It was an event of monumental significance: the emergence of Aleksandr Dugin.

Not that the 62-year old Russian self-styled political philosopher has been in hiding all these years. It’s just that, somehow, an interview with Tucker Carlson tends to bring one out into the open — warts and all. And I’ve got to tell you: this guy has more warts than a knot of toads.

As for Carlson, it isn’t necessary — nor do I care to devote the time and space — to go into details concerning his political viewpoints or his journalistic skills. He was hot off of that famously disastrous interview with Vladimir Putin last February when he sat down with Dugin to give it another try. And he hadn’t learned a thing. Rather than use the opportunity to question Dugin about his relationship with Putin, the progress of the war in Ukraine, the effect of sanctions on the Russian economy, or any other even vaguely significant topic, Carlson simply let him rant . . . occasionally nodding in agreement or tossing in a few words to trash his own country.

Anyway, enough about Carlson. It’s Dugin who concerns me. He allegedly has Putin’s ear and his trust, at least to some extent — he has been called “Putin’s Brain” by some. And he is — to express it in the simplest of terms — a madman. He doesn’t merely support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; he describes Ukrainians as “a race of degenerates who crept up from sewers and deserve to be eliminated through genocide.” [Julia Davis, CEPA, May 2, 2024.]

He has stated that, in his opinion, Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s territories amounts to “opposition to the junta and Ukrainian Nazism that exterminates civilians.”

Wait a minute — who’s talking about exterminating civilians now? Who just used the word “genocide”?

And by the way, on behalf of my four Ukrainian grandparents . . . thanks a lot.

He said that he believes the West despises Putin, not because of the war in Ukraine, but because of his “values.” “Given someone with nuclear weapons is standing strong defending traditional values that you’re going to abolish, I think they have some basis for this Russophobia and the hatred for Putin.” [CEPA, id.]

Dugin’s anger, his hatred, his vitriol know no bounds. America — in fact, all of the “Anglo-Saxon world” — is, in his twisted mind, the Antichrist, the purveyor of all evils . . . liberalism being at the top of the list.

In a later interview by Roman Golovanov on the Solovyov Live channel, Dugin claimed that Carlson had favorably compared his interview with an earlier sit-down with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and that Carlson “had praised both Dugin and Orban as representatives of a culture and a civilization that is ‘much deeper’ than that of the West.” [CEPA, id.]

Somehow, being compared with Viktor Orban does not strike me as a compliment. But to Dugin, I suppose it was.

Aleksandr Dugin is important to the Kremlin precisely because of his popularity as a vocal, and virulent, supporter of the war in Ukraine, of Putin’s extreme brand of conservatism, and of the current anti-Western trend in parts of Eastern Europe.

His diverse body of work includes some frightening subjects, such as “apocalypse, millenarianism, occultism, and the problematics of conservative revolution.” [Maxim Trudolyubov and Ekaterina Kotrikadze, Wilson Center: The Russia File, May 10, 2024.]

But in his views on liberalism, he claims that its “globalist” (his term) agenda “takes its unwitting followers away from the collective identities of old — the empire, the nation, the family, and a clearly defined gender. Through artificial intelligence . . . liberalism is threatening to break the last collective identity standing, human personhood itself.” [Id.]

And we haven’t even touched on his conspiracy theories, or his rabid antisemitism. After the terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall music venue last March, Dugin implied that Israel’s Mossad might be to blame: “We shouldn’t rule out any possibilities beforehand. For example, this could be the Zionists’ retaliation for Russia’s stance on Gaza.” [Id.]

Considering that four ISIS-K members from Tajikistan have been charged with that attack, that’s quite a leap. But it’s the way Dugin’s mind works.

Nor did Carlson ask Dugin about matters of current importance such as repression in Russia, imprisonment of journalists and others for speaking against the war in Ukraine, or the mass flight of Russians under threat of criminal prosecution on similarly specious charges. Again, he simply let Dugin talk — apparently in all seriousness — about the threat of a robot uprising, and the need to return to traditional values and collectivism:

“We have no other option. Either Matrix, or Artificial Intelligence, or something or ‘Terminator.’ . . . Putin is a traditional leader, . . . someone with a nuclear weapon [who] stands strong defending traditional values.” [Id.]

I rest my case.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/20/24