Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumAnyone know much about Putin's religious mentor
guru, Putin's Rasputin? Aleksandr Dugin
Just google him, there's plenty there. Scary stuff.
defacto7
(13,610 posts)But I'm curious why there are no comments whatsoever in GD or this one about Aleksandr Dugin. Is it fake info or CS? If it is I would really like to know it. If it's true that he is the philosophical mentor of Putin, it's serious shit. He pushes world domination through fascism and the Russian Orthodox Church. He is calling for the destruction of the US and Europe by any means including nuclear annihilation of the west... and he really likes Trump or at least thinks he's a means to his ends.
We know Putin is a strong believer in Russian Orthodoxy. We also know there us a strong anti-west Russian Orthodox extremist movement in Russia. I think knowing what mystical brain influence Putin is subjuct to is highly pertinent to knowing what we are up against and it's effect on US politics. Let me know if you think I'm off base here.
Here's a couple of the many sites pertaining to this guy...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-dangerous-philosopher-behind-putins-strategy-to-grow-russian-power-at-americas-expense
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-03/who-is-alexander-dugin-the-man-linking-putin-erdogan-and-trump
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)You're right, Dugin is very scary.
From your second link:
"What Dugin proposes instead of what he sees as three dead and dying ideologies is his Fourth Political Theory. It would create an entirely alternative political model, set against progress of world history as is. It would not be based on the issues of individualism, race or nationalism. He sees this theory to be partially based on the work of the existential German philosopher Martin Heidegger, controversial for his association with Nazism. His philosophy calls for a root of a human being's self-awareness (called dasein by Heidegger) to be saved in the world, as it has been diluted in the modern space by essentially dehumanizing technology.
Since this root of being differs from person to person and from culture to culture, the world should feature a multipolar power division, instead of one superpower in the United States. Finding a way to implement such a new way of looking at the world would, per Dugin, return a sense of identity to humans who have been losing it all around the world.
Dugin contrasts this theory of a multipolar world with what he (and conspiracy theorists worldwide) see as the movement towards creating a world government, led by disingenuous "globalist elites" who are out to deprive people of a sense of identity and to subjugate them to their corporate needs."
"globalist elites"? Isn't that code for Jews? Sounds like he's promoting anti-Semitic conspiracies.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)From the Guardian:
"Heidegger's 'black notebooks' reveal antisemitism at core of his philosophy
New publication shows highly influential philosopher saw 'world Judaism' as driver of dehumanising modernity
He is widely regarded as one of Europe's most influential 20th century philosophers whose writings inspired some of the important thinkers of the modern era. But almost four decades after Martin Heidegger's death, scholars in Germany and France are asking whether the antisemitic tendencies of the author of Being and Time ran deeper than previously thought.
...
The most controversial passages of the black notebooks are a series of reflections from the start of the second world war to 1941. While distancing himself from the racial theories pursued by Nazi intellectuals, Heidegger argues that Weltjudentum ("world Judaism" is one of the main drivers of western modernity, which he viewed critically.
"World Judaism", Heidegger writes in the notebooks, "is ungraspable everywhere and doesn't need to get involved in military action while continuing to unfurl its influence, whereas we are left to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people".
In another passage, the philosopher writes that the Jewish people, with their "talent for calculation", were so vehemently opposed to the Nazi's racial theories because "they themselves have lived according to the race principle for longest".
The notion of "world Judaism" was propagated in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forgery purporting to reveal a Jewish plan for world domination. Adolf Hitler stated the conspiracy theory as fact in Mein Kampf, and Heidegger too appears to adopt some of its central tropes.
"Heidegger didn't just pick up these antisemitic ideas, he processed them philosophically he failed to immunise his thinking from such tendencies," the notebooks' editor, Peter Trawny, told the Guardian.
The notebooks also show that for Heidegger, antisemitism overlapped with a strong resentment of American and English culture, all of which he saw as drivers of what he called Machenschaft, variously translated as "machination" or "manipulative domination".
In one passage, Heidegger argues that like fascism and "world judaism", Soviet communism and British parliamentarianism should be seen as part of the imperious dehumanising drive of western modernity: "The bourgeois-Christian form of English 'bolshevism' is the most dangerous. Without its destruction, the modern era will remain intact."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/martin-heidegger-black-notebooks-reveal-nazi-ideology-antisemitism
***
Dugin uses code words for Jews, believes in anti-Semitic conspiracies and bases his theory on a former Nazi who despised England and America.
Chilling.
muriel_volestrangler
(102,483 posts)He has his theories about what Russia should do, but how much they guide Russian policy, I'm not so sure. They may provide a comforting pretense of academic foundations for Putin, but I think Putin drives things much more by pragmatism - what works for him in practice, at any one time, than from a long-term ideology.
For instance, money rules in Russia, above all. Having Orthodox support is useful for Putin, and nationalism, but I don't think Dugin's ideas are based on an oligarchy, which is what controls Russia now. Putin's Russia is the Republican party on steroids. And that's why so many Republicans have learned to love Putin. They grow up equating money and success, and then want the whole world to be based around giving power to the people with the most money. They chose Trump on that basis, and ignored all the Christian moralising they had claimed was central to their character. And if Trump says Putin is their kind of oligarch, that's good enough for them.
defacto7
(13,610 posts)Thanks for your input.
There's a picture I saw only once of Putin praying his Orthodox prayer beads. When I think about his actions against western as well as middle eastern nations that picture tempers my opinion about a purely pragmatic Putin. His mother was devout and they practiced a strict Russian Orthodoxy. Putin as a pragmatic oligarch doesn't conflict with Putin the devout, especially when noting the ways and history of the ROC with its absolutism, and a background of mythical thinking certainly can open itself to a mix of intellectualism and a newly branded fascism that Dugin offers.
I appreciate tempering my imagination with down to reality data; I need to do that. But I wouldn't underestimate the value of keeping an eye on broad perspectives as long as it's observation based. I see a clandestine mystic under the pragmatic exterior of the hardend power mad Putin. That makes a big difference in making sense of and predicting his moves.