Dear Prof. Dugin:
Because we hope you are genuine—or are at least working in that direction—we have to test you, right? We have to test you because so much of what you are attempting is so vital to our understanding of what the human race is up against, and of what our options might be—both spiritually and politically—now that we are facing nothing less than the end of a great World Age, we must be sure of you, as I’m sure that you wish us to be. And so:
1} In our brief exchange on Facebook you insisted that you have never supported ISIS. Yet in Eurasian Mission you say this:
Jihadis are universalists….We don’t like any universalists, but there are universalists who attack us today and win, and there are also non-conformist universalists who are fighting against the hegemony of the Western, liberal universalists, and therefore they are tactical friends for the time being….I don’t like Salafists. It would be much better to align with traditionalist Sufis, for example. But I prefer working with the Salafists against the common enemy [rather] than to waste energy in fighting against them while ignoring the greater threat….
QUESTION: If—no matter how distasteful you may find it—you were willing to work with Jihadi Salafists instead of fighting against them, how can you say that you have never supported Jihadi Salafist groups like ISIS?
2} If you say that you would rather work with the Sufis than the Jihadi Salafists, yet you are nonetheless willing to work with the Jihadi Salafists if necessary, then—in view of the fact that the Jihadis are the Sufis’ mortal enemies who have been massacring us for generations—aren’t you in effect threatening to throw your support behind the Jihadis unless the Sufis get in line?
3} In The Fourth Political Theory you say:
we should….move towards ontic roots but not ontological heights. Therefore, we should postpone such notions as the dimension of spirit and the divine, and move towards chaos and other vertical and depth-oriented concepts.
In the words of the Qur‘an, If there were in them (the heavens and the earth) other gods besides Allah, there would have been chaos. Glory be to Allah; the Lord with absolute authority. He is high above their claims [21:22]. If your Fourth Political Theory requires its exponents to postpone God in favor of Chaos, how can either faithful Muslims or faithful Christians follow it?
4} In The Fourth Political Theory, when describing the “fundamental conservative” position, you say
In their works, Guénon and Evola gave an exhaustive description of the most fundamental conservative position.
but also
If we peel it away from the negative stereo-types and look at how, theoretically, those Muslims who lead the battle against the contemporary world would have to feel and think, we will see that they stand on the same typical principles of fundamental conservatives.
In other words, both the Traditionalist School and the Jihadi Salafists, who—in their own minds at least—lead the battle against the contemporary world, are fundamental conservatives. However, since the Traditionalists accept traditional civilizational Islam with its whole spectrum of sacred art and philosophy, as well as (in most cases at least, for those who are Muslims) the traditional madhhabs of the shari’ah, while the Salafi Jihadists reject these things—not to mention the fact that most of the Traditionalists, at least in Frithjof Schuon’s branch of the School, are Sufis (as was Guénon), while the Jihadi Salafists reject Sufism and believe that any Sufi can be legally killed—how can you justify saying that the Jihadi Salafis and the Traditionalists share the same fundamental conservative position? They are as different as night and day. And as evidence that by “those Muslims who lead the battle against the contemporary world” you mean the Salafi Jihadists, elsewhere in The Fourth Political Theory you claim that one recognized form for the rejection of globalism,
is….a Universal Caliphate which will bring the entire world under Islamic rule….Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda remains symbolic and archetypal of such ideas, and the attacks which brought down the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on 9/11, and which are supposed to have “changed the world,” are proof of the importance of such networks.
5} In The Fourth Political Theory you say:
The Fourth Political Theory rejects …. all forms of the normative hierarchicalization of society based on ethnic, religious, social, technological, economic or cultural grounds. Societies can be compared, but we cannot state that one of them is objectively better than the others.
And yet in the same book you call Atlanticism “the absolute evil” and extol the virtues of Eurasianiam and the holy Russian narod. In doing this aren’t you declaring that Eurasianism is objectively better than Atlanticism?
6} In The Fourth Political Theory you say:
This subjectivity of time does not …. that any event is realisable a priori. The future is strictly determined, not something voluntary. Time, being historical, is predefined precisely by its historical content. The subject is not free from its structure, and more than this, it is absolutely enslaved by it.
Yet in the same book you say:
What is activity as mentality? It is the idea that thoughts are magic, that thoughts can change reality….
But if historical time is precisely predefined, if the subject is absolutely enslaved by it, then how can thoughts change reality?
7} In The Rise of the Fourth Political Theory you coin the motto “We are the supporters of the Absolute and we are against the relative”. Do you mean to imply that the Absolute itself is against the relative? But if so, then why is the relative still around? Why hasn’t the Absolute, which presumably has absolute power, been able to get rid of it yet? The Absolute is God, the relative is His creation. Are you for God but against His creation? And when you say “Societies can be compared, but we cannot state that one of them is objectively better than the others,” aren’t you siding with the relative against the absolute, at least the social absolute?
8} In “The Metaphysics of Chaos” from The Fourth Political Theory you define two different types of Chaos. You say:
We need to distinguish between two kinds of Chaos, the postmodernist ‘Chaos’ as an equivalent to confusion, a kind of post-order, and the Greek Chaos as pre-order, as something that exists before ordered reality has come into being. Only the latter can be considered as Chaos in the proper sense of the word.
And:
Modern science [in its conception of chaos] is dealing with….logos in the ultimate state of dissolution and regression.
And also:
The process of the final dissipation and destruction of logos is taken here for “chaos”….In reality, though, it has nothing to do with chaos as such, with chaos in the original Greek sense of the term. It is rather a kind of utmost confusion. René Guénon has called the era we are living through now an era of confusion.
But then you suddenly invert the significance of Guénon’s term “confusion” by saying:
“Confusion” means the state of being that both runs parallel to order and precedes it.
Now you identify Guénon’s “confusion” with the “Greek” Chaos, the sort of Chaos that you and Heidegger claim has historically superseded Logos, which you further define by saying
The Greek chaos [is] pre-order….something that exists before ordered reality has come into being….Chaos is eternal, but eternally coexisting with time. Therefore, Chaos is always eternally new, fresh and spontaneous….
This is obviously not a description of the postmodern Chaos and confusion that rises from the decay and dissolution of Logos, but of the “Greek” chaos that precedes Logos—ordered reality—and is co-extensive with it.
But (as you say) the “confusion” of our era that Guénon not this eternal, pre-existing Chaos but precisely, the dissolutionary Chaos that you have defined as the decay-product of Logos. As Guénon says, in The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times:
the Antichrist [the preparation for which he sees as the keynote of our era] must be as near as it is possible to be to “disintegration”….[to] confusion in “chaos” as against fusion in principial Unity….
So Guénon’s “confusion” is clearly not, as you claim, “the state of being that both runs parallel to order and precedes it,” but the opposite kind of Chaos—chaotic confusion that follows thethe death of Logos. THEREFORE, when you claim that Guénon uses the word “confusion,” which he says characterizes our era, to indicate this original and eternal Chaos, you precisely invert Guénon’s meaning, 180 degrees, thereby making him not the great Warner against Antichrist, but Antichrist’s herald and disciple.
Why have you done this?
9} If, as you maintain in The Rise of the Fourth Political Theory, the individual is a “heresy”—if, as you assert in the same book,
A person is the embodiment of the narod and the earth. In other words, the person by himself does not exist,
and if
man is a conditionality, simply a conditionality,
then how can this heresy, this conditionality, this non-existent entity have the ability, as you also claim in The Rise of the Fourth Political Theory, to “expand the borders of his ‘I’ to limitlessness. For instance upward in order to say: ‘I am a soul.’ ”?
10} Once again you say, in “The Metaphysics of Chaos”, that
We need to distinguish between two kinds of Chaos, the postmodernist ‘Chaos’ as an equivalent to confusion, a kind of post-order , and the Greek Chaos as pre-order, as something that exists before ordered reality has come into being. Only the latter can be considered as Chaos in the proper sense of the word.
However, you also maintain in the same section of the same book that
The earliest Greek philosophy arose as something that already excluded Chaos.
I will admit that citing the Greek notion of Chaos while at the same time maintaining that the Greeks had no notion of Chaos is an admirably chaotic method….but it is still a contradiction. How do you explain it? Which of these two contrary statements do you really believe?
11} In The Fourth Political Theory you say:
It is the political system that gives us our shape. Moreover, the political system has an intellectual and conceptual power, as well as a transformative potential, without limitations.
But to say that politics, not God, creates man is a solemn vow and profession of atheism. It is an intellectual terror-attack on the essence of Christian anthropology, which, in the language of Eastern Orthodoxy, declares that man is created in the Image of God, not politics, and that, by virtue of the theosis to which Christ calls him, he is capable of conforming himself to that Image, thereby attaining and manifesting the Likeness of God. If politics has unlimited power to shape us, a power that both Christians and Muslims attribute only to God, then how can you be a sincere Eastern Orthodox Christian?
12} In The Fourth Political Theory you speak of “the realization of the technological aspect” of The Fourth Political Practice, yet in The Rise of the Fourth Political Theory you say:
The initiation of the conservative project in contemporary Russian society, of course, must not, by any means or any circumstances, flirt with technology….
Can you explain this apparent contradiction?
13} In The Fourth Political Theory you say:
What is the Fourth Political Practice? It is contemplation. What is the manifestation of the Fourth Practice? It is a principle to be revealed. In what aspect is the myth realised as ritual? It becomes theurgic fact (let us recognise that Neoplatonic theurgy is the reanimation of statues).
The Fourth Political Practice brings us to the nature of the supranatural world.…in the realisation of the technological aspect of the project. What is the supranatural world? It is a world where there is no barrier between idea and realisation. It is the principle of adopting a magical view of the world based on the idea that thought is the only thing that crosses worlds, and everything we cross with is nothing more than a thought.
QUESTION: What precisely is “the technological aspect” of the Fourth Political Practice? How does it relate to “the supranatural world”? What does it have to do with “the reanimation of statues”? What is the meaning of this kind of “reanimation” in terms of political praxis?
14} In The Rise of the Fourth Political Theory you say:
The Eurasian doctrine is in the first place a spiritual doctrine. In a sense it is a prophetic school….
What else do prophets do? They restore the connection between reason and consequences. “Come to your senses, Edom; come to your senses, Sire; you fell away from the worship of the true God, and therefore God punished you, destroyed your walls, your city. Where is the kingdom of Babylon that stood strong? The kingdom of Babylon is no more. Why? Because they rejected the one God.
In the Old Testament, Edom is the archetypal kingdom of evil, descended from Esau, just as Israel, the spiritual kingdom, descends from his brother Jacob. Furthermore, Edom is a kingdom not a king—so why do you address it as “Sire”? What does it mean for you to swear fealty to Edom? And if you say that we must postpone God in order to find our ontic roots, and that Christ the Logos has now been replaced by the principle of Chaos [see next question], have you not rejected the one God yourself?
15} In “The Metaphysics of Chaos” from The Fourth Political Theory you say:
Modern European philosophy began with the concept of Logos….over two thousand years, this concept became fully exhausted. All the potentialities and principles of this logocentric way of thinking have now been thoroughly explored, exposed and abandoned by the philosophers.
It is not correct to conceive of Chaos as something belonging to the past. Chaos is eternal, but eternally coexisting with time. Therefore, Chaos is always eternally new, fresh and spontaneous.
The epic vision of the rise and fall of Logos in the course of the development of western philosophy and history was first espoused by Martin Heidegger, who argued that in the context of European or Western culture, Logos is not of only the primary philosophical principle, but also the basis of the religious attitude forming the core of Christianity
The astronomical era that is coming to an end is the fish constellation of Pices, the fish on the shore, the dying one. [Christ, symbolized by Ichthys the Fish, is often thought of as the avatar of the Picean Age.] So we need water very badly now [obviously from Aquarius]…. Logos has expired and we will all be buried under its ruins unless we make an appeal to Chaos and its metaphysical principles, and use them as the basis of something new. Perhaps this is the “other beginning” Heidegger spoke of.
QUESTION: If, according to Heidegger whom you follow, Logos has now expired, and if Logos was the philosophical basis for Christianity, as well as being explicitly identified with Christ in the Gospel of John, then how can you be an Eastern Orthodox Christian? Do you worship a dead god?
Charles Upton 