In a short 1995 essay, “The Gnostic,” published when he was co-founder of Russia’s National Bolshevik Party, Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin urges young Russians to drink
“The wine of socialist revolution, the joy of rebellion against the forces of fate, and the sacred, berserker passion for total destruction of all that was black”.
To do so, he writes, is to follow the “Left Hand Path,” the “path of wine.”
“It is destructive, terrifying. Wrath and rage reign on it. In this path, all reality is perceived as hell, as ontological exile, as torture, as submersion into the heart of some kind of unthinkable catastrophe”.
The Left Hand Path is called “gnosis,” and he notes that revolutionaries such as Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, Goebbels, Hitler, and Mussolini followed it and that deep thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger had glimpses of it.
Dugin’s short essay is relevant to understanding several darke currents of contemporary activism in the period of political realignment.
Sources:
Link to Dugin’s “The Gnostic” essay, Link to my Philosophy of Politics course lecture on Dugin’s intellectual journey, including also his 1997 Fascism, Borderless and Red and his 2009 The Fourth Political Theory:
In lecture seven, we explore the political philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, a key post-Soviet thinker who advocates a “Fourth Political Theory” blending fascism, communism, and religious traditionalism in opposition to Western liberalism. His philosophy promotes a spiritual, anti-individualist society rooted in ethnic identity, and rejects materialism, progress, and universal rights. Professor Hicks examines how Dugin’s vision positions the United States as the primary enemy representing global liberal hegemony. Ultimately, we see that Dugin proposes a multipolar world order centered on a Eurasian bloc led by Russia, drawing heavily on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and apocalyptic religious traditions.
Note that James Lindsay has been prescient, as has Michael O’Fallon, in noting the connections between Russian Alexander Dugin and the American Woke Right.