No More Learning

He borrows from Schmitt his con- ception of the nomos, the general form of organ- ization of the objective and subjective factors of a given territory, and the theory of Grossraum, "large spaces. "
Dugin attaches great value to this German heritage, and wishes to be viewed as a continen- tal geopolitician on a par with Schmitt and Haushofer: Russia's centrality and continentality, to him, are comparable to those of Germany in the 1920s-30s. He thus develops his own bipolar interpretation of the world, opposing the 'Heartland', which tends toward authoritarian regimes, to the 'World Island', the incarnation of the democratic and commercial system. He com- bines the classic Eurasianist theories with this bipolar division of the world into sea-based and land-based societies, or thallassocracies and tel- lurocracies, and links them to various classic cou- ples of concepts from "Russian thought" (Western Christianity/Orthodoxy, West/East, democracy/ideocracy, individualism/collec- tivism, societies marked by change/societies marked by continuity). The opposition between capitalism and socialism is seen as just one partic- ular historical clash destined to continue in other forms. "The Earth and the Sea disseminate their original opposition to the whole planet. Human history is nothing but the expression of this struggle and the path of its absolutization. "34
Dugin then divides the world into four civi- lizational zones: the American zone, the Afro- European zone, the Asian-Pacific zone, and the Eurasian zone. Russia must strive to establish various geopolitical alliances organized as con- centric circles. In Europe, Russia must of course ally itself with Germany, to which Dugin pays particular attention. Presented as the heart of Europe, Germany should dominate all of Central Europe as well as Italy, in accordance with the theories of 'centrality' developed by the Nazi geopoliticians as well as 19th century Prussian militarism. In Asia, Russia should ally itself with Japan, appreciated for its Pan-Asian ideology and the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis dur-
ing the Second World War. Within the Muslim world, Dugin chooses Islamic Iran, admired for its moral rigorism. He presents Iran as one of the few real forces of opposition against American globalization, and invites it to unify the entire Arab world, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, under its leadership. Dugin charac- terizes this quadruple alliance Russia-Germany- Japan-Iran which would react against the thalas- socracies (the United States, Britain in Europe, China in Asia, Turkey in the Muslim world) as a "confederation of large spaces,"35 since each ally is itself an empire that dominates the corre- sponding civilizational area. Unlike the Eurasianists of the 1920s, Dugin does not talk of an irreducible and romantic opposition between East and West; in Dugin's theories, both Asia and Europe are destined to come under Russian-Eurasiandomination.
As the maritime and democratic enemy allegedly has a "fifth column" in Russia, Dugin calls for a restoration of the Soviet Union and a reorganization of the Russian Federation. He is the only Neo-Eurasianist to include in his polit- ical project not only the Baltic States, but the whole former socialist bloc. 36 His Eurasia must even expand beyond Soviet space, as he propos- es to incorporate Manchuria, Xingjian, Tibet, and Mongolia, as well as the Orthodox world of the Balkans: Eurasia would only reach its limits with "geopolitical expansion to the shores of the Indian ocean,"37 an idea that was taken up and popularized by Zhirinovskii. Dugin also proposes a general repartition of the Federation, and especially of Siberia, which he considers to have been on the verge of implosion for quite some time. He calls for the abolition of the "national republics," to be replaced by purely administrative regions subservient to Moscow. In The Foundations of Geopolitics, he acknowl- edges his hopes for the breakup of Yakutia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Buryatia, con- demned for their separatism and their capacity to form Buddhist or Pan-Turkic anti-Russian axes with the neighboring regions. He wishes to unify them with industrialized regions that have a Russian majority, such as the Urals or the Pacific shore [Primorskii krai]. 38
As in the Eurasianism of the 1920s-30s, the non-Russian peoples, and particularly the Turko- Muslim minorities, are treated ambiguously. They are appreciated as key elements confirming
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 7
the distinctiveness of Russia's Eurasian identity, but are also presented as potential competitors or even enemies if they decided no longer to go along with a Russian-dominated multinational Eurasia. The international events of the past few years, especially 9/11, as well as the second war in Chechnya and the ensuing terrorist acts that cov- ered Russia with blood, forced Dugin to fine- tune his conception of Islam, and to be more cautious in his positive appreciation of a certain type of Islamic radicalism. Thus, at a symposium called "Islamic Threat or Threat against Islam? " organized by Evraziia on 28 June 2001, the party officials disavowed fundamentalism, presented as a danger to traditional Islam, and asserted a wish to create a Eurasian Committee for Russian-Muslim Strategic Partnership. According to Evraziia, tra- ditional Islam, Sufism, Shi'ism, and Orthodox Christianity are spontaneously Eurasian, whereas Catholicism and Protestantism, but also U. S. - sponsored radical Islamism, represent Atlanticism. Dugin thus tries to distinguish between Shi'ite fundamentalism, which he considers positive, from Sunni fundamentalism, which he disparages.
Dugin's wish to dissociate a "good" tradition- al Islam from the other branches of the religion, which he all equates with Wahhabism, is shared by numerous contemporarz Russian nationalist movements, which aim to woo official Russian Islam. This kind of talk permitted Dugin to recruit the leaders of the Central Spiritual Directorate of Russian Muslims into his Evraziia movement. Dugin tries to preclude any compe- tition with Turkic Eurasianism on the question of the country's religious and national minori- ties. He has managed brilliantly to present his movement not only as a tool for upholding Russian power, but also as a pragmatic solution to Russia's internal tensions. Thus, from its cre- ation in 2001, Evraziia includes representatives of sensitive regions such as Yakutia-Sakha, the North Caucasus, and Tatarstan, and was pleased to bring together all of Russia's confessions: many muftis from the Central Spiritual Directorate of Muslims, including their leader, Talgat Tadzhuddin, but also Buddhists (Dordzhi- Lama, the co-ordinator of the Union of Kalmyk Buddhists) and members of the Radical Zionist Movement, adhered to the party and stated their desire to fight the rise of religious extremism using the integration strategy implicit in the Eurasian idea.
However, Dugin does not limit himself to bringing Eurasianism's geopolitical view of Russia up to date. He seeks to anchor it in a global vision and to present it as a relevant mode of analysis that would help understand the entire evolution of the post-Cold War world. Once again, Dugin is playing the "guide," using the innumerable Western texts he is familiar with to adapt classic ideas from the history of Russian thought to contemporary debates. Thus, for sev- eral years now he has centered his argument about the Eurasian nature of Russia entirely on the topic of globalization. According to him, globalization presents as obvious truth what is actually ideology: representative democracy as the end of the history of human development, the primacy of the individual over any commu- nity, the impossibility of escaping the logic of the liberal economy, etc. 39 He argues that only the Eurasianist solution offers a viable alternative with a strong theoretical potential that could face up to the current globalization processes institut- ed by the United States. "Russia is the incarna- tion of the quest for an historical alternative to Atlanticism. Therein lies her global mission. "40
Like all Neo-Eurasianists, Dugin is a support- er of Samuel Huntington's "clash of civiliza- tions" argument, which is fashionable in Russia. Huntington's warmongering allows Dugin to affirm the necessity of maintaining the Russian imperial structure and to reject any prospect of a global equilibrium. According to him, the Russian nation needs to be prepared for "defending its national truth, not only against its enemies, but also against its allies. "41 Indeed, Dugin's geopolitical doctrine cannot function without creating enemies. He bases his ideology on conspiracy theories, presenting the new world order as a "spider web" in which global- ized actors hide in order to better accomplish their mission. Dugin even dedicated a whole book (published in 1993 and republished in a revised version in 2005) to what he calls con- spirology. The ideas expressed in it are contra- dictory. He harshly criticizes the presuppositions about Jewish, freemason, Marxist etc. conspira- cies held by numerous left- and right-wing political groups, but he also shares some of their ideas. 42 For example, he recounts a secret histo- ry of the Soviet Union in which a Eurasianist order opposes its Atlanticist counterpart. The putsch of August 1991 is described as the culmi-
8 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
nation of the occult war between these two orders. According to Dugin, however, the alter- natives to globalization remain limited: either left-wing ideologies worked out in the West, or a right-wing liberalism and the stagnation typi- cal of Asian countries. Dugin also notes that these two alternatives are opposed to each other even though they share a common enemy. He therefore proposes that Russia elaborate a fertile combination, because "all anti-globalization tendencies are 'Eurasianist' by definition. "43
Dugin does not play the autarchy card at any cost: he is convinced that the Eurasian model of resistance to American domination is exportable to the rest of the planet. He presents it as the most appropriate way of resisting the so-called New World Order. One of the aims of his thinking is therefore, as he describes it, "to transform Russian distinctiveness into a univer- sal model of culture, into a vision of the world that is alternative to Atlanticist globalization but also global in its own way. "44
Thus Russia is called upon to participate in world affairs while constructing a certain Eurasian cultural autarchy. Much more than, for example, Pyotr Savitsky and Count Trubetskoi, Dugin seems to have completely internalized the contradiction between, on the one hand, an exaltation of national distinctiveness and a pas- sionate rejection of any borrowing that would risk "warping" Russia and, on the other hand, a desire for geopolitical and ideological expan- sionism and a new messianism. Far from being just a "successor" to the first Eurasianists, he is a theoretician who has multiple or even contra- dictory facets: many other doctrines have influ- enced his intellectual evolution at least as much as, if not more than, Eurasianism.
TRADITIONALISM AS THE FOUNDATION
OF DUGIN'S THOUGHT
Traditionalism is a comparatively little studied strand of thought, although many 20th century thinkers have been more or less discreetly inspired by it. 45 In the 1920s, Rene? Gue? non (1886-1951) formalized the main concepts of Traditionalism in five books. 46 He went through a Catholic phase, followed by a spiritualist stage (first in a theosophist lodge, then in the Martinist Order), during which he discovered the oriental religions and became disappointed with the West, which he thought incapable of restoring a
mystical bond with faith. He left France for Cairo, where he joined an Egyptian order and tried to put his Traditionalist precepts into prac- tice in Sufism. During the 1930s, his ideas were developed in Italy, Germany and Romania, and Traditionalism became one of the main catch- words for fascist-minded spiritualist groups. The work of Gue? non's main disciple, Julius Evola (1896-1974), an Italian painter close to the Dadaists, should be mentioned here. One of his books, Revolt against the Modern World (1934), had a deep influence on German and Italian Neo-pagan movements. Traditionalism gained a new impetus in the 1960s, in particular in the Muslim world and, to a lesser extent, in Russia.
Traditionalists believe in the Tradition, that is, in the existence of a world that was steady in its religious, philosophical, and social principles and started disappearing with the advent of modernity in the sixteenth century. Modernity is considered to be harmful in that it destrois the pre-established hierarchical order that is natural to the world: the hierarchization of human beings is believed to be of transcendent origin and to have a mystical value. The Tradition is better preserved in non-Western civilizations, but through the colonial experience, the reassessment of the past begun in the West dur- ing Renaissance spread to other cultural spaces. Gue? non gives this view--which, in its political aspects, is a typical example of counterrevolu- tionary thought (de Maistre, Bonald)--a reli- gious coloring that makes Traditionalism stand out among conservative currents. For him, all religions and esoteric traditions--regardless of their concrete practice--reveal the existence of a now-extinct original sacred Tradition. Dubbed the "primordial Tradition," it is seen as the secret essence of all religions. Gue? non then urges the modern world to regain an awareness of this unity in the face of the desacralization and sec- ularization of the modern world. Through this appeal, he has influenced numerous Gnostic and Masonic currents, as well as several Sufi orders.
Some Traditionalist texts seem to have been known in the USSR since the 1960s thanks to the poet Yevgeny Golovin and his discovery of Louis Pauwel's The Morning of the Magicians. From the end of the 1970s, Dugin participated in Golovin's circle of occultist intellectuals, which included, among others, the Muslim thinker Geydar Dzhemal' and the writer Yuri
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 9
Mamleev (who would later leave the country for the United States). The intellectual unity of this circle was based on a simultaneous rejection of the Soviet experience, the West, and Slavophilism. These clandestine activities, as well as the possession of forbidden books, caused Dugin to be expelled from the Moscow Aviation Institute where he had been studying. Introduced to Traditionalism at a very young age, Dugin translated the 1933 version of Evola's Pagan Imperialism into Russian in 1981 and distributed it in samizdat. Choosing among the various cur- rents of Traditionalism, Dugin did not content himself with the search for an individual inner spiritual way--such as that, for example, of A. K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), which concen- trates on the aesthetic aspect of Traditionalism. Dugin is closer to Evola, who developed a politi- cized vision of Traditionalism, and does not hes- itate to affirm a sacrificial conception of politics: "We need a new party. A party of death. A party of the total vertical. God's party, the Russian ana- logue to the Hezbollah, that would act according to wholly different rules and contemplate com- pletely different pictures. For the System, death is truly the end. For a normal person, it is only a beginning. "47
The influence of Traditionalism on Dugin seems to be fundamental: it constitutes his main intellectual reference point and the basis of his political attitudes as well as his Eurasianism. Dugin has made considerable efforts to dissemi- nate Traditionalist thought in Russia. He regu- larly translates extracts from the works of the great Traditionalist theoreticians, Rene? Gue? non and Julius Evola, but also from so-called "soft" Traditionalist authors such as Mircea Eliade and Carl Jung; so-called "hard" Traditionalists like Titus Burckhardt; converts to Sufism, such as Frithjof Schuon; and converts to Islamism, like Claudio Mutti. The journals Elementy, and, especially, Milyi angel, whose full subtitle is "Metaphysics, angelology, cosmic cycles, escha- tology, and tradition," are dedicated to the diffu- sion of Traditionalist thought. They include arti- cles on specifically Russian apocalyptic tradi- tions, aiming to facilitate the acceptance of Traditionalism in Russia by proving that ele- ments of it were present in old popular concep- tions (the mystical currents of Orthodoxy, the myth about the submerged city of Kitezh, hesy- chasm, and the teachings of Gregory of Palama).
Dugin also lectured on Traditionalism at the New University in 2002, and published his lec- tures in The Philosophy of Traditionalism in the same year. He believes that the contemporary period, being profoundly eschatological, allows him to disseminate the Traditionalist message much more broadly than before, and to reveal the radical and revolutionary character of Gue? non by teaching what Dugin calls Gue? non's "eschatological humanism. "48 "Tradition, accord- ing to Gue? non's definition, is the totality of divinely revealed, non-human Knowledge, which determined the makeup of all sacred civi- lizations--from the paradisiacal empires of the Golden Age, which disappeared several millennia ago, to Medieval civilization which, in its various forms (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, etc. ) reproduced the fundamental parameters of Sacred Order. "49
According to Dugin, the mission of soterio- logical Traditionalism has three stages: the first, or individual stage, is to contribute to the devel- opment of the Tradition as such, i. e. of esoteri- cism; the second, political and exoteric stage, is to reaffirm the superiority of the laws of the church (or, for example, of the Shari'a); the third, or social stage, is to assist in the restoration of a hierarchy of medieval orders. Dugin is never, however, a simple ideological "reproduc- er. " He hopes to "Russify" the doctrines that inspire him, and to adapt them to what he calls the traditional concepts of the Russian world. Thus, he defines himself as a "post- Gue? nonist,"50 seeking to deepen Gue? non's basic ideas, which implies acknowledging certain points of disagreement with the founding father. His main criticism of the Western Traditionalists, and in particular of Gue? non, concerns their vision of Orthodoxy. In The Metaphysics of the Gospel (1996), Dugin asserts that Gue? non, who held that Christianity became exoteric after the great Councils, was actually targeting the two Western confessions, but not Orthodoxy, which has retained its initi- atic character and esoteric foundations to this day. 51 He also affirms that metaphysics and ontol- ogy, which Traditionalism attempts to rehabili- tate, have been particularly well preserved in Orthodoxy, which has never rejected an escha- tological approach: "We are the church of the final times [. . . ], the history of the terrestrial church is probably nearing its end. "52
10 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
Concerning the divisions between Neo- pagans and Christians that shook the Western Traditionalist movement, Dugin remains in an ambiguous position that is revelatory of his own hesitations on this matter. He appreciates the rehabilitation of paganism as Tradition proposed by Evola. Like Evola, he believes that Christianity has remained the most pagan monotheism (through the figure of the Trinity), and admires the importance of entropy and eschatology in the pagan religions. He remains, however, deeply anchored in Christianity and, like Gue? non, sees it (but only in its Eastern variety) as the reposito- ry of Tradition. Dugin affirms that "the develop- mental stages of the metaphysical constructions in orthodox Gue? nonian (and Evolian) Traditionalism [lead] to the ultimate affirmation of Orthodox Trinitarian metaphysics, in which all the most valuable vectors of insight found their complete and accomplished expression [. . . ] Everyone who follows this metaphysical logic [. . . ] necessarily arrives at Orthodoxy. "53
Dugin remains, however, attracted to Neo- pagan conceptions, which exalt the body and harmony with nature, although he remains embedded in Orthodoxy as the founding institu- tion of Russian distinctiveness. His position on this question is therefore revolutionary in its break with Christianity, and fundamentally con- servative in its respect for the religious institution and its hierarchy. Dugin links an esoteric account of the world to Orthodoxy, which he sees as having preserved an initiatic character, a ritual- ism where each gesture has a symbolic meaning. He thus calls for the restoration of an Orthodox vision of the world, for a "clericalization [otserkovlenie] of everything. "54 This opposition, however, which had divided the German National Socialists and later the New Right, may seem less relevant for Russia: Orthodoxy, unlike Catholicism or Protestantism, is more easily instrumentalized as a specifically national rather than universal faith. This is indeed how Dugin interprets it: he regularly participates in the various nationalist movements launched by official Russian Orthodoxy. 55 His adherence, since 1999, to the Old Believers allows him to uphold a strictly national faith without having to make the difficult choice of converting to paganism and reject official Orthodoxy. 56
Dugin tries to present the Russian schism of the 17th century as the archetype of Traditionalist
thought, born of the rejection of the seculariza- tion of Orthodoxy, which he dates at around the same time as that given by Gue? non for the end of Tradition in the West (after the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648). So "Eurasianism will only be entirely logical if it is based on a return to the Old Belief, the true ancient and authentic Russian faith, the true Orthodoxy. "57 According to Dugin, the schismatic church is simultaneous- ly conservative and revolutionary, espousing a cult of the earth (like paganism), free of an insti- tutionalized conception of faith, and driven by a fundamentally apocalyptic vision of the fate of humanity. This view is ideologically convenient since it permits Dugin to avoid making a choice between a national paganism and a universal faith. Thus, Orthodoxy, and in particular the Old Believers, can incorporate Neo-paganism's nationalist force, which anchors it in the Russian soil and separates it from the two other Christian confessions.
Dugin fully agrees with the Traditionalist criticism of spiritualism. Gue? non already con- sidered spiritualism to be a "counter-initiation," a reconstruction of pseudo-traditions actually born of modernity, which must be condemned for wanting to usurp the real Tradition. For Dugin too, theosophism, cosmism and the New Age religions are a spiritualist version of post-industrial modernity and a veiled cult of technology. 58 He condemns their populism and lack of coherent spiritual conceptions, whereas he sees Traditionalism as intended for a restrict- ed elite, which is alone able to understand its requirements. 59
Dugin views religion as being at the founda- tion of societies as well as modes of analyzing societies. This implies a reinterpretation of mod- ern Western intellectual life, and especially of its scientific attitudes. Following the Traditionalist precept that rationality is a mental construct, and progress a notion that bears no relation to reali- ty, Dugin argues that the positivist foundation of contemporary science must be questioned in its very principle. 60 Since the Renaissance, the sep- aration between sacred and profane, like that between art and science, has opened the way to a distorted vision of the human ability to under- stand the universe. Dugin therefore calls for a rehabilitation of esoteric knowledge as part of scientific research, and appreciates Romantic Naturphilosophie because of its intention to recre-
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 11
ateaholisticknowledgeoftheworld. Likewise, he believes in the imminent end of positivist sci- ence, and in the rebirth of synthetic sciences that would be full of meaning and reveal man's place in the world.
Dugin formulates this idea by trying to theo- rize so-called "sacred sciences. " According to him, their sacredness expresses itself not in a spe- cific methodology, but rather in the functions and goals attributed to the discipline. Like the modern sciences, thus, these "sacred sciences" have a specific object of research, but they do not lose their ties with ontological and gnoseo- logical knowledge. 61 One of the fields capable of fusing objective data and philosophical back- ground is geopolitics. Dugin systematically pres- ents it not as a simple scientific discipline, but as a Weltanschauung, a meta-science which encom- passes all the other sciences, thereby endowing them with meaning. According to him, "geopolitics is a vision of the world. It is there- fore better to compare it not to sciences, but to systems of sciences. It is on the same level as marxism, liberalism, etc. , i. e. systems of inter- pretation of society and history. "62
Dugin does not limit himself to a spiritual or intellectual understanding of Traditionalism. He asserts that it is in itself an "an ideology or meta- ideology that is in many ways totalitarian and requires that those that adopt it accept its strin- gent requirements. "63 Among these requirements, political commitment seems fundamental to Dugin. According to him, Traditionalism is the metaphysical root of numerous political ideolo- gies, in particular those known as the theories of the Third Way. He thus outlines three types of doctrines that are simultaneously philosophical, religious and political, and between them govern the entire history of the world. The first, which he calls the polar-paradisiacal one, expressed itself on the religious level as esotericism or Gnosticism, on the historical level as the medieval civilization of the Ghibellines, then German National Socialism, and on the political level as eschatological totalitarianism. The second ideology, called the "creation-creator" one, is religiously exoteric, its historical incarnation is Catholicism or classical Sunnism. On the politi- cal level it blends theocracy, clericalism and con- servatism. The third ideology, defined as "mysti- cal materialism," is a form of absolutist pantheism embodied in the militant atheism of the liberal
West. 64Duginthusformalizestwo"rights,"arev- olutionary and a conservative one (the third ide- ology represents the "left"), and displays a dis- tinct preference for the former of the visions of the world.
Dugin also proposes another Traditionalist terminology with which to define the political spectrum, which he sees as always being divided into three groups. The right is "History as Decadence, the necessity of instantaneous Restoration, the primacy of eschatology. " The center is "History as Constancy, the necessity to preserve the balance between the Spiritual and the Material. " The left is "History as Progress, the necessity to contribute to its advancement and acceleration in every possible way. "65 In this second account, conservatism seems to be classi- fied as being in the center, thereby reserving the right exclusively for the revolutionary move- ment of which Dugin considers himself a repre- sentative. This reveals the ambiguous political place he attributes to Traditionalism: "from the point of view of Integral Traditionalism, the only adequate position for implementing the principles of the Sacred Tradition to contempo- rary political reality is, in a normal case, that of the which is often called 'extreme right' [. . . ].
But social history advances in a sense which is strictly opposed to this ideal, from theocracy to secularism, from monarchism to egalitarianism, and from spiritual and empire-building disci- pline to an apology of comfort and individual well-being. [. . . ] This is why the 'extreme right' on the political level often proves to be too "left" for the authentic Traditionalist [. . . ] Some Traditionalists may pass from 'extreme right' positions to the 'extreme left,' revolutionary or even socialist or communist wing, while remaining fully consistent and logical in their actions. "66 This idea of the interchangeability of left and right is reminiscent of certain ideas of the Western New Right.
THE RUSSIAN EXPONENT
OF THE NEW RIGHT?
Dugin has often been compared to Alain de Benoist (b. 1943), the principal theoretician of the French movement called "New Right. " This school of thought emerged in the second half of the 1970s, going back to the GRECE (Groupe d'E? tudes et de Recherche sur la Civilisation Europe? enne) and the magazine Nouvelle E? cole. 67
12 KENNAN INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER #294
The two men met during Dugin's stay in Paris at the end of the 1980s, and they remained close collaborators for a few years. In 1992, for exam- ple, the patriotic newspaper Den' published the transcript of a round table discussion with Dugin, Aleksandr Prokhanov, Sergei Baburin and Alain de Benoist. 68 When Dugin launched his own journal the same year, he called it Elementy and presented it as the Russian version of E? le? ments, the magazine of the European New Right. This publication made the split between Dugin and the more classical nationalists of Den' (future Zavtra) official, but did not prevent dis- agreements with de Benoist. Thus, in 1993, de Benoist strove to clear himself of associations with Dugin after a virulent French and German press campaign against the "red-and-brown threat" in Russia. In an interview, he acknowl- edged that he had become aware of a number of ideological divergences with Dugin, concerning politics--e. g. on the concept of Eurasia and Russian imperialistic tendencies69--but also the- ory. Indeed, de Benoist makes only partial use of Traditionalism, whereas Dugin draws on the whole body of that doctrine. Conversely, de Benoist is strongly attracted to Heidegger's phi- losophy, while Dugin does not find it congenial.
Nevertheless, the careers of both men have many features in common. For example, it is impossible to classify either using pre-defined ideological patterns, or to pin down their polit- ical sympathies precisely in the classical right- left spectrum. Both reject populism and, in spite a few fruitless attempts, neither of them has been able to find a political party capable of reflecting their complex thought. Since the early 1990s, de Benoist has never hidden his contempt for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front,70 while Dugin condemns the famous fig- ures of Russian nationalism, such as Eduard Limonov, Gennady Ziuganov, or Vladimir Zhirinovskii, despite having more or less direct- ly inspired them. Like the French thinker, he subjects the entire right-wing spectrum in his country to fierce criticism, denies the relevance of the distinction between right and left, and cannot accept the electoral populism of those groups, in particular their most xenophobic statements. In the diversity of his sources of inspiration and in his striving to to find an alter- native way of thinking, Dugin seems as alienat- ed from traditional Russian nationalism as de
Benoist is from the classic French nationalism of Charles Maurras or Maurice Barre`s.
Both Dugin and de Benoist have therefore regularly had to explain their stance, and have been considered as "traitors" by other factions of the radical right. Dugin, for example, provided a lengthy explanation of his dismissal of ethno- nationalism. According to him, the Russian nationalist milieu is divided into two groups: on the one hand are the Pan-Slavists and monar- chists, who have an ethnocentric and politically outdated vision of Russia; on the other hand are the Eurasianists, Communists and pro-statists, who give priority to great state power over eth- nic feeling, and who are above all focused on the future. 71 Indeed, like de Benoist, Dugin attempts to "dissociate the question of identity affirmation from the question of nationalism":72 he extols non-xenophobic nationalism, criticizes Pan- Slavist sentimentalism such as it manifested itself in Russia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and rejects the popular anti-Caucasian phobia instrumentalized by politicians such as Ziuganov, or, even more strongly, Zhirinovskii.
Dugin thus calls for a rational, dispassionate nationalism, one that would acknowledge its borrowings from alternative projects such as religious fundamentalism, Third Worldism or left-wing environmentalism. Since the 1980s, Dugin and de Benoist have been the main pro- ponents, in their respective countries, of a doc- trinal revitalization of right-wing thought. Both also presuppose that the conquest of political power requires first gaining cultural power. For more than a decade, de Benoist's aim has been to disseminate his doctrines in French intellec- tual circles, in particular through the journal Krisis, which offers a space for critical discussion between the foremost right-wing and left-wing thinkers. This preference for culture also explains Dugin's choice of public strategy over the past few years.
In spite of their break, Dugin continues to make regular references to de Benoist, and shares his hope for a continental destiny for Europe, built along overtly anti-Atlanticist lines. He borrows many conceptions from the Jeune Europe movement, as well as from the Belgian Jean Thiriart (1922-92), who had striven for a Euro-Soviet empire to be brought about by a movement he called "national communitarian". What is common to all these trends is a striving
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 13
? for what they call organic democracy, which would place the state at the service of the national community. This kind of democracy would express itself in political unanimity as well as in a return to a "natural hierarchy" of social castes, and in a (professional, regional or confes- sional) corporatism that would leave no room for the individual outside the collectivity. Thus, Dugin distinguishes himself from other figures in the Russian nationalist movements precisely through his militant Europeanism, his exaltation of the Western Middle Ages, and his admiration for Germany. All these ideological features con- trast strongly with the ethnocentrism of his competitors and a Soviet tradition of equating Germany with "fascism". This is why Dugin has often been criticized, in particular by the Communists, for whom the Russian "anti-fas- cist" tradition rules out the recognition of any German, and more generally Western, cultural influence on Russian nationalism.
Even more than de Benoist, Dugin has an ambiguous position on the racial question. GRECE has largely abandoned the theme of "biological realism," which was very present in Jeune Europe and other radical nationalist fac- tions, and has preferred to insist on a cultural and non-racial differentialism since the 1960s. De Benoist was the main driving force behind this evolution, and, since the end of the 1960s, he has condemned all racial ideas, which he presents as an application of the Judeo-Christian presuppositions he criticizes. Nevertheless, racial arguments remain important in other Western radical right-wing circles. On this point, Dugin does not go as far as de Benoist: he remains more influenced by racialist currents as well as by those Traditionalists who, like Evola and unlike Gue? non, were also sensitive to racial topics. Thus, Dugin condemns racialism in its Nazi ver- sion for having led to the Holocaust, but also for having crystallized around a German-centered vision of the world instead of a European one. Dugin supports Evola's criticism of the racial and anti-Semitic determinism of Third Reich Germany, but shares his vision of race as the "soul" of peoples. 78
He systematically constructs an opposition between race and geopolitics, between national- ism and loyalty to the state, and systematically takes a stand in favor of the latter. Nevertheless, he regularly uses the term "race" to clarify what
he calls "civilizational" differences. For instance, Eurasia to him is a racial synthesis between Whites (the Indo-European Slavs) and Yellows (the Finno-Turkic peoples): according to the Evolian principle of "spiritual racism," each of these races is endowed with innate qualities rev- elatory of certain philosophical principles79 which Dugin, borrowing from the Slavophile A. S. Khomiakov80 (1804-60), calls the Finnish and the Frisian principles: the former, that of the "Whites," is associated with authoritarian- ism, hierarchy, order, exotericism; to the latter, that of the "Yellows," correspond equality, liber- ty, and esotericism. The hybrid nature of Eurasia, which is simultaneously white and yel- low, gives it a global role to play: Russia will start its Nordic renewal, and "wherever there is a sin- gle drop of Aryan (Slavic, Turkic, Caucasian, European) blood, there is a chance for racial awakening, for the rebirth of the primordial Aryan conscience. "81
Dugin's texts abound in references to Aryanism and Neo-paganism, a classic corollary of the racial ideology and of the idea of the original superiority of the Whites. Here again, his inspiration comes from the New Right, which since the 1950s has tried to transcend tra- ditional nationalism by refocusing on the European idea, and from the doctrines of Europe-Action. These proponents of the idea of an ethnic and cultural unity of European peoples no longer wish to express their identity in an insular or chauvinist manner, remembering the obstacles that divided the European nationalists during the Second World War. Thus Dugin accepts the theory of a "defense of the West," if this term is understood in its ancient racial and Aryan sense, not in terms of contemporary Western culture. In his works, he regularly refers to Guido von List (1848-1919) and Jo? rg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954), the famous thinkers of Germanic Aryanism, and presents himself as one of the founders of Ariosophy, or the science of Aryan wisdom.
There are even more frequent references to Hermann Wirth (1885-1981), one of Dugin's favorite authors, and to his occultist theories on the Arctic homeland of the original Aryan peo- ples. "Thousands of years ago, our land wel- comed the descendants of the Arctic, the founders of the Hindu and Iranian civilizations. We (especially as Orthodox Christians) are the
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most direct heirs of the Arctic, of its ancient tra- ditions. "82 Gue? non would have affirmed that the Hyperborean civilization was not in Scandinavia but more to the East, a theory that Dugin has discussed at length, in particular in The Mysteries of Eurasia (1991). In this book, he presents Siberia and its enormous Nordic continental mass as the original cradle of the Aryans, as well as the magical center of the world, following the idea that "the continents have a symbolic significance. "83 In The Hyperborean Theory (1993) and The Philosophy of Traditionalism (2002), he also professes his belief in a runic writing, a kind of Aryan Grail written in a universal proto-lan- guage, supposedly discovered and published by Hermann Wirth in 1933 under the name of Chronicle of Ura-Linda. 84
Dugin's occultist leanings are also apparent in his striving to create a metaphysics of the cardi- nal points, which he perceives as absolutes that are sources of identity. The North and the East are at the heart of his esoteric concerns: the North confirms Russia's Nordic identity, a fun- damental element of the discourse of racial identity inspired by Nazism. The East is the expression of Russia-Eurasia's inner Oriental nature. "The Drang nach Osten und Norden of Russia is the natural geopolitical process of Russian history. "85 Russia's global role then appears distinctly, since only Russia combines the symbolic distinctions of being racially Northern, Eastern by its cultural and religious choices, and economically Southern, an ally of a Third World resisting Westernization. In a blend of the Nazi and Eurasianist traditions, Dugin sees Siberia as destined to play a major role in the new Russian identity. He thus elab- orates a cosmogony of the world in order to make Siberia, the last "empire of paradise"86 after Thule, the instrument of his geopolitical desire for a domination of the world, justified by Russia's "cosmic destiny. "87
Dugin advances various occultist lines of rea- soning in favor of this Hyperborean theory, draw- ing on the mystique of the alphabets, sounds, numbers, and geometric symbols, references to the Kabbala, alchemy, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, the law of astrological correspondences, parallels with Iranian and Indian culture, etc. Dugin defines this set of theories as sacred geography, that is to say, "the unknown science of the secrets of world history, of the enigmas of ancient civi-
lization and continents, and of the origin of races, religions and old mythologies. "88 All these ele- ments of occultist culture are not specific to the New Right, they have their roots in the esoteric ideas of the founding fathers of Traditionalism, and have been explored by mystical currents of the 1920s and 1930s close to fascism.
FASCISM, CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL BOLSHEVISM
The connections between Dugin's ideas and fas- cism have been a subject of much debate. 89 However, the terms of the debate stand in need of definition. Fascism is a historically circum- scribed phenomenon that was politically and intellectually liquidated with the end of the Second World War, though it left some traces with small Neo-Fascist groups which reap- peared, above all in Europe and in Latin America, in the second half of the 20th century. Fascism can also be chronologically and ideolog- ically divided into Fascist movements and Fascist regimes (in Italy and Germany). Only the first interest us here. To classify a thought as "Fascist" does not, then, mean to predict that it will take power and endanger human lives, nor to catego- rize it in a discriminatory manner that would deny it the right to be analyzed. This terminol- ogy merely points to an adherence to a specific intellectual tradition. Intellectual fascism shares with the other currents of the "extreme right" a Romantic heroism (a cult of the leader, the army, and physical effort, and the indoctrination of the young), but distinguishes itself from them by its revolutionary and pro-socialist aspects, as well as by its attraction to futurism and esoteri- cism. Dugin's ideas share many features of this original fascism, as he is expecting a cultural rev- olution aiming to create a "New Man". It can- not, however, be equated with fascism if that is understood to designate the contemporary racist extreme right, a designation that is moreover historically and conceptually incorrect.
On economics, Dugin unapologetically stands "on the left," even if this Western (or even "all-too-French") terminology is not necessari- ly applicable to the Russian political spectrum. For example, Dugin repeatedly asserts that he has borrowed from certain socialist theories, in particular on economics, since he is in favor of giving the state a crucial role in production structures. Economics was not at all addressed in
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 15
his first works, but it seems to have taken on an increasing importance since 2001. Dugin even hopes to establish the "theoretical sources of a new socialism,"90 based largely on a paternalistic version of Keynesian economics. He has also appropriated some Marxian ideas: for him, the opposition between labor and capital, Continentalism and Atlanticism, and East and West, are parallel. 91 These left-wing conceptions played a role in Dugin's rapprochement with the socialist-leaning economist Sergei Glaz'ev and their brief alliance in 2003 within the Rodina bloc, which presented itself as a left-wing alter- native to the Communist Party.
Dugin never plays the communist card. He has only negative things to say about Marxism- Leninism such as it existed in the USSR, and has, for several years, been a condescending crit- ic of the Communist Party. He appreciates Ziuganov's borrowings from his geopolitical the- ories, but condemns his electoral exploitation of Soviet nostalgia, and most of all regrets his ide- ological inconsistency. According to Dugin, the CPRF no longer has a claim to the heritage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and cannot even present itself as a left-wing party, since it advances a series of arguments that Dugin classifies as right-wing, such as social conservatism, racism and anti-Semitism, monar- chism, calls for tax cuts, etc. Dugin therefore believes that the Communist Party can be defined as an unacknowledged Eurasianist movement, whose function is to express social discontent, but not to take power. 92
This combination of economic socialism and conservatism regarding values is typical of cur- rents espousing the so-called "third way". Dugin acknowledges his fundamental attraction to rev- olutionary ideas: he has never been a partisan of any return to the past, which explains his gradual break with so many other nationalist figures. He does not play the card of czarist or Soviet nostal- gia and sees himself as resolutely turned toward the future. For example, he is a militant propo- nent of the introduction of modern technologies in Russia, cultivating a strong presence of his own on the Internet and calling for a "modern- ization without Westernization. " He is thus fully in accordance with the doctrines of so-called National Bolshevism, whose theoreticians he admires, whether they were Russian exiles, members of the Soviet party apparatus, German
Communists, or left-wing Nazis. During his dis- sident years, Dugin seems to have opposed this strand of thought, which he did not identify as "Traditionalist,"93 but in the 1990s, he changed his mind and attempted a synthesis between his Gue? nonian philosophical conceptions and the political ideas of the National Bolsheviks. Like many dissidents, Dugin only took a positive view of the Soviet experience after two events: a trip to the West in 1989, and the disappearance of the regime in 1991.
Dugin then developed the distinction pro- posed by Mikhail Agursky, between "National Bolshevism," a messianic ideology that has a national basis but a universal vocation, and "national communism," the Soviet newspeak term that designated the separatism of the Russian Empire's ethnic margins. 94 Basing himself on Karl Popper,95 Dugin defines National Bolshevism as a "meta-ideology common to all the enemies of open society. "96 Indeed, what is most important for him is that right-wing and left-wing totalitarian ideologies are united in their refusal to accord a central role to the individual and to place it above the collectivity, be it social or national. The phenomenon of National Bolshevism, then, is not a specific moment of history, but a philosophical conception of the world which has lost none of its relevance, brack- eting together all non-conformist thinkers seek- ing an alternative to liberalism and communism.
Dugin's view of National Bolshevism rests largely on mystical foundations, which once more reminds one of the original Fascists. He stresses the parallels between esotericism and political commitment, be it Fascist, Nazi, or Bolshevik: National Bolshevism is thus to him merely a politicized version of Traditionalism, the modernized expression of the messianic hopes that have existed in Russia since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. According to Dugin, it heralds "the Last Revolution, worked by an acephalous, headless bearer of cross, sickle and hammer, crowned by the eternal swastika of the sun. "97 According to Dugin, the most complete incarnation of the Third Way was German National-Socialism, much more so than Mussolini's Italy or the inter-war Russian exiles. He then points out parallels between "Third Rome, the Third Reich, the Third Inter- national,"98 and attempts to prove their common eschatological basis. For Dugin, the original triad
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of Father, Son and Holy Spirit reveal to the ini- tiated that the Third Reich, just like Third Rome, will be the kingdom of the Holy Spirit. Thus, examining the fear that the term "fas- cism" still causes today, even though the phe- nomenon no longer exists as such, Dugin explains: "By fascism we obviously do not mean a concrete political phenomenon, but our deep- seated secret fear that brings the nationalist, the liberal, the communist and the democrat closer together. This fear does not have a political or ideological nature, it expresses a more general, more deep-seated feeling [. . . ] [the fear of] a magical fascism. "94
Dugin therefore advances a positive reading of fascism, and does not denounce Nazism, even though he condemns its racism. He is content with regretting that Hitler attacked the USSR and made mistakes in his application of the theo- ries of conservative revolution, which were bet- ter preserved by left-wing Nazis who called for an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union. He especially appreciates the Waffen-SS95 and, even more, the cultural organization Ahnenerbe. In his publications of the 1990s, par- ticularly in periodicals and on his web sites, Dugin's ideological arsenal borrows from anoth- er typical component of the original fascism: the ideologization of sex. According to him, men and women respond to different philosophical principles (active and passive), and men's superi- ority is proven etymologically since, in numerous languages, a single term designates both male persons and human beings in general. 96 Thus, the liberalization of sex, pornography, feminism, homosexuality, and the fashion for Freudianism and psychoanalysis are part of the process of forced Westernization of the world. This "era of gynecocracy"97 heralds the "castration" of men and, along with it, the disappearance of tradi- tional society. Dugin calls for a revindication of eroticism in a phallo-centric and patriarchal way, and hopes to develop a "patriotic conscience" of the sexual act because "empire represents the cul- minating point of eroticism. "98
Like the original Fascists, Dugin admires the Romantic taste for death and combat, shares a contempt for contemporary society, which he believes to be bourgeois and decadent, and aspires to form young, purified generations: "the Eurasian is a strong, healthy, and beautiful person, who has passionarity and passion [. . . ]
Our ideal is to make good physical and moral health, strength, valor, fidelity and pride honor- able goals. "99 The journals Elementy and Milyi Angel, as well as the Internet sites linked to Dugin, are therefore filled with a strong military symbolism, and sometimes exhibit muscular, weapon-laden and khaki-clad bodies. The back cover of one of his latest books, The Philosophy of War (2004), is particularly explicit: "The value of peoples, cultures and societies is proved in war and through it. The beautiful is what has as its foundation the accomplishment of self-affir- mation. War renews Man, and the price to pay for this gigantic personal effort confirms his adherence to the community. War has always been a collective business, having as its goal the conservation of the people and the State, the increase of their power, of their space, and of their life regions. Herein lies the social and national sense of war. "100
A VEILED ANTI-SEMITISM
His exaltation of this warlike spirit, combined with numerous references to Fascist ideas, prompts questions on the place of the "Jewish question" in Dugin's thought. As with the other Eurasianist thinkers, this question is particularly complex because they all combine philo-Semitic and anti-Semitic arguments. Dugin proposes his own version of that conjunction in the form of a paradoxical Judaeophobic philo-Zionism.
In The Conservative Revolution (1994), Dugin recognizes that the state of Israel has realized a kind of Traditionalism: "the only state that has partly succeeded in putting into practice certain aspects of the conservative revolution is the state of Israel. "101 This prompted him to establish close links with some Israeli ultra-nationalist currents. Thus, since 1998, Dugin has sought to develop contacts with that part of the Israeli right which upholds the belief that all Jews must live in Israel. This militant Zionism agrees with him because it is in accordance with the principle of ethno-plu- ralism: all peoples should live in peace, but "at home. " The Evraziia movement is linked with two radical Zionist groups, Vladimir Boukharsky's MAOF Analytical Group and Be'ad Artzeinu, controlled by Rabbi Avram Shmulevich. These two groups, situated to the right of the right-wing Israeli party Likhud, are led by two former Soviet citizens of Jewish ori- gin who emigrated to Israel and are now com-
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: A RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE EUROPEAN RADICAL RIGHT? 17
mitted to politicizing the Israeli Russians. Both of them participated in the founding convention of Evraziia and occupy important positions in the party hierarchy. 102 The web site of the International Eurasianist Movement also men- tions a link with Avigdor Eskin, a former Soviet Jew who took refuge in Israel and is now fighting the "liberal oligarchy" which he says is running the country. 103 Some radical currents of Judaism (most often Zionist, but also Hasidic and mysti- cal)arealsorepresentedinEvraziiabyRabbisstill living in Russia, for example Adol'f Shaevich. They are all united by the idea that Jewish tradi- tion, like Orthodoxy and Islam, is a target of unceasing attacks by secularization, a kind of reli- gious globalization: only the unification of the traditionalists of all religions will allow for the development of strategies of resistance. 104
Dugin's objective of an alliance with Israel derives from the idea of a distinction between "good" and "bad" Judaism, which had already been developed by the first Eurasianists, in par- ticular in Iakov Bromberg's texts on the Jewish question. Dugin borrows from Bromberg the distinction between a Eurasian and an Atlanticist Jewishness. For Bromberg, the goal was to involve the Jews of the Russian Empire in the construction of Eurasia, and to invite them to cultivate their specificities without trying to assimilate to the Russians. However, he belittled the West European Jews whom he saw as bear- ers of political and economic modernity, of cap- italism and communism, and as being excessive- ly assimilated to the Romano-Germanic world. In Dugin's texts, the distinction is different: the "good" Jews are the citizens of Israel, as well as those who choose to leave for Israel, because this act signals their awareness of their irreducible Jewish specificity. The "bad" Jews are those who continue to live in the diaspora and try to be assimilated by the surrounding cultures, be it in the Atlanticist or the post-Soviet world. Thus, unlike the original Eurasianists, Dugin does not attempt to attract the East European Jews, whom he presents as historical enemies of Russian nationalism.
Dugin thus demonstrates a complex philo- Zionism combined with anti-Semitic state- ments, another combination typical of a part of the Western New Right. While he regularly criticizes the vulgar anti-Semitism espoused by most currents of Russian nationalism, he does
expound a more sophisticated and euphemized version of anti-Semitism, centered on more sub- tle religious and philosophical arguments. For example, he disagrees with Rene? Gue? non, who considered the Kabbala to be an authentic eso- tericism: for Dugin, the sense of the universal-- an indispensable element of any real Traditionalism--is absent from the Kabbala, which, like the Talmud, is founded on the Jewish ethnic consciousness. 105 He also argues that Traditionalism views history as cyclical, whereas Judaism, because of its pessimism, regards it as linear. 106 For Dugin, the idea of God's incarnation as a man fundamentally changed the metaphysical cosmogony of Christianity. Thus, "from the point of view of Orthodox esotericism, the counter-initiation is, without doubt, Judaism. "107 Dugin then consid- ers the term "Judeo-Christianity" to be an incorrect formula, in particular for Orthodoxy, which he argues is even more distant from Judaism than Catholicism is. 108
This argument illustrates Dugin's version of anti-Semitism. He attempts to efface the com- mon historical roots that link Judaism to the two other monotheistic religions, and accuses the Jewish world of having created a biological con- ception of itself. This inversion, a classical feature of anti-Semitism, is found in many of his texts, where he rejects, but also partly admires, the Jews' alleged capacity for conceiving of them- selves as a race. Thus, according to Dugin, Israel is the archetypal example of a state founded on an ethnic or racial principle, born of the Holocaust, of course, but also having contributed to the cre- ation of this drama to which the Jews fell victim. Dugin argues that Zionism and Nazism are an ideological couple, in which it is difficult to know which caused the other: their polarity is a sign of their intimate correlation. 109
Dugin also repeatedly asserts that the Jews consider themselves to be a chosen people, which squarely opposes them to Russian Messianism, another ideology of national excep- tionalism. Another consistent opposition between Judaism and Russianness concerns the relation to territory. According to Dugin, life in the diaspora has desacralized in the Jewish mind the territories on which the Jews have lived for two millenia, and only the long inaccessible land of Israel has kept its sacred character. Their lack of emotion toward nature and their theological
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rejection of redemption by the earth--embod- ied by Jesus in Christianity--reveals their incompatibility with the Eurasian idea, for which territory is laden with meaning, as well as with Russian identity, marked by the cult of the nurturing soil. The famous Jewish nomadism found its most sophisticated expression in the maritime character of the thallassocracies. 110 This is why only the traditionalist Jews returning to live in Israel can be in agreement with the Eurasianist idea, all others being (possibly unconscious) bearers of an Atlanticist identity marked by affective indifference toward soil.
In his interpretation of Jewishness, Dugin also employs the esoteric elements that he devel- ops in his theory of peoples. According to him, the world is divided into two types of cultures: Finnish (Judaism and Sunnism) and Aryan (Christianity, Aryan paganism, Shiism). The par- allel is also sexual: Dugin argues that masochism is Jewish, while sadism is Aryan. 111 The funda- mental difference between them resides in their vision of the universe: for the Jews, the cosmos is God's place of exile, whereas in Christianity, it is the place willed by God. Dugin's anti- Semitism appears in full here: the identity of the Jews, the 'Finnish' culture par excellence, is not just different from that of the Aryans, it is unas- similable to it. This irreducibility foreshadows, according to him, the coming metaphysical war between the Aryan and Semitic worlds: "The world of 'Judaica' is a world hostile to us. But the sense of Aryan justice and the gravity of our geopolitical situation require us to comprehend its laws, its rules, its interests. The Indo- European elite is facing a titanic mission today: to understand those who are different from us, not only culturally, nationally, and politically, but also metaphysically.