Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes referred to as” Putin’s mind” because of his philosophical effect on Russian politicians, endorsed the laws of Donald Trump in a CNN interview aired on March 30.
Interviewed by Fareed Zakaria, Dugin said Trump’s America has a lot more in common with Putin’s Russia than most people think, adding:” Trumpists and the supporters of Trump may know little better what Russia is, who Putin is and the desires of our elections”.
Dugin made his name by espousing Russian republican and conservative – including racist – designs, and publishing heavily on the importance of Russia in earth society.
But, this support should be a reminder of the problematic nature of the Trump White House. It implies that Dugin believes Trump’s guidelines support Russian pursuits.
Dugin began his career as an anti-communist advocate in the 1980s. This was owing less to an intellectual antipathy for socialism than to his dismissal of the ideology that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union espoused. He even criticized the celebration for breaking from conventional – mainly religious – values.
Dugin proposes what he calls a “fourth social idea”. The second three, he claims, are Marxism, authoritarianism and democracy – all of which he thinks have elements of error, particularly their refusal of custom and their subjection of culture to scientific thought.
Dugin’s third political principle takes items from all three and discards the elements with which Dugin disagrees, particularly the dwindling value of classic family and society. The culmination is a melange of ideas that often appear Communist and sometimes totalitarian, but which usually center on the criticality of conventional Russian culture.
His founding philosophy is traditionalism, which he views as a strength of Russia. Thus, he has become a strong supporter of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, who emphasizes traditional Russian values. Dugin and Putin align in their criticism of liberalist anti-religious individualism, which they claim destroys the values and culture on which society is based.
Dugin has value for Putin because he advances the president’s objectives. Putin’s security goals are in part founded on the principle that political unity is strength and political division is weakness. If Russia can maintain political unity by whatever means necessary, it retains its perception of strength. And if a state opposed to Russia is divided internally, it can be portrayed as weak.
The Russian government claims complete political unity inside Russia.
Its spokespeople reinforce that claim by declaring, for example, that the Russian electorate was so unified behind Putin that the 2024 Russian presidential election could have been skipped as an unnecessary expense.
They also push a strained claim that the Russian population is unanimously behind the Ukraine war.
Dugin energizes voters behind Putin, basing his support on the philosophy of Russian greatness and cultural superiority and the perception of Russian unity. His influence has been felt throughout the Russian government and society.
He publishes prolifically, and lectures at universities and government agencies about the harms of western liberalism. He also served as an advisor to Sergey Naryshkin, currently director of the Foreign Intelligence Service ( SVR ) of the Russian Federation.
Dugin’s views support an expansionist Russia, especially in the direction of Ukraine. He questions the existence of Ukraine and promotes Russia’s war there wholeheartedly. But his support for the war led to an attempt on his life. On August 20 2022, a bomb exploded in a car owned by Dugin, killing his daughter, Darya, who was driving it back from a festival of Russian traditional art.
Divide and conquer
Russia applies the same principle of “unity equals strength” to its adversaries, but in reverse. Many Russian political thinkers try to emphasize political divisions in unfriendly states. They work hard to broaden existing disagreements and support disruptive political parties and groups.
Such operations give the Russian government the ability to denigrate the foreign powers that Russia considers adversaries by making them look weak in the eyes of their own people– and more importantly, in the eyes of the Russian population.
Dugin lays a philosophical foundation for foreign parties that oppose the European Union and western liberalism, and that disrupt political unity. His views have been adopted by far-right political groups such as the German National Democratic Party, the British National Party, Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the National Front in France.
Dugin’s interview in which he endorsed Trump’s policies is likely to have been directly authorized by the Kremlin. He pushes a Kremlin-sponsored endorsement of Trump’s divisive – and thus weakening – effect on US politics.
But Dugin’s extreme Russian nationalist rhetoric at times clashes with Putin’s attempts to include all peoples of Russia in a strong unified state, rather than only ethnic Russians. As it is a multi-ethnic state, Russian ethnic nationalism can obstruct Putin’s attempts at portraying strength through unity. The label” Putin’s brain” is only accurate sometimes.
The Russian government uses Dugin when he is useful and separates itself from him when his extremism is inconvenient. Dugin is a tool who says many of the right things and facilitates Kremlin goals. His endorsement of Trump should be seen in its context: Russia attempting to strengthen itself at the expense of the US.
Kevin Riehle is a lecturer in intelligence and security studies at Brunel University of London.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.