This is Part 2 of a series on the writing of Dugin (see Part 1 here). This post highlights some key points the author makes in his book The Great Awakening vs The Great Reset, translated into English in 2021 (a very short book, more like an essay at 86 pages of well spaced text). Some notes:

""Nominalism" laid the foundation for future liberalism, both ideologically and economically. Here humans were seen only as individuals and nothing else, and all forms of collective identity (religion, class, etc.) were to be abolished. Likewise, the thing was seen as absolute private property, as a concrete, separate thing which could easily be attributed as property to this or that individual owner. Nominalism prevailed first of all in England, became widespread in Protestant countries and gradually became the main philosophical matrix of New Age - in religion (individual relations of man with God), in science (atomism and materialism), in politics (preconditions of bourgeois democracy), in economy (market and private property), in ethics (utilitarianism, individualism, relativism, pragmatism)" (p. 8).

"All who oppose them are, in their eyes, "forces of darkness". And by this logic, the "enemies of open society" must be dealt with in their own severity. "If the enemy does not surrender, he will be destroyed." The enemy is anyone who questions liberalism, globalism, individualism, nominalism in all their manifestations. This is the new ethic of liberalism. It's nothing personal. Everyone has the right to be a liberal, but no one has the right to be anything else." (p. 16)

"Another argument of the Great Awakening lies with the peoples of Islamic civilization. That liberal globalism and Western hegemony are radically rejected by Islamic culture and the very Islamic religion on which that culture is based is obvious. Of course, during the colonial period and under the power and economic influence of the West, some Islamic states found themselves in the orbit of capitalism, but in virtually all Islamic countries there is a sustained and profound rejection of liberalism and especially of modern globalist liberalism." (p. 37)

"The context of the Great Awakening could become an ideological platform for the unification of the Islamic world as a whole as well, since opposition to the "Great Reset" is an unconditional imperative for almost every Islamic country. This is what makes it possible to take the globalists' strategy and opposition to it as the common denominator. Awareness of the scale of the Great Awakening would allow, within certain limits, to cancel out the acuteness of local contradictions so as to contribute to the formation of another pole of global resistance." (p. 38) 

For decades, globalization was promoted as a process to increase global prosperity. In 2005, John Ralston Saul published "The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World" to make the case that globalism was on the decline. Many have praised the book as seeing well beyond its time, particularly as the financial crises followed shortly thereafter and changed many perspectives.

To set the opening scene, he writes: "Globalization emerged in the 1970s as if form nowhere, fully grown, enrobed in an aura of inclusivity. Advocates and believers argued with audacity that, through the prism of a particular school of economics, societies around the world would be taken in new, interwoven and positive directions. The mission was converted into policy and law over twenty years – the 1980s and 90s – with the force of declared inevitability. Now, after three decades, we can see the results. These include some remarkable successes, some disturbing failures and a collection of what might be best called running sores. In other words, the outcome has had nothing to do with truth or inevitability and a great deal to do with an experimental economic theory presented as Darwinian fact. It was an experiment that attempted simultaneously to reshape economic, political and social landscapes." (p. 3)

The book traces the emergence of the idea, its establishment and diverse consequences, its fall, and then predictions (written in 2005) of the future. There are glimmers of hope from the past, where new ideas turned the fall into opportunity. However, it seems negative nationalism has filled much of the ideological vacuum. Saul characterizes negative nationalism as "often dependent on ethnic loyalty, an appropriation of God to one's side, a certain pride in ignorance, and a conviction that you have been permanently wounded - that is, an active mythology of having been irreparably wronged" (p. 246). He says, in 2005, that the "general atmosphere is one of false populism, which in turn feeds into negative nationalism." (p. 253)

When the author looked forward, again in 2005, some changes were well sighted: "It is hard for any society that slips into a vacuum to admit that it is no longer advancing in any particular direction. That is particularly difficult for those individuals who hold power. Their vocabulary, their image of themselves, even their skills have all be honed to fit the certainty of a direction that no longer prevails. The sign of mediocre leaders is that they believe things will continue as they have" (p. 217).