Tuesday, March 04, 2008

RUSSIA IN 2008: THOUGHTS ON HEGELIAN GEOPOLITICS

by Troy Southgate

Despite the negative image of Russia that is currently being portrayed in the media, it seems pretty feasible that Putin - possibly since his last meeting with Bush in 2007 - was eventually persuaded, albeit covertly, to capitulate to Western demands. That he's a loyal friend of Russia's capitalist ruling class is not even up for debate, even if some people in Right-wing circles do seem to respect him for ousting the Jewish oligarchs several years ago. In reality, however, Russian capitalism is no better than its Jewish-dominated counterpart and Putin's so-called 'successor', Dmitry Medvedev, is little more than a puppet of the same socio-economic regime. But when you stop to think about the vilification of Russia over the last few months, especially with the well-publicised Litvinenko affair, the systematic construction of what many people are interpreting as a 'new Cold War' is, in a sense, rather Hegelian. The reason being, that contradiction, of course, eventually leads to reconciliation and some commentators believe that the thesis-antithesis-synthesis formula is better expressed in the dictum: 'problem-alternative-solution'. Perhaps this potential return to a bi-polar world is a shift beyond Samuel Huntingdon's 'Clash of Civilisations' strategy in which there is merely one superpower (United States) fighting against an imagined or manufactured opponent (Islam)? Let's think seriously for a moment about the relationship between the West and Russia in both a Hegelian (after Fichte) and a geopolitical context:

* thesis or intellectual proposition (Western capitalism)
* antithesis or negation of the proposition (Soviet communism)
* synthesis or reconciliation (a gradual alliance, through perestroika, between the two)
* presentation of a new antithesis (Cold War 2, Russia as the 'new' bogeyman)

... and so it goes on ...

Russia has not exactly presented a new antithesis in an ideological sense as Soviet Communism claimed to do, of course, and it was Hegel's view that no new antithesis can ever arise due to the eventual disappearance of extreme ideological and philosophical positions, but this rather idealistic perspective does not seem to take into consideration the fact that convenience will often outweigh genuine revolutionary fervour. It remains to be seen where Islam will fit into all this.

Food for thought.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Russian antithesis is being born right now. It is New Russkiy Nationalism. When they will take power in Russia soon, it would be the strongest challenge from the Free White Russians to the West, which is dying of tolerant multiculturalism. Apparently, new Rus would revive the best western values and bring them on a higher, more comprehensive level. So Hegel will definitely work again :) Ideologically - it's really something new. If you'd try to define it, you'd have to use terms like National Liberalism, National Democracy, National Anarchism, Populism, Rusism and Rasism - try to invent a new term for that, which would be some kind of cocktail of the above, but definitely a new entity. Well, note, that there's no place for Putinism in it :)

Anonymous said...

I must say after reading the book, though not a big deal really, but the book could have used some proof-reading.

I don't know if that is un-anarchist for these guys or not, but it is chaulk full of typos.

The book is already available online in articles if you have ever google NA'ism or it's purported ideological founder Southgate. There is nothing new in it that can't be found online for free, other then that you are paying for someone else to stay home that refuses to work like the bloody rest of the world has to.

If you are looking for an ideological Das Kapital only for National Anarchism, afraid one would have to look elsewhere as it has not been written yet.

Anonymous said...

My fee for writing the book, which, after all, is a COLLECTION of my work, was 20 copies. Hardly something I can live on. Unfortunately, therefore, although I home-educate my children by day, I too have to work part-time. Meanwhile, there are very few typos in the book, as anyone who has REALLY read it will attest.

Anonymous said...

Mr Southgate

Can you address the issue of defense?

How will NA communities resist invasions by remaining strong nation states that will view the dissolution of a country like Australia into decentralised regions as a opportunity?

DO you believe for instance the existing Chinese community that you say would become a NA community alongside the remaining white europeans would remain peaceful? Or would they join their ethnic cousins who still live in nation states in helping an invasion force?

Or is it simply like Lord of the Rings, as you mentioned once before, where all the asian, black & white subgroups plus other non race variants would join forces like elves,dwarves and humans?