Dugin ponders why there are Orientalists who find out about East-Asia at Russian universities, however they have got no opposite numbers who find out about the West. “We will have to find out about the West as an object. Symmetrical to the East,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “It’s imaginable to undertake some issues from the West and from the East, however after cautious attention, calculation and in correlation with one’s personal conventional values.”
He advanced this concept extra within the article Westernology: Against Sovereign Russian Science, which is to be had in each Russian and English at the website online of the Katechon suppose tank.
The poisonous, damaging West
“The West can and must be studied now not as without equal reality, however as a unique and distinctive civilization amongst others – non-Western ones. With regards to Russian science and the general public sphere, what can also be productive and applicable for Russia will have to be strictly separated from what’s poisonous and damaging,” writes Dugin. “We’re coping with peculiar ethnocentrism that has long gone some distance past herbal bounds and develop into competitive, mendacious, vile and now and again irrational, incapable of true self-reflection and demanding inquiry.”
As of late, in line with Dugin, the arena is ruled by way of Western values, which, in line with him, must now not be common; he considers them inaccurate. “Postmodernism now not simplest inherited modernity’s intolerance of custom, but additionally intensified it and became it into an competitive parody, into natural Satanism. From this second on, the criterion of ‘building’ and ‘democracy’ turns into compliance with postmodern globalist values and ideas. Best what is regarded as ‘medical’ is in keeping with gender politics, the popularity of the rights of minorities of a wide variety, the rejection of any identification, together with that of the person, and transitology (which is now understood because the transition from modernity to postmodernity).”
In step with him, Russian civilization is – and must be – other. “Best now’s she starting to be obviously conscious about herself and her fundamental ideas. A right away disagreement with the West, which will turn out to be an apocalyptic situation of nuclear conflict at any time, simplest provides a different drama to this technique of civilizational awakening,” the thinker continues. “Russia now not simplest rejects overtly poisonous and perverse postmodernism, however returns to its roots and reaffirms its civilizational identification – in different phrases, his Russian ethnocentrism, wherein Russia is the middle of the Orthodox (and due to this fact Christian, common) ecumen.”
The aim of his new idea of Westernology is to scrupulously evaluate all of the values and ideas that Russian tradition and science have taken over from the West – and get rid of the flawed ones.
Professional: Russians for a laugh
“When any individual desires to get stuck up in such issues, they get stuck up in them, however I feel that even the Russians have somewhat a laugh with it,” commented for Blesk Zprávy Karel Svoboda from the Division of Russian and East Ecu Research, Institute of World Research, College of Social Sciences, Charles College. “Then again, numerous folks made a laugh of various folks after which it became out that they had been if truth be told related. However right here at Dugin, it sort of feels to me that they let him pass loopy and take simplest what they would like from him. No longer that Putin would pay attention to Dugin’s phrase.
Dugin is steadily described as an ideologue of the Kremlin, however Svoboda sees this with nice reserve. “They’re such partners of the Kremlin, who observe their very own line, moderately half-crazy, however now and again their ideologies intersect. From my perspective, he’s, I have no idea if he’s extra radical or what to name it, however he’s this sort of nut that the Kremlin will pull out when wanted. And when it isn’t wanted once more, it’s merely put away someplace. That he can be an ideologue in line with which the Kremlin would transfer, now not in reality, they’re way more pragmatic there and use those ideological issues when it fits them – and if now not, they just reject such folks” Svoboda explains.
Dugin isn’t glad with a theoretical article, he in an instant applies his imaginative and prescient in apply. He in the past lectured on the maximum prestigious college in Russia – Moscow State College. Then again, he used to be fired for his arguable perspectives. He now works on the Russian State College for the Humanities, and heads the Ivan Ilyin Upper College of Politics, based closing 12 months. And now he’s introducing westernology there as a brand new topic, as he knowledgeable at the telegram. It’s mentioned that prestigious universities in China and India also are impressed by way of it.
“Even within the 2000s, it used to be a particularly liberal college, significantly attention-grabbing. We had some more or less settlement signed with it, which, in fact, totally fell via in 2014, let by myself 2022,” political scientist Svoboda recollects. “Progressively, they started to increase such lifestyles there, and these days they just be informed Western Satanism and an identical nonsense there. From my perspective, it used to be an excessive, now not precisely delightful slide.”
