To say the truth, I am a little bit disappointed by this debate with Mr. Olavo de Carvalho. I thought I would find in him a representative of Brazilian traditionalist philosophers in the line of R.Guenon and J.Evola. But he turned out to be something different and very queer indeed.
I am also sad with his hysterical and aggressive attacks against my country, my tradition and myself personally. It is something I was not prepared to meet. Knowing his manners of conduct better before, I would not have agreed to participate in such a debate – I don't like at at all this kind of hollow accusations and direct insults . So I am going to continue only because of some obligations in front of the group of gentle Brazilian young traditionalists that invited me to enter this unpleasant kind of dialogue – that in other circumstances I would prefer to avoid.
For the beginning there are some short remarks concerning some affirmations of Mr. Carvalho.
«Political Science, as I have said, was born at the moment when Plato and Aristotle distinguished between the discourse of political agents and the discourse of the scientific observer who seeks to understand what is going on among the agents. It is true that political agents may, over time, learn how to use certain instruments of scientific discourse for their own ends; it is also true that the scientific observer may have preferences for the politics of this or that agent. But this does nothing to alter the validity of the initial distinction: the discourse of the political agent aims to produce certain actions that favor his victory, while the discourse of the scientific observer seeks to obtain a clear view of what is at stake, by understanding the objectives and means of action of each of the agents, the general situation where the competition takes place, its most probable developments, and the meaning of such events in the larger picture of human existence.»
The thesis is overthrown by Marx in his analysis of the ideology as the implicit basis for the science as such[1]. Not being Marxist myself, I am sure that observation is correct.
«The function of the scientific observer becomes even more distinct from that of the agents when he neither wishes nor can take sides with any of them and keeps himself at a necessary distance in order to describe the picture with the maximum realism available to him.»
I argue that that is simply impossible. There is no such place in the realm of thought that can be fully neutral in political terms. Every human thought is politically oriented and motivated. The will to power permeates the human nature in its depths. The distance evoked by Mr. Carvalho is ontologically impossible. Plato and Aristotle were both politically engaged not only in practice but also in theory.
“The photos that I attached to my first message, by way of a humorous synthesis, document all the difference between the political agent invested with global plans and means of action of imperial scale and the scientific observer not only divested of both, but firmly decided to reject them and to live without them until the end of his days, since they are unnecessary and inconvenient to the mission in life that he has chosen and that is for him the only reasonable justification for his existence.»
The indignity demonstrated a little above against “Russian-Chinese” poles and completely ridiculous identification between the Eurasianism and the communism is the bright testimony of the extreme partiality of Mr. Carvalho. The evaluation of the major global forces is based on the presumption of the scale that could be taken as the measure – the quantity of humans killed. It is not so evident and is rather example of political anti-communist and anti-Russian propaganda than the result of “scientific analysis”. Yes, I am political agent of Eurasian Weltanschauung. At the same time I am political analyst and scientist. The two aspects don’t correspond fully. In my courses in the sociological faculty of Moscow State University[2], where I chair the department of the Sociology of International Relations, I never profess my own political views and I give always the full spectrum of the possible political interpretations of the facts, but I don’t insist on one concrete point of view, always stressing that there is a choice. At the same time this choice is not only the freedom but also the obligation. You are free to choose but you are not free to chose not. There is never such a thing as political or ideological “neutrality”. So it is quite erroneous to present Mr. Carvalho himself as “neutral” and “impartial” and myself as “engaged” and “ideologically motivated”. We are both ideologically engaged and scientifically involved. So I continue to regard our photos not as “professor vs the warrior” but rather two “professors/warriors vs each other”. Finally in the arms of Mr. Carvalho is a gun. Not a cross, for example. By the way, there are some photos of myself bearing a big orthodox cross during religious ceremonies. So, that would illustrate nothing. Our religions are different as our civilizations are.
“Both professor Dugin and I are performing our respective tasks with utmost dedication, seriousness and honesty. But these tasks are not one and the same. His task is to recruit soldiers for the battle against the West and for the establishment of the universal Eurasian Empire. Mine is to attempt to understand the political situation of the world so that my readers and I are not reduced to the condition of blind men caught in the gunfire of the global combat; so that we are not dragged by the vortex of History like leaves in a storm, without ever knowing whence we came or whither we are being carried.”
I agree here in one point. It is true that “to recruit soldiers for the battle against the West and for the establishment of the universal Eurasian Empire” is my goal. But it is possible only after having achieved the correct vision of the world global situation based on the accurate analysis of the balance of forces and main actors. So up to this moment Mr. Carvalho and myself we have the strictly one and the same task. If our understanding of the leading world forces and their identification differs that doesn’t mean automatically that I am motivated exclusively by political and geopolitical choice and himself by the “neutral”, purely “scientific” reasoning. We are both trying to understand the world we live in, and I presume that we both are doing it honestly. But our conclusions don’t fit. I wonder why and try to find deeper reasons than simply the obvious fact of my own ideological and political involvement. We both want to make our world better and not worse. But we both have different visions of what is the Good and Evil. And I wonder where lies difference.
I believe it is rather the result of the divergence of the mutual civilizations; we have respectively different ontologies, anthropologies and sociologies. So the culpabilization and demonization of each other is the result of the necessary mutual “ethnocentric” positions and not the final arguments for the choice of lesser evil.
“He employs all the usual instruments of political propaganda: Manichean simplification, defamatory labeling, perfidious insinuation, the phony indignation of a culprit pretending to be a saint and, last, not least, the construction of the great Sorelian myth – or self-fulfilling prophecy – which, while pretending to describe reality, builds in the air an agglutinating symbol in hopes that the false may become true by the massive adherence of the audience.”
Stressing the presumed fact of the communist Russian-Chinese “genocide” Mr. Carvalho does exactly the same game of the pure political propaganda playing on the false humanitarian sensibility of the Western audience, not remarking, by the way, the real, existing here and now, massive and planned genocide conducted in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya by American bloody murders (I imitate here the very “scientific” style of polemic imposed by Mr. Carvalho).
«Of course, I do not say that Professor Dugin is dishonest. But he is honestly devoting himself to a kind of combat that, by definition and ever since the world began, has been the embodiment par excellence of dishonesty.»
This thesis I find really stupid. I don't affirm that Mr. Carvalho is stupid himself, no way, but I feel sincerely that the usurpation of the right of global moral judgment in such affairs as what is «honest» or «dishonest» fits perfectly into the old tradition of extreme stupidity. So being really clever and smart, Mr. Carvalho consciously supplies very stupid argument in order to be nearer to the American right «Christian» public he tries to influence. And one philosophic point:
“Yet, the millennial philosophical technique, which those people totally ignore, teaches that the definitions of terms express only general and abstract essences, logical possibilities and not realities.”
The question what reality is and how it corresponds to the “definitions” or “ideas” differs considerably in various philosophical schools. The term itself “reality” is based on the Latin word “res”, “re”, “thing”. But that word fails in Greek. By Aristotle there is no such word – he speaks about pragma (deed), energia, but mostly about on, the being. So the «reality» as something independent (or partly dependent – in Berkley[3], for example) from the mind is Western post-Medieval concept and not something universal. Different cultures don't know what “the reality” means. It is a concept, nothing else. A concept among many others. Thus, to impose it as something universal and ostensive is a kind of intellectual «racism». Before speaking of the “reality” we need to study carefully the concrete culture, civilization, ethnos and language. The Sapir/Whorf rule and the tradition of the cultural anthropology of F.Boaz and structural anthropology of C.Levy-Strauss teach us to be very careful with the words that have full and evident meaning only in the concrete context. The Russian culture or the Chinese society have different understandings of «reality», «facts», «nature», «object». The corresponding words have their own meaning. The subject/object dualism is rather a specific feature of the West. The «logic essence» is the other purely Western concept. There are the other philosophies with different conceptual structures – Islamic, Hindu, Chinese.
“From a definition it is never possible to deduce that the defined thing does exist.”
To prove the existence is not an easy task. Heidegger’s philosophy and before him Husserlian phenomenology tried to approach the “existence” as such with problematic success.
“In order to do this, it is necessary to break the shell of the definition and analyze the conditions required for the existence of the thing. If these conditions do not reveal themselves to be self-contradictory, excluding in limine the possibility of existence, even then this existence is not proved. In order to arrive at that proof, it is necessary to gather from the world of experience factual data that not only corroborate the existence, but that confirm its full agreement with the defined essence, excluding the possibility that the existing thing is something very different, which coincides with the essence only in appearance.”
It is a kind of positivist approach completely dismissed by the structuralism and late Wittgenstein[4]. It is philosophically ridiculous or too naïve statement. But all these considerations are details with no much importance. The whole text of Carvalho is so full of such pretentious and incorrect (or fully arbitrary) affirmations that I can not follow it any more. It is rather boring. I'd rather come to the essential point.
What Mr. Olavo de Carvalho hates?
The text of Mr. Carvalho breaths with the deep hatred. It is a kind of resentment[5] (in the Nietzsche sense) that gives him a peculiar look. The hatred is in itself fully legitimate. If we can't hate, we can't love. Indifference is much worse. So the hatred that tears Mr. Carvalho apart is to be praised. Let us now search what he hates and why he does it. Pondering on his words I come to the conclusion that he hates the East as such.
That explains the structure of his resentment. He attacks Russia and Russian holistic culture (that he dismisses with one gesture of indignation), the Orthodox Christianity (that he consider “morbid”, “nationalist” and “totalitarian”), China (with its collectivistic pattern), the Islam (that is for him the equivalent of “aggression” and “brutality”), Socialism and Communism (in the time of the cold war they were synonyms of the East), Geopolitics (which he arrogantly denies the status of science to), the hierarchy and traditional vertical order, the military values…. In his hysterical hatred toward all this he finds the goal in my person. So he hates me and makes it feel. Is he right to see in me and in Eurasianism the conscious representation of all this? Am I the East and the defender of the Eastern values? Yes, it is exact. So his hatred is directed correctly. Because all what he hates I love and I am ready to defend and to affirm. For me is rather difficult to insist on the greatness of my values. There are many other thinkers who methodically describe the positive sides of the East, order, holism, hierarchy and negative essence of the West and its degradation. For example, Guenon[6]. It is sure that he hadn't much of enthusiasm regarding communism and collectivism, but the origin of the degradation of the civilization he saw exclusively in the West and Western culture, precisely in Western individualism (see «The crisis of the modern world»[7] or «The East and the West»[8]). It is obvious that modern Eastern societies have many negative aspects. But they are mostly the result of modernization, westernization and the perversion of the ancient traditions.
In my youth (early 80-s) I was anticommunist in the Guenonian/Evolian sense. But after having known modern Western Civilization and especially after the end of Communism I have changed my mind and revised this traditionalism discovering the other side of the socialist society, which is the parody on the true Tradition, but nevertheless is much better than absolute absence of the Tradition in Modern and Post-Modern Western world.
So, I love the East in general and blame the West. The West now expands itself on the planet. So the globalization is Westernization and Americanization. Thereforee, I invite all the rest to join the camp and fight Globalism, Modernity/Hypermodernity[9], Imperialism Yankee, liberalism, free market religion and unipolar world[10]. These phenomena are the ultimate point of the Western path to the abyss, the final station of the evil and the almost transparent image of the antichrist/ad-dadjal/erev rav. So the West is the center of kali-yuga, its motor, its heart.
Mr. Carvalho blames the East and loves the West. But here begins some asymmetry. I love the East as a whole including its dark sides. The love is the strong, very strong feeling. You don't love only good and pure sides of the beloved one, you love him wholly. Only such love is real one. Mr. Carvalho loves the West but not all the West, only its part. The other part he rejects. To explain his attitude in front of the East he makes appeal to the conspiracy theory. Scientifically it is inadmissible and discredits immediately Mr. Carvalho thesis but in this debate I don’t think that scientific correctness is that does mean much. I don't try to please or convince somebody. I am interested only in the truth (vincit omnia veritas). If Mr. Carvalho prefers to make use of the conspiracy theory let him do it.
The conspirology version Carvalho
The conspiracy theory exposed by the Mr. Carvalho is however a banal and flat one. There are other many theories of a more kextravagant and brilliant kind in their idiotism. I have written thick volume on the sociology of the conspiracy theory[11], describing much more esthetic versions[12] (for example assembled in the Adam Parfrey[13] books, “extraterrestrial ruling the world”, David Icke’s[14] “reptiles government” or R.Sh.Shaver[15] underground «dero's» impressively evoked in the Japanese film «Marebito» by Takashi Shimitsu). But we have what we have. Let us try to find the reason why a serious Brazilian-American professor take the risk of looking a little bit loony making appeal to the conspiracy theories?
It seems that I know the answer. The serious side of this not much serious argumentation consists in the necessity for Mr. Carvalho to differentiate the West he loves from the West he doesn't love. So Mr. Carvalho proves to be idiosyncratic. He not only detests the East (so Eurasianism and myself), but also he hates the part of the West itself. To make the frontier in the West he uses the conspiracy and the term «Syndicate» (he could use also «Synarchy», «Global Government» and so on). Let us accept it for a while, we agree on the “Syndicate”.
The description of «Syndicate» is amazingly correct. Maybe the feeling of correctness of Mr. Carvalho analysis from my side can be explained by the fact that this time I fully share the hatred of Mr. Carvalho. So I agree with the caricature description of the globalist elite and with all furious images applied to it. Here our hatred coincides. Mr. Carvalho affirms that the Syndicate takes control over the world against the will and the interest of all people, their cultures and traditions. I agree with it. Maybe the Rothschild or Fabian myths are too simplistic and ridiculous, but the essence is true. There is such thing as global elite and it is acting.
But this elite deals with concrete ideological, economical and geopolitical infrastructure. In other words this elite is historically and geographically identified and linked with special set of values and instruments. All these values and instruments are absolutely Western. The roots of these elite goes into the European Modernity, Enlightment and the rise of the bourgeoisie (see W.Sombart[16]). The ideology of this elite is based on the individualism and hyper-individualism (G.Lipovetsky[17], L.Dumont[18]). The economical basis of this elite is Capitalism and Liberalism. The ethos of this elite is free competition. The strategic and military support of this elite is from the first quart of the XX century USA, and after the end of the WWII – Nord-Atlantic Alliance. So the global elite, let it be called “Syndicate”, is Western and concretely North American.
Eurasian war against Syndicate
Seeing that clearly I, as the conscious representative of the East, make appeal to the humanity to consolidate all kinds of the alternatives and to resist the globalization and Westernization linked in it. I appeal first of all to Russians, my compatriots, inviting them to refuse pro-Western and pro-globalist corrupted elite that rules now my country and to come back to the spiritual Tradition of Russia (Orthodox Christianity and multi-ethnic Empire). At the same time I invite Islamic people and their community, as well as all other traditional societies (Chinese, Indian, Japanese and so on) to join the battle against the Globalization, Westernization and the Global Elite. The enemy is fighting with new means -- with post-modern informational weapons, financial instruments and global network. We should be able to fight them on the same ground and to appropriate the art of the network warfare. I sincerely hope that Latin Americans and also some honest North Americans enter in the same struggle against this elite, against the Post-Modernity and unipolarity for the Tradition, social solidarity and social justice. S.Huntington[19] used to say the phrase «the West against the Rest». I identify myself with the Rest and incite it to stand up against the West. Exactly as first Eurasianists (N.S.Trubetskoy, P.N.Savitsky and other) did.
I think that to be concrete and operational the position of Mr. Carvalho should be rather or with us (the East and Tradition) or with them (the West and Modernity, the modernization). He refuses obviously such a choice pretending that there is a “the third position”. He prefers not to struggle but to hate. To hate the East and to hate the globalist elite. That is his personal decision or maybe the decision of some North American Christian right, but it is in any case too marginal and of no interest for me.
Loosing the rest of the coherence Mr. Carvalho tries to merge all he hates in one object. So he makes the allusion that the globalist elite and the East (Eurasianism) are linked. It is new purely personal conspiracy theory. It could enlarge the panoply of the other extravaganzas. It should sound something like this: “the globalist elite itself is directed by hidden devilish center in the East” or “the East (and socialism) is the puppet in the hands of the devilish bankers and fanatics from CFR, Trilateral and so on”. Congratulations. It is very creative. The free fantasy at work.
What Mr. Carvalho loves?
Here I would rather finish the debates. But I think that it is possible to pay little more attention to «the positive» forces described by Carvalho as victims of the global elite. They represent what Mr. Carvalho loves. It is important.
He names them: Western Christianity (ecumenical style – see his description of his visit to the Methodist Church, being himself Roman Catholic), Zionist Jewish State and American nationalist right wingers (I presume he excludes neocons from the list of love, because of their evident belonging to the global elite). He admires also the simple Americans of the countryside (personally I also find them rather very sympatethic).
This set of positive example is eloquent. It is trivia of the American political right. We can consider it as right side of the modern West. Or better “paleoconservative” side of the Modern West. Historically they are losers in all senses. They have lost (as P. Buchanan[20] shows) the battle for the USA, including for the Republican party where the main positions were taken by neoconservative with clearly globalist and imperialist vision[21] (see PNAC[22]). They are losers in front of the globalist elite controlling now both political parties in USA. They are living in the past that immediately precedes the actual (Post-Modern and globalist) moment. But at the same time they don't have the inner strength to stand up to the Conservative Revolution[23] - Evolian or wider European style[24].
The yesterday of the West prepared the today of the West as global West. The yesterday Western values (including the Western Christianity) prepared the today hypermodern values. You can deplore this last step, but the precedent step in the same direction can not be regarded as serious alternative.
The Western Christianity stressed the individual as the center of the religion and made the salvation the strictly individual affair. The Protestantism led this tendency to the logical end. Denying more and more the holistic ontology of the organic society the Western Christianity arrived with the Modernity to self-denial (deism, atheism, materialism, economism). French sociologist Luis Dumont in his excellent books «Essai sur l'Individualism»[25] and «Homo Aequalis»[26] shows that the methodological individualism is the result of the oblivion and direct purge by the Western scholastic of the early and original Greco-Roman theological tradition conserved intact in the Byzance and Eastern Church as whole. This social vision of the Church as the body of Christ in the Catholicism is more developed than in Protestantism and in the Catholicism of the Latin America more than in other places. The Catholicism was imposed here by force in the time of the colonization. But the traditional spirit of aborigine cultures and the syncretic attitude of the Spanish and Portuguese elites gave birth to the special religious form of Catholicism – more holistic than in the Europe and much more traditional than extremely individualistic Protestantism. Mr. Carvalho prefers Western kind of the Christianity that was according to L.Dumont and W.Sombart (as well as to M.Weber[27]) the direct forerunner of Modern secularism.
Some words about the Jewish state. From the point of view of the quantity of violence the tender love of Mr.Carvalho to the Zionism is quite touching. The inconsistency of his views reaches here the apogee. I have nothing against Israel, but its cruelty in repressing the Palestinians is evident. In Israel there are traditionalists and modernists, antiglobalist forces and representatives of the global elite. The antiglobalist front is formed there by the anti-American, ant-liberal and anti-unipolar religious groups and by the left anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist circles. They can be good, that to say “Eurasian” and “Eastern”[28]. But the Jewish State itself is not something «traditional». As a whole it is a modern capitalist and Atlantist entity and an ally of American imperialism. Israel was different at the time and could be different in the future. But in the present is rather on the other side of the battle. More than that, the conspiracy theories (Syndicate and so on) include almost always the Jewish bankers in the heart of the globalist elite or world conspiracy. Why Mr. Carvalho modernizes the conspiracy theory excluding from the main version the «Jews» rests a mystery.
My opinion: American paleoconservatives, traditional American right are doomed. Their discourse is incoherent, weak and too idiosyncratic.
If some honest and brave people among North Americans want to fight the globalist elite as the last stage of the Western history, as the end of the history, please join our Eurasian troops. Our struggle is in some sense universal as universal is the globalist challenge. We have different traditions but defending them we confront the common enemy of any tradition. So we will explore where lie our respective zones of influence in the multipolar world only after our common victory over the Beast, american-atlantist-liberal-
Once the West had its own tradition. Partly it has lost it. Partly this tradition has given the poisonous germs. The West should search in its deep ancient roots. But these roots lead to the common indo-european Eurasian past[29], the glorious past of the Scyths, Celts, Sarmats, Germans, Slavs, Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans and their holistic societies, warrior style hierarchical culture and spiritual mystic values that had nothing in common with present day Western mercantile capitalist degenerated civilization.
To return to the Tradition we need to accomplish the revolt against modern world and against modern West -- absolute revolt – spiritual (traditionalist) and social (socialist). The West is in agony. We need to save the world from this agony and may be to save the West from itself. The Modern (and Post-Modern) West must die. And if there were the real traditional values in its foundations (and they certainly were) we will save them only in the process of the global destruction of the Modernity/Hypermodernity.
So the best representatives of the West, of the deep and noble West should be with the Rest[30] (that is with us, Eurasians) and not against the Rest.
It is clear that Mr. Carvalho chose the other camp pretending to choose neither. It is a pity because we need friends. But it is up to him to decide. We accept any solution – it is the inner dignity of a man to find his own path in History, Politics, Religion, and Society.
[1] Marx K. the German Ideology.
[2] More than 5 000 students receive the sociological, political science, geopolitical and IR education in our faculty.
[3] Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, New York: Collier, 1974
[4] Wittgenstein L. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984.
[5] Scheler, M. Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen. Frankfurt am Mein: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978
[6] Guenon Rene. Orient et Occident, Paris, 1924.
[7] Guenon Rene. La crise du monde moderne, Paris, 1927.
[8] Guenon Rene. Orient et Occident, Paris, 1924.
[9] Lipovetsky Gilles. Les temps hypermodernes, Paris, Grasset, 2004.
[10] Krauthammer Charles. Universal Dominion: Toward a Unipolar World// National Interest, Winter 1989/90.
[11] Dugin A. Konspirologiya. M.2005.
[12] See also Barkun, Michael, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America; University of California Press Berkeley, Los Angeles, 2003.
[13] Apocalypse Culture edited by Adam Parfrey Amok Press, 1988; Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind by Adam Parfrey. Feral House, 1995; End Is Near!: Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia by Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Manley, Adam Parfrey, Dalai Lama, foreword by Rebecca Hoffberger. Dilettante Press, 1998
[14] Icke D.The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World. Bridge of Love Publications, 1999.
[15] Mott, Wm. Michael, This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver, TGS/Hidden Mysteries Publishing, 2007
[16] Sombart W. Handler und Helden: Patriotische Besinnungen. Munich, 1915.
[17] Lipovetsky Gilles. L'ère du vide. Essais sur l'individualisme contemporain, Paris, Gallimard, 1983.
[18] Dumont Louis. Essais sur l' individualisme.Paris, Le Seuil, 2002.
[19] Huntington, Samuel P. The clash of civilizations? //Foreign Affairs; Summer 1993.
[20] Buchanan P.The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002
[21] Buchanan P. Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, 2004.
[23] Evola J. Rivolta contro il mondo moderno, Roma, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1969.
[24] Mohler Armin. Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932. Ein Handbuch. Graz, 2005
[25] Dumont Louis. Essais sur l' individualisme.Paris, Le Seuil, 2002.
[26] Dumont L. Homo Æqualis I: genèse et épanouissement de l'idéologie économique. Paris: Gallimard/BSH, 1977:Dumont L. Homo Æqualis II: l'Idéologie allemande. Paris: Gallimard/BSH, 1978.
[27] Weber M. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930.
[28] Bromberg Yakob. Evrei y Evraziya. Moskva, Agraf, 2002.
[29] Benoist Alain de. Indo-Européens : à la recherche du foyer d'origine// Nouvelle École, 1997