The Idea of “Progress” as the Basis for Political Colonization and Cultural Racism - Alexander Dugin

The Idea of “Progress” as the Basis for Political Colonization and Cultural Racism - Alexander Dugin

The identity of “modernization” and “Westernization” requires some clarifications, which will lead us to very important practical conclusions.

The issue is that the formation in Europe of the unprecedented civilization of the modern era led to a particular cultural arrangement, which at first formed the self-consciousness of the Europeans themselves and later also of all those who found themselves under their influence. The sincere conviction grew that the path of development of Western culture, and especially the transition from traditional society to contemporary society, was not only a peculiarity of Europe and the peoples that populate it, but a universal law of development, obligatory for all other countries and peoples. Europeans, “people of the West,” were the first to pass through this decisive phase, but all others are thought fatally doomed to go along the same path, because this is the supposedly “objective” logic of world history. “Progress” demands it. 

The idea arose that the West is the obligatory model of the historical development of all mankind, and world history — as in the past, so in the present and future — was and is conceived of as a repetition of those stages that the West, in its development, already passed through or is presently approaching, in advance of all others. In all places where Europeans encountered “non-Western” cultures, which preserved “traditional society” and its way, Europeans made an unequivocal diagnosis: “barbarism,” “savagery,” “backwardness,” “absence of civilization,” “sub-normality.” Thus, gradually the West became the idea of a normative criterion for the evaluation of the peoples and cultures of the entire world. The further they were from the West (in its newest historical phase), the more “defective” and “inferior” they were thought to be.

The Idea of “Progress” as the Basis for Political Colonization and Cultural Racism - Alexander Dugin

The identity of “modernization” and “Westernization” requires some clarifications, which will lead us to very important practical conclusions.

The issue is that the formation in Europe of the unprecedented civilization of the modern era led to a particular cultural arrangement, which at first formed the self-consciousness of the Europeans themselves and later also of all those who found themselves under their influence. The sincere conviction grew that the path of development of Western culture, and especially the transition from traditional society to contemporary society, was not only a peculiarity of Europe and the peoples that populate it, but a universal law of development, obligatory for all other countries and peoples. Europeans, “people of the West,” were the first to pass through this decisive phase, but all others are thought fatally doomed to go along the same path, because this is the supposedly “objective” logic of world history. “Progress” demands it. 

The idea arose that the West is the obligatory model of the historical development of all mankind, and world history — as in the past, so in the present and future — was and is conceived of as a repetition of those stages that the West, in its development, already passed through or is presently approaching, in advance of all others. In all places where Europeans encountered “non-Western” cultures, which preserved “traditional society” and its way, Europeans made an unequivocal diagnosis: “barbarism,” “savagery,” “backwardness,” “absence of civilization,” “sub-normality.” Thus, gradually the West became the idea of a normative criterion for the evaluation of the peoples and cultures of the entire world. The further they were from the West (in its newest historical phase), the more “defective” and “inferior” they were thought to be.