Thread by @NTenzer

I read many (opposing) comments about the supposed or real influence of Alexander #Dugin. I made some myself on several TV and radio stations today.
He was certainly not Putin's Rasputin, nor his director of conscience. But was he without influence?
Let's try to find out.
1/14
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I don't think you have to be on one side or the other. Things are more subtle and there are methodological points to consider.
The binary opposition of the two theses makes no sense.
2/14

1 First of all, yes, Dugin's books and articles were not equivalent in Putin's ideological system to the Communist Party Manifesto or Marx's Capital in Soviet references or Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. Here me on Putin's ideology.
3/14
tenzerstrategics.substack.com/p/what-does-vl…

2 He wasn't close to Putin, nor a member of his first circle. He wasn't his master mind & the Kremlin kept him at a distance (too unpresentable!).
Putin's ideological references are multiple, complex & also instruments.
Read The Road to Unfreedom by @TimothyDSnyder on this.
4/14

3 Should we say that Dugin is for all that accessory to Putin's own ideological system? Putin has taken up certain references (notably the idea of "Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok" forged by Dugin and present in Putin's 2010 article in @SZ).
5/14
sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/put…

4 Dugin's theses form the ideological substratum — but not exclusively — of Putin's radical theses, which he did not always express so brutally (at least before 2021).
They partly feed his most extreme propagandists (including on Kremlin channels).
6/14

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/477282526537334784?s=20&t=Ti6hYHvcXTlZZ2FD-gowtw

We see similar theses taken up by extremist movements in support of his crimes against humanity in Ukraine (and before).
Just because Putin has not always EXPRESSED (before) extreme things does not mean that this extremism is alien to him.
Putin actually DID extreme things.
7/14

One should read the sublime book also by @mashagessen (already mentioned here - an absolute #mustread) "The Future is History. How Totalitarianisme Reclaimed Russia" where Dugin appears.
Read it - I won't sum it up now.
8/14

5 Secondly, it has been said a lot: Dugin has served a great deal to spread the ideology defended by Putin abroad (see his relays in the extreme right-wing movements in Europe and in France in particular).
9/14

https://twitter.com/fernandfilback/status/1561354961857945600?s=20&t=Ti6hYHvcXTlZZ2FD-gowtw

It is not because he was not the expression of the official ideology that he did not serve the interests of the Kremlin.
To think of strategies of influence (Russian or any other) in terms of linearity is to understand nothing about them.
10/14

6 Dugin isn't so important now. His ideology exists, has permeated people's minds, even if it isn't his ideology alone (it's an indigestible syncretism of abysmal intellectual poverty).
With or without him, it will continue to exist.
He's part of #Russia's Zeitgeist.
11/14

In this respect, the man Dugin is probably no longer of major importance (which is not to say that at times he was not one of the Kremlin's rather convenient tools).
Now his existence does not matter to the Kremlin.
Making it a major player today makes no sense.
12/14

7 In this, even if he is not the chief ideologist of the Kremlin (there is none), it does not mean that he isn't part of the Russian so-called "soft power", national and international (more important than ever).
One cannot think of it in terms of the old communist ideology.
13/14

By dint of being in binary opposition, one does not understand anything about the way the Kremlin propaganda operates.
I would not dare to suspect that this is intentional.
14/14