Russia Discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Well well.... not surprising.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...s-expose-russian-trained-killers-in-kiev.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...s-expose-russian-trained-killers-in-kiev.html
The Putin devotees will never acknowledge that though. Some won't even accept that the men who invaded Crimea, from Russia in Russian vehicles with Russian military license plates, were Russian.
Lavrov told Kerry that Eastern Ukraine needs to be more autonomous and Kiev needs less influence. I'm shocked that Putin would like to weaken Ukraine's hold over the east so that they can steal that too in time.
Lavrov told Kerry that Eastern Ukraine needs to be more autonomous and Kiev needs less influence. I'm shocked that Putin would like to weaken Ukraine's hold over the east so that they can steal that too in time.
All I see is a few guys in vests with some guns, none of them have sniper rifles. What exactly does that prove? Maybe there's a sniper inside that safe in a second photo?
There's an article that accompanies the photos.
This is well worth a watch. The methodologies are eerily similar to what was used in Crimea. Best part is when someone characterizes the KGB mindset as needing to control things, which explains all of Putin's geopolitical behavior in a nutshell.
Yes, I read it. Did you? Because it has nothing but assumptions, and no facts to back them up. The photos are pointless.
That M4 you see is a bit long for CQB engagments but it's barrel isn't quite long enough to take it to sniper territory. It's probably a 16" and made in the USA (because they won't export anything with a shorter barrel than that). If you can ignore the sensational media language and take it on what you see, those boys are the business.
That M4 you see is a bit long for CQB engagments but it's barrel isn't quite long enough to take it to sniper territory. It's probably at least 16" and made in the USA (because they won't export anything with a shorter barrel than that). If you can ignore the sensational media language and take it on what you see, those boys are the business.
Nevermind. You're better off sticking with RussiaToday.
It still doesn't prove they have anything to do with the killings, whoever they are, whenever those photos were taken and whatever it is they seem to be doing.
Western media is as much a propaganda nowadays as Russian is. No one is even attempting to be unbiased and see the situation for what it really is. Both sides are trying to manipulate the public.
Yes I agree with that to an extent, but the coverage from western media has been far more truthful than what you are going to see on state run Russian TV. For example, CNN did a great job of debunking the "invasion of Crimea by fascists" narrative and "no Russian troops in Crimea" stuff that was being flogged on Russian TV to stir up paranoia among Crimeans prior to the referendum. For Russian channels, information is used like a military weapon to support the operations and actions of the state. That can't be said of western outlets who each answer to different free market audiences, and although no one is completely objective, you're far more likely to get a fair story out of the likes of Reuters, CNN, BBC, and that crowd than by a media that is owned and financed by the state for the lone purpose of promoting Putin's policy choices.
I like the examples you used to prove your point. How much debunking does CNN and other western media outlets do when it comes to things that make US, EU and Ukraine look bad? Very little, if any. Or is it only Russians and Putin that are at fault for everything that has been happening in Ukraine?
Western media has an agenda when it comes to Putin and Russia, and it doesn't concern just Ukraine. The Olympic coverage for example, was extremely negative, you'd think it was 1980, not 2014.
Its not the job of any free media to make a particular side look good or bad. They are there to report on a given situation as they see it on the ground. There were clearly certain things that happened in Crimea that were bogus and were rightfully called out by western outlets with journalists on the ground. The Soviet style takeover by non descript soldiers who were obviously Russians as indicated by their license plates, the fear mongering of a fascist takeover in Crimea, the takeover of the Parliament by paramilitary soldiers followed by a sudden announcement of a referendum to move Crimea to Russia, the takeover of media outlets to block outside coverage from obscuring the validity of the takeover are all examples where western media reported accurately and the likes of RT and the other Russian state sponsored channels did not/could not because they are state sponsored accessories to Putin's policy and Russia itself has no free media capable of asking the tough questions that most western outlets are able to do. Therefore the idea that western outlets have it out for Putin is a perceptual illusion stemming from the fact that they ask questions that Russian media cannot, which in the process casts Putin and his authoritarian ways in an unflattering light.
Putin can crush dissent and intimidate voices internally, but he can't stop the media on the outside from asking the same questions they ask that are consistent with a free press.
Have you seen Russian inland (not sure what's the right word here) television? Not Russia Today or what channel they broadcast outside. Because you can't imagine this level of propaganda if you're living in a free country. Same goes for the Ukraine - it's the same level but from a different angle.
Western media has an agenda, of course, but it's nowhere near. The only independent news channel in Russia has been threatened for years now, they're now living on the crowdfunding money, literally selling dinners with their founder to pay the bills.
This is pretty interesting. I knew Alexander Dugin had some relationship with Putin and was involved in his pursuit of a new "Russian" identity, but this is more detail about Dugin's ideology, which has become more popular in Russia.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/138151
Putin's Brain
Alexander Dugin and the Philosophy Behind Putin's Invasion of Crimea
Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn
ANTON BARBASHIN is a Moscow-based international relations researcher and analyst. HANNAH THOBURN is a Eurasia analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has searched fruitlessly for a new grand strategy -- something to define who Russians are and where they are going. “In Russian history during the 20th century, there have been various periods -- monarchism, totalitarianism, perestroika, and finally, a democratic path of development,” Russian President Boris Yeltsin said a couple of years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, “Each stage has its own ideology,” he continued, but now “we have none.”
To fill that hole, in 1996 Yeltsin designated a team of scholars to work together to find what Russians call theRusskaya ideya (“Russian idea”), but they came up empty-handed. Around the same time, various other groups also took up the task, including a collection of conservative Russian politicians and thinkers who called themselvesSoglasiye vo imya Rossiya (“Accord in the Name of Russia”). Along with many other Russian intellectuals of the day, they were deeply disturbed by the weakness of the Russian state, something that they believed needed to be fixed for Russia to return to its rightful glory. And for them, that entailed return to the Russian tradition of a powerful central government. How that could be accomplished was a question for another day.
Putin, to whom many of the Soglasiye still have ties, happened to agree with their ideals and overall goals. He came to power in 1999 with a nationwide mandate to stabilize the Russian economy and political system. Thanks to rising world energy prices, he quickly achieved that goal. By the late 2000s, he had breathing room to return to the question of the Russian idea. Russia, he began to argue, was a unique civilization of its own. It could not be made to fit comfortably into European or Asian boxes and had to live by its own uniquely Russian rules and morals. And so, with the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin began a battle against the liberal (Western) traits that some segments of Russian society had started to adopt. Moves of his that earned condemnation in the West -- such as the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and the sentencing of members of Pussy Riot, a feminist punk-rock collective, to two years in prison for hooliganism -- were popular in Russia.
True to Putin’s insistence that Russia cannot be judged in Western terms, Putin’s new conservatism does not fit U.S. and European definitions. In fact, the main trait they share is opposition to liberalism. Whereas conservatives in those parts of the world are fearful of big government and put the individual first, Russian conservatives advocate for state power and see individuals as serving that state. They draw on a long tradition of Russian imperial conservatism [1]and, in particular, Eurasianism. That strain is authoritarian in essence, traditional, anti-American, and anti-European; it values religion and public submission. And more significant to today’s headlines, it is expansionist.
RUSSIAN ROOTS
The roots of Eurasianism lie in Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, although many of the ideas that it contains have much longer histories in Russia. After the 1917 October Revolution and the civil war that followed, two million anti-Bolshevik Russians fled the country. From Sofia to Berlin and then Paris, some of these exiled Russian intellectuals worked to create an alternative to the Bolshevik project. One of those alternatives eventually became the Eurasianist ideology. Proponents of this idea posited that Russia’s Westernizers and Bolsheviks were both wrong: Westernizers for believing that Russia was a (lagging) part of European civilization and calling for democratic development; Bolsheviks for presuming that the whole country needed restructuring through class confrontation and a global revolution of the working class. Rather, Eurasianists stressed, Russia was a unique civilization with its own path and historical mission: To create a different center of power and culture that would be neither European nor Asian but have traits of both. Eurasianists believed in the eventual downfall of the West and that it was Russia’s time to be the world’s prime exemplar.
In 1921, the exiled thinkers Georges Florovsky, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Petr Savitskii, and Petr Suvchinsky published a collection of articles titled Exodus to the East [2], which marked the official birth of the Eurasianist ideology. The book was centered on the idea that Russia’s geography is its fate and that there is nothing any ruler can do to unbind himself from the necessities of securing his lands. Given Russia’s vastness, they believed, its leaders must think imperially, consuming and assimilating dangerous populations on every border. Meanwhile, they regarded any form of democracy, open economy, local governance, or secular freedom as highly dangerous and unacceptable.
In that sense, Eurasianists considered Peter the Great -- who tried to Europeanize Russia in the eighteenth century -- an enemy and a traitor. Instead, they looked with favor on Tatar-Mongol rule, between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Genghis Khan’s empire had taught Russians crucial lessons about building a strong, centralized state and pyramid-like system of submission and control.
Eurasianist beliefs gained a strong following within the politically active part of the emigrant community, or White Russians, who were eager to promote any alternative to Bolshevism. However, the philosophy was utterly ignored, and even suppressed in the Soviet Union, and it practically died with its creators. That is, until the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia’s ideological slate was wiped clean.
Putin's Brain
Alexander Dugin and the Philosophy Behind Putin's Invasion of Crimea
Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn
ANTON BARBASHIN is a Moscow-based international relations researcher and analyst. HANNAH THOBURN is a Eurasia analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has searched fruitlessly for a new grand strategy -- something to define who Russians are and where they are going. “In Russian history during the 20th century, there have been various periods -- monarchism, totalitarianism, perestroika, and finally, a democratic path of development,” Russian President Boris Yeltsin said a couple of years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, “Each stage has its own ideology,” he continued, but now “we have none.”
To fill that hole, in 1996 Yeltsin designated a team of scholars to work together to find what Russians call theRusskaya ideya (“Russian idea”), but they came up empty-handed. Around the same time, various other groups also took up the task, including a collection of conservative Russian politicians and thinkers who called themselvesSoglasiye vo imya Rossiya (“Accord in the Name of Russia”). Along with many other Russian intellectuals of the day, they were deeply disturbed by the weakness of the Russian state, something that they believed needed to be fixed for Russia to return to its rightful glory. And for them, that entailed return to the Russian tradition of a powerful central government. How that could be accomplished was a question for another day.
Putin, to whom many of the Soglasiye still have ties, happened to agree with their ideals and overall goals. He came to power in 1999 with a nationwide mandate to stabilize the Russian economy and political system. Thanks to rising world energy prices, he quickly achieved that goal. By the late 2000s, he had breathing room to return to the question of the Russian idea. Russia, he began to argue, was a unique civilization of its own. It could not be made to fit comfortably into European or Asian boxes and had to live by its own uniquely Russian rules and morals. And so, with the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin began a battle against the liberal (Western) traits that some segments of Russian society had started to adopt. Moves of his that earned condemnation in the West -- such as the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and the sentencing of members of Pussy Riot, a feminist punk-rock collective, to two years in prison for hooliganism -- were popular in Russia.
True to Putin’s insistence that Russia cannot be judged in Western terms, Putin’s new conservatism does not fit U.S. and European definitions. In fact, the main trait they share is opposition to liberalism. Whereas conservatives in those parts of the world are fearful of big government and put the individual first, Russian conservatives advocate for state power and see individuals as serving that state. They draw on a long tradition of Russian imperial conservatism [1]and, in particular, Eurasianism. That strain is authoritarian in essence, traditional, anti-American, and anti-European; it values religion and public submission. And more significant to today’s headlines, it is expansionist.
RUSSIAN ROOTS
The roots of Eurasianism lie in Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, although many of the ideas that it contains have much longer histories in Russia. After the 1917 October Revolution and the civil war that followed, two million anti-Bolshevik Russians fled the country. From Sofia to Berlin and then Paris, some of these exiled Russian intellectuals worked to create an alternative to the Bolshevik project. One of those alternatives eventually became the Eurasianist ideology. Proponents of this idea posited that Russia’s Westernizers and Bolsheviks were both wrong: Westernizers for believing that Russia was a (lagging) part of European civilization and calling for democratic development; Bolsheviks for presuming that the whole country needed restructuring through class confrontation and a global revolution of the working class. Rather, Eurasianists stressed, Russia was a unique civilization with its own path and historical mission: To create a different center of power and culture that would be neither European nor Asian but have traits of both. Eurasianists believed in the eventual downfall of the West and that it was Russia’s time to be the world’s prime exemplar.
In 1921, the exiled thinkers Georges Florovsky, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Petr Savitskii, and Petr Suvchinsky published a collection of articles titled Exodus to the East [2], which marked the official birth of the Eurasianist ideology. The book was centered on the idea that Russia’s geography is its fate and that there is nothing any ruler can do to unbind himself from the necessities of securing his lands. Given Russia’s vastness, they believed, its leaders must think imperially, consuming and assimilating dangerous populations on every border. Meanwhile, they regarded any form of democracy, open economy, local governance, or secular freedom as highly dangerous and unacceptable.
In that sense, Eurasianists considered Peter the Great -- who tried to Europeanize Russia in the eighteenth century -- an enemy and a traitor. Instead, they looked with favor on Tatar-Mongol rule, between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Genghis Khan’s empire had taught Russians crucial lessons about building a strong, centralized state and pyramid-like system of submission and control.
Eurasianist beliefs gained a strong following within the politically active part of the emigrant community, or White Russians, who were eager to promote any alternative to Bolshevism. However, the philosophy was utterly ignored, and even suppressed in the Soviet Union, and it practically died with its creators. That is, until the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia’s ideological slate was wiped clean.
Continued:
THE EVOLUTION OF A REVOLUTIONARY
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ultranationalist ideologies were decidedly out of vogue. Rather, most Russians looked forward to Russia’s democratization and reintegration with the world. Still, a few hard-core patriotic elements remained that opposed de-Sovietization and believed -- as Putin does today -- that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century [3]. Among them was the ideologist Alexander Dugin, who was a regular contributor to the ultranationalist analytic center and newspaper Den’ (later known as Zavtra). His earliest claim to fame was a 1991 pamphlet, “The War of the Continents [4],” in which he described an ongoing geopolitical struggle between the two types of global powers: land powers, or “Eternal Rome,” which are based on the principles of statehood, communality, idealism, and the superiority of the common good, and civilizations of the sea, or “Eternal Carthage,” which are based on individualism, trade, and materialism. In Dugin’s understanding, “Eternal Carthage,” was historically embodied by Athenian democracy and the Dutch and British Empires. Now, it is represented by the United States. “Eternal Rome” is embodied by Russia. For Dugin, the conflict between the two will last until one is destroyed completely -- no type of political regime and no amount of trade can stop that. In order for the “good” (Russia) to eventually defeat the “bad” (United States), he wrote, a conservative revolution must take place.
His ideas of conservative revolution are adapted from German interwar thinkers who promoted the destruction of the individualistic liberal order and the commercial culture of industrial and urban civilization in favor of a new order based on conservative values such as the submission of individual needs and desires to the needs of the many, a state-organized economy, and traditional values for society based on a quasi-religious view of the world. For Dugin, the prime example of a conservative revolution was the radical, Nazi-sponsored north Italian Social Republic of Salò (1943–45). Indeed, Dugin continuously returned to what he saw as the virtues of Nazi practices and voiced appreciation for the SS and Herman Wirth’s occult Ahnenerbe group. In particular, Dugin praised the orthodox conservative-revolutionary projects that the SS and Ahnenerbe developed for postwar Europe, in which they envisioned a new, unified Europe regulated by a feudal system of ethnically separated regions that would serve as vassals to the German suzerain. It is worth noting that, among other projects, the Ahnenerbe was responsible for all the experiments on humans in the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.
Between 1993 and 1998, Dugin joined the Russian nationalist legend Eduard Limonov in creating the now banned National-Bolshevik Movement (later the National-Bolshevik Party, or NBP), where he became the chief ideologist of a strange synthesis of socialism and ultra-right ideology. By the late 1990s, he was recognized as the intellectual leader of Russia’s entire ultra-right movement. He had his own publishing house, Arktogeya (“Northern Country”), several slick Web sites, a series of newspapers and magazines, and published The Foundation of Geopolitics [5], an immediate best seller that was particularly popular with the military.
Dugin’s introduction to the political mainstream came in 1999, when he became an adviser to the Russian parliamentarian Gennadii Seleznev, one of Russia’s most conservative politicians, a two-time chairman of the Russian parliament, a member of the Communist Party, and a founder of the Party of Russia’s Rebirth [6]. That same year, with the help of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of Russia’s nationalist and very misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Dugin became the chairman of the geopolitical section of the Duma’s Advisory Council on National Security.
But his inclusion in politics did not necessarily translate to wider appeal among the politics of the elite. For that, Dugin had to transform his ideology into something else -- something uniquely Russian. Namely, he dropped the most outrageous, esoteric, and radical elements of his ideology, including his mysticism, and drew instead on the classical Eurasianism of Trubetzkoy and Savitskii. He set to work creating the International Eurasian Movement, a group that would come to involve academics, politicians, parliamentarians, journalists, and intellectuals from Russia, its neighbors, and the West.
TO EUROPE AND BEYOND
Like the classical Eurasianists of the 1920s and 1930s, Dugin’s ideology is anti-Western, anti-liberal, totalitarian, ideocratic, and socially traditional. Its nationalism is not Slavic-oriented (although Russians have a special mission to unite and lead) but also applies to the other nations of Eurasia. And it labels rationalism as Western and thus promotes a mystical, spiritual, emotional, and messianic worldview.
But Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism differs significantly from previous Eurasianist thought. First, Dugin conceives of Eurasia as being much larger than his predecessors ever did. For example, whereas Savitskii believed that the Russian-Eurasian state should stretch from the Great Wall of China in the east to the Carpathian Mountains to the west, Dugin believes that the Eurasian state must incorporate all of the former Soviet states, members of the socialist block, and perhaps even establish a protectorate over all EU members [7]. In the east, Dugin proposes to go as far as incorporating Manchuria, Xinxiang, Tibet, and Mongolia. He even proposes eventually turning southwest toward the Indian Ocean.
In order to include Europe in Eurasia, Dugin had to rework the enemy. In classical Eurasianist thought, the enemy was the Romano-Germanic Europe. In Dugin’s version, the enemy is the United States. As he writes: “The USA is a chimerical [8], anti-organic, transplanted culture which does not have sacral state traditions and cultural soil, but, nevertheless, tries to force upon the other continents its anti-ethnic, anti-traditional [and] “babylonic” model.” Classical Eurasianists, by contrast, favored the United States and even considered it to be a model, especially praising its economic nationalism, the Monroe Doctrine, and its non-membership in the League of Nations.
Another crucial point of difference is his attitude toward fascism and Nazi Germany. Even before World War II, classical Eurasianists opposed fascism and stood against racial anti-Semitism. Dugin has lauded the state of Israel for hewing to the principles of conservativism but has also spoken of a connection between Zionism and Nazism and implied that Jews only deserved their statehood because of the Holocaust. He also divides Jews into “bad” and “good.” The good are orthodox and live in Israel; the bad live outside of Israel and try to assimilate. Of course, these days, those are views to which he rarely alludes in public.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ultranationalist ideologies were decidedly out of vogue. Rather, most Russians looked forward to Russia’s democratization and reintegration with the world. Still, a few hard-core patriotic elements remained that opposed de-Sovietization and believed -- as Putin does today -- that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century [3]. Among them was the ideologist Alexander Dugin, who was a regular contributor to the ultranationalist analytic center and newspaper Den’ (later known as Zavtra). His earliest claim to fame was a 1991 pamphlet, “The War of the Continents [4],” in which he described an ongoing geopolitical struggle between the two types of global powers: land powers, or “Eternal Rome,” which are based on the principles of statehood, communality, idealism, and the superiority of the common good, and civilizations of the sea, or “Eternal Carthage,” which are based on individualism, trade, and materialism. In Dugin’s understanding, “Eternal Carthage,” was historically embodied by Athenian democracy and the Dutch and British Empires. Now, it is represented by the United States. “Eternal Rome” is embodied by Russia. For Dugin, the conflict between the two will last until one is destroyed completely -- no type of political regime and no amount of trade can stop that. In order for the “good” (Russia) to eventually defeat the “bad” (United States), he wrote, a conservative revolution must take place.
His ideas of conservative revolution are adapted from German interwar thinkers who promoted the destruction of the individualistic liberal order and the commercial culture of industrial and urban civilization in favor of a new order based on conservative values such as the submission of individual needs and desires to the needs of the many, a state-organized economy, and traditional values for society based on a quasi-religious view of the world. For Dugin, the prime example of a conservative revolution was the radical, Nazi-sponsored north Italian Social Republic of Salò (1943–45). Indeed, Dugin continuously returned to what he saw as the virtues of Nazi practices and voiced appreciation for the SS and Herman Wirth’s occult Ahnenerbe group. In particular, Dugin praised the orthodox conservative-revolutionary projects that the SS and Ahnenerbe developed for postwar Europe, in which they envisioned a new, unified Europe regulated by a feudal system of ethnically separated regions that would serve as vassals to the German suzerain. It is worth noting that, among other projects, the Ahnenerbe was responsible for all the experiments on humans in the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.
Between 1993 and 1998, Dugin joined the Russian nationalist legend Eduard Limonov in creating the now banned National-Bolshevik Movement (later the National-Bolshevik Party, or NBP), where he became the chief ideologist of a strange synthesis of socialism and ultra-right ideology. By the late 1990s, he was recognized as the intellectual leader of Russia’s entire ultra-right movement. He had his own publishing house, Arktogeya (“Northern Country”), several slick Web sites, a series of newspapers and magazines, and published The Foundation of Geopolitics [5], an immediate best seller that was particularly popular with the military.
Dugin’s introduction to the political mainstream came in 1999, when he became an adviser to the Russian parliamentarian Gennadii Seleznev, one of Russia’s most conservative politicians, a two-time chairman of the Russian parliament, a member of the Communist Party, and a founder of the Party of Russia’s Rebirth [6]. That same year, with the help of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of Russia’s nationalist and very misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Dugin became the chairman of the geopolitical section of the Duma’s Advisory Council on National Security.
But his inclusion in politics did not necessarily translate to wider appeal among the politics of the elite. For that, Dugin had to transform his ideology into something else -- something uniquely Russian. Namely, he dropped the most outrageous, esoteric, and radical elements of his ideology, including his mysticism, and drew instead on the classical Eurasianism of Trubetzkoy and Savitskii. He set to work creating the International Eurasian Movement, a group that would come to involve academics, politicians, parliamentarians, journalists, and intellectuals from Russia, its neighbors, and the West.
TO EUROPE AND BEYOND
Like the classical Eurasianists of the 1920s and 1930s, Dugin’s ideology is anti-Western, anti-liberal, totalitarian, ideocratic, and socially traditional. Its nationalism is not Slavic-oriented (although Russians have a special mission to unite and lead) but also applies to the other nations of Eurasia. And it labels rationalism as Western and thus promotes a mystical, spiritual, emotional, and messianic worldview.
But Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism differs significantly from previous Eurasianist thought. First, Dugin conceives of Eurasia as being much larger than his predecessors ever did. For example, whereas Savitskii believed that the Russian-Eurasian state should stretch from the Great Wall of China in the east to the Carpathian Mountains to the west, Dugin believes that the Eurasian state must incorporate all of the former Soviet states, members of the socialist block, and perhaps even establish a protectorate over all EU members [7]. In the east, Dugin proposes to go as far as incorporating Manchuria, Xinxiang, Tibet, and Mongolia. He even proposes eventually turning southwest toward the Indian Ocean.
In order to include Europe in Eurasia, Dugin had to rework the enemy. In classical Eurasianist thought, the enemy was the Romano-Germanic Europe. In Dugin’s version, the enemy is the United States. As he writes: “The USA is a chimerical [8], anti-organic, transplanted culture which does not have sacral state traditions and cultural soil, but, nevertheless, tries to force upon the other continents its anti-ethnic, anti-traditional [and] “babylonic” model.” Classical Eurasianists, by contrast, favored the United States and even considered it to be a model, especially praising its economic nationalism, the Monroe Doctrine, and its non-membership in the League of Nations.
Another crucial point of difference is his attitude toward fascism and Nazi Germany. Even before World War II, classical Eurasianists opposed fascism and stood against racial anti-Semitism. Dugin has lauded the state of Israel for hewing to the principles of conservativism but has also spoken of a connection between Zionism and Nazism and implied that Jews only deserved their statehood because of the Holocaust. He also divides Jews into “bad” and “good.” The good are orthodox and live in Israel; the bad live outside of Israel and try to assimilate. Of course, these days, those are views to which he rarely alludes in public.
This is longer than I expected:
PUTIN’S PLAY
Since the early 2000s, Dugin’s ideas have only gained in popularity. Their rise mirrors Putin’s own transition from apparent democrat to authoritarian. In fact, Putin’s conservative turn has given Dugin a perfect chance to “help out” the Russian leader with proper historical, geopolitical, and cultural explanations for his policies. Recognizing how attractive Dugin’s ideas are to some Russians, Putin has seized on some of them to further his own goals.
Although Dugin has criticized Putin from time to time for his economic liberalism and cooperation with the West, he has generally been the president’s steadfast ally. In 2002, he created the Eurasia Party, which was welcomed by many in Putin’s administration. The Kremlin has long tolerated, and even encouraged, the creation of such smaller allied political parties, which give Russian voters the sense that they actually do live in a democracy. Dugin’s party, for example, provides an outlet for those with chauvinistic and nationalist leanings, even as the party remains controlled by the Kremlin. At the same time, Dugin built strong ties with Sergei Glazyev, who is a co-leader of the patriotic political bloc Rodina and currently Putin’s adviser on Eurasian integration. In 2003, Dugin tried to become a parliamentary deputy along with the Rodina bloc but failed.
Although his electoral foray was a bust, some voters’ positive reception to his anti-Western projects encouraged Dugin to forge ahead with the Eurasianist movement. After the shock of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, he created the Eurasianist Youth Union [9], which promotes patriotic and anti-Western education. It has 47coordination offices [10] throughout Russia and nine in countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Poland, and Turkey. Its reach far exceeds that of any existing democratic-oriented movement.
In 2008, Dugin was made a professor at Russia’s top university, Moscow State University, and the head of the national sociological organization Center for Conservative Studies. He also appears regularly on all of Russia’s leading TV channels, commenting on both domestic and foreign issues. His profile has only increased since the pro-democracy protests of the winter of 2011–12 and Putin’s move around the same time to build a Eurasian Union [11]. His outsized presence in Russian public life is a sign of Putin’s approval; Russian media, particularly television, is controlled almost entirely by the Kremlin. If the Kremlin disapproves of (or not longer has a use for) a particular personality, it will remove him or her from the airwaves.
Dugin and other like-minded thinkers have wholeheartedly endorsed the Russian government’s action in Ukraine, calling on him to go further and take the east and south of Ukraine, which, he writes, “welcomes Russia, waits for it, pleads for Russia to come [12].” The Russian people agree. Putin’s approval ratings [13] have climbed over the past month, and 65 percent of Russians believe [14] that Crimea and eastern regions of Ukraine are “essentially Russian territory” and that “Russia is right to use military force for the defense of the population.” Dugin, then, has proven to be a great asset to Putin. He has popularized the president’s position on such issues as limits on personal freedom, a traditional understanding of family, intolerance of homosexuality, and the centrality of Orthodox Christianity to Russia’s rebirth as a great power. But his greatest creation is neo-Eurasianism.
Dugin’s ideology has influenced a whole generation of conservative and radical activists and politicians, who, if given the chance, would fight to adapt its core principles as state policy. Considering the shabby state of Russian democracy, and the country’s continued move away from Western ideas and ideals, one might argue that the chances of seeing neo-Eurasianism conquer new ground are increasing. Although Dugin’s form of it is highly theoretical and deeply mystical, it is proving to be a strong contender for the role of Russia’s chief ideology. Whether Putin can control it as he has controlled so many others is a question that may determine his longevity.
Since the early 2000s, Dugin’s ideas have only gained in popularity. Their rise mirrors Putin’s own transition from apparent democrat to authoritarian. In fact, Putin’s conservative turn has given Dugin a perfect chance to “help out” the Russian leader with proper historical, geopolitical, and cultural explanations for his policies. Recognizing how attractive Dugin’s ideas are to some Russians, Putin has seized on some of them to further his own goals.
Although Dugin has criticized Putin from time to time for his economic liberalism and cooperation with the West, he has generally been the president’s steadfast ally. In 2002, he created the Eurasia Party, which was welcomed by many in Putin’s administration. The Kremlin has long tolerated, and even encouraged, the creation of such smaller allied political parties, which give Russian voters the sense that they actually do live in a democracy. Dugin’s party, for example, provides an outlet for those with chauvinistic and nationalist leanings, even as the party remains controlled by the Kremlin. At the same time, Dugin built strong ties with Sergei Glazyev, who is a co-leader of the patriotic political bloc Rodina and currently Putin’s adviser on Eurasian integration. In 2003, Dugin tried to become a parliamentary deputy along with the Rodina bloc but failed.
Although his electoral foray was a bust, some voters’ positive reception to his anti-Western projects encouraged Dugin to forge ahead with the Eurasianist movement. After the shock of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, he created the Eurasianist Youth Union [9], which promotes patriotic and anti-Western education. It has 47coordination offices [10] throughout Russia and nine in countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Poland, and Turkey. Its reach far exceeds that of any existing democratic-oriented movement.
In 2008, Dugin was made a professor at Russia’s top university, Moscow State University, and the head of the national sociological organization Center for Conservative Studies. He also appears regularly on all of Russia’s leading TV channels, commenting on both domestic and foreign issues. His profile has only increased since the pro-democracy protests of the winter of 2011–12 and Putin’s move around the same time to build a Eurasian Union [11]. His outsized presence in Russian public life is a sign of Putin’s approval; Russian media, particularly television, is controlled almost entirely by the Kremlin. If the Kremlin disapproves of (or not longer has a use for) a particular personality, it will remove him or her from the airwaves.
Dugin and other like-minded thinkers have wholeheartedly endorsed the Russian government’s action in Ukraine, calling on him to go further and take the east and south of Ukraine, which, he writes, “welcomes Russia, waits for it, pleads for Russia to come [12].” The Russian people agree. Putin’s approval ratings [13] have climbed over the past month, and 65 percent of Russians believe [14] that Crimea and eastern regions of Ukraine are “essentially Russian territory” and that “Russia is right to use military force for the defense of the population.” Dugin, then, has proven to be a great asset to Putin. He has popularized the president’s position on such issues as limits on personal freedom, a traditional understanding of family, intolerance of homosexuality, and the centrality of Orthodox Christianity to Russia’s rebirth as a great power. But his greatest creation is neo-Eurasianism.
Dugin’s ideology has influenced a whole generation of conservative and radical activists and politicians, who, if given the chance, would fight to adapt its core principles as state policy. Considering the shabby state of Russian democracy, and the country’s continued move away from Western ideas and ideals, one might argue that the chances of seeing neo-Eurasianism conquer new ground are increasing. Although Dugin’s form of it is highly theoretical and deeply mystical, it is proving to be a strong contender for the role of Russia’s chief ideology. Whether Putin can control it as he has controlled so many others is a question that may determine his longevity.
You mad bro ?
Take it up with Reuters.
Reuters in being biased shocker.
The vote is non-binding and is mostly a sham. The 11 countries who voted No all have agenda against the US. And all NATO obviously voted Yes.
The only interesting thing that came about in the vote are thhose who abstained from voting, especially BRICS. China and India are obviously the biggest regional players in the vote and both have abstained. China may be tactically silent, but India seems to be pro-Russia, which again considering the bilateral ties is nothing surprising!
I think Russia will get away with this.
The only interesting thing that came about in the vote are thhose who abstained from voting, especially BRICS. China and India are obviously the biggest regional players in the vote and both have abstained. China may be tactically silent, but India seems to be pro-Russia, which again considering the bilateral ties is nothing surprising!
I think Russia will get away with this.
I think this is becoming less about Crimea and more about Europe and the US keeping Russia in line by showing where the try power structures the international system are - namely in America and Europe (as well as the other BRICs) but they don't have a dog in this fight. The message to Putin is that he may have gained Crimea, but in the process he's managed to squander the rest of Ukraine in that Ukraine is now almost certainly going to lean towards Europe and America. This is why Putin's new strategy is to break Ukraine up into a Federalized system where the likes of Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov are part of a pro-Russian region. But that's not likely to happen and the long term cost benefit for Putin will be having lost both Ukraine from the Russian sphere, and the economic isolation of Russia from its main trading hub of Europe.
@Sir Matt
Rather long, but fascinating.
If that, or anything like it, becomes the official ideology of the new Russia, the 21st century is in for a bumpy ride!
Rather long, but fascinating.
If that, or anything like it, becomes the official ideology of the new Russia, the 21st century is in for a bumpy ride!
http://vestnikkavkaza.net/news/politics/53519.html
Detailing just how bad Ukraine’s economy has been over the past couple of years, the head of the International Monetary Fund revealed Russia’s late 2013 bailout essentially saved the nation from full-scale economic collapse.
“Without the support that they were getting from this lifeline that Russia had extended a few months ago, they were heading nowhere,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde insisted.
Lagarde went on to say that the new IMF bailout “comes with a price” and is conditioned on reforms, adding the economy needs a “profound transformation of its fiscal policy, of its monetary policy, and of its policies on energy.”
The $27 billion IMF bailout, announced last week, came after the agreement that Ukraine cut back energy subsidies, meaning a 50% increase in the price of natural gas in May, and an electricity price hike later in the summer.
Detailing just how bad Ukraine’s economy has been over the past couple of years, the head of the International Monetary Fund revealed Russia’s late 2013 bailout essentially saved the nation from full-scale economic collapse.
“Without the support that they were getting from this lifeline that Russia had extended a few months ago, they were heading nowhere,” Managing Director Christine Lagarde insisted.
Lagarde went on to say that the new IMF bailout “comes with a price” and is conditioned on reforms, adding the economy needs a “profound transformation of its fiscal policy, of its monetary policy, and of its policies on energy.”
The $27 billion IMF bailout, announced last week, came after the agreement that Ukraine cut back energy subsidies, meaning a 50% increase in the price of natural gas in May, and an electricity price hike later in the summer.
A perk of having Yanokovich - Putin's man in Kiev - running the show on behalf of Moscow. Take away the corrupt pro-Russian President and Russia suddenly does a Sudetenland in Ukraine, and is now back to using energy prices as a weapon.
Don't US and EU use sanctions as a weapon against Russia? And current Ukrainian government are even more of a US puppets than Yanukovich was ever Putin's.
Debating with Raoul is tedious because he is (I believe) in active service of the US government or army. You can't expect him to be unbiased.
It could be perceived as tedious because I'm less inclined to back down in a debate when I sense the opposing view is complete BS.
Do you not find it problematic for an increasingly authoritarian state playing power politics with energy resources and making Sudetenland type - landgrabs on neighboring countries under the pretext of "protecting Russian speakers" ?
I disagree 100% with what Russia is doing. However, I find the US's (and the West in general) response ironic and hypocritical. I've lived in India and now am in the States, so I've seen and read multiple sides of the propaganda spin.
Most people in this thread (IMO) who have argued with you don't think what Russia is doing is right - its just that the US has no moral right to protest.
Its actually neither ironic nor hypocritical if you understand how the international system works. This is fundementally struggle of power between the West and Russia (Democracy and Authoritarinism) and both sides are going to react to one another. Putin's Russia is nationalist, expansionist and intent on reliving the good old Soviet days by bulling states in the former Soviet sphere. That (resource nationalism) is fundementally incompatible with the interdepdenent nature of global economics, particularly when it takes place n Europe's doorstep. Therefore its neither hypocritical or ironic that the US and Europe are going to react strongly, as it directly affects the economic system to which most nations (including Russia) belong.
As always Raoul, you ignore the point. You know exactly what context I was calling them hypocritical, but chose to ignore it. Either that, or you aren't nearly as smart as I think you are.
Also, reducing the West and Russia to Democracy and Authoritarianism is foolish in the extreme, so I'll just take it as another example of your bias.
If the West is so concerned about democracy, perhaps it should have a word with Saudi Arabia eh?
You're not understanding the point and interpreting my views as bias and hypocricy. My fundemental point is that the international system is based on power; and the power structures in the world are driven by the west (albeit increasingly less in recent years). The pursuit of power involves powerful actors routinely forming colations (such as the US with Saudi) in order to consolidate their power and marginalize those that may reduce it. In the case of Russia vs the West - Russian nationalism and its expansionst logic threatents the established economic power structures in Europe and the West, so yes, there will be a reacion if Putin descides to invade Crimea and mass 100,000 troops on the eastern Ukrainian border. Not keeping such actions in check is a threat to the dominant order of the international system, so don't be surprised if the west retaliate with sanctions and economic pressure. This also explains the hyprocisy argument in that inconsitencies are always attributable to the pursuit of power, not the policy consistencies.
No, I understand your point. My point is that I don't care that they are doing it to maintain power - It is still hypocrisy. I don't care if they are trying to maintain power, it is hypocritical. I don't see how that is hard to understand.
You are justifying it, while I'm calling your "justification" wrong.
Do you think perhaps having moved there and benefiting directly from their foreign policy, coming on the internet to attack someone for defending it might also be seen as a little hypocritical? If you had moved to live in Russia and lived the dream of the down with the west brigade it would appear more consistent.
I find it hard to understand how anyone can think Putin's Russia will be better for even the Russians in Crimea never mind the minorities who are now trapped there. Decrying western/US policy is one thing moving on to equate Russian and the US systems and ideology as the same, is quite something else.
One thing if we say that a nation can not protest the actions of another unless its past and current actions are above reproach it then leaves us with nobody in the world with any solrt of pull being able to protest the actions of any other nation. We would then be left in a situation where every nation can do what it likes and no other nation can say anything about it.
Answer in two parts:
1: I actually don't like it here and am trying to leave. Moving here definitely didn't benefit me. I would actually differ on the foreign policy benefiting me as well, but let's not derail the thread.
2: I'm not defending or equating it - I said I disagree 100%. However, most people can see the hypocrisy in the US's reaction to Russia after its previous actions. Turn the US media off, and listen to the wider world. You will agree with me.
I'm going to venture a wild guess here
, in that i don't think DKB spends his Saturdays walking around in a Sean Hannity t-shirt whilst sipping on some tea out of a Glenn Beck mug.
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I would hope not. I hope we don't have any of the Fox News loonies on the caf!