Authors

Discussion

The influence of A. Dugin’s writings on the Kremlin’s politics has often been analyzed (see Darczewska 2014 and van Herpen 2015) but also overestimated (Kragh & Umland 2023: 382). In particular, Dugin plays a minor role in V. Putin’s speeches. A more important source of inspiration for Putin is the work of the nationalist philosopher I.Il’in, who on his exile became a sympathizer of Hitler. The appointment of Dugin as the director of the new Il’in Center at the Moscow Higher School of Economics in 2023 establishes a link between these two philosophers and marks an upgrade of Dugin’s position in the ideological battle with the West: he now stands for Putin’s favorite philosopher at the country’s most prestigious university. Thus, returning to Dugin’s origins as a conspiracy theorist may be rewarding. In doing so, I will focus on the most frequent argumentation patterns in his 2005 “Konspirologija” and his rhetoric (quotations, metaphors, presuppositions, rhetorical questions).

What strikes us most in Dugin’s use of conspiratorial argumentation (Oswald 2016) is his inconsistent treatment of the final conclusion. In the case of the collapse of the Soviet Union, he names all alleged forces involved: the Western Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg Club, and their Soviet “mondialist allies” Javlinskij, Gajdar, Berezovskij and čubajs. This allows us to identify the culprits of the end of the Soviet Union (although no textual evidence is quoted), all the more so as the author characterizes the whole process as treason. By contrast, the 9-11 catastrophe is analyzed in terms of “Cui bono?”, to which Dugin’s answer is “only the US”. The conclusion (the perpetrators were anonymous American agents) is not spelled out but left to us by implicature. The deeper reason for Bush’s war on Iraq is the reputation of Babylon as the sinful whore in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here, no causal arguments are presented but replaced by mere speculation.

Dugin’s quotations reveal two main sources: the Bible, including the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, and folk etymology based on phonetic assonances. The quotations from the Bible are not attributed to a specific quoter. Thus, it remains open whether they serve as arguments from authority for those American protestants who are said to influence the US government or for Dugin himself. Folk etymologies shape his concept of America, which is linked to Celtic legends and the Bible. By contrast, Russia is identified with the apocalyptical Rosh, which helps demonize Russia more than “those infamous human rights.” Terms such as “half-subconscious geopolitical intuition” do not improve our understanding. Overall, one must conclude that this work does not meet the criteria of scientific reasoning but fits ideally in the overall ideological frame of Russia as a guardian of traditional values threatened by a hostile civilization.