Dugin on the Sacred Return of Politics

Exploring philosophy, liberalism, and the path beyond modernity.

Alexander Markovics interviews Alexander Dugin about how Platonic philosophy shaped Europe, why liberalism is rooted in atomistic and feminist metaphysics, and how the Fourth Political Theory offers a path beyond modernity to a transcendent and hierarchically militant political order grounded in eternity.

1) Dear Prof. Dugin, in your book, Politica Aeterna, you describe how philosophy shapes and creates society, beginning with Platonic and Aristotelian thought and their influence on Europe. What is the essence of Political Platonism, how did it shape European society, and what kind of continuity exists between the thoughts of Plato and Christianity?

To begin, I share the traditional understanding that philosophical thought shapes reality. The political dimension is always embedded in philosophy. As Martin Heidegger noted in his Black Notebooks, we should not view political philosophy as a separate discipline. Politics is already contained within philosophy from its inception. It is therefore entirely artificial to attempt a division between the two. All philosophies carry implicit political consequences, and all political systems find their roots in specific philosophical traditions.

In the case of Plato, political thought and philosophical vision are absolutely homogeneous; a deep structural homology links them. Plato’s ontology — his concept of being, mind, nature, cosmos — is organized around vertical axes. These lead upward toward the realm of the good Agathon and ultimate unity. The One and the Good are identical, forming a transcendental principle: a heaven where the gods themselves ascend to contemplate the divine.

This vertical structure underlies all being. The soul mirrors this ascent: it is structured like a mountain, culminating in a peak from which transcendence becomes visible. A proper state mirrors this triangle — this ascent — with those capable of contemplation, those attuned to something beyond mere statecraft, standing at the summit. The Platonic state is therefore built as a pyramid crowned by guardians — warrior-philosophers who protect and serve the transcendent.

The philosopher-king rules not because of material power but because of his capacity to transcend himself, to commune with what lies beyond. Plato recognized that women, endowed with sufficient energy and spiritual strength, could also reach the level of guardianship. What matters is the contemplative capacity.

This figure at the summit — a prophet or seer — is the sacralized embodiment of authority. Such a model dovetails with the Christian empire, in which the emperor served as the katechon, the one who restrains chaos. This Christianized continuation of Political Platonism flourished in Byzantium and was later transmitted to Russia. In contrast, Western Christianity, following Augustine, introduced a division between the Church and temporal authority — between transcendence and worldly governance — disrupting the Platonic unity.

Charlemagne attempted to replicate the Byzantine model, and later, the Habsburg emperors continued this tradition. From Charlemagne to Nicholas II, Europe maintained a form of Christianized Political Platonism.

However, when the philosophical orientation shifted — when transcendence was abandoned in favor of immanentism — a new, secularized state emerged. Political Platonism gave way to Political Atomism. Accepting atomistic philosophy, which holds that all reality consists of disconnected atoms moving through the void, leads us to liberal political structures. Liberalism is the political expression of atomistic metaphysics. The result is the rejection not just of the state’s sacred mission but of the state as such, to make way for autonomous, rootless individual masses.

Thus, two opposing models arise: one vertical, symbolic, sacral — Political Platonism; and one horizontal, material, chaotic — Political Atomism. The former sees everything in politics as sacred and meaningful. The latter cuts off transcendence, creating sterile political systems lacking destiny or purpose.

Modern liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and individualism all stem from this atomistic logic. If we are Platonists, we must remain faithful to a higher vision. Atomism and liberalism are philosophical choices, not inevitabilities. The message of Political Platonism is this: destiny is illusory. Philosophical regime change is a matter of will.

They tell us, “You prefer the alternative, therefore you are subhuman, deviant, and dangerous.” Yet those who resist this pressure with strength endure. Even Donald Trump — though not a Political Platonist — represents a rejection of the final phase of liberal-atomistic degeneration. He reveals that the force once deemed inevitable can, in fact, be resisted. As with the Soviet Union — once thought eternal — liberalism too shall pass. It is merely a moment.

This empowers the return of Political Platonism. It is not archaic. It is eternal. It was the bedrock of Europe, of the West itself. The restoration of the vertical, symbolic order is not a fantasy; it is a real and necessary choice.

2) This leads me directly to my second question. In your book, you describe Platonic thought as the philosophy of the father, Aristotelian thought as the philosophy of the son, and you also speak of a third path: the philosophy of the mother. Why do you characterize atomism as a female philosophy, and what consequences did its re-adoption during the Renaissance have for European societies?

This symbolism is not about gender in the ordinary biological sense. When I speak of the masculine or feminine Logos, I refer to archetypal forces, metaphysical tendencies. The Apollonian Logos — purely masculine — is embodied in Political Platonism. The father sits eternally above, on his unshakeable throne. We, as sons, inhabit the horizontal plane beneath, striving to conform to that transcendent order. Pallas Athene, a female deity, belongs to this Apollonian sphere because her essence is vertical, not maternal. The archetype transcends sex.

The second Logos, Dionysian, aligns with Aristotelian thought. This is a mixed form — neither fully vertical nor fully horizontal. The Dionysian spirit moves between extremes, mediating, balancing. It is masculine and feminine, yet neither fully. There are Dionysian men and Dionysian women.

The third Logos, that of Cybele — the Great Mother — is radically different. It rises from the bottom. It affirms the material as such, unformed, formless. The atom is its symbol — a particle severed from all wholes, devoid of inner meaning. In the myths of antiquity, the Great Mother produces all: gods, titans, demons. She sees no distinction. In her eyes, all are equal.

This maternal materialism underlies liberalism, democracy, and feminism. It inverts the sacred hierarchy of Apollonian thought. The cults of the Great Mother were marked by castration, ecstatic madness, and clownish processions — traits visible today in the parades of postmodern identity politics. Queer theory, transgenderism, feminism — all emerge from this return of ancient Cybelian worship.

I once visited Freiburg, where Heidegger taught. Today, the chair once reserved for phenomenology bears the title “Queer Studies.” That is no accident. It marks a metaphysical inversion. Dionysus has been replaced by Cybele. Heidegger’s path has been overtaken by atomistic, maternal ontology.

This inversion operates across all levels: political, cultural, philosophical. Kamala Harris embodies the Cybelian archetype: not racially but metaphysically. In Hindu thought, her essence is tamas, the principle of inertia, obscurity, the underworld. She is an avatar of the Great Mother, as imagined by Pink Floyd in their lament for the “Atom Heart Mother.”

3) You spoke of the materialistic and atomistic factors of modernity. In your book, you analyze the three paradigms of modernity: liberalism, communism, and revolutionary nationalism. What are the different concepts of society within these three paradigms? And in the context of the Fourth Political Theory, what is the special significance of the Conservative Revolution? How can it lead us beyond modernity towards a different kind of society?

The three political ideologies — liberalism, communism, and nationalism — together constitute political modernity. Although they may appear to be in conflict, they are all branches of the same metaphysical tree. I prefer to treat nationalism not merely as revolutionary or fascist but as the broader concept of the bourgeois nation-state, which asserts the individual citizen as the political unit. All three paradigms — left, right, and center — are grounded in atomistic, materialist, and ultimately gynocratic ontologies.

Each represents a variation of the Cybelian Logos. Liberalism isolates the atom, the individual, celebrating fragmentation. Communism fuses the atoms artificially into a mass, into collectivized abstraction. Nationalism assembles individuals into imagined traditions, creating states, languages, hymns, and symbols from the bottom upward. These modern nation-states replaced empires, which were hierarchical and sacred. Nationalism thus serves as another Cybelian manifestation — claiming to be organic while in fact built through fabrication.

In the twentieth century, these three ideologies waged war against one another, each proclaiming itself the embodiment of the future. Liberals, fascists, communists — all claimed the mantle of historical destiny. Yet liberalism prevailed — not by accident, nor because it was more practical or attractive, but because it was the most faithful expression of atomistic materialism. It left the atoms alone, unbound, unleashing individualism in its purest form. In that metaphysical contest, the most consistent ideology — liberalism — emerged victorious.

We now live under this triumph: the final phase of the Cybelian reign. Liberalism has revealed its essence: transgenderism, transhumanism, the complete normalization of sin. The defeated ideologies — communism and nationalism — have tried to adapt, submitting to the rule of the Great Mother. They are now outdated versions of the same impulse, lingering vestiges of earlier stages of modernity.

To escape this trap, I conceived the Fourth Political Theory. Initially, my thought was strategic: unite those still resisting liberalism — disparate forces on the margins, whether nationalist or communist. I imagined a synthesis. When applied practically, this approach proved plausible. In Italy, the alliance of the Five Star Movement and Lega Nord could disrupt the liberal center. In France, a coalition of Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen could challenge Macron. In Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht and the AfD together would be victorious. Alone, each remains weak; together, they break the spell.

Alain de Benoist recently observed that Trump is a working-class candidate. This convergence of left and right finds expression in practice. Yet I soon realized that such coalitions, while effective, do not go far enough. They remain inside the labyrinth of modernity.

The Fourth Political Theory is an invitation to exit that labyrinth altogether. Not to side with liberalism, communism, or nationalism, but to reject all three as modern. The aim is to explode the maze, to cut the Gordian knot. We do not seek to reconfigure modernity; we aim to transcend it. The Fourth Political Theory looks both backward to premodern traditions and forward to a postmodern critique of modernity.

It is not about returning to the past but about accessing eternal patterns: empires, sacred orders, Political Platonism. At the same time, we must not shy away from deploying contemporary tools: structuralism, anthropology, phenomenology. Multipolarity, too, becomes a key concept: a world of many civilizations, each sovereign, each rooted in its own logos.

The Traditionalist thinkers — René Guénon, Julius Evola — show how to express perennial truths in modern languages. Evola, for example, applies the values of Rome to critiques of modern art. Likewise, the Conservative Revolution in Germany, despite its errors, sought a path beyond liberal modernity. So did the Kyoto School in Japan. These were not uniquely Russian or European developments. They are global.

The Fourth Political Theory is open. It has a number, not a name. Its name must be discovered differently in each civilization. It is not a closed system but a direction. We do not yet know what lies at its end. It is a search. That is its power.

4) I see. A very interesting point you made is that the Second and Third Political Theories lost the battle against liberalism because they were not modern enough. From a sociological standpoint, what was the core of the Second and Third Political Theories, and why were they insufficiently modern to win the battle for the legacy of modernity?

We can observe that Socialist revolutions triumphed not where Marx predicted but precisely where he said they could never occur. He failed to account for the power of traditional elements. The real driving force of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was the strength of the peasantry — deeply traditional people who desired liberation from a Westernized elite. That revolution was, at its heart, national. It was a popular uprising rooted in the soil of a premodern society, cloaked in Marxist language but alien to Marx’s expectations.

According to Marx, such a revolution could not occur in Russia. Lenin’s doctrine was already a profound revision of Marxism; Stalin’s was even more so. Stalin declared that socialism could be built in a single country — an idea rejected by both Marx and Lenin. Thus, the success of Communism in Russia, and later in China, Vietnam, and elsewhere, was not due to class structure, industrial development, or a powerful proletariat — these elements were either weak or nonexistent. Instead, the success came from the persistence of tradition.

Mao’s China, despite its Marxist rhetoric, remained far more Confucian and traditional in character. The revolutions succeeded because they drew upon ancient forces: myth, nationalism, agrarian solidarity. And yet, paradoxically, this very reliance on premodern foundations doomed them in the long term. They bore within them metaphysical contradictions.

The same applies to the Third Political Theory: revolutionary nationalism. While it claimed to be modern, it often borrowed from archaic archetypes: heroic masculinity, mythic leadership, militarized aesthetics. Fascism and National Socialism, despite their claims to futurism, were saturated with premodern symbols. These elements became distortions — caricatures, in some cases — of the Apollonian or Dionysian types. Precisely because of these deep premodern resonances, both nationalism and communism proved incapable of sustaining the purely modern worldview required to defeat liberalism.

Thus, both the Second and Third Political Theories failed because they were metaphysically impure — entangled with traditional structures incompatible with modernity’s inner logic. Liberalism, by contrast, was fully modern, fully atomistic, entirely consistent with the metaphysical project of dissolving all verticality. This is why it triumphed.

5) Just before, you spoke about postmodernism. You mentioned it in two senses: first, as the final consequence of atomism, which you describe as something deeply destructive and opposed to Platonism and Traditionalism; second, as a potential ally of Traditionalism in the struggle against modernity. Could you clarify these two meanings of postmodernism in your work? Also, you described the defeat of Kamala Harris and the globalists in the recent US election as a partial defeat of liberalism. In your book, you equate postmodernism with hypermodernity and also reference the Dark Enlightenment, including the work of Reza Negarestani and other thinkers. What conclusions should we draw about postmodernism in light of the Dark Enlightenment and its implications for society?

Postmodernism, on one hand, is the final unfolding of modernity — its logical conclusion, or what I sometimes call hypermodernity. As such, it reveals the full truth of the modern project, unmasked. In this sense, it is preferable to earlier stages of modernity, which veiled their intentions beneath humanitarianism, rationalism, or progress. The naked face of evil is easier to confront than the disguised one. When Satan removes his mask, illusions are no longer possible. That is the advantage of postmodernism: its honesty.

Today, we see what lies at the heart of the modern Western liberal order. Sexual scandals involving elite figures like Puff Daddy or Jeffrey Epstein are not anomalies; they are expressions of the system’s core. The rhetoric of humanitarianism — the Open Society Foundations, Doctors Without Borders, climate activism — often conceals a black mass beneath. The rituals of liberal democracy mask baby sacrifices, predation, and metaphysical perversion. This is the true form of the elite: witches, rapists, and destroyers. Satan is no longer hiding.

Modernity denied both God and the Devil. Postmodernism admits there is no God and exalts the Devil. This is the Antichrist revealed — not metaphorically but literally. This clarity is terrifying yet liberating. As Alex Jones rightly says, this is the moment of awakening. The compromise is over. There is no longer a mixture of good and evil — only evil, unfiltered. Those who oppose this satanic order are demonized as Nazis, Putinists, and extremists.

Yet this revelation also awakens resistance. Eschatological awakening follows the unveiling of the Antichrist. We are now summoned into the final battle. Traditionalism, in its classical form, is insufficient for this moment. In traditional society, one lives in harmony, in balance, through prayer, sacrifice, family, and sacred duty. War was episodic, not essential. Now, war is permanent because satanic forces are omnipresent. There are no longer safe spaces of tradition left untouched.

To be a Traditionalist today is to be a warrior. There is no neutrality, no retreat. You must fight — philosophically, spiritually, and culturally. This is eschatological Traditionalism: not nostalgic but militant. In this struggle, we may deploy certain elements developed within postmodernism — those tools which criticize or transcend modernity.

Phenomenology, structuralism, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis — these can serve us if reoriented. Heidegger’s Dasein, Lévi-Strauss’s cultural relativism, even aspects of Lacan or Jung — these may become weapons. There exists a right-wing postmodernism, a metaphysical counter to leftist deconstruction. This postmodernism from the right does not reject Tradition. It allies with it in the final struggle.

The Dark Enlightenment — figures like Nick Land, Reza Negarestani, the Black Deleuzians — embrace the abyss. They summon Lovecraftian gods, idiotic deities from beyond time. They are self-declared prophets of the inhuman. These thinkers are valuable in that they expose the innermost logic of modernity. Their horror is instructive.

In this moment, Guénon’s vision of the “inverted hierarchy” becomes real. Gog and Magog have emerged from the cracks of the Earth. They gather openly. They host conferences, fund institutions, and participate in ritual abuse while claiming to represent rationality. This is the end of the compromise.

Now begins the final war.

6) Finally, in your book, you describe the Fourth Political Theory as a model for transcending modernity, one that incorporates elements of Traditionalism, Political Platonism, and metaphysical realism. How close is the Fourth Political Theory to Plato’s Kallipolis? What can we actually do to move from the infernal postmodern society of today towards this ideal state?

The most important step is to realize that Kallipolis, the ideal Platonic city, lies not behind us but ahead of us. It belongs not to the past but to eternity. We are not returning to a golden age. We are approaching its re-manifestation. In this particular moment of history, we find ourselves far closer to the end than to the beginning. We live in midnight, the final hour of human time.

At the dawn of history, the archetype of the sacred city revealed itself. Kallipolis was then remembered, preserved, and transmitted through ritual, law, myth, and initiation. Tradition was the act of remembrance: to recall the proportions of that perfect city, to approximate its form through philosophy, kingship, and sacred order. As memory faded, we adjusted our political structures with increasing error and compromise. Over centuries, we forgot more and more.

Now, at the end, we no longer remember Kallipolis. We have accepted forgetfulness as normality. Liberal democracy becomes the official doctrine of oblivion. No longer is sin resisted; it is affirmed, celebrated, and legalized. Homosexual marriage is not merely tolerated; it is declared sacred. The fall becomes doctrine.

Yet, Kallipolis also returns at the end of time. In the Christian tradition, this is the New Jerusalem. The heavenly city is not a utopia; it is a reappearance of eternity, a final echo of the archetype. The New Jerusalem is not merely symbolic. It is real. It existed, exists, and will exist. In the last hour, it draws near. Compared to the vast distance from origin to fall, the step between now and the return is small. We stand before it.

The difference between classical Traditionalism and the Fourth Political Theory lies here: we adopt an eschatological stance. We do not look back longingly; we look forward with eternal fidelity. Our gaze pierces the veil of collapse to glimpse the eternal pattern beyond.

We do not expect evidence. We fight in total darkness. The last spark of light has vanished from the horizon. Yet, we believe. Not because the light is visible, but because it exists in eternity. The true believer follows God not because God is seen, but because He is.

Even if it were proven to us that God does not exist, we would fight for Him. That is the essence of heroic Traditionalism: a voluntarism beyond proof, beyond inertia. We remain loyal when the world has turned away. We pray in the ruins. We build cathedrals in the desert.

Thus, the Fourth Political Theory comes after modernity, not before it. It is born in the ashes, forged in the fire of eschatological struggle. It is not inherited; it is chosen.