To date, a lot of criticism aimed at Dugin has been fantastical, emotive and superficial. Of the little serious criticism out there, almost none has come from the perspective of a school of thought Dugin sometimes claims to follow; the Traditionalist or Perennialist school. Upton’s book is the first major attempt to critique Dugin from this perspective. Gary Lachman’s 2018 Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump has some very is interesting material and commentary about Dugin, and much like Lachman’s other works does a good job of spinning pop-culture, occult, and esoteric resonances and connections into a speculative, though highly readable and informative mix. But at best is only secondarily about Dugin.
is a formidable and substantial work, perhaps Upton’s thickest since his The System of Antichrist. But it is absolutely packed with insights and the startling bits of unearthed lore that Upton’s writings are noted for. I find Dugin Against Dugin to be a well written, well informed, and well-reasoned critique and take-down of Aleksander Dugin’s ideologies of the Fourth Political Theory and Eurasianism (or rather Neo-Eurasianism). What makes the work most interestingly is that it’s written from a Traditionalist, “Perennialist” perspective. And, moreover, Upton offers solutions, by the way of a kind of Sacred Activism informed by Sufic and Islamic principles. So he doesn’t just assault Dugin, he suggests viable alternatives, ones that involve the kind of personal transformation that is a necessary prerequisite to broader societal change. Or at least that’s my reading.
Upton’s other works articulate a nuanced understanding of the Perennial Philosophy, one that is closer to that which was articulated by Rene Guenon, than that which was articulated from Frithjof Schuon. Schuon’s problematic aspects are recognized by Upton and many of his other works implicitly tackles a subtle critique of Schon’s followers. But Upton is not a party follower. His writings and thought makes a broad intellectual synthesis not only of both thinkers and their students (such as M. Lings, W. Perry, Lord Northbourne, S.H. Nasr et al), but of wealth of spiritual religious and culture lore, as well as fertile grounds of Mythopoeia, from which he draws some original insights.
In this book, Upton takes this synthesis and uses it as a tool to rigorously examine Dugin and his thought, holding it to the mirror of an orthodox and normative Traditionalist understanding of Metaphysics, Philosophy and Socio-Religious thought and action.
Dugin has a Geopolitical vision, and he has an eschatological vision. The eschatological vision of course is apocalyptic. Dugin’s geopolitical views and aims are informed by his eschatology, and perhaps in a sense serve it. It is a vision rooted in Chaos. In a sense Chaos is his method, as well as his teleology. Dugin aims to use chaos, to arrive at chaos. Chaos is practically his god, his divinity in an effective sense.
Upton’s analysis looks at some of the startling and blatant inherent contradictions in Dugin’s publicly expressed worldview, philosophy and agenda. And Upton discovers many contradictions indeed. He also examines the contradictions between Dugin’s claimed adherence to the Traditionalist school of thought and his actual stated views. He examines Dugins metaphysics, and Upton suggests some amazing conclusions.
When rigorously examined there is an actual Satanic aspect to Duginsim. In many ways it appears to be an inversion of Traditionalist or Perennialist thought. His metaphysics is an inversion of traditional metaphysics. Dugin adopts many of the motifs and wording of Traditionalism, but turns them on their head. In the question of Islam, moreover, Dugin horrifically misreads Islam and its currents. He at times expresses an admiration of, or at least an admiration of the utility of, Salafism for example, while at other times courting Sufism and Sufis, and Shiites, not only ignoring the oppositions between all of these camps, but more dangerously seeming willing to use the most destructive tendencies of Salafism for his own aims.
From Upton’s outline and criticism Dugin’s real aims appear to be more or less immanentizing the eschaton, in a sense. But worse, it is from what really appears to be a Promethean or Titanic perspective. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your perspective, of course. But a Titanic, Promethean, urge to overthrow all order in place of Chaos, a Chaos that Dugin practically divinizes, is not a good thing in my book. Your mileage, of course, may differ.
Upton’s criticisms of Dugins many contradictions and apparent bad faith and hidden motives resonate with me. What I get out of this reading is that Dugin’s project would appear to resonate with the motto ORDO AB CHAO, the Masonic maxim who’s Latin translates as ‘Order out of Chaos.’ But in a certain sense it doesn’t quite. Because Dugin appears to aim at dissolution and dissipation; Chao, not Ordo. Yet, if there is to be any order emerging from his stated aim then it is to be a Eurasianist super-state, whose spiritual and temporal center is Moscow.
Dugin claims that many of the world’s problems lie in the unipolar dominance of the modern American, or Anglo-American, empire. Thus, we need a multi-polar world that preserves much of the ethnic and religious diversity that globalism, and its totalitarian tendencies toward flattening and leveling all qualitative distinctions, threatens. A dominant Eurasia forms the second pole to oppose and keep the Anglo-America sphere in check. However, at the core, Dugin seems to aim at a unipolar world too: one dominated by Eurasia, which in reality will be a greater mother Russia.
In other words, Dugin wants a world empire. Again, he has his reasons. His vision of a tellurocratic Greater Eurasia superstate is a reaction to the aggressive attempts at global dominance by the Anglo-American thalassocratic empire. Dugin fans would see his aims as just, and right. As the necessary defense against the aggressive tendencies of thalassocracy in general, chiefly Americanism and Transatlanticism. Fine, sure. But the real point, I think, is that Dugin aims for only one power to dominate. This exposes a basic contradiction. The man who opposes unipolar world empire implicitly aims at it. Power and dominance, not truth, is what matters then.
In any case those are my surface reflections and reactions to Upton’s book. It is the type of work that I will have to read two or three times to fully ‘grok’, let’s say, with apologies to Heinlein… It’s a book that, I’m confident, will further unlock aspects of the phenomenon and mystery of Dugin that are still cloudy to me. Whether you totally disagree with with Upton’s perspective, or whether you totally disagree my review, I urge you give his book a good fair reading. Even if you reject his conclusions you will come out of it better informed of the kinds of criticism that can fairly be leveled at Dugin’s thought.
Some thoughts about Criticism of Upton:
Some critics of Upton may be Dugin’s followers, or people influenced by Dugin who find his criticisms to be unfair. My take is that Upton seems willing to openly engage Dugin or Eurasianists. Upton has posted some Youtube videos addressing his basic objections. I would be very interesting in watching a respectful and intelligent exchange either with Dugin himself defending his ideas, or with Duginite Eurasianists doing the same. Not intellectually vapid snarky troll comments from the peanut gallery, but actual engagement with Upton’s criticisms. I would be delighted to see a real debate here.
There are other critics who may attack Upton for what they see as liberal sentiments, ignoring the fact that Upton is explicitly setting himself up against Liberalism properly speaking. The entire Traditionalist position Upton espouses is explicitly anti-Liberal. Many of these are critics whose standards for “Classical Liberal” are anyone who doesn’t want to tar, feather, and lynch immigrants, non-Whites, and Muslims. This is simply revanchist politicized ideological dogmatism, coming from people whose religion itself is their blood, soil, and skin. I can’t take knee-jerk jingoism from people whose entire intellectual perspective is dominated by Identitarianism seriously. It’s the mirror image of the sort of Identity Politics increasingly dominating the left over the last 20-25 years. Pissy identity obsessed millennials being millennials I guess. You have the lefty purple hair social justice warrior crowd, and you have the righty undercut or buzzcut Blood Dirt and Neo Folk crowd, and neither are typically able to make substantive intellectual arguments from any ground other than their precious senses of identity. Such criticism can be ignored unless it comes with serious non-emotive and non-natavist non-identitarian intellectual content.
In a word: “Upton favors immigrants who are going to take our jobs and deny a future to our beautiful white children, because he’s a liberal Baby Boomer who used to hang out in San Franciso,” is a histrionic, non-intellectual, knee-jerk reaction, and it is identity baiting. It is, in other words, not an actual argument concerning how or why Upton’s criticism of Dugin is wrong. It is silly.
I mean, if Jay Dyer, who is really one of the few intelligent and well-read critics of Liberalism from this new Right scene wants to criticize Upton along those lines, then I would at least listen. Because whether I agree or not, I would probably get something out of his criticism. Jay Dyer tends to back his arguments with substance and actually does the work – the reading and the thinking;– unlike most others. And most of the people who might make criticize Upton for some sneaking lingering Liberalism lack Dyer’s philosophical background. Anyway, moving on now..
There are also critics of Upton who, may accuse him of misunderstanding certain key philosophers. I am not a philosopher, and do not consider myself to be philosophically competent. But if anyone criticizes Upton for not understanding Heidegger I simply roll my eyes. The probability of any of Upton’s critics understanding Heidegger is low indeed. Heidegger is notoriously difficult, and most people who claim to actually understand him do not. Many philosophy philosophers of any real experience (people who have taught for a couple of decades at least) are aware of this. I know a professor who used to privately joke that anyone who claims to understand Heidegger is deluded or a liar, himself included. This is not an argument, it’s a personal anecdote. But it amuses me. If someone who actually does understand Heidegger, and has read him in German, wants to elucidate the matter and give a substantive argument as to how and why Upton misunderstands Heidegger, or any other philosopher, then I’m personally all ears. But make it substance.
There are also critics of Upton who, among other things, may take an askance look at him for his Traditionalism or Perennialism and his personal practice of Islam. Some critics find the two positions of being a Perennialist and being a Muslim to be contradictory. This can be – but is not necessarily – a reductionist criticism that simply avoids tackling his ideas. This can be more of an actual character attack, particularly when made by people from outside of both camps. If so then it’s effectively a cheap shot. sort of like criticizing him for being a Baby Boomer, and belonging to a particular generational cohort. And further accusing him of a type of syncretism that is somehow conditioned on his being a Baby Boomer. It’s facile, cheap, and frankly rather stupid.
However this criticism can also be quite serious. Someone could make more serious criticism along the lines that the Perennial Philosophy itself, or Traditionalism more properly speaking (with a capital T) is itself a type of syncretism. And that there are serious theological, much less than philosophical, reasons to see it as internally contradictory and non-cogent. And further that it’s contradictory for Upton to adopt that line, and doubly so for him to do so while also adhering to Islam. Further, that there are very serious criticisms of Perennialist Traditionalism – and its followers – from more orthodox Muslim perspectives.
I do not consider myself a Perennialist or Traditionalist. I freely admit I was once involved in that school of thought and still have Traditionalist friends and contacts, but I am no longer a Traditionalist or Perennialist, and have not been for quite some time. That said I am not a Platonist or Aristotelian, yet this doesn’t stop me from finding very serious and useful insights in Plato’s or Aristotle’s thinking. Or, for that matter, in Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, and al-Farabi.
To criticize the process of dialectically weighing and examining disparate and even contradictory ideas in the process of seeking insights and a greater synthesis of sorts, strikes me as a kind of black and white reductionism. A type of philosophical autism, in a sense. It’s a subtle identitarian error, in a sense. One claims that having a certain religious or philosophical identity is inconsistent with arguing from philosophical perspectives outside of that identity. Were certain Church Fathers hypocrites or inconsistent and contradictory for finding insights into the notion of the Logos from pagan Greek philosophy? Some would say yes, I find that rather small minded.
The point is that in this book Upton is examining Dugin from a perspective that Dugin and his followers actually claim to hail from, and Upton examines Dugin’s contradictions from that basis primarily. And finds that there is a very real possibility that these contradictions arise from bad faith, that Dugin is in fact, from an ideological, philosophical (and theological when it comes to Christian Orthodoxy) the exact opposite of what he claims to be.
Is criticizing Upton’s espousing Traditionism in the Guenonian sense while being a Western Muslim the same as Upton’s criticizing Dugin’s espousing Traditionalist principles, while in fact most likely being a Satanist of sorts ? Well on the face of it, no.
Today Perennialism or Traditionalism is far more popular among Muslims, openly or secretly, than it would seem. This is not just among Western converts, the school is very popular in Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, and has adherents among many intellectuals scattered through the Arab world. It’s marginal, but intellectuals themselves are marginal, much less than intellectual movements. People who read books are fairly marginal, in any religious tradition, culture, or society. I mean real books, not novels.
Now, you could fairly make this comparison and criticism in an intellectually honest and cogent way, done well, if you made specific points as which specific Traditionalist ideas are incomparable with Islamic thought. But I don’t think most people would make that criticism well. At least not yet. and Islamic thought is incredibly broad. I can guarantee you that if you ransack through the history of Muslim theology, philosophy, theosophy, and esotericism you would find some key figures whose thoughts were essentially in line with many contemporary Perennialist concepts.
And this brings us to the question Islam and orthodoxy. Is Muslim religious commitment inconsistent with holding philosophical positions like Traditionalism? That’s a serious question, I don’t think that asking it is being trivial. Ultimately I find it to reflect a kind of essentialism that bothers me, as a practicing Muslim. There are quite a few important Islamic thinkers whose theologies seem heretical from where I stand, and yet they were absolutely critical thinkers. My personal theology is probably heretical by the standards of many Muslims, for that matter. So what?
In actual practice, and not theory, people looking at Islam’s intellectual scene from the outside are typically unaware that questions of intellectual and spiritual orthodoxy have always been far less important in Islam than in Christianity.
In actual historical fact, outside what many people now claim, Muslims have always aimed at a type of orthopraxy, not an orthodoxy. The basic creed that defines being a Muslim is rather short, witnessing and accepting the indivisible Oneness of God, and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is his Prophet and Messenger, God’s Nabi. The remaining four pillars after this concern practice, rites: fasting the lunar month of Ramadan, establishing and performing the Salat (the so-called ‘prayer’), paying the zakat alms to the poor, and making the pilgrimage to the Kaaba shrine in Arabia once in your lifetime, if you are physically and financially able – and free of debt.
Islam is what you do, chief and foremost. Iman is what you believe. The classic traditional narration that establishes what it truly means to follow Muhammand includes three stages: Islam, Iman, and Ihsan. Which are, in turn, Surrendering or submitting to the Divine in practice (Islam), believing in God his Prophet and other creedal matters (Iman), and making beauty beauty or excellence by worshiping the Divine as if you were witnessing the Divine, with the awareness that you yourself are constantly being witnessed by it.
That, and what follows, may seem to be pedantic nitpicking, but it’s important to set a stage. In terms of philosophy, theosophy, and theology, an extremely wide range of intellectual and philosophical perspectives have always co-existed in both mainstream Sunni and mainstream Shia Islam. Including ones that were seemingly, or actually, heretical. Albeit sometimes uneasily. But, the ranks of Muslim thinkers have always been philosophically and theologically quite diverse since the first century. After the first 60 years of Islam in actual fact. And the actual working definition of “orthodox” Sunni Islam has always been rather fuzzy. In actual fact it is actually simply political, concerning the question of the locus of political authority in a Muslim community. Should the leader be a qualified Muslim freely chosen, or selected from a consulting body, or simply appointed by the preceding leader – or should it be from the House and family of the Prophet? And if from the Prophet’s House (the Ahl al-Bayt) from which lineage (Hassani or Hussaini). This is what the division between Sunni and Shia originally was, and essentially still remains.
Supposedly, from the perspective of creed the Asharite school of theology (Kalam) is Sunni Islam’s mainstream and definitive philosophical and theological current. However for a very long time many Sunnis considered the Asharites to be heretics. Many still do. But the Asharites consider these people in turn to be heritics. And besides, the Hanafis – who are the actual majority of Sunnis have mostly followed the Maturdi creed for several centuries. So when this is pointed out Asharite Sunnis begrudgingly throw the Maturidis in, pointing out the Maturidi belief is very similar to the Asharite one (it is in some senses but not in others) and claim a Asharite-Maturidite synthesis. But then you bring in the Mutazilites, whom both decry as heretics unduly influenced by Greek philosophy, or falasafa. The funny thing is; Mutazilism was normative in Hanafi circles for centuries. Hanafis embraced Maturidism because it was closer to Mutazilite rationalism.
Another funny thing; both Asharism and Maturidism evolved out of the supposedly heretical Mutazilite school. A school supposedly beyond the pale of Muslim belief itself. The founders of both were Mutazilite students and theologians initially. Which is why the Hadith movement in Sunni Islam castigates all three schools. In spite of the fact that the vast majority of Muslims are somehow members of one of them.
Many philosophical streams have found adherents in Islam which were or are considered heretical, or seemingly considered thus, by the mainstream of seemingly orthodox Muslims. And yet these streams are and have been amazingly popular. For example very committed Muslims have existed in Islam’s body from right after its first century and massively contributed to Islam’s thought while hailing from Peripatetic Aristotelian falasafa, or Mutazili rationalism, or Tassawuf: Sufi theosophic gnosticism (note the small g). At the same time, the seemingly mainstream and orthodox Ahl al-Hadith movement that has for centuries made up the core of contemporary Sunni Islam was originally somewhat marginal.
There are also strong indications that three of the founders of the four “orthodox” schools of Sunni Islam were Sufis, or at least had serious Sufic affiliations (Abu Hanifa, Malik, and Shafi). So too, two of these orthodox Sunnis had very strong Shia affiliations (Malik and Abu Hanifa) and there’s evidence that they financially and intellectually supported Shia, or at least ‘Alid revolts. So too, there were periods in which, in actual fact, the intellectual mainstream of the largest Sunni school, the Hanafis were Mutazilite rationalists.
Intellectual, philosophical, and theological diversity has been the norm in Islam, not the exception. This was within historical limits of course, but in actual practice a wide range of ideas and beliefs have always been tolerated for the most part within the Dar al-Islam, or Islamdom if you will. The sort of Neoplatonic approaches to gnostic knowledge that modern Perennialism often considers have very much been a part of Muslim thought for the last 1300 years. Criticizing Upton’s work for his being a Muslim and Traditionalist at the same time is almost as irrelevant for criticizing him for being a Baby Boomer. Taking generational pot-shots at Boomers is sort of en vogue these days, particularly in some Gen Y and younger Gen X circles. I think it’s silly. 50 years from now people will be doing the same to millennials. In fact, I suspect it’s a reaction to the large amount of flack millennials already get from, well, just about everyone older than them. Including Gen X’rs.
Anyway, so Upton is a Muslim and also a Perennialist. Ooh my, what would his fellow Muslims think? Well for the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions who themselves have been influenced by Guenon and Schuon, they would probably think “what’s the big deal?” And for the billion or so more who have not been influenced by Guenon and Schuon, or moreover actively distrust or dislike both thinkers, they would probably think something along the lines of “well, they make salat with us in the mosque and fast with us, so whatever. Just don’t come peddling that heretical bida openly around me buddy.”
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