"If I were to rend my garments every time Dugin hatches a new blasphemy, I would have to buy myself a whole new set of clothes…." - CHARLES UPTON
Alexander Dugin wanted to ride with friends after a festival event Saturday night. His 29-year-old daughter, Darya, drove his car while he road in the car behind. Suddenly, the car Darya was driving exploded into a fireball and Darya was burnt beyond recognition. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack “vicious and cruel.” Undoubtedly it was. Who carried out the attack? Was it meant for Dugin? And what effect will it have on the war?
Dugin has enemies because his words have an unmistakable militancy. His rhetoric has been violent, even bloodthirsty. He has pushed the war in Ukraine, and many Russians have died who might, on reflection, blame him. War is attended by blame games. The Russian government, taking advantage of this tragedy as a propaganda bonanza, blames Ukraine. From the standpoint of the Kremlin, of course, Alexander Dugin and his daughter are expendable. Especially as the sight of a grieving father might be used to rally a nation that is having second thoughts about a war that is going badly.
On the occult side of the equation, Dugin has allegedly written about the ritual sacrifice of children (about fathers sacrificing their daughters). This is the creepy sort of writing an old fan of Aleister Crowley might engage in. And that, of course, is who Dugin is. Seeing how unserious Dugin is in his political discourse, the way he plays games with the truth, these creepy ideas were never thought to be serious. But now it seems that someone, or some thing, has take him very seriously. Maybe it was something that goes bump in the night.
Regardless of the darker forces at work, blood will answer blood. The heartbroken father says the Ukrainians must pay. The Kremlin says the same. As if to underscore Ukrainian culpability, the FSB claims to have evidence pointing to a Ukrainian woman who entered the country and successfully escaped across the border. But this does not pass a basic smell test. The FSB typically manufactures evidence in assassination cases, or finds no real evidence at all. Take the case of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, gunned down on a street near the Kremlin in 2015. In this case the FSB extracted confessions by torture. Suspects were killed before they could give testimony. The security cameras at the scene of the crime had been conveniently “turned off for maintenance” when the shooting occurred. Hours before being gunned down, Nemtsov was organizing a march against the war in east Ukraine that began in 2014. As with so many political assassinations in Russia, the Kremlin had motive and opportunity. And now, in the present case, the FSB has allegedly, somehow, identified Darya’s assassin in a matter of hours. You have to wonder.
Of his daughter, Dugin said, “She died for Russia, for the people.” Or did she die so that Moscow might justify more killing in Ukraine – of Russians and Ukrainians? It is impossible, at this distance, to say who detonated the bomb in Dugin’s car that killed his daughter. If Russia demands retribution, the suspicion is at least aroused that the death of Darya Dugina is being exploited to justify some kind of military escalation.
The accused assassin – a Ukrainian woman with a child – allegedly rented an apartment in the same building as Darya, following Darya as she moved around Moscow, changing her vehicle license-plates numerous times as she went. If this was all known, why wasn’t this woman arrested? A supposedly independent Russian media outlet, Agentstvo, asked why an assassin would bring along a child. Ilya Ponomarev, an exiled former Russian MP, suggested the assassination was organized by a Russian resistance organization known as the National Republican Army. But hardly anyone has heard of this group.
In Kiev Ukrainian officials are worried. Will weapons of mass destruction be used against the Ukrainian people? You have to wonder. This also dovetails with Russian activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Is Russia planning to detonate the plant and blame the Ukrainian “Nazis” in order to justify an escalation to tactical nuclear weapons? This may be Moscow’s only way to avoid eventual defeat.
One thing is certain. The war in Ukraine is the beginning of something larger. When the COVID outbreak began, some of us sensed that life would not be returning to normal. One crisis now piggy-backs upon another. We are facing crises involving food, energy, political stability, etc. There are deeper forces at work here, and deeper reasons. We have to wonder what the Russians and Chinese are planning. Why persist in a seemingly futile attack on Ukraine?
The minute we see that Russia is giving up on the war we will all breathe a sigh of relief. Yet the death of Dugin’s daughter signifies an escalation.
Below is the discussion with Nevin Gussack