Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Meet Aleksandr Dugin, the Intellectual Godfather of Russia's New Right


Crooked Timber offers a profile of Aleksandr Dugin, Russia's influential New Right / Eurasianist ideologue.

His geopolitical playbook makes for some scary bedtime reading.

And it appears that President Putin is a fan, in that he has proven to be a careful student of Dugin's playbook, judging by his actions in Ukraine and elsewhere; here is the wikipedia summary of Dugin's geopolitical strategy for Russia:
Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.
Here is a recent Wilson Center Occasional Paper on Mr. Dugin. And here is a Vice.com profile from 2014.

One thing I cannot figure out is why he uses Michael Moorcock's Sign of Chaos as a symbol of his movement:


1 comment:

Delta said...

Wow. Including that chaos symbol, it's a pretty good example of Poe's Law: "Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing" (or maybe the converse).