Alexander Dugin discusses the unfolding political crisis in Poland, its links to the U.S. midterm elections and the fate of Donald Trump, the deeper crisis of Western liberalism and democracy, the eschatological stakes of the Netanyahu–Eisenkot contest in Israel, and the need for Russia to abandon its inertial orientation towards a West that has lost its sense of reality.
Conversation with Alexander Dugin on the Sputnik TV program Escalation.
Host: Very interesting, dramatic events are unfolding in Poland. According to Supreme Court Chairman Zbigniew Kapiński, what is happening there has all the hallmarks of a coup d’état.
Let’s try to figure out together what exactly has happened. According to the same Kapiński, roughly a thousand police officers were brought onto the grounds of the Constitutional Tribunal supposedly to “stabilize the situation.” Tell me, Alexander Gelyevich [Dugin], what caused events of this scale and intensity? Why have the tensions between the current government and the judges appointed by the previous government escalated to this degree?
Alexander Dugin: I believe all of this is directly connected to the so-called midterm elections in the United States, where the fate of Trump and the entire Republican Party is largely being decided right now.Because America remains the asymmetrically dominant force within the modern Western world—and for Europe above all—the internal political processes taking place in the US during these elections (voting and the counting of results are underway at this very moment) are bringing us to the threshold of global transformations.
In Europe, the globalist elite—all these Tusks, Merzes, Macrons—are oriented exclusively towards the US Democratic Party. They are classic globalists, left-wing supporters of Soros’s structures, adherents of the LGBT agenda, and apologists for uncontrolled migration. Their left-globalist program is essentially identical to the course of the American Democrats.
At the same time, just as conservatives, populists, the right, and ordinary citizens in the United States itself chose and supported Trump—in spite of the Democrats and globalists, in search of an alternative path—something similar has occurred in Europe as well, albeit on a different level.In Poland, representatives of two irreconcilable lines have ended up at the head of the state. On one side is Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a direct proxy for the US Democratic Party, Soros, and ultra-liberal Euro-Atlanticism, who rejects fundamental Catholic and traditional values. On the other side, riding the wave of right-wing populism, President Karol Nawrocki was elected, backed by conservative and Catholic circles.It must be said plainly: both Tusk and Nawrocki are extremely hostile towards Russia. They are hardline Russophobes, and one should not entertain any illusions about them for a second. For us, both of these groupings are an alien and hostile force. But objectively, politics inside the West, including Polish politics, has been split between two poles.
And so, on the eve of the US midterm elections, when the majority of forecasts suggested that Trump and the Republicans might lose full control of Congress, a decision was quietly made to purge the conditional “Polish Trumpists” inside Poland itself by force.
The situation there has reached a deadlock precisely because America itself is in a stalemate. Had there been a clear victory for one side in Washington, the situation in Warsaw would have resolved differently. But as long as the Democrats hold their positions, they are keeping their European agents—all these von der Leyens, Merzes, and Tusks—on full combat footing: “Advance, purge all the conservatives oriented towards Trump and the movement, before our revanche wave arrives!”
And apparently, it was American structures that supplied Nawrocki with information—he literally turned his plane around mid-flight while on a visit to Africa and returned to Warsaw upon learning of the planned takeover. Intelligence and interested circles informed him that Tusk was in effect implementing a coup scenario.
The Prime Minister appointed his illegitimate, pocket judges with a transparent aim: to launch an impeachment procedure and remove President Nawrocki from office—the main exponent of the national-conservative and pro-Trumpist line. As a result, dual power has formed in Poland’s judicial system: on one side, the legitimate composition of the Constitutional Tribunal, relying on the lawful prerogatives of the president, and on the other, a quasi-judicial body pushed through by Tusk in a revolutionary, forceful manner.
And now everything hinges on which composition will deliver the decisive verdict: either the launch of Nawrocki’s impeachment, or the opening of criminal cases against Tusk himself for attempting a coup d’état. That is precisely why the Constitutional Tribunal has become the epicenter of the confrontation. The building has been blocked by police subordinate to Tusk’s government, while outside stand crowds of many thousands of citizens supporting Nawrocki—that is, the overwhelming majority of the traditionally minded Polish population.
At the same time, there remains a hidden but significant presence of the army, which traditionally swears allegiance to the head of state and in this conflict sympathizes with Nawrocki. It is a classic division: the police for the globalist Tusk, and the army and the people for President Nawrocki.What we are observing in Poland is a classic, textbook coup d’état that left-wing globalists attempted to carry out on the sly, counting on Trump’s positions weakening after the US midterm elections so they could clean out undesirable conservative leaders with impunity using unconstitutional methods. For modern liberals, however, the concept of “legality” has long become an empty sound. They act according to well-practiced templates—recall how they crushed sovereign candidates in Romania or how they tried to destroy the Alternative for Germany.
Any politician who refuses to play by the rules of the globalist government and Soros’s networks is automatically declared by them “illegitimate.”
Host: Your elections are dishonest, your candidates are not right
Alexander Dugin: Yes, “we don’t like your candidates at all, we never granted them any right to exist…”In effect, what we have before us is what is now rightly called not the European Union, but the “Euro-kolkhoz”1 or the “Euro-troikas.”2 This is a totalitarian liberal state that frankly couldn’t care less about all forms of legality and democracy in whose name it supposedly acts. This is the classic situation where, as they themselves openly admit, democracy is suspended. It has in fact been abolished in favor of pure liberal ideology.
Liberals have turned into ideological commissars. They are building a vetted system: if a candidate has the “correct” globalist consciousness, if he is a loyal liberal operative of Soros, then he can be installed and promoted. Kaja Kallas fits all the parameters perfectly, Annalena Baerbock and the other commissars of global liberalism pass this qualification with flying colors. And those who do not pass are automatically declared outside the law.
The hope of all conservative and populist forces in Europe was the idea that something could be done about this liberal dictatorship, especially since America remains the main power of the West anyway. And if Trump had been a real Trump, and not the misunderstanding that he has in fact turned out to be, he could have radically reversed this situation. He could have said: “Come on, let’s follow the rules! Let’s listen to the people who are elected! Let’s stop your totalitarian liberal terror and return to good old democracy, where the majority had real meaning, not the minority!”
I have discussed this question in detail many times in conversations with Francis Fukuyama—the key ideologist of American liberalism. And Fukuyama openly explained this transformation: previously, democracy was understood as the rule of the majority, but now the concept has changed—today “democracy” is sharpened as an instrument for the protection and power of minorities, directed straight against the majority.
And what exactly is the majority “guilty” of? Of being unmanageable. It can go and elect Trump, it can elect Putin or someone even “worse.” Therefore the majority has been declared dangerous. It simply cannot be given the right of real choice: only pre-vetted, filtered candidates must be put forward, under whom the liberal agenda will win in any case.
And this is not an accident; it is an absolutely conscious, systemic course of the modern West. This is what we have come to. We are dealing with a finished totalitarian system that can remove any dissenting politician, can organize a coup d’état against him, arrest him, or physically eliminate him.
And what is happening now in Poland is merely one of the theaters, one of the stages of that deepest tectonic shift that has engulfed the entire political system of the West.
Host: Alexander Gelyevich [Dugin], how do you think this entire Polish drama will ultimately end? Judging by where we are right now, the globalists did not manage to force the coup through and finish it on the first attempt after all.
Alexander Dugin: Yes, they have not yet succeeded in fully forcing the coup through, but the situation is genuinely hanging by a thread. Look: the steady rise of populist sentiment across Europe is an undeniable fact, one that all polling agencies agree on. Even Marine Le Pen, towards whom the systemic establishment is extremely hostile, openly states that she will become president in the next French elections. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany remains the most popular political force.
Across Europe today, furious riots and pogroms are raging, organized by dark forces—quite possibly those same left-wing globalists who are deliberately rocking the boat. They need a European civil war as the only tool to save their own skins, because they have completely lost any support among the population. By all appearances, they are desperately trying to cling to power by imposing a state of emergency and total dictatorship.
Exactly the same goal is served by the artificial whipping up of hysteria and expectations of an inevitable war with Russia. Remember the old Ukrainian slogan “Ukraine is Europe”? Well, today the logic of the Eurocrats has evolved in the opposite direction: they look at Kiev and think “Europe is Ukraine.” They look at the Zelensky regime with envy: there is a war, no democracy, no elections, no one can remove the dictator by legal means… The globalists look at this disgrace and think: “Was this really possible?!” And on top of that…
Host: They are given money.
Alexander Dugin: Everyone gives them money—yes, in general: just live as you please. But the people…
One of the tasks of the modern Western European elites is the extermination of the indigenous population, the so-called “Great Replacement” (Le Grand Remplacement). This is quite openly implied, because the white European population is prone to authoritarianism; it is dangerous for them. The leaders of European countries themselves are consciously and consistently working towards the replacement of the local population by newcomers.
And Zelensky does this even more effectively: he has simply physically destroyed millions of Ukrainians. So perhaps war is the universal solution for this kind of power? Both for advancing the globalist agenda and for the physical destruction of one’s own indigenous population? These migrants and the rioters who are currently looting shops in European capitals and cities are hardly going to go fight the Russians. Are they fools? They will not go, and they have no intention of doing so. They will continue looting and raping—what they do best and what the authorities effectively welcome.
It will be the last of the local population, those who can somehow still be motivated, who will go to war. That is what they are counting on.That is why it seems to me that we are in an extremely complicated situation. Yes, in Poland the coup did not succeed at the first attempt. The Trump faction in the CIA intervened—perhaps not the largest or most influential, but one that managed to warn Nawrocki in time. How this will end is difficult to predict, but Europe as a whole is sliding either towards an internal civil war or towards a war with us.Because if the information is confirmed that Tusk intends to send Polish troops into the territory of Western Ukraine… There you have the perfect pretext. Immediately afterward a state of emergency is introduced. Nawrocki, who is protesting together with the people, is forcibly removed under the pretext of martial law. And Tusk begins direct combat operations, becoming “Zelensky number two.” Then Merz becomes “Zelensky number three,” Macron “Zelensky number four” (or in any other order), and Kallas “Zelensky number five.”
As a result, this entire political Euro-elite, which is absolutely democratically bankrupt and consists of simple usurpers of power, retains its positions. In the United States the regime may change by then—Trump will be impeached, which is more than likely—and then America will resume large-scale financing of Europe in exactly the same way that Europe finances Ukraine. And everything will fall into place: everyone receives money, everyone fights with other people’s hands, and America is once again in the hands of the Democrats.Therefore, on Trump—despite his shameful failure of his own historical mission, for he was the last hope of all conservative strata both in America and in Europe and throughout the world (after all, he could have accepted a multipolar world, but no!)—his Zionism, his Christian Zionism, Bibi, and his own political weaknesses drew him into those adventures that canceled out his positive beginning. And yet it is precisely he who is still holding the world back from finally collapsing.
Even such a Trump—a lame Trump, half-Trump, a truncated Trump, a “lame duck,” as American presidents are called after midterm elections—still, the global balance continues to rest on him for now. This fragile peace rests on such an unreliable and contradictory person as Trump. And this makes the situation extremely tense—for Europeans, for Americans, and for us.Host: On 27 October, parliamentary elections were held in Israel. The Likud party led by Benjamin Netanyahu received 27 seats out of 120, while the key opposition bloc is breathing down their necks with 21 seats.Based on the numbers, Netanyahu does not yet have a stable majority to form a full cabinet; the situation looks like yet another extremely difficult political deadlock. What will happen now in Israel? Does this mean that the historical era of Netanyahu is finally coming to an end?Alexander Dugin: Note: Netanyahu won, taking a bit more, and his main opponent—also a Zionist, Gadi Eisenkot—gathered a bit less. But in principle their policies are very similar. The only difference is that Eisenkot criticized Trump for ultra-radicalism: he believes that this eschatological policy of the forced creation of a “Greater Israel” is premature, whereas Netanyahu thinks that now is precisely the most suitable moment. That is their key disagreement. And there is also the dispute over drafting religious Orthodox into the army: Netanyahu is against, Eisenkot is for; he presents himself as a more secular, nationalist politician.
But the most important thing here is something else: Arab parties (“United List” and Ra’am) received a combined total of about 19 percent in the elections. And this representational volume theoretically gives Gadi Eisenkot the possibility of forming a government. To do so, of course, he will have to compromise on certain Zionist dogmas and enter into an alliance with the Arabs in order to become prime minister.
If this happens, we will see radical changes both in Israel itself and in America, because the entire logic of further actions will be fundamentally restructured. Gadi Eisenkot is not a left-wing pacifist or a liberal democrat. He is an aggressive Zionist, in no way inferior to Netanyahu, but without this extremist, eschatological dimension. He is more secular, more sober, and more pragmatic.
If he enters into a coalition with the Arab list—against which part of the right flank, such as Lieberman, is already speaking out—Netanyahu is finished. And this is incredibly serious. It will affect the entire world, because Netanyahu is the main engine of escalation. Everything Netanyahu does is directly tied to the expectation of the imminent arrival of the Messiah, the building of a “Greater Israel,” the genocide of the Palestinians, and the destruction of the Arab world. This is an extremely radical scenario, around which a significant part of American foreign policy has been built, since Netanyahu is desperately trying to drag Trump into delivering a nuclear strike on Iran.
If Eisenkot consolidates his position, enters into a coalition, and becomes a legitimate prime minister, the situation will shift substantially towards de-escalation—or at least this ultra-radical eschatological project will be postponed.
Although different configurations are possible here. On the one hand, the Arabs are signaling that they are ready for dialogue, and so is Eisenkot. On the other hand, it cannot be ruled out that part of Bibi’s right flank (for example, the religious party Shas, which is always wavering) will decide to defect to Eisenkot, and then he will have enough votes purely from Jewish parties. Such a variant is unlikely, but it cannot be excluded.A third option is that everything becomes blocked, no coalition is formed, Netanyahu remains acting prime minister by inertia, and new elections are called. But in Israel no one wants that. The overwhelming majority is inclined to believe that an alliance between Eisenkot and the Arab bloc is a real way out both for moderate Zionists and for supporters of a softer scenario.
There is no longer a democratic or left-wing flank in Israel; analysts are unanimous: only different forms of fairly hardline ultra-nationalism remain there. But even against this background Netanyahu represents the extreme, absolutely extremist pole. The idea of blowing up the Al-Aqsa Mosque, seizing Damascus, building an “Israel from the sea to the sea” in anticipation of the Messiah and the imminent arrival of the “King of the Jews” (of whom Netanyahu sincerely considers himself the forerunner)—this is too much even for an agitated, far-right Israeli society.
Therefore a fundamental question is being decided there right now, and its outcomes will inevitably affect the entire world, given the colossal influence of these forces on the global stage.
Host: If Eisenkot does take that step and forms a government, what will Israel’s position be on the Iranian front? How do Netanyahu’s and his opponent’s approaches differ in practical, military terms?
Alexander Dugin: Eisenkot’s main line is that Netanyahu made a fatal mistake by starting this war. Accordingly, Eisenkot will be inclined not so much to remove the Iranian question from the agenda entirely as to substantially dampen it. If the Iranians do not provoke a new round—and they most likely will refrain from doing so, since they conduct their foreign policy with extreme rationality—then de-escalation can quite reasonably be expected here.
This would be extremely beneficial for the Americans as well and would become a literal lifeline for Trump.You see, the entire logic of Netanyahu is built on the expectation that the Messiah must appear before them at this very moment. If the Messiah does not appear in the midst of this critical, eschatological situation, then their whole construction begins to collapse, and everything will have been in vain. That is why they find themselves in a desperate, dead-end position. I am convinced that Netanyahu’s only and final chance of remaining in power is to persuade Trump at all costs to deliver a nuclear strike on Iran. This scenario is still on the table; it remains. And if it happens, it will become an absolute, colossal catastrophe—first and foremost for Israel itself.
Host: We have a question from a listener precisely on this topic.
Alexander from Perm asks: “Are Netanyahu and Israel sure that Iran no longer has nuclear weapons, since Iran is also preparing for such a development of events, and this could ultimately turn into a catastrophe?”
Alexander Gelyevich [Dugin], your opinion on this question: how fully do all sides actually understand the consequences of such steps?
Alexander Dugin: I think that an objective picture of Iran’s real capabilities exists in the West and in Israel. All the more so since Tehran long ago published a hypothetical scenario of a retaliatory strike on the nuclear center in Dimona. And that facility in Israel is in fact a gigantic “dirty” nuclear bomb. If such a retaliatory strike is carried out, Israel will simply cease to exist.Something of Iran will of course remain—it is a huge state with a large population and territory. Compact Israel, however, can be physically wiped off the face of the earth, its territory rendered completely uninhabitable. And Iran has all the necessary capabilities for this.
But I want to draw your special attention to the unprecedented radicalization of the consciousness of modern Western elites in all spheres. Take the globalists: right now they are opponents of Netanyahu and Trump, yet their own agenda is absolute extremism. Their advancement of ultra-liberal—and in essence post-human—projects for gender change, population replacement, the destruction of national states, and the imposition of a postmodern culture that dissolves the remnants of the human personality is extremely aggressive in character.
And to defend this project the globalists are prepared to go to any provocations: to instigate riots, color revolutions, arrange civil wars, or even unleash a direct war with us. The readiness of European globalists to enter into direct confrontation with a nuclear power is a direct readiness to place the entire world on the brink of self-destruction.
The scenario of a joint strike by Netanyahu and Trump on Iran is a provocation of exactly the same eschatological type, only in another region. Here the object is not Russia, but Iran and the Middle East. If something of the kind occurs and an exchange of nuclear or “dirty” strikes takes place, the entire region will turn into an uninhabitable desert, and a colossal economic, ecological, and political catastrophe will fall upon humanity.
Look at what has been happening on world markets these days. We have seen an unprecedented collapse. It all began with the claim that North Korean hackers (and it is always convenient to blame everything on them) withdrew more than 6 billion dollars from the Binance exchange. As a result, the total losses on the key indices of the American stock market in a single day amounted to a trillion dollars! A trillion dollars simply evaporated from the world economy in 24 hours, even though a major war has not even begun. A host of the largest corporations found themselves on the brink of collapse.
And what will happen next, when this financial bubble finally bursts and coincides with a nuclear strike, a large-scale ecocidal catastrophe, or the outbreak of a European civil war?
The scenarios between which Western leadership is oscillating today are uniformly monstrous. If we were to hear even one major Western leader say: “We recognize a multipolar world! We agree to coexist with other independent civilizations, to compete with them, to trade, to rival, yes, even to conflict in some places, but let us preserve a common order that today can only be multipolar!”—but alas. There are no such voices in the West at all today.
That is, they are all either desperately clinging to a dying unipolarity, or proposing to abolish any independent poles altogether, or else they are waiting for the Messiah—that is, for something that in principle cannot happen.
The most serious political forces of Israel, and behind them the United States with its gigantic global potential, have become involved in a fanatical, eschatological expectation of the most extreme, radically religious elements. Such an attitude makes the world order extremely vulnerable, fragile, volatile, and absolutely unpredictable.In this atmosphere the Israeli leadership begins to reason according to the logic: “To hell with everything! If I am removed from power, if Eisenkot reaches an agreement with the Arabs—then for us everything is finished! If I am not the forerunner of the Messiah, then who am I at all?! Let’s just strike Iran, and then come what may!”
And approximately the same hysterical, irrational decisions are ripening today at the other poles of the West as well.In this respect Russia, China, India, the Islamic world, Africa, and Latin America represent a kind of archipelago of reason. Yes, on our archipelago there are problems, internal frictions, and contradictions, but we are in principle not ready to destroy the entire planet simply because someone’s nerves gave out and someone snapped. Not one of these great civilizations is interested in forcing Armageddon.
The West, however, for all the diversity of its foreign-policy scenarios, appears to be seriously toying with the scenario of the end of the world or trying to provoke others into it.
The very idea of the end of the world, from the category of fiction, of something incredible and irrational belonging exclusively to tiny marginal sects, has unexpectedly turned into one of the most mainstream directions of contemporary political planning in the West.
And this, perhaps, is the most unexpected turn. We were definitely not ready for it: our President and our diplomacy long counted on the basic rationality of Western partners. But what do we see in reality?In place of the pragmatic West—the West that strictly calculated everything, extracted cynical advantage, distributed risks into different baskets, and acted according to transparent algorithms (even if in its own interests, even if rigging the rules, but preserving frameworks and order)—an entirely different subject has appeared.
There, on the other side of the front—and today we are in a state of direct existential confrontation with them, which they themselves provoked us into—sit players who have completely lost their sense of reality. They are playing with fire, playing with the nuclear arsenal, playing with color revolutions and mass uprisings that shake and destroy the West European societies themselves. They are provoking a total energy and financial collapse of the largest powers.
And this behavior can no longer be reduced to a thirst for profit, to fraud, or to tough but rational business. It is something fundamentally different. I am afraid that until now we have been dealing not with the real West, but with our own inertial projection—with what the West used to be, and not with what it has finally become today.
And here, precisely, is the time to take up philosophy, a deep study both of the West itself and of our own tradition.
Because what is happening in the world can no longer be reduced to the economic models, energy calculations, technological cycles, and traditional political-science methods familiar to us—things simply no longer add up.We need to fundamentally change the very paradigm of understanding the West. For our consciousness it was an axiom that the use of weapons of mass destruction is not merely an extreme step, but something that must never be brought into action. Nuclear weapons are fundamentally unusable weapons. They were used once in 1945, but as soon as two antagonistic poles possessed them—that was it, a regime of absolute strategic deterrence and taboo came into force. After the emergence of parity the nuclear factor ceased to be a possible option in a real military conflict.
But it turns out—no! From a rational point of view everything should indeed be that way. But if we see something else, then it is our very notion of Western “rationality” that must be changed.Here, unfortunately, we have become victims of the heaviest inertia. For a long time we looked at the West, followed in its wake, and constantly lagged behind, seeing only the last departing car of this train and orienting ourselves by it. But where the front cars are rushing and into what abyss the locomotive itself is flying—we never posed that question to ourselves. And we should have.
Now this is not simply an overdue topic for discussion; it is a question of physical survival. Where did this West come from? Where is it heading? Why is it transforming so rapidly and in such a terrible, frightening direction? And the main thing: did we even board the right train in the first place?
Remember “The Absent-Minded Man from Basseynaya Street”?3 In a certain sense he was lucky: he got into a detached car that was going nowhere. That can still be survived. But if the train is racing at mad speed exactly to where destruction awaits us, and we climbed into it by mistake, on the principle “like everyone else”—everyone was running, and I was running; everyone was standing in line for tickets, and I was standing—then an existential question arises: where are we going, and do we really need to go there?
That is why the world processes taking place are becoming ever more wild and incomprehensible to normal, sovereign countries. And Russia is a normal, beautiful, reasonable, and orderly civilization.
We vitally need radically new methods of thinking, new instruments for the analysis of international relations, and a theory of civilizations. A deep historical excursion is required, for the West did not become insane in a single day—it has been moving towards this condition for centuries. We need to trace where this path began, where exactly they went off course, or whether the Western matrix from the very beginning carried within itself that eschatological charge which we observe now.
We need a large-scale revision of the whole of world history, world politics, the theory of civilizations, of the very understanding of man, culture, science, and philosophy. That is the titanic work we are obliged to carry out in order to act with maximum adequacy and to win in these extreme conditions.
Host: Yes, Alexander Gelyevich [Dugin], a question arises here connected with the basic electoral mechanisms. Any normal society always has built-in mechanisms of self-regulation—above all the rotation of power through elections, when people vote for a more reasonable, adequate leader capable of pursuing a policy in their interests.
But today we see that many Western leaders have completely detached themselves from this agenda and act contrary to the interests of their own voters. That means that somewhere at this deep level the feedback mechanism itself has broken.
Alexander Dugin: Well, one can look at it that way, or perhaps we should radically reconsider the very idea of what “democracy” is. Where did we get the notion that this is the best political system? Why did we blindly believe this liberal myth that, thanks to democracy and the rotation of power, the system necessarily improves rather than degrades?
The greatest thinkers of antiquity—Plato and Aristotle—were absolutely convinced of the opposite. They considered democracy one of the worst, degenerate forms of government, which inevitably generates chaos, ochlocracy, and demagogy. And the constant reshuffling with the change of power deprives the ruler of the possibility of concentrating on long-term strategic construction, forcing him to engage in populism and political buffoonery for the sake of the momentary approval of the crowd.
Why did we, following the West, begin to deify democracy? There is absolutely nothing sacred in it. There is not a single word about it either in the Old or in the New Testament, nor in the Gospel. Sacred history gives us completely different models, tested over millennia: the power of judges, the power of charismatic leaders, the power of sacral kings and legitimate empires.
Why did we suddenly believe this Enlightenment Western mythology that “democracy and elections will put everything in its place”? They put nothing in place and never have. Democratic upheavals are everywhere accompanied by monstrous violence, the collapse of states, and genocide—recall at least the Great French Revolution or the tragedy of our own Time of Troubles4 and revolutionary upheavals.
Democracy is, at best, one of the possible, historically conditioned political forms. But that it is certainly not a panacea, that it does not represent some “highest achievement” of the human spirit—this is obvious to any sober analyst.
Democracy from the very beginning carries within itself a colossal ambiguity. And what it has degenerated into today—an open liberal dictatorship and the dictate of minorities—is by no means a random malfunction. It is its original, immanent possibility, its genetic finale.Therefore we need to reconsider absolutely everything. And our main mistake lies in the fact that we were eternally lagging behind the West, trying to catch up with it. By inertia, in the old way, we still reason in liberal categories: as if “something went wrong with democracy over there.” But can one even think that something can ever be “right” with it! Something is always wrong with it, from its very birth.
It is no accident that classical political philosophy directly indicated: democracy raises its head when society begins to degrade, grow stupid, and disintegrate into an atomized mass. And it is no accident that in our own traditional history there was practically never any democracy—neither de jure nor de facto. And thank God!
Therefore democracy is not a panacea. No Western institutions are a universal answer. We need to rethink anew, from a clean slate, both our own identity and our deep history and our civilizational future.
To look at and critically rethink the path of the West to the condition in which it finds itself today. After all, we were constantly lagging behind it—and thank God! We do not need to run after this mad train. We need to clearly realize: we are going in a completely different direction; we have a fundamentally different course.
Our Russian tradition, our Russian civilization, our Holy Church, our Russian people, our statehood, our great power, and our culture have always gone their own way. And let us return to our own track, to our native rails, and confidently move towards our own—Russian, sovereign, civilizational—future.
And then everything will instantly fall into place. Then we will clearly see into what abyss the Western locomotive is racing. Everything will become extremely clear to us. We will discover that before us is by no means a random “malfunction” in the mechanism of democracy, but that democracy as such is a historical injustice. It is a hasty, unfounded, global hallucination imposed by dark elites with the most evil intentions. Everyone talks about “democracy,” but it is nowhere to be found, and the louder they shout about it, the more terrible the masks it assumes, revealing ever darker, chthonic sides. And this is also absolutely not accidental.In other words, we need to irreversibly take our own, Russian point of view on absolutely everything—both politics and economics and technology and religion and spirit. And from there, from the height of our own civilizational observation post, we must comprehend both ourselves and the entire surrounding world. Only then will we truly understand what is happening in it at all.In essence we are already doing this. Recall the official decrees of our President: the defense of traditional values, the official proclamation of Russia as a state-civilization, the awareness of the acute necessity of historical enlightenment—all this is movement in the right direction, towards genuine civilizational sovereignty.
But the trouble is that we are still thoroughly permeated by Western templates, Western hasty, contradictory, and at times openly false and erroneous ideas. Because of this burden we cannot yet comprehend the full measure of what is happening at the global level—and we are obliged to do so.
Host: Continuing the theme of democracy: the midterm elections to Congress in the United States are coming up soon. Analysts and experts differ in their assessments, but many agree that the Republicans risk losing at least one of the chambers—the House of Representatives—and some forecast that they will also lose control of the Senate.What is your opinion on this? What will happen in practice if these negative scenarios for Trump are realized, and how will he try after that to build interaction with us and with the world community?
Alexander Dugin: First of all, many of the things that Trump has been trying to do now—even if he hesitated, even if he acted inconsistently—he will simply be unable to continue, because colossal pressure will be exerted on him.
The Democrats are our absolute, irreconcilable enemies. They will force the already doubting, wavering Trump to move in an extremely narrow corridor. The flywheel of “Russiagate” will spin up again, accusations will again be made that he is an “agent of Putin,” and all this nonsense will start all over again.I absolutely do not rule out the impeachment of Trump and his early removal from power under one pretext or another. The Democrats are now in a rage. If they succeed in taking control of Congress, their revenge on Trump for the horror they experienced will be merciless. After all, at first they were seriously frightened: when Elon Musk created DOGE and began to shake up USAID, the systemic Deep State thought that they were really beginning to be eradicated, that Trump would fulfill his promises. But then they saw that this was banal bravado, not a thought-out strategy, and calmed down a bit. But they will never forgive Trump for the fear they experienced.Their revenge on the Trumpists will be furious—a harsh liberal dictatorship in the spirit of Macron or the same Tusk will begin. I do not rule out a full-scale civil war in the United States either, since American society is extremely polarized. Trump raised his hand but did not strike—and in such a hard fight this is not forgiven. Now those whom he threatened with his finger are returning to power, and they are full of determination to crush him.Trump will find himself in a critically constrained state; he will quickly be driven into a corner. With regard to us he will definitely not be able to answer for his words—he was never particularly eager to keep commitments to anyone before, and to us even less so. Therefore the internal political situation in the United States will only heat up.
The only thing Trump may decide to do on the principle “the barn has burned—let the house burn too” is to strike Iran together with Netanyahu, proclaiming himself “king of the world” for about fifteen minutes. And after that a completely unpredictable chain reaction will be set in motion. Realizing that the arrival of the Messiah is delayed, fanatics may try to “fake” his coming through an artificial eschatological catastrophe.
Trump’s collapse in the elections or his paralysis in Congress leads to terrible consequences. However, even if he miraculously retained Congress, nothing fundamentally good can be expected from him any longer: even if he sincerely wanted to conclude a reasonable deal, the strengthened opponents would simply not allow him to do so.
Of course, we would very much like the West finally to plunge into its own internal squabbles and at last leave us alone. But we have no right to count on such a gift from outside. If we do not take care of ourselves—our security, our victories, our deep challenges and meanings—no one will do it for us.
If Russia does not save itself—with God’s help, with faith in its spirit, in its history, in its people, in its great Power and Holy Church—then no one will present this Victory and this salvation to us. We are obliged to wrest them with our own hand!
(Translated from the Russian)
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Translator’s note (TN): “Euro-kolkhoz” (евроколхоз) is a pejorative term that merges “Europe/EU” with the Soviet kolkhoz (collective farm). It portrays the European Union as a rigid, top-down collectivist system in which national sovereignty is subordinated to a central bureaucracy, much as Soviet peasants were forced into collective farms under strict central control and denied independent economic or political agency.
TN: “Euro-troikas” (евротройки) alludes to the “troikas” of the eurozone debt crisis (the European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF), which imposed austerity and policy conditions on member states. In this usage, it evokes external bodies that override elected national governments and enforce compliance, presenting the EU as an undemocratic mechanism of external diktat rather than a voluntary association of sovereign states.
TN: “The Absent-Minded Man from Basseynaya Street” is a reference to Samuil Marshak’s classic 1928 Soviet children’s poem (later adapted into a famous cartoon) about a scatterbrained man who, among other mishaps, boards a train only to discover he has gotten into a detached carriage going nowhere. In the interview, the image is used metaphorically: unlike the Absent-Minded Man, who was “lucky” because his car was not moving, those who followed the West may have boarded a train racing at full speed towards disaster.
TN: The Time of Troubles (Смутное время, c. 1598–1613) was a period of dynastic crisis, civil war, famine, and foreign intervention in Russia that followed the death of the last Rurikid tsar and ended with the accession of the Romanov dynasty. In the interview, it is invoked as a historical example of the violence, state collapse, and upheaval that can accompany periods of political breakdown and contested power, placed alongside the French Revolution as a caution against the chaos that may follow the collapse of established order.
E se fosse arrivato in anticipo e non ce ne fossimo accorti ?…