Alexander Dugin’s Political Platonism offers a seminal analysis of the contemporary philosophical crisis from one of the best-known writers and political commentators in post-Soviet Russia. Through a series of essays, course transcripts, and a single long interview—each remarkable for the depth of its learning and the boldness of its vision—Dugin exposes the profoundest roots of the Western philosophical tradition, offering his view of why it has reached its final terminus, and his indication of where a new beginning must be sought.

The works collected in this volume present Dugin’s theory of Political Platonism as a fundamental philosophical and political orientation, capable at once of reviving higher political and social forms and furnishing solid ground for resistance to the collapse of the contemporary world. His multi-perspective thesis offers a thorough and thought-provoking critique of modernity and a masterful survey of Western philosophy, reaching from before Heraclitus to beyond Heidegger. In its provocative, clear-sighted analyses and its visionary flights, this book provides an invaluable reference for those already familiar with Dugin, and an intriguing introduction for those coming to him for the first time.

First of all, the fact that populist movements are directed against the political elite as a whole, without making a distinction, whether it is right or left-wing, is striking. This is the 'uprise of the periphery of society against its center'. In his famous work, the American sociologist Christopher Lasch (1932–1994) designated the form of government that prevails in modern Western society as the “elite revolution”.

At the beginning of the XXth century, it was customary to follow José Ortega y Gasset's discourse about the “revolt of the masses”, whose increasing influence on politics threatened, it seemed, to destroy Western culture - the European Logos.

But Christopher Lasch noted a new political trend: it is the elites that are destroying culture and European Logos today. These new western elites, who have reached the pinnacle of power only by their resourcefulness and immense will to power, are much worse and more destructive than the masses.

Where right-wing liberals and conservatives preach “you can’t do anything against the progression of modernity, it’s only possible to gradually influence the process”, Alexander Dugins Ethnos and Society tells you the exact opposite: When one realizes the fact, that there are still ethnic societies around this planet in the Amazon, that the Muslim communities of the Middle East still live in the community of their narod, that in Russia and India the modern nation state is just a thin layer, then it’s obvious that the decay of modernity is just a possibility and not our destiny. If we want to continue the suicide of Europe and follow modernity to its conclusion and change nothing. But if we want to restore our tradition and ensure the existence of our people, we have to radically change our habits, morals and our way of life.

Whereas The Fourth Political Theory tells us to return to pre-modernity in order to protect our Dasein (narod), Ethnos and Society shows us how the preconditions for a return to pre-modernity work. Therefore, Ethnos and Society, is not only important to better understand the work of professor Dugin, but also in order to fight post-modernity to the last blood. If one doesn’t let oneself be scared off by the theoretical depth of this book, it’ll greatly improve one’s understanding of the current processes of globalization, decadence and the Great Replacement. This book is exactly what all the right-wing populist parties in Europe would need in order to change their policies of fake populism and realize what is really necessary to revive European identity.

Cold war was the confrontation between two ideological camps. Now there is no more clear distinction in the field of ideology, rather between two versions of the same liberal-democracy – advanced in the case of USA and EU and delayed in the case of Russia. So we would presume that should reduce considerably the tension. But it is not the case. So we have to search the reason of growing tensions in other field than ideology. The most likely the reasons of the “new cold war” are this time geopolitical. But it is legitimate to ask the question: That it was not in reality an ideological cold war between capitalism and socialism the moment of much more broader historically context the moment of Great War of Continents.

This GWoC is the very basis of geopolitical understanding of history – Sea Power against Land Power, Eurasia against Atlantica. If we can agree on that everything becomes logical and clear. There is the everlasting battle between two types of civilizations – dynamic (progressive, merchant)  Sea civilization and static (conservative, heroic) Land civilization: Carthage against Rome, Athens against Sparta.

Heidegger himself later called Sein und Zeit the most old-fashioned book ever written. We believe that in the way our economically driven political speech develops, we experience that in Dutch ‘ de wal het schip keert’ , meaning literally that the shore is the only thing that can stop the ship. We are caught up in a form of management. The thought of an Eurasian continent as a mediator between the Atlantic and the Asian might for a Dutch metaphysician be felt as the relieve of a burden. Heidegger saw his own mission in preparing European thinking for a confrontation with the East.

Bringing the geopolitical question back in the philosophical and political agendas means also the necessity of posing the question of the relation between the two. After all the question of politics is again the Schmittian question of friend or foe. When we would be so bold to identify the foe with the antichrist, Heideggers remark in the black notebooks spring to mind: ‘In relation to liberalism the antichrist is a small boy’ .

To work on a new political theory is a matter of great importance, but also a thing that requires great care. Perhaps this care, Sorge, for Heidegger in Sein und Zeit the unity of Dasein, is the driving force itself.

To overcome the Modernity is not easy. Any alternative will be impregnated by the some modern prejudices. We need be afraid of nothing – including regress, authoritarianism and so on. We are ashamed of all such phenomena because we are still Modern. I like communitarianism. It has in itself something premodern as organic community of people living in the personalized relations to the nature and each other. But we shouldn’t exclude the imagination of Empires, hierarchies and most of all sacredness, We need to restore all three traditional types – Priest, Warrior and Peasant. The economy is the field of peasant. So the peasant community and small manufacturers are the base of the material aspect of society. But outside of Modernity the materiality is the last concern. So the real basis of the society should be the Heaven – spiritual life, sacred values. The Earth should be once more conquered by the Heaven. So the Priests and Warriors should regain its essential position. So we need reverse the Modernity that began with quite opposite with the putting the material over spiritual, the Earth over the Heaven.

The Fourth Political Theory treats the concept “narod” as an independent legal and philosophical category, beyond its interpretations in the context of the three political theories of Modernity. But the “narod” is understood existentially, as Dasein. Heidegger’s formula “Dasein existiert völkisch” is key. The Fourth Political Theory understands the narod, the populus, as Dasein, Volk als Dasein. That makes the phenomenon of populism not indistinct, chaotic, and spontaneous, but deeply grounded, philosophical, and avant-garde. In this case, the Fourth Political Theory can be regarded as a “metaphysics of populism,” explaining its appearance and supplying the blind protest of humanity against the satanic elite that has seized power over it with a strategy, consciousness, thought, a system, and a plan of struggle.

To conclude this preface to the Italian edition, I want to emphasize: the Fourth Political Theory appeals to everyone – to traditionalists, socialists, liberals, conservatives, persons with convictions and persons without convictions. It is an invitation to think, and not the imposition of ready-made judgments or models. Our goal is to awaken in Italian society an interest towards political philosophy, towards ideas and towards an acute – truly Italian – perception of reality.

Modern European civilization is the historical continuation of Mediterranean civilization. The Indo-European element is predominant in this continuity, as the Indo-European tradition makes up Europe’s main linguistic and cultural matrix. If we recall Dumézil’s reconstruction of the trifunctional system here, then we immediately obtain a sociological map of Europe, the social structure of which is dominated by a constantly reproduced principle of three prevailing castes: priests, warriors, and producers. Indeed, we encounter none other than this stratification of European societies at the most different historical stages and under different names and titles.

The classic expression of this order was the ancient epoch of Mediterranean societies beginning with the Achaean conquests and Homeric Greece. Such a system was characteristic of Ancient Greece and Rome with the exception of periods of decline distinguished by a strengthening of the political positions of “urban dwellers”, who represented a mixture of higher castes with uprooted peasants that gave birth to a new type of merchant hitherto alien to classical Indo-European societies. This type of merchant could have taken shape through the degradation and materialization of the warrior caste (which Plato describes in his Republic as the phenomenon of timocracy), or from below through a specific deviation from social type on the part of former peasants or urban artisans. It cannot be ruled out that this was the result of influences that were altogether foreign to the Indo-European cultural circle, such as Phoenician or, more broadly, Semitic cultures, for whom trade was a widespread social occupation. In the city-states of Greece, “urban dwellers” and “citizens”, i.e., “townspeople”, formed a specific social milieu in which the three classical functions of Indo-European society found parodical manifestation. In the very least, this is what Aristotle presented in his Politics. The authority of king-priests (the sacred monarchy) transformed into tyranny. The domination of the warrior aristocracy gave way to domination by a financial oligarchy. The organic self-government of ethnically homogeneous and solidary communities (polity) became “democracy”, or the power of the sporadic and disparate crowd unified only by territory of urban residence.

In Wirth’s view, the main key to understanding this language, and all existing languages and traditions, is the year. The year and man, the year and God, the year and nature, the year and time, the year and space are, in Wirth’s view, synonymous concepts. Man is the embodiment of condensed time. Time in and of itself is a divine manifestation.

The northern, polar cycle is the highest knowledge and, as follows, everything else is to be explained through the calendar. Special attention should be paid to the natural features of the North Pole. We know that a day there lasts not 24 hours, but six months, as does a night. For example, such a notion as the “midnight sun”, which is addressed in many of the Dionysian mysteries and is a generally important element in multiple sacred theories, acquires an entirely natural sense in Arctida – natural-magical meaning. This is the sun that shines at midnight at the North Pole during the summer solstice. Indeed, there is sun, and there is midnight. The memory of this midnight sun, like the memory of the primordial homeland of our ancestors, has been preserved in traditional models and been passed down from generation to generation in the form of legends and stories.

Heidegger is universally recognized as a great philosopher of world history.  No one seriously contests this, but someone calmly passes by, relying on other trends in philosophy, while someone responds keenly to his message, using his terms ("Dasein", "existential", "Angst", etc.) and allowing himself to be carried away by his thoughts.

            A different, special, exclusive place in the history of philosophy that can be set aside for Heidegger should be recognized in the case that we fully trust Heidegger, immerse ourselves in his thinking, and make him our highest authority.  In other words, Heidegger in the space of Heideggerianism will differ essentially from Heidegger in the average and conventional history of philosophy.  In this case, Heidegger will be revealed not only as a great philosopher, on par with the other greats, but as the greatest of them all, occupying the place of the last prophet, concluding the development of the first stage of philosophy (from Anaximander to Nietzsche) and serving as the transition, the bridge to a new philosophy, which he only anticipates in his works.  In that case, Heidegger is revealed as an eschatological figure, as the final interpreter and clarifier of the deepest and most enigmatic themes of world philosophy and the creator of a radically new thinking.  In this case he can be viewed as a figure of the religious pantheon, as an "envoy of being itself", a prophesier and preparer of the greatest event, in which the old history of the European world will end and a new one, which has never been hitherto, will begin.

            It seems to me that the second approach is more productive for a true understanding of Heidegger (even if at some time, in the distant future, it will be revised).  It allows for full and complete immersion into Heidegger's thinking, without hurried attempts at interpreting him through appeals to other authorities (and to their separate traces in our consciousness) and allows Heidegger to communicate to us without hindrance what he intended to communicate.  And only after accepting this message in its main features and believing in its significance and inevitability can one, if need be, take a certain distance in regards to it.

There exists no greater mystery in human existence than the mystery of life and death, dying and becoming. For man, the Year is the supreme Revelation of divine action in the Universe. The Year is the expression of God’s providential cosmic law, in accordance with which occurs the becoming of the world in the infinite and everlasting return. The most magical and profound phenomenon before us in nature is the Year of God. A number of days makes up the Year, and in each of these days is opened the image of the Year: the birth of the Light from which comes all life, its climb to the highest peak, and its descent, death, and sinking, only to rise again. The morning, noon, evening, and night in a day correspond to spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the Year.

During the last days 24 and 25 of February was held in San Lorenzo de El Escorial the Seminar of metapolitics: "Keys and visions for a metapolitical resistance in Spain."

Half a hundred people from different and distant points of the Spanish geography, came to listen to the papers and participate in the round tables with the speakers who generously and selflessly responded to the invitation of the seminar.

In this way, José Alsina Calvés opened the sessions with the conference "Hispanism and Fourth Political Theory", where he gave a brief introduction on the nature and fundamental points of the 4th Political Theory proposed by the Russian thinker and philosopher Alexander Dugin, and on The idea of ​​Hispanism and Hispanism as possible genuinely Spanish ways of expression for their own counterhegemonic discourse and for the creation of a differentiated geopolitical space.

One of the few European geopolitical schools which has preserved an uninterrupted link with the ideas of the pre-war German continentalist geopoliticians is that of the “New Right.” This trend appeared in France in the late ’60’s and is associated with the philosopher and publicist Alain de Benoist, the leading figure of the movement. 

The “New Right” sharply differs on practically all matters from the traditional French right consisting of monarchists, Catholics, Germanophobes, chauvinists, anti-communists, conservatives, etc. The “New Right” includes those who support “organic democracy,” pagans, Germanophiles, socialists, modernists, etc. At the beginning, the “left camp” so conventionally, extremely influential in France considered such to be a “tactical maneuver” by typical rightists, but with time the gravity of this evolution was proven and came to be recognized by all. 

One of the fundamental principles of the “New Right’s” ideology, analogues of which soon appeared in other European countries, is the principal of “continental geopolitics.” In contrast to the “old right” and classical nationalists, de Benoist believed that the principle of the centralized Nation-State has been historically exhausted and that the future belongs only to “Great Spaces.” The basis of such “Large Spaces” are to be not so much associations of various states in a pragmatic political bloc, but the equal-footed conglomeration of ethnic groups of different scales into a “Federal Empire.” Such a “Federal Empire”  is supposed to be strategically unified, yet ethnically differentiated. Moreover, such strategic unity is to be underpinned by the unity of primordial culture.

There is a second agenda the US has concerning Europe. There is official, open American agenda – US wants to continue the liberal strategy of the integration of Europe within the existing framework. America will continue to proceed with this as long as everything is going well. However, the second agenda is much more radical – an emergency or alternative agenda. This agenda would entail the American instigation of a civil war in Europe. The real state of things (rather than at the propaganda level) would be that mass immigration provokes more and more of a reaction, anti-systemic parties and groups start to gain power and influence, gender politics start to be rejected, and the middle class continues to decline. This wouldn’t fit with what we hear, so it makes sense that there would be another agenda of the US concerning Europe. There is a growing interest in the US and above all Israel in funding and influencing the far right movement in Europe, the identitarian movement being the most obvious example. 

We are living in the decisive moment when Western civilization is approaching its end. Such terroristic acts as that of Paris 13.11 show it clearly and unmistakably. The West we knew doesn’t exist any longer. Can’t exist any longer. One upon a time there was a certain West. With patriarchic heroic values, Christian identity, deep and exquisite culture with Greek-Roman roots. The West of God, man and nature. There is nothing like that in sight. The ruins. The weak and poisonous liberal civilization based on self-indulgence and at the same time on self-hatred. With no identity but purely negative one. Peopled by humans egoistic and ashamed of themselves. It can have the future. In front of brutal post-modern ISIS-fighters it can’t affirm anything, can’t oppose anything, can’t suggest anything. The West can’t be any longer Western. It is loosing itself. It is drowning.