Kremlin Ideologue. Part 2:
Portrait of the Postmodern Rasputin.
Alexander Dugin confesses that the arrival of a “man of destiny” was a mystic vision granted to him long before Putin appeared.
Whether Dugin emerged as a spokesman for Putin’s aspirations or was his original seducer, we may never know. Perhaps it was a complex karmic process, preordained by some dark god from the sullen offshoot of a reptilian pantheon, or whatever faith Dugin followed.
Many have remarked that Dugin does resemble Grigori Rasputin, the infamous “holy man” who emerged from his uneducated peasant origins to end as the advisor of Nicolas II, the last Emperor of Russia. His reputation in so many ways adversely affected the tsar’s. But it was not only the resemblance that is the key here, but that almost mystical insecurity of the Russian government, its search for more profound reasons for its own existence. Which inevitably leads to catastrophic decisions and tragedies — in the past the end of tsarist rulership, the future yet to be revealed.
Dugin’s portrait can be sketched in broad post-impressionist strokes with their heavy outlines. A Rasputin-miened sage, at times poised, at times madly passionate — as in an argument with the French professor Bernard-Henri Levy — and whenever engaged in debates with the much-hated liberals, he has the temper of a wounded bear with a hangover.
Dugin’s close friend and a fellow member of the National Bolshevik Party, the talented writer Eduard Limonov, wrote: “Short-sighted minds know Dugin as a Eurasian and an avid preacher of geopolitics, but these are only small magnitudes of his vast world.” The writer is sure that such a definition only serves to undeservedly narrow Dugin’s immense existence: “The grey depths of the traditions of all the world’s religions, the depths of chaos, and the microcosm of Russian politics and the paradoxical world of super mathematics”. Limonov continued: “Even if it turned out that Alexander Gellievich kills passersby in dark alleys at night, my opinion of him would not waver by a grain of sand. If he kills — he kills, but he thinks brilliantly, inspiringly, carnivorously.”
Toward the end of the Soviet Union era, Dugin charmed youngsters’ minds with his ideas and his stern Rasputin look. Duginism burst into post-Soviet chaos like a breath of fresh air. Dugin and his entourage were akin to political rock’n’roll stars at that time; the bearded young sage participated in the opening of countless soirees and parties, and had learned nine languages so as to read in their original versions forbidden, untranslated literature banned in the USSR. He quickly gained notice and fame as an intellectual and thinker. In the ’80s he was an active anti-Soviet. He took his young son on a pilgrimage to monuments honoring Ilyich (Vladimir Lenin) — only to have him spit on them. Later, in ’93, Alexander Dugin would defend the Supreme Soviet of Russia, and took the parliament’s defeat as a personal tragedy. His origins were, however, buried in the dust of the KGB archives, with their unmatched access to the secret esoteric knowledge and teachings of the SS Fascist Order.
In a surrealistic video on YouTube (the celebration of Alister Crowly’s birthday) a young Dugin appears half-naked, cavorting in a kind of gentle homoerotic dance with his National Bolshevik Party (NBP) teammate Eduard Limonov. The members of the “epatage” party themselves defined the party as radically anti-centrist, and as absolutely “right-wing” and infinitely “left-wing” at the same time.
At that party, Limonov reads out a list of angels who have remained in heaven, and those who have descended from it. Dugin, on the other hand, recites a mysterious incantation focusing on the number 418. The ensuing puppet theater improvises on rituals of Golden Dawn sexual magic, including an executioner dressed up in a Klu-Klux-Clan costume in a wheel, people tied to burning crosses spun around to represent fiery swastikas, and Kostroma group artists dressed in lunatic costumes summoning the Harlot of Babylon, in a bright nylon outfit. She performs a magnificent dance, celebrating the end of the world.
Later Eduard Limonov would become disillusioned with his associate and part-time political opportunist Dugin. From a Renaissance man, as Limonov had called him, he was demoted to an incorrigible storyteller, disconnected from reality. Not long afterward Dugin left the party, taking a comfortable seat as an advisor to the Russian State Duma.
Wrapped in the mantle of the Great Geopolitician, Dugin at some point left behind the games of occult symbols, parochial nationalism, and the pettiness of scientific thought. The only motive for the shift, made official by a freshly grown, scholarly beard, was the doctrine of world domination.
Since there are no universally acknowledged valuations for Dugin’s “genius”, we can choose an extremist one for the sake of a different perspective. The occultist and psychoanalyst Oleg Telemsky (the last name is a pseudonym) once mentioned in an interview: “Behind Dugin is some dark magical entity called Astaroth.” He believes that “Dugin is a model example of a black magician. This is a man who began as a sympathizer of Hitler and Nazism. In the ’90s, he “stuck” to Thelema, even translated a couple of texts by Satanist Aleister Crowley. “But he quickly realized,” Telemsky shares, “that there was no secret route to power in Crowley’s texts. He needs power, just like any other infernal entity. Dugin is a real infernal, terrifying force. It is he and the forces behind him that have a very strong influence on the current government”. And also: “Scary man. But a genius. An evil genius, compared to which Professor Moriarty is a half-assed puppy.”
It would not be much of a surprise if Telemsky envisioned Putin — who reputedly enjoys bathing in animal blood — being surrounded by shamans, his ministers and the bearded Rusputin-like sage Dugin reading his Geopolitics thesis out loud.
Even if we put aside the amusing demonological conspiracies, there is some hidden root of truth there. As Telemsky’s fictional image of Dugin’s blooms — we begin to see that the only thing that might possess Dugin is essentially aspiration for power. As is the case for Putin, to the point that he feels that he “owns” Russia. Dugin for his part is sure that he owns the only valid definition of the Great Empire Russia. Here we can consider all sorts of psychoanalytical theories to assess and interpret their power complexes. But it is actually much more straightforward: after his deportation from Crimea in 2005, Dugin took it very personally and blamed Ukraine. When Euromaidan supporters in Ukraine advocated for regime change in 2014, Dugin openly urged: “kill, kill, kill!” and added: “All lawless doers.” Dugin predicted that the war in Ukraine was inevitable. Kiev, in his theories, is fated to become a permanent buffer between the unification of the eastern Slavs and the creation of a sovereign Russian civilization, opposed to the West. “Ukraine is in the hands of homosexuals and Jewish oligarchs”, Dugin shares his opinion, “It is just a freak state, it would be ridiculous if it were not bloody”. By implication, he advocates that Russia has to “fix it” and take it under its emperor’s wing.
In retrospect, it is obvious that Dugin’s intellectual speculations might have remained a wandering caravan of ill-founded theories to support imperialism, if they had not been so openly supported by his own criminal callings. There is one unchanging underlying precept — the right to kill. He unequivocally states that politics without killing is not politics.
To be continued
