Alexander Dugan is a 62-year-old Russian academic philosopher. He spent his life in Moscow. He was an anti-Soviet dissident as a young man. And now he is famous the world over, in the English language press anyway, as, quote, Putin’s brain. But he is not a political figure here in Russia. He is once again a philosopher. And his ideas are deeply offensive to some people. In August of 2022, his only daughter was murdered in Moscow when a car bomb killed her. U.S. intelligence says she was murdered by the Ukrainian government, and we take that at face value. But what’s interesting is that once again, Alexander Dugan is not a military leader.

He’s not a close daily advisor to Vladimir Putin. He is a writer who writes about big ideas. And for this, his books have been banned by the Biden administration in the United States. You cannot buy them on Amazon. Banning books in the United States because the ideas inside are too dangerous. He’s often described again in the English language press as far right. We’ll let you assess. But we wanted to talk to him about some of his ideas, these ideas that are so dangerous that his only daughter was murdered over them, and his book’s been banned in the United States.

And so we’re happy to have him join us now. Mr. Dugan, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. And welcome to Moscow. Of course. Thank you. So we were talking off camera. Actually, we’re having a conversation that we were not going to film. Just interested to meet you. But what you said was so interesting that we got a couple of cameras and put this together. And my question to you is, what do you think is happening in the English language countries? And I said, all of them, United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, all at once decided to turn, seemed to turn against themselves with this great turmoil.

And some of the behaviors seem very self-destructive. And where do you think, as an observer, that comes from? I could just suggest, express my reading of that. It demands a little passion. So I think that everything started with individualism. So individualism, that was wrong understanding of the human nature, of the nature of man. When you identify individualism with the man, with the human nature, you cut all the relations to everything else. So you have a very special idea of the subject, philosophical subject, as individual. And everything started in the Anglo-Saxon world with Protestant reform and with nominalism.

Before that nominalist attitude that there are no ideas, only things, only individual things. So individual, it was the key concept that was put in the center of liberal ideology. And liberalism, as in my reading, it is a kind of historical and cultural and political and philosophical process of liberation of individuals of any kind of collective identity. That transcends individual. And that started with refuse of Catholic Church as collective identity, of empire, Western Empire as collective identity. After that it was revolt against national state as collective identity in favor of purely civil society. After that there was a big fight of the 20th century between liberalism, communism and fascism.

And liberalism has won once more. And after the fall of the Soviet Union there was only liberalism. And Francis Fukuyama has pointed out correctly that there are no more any ideologies except of liberalism. And liberalism, that was liberation of this individual from any kind of collective identity. There were only two collective identities to liberate from gender identity, because it is collective identity. You are a man or a woman collectively, so you could live alone. So liberation from gender, and that has led to transgenders, to LGBT and new form of sexual individualism. So sex is something optional.

And that was not just deviation of liberalism, that was necessary elements of implementation and the victor of this liberal ideology. And the last step that is not yet totally made is liberation from human identity, humanity optional. And now we are choosing, or you in the West, you are choosing the sex you want as you want. And the last step in this process of liberalism, implementation of liberalism, will mean precisely the human optional. So you can choose your individual identity to be human, not to be human. And that has a name, transhumanism, posthumanism, singularity, artificial intelligence, Klaus Schwab, Kurzweil or Harari.

They openly declare that is inevitable future of humanity. So we arrive to the historical terminal station that we finally, five centuries ago, we have embarked in this train, and now we are arriving at the last station. So that is my reading. And when all the elements, all the phases of that, you cut the tradition with the past. So you are no more protestant, you are secular, atheist, materialist, you are no more national state that served to liberate from empire. And now national state becomes, at its turn, obstacle. You are liberating from national state. Finally, family is destroyed in favor of this individualism.

And the last things, the sex that is already almost overcome, sex optional and in gender politics, there is only one step to arrive to the ends of this process of liberation, of liberalism. That is the abandoned human identity as something prescribed. So to be free from, to be human, to have the possibility to choose to be or not to be human. And that is the agenda, political, ideological agenda of tomorrow. That is why, how I see Anglo-Saxon world that you have asked of, I think that is just one word of this process. Because that started with Anglo-Saxons, imperialism, nominalism, Protestantism, and now you are ahead as Anglo-Saxon, more devoted to liberalism than any other European.

So what you are describing is clearly happening and it is horrifying. But it is not the definition of liberalism I have in mind when I describe myself as what we say in the United States is a classical liberal. So you think of liberalism as individual freedom and choice from slavery. So the options as we conceive them, as I was growing up, were the individual who can follow his conscience, say what he thinks, defend himself against the state versus the statism, the totalitarianism embodied in the government that you fought against, the Soviet government. And I think most Americans think of it that way.

What is the difference? Very interesting question. I think that the problem is in two definitions of liberalism. There is old liberalism, classical liberalism, and new liberalism. So classical liberalism was in favor of democracy. Democracy understood as the power of majority of consensus of individual freedom that should be combined somehow with the freedom of others. And now we have totally the next station already, next phase, new liberalism. Now it is not about the rule of majority, but it is about the rule of minorities. It is not about individual freedom, but it is about walkies. So you should be so individualistic that you should criticize not only the state, but the old understanding of individuals.

So now you are invited to liberate yourself from individuality, to go further in that direction. So I have spoken once with Frances Fukuyama on TV, and he has said before democracy has meant the rule of majority. And now it is about the rule of minorities against majority. Because majority could choose Hitler or Putin, so we need to be very careful with majority, and majority should be taken under control. And minorities should rule over majority. Majority, it is not democracy, it is already totalitarianism. And now we are not about defense of the individual freedom, but about prescription to be woke, to be modern, to be progressive.

It is not your right to be or not to be progressive, it is your duty to be progressive, to follow this agenda. So you are free to be left liberal, you are no more free enough to be right liberal. You should be left liberal, and that is a kind of duty, it is prescription. So liberalism fought during its history against any kind of prescription. And now its turn became totalitarian, prescriptive, not free as it was in some… And do you believe that was inevitable, that process, that was always going to happen? I think that is…

I perceive here a kind of logic, so a kind of logic that is not just perversion or deviation. You start with one thing, you want to liberate individual, when you arrive at the point where it is possible, it is realized. So you need to go further, and you start to liberate yourself, this time from old understanding of individual, in favor of more progressive concepts. So you could not stop here, that is my vision. So if you say, I prefer old liberalism, they would say, the progressives, they would say, it is not about old liberalism, it is about fascism, you are defender of traditionalism, conservatism, fascism.

So stop here, either be progressive liberal, or you are done, or we will cancel you. That is what we observe. Well, it is certainly what we are living, and to see self-described liberals ban your book, which is not a manual for bomb making, or invading Ukraine, these are philosophical works, tells you that of course it is not liberal, in any sense. I wonder though, when you reach the point when the individual can no longer liberate himself from anything, when he is just not even human, what is the next step after that? That is described in American pictures, films, in many ways.

So I think that you know that all the science fiction, almost all of the 19th century, were realized in the reality in the 20s. So there is nothing more realistic than science fiction. And if you consider Matrix or Terminator, you have so many more or less coinciding versions of the future, the future with the post-human or human-optional situation or artificial intelligence. Hollywood has made many films. I think they portray correctly reality of the close future. So for example, if we consider the human nature as a kind of rational animals, so you could now with our technology, you could produce them.

So you could create rational animals or combine them or construct them. And artificial intelligence, strong artificial intelligence, your network plus a huge database, it is a kind of king of the world, I would say, that could not only manipulate but create realities. Because the realities are just images, just sensations, just feelings. So I think that post-humanist futurism is a kind of not only a realistic description of the very possible and probable future, but as well a kind of political manifest. So that is kind of visual thinking and the fact that you have no bright traditional future described in the films.

I don’t know any movie of the future in the West made about return to traditional life, the prosperity, the families with many children. Everything is quite, quite in shadow, quite black. So if you’re used to paint everything black in the future especially, so this black future once arrives. And I think that is the same fact that we have no other option, either matrix or artificial intelligence or something or a terminator. So the choice is already outside of the limits of humanity and that is not just fantasy, I think. That is a kind of political project and it is easily imagined because we have seen the films, they follow more or less close this progressive, I would say, agenda.

So I’ve asked you no questions about Russia or Russian politics that I’m not going to because I think it’s so interesting to see your perspective on countries that you don’t live in because we do gain insight, I think, from the view of outsiders. My last question to you is how do you explain this phenomenon I have noticed where for over 70 years a group of people in the West and the United States liberals effectively defended the Soviet system in Stalinism and many personally participated in Stalinism, spied for Stalin, supported him in our media. In the year 2000, and they loved Boris Yeltsin because he was drunk, but in the year 2000, leadership of this country changed and Russia became their main enemy.

So after 80 odd years of defending Russia, they hated Russia. What was that? Why the change? I think that, first of all, Putin is a traditional leader. So Putin, when he came to power, from the very beginning he started to extract our country, Russia, from the global influence. So he started to contradict to global progressist agenda and these people who supported Soviet Union, they were progressists and they are now progressists. So they have felt that now they are dealing, they were dealing with someone who doesn’t share this progressist agenda and who tried and with success to restore traditional values, sovereignty of the state, Christianity, traditional family.

That wasn’t evident from the beginning, from outside, but when Putin insisted more and more on this traditional agenda, I would say, on the particularity and speciality of the Russian civilization as some special type of world vision that had and has now very little similarities with the progressist ideals. So I think that they have discovered, they have identified in Putin precisely what Putin is. So he is a kind of leader, political leader, defending traditional values. So only recently, one year ago, Putin has made decree of the political defense of traditional values. That was turning point, I would say.

But observers from the progressive camp in the West, I think they have understood that from the beginning of his rule, correctly. Correctly. So this hatred is not just casual, something casual or some mood. It is not casual. It’s very serious. It’s metaphysical. So if your main task and main goal is to destroy traditional values, traditional family, traditional states, traditional relations, traditional beliefs, and someone with the nuclear weapon. That is not the last but not least argument. Someone with nuclear weapon to stand strong defending traditional value, you are going to abolish. I think they have some basis for this, Rosa for the hatred for Putin.

So it is not just by the chance, not some irrational change from Soviet affiliate to Russia for there. It’s something deeper, I would say. It’s my guess. It’s clearly something, it’s clearly something deeper. We felt it was important for your ideas to get an airing in English in the United States simply because we believe in the open airing of ideas. I guess we’re liberals that way. So we’re grateful that you took the time. Mr. Dugan, thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you. [tr:trw].

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