The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

This is a book-length essay by the Russian philosopher and political theorist Alexander Dugin. Without a doubt, Dugin is one of the most brilliant “out of-the-box” thinkers of our age. Does this mean I’m some kind of full-on Dugin disciple? No. I have my doubts about his contention that philosophical Nominalism (aka William of Ockham) was ultimately the cause of the downfall of Western Civilization.

All who have studied, let the most superficial way, International Relations know that the world order in which we still live humanity is called Westphalian. This expression has become commonplace, but it is still worth recalling – what exactly is the Treaty of Versailles, concluded on October 24, 1648.
On this day, in Münster and Osnabrück, an agreement was concluded between the leading European powers to end the Thirty Years’ War. In European history, the Thirty Years War is seen as the border between the medieval order and the full-fledged onset of modern times. This was the last war to be fought under the banner of religion. Catholic countries fought against Protestant ones. The main question that was being decided: who will win – the Reformation or the Counter-Reformation?

Among the most recent important events in the field of geopolitics that followed the shameful flight of the Americans from Afghanistan, one should especially highlight the revitalization of the Anglo-Saxon alliance in the Pacific Ocean. In a fairly quick time frame, the Biden administration, in order to brighten up the depressing effect of the failure in Afghanistan, announced the creation of two new strategic alliances – AUKUS and QUAD.

Amid ongoing attacks on Nord Stream 2 and the advancement of the green agenda, gas prices in Europe continue to break records. Now the cost of a thousand cubic meters of natural gas is already $ 1500. This means that it has risen in price by 5 times over the past two years. Analysts predict: and this is not the limit – in winter it can reach up to $ 2,000. At the same time, Europe is already requesting coal from Russia.

The wedding in St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg of Grand Duke Georgy Mikhailovich Romanov shook our society. For a long time, I have not seen so much poison and rudeness against the descendant of the glorious family of Russian tsars. The impression is that the rage of the envious proletarian masses has flared up again. To them was added the malice of the liberals who hate everything Russian. That is,  two revolutions – 1917 and 1991 – merged in a common hatred of the Russian monarchy… Quite indicative. But the detached position of the authorities was completely incomprehensible. Such a restrained and cold reaction to the beautiful and sophisticated symbolic event – the return to Russia of a descendant of the Romanov family and the solemn wedding ceremony in the main cathedral of St. Petersburg – causes only bewilderment. This is a direct illustration of the conservative vector of Putin’s policy – the restoration of ties from the times of Russian history, sympathy for the conservative part of the European elite and the aristocracy – and after all, among the guests of the Grand Duke were representatives of almost all the royal houses of Europe, a careful attitude to the aesthetics of the reviving imperial capital .

Globalist philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy reports that in the coming weeks, the French President and his Italian counterpart will announce a “Quirinal Treaty,” which is said to be modeled on the Elysee Treaty, which defines the framework for Franco-German relations. It is not the first year that the pact between Italy and France has been talked about. However, now, according to the liberal philosopher, it is high time to conclude such an agreement .

This article is devoted to the most important philosophical problem – the problem of Nothing. At first glance, nothing is easier than nothing, but in fact, nothing is more complicated. When a person begins to think about being, including about his own being, about his life, he will sooner or later come across the topic of the border. Being is. But in order to truly appreciate it, it is necessary to correlate it with something. This is where Nothing comes in.

You’ve probably noticed that in Russia the campaign against the liberal fifth column is gradually gaining momentum. This is related to the consolidation of the status of foreign agents for a number of media outlets and individual figures. Increasingly, the authorities are resorting to a completely justified classification of a number of liberal and pro-Western groups that are actively acting in order to destabilize society as extremism. What for decades got away with Navalny, Roman Dobrokhotov and other radical anti-state figures are finally beginning to qualify properly. Like a crime. Working for the collapse of your country in the interests of the enemy powers is, of course, a crime. In all senses. And it must be followed by punishment.

September 22 is the Independence Day of the African state of Mali. In Antiquity, since the 13th century, a real African Empire was formed on the territory of this state. Its name comes from the Malinke people, which are part of the Mande group of West African tribes. Previously, this area was dominated by the power of the people of Ghana, but after its decline, the initiative passed to Mali. The founder of the Mali Empire is considered the legendary ruler of Sundyatta Keita, about whom the whole epic “Sundiata” was composed.

Context of Africa’s return to the spotlight is the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. During the unipolar moment that followed the collapse of the USSR, it seemed that only the United States and its junior partners were responsible for all the main events in the world. But at some point, this model stopped working, and after the shameful flight of Americans from Afghanistan after 20 years of senseless and brutal occupation and a costly and outright lost war with the Taliban, the United States with their current globalist leadership and president in dementia looks just pathetic. New players are gaining momentum and are rapidly taking their place in global geopolitics.

One of the branches of the Niger-Congolese family is the Mande people. Their languages ​​differ significantly in fundamental parameters from other Niger-Congolese languages, therefore linguists consider them to be the first to separate from the main trunk, along with the Ijo and Dagon languages. The differences between the Mande and the very structure of the Niger-Congolese family are so great that there are classifications that distinguish the Mande languages ​​into a separate families.

In phenomenology, the Cartesian distinction between subject and matter is considered unnecessary (epoché in Husserl's term), which means that the subject experiencing the object is in fact experiencing the object as part of himself, and vice versa. Heidegger, as Husserl's student, developed this thesis, and introduced the now famous notion of Dasein [Being]. Being, whose existence, or ontology, precedes reality and imposes itself on everything, discovering its surroundings as elements (existentials in Heidegger's words) of itself. This approach revolutionized social science  in 'left wing' [Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze] - as well as 'right wing' cirles [Leo Strauss, Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye].

This is the logic behind the current surge of Russophobia in the CIS countries. There is no doubt that there is friction. They have always existed, and in the era of the collapse of the USSR, they bore a character close to ethnic cleansing against the Russian population and the practice of genocide – on a large territory of the CIS countries. Today the scale is incomparably smaller. And because millions of Russians were forced to flee. And because it is completely unprofitable for the authorities of the CIS countries to draw additional attention to this. Of course, new countries are building their own national states, and language plays a key role in such cases. But even this can be solved gradually and gently. And when necessary, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan do just that.

Francis Fukuyama recently wrote a fairly objective and balanced article about the end of American hegemony. Fukuyama in the early 90s was clearly in a hurry to declare the worldwide victory of liberalism and the end of history. He later corrected his position. In some personal conversations with him, I became convinced that he understands many world processes quite realistically and is able to admit mistakes in his forecasts – a rare feature among narcissistic political scientists who make mistakes every day and that only makes them even more arrogant.

On August 10, 70 AD, a very important event took place for two world religions – Christianity and Judaism. On this day Roman legions of the emperor Titus broke into Jerusalem, which was defended by the Jews-Zealots who had raised against the Roman power. The Romans subjected the inhabitants to indescribable brutality repression, killing hundreds of thousands of people. They burned the city itself to the ground, and they destroyed the Second Temple, built by Zerubbabel after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, to the ground. The fall of the city was preceded by a terrible famine, which also claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and was accompanied by monstrous events, including cannibalism, which is colorfully described by the Jewish historian Josephus.

The problem with the Russian elections is that the idea of ​​representative democracy and especially party representative democracy is completely alien to Russian political culture and tradition. At the same time, Zemskaya democracy, the election of village elders, and before the schism and parish priests, has a long history in Russia. At the most critical moments – as, for example, at the end of the Time of Troubles – the people even chose a king, a new dynasty. And before that, it was the popular decision to form a militia – especially the second, which saved the country. But the Russians never really chose parties. They chose people – their own people, acquaintances, or those they believed. They were always chosen personally, not in bulk. The Russian tradition is personal. She wants to see a person as a political figure. He wants to understand him, know him, trust him. And sometimes hate him, despise him, punish him. But always it is a person. Our view of the world is deeply human. And about politics too.

On August 14, 1385, the authorities of two neighboring medieval states – Poland and Lithuania – met at the Krevo castle, which is located on the territory of today’s Belarus, and concluded a historical pact – union. The alliance between the two neighboring and very influential states at that time was sealed by the marriage union of the Queen of Poland Jadwiga, the last of the Piast dynasty, and the pagan Lithuanian prince Jagiello. At that moment, this seemed an excellent geopolitical solution, since it allowed two previously hostile states to focus on solving more important problems – to resist the Teutonic Order located in the neighboring Baltic lands and to strengthen the influence of Lithuania in the east, which was under the rule of the Mongols and controlled by the Russian princes. vassals of the Mongols.

From the very beginning of his rule, Putin began to withdraw Russia from the influence of the West and its globalist structures. With each step, Russia became more and more independent and sovereign. It not only stopped the disintegration that began under Gorbachev and continued under Yeltsin, but began to expand its territory (this is clearly seen in the reunification with Crimea, and in many other things). And as the course of Russia became more and more independent, the pressure on it from the West grew. At the same time, Putin himself and the forces loyal to him in Russia were subjected to systematic demonization and criminalization. In the eyes of the liberals, relations with Russia acquired an increasingly pronounced ideological character.

The seizure of all power by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the shameful flight of the Americans and their allies require a broader survey of fundamental changes in world geopolitics. Afghanistan has been an indicator of these changes over the past 50 years. It was with him that the fractures in the global architecture of the world were associated. Of course, this was not the cause of geostrategic transformations, but rather a  screen on which, more clearly than anywhere else, the fundamental changes in the world order were reflected. 

Agamben has long been dealing with the problem of “bare life”, when the pressure of the political system reaches the very biology of man, penetrates his body, and seeks to control it at the biochemical level. A person in the ultimate dictatorship turns precisely into a biological object, determined by a set of sanitary indicators. Real totalitarianism seeks to control not the mind, but the body. This is “naked life” when a person is equated with a set of biological indices. This, according to Agamben, is the end of man and the triumph of the most disgusting political systems imaginable. In his writings, Agamben stressed in every possible way that the most avant-garde and perfect example of “naked life” was the situation of prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. The prisoners in them were not considered human at all.

It is quite natural that Russia, which seeks to strengthen its sovereignty and is generally oriented towards a multipolar world, interprets many processes proceeding from its interests and from its values, which sometimes do not coincide at all with the interests and values ​​of the United States, NATO countries and globalist circles. But this gives no reason at all to call Russian media policy in the international context either “disinformation” or “propaganda.” However, in the eyes of the State Department and the entire Western propaganda machine, everything that does not coincide with the views of the globalists and the United States, contradicts them, gives an alternative point of view, opposes their strategies and approaches, is perceived as an “enemy attack.” 

Survival is the most important concept of Spinoza. For him, it is associated with duration and life, as the ability to preserve one’s identity for a certain period. Ability = strength. Further, Deleuze, reflecting on Nietzsche, force = life. Survival is persistence in durability, perseverance. The will to last. Survivalism is a lifestyle aimed at only one thing – survival, which means, life for the sake of life, strength for the sake of strength.

In the modern world, a multipolar model is clearly taking shape – almost taking shape. It replaced the unipolarity that was marked after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and especially the USSR. And the unipolar world, in turn, replaced the bipolar one, in which the Soviet camp geopolitically and ideologically opposed the capitalist West. These transitions between different types of world order did not take place overnight. Some aspects changed, but some remained the same by inertia.

Today it is common wisdom to claim that Russia is returning to the Middle East. Some regard it with hate, the others with suspicion, the third with hope. But before any evaluation according to interests and positions of different players and observers, we need first to clarify how Russia returns? What represents contemporary Russia on the new map of balance of world powers – especially regarding the Middle East? In the last 50 years, Russia has thrice changed radically its geopolitical and ideological status. During the Soviet period in the context of a bipolar world, Russia was undoubtfully a geopolitical superpower, the stronghold of Land Power, and the center of universal communist ideology, seeking to gain the mortal fight with the capitalist system, for the global control on the human societies on a planetary scale. The opposite camp – NATO States – represented geopolitically Sea Power and liberal ideology. Geopolitics and ideology, interests and values were densely intertwined forming two totalities – two blocks, two projects for humanity claiming to evict sooner or later the opponent.