Thursday, March 26, 2015

"Maoism is too Modern for me" says Alexandr Dugin : Five Questions for Alexandr Dugin

  
 
Publication of views of Alexandr Dugin is not approval of them but form the basis for an informed  critical examination of his influential views.
 
A process which we started last year with publication of Aleksandr Dugin - Radical Conservatism dressed up as Revolution.  
     
Five Questions for Alexandr Dugin 
1. Recent attacks on you especially from Glenn Beck in the United States label you a Fascist Racist I understand you to be a conservative communist (nationalist communist) and anti racist - is my understanding correct ?

I am certainly not "Fascist Racist". I am not Fascist (not Third Position). I am convinced anti-Racist. I hate racism as part of liberal Eurocentric and imperialist ideology. Most Westerners including human rights partisans – are definitively racists being universalists and sharing the vision of Modern Western civilization as normative one.

I defend the plurality of civilizations, the absence of the universal (Western) pattern of social development. I strongly oppose any kind of xenophobia and nationalism as the bourgeois artificial and essentially Modern construction.

I am not communist nor Marxist because I refuse the materialism of any kind and deny the progress. So much more correct to describe my views as Fourth Political Theory and traditionalism.

On the level of International Relations it is translated as the Theory of Multipolar World based on the vision of the pluralist architecture of the World based on the great spaces principle (Grossraum). I am against capitalism as a essential phenomenon of Modernity.

I strongly believe that Modernity is absolutely wrong and the Sacred Tradition is absolutely right. USA is the manifestation of all I hate – Modernity, westernization, unipolarity, racism, imperialism, technocracy, individualism, capitalism.

It is in my eyes the society of Antichrist. USA hates me – repressing, putting under sanctions (only for my ideas!), blaming, lying, organizing the defamation on the world scale (Glenn Beck is only small part of it).

But I accept all this patiently. If you are against the Modernity it is but logical the Modernity were against you.

2. In your Fourth Political Theory you owe much to the ontological theories of Martin Heidegger in which being is the fatherland a theory which allowed for a rebasing of Neo Fascism after the Second World War based on rootedness of being and not Nazis "scientific racism". This ontology gives ideological support to neo fascism and ethnic nationalism.

I cannot classify Heidegger as "neo-fascist". He is simply the greatest European thinker of XX century. I rate and consider him to be the founder of Fourth Political Theory.

He was resolutely anti-liberal and anti-communist but as well very critical toward national socialism. He has laid the basis for completely new political philosophy that I try to render explicit. I am convinced that we need to re-discover Heidegger , re-read his writings beyond any form of classifications. He is a kind of metaphysical prophet.

3. Inclusive Bourgeois Civic Nationalism on the Scottish Model offers a better way for dealing with social contradictions like class than ethnic nationalism which just deals with the ethnic other. Civic nationalism offers a framework in which a socialist and communist movement can move forward. Western Ukraine being prime example of self destructive ethnic nationalism.

I think the problem has two levels. First – the ethnic organic societies should be saved from nationalist modernist dictatorship of the Western kind. The Eurasianism is precisely this: traditional sacred religious and spiritual Empire based on organic traditional ethnic societies against bourgeois Nation State and globalization (that is the universalization of the liberal pattern on the world scale). Here on the first level ethnic nationalism can be considered as legitimate part of liberation struggle against imperialism. That is the case of Welsh or Scottish fight today that I fully support.

More than this: I consider legitimate the will of Ukrainians to re-affirm their ethnic identity. But one thing affirmation of identity the other – creation of new bourgeois National State that will necessarily oppress the ethnic minorities. So National State – big or small is never solution.

Here we are coming the second level. The struggle for ethnic historic identity being legitimate it should be placed in correct context. This context should be Sacred and Imperial, not national. Russian Empire was sacred.

I think that the myth of the Sacred Empire of King Arthur can be regarded as celtic project for eschatological unification of the Western Europe. That was the idea of Henry VII that was fully inverted by Henry VIII. So I suggest Red Dragon Empire as a kind of Pan-Celtic vision of the great space that should overcome the context of small ethnic nationalism.

The past has its roots in the eternity. And eternity is always new and fresh. So I consider King Arthur and Holy Grail narrative as something ontologically real.

The English Empire was thallassocratic and merchant, the new Carthage. That was anti-Empire – modernist, capitalist and racist. It was wrong not because of being Empire but because of being anti-Empire. Against it we need to oppose not only ethnic struggle of liberation but alternative continental tellurocratic Empire. Irish, Welsh and Scottish people as well as Brettons and French people should create their proper celtic imperial vision. The figures of the King of biturges Ambigatos or King Arthur can be taken as symbols for this.

So Russian Spring as it is called is not nationalist. It is imperial and spiritual revival of sacred roots of our Eurasian – inclusive, not exclusive! – identity. We are Third Rome. It is our eschatological project. Not narrow nationalism or new kind of imperialism: pluricentric vision that refuses anglosaxon and modernist global Empire but accept plurality of imperial spaces. We don’t want to exchange American domination for Russian one. We are struggling for independent great spaces – Eurasian, European, Celtic, German, North-American, South American, Muslim, Chinese, Indian, African and so on.

So first level – anticolonial struggle on the ethnic ground; the second – positive multipolar vision based on the concept of the pluralility of sacred Empires (great spaces).

4. Mao's theory of knowledge based on knowing through doing (On Practice) and his theory of contradiction (On Contradiction) and Marxism Leninism Maoism offers a better route to knowledge than Heidegger's intuitive knowledge through being.

Mao was right affirming that socialism should be not exclusively proletarian but also peasant and based on the ethnic traditions. It is closer to the truth than universalist industrial internationalist version represented by trotskyism. But I think that sacred part in Maoism was missed or underdeveloped. Its links with Confucianism and Taoism were weak. Maoism is too Modern for me. For China it would be best solution to preserve the socialism and political domination of national-communist party (as today) but develop more sacred tradition –  Confucianismand Taoism. It is rather significant that ideas of Heidegger are attentively explored now by hundreds of Chinese scientists. I think Fourth Political Theory could fit to contemporary China best of all.

5. Maoism is the most successful rebasing of Communism in 21st century. 
 
What do you think of Marxism Leninism Maoism has developed by Chairman Gonzalo in Peru and Ganapathy in India and Jose Maria Sison in Philippines ?

All these struggles were synthesis of national and class struggles and are patriotic struggles.

Generally speaking I am rather on favour of such tendencies – anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and directed toward social justice.

But I refuse their materialism, universalism and progressivism.

They could transform in something more close to Fourth Political Theory. The 4PT is based on the Dasein and Tradition. 4PT refuse the Western hegemony and Modernity.

We could collaborate with left and with right, with Maoists or with Evolians but heading always toward new vision.

Last words.

I appreciate very much the Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Breton struggle for the affirmation of the deep Celtic identity. I am admirer of Celtic culture and history. I consider this the great treasure of Indo-european heritage.

So I think that Celtic front is very important part of our common fight.
 
SEE ALSO: http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aleksandr-dugin-radical-conservatism.html

5 comments:

Cave Rat said...

This is just disgusting. Dugin is a marginal figure in Russian political landscape, he is too crazy even for the times we live in. His 'anti-imperialism' is the same as Hitler's 'anti-imperialism' (Adolf also loved to rant how Jews and Brits exploit the whole world) and his ideology has nothing to do with Maoism. To hell with such 'allies'.

Anonymous said...

If Maoism is too modern, then what about Bob Avakian?

You need to seriously study the New Synthesis of Communism of Bob Avakian. Dugin leads backwards, Avakian shines the path forward.






Anonymous said...

The above is a comment from Moscow Red Cat .
We also publish some more from Moscow based Red Cat's Blog as we are sure this will be of interest to our readers.
"Unfortunately, many communists then believed that there were no antagonism between communism and nationalism (a view which some still share today).
The liberal press labeled this strange alliance the ‘red-brown bloc’ (communist-nazi bloc) in full accordance with the typical liberal view of communism as another version of nazism.
Some communists accepted this ‘definition’ proudly – this is also a sad characteristic of new Russian communist movement which was just recovering from devastating defeat. The ultra pro-Western orientation of liberals and Yeltsin regime, of course, helped these kind of views to take roots in the communist movement" .

Anonymous said...

Russians who opposed Nazi invasion in 1941 were called Red Fascists in 1950's by US Senators who had previously fallen over themselves in admiration for Hitler in 1930's.

Russians who oppose US Imperialism in its destruction of Russian Federation are called Red Brown Fascists by the Russian liberal press and US Imperialism as part of its propaganda war.

Such a label on patriotic Russians should be firmly rejected and not embraced by Leftists and we agree with Moscow Red Cat that accepting such a label is self defeating and is internalising enemy propaganda.

nickglais said...

Moscow Red Cat we would like to publish your Black October post on Democracy and Class Struggle as a contribution to understanding contradictions between nationalism and communism in Russia.