Once relegated to the mere corners of some fringe political currents in Russia that nobody took seriously, we have had the misfortune of being subjected to Dugin in the English-speaking web thanks to the tireless efforts of the patsoc crowd, specifically the Infrared folks, who made it their mission to put communism and the revolution on hold to promote the word of Dugin.
With that in mind, and because I see some people uncritically accepting Dugin as this great figure to look up to (they never actually call him a Marxist) in the name of contrarianism, I figured I was gonna have to actually read Dugin. When the Internet was created and touted as a way to bring people closer together, I’m not sure this is what they had in mind.
Regardless, I have downloaded a PDF of Dugin’s foundational book, The Fourth Political Theory, and I can now look forward to a very good time for the foreseeable future.
Oh no what’s this
Oh shit shit shit
Oh fuck you at this point you’re just trolling
it’s important to keep an open mind, and it’s important to know that infrared people don’t consider him a marxist-leninist either. but i think they merely dispute the fact that he’s a facist or nazbol (i don’t think you can put him neatly into any of these catagories) hence the whole “fourth position” he coins… the old enemy of my enemy addage i guess. and all the liberals and actual mask-off ukranian neo-nazis celebrating (and most likely were involved with) his daughter’s death is a pretty telltale sign (to me at least) that he’s no friend of theirs and not ideologically aligned to that sort of rhetoric that they spout
This tracks with what I observed back when I did watch some of Infrared’s content (a long time ago by now). I don’t know much about his audience particularly, but going by what I saw in his videos, I would say he loves to delve into sources that people, particularly liberal progressives, but also some MLs, might regard as “untouchable”.
I think for Infrared, and I imagine also his audience, a person’s willingness to approach these “dark” and “untouchable” ideas with nuance serves as somewhat of a litmus test of a person’s ideological fortitude. I would say that a fearless pursuit of knowledge is a correct attitude for a Marxist-Leninist to have, so I have no problem with that.
I do get the impression, though, that a lot of what the Infrared crowd seem to thrive on is a kind of delight in being mischaracterized. To be charitable about it, I would say they love to expose contradictions, which is a good thing. They seek out controversial stances, and enjoy attracting ire from every ideological corner. To be less charitable about it, to me it comes across mainly as edgelordism rather than rigorous work being done to expose and resolve contradictions. I think Infrared fails to cultivate in his audience a desire to investigate into the particularities of things, and breeds in them an eagerness to go on the attack or to adopt bold-sounding stances before investigating properly, basically just creating people who like to argue “because they’re right” rather than argue for the purpose of discovering and resolving contradictions.
From what I can tell, a big part of what Infrared tries to point out is that Marxism-Leninism doesn’t depend on any particular set of Western liberal values to function. He’s correct that a lot of people find this idea intimidating, and avoid talking about it. However, I think he overestimates (or oversells) how innovative and provocative he is really being on that front, and I imagine a lot of people who get super into him are just mindblown by this and find it to be such powerful ammunition for winning arguments with people of all political stripes that they don’t really move any further beyond it or see much need to question whatever beliefs or preferences they have that don’t line up with “Western liberal values”, feeling assured that they are simply correct and that there is no need to further investigate into things that they regard as springing out of Western “woke” liberal ideology.
It’s no secret that early on when Infrared started making videos, there were mostly nazbols in their comment sections. I’ve never seen that happen with any other ML figure where nazbols flocked to them from the start, and were also not discouraged right then and there.
Coming back to Dugin, I read chapter one and a friend read chapter 13 of the above book (mostly dealt with gender and sex) and gave me their impressions. I don’t get anything from that reading that other, better Marxist writers haven’t talked about. It’s okay to read stuff we disagree with, it’s something else to think that Dugin wrote some profound forbidden knowledge.
There is perhaps some edgelordism going on with Infrared, but I also think we don’t do things without a point to them. Infrared is turning more and more openly towards nazbolism (which is much like what Dugin and Soral want), and I think that’s their reason for promoting Dugin. Before Maupin and Infrared (who also have various ties between each other), no ML in the English world knew who Dugin was.
Thanks for your insight about his early audience. Frankly, I watched a handful of his videos (a year or two ago I guess? I don’t have a great sense of time) and then didn’t follow him much beyond that. I did lurk in some chatroom of his fans for a bit. I didn’t see much there that I couldn’t just find on 4chan (which I unfortunately have extensive experience with).
Yeah, I guess in the content I recall, I mostly remember Infrared kind of qualifying his statements around Heidegger, Dugin, Nick Land, etc. as them basically having some interesting/underexplored ideas, and emphasizing that liberals are too afraid to engage with things like that to find the kernels of truth in it and such. I may have just not noticed that he has a bigger fixation on Dugin than that, or the vids I saw just touched on that tangentially while he was talking about something else (iirc one thing I watched was a video of him explaining Capital).
I’ll clarify that the “edgelordism” I was referring to is more about the limited view I had of his fans/my speculation about them, rather than Infrared himself, who I feel is quite purposeful in his actions. At least that’s the impression I got of him at the time. I think that his style creates an atmosphere that attracts contrarians who enjoy being smug about their views being “misinterpreted” by plebeians (an extrapolation I’ve made based on my many painful years spent visiting 4chan). I don’t mean to say that this would compose the entirety of his audience, though.
Looks like I need to go refresh my view on him and take another look at his community before I speak on it again.
great writeup. i agree with you here