As they course through the years.
>Dugin also read deeply in the Russian canon. The notion that Russia is more than a state or nation—that it is a holy empire with a world-saving duty—goes back at least half a millennium. “All Christian realms will come to an end and will unite into the one single realm of our sovereign, that is, into the Russian realm, according to the prophetic books,” the Russian theologian Filofei predicted in 1510. “Both Romes fell, the third endures.” The idea was brought to its highest polish in the nineteenth century, the apex of tsarist imperialism and, not coincidentally, of Russian letters. That era is the origin of Dugin’s views of the West and Ukraine, and of Putin’s recent thinking. Indeed, it can be seen as the true start of the Ukraine war.< - The Imperialist Philosopher Who Demanded the Ukraine War
I came across an Australian journalist who has added to the understanding of Alexander Dugin's influence upon Putin's war. It's late, so I'll simply post his piece I found on FB and leave it at that.
>To understand the civilisational battle confronting the world today, we need to discuss a little known 1997 book by a Russian neo-fascist and political philosopher named Alexandr Dugin, a man so closely associated with the belief systems and values of Vladimir Putin that he became colloquially known as "Putin's brain".
Dugin has spent his life warning of the evils of liberalism and democracy, and insisted that only Russia could save humanity through the advancement of Christian Russian Orthodox values.The book provides the blueprint for how Russia could fight "the battle for the world rule of Russians". It laid out in detail how Russia needed to use information warfare, economic power, and military force, to establish a new Eurasian Empire.It's been used a textbook in schools, indoctrinating a generation of Russians into a belief that the Russians had a God given right to rule the world from the "third Rome" (Moscow), and that notions like democracy and civil liberties were a uniquely Western invention that were bordering on satanic.It called for Georgia, most of the Baltic States, Finland, and Central Asia to be annexed into this new empire though force, while Belarus and Moldova are expected to voluntarily join after a decades long propaganda onslaught.He was adamant that an independent Ukraine could not exist if Russia was truly going to become a superpower, arguing that "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics".Western Europe, meanwhile, would become a collection of weakened vassal states, subordinate to Russia's will, and argued that to achieve this Russia could help fund and organise a collection of right wing political parties to infiltrate and erode liberal democracy from within. To achieve this, Dugin suggested finding ways to weaken the NATO alliance, culminating in the removal of US military presence in Europe.But perhaps most disturbing is Dugin's vivid advice on how Russia could subdue the greatest impediment to Russian ambitions, the great defender of the liberal values Dugin despised... the USA.He argued that Russia should use special services to "...introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics'."< - Carrick Ryan
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