Who Is Aleksandr Dugin?

Bannon says he is one of the greatest political minds of our time. Glenn Beck says he is a very dangerous man. So who is this Russian philosopher?

Tucker Carlson calls him “the most famous political philosopher in Russia,” and says that “his ideas are considered so dangerous, the Ukrainian government murdered his daughter, and Amazon won’t sell his books.” Steven Bannon says he is a big fan and describes him as “one of the greatest, most influential geopolitical thinkers and strategists of modern times.” Alex Jones thinks he is “one of the leading people when it comes to rebirthing Russia and rediscovering the greatness of Russia and humanity itself and creating a pro-human system.” Candace Owens says she owns two of his books and may have had the opportunity to meet him during her recent trip to Russia. So, who is Aleksandr Dugin, and why have so many of the Woke Reich attached themselves to his teachings?

Aleksandr Dugin is a Russian philosopher who likes to throw lots of $20 words into his word salad that is at times so convoluted that he makes Kamala Harris sound smart. In 1980, a young Dugin joined a secret underground club called the Yuzhinsky Circle. This club was deep into mysticism, esotericism, and the occult. The group was all about finding hidden knowledge, whether that meant using Ouija Boards, hypnotism, and rituals that bordered on satanic. The group also worked to translate texts from around the world, and it was here in the Russian underground that Dugin was exposed to Nazism, Islam, French mysticism, and the Italian writer Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World, which advocates for an Indo-European Aryan racial caste.

Dugin has always had Nazi sympathies. He has continued to push a form of esoteric Nazism (Nazi ideals blended with mysticism and occult practices) into Russian culture. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Dugin spent some time in France, where he met a few of his mentors, Alain de Benoist, a neo-fascist, anti-Zionist, antisemitic, and Claudio Mutti, who was part of a neo-fascist terror group and eventually converted to Islam.

Dugin is also a prolific writer, but in reality, his books are full of nihilistic fantasies and ridiculous predictions couched in word salad designed to make him seem smarter than your average bear.

Professors Nikos Sotirakopoulos and Ziemowit Gowin explored Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory in a podcast for the Ayn Rand Institute. Dugin took the bits he liked from the existing three political theories: Liberalism, Fascism, and Communism. He combined that with a generous helping of Traditionalism, Mysticism, and Religion to create what he calls the Fourth Political Theory.

Marc Weitzmann at Tablet explains that Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory essentially boils down to a cosmic war for the human soul between good and evil. Thing is, Dugin believes the villains in his cosmic war are the US, Israel, Western Europe, the Jews, and the atheists. The good side is Russia (of course), Iran, the Orthodox Church, Catholics, and Shiite Muslims. According to Dugin, if America wins this cosmic war, then the world is doomed.

So, how should Russia defeat America? Dugin spelled it out for us in his 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics. He said that Russia needed to destabilize America by feeding into divisions along racial, ethnic, and social lines, while at the same time convincing Americans to withdraw from the global stage and become isolationists.

Dugin actively began his campaign to sow discord in the US as far back as the early 2010’s. White nationalist Richard Spencer, whose ex-wife is Dugin’s American translator, invited him to an event in 2014. The other former big name in white supremacy, David Duke, was also a big fan. Duke apparently lived in Moscow for a bit, and his roommate there used to host online chats with Dugin at Texas A&M.

Alex Jones found Dugin in 2017. He hosted Dugin on multiple occasions, and the two lamented the “globalists” that Jones claimed were influencing Trump Admin 1.0 after the firing of Gen Mike Flynn. Speaking of Flynn, the Flynn family Priest, Carlo Vigano, has been associated with Dugin for years. Flynn also has connections through some of his lobbying firm’s clients.

If Vigano’s name is mildly familiar, it’s because he’s the priest who was supposed to head up the school that Steve Bannon tried to start in Italy. I mentioned that in my piece on the Catholics for Catholics Group. Bannon found Dugin in 2014 and has been espousing his theories ever since. Bannon is even in the Epstein files, sending Epstein an email in 2018 recommending Dugin.

Bannon's biggest disagreement with Dugin is that Dugin thinks the US is all that is wrong in the world, but Bannon splits hairs and says that the liberals in the country are the evil, and we just need to reclaim the country for conservatism, then we'll be good again. The absolute irony, because that's exactly what Dugin wants! He wants us divided along political lines, fighting each other. Bannon is a useful idiot who plays right into his hand!

Candace Owens’s ideology shift in late 2023/early 2024 seemed to put her squarely in Dugin’s camp. In December 2025, she admitted to owning two of Dugin’s books on X during a spat with Lil Nicky Fuentes. Just last week, Candace traveled to Russia to speak at SPIEF, Russia’s version of the WEF in Davos. While it is unknown if she actually met with Dugin, they were both speakers at the same event. According to Glenn Beck’s reporting, Russian media have begun calling her the “bridge” between Russia and the USA.

Tucker was late to the party, as he found Dugin in 2024. He did a sit-down interview with him in April 2024, while he was in Russia for his infamous interview with Putin. He has since been espousing many of Dugin’s ideas, especially regarding multipolarity.

The idea of a multipolar world is central to Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory. Dugin believes that every nation has their own “truth,” the exact opposite of Ben Shapiro’s “Facts don’t care about your feelings” mantra. Dugin says we shouldn’t judge another nation’s culture, yet he hypocritically judges Western culture as evil and far too modern. Because of this, he wishes to see the world divided into “poles” that seem to be conglomerates of nation-states, for example, the European Union or BRICS.

Think of it this way: many of our older readers may remember growing up during the Cold War. The conflict between Russia and the US, and the way both were considered superpowers, is a perfect example of what Dugin would term Bipolarity. Our younger readers likely only remember a world where America was the dominant and only superpower, despite China’s best efforts, which would be a Unipolar world.

Dugin would like to see a world where the US gets knocked down a few pegs. We would have equal footing with the EU and BRICS, and possibly other groups of nations. The three groups would all have equal standing and equal might, or if there were more, some would be slightly more equal than others, but there would always be at least three “poles” jockeying for position at the top.

Dugin’s desire to end America, or at the very least bring about a multipolar world, makes more sense when you dig into the spiritual aspect of his Fourth Political Theory. Russian historian Victor Shnirelman says that the biblical Book of Revelation is the foundation for Dugin’s view of history.

In Dugin’s view, the antichrist isn’t one person, but rather the whole of America. He also misinterprets 2 Thessalonians 2:7 to mean that Russia is the katechon or the one “who now restrains it (the antichrist) will do so until he is out of the way.” In reality, the verse is talking about the Holy Spirit. The chapter refers to the antichrist as the “man of lawlessness,” and the Holy Spirit is the restrainer, holding back lawlessness until the rapture, when Jesus’s followers are caught up to heaven, and the lawlessness is then unrestrained.

Dugin believes that the final battle of Armageddon will be a coalition of the katechon, aka Russia, and the Muslim mahdi, aka their version of a messiah, versus a Jewish Antichrist that is also America, somehow.

Ryan Mauro has a great piece over at Glennbeck.com about the spiritual side of all this and how Candace and others are being misled. Essentially, Dugin, and by extension Russia, are working to make Christians everywhere, but primarily in America, question whether their faith or patriotism comes first. They claim the Western ideals of individual freedom lead to immorality. Thus, we must be putting our patriotism above our faith if we allow this to continue. In contrast, by putting our faith above our patriotism, it would lead to a multipolar world as well as a more authoritarian version of Christianity, which would rescue our society and the world.

This is a false dichotomy. It is entirely possible for a Christian to value their faith above all and yet recognize not only that we live in a society that values individual freedom, but also that God gave us free will. None of us can force anyone else to accept the gift of God’s grace. Turning Christianity into some authoritarian system of government is not in line with the teachings of Jesus. Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 10:13-15 that if someone didn’t freely accept the gift of salvation, brush the dust from your shoes and move on.

Glenn Beck compared Dugin to a doctor who gets the diagnosis right, but his prescription for the cure is all wrong. He says that while Dugin is right about the evil attacking the West, “it is his solution we must run from.”

As Ryan Mauro said, “to actually fight back against this threat, we need to counter the ideology driving it — not just go after the messenger.”

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Lorraine Yuriar is a wife, mother, and lifelong conservative currently stuck in a very blue state.