary importance. We need to put this rivalry to the side.

There is a more pressing conflict. It is precisely that either the global world order will remain unipolar with some adjustment or that it will be multipolar and full scale multipolarity will arrive. If we live in a multipolar world order without any unique hegemon, we could exit this liberal agenda and also the domination of liberalism and all its ideological impositions: human rights, individualism, technological development, and artificial intelligence.

Now we are in front of a choice that will seal our destiny. If we choose multipolarity on the ideological level, this means that neither human rights nor gender or other equality nor technological development will be considered anymore as obligatory for everybody. Everybody will be free to follow its own values: Russia could follow its own traditions. Turkey, China and Iran, all these countries can follow their own traditions and pursuit their interests.

Only after creating and securing a multipolar world order could we speak about geopolitical rivalry between these countries and great civilizations – not before. If we stress this inter-state rivalry, all of them being under attack by globalism, Atlanticism and western hegemony will win and we will fail. Consequently, we will go deeper into western liberal hegemony. Now this hegemony is in deep crisis and that is a great opportunity for all of us, to get out of this, to step aside when it dies.

FIRST, ON THE PRESENT STAGE, WE NEED TO ESTABLISH A MULTIPOLAR ALLIANCE BETWEEN ALL THE POWERS, ALL THE STATES, ALL THE COUNTRIES AND CIVILIZATIONS FIGHTING FOR THEIR INDEPENDENCE.

First, on the present stage, we need to establish a multipolar alliance between all the powers, all the states, all the countries and civilizations fighting for their independence. Independence and real sovereignty, geopolitical sovereignty should be obtained first and only afterwards should we speak of geopolitical rivalries. But for globalist liberals, the picture is quite opposite. They say “Russia! You are a Christian country different from Islamic Turkey. Turkey! You are a Sunni country and you, Iran is Shiite country. So, all of you should fight among yourselves. China! You are a great economic power: you can beat Russia, which is economically weak but military dangerous and so on”. They try to divide and rule.

We need to unite and to create a new paradigm of the global world order based on multipolarity and we should do that together. Only then can we evaluate balances, interests and eventually certain disagreements. I think we could easily agree on cooperation instead of rivalry.

Yes, we have some different and sometimes contradictory interests and geostrategic goals, but we could always find a kind of solution when there is no direct involvement of Western liberal hegemony. We could somehow manage these contradictions.

For example, Russian and Turkish military troops are patrolling together in the North-Eastern part of Syria. That doesn’t prevent us from having some disagreements on the issue of Libya or Idlib, but nevertheless we are overcoming these local problems. So, we could repeat that approach in many situations. But when there is a third power, US or globalists, they immediately create new points of conflicts. With them all conflicts seem to be inevitable, but without them we almost always find solutions. I think that sometimes having divergent goals does not  cancel the necessity to create a geopolitical alliance between Russia, Turkey, Iran and China in order to promote a multipolar world order. Only after could we concentrate on solving our secondary problems. Not before.

Russian-China Alliance for A Multipolar World Order

Fikret Akfırat: What is the role of Russia, Turkey, Iran, and China in building a multipolar world order, taken individually as well as in terms of their relationships among themselves?

Alexander Dugin: Today we see that outside of the Western world: we already have two alternatives, almost fully formed poles, not yet totally complete, not yet totally perfect but already something very concrete. I mean China and Russia.

Economically speaking, China is already a pole; in strategic terms, it is growing at a very high speed and I think it will soon become real and a totally independent pole in all senses.

We also have Russia, which is economically weak in relative terms, but is rich natural resources. The decisive argument is its huge nuclear military power. Russia is almost a pole.

We already have more than two poles, including the West, obviously: the USA and NATO States. China is almost a perfect one and  Russia is another, very powerful both militarily and geopolitically. There is also the West.

We see at the same time that the Western pole, which was recently unique and most powerful, now is in a very deep crisis. It is still greater and more powerful than China and Russia, but not more powerful than the Russian and Chinese poles taken together.

The US is much more powerful than China or Russia separately, but summing up the powers of Russia and China, the equation is somehow different. That creates a global situation where everything depends on the Russian-Chinese alliance. That is the key factor. If this alliance will manage to go on, to develop, there will very soon be full-scale multipolarity.

With the Russian-China alliance, we get a multipolar world order. This multipolar world order will provide Iran and Turkey as well as other Islamic countries with the opportunity to build an Islamic civilization. It is up to Turkey, to Iran, to Arab countries, to Pakistan, to all other Islamic societies to find the form for it. There may be different centers of powers, some united structures, or maybe various spheres such as Shiite, Sunni, Arab and so on. That will be a kind of composed pole – differentiated ideologically, religiously, psychologically and so on. But I think that Muslim society is ready for that, in spite of many divergencies and rivalries.

But without Russia and China, I think that the Islamic pole cannot be created: Islamic countries are too weak and too divergent for that. Today, there are too many contradictions that prevent the Islamic world from uniting and representing a real alternative pole to the Western one. Islamic society, Islamic civilization very badly needs Russia and China, not because of

Christianity or a Chinese form of national communism but rather for their geopolitical power that can counterbalance the Western powers. The Russian-Chinese alliance is the key element, central to creating a multipolar world order. But I think that Islamic civilization –as well as India, Latin America and maybe Africa– should play a very important role in that.

NOW, EVERYTHING STARTS WITH CHINA AND RUSSIA AS WELL AS THE BELT & ROAD INITIATIVE WHICH PRESENT THEMSELVES AS A SYMPTOM OF THIS MULTIPOLARITY. I THINK THAT ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION IS ANOTHER SYMPTOM, WHOSE MAIN REPRESENTATIVES ARE IRAN AND TURKEY AS WELL AS THE ARAB WORLD.

If the current unipolarity is collapses along withthe hegemonic liberal world order, other civilizations, other types of societies could find the opportunity to affirm themselves as new and independent, sovereign poles. Now, everything starts with China and Russia as well as the Belt & Road Initiative project, which present themselves as a symptom of this multipolarity. I think that Islamic civilization is another other symptom, whose main representatives are Iran and Turkey as well as the Arab world.

I think that we are approaching the moment of the real multipolarity and that is precisely what the unipolar political liberal globalist elites do not desire. They try to find ways to avoid this necessity. Nobody among them could accept multipolarity because that would be the end for their ideological, economic, strategical, political, cultural and diplomatic domination. They will lose their dominant position in education, in culture, in technology and so on. Now, the course of history is still somehow controlled by the West, but Western elites understand more and more that the West cannot lead the world anymore. They try to transmit this mission to Artificial Intelligence. They can use the other tricks or – very probable – start new wars or promote color revolutions.

I think that life on earth is now at stake. Human nature itself is about to be replaced by some kind of post-human, post-living species. That is the real goal of the globalist world order. We need to understand it clearly and we need to resist against that threat in order to save humanity from this coming plague, because the liberal post-modern West became a kind of plague for the civilization, for all of us, for Russians, for Chinese, Iranians, Turks and for everybody else.

Western Civilization Tries to Involve All of Humanity in This Process of Suicide

Fikret Akfırat: In one of your articles, where you evaluate Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations”, you argue: “If there must be a ‘clash’ of civilizations, it has to be a clash between the West and the ‘rest of the world’. And Eurasianism is the political formula which suits this ‘rest’.” You also emphasized the need for mobilizing a united front of civilizations against globalism, which you portray as the common enemy. How do you define points of divergence between the Western civilization and the rest of the world?

Alexander Dugin: First of all, we need to develop a deeper understanding of what Western civilization really is. Western civilization was born when the West cut ties with its real traditional values. Western civilization is based on an act of castration or suicide. The West has cut its ties with Christianity, with Greco-Roman culture.9

With the Enlightenment, the West entered a totally artificial civilization based on wrong ideas – such as progress, materialism, technology, capitalism, selfishness and atheism. That was the Enlightenment – Luciferian pride,10 the war against the Heaven. That coincides with Western colonial expansion. Colonialism was a kind of projection of the same disease on the global scale. No civilization concentrated so much effort on the material aspect of life as the West. The Chinese discovered the powder long ago but used it in order to make beautiful fireworks. It was a kind of cultural and artist phenomena. When Europeans discovered the same gunpowder, they started immediately to kill each other and all other peoples. Western hegemony is based on disease so we should recognize the Western civilization of modernity as the pathology.

WESTERN CIVILIZATION, ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION, CHINESE CIVILIZATION, INDIAN CIVILIZATION AND MANY OTHERS HAVE LONG COEXISTED. THE PROBLEM BEGAN WITH MODERNITY, WITH THE SO-CALLED ERA OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES, WITH COLONIZATION.

Modernity is the problem, not the Western Antiquity or Middle Ages. During the Middle ages all civilizations were more or less the same. Western civilization, Islamic civilization, Chinese civilization, Indian civilization and many others coexisted. The problem began with modernity, with the so-called era of geographical discoveries, with colonization. The modern West started to occupy the planet, conquering all of humanity. The problem is the modern Western civilization that has created a kind of asymmetry between the Master and the Slave (as Hegel put it in his “Phenomenology of Spirit”). The Master was the modern West. All the humanity, all the Rest was considered to the Slave and the tool of total domination was precisely material power. That was a great catastrophe.

That Western expansion in the era of great geographical discoveries has destroyed the fragile balance between civilizations. This racist, colonial, imperialist nature of the West still exists in this century. Liberalism, an idea of universality of so-called human rights, gender equality and other stupidities are elements of a new version of the same racist, colonial, imperialist ideology. The West tries to impose its own values as something universal including when they criticize their own past.

Modernity began with criticism of Europe’s past and present. Post-modernity tries once more to cut the ties, this time with Modernity just like the way modernity has done with pre-modernity, with the classical medieval phase in Western history. It is not new; it is a continuation of the long-lasting suicide but Western civilization tries to involve all of humanity in this process of suicide.

This homicide, killing of the Other, transforming it into a “lesser self” is precisely what the modern liberal globalist West brings to all

other peoples. But it is evident that the Rest, all non-Western civilizations, reject this pathological Western liberalism along with LGBT+ norms, the pretended optionality of the genders, this techno-centric, highly anti-humanist or post-humanist ways of developing technology and industry, this intolerant and totalitarian “cancel culture”.

All the (non-Western) Rest that has its own civilizational basin should be united against globalism. That is the logical continuation of decolonization. Decolonization is not finished; it has just started.

And now, we experience the next wave of colonization. We are colonized with Western patterns, with Western technologies, with Western values, with Western democracies, with Western market procedures, with Western education, with Western politics of so called “liberal democracy”. All that is imposed on us as something universal, but this is pure ethnocentrism.

Now, this Western civilization is in clash with all others who do not recognize themselves within Western destiny, Western history. That is the crucial moment. It is not only the manifestation of mere secondary differences between civilizations. Before the beginning of expansion of the modern West on the global scale, there were different civilizations that co-existed – more or less peacefully and harmoniously. I agree that there were some conflicts and wars and so on, but they were more or less local. The real genocidal war arrived with modernity when humans started to use technology in order to exterminate each other.

Nihilism of Modern Western Civilization

But pacifism is illogical. To dream of a world without wars is the same as to dream of man without humanity. It is possible only in a totally inhuman society. War is very bad; we need to avoid it but war is always possible. We need to reduce its probability but not to try to destroy war as such because in order to do that, we would need to destroy humanity itself. I think that the real divergence is not so much between Western civilization and the rest of the world but between modern Western civilization and the rest of the world. That is the real divergence between two fundamental kinds of civilization. Modern Western civilization in its present globalist liberal stage is in reality an anti-Western, completely nihilistic kind of civilization. It has destroyed its own identity and tries to destroy the identities of others in the same way.

But to fight against post-modern Western civilization, we have many allies in the West because not all Western people share the same liberal ideology, the perverted and morbid values of the global liberal elite. There are protests against these elites, the rise of populism, the growth of the revolutionary populist movement. Trump himself is the symptom of these anti-globalist tendencies growing inside of American society.

I think that we need deep analysis of the origins of modern Western civilization. Critical deconstruction of the present stage of the civilization will lead us to the clear conclusions that we need. The deconstruction in question does not mean total destruction of Western civilization, but rather reduction of its universalist pretentions to realist proportions, to natural historical limits. We need to reduce the West to its organic borders. It is just one of the many regions of humanity – nothing but a Province.

The Rest should defend and resurrect the plural identities proper to non-Western regions, to other Provinces of humanity. We should restore and develop our own traditions – Islamic traditions, Chinese traditions, Russian traditions, Christian traditions, without any regard for what the liberal human rights activists of Soros or color revolution promoters or some Internet cancel culture activists will say. Nobody cares: their opinion can signify something only in their zones of influences – strictly inside the West.

The Western liberals are free to judge their own society; we could judge our own. The Rest should now come to the final clash. But this clash against Huntington will not be between civilizations but between a civilization that still pretends to impose its own historically and geographically limited values and foundations, principles as something universal, and the World that consists of multiple civilizations.

We should put an end to the expansion of Western liberal globalization and reduce the West to its due space. Afterwards we should begin the mission of Renaissance, reconstruction, and reformation of our destiny. And from that Renaissance we can deduce the necessary clash between reborn civilizations. They could prosper and develop based on dialogue, cooperation, and mutual recognition, without necessarily fostering conflict. There is only one real clash of civilizations that is inevitable: the clash of humanity and this aggressive, today liberal but always racist West.

Fikret Akfırat: Thank you very much for your time, Dr. Dugin. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Alexander Dugin: I have nothing else to add. Thank you for your attention.

Notes

1- Editor’s Note (Ed. N.). Founded in Italy in 1968, the Club of Rome is a think tank.

2- Ed. N. The Fabian Society is a UK-based movement that seeks to achieve the  principle what they call “democratic socialism” through incremental and reform, rather than revolutionary methods.

3- Ed.N. It is the philosophy of Descartes, based on the thinking self. And it is also associated with his dictum “I think, therefore I am”.

4- Ed.N. Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist.

5- Ed.N. According to the psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious mind is a structure that is deeper than the conscious mind, in an invisible region, that is related to any mental content or process that the individual is not aware of. According to Lacan, the unconscious mind is the personal history that determines the life of a person, it is a kind of memory, and is the consciousness that the person is not aware of.

6- Ed.N. The French postmodern thinker, Gilles Deleuze suggests that everything is different, no two things are the same, so there is no identity.

7- Ed.N. It is the feminist approach with regard to the relationship between women and technology, particularly between women and internet.

8- Ed.N. The concept of “Cordon sanitaire” (security belt) was coined by the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau at the end of the First World War. Russia lost its western region, including Ukraine, Poland, Finland, and Belarus, with the Brest-Litovsk (1918) agreement signed at the end of the First World War. This region was seen by the West as a “shield” between Soviet communism and Western capitalism, and was referred to as a “security belt” in the interwar period.

9- It refers the mixture of the ancient Greek and the Roman culture.

10- Lucifer is a name, generally used for describing the Devil. Luciferianism is an atheistic philosophy of recognizing Lucifer, name of the Devil before being expelled from the paradise, as a symbol. They believe that people should make their own way by themselves and they reject to believe in god or any imaginary creature. The war against angels seems as a rebellion of Lucifer together with some angels against the god. It is believed that the angel Michael, one of four main archangles, sent rebellious angels away from the paradise and therefore Lucifer is also recognized as a fallen angel. In Islamic mythology, Lucifer is known as Iblis, Harut or Marut.