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Given that Vladimir Putin’s pet bear’s psychic consults Alexander Dugin (via remote vision using Rasputin’s shin bone), and that Regime propagandists enjoy painting him as Putin’s cackling demonic seer, the propaganda so effective that the poor man’s daughter was assassinated, I thought I’d review one of his books. Being lazy, I chose his shortest, which is also one of his newest.
Amazon, being an arm of the Regime, is too frightened to stock any of Dugin’s books, so I bought The Great Awakening Vs The Great Reset directly from the publisher Arktos.
It’s more of a pamphlet than a book, only forty four pages of main text, along with some appendixes consisting of an interview Dugin gave a media outlet, a hot essay written immediately after Jan 6, and some bullet points of his Fourth Political Theory.
None of Dugin’s ideas or arguments are given full life here, and can’t be, not in forty-four pages, so it would be churlish to point out he hasn’t really proved anything. Indeed, this book is best classed as a polemic.
“The main idea of the Great Reset,” he writes, “is a continuation of the globalisation and the strengthen of globalism after a series of failures”. Among globalism’s failures are Trump, Russia & China and various Mideast countries, not to say Afghanistan.
Yet this can’t be true globalization with half the world determined to stay on the other side of the ledger. The Great Reset is therefore better seen as the actions and failures of Big GAE (pronounced like it’s spelled), i.e. the Global American Empire. Which Dugin inexplicably—though we recall he wrote this in early 2020—believes Biden is in firm control of.
A better measure of globalization is the creation of Expertocracies with local flavors, as in China. These are naturally brought about because of the globalization of higher education, especially science. Expertocracy: The system of rule whereby government Experts order all things, expertly, using The Science and monitoring technology. Think China’s nascent social credit system, for instance.
What I like best is Dugin’s “Brief History of Liberal Ideology”. I quote the first part extensively, because I believe it to be correct, important, and too often forgotten:
Biden and the forces behind embody the culmination of a historical process that began in the Middle Ages, reached its maturity in modernity with he emergence of capitalist society, and which today is reaching its final stage…
The roots of the liberal (=capitalist) system go back to the scholastic dispute about universals. This dispute split Catholic theologians into two camps: some recognized the existence of the common (species, genus, universalia), while others believed in only certain concrete—individual things, and interpreted their generalizing names as purely external conventional systems of classification, representing “empty sound”. Those who were convinced of the existence of the general, the species, drew on the classical tradition of Plato and Aristotle. They came to called “realists,” that is, those who recognized the “reality of unversalia.” The most prominent representative of the “realists” was Thomas Aquinas and, in general, it was the tradition of the Dominican monks.
The proponents of the idea that only individual things and beings are real came to be called “nominalists.” from the Latin nomen.
He reminds us that William Occam of razor fame was a nominalist.
It is impossible to be a consistent nominalist. But error can be made in its name with ease. It is a fallacy of nominalism to “identify” a horse as a cat, for instance, because both are “really just” animals, and you pretend there is no other essential difference between the two. But if that is so, then animal is a universal, which nominalists deny exist. Nominalism is at the root of every “I Identify As” fallacy, a class of mental malady which now suffocates us.
Dugin sees clearly that once this error slithers in, religious belief must suffer. For if there are universals, there must be a cause of them.
The rest of the story is more or less familiar. He compresses several centuries of history into a few pages, here compressed into a paragraph.
Protesting Christianity followed directly from nominalism, Dugin says, rejecting Tradition and trading it for Reason. Which can work, for those with the ability to think. Alas, thinking is rare, so that the fading of Tradition is to be lamented. In any case, from Protesting Christianity the bourgeois developed, along with Capitalism. The weakening of the Church led to nation states. Then came Locke, Hume, and Kant. The Twentieth Century we know. And so forth.
Dugin sees that the globalist/Big GAE impulse is the destruction of all identity outside the Regime (he doesn’t use that term), even as it wields certain collective identities as weapons. The impetus behind it all he nails:
[The Great Reset] is nothing less than the beginning of the “last battle”. The globalists, in their struggle for nominalism, liberalism, individual liberation and civil society, appear to themselves as “warriors of light”, bringing progress, liberation from thousands of years of prejudice, new possibilities—and perhaps even physical immortality and the wonders of genetic engineering, to the masses.
Trump upset the globalists’ plans, and their hersterical conniption fit over him is so well known we needn’t say much about. Dugin covers the matter succinctly, coming to the view that the election was, indeed, fortified (he doesn’t use that term either).
It’s amusing Reseters label their enemies “populists” at the same time they boast of “our democracy”. Populism is the definition of democracy. But, of course, their definitions on these matters, or indeed most, do not accord with Reality. Anyway, deplorables vote the wrong way and need to be stopped.
Dugin reminds us that it’s important Trump wanted a return to the nation-state kind of politics with which he was familiar and comfortable. This the Reseters could not abide, individual nations being an affront to Equality.
Like many gloablists, Dugin indicates he thinks the dreaded Singularity is possible. I do not, and I find it difficult for anybody who has ever coded a computer to believe so.
All this is contrasted with the Great Awakening—of the sort defined by Alex Jones (yes). This is the counter-reaction to the usurpation of Reality by the Reseters. Well, there have been other Great Awakenings, all religious, so such a thing is always possible. Dugin says “that a kernel of resistance is maturing in the masses, that they are beginning to mobilise.” And he’s right that the self-consistent insularity of those on the Right—people who want their nations’s business to be their business—precludes them from “seeing that the people of other civilizations are in the same desperate situation.” He does not develop the idea that anti-globalists might be forced to globalize to fight globalism. He does something else instead, which we’ll shortly see.
He makes the same prediction many on our side have made: “It is likely the Democrats will try to kill the two-party system itself by introducing an essentially one-party regime, quite in the spirit of the current state of their ideology. This is liberal Bolshevism.” It is.
It will come as no surprise that he believes the Great Bulwark against the Great Reset will be Russia herself. “Nominalism,” he says, “is deeply alien to the Russian people in its very foundations.”
Russian identity has always prioritised the common—the clan, folk, church, tradition, nation, and power, and even communism represented—albeit artificial, in class terms—a collective identity opposed to bourgeois individualism. Russians stubbornly rejected and continue to reject nominalism in all its forms. And this a common platform for both the monarchist and Soviet periods.
I recall Ianto Watt getting grief for his similar summary of the Russian spirit.
In any case, Dugin says—and recall he wrote this before the Russia-Ukraine war—“Russia is the most important—if not the main!—pole of the Great Awakening.” He acknowledges the old, and continuing, distrust of and even determined rejection of the West. Opinions which are unfathomable to globalists, who truly believe everybody, once they are purged of error, secretly wants to be like them.
Whether it’s a Russian chip on his shoulder, or a prescient observation, he says:
[Russia] is diametrically opposed to the globalist project of the Great Reset. And it would be natural to expect that in their decisive rush the globalists will do everything in their power to prevent an imperial renaissance in Russia. Accordingly, we need exactly that: an imperial renaissance. Not to impose our Russian and Orthodox truth on the other peoples, culture and civilisations, but to revive, fortify [!] and defend our identify and to help others in their own resistance…
The sequel we know. We naturally agree that Big GAE must be stopped.
He leaves us with a word of optimism. Don’t forget that the “Great Reset was proclaimed by a handful of degenerates and panting old globalist men on the verge of dementia…and a marginal, perverted rabble selected to illustrate the lightning-quick careers opportunities for all nonentities.”
Apt, that. The gerontocracy is wearing out their Depends. We may need nothing more than await the inevitable biological solution.
The rest of the book, as I said, are appendices. One an interview with some media outlet. A blistering, rage-filled article written shortly after Jan 6. And some bullet points about his Fourth Political Theory. I think the publishers included these lest the main book appear too thin.
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Thanks for the review. You really dug in to it, and rush in to put in what you found. Apparently, some find his views explosive, but while Dugin may be a hit at the Kremlin he clearly bombed in Moscow. At any rate he certainly comes across as an Orthodox Catholic Protestant.
I find the meaning of “nominalism” confusing. You’d think it would mean believing that names of things, their essences, had some kind of platonic, non-material existence. But no, it means the opposite. And it’s the “realists” who actually believe in woo-woo rather than being hard-nosed materialists. And then there are the realistic nominalists, who believe in things that aren’t real. What a muddle.
Perhaps its my fault, but my impression is that all of this may be ignoring, if not an elephant, then a few rhinos or smaller animals in the room:
Yes, scholars thought this and that, but why did they thought it? What were the causes of nominalism? Could it have been hatched due to cracks in the “reality of universalia” worldview?
The weaknesses of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection spring to mind.
If the liberal “(=capitalist)” system is a result of a scholastic dispute in Western Christianity, isn’t it curious how much late liberalism=capitalism resembles ancient Rome in a period before the emergence of Christianity?
That Rome was rife with “cults of unspeakable degeneracy and depravity.” “The chief reason for their attraction is to be found in their claim to be able to give the individual a liberating answer to his questions about his fate in the next world.” […] Intoxication, frenzy, self castration, these were all involved in their various rituals,” (—Pope Head Post, with a quoting from historian Hubert Jedin)
If Russia, USA and China are really separate “civilizations” as Dugin thinks, how come their youths listen to the same kind of music?
If China is in the grip of expertocracy just as we are:
How come ordinary people’s living standards in China are consistently on the rise for decades? With the result that life expectancy in China is now higher than in the USA?
Is it that they’re just late to the party?
How come China’s 2022 time-travel/whodunit series “Reset” (you can watch it on YT) features a police force that is oppressive because it’s too limited to believe a young couple that speaks the truth? OK, their story is incredible, but still, you would have thought that the Chinese establishment would censor such a thing. By the way, Orwell’s “1984”, the novel itself, appears to be pretty popular in China…
Yikes .
Want the recipe for understanding dugin? Ok:
0 – read russian literature (particularly gogol) and 17th- 19th century orthodox theology
1 – get the 1966 Kiev recording of Lady Macbeth of Mtensk (Shostakovich) with Konstantin Simeonov – et al.
2 – drink half a bottle of potato vodka during the prelude, crank up the volume on the music to the neighbors calling cops level;
3 – drink the next quarter during the first act while writing out your perceptions of humanity as you imagine yourself looking out at the dock markets from the 22nd floor of the Mumbai Taj Mahal hotel;
4 – drink the last quarter during the second act while imagining your view of humanity after five days of treking alone across tiaga during a snow dump.
Now you understand why national bolshevism isn’t an oxymoron and that the number of angels on the head of a pin has nothing to do with your continued existence. (Of course, tomorrow you will feel guilt and despair without remembering why, but that’s part of understanding Russia too.)
Paul Murphy–It sounds like a fella could have a pretty good time following that outline. I’m gonna go through my Shostakovich LPs…
Aha, OK. So 2000 years after all those “books” of ~40 pages each from the Bible were written, people are again writing 40-page books. Good. It means the “books” of the Bible weren’t anomalies. (Obviously I’m not talking about things like Isaiah or Ben Sira but Ezra and all the little prophets.)
Another, “Russia will save us.” Give me strength. After we spent the latter half of the C20 with Russia/Soviets as the Evil Empire. Russia today isn’t the Russia it was even during the Evil Empire phase. It’s a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic mess very much in terminal economic and social decline. The formerly hegemonic ethnic group of Slavic Russians is the one in a death spiral of below replacement fertility, Dugin’s protestations of the Russian character are a quaint anachronism. There are innumerable Facetube vlogs of young working/fighting age Slavic Russians desperate to get out of Russia and their dead end lives there for the hope of some kind of life elsewhere. Putler is obviously a smart enough political operator that he’s seen the writing on the wall and the Russian oligarchy is by force of necessity on board with the Great Reset and the globalist project. How could they not be when their wealth depends on it. I’m baffled as to why this isn’t blindingly obvious to anyone with more than a standard deviation of IQ points to rub together. Next you’ll be telling me England will find its Dunkirk spirit and rise again. It would appear to me that it’s obvious that it’s slam dunk that all the Indians and Pakistanis that now comprise England will find their ethnic spirits rising enough to have an “English” civil war that’s a proxy for nuclear war India and Pakistan can’t afford. Unless they’re too busy warring with the Somalis and Nigerians. Then there’s the Albanians who aren’t known for taking prisoners. It’s a brave new world and the past has little or nothing to do with it except for black propaganda purposes.
“Dugin sees that the globalist/Big GAE impulse is the destruction of all identity outside the Regime (he doesn’t use that term), even as it wields certain collective identities as weapons. The impetus behind it all he nails:
[The Great Reset] is nothing less than the beginning of the “last battle”. The globalists, in their struggle for nominalism, liberalism, individual liberation and civil society, appear to themselves as “warriors of light”, bringing progress, liberation from thousands of years of prejudice, new possibilities—and perhaps even physical immortality and the wonders of genetic engineering, to the masses.”
***
Yeah? Ok, but what about this:
The promising technologies, the development of which was signed in this government order signed February 2023, for the 2023-2027 programme, for 185 billion rubles, of the most key Russian Institute which is widely popular with the “peaceful atom”.
The promising technologies, as you can see if you walk through the posts below, include:
– investigation of the bio-distribution kinetics of mesenchymal stem cells loaded with magnetic nanoparticles (as a model of drugs) in organs and tissues;
– research to study the fundamental principles of conservation, implementation and transmission of genetic information, as well as the principles of genome modification;
– genetically modified bacterial vaccines that stimulate innate immunity;
– studying the diversity of the structure of CRISPR systems in prokaryotes;
study of the structure and mechanisms of functioning of enzymes for genome editing;
– development of universal platforms for rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases based on modern genetic technologies;
– development of systems for genomic editing;
– Study of the fundamental principles of preservation, realization and transmission of genetic information, as well as the principles of genome modification;
– analysis of the mechanisms of functioning of CRISPR systems;
development of technologies for the prevention and therapy of infectious diseases based on modern genetic technologies;
– development of methods for evaluating the effectiveness of genomic editing systems and predicting their use on various living systems;
And also:
– genetic and biochemical mechanisms to regulate behavior;
modeling processes in neural cells and cellular systems to create autonomous bioelectronic systems;
– software and hardware tools for natural communication with robotic devices based on human-machine interfaces;
– investigation of cellular mechanisms of behavior and movement formation in order to create a biomorphic control system for biorobototechnical systems;
– development of new approaches to ensuring highly effective human interaction with social robots and other technical devices based on neurocognitive interfaces;
– development of group robotics systems with elements of social behavior with intelligent and hybrid control systems based on biosimilar technologies;
– [applied research for] the law of radioactive decay as the basis of abiogenesis and the key role of radon in the formation of the genetic code of living systems;
Already in January 2021:
“The Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin approved the Program of fundamental scientific research for 2021-2030 with a funding volume of more than 2.1 trillion rubles. Genetic technologies prevail among medical areas, including the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing method.
…
The program also outlines plans for the development of vaccines, including a new generation (genetic engineering technologies, methods of reverse genetics and nanotechnology), against tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis B and C, influenza, developments in the field of transplantology, including bioengineering (the creation of biomedical cellular and tissue-engineered liver and cartilage products) and many other directions.”
This news and partial review of the program.
Also, along with the predominant genome editing systems, among the planned developments in the Program, is:
“Research in the field of synthetic biology is aimed at creating technologies and tools for purposeful modification and construction of genomes in order to create organisms and their components containing biosynthetic pathways not found in nature. As a result of these works, it is planned to develop approaches to the development of technologies for creating completely artificial living organisms in the future.”
***
Dugin:
“[The Great Reset] is nothing less than the beginning of the “last battle”.”
“[Russia] is diametrically opposed to the globalist project of the Great Reset. And it would be natural to expect that in their decisive rush the globalists will do everything in their power to prevent an imperial renaissance in Russia.”
?! 🙂
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I recommend the late great brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho’s debate with Dugin.