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Gnuneo's avatar

V interesting, thanks for sharing Glenn. I don't pretend to follow all of his arguments, and I'd probably appreciate a read of his book(s).

Personally, I sit uncomfortably on this, as I am a hardcore Liberal who also sees the limits of Liberalism (And its dangers when taken too far without leavening), and also the necessity of spiritual, and/or traditional elements that have been cast aside.

Dugin seems not to have followed Graeber in seeing the basics of the Ideologies in normal social situations;

Leftism: How you interact with your friends in a social group;

Rightism: how you interact with authority and hierarchy;

Liberalism; How you trade with peers.

These will be true in all civilisations except totalitarian impositions.

Another point of disagreement I would have is the apparent claim that ONLY Liberalism as a Ideology seeks universalism and other forms of domination - both the Right - Nation, hierarchy, and the Left - Community, socialism, will also follow similar paths to universal imposition if taken too far. If the result of WW2 had been different, we would be seeing that now instead.

I grasp that for Dugin "Liberalism is the enemy", a huge, if understandable simplification considering Liberalism is the main force he has to overcome as he sees it.

Again, I wish I had read one of his books at least to better understand his arguments.

A society without ANY Liberalism however will be a hellscape.

One stunning irony is that the Eurasianism that he describes is almost a textbook example of traditional, pre-Modern Liberalism. Live and let live is about the most Liberal thing you can possibly say.

That this to some extent is no longer the case, is partly the fault of Liberalism's excessive success, but also unarguably due to Feudalism's re-enrtry under the rebranding "Neoliberalism". And the ruling elites increasingly frantic attempts to create chaos and social division to hide the theft of Public wealth from under their noses, and the destruction of the social compacts.

This appeared to be entirely missing from Dugin's analysis of "Liberalism", and that has huge ramifications.

But there's only so much one can cover in an hour's worth of conversation.

I get the feeling attempting a defence of Liberalism with Dugin would be a fools' errand, even from a Liberal that agrees with many of his core principles.

The way the Western media treated the assassination of the beautiful and extremely intelligent Darya was a harbringer of not only how Russians were to be considered, but also the later behaviours of Israel and its assassination programs.

It is hardly surprising that Dugin loathes the West and its never-ending hypocrisies and forked-tongues.

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ScuzzaMan's avatar

Excesses of reason?

Funny, if I was going to criticise modernity on that axis I'd be inclined to draw attention to its deficits of reason.

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