Another email I wrote to an ancient professor of mine;
Greetings; I have no idea if you would remember who I am but I took 19th Century Philosophy in 2009ish which was quite an interesting course and that was essentially the last batch of relevant philosophers in a modern context. Soon I imagine there will be a Ukrainian or Taiwanese philosopher who is immediately influential and historically relevant for hundreds of years in the West and already Aleksandr Dugin has attained that role at least in Russia.
I believe I visited your offices a few times (at least once) and we spoke in a one on one fashion, one of the points I was trying to make at the time but did not have an immediate contextualization for is the clear divide between Western "Liberal Hegemony" (a John Mearsheimer affectation) and pseudo traditionalist or autocratic values in China and Russia (and in much of the developing world); in the West this point of view is just immediately thrown out or the supremacy of Western fundamental concepts like Human Rights, Individualism, and Globalization (which directly led to Chinese dominance ironically), like those points of views are the only ones tolerated at all and any difference is explicitly seditious and vile or what have you.
Over time I have acclimated more to those concepts so my political compass as it were has shifted slightly to the left, I think I was dead center or so during college. I'm still a moderate and/or think Bipartisanship is an artificial tool of the ruling class (though that is in the process of being disrupted by Populism). But it is nice being able to express former thoughts of mine and have an immediate relevant context in describing the explicit line on a military sphere of influence level in Ukraine (and possibly Taiwan shortly) as well as a philosophical level between Dugin, Realists and the extraordinarily dominant and/or ubiquitous point of view of Western Liberal Intellectuals.
With that we come to Dugin who is a philosopher first and foremost and also someone that has Putin's ear or embodies Putin's Worldview. It should be noted that if Ukraine had fallen immediately instead of being a Western military Bastion as it is now (and likely the strongest national identity in the whole world in sharp contrast to Putin and Dugin's worldview though reinforced by their very invasion) then I think it was very likely that some form of genocide would have occurred in Eastern Ukraine; that has not happened though we have had massive amounts of civilian casualties in a traditional indirect way a la the firebombing of Tokyo or usage of Nuclear Weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; debatable whether you would call those a genocide and I guess more importantly it's impossible to prosecute Putin (also apparently Stalin is still not regarded as a person who propagated genocide in Russia, despite being either the most prolific or second most prolific mass murderer in history with Mao, also still well regarded in China) so the usage of the word genocide is pseudo shock journalism and nothing more so far (this could change).
Thus I don't think Dugin is directly sponsoring that ideology or fascism though admittedly the beginning of WW2 Lebensraum and also the alliance system of WW1 parallels are striking while we move into the later stages of this or these conflicts. Dugin being relevant directly in his own lifetime is interesting to me as someone who has continuous cognitive dissonance about being utterly insignificant due to the scope of population (though it is now relatively easy to figure out a means to become relevant or for one's children to become relevant by simply moving to Ukraine as a volunteer), admittedly a very common point of view. But another issue I have is with the academic consensus and the over proliferation of writing it is impossible to distinguish one's self as an individual thinker.
I have been watching a weekly series on the War in Ukraine from Marshall University which is utterly superb and gets somewhere around a few dozen views on youtube, relative to any random gaming video that could get hundreds of thousands. This is a sort of loose and easy correlation to both human interest in massive geopolitical world shaping issues and producing discourse on them that isn't explicit propaganda, actually frequently the only point of view that gets traction in this regard is the pro russian "Realist" one that condemns NATO (Marshall's videos are almost entirely anti invasion and pro Ukraine, but frequently have a more human context vis-a-vis artists and poets in Ukraine).
So this leads back to the fundamental question, if the only way to get traction is to have a contrarian point of view doesn't the academic base having an oppressively forceful conformist identity defeat the purpose of academia existing in a modern context? If academics can only reach dozens of people with years and years of work behind what they create how can they possibly propagate their ideas for longer than the duration of their lifetimes; or even see a modicum of success in anything beyond very sheltered academic circles.
In the case of Dugin he is relevant because on of the most powerful people in the world listened to him; this makes him a sort of modern Cardinal Richelieu. Marx, while unquestionably one of the most influential philosophers in history, didn't immediately see results in his own lifetime. I guess as someone who studies Nietzsche you might have a more informed opinion of how his philosophy transmogrified into the German Nationalist identity of the early 20th century and how that could relate to current Russian Nationalism and aggressive expansion of sphere of influences and so forth; also the development of the "Russian Idea" (Dostoevsky) or Eurasian identity (more modern take on the same concept).
Sorry if this seemed rambling or incoherent unless it was incoherent on the basis of not being conformist enough; my goal is mostly just to absorb as many points of view as possible to distill a more objective thought on the present state of reality in order to have some basis for understanding the shifting nature of the present world (stagnant for 30 years and now rapidly changing).
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