“Ukrainians aren’t human”

Thus wrote the late Darya Dugina, who was the other day blown to pieces by a car bomb probably meant for her father, Alexander.

I’d pity Dugin if I didn’t pity Ukrainians more

Or if you’d like the full robust quote: “We began this operation too delicately and kindly, while at times it’s necessary to be more cruel and less forgiving… Each [Ukrainian] city must have its own tribunal, like the one in the Hague, to investigate the crimes of these subhumans. For they aren’t human any longer.”

One assumes that the Ukrainians stopped being human on 24 February, 2022, when the Russians launched their bandit raid on the country. Or perhaps they became simian creatures in 2014, when the Russians started the war by annexing the Crimea. One way or the other, Darya is living, or rather now dead, proof of the proverb about apples and trees.

The theme of racially inferior species isn’t exactly new in modern history, so neither Darya nor her daddy can claim ownership of the idea. But they have added some indigenous twists to the seminal works by Hitler, Rosenberg, Streicher and Goebbels.

Alexander Dugin isn’t so much a creator as a synthesiser. He expertly weaved together the ideas of the Third Rome dating back to the 16th century, those of the GPU-inspired Eurasian Movement of the 1920s and German Nazism to create the supremacist fascist ideology Putin has adopted as his own.

With one minor exception: Putin has so far shunned Dugin’s virulent anti-Semitism, satisfying himself with the other aspects of his ‘philosophy’. Yet something tells me that oversight will soon be corrected – anti-Semitism is never too deep beneath the surface in Russia, and it always comes out sooner or later, especially when things aren’t going too well.

Both Dugins have agitated for war against the Ukraine since the time it was barely a twinkle in Putin’s eye.

The father has led the way since at least 2008, nominating the Ukraine as the first step on the way to creating a Russia “from Dublin to Vladivostok”. But the daughter echoed his ideas faithfully in her own writing, acting as a sort of Streicher to his Rosenberg.

The question is, whodunit? “Is it possible that Darya was killed by Russians?” asked one of my readers yesterday, to which I replied that, “Everything is possible.”

One possibility, that the Ukrainians did it, is vehemently denied by both the Ukrainian government and the Russian friends of that long-suffering nation.

Describing the explosion as a terrorist act, head of the Ukrainian President’s administration, Mikhail Podolyak, said: “I stress that the Ukraine definitely had nothing to do with this because we aren’t a criminal state like the Russian Federation, and especially not a terrorist state.”

I agree that the Ukrainian state isn’t criminal but, if it were indeed responsible for the assassination, I disagree that it would be a crime. There is a war going on, and the Dugins are legitimate targets.

The precedent was established at Nuremberg, where both Rosenberg and Streicher were hanged in 1946, even though neither of them had played a hands-on role in the Nazi crimes. Yet those crimes were committed in the name of an ideology, whose creators and promulgators were judged to be criminals themselves.

Those who think that the Dugins, along with other creators and champions of Russian Nazism, should be off-limits for attacks must also believe that Rosenberg and Streicher should have been spared at Nuremberg. Looking at some British Putinistas I know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they believed just that. But this isn’t a view shared by decent people.

The Israelis are known to have assassinated a few physicists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme. I have no moral problem with that: those who create physical weapons for an evil regime to annihilate a civilised nation are legitimate targets. However, I’d suggest that creators of ideological weapons are equally culpable – if not more so.

If I were a spokesman for the Ukrainian government, I’d happily take the credit for the assassination even if someone else was responsible. It’s important for the Russians to know that war isn’t just happening somewhere else, that they themselves can be targeted.

The inhuman monstrosity with which the Russian Nazis are conducting their bandit raid is fully comparable, in kind if not quite yet in scale, with the crimes committed by the German Nazis 80 years ago. That was seen as sufficient justification for the Allies to bomb Germany flat. Taking this as a precedent, bombing a car carrying an ideologue of Russian fascism strikes me as both just and strategically desirable.

But yes, of course it’s possible that Darya was killed by the Russians. They’ve used false-flag terrorism on Putin’s watch before when, for example, the FSB blew up several residential buildings in Russia as a pretext for starting the second Chechen war.

Putin might have sensed that the hatred of Ukrainians his propaganda had cultivated is losing its febrile pitch. Hence he might have counted on the assassination as a way of ratcheting up popular enthusiasm for the war, perhaps even for the use of nuclear weapons. That would be a fit answer to Darya’s lament about the Russians being “too delicate and kind” in the Ukraine.

It’s also possible that the Dugins fell victim of internecine squabbles within the ruling regime, which isn’t an unusual occurrence there. Murder is a reliable technique of political debate in Russia, especially over the past 20 years.

Then of course Dugin père has extensive business interests in addition to his ‘philosophy’, which is a factor of danger in a country whose economy is criminalised from top to bottom. It’s quite possible he was supposed to be ‘whacked’ for purely economic reasons. It’s even possible that Darya was targeted specifically, for whatever reason, such as sending a message to her father.

But all such possibilities lack the poetic justice of Ukrainian involvement. Taking the war into Russia, if only on a limited scale, is a proper response to the ghastly crimes being committed by Russian Nazis in the Ukraine.

P.S. Dugin, by the way, is the darling of assorted Western (including British) extremists who see him as a kindred soul. Those who still feel that way after all the Russians have done should be hit by personal sanctions — just like the Dugins were.

That would be denying their right to free expression, but then so was the execution of Lord Haw Haw. Enemy propaganda shouldn’t be confused with free speech.

8 thoughts on ““Ukrainians aren’t human””

  1. Does the Ukraine have a foreign intelligence service? If she does, I can’t imagine it being as insidious as the FSB. A Ukrainian cell operating in the belly of the beast seems rather too ambitious. However much they may desire such a mission.

    I refuse to believe that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ because it so violently conflicts with the American psyche “Bomb our own soil? Good God you can’t be serious!” Whereas it seems perfectly appropriate for the sado-masochistic Russians. Although I suspect the intention was to kill the pair of them. To bereave a man like Dugin would seem to be a dangerous course of action. Who knows what he might do now?

  2. Rosenberg and Streicher were arrested, tried and convicted before they were executed. And they were executed not so much for expressing nasty opinions as for the orders they issued as high officials of the NSDAP. And neither of them was a 29-year-old woman who (one might charitably hope) merely parroted her nasty father’s nasty opinions because he was her father.

    As for William “Lord Haw-Haw” Joyce, he was executed (after solemn consideration of an appeal) for treason.

    This assassination isn’t a legitimate punishment for a proven crime, but a grubby little murder.

    1. With the benefit of hindsight, would you have felt the same way had someone assassinated Hitler in, say, 1934? Or, for that matter, Lenin in 1917? I too prefer due process, but before it can start, an evil regime has to be defeated. Until then, I’ll settle for palliatives.

      There is also a difference between merely expressing nasty opinions and creating a nasty ideology on which an evil regime is acting in an evil way.

      1. In 1934 Hitler was 44 or 45 years old. In 1917 Lenin was 46 or 47. Neither of them was likely to be under the influence of an admired parent, or to be excusable by the foolishness of youth. The assassination of either or both of them in the specified years wouldn’t have displeased me, though I’d still have had reservations about the use of assassination as a political weapon.

        But when any of the three were in their twenties, we owners of time machines might have tried buying them a few drinks and having a chat with them before resorting to assassination.

        Also, do you think that Darya Dugina, aged 29, is the creator of a nasty ideology that is responsible for the crimes of Vladimir Putin, aged 69?

        1. You seem to attach more significance to age than I do. A person of 29, as opposed to 19, is a fully responsible adult as much as a 69-year-old. As to Darya’s responsibility for the nasty ideology, that depends on what you mean. As I made clear in this piece, and especially the next one, neither Darya nor her father created the evil ideology in question. Yet they, especially the father, were major influences in moving it from the margins of society into the mainstream. The idology successfully brainwashed the Russian population, and the Dugins were among those who held and directed the hose. That, as far as I am concerned, makes them legitimate targets in the war Putin’s evil regime is waging by evil means. Certainly more legitimate than tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians targeted simply for being Ukrainian.

    2. It is interesting to note that this is an area in which conservatism overlaps with the woke ideology; contra Ricky Gervais, words can indeed be a form of violence. Making more violence a justifiable response.

  3. Mr. Dugin was in the car behind his daughter. And had just switched cars unexpectedly? As it is reported and does raise a lot of questions if true.

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