For Russia, in the Postmodern World Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted
Individuals and collectives act on the basis of certain deep-rooted beliefs that define their ethics, morals and attitudes and shape their behavior. This can be viewed as their fundamental philosophy, or their metaphysical foundation.
Thus, in the case of modern Russia, “NATO expansion” and “Neo-Nazis in Ukraine” can hardly be called fundamental philosophy. These are rather invented narratives that reflect deeper doctrines.
There were philosophers like Ivan Ilyin or the early 20th-century Eurasianists who contributed to the theory and philosophy of Russian fascism and neo-imperialism, but it was arguably Aleksandr Dugin who synthesized those views and formulated the modern version of the Russian ideology which is perfectly aligned with the agenda currently pursued by Putin and the Russian state.
Speaking of metaphysical foundations, Dugin was heavily influenced by the traditionalist philosophy of René Guénon and Julius Evola, but he reinterpreted it along the lines of Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian collective psychology, and, no doubt, his personal quirks.
One of the key tenets of traditionalism is its judgmental view of history. Accepting the Western model of historical epochs — in a sort of intellectual parasitism, — Dugin, along with other traditionalists, sees them not as something that just happens or as progress, but as regress, decline, moving away from the mythical Golden Age in the distant past.
Modernity, against which Guénon and Evola revolted, with its rationalism, capitalism, and globalization, was already bad enough, but postmodernity — the epoch Dugin and Putin have to deal with — is even worse.
Dugin has written dozens of books with critique of the modern and postmodern (Western) world, but it is perhaps his Postphilosophy (Постфилософия) that is most focused on the perceived evils of postmodernity. The leitmotif of this book can be summarized with the words like perversion, deviation, simulacra, and post-everything.
Perversion and deviation refer to the fact that, for Dugin, the world shifts more and more away from its “natural” course. Feminism, LGBT rights, environmental activism, “perverted” art and music — all these are signs of this deviation. From this perspective, human rights themselves are deviation, a fiction that doesn’t exist in reality.
Simulacra, in a reference to Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, mean that we are surrounded by semblances, copies, simulations, secondary, superficial things devoid of deeper substance. Digitalization, virtual reality, interaction with screens, surfaces, instead of “real things”, and “blip culture” (as defined in Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave) imposed by modern media that makes us think and perceive in fragments and clips (browsing social media versus in-depth reading would be a good analogy) are all viewed as symptoms of the postmodern world’s disease.
Finally, post-everything refers to the dead-end reached in modernity’s search for ultimate rationalization of the world, a perceived trap of progressivist thinking implied in the fact that, for further progress, rationalism needs to be transcended, too. Thus, while modernity was the age of reason, science, and the search for truth, postmodernity is the age of post-rationalism, post-science, and post-truth.
There is no one truth for all, but many possible “truths” and “alternative facts”. Nothing is true, everything is permitted — as the alleged maxim of the Assassin Hassan-i Sabbah goes, popularized by William S. Burroughs after the Slovene author Vladimir Bartol’s 1938 novel Alamut, who, in turn, had borrowed it from Friedrich Nietzsche.
Despite all Dugin’s disgust towards postmodernity, it’s hard not to notice a certain sympathy, too. After all, Guénon’s and Evola’s traditionalism negated modernity, and postmodernity also negates it, although in a different way. It also exacerbates the West’s decline and precipitates its downfall and the arrival of the new Golden Age.
Last but not least, Russia can parasitize on the postmodern mentality and instrumentalize the concept of post-truth. Any nonsense can be presented as “alternative facts”: hey, look, there is no absolute truth, how about believing OUR truth? That is one way to understand how Russian media and politicians can promulgate outright lies, fakes and nonsense with a straight face. It’s all about their interpretation of postmodernity as a schizophrenic world where nothing is true and everything is permitted.
This ideology found a fertile breeding ground in Russia for several reasons.
First, philosophical foundation was already prepared by the aforementioned Ilyin and the Eurasianists.
Second, there has been longstanding competition with the West combined with centuries-long collective imperialist megalomania where everyone else is seen as degenerate and easy to outsmart.
Third, Soviet propaganda methods and the long tradition of doublethink assured nation-wide acceptance of these narratives.
Fourth, nostalgia for the USSR coupled with the renewed interest in pre-Soviet tsarist culture facilitated the solidification of the national “Golden Age” myth: in the days of yore, everything was much better, but then it all went downhill due to the influence of the evil West.
Finally, this philosophy resonated with deeply conservative, backward-thinking psychology of the Russian population. Don’t be fooled: the October Revolution was successful not because the broad masses were progressive thinkers, but because of the widespread dissatisfaction with economic and social conditions of the time.
When dealing with both criminals and mental patients, for proper diagnosis and judgment, it is important to investigate their motives, their psychology, as well as philosophical principles that guide their behavior. This will help decide how to treat them, how to punish them, and for how long to isolate them. And this approach is crucial for understanding Russia’s behavior and responding to it.