Lévy vs Dugin: French philosopher accuses Putin's intellectual mentor as anti-semitic and racist in unmissable debate

For nearly half a century, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has been one of the most visible public intellectuals in France. He is the most famous, provocative and revered contemporary philosopher. He recently praised Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky in his country's Sunday, Journal du Dimanche, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky: “His humor, which does not leave him even if it rains missiles”.

Zelenski reminds other freedom fighters the philosopher has known, who “learned to wage war without loving it”. “This man has become Putin's nightmare. If we send him the much-needed weapons, planes and defenses, he can become the man who ends him up,” he added.

For his part, Aleksandr Dugin is an intellectual who has become one of the great influences of Vladimir Putin . David Von Drehle, in his column for The Washington Post, described that “Dugin's intellectual influence on the Russian leader is well known to close scholars of the post-Soviet period, among whom he sometimes refers to 60-year-old Dugin as the 'brain of Putin'. His work is also familiar to the European 'new right-wing', of which Dugin has been a leading figure for nearly three decades, and to the American alt-right.”

For the past 20 years, he is the one who created the stories necessary for the Russian head of state to solidify himself in power. A book he authored, published in 1997, entitled The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, states: “Russian actors should foster racial, religious and sectional divisions within the United States while promoting that country's isolationist factions. In Britain, the psychological operations effort should focus on exacerbating historical disagreements with continental Europe and separatist movements in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Western Europe, meanwhile, should be attracted to Russia by the attractiveness of natural resources: oil, gas and food. NATO would collapse from within.”

But his completely different points of view were already confronted three years ago.

It was at the invitation of the Nexus Institute, one of the most prestigious intellectual organizations that keep the spirit of European humanism alive, that it celebrated its 25th anniversary in October 2019 with a public symposium, which opened with an intellectual duel between the two philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alexander Dugin.

The Dugin debate begins: “I think we are nearing the end of Western hegemony, US rule or global liberalism. I would like to ask him why he continues to defend this increasingly openly nihilistic system, why he fights for this decadent, decaying modernity, and why he invests all his intellectual power to defend it.”

“I fight for political modernity, because it means democracy, freedom, equality between women and men, secularism, etc.”, answers the Frenchman. “Although political modernity is probably in crisis, I reject the idea of its irreversible decline and, even worse, of its disappearance. And I reject it because I firmly believe that the survival of liberal democracy is an advantage for the whole world.”

Lévy tells him that they both think oppositely on most issues. “But I recognize its importance, at least on the Russian stage. That's why I read you carefully. And for me, the epitome of today's nihilism is you. And your friends. And the Eurasian current. And the morbid atmosphere that fills your books. And how it dissolves the very idea of human rights, of personal freedoms, of singularities, into some large blocks of community, great religions, sacred origins.”

“I challenge that the subject of freedom is the individual,” replies Dugin. “For example, in our Russian tradition, the subject of freedom or the human subject is not individual, it is collective. And that was in the time of the tsars, that was defined by the church, then communism. But collective identity has always been dominant in our culture. (...) I just question that the only way to interpret democracy is like minority rule against the majority, that the only way to interpret freedom is as individual freedom, and that the only way to interpret human rights is by projecting a modern, western, individualistic version of what it means to be human in other cultures”.

But Lévy contradicts it: “I am friends enough with Russia to know that what you just said about the place of subjectivity in Russian tradition is not true. You also have the tradition of Herzen, of Pushkin, of Turgenev, a part of Sacharov, the whole glorious tradition of the dissidents who fought against the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, and who waged this struggle in the name of individuality, the rights of the subject and human rights. Now, what is democracy? It is the government of the majority and also the government of the minority. It is a very complex architecture, which evolves over time, that enriches itself, and the difference between democracy and all kinds of authoritarianism, including Putin's in Russia today.”

He adds: “We have the best definition of nihilism in our memory. It is Russia, with its 24 million dead during the Great Patriotic War. It's Europe, occupied by Nazism. And it is the Jews, my people, almost exterminated, reduced to nothing by the worst nihilists of all time. Yes, there is a true definition of nihilism, which is: those who committed these crimes. And these people, these Nazis, didn't come from heaven . They came from ideologues. By Carl Schmitt. Spengler's. By Steward Chamberlain. By Karl Haushofer. All the people i'm sorry to see you like, and quotes, and take their words as inspiration. So, for me, when I say that you are a nihilist, when I say that Putin is a nihilist, when I say that in Moscow there is a morbid atmosphere of nihilism (which creates, by the way, some real deaths: Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov and so many others, killed in Moscow or in London), I say so seriously. And I want to say that, unfortunately for this great Russian civilization today, there is a bad, dark wind of nihilism in its proper sense, which is a Nazi and fascist sense, that is blowing in great Russia.”

Dugin, for his part, says that the Soviet people fought this Patriotic War to stop fascism in Europe, in Russia, and to save all the people who suffer in that situation. “And I strongly blame all kinds of racism. I don't stand for that. But racism is an Anglo-Saxon liberal construction based on a hierarchy among peoples. I think this is criminal. And I think that now, globalism repeats this same crime, because what globalists, liberals, like you and the people who support your ideas, are now trying to affirm as universal values, are simply modern, western, liberal values. And that's a new kind of racism; cultural, civilizing racism. Those who are in favor of Western values are good. All those who challenge that are populists and are classified as fascism.”

“When you say that believing in universal values is a new form of totalitarianism, etc., I'm sorry, but this is very short-sighted,” Lévy counters. “Your civilization, the Russian one, which I venerate and respect, invented, for example, through Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the very idea of the struggle against totalitarianism. In the same vein, Europe also invented some things, which are gains for all mankind. For example, equal rights between women and men. For example, the right of a body not to be tortured, not to be chained or enslaved. This right is universal. The idea is not to impose a pattern on others. It is to take in every civilization the good for the rest of humanity that it invented. And one of those goods, in Europe, is the civilization of human rights, freedom, individual dignity, etc. This deserves to be universalized. This must be conceived, unless one is racist, as profitable to all mankind. Now, are you, Mr. Dugin, a racist? I'm glad to hear you're pretending you don't like racism. But I'm not so sure you're sincere.”

“I read, a few days ago, a book of his called The Conservative Revolution. Page 256. And you are talking, on this page, about metaphysical rivalry and war between Aryans and Jews. And you say that this is a challenge, that this is a debate, not only of this century but of all times. Therefore, you are clearly anti-Semitic,” he accuses him.

Dugin defends himself.” I have many friends in Israel, in traditionalist circles in Israel who share my opinion. They are Jews who believe in God. Unlike you, you define yourself as a Jew who doesn't believe in the Jewish God. For my friends, this would be absolutely anti-Semitic, because Jews are God's people, and that is the essence. So without God the Jews lose their essence, their religious mission, their place in history.”

“On Judaism, you have to review your information. It's a little more complicated than that,” Lévy contradicts him. “To be Jewish, of course, is to have a relationship with God. But it is a relationship that is based on study, rather than on creed. And that is, by the way, the main difference between Judaism and Christianity. And what I fear when I read you, and what I find when I read you and all the writers of this Eurasian current that is supposed to inspire Putin, and what I find so morbid, so death-smelling and so nihilistic, is the fact that I conceive these civilizations as blocks. You say you respect Islam, respect Japanese civilization, respect Turkish civilization, and maybe Jews. But with two conditions: that each one remains in place, and that there is as little communication as possible between them. (...) And when you look at Vladimir Putin today, when you look at what he says when he is going to Europe, when he is going to the United States, when he is going to human rights, etc. When he goes to Ukraine, when he attacks Ukraine in Crimea, it is a speech of war. So, a philosophy of war, a philosophy that regards civilizations as holistic blocs at war with each other, naturally results in a practice of war, which Vladimir Putin implements today.”

“Do you often come to the United States?” , asks Dugin, who replies that “from time to time, but now I am under sanctions”.

“I hope he will be allowed to return; he will discover that in American universities, nothing is more active than these departments of otherness studies. The United States has many flaws, many problems, but one of the good things about America today, for a long time, but today more than ever, is this attention to otherness. Of course, this attention to otherness can also have a dark side, and sometimes it is a stubborn political correctness,” and I asked him: What do you think of your country's aggression against Crimea? And what do you think of the aggression against eastern Ukraine by your country's paramilitaries or soldiers?”

“Historically, through aggression against neighboring countries, Russia has created Ukraine. And the last piece was added by Stalin, from what was previously part of the Austro-Hungarian empire: Lemberg, or Lwów. So Ukraine is a composite entity that appeared after the fall of the Soviet Union. And there was the possibility of creating a Ukrainian identity; he had the opportunity to create his national structure respecting both the people who live there, in eastern Ukraine and in western Ukraine, and to find a balance. We should have liberated eastern Ukraine with Crimea, and we should have proposed to recreate Ukraine, an independent Ukraine as a bridge between us and Europe, based on respect for both identities. That was the mistake, that we only took Crimea and Donbass. We should have restored and rebuilt Ukraine as a whole.”

“I see a pure and rabid aggression and violation of international law, I see an attempt to rewrite and revise history, which by the way, if I understand you correctly, today you are pursuing. When you say that Ukraine is a new state, this is what I heard: how can you say that? Ukraine existed before Russia,” questions Lévy. “Ukraine is an ancient country, older than Russia.”

“It's Russia,” Dugin fights.

“You can, if you like, choose, like Mr. Trump, your 'alternative truth'. But unfortunately, the facts are there. Ukraine is an ancient nation. Crimea too. And Crimea came under the Russian boot only because of a late colonial process. Anyway... The discussions, on these issues, are so endless that the best thing we can do, Mr. Dugin, is to respect, however imperfect, international laws, laws that could prevent us from falling into another catastrophe like the one that cost your people 24 million dead, 24 million brave soldiers and civilians destroyed by Hitler, which cost Europe so much ruin. (...) And what Putin did in Crimea is against the interests of our children and grandchildren.”

“I don't think we could accuse, in that situation, only Putin. This is the wrong image. Putin tried to assert the Russian voice,” says the Russian philosopher.

“You cannot find a far-right, neo-fascist party in Europe that is not at least blessed and, at best, funded by Russia. One cannot find a crisis in Europe that is not encouraged by Russia. We cannot count the number, in 2014 and 2015, of violations of the airspace of Poland, Lithuania and sometimes even France by Russian planes.”

After several other points of Debate, Lévy concludes: “There is a great struggle around the world between liberal values and non-liberal values. This struggle is also going through our countries. You have some liberals in Russia and we have some anti-liberals in Europe. And what is certain is that liberalism faces the same kind of credibility crisis that it faced in the 1930s or at the beginning of the 20th century. But in this fight, Mr. Dugin, I confirm today, we will be on the opposite sides of the barricades. Because for me, a free press is not totalitarianism. Respect for liberal ideas and freedom is not another totalitarianism. Secularism, women's rights cannot be placed, as you did at the beginning of our meeting, on the same level as fascism and communism. Today there is a real clash of civilizations. But not the one you mention in your books, between north and east and west and south and all that; there is a clash of civilizations all over the planet between those who believe in human rights, in freedom, in the right not to have a body tortured and martyred, and those who are content with anti-liberalism and resurgence of authoritarianism and slavery. And this is the difference between you and me. I'm sorry I confirmed it once again today.”

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