Eurasianism in Sweden - the reception of Dugin's theories in Swedish identitarian forums

Abstract: With Russia becoming increasingly hostile towards the West with the culmination of the full-scale invasion into Ukraine in February of 2022, the rhetoric of Putin has been linked to the philosophy of a geopolitically aggressive right-wing sociologist called Alexander Dugin. With several previous statements pertaining to the delegitimization of the sovereignty of Europe Dugin has previously argued for the Finlandization of the continent as a way for Russia to reactivate its imperial past. Despite of this he is popular within the European right-wing, not least within the Swedish identitarian movement. Combining content analysis with narrative inquiry, the aim of this thesis is to understand how Dugin’s theories relate to the views of Swedish identitarians. I have found that they resonate with Dugin’s antiliberalism as the key factor that fractures all tradition and collective identities, but I also found that they omit or downplay features of Dugin’s theories that would threaten their own Swedish identity if realized: such as his antinationalism and categorical dismissal of all liberal values, including freedom of speech. I end the thesis by presenting a theoretically informed interpretation of why this could be the case, arguing that Dugin succeeds in presenting a narrative of ‘ontological security seeking’ which gives comforting answers to existential anxieties which I believe overshadows the threats to the ‘Swedishness’ of their identity.