Happy twentieth birthday, blog!

Hard to believe, but this blog is now twenty years old. The first post was dated June 14, 2006, and explained that it was time for the addenda I had been publishing on the companion website to Against the Modern World to take a new form. June 15, 2026 saw the first real post: a book announcement, welcoming Jean-Pierre Laurant’s René Guénon, les enjeux d'une lecture. Since then there have been 536 more posts, an average of about two a month, and 1,209 comments.

The blog has become more popular over time. It took nine years to reach 250,000 page views (in 2015), two more years to reach 500,000 page views (in 2017), six years to add a further 500,000 page views and reach 1,000,000 (in 2023), and finally three years to reach 2,000,000 (in 2026). This reflects both increased interest and the fact that as the years have passed there have been ever more pages for an interested visitor to view.

Over these twenty years, the blog’s audience has become more global. From 2006 to 2015, 45% of visits came from the US, UK and Canada, and from 2006 to 2017, 59% from the US alone. By 2023 the US share had fallen to 38%, and to 37% by 2026. Non-US interest came initially from the UK, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, and Brazil, then (by 2017) especially from the UK and Russia, a pattern little changed in 2023. By 2026, Singapore came in second place after the US, followed by the UK, Brazil, Hong Kong, France, Germany, and Russia. Why the new interest in Singapore and Hong Kong? If you know, please leave a comment.

Dugin as viewed from the American Left

Bruce Lerro, an adjunct college professor of psychology who describes himself as a libertarian communist, has written a long article on Alexander Dugin’s concept of the ethnos, which you can read here.  It is entitled “From Shaman to Heroes, From Prophets to Traders: Alexander Dugin’s A Russian Eurasian Perspective on Ethnogenesis.” Interestingly, it was published on a website called Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism.

Lerro asks the question “Why Should You Care?” and answers: 

For socialists, a knowledge of the history of human societies is vital to understand the dynamics of why societies arise and break down. As historical beings we train ourselves to accept the torch of existing social conditions and pass the torch to the next generation to help plant better social conditions. The Atlanticist world of the West is falling apart. The Asian world is rising. While Western anthropology and macrosociology has made some important contributions it has been relatively neglectful of steppe people and has generally looked skeptically on the value of ethnicity and other forms of attachment. This is because capitalist societies need individuals, not groups to be the lowest unit for its economic advertising. Dugin’s work, as shown in this article, supports both ancient forms of attachment and the place of steppe people in social evolution. In the extent to which socialists wish to be Eurasian polarists, we owe it to the world and ourselves understanding of their picture of how societies evolved.

In principle Dugin sees himself as neither left or right, but in generally his reception in the West has very much been on the right, and Lerro's article was republished on Countercurrents (here), which is generally described as alt right. What is interesting is to see the American left taking an interest.

Dugin and the Decolonial School

Alexander Dugin’s modernity, like that of René Guénon but more explicitly, is located in the West. Dugin therefore calls for the end of Western hegemony and the liberation of other civizational spheres. He is not alone in doing this, as has been pointed out in a recent article by Miri Davidson, an assistant professor in Political Theory at the University of Warwick. The article is “On the concept of the pluriverse in Walter Mignolo and the European New Right,” Contemporary Political Theory 24 (2025), pp. 469–489, available open access at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-024-00732-x.

Davidson compares the views of Walter Mignolo, an American scholar of Argentinian origin and doyen of the post-Marxist “decolonial school,” with those of Dugin and Alain de Benoist, the French doyen of the “New Right.” The term “pluriverse” was popularized by Arturo Escobar, another member of the decolonial school, as an alternative to the dominant Eurocentric, conquering, capitalist worldview. It is, Davidson shows, comparable to Benoist’s ethnopluralism and Carl Schmitt’s great spaces as adopted by Dugin. Yet there is a difference, she maintains: the decolonial pluriverse is open, “composed of many related and entangled worlds which mingle and coexist with one another,” while the pluriverse of Benoist and Dugin is closed, as “culturally diverse worlds can only live a healthy existence in separation from one another.” This is probably true of Benoist, but not—at least in principle—of Dugin, for whom traditional civilizations can and should combine.

Davidson makes another interesting point, that both versions of the pluriverse imagine hegemony erasing difference. This, she argues, misunderstands the nature of imperialism, which “does not only homogenise and erase difference—which it certainly does on a cultural level—but also constantly and relentlessly produces difference in the form of striated, hierarchical, and often essentialist ethnic, racial, national, and sexual identities.”

An interesting article, which shines a new light on Dugin’s theories, and also (though Davidson does not say this) shows the limits of classification in terms of “left” and “right.”

Black Nationalist Traditionalism: Kémi Séba

The Pan-African “influencer” Kémi Séba (see photo, originally Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi) has applied the Traditionalist framework to Africa. In his Philosophie de la panafricanité fondamentale (Philosophy of fundamental Pan-Africanism, Editions Fiat Lux, 2023). Séba identifies the deceptive "progress" of modernity with the West and primordial virtue with Africa, the birthplace of humanity. The West appears superior only according to the criteria of modernity; according to Traditionalist criteria, it is the African peoples that are superior, with their knowledge of the true tradition.

Séba was born in France to Beninese parents in 1981, and first came to public attention in France as leader of the “Tribu Ka” (Ka Tribe), a Black Nationalist organization that was dissolved by the Council of Ministers in 2006 because it incited to racial hatred (primarily antisemitism). Séba was subsequently imprisoned in 2008 for reconstituting a dissolved group. He then discovered the work of René Guénon, and converted to Islam, though he does not generally emphasize a Muslim identity—he does not use a Muslim name, and on videos says “peace be upon you” in French rather than Arabic.

In 2011 he moved from France to Senegal, where in 2015 he founded an NGO, Urgences Panafricanistes (Panafricanist Emergencies). More importantly, he became increasingly well known on social media, which is his main platform—and nowadays is quite a sufficient platform in its own. In 2017, he was invited to Moscow by Alexander Dugin, with whom he has subsequently enjoyed good relations, returning to Russia several times. His French citizenship was removed in 2024. He is reported to have been expelled from Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Guinea, and to travel on a diplomatic passport issued by Niger. He has recently been active in his parents’ country of origin, Benin, where he was at first blamed for involvement in a failed 2025 coup attempt, but then stood for election as president in 2026—the election is due on 12 April.

Séba’s Philosophy of fundamental Pan-Africanism explains that the true “war of the worlds” is the war between traditionalism (sic) and modernity (chapter two). The “global black population” is the “guardian of the first tradition” (chapter three). Black peoples had a “metaphysical unity” that appears in various forms across Africa but is clearest in ancient Egyptian religion—Séba follows the model proposed by the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop (1923–1986), according to who the Egyptians were of Black African origin, migrating northwards. In contrast, we now have “the West, the kingdom of modern people, the elect of the age of iron” (chapter four). Humanity has passed from Zep Tepi (ancient Egyptian: first time) to the age of Isfet (ancient Egyptian: chaos)—that is, the Kali Yuga, a phrase he does not use. One result is “Negrophobia, the guiding thread of the end of times” (chapter five), given the inability of Westerners to contemplate the representatives of “the original world.” This did not apply to Guénon, given his “traditionalist initiatic spiritual reform.”

What is needed is “globalized quilombanité” to replace globalized neoliberalism (chapter six). Séba derives the term quilombanité from the Portuguese term quilombismo, coined by the Afro-Brazilian politician Abdias do Nascimento (1914–2011) from the term quilombo, used in Brazil to denote a settlement of escaped slaves. Quilombismo is a form of liberatory communitarianism based on Afro-Brazilian or African culture. Séba added to the socio-economic model of Abdias the formation of “traditionalist initiatic centers” based in the “spirit of the primordial age.” To achieve all this, a metaphysically based sociology and geopolitics are required (chapter seven): a sociology based on tradition, and a geopolitics that breaks Western global dominance. In this last point, we perhaps see the influence of Dugin.

There is surprisingly little Islam in the Philosophy of fundamental Pan-Africanism, but a lot of Traditionalism. The book has been well received on Amazon.fr, with 87% of 200 readers giving it five stars. A (badly) machine-translated English version of a talk about the book given by Séba has attracted 550,000 views on YouTube. Both Séba and the book are far from marginal, then.

Russian Conservatism and Alexander Dugin

Many articles in an important and very long special issue on “Aleksandr Dugin and Contemporary Russian Conservatism” in Studies in East European Thought (volume 78, issues 1-2, 2026) deal with Dugin. The special issued is edited by Jeff Love (Northwestern) and Marina F. Bykova (North Carolina State University).  Given the number of articles, this will be a long post.

Four articles look at Dugin's use of Heidegger, two articles at his Fourth Political Theory, one at his use of Armin Mohler's “conservative revolution,” and one at his apparent abandonment of Eurasianism. Five look at his impact abroad: in the West, in the Middle East, in the Global South, in China, and online. One looks at Queer theory (see earlier post here), and one at apocalypticism. Only one focuses on Dugin’s Traditionalism, which many of the the rest ignore, and that is Mark Sedgwick, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Traditionalist roots,” discussed here. 

The same issue also contains five short papers about the meaning of conservatism, fruit of a round table on this issue. Most do not mention Dugin, but all are interesting. The paper that does mention Dugin, Artemy Magun's “Conservatism and the dialectic of ideology” (here), notes that conservativism in Russia has become more radical, with Dugin as the latest in the line from Fyodor Dostoevsky through Ivan Ilyin, Lev Gumilyov, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Magun summarizes this conservatism as “aggressive counterrevolution, the unique path and values of Russia as a culture and ‘civilization’ (‘Sonderweg’), traditionalism in contrast to moral experimentation, the capitalist materialism of the West, and to the emphasis on the positive, good, and normal models as opposed to ‘Western perversity.’” It is, he argues, a coherent idea. He also notes that “the moral panic that the specter of a serious conservatism… induces in some English-language literature is counterproductive.”

For Heidegger, Jeff Love, in “Dugin’s masks,” (available here) shows how Dugin’s interpretation of Heidegger is combined with Plato to produce a “philosophy of chaos.” It ends by identifying contradictions between Dugin’s philosophy and his political action. Maja Soboleva, in “From the ‘Russian idea’ to the ‘Russian World’” (available here, open access) looks at the development of the “Russian idea” as a basis for Russian national identity, and the role of Dugin in introducing Heidegger into later conceptions of the Russian idea, which in turn “correlates with the myths that later found their way into Putin’s catalog of traditional values.” These are characterized as “a peculiar mythologized metaphysical pseudo-Heideggerian realism.” The presence of these ideas in Putin’s “catalog,” as Soboleva does not say, might be one basis for answering the heated question of Dugin’s real influence in contemporary Russia. Gregory Fried, in “'Something wicked this way comes': the neo-fascist mobilization of Martin Heidegger in the Nationalist International” (available here) deals, as the title says, with the uses of Heidegger by the Global New Right, not just by Dugin, to whom one section is devoted. Finally, Daniil Koloskov, in “Russian Dasein: Dugin’s reading of Heidegger and the possibility of 'cultural Dasein'” (available here) argues that Dugin's reading of Heidegger "runs counter to the basic meaning of Heidegger’s early project and remains non-Heideggerian in spirit. All useful and interesting. 

For the Fourth Political Theory, in “Old wine in a postmodern bottle: Aleksandr Dugin’s ‘Fourth political theory’ and Aurel Kolnai’s War against the West” (available here, open access), Matthew Sharpe argues that the Fourth Political Theory is just a revised version of Nazism, as understood by the liberal Austrian philosopher Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973). Ronald Beiner, in “Alexander Dugin: philosopher or ideologue?” (available here) also argues that the Fourth Political Theory is no more than rebranding. Beiner made the same argument in his chapter on Dugin in his 2025 boook on  Radical Right Ideologues in the Age of Trump: Heralds of Nihilism. I myself am not so sure, nor am I sure that Kolnai's definition of Nazism is the best one to use.

Michael Meng, in “Dugin’s apocalypticism: Western or Russian?” (available here, open access) looks at classic models of apocalypticism from Thucydides and Plato to Augustine and Hitler, and concludes that unlike these models Dugin is most concerned with averting the destruction of Russia’s “mythic position between East and West.” Meng does not mention the Traditionalism that informed Dugin’s original and early interest in the apocalypse, and I am not sure his conclusion is entirely right. 

Emmanuel Faye’s “A strategy of exoneration? Armin Mohler, Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin on the ‘conservative revolution’, National Socialism, and the SS” (available here) is only partly devoted to Dugin, as it deals at length with Mohler’s construction of the alleged “conservative revolution” and its reception by de Benoist before he gets to Dugin. Part of the point of Mohler’s construction was to exonerate “a whole host of National Socialist authors, beginning with Carl Schmitt,” and including Martin Heidegger and Ernst Jünger. The main difference between Dugin on the one hand and Mohler and de Benoist on the other was that, unlike them, Dugin “was not concerned to distance himself from Nazism at any price,” and in fact praised the Waffen SS as “a kind of intellectual oasis at the heart of the National Socialist regime.” Faye is one exception to the general rule that articles other than Sedgwicks’s “Aleksandr Dugin’s Traditionalist Roots” ignore Traditionalism, as he notes in passing that Dugin was a Traditionalist and that his Fourth Political Theory draws on Guénon as well as Jung and Heidegger. 

It is Nicola Guerra who proposes that Dugin has abandoned Eurasianism, in "From neo-Eurasianism to Trumpism: Aleksandr Dugin and the making of conservative internationalism" (available here). If it has happened, this would be a major change since, as Guerra says, it is Eurasianism that brought Dugin to public attention in the first place. The argument is based on recent comments by Dugin, and also  on the fact that his English-language social media activities have recently mostly abandoned classic Eurasian themes and now repost a lot of MAGA content. Guerra also points out that Dugin has concede that the project of Eurasian integration in the post-Soviet space has filed, despite President Putin’s best efforts.

In 2025 Dugin’s Facebook channel announced that “Trump clears the path towards multipolarity. Aleksandr Dugin maintains that Trump’s UN speech has destroyed the illusion of a liberal world order.” In my own view, this is not so much the abandonment of Dugin’s earlier positions as a note that what he had so long railed against—the hegemony of monopolar American liberalism—has fallen. Instead, “Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Narendra Modi embody ancient civilizations [Confucian and Vedic] that now assert their sovereignty within their own value systems.” Just as Dugin had hoped for years.

Guerra writes “Dugin has not merely abandoned the neo-Eurasianist framework and its attendant geopolitical logic, but has also realigned his ideological orientation toward the American Alt-right, illiberal conservatism, the Alt-lite, and the Bannonite ideological milieu—positions that are fundamentally at odds with the theoretical and strategic premises underpinning his earlier neo-Eurasianist corpus.” He refers to an earlier article of his, "The Russian-Ukrainian war has shattered the European far right: The opposing influences of Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin," in European Politics and Society 2024, available here. In this he argues that although many observers lump Bannon’s and Dugin’s ideologies together, they are in fact profoundly different, as “Bannonian traditionalism is markedly Christian and identifies Islam as an enemy… [while]  Dugin’s traditionalism, which can in no way be separated from his project of creating a Eurasian empire, is instead polyreligious.” Bannon’s perspective, he further argues, is ethnic, perhaps even white supremacist, while Dugin’s is multi-ethnic.

This is true, if one accepts Guerra's take on Bannon, except that in my view Dugin’s Traditionalism can and should be separated from his Eurasian project. Endorsement of Trump as the person who destroyed unilateral American power and the hegemonic liberal project does not constitute an acceptance of Christian white supremacy or an abandonment of multi-ethnic perennialism.

Finally, for reception, several articles are co-written with Marlene Laruelle.

The West is covered by Erik Piccoli in "The Dugin network: multipolarity, traditionalism, and transnational liaisons in the West" (available here). He looks at France, where Dugin's earliest contacts were, and then at Spain, Italy, and the US. He focuses on networks, not thought, though he does concede that the publishing house Arktos, which translates Dugin's works on all topics, may actually be more important than any ot the networks, though of course French, Spanish and Italian networks also publish translations. In terms of networks, he sees Dugin as "an intermediary between the Russian state and sympathetic groups abroad." He argues that what has mattered most since the invasion of the Ukraine is Dugin's geopolitics, as a result of which he appeals to pro-Russian groups irrespective of other factors. It is about multipolarity (the alternative to American unipolarity) more than Traditionalism. Piccoli identifies individuals and small groups in each country that have welcomed Dugin and promoted him and his work.

Four countries in the Global South are discussed by Marlene Laruelle and Arsenio Cuenca in "Russia’s metaphysical diplomat: Dugin’s ideological circulation in the Global South" (available here). They are India, Brazil, Argentina, and West Africa. In all four countries Dugin has been well received, in India by the government (it seems) as a semi-official representative of Russia, in Brazil by the rightist group Nova Resistência (New Resistance), in Argentina by the Peronists. In these three cases the interest is mostly political. In West Africa, however, it is Traditionalism that matters, as Dugin's strongest relationship is with Kémi Séba, a widely popular Pan-Africanist who not only credits Guénon for his conversion to Islam but also incorporates Traditionalism in his political and cultural theory. More work remains to be done on Séba.

China is a different matter, covered by Marlene Laruelle and Victor Liu in "Civilizational dissonance: Alexander Dugin and the limits of Sino-Russian ideological convergence" (available here). This is the most political reception of all. It started in 2018, when Dugin was invited to China and promoted as a lecturer by prominent policy thinkers like Zhang Weiwei and Wang Wen, who presented him as the “philosopher of multipolarity.” He was then received enthusiastically on social media in 2022 as China and Russia became closer following the invasion of Ukraine, and Chinese media started to present the war as against Western positions. The following year, however, opinion turned, mostly because Dugin’s earlier and somewhat Russo-centric and hostile positions on China in his Geopolitics became known, and to some extent also because his “metaphysical worldview” were discovered and rejected.

For the Middle East, Kamal Gasimov and Marlene Laruelle contribute “Eurasia and eschatology. Dugin’s antiliberal resonances in the Muslim world” (available here, open access). The article in fact covers Turkey, the eastern Arab world, and Iran, not the Muslim world as a whole, but the countries it does cover, it covers well and in detail. Traditionalism is most important for Dugin's reception in Iran, but “his elaboration of a doctrine deeply rooted in esoteric, occultist, and eschatological traditions as well as geopolitics” matters everywhere, “allowing him to translate current transformations of the international order into a metaphysical language.” Beyond this, Dugin's view of the West fits comfortably with well-established Middle Eastern experiences of Western imperialism and his anti-modernism fits well with equally well-established Middle Eastern views of the West as a source of atheism and moral depravity. This matters more, in the view of Gasimov and Laruelle, than the details of his more recent political theory, though of course general views of political relations with Russia also matter. It is going too far, however, to say that Dugin is not “an exporter of a coherent doctrine but... a cipher through which diverse publics negotiate their own ideological positions vis-à-vis liberalism and the West.” His Traditionalist-based critique of the West and modernity placed in opposition to the esoteric is, in fact, a coherent doctrine, and Dugin is no more a cipher than any other philosopher.

A final article on reception is “Dugin as digital influencer: symbolic authority and media ecosystems” by Marlène Laruelle and Dusan Bozalka, available here. This is one of the most interesting articles in the special issue, arguing that what matters is not so much Dugin’s thought or even its institutional connections and backing but the way it circulates online. This approach is a new idea for some, but has become well accepted among others. The article examines Dugin’s online presence using variously technically sophisticated tools, looking at his Telegram channels and his major websites. This analysis shows us Dugin’s thought, or at least his online messaging, from an entirely new perspective. It also shows where this online messaging is received: most of all among Russian speakers, in the Francophone world, Latin America, the Anglosphere, and also among readers of Serbian, Italian, German, Turkish, Polish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Dutch, Finnish, and Ukrainian.

The major themes of Dugin’s online messaging, Laruelle and Bozalka find, are multipolarity, “which calls for the decline of Western hegemony and the establishment of a world order in which sovereign civilizations coexist on equal footing, each maintaining its own spiritual and cultural integrity,” followed by the rejection of liberal modernity, which draws heavily on Traditionalist understandings, and “is rooted in the idea that liberalism is not just a political model but a spiritual disintegration.” Beyond these come “the weaponization of aesthetics and political theology,” an idea that is only discussed briefly.

All these channels not only post Dugin’s own materials but also republish materials from other networks, including the Latin American channels like Novaresistenciabrasil and NostraAmerica. Messaging is also adapted to each language audience, with French readers encountering “Europe’s spiritual decline [and] the betrayal of French Christian identity by laïcité,” Latin Americans learning of US neocolonialism, and the US audience reading of “cultural Marxism” and “the ‘Orthobro’ phenomenon— a loosely defined digital identity that valorizes Eastern Orthodoxy, traditional masculinity, hierarchical social order, and pre-modern aesthetics.” “This eclectic mix… provides Dugin’s ecosystem with a cross-ideological range that strengthens its claim to intellectual authority across both the far-right and dissident left,” in the view of Laruelle and Bozalka.

Traditionalism and Eastern Orthodoxy: Call for contributions

The reception of Traditionalism has been better studied in some contexts than in others. This Call invites proposals for chapters in a forthcoming multi-author book to be entitled The Reception of Traditionalism in Eastern Orthodoxy: Mysticism and Politics, edited by Mark Sedgwick. Contributors will be invited to an authors’ workshop in Belgrade in March 2027 to discuss pre-circulated drafts (expenses covered by the organizers).

Topics to be covered include: Traditionalism in interwar Romania: Mircea Eliade and his circles; Traditionalism in Yugoslavia and Serbia; Eastern Orthodox Traditionalism in the West: James Cutsinger, Philip Sherrard, and John Tavener; Traditionalism in late-Soviet and early post-Soviet Russia; Traditionalism in Ukraine, Belarus, post-Communist Romania, and b; Aleksander Dugin and the development of Traditionalist Eurasianism; and perhaps also Traditionalism in Bulgaria, Moldova, and/or Georgia.

Chapters should cover the reception of Traditionalism in the country(ies) and period(s) in question, explaining who transmitted and developed Traditionalist thought, what aspects were stressed, glossed over, and further developed, and how this relates to the context of the place(s) and time(s).

Brief proposals (500 words), including a proposed title, should be sent to Mark Sedgwick (mjrs@cas.au.dk) before midnight CET on February 15, accompanied by a biographical note that mentions relevant prior publications. Feel free to send more than one proposal. On the basis of these proposals, actual chapters will be commissioned as soon as possible, to be researched and drafted before March 2027.

The authors’ workshop will refine the drafts and allow us to discuss how the reception and development of Traditionalism in Eastern Orthodoxy differs from what happened in the Catholic and Protestant West, and in Latin America, and to explore what this tells us about Traditionalism, mysticism, politics, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

“Traditionalism” as used in this Call refers to those working with the idea of an esoteric primordial tradition as developed by René Guénon. The book will not cover forms of traditionalism that have no connection with Guénon.

This project is funded by the Templeton Religion Trust through the Program in the Study of Mysticism (PRISM) at Tampere University, Finland.

Dugin, the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, and Russian intelligence

The Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE, logo to left), based in Moscow and directed by Alexander Dugin’s right-hand man Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin, has just (December 9, 2025) been sanctioned by the UK government, following the lead of the EU and US. As a result, “internet access services and application stores must take reasonable steps to prevent users in the UK from accessing content, sites or applications provided by” CGE.

According to the EU, the CGE has been “involved in creating and disseminating false information by utilising artificial intelligence tools to produce deepfake videos, and supporting a network of hundreds of fake news websites. CGE is alleged to have worked closely with Russia’s military intelligence agency.” The UK agrees, identifying the “network of hundreds of fake news websites” as Storm-1516.

This is hard to verify using open sources. The CGE exists as a legal entity, and Korovin is listed as its director, but it has no internet presence. Storm-1516 is the name assigned by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center to a Russian network it detected that was involved in attempting to influence the 2024 US presidential election. The source for the connection between the two is Microsoft, according to an October 2024 NBC news report, but there is nothing about this online at the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center. One source for the connection between the CGE and Russian intelligence is a January 2024 public report by the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, according to which “Russian intelligence agencies have repeatedly used the Centre as a cover to get involved in organising press tours” of Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

An EU report gives two URLs for the GCE. One, cge.su, operated from 2017 to May 2024 with the CGE’s articles as a placeholder and no other content save the logo reproduced above. The other, cge.evrazia.ru, seems never to have existed, and may be a mistake for evrazia.su, which does exist and does organize tours of the “post-Soviet space,” which may well include occupied areas of Ukraine, but does not seem to be related to Korovin or Dugin.

The EU and UK information, then, may not be entirely reliable. There is certainly confusion when it comes to a related matter. Dugin’s daughter Darya was killed by a Ukrainian operation inside Russia in August 2022. She was sanctioned by the US in March 2022 and by the UK in July 2022, even though the UK had not then sanctioned Dugin himself, and did not do so until December 2025 (the EU sanctioned him in 2022, and the US in 2015). The UK then tightened its sanctions on her in 2023 and 2024, first imposing “trust services sanctions” and then a “Director Disqualification Sanction,” even though she had been dead for some time.

Thought-provoking Piece on Dugin

A thought-provoking piece on Alexander Dugin has appeared in Playing Civilization, a new English-language blog run by Georgy Birger, who describes himself as “a Russian journalist in exile.” It is “The Imaginary West and East of Alexander Dugin,” available here.

Birger argues that “it is [Dugin’s] global connections—not the Slavophile philosophy—that make him valuable to the Kremlin,” and that this is risky for him, as he is “the last of ‘Russian civilization’ fans to support the West in any form [that form being support of the Western Radial Right]. Dugin’s involvement in Western culture marks him as someone who has spent too much time with the enemy.”

Birger also explores what he calls “the imaginary West—a vision of the West Russians have crafted over centuries.” The imaginary West that is currently dominant, created with Dugin’s help, is of “the Western radical right as heroes fighting the tyranny of ‘obsolete’ liberalism.” Dugin’s role in Russia. Birger further argues, is “to observe the West, to understand it, and to explain what is going on to those who cannot be bothered with it while they are making Russia great again.” 

The paradox that  Dugin is a Russian nationalist who likes to lace his speeches and writings with non-Russian terms and names has been pointed out before. Birger's piece takes this line of thought several steps further.

Update on Passages

The first number of a new Traditionalist journal, Passages, edited by the American Traditionalist Jafe Arnold, was released in 2023 (and reviewed here). The second number was released earlier in 2025. It is much the same size as the first number (382 pages, fifteen articles) but has grown more Russian, with six Russian contributors (including Alexander Dugin), as against two in 2023. There are about the same number of Italians (five as against six) and Hungarians (three, unchanged). Unlike 2023, there are no American, English or French contributors, perhaps because of the Ukraine war.

New article on the continuing relevance of Traditionalism for Alexander Dugin

Just published: an article on the continuing relevance of Traditionalism for Alexander Dugin. It is Mark Sedgwick, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Traditionalist roots,” Studies in East European Thought, available here (open access). The abstract for that article is:

By the time of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Russian political activist Aleksandr Dugin was known as an ultra-nationalist, a fascist, a geopolitician, a Eurasianist, a Heideggerian, and sometimes also as a Traditionalist in the school established by René Guénon. Some, however, hold that Dugin had left Traditionalism far behind, or perhaps had never really been a Traditionalist in the first place. This article examines the extent to which Dugin’s engagement with Traditionalism has persisted throughout his intellectual and political career. It begins with Dugin’s formative years in the late-Soviet Iuzhinskii Circle, where he first encountered Traditionalism, and explores his adaptations of Guénon’s views. The article argues that Dugin’s works, including his best-seller The Fundamentals of Geopolitics (1997), reflect his continued commitment to Traditionalist principles, despite significant modifications. The article thus challenges views that dismiss Dugin’s Traditionalism as superficial or abandoned. It concludes that Dugin’s enduring adherence to Traditionalism is essential to understanding his influence on Russian political thought and his broad appeal.

Dugin and Queer Theory

A new article looks at an aspect of Alexander Dugin’s thought that has not received much attention before: Queer Theory. The article is Trevor Wilson, “Normative anti-normativity: when Dugin reads queer theory.” Studies in East European Thought (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09695-6 (open access). 

 The abstract runs: 

In line with a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ discourse within conservative Russian politics, Aleksandr Dugin has increasingly critiqued “postmodern” theories that allegedly underpin social diversity (sexual, gender, racial, etc.) within the West: queer theory, post-structuralism, and other theoretical accounts of identity and alterity. In Dugin’s argument for a political philosophy of Eurasianism, the Western endorsement of multiculturalism and pluralism is indicative of individualism and “Atlanticist” liberalism, therefore at odds with the traditional, nationalist collectivism of Eurasia. In this light, queer theory is a Western imposition whose philosophical premises directly contradict native, Russian traditions. Dugin’s attack on queer theory, however, mark a departure from the philosopher’s earlier career within the National Bolshevik movement. Throughout the nineties, Dugin was relatively sympathetic with the nascent LGBT movement in Russia: specifically within the political and philosophical circles of National Bolshevism, in which such figures as Eduard Limonov and Slava Mogutin coalesced with fascists and communists around a broad critique of Western capitalism and openly embraced homoeroticism and countercultural, queer dissidence. Dugin’s links to the LGBT movement are even relatively mainstream: his first wife, Evgeniia Debrianskaia, was a prominent gay activist, and both Debrianskaia and Dugin for a time viewed the Eurasianism’s goals as aligned with that of LGBT activism in Russia. This article examines the development of Dugin’s political philosophy in the context of his reading of queer theory. It first discusses the link in historical terms, in the connections between Dugin’s early post-Soviet career and post-Soviet Russian gay activism. The article then focuses on Dugin’s philosophy of “multipolarity,” as a form of resistance to universalist, American hegemony, in order to illustrate how Dugin’s Eurasianist account of political “anti-normativity” both aligns and contradicts with his reading of queer theory. The article concludes with comments on the globalization of queer theory, cultural imperialism, and its relationship to Dugin’s geopolitics.

Dugin’s status in Russian philosophy

A recent article by the Russian philosopher Yulia Sineokaya, currently based in Paris, reviews the Russian philosophical landscape, identifying four generations and dividing them between opponents of Vladimir Putin’s regime (mostly in exile), supporters of the same, and neutrals in “internal exile” who keep their heads down and try to preserve the structures of philosophical scholarship in Russia. It is “Philosophical generations in contemporary Russia,” Ethics & Bioethics 14 (2024), no. 3, pp. 140–150, available here.

The two generations that matter most, Sineokaya considers, are the second and third, consisting of those who emerged under perestroika/glasnost and those who emerged in the 1990s during the period of market reforms. The second generation, she writes, can be seen as “a generation of translators into Russian,” the third as “a generation of interpreters,” and the current generation (which is not yet prominent) as “a generation that speaks the languages of the world.” Possibly a little cruel, but not without truth.

Those in these generations who support the regime “have actively engaged in the process of transforming the Russian education system of values from universal liberal (‘Eurocentric’) to conservative, isolationist ‘Russian traditional values.’” Sineokaya’s list of “the most influential” members of these generations is headed by Alexander Dugin, though she then goes on to divide the neo-Eurasians between two groups: “In the first group are ultra-nationalism and isolationism with elements of the fascism of Alexander Dugin, and in the second is the symphonic pan-Eurasian internationalism of Andrei Smirnov.” It would be interesting to know more about Smirnov. The third generation includes followers of Dugin such as Nikolay Arutyunov and the late Daria Dugina. All of these philosophers, Sineokaya reports, became prominent after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, certainly a turning point in relations between Russia and the West (though she does not say this).

Sineokaya also reports the appointment of Dugin to head the Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Political Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities in August 2023. Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) was an émigré Orthodox philosopher, often cited by Putin, and also by Dugin. Student protests against this appointment were, in her view, an exception to the neutrality of those who neither support or oppose the regime. She sees the Institute as “stillborn,” having failed to achieve its objectives, but does not say why. More effective, though less noticed, she thinks, is the Institute for Heritage and Contemporary Society, also at the Russian State University of Humanities, led by Valery Fadeyev, a journalist with various government posts, not a philosopher.

The article is mostly written with normal academic neutrality, but Sineokaya is evidently not sympathetic towards Dugin or the Putin regime. That she places Dugin first among the currently ascendant faction of Russian philosophers, then, is a real testimony to his current importance.

A new journal and a new generation

A new Traditionalist journal was published in 2023: Passages: Studies in Traditionalism and Traditions (cover to left). It represents a new generation of Traditionalists: Americans, Russians, and Europeans.

Passages describes itself as “a textual forum for studies on and in Traditionalism” in succession to earlier Traditionalist journals such as Études traditionelles, Studies in Comparative Religion, Sophia, and Sacred Web, and is published by PRAV Publishing, on whom more below. It is more of an annual than a journal, as the first volume is 393 pages long, and the next volume is due in 2024 or perhaps early 2025.

The lead editor of Passages and the Editor-in-chief of PRAV Publishing is Jafe Arnold, an American with an MA in Religious Studies and Western Esotericism from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in Philosophy and Education at the University of Warsaw, where he submitted a dissertation on “Heidegger’s Ins and Outs of Plato’s Cave: The Mythical Liberation of Education in Heidegger’s On The Essence of Truth” in 2024. Arnold is one of the most active Traditionalists of the new generation, and has worked on and with Alexander Dugin. One article of his was previously discussed on this blog (see here). 

The opening article in Passages 1 is a translation of Dugin’s “René Guénon: Traditionalism as Language,” originally a 1998 lecture, and certainly one of Dugin’s most important pieces on this topic. Of the following seventeen articles, two are by Russians, three by Hungarians, and six by Italians, including two authors from the Julius Evola Foundation (definitely not the new generation). There are also two Americans, one Belarusian, one Englishman, and one Frenchman—this last being Jean-Pierre Laurant, the venerable doyen of French scholars of Guénon, neither new generation nor usually associated with Dugin.

PRAV Publishing (website at pravpublishing.com) describes itself as “devoted to the publication of scholarly and popular works which build bridges of ideas between Continents and Civilizations.” The ideas in question are those of Traditionalists, especially Russian ones. So far it has published sixteen books. These include three volumes on the Foundations of Eurasianism, translated and edited by Arnold together with John Stachelski, an American who recently completed a PhD on “The geopoetics of an undiscovered continent: Eurasianism as a writing practice” at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale. The first volume of the Foundations is introduced by the contemporary Russian Traditionalist and Eurasianist Leonid Savin, and contains texts by the classic first-generation Eurasianists, especially Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938), Petr Savitsky (1895-1968), and Georges Florovsky (1893-1979). These are the thinkers on whom Dugin’s Eurasianism, sometimes called neo-Eurasianism, builds, combined with Guénon and Evola.

Two of the other books are by Daria Dugina (1992-2022), the daughter of Alexander Dugin who was killed by a Ukrainian car bomb that was probably intended for her father. There are no books by Dugin himself, as the English translations of these are mostly published by Arktos, an older publisher focusing on Traditionalist works, established in 2009. Five of PRAV’s other books are by Askr Svarte (Evgeny Nechkasov), a Russian Pagan Traditionalist who was once a prominent member of Dugin's Eurasian Youth Union and in 2011 founded Svarte Aske (Norwegian: Dark Ash[tree]), an Odinist community in Siberia. Then there are two books by Boris Nad, a Serbian writer whose Vreme imperija (Time of Empires, 2002) was published with an introduction by Dragoš Kalajić, the leading Serbian Traditionalist of the first generation, discussed in a recent blog post here. In addition there four more books written by two Americans, a Russian, and an Italian. 

I am told that PRAV is working on an English translation of Andrea Scarabelli’s Vita avventurosa di Julius Evola (The Adventurous life of Julius Evola), a monumental biography of Evola, a blog post on which is overdue. 

PRAV, Passages, and Arnold and his collaborators are definitely worth watching. 

This post has been edited to correct a number of small errors.

Alexander Dugin interviewed by Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson, the American political talk-show host who in February 2024 interviewed President Putin for his own show on X, the Tucker Carlson Encounter, has now interviewed Alexander Dugin. 

In the 20-minute interview, available here, Dugin develops two arguments. The first is that the central problem today is individualism, which starts with the Protestant reformation, passes through a transition from a classic liberalism that is about the rule of the majority to a new liberalism that is about the rule of minorities and is in fact prescriptive and totalitarian. This new liberalism seeks liberation from all collective identities—most recently gender, which has now become a matter of choice, and finally from humanity itself, moving towards the post-humanism of The Matrix. The second argument is that the reason that Western progressives hate Putin is that he is a defender of “traditional values,” a phrase that Dugin uses several times. He understands these values as being the traditional sovereign state, the traditional family, and traditional belief. This, he says, is metaphysical. But he has not become purely statist; he also mentions Russian civilization as a “world region,” without going in to what he means by this. He is referring to his early understanding of sacred geography, in which the Russian world region becomes the traditional East in contrast to the modern West. This was, of course, one of René Guénon’s fundamental ideas, though Guénon’s East was a different East. For Guénon, individualism was an important aspect of modernity, and the classic pair of modern and traditional can be seen behind the interview’s pair of individualist progressivism and tradition. 

Dugin’s views in the interview are not a great surprise. If anything, the surprise is that Tucker Carlson likes them so much, which he evidently does. The Daily Beast has described the interview as “deranged” (here), and one comment on Twitter suggested that Carlson had been brainwashed. So far the interview has clocked 5.3 million views.

Traditionalism and Nikolai Berdyaev

The Polish philosopher Marek Jedliński has just published an article in Studia z Historii Filozofii (in English) entitled “Russian Yearning for Elite Power: Nikolai Berdyaev’s Reflections on the Metaphysics of Democratism” (available here). Berdyaev (1874-1948, pictured) was a Russian philosopher and exile whose critique of modernity was grounded in religion. 

Jedliński, who has previously published on Julius Evola, René Guénon, and Traditionalism, terms Berdyaev a “traditionalist” and compares him in several respects with Guénon, especially with regard to their understandings of modernity and democracy. Berdyaev even wrote of a “democratic ideology of quantity” (48). There are certainly interesting parallels, but in the end Berdyaev was not a perennialist, even if he was an anti-modernist. 

Jedliński’s article raises the question of what Guénon and Berdyaev thought of each other’s work. They both lived in Paris at the same time, and Berdyaev’s key Le Nouveau Moyen-Âge (The New Middle Ages) was published in French in 1924. Berdyaev was friends with Jacques Maritain, at one point Guénon’s sponsor. Yet Guénon never seems to have mentioned Berdyaev, nor Berdyaev Guénon.

Dugin's multiple contexts

An excellent article on the multiple contexts of Alexander Dugin and Eurasianism has just been published in the New York Review of Books. It is “Russian Exceptionalism” (available here) by Gary Saul Morson, a scholar of Russian literature who has read Dugin and other Eurasianists carefully. He places Dugin in three larger contexts: the “Russian Exceptionalism” of his title, early Eurasianism, and contemporary Russia. And he may well be right in all three ways. He concludes that “Far from distorting earlier Eurasianism, Dugin’s bloodthirstiness represents its predictable development.” I myself would prefer “apocalypticism” to “bloodthirstiness,” but I must admit that the current Dugin can certainly seem rather bloodthirsty. 

Two thirds of the article is about the early Eurasianism of Nikolai Trubetskoy, Pyotr Savitsky, and Lev Gumilev, to which too little attention is usually paid. In Morson’s view, Dugin synthesized this “with the work of practitioners of geopolitics from Halford Mackinder on, along with structuralists, postmodernists (Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze), French ‘traditionalists’ (René Guénon and Alain de Benoist), and various Nazis or ex-Nazis, including Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, and, of course, Martin Heidegger.” Yes, though Benoist would not identify himself as a Traditionalist like Guénon, even if there is indeed much Traditionalism in his through. And Evola, of course, should be listed as a Traditionalist, not a Nazi—he was never even a proper Fascist, let alone a Nazi. But this is not the point: the article is about contexts, not the classification of Dugin’s sources.

Understanding and Misunderstanding Dugin

Hal Brands, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has published a useful article in Foreign Policy, “The Promise and Peril of Geopolitics” (here), placing Alexander’s Dugin’s Geopolitics in its wider context, going back to the British geographer Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) and forward to Chinese and American geopolitical perspectives today. Brands starts by describing Dugin as “a bit of a madman,” but still helps our understanding of one aspect of his thought.

The same cannot be said of the Ayn Rand Institute (129,000 subscribers), which has listed among its eight best podcasts of 2023 “From Russia with Evil: The Philosophy of Alexander Dugin” (here)  a discussion by two Ayn Rand Institute fellows, Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Ziemowit Gowin. The podcast is interesting because, despite often seeming to know Dugin’s work well, Sotirakopoulos and Gowin still get it back to front. They start by describing Dugin as a “Russian ultra-nationalist,” which ignores his views on nationalism, and then identify the two key elements in his thought as condemnation of individualism and celebration of the ethnos. They then confuse cause and effect when they assert that Dugin condemns modernity because modernity “destroys tradition and tradition is one of the most important aspects of ethnos.” Thus “for Dugin tradition is good no matter what is your tradition—to do… I don’t know… human sacrifices? Good, it’s your tradition.” Dugin, as a postmodernist, does not believe that there is any one single truth. Ultimately, “Dugin welcomes any form of irrationality which for him can be used as a shield against reason.” This interpretation allows Sotirakopoulos and Gowin to condemn Dugin and his thought. 

It is, however, hardly accurate. It is not the case that Dugin, as a postmodernist, believes that all traditions and irrationalities are equal, but that, as a Traditionalist, he condemns modernity as the negation of a very specific tradition—which Sotirakopoulos and Gowin in fact come close to recognizing when they refer to Dugin’s belief in “a crazy eclecticism of mysticism, of religion or even religions.” Traditionalism is indeed in a sense eclectic, but not exactly crazy, and for Dugin long precedes any postmodernism. 

The Ayn Rand Institute is quite entitled to condemn Dugin, but would do well to get his thought right before they do so.

Dugin, the State Department, and Brazil

Nova Resistênca (New Resistance), a Brazilian group that draws on and supports Alexander Dugin and is led by Raphael Machado, originally a proponent of Julius Evola before he discovered Dugin, has drawn the attention of the US State Department. 

Nova Resistênca is the subject of a report, available here, by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, a group that aims to “understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.” The report concludes that “While there is no direct evidence that… Nova Resistência [and certain other organizations that have promoted Dugin’s work]… are controlled by Russian intelligence services, the organizations have the hallmarks of other proxy websites and organizations that the FSB, GRU or SVR are known to direct, task or influence.”

The report is less interested in Nova Resistênca and Dugin’s thought than in how this thought is delivered and in possible links to the Russian state. Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory is described only very briefly, and classified as “pro-authoritarian disinformation,” a “neo-fascist, destabilizing ideology,” and part of “a violent, anti-liberal, neo-fascist agenda that serves as an ideological vehicle to destabilize democracies, upend the rules-based international order, and agitate for revanchist military activity in favor of the Kremlin’s strategic goals.”

The evidence for Nova Resistênca being a Russian proxy is far from conclusive, but still interesting. Its website, http://novaresistencia.org/, is hosted in Moscow, and shares an IP address with Dugin’s https://www.4pt.su/en. This website re-publishes a variety of pro-Russian material, including stories that promoted the Wagner Group, as well as Dugin’s material. Nova Resistênca and an address to it by Dugin were reported favorably by the Russian news service, Sputnik. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, spoke at an online “Global Conference on Multipolarity” organized by Nova Resistênca, Dugin’s International Eurasian Movement, a Chinese state organization, and the International Movement of Russophiles, a recently-established organization that evidently enjoys Russian state support and shares some activists with the Eurasian Movement. Whether Lavrov was invited by Nova Resistênca, Dugin, the Chinese, or the International Movement of Russophiles is unclear, but my guess would be the latter.

In the end, the report really only demonstrates that Nova Resistênca is inspired by Dugin, and that Dugin is anti-American, which we already knew. Perhaps what is most interesting is precisely that the US State Department has become interested in Nova Resistênca and Dugin. 

The report also identifies a number of other pro-Dugin groups that I have no investigated: the Center for Syncretic Studies in Serbia (2013-2022), the Junta Nacionalista del Peru and the Centro de Estudios Crisolistas (also Peru), the Vanguardia Nacional (Colombia), the Plataforma Multipolar (Argentina), the Coordinadora Nacional Tempestista (Mexico), and the Círculo Patriótico Chile.Probably all worth looking at.

My thanks to WP for drawing my attention to the report.

The influence of Traditionalism on contemporary Dutch politics

Guest post by Milan Reith

In recent years Traditionalist ideas have surfaced on the fringes of Dutch politics, yet another instance of their ongoing revival. The most notable examples of this phenomenon coalesce around a network of individuals connected to the far-right political party Forum voor Democratie (FVD). Originally founded as a conservative think tank, this organization later evolved into a political party which did very well in the 2019 provincial elections, and has since undergone a significant process of radicalization. While its political agenda initially centered around Euroscepticism, it has increasingly begun to put forward conspiratorial, antimodern and racist ideas, leading to a considerable loss of electoral support.

In 2022, the affiliated youth wing of FVD published a special issue of their periodical De Dissident dedicated to the topic of “Tradition” (see image). Some pieces of note within this special issue include an interview with Alexander Dugin and a new Dutch translation of an article by Julius Evola. This translation was completed by Massimo Etalle, who is the editor-in-chief of the magazine in question, as well as the interviewer of Dugin. As it happens, this marks the second time Evola has been translated into Dutch, with the first instance being a translation of Evola’s book Orientations which was completed by the Flemish nationalist Peter Logghe in 1982.

In the interview titled “Western Europe has chosen Satan,” Dugin repeats his familiar talking points, portraying traditional religion and extremist politics as indispensable instruments in the fight against modernity. In the course of the discussion, he particularly emphasizes active resistance against the forces of modernization, reminiscent of Evola’s distinctive brand of Nietzschean esotericism. This hostile dimension is confirmed in the conclusion of the piece, where Dugin stresses the need for young people in the Netherlands to read authors such as Guénon and, especially, Evola, as he emphasized the need for practical action.

Owing to this renewed appreciation for Traditionalism within the FVD, it is perhaps unsurprising that the party leader Thierry Baudet has routinely put forward ideas which mirror the sentiments of Dugin’s political thought. For example, Baudet’s framework for viewing the geopolitical sphere as a clash between Russian and American civilization owes much to Dugin’s theories. Whereas Baudet perceives America to be guided by a globalist conspiracy, he praises Russia as the only country offering a conservative resistance against the progressive agenda.

The special issue of De Dissident marks an attempt to introduce Traditionalism to a broader range of readers in the Netherlands. Although the target audience is already somewhat embedded in a subculture of conspiracy, nationalism, and a deep sense of nostalgia, they are likely not overly familiar with the thought of either Evola or Dugin. In that regard, it is certainly significant to see FVD make the decision to go in this particular direction. This development once again highlights the significance of Traditionalism as a source of inspiration for the contemporary far-right.

Milan Reith is pursuing both a research master's in philosophy at Radboud University, and a master's in religious studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is primarily interested the relationship between esotericism and politics in the twentieth century.

New book on Traditionalist thought published (coming soon in US)

Mark Sedgwick, Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order is now available in Europe and Canada. Readers in the US will have to wait until July 6. 

Official UK price is £25, but Amazon.co.uk is selling for £22 and £12.99 on Kindle. In Canada, $53.95 and $17.99 Kindle, and in Europe €22.19 and £18.75 Kindle. 

One of the first reviews is in The Scotsman, and says (in part) "This very fine book is a forensic look at the movement and its influence, and has several points where you both realise something and ponder 'why did I never realise that?'” That is rather what I had hoped for.

The book looks at the intellectual foundations of Traditionalism, its application both to various projects, and "post-Traditionalism." Each chapter looks first at the general intellectual background to the issue it discusses, and then at Traditionalist understandings, starting in most cases with René Guénon and ending as much as possible with living Traditionalists.