There are in the political and ideological landscape of contemporary Russia characters who defy simple classifications. Aleksandr Dghin, for example, is harder to fit into a recognizable typology: he is not a politician, but he influences politics; He is not theologian, but he often invokes Orthodoxy; It's not general, but he dreams of maps with restored empires. More recently, he discovered a new vocation: the ideological bridge between Moscow and the American radical right.
Russian ideologist Aleksandr Dughin/Photo: Profimedia
What is striking is not only his strategic move in the US conservative media landscape-invited with a surprising nature in Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones-but the way he manages to seduce this audience through a mixture of geopolitics, metaphysics and fear of “Wokeism”. With an English English easily crossed by the Slavic emphasis, Dghin speaks phrases that seem to be taken from a treaty of ideology written in an optine cell, but broadcast on youtube channels, writes The Wall Street Journal.
He does not come up with the gross speech of a party ideologist, but with the solemnity of a man who seems to have meditated for a long time at the fate of mankind between two volumes in Heidegger and a strong drinking coffee. That he speaks of the “death of the family in favor of individualism” or about “the attack of globalism on tradition”, does it with the air of the one who offers not opinions, but revelations.
Paradoxically, this apologet of Eurasia, who dreams of an extended Russia from the Balkans to the steppes of Central Asia, now finds sympathy in the world of an America who, theoretically, should be hostile to him. But a part of the American Conservative electorate, tired of its own internal crises, begins to see in Russia a bastion of “traditional values” – an idealized but convenient projection.
Dghin, who once listened to the dissident rock and frequency esoteric circles, turned into a book author translated into English, an ordinary guest on platforms such as Rumble or X (former Twitter), and essentially into an oriental anxieties packaged in a Western conservative discourse.
It remains to be seen whether this cultural proximity between Dughin and “Trumpism” is a flirtation or a prelude to a deeper ideological alliance. What is certain is that his philosophy – a mixture of geopolitical resentment, orthodox mysticism and imperial nostalgia – takes root where the identity crises are already fertile.
In a world where ideas travel more easily than ever, a Russian philosopher with a bearded, with a mental map of the world in which the West is on the way, can be wake up to thousands of miles away-in the studios of some American talk shows where Ronald Reagan was invited.
Tragedy transformed into personal myth
Daria Dugina, the philosopher's daughter, died in a bomb attack in the summer of 2022, near Moscow. She was only 29 years old and shared her father's vision with sometimes vehement enthusiasm than her. She had been present in the studios of state television, pleading for the “special military operation” in Ukraine (as the Russians call the invasion of the neighboring state), talking about the Russian destiny and the enemies of traditional civilization.
Her death was quickly claimed by both camps: the Russian authorities accused Kiev, and some sources suggested that the target was actually Dighin. US services confirmed the involvement of Ukraine, but insisted that the action had not been coordinated with Washington. In the midst of these speculations, Dghin found a new voice-not only that of the philosopher, but also of the bereaved father, transformed into a prophet with a deep wound.
His image standing in front of a black and white photo with Daria, in solemn interviews, is one of the most effective symbolic constructions of the last years in the Russian public space. He is not just talking about his daughter, but about a sacrifice. Not only about a crime, but about an attack on an idea.
For an observer outside this ideological universe, what Dghin does may seem like an exercise in emotional instrumentation. For its supporters, however, it is a new chapter into an epic that transforms the history of Russia into a suite of martyrs and rebirths.
And here is one of the keys to Dghin's success in the American conservative space: the ability to ideologically dramatize reality. To turn a personal event into a geopolitical lesson. To talk about mourning in terms of mission and death in terms of meaning. Like a Greek tragedy, everything gets weight, symbol, fatality.
In an age when the world seems to struggle between digital chaos and land loss, Dighin offers what many are looking for: certainties. The rigidity of a “natural” order, the return to “roots”, the clear delimitation between good and evil, between man and woman, between civilization and barbarism. It does not matter that these grids are simplistic or anachronistic – they have, for some, the merit of making the world again intelligible.
And maybe that's why Dughin's voice is heard today not only in Moscow, but also in the media studios from Miami or Dallas.
From Underground to “sacred geopolitical sense”
Few of those who listen to him today speaking with gravity about metapolitics, Eurasian empires and telluric energies of Orthodoxy know that Aleksandr Dighin began, in the 1980s, as a non -conformist young man, attracted by the forbidden literature and Western rock. The son of a GRU officer, familiar with the rigid discipline of the Soviet system, the young Aleksandr preferred the esoteric circles and texts of Evola or René Guénon, Western authors who dreamed of restoring a lost tradition.
After the collapse of the USSR, in the ideological chaos of the 1990s, Dghin was noted for a strange mixture of hard geopolitics and oriental mysticism. Unlike other former dissidents who dreamed of integrating Russia into the democratic world, he saw in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, but a catastrophe. He sought not a westernized future, but a restoration-but not in the nostalgic sense of a USSR 2.0, but in the form of an “Eurasian empire”, organic, spiritual, anti-liberal and deeply conservative.
His books – many, dense, sometimes of a scheduled obscurity – circulated in a row in small circles, until the Kremlin began to borrow, at times, from his vocabulary. Without an official function, but with an increasing visibility, Dghin became a marginal, but endless figure from the ideological landscape of the new Result. Whoever wanted to understand why Moscow was watching the West hostily, could start with a paragraph in Dughin.
In this sense, he is an atypical ideologist. Does not write to immediately influence politics – although sometimes it does – but to configure a thinking horizon. To give Russia a metaphysical map. He talks about spaces not only as territories, but as forms of destiny. About Europe as a continent “unbalanced between rationalism and decadence”. About America as the “ultimate expression of modern individualism”.
And, most importantly, about Russia not as a country, but as an idea.
This is why, perhaps, in a more confusing present, his speech resonates not only in the former Soviet republics, but also in the conservative environments in the West, where anxieties related to migration, gender identity, globalism and secularization have created a fertile space for counter-current theories. In a world where everything seems relative, Dghin offers certainties.
You don't need to agree with him. But it's hard not to notice the fascination he exercises. Not as a politician, but as a storyteller of lost ideologies. A man who crossed the post-Soviet transition without converting to democracy, but to a form of geopolitical essentialism-in which ideas are not only concepts, but weapons.
West echo: Dughin, between fascination and fear
What is, perhaps, the most disturbing in the international route of Aleksandr Dighin is not necessarily its real influence on Kremlin decisions – which remains questionable and fluctuating – but the opening with which it is received in cultural spaces once impermeable to such visions. American podcasts, conservative youtube channels, interviews developed with journalists once dedicated to democratic transparency-all of these gives Dighin today an audience that he could not dream ten years ago.
The fact that his ideas find echo precisely in rural America, among segments of the electorate that declare himself patriotic, religious and anti-globalist, is less a proof of Dighin's power and more a symptom of a drift era. An era in which people are no longer looking for political solutions, but also cosmic narratives to explain why the world seems to break down.
Dghin offers exactly this type of story: one with obscure forces, a decline civilization, a messianic Russia and a decay. It is a familiar scenario to anyone who read the interwar literature of Central Europe, but which today acquires a new packaging-digital, viral, share-sound.
