“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.

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 16^th 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.