Homecoming?

 

The American eagle dominating a Russian bear

Is Richard Spencer´s flirt with liberalism over? He´s trying to sound like "Amerika´s most dangerous Nazi" here... 

>>>So-called "multipolarity" is, for lack of a better word, gay. >>>It is an admission of the weakness of Russia—and the whole low-IQ coalition of the colonized. In effect, it's a kind of liberalism, in which the individual has been replaced by the ethno-sphere. It's obvious why weak, backward, stupid people—people who could and should be dominated—are so eager to adopt "Duginism" and their "right" to self-sufficiency, that is, their "right" not to be kicked to the curb. >>>Real men want to rule the fucking world.

Original Xweet

Just another Tuesday?

Credit: Reshinna

According to media reports from last year, the United States believes that Ukraine killed Russian ultra-nationalist Darya Dugina in Moscow. Or, more specifically, certain groups within the Ukraine state apparatus. (See *second* link below.)

Interestingly, in a recent interview, the chief of Ukrainian military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov seemingly admits that this is the case. Budanov also claims that a clandestine Russian resistance group supports Ukraine by attacking targets inside Russia! 

Is this true? Or is Budanov claiming these attacks to boost Ukrainian morale? It *does* sound strange that Putin has so little control that Ukraine - the underdog in this war - can carry out daring operations of this kind.  

"We´ve targeted quite a few people"

U.S. believes Ukraine was behind killing of Dugina in Russia

The fourth fascism

 

I actually read "The Fourth Political Theory" by Alexander Dugin. My review is linked below. A propos recent events in Moscow, and so on. 

The nihilistic fascism of Alexander Dugin

Assassination in Moscow

 

The Russian secret service FSB claims that a Ukrainian woman with connections to Azov single-handedly carried out the recent assassination of Alexander Dugin´s daughter Darya in Moscow. This is an almost brilliantly incompetent propaganda lie. Or maybe not, since I don´t know how paranoid the average Russian is right now. Or how paranoid the FSB want them to be! 

If taken at face value, though, the FSB version is absurd and actually paints Russia in a very bad light. If a single Ukrainian fascist can sneak into Russia, assassinate the daughter of a high profile Putin supporter in Moscow, and sneak out again, *the Putin regime has no control over its own territory*. Maybe Paddington the Bear can travel to Russia on a Peruvian tourist visa and blow some shit up, I don´t know, some Gazprom-associated marmelade store? 

The most likely explanation is the conspiracy theory that Putin had Darya Dugina killed as a warning to Dugin, god knows about what. Maybe they are bickering behind the Kremlin walls? Or maybe they just wanted to carry out a really good false flag, the Dugin family being sort-of-innocent victims? 

Could it be some Western intelligence agency? I´m not an expert on that particular demimonde, but assassinating Darya Dugina strikes me as very "esoteric" somehow. If Dark Brandon wants to escalate against Russia, wouldn´t a more likely target be Putin himself? Or somebody directly responsible for running the Ukrainian war? Compare the car bombing to covert US-Israeli attacks on Iranian interests. These weren´t directed at some obscure cult leader...

Verdict: Probably Putin. Just another Tuesday! Or in this case, Saturday. 

Eternity can´t wait

First, a word of warning. Even though Benjamin Teitelbaum´s 2020 book "War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right" is written in a style that´s meant to be easily accesible, the book could nevertheless be a hard read if you know next to nothing about so-called Traditionalism and/or Steve Bannon. For an overview of Bannon´s less esoteric activities, see "Devil´s Bargain" by Joshua Green (anti-Bannon) and "Bannon: Always the Rebel" by Keith Koffler (pro-Bannon). Since Bannon´s story is ever-developing, a perusal of the latest news about the man might also be in order. For Traditionalism, see "Against the Modern World" by Mark Sedgwick. After reading all these volumes, you might be ready for "War for Eternity" (the book, I mean). 

Teitelbaum, a music professor, has been doing research on the far right for decades. Since he obviously isn´t far right himself, and even has a Jewish-sounding last name, I´m not sure why so many far right activists are willing to talk to him. This is especially true in this case: Bannon worked for Donald Trump in the White House, Alexander Dugin works for the Kremlin, and Olavo de Carvalho is an advisor to controversial Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Another person Teitelbaum interviewed, Jason Reza Jorjani, was temporarily involved in a murky milieu of former mercenaries, secretive millionaires and suspected double agents. Unless it was all just a con game! Teitelbaum was warned to continue his investigations into the identity of a mysterious well-connected "Londoner" and his motives for supporting (actually or purportedly) the international far right. But apart from this, most Alt Right personalities (Dugin being a partial exception) had no problem being interviewed by this intrepid scholar, for reasons best known to themselves...

"War for Eternity" investigates two things: the stunning come back of the far right to positions of power and influence before and during "the populist spring", and more specifically the influence of Traditionalism within the broader far right milieu. The various conspiracies or cons detailed in the book made my head spin, while the ideological underpinnings of the various actors made me deeply intrigued. Of the Traditionalists mentioned in the book, Dugin comes across as the most serious (and perhaps also the most dangerous), since he obviously works on a long-term basis for Vladimir Putin´s administration in Russia and often acts as a kind of informal envoy to various foreign nations. Dugin is even tasked with somewhat sensitive missions, for instance to Turkey after the Turks had shot down a Russian military plane. Books on geopolitics by "Putin´s Rasputin" (pun intended) have at least previously been included in the literature studied at the Russian Military Academy. Perhaps inevitably, Dugin was also the Traditionalist least willing to talk to the author. For instance, he denied ever meeting Bannon (while Bannon freely admitted it). Bannon seems more of a loose cannon (pun intended again), while Olavo is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. 

Capital-T Traditionalism is a very heterogenous school of thought, associated with French esotericist and Muslim convert René Guénon (d. 1951), Italian fascistic Neo-Pagan Julius Evola (d. 1974), and Swiss-German "Sufi" and colorful kook Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998). I never understood what these men really had in common, and the Traditionalist "school" has expanded even more since the early-to-mid 20th century, when these men seems to have flourished the most. If Traditionalism can be defined at all, it´s characterized by anti-modernism and a belief in hierarchy, patriarchy, esotericism and spirituality. The ideal society is often conceived as an "Aryan" caste system, with either priests or warriors on top. The present time is the kali yuga, the dark age, when nothing meaningful can be done...or maybe it can (Traditionalists have differing approaches to political action). Despite this quasi-Hindu angle, both Guénon, Schuon and some later Traditionalists converted to Islam or took up strongly Islamophile positions. Logically, Traditionalists should support "the East" against the modern West, and they should despise the United States above everything else, the US being the quintessentially modern society, born in sin, indeed almost the Great Satan. Dugin therefore strikes me as the most consistent of the Traditionalists mentioned in this book, and he does indeed call for a Eurasian geopolitical alliance of Russia, China, Iran and Turkey against the United States. I assume Dugin is at least nominally an Orthodox Christian, but judging by Teitelbaum´s description, Putin´s Rasputin also has a peculiar infatuation with Persia. On other points, he is less obviously traditional, even using relativist and almost nihilist postmodernist arguments when calling for a "multi-polar world" in which every ethnic group can live out its unique truth or "Dasein" without homogenizing globalist influence. 

Steve Bannon is a far stranger addition to the, shall we say, multi-polar Traditionalist spectrum. His pro-American anti-establishment populism doesn´t seem to have much in common with Traditionalism, except that both currents are somehow "right-wing". And can one imagine a less apt vehicle for Traditionalism than Donald J Trump, who is in many ways the very epitome of modernity and its reign of quantity? And yet, it seems that Bannon does identify himself, at least after a fashion, with Traditionalism. His idea seems to be a kind of "metaphysics of the peasantry" (Teitelbaum´s term), where the traditional White working class and the farmers in the American Heartland are seen as guardians of tradition and spirituality, whereas the US establishment represent modernity and all its evils. The plain folk - the shudras - are the real priestly caste, a stunning inversion of the traditional Traditionalist perspective. The nation-state, rather than ancient empires, is the preferred form of polity. The real America isn´t an "idea", but a real network of communities rooted in religion and the land. 

Bannon´s geopolitics are strongly anti-Chinese, something the former Trump advisor explains by referencing China´s role in the globalist economy. Far from being "traditional", China (or rather its regime) is modernist. Bannon´s grand design is to realign Russia with the United States, thereby isolating and weakening China. (It´s interesting to note that Bannon is, or perhaps was until recently, financed by an exiled Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui.) This explains his interest in the European far right, and also his secretive meeting with Dugin in Rome. However, Dugin wasn´t interested in a US-Russia realignement, instead continuing the usual course of strengthening a Sino-Russian bloc. I assume this created problems for Bannon in several European nations, where the far right is both pro-Russian and pro-Chinese (Italy comes to mind). He fared better in Britain, where he assisted the Brexit campaign. 

Olavo is perhaps the strangest fish of them all. He could be seen as a kind of Brazilian version of Bannon. Like his American collegue, Olavo believes that the common people are closer to tradition and spirituality than the elites. A somewhat absurd detail is that Olavo doesn´t live in Brazil, but in rural Virginia! Yet, he has a strong connection to Bolsonaro´s administration, and has so far survived all attempts to push him out of it. It seems the Brazilian military strongly dislike him, according to Olavo because of their business ties with China. Olavo rather wants Brazil to orient itself towards the United States. Before entering the political limelight, Olavo was a leading member of the Brazilian branch of Schuon´s "Sufi" order. His present connection to Traditionalism isn´t entirely obvious, however, and he often criticizes (or perhaps pretends to criticize) Guénon. He also likes ice cream, but that´s another matter.

Somewhere here, "War for Eternity" ends, the book obviously being written before Trump´s spectacular electoral defeat in 2020. Since it was published that year, it doesn´t mention the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It seems the war for eternity has been suspended. For how long, remains to be seen. The COVID pandemic, the fall of Kabul, the crisis at the southern border, the de facto ban on abortions in Texas, the supply and energy crises, and the general failure of Joe Biden´s administration to adequetely deal with these situations will surely have an impact on the far right (including the Traditionalists). So will Biden´s decision to continue Trump´s confrontation with China and forge an alliance with a post-Brexit Britain, but also his refusal to realign with Russia. Something tells me this isn´t over quite yet.

The war for eternity never ends.   

The nihilistic fascism of Alexander Dugin

"The Fourth Political Theory" is a book by Alexander Dugin, a Russian philosopher and political activist. He is sometimes referred to as a Traditionalist, at other times as an Eurasianist. Dugin is the leader of a small political party in Russia, the Eurasia Movement. More ominously, he is rumoured to be an advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin. As far as I can tell, "The Fourth Political Theory" is the only book by Dugin translated to English. It's not an easy read, since the author writes in a difficult prose filled with references to Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Deleuze and other thinkers not considered main stream. It took me about two weeks to sift through this material.

While Dugin claims to represent a striving to create a Fourth Political Theory beyond liberalism, socialism and fascism, I think it's obvious that he is a fascist. A nihilistic fascist, to be exact. While he pretends to oppose postmodernism, he is in fact heavily indebted to it for his own perspective. In Dugin's universe, there are no absolute truths. Each culture, nature or community is a (more or less) self-contained whole. Its worldview is purely subjective (even "time" and "past" are subjective concepts). Hence, no outsider can judge whether or not a certain culture is "right" or "wrong". Humans are constituted by "politics", by which Dugin seems to mean pre-existing hierarchies in each culture which inevitably moulds us into what we are. For this reason, Dugin rejects liberal individualism. Of course, this contradicts his claim that no absolute truths exists. There is at least one absolute truth in Dugin's system: the collective is everything, the individual nothing. How this squares with his claim that the most basic ontological category is the Radical Subject is unclear. The Radical Subject is, I suppose, individual. Dugin is well aware of his affinity with postmodernism. He wants to use postmodernism to further his own (fascist) agenda. The tolerance of postmodernism can be used to justify a multi-polar world in which "traditional" cultures can co-exist with each other, and (temporarily) with Anglo-American liberalism. The existence of classes and the left-right dichotomy is also denied in favour of a postmodernist-sounding perspective, according to which there is only "centre" and "periphery".

In a universe with no absolute truths, the will to power is central, and Dugin (unsurprisingly) believes that "geopolitics is epistemology" and that "the political" is fundamental. In plain English, Russian imperial expansionism is a good thing, and nothing meaningful can exist outside the imperial-hierarchic state. Of course, this is so only from a Russian perspective, but that's apparently irrelevant. War is a perennial condition of human existence. The author clearly wants the particular subjective perspective of his own tribe to win the day.

Since Hitler and the Nazis killed millions of Russians during World War II, Dugin has no choice but to repudiate Hitler's politics, especially his racism against Slav Untermenschen. At the same time, however, he is interested in the German current known as Conservative Revolution. His book contains a lot of references to "National Bolsheviks", who attempted to combine Communism and nationalism. Dugin makes the (admittedly interesting) observation that many Communist regimes were nationalist, and that National Bolshevism in all but name existed in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and so on. He claims that Communism as it looked like in practice wasn't really "modern", but a resurrection of archaic forms. Many critics of Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China have noticed similarities with the so-called Asiatic mode of production in ancient societies. Dugin agrees, but regards this as something positive! While rejecting liberalism, he wants to salvage the "positive" traits of both Communism (actually Stalin's regime) and fascism. This is a common project in Russia, where "Red-Brown Blocs" between Stalinists and right-wing nationalists (including fascists) were influential during the 1990's. Dugin himself was a founding member of the notorious National Bolshevik Party, but seems to have left the organization when it became too burlesque. (Today, the NBP is opposed to Putin, and Dugin actually accuses it of being in cahoots with Western intelligence services.) Although Dugin is included in Mark Sedgwick's seminal study of Traditionalism, "Against the Modern World", the Traditionalist traits of the Fourth Political Theory are incidental. Dugin is anti-modernist, and does mention Guénon and Evola. Yet, his covert postmodernism, relativism and nihilism are difficult to square with the Traditionalist insistence on an absolutely valid and universal esoteric truth.

Dugin is curiously oblivious to peak oil and peak uranium (perhaps because Russia has plenty of those natural resources?), and believes that postmodernism can actually succeed in creating a bizarre world dominated by "post-humans" and other "simulacra", apparently some kind of cyborgs. Both transhumanism and transgenderism are perceived as threats. When condemning LGBTQI, Dugin sounds more essentialist than relativist. However, resistance isn't futile, it seems. Here, Dugin has a voluntarist perspective. Humans can freely decide to resist the system, and thereby challenge and change their "fate". This is the will to power again. The step from this to gratuitous violence and terrorism is short.

Personally, I doubt that Vladimir Putin is listening to the gaga of Alexander Dugin. However, "The Fourth Political Theory" is interesting. It shows us the real face of fascism behind the ideological façade: nihilistic violence from the Supermen, just because they can. For more insight into this subject, see Shadia Drury's "Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics".

How traditional is Traditionalism?

"Against the modern world" is a scholarly study of Traditionalism, a current of thought associated with René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon and Julius Evola. Others mentioned in the book include Mircea Eliade, Huston Smith and the National Bolshevik Party of Russia. Indeed, one wonders what these disparate personages and movements really have in common, except the name and a certain admiration of Guénon, the "founder" of the Traditionalist school? "Against the modern world" also traces Traditionalist influences on people not generally considered Traditionalist, such as Thomas Merton and Seraphim Rose.

The author, Mark Sedgwick, believes that Traditionalism is characterized by three main ideas, which he calls perennialism, inversion and counterinitiation. Perennialism (also common outside the Traditionalist fold) is the idea that all religions and philosophies have a common, inner message. This message is primordial and secret, and often expressed in the form of symbols. Only a small elite can understand it. The outer forms of religions and philosophies might vary over the centuries, but the esoteric message does not. Inversion is connected to anti-modernism, the idea that the modern world is actually an example of regression rather than progress. Inversion more specifically denotes that what is base, vulgar or indifferent is turned into something positive. Counterinitiation is more difficult to grasp. It seems to be a sectarian concept, whereby the Traditionalists reject other alternative religious groups as representing a fake pseudo-tradition. René Guénon criticized the Theosophical Society on this basis.

If Traditionalism has a founder, it is surely the French writer René Guénon, whose most famous work is "The crisis of the modern world". Guénon was a maverick Catholic when he developed Traditionalism. Later, he moved to Egypt and converted to Islam, while nevertheless keeping his Traditionalist ideas as a kind of esoteric message. Guénon's writings have inspired a rather heterogenous set of people, from respected scholars of comparative religion to strange New Religious Movements. It has also influenced some Muslim groups. More disturbingly, an activist form of Traditionalism has been taken up by fascists such as Julius Evola or Alexander Dugin. Sedgwick's book rather scrupulously follow each line of development, which explains the attacks from some other reviewers, who believe that Evola, Schuon or Eliade aren't "real" Traditionalists. Sounds familiar? Sedgwick also distinguishes between "hard" and "soft" Traditionalism. The latter, for obvious reasons, isn't always easy to distinguish from New Age or some kind of ecumenism.

A question that comes to mind when reading this book, is how traditional Traditionalism really is? Guénon rejected the Theosophical Society, but his own message is a blend of Western occultism, Eastern religions, and even the legend of Atlantis and Hyperborea. In other words, something similar to the occultic-Theosophical streams Guénon claimed to have broken from. In contrast to the Theosophists, Guénon didn't create an eclectic new religion. Rather, he attempted to influence the Catholic Church from within, and failing that, converted to Sunni Islam. However, the esoteric message known only to the elect, is in effect an eclectic blend of very different elements! Frankly, I was surprised when I started reading some of Guénon's own works (which I did prior to reading this book). I expected Guénon to be "traditionalist" in the usual sense of that word, say, a traditional Catholic or a conservative Muslim. Instead, he talks about Atlantis, Hyperborea, pre-columbian contacts with America, numerology, and what not. This tendency is even more pronounced in the writings of Julius Evola, whose wild speculations have nothing in common with traditional religion. (But then, we are supposed to believe that this is an "esoteric" message, revealed to the hoi polloi only in the present dispensation.) As for Frithjof Schuon, I think it's fairly obvious that his Sufi order was really a modern, syncretist movement - something Traditionalists ostensibly oppose.

I recommend Mark Sedgwick's book to everyone interested in...New Religious Movements.