The Ukraine crisis shows that here is an ideology for trumpism, even if they all do their own objectivist research. Whether it’s oligarchic kleptocracy or kleptocratic oligarchy, tradition or traditionalism gets the accumulated wealth over those darn “liberals”. What’s left for the non-ruling classes is gaslighting and privation, what libertarians would say that they deserve.
(2020)
The rise of the traditionalists: how a mystical doctrine is reshaping the right: Steve Bannon, Russia’s Alexander Dugin and Brazil’s Olavo de Carvalho are united by their affinity with a spiritual movement
Bannon is often characterised as a “nationalist” and a “populist”, but few realise that he is also affiliated with a much more obscure movement – one stranger and more radical than right-wing populism, and one whose cause is greater than that of a single election, greater, in fact, than politics.
This fringe spiritual movement bears an inconspicuous name: traditionalism. Bannon is not alone in his interest – traditionalist sympathisers on the right with significant political influence are also to be found in Russia and Brazil. And, as I would learn during the year and a half I spent following and speaking to these figures while researching my book War for Eternity, they are attempting to coordinate their actions.
Adherents to this arcane school have made homes for themselves in nationalist-populist movements – although rank-and-file nationalists would likely be alienated by their eccentric ideas. But as I discovered, the incendiary, populist agenda with which traditionalists are associated – border walls, contempt for elites, isolationism, the targeting of racial and sexual minorities – are secondary, preparatory work for an altogether grander project.
At its core, traditionalism rejects modernity and its ideals: faith in the ability of human ingenuity to advance living standards and justice; an emphasis on the management of the economy; the coveting of individual liberty; the existence of universal truths equally valid for, and thereby equalising of, all. Repudiating the Enlightenment, traditionalists instead celebrate what they regard as timeless values. They honour precedence rather than progress, emphasise the spiritual over the material, and advocate surrender to the fundamental disparities – as opposed to equality – between humans and human destinies.
[...]
There is a political dimension to this social disintegration too: theocracy and the reign of a spiritual elite devolve into the reign of the masses, which is to say democracy or communism. Traditionalism thus deals in a series of oppositions: between the spiritual and material, quality and quantity, social stratification and mass homogenisation.
[...]
In the course of our conversations, Steve Bannon never made clear how he came in contact with these ideas – though he assured me the experience was revolutionary: not so much the racism and sexism, which he said he opposed, but the core message that an anti-modern politics could return society to “immanence and transcendence”. Bannon grew up Catholic in a Democrat-leaning household in Richmond, Virginia, but describes his youth as lacking in spirituality. After experiments with Buddhism and meditation – as was conventional for spiritually disgruntled Westerners at the time – he eventually found his way to Guénon. By the time of his rise to global prominence at the helm of the Trump campaign, Bannon had also discovered Evola.
[...]
Perhaps then, for Bannon, Olavo and in particular Dugin, nationalism is a two-way street rather than an end in itself. Their calls for the strengthening of borders and even for more egalitarian orders within them (Dugin frequently advocates “social justice”, while Bannon, in theory, supports progressive tax policies) may be initial steps in an effort to reverse time. First, establish a horizontal difference by destroying internationalism and crafting a world of islands. Then, reinstate vertical difference with a theocratic hierarchy by sacralising the otherwise modernist and secular institution of the nation-state. For the influential acolytes of traditionalism, nationalism would thus be merely the opening salvo of a crusade to re-segment and re-mystify the world.
www.newstatesman.com/...
(2017) A former banker turned film producer and right-wing polemicist, Bannon has praised not only Russian President Vladimir Putin but also a brand of Russian mystical conservative nationalism known as Eurasianism, which is the closest the Kremlin has to a state ideology. Eurasianism proclaims that Russia's destiny is to lead all Slavic and Turkic people in a grand empire to resist corrupt Western values. Its main proponent is Alexander Dugin, a Russian political scientist. Dugin's philosophy glorifies the Russian empire—while Bannon and the conservative website he formerly led, Breitbart News, revived the "America First" slogan, which Trump later adopted in his campaign.
Despite their nationalism, Bannon and Dugin have something in common: They both believe global elites have conspired against ordinary people. Their enemies: secularism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism. In both Bannon's and Dugin's worldview, the true global ideological struggle is not between Russia and the United States but between culturally homogenous groups founded on Judeo-Christian values practicing humane capitalism on one side and, on the other, an international crony-capitalist network of bankers and big business.
Bannon's fix for the world is to revive the nation-state—precisely what Putin's Kremlin is promoting as it backs anti–European Union candidates from Hungary to France. "I happen to think that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing and a strong thing," Bannon told an audience of Catholic thinkers at the Vatican by video link from the U.S. in 2014. "Putin is standing up for traditional institutions, and he's trying to do it in a form of nationalism."
Dugin agrees. "We are unfairly described as nationalists—but this is not old-fashioned nationalism in the sense of ethnic chauvinism but reflects the idea that we believe in many civilizations that are all equal and have the right to their own identity and decide their own course."
www.newsweek.com/...
(2014) A prominent Russian ultra-nationalist philosopher has told BBC News that war between Russia and Ukraine "is inevitable" and has called on President Vladimir Putin to intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine "to save Russia's moral authority".
Alexander Dugin is the founder of Russia's Eurasian movement. His views are believed to be popular among the hawkish Russian elite. Until recently, he was also a professor at Moscow State University, but he says his current status with the university is unclear.
His views have not changed, he says, but attitudes towards his views among those in power may be shifting.
The centrepiece of his geopolitical theory is that Russia's mission is to challenge US domination of the world, with the help of Iran, as well as Eurosceptic parties, which are currently on the rise in Europe.
He has been labelled the brains behind President Putin's wildly popular annexation of Crimea.
The next step, he proclaims, is military intervention in eastern Ukraine, which he regularly calls Novorossiya (New Russia). It is a name that has also been used by President Putin.
www.bbc.com/…
Abramovich was the first person to recommend to Yeltsin that Vladimir Putin be his successor as the Russian president.[53]: 135 When Putin formed his first cabinet as Prime Minister in 1999, Abramovich interviewed each of the candidates for cabinet positions before they were approved.[35]: 102 Subsequently, Abramovich would remain one of Putin's closest confidants. In 2007, Putin consulted in meetings with Abramovich on the question of who should be his successor as president; Medvedev was personally recommended by Abramovich.[53]: 135, 271
Chris Hutchins, a biographer of Putin, described the relationship between the Russian president and Abramovich as like that between a father and a favourite son. Abramovich has said that when he addresses Putin he uses the Russian language's formal "вы" (like Spanish "usted", German "Sie", Italian "lei" or French "vous"), as opposed to the informal "ты" (Spanish "tú", German "du", Italian "tu" or French "tu"). Abramovich says that the reason is 'he is more senior than me'.[54] Within the Kremlin, Abramovich is referred to as "Mr A".[55]
In September 2012, the High Court judge Elizabeth Gloster said that Abramovich's influence on Putin was limited: "There was no evidential basis supporting the contention that Mr Abramovich was in a position to manipulate, or otherwise influence, President Putin, or officers in his administration, to exercise their powers in such a way as to enable Mr Abramovich to achieve his own commercial goals."[56] U.S. media reports that the U.S. intelligence community believes Abramovich is a "bag carrier", or financial cutout for Putin.[57]
en.wikipedia.org/...
US prosecutors said "millions of dollars" were moved by Ihor Kolomoisky and others through companies in the United States as they acquired 13 steel mills and five skyscrapers along with two office parks and a cell phone factory. Unsealed documents now show it was $4.45 billion.
It has been two and a half years since the publication of parliament’s “Russia report”, which laid bare the extent of links between the Kremlin and Russian-backed financial interests – and the resulting endless flows of illicit cash through the City of London. The UK’s allies are beginning to take note of the intractability of the problem. A report from the Center for American Progress – a thinktank close to the Biden administration – stated last week that “uprooting Kremlin-linked oligarchs will be a challenge given the close ties between Russian money and the United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative party, the press, and its real estate and financial industry”.
After all, clear mechanisms to crack down on these practices exist. My government has long called for Westminster to legislate on the improper use of Scottish limited partnerships – just one favourite instrument of financial exploitation – to ensure that they are no longer used to facilitate the sort of financial corruption that has benefited authoritarians and their wealthy cronies for far too long.
“No one is more to blame than us for the fact that Russia’s richest can treat war like a spectator sport.”
www.theguardian.com/...