Aleksandr Dugin Against the Modern World

Edward Stawiarski at Chronicles Magazine interviews the “Russian philosopher, mystic, political strategist, radical bohemian, and geopolitical guru” — Foreign Policy as Spiritual Warfare: A Conversation With Aleksandr Dugin.

The “religious and spiritual beliefs embedded in his philosophy… are informed on the one hand by perennialism and the esoteric traditionalism of the French intellectual René Guénon, which attempt to synthesize Eastern metaphysics with Western philosophy, and on the other hand, by Russian Orthodox Christianity.” Noting that “his beliefs are imbued with occult and mystical hermeneutics,” the author cautions, “Those who do not get a grip with his spiritual beliefs will be doomed to a shallow and soulless understanding of his influence.”

In response to the interviewer’s question about “how does he reconcile the dogmatic absolutism of Christianity with the open approach toward Eastern religions taken by esoteric traditionalism, which could be seen as indifferentism to the Orthodox mind,” we read:

Dugin responded that Evola and Guénon taught him to respect different sacred religions and not to compare differences between them, but instead to compare them against modernity. Everything anti-modern is good, Dugin said; seeing different religious traditions in union with this principle allows him to reconcile non-Christian and non-Orthodox traditions. He admits rather paradoxically, however, to the belief that one must fully assent to the teachings of one’s Christian religion, including its emphasis that all other faiths are in error. Dugin indicated that he gets around this difficult problem by finding ecumenical commonality. He stated that, for instance, if a Catholic fully lives his religious tradition, then it is possible to find commonality with other traditional religions in a mutual opposition to modernity.

Dugin said his approach to promulgating his philosophy of anti-liberalism and Eurasianism is not as focused on Christianity as his other ideas. His aim has always been to create a philosophical language that is universally adaptable to all religions, cultures, and peoples irrespective of their religious beliefs. To do this, he appeals to Guénon’s idea of a communal fight against the modern world.

In Dugin’s view, Christianity is a sacred religion among many existing in what he calls “a historically eschatological, and apocalyptic time’’ and should therefore not be fighting against other religions but against modernity. All forces must be used “to fight against the eschatological modern Western reality,’’ which he said is not only anti-Christian but also, at its roots, against the Western tradition (i.e. against itself), and therefore threatens all religious paradigms.

Having allowed Dugin to make it clear that he takes a broad and ecumenical approach, I would argue that he actually places more emphasis on Christianity and its role in fighting Western modernity than he likes, for pragmatic reasons, to publicly state. Dugin relies strongly on the Christian view of the Apocalypse and believes we are living in the age of the Antichrist. This view is essentially Christian and is why Dugin strongly expresses the idea that Christians should fight Western modernity. It is important to mention here that he sees the enemy as Western modernity, not the West itself, and that Christianity will play a major role in defeating that enemy….

Dugin believes that Westerners in particular have an obligation to fight the force of the Antichrist—modernity—since it was the West that created modernity. He describes this fight as a spiritual war in which “we must not sell our souls to the Antichrist’’ but be willing to “fight until the end and to die to win with Christ.”

The willingness to fight modernity is more important than the likelihood of victory, Dugin said. God “approves of us” and will save those who are tested in spiritual battle. This fight must be directed towards what Guénon called the “Kingdom of Quantity,” which Dugin said manifests itself today as “liberalism, LGBT culture, artificial intelligence, banks, and capitalism.”