The Dugin Doctrine — how a Russian philosopher has shaped antiliberal sentiment in SA and globally

3 Mar 2025

Among the long-time followers of Alexander Dugin – ‘Putin’s Rasputin’ who has absolute disdain for Western ‘liberalism’– is Willem Petzer, an Afrikaner activist who also aligns himself with Vladimir Putin.

Willem Petzer, who recently led a group of disgruntled Afrikaners to the US embassy in Pretoria, has much in common with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Apart from their mutual connection with Donald Trump, Petzer has been a long-time follower of the Kremlin-approved Russian philosopher, Alexander Dugin, otherwise known as “Putin’s Rasputin” or “the most dangerous philosopher in the world”.

Petzer, an activist for the Afrikaans-speaking community and chair of the Taxpayers Union, told the cheering crowd gathered, some in their MAGA hats, that “with the support of the US we can make South Africa great again”.

A petition was then handed over, thanking Trump for his “intervention” in highlighting “white genocide” and “land grabs” in South Africa.

Read more: Global alt-right exploiting SA’s divisions and history

Dugin is an intellectual rock star in Russia and was until 2014 a sociology professor at Moscow State University and a key adviser to political and military high-ups. He features on the US sanctions list for advocating the murder of Ukrainians after the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014.

Writing in the latest edition of The New Yorker, James Verini recalled how, in August 2022, six months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, a festival billed as “Traditions” was held outside Moscow:

“The star speaker was Alexander Dugin, a scholar and a prominent proponent of the war who has been called the prophet of the new Russian Empire.”

Dugin is believed to have been the target of an assassination attempt that same night which killed his daughter, Dugina, a writer who also worked as a publicist for her father. They drove off in separate vehicles and an explosive device placed under Dugina’s SUV exploded.

An obscure Russian paramilitary group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Putin had insisted that the order had come from Ukraine’s intelligence services.

This was denied by Ukraine but Biden administration officials reportedly agreed with Russia.

Liberalism – the enemy of humanity

Dugin has absolute disdain for Western “liberalism”, which he has defined as the “false premise that a human is a separate, autonomous individual – a selfish animal seeking its own benefit. And nothing more.”

In 2019, Petzer, explaining the “Russian plan” in South Africa, said it was Dugin and his predictions of a “fourth political theory” (transnational nationalism or Duginism) that had played “out on the world stage with the election of politicians like Bolsonaro, Kurz, Orban and Putin”.

Dugin’s fourth political theory posits that “so-called” human rights movements in Western democracies are “mere propaganda” – unworkable and unsustainable”.

“The concept of human in human rights theory is against the nation-state and against the concept of citizen. If you say that the human being has the same rights as the citizen, you destroy citizenship,” Dugin writes.

Petzer said he admired Putin’s attempt at asserting traditional Christian values in Russia.

Verini highlights in his writing that Dugin “inveighs against democracy, secularism, individualism, civil society, multiculturalism, human rights, sexual openness, technology, scientific rationalism, and reason in general, which he rejects in favour of the mystical revelations of the Russian Orthodox Church”.

South African connection

In 2018, Vladimir Poluboyarenko, a Russian government liaison “emissary” from Stavropol in Southern Russia, trawled South Africa for “Boers” hoping to swap their “fatherland” for a new “motherland” in Russia.

Writing for SputnikNews (the web platform for the Russian state news agency), special correspondent Denis Bolotsky said:

“Representatives of the Boer community visited Russia on several occasions this year to see for themselves the land that they will be able to rent or purchase, and, in turn, invited Vladimir Poluboyarenko to see for himself how they live in South Africa.”

Bolotsky charged that “Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is attempting to dismiss allegations that white farmers are being targeted for ethnic cleansing”.

Russia is now a country that claims to defend “conservative values”, with Putin describing, in his 2013 state of the nation speech, so-called Western tolerance as “genderless and infertile”.

While Poluboyarenko claimed to have funded his trips for the South Africans to Russia out of his own savings, “such activity would almost certainly need the Kremlin’s blessing”.

That year, Petzer toured South Africa with a crew from Russian State Television 1.

The end result, “Black South Africans unleash campaign of savagery and predation on local whites”, was broadcast in December 2018 and which since appears to have been removed.

What appeals to white nationalists like Petzer is Putin’s disdain for the West and his self-appointed role as protector of conservative values.

“Many countries today are reviewing moral norms and erasing national traditions and distinctions between nationalities and cultures,” Putin said back then.

Verini noted that the “more extreme elements of the European New Right love his disdain for democracy” and that Dugin’s books have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian and English”. DM

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Politics

Liberalism – the enemy of humanity

South African connection