Question: On the one hand, the process of returning to traditional forms may indeed contribute to forming a Pan-African polity

Question: On the one hand, the process of returning to traditional forms may indeed contribute to forming a Pan-African polity. But if we look at the example of the European Union, we see that European political unity was achieved only when Europe had practically eliminated monarchies—with exceptions like Great Britain. Is there something fundamentally different in Africa’s meaning-making (if it even exists continent-wide as something unified) compared to European culture, where unification proceeded through dismantling monarchic systems and empires?

Alexander Dugin: If we consider European civilization as a civilization of Cartesian linear coordinates, applying this to Africa is entirely impossible. The structure of the African Logos is inherently polycentric and multifaceted. There, the interplay between Apollonian and Cybelian principles is distributed in an extraordinarily intricate manner. When you examine this more closely, you realize that none of the generalized models applicable to, say, classifying certain epochs of Western European civilization — premodern, modern, postmodern — hold any relevance here. They broadly fit the West, albeit with nuances, complex phase transitions, and overlaps. Yet Western Europe still conforms to this framework, and one could argue that modern European unity is built on dispersion. First came the destruction of empires and monarchies, then the shift to bourgeois nationalism, followed by the emergence of a civil European society — and ultimately, its annihilation and disappearance. It’s almost like a Spenglerian decline of Europe. Europe descended from its solar Medieval zenith to today’s bastardized liberalism and utter degeneration, which is now literally written on the faces of modern European politicians. This entire trajectory — from heroes to degenerates — Europe has traversed, and it has done so in a strikingly linear fashion: a succession of Logoi, the sun’s shift, then twilight, all the way down to the current Cybelian night of [Annalena] Baerbock or bug-eyed Greta Thunberg. From Roman emperors to such sickly, Graves’ disease-afflicted adolescents — unhinged, mentally unwell. Europe’s entire arc is, indeed, astonishingly straightforward.

When we apply similar methodologies to Africa, we observe nothing comparable here. Within a small tribe may survive some fragment — a shard of an extraordinary past that apparently once encompassed vast regions. Or conversely, the predictable Bantu culture — displaying no particular distinction among other Niger-Congo peoples — proliferates across the entirety of Central and Southern Africa. Yet within their apparent cultural homogeneity, they generate numerous additional poles and supplementary structures. Africa’s Logoi should be spoken of exclusively in the plural. The equilibrium of these elements is astonishing. Consider the solar Saharo-Nilotic tribes — utterly distinct from anything within the Niger-Congo world, yet themselves profoundly diverse. Thus, it is wholly inappropriate to apply here any analogue of that linear descent from grandeur into “the garbage pail” that characterises the Western trajectory.

We observe that America is currently undergoing a conservative revolution, though how this will ultimately unfold remains uncertain. But if we consider Europe, it stands as the last bastion demonstrating the sequential phases of global socio-civilisational degradation – a clear descent, as if down a staircase. Yet this schema is entirely inapplicable to Africa. For many African peoples exist simultaneously in multiple universes, multiple temporalities, multiple phases, bearing different Logoi – without this generating inevitable conflicts. Naturally, where Muslims have settled, for instance, the cultural situation becomes somewhat simplified. If we examine African Islam specifically, we find it remarkably diverse, complex and multidimensional – yet possessing certain common denominators.