There is a specter haunting the neocons. it is the specter of Russia, which has been the same specter haunting their ancestors settled in America. The new term of art to sell this paranoia is “Eurasianism.” Maybe it will be “Duginism,” after the Russian political scientist Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin. The later is easier for pundits on TV and radio to pronounce so that’s the one that probably sticks, but you never know. Maybe they come up with some new way to personalize the old tribal fear.

Steve Sailer has written about the subject, but only superficially. Most of the paleocons, which make up the bulk of his audience, are not all that interested in how younger dissidents have responded to Dugin’s writing. The paleo-crowd simply does not care beyond demanding the US stay the hell out of the problems of Eurasia. Steve’s information and comments will therefore be received without too much fanfare. I may be reading it wrong, but that’s not a crowd looking for dragons to slay.

National Review is another matter. Given that they are wholly owned by the neocons at this point, they have to obsess over this new thing. Not only are they looking for a reason to restart the Cold War, they need to find a way to justify their embrace of multiculturalism. They had some guy named Robert Zubrin write a piece on Eurasianism. His biography suggests he is a very bright guy, but the tone of the article suggests he lies awake at night, straining to hear the hoof beats.

The roots of Eurasianism go back to czarist émigrés interacting with fascist thinkers in between-the-wars France and Germany. But in recent years, its primary exponent has been the very prominent and prolific political theorist Aleksandr Dugin.

Nazism, it will be recalled, was an abbreviation for National Socialism. National Bolshevism, therefore, put itself forth as an ideology that relates to National Socialism in much the same way as Bolshevism relates to Socialism. This open self-identification with Nazism is also shown clearly in the NBP flag, which looks exactly like a Nazi flag, with a red background surrounding a white circle, except that the black swastika at the center is replaced by a black hammer and sickle.

The open devotion to Nazism is Dugin’s thought is remarkable. In his writings he celebrates the Waffen SS, murderers of millions of Russians during the war, as an ideal organization. He also approves of the most extreme crimes of Communism, going so far as to endorse the horrific 1937 purges that killed, among numerous other talented and loyal Soviet citizens, nearly the entire leadership of the Red Army — something that Stalin himself later had second thoughts about.

What Russia needs, says Dugin, is a “genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism.” On the other hand, “Liberalism, is an absolute evil. . . . Only a global crusade against the U.S., the West, globalization, and their political-ideological expression, liberalism, is capable of becoming an adequate response. . . . The American empire should be destroyed.”

This is the ideology behind the Putin regime’s “Eurasian Union” project. It is to this dark program, which threatens not only the prospects for freedom in Ukraine and Russia, but the peace of the world, that former Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych tried to sell “his” country. It is against this program that the courageous protesters in the Maidan took their stand and — with scandalously little help from the West — somehow miraculously prevailed. But now the chips are really down. The Ukrainians are being faced not with riot police, but with Russian divisions, subversion, and economic warfare. The country needs to be stabilized, and defended. The Ukrainians deserve our full support — and not just for reasons of sympathy for those resisting tyranny or respect for the brave. It is in the vital interest of America that freedom triumphs in Ukraine.

Without Ukraine, Dugin’s fascist Eurasian Union project is impossible, and sooner or later Russia itself will have to join the West and become free, leaving only a few despised and doomed islands of tyranny around the globe. But with Ukraine underfoot, the Eurasianists’ program can and will proceed, and a new Iron Curtain will fall into place imprisoning a large fraction of humanity in the grip of a monstrous totalitarian power that will become the arsenal of evil around the world for decades to come. That means another Cold War, trillions of dollars wasted on arms, accelerated growth of the national-security state at home, repeated proxy conflicts costing millions of lives abroad, and civilization itself placed at risk should a single misstep in the endless insane great-power game precipitate the locked and loaded confrontation into a thermonuclear exchange.

The 20th century saw three great-power confrontations. Two of them turned into total war. We lucked out on the third. Do we really want to roll those dice again? We will have to, unless the Eurasianist program is stopped.

The stakes in Ukraine could not be higher.

It is not hard to see where this goes. The usual suspects in Conservative Inc. will be chanting about the shadow of Eurasianism over Europe. or, it could be the specter of Duganism haunting the West. Mix in some Cold War nostalgia and the usual suspects will be wearing American flag lapel pins again. We are ruled by people who are defined by ancient hatreds and nostalgia for a time when being anti-Russian was enough to be on the side of angels. They will never leave Russia alone.