The Fourth Political Theory

beyond left and right but against the center

As the point of departure of our investigation we shall take the extremely interesting data concerning the sacred geography of the southernmost (or, more precisely, the south-western) territorial sector of Gardariki (the Galician principality) gathered in the book Hyperborean Dacia [13] by the Romanian Traditionalist author of a Guenonian orientation, Geticus (Basil Lovinescu). In this work, the author convincingly demonstrates on the basis of sacred toponymies and a deep analysis of Romanian folklore that ancient Dacia (modern Romania and Moldova) was once the sacred center of the Hyperborean tradition, albeit secondary in regards to Polar Hyperborea which was far more original than other indirect spiritual centers of traditional civilizations. In our opinion, the thesis of Hyperborean Dacia looks quite convincing and we would especially like to dwell on the mystery of the Danube delta which, according to Geticus, was the location of one of the main sanctuaries of Hyperborean Apollo. 

The author of Hyperborean Dacia notes the following peculiarity of the Danube delta and its cult center: river Danube flows into the Black Sea on the 45th parallel, i.e., on the belt dividing the entire northern hemisphere in half. Thus, the cult center of Apollo in Dacia was located in the far north for the entire southern half of the northern hemisphere whose establishment has only recently become known to modern historians of civilization. We note that the 45th parallel in general plays an extremely important role for Eurasia and in the far West. In France, two of the most important sacred centers, Lyon (the “city of meadows, i.e., the center of the geographical spiral of the druids as examined in Louis Charpentier’s book The Giants and the Mystery of the Origin [14]) and Grenoble (the “land of the Dauphins” [15] whose solar, Hyperborean symbolism was researched by the scholars Eugene Canseliet – Sevren Bafrue and Guy Beatrice in the book Land of the Dauphin [15]). At the same time in the Far East, in Mongolia, at approximately the same latitude is located the sacred center of Genghis Khan’s empire, the city of Urga. In addition, it is interesting note that the borders of the Russian Empire also more or less followed this parallel over a gigantic space resembling a sinusoid with a recess in the South in the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and in the Pamir mountains, and a rise in the North in South-Eastern Siberia, Altai, and across the Amur River. In addition to such an important parallel at which the center of the Apollonian cult of “Hyperborean Dacia” was located, what is also extremely important for us is that the longitude of this place was 30 degrees east. It can be said that this meridian, in its northern part, was the axis of the Slavs’ settlement. To its west were the Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, and Belarussians, and to its east are the Great Russians. Thus, in addition to the “extremely northern” location of “Hyperborean Dacia” in relation to the mediterranean world, the extreme South of its situation can also be considered in regards to the Slavo-Baltic-Scandinavian world and Gardariki Rus. In fact, the mouth of the Danube was always the southern sacred-geographical pressure point of the “masses” of the Slavic, Russian world to the north. 

Sacred geography differs substantially from conventional, physical geography. We are accustomed to consider the earth as an orb, as a globe (in Latin, globus means “orb”). For us, the North is the top of the orb, and the South is the bottom. A globe can be rotated and, consequently, concepts of East and West slip away from our geographical attention. But when we present our earth as rotating in the solar system and in outer space, we generally digress from such concepts as cardinal directions. All of this seems to be so conventional! Understanding the world as standing on three pillars and the earth appearing to be a disk are relics of the “dark ages.” 

For a long time, scientific discoveries which have opened new horizons and succeeded each other at a furious pace have been accepted by people uncritically and with excessive enthusiasm. In turn, many have come to treat our ancestors’ map of the world with disdain and disgust and we have been inclined to consider our ancestors to be “dark,” “wild,” “primitive,” or having only recently ceased to be “apes.” 

Such a positivist attitude quickly finds itself confronted with a number of contradictions. The development of science has arrived at the problem of consciousness and the human factor in relation to natural phenomena. Here everything changes. It turns out that the mythological archetypes and systems of consciousness formed by culture, history, the environment, geography, and language have a strong influence on scientific methodology to the point that they “deform” these so-called “objective” material studies. 

The most profound Russian thinkers of the 20th century were undoubtedly the Eurasianists, the ideologists of the special Third Way wing of the first Russian emigration who expressed genuinely important and reliable considerations on the fate of Russia. In their conceptions, the geographical location of Russia between East and West plays a central role. For them, Eurasia amounts to Russia and the Russian ethnos (in the supranational sense of the word) is considered to be the modern carrier of Turanism, a special imperial psycho-ideology accordingly passed down to the people of Rus by the Turkic-Mongolian tribes of the Horde. Thus, the Eurasianists, in contrast to the representatives of the monarchist camp, were not so much “Panslavists” as Turkophiles. And this is not a paradox since a significant part of the Russian nobility and, in particular, many Slavophile ideologists of the 19th century who constituted a significant percentage of the top Russian elite,were representatives of the Turkic heritage. For many Eurasianists, Russia-Turan was a supra-political concept whose value was defined by its geopolitical mission.

The intuition of the Eurasianists proved to be quite true, but the origins of this concept stretch back to pre-history, to the epochs prior not only to the conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors, but also prior to even the appearance of Slavs on Russian lands. Where did Russia-Turan come from?

In principle, this is exactly the same case with the “enigma of Russian patriotism.” Mystical Russia, the “White India” of Klyuev, the “Holy Rus” which Yesenin set above Paradise and which Tyutchev equated to a religious principle in which one has to believe – imagine how absurd “Holy Australia” or “Faith in the Czech Republic” would sound! – undoubtedly, this is a deep reality of national psychology, an “Internal Continent” synthesizing in itself the worldview of a giant nation. The memory of “Continent Russia” may lurk and sleep at the bottom of consciousness for many long years, but sooner or later it will come to life and, when the time of Awakening arrives, it will become a storm, a vortex, a scream. 

However, the psychological reality of “Inner Russia,” in order to be effective and specific, should have an archetypal structure entirely corresponding with objective historical processes and geographical areas. In this way, it is not a mere passive reflection of the external, but a paradigm which forms and structures the surrounding temporal and spatial space. In this regard, the famous historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, keenly observed: “Nature is something determined by culture (culturalmente condizionata); some of the ‘laws of nature’ vary depending on what the peoples of this or that culture understand by ‘nature.’”

One of the few European geopolitical schools which has preserved an uninterrupted link with the ideas of the pre-war German continentalist geopoliticians is that of the “New Right.” This trend appeared in France in the late ’60’s and is associated with the philosopher and publicist Alain de Benoist, the leading figure of the movement. 

The “New Right” sharply differs on practically all matters from the traditional French right consisting of monarchists, Catholics, Germanophobes, chauvinists, anti-communists, conservatives, etc. The “New Right” includes those who support “organic democracy,” pagans, Germanophiles, socialists, modernists, etc. At the beginning, the “left camp” so conventionally, extremely influential in France considered such to be a “tactical maneuver” by typical rightists, but with time the gravity of this evolution was proven and came to be recognized by all. 

One of the fundamental principles of the “New Right’s” ideology, analogues of which soon appeared in other European countries, is the principal of “continental geopolitics.” In contrast to the “old right” and classical nationalists, de Benoist believed that the principle of the centralized Nation-State has been historically exhausted and that the future belongs only to “Great Spaces.” The basis of such “Large Spaces” are to be not so much associations of various states in a pragmatic political bloc, but the equal-footed conglomeration of ethnic groups of different scales into a “Federal Empire.” Such a “Federal Empire”  is supposed to be strategically unified, yet ethnically differentiated. Moreover, such strategic unity is to be underpinned by the unity of primordial culture.

Although there is a philosophy that free from politics occupies itself with non-political questions, in fact, in one way or another, even such a free, non-political philosophy is connected, in one way or another, with politics, inasmuch as philosophy and politics have a common root. For this reason, if philosophy considers aesthetic questions, historical questions, cultural questions, and says nothing about politics, this nevertheless does not mean that it is a completely separate phenomenon. Any philosophy at all, even the most abstract, has a political dimension, in some cases explicitly. In the case of Solon, as in the case of the ancient Greek Pre-Socratics and Wise Men, and as in the case of Plato and Aristotle, this is an explicit dimension of philosophy. But there is also an implicit political dimension of philosophy, when philosophy says nothing about politics, but the very fact of the presence of a philosophical paradigm of one or another already carries in itself the possibility of a political dimension. In one case it is only explicit, open, and manifest; in the other, it is implicit, contained.

Although Western analysts continue to debate the motivations of Russian President Vladimir Putin for forming his Eurasian Union, what is undeniable is that the most vocal proponent of this union is Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin laid much of the ideological framework for a Eurasian Union when Putin was just beginning to emerge in the upper echelons of the government of the Russian Federation, and Dugin has been as outspoken in his ideological agenda as Putin has been taciturn in revealing his own. In fact, when Dugin’s remarks concerning Russia’s involvement in Ukraine were widely interpreted asadvocating a genocidal campaign against Ukrainians who would oppose Russian occupation of portions of that country, Dugin lost his teaching position at Moscow State University and was eventually placed under sanctions by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. As this reviewer has noted in previous reviews of Dugin’s books — Putin vs. Putin and his Fourth Political Theory — Aleksandr Dugin views the confrontation between the United States and Russia in no less than apocalyptic terms and has sought to frame the contest between the two countries as the latest phase in an ancient war between the "powers of the Sea" and "powers of the Land." One of Dugin’s most recent books to be translated into English is Last War of the World-Island — The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia, and in this book, the author continues to advance this apocalyptic theme.

To tell the truth, war has broken out. War has been "broken out". That war, which is most important now, is the confrontation of two civilizations: the Land civilization, represented by Russia, and the Sea ​​civilization, represented by the US. It is a standoff between a trade-based system, and a heroic civilization, between Carthage and Rome, Athens and Sparta. However, at certain moments it reaches a “hot” stage. We are in this moment again. We are at the brink of the war, and also one exists. However, this war can become a major and, perhaps, the sole battle of our lives, at any time. As the major players – the US and Russia – are nuclear powers, the war involves all the nations of the Earth. It has every chance to become the end of humankind. Of course this is not guaranteed, but such a plot twist cannot be excluded.

The spiritual plan of the great conflict is comprehend in special terms and contexts. There, the balance of power is always in favor of the Light, despite the faithful’s position. However, at the strategic level, it may seem a little different. The roles in the war are not symmetrical. Russia is in a weaker position, but trying to get back its status of the global player. It only seeks to restore its potential regional power to exert its influence freely in areas near to its borders. However, it is unacceptable for the United States, which, despite everything, remain the global hegemony and refuse to lose the monopolarity by its own will.

Outside of enantiodromia, bureaucrats become (anti-liberal and anti-American) patriots, ideological patriots (Russia above all), and liberal supporters of the regime and its elite become opponents of the regime, and an implacable opposition to it (there should be no Russia at all). Liberals in irreconcilable opposition represent a Fifth Column, while the liberals in the government — the Sixth Column. Symmetrically, a distinction exists between security officials and bureaucrats (within the elite), and the independent ideological core of patriotism (great power nationalists, supporters of the Orthodox Empire, traditionalists, conservatives and conservative revolutionaries, Eurasianists and followers of the 4PT). But in modern Russia, as in almost all modern powers of the second degree, the enantiodromia practically dominates everywhere. This is the alliance of military men for peace with the liberals for sovereignty. 

There is a second agenda the US has concerning Europe. There is official, open American agenda – US wants to continue the liberal strategy of the integration of Europe within the existing framework. America will continue to proceed with this as long as everything is going well. However, the second agenda is much more radical – an emergency or alternative agenda. This agenda would entail the American instigation of a civil war in Europe. The real state of things (rather than at the propaganda level) would be that mass immigration provokes more and more of a reaction, anti-systemic parties and groups start to gain power and influence, gender politics start to be rejected, and the middle class continues to decline. This wouldn’t fit with what we hear, so it makes sense that there would be another agenda of the US concerning Europe. There is a growing interest in the US and above all Israel in funding and influencing the far right movement in Europe, the identitarian movement being the most obvious example. 

From a purely scientific point of view, there still exists no full and complete theory of a multipolar world (TMW) to date, nor can it be found among the classical theories and paradigms of International Relations (IR). We will try to look for it in the latest post-positivist theories in vain. It is not fully developed in its final aspect, the sphere of geopolitical research. Time and time again this theme is openly comprehended, but still left “behind the scenes” or treated in too biased of a fashion within international relations.

Nevertheless, more and more works on foreign affairs, world politics, geopolitics, and actually, international politics, are dedicated to the theme of multipolarity. A growing number of authors try to understand and describe multipolarity as a model, phenomenon, precedent, or possibility.

The topic of multipolarity was in one way or another touched upon in the works of the IR specialist David Kampf (in the article "The emergence of a multipolar world"), historian Paul Kennedy of Yale University (in his book "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" ), geopolitician Dale Walton (in the book "Geopolitics and the Great Powers in the XXI century: Multipolarity and the Revolution in strategic perspective"), American political scientist Dilip Hiro (in the book "After Empire: Birth of a multipolar world" ), and others. The closest in understanding the sense of multipolarity, in our view, was British IR specialists Fabio Petito, who tried to build a serious and substantiated alternative to the unipolar world on the basis of the legal and philosophical concepts of Carl Schmitt. 

We are living in the decisive moment when Western civilization is approaching its end. Such terroristic acts as that of Paris 13.11 show it clearly and unmistakably. The West we knew doesn’t exist any longer. Can’t exist any longer. One upon a time there was a certain West. With patriarchic heroic values, Christian identity, deep and exquisite culture with Greek-Roman roots. The West of God, man and nature. There is nothing like that in sight. The ruins. The weak and poisonous liberal civilization based on self-indulgence and at the same time on self-hatred. With no identity but purely negative one. Peopled by humans egoistic and ashamed of themselves. It can have the future. In front of brutal post-modern ISIS-fighters it can’t affirm anything, can’t oppose anything, can’t suggest anything. The West can’t be any longer Western. It is loosing itself. It is drowning.

But why does Russia provide military aid to Syria? First, this is a geopolitical conflict. The front between Atlanticists and Eurasians runs in Syria. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a political vacuum was created in the East and in the Middle East as well. There, the U.S. pursued a project focused on destroying nation-states—dubbed the "Greater Middle East Project." It even destroyed states that had behaved more or less loyal to Washington. The U.S. creates chaos to project itself as a hegemonic power. In the 1990s, Russia was weak and did not react, but in the early 2000s, it began to recover slowly. Today, Vladimir Putin has decided to actively oppose the U.S. policy of chaos in the Middle East. Russia’s military help against terrorism in Syria can be seen as an act of Eurasian geopolitics. Syria is located at the center of the battle between the representatives of a unipolar (U.S.) and a multipolar (Russia) world order.  

Are you an apocalyptic thinker? In what sense?

Yes, I am apocalyptical thinker, because I see time as Revelation and the Endtime as the integrity of the Revelation. The beginning of time is already the end, because it installs finitude and limit in life, with life and as life. So time is apocalyptic in itself. Not only because it flows in the direction of death, but also because the end and Revelation are the real and only nature of time. Time reveals being, hiding it. When time reveals more than it hides, it ends. If it hides more than it reveals, it lasts. Religion is orthodoxy in the sense I have explained before. I am with Heidegger in the truth and in seeking the truth. I am a religious man in definition of the directions that should lead to the truth. Christianity (at least Orthodox Christianity) and Heidegger in my personal existence and thought are fully compatible.

Geopolitically Europe is today atlanticist entity. The geopolitics imagined by Englishman Sir H. Mackinder declares that there are two type of civilizations – the civilization of the Sea (Seapower) and the civilization of the Land (Landpower). They are constructed on the opposite systems of values. Seapower is purely merchant, modernist and materialist. The Landpower is traditionalists, spiritual and heroic. That dualism corresponds to the pair of Werner Sombart concept – Händlres and Helden. Modern European society is fully integrated in the civilization of Sea. That is manifested in the North-American strategic hegemony and in the NATO.This situation prevents Europe from becoming independent geopolitical entity. More profoundly it perverts the geopolitical nature of Europe as continental entity – Landpower. So there is a need to change the situation and to restore the Landpower strategy based on the real European sovereignty. Instead of atlanticism Europe need to become continental strategic power.

The words that became the title of this lecture appeared in my consciousness as something in themselves. Not so much the idea as the formula: Satan and the problem of antecedent. It seems to me that this should be anything but a simple statement of something long known, is understandable. Many things in the process of preparing this lecture, I myself have been not completely clear. I hope that in the process of narration (from my side, with your – in the process of listening, that is, complicity) but there is a lot I can find out. Some things, so to speak, hanging in the air, and perhaps they will be formulated in the here and now. New The University (unlike the old) suggests spontaneous cognition, spontaneous epistemological grasp certain things, not specified initially. The main thing may (and should!) born at the time of presentation, in the process of focusing on certain aspects of a given topic.

Though he prefers not to dwell on it, Dugin alludes to the possibility that the attractions of the West will win out, that Putin lacks the resources or even the will to thwart liberalism.  In this regard, other Russia observers have even raised Thomas Molnar’s concept of the “counterrevolutionary hero”—an archetypal figure who is not really counterrevolutionary, and who will inevitably disappoint right-wing followers drawn to his personality and mystique.  The anxious handwringing of liberals notwithstanding, it’s conceivable that Putin may in the long run prove their best friend by letting down the very patriotic base that elevated him to power.  The legacy of Charles de Gaulle comes to mind, as does Reagan’s. Then again, liberals have put their cards on the table awfully soon, and may have backed Russia into a corner.  It would be foolish to continue appeasing Western elites who have time and again demonstrated an insatiable appetite for regime change—and whatever else one may say of Putin, he is no fool.  Hawkish rhetoric and overtly perverse policies on behalf of queer power may backfire, pushing the Russian state toward the pursuit of consciously and assertively antiliberal empire.  

While the EEU fulfills the economic, political, and symbolic goals of Eurasianism, Putin’s agenda can change without seriously affecting Dugin’s mission. He has the diversionary task of filling ideological vacuums created around the world by suspicion and skepticism regarding the United States, the European Union, and other liberal powers. Dugin’s ideology already resonates with both high intellectuals and the conspiratorial fringe. His ideas seem tailor-made to exploit continuing economic stagnation, distrust of EU bureaucracy, anxiety at the continuing influx of immigrants, and, crucially, the anxiety of those immigrants themselves, who fear the assault on their traditions that comes as a part of their resettlement in the West. Dugin is also obviously intent on maximizing the potential of his ideology through various political, intellectual, and social media networks. 

Aleksandr Dugin has come to public attention as “Putin’s Brain,” as Foreign Affairs memorably dubbed him – that is, as the ideological mastermind behind Russia’s moves towards reasserting imperial ambitions, notably with respect to Ukraine. Is this accurate, or is it just media hype? The truth is that it’s extremely difficult to judge with confidence exactly to what extent Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive policies towards, for instance, Ukraine reflect Dugin’s influence (or supposed influence) as an omnipresent publicist and behind-the-curtain advisor to aspiring czars. (The suspicion easily arises that Putin uses Dugin – lets him rant on state TV – without himself buying into the crazy worldview.) But whether Dugin really is influencing Russian policy or is simply the object of excessive hype, either way intellectuals as well as ordinary citizens in the West need to be aware of him, lest they be taken in by his pretensions as a theorist and his claimed interest in civilizational dialogue and pluralism, which functions as a rhetorical cloak. Either way, he’s dangerous.

The principal aim of Professor Dugin's work is not simply to deconstruct the previous failed political theories, which he lists as fascism, communism, and liberalism, but to fashion a new fourth theory, utilising what may be learnt from some of the previous models after their deconstruction rather than dismissing them outright on the basis of particulars worthy of rejection. That is not to say that the Fourth Political Theory is simply a synthesis of ideas that in their singular form have seen their day. Dugin is conscious of the necessity to bring something new to the table, with one of the principal of these novel ideas being the rejection of the subjects of the old ideologies, such as class, race, or the individual, in favour of the existential Heideggerian concept of Dasein (roughly Being or being-in-the-world. Literally da – there; sein – being) as the primary actor.

Along with the more geopolitical aspects, the Fourth Political Theory lies at the heart of Eurasianism, and constitutes its philosophical core. Drawing its roots from France's New Right, the Third Way, the German Conservative Revolution, and thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Boaz, Evola, and de Benoist, the Fourth Political Theory could be summed up by what Alain Soral calls "la gauche du travail et la droite des valeurs" ("the worker’s left and the moral right"). It is important to note that, just like Alain Soral, Dugin rejects ethnocentrism. The Fourth Political Theory rejects not only liberalism (capitalism), but also communism (socialism) and fascism, preferring a blend of the two non-capitalistic systems in order to prevent each one’s particular shortcomings.

Even though it believes in multipolarity, Russia is central to Eurasianism, as is the goal of creating a "European Space," encompassing both Europe and Russia. The objective is clearly to shift the balance of global power from Washington to Moscow, although Dugin denies this in an interview with Arktos published at the end of the book. 

What struck me on arriving in the US was the interest in and presence of other cultures, especially in relation to spirituality. Spiritual, New Age and occult centers (or at least bookstores) existed and seemed relatively vibrant. Religion was also far more important than in England, whether that was Christianity, Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism, or something else. There was (and of course still is) a big Chinatown, where Chinese was spoken (London’s is tiny). I practiced Kung fu in the early morning at a park in Chinatown and went for tea at a Chinese place afterward; I went to read in a French cafe that was always empty and the owners were actually French; I went to the spiritual and occult bookstores; to the museums, to Japanese events with my Japanese friends; and so on. Moving to the US, my life was steeped much more consciously in the archaic and the “Traditional” than in the much older culture of England.

Capitalism, of course, always seizes on what is different and exciting, and repackages it for the mainstream, often destroying the culture-creating roots as a consequence. But, if we leave aside this aspect, and get back to the people, America’s history is one with as much depth as anywhere else. Indeed, while Britain and Europe ape the most crass aspects of the USA, Americans often look to something more integral.