The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

The words that became the title of this lecture appeared in my consciousness as something in themselves. Not so much the idea as the formula: Satan and the problem of antecedent. It seems to me that this should be anything but a simple statement of something long known, is understandable. Many things in the process of preparing this lecture, I myself have been not completely clear. I hope that in the process of narration (from my side, with your – in the process of listening, that is, complicity) but there is a lot I can find out. Some things, so to speak, hanging in the air, and perhaps they will be formulated in the here and now. New The University (unlike the old) suggests spontaneous cognition, spontaneous epistemological grasp certain things, not specified initially. The main thing may (and should!) born at the time of presentation, in the process of focusing on certain aspects of a given topic.

While the EEU fulfills the economic, political, and symbolic goals of Eurasianism, Putin’s agenda can change without seriously affecting Dugin’s mission. He has the diversionary task of filling ideological vacuums created around the world by suspicion and skepticism regarding the United States, the European Union, and other liberal powers. Dugin’s ideology already resonates with both high intellectuals and the conspiratorial fringe. His ideas seem tailor-made to exploit continuing economic stagnation, distrust of EU bureaucracy, anxiety at the continuing influx of immigrants, and, crucially, the anxiety of those immigrants themselves, who fear the assault on their traditions that comes as a part of their resettlement in the West. Dugin is also obviously intent on maximizing the potential of his ideology through various political, intellectual, and social media networks. 

The principal aim of Professor Dugin's work is not simply to deconstruct the previous failed political theories, which he lists as fascism, communism, and liberalism, but to fashion a new fourth theory, utilising what may be learnt from some of the previous models after their deconstruction rather than dismissing them outright on the basis of particulars worthy of rejection. That is not to say that the Fourth Political Theory is simply a synthesis of ideas that in their singular form have seen their day. Dugin is conscious of the necessity to bring something new to the table, with one of the principal of these novel ideas being the rejection of the subjects of the old ideologies, such as class, race, or the individual, in favour of the existential Heideggerian concept of Dasein (roughly Being or being-in-the-world. Literally da – there; sein – being) as the primary actor.

What struck me on arriving in the US was the interest in and presence of other cultures, especially in relation to spirituality. Spiritual, New Age and occult centers (or at least bookstores) existed and seemed relatively vibrant. Religion was also far more important than in England, whether that was Christianity, Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism, or something else. There was (and of course still is) a big Chinatown, where Chinese was spoken (London’s is tiny). I practiced Kung fu in the early morning at a park in Chinatown and went for tea at a Chinese place afterward; I went to read in a French cafe that was always empty and the owners were actually French; I went to the spiritual and occult bookstores; to the museums, to Japanese events with my Japanese friends; and so on. Moving to the US, my life was steeped much more consciously in the archaic and the “Traditional” than in the much older culture of England.

Capitalism, of course, always seizes on what is different and exciting, and repackages it for the mainstream, often destroying the culture-creating roots as a consequence. But, if we leave aside this aspect, and get back to the people, America’s history is one with as much depth as anywhere else. Indeed, while Britain and Europe ape the most crass aspects of the USA, Americans often look to something more integral.

Fukuyama's main tenets

never getting to the core of things – "We [USA] are not good at democratizing countries". But then again, who in the world asked you to do that "for us"? This question has to be answered honestly—as a matter of fact, it is Paikin not asking this that proves the show to be sold in advance;

replacing truth for political correctness – "Liberal democracies don't fight each other". The idea is mischievous at least for three reasons:

the problem with this assumption relies not only in the accuracy of the claim itself (there has been wars between democracies), but also in the fact that its credo is precisely what leads to war against other kinds of regime, who are considered intrinsically a crime punishable by war; therefore, the claim recognizes its prejudicial vision of the Other as a phenomenon and legitimizes the necessity of their killing.

Russia, for its part, is seeking to implement a new geopolitical axis with Beijing and Tehran, a factor of multipolar balance of power opposed to the Atlanticist endeavors. The Chinese, after long procrastination, are no longer hiding their desire to “de- Americanize the world.”  Yet, the future of Russia, a great power, albeit still fragile, in a similar way as China, with its own inner contradictions, remains uncertain. Countries of Eastern Europe are still hesitant  as to which path to follow—all the more so as Germany is seeking to replace the former USSR as a federating factor in Eastern and Central Europe.

We are witnessing a restructuring of the forms of world domination. The United States, with its financial markets, its armed forces, its language and its culture industries remains the leading world power. Its economic impact, however, is decreasing bit by bit (its share of global industrial output has fallen from 45% in 1945 to 17.5% today), with the dollar representing today only a third of world trade in comparison to more than a half in 2000.  The process of “de- dollarization” has already and simultaneously begun, in oil and gas trading and on the monetary front. Russia and China, emulated by other Third World countries, are using more and more their national currencies in trade and investment. The project of trade in energy and raw materials, without resorting to the dollar, is beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, the purchase of gold is gathering momentum. The advent of a new international reserve currency, designed to replace the dollar, seems inevitable.

From our examination thus far, it should be obvious that there are too many misconceptions about Alexander Dugin’s thought being circulated among Right-wingers. These misconceptions are being used to dismiss the value of his work and deceive members of Right-wing groups into believing that Dugin is a subversive intellectual who must be rejected as an enemy. Many other important Right-wing intellectuals have been similarly dismissed among certain circles, due to practices of a kind of in-group gleichschaltung, closing off any thinker who is not seen as readily agreeable. It is important to overcome such tendencies and support an intellectual expansion of the Right, which is the only way to overcome the present liberal-egalitarian hegemony. People need to take a more careful and unbiased look at Dugin’s works and ideas, as with other controversial thinkers. Of course, Dugin is not without flaws and imperfections (nor is any other thinker), but these flaws can be overcome when his thought is balanced with that of other intellectuals, especially the Revolutionary Conservatives and the New Rightists.

From the moment of its inception in the 1920s, Eurasianism has always opposed the global domination of the West, European universalism, and supported the uniqueness of the Russian civilization. Therefore, Eurasianism is, indeed, an anti-Western ideology in the sense that it rejects the Western society’s right to impose its criteria of good and evil as the universal norm. Russia is an independent Orthodox-Eurasian civilization, rather than the periphery of Europe, insisted Eurasianists, following their ideological predecessors, the Slavophiles, along with other Russian conservatives.

Gradually, Eurasianism was enriched with the methods of classic geopolitics that were based upon the dualism of the Land and Sea civilizations. Englishman Halford Mackinder introduced this concept in the first half of the twentieth century; it was further developed by American strategists such as Nicholas Spykman and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here, Russia serves as the core of the Land civilization, Eurasia’s Heartland, and is thus doomed to carry out a centuries-old battle against the Anglo-Saxon world. In the past, its core was the British Empire, and, from the second half of the twentieth century onward, this was the United States. Therefore, Eurasianists oppose Western hegemony, American expansionism, and Liberal values and support the distinct Russian civilization, religion, and tradition. Furthermore, Eurasianists not only oppose the West, but also Russia’s own Westernizers and moderates: Liberals, first and foremost.

We can also hear the words of some indigenous masters from Brazil, saying that each person has the responsibility of making the intercultural dialogue happen inside themselves, because we can only recognize the differences as being both unsurmontable and yet all too natural. As such, this dialogue occurs only in a situation of double-endedly openness:

1. open to the culture of the Other, whom we recognize as being not an Object, but a full Subject of his own, having, then, as much right to existence as we do;

2. being entirely open to our own culture, or being open to it in its entirety, because otherwise there is no way to be fully recognized as a Subject in turn, and demandSujbec. This second point has two meanings to be conjugated:

a) it is almost impossible to be fully recognized as a Subject by the Other without an inner understanding of such;

b) it is not possible to know what to want when one does not recognize themselves as a full Subject; in this case, one easily "swallows" anything that is given to him without further thinking, becoming, by acting so, a mere Object.

Like Dugin, one discovers in Heidegger, whom Dugin routinely calls “the greatest thinker,” a combination of traditional philosophical interests with self-consciously modern concerns. But again, like Dugin, Heidegger was a reactionary modernist, someone who combatted modernity by underlining its defects and shallowness and by trying to prove that the modern enterprise was headed in a very bad direction. Heidegger tried to do this without returning to metaphysical assumptions that he believed belonged to a vanished past. This, too, as in the case of Dugin, is not as simple as it would first appear. There is something backward-looking in both thinkers, as the past is for them a source of creativity. This is totally different from the kind of “cultural conservative” this writer has often encountered: a tedious eccentric who manifests his “conservatism” by making himself the butt of gentle jokes. Such a person may frequent clubs where tea and crumpets are served or may introduce himself as a liturgical traditionalist with an ostentatious interest in Gothic architecture, but he is, above all, an expert at staying out of controversy that could threaten his career or social calendar.