Perspective: Why far-right nationalists like Steve Bannon have embraced a Russian ideologue
Former Trump campaign manager Stephen K. Bannon speaks to reporters March 25 before meeting a member of the Italian Democratic Party in Rome. By Brandon W. Hawk Brandon W. Hawk is an assistant professor of English at Rhode Island College who writes about the Middle Ages, biblical apocrypha, and intersections with pop culture. April 16 at 6:00 AM Stephen K. Bannon is back.
One key to understanding Dugin’s politics is his fixation on the Middle Ages. His website is plastered with medieval imagery and iconography: Stock images of icons of saints, Byzantine mosaics, manuscripts and church architecture abound. In his writings, too, Dugin idealizes a fictional version of the Middle Ages, one that stands in stark contrast to the modern world and liberalism, which he rejects.
A vital component of Dugin’s rejection of modernity is an embrace of conservative Orthodox Christianity and, with it, sharp anti-Semitism. But this too is ahistoric. Dugin, Bannon and other right-wing fundamentalists use the racist dog-whistle term “Judeo-Christian,” which seems to indicate shared religious values, but through supersessionism, it erases differences and eliminates Judaism by appropriating it for Christianity.
Yet his notions have little to do with the actual Middle Ages. Rather than a historically accurate portrayal of the complex period, he cobbles together the bits of the Middle Ages that best suit his political philosophy. Ironically, for all of Dugin’s disdain for modernity, his views are modern at their core because they are rooted in 18th- and 19th-century constructions of nationalism.
Dugin’s ideas have infused right-wing circles, an influence apparent from his numerous appearances in “The Complete Glossary of the Trumpist Alt-right.” As others have charted, white supremacists have fallen in love with the Middle Ages. The white supremacists in Charlottesville embraced medieval imagery, and members of the alt-right and political actors like Bannon regularly deify the Middle Ages.
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