In theory, 4PT accepts that Western responses to current ideological norms should come from a framework appropriate to Europe and the Anglosphere. In practice, those who believe that Putin’s traditionalist vanguard is the best hope for Western rebirth go far beyond this. Criticism of the Russian government is met with accusations of serving Western liberal oligarchs. Putin’s achievements become lionized, and his failures ignored. RT becomes trusted as a news source. (Before it appears in the comments, yes it is perfectly possible for both Western and Russian channels to be airing propaganda. One doesn’t exclude the other.) Russian media gives voice to radicals from across the political spectrum. The Kremlin itself condemns European right wing ideologies at the same time that it funds European right wing parties. This can be useful when voices marginalized by the ideological conglomerate of media, academia, and government are able to make their ideas heard. But Russia’s aim is not to create a resurgence of traditionalism, rightist ideas, or the values which strengthen civilization. Russia’s interests are its own, and its interest is dischord which will give it the opportunity to re-establish its sphere of influence. Even if one takes the position that re-establishment of Russian influence is a good thing,  it should be obvious that Russia is not here to restore the West, nor should we expect it to be.

The Communist traitor Alger Hiss testifies at the HUAC. Don’t be him.

Russia has always had a talent for weaponizing ideology. This goes back before Putin, even back before the hammer and sickle was ever hoisted on Russian soil. After the defeat of Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I went from being a sympathizer of liberalism and Enlightenment to promoting European unity against the Jacobin tide. When the time of the Tsars did come to an end, the internationalism of communist ideology lent the USSR a great advantage. From Asia to Europe and even America, communist faithful were manipulated into supporting the geopolitical interests of the USSR, the total absence of any workers’ utopia presumably going unmentioned. The NKVD and later KGB were skilled in infiltration and sabotage, but a lot of this depended on finding willing cooperators in the organizations they worked in. From State Department official Alger Hiss to the Cambridge Five spy ring, what makes many Soviet agents remarkable is that they weren’t just motivated by personal gain. Many of these people truly believed that they were serving a higher cause for the good of the world by serving the Soviet Union. They believed that the benefits of the West were outdone by its injustices, and that the injustices of the USSR were necessary for the Revolution. The lesson to be learned is this: when the interests of your ideology so systematically line up with the interests of a foreign power, it might be time to ask yourself whether you’re getting played. If you can’t tell who the useful idiot at the table is, it’s probably you.

But this skill at ideology and propaganda hid some important realities about the Soviet Union itself: chiefly, its stagnation. Soviet rule wrenched the country from an agrarian to an industrial position at stunning speed, at the cost of millions of lives from famine and other causes. Soviet institutions incentivized getting to know the right people rather than innovation and productivity. A socialist economy can function to a certain degree, especially when the state can simply move entire populations. But it could never attain the dynamism of the market economies, from American capitalism to European welfare states. The Official Truths of the USSR made for beautiful propaganda, because this propaganda was necessary to obscure the cold and real truths about how the country was actually being governed.

Many Westerners today have become fascinated with Russia. This time they’re people alienated by weak leadership and cultural masochism rather than by capitalist inequality. They see Western media and academia contesting each other to see who can do away with their heritage and self-respect fastest. It takes an impressive level of cognitive dissonance to apologize for every time the West asserted itself while simultaneously using drones to kill innocents a world away. By way of contrast, Putin has restored national pride to the hearts of many Russians. His cultivated image is one of unapologetic masculinity and forthright leadership. Little wonder that he would capture the imaginations of so many Westerners disgusted with their state of affairs. And so the question arises: how much is advancing 4PT, Eurasianism, and Putin propaganda doing for us and how much is it doing for Russia?

And once again, Official Truth obscures trends which still leave Russia fragile as a country. Of course, this isn’t to say that all Official Truths are created equal. Orthodoxy and cultural pride are nowhere so totalitarian as the Soviet system was. Properly framed, they can even aid in implementing solutions to some of these crises. But Russian expansion in geopolitics won’t protect the state from its failures in providing sound governance.

First, demographics. The reproductive crisis of the Russian population has been well known since the end of the Soviet Union. Despite a recent surge in births, official predictions still envision a decline resulting in significant economic and social stagnation. Ironically, modern Western liberalism managed to out-progress Communism, which meant that social mores in the USSR were more traditional than we are used to today. Today, cohabitation is up 30% for women, but a much lower number of these end up in marriages. At this point, the proportion of Russian women who get and stay married has dropped from 60% in 1990 to 34% just six years later. Today, the UN estimates that half of Russian marriages end in divorce. Mortality rates are higher now than they were during the 50’s – an increase which started around a decade later, in large part due to alcoholism. Russian men have born the brunt of this, facing high rates of chronic disease and a life expectancy of 64 years. That’s lower than their male counterparts in Iraq, who make it to around 70 years despite over a decade of war and a fundamentalist death cult controlling a chunk of their territory. Now as others have pointed out, these obstacles are not insurmountable, and Russia is indeed making progress. But if the result of its ideological shift is that resources are devoted to funding expansion rather than moving forward in its social and economic development, these advances could be undermined. Diplomatic pushes as with Egypt and the Eurasian Economic Union bring more opportunities with less costs.

“Putin is not the future of Russia. The future of Russia is us.” – Khodorkovsky, oligarch and Western liberal favourite. Bad governance is what he will exploit.

This brings us to investment in the population. If your people don’t feel confident enough to invest in the future, your country won’t have much of one. Two big incentives are health and economic opportunity. Tax cuts and benefits won’t encourage people to reproduce if their children are at risk of dying young and becoming caught up in crime or drug use. If Russian families are to keep reversing the demographic decline, they must be able to reverse their educational and medical decline. This requires stable institutions, which give people the confidence to make significant investments. The great failure of Russian governance since the fall of the USSR has been the inability to stem the tide of corruption. Putin’s supporters paint him as having smashed the corrupt oligarchy. In reality, corruption as a business model has grown under Putin’s rule. The Interior Ministry estimates that the average bribe has grown 26 times between 2008 and 2011, much faster than inflation. It’s a consistent issue with states which focus on ideology and personality cult to the exclusion of sound governance. It’s also what allows Western-funded dissidents to appeal to popular discontent. After the flags stop waving and the ruler returns to the capital, the grind of daily life goes on. The inability to build strong, trustworthy institutions makes the state fragile overall. There will come a day when Russia must make do without Putin. Perhaps he will have a successor ready to go. But should the Russian state take this risk? General health and order was much higher when the Soviet Union was dissolving. Not so today. A power struggle in the Russian state could tear the country apart.

And ultimately, the fate of Russia has dire consequences for the West, be it Left, Right, or divided between the two. Chechen fighters have been a core fighting force for Islamic State since its inception. Russia is a major supporter of Central Asian governments which will have to deal with hardened fighters returning from Iraq and Syria. The terrorist group is already leaving its mark in North Africa. A Russian collapse would give ISIS a free reign to increase its demands for loyalty from Islamists in the region seeking to ascend in the new power vacuum, and it has money, weapons, and experience to tempt them with. And whatever criticisms we have of Russia’s governance, the fact is that it remains a voice in opposition to the equally weaponized ideology which our own elites want to see overtake the entire globe. Whatever future the West has depends on having good political and economic relations with the growing powers of the new millennium. If all goes well, we will be one of them.

If pro-Russian Westerners overstate the glories of Putin, my belief is that Western ideologues will keep doing everything they can to damn Russia for rejecting them. There is a dangerous mixture of fatal hubris and existential terror at the heart of how the West today is being governed. We don’t know what the future map of the West will be. We can guess at ethnic and cultural demographics. We might imagine what ideologies will take over. But what we can say for certain is that our coming generations of leaders must find an antidote to this mixture and ingest it. 4PT and similar ideologies born in Russia have been crafted to secure the future of the Russian world. They will not do the same for the heirs of Western Civilization.

The post Russia Is Not Our Saviour appeared first on Social Matter.

For the uninitiated, Dugin calls his theoretical framework the Fourth Political Theory (4PT). Its name hints at its foundations. Dugin holds that since the Enlightenment, three political theories have wrestled for global control. Liberalism came first, and annihilated the old Christian and monarchic order. When it thinks about society, it focuses on the individual person. Communism came second, and rose in reaction to Liberalism. It takes the socio-economic class as its subject. This was because Liberal individualism failed to address the situation of the poor and working classes, now that the bourgeoisie had overthrown their own masters. The third theory is Fascism, and it reacted against both Communism and its Liberal predecessor. It tried to overcome the division of individuals and classes by basing society on a common foundation. In cases like Italy, it took the State as its starting point. In Germany, the racial volk played this role. Communism and Liberalism defeated Fascism, and Liberalism eventually overcame its former ally too, and now stands triumphant. Dugin claims that it can only be challenged by a fourth theory, which learns from the failures of former critiques.

His belief is that the failures of each ideology came from focusing on a single aspect of human existence. In fact, our world is a complex of all these things: we individuals are part of an ethno-cultural whole, a political order, and a particular station in that order. The 4PT claims to take a holistic view of the human being and accepts all these realities. Dasein – real existence in the world – can’t be so slickly reduced to a set of axioms. Humans are different. Ethnicities differ. Cultures and histories differ. Geopolitical realities differ. Because of this, societies develop different ways of existing. Liberalism claims to accept differences, but this is mere shadow play. In reality, it imposes a common value framework on all groups. Religion and culture become ornaments for liberal homogeneity. Neoreaction’s own framework agrees with this analysis. It condemns the idea that society can be constructed from an ideological blueprint. The bigger the plan for society, the more unknowns one faces. In fact, Neoreaction takes this further than 4PT. The Eurasian idea itself, with its vision of a federal union of states and de-Westernized cultures, is more detailed than anything Neoreaction puts forward. The presumption of knowledge is a dangerous thing to contend with. Instead, Neoreaction intends to be a toolbox to be used according to different sets of needs.

There are further comparisons. Western social science distinguishes between theoretical models and the “real world”. Both 4PT and Neoreaction critique this. Dugin talks about “practice as theory”, and believes that one cannot separate lived experience from ideology; Neoreaction discerns the prerequisites to Civilization from the historical record rather than manifestos. Liberalism claimed to leave individuals free to choose their own ways of living; the modern Liberal agrees, provided they make the proper choice. With Dugin, Neoreaction recognizes the slight of hand. All three have come to understand that unrestricted personal freedom is inimical to an enduring social order. The only difference is that the latter two are honest about it. Furthermore, Neoreactionary thought has overcome theological divides in the concept of Gnon – Nature or Nature’s God. Gnon’s laws cannot be suspended by activist judges or deconstructed by university professors. Societies must discover them and structure themselves accordingly. Meanwhile, Dugin has taken inspiration from the German Conservative Revolution and the Traditionalist School. As Dugin says in The Fourth Political Theory:

“Conservative revolutionaries want not only to slow time down, like the liberal conservatives, or return to the past like traditionalists, but to pull out from the structure of the world the roots of evil…and in so doing [fulfil] some kind of secret, parallel, non-evident intention of the Deity itself.”

But Dugin’s response to these ideas also leads us to some of the clashes between Western Rightists and the Fourth Political Theory. Dugin has consistently charged the ideology of progress as racist, and the West as being a “globally deployed model of…ethnocentrism, which is the purest manifestation of racist ideology.” When he so closely echoes the rhetoric of university SJW’s, those otherwise sympathetic become understandably suspicious. There are two things we need to note. The first is that racism isn’t actually the accurate term to describe what Dugin means. In Fourth Political Theory, he states that racism also exists among cultures, classes and even technology. Clearly, “chauvinism” or “supremacy” would be more accurate words than “racism”. Dugin’s supporters explain that the term illustrates that the West uses ideology in the same way it once used race and religion – to justify itself as the standard for Civilization. But it’s worth noting that the word also allows Dugin to attack Western liberalism on its own basis.

Dugin takes as one of his premises that all cultures and peoples – including the European West – must determine for themselves how they choose to exist. In that sense, 4PT undermines modern Progressivism’s condemnation of Western identity and heritage. The 4PT is a weaponized ideology: its stated purpose is to take over from the failures of Liberalism. Western countries have often used liberal ideology to undermine states in opposition to Western interests. From Russia to Egypt, Western NGO’s have funded groups with liberal sympathies, as the ideology is particularly useful in such ventures. Since it focuses on the individual, Liberalism can delegitimize a political order by focusing on select groups who view themselves as being excluded from the political process. Of course, Western countries themselves do this all the time through electoral and speech regulations. Implicit in our laws is the admission that not everyone should have equal involvement in the political process. If the 4PT gains influence, Russia and other countries will have a strong ideological counterweapon to this tactic.

Nevertheless, this is not the only issue on which Dugin seems to compromise with ideologies antithetical to the values of the Right. While an ideological anticommunist, he has defended the Soviet Union as an expression of the Russian worldview.

“Thanks to those who will be engaged in the defense of the Republic of Novorossia and who experience this particular Eurasian Orthodox identity, the rest of the Russian population will learn more about its ideological identity. At the same time, the achievements of the Soviet Union will not be excluded but included in a broader context rid of orthodox Marxism, materialism and atheism. That is the Eurasian ideology: it mainly includes the legacy of orthodoxy of the Byzantine monarchy and Russian nationalism, not to mention the Russian interpretation of Soviet history as briefly expressed in National Bolshevism.”

To understand Dugin’s reasoning, we need to distinguish between ideological communism and the geopolitical entity of the USSR. Communism as an ideology is rejected by Dugin as the failed second political theory. Communism as a system of government was absorbed into a broader Russian culture and worldview. Hence, Stalin is today remembered by many Russians not primarily as a Communist, but as a strong central ruler in the Russian tradition of autocracy. Similarly, the modern Communist Party of the Russian Federation supports cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church. This is due to the Left-Nationalist faction currently controlling the party. The same pattern is reflected in the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics attempting to secede from Ukraine. Soviet institutions, nationalist rhetoric, and Orthodox religion are woven together by supporters of Russian rule. For Dugin, this is part of an organic process. Under bolshevism, the Russian people suffered mightily. From Stalin on, they were also a superpower. In the post-Soviet age, the Russian mind must reconcile itself to its own historical experience.

Applied metaphysics

Neoreaction’s similarities with 4PT also contain its differences: both seek to deconstruct the liberal ideological premises laid in the Enlightenment. But Dugin is working in a society which holds fundamentally illiberal values, mores, and worldviews. Neoreaction exists in the sanctum of Liberalism, the West itself. If 4PT is a ship to let Russia sail on its own path, Neoreaction is a lifeboat with a map and compass that we hope against hope will get us to shore. Dugin looks at civilizations which must choose whether to follow the West’s path or not. Neoreaction looks at societies which must choose whether to follow Civilization’s path or not – and most seem to have chosen the latter. Moreover, Neoreaction stands firmly in a tradition of empirical analysis which Dugin categorizes as part and parcel of the Western “Atlanticist” thinking Russia rejects. The programmer who built an ideology in his garage stands in stark contrast to the bearded philosopher holding a rocket launcher in South Ossetia. As both ideologies accept differences, this isn’t necessarily a point of conflict. But it’s crucial to understanding the distinctions in methodology.

Both 4PT and Neoreaction are deeply concerned with Civilization. But this may also be the most fundamental point of distinction between the two schools of thought. For 4PT, the main emphasis is on the right to difference. Of course, Neoreaction agrees that different peoples and cultures must find their own particular modes of Civilization. But Dugin goes further, almost into relativism. He proclaims:

“There will be no universal standard, neither in the material nor in the spiritual aspect. Each civilisation will at last receive the right to freely proclaim that which is, according to its wishes, the measure of things. Somewhere that will be man, somewhere religion, somewhere ethics, somewhere materialism.”

This makes the difference clear. Dugin imagines many different civilizations. Civilization is simply a particular people’s mode of being – its culture, self-conception, and so forth. But Neoreaction goes further. Modes of being have consequences. They can make you master of the globe or they can send you to a humiliating historical grave. Beyond the many particular civilizations, there is a common phenomenon of Civilization proper. Violence and force are its foundation, because they are the tools used to create law and order. When people can live in peace and safety, they have the incentive to have families, invent, and improve themselves. When this is reinforced with responsibility to the common good, people invest in the future. The structures may differ, but the effect is the same: society flourishes. But when authority breaks down, families are abandoned, and the common good forgotten, a society will collapse. Sometimes, enough is protected that it can repair and be reborn. More often, it gets overrun and absorbed by healthier rivals. While 4PT focuses on the particular, Neoreaction is more willing to address those universal truths that all civilizations must contend with. And if it has no quarrel with Russia taking its own path, it can also see the omens that point to its incredible fragility at the present time. Any Eurasian future becomes less likely when the future of Russia itself is uncertain. From demographic collapse to economic woe, no stirring promises of a united Russian sphere can mask the problems besetting it. Neoreaction may have some lessons for Mr. Dugin yet, Atlanticist or not.

Next week’s article will be a neoreactionary analysis of Russia itself. It will cover geopolitical and domestic issues, as well as the Russian talent for weaponizing ideology.

The post The Crab and the Bear: On Alexander Dugin appeared first on Social Matter.