The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

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].

Sculpture number 4, which is being erected on Bolotnaya Square, is being heatedly discussed today. The sculpture, of course, is still the same. And what she reminds each baby is clear. Almost everyone is familiar with this.

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.

The ideological situation in Russia on the eve of the elections is becoming tenser and tenser. The election result does not matter. But the system itself begins to tremble not from impending risks but entering into resonance from the contradictions accumulated in itself. They are not reflected in elections, but in the system itself and in society – how. This

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.

As we said, the Taliban banned in Russia took Kabul and established their control over almost the entire territory of Afghanistan. The way the Americans fled the country, who had previously spent all their efforts on celebrating the week of transgender and perverts at their embassy in Kabul, shows that American domination and the hegemony of liberal ideology have collapsed.

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.

On September 11th 1990, during the ongoing disintegration of the Soviet Union, then US President George Herbert Walker Bush announced the arrival of a “New World Order”. Much ink has been spilt and many-a-video has been made about this phrase by those whose tinfoil hat is fastened around their heads perhaps a little too tightly, and thus have largely misunderstood the implications of this phrase, wound up by hyperbolic conspiracy mongers and distracted by dystopian visions of Satanic orders and a global police state.

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.

Putin has always had a certain sympathy for Germany. This is his personal experience, knowledge of the country, and language. And the geopolitical orientation towards the construction of a Greater Europe – from Vladivostok to Dublin – where Germany is called upon to objectively play the main role. Germany is the core of the European sovereign economy. Like France in the post-World War II world – primarily under De Gaulle – has traditionally been the core of sovereign politics. Franco-German alliance and became the basis of United Europe. Initially, it was planned very differently than it turned out. Europe was supposed to become an independent pole of a multipolar world – independent of both us and the United States, and at the same time maintaining friendly ties with both. Europe in the last 30 years has not depended much on us, but on the USA, on the contrary, excessively.

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.

After Azerbaijan regained control over Nagorno-Karabakh territory, analysts began to notice Turkey’s increasing effectiveness both in the Caucasus region and more broadly in Central Asia. Erdogan began to strengthen his presence in Turkish states again, he began to assert Turkish interests in Georgia, he set his sights on Afghanistan, where a significant part of the population is of Turkish origin (Afghan Uzbeks).

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.

After Azerbaijan regained control over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, analysts increasingly began to notice an increase in Turkish activity both in the Caucasus region and, more broadly, in Central Asia. Erdogan again began to strengthen his presence in the Turkic states, began to promote Turkish interests in Georgia, set his sights on Afghanistan, where a significant part of the population also has Turkic roots (Afghan Uzbeks).

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. 

When we trying to analyze the evils of the African continent, it is essential not to forget to address the ideologies with which Africa has aligned itself in order to emerge in the geopolitical chessboard. In the 1960s, African nations gained independence, but not de facto. Being independent does not only mean having control over one's own territorial primacy. We must be able to apply a unique paradigm from the perspective of geopolitical pluriversalism. It was Africa's fundamental problem, of having rooted itself in exogenous ideologies conceived by others, for others, and therefore which are not in line with the realities of the African continent. After colonization, several African nations adopted modern ideologies derived from the Age of Enlightenment: liberalism (both socially and economically), communism, micro-nationalism, liberal democracy, social democracy, capitalism, etc.

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.

During the pandemic, we began to lose famous people not one by one, as usual, but in whole blocks. Which is very sad. We do not have time to recover from one loss, as immediately the next. July was particularly troubling. I knew many of those who had passed away personally and watched others with interest and attention for many years.
Today I would like to remember Peter Mamonov, who died from the coronavirus (and why else is everyone dying today from…).

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.” 

Today one can often hear the opinion that our Church is wrong in something, does something wrong, does something wrong, and there are even worse expressions. However, it should be recalled that in the Orthodox tradition the concept of the Church includes all believers – or, more precisely, all Christians baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church.
This is one of the main differences from Catholicism. Western Christianity understands the church only as an aggregate of the priestly class – deacons, priests and bishops. And ordinary Christians are placed in the outer circle. They are not inside the church, but around it. Hence the theory of the Pope’s infallibility. He is the head of the Catholic Church in the sense that he stands at the top of the entire institution, being the direct ruler and leader of all lower church ranks.

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 conditions of unipolarity, liberalism has advanced even further in its individualism and technocracy. A new stage began when gender politics, the critical race theory, feminism, the overdue concern with all kinds of minority, came to the fore, as well as in the horizon of the near future – the transition through deep ecology to posthumanism, the era of robots, cyborgs, mutants, and Artificial Intelligence. American embassies or NATO military bases around the world have become the ideological representations of the global LGBT+ movement. LGBT+ signs are nothing more than a new edition of advanced liberalism.

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.

Modern civilization is rather in a state of deep decline. This is a bitter confession, but it is not the same as despair. If everything went wrong – and everything really went wrong – let’s return to fullness and health, let's restore everything as it was -- in the state that existed before it went bad. Moreover, the rejection of progress by no means prohibits the recognition of the improvement of certain aspects of life. But it just doesn’t make it binding law.

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.