1. Introduction
One of the victims of the war in Ukraine was Russian philosopher and journalist Darya Dugina. Dugina was murdered in a car-bomb attack on the outskirts of Moscow on August 20, 2022. In an interview with the French publication Breizh-Info dated May 25, 2022, Dugina discussed Western hegemony and its relation to NATO, globalism, censorship, and war (Dugina, May 2022). The Postil published an English translation of the interview titled “A Stepping-Stone out of the Cave” (Dugina, June 2022). The following are Dugina’s concluding remarks:
I urge all readers to think critically and question the reports published by the media. If the Western liberal elites insist so much on supporting Kiev and demonizing Moscow, it is because there is a profit logic behind it. Everything must be questioned. This is an important principle that allows us to keep a sober eye. In a society of spectacle, of propaganda and of the totalitarian nature of Western systems, doubt is a fundamental stepping-stone to get out of the cave (Dugina, June 2022).
Throughout the interview Dugina focuses on the war in Ukraine, but her remarks on the war remind us that the United States has its historical roots in bloodshed, exploitation, and avarice. Given the propaganda of which she spoke, however, Americans and Europeans alike tend to envision the United States as a freedom-loving democracy, a force of light and modernity in a world marred by darkness and chaos. How did we reach this point? I believe that Dugina’s final words, cited above, provide a starting point for answering this question. The sections below discuss the three aspects of “Western systems” mentioned by Dugina in her concluding remarks. The conclusion of this essay suggests some responses to our present situation, a situation largely shaped by the “profit logic” mentioned above.
2. Spectacle
During the interview, when asked about her view on the war in Ukraine, Dugina observed that many “African countries, especially those with strong antiglobalist sentiment, have not supported Western criticism of Russia … These reactions indicate the end of the myth of a ‘single world space’.” (Dugina, June 2022)
These words echo the remarks of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. In 1998, Khatami gave a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he stated, “The fantasy of a unipolar world ruled by a single superpower is but an illusion, indicating the failure of its holders to keep pace with history” (Muzaffar, 2009).
The myth or fantasy of “a single world space” reflects the concept of Manifest Destiny. Those who had espoused this concept in the 19th century hoped and believed that the United States is a great and benevolent power destined to vastly expand its territories and influence. The first occurrence of the term Manifest Destiny in print is to be found in a polemical tract written by John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, shortly before the Mexican-American War. O’Sullivan states: “It is time now for opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease … Texas is now ours” (O’Sullivan, 1845). Not only Mexico, but many abolitionists, who believed that the annexation of Texas was yet another expansion of the institution of slavery, were standing in the way of U.S. expansion. O’Sullivan complained that those who opposed annexation were “thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (O’Sullivan, 1845). Offended by the fact that not everyone agreed with the aggressive takeover of territory by the United States, he bemoaned the “insolent and hostile interference against us” (O’Sullivan, 1845).
In addition to justifying war against other nations such as Mexico, Manifest Destiny also rationalized aggression against the indigenous peoples who had hindered the expansion of the Western territories and the slave states. The aspirations, expectations, and ideas behind Manifest Destiny are illustrated vividly in the 19th-century chromolithograph print American Progress (Crofutt, 1873), shown in the figure below.
The reverse of the print, written by entrepreneur George Crofutt, states:
In the foreground the central and principal figure, a beautiful and charming Female, is floating Westward through the air, bearing on her forehead the “Star of the Empire”… The general tone of the picture on the left declares darkness, waste and confusion … Fleeing from “Progress,” and towards the blue waters of the Pacific … are the Indians, buffaloes, wild horses, bears, and other game, moving Westward—ever Westward—the Indians, with their squaws, papooses, and “pony lodges,” turn their despairing faces towards, [sic] as they flee from the presence of the wondrous vision. The “Star” is too much for them” (Crofutt, 1873).
The “wondrous vision” mentioned above is emblematic of the spectacle that permeated the collective imagination of the United States. The angelic figure in this print is a fantasy, an image of purity, enlightenment, and progress. Holding a book with technology in her train and floating above the earth, as if transcending it, she appears as an adaptation of Sophia, goddess of wisdom. Even the animals and storm clouds seem to flee from the angelic figure—it is as if nature itself, not only the wilderness, is being subdued.
American Progress foreshadows today’s political rhetoric with its themes of light versus darkness and order versus chaos. The war in Ukraine is a case in point. To cite one of many examples, in a joint press conference held in December 2022, President Biden described the role of the United States in Ukraine as follows: “The American people know that if we stand by in the face of such blatant attacks on liberty and democracy and the core principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the world would surely face worse consequences … I have no doubt we’ll keep the flame of liberty burning bright, and the light will remain and prevail over the darkness” (Biden, 2022).
American Progress and the concept of Manifest Destiny foreshadow the fantasy of a single world space governed by the United States and its allies. The powers that be would have us believe that this “single space” is a space in which freedom and justice thrive—it is a space that is formed when darkness, chaos, and savagery have been vanquished in the names of democracy, sovereignty, and liberty. Through the military and industrial power of the United States, through the spectacle of “the bombs bursting in air,” light conquers darkness—or so we are led to believe.
Yet, as Dugina states, there is a profit logic behind the spectacle of “democracy” and “freedom.” In many ways, to borrow a phrase from Guy Debord, the spectacle is “a permanent opium war” (Debord, 2014). In the case of Ukraine, for example, there is certainly a profit logic operating behind the rhetoric of democracy. Following their trip to Kiev in the summer of 2024, their sixth visit, U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal published a bipartisan statement in which they wrote:
We urge NATO to issue an invitation this year to Ukraine for membership … Expanding economic cooperation with Ukraine makes America stronger and accelerates Ukraine’s economic recovery. Ukraine is blessed with significant lithium, titanium, and other rare earth minerals that are needed by the American economy. An agreement with Ukraine in this area would make the U.S. less dependent on foreign adversaries for rare earth minerals. (Graham & Blumenthal, 2024)
The senators conclude by stating: “Now is the time to form a strategic partnership with Ukraine that can have tremendous economic benefits to the United States” (Graham & Blumenthal, 2024). Certainly, NATO’s war in Ukraine is lucrative; in addition, Ukraine is rich in rare earth minerals that are instrumental to the functioning of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
American historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who himself has gone down in history as a staunch advocate of Manifest Destiny and imperial expansion, observed in 1910 that the Western territories of the United States yielded vast amounts of precious metals; over 41,600,000 ounces of gold had been mined in the United States alone in the first ten years of the twentieth century (Turner, 1920). As the president of the American Historical Association, Turner described the expansion of the United States as follows:
It is true there was added to the farms of the nation between 1870 and 1880 a territory equal to that of France, and between 1880 and 1900 a territory equal to the European area of France, Germany, England, and Wales combined. The records of 1910 are not yet available, but whatever they reveal they will not be so full of meaning as the figures which tell of upleaping wealth and organization and concentration of industrial power in the East in the last decade. As the final provinces of the Western empire have been subdued to the purposes of civilization and have yielded their spoils, as the spheres of operation of the great industrial corporations have extended, with the extension of American settlement, production and wealth have increased beyond all precedent. (Turner, 1920)
According to Turner, this spectacular influx of resources and money had led to “social readjustments” and a revolution in U.S. politics (Turner, 1920). These were some of the consequences of the “profit logic” of which Dugina spoke.
Turner celebrated the seemingly boundless expansion of industrial and corporate power. He states: “It is a wonderful chapter, this final rush of American energy upon the remaining wilderness” (Turner, 1920). This “wonderful chapter” in United States history is, sadly, one of many, with NATO’s aggression in Ukraine and U.S. military expansion in East Asia being the latest chapters. The hunger for power, resources, and money continues—the “profit logic” has been working behind the scenes since the beginning. In the United States, Mammon, not Christ, holds sway, and the spectacle promulgated by politicians, academics, and mainstream media is very effective in concealing this.
In The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord states that the spectacle of modern times involves “the economy developing for itself… The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having—human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed” (Debord, 2014). Both before and after the birth of the United States, people of European descent murdered, enslaved, and subdued those who stood in the way of territorial expansion—the “Manifest Destiny” of the occupiers. To the extent that “sovereignty” and “liberty” were real, they were limited to those who had money, influence, and property—i.e., those who benefited from exploitation and conquest.
In his seminal essay of 1893, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Turner describes the conquest of the American West as follows:
The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmer. Good soils have been the most continuous attraction to the farmer’s frontier. The land hunger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, in early colonial days… (Turner, 1920)
Turner also stresses the importance of the frontier army post, which “acted as a wedge to open the Indian country”; as such, it was “a nucleus for settlement” (Turner, 1920). The frontier was, in short, both “a military training school” and the border between civilization and savagery—according to Turner, the “Indian was a common danger, demanding united action.” (Turner, 1920).
In time, the frontier army post was replaced by bases operated by NATO and the overseas armed forces of the United States. As a parallel development, the American frontier was superseded by Africa and the Pacific (Rasmussen, 2014). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is no longer restricted to the North Atlantic, nor is it merely a “treaty organization.” In fact, NATO’s official history states: “Successful peacekeeping has come to entail not merely providing a baseline of security, but assisting in the construction of modernity itself” (NATO, 2022). After having “civilized” the West through war and slavery, the United States and NATO are now “modernizing” those regions of the world that are now in its sights. This, perhaps, is the reason the United States remains the world’s top military spender; in 2022 alone, its military expenditure was 877 billion U.S. dollars (Tian, 2023). By comparison, in the same year it is estimated that China had spent USD 292 billion and Russia USD 86.4 billion (Tian, 2023). Manifest Destiny is a lucrative business.
During a speech at the Marines’ Memorial Club Hotel in San Francisco in 2014, then NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stated: “Our world is more connected. And more competitive. But also more chaotic. And more precarious. So it is vital that we maintain the rules-based order that promotes freedom, democracy and the rule of law. And a strong NATO is an essential part of preserving that order” (Rasmussen, 2014). The chaos and darkness depicted in American Progress are still hindering the expansion of the United States and its allies, if we are to believe the rhetoric espoused by NATO. The war continues, but the targets have changed.
3. Propaganda
If images serve as the basis of spectacle, we may assume that words serve the same purpose for propaganda. Given this, ‘democracy’ and allied terms such as ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’, and ‘order’ constitute the core of Western propaganda. We are led to believe that the United States lies at the very center of “democracy,” a “democracy” that is destined to reshape the world and conquer darkness with light.
If the United States is the center of “The Empire of Lies,” the word democracy serves as the key political instrument by which it justifies its expansion. Despite (or because of) its importance in political and military discourse, the word democracy is amorphous and elusive. In practical terms, the word means whatever suits the political class of the United States. In his study of the concept of democracy in American historical writing, Merle Curti states:
…it is clear that the treatment of democracy in American experience reflected the reactions of historians to dominant and competing currents of thought about human nature, social relationships, and the place of America in the world at the time of writing … there has been no consensus about either the meaning of American democracy or its origins and conditioning circumstances or the degree of importance it has had in our national experience. It is thus an open question whether or not the current confusion and uncertainty about democracy do not in some measure rest on our shoulders. For we have largely written and taught our history to our people and to the rest of the world. (Curti, 1962; work originally published 1955).
In her interview, Dugina stated that we are in an “information war” in which “everything from military reports to figures is politicized” (Dugina, June 2022). NATO, which presents itself as a benign, largely peaceful organization necessary for the defense of Europe and other vulnerable regions, is a case in point. NATO’s official history states that when three nations joined the organization in 1999—Czechia, Hungary and Poland—NATO “had played a crucial role in consolidating democracy and stability in Europe” (NATO, 2022). This serves as an example of how the term democracy plays a key role in propaganda. More specifically, it is used to justify geopolitical strategies that have little to do with stability and democracy. In a U.S. State Department memorandum written in 1965, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) reported that “NATO has become the generally accepted vehicle for a dominant U.S. presence, politically and militarily, in West Europe” (Hughes, 1965). In addition, “NATO remains essential to the U.S. as a well established and easily available instrument for exercising American political influence in Europe”; more generally, NATO is the most efficacious means by which the United States can “safeguard its own commercial and political interests in West Europe” (Hughes, 1965). The report stated that from a military perspective, NATO is not indispensable for the defense of Europe; bilateral and other agreements would be sufficient to protect U.S. allies in Europe (Hughes, 1965).
Propaganda has also concealed historical facts that cast into doubt the legitimacy of the United States’ foreign policies. More specifically, the rhetoric of democracy and order is used to justify NATO’s expansion while concealing a series of broken promises. A report published by the National Security Archive states that declassified documents “show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner” (National Security Archive, 2017). The report summarizes its findings as follows:
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991… (National Security Archive, 2017).
However, since 1949, 20 nations have joined NATO through 10 rounds of enlargement in 1952, 1955, 1982, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2017, 2020, 2023 and 2024 (NATO, 2024).
The expansion of NATO reflects a pattern in the history of the United States. In September 1896 Turner wrote:
For nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the Pacific coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a check. That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue. (Turner, 1920).
Unfortunately, he was right. The United States via NATO and its allies continues its expansion throughout the world while the rhetoric of democracy and liberty serves as a justification.
NATO claims that “through social media and other means, the opponents of liberal open societies are spreading disinformation and propaganda that seek to undermine the values that NATO has always sought to protect and promote” (NATO, 2022). This claim may be contrasted with a statement made by Richard Stengel, a long-standing official of the U.S. State Department and former managing editor of Time. During a panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, he said: “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist … I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful” (Norton, 2020).
In addition, during the Obama administration Stengel, “the chief propagandist,” had launched the Global Engagement Center. Before it closed in December 2024, the mission of the “Engagement Center” was to “direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts …” (Global Engagement Center). Hence, both the United States and NATO use propaganda to accuse their adversaries of propaganda. The name of the “Global Engagement Center” is itself a form of propaganda.
4. Totalitarianism
Dugina described one aspect of the “totalitarian nature” of modern liberalism as “the manipulation of information and data” (Dugina, June 2022). Such manipulation includes widespread political censorship. Commenting on the recent censorship of news agencies in Europe, Dugina stated:
Freedom of expression implies the possibility of different points of view, sometimes unpalatable to the authorities. RT and Sputnik are not instruments of Russian propaganda, but platforms for discussion. I watched many programs of RT France, and they were interesting because they included experts with an alternative point of view to that of the mainstream media. The fact that journalists in Europe did not react in any way to these blockades shows the “totalitarian” nature of the entire Western media world. This is very sad. Let’s hope that the re-information media will remain active and will hasten the destruction of the disinformation block. (Dugina, June 2022)
We may question the use of the word totalitarian (‘totalitaire’) above, but if we understand Dugina to mean total or near total control of information flow by governments and corporations, her claim carries a great deal of weight. Censorship and propaganda work in tandem. The latter aids and abets the spectacle of “the free world,” while the former conceals that which has the potential to undermine the spectacle. The result is often a gross distortion of history.
Academia in the United States and Europe, by and large, does little to counter political censorship and distorted views of history. In fact, often these problems are exacerbated by academics and intellectuals. To cite one of many examples, shortly after Russia launched its Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the president of a wealthy university in Fairfield, Connecticut published a community statement in which he stated:
Early this morning, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. At this very moment, most of the country is under a full-scale attack. Since this is the first time in 80 years that there has been a significant war in Europe, it is safe to say that it is a new and very sad experience for all of us. It is the start of a war that has the potential for far-reaching implications (Petillo, 2022).
Aside from the fact that all wars are significant, Europe has had more than one “significant war” since World War II. The Bosnian War (1992-1995) was certainly significant—nearly 100,000 died during the war and over 1,000,000 people were displaced. NATO carried out massive bombing campaigns in its attacks against the Serbian population and there were several incidents in which NATO indiscriminately killed civilians (Voon, 2001).
The community statement cited above omits the fact that the war in Ukraine began in 2014, not 2022. Moreover, many of the people who were killed, tortured, and persecuted since 2014 were victims of the Kiev regime and its supporters. A United Nations Human Rights report published in 2016 states:
OHCHR documented a pattern of cases of SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] detaining and allegedly torturing the female relatives of men suspected of membership or affiliation with the armed groups. In addition to being a violation of the prohibition of torture, these cases raise concerns of arbitrary deprivation of liberty and gender-based violence. On 8 December 2015, in Shchurove village, Donetsk region, SBU officers arrested a 74-year-old woman at her house while they were looking for her son. She was detained at the SBU building in Mariupol, charged with ‘terrorism’, and beaten (United Nations, 2016).
The above, sadly, is one of many incidents reported by the UN and humanitarian agencies. While atrocities were carried out by both sides, clearly Kiev is not a bastion of democracy and liberty.
Insofar as academia is concerned, the political class of the United States has a tight grip on information and data. The problem is exacerbated by U.S. sanctions that target universities in many parts of the world. Teaching as well as research is heavily regulated by the U.S. Department of Treasury; students of certain nationalities are by default excluded from online education (UMass Amherst, 2023). In general, people who live in war zones and impoverished regions take the brunt of the Treasury Department’s sanctions (U.S. Dept. of the Treasury). Africa and the Middle East are especially hard hit. Hence, Dugina’s observation that many African countries have not supported Western criticism of Russia should come as no surprise.
Despite the First Amendment, censorship has a long history in the United States. For example, in February 1898, an explosion had sunk the U.S. Battleship Maine in the Havana harbor. Although the party responsible for the incident was never conclusively determined, the people of the United States were overtaken by war fever. Thirst for retribution was exacerbated by sensationalist publications such as the New York Journal. Thomas Edison produced a film showing the shattered warship being towed away (Paley & Edison, 1898). Less than three months later the Spanish-American War began, a conflict which spread as far as the Philippines. The platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League, published in 1899, described the U.S. political climate in the following year as follows:
We deny that the obligation of all citizens to support their Government in times of grave National peril applies to the present situation. If an Administration may with impunity ignore the issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote the adventure, organize a truth-suppressing censorship and demand of all citizens a suspension of judgement and their unanimous support while it chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself is imperiled. (American, 1899)
While yellow journalism served as a vehicle for sensationalism, spectacle, and propaganda, the government garnered support by means of “truth-suppressing” censorship.
In the United States, control is not in the hands of the people insofar as “the people” refers to those who do not have money and influence. Greed and violence, not the people, have shaped the political landscape. In 1910 Turner stated:
The self-made man has become, in popular speech, the coal baron, the steel king, the oil king, the cattle king, the railroad magnate, the master of high finance, the monarch of trusts. The world has never before seen such huge fortunes exercising combined control over the economic life of a people, and such luxury as has come out of the individualistic pioneer democracy of America in the course of competitive evolution. (Turner, 1920)
However, as Dugina made clear, it is more than just the “economic life” of a people that is controlled.
In the United States, the spectacle of democracy inverts reality: the controlled believe they are controllers, the subjected believe they have sovereignty. There is indeed an order, but it is not an order of our own making. What we believe is more or less what we are told to believe—truth is secondary. Thus, many if not most Americans, victims of censorship and propaganda, believe that the war in Ukraine began eight years after it truly began.
5. Conclusion
How do spectacle, propaganda, and totalitarianism work in unison? Perhaps totalitarianism is that which glues spectacle and propaganda together, spectacle being theater, propaganda being “information,” though there is no clear-cut distinction between the two. Who would deny that in the United States, politicians of both “parties” are poor players strutting on the stage of a decaying empire? Censorship and manipulation of information, the “totalitarianism” of which Dugina spoke, reinforce spectacle and propaganda and keep the masses in the dark. As a result, dialogue between citizens of the United States and citizens of purported enemy nations is hindered if not extinguished.
Dialogue, however, is crucial. Citing Fabio Petito, a specialist in international relations, Dugina stated that the “process of creating multipolarity, of structuring civilizational blocs and establishing a dialogue between them is the main task of all intellectuals today” (Dugina, June 2022).
Dugina also stressed the importance of the “border areas” of the world, regions such as Ukraine where conflict as opposed to dialogue is more likely to take place. She states that with the breakup of the Soviet Union, “the territories of the once-united country became ‘frontiers’ (intermediate zones)—those spaces to which the attention of neighbors increased, with NATO and especially the United States interested in destabilizing the situation on Russia’s borders” (Dugina, June 2022). Hence, the war in Ukraine exemplifies “a clash of civilizations,” in this case a clash between globalist and Eurasian civilizations. Repeating the same pattern that recurs throughout its history, the United States took advantage of these newly-created frontiers to destabilize the region and antagonize its adversaries.
The clash in Ukraine, a conflict in which the West (Kiev and its allies) wages war against the East (Donbas and its allies) is a mirror image of the providential march westward depicted in American Progress. That which was a “frontier” for the European colonists and the United States was the edge of a wave of persecution and bloodshed for the indigenous peoples. Hence, there are also “borders” and “intermediate zones” within the United States. These borders are not only those of the Indian reservations but also the conceptual borders that separate cultures. Instead of attempting to “construct modernity” through the expansion of NATO we should strive to learn from those who have become victims of our aggression.
Dialogue with “the enemy” is a means by which we can expose the contradictions concealed by spectacle and a means by which we can break the illusions that have taken hold of us. Someone who has spent most of his life in prison will have a very skewed perspective of the world unless he talks to those who live on the outside. When we in the United States see ourselves from the point of view of those we antagonize, we see we are not so free and innocent after all.
Yet, we are expected to remain within whatever intellectual prison the political class has constructed for us. For example, an anti-Russian petition signed by people such as Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Informational Policy urges us to stop “covering Russian culture in the media,” suspend “the operations of all Russian cultural centers located in partner countries” and ban Russians from “contemporary art exhibitions” and “international book fairs” (Ukrinform, 2022).
At the same time, the petition states: “Art has always remained at the forefront of humanitarian values. We strongly believe that culture cannot be subservient to political propaganda, instead it should be utilized for developing critical thinking and promoting dialogue” (Ukrinform, 2022). The petitioners have forgotten that we do not promote dialogue through censorship, suppression, and prejudice.
Dialogue, however, is anathema to those who promote Western-style “democracy,” a sham democracy buttressed by greed, hubris, and war. In 1905, Henry Adams observed that “Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds” (Adams, 1973). Today, we are told to hate Russia. This hatred has reached a low point; even popular singers such as Polina Gagarina have been banned by YouTube and sanctioned by the European Union (LRT, 2024). No doubt we are to believe that Ms. Gagarina, talented singer though she is, is a threat to the security of the United States and its allies. Perhaps her love songs undermine Kiev’s war efforts.
Those who are banned, censored, castigated as threats, and those who occupy the “intermediate zones” culturally or geographically include the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov. In any case, no one can stop us from studying them and, depending on the “democracy” in which one lives, no one can stop us from corresponding with artists, writers, and scholars who currently live in a nation or region targeted by the government of the United States. Such correspondence would be a good way to follow Dugina’s advice to engage in dialogue.
Henry Adams had described state education in 19th-century Germany as “a sort of dynamo machine for polarizing the popular mind; for turning and holding its lines of force in the direction supposed to be most effective for State purposes. The German machine was terribly efficient” (Adams, 1973). Such “lines of force” are not restricted to 19th-century German schoolchildren. They are evident in American Progress and in Turner’s accounts of “industrial democracy.” They also operate in a more subtle and insidious fashion in today’s mainstream media and in academia. We are taught not to hate, but hatred is precisely what is wanted of us. When Dugina was murdered, Kiev applauded. The head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, stated: “We’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine” (Galeotti, 2023). This is all the more reason to treat Darya Dugina as a teacher and an ally. We should be grateful to those who preserve our memory of her, most especially her father.
