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March 10, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
20:02
[ EXCLUSIVE ] - Judge Napolitano w/ Prof. Aleksandr Dugin {Moscow, Russia} - pt.1
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
We are coming to you today from St. Basil's School outside of Moscow, a beautiful, gifted, what we would call in America a very upscale preparatory school where students from grade 1 through 11 are given a classical education.
I am privileged, deeply and profoundly privileged, to be interviewing today one of the smartest Philosophers in the world, the great Professor Alexander Dugan.
Professor Dugan, welcome here, and thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak with you.
Professor Dugan, how do you account for the resurgence of traditional Christianity out of the ashes of the Soviet Union?
It was a kind of miracle, because in the Soviet time there was the image, there was a kind of general, general...
Opinion that all religious tradition was destroyed, was cut.
But nevertheless, the faith, the real belief in Christ and Church and Holy Trinity somehow managed to survive in spite of all this atheistic, materialistic propaganda in the heart.
Of the people.
And when Soviet Union came to the end, when there was the collapse of the Soviet system, it has re-emerged.
The religion, the church has re-emerged from nothing.
It seemed at the moment from nothing, but that was from the people, from the people.
There was always some tradition, church, liturgy that wasn't interrupted in Soviet time, but in very, very small circles.
But the church continued to exist.
And when the collapse of the Soviet system occurred, happened.
That was the kind of great, great restoration, great return, and the vacuum of the Soviet ideology was filled by Christian Orthodox ideas, doctrines.
Did the Russian people retain a certain traditional religiosity during World War II?
That was a kind of, as well, that was a very special period in our history when Stalin himself made appeal to the Christian Orthodox people to stand for fatherland, to defend Russia as motherland.
There was not so much...
It talks about communism and socialism, but patriotism.
That was one of the very important moments when communists made appeal to the orthodox people, to the orthodox way, in order to stand strong to defend the country against the Germans.
But after Stalin, there was Khrushchev, the other.
Our communist leader that tried to destroy all these traditional tendencies, but finally...
I think that the major event in our modern history was the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And from this point, Russia should be considered rather as traditional Orthodox Christian country.
It is not just now.
It lasts from the beginning of the 90s.
So it would be fair to say that traditional Orthodox Christianity survived World War II.
It is correct.
It is correct because we have no other ideology.
The people now, after the end of the Soviet Union, there is the...
The disillusion, kind of rejection of the materialism, of the atheism.
Liberalism was so strange, so alien to us, so we have rejected that.
The gap of the world vision was filled by Christian Orthodox faith, doctrine and teaching.
But there still is some liberalism here, I mean, in the sense of traditional liberalism, classic liberalism, what we call libertarianism in America, whereby people are free to speak their minds and people are free to dissent.
Yes, yes.
This did not exist under the Soviets.
Yeah, absolutely.
That didn't exist.
But that doesn't exist in modern so-called liberal world.
So liberalism has lost its...
We lived under Soviet totalitarianism and now the West lives under liberal totalitarianism.
Very fascinating way to address this.
Professor Dugan, what became of the old communists and what became of the idea of communism?
What became of the Soviet totalitarians?
Where did they go?
So that was a fantastic moment, because in one moment, this totalitarian system, very huge, very established, deeply established in the society, not only in the state,
but in the culture, everywhere in their everyday lives, has disappeared.
That was a kind of miracle.
People who just yesterday blamed church, idealism, they became visitors of Easter with icons immediately.
But that was a kind of...
General turn of the orientation of the society, but we had very special periods after the end of the Soviet Union, 90s.
During the 90s, we tried to imitate the Western pattern and Western model, liberal, left-liberal, Western paradigm, and that was...
You're talking about the time period under President Yeltsin and President Gorbachev?
Yes, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, exactly.
During that time, we tried to copy-paste the Western liberal agenda, globalist agenda.
We pretended to be part of the global West, but the Orthodox Church...
Worked at the same time trying to reshape the mentality of the society, carefully, without direct clash against Yeltsin, but trying to expand its ideas in the society.
But the human beings that were prominent in the communist era, are they still alive?
Have they become Democrats with a lowercase d?
So, some of them, yes, but the younger population, younger generation of the communists, they turned into globalists, the oligarchs.
They used the end of the Soviet Union in order to become richer and they have accepted Western...
Way of life, Western patterns.
Liberalism in the 90s was made by communists, by younger generation of communists.
The part of them, of communists, they have discovered, the other part, that they are just patriots, just Russian people, and some of them turned into the orthodoxy as well.
They have embraced, some of them embraced Christian orthodoxy as alternative world vision.
So there were splits, but I think that with Putin everything has ended, this split, because the majority, absolute majority of Russian elite.
It has embraced a kind of conservative, traditional world vision.
Professor Dugin, you have been critical of globalism.
What is your understanding of globalism?
What does it mean to you, Alexander Dugin?
What does it mean to President Putin?
I think that, in my eyes...
It is absolute evil.
From the church, from the Christian perspective, it is the kingdom of Antichrists.
That means that all traditional values, all traditional institutions, church, faith, family, state, nation, culture,
everything is turned upside down.
So that is a kind of creation.
Globalism is the project to destroy the human civilization with different...
Parts with different cultures and different religions, different states, in order to create a kind of post-human future when only individual or post-individual will exist.
So all the ties of organic community to organic community, to family, between the generation, state, patriotism...
Faith, history, identity, relations between genders, all that should be totally reversed.
And that was the kind of project we could call Antichrist project.
Does the West, by which I mean the United States and Western Europe, represent an effort at globalism?
Exactly. I think it is, yes, it is precisely that.
And what is interesting that the other miracle, how fast in United States this tendency, great tendency...
To be the driver of anti-Christian civilization is exchanged with Trump to something opposite.
So we have spoken about a very, very immediate change turn in Russian history, but now we are witnessing something very, very similar in your country.
Why do you think that elites in America and elites in Europe We despise or fear, or perhaps both, Russia and the Russian people.
I think that there is a long story.
First of all, in order to understand our mutual relations, we need to get to the great schism, the split between Orthodox Church and the Western Church.
Before the 11th century, we were the same, just the same.
Western part, Eastern part, the same saints, the same doctrines, the same rites.
Yes, Pope and the other patriarchs, one emperor.
One Pope, one emperor.
Emperor in the East, Pope in the West.
But there was the other patriarchs as well accepted by everybody.
That was the United Church, United Empire with different branches and United Christendom.
So that was something we were...
One and the same.
And after this split, we started to separate.
The split is a thousand years ago.
Yes, yes.
And from that point, our ways were divided.
Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition was and still is very loyal.
To the roots.
We didn't embrace the social progress, the technological development, but rather we try to stay loyal and closer to the roots.
And the past and the eternity and God still are the main values for us.
Eternity is not obsolete.
It is not just the past.
So we venerate not just past.
So, you trace the Western hatred and fear of all things Russian back to the schism and the church a thousand years ago.
But what manifests the leaders of France and And Great Britain and before President Trump, the United States to hate Russia.
What manifests that?
Communism is gone.
President Putin was popularly elected.
Freedom of speech is here.
The society is traditional, but it's an open society.
Why do they hate it?
What do they fear?
What are they misunderstanding?
There is...
Because we still...
We still are...
Two civilizations with the same Christian roots, but very opposite in many ways.
For example, Russian society is much more traditional.
So we've made the same laws and decrees as Trump.
Is doing now long before in favor of traditional family, against perversions, against gender politics.
We affirmed that we are patriots, we are traditionalists, we are much more conservatives.
And I think this...
Ancient hatred is revived by globalist elites artificially.
It was not natural.
We could find many common points, but they preferred, and they still prefer in Europe, to emphasize what divides us, and why it divides not two branches of the Christian civilization, but what divides...
Post-Christian, anti-Christian, globalist liberal civilization and traditional civilization because Russia is continuation of this traditional core.
Do you think that the Western elites believe that Russia is still communist?
I could not judge.
It's up to you to...
You think I would have a better understanding of them than you?
Yes, yes.
So, I don't know.
Normally, they should remark very important events that have happened almost 40 years ago when we have stopped to be communist.
And for 40 years, we are not anymore, neither officially nor...
In the society, communist.
We have made this great shift with the collapse of the Soviet Union, first in the 90s to the liberalism, embracing liberalism and globalism, and after that with Putin, we have returned to our conservative Russian-Christian traditional roots.
Professor Dugin, you are a philosopher.
You are a professor.
You are a teacher of international recognition.
In 2015, the United States and Canada sanctioned you personally.
But why?
You didn't pull a trigger on anyone.
You are a teacher.
You think.
You write.
You speak.
Why would Western governments want to sanction arguably the smartest man?
I know you don't want me to say that, but that's what some of us know to be so.
So, formally, that was for supporting Putin's desire to unification of Crimea.
But I didn't participate neither in Crimea nor in Donbas.
I wasn't involved in the real politics.
I didn't influence in any sense any serious decision.
I'm, as you correctly have said, judge, I'm just a thinker.
And I think that was maybe, for example, if you censor some books with radical ideas, inciting...
Hatred, inviting people to kill the other of race, but I am anti-racist, I am anti-totalitarian, I am very critical to all three political theories and I have explained that.
In my many, many books that I am against communism, liberalism, and fascism.
And so, in order to make debates with myself, you need at least to accept that as this starting point and try to convince me that maybe I am wrong, maybe...
But even if you are wrong, these are ideas.
I mean, as Thomas Jefferson once said, it doesn't...
Rob my pocketbook and it doesn't break my bones, what names they call me.
So if you articulate ideas against globalism, against fascism, against certain forms of liberalism, the West wants to punish you, Alexander Dugan, for articulating those ideas here in Russia?
It doesn't make any sense.
Okay.
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