A far-right Russian philosopher who’s called for Russia to expand its borders and rise up against the West says his interview with Tucker Carlson shows Americans are ready to accept his fascist ideas.
Alexander Dugin, dubbed “Putin’s brain” for supposedly influencing the Russian leader’s geopolitical crusades, took to Telegram in the wake of his interview with the former Fox News host to note that he’d made it into the “American mainstream” by sitting down with Carlson, and that the “American public is a little ready for my ideas.”
He claimed there’d been a “defamation” campaign against him hatched by “globalists” and “left-wing liberals” who portrayed him as “Dr. Evil” and “the most dangerous philosopher in the world.” Of course, Carlson himself used precisely those descriptors in trying to hype the 20-minute interview on X, falsely claiming Dugin’s ideas are “so dangerous” that “Amazon won’t sell his books.” (In fact, several of his books are currently available for purchase on Amazon in Russian.)
Dugin’s interview with Carlson—whom he describes as the “number one journalist in the world”—was the first time he was able to appeal directly to Americans on such a scale, Dugin said.
He went on to share a roundup of praise for his interview said to be from “ordinary American” YouTube commentators, including the likes of, “What a wonderful, wise person! I love Russia!” Kremlin-controlled media and Kremlin-friendly bloggers have also pushed the narrative that the interview somehow marks a win for Moscow vs. Western liberalism.
Dugin, whose ideas are believed to have influenced Moscow’s genocidal war against Ukraine, was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2015 for his role in the conflict, which included peddling disinformation and recruiting volunteers to fight alongside pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
In his interview with Carlson released this week, Dugin blamed the “Anglo-Saxon world” for the rise of liberalism, claimed films like The Terminator and The Matrix will become a reality in the West, and declared that Vladimir Putin is the one man who can save the world from such horror.