Alexander Dugin: An ideological inspiration for France's pro-Russian far right (2024)

On Saturday, August 20, journalist and activist Daria Dugina died in a car explosion near Moscow, aged 29. She was driving a car belonging to her father, the neo-Eurasian political theorist Alexander Dugin. Her death did not go unnoticed among parts of France's far right, for whom she and her father are well-known and respected figures.

Since Saturday, tributes have been pouring in. Eléments, a magazine affiliated with France's "new right", wrote: "The West has wanted the father's head since 2014, the date of an unjust ban on residence on European Union soil. And now they have just had the head of the daughter of 'Putin's brain,' according to the media's sheepish terminology, in the most shameful and cowardly way possible."

Unlike far-right politicians Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour, who did not react, Florian Philippot – the fomer number two of Ms. Le Pen's party and now the leader of the nationalist and eurosceptic Les Patriotes – tweeted: "Dugin's daughter murdered, Macron's warlike remarks, Zelensky's provocations around nuclear sites risk causing an incident... It is clear that Washington's camp wants war! And Macron is just waiting for it!" Another former member of Ms. Le Pen's party, Aymeric Chauprade, also paid tribute to Ms. Dugina.

The best way to measure the significance of Mr. Dugin's ideology within the pro-Russian French far right is not look at the reactions from officials, but rather to delve into the margins of this political camp with which the Russian has maintained close relations for more than 30 years.

The emotion is so strong in parts of the far right because Mr. Dugin was able to forge both intellectual and personal ties with France (others parts of the far right, far from sharing their grief, are pro-Ukrainian and identify with the Azov Regiment). His daughter, who was close to him politically, was also highly regarded among them. She had studied in France, at the University of Bordeaux. The connections are long-standing, deep and strong.

The fight against Western power

"Duginism" is, however, complex and very far from Western standards. Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist on the far right, even defines it as "a-western." An orthodox mystic and esoteric traditionalist, Mr. Dugin is the father of neo-Eurasianism, a doctrine that promotes the formation of a large Eurasian continental bloc to fight against the power of the anglosphere. According to Nicolas Lebourg, a researcher on the far right, one of the Russian theorist's phrases that best sums up his political philosophy is the following: "The Third Rome, the Third Reich and the Third International are components that must be connected in the revolt against the modern world."

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