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Who is really Dugin? Round dance of experts

2 years ago babelfish

Who is really Dugin? Round dance of experts

Is Aleksandr Dugin, Darya's father killed in an attack in Moscow, really Putin's ideologue? Here is what the Italian experts of Russia think

Confusion is rampant in the Italian press about the attack that killed Darya Dugina in Moscow, daughter of the Russian political scientist and philosopher Aleksander Dugin, whom newspapers and agencies universally consider Putin's ideologue.

In truth, there is no lack of those who point out that Dugin was anything but Putin's ideologue. And the theses, more or less risky, multiply about the attack, such as the one according to which the real target of the blitz would have been the father and not the daughter or the one according to which the Ukrainians would not have scored the blow, who however, they deny any wrongdoing, but a Russian dissident group.

To get an idea of ​​this magmatic debate, we review a selection of analyzes published in these hours by the major Italian media outlets, to which we will add the comments of some analysts who study and know the Russian universe.

The philosopher (and his vision) transformed into a target

Ezio Mauro , a columnist and former editor of Repubblica (of which he was also a correspondent from Moscow) has no doubts about what happened the other night in the Russian capital.

It would have been "an attack directed against the top of the country: threatened in its cultural, spiritual, philosophical connections with the very source of the meta-historical theory and political theology that determined Putin's strategic turning point, and daily inspire his conception of Russian soul, its mission and its destiny in the world ”.

According to Mauro, it is therefore the Machiavellian prince of the tsar who was "transformed into a target after having provided Putin with the theory behind Russia's imperial resurrection plan, of which the invasion of Ukraine is only the first element" .

Selecting him as a target, Mauro continues, and therefore identifying "Dugin as the soul of Putinian power, it is as if the attack revealed the cultural, philosophical, mystical dimension of Moscow's new imperial claim: for the spiritual (and therefore inevitably political) reunion of Slavic peoples in the new Eurasian strategy that will see Russia emerge as a guide from the suicidal exhaustion of the West ”.

As for material responsibilities, Mauro has no hesitation in pointing out the trail of an opposition movement within the same country and in particular " an internal front to fight the war".

This, in fact – Mauro continues – "was an option sooner or later widely possible from the first day, unless the Russian Army managed to bend the military-occupied Ukraine with a blitz, bringing down the government to establish sovereignty in Kiev. delegated and fictitious, of Muscovite obedience ".

But once the attempted blitz turned into open warfare, Mauro writes, "with Russian soldiers mired in front of the world in the evidence of aggression, it was foreseeable that outbreaks of dissent would arise in the country in front of the dead, at the cost , sanctions, the separation of Russia from the concert and international cooperation ”.

Putin's ideological castle collapses

This is the expression used by the historian of the University of Naples Federico II Andrea Graziosi, author of essays on the USSR translated all over the world and fellow of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, in an interview with the National Newspaper . Words that therefore echo those of Mauro.

When the interviewer asks Graziosi to interpret the attack, the historian replies by recognizing " the evidence that every day Putin is losing what he calls a 'special military operation in Ukraine' and that internal tension in Russia is now over very high levels ".

Invited by the interviewer to specify why according to him Putin is losing the war, Graziosi points out, with a reference to the dated and controversial worldview attributable to Dugin which Mauro also mentioned, that “perhaps for him it is even worse. The theories that justified the special operation are failing. Nobody can argue that Ukrainians want to be Russians anymore. And discontent grows. Perhaps even against the director Dugin, who helped motivate these failed ideas ”.

Dugin who?

But these ideas do not at all convince Mara Morini , professor of Political Science at the University of Genoa and author of the recent essay "Putin's Russia".

Examining the figure of Dugin, Morini notes in the newspaper Domani directed by Stefano Feltri that "not only are there no photos depicting him with Putin, but if he were truly the Kremlin ideologue, Dugin could have used the FSB service escort and it could be said that the attack has a high symbolic value because 'a Putin man' was killed ”.

As a lead, the scholar emphasizes the idea that the real target may even be Dugina herself "who worked for Russia Today and has always spoken out in defense of the Donbas separatists and in favor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine".

The FSB factor

To point out the anomaly of the absence of an escort that would question the actual political weight of the alleged ideologue, the journalist Luigi De Biase ( Tg5 ), expert on Russia and Eastern Europe also intervenes with a sharp tweet:

But which ideologue in chief?

On Twitter Orietta Moscatelli, editor-in-chief of Askanews , Limes collaborator and expert on Russian affairs (author of the recent “Putin and Putinism of war”), to diminish the importance of Dugin and deny his belonging to Putin's magic circle.        

An attack by the internal opposition?

For her part, the journalist Marta Ottaviani, author of the essay "Russian Brigades", notes, again on Twitter, how Dugin was a figure that was anything but central, to the point of being better known abroad than at home.

A detail that, Ottaviani herself suggests, in a second tweet, would make him an attractive target for an attack organized by a Russian underground movement in search of international recognition.

The thesis of the former deputy of the Duma

Ilya Ponomarev, former deputy of the Duma critical of the Kremlin and repaired in Kiev, who, as Ansa reports, also made it the name with the Guardian: it would be the so-called National Republican Army (NRA).

The former parliamentarian speaks of an "attack (which) opens a new page in the Russian resistance to Putinism".

While participating in a television broadcast, Ponomarev also read some passages from the alleged manifesto of the opposition group. A document in which “Putin is defined as a usurper of power and a war criminal who amended the Constitution, unleashed a fratricidal war between the Slavic peoples and sent Russian soldiers to a certain and senseless death. And that he will be deposed ”.

The document also contains an important detail: Dugin's daughter is described as a "legitimate target because she is a faithful companion of her father, who supported the genocide in Ukraine".

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/aleksandr-dugin-chi-e-davvero/ on Mon, 22 Aug 2022 09:18:14 +0000.