by Benjamin Teitelbaum at Spiked
The images from Moscow from Saturday night will be hard to forget. Notorious philosopher and political operative Alexander Dugin was filmed standing by a busy road strewn with smouldering shrapnel, his hands pressed to his temples as he gasps for air. Across from him, fire engulfs a Toyota Land Cruiser containing his daughter’s burning corpse. A car bomb, it seems. The assailants may have assumed he would be riding in the vehicle, too.
I have met and interviewed Alexander Dugin many times, and I still struggle to explain who he is. We could call him a writer, a former professor, a media figure, an occultist or a pseudo-diplomat. He espouses a radical anti-liberal, anti-modern political theory – plain fascism in the eyes of some – which he uses to condemn the West as inherently belligerent and decadent. Through his commentary and his international networks, he pushes political actors and states to align with Russia. Domestically, he campaigns for his homeland to reassert dominance in the former Soviet territories.
Dugin’s daughter, Daria Dugina, doubled as his protégée, especially in the media. She shared his penchant for recasting conflicts in grand metaphysical terms – the war in Ukraine, for instance, pits ‘life’ against Satanism, black magic, and death, Dugina said recently. And just weeks before her murder, she traveled to the Azovstal metal plant in Mariupol, where Ukrainian Azov soldiers made a last stand before surrendering to Russian invaders. Daria was there to film and take celebratory selfies in the wreckage.