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What is it about Russian despots and the madmen some of them rely on? There was Rasputin, the mad monk who proved so difficult to kill, upon whom the Tsarina Alexandra came to rely. There was Joseph Stalin, who needed no other madman, for he was his own madman, indeed a full- blown homicidal maniac. And now there is Alexander Dugin, who has found favor with Vladimir Putin, offering a moral defense for the resurrection of a Russian Empire that would include all the former republics on the Soviet Union, buttressed by a theory he calls “Eurasianism,” a term he borrowed, and misapplied, from the early 19th century Russian thinker Pyotr Chaadayev. Elder of Ziyon gave us more information on Dugin a couple of months ago; with Putin in the news again after his summit with Trump, Elder of Ziyon’s post is worth revisiting: “‘Putin’s philosopher’ is an antisemite who thinks Israel will blow up Al Aqsa and blame Iran,” Elder of Ziyon, June 23, 2025:
Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian ultranationalist often dubbed “Putin’s philosopher,” is not just a dangerous ideologue. He is also a conspiracy-minded antisemite obsessed with Israel, and his ravings reflect a recurring truth: that Jews and the Jewish state are seen as existential threats to totalitarian ideologies – precisely because Jewish values stand in moral opposition to them.
The New York Times introduced its readers to Dugin in 2022, describing him as “Putin’s philosopher” who has been a leading advocate for conquest of Ukraine.
His thinking builds on ideas of “Eurasianism,” that Russia is a distinct civilization that should forge a continent-spanning state along the lines of its former empire but without the Communist ideology of the Soviet Union. Jane Burbank, an emeritus history professor at New York University, has written that in Mr. Dugin’s view, after the Soviet Union’s “sellout” to the West in the 1990s, “Russia could revive in the next phase of global combat and become a ‘world empire.’”
What Dugin considers to be the Soviet Union’s “sellout” to the West was simply the work of Gorbachev and then Yeltsin, in putting an end to Communist despotism, and giving the Soviet republics their independence, thereby greatly reducing the size, population, and resources of the successor state to the Soviet Union — the Russian Federation.
It turns out that “Putin’s philosopher” is an antisemite who seems obsessed with the idea that Israel is run by crazed messianic Jews who are hellbent on creating a Greater Israel.
Are Prime Minister Netanyahu, or President Isaac Herzog, or Foreign Secretary Gideon Sa’ar, or Defense Secretary Israel Katz, “crazed messianic Jews”? And as for that “Greater Israel” Dugin claims Israelis are determined to create, does he really believe that they want an Israel “from the Nile to the Euphrates”? If they do, then why did Israel hand back the entire Sinai to Egypt as part of the Camp David Accords in 1979? The only territory that Israel won in the Six-Day War that it is likely to insist on retaining (aside from the Golan Heights) is Judea and Samaria, which is where Jews have lived continuously for 3500 years, where so much of Jewish history was made, and where continued Israeli control is necessary for the Jewish state’s defense against possible invaders from the east. And remember, Judea and Samaria (which Jordan renamed in 1950 as the “West Bank”) were always intended by the League of Nations to be included in the territory of Mandatory Palestine — that is, the territory that would eventually become the Jewish state of Israel. None of that history means anything to Alexander Dugin.
In a recent podcast, he said, “Half of Israel is pure liberal trash. The other half are cheerful Zionists who want to blow up Al-Aqsa.”
His insistence that Israel will blow up Al Aqsa is a recurrent theme in his writings – see, for example, this article from December where he is certain that Ben Gvir will blow up the mosque to create a Greater Israel….
These are a madman’s ravings. Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s Minister of Security, wants to establish the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount — and surely it is long past time for Jews to enjoy the same right to pray on the Temple Mount, the most sacred spot in Judaism, as the Muslims have. But Ben Gvir but has never expressed a desire to “blow up” Al-Aqsa. He knows perfectly well that such an explosion would lead to anti-Israel hysteria among 1.5 billion Muslims that nothing could quell; the Jewish state’s very existence would be imperiled as never before.
Given that Dugin believes that the Russian Federation’s destiny is to become a holy empire along tsarist lines, he views Jews and Israel as implacable obstacles to the fulfillment of his dream….
Will this Russian Federation be able to reconquer and incorporate into a resurrected Holy Russia all the former territories of the Soviet Union? That attempt has started with Ukraine, but after three years, tens of billions of dollars spent on weapons, and one million Russian dead and wounded, Ukraine is still standing and still holding onto 80% of its prewar territory. And by what tortured logic does Dugin blame “the Jews” and Israel as obstacles to this geopolitical dream of a revived Russia ruling over all the former Soviet republics?
It used to be said, a quarter-century ago, when Putin first took power, that he was that remarkable thing, a Russian despot who was not an antisemite. It turned out that as a boy, he had lived in a communal apartment, where a family of Orthodox Jews also lived. They took the young Putin under their wing. Their solicitude, it was said, saved the young boy from becoming a “hooligan.” He has visited Israel three times, and each time he has gone, a yarmulke on his head, to the Western Wall. During his last visit, he commented on the deep Jewish connection to the holy site: “You can see how the Jewish past is engraved in the stones of Jerusalem.” He also sought out, and located, a Jewish lady, Mina Yuditskaya Berliner, who had been his beloved high school teacher of German. He showered her with gifts, and arranged for one of his friends, the oligarch Roman Abramovich, to buy her an apartment in Tel Aviv.
Now Putin has become much less favorable to Israel. He has formed a military alliance with Iran, receiving weapons from Tehran, including drones, to use against Ukraine, and diplomatically, he has taken Iran’s side at the UN. No doubt part of this change in Putin’s thinking can be attributed to the influence of Alexander Dugin. He’s not himself an antisemite, but Putin has been willing to give the antisemitic theorist a respectful hearing. For Israel, this is worrisome news. And there is no Prince Yusupoff on the horizon to rid both Putin, and Russia, of this dangerous man.