Why Christians Should Test Controversial Thinkers, Not Fear Them
The Changing World Order series is my attempt to help Christians understand the great civilizational shift now taking place in the world. In the series, I examine Ray Dalio’s theory of economic and imperial Big Cycles, Samuel Huntington’s thesis on the Clash of Civilizations, and Aleksandr Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory – not to accept these thinkers uncritically, but to test their insights through Scripture, Christian civilization, and a Reformed biblical worldview. My goal is to show how Christians can understand the decline of Liberal Modernity, the rise of a multipolar world, and the opportunity before us to recover a truly Christian vision of culture, politics, and civilization.
The reception and sales of the third volume, my book on Aleksandr Dugin, has surprised me. I knew from the beginning that Ray Dalio would be easier for readers to approach because his framework is practical, economic, and familiar. I knew Samuel Huntington would be easier to grasp because Christians already sense that the world is moving from ideological conflict toward civilizational conflict. But Dugin is different. He is controversial, foreign, philosophical, and almost always introduced to Americans through caricature. He is also difficult to understand unless you have a grasp on the history of Western philosophy including many recent esoteric and anti-Modernist thinkers. So the fact that this book is finding an audience tells me something important: thoughtful Christians are beginning to understand that the crisis of the West cannot be explained by ordinary left-right politics.
I am not asking Christians to become Duginists. I am asking them to become discerning Bereans. That is why I welcome honest criticism of Dugin. Debate is healthy. Christians should not be afraid of difficult ideas, nor should we swallow any thinker whole simply because he attacks the same enemies we oppose. But we must also understand that articles about Dugin often come with an agenda. J. Michael Waller’s article on Dugin is not merely an academic review of Dugin’s philosophy. It is a warning piece written from a national-security perspective, aimed at convincing American traditionalists that Dugin is not just wrong, but spiritually and geopolitically dangerous. Waller frames Dugin as a false prophet whose “price” is “the end of the United States and Western civilization.”
There also appears to be a secondary purpose: to discredit Tucker Carlson by associating him with Dugin. The article does not begin with Dugin’s philosophy, but with the insinuation that Dugin is “Tucker Carlson’s” favorite philosopher. That framing does a great deal of work before the argument even begins. If Tucker is willing to interview or platform Dugin, then Tucker himself must be flirting with anti-American, pro-Russian, or pagan-imperial ideas. This is a common guilt-by-association tactic. Rather than first asking whether Tucker’s interview helped expose Americans to a censored or misunderstood thinker, the article uses Dugin as a weapon to discredit Tucker and, by extension, any American traditionalist who is willing to question the official Liberal-globalist consensus.
That does not mean Waller is wrong about everything. Far from it. Some of his warnings are worth hearing. But Christians should act as wise Bereans on all matters sacred and secular. We should test every claim. We should compare accusations with primary sources. We should distinguish between what Dugin actually says, what he implies, what he said in earlier phases of his development, and what his critics say he must mean. My book is not an attempt to baptize Dugin. It is an attempt to read him fairly, critique him biblically, and ask what Reformed and evangelical Christians can learn from his assault on Liberal Modernity.
The first charge is that Dugin wants the United States destroyed. This is misleading. Dugin certainly opposes the American-led Atlanticist order, the unipolar liberal empire, and the geopolitical system that uses American power to impose Liberal Modernity on the rest of the world. But that is not the same thing as hating America as a Christian civilization. In my own book, I make a distinction between America as a historic Christian civilization and “the West” as a Liberal ideological system. When I speak of fighting “the West within the west,” I do not mean destroying my country. I mean resisting the Liberal worldview that has hollowed out America’s Christian inheritance.
The second charge is that Dugin rejects the American founding and Protestant political principles. Here, Waller touches a real disagreement I have with Dugin. Dugin often traces Modernity through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, individualism, and Anglo-American sea power. I think he is wrong to collapse the Protestant Reformation into Liberal Modernity. In my book, I argue that America was founded first as a Christian civilization through families, churches, covenants, compacts, and colonies, and only later became a Liberal nation-state. The Mayflower Compact, the Puritan vision, Reformed political theology, and Christian self-government are not the disease. They are part of the cure. My impression overall, as I note in my book, is that Dugin has not spent a lot of time reading Calvin and other Reformed thinkers. In fact, I think he’d find kindred spirits in Jonathan Edwards as a philosopher and the founder of the current Christian Reconstructionist movement, R.J. Rushdoony. In recent interviews, Dugin has admitted that the North American logos, on which conservatives ought to rebuild, is Protestant Christianity, although he himself disagrees with some major tenets as a Russian Orthodox philosopher.
The third charge is that Dugin built the Fourth Political Theory around National Bolshevism and Marxism. This is one of Waller’s weaker claims. It is true that Dugin was involved in National Bolshevism in the 1990s. It is also true that he has said certain aspects of Marxism may be useful as tools of critique. But this does not mean that more mature Fourth Political Theory is simply Marxism in disguise. In my book, I explain that Dugin eventually rejected the idea that communism and fascism could simply be rehabilitated. Communism without class struggle ceases to be communism. Fascism without race or state supremacy ceases to be fascism. Dugin is searching the wreckage of failed ideologies, but that does not mean he is trying to resurrect them unchanged.
The fourth charge is that Dugin has a soft spot for fascism and National Socialism. Again, Waller begins with something real and then presses it too far. Dugin does read thinkers who are dangerous, compromised, or associated with the far right. He draws from Heidegger, Evola, and other anti-modern thinkers whom Christians should approach with great caution. But Dugin also explicitly rejects fascism as a political theory. In my book, I point out that one of the false media narratives about Dugin is that he is simply a fascist. Fascism’s political subject is race, nation, or state. Dugin rejects that subject and seeks another political subject in civilization, culture, and Being (Dasein).
The fifth charge is that Dugin is a Russian imperialist rather than a defender of national sovereignty. This is probably Waller’s strongest geopolitical warning. Dugin’s early geopolitical writings are Russia-centered. His concept of Eurasia can sound imperial, and Christians should not trade American Liberal empire for Russian civilizational empire. But Waller again fails to distinguish between Dugin’s Russian geopolitical program and the broader philosophical insight of multipolarity. I do not want Russia to rule the world. I do not want America to rule the world either. I want a world of Christian civilization, ordered liberty, national repentance, and peoples living under God rather than under a global Liberal machine.
The sixth charge is that Dugin wants to erase individual freedom. Here the disagreement turns on definitions. Dugin rejects the Liberal individual as the subject of politics. I also reject the Liberal individual when “individual rights” are used to overthrow God, family, church, moral law, and the created order. But I do not reject the dignity of the person. In my book, I distinguish between Liberal individual rights and biblical human rights. Human rights come from God. They belong to persons made in the image of God. Liberal individual rights, by contrast, often become a counterfeit freedom from all duty, all authority, all hierarchy, and all moral order.
The seventh charge is that Dugin is not a Christian. This is where Waller moves from political analysis into theological judgment. I understand the concern. Dugin’s Eastern Orthodox framework, which also blends in mysticism, esotericism, and attraction to pre-Modernist metaphysics raise serious questions for evangelical and Reformed Christians. I address those objections in my book. But it is not enough simply to declare him a pagan. Dugin professes Eastern Orthodox Christianity. He has stated in recent interviews that he sees salvation as coming only through faith in Jesus Christ. He speaks in Christian categories. He opposes Liberalism partly because he sees it as anti-Christian and post-human. I would rather say this: Dugin is a Christian thinker with Eastern Orthodox opinions, not a Reformed teacher to be followed.
The eighth charge is that Dugin wants to co-opt world religions for political indoctrination. This accusation also begins with a real issue. Dugin does call for traditional religions and anti-Liberal forces to unite against the common enemy of Liberal Modernity. That can become dangerous if it becomes syncretism. But there is a biblical distinction between religious union and limited co-belligerence. Christians can cooperate with Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Jews, Hindus, or secular traditionalists against abortion, transhumanism, globalist tyranny, pornography, anti-family ideology, and cultural nihilism without pretending that all religions are equally true. Waller treats all cooperation as compromise. I argue for discernment.
The ninth charge concerns the Jewish Zionist question. Antisemitism is the most serious accusation and delicate part of Waller’s article. He accuses Dugin of promoting Jewish conspiracy theories, distinguishing between traditional Jews and Atlanticist Jews, and using antisemitic tropes as tools of geopolitical warfare. If these claims are accurately sourced and contextualized, Christians should rebuke them without hesitation. However, I would not let a polemical article become the final word. This is an area where I would want primary-source documentation, careful context, and direct comparison with Dugin’s mature position. A future edition of my book could profitably include an appendix on Dugin, Judaism, Zionism, and the charge of antisemitism, and an analysis of his more recent book on the Semitic and Jewish Logos in the Noomakhia series.
The tenth charge is that Dugin seeks a pagan future. Waller is right that Dugin uses pagan categories, Greek metaphysics, myth, symbolism, and civilizational archetypes. This is especially evident in his broader philosophical project, including Noomakhia. But again, the Christian response should not be panic. It should be discernment. The Greeks also had metaphysics. The Egyptians had wisdom. The Babylonians had learning. Paul knew pagan poets and could quote them without becoming a pagan. The question is not whether Dugin uses non-Christian and even anti-Christian materials. He does. The question is whether Christians can identify truth, reject error, and confess that the only true Logos is Jesus Christ.
So what does Waller get factually wrong?
- He treats Dugin’s more mature The Fourth Political Theory (2009) as if it were still the National Bolshevism he advocated as a young man in Foundations of Geopolitics (1997).
- He treats Dugin’s study of communism and fascism as endorsement.
- He downplays or ignores Dugin’s explicit rejection of fascist racism.
- He collapses anti-Atlanticism into hatred of America itself.
- He treats Dugin’s professed Christianity as fraudulent without proving the case.
- He interprets multipolarity as if it can mean only Russian imperial rule.
- He ignores the fact that Dugin has written roughly 100 books, most of which have not been translated into English.
- He never mentions that Dugin’s Noomakhia series alone consists of 28 volumes, many of them substantial works.
These are not merely differences of tone. They are places where a serious reader must say: this is too simple.
But where is Waller useful? He reminds Christians not to read Dugin as a guru. I agree with that completely. Dugin is not a Reformed theologian. He is not a Puritan. He is not an American constitutionalist. He is not writing from within our Protestant tradition. He draws from thinkers whom I would not recommend as purely safe guides. His Russian civilizational commitments are not my commitments. His Eastern Orthodox mysticism is not my Reformed theology. His language about Being, Dasein, and metaphysics can easily become obscure, speculative, or spiritually dangerous to a novice who will swallow these ideas whole.
The deeper difference between Waller’s article and my book is not that he criticizes Dugin while I defend him. That is not the issue. The deeper difference is that Waller wants to keep American conservatives inside a national-security framework, while I want Christians to think beyond Liberalism altogether. Waller says, in effect, “Dugin is dangerous; stay away.” I say, “Dugin might be misleading to some if he is read uncritically, but provides many useful and unique insights if read critically under Scripture.”
One approach trains fear. The other trains discernment.
This matters because most American Christians still do not understand Liberalism as a political theology. They think the problem is merely wokeness, Democrats, globalism, bad court decisions, or cultural Marxism. Dugin helps expose something deeper. He sees the long arc of Modernity, the collapse of Liberalism into post-humanism, the failure of the three great modern political theories, and the need for a civilizational alternative. That is why Christians should not dismiss him too quickly. We may reject many of his answers while still learning from the questions he forces us to ask.
My own answer is not Eurasian. It is not pagan. It is not Orthodox imperial mysticism. It is not Russian messianism. It is not fascism, communism, or Liberalism. My answer is that America must recover her own Christian logos. We need a biblical, Protestant, Reformed, evangelical, pro-family, pro-life, postmillennial, and civilizational answer to Liberal Modernity. We should be willing to learn why Dugin’s critique is powerful and why Liberalism is failing.
That is the real value of studying the Fourth Political Theory. It forces us to stop pretending that the old categories are sufficient. Liberalism has not conserved Christianity. Conservatism has not conserved the family. Individualism has not protected human dignity. The secular nation-state has not produced moral order. A Christian people must think more deeply than slogans. We must ask what it means for a civilization to be ordered under God, grounded in Scripture, formed by families and churches, and directed toward the reign of Christ.
Waller’s most outrageous claim is the title of the article, “Ten Points to Understand Aleksandr Dugin. It should rather read, “Ten Things I Want You to Believe About Dugin,” written by someone who either has not engaged Dugin’s larger body of work or has chosen not to represent it in its full complexity. Waller simply repeats the neoconservative panic narrative.
If all someone wants is a reason to fear Aleksandr Dugin, Waller’s article will provide one. But if someone wants to understand what Dugin actually argues, where he is right, where he is wrong, why he attracts serious readers, and how Christians can respond without losing biblical clarity, then my book was written for that purpose. I do not ask readers to accept Dugin. I ask them to examine him like Bereans.
The real question is not whether American Christians should become followers of Aleksandr Dugin. They should not. The real question is whether we can defeat Liberal Modernity without surrendering America’s Christian inheritance, the authority of Scripture, the dignity of the human person, or the lordship of Jesus Christ. That is why I wrote “Aleksandr Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory in Biblical Perspective”. It is not a book for people who want propaganda. It is a book for Christians who want the truth.
Varn Vlog: Jay Rogers on Aleksandr Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory. I also offer a Master Volume that compiles all three Changing World Order books into one. The above interview refers to this longer 700-page book, but mainly covers topics related to Dugin.
