The Ethnosociological and Existential Dimensions of Alexander Dugin’s Populism

Abstract

If in 2004 Margaret Canovan could write that “few political theorists believe that populism deserves their attention,” by 2017, as Jonathan White and Lea Ypi observe, “contemporary political theory has made the question of the ‘people’ a topic of sustained analysis.”1 Even so, “what a people is . . . is a matter of enduring dispute.”2 One of the disputed definitions of what a people is comes from the domain of right-wing populism.3 While the political relevance of right-wing populist challenges to liberal democracy is widely recognized, the theoretical bases of right-wing populism are rarely the targets of sustained analysis. Yet what Alberto Spektorowski writes about the New Right perhaps applies also to right-wing populisms more generally: their importance “lies . . . in [their] theoretical innovation.”4 This paper is meant to be a contribution to the general study of the theoretical innovations of right-wing populism. Specifically, it focuses on Alexander Dugin’s populism. First, I briefly introduce the place of the “people” in Dugin’s fourth political theory. Second and third, comprising the bulk of the essay, I provide an overview of the ethnosociological and existential dimensions of Dugin’s populism. Fourth, I outline an additional, “noological” aspect before concluding.