Darya Dugina's assassination was almost certainly organised by the Russian FSB. Assuming this is true, then:
1. Order must've been explicitly/implicitly given by Putin 2. It was Darya, not Alexander who was the target 3. Alexander knew it ofc. He's just making show for a public
If Alexander was notified about the impending assassination of his daughter Darya, that explains the strangeness with changing cars. Alexander took *her* car, while she took his one. Why?
Most probably the plan was to present Alexander Dugin as the real target of assassination
That had an additional benefit. If we make the world believe that assassins targeted Alexander, but got Darya, the entire operation looks clumsy. It looks as if it is done by someone who does not have full control over the situation and over the territory. Not by Russians
It is the perceived clumsiness of the operation (they wanted to get a dad but got his daughter) that makes it look as if it is done by the Ukrainians. If it was done by the FSB, who fully control Moscow, they would kill the person whom they intended to kill
May be they did?
If Putin wants to escalate the war in Ukraine or political purges within Russia, he needs a pretext to justify his "outrage". Some "terrorist attack" preferably. And Putin can't just blow up residential houses with nonames: he had already used this trick before
An overly ambitious golden kid who:
1. Privately advertises *herself* as a person who knows how to fight a war in conversations with influential people 2. Wants to sell *herself* as the Russian nationalist leader 3. Damaged relations with her dad
would be a perfect candidature
It's not that Putin saw Darya as a threat. That's highly implausible. It's much more probable that he was actively looking for a sacrificial animal and sacrificing someone troublesome kinda makes sense. Solve two problems at once: big one (pretext for escalation) and a small one
Alexander was probably notified about this decision only after it was taken. But if it was the dad who suggested his daughter as a sacrificial animal, I wouldn't be much surprised. Perhaps, he knew what she's telling about the great and wise Dugin behind his back. The end
Scientific rationality is overrated, evolutionary rationality is underrated. If such behaviour is common, it suggests it is evolutionary stable = rational
Tribe needs mythology to unite it. And mythology must be dumbed down for the entire tribe to get it, otherwise it won't work
It is absolutely rational to believe in some dumbed down crap. Reality is incomprehensible in all of its complexity anyway. And when you start adding 1st nuance, 2nd nuance, 3rd nuance, it can't unite the tribe anymore. Working tribal mythologies are very dumb. Hence, rational
That's a common mechanism of social changes. When a party is small, its myth is nuanced, complicated. But once it expands, it *must* dumb it down to unite everyone. As a result, the old core (inner party) has a nuanced myth and the newcomers (outer party) have dumbed down version
"There is destructive energy in the air this month and it will manifest someway. So I must take preemptive action and trigger a crisis *of my choice*. All the bad energy gonna flow there and voila, it's all gone"
That's very easy to understand. In some countries they trigger forest fires for this very reason. There's lots of dry wood in the forest, so we create a controllable fire artificially. Otherwise, we'd have to wait for the uncontrollable one, which is more dangerous
In other places they provoke the avalanches with special cannons for this very reason. There's *objectively* lots of snow on the mountains, so if we just let it lie there, it will go down in an uncontrollable avalanche. Creating a controllable one artificially is way better
Most analysts would dismiss a hypothesis that numerology plays a big role in Russian scheduling of key events (invasion, important political assassination, etc)
While it is almost certainly true.
Russia is run by state security. Who are not "rational"
Let me get it straight. There are plenty of absolutely "rational" (Western-style) people in Russian bureaucracy. They're smart, they're following the recent Western intellectual fashion, mimic the language, the conceptual framework
But they're not rulers. They're servants
Russia has high ranked officials who would easily communicate with people on the US campuses and fit in well. *These people do not make decisions*. They follow orders, that's it. When hearing an order they consider dumb/counterproductive/dangerous, they just bow and execute it
For high quality investigative journalism from Russia I strongly recommend following the Агентство (Agentstvo) media. They're not super big or super famous, and that's good. World famous media do not feel evolutionary pressure to do their homework. These guys do, and do it well
Their first material - on Shoygu was the work of art. Strongly recommended
This one may be even more interesting. On the Putin's mortality. What do we know of his health, of which doctors visit him and how often, which procedures he is taking (including baths from deer antlers), what and how is reported in media
Some are asking, why should even care about Darya Dugina's assassination? Because:
1. It is almost certainly the FSB false flag operation 2. Most likely, it will be used as a pretext for strikes that had been already pre-scheduled for the Ukrainian Independence Day this Thursday
Once again. Strikes later this week are highly likely, they have must been prescheduled long ago. Most probably, on Thursday-Friday. It's quite probable that Putin wants to scale up and sacrificed Dugina to needs justify future strikes as counter-terrorist action or sth like that
Assuming this is true, why was Dugina chosen as a sacrificial lamb? Presidential plenipotentiary Schegolev's speech on her funerals gives some idea:
1. Alexander (and Darya) Dugina were nobody in the Russian system of power 2. But the West believed they were somebody
Let's be honest, what Yeltsin did in 1991 certainly had an *element* of military coup, to say the least. Yeah, it's kinda nice he had crowds on his side. But the fact that a few army regiments and lots of KGB joined him didn't hurt either. Peaceful protests are hugely overrated
In fact, it was the coup element of 1991 that determined the face of the Russian army leadership till around 1996. Upstarts with no relevant experience, credentials or network heavily dominated the military command. Why? They just happened to switch to Yeltsin in August 1991
I see why media and academia tend to wildly exaggerate the power of peaceful protests. But honestly I'm sick of that BS. For a regime change to happen you need at least few regiments to switch sides. If that doesn't happen, regime not gonna change. Army always beats the "people"