Great Reset or Great Awakening? Pt. 2
How Russian Philosopher Alexander Dugin Points the Way Forward
4. Formulating the Vision of the Great Awakening
Alexander Dugin clearly agrees with Mattias Desmet that the critical issue going forward is “to envision a new view of humankind and the world, to find a new foundation for our identity, to formulate new principles for living together with others…” This is what Dugin defines as “The Great Awakening.” In his view, at the socio-political level, such an awakening begins with a return to a multipolar world, not the unipolar monopoly on power the West has enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Already that unipolar world has been fraying at the edges, with Russia and China growing in economic strength and more and more nations joining BRICS. It’s not hard to concede Dugin’s argument that a multipolar world—especially one that has nuclear weapons—is ultimately far safer for everyone:
“This is not just the salvation of the West itself… but the salvation of humanity, both Western and non-Western, from the totalitarian dictatorship of the liberal capitalist elites. And this cannot be done by the people of the West or the people of the East alone. Here it is necessary to act together. The Great Awakening necessitates an internationalization of peoples’ struggle against the internationalism of the elites.” —Alexander Dugin, The Great Awakening or the Great Reset [1]
Among the “Twenty-One Points” of his “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening,” Dugin makes his philosophy of multipolar world order explicit: “we should recognize this as the main law: all civilizations can establish their own political systems outside any universal paradigm… Democracy, liberalism, human rights, LGBT+, robotization (sic), progress, digitalization and cyberspace are optional. They are not universal values… We need to accept humanity as humanity—not the West and the Rest.” [2] In fact, Dugin believes the West needs to be rescued from its own corruption: “…the West itself is colonized by modernity.” [3]
Not insupportably, Dugin argues that this may be humanity’s last chance to avoid stepping into the abyss, the Panopticon world of mass slavery and total surveillance envisioned by the technocrats. Alluding to what Ray Kurzweil and others of his ilk have described as the “singularity” supposedly about to be achieved by AI, Dugin writes: “The Great Awakening is a flash of consciousness at the threshold of the Singularity.” [4] Again, note the paradox of Western individualism subsumed to this “singularity,” a monolithic artificial intelligence. As some commentators have pointed out, AI hardly lives up to its promoters’ claims, often giving wrong answers biased by leftist ideologies or simply making things up—lying. “Garbage in, garbage out.” But all technologies in their early days tend to be clunky until they’re refined. And as I’ve often said: The tool shapes the shaper. Dugin says something similar:
“That is the negation of human nature: the creation of technical tools that become step by step the masters, and stop being tools. So, when the tool becomes the master, that changes everything; that is the Singularity moment—this alienation and the loss of human identities step by step…” —Alexander Dugin, The Great Awakening or the Great Reset [5]
He thus frames our response to the tyranny of Big Tech and the philosophy of technocracy in unequivocal terms: “Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Apple, YouTube, Facebook and so on are not just commercial—presumably ‘neutral’—tools. They are ideological weapons and machines of surveillance and censorship. We need to destroy them.” [6]
Dugin sees humanity at a critical crossroads, with a choice between Great Reset and Great Awakening: “It is the last opportunity to make an alternative decision about the content and direction of the future.” [7] In a phrase worthy of Toynbee, Dugin adds:
“The complete replacement of human beings with new entities, new divinities, cannot simply be imposed by force from above. The elites must seduce humanity, obtain from it—albeit vaguely—some consent. The Great Awakening calls for a decisive ‘No’!” —Alexander Dugin, The Great Awakening or the Great Reset [8]
As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has observed of the American political system—and it applies equally to most Western democracies—what we currently have is essentially a “uniparty” state with two brands to choose from, neither of which result in any change to the status quo of corporate control and oligarchy. Dugin asserts that the American Democratic Party will “try to kill the two-party system” by replacing it with a one-party system, a “liberal Bolshevism.” [9] In many respects this is merely making obvious what has already existed in the West for some time. Thus, a key task of the Great Awakening, says Dugin, is “the final overcoming of the boundary between the Left and the Right… and the elevation of… integral populism into an independent ideological model. Its meaning and its message should be a radical critique of liberalism and its highest stage, globalism, at the same time combining the demand for social justice and the preservation of traditional cultural identity.” [10]
Nor should the Great Awakening be “just a continuation of modernity or postmodernity. It should be a revision of modernity, a critical revision from the Left and from the Right. We need a complete revision of modernity itself.” This requires “a manifesto that deals with the Great Reset as an absolute evil. It’s a crystallization of opposite value.” [11] Some of these values, Dugin argues, can be found in the eschatology of the Christian tradition represented in the Second Coming of Christ—really a spiritual awakening, since Jesus himself said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” [12] Dugin finds parallels in the Shia and Sunni traditions of Islam as well as in the Indian tradition of the Kali Yuga mentioned in Part 1 of this essay.
Conversely, he sees in the false liberalism of the Great Reset the allegorical Devil, who “appears little by little in academia, in gender studies… which has prepared the territory for this non-human way of thought—artificial intelligence that could exist without humans and without life on earth.” [13] Dugin traces this thread back to the dawn of the 20th century with the philosophy of modernism, which “was not neutral. Modernity was from the very beginning a Satanic creation… not Aleister Crowley or black masses or LaVey—the real black magic is modern science and modern culture.” [14] While it may be too sweeping a statement to cast all science as “black magic,” there can be little argument that it has become the high priesthood of modern society, replacing religion as the foremost determinant of value. The past three years under the boot of pandemic totalitarianism has only made the corruption of science and its failure as an ideology more obvious.
Interestingly, Dugin sees Islam as a central pole in the axis of the Great Awakening, since they are unsympathetic with the Western liberal elites’ program of secularization and erasure of traditional or cultural identities, particularly those of religion. [15] However, Western political and intelligence operatives have skillfully played up the theological and political divisions within Islam in the Middle East as a means of preventing them from forming a powerful military alliance. This is why the US and Israel are right to be terrified that Netanyahu in his war with Palestine has taken a fatally wrong step. If Turkey, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria decide to unite against Israel, they are doomed. Despite the ongoing demonization of Iran by American propaganda, however, former US Marine and military analyst Scott Ritter believes Iranians are the least likely to want a war with the US and Israel.
Dugin seems confident that, in addition to Muslims becoming a part of the Great Awakening—by culture if not by declaration—“the great Indian civilization, Latin America, and Africa, which is entering another round of decolonization… may also join this camp.” [16] Key to the Great Awakening, says Dugin, is to “consider Western history as only one branch of the history of humanity… we could rediscover the values of Chinese political ideas, Islamic political ideas, Christian Orthodox political thought…” [17] This is something he calls “the Fourth Political Theory” in his “Twenty-One Points” of the “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening.”
What he seems to be hinting at rather broadly is that the resistance to the Great Reset is already well underway and probably far wider than most of us know.
5. Russia Key to the Great Awakening
Dugin sees Russia’s mission in all of this to be “at the forefront of the Great Awakening.” [18] Despite Russia’s involvement with Western Enlightenment culture, he says, “the deep identity of Russian society is deeply distrustful of the West, especially of liberalism and globalization.” Dugin returns here to the theme of universalism vs. nominalism, the latter “deeply alien to the Russian people in its very foundations.” This alienation from Western ideals was only deepened in the post-Soviet era, “thanks to the failure of liberal reforms,” which left Russian society “even more convinced of the extent to which globalism and individualistic attitudes and principles are alien to Russians.” In Dugin’s view this also explains the general support among Russians for Putin’s “conservative and sovereign course.” [19] He provides the historical-social context for his assessment of Russian culture:
“Russian identity has always prioritized the common—the clan, folk, church, tradition, nation, and power, and even communism represented—albeit artificial, in class terms—a collective identity opposed to bourgeois individualism. Russians stubbornly rejected and continue to reject nominalism in all its forms.” —Alexander Dugin, The Great Awakening or the Great Reset [20]
Dugin admits, however, that today’s Russia lacks “a complete and coherent ideology that could pose a serious challenge to the Great Reset,” due to the continuing entrenchment of “liberal ideas, theories and methods (that) still dominate the economy, education, culture and science,” weakening Russia’s potential.[ 21] Yet he insists on Russia’s importance as a central driver of the Great Awakening. What concerns me about this analysis is his idea that “our revival is inconceivable without returning to the imperial mission laid down in our historical destiny,” [22] given the history of such imperial rhetoric, its tendency to justify aggression across borders. Dugin hastens to add, however, that a return to Russia’s imperial “destiny” does not mean imposing “our Russian and Orthodox truth on the other peoples, cultures and civilizations, but to revive, fortify and defend our identity and to help others in their own renaissance…” [23] I was relieved to see in Dugin’s book that he isn’t calling for a return to the kind of Soviet collectivism that claimed millions of Russian lives under Stalin. And indeed, no Russian of any intellectual stature is ever likely to call for that.
6. Conclusion: Strength in True Diversity
In the context of Dugin’s philosophy of Great Awakening, then, collectivism seems to represent more of an identification with the age-old elements of community and society that give humans a sense of meaning, something Carl Jung said we cannot live without. History makes ridiculous any Great Reset notions of a social monoculture governed by a single authority. The rule in Nature is diversity; this is how ecosystems thrive. It’s only when humans eliminate diversity from an environment that it begins to collapse. The same is therefore true of human social ecosystems—diversity of language, culture, arts, government and tradition is the norm. It’s this that Dugin is saying must be respected. Under the subhead, “Towards the Victory of the Great Awakening,” Dugin provides a hopeful perspective:
“Of course, they have the stock exchanges and the printing presses, the Wall Street crooks and the Silicon Valley inventor junkies working for them. Disciplined intelligence operatives and obedient army generals are subordinate to them. But this is negligible compared to all of humanity, to the people of labour and thought, to the depths of religious institutions and the fundamental richness of cultures.” —Alexander Dugin, The Great Awakening or the Great Reset [24]
My good friend Norbert Deurichen, who is fond of quoting the verses of Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village,” will be relieved to hear that Dugin sees a return to “self-sufficient agricultural societies based on small villages” [25] as an essential step in the way forward. Dugin believes we must abandon industrialized cities as “an existential and metaphysical move to return to the being.” [26] Dedicated environmentalists will be relieved to hear Dugin quote Nietzsche’s admonition: “My brethren, stay loyal to the earth.” Or in Dugin’s own words, “the earth for the people is the being—it is not an alienated substance to be used for material needs. The earth is sacred.” [27] But let’s give the poet Goldsmith the final words:
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more:
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
[1] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., pp. 32, 33.
[2] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening, Twenty-One Points,” pp. 73, 74; emphasis in original.
[3] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening, Twenty-One Points,” p.76.
[4] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 30.
[5] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: interview with Deutsch Stimme, p. 51.
[6] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “The Great Awakening: The Future Starts Now,” p. 62; emphasis in original.
[7] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 30.
[8] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., pp. 30, 31; emphasis mine.
[9] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 34.
[10] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 35.
[11] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: interview with Deutsch Stimme, p. 53.
[12] New Testament, Luke 17: 20, 21.
[13] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: interview with Deutsch Stimme, p. 55.
[14] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: interview with Deutsch Stimme, p. 56.
[15] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 38.
[16] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 43.
[17] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening, Twenty-One Points,” p. 71; emphasis in original.
[18] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 39.
[19] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 39.
[20] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 39.
[21] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 40.
[22] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 41.
[23] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 42.
[24] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid., p. 43.
[25] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening, Twenty-One Points,” p. 84.
[26] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening, Twenty-One Points,” p. 86.
[27] Dugin, The Great Awakening vs. The Great Reset, ibid.; Appendices: “Theoretical Principles of the Great Awakening, Twenty-One Points,” pp. 85, 86.
Great awakening for sure; who is voting for the reset? Oh I forgot that is being imposed, choice is so old school.
yes indeed, well thought out