Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What the Dugin assassination tells us about Russia
Spectator ^ | 8.21.2022 | Marl Galeotti

Posted on 08/21/2022 9:11:52 AM PDT by libh8er

Car bombs used to be a fixture of gangland feuds in 1990s Russia but have since fallen out of fashion. This makes it all the more striking when, as happened last night, such a device rips through a car just outside Moscow, killing Darya Dugina, daughter of the controversial nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin.

She was a prominent figure in her own right, a journalist working for an outfit Washington says is owned by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin – under sanctions in the West for being the godfather of both the Wagner mercenary group and the infamous social media ‘troll farms’ – who had been a cheerleader for the war in Ukraine. Indeed, she was under sanctions, with the UK government describing her as a ‘frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine’.

Nonetheless, inevitably there is a widespread assumption that the real target was her father. The car was said to have been his, although other accounts say it was registered in her name. Either way, he would have been in it had he not at the last moment chosen to return home another way. No one has yet claimed responsibility, but in the charged political environment of the moment, everyone is blaming their favourite villain.

No doubt there will be video footage of Federal Security Service officers bursting into a flat artfully staged with some bomb-making equipment Already, Russian commentators are blaming Kyiv, without explaining either why either Dugin would be their target of choice – there are much more rabid and influential commentators on Ukraine – or how they managed to pull off an attack in the very heart of the Russian security state. Likewise, others assume this was a Kremlin hit, either because they wanted to make Dugin a symbolic martyr or else because they feared ultra-nationalists like him would stir up protest were Russia to step back from its war in Ukraine. Finally, there are the inevitable suggestions that this was actually a contract killing driven not by politics but by business disputes. Dugin is, after all, a phenomenally productive writer – never mind the quality – and an energetic self-promoter. In other words, there’s apparently a fair amount of money in his brand of splenetic and mystical nationalism.

This murder will only add to the Dugin myth, one he himself has so assiduously developed. There are many in the West happy to take him at face value, as ‘Putin’s Brain’ or ‘Putin’s Rasputin’. He is not, though, and never has been especially influential. He has no personal connection to Putin, but rather is just one of a whole breed of ‘political entrepreneurs’ trying to pitch their plans and doctrines to the Kremlin. For a while, in 2014, he was in favour; his notions of Russia’s civilisational destiny and status as a Eurasian nation convenient to rationalise a land grab in Ukraine’s Donbas. Suddenly he was on every TV channel, his book Foundations of Geopolitics was on the syllabus at the Academy of the General Staff and he was offered a chair at MGU, Moscow State University, the country’s premier institute of higher learning.

But then the Kremlin decided against outright annexation of the Donetsk and Lugansk ‘People’s Republics’ and Dugin was no longer useful. The invitations began to dry up, MGU rescinded its offer, and he was back in the marketplace, hawking his books to the public and his ideas to the leadership. In the process, he mastered the art of retrospective thought-leading. In other words, of picking up on hints about what the Kremlin was about to do and loudly advocating just this move – and then claiming the credit. Overall, though, he has been more effective in selling himself to western alt-right circles – which to be sure, gives him some value to Moscow as an agent of influence – than to the Kremlin.

So this is the Dugin paradox, he is Schrödinger’s Ideologist, at once important and also not. He may not have real traction with the government, but his capacity to present himself as a profound thinker whose (often barking mad) ideas frame Kremlin thinking means he is considered important. And if people think him important, then to a degree he becomes important. Or rather, the myth of Dugin does.

It is that myth which will likely matter in the aftermath of his daughter’s killing. Already, Russian nationalist tub-thumpers are calling for retaliation, but given that the Kremlin already seems to recognise no limits on its operations in Ukraine, it is unlikely it can or will do anything beyond the symbolic. A dead Dugin would have been a malleable martyr, an angry living one could prove a wild card. The man who once called for a Russia stretching ‘from Dublin to Vladivostok’ is unlikely to be assuaged and nationalists who are already dissatisfied with Putin – they don’t have a problem with him invading Ukraine, just with him doing it so very badly – will feel all the more reason to be angry.

We likely will see some hurried arrests. No doubt there will be video footage of Federal Security Service officers bursting into a flat artfully staged with some bomb-making equipment, a gun, a teach-yourself-Ukrainian handbook, some US dollars and, maybe, a volume of Shakespeare (seriously: one was used as ‘evidence’ of the presence of British mercenaries fighting for Ukraine, as we all know squaddies are mad for a little King Lear). But we, and more to the point, the Russians, have seen it all before. This is unlikely to bring closure or reassurance. Instead, it is just one more hint of the subterranean instabilities and weaknesses of a regime that tries to look indomitable.

Whether it reflects a serious failure of the Russian security state or tensions and rivalries within it, it will convince the nationalists – who may be less numerous and visible than Putin’s liberal critics, but tend to be within the security services and have, to be blunt, the guns – that this is a regime that is not living up to its own rhetoric and may be weaker than it looks.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: aleksandrdugin; alexanderdugin; ciaassassination; daryadugina; dugin; evgenyprigozhin; followthemoney; fsb; fso; goodriddance; gru; mafia; marlgaleotti; neoconassassination; patrushev; prigozhin; russia; russianmafia; ukraine; wagnergroup; wagnergrouppmc; wagnerpmc
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-42 next last
To: libh8er

21 posted on 08/21/2022 10:32:03 AM PDT by Pollard (Worm Free PureBlood)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BeauBo
Success has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan.

This.

Russia is too big to be run by a Central Government, so it relies on LOTS of little fifedoms in flyover Russia to run it.

People in Flyover Russia LOVE LOVE LOVE Putin and the guy can do no wrong (if you had 3 government run TV channels and no other means of information, what else would you think?)

But...Flyover Russians lives also pretty much suck, so ALL of their problems (including their sons coming home in a body bag) are the direct fault of their local fifedom leaders, putting pressure on these local "warlords without a war" to act.

You don't get to be in charge of a local fifedom in Russia without learning how to break a few eggs. When crapstorms are rolling your way, you can revert to your old ways to try to head them off at the pass.

22 posted on 08/21/2022 10:36:52 AM PDT by UNGN
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: JonPreston

https://www.bkmag.com/2015/06/01/all-in-the-family-farrells-bar-and-grill/

Pete Hammill would be disgusted by today’s lefties. Despite all his drinking he lived to 85. The lefties of 30-40 years ago were entertaining. Today’s lefties are psychos from the jabs they got


23 posted on 08/21/2022 10:58:57 AM PDT by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: mac_truck

It has to be someone close to the Establishment which Assange isn’t and Breitbart wasn’t.

Inside the Government inside the System.

I have no names to drop perhaps the FBI would like us to do that for their next “Gretchen Whitmer Kidnap Plot” scam.


24 posted on 08/21/2022 11:00:01 AM PDT by Nextrush (FREEDOM IS EVERBODY'S BUSINESS-REMEMBER PASTOR NIEMOLLER)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: mac_truck

Neither Breitbart nor Assange had the philosophical weight (or ballast, or ambition) that Dugin was trying to push. Those guys were tactical, not strategic, or academic.

In the west, on the right, you are talking in the ballpark of the late Roger Scruton. Or, less eminent, maybe Curtis Yarvin (mencius moldbug). Or perhaps Houellebecq in France, but he has a rather different focus. The late Angelo Codevilla would have been there in a “big picture” sense, but, also, his focus was the US.

On the left - mainstream there arent really any big ideas guys that anyone knows anymore, certainly none with such an international reputation that the Russians would have heard of them. Most of the big names have died since the end of the Cold War.


25 posted on 08/21/2022 11:02:40 AM PDT by buwaya (Strategic imperatives )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: dennisw

Farrell’s was one of the oldest bars in NYC. No stools, no chairs no tables. Hamil got more than a few scoops in there from the regulars who were cops, lawyers, judges and assorted hack politicians. He was tossed out more than once too. You stood and drank and laughed. Truly great memories of days long gone.


26 posted on 08/21/2022 11:08:13 AM PDT by JonPreston
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: JonPreston

I knew Breslin from when he decorated the mahogony at Moochies on Market Slip when I lived on Cherry St. around the corner from the J.A. He once wrote a column about a fireman buddy of mine and how he jumped into action, though off duty, at the scene of a wreck. They went out afterward for a ball and a beer....and, get ready for this....Breslin paid!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hamil was so far left he made Khruschev sound like McCarthy, but man, could that guy write love stories. Not soppy BS, but good, heart tugging love stories. The man had a wonderful way with words.


27 posted on 08/21/2022 11:09:06 AM PDT by Roccus (First we beat the Nazis........Then we defeated the Soviets....... Now, we are them.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: mass55th

Deep State appears to want WW3. Great reset time, one way or another.


28 posted on 08/21/2022 11:10:34 AM PDT by teevolt
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Roccus

Cherry street. Good eating. A lot better than the onions and saltines they served at McSorley’s Ale House. We used to sneak our girlfriends in and begin our pub crawls back in the daze!


29 posted on 08/21/2022 11:26:20 AM PDT by JonPreston
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: libh8er

I don’t want to see anyone killed. As far as I can tell she was an innocent bystander. And do not believe any of the Putin Puffer’s conspiracy rants. They have less credibility than CNN.


30 posted on 08/21/2022 11:49:31 AM PDT by rrrod (6)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Roccus

Cherry St. was near Knickerbocker village. The Rosenbergs lived there. The spies.


31 posted on 08/21/2022 1:29:33 PM PDT by dennisw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: libh8er

There goes Darya. And THERE goes Darya.

Over there, too.


32 posted on 08/21/2022 1:40:42 PM PDT by jdsteel (Do I really need a /sarc?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: achilles2000; Alberta's Child; Allegra; ANKE69; BlackbirdSST; BobL; C210N; Cathi; caver; ...

*MAGA First/Anti-War/Anti-Globalist Ping*

If you want on or off this list, please let me know.


33 posted on 08/21/2022 2:27:19 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

The news of a woman being blown up in her car was met with delight in some circles.


34 posted on 08/21/2022 2:34:47 PM PDT by Chunga85 (An arrogant govt combined with an ignorant population is a recipe for disaster.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: dennisw
Pete Hammill would be disgusted by today’s lefties

The Van der Graaf Generator singer?

35 posted on 08/21/2022 2:36:30 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Chunga85

Some real sicko trolls on FR.


36 posted on 08/21/2022 3:18:04 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: Nextrush

In the article it reminds folks this used to be used a lot
in Russia. Why would you ignore that and try to blame
others for it?

Lets see who did do it. Maybe you’re be right, but it
would be nice to see some reasoned explanation for that
blame.


37 posted on 08/21/2022 4:45:32 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance the flag of the U S of A, and to the REPUBLIC for which stands.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: buwaya

Angelo Codevilla is an excellent choice as the American equivalent to Alexander Dugin, except it seems he lacked the influence within government for his ideas...if only more Republicans (including Trump) paid attention to what he was saying.

Of the other names you mentioned, Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting although its doubtful the Macron government pays attention to him.


38 posted on 08/21/2022 5:30:40 PM PDT by mac_truck (aide toi et dieu t'aidera )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: mac_truck

I’m reading that Dugin was not that well-known domestically and while he & Putin may share love of Russian culture, support for Russian sovereignty, opposition to *woke*/child mutilation/global government/collectivism, it appears more synchronization that mentor/pupil. Perhaps 2 nationalists/traditionalists who speak to each other, likely as equals. GMTA sort of thing.

That’s a hot take, so I will read/listen to more of him to decide.


39 posted on 08/21/2022 6:43:52 PM PDT by reformedliberal (Make yourself less available.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: DoughtyOne

Based on recent incidents in other countries like Syria and Iran I say intelligence agencies are likely suspects starting with Ukraine.

Zelensky talks all out war and Israel has set the standard for other nations to imitate.

Targeted assassinations are OK in Zelensky’s playbook IMHO.


40 posted on 08/21/2022 8:25:00 PM PDT by Nextrush (FREEDOM IS EVERBODY'S BUSINESS-REMEMBER PASTOR NIEMOLLER)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-42 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson