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As I mentioned before, I am traveling to pursue certain interviews, conduct other interviews and speak to people in places such as Russia. Here I am currently in Budapest. I spent the last several days in Moscow. I'll be in other countries over the next week or so. A lot is going on in terms of the reaction to President Trump, to the Trump administration, to the massive changes he is speaking about and in some cases bringing to alliances such as NATO that have repercussions and ripple effects throughout the world, but especially in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Western Europe.
In Moscow, I conducted several interviews, one of which I am very excited to show you tonight. It is with Professor Aleksandr Dugin, whose role in Moscow is undoubtedly significant and influential, but, oftentimes, misapprehended or misdescribed in the West.
Dugin has often been called Putin's brain in Western media, which is designed to imply that he's the person who sits next to Putin, whispering in his ear, shaping the dogma, the ideology and the geostrategy that Putin follows.
He is more a philosopher, a scholar, a theorist, but he has become a household name in Russia. He is undoubtedly influential, although he is very influential in particular factions and particular circles, one that tends to look at President Putin almost as too moderate of a figure, too cautious of a figure, too restrained a figure. And I think therein lies one of the fascinating parts of this interview, which I have to say, and I said this last night, I consider to be one of the most interesting interviews I've ever conducted. It illustrates the fact that here in the West, we love to, or at least we're often subjected to these very cartoon versions of what Russia is, its totalitarian regime: Adolf Hitler is in charge of Moscow in the form of Vladimir Putin. He's this totalitarian figure. He speaks and everybody obeys instantly and there's no dissent. There's no questioning. The minute you question, you're killed or murdered or sent to a gulag. Of course, the complexities of modern-day life in Russia and Moscow, in particular, are far more nuanced, far more complex than that. There are constantly competing factions and ideological disagreements.
I might analogize the role that Dugin plays maybe to a Steve Bannon figure where he is unquestionably pro-Putin in the way that Steve Bannon is unquestionably pro-Trump and there have been definitely instances and time periods and issues in which Bannon has played a vital role, arguably the central role, in shaping the mentality, ideology and worldview of Donald Trump, much like Professor Dugin has done with the Putin circle.
There are other times that Bannon has been kind of cast out of favor, sort of speaks and incites a significant part of the pro-Trump base, but from the outside and that I think is also Professor Dugin, who represents and symbolizes a very significant part of the pro-Putin faction in Moscow, but not one that always gets its way by any means.
In fact, over the last 15-20 years, there have been times when Professor Dugin has been ostracized, there are other times that he has been kept far more in favor. He probably is at a higher point of influence now because he was somebody who was urging Putin in Moscow to annex Crimea in the wake of the coup attempt, the successful coup that the West helped engineer with Victoria Nuland, John McCain and Chris Murphy and the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID and Ukraine right on the other side of the Russian border.
He has also been a stalwart defender of the Russian war in Ukraine, which he sees as necessary to combat the influence of the West and NATO and the United States and globalism generally in Ukraine. But he has also at times been critical of the Kremlin in subtle ways for not going far enough in his view for being too eager to recreate engagement with the West, positive relations with the West, even if in his eyes it means sacrificing legitimate Russian interests.
And so, a lot is going on in Moscow given what Trump is trying to do in terms of facilitating a Russian-Ukrainian peace deal that will end the Russian war in Ukraine. He and others in Moscow are very concerned about what that might look like, what Russia might give away, what Russia might concede.
There's a lot of robust debate taking place in Budapest as well and throughout Eastern Europe, throughout Western Europe, all as a response to Trump taking the global order and kind of shaking it up like one of those little glass paper weights you put on your desk when you have the water and you pick it up and you shake it and everything kind of moves. That's always the potential that I’ve seen in Donald Trump that it kind of takes 80-year-old post-World War II institutions that have done so much harm, just shakes them up and forces them to rearrange themselves. That's the reason there's so much hysteria in establishment circles when it comes to what Trump is doing.
So, I had a few general ideas of what I wanted to talk to Professor Dugin, but I didn't have any written questions. As you'll see, I just have a little notebook in front of me, occasionally jotting down some ideas. I wanted it to be a very organic and natural discussion as opposed to a rigid interview. I wanted to hear what he said and react to that and kind of go where that took us as opposed to just having an agenda beforehand. Like I said, I found it to be an extremely thought-provoking interview. There's a reason why we're told not to listen to Russian voices, why the EU forbade any platforming of Russian state TV so that all Western populations would hear the propaganda of Western countries about Ukraine, about Russia, because when you can hear directly from the other side, from somebody you're told not to listen to, the impression that is left with you is radically different, of course, than if those ideas are mediated to you, or served to you, or distorted for you by somebody who wants you to have a particular impression of that other side but not actually ever listen to them.
So, the conversation ended up being an hour and a half, an hour and 40 minutes. For me, the time flew. In addition to having written questions, I also didn't have a clock or a phone in front of me. I just kind of got a feel for how long the conversation went. The time really flew. His English is excellent, but he's also a very, very clear thinker. He was trained originally as a philosopher, or self-taught as a philosopher, speaks multiple languages, having learned them himself and he thinks and reasons primarily as a philosopher, as a political analyst, secondarily. So, he really speaks from first principles, those first principles that serve as the foundation for at least a significant faction of Russian thought that wields a lot of influence in Moscow. It's really worth hearing what he thinks about Donald Trump and Washington, about the international aspect of this populist nationalist movement, as well as the multipolar world that is clearly emerging and what that might look like and his vision for Russia and what he calls Russian civilization or Russian culture and the role that it plays in the world in relationship to other forms of culture. It's a kind of voice that you very rarely hear, at least in depth, in Western discourse.
So, I found this discussion extremely illuminating, very thought-provoking, very engaging. I really think you will too. I hope you will and we are proud to show it to you.
The Interview: Prof. Dugin
G. Greenwald: Professor, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. It's great to see you. I want to start with the change in what seems like the climate and certainly in Washington, in the United States, where there's a great deal of expectation that with a new president, one who specifically is vowing that he wants to see an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine and there's a lot of expectation that that is going to happen. I think the same is true in Western European capitals, for better or for worse. Some people are happy, some people are not. What is the expectation here in Moscow in terms of that likelihood?
Aleksandr Dugin: First of all, we observe carefully how deep the changes that Mr. Trump has brought with his new team, new administration are. That is something incredible. He has changed direction 180%. So that is totally reversal of the previous administration.
G. Greenwald: In what way do you mean that?
