There are many nodes in this Duginist network including many organizations, both online and in brick and mortar form in the U.S. and Europe and they have tremendous amount of influence within Russian media. Because I have read Dugin and am intimately familiar with a large portion of the alternative media landscape, it has become for me second nature to recognize fake anti-imperialists. I know the telltale indicators, the buzzwords and their ideological framework.
But even if one is not as versed about Dugin or that history, people who simultaneously call themselves "anti-imperialists" but advocate against refugees, or those who have no comment about any of the violations of countries that are not empire are obviously fake anti-imperialists coming from the right. For example, look at the "anti-imperialists" lauding the Philippine dictator Duterte, as they ignore his massacres of innocents in the streets. Why? Because he poses nicely with the Chinese and tells Trump to go to hell.
Who on the left is susceptible to the allure of fascism? What are some indications/patterns that you recognize?
ARR: Authoritarians and elitists are vulnerable in the affective sense, because they think in grandiose terms and often put ideology before experience. This often creates a perverse idealism through which the subject alone can understand fully the clean break that must be made with the modern world. Collectivists and individualists alike can be lured into this trap, ignoring common sense and the interests of most people in favor of their grand Idea. At the same time, the romantic idealism tied to ecology and biocentrism can lead one toward essentialist conceptions of gender, ethnos, race, and nation on the basis of place-based thinking. Lastly, anti-colonial struggles can even creep toward fascist alliances where they understand their liberation in terms of strict ultranationalist patriarchy (e.g., Qaddafi's enlistment of Skorzeny's Paladin Group and Nassr's deployment of Nazi war criminals like Johann von Leers to create anti-Semitic propaganda).
What exactly is a red-brown alliance and do you see it forming? Where? What is a good way to combat this trend?
ARR: A red-brown alliance is a political formation that includes leftist and fascist forces. I see a number of red-brown alliances forming today, particularly in the field of political geography. A number of far-right groups view the modern-day axis of Syria, Iran, and Russia as a kind of international counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has always been seen by fascist groups as a kind of nemesis led by the nations that defeated the Rome-Berlin axis in 1945. Authoritarian leftists often view that same axis of powers between Syria, Moscow, and Iran as a convenient ally in their declared struggle against US imperialism and its partner in the State of Israel. To combat this kind of mobilization of left and right against liberal democracy, we must promote principled alternatives to the world-systems offered up by both extremes and liberals.
What is Russia's status today and how is it portrayed in the United States?
ED: First and foremost, we must reject the empire's narrative that Russia is essentially no different from the status it had during the cold war: that it is the main geopolitical rival of the U.S. and is an aggressive imperialist nation that seeks to swallow up all of its neighbors out of some inherent blood lust and/or desire to destroy Reagan's "city on the hill". This type of narrative is promoted by the Democratic Party and the neocons of the Republican Party. Anybody on the left needs to take a long hard look in the mirror if they find themselves parroting the ruling class's talking points on Russia.
It is also important to examine whether Russia actually fits what we understand to be an imperialist power. If we take the standard definition of imperialism as put forth by Lenin in "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism", I would say that Russia does not fulfill the definition of an imperialist power: it does not monopolize finance capital, it does not use financial power as a means of power projection or acquiring raw materials. If anything, Russia is the inverse of that, Russia is a raw material exporter and little more. So in that regard, Russia is almost more colony, than colonial power. Though I do believe it is a false impression if you think Russia is merely just an oppressed global south nation like any other, it is certainly not.
Russia's foreign policy imperatives are basically to re-establish itself as a global power and to leverage the advantages that it does have in order to compensate for its deficiencies. Russia has very little true economic power globally: it is not a manufacturing or trading power. Russia's influence and power rests in its ability to export energy and that is precisely how it crafts its foreign policy. The other economic strength that it has is export of weapons and military technology, Russia being the number two global supplier of arms behind the U.S. Russia's power projection rests not in its ability to conquer territories, which is the way imperialist powers are traditionally thought of, nor does it rest in Russia's ability to influence in a full spectrum dominance approach that Washington has maintained for decades. Rather, Russia is trying to maneuver Brzeziniski's geopolitical chessboard using it advantages where it can, so that it can pursue its self-interests.
The problem rests in the fact that a leftist political outlook, the anti-imperialist, anti-fascist outlook cares not at all for Russia's self-interested goals but about ideological principles. In this way a true anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist perspective on the left is at odds with the "Russia is great" version of leftist politics.
What has been Russia's role in the far-right surge in the United States and Europe?
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