The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

The escalation of tension in Russian-Ukrainian relations after the conflict in the Sea of Azov demands analysis.

The formal side of the conflict is obvious: Poroshenko is not capable of winning the upcoming elections, so he arranged a provocation to impose state of emergency and disrupt them. That`s how Russian experts have commented on the situation, with a smile. This analysis is correct to a certain degree, but the decision is not spontaneous: Poroshenko has a plan, and it is more serious than some momentary trick.

If the current escalation gradually calms down, then martial law will eventually be repealed, and elections will be held. Poroshenko will look like an idiot because the “Russian threat” will not be enough to improve his popularity. He must have another plan in mind. The only thing that would make Poroshenko's action logical, is a deeper orientation toward war with Russia. If such a war does not occur, Poroshenko will only have worsened his situation. Poroshenko needs more than escalation, he needs war.

The task of describing Turanian civilization in the recent volume of Noomakhia was inseparable from the fact that Turan is gone. The book was therefore a reconstruction of a past society, an archaeological volume, in which Turanian civilization had to be restored bit by bit on the basis of archaeological research, linguistic analysis, what we know about ethnology and ethnography, and essentially artificial methods.

A few Turanian peoples can be named. For example, the Ossetians are the last heirs of the Sarmatians, there are the various Pashtun tribes, and the direct descendants of the Indo-European nomads in the Great Steppe. There are also descendants in Nuristan, the Kalash in Pakistan and Afghanistan, enclaves of direct Turanian cultures and Indo-Europeans nomadic tribes. But, of course, this is largely a conditional reconstruction.

This is also where some of his most useful observations are found—his discussion of potlatch, for example, the ethnic destruction of property to demonstrate power, can be very useful in understanding the tendency of certain demographics to riot as a means of demonstrating or celebrating power. Civilized societies, of course, consider such riots as counter-productive because when a fully realised narod riots, it is usually an expression of frustrated powerlessness, not a demonstration of social power. Dugin enables us to draw qualitative distinctions having nothing to do with environment or circumstance between the bread riots preceding the French Revolution and the Ferguson and Baltimore riots following the death of Black criminals in the United States or the more recent riots in places like Johannesburg. Another interesting observation is his understanding of slavery as a function that only higher civilization, the narod, is truly capable, since slavery creates irreconcilable contradictions within the structure of the ethnos. The primitive ethnos has no category for a slave, since the balance of the ethnos requires the “other” to be an absolute evil to be destroyed, while a slave is allowed to exist and remain “other” to the ethnos (he observes that the Egyptians referred to slaves as “living dead” for this reason – those who by all right should have been deprived of life but instead were kept alive to become tools for ethnic labour). The necessary connexion of slavery with complex societies and higher thought is rich fodder for Reactionary thought in particular.

Cold war was the confrontation between two ideological camps. Now there is no more clear distinction in the field of ideology, rather between two versions of the same liberal-democracy – advanced in the case of USA and EU and delayed in the case of Russia. So we would presume that should reduce considerably the tension. But it is not the case. So we have to search the reason of growing tensions in other field than ideology. The most likely the reasons of the “new cold war” are this time geopolitical. But it is legitimate to ask the question: That it was not in reality an ideological cold war between capitalism and socialism the moment of much more broader historically context the moment of Great War of Continents.

This GWoC is the very basis of geopolitical understanding of history – Sea Power against Land Power, Eurasia against Atlantica. If we can agree on that everything becomes logical and clear. There is the everlasting battle between two types of civilizations – dynamic (progressive, merchant)  Sea civilization and static (conservative, heroic) Land civilization: Carthage against Rome, Athens against Sparta.

The US, UK, and France’s first missile airstrikes were rather improvisational and symbolic in nature.

Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah forces were not attacked. Assad did not suffer strategically. The Syrian opposition, which expected much more, did not gain any serious advantages. Mass demonstrations in support of Assad are being held in Damascus.

Russian commentators have pointed out that France itself did not launch any missiles - all those launched were by British and American military forces.

Judging by the fact that all the missiles were launched at targets at a careful distance from the location of Russian soldiers, it seems that Mattis’ line won out in the US, as opposed to that of Bolton, who has insisted on directly attacking Iranians and Russians.

Man, as the cosmic mediator, is situated on the border between both worlds, between Tradition (above) and modernity (below). He is always straddling this border, eternally, in both the era of Tradition’s predominance, and in the periods in which modernity temporarily wins. In his eidetic, eternal dimension, man himself is this border, and the movement of his spirit, his thought, his ways and methods of philosophizing, outline the content of that which lies on either side. Through his choice of orientation, spiritual or corporeal, man constitutes the time, the epoch, the age in which he lives.

Thus, residing in the “dark age”, the Kali-Yuga, is neither a fatality, a punishment, nor something arbitrary, but the Night’s testing of the grain of eternity, of the divine center that comprises the essence of man. In other words, no matter how far away the Golden Age might be, a kernel of it remains within man as hope, as opportunity, as a fulcrum, which can always be found in refusing to unconditionally and fatalistically (or unconsciously) accept the conditions of the Iron Age. Time is an illusion. The historial is no more than a sign, a metaphor that can be deciphered in different ways and appealed to freely. We ourselves choose the time in which we live. And if man is born in the modern world and in the West’s zone of influence, this means that he is included in the profound plans of eternity, and this reflects his mission and fate. Modernity is in Tradition, and Tradition is in modernity. But in different sections of the vertical world, their proportions adjust to being polar: in Heaven (Tradition) there is only a drop of hell (the Biblical serpent that first appeared in paradise), and in hell there is a drop of Heaven. But this is enough to stretch a semantic thread of sacred history, or hiérohistoire (in Henry Corbin’s formulation) between these drops.

Moscow is not just a great city, not just a great capital, not just the symbol of a gigantic Empire. Moscow is a basic concept of theology and geopolitics.

Moscow has been called the “Third Rome” not merely as a metaphor or self-indulgent manifestation of purely national pride. Everything goes much, much deeper. Orthodoxy knows the special teaching of the “three Romes.” The first was imperial Rome before Christ, the same state on whose territory the Son of God set foot on earth. This Rome was a universal reality that united enormous spaces and manifold peoples and cultures in civilizational unity.

The Second Rome, the New Rome, was Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire, which had accepted the blessing of holy christening. From that point forward, the Roman Empire acquired a strictly ecclesiastical, deeply Christian meaning. The Orthodox Emperor (Basileus), as head of the Empire, was identified with the mysterious person from the Apostle Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians: the “withholder”, “katechon”, who in the end times is fated to prevent the “coming of the son of perdition.”

The coming of Christ is a central event in world history. Everything that preceded it was a presage. What followed it was the universalization of the Gospel. And, in the Orthodox conception of the world, the center of history in the Christian era was Rome, the New Rome, Constantinople and its ruler, the Orthodox Basileus.

To overcome the Modernity is not easy. Any alternative will be impregnated by the some modern prejudices. We need be afraid of nothing – including regress, authoritarianism and so on. We are ashamed of all such phenomena because we are still Modern. I like communitarianism. It has in itself something premodern as organic community of people living in the personalized relations to the nature and each other. But we shouldn’t exclude the imagination of Empires, hierarchies and most of all sacredness, We need to restore all three traditional types – Priest, Warrior and Peasant. The economy is the field of peasant. So the peasant community and small manufacturers are the base of the material aspect of society. But outside of Modernity the materiality is the last concern. So the real basis of the society should be the Heaven – spiritual life, sacred values. The Earth should be once more conquered by the Heaven. So the Priests and Warriors should regain its essential position. So we need reverse the Modernity that began with quite opposite with the putting the material over spiritual, the Earth over the Heaven.

In this monograph, Dugin provides an overview of the primary foreign and Russian sources and schools that influenced the establishment of ethnosociology as an independent and original scientific discipline. Dugin offers a profoundly philosophical approach to the categories of the “ethnos,” “narod,” “nation” and “society,” providing clear definitions of these concepts, and expounding a broader ethnosociological taxonomy. For the first time in the field, this work brings a consistent approach to a broad spectrum of knowledge, as well as elucidating various methodologies of ethnosociological analysis, bringing everything together into a single, easily applicable system.

This volume is an invaluable manual for those specializing in sociology, philosophy, political science, cultural studies, ethnology, international relations, state, and law, as well as being of interest to those who follow the current developments in the humanities.

This volume is an invaluable manual for those specializing in sociology, philosophy, political science, cultural studies, ethnology, international relations, state, and law, as well as being of interest to those who follow the current developments in the humanities.

The Fourth Political Theory treats the concept “narod” as an independent legal and philosophical category, beyond its interpretations in the context of the three political theories of Modernity. But the “narod” is understood existentially, as Dasein. Heidegger’s formula “Dasein existiert völkisch” is key. The Fourth Political Theory understands the narod, the populus, as Dasein, Volk als Dasein. That makes the phenomenon of populism not indistinct, chaotic, and spontaneous, but deeply grounded, philosophical, and avant-garde. In this case, the Fourth Political Theory can be regarded as a “metaphysics of populism,” explaining its appearance and supplying the blind protest of humanity against the satanic elite that has seized power over it with a strategy, consciousness, thought, a system, and a plan of struggle.

To conclude this preface to the Italian edition, I want to emphasize: the Fourth Political Theory appeals to everyone – to traditionalists, socialists, liberals, conservatives, persons with convictions and persons without convictions. It is an invitation to think, and not the imposition of ready-made judgments or models. Our goal is to awaken in Italian society an interest towards political philosophy, towards ideas and towards an acute – truly Italian – perception of reality.

Peruvian social scientists are reducing their work to the strict academic terrain, this relationated with the fear of social rejection and labor ostracism, which would imply their participation in political projects and social reforms, this situation is generating that, today, political parties are in a lack of doctrine, strategies and coherent programs. The decline of the Peruvian political parties, we endorse, is also determinate by the flight of thinkers and social scientists from them.

Due to this situations, and in order to amend them, investigations are being carried out in Peru, in such areas as political philosophy, metapolitics and geopolitics. For the sake of identifying the real obstacles that interfere with our progress as a nation, and to give with this the necessary tools for the institutionalization of a political project. It is the return of social scientists to the political arena, since today, far from the humanities, the Peruvian political parties are only political companies, prey to corruption, improvisation and clientelism.

If one takes the third position on religion and modern science, life will become difficult (perhaps even unbearable). In this case, we must not only distrust the ideology of the modern (definitely non-Christian, often directly anti-Christian) society, but also the world itself, which, if we think about it, is pushed onto so heavily onto us by the entire structure of upbringing, education, study, and culture that we are convinced that it is reality, nature, existence, truth. Once can debate an ideology (although this is difficult, if it is a totalitarian one like all Modern ideologies: communism, fascism, and the most totalitarian one of all, liberalism!), but to distrust one’s own sensory organs, to see that which ‘isn’t’ behind ‘natural’ phenomena (as was said to us by our parents and teachers), i.e. the cosmological power of angels and demons is a direct road to insanity.

I do not know the answer to this question, as it can neither be easy nor understood. I can only express certain assumptions without being confident in neither their effectivity nor their ability to change anything.

First, we must give ourselves the task of fundamentally researching the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. This demands effort, but it is the foundation of Christian thought. Without Plato, the fundamental theological theses of the Cappadocian school, or even the most fundamental teachings about the Trinity, creation, etc., to say nothing of the Aeropagites, asceticism, or hesychasm would have no foundation at all. The fundamentals of Christian theology were developed by the Platonists. And it is Platonic cosmology (with Christian corrections) that was patched into this philosophy. In the Christian context, this corpus is most clearly represented by the Aeropagites, in the West by Scotus Eriugena.

According to Ultra-modernity, everything that is said now will be claimed wrong within, say, twenty years. Remember, though, that you will be a grandparent yourself. So, are you ready to be thrown in the trash can in your days of old? Or will you simply refuse to grow old, considering aging a disease and trying to stop it? Because these are the days we are living: we will have to work hard for the right of being both right and old.

There is a very simple test that you can make, even if you do not know much about Geopolitics or Political Philosophy, to see on what side you are. It goes like this: if your people/territory/identity accepts most tenets of the Western culture, will the best ways of your grandparents fade or will they blossom?

Unlike Dugin, for Freedland there is only one truth in the world, which cannot be questioned at all. The British journalist completely ignores the so-called autonomy of the political, such as the fact that politics is not based on rationality, but on irrationality. As we learn from the German jurist Carl Schmitt, politics means acting to defend or impose a particular type of collective existence, beyond what is morally right or wrong and what is objectively true or false. Freedland is very surprised by the actual trend towards a «deeper and more bitter partisanship», but this fact only means that what is happening in countries like his own it’s simply the return of politics in contexts from which it was almost gone. Politics divides people into different groups, which are aggregated around a particular “speech”, or a particular “narration”, or, as Dugin teaches us, around a particular “truth”. To Trump’s supporters (like those of any other political leader) doesn’t matter if what their leader says is true or false; they only identify themselves in him and in his political view. So politicians like Trump are neither “engaging in post-truth politics” nor lying, but they are only making politics. Furthermore, Freedland should understand that in  politics there are indeed no  referees, but only players.  In fact, there are referees only when there is someone who commands on all the others and who has the monopoly of the truth.

Christianity is that tradition whose metaphysical dimension has been studied least of all. This is quite a paradox since one would think that such a deep study of Christianity, the religion of the West, would attract all those interested in metaphysics and who, following Guénon, are trying to make sense of the most profound aspects of Tradition. Nevertheless, the disputes surrounding Christianity in Traditionalist circles are, as a rule, limited to fairly secondary, practical issues regarding the virtual initiation of the sacraments, the absence of an idea of cyclical time, etc. In all of this, one can see a tacit consensus among Traditionalists that Christianity is nothing more than a reduced, incomplete tradition whose esotericism has been practically lost, and whose metaphysical content cannot be detached from the dense veil of exoteric scholastic theology and the hazy subjective intuitions of mystics. All attempts to identify any consistency between the basic principles of Christianity and the conceptual categories of other, more metaphysically developed traditions (primarily Hinduism) have yielded rather poor results and have been based on strained interpretations and biased urges to arrive at any cost at conclusions which match Guénon’s own ideas.

Orthodoxy, for its part, despite having preserved ontological and metaphysical wholeness, from a certain time onward could no longer assert its metaphysical content (i.e., actual Christian metaphysics) in clear categories. Shortly after the “Palamite disputes” when Orthodox esotericism experienced its last dazzling rise in history, this line was somewhat marginalized and “frozen”, as priority was given to the exoteric sides of the Church. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Russian theologians and even secular philosophers, intuitively surmising the special metaphysical nature of Orthodoxy, attempted to formulate certain principles for reviving the forgotten dimension of this tradition. However, most of these attempts did not yield serious results since none of them were familiar with the works of Guénon. Hence why only now, in our opinion, is it possible to acquire adequate knowledge of the most important proportions of the structure of fully-fledged metaphysics.