A Critique of Alexander Dugin’s 4th Political Theory: Against the Gnostics

Alexander Dugin is controversial in a unique way. He seems to be reviled, praised, accepted and rejected all at the same time. Nothing peculiar there, if it weren’t for the fact that these conflicting reactions can occur in conscience of a single man reading single one of his books. In the lines to follow we’ll try to demonstrate why this is so, by attempting to digest Dugin’s cocktail of contradictory ideas without getting too intoxicated, something which, unfortunately, happens to good number of his readers in the West.
Ideas underlying Dugin’s sociological and political analysis on closer scrutiny appear to be contradictory to the point of insanity, in the sense not so dissimilar to insanity found in writings of ancient Gnostics – both in stylistic form and content. Dugin invites his readers to embrace Chaos, as he finalizes his pamphlet politico-philosophicus titled The Fourth Political Theory with the sermon in it’s praise. So, in the following, we’ll proceed to scrutinize this book albeit not in a way of close reading analysis.
Namely, 4PT is so chaotic, so chock full of contradictions and of juxtaposing irreconcilable doctrines – from Rene Guenon to post-structuralism – that any kind of consequent interpretation would not do it justice. Alexander Dugin preaches Chaos. As both sanitary measure and act of common courtesy we’ll let him have it. And in the process, make an argument why it should be utterly rejected.

This post was published at 21st Century Wire on MAY 31, 2016.