Elon Musk’s father Errol didn’t say much as he sat among a group of far-right ideologues in Moscow on Monday.
He didn’t need to.
The presence of the world’s richest man’s father turned what had been simply been seen as the murky, criminal, and crazy into a mainstream celebration of war on “liberal civilization.”
It was the seal of approval for Putin’s alt-right Rasputin, Alexander Dugin and a sign of just how seriously to take his movement and its demand for an all-out war on liberalism—one which has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, many of them Russian.
The whole event was put together by Dugin’s publisher, Tsargrad, which translates as the “tsar’s city.”
Beside Musk Sr., 79, was a motley crew of anti-mainstream Western politicians, disaffected one-time Western intelligence analysts, a Columbia professor known for his endorsement of the war in Ukraine, and a phalanx of Russian nationalists.
“The new world order will depend on Moscow’s words and actions now,” Tsargrad wrote of the main message for the gathering, Forum Future 2050. “No money was needed to buy speakers like Musk. They clearly love to participate, fight for human souls in this ideological and geopolitical war.”
Errol and Elon of course have an on-off estrangement, but they are sufficiently intertwined that the older Musk’s presence was a victory for the Russians—helping make Tsargrad mainstream.
Alexander Verkhovsky, a Moscow-based expert on rising far-right movements, told the Daily Beast, “Tsargrad is the Kremlin’s channel for the most radical far-right ideas. If before today, Tsargrad and its revolutionary, Dugin, were considered shadowy and unpopular, Musk helped to turn their stage into a mainstream platform.”
Dugin is editor-in-chief of Tsargrad, with extraordinary ability to whisper his thoughts to Vladimir Putin—including his enthusiasm for the war in Ukraine.
Dugin, 63, calls himself “the world’s most dangerous philosopher.” And not without reason.
He admits that starting from age 18, he has dedicated his life to the creation of what he calls the “Russian macro-continent project.” To do it, he advocates war, against ‘the civilization of Western globalists and liberals.’”
Since 2014, Dugin has been the architect of, and chief ideological warrior for, the “Russian World” concept of a Russian takeover of Ukraine.
Resurrection or, as Dugin calls it, “awakening,” of the Greater Russian Idea has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
This bloodiest of wars Dugin called for has been destroying dozens of cities in Europe’s largest country for more than ten years.
“Many Russians who read Dugin joined the insurgency in 2014,” Verkhovsky confirmed.
The victory in Ukraine “is a matter of Russia’s existence,” Dugin insists. He hates Europe and is calling for “full readiness of the Russian nuclear arsenal.”
If there was any doubt that Musk’s presence pleased the Kremlin, sitting beside him on the stage was Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who talked about the Russia’s opposition to the liberal West. The background wall behind them was covered in “Tsargrad” logos. The entire scene looked wild.
“In 2002, when Vladimir Putin was the president, Russia, India and China had the first summit, since then the Russia-India-China alliance has been established without much noise but not hiding.” Lavrov turned to Musk and began to talk about the fight against his and Dugin’s idea of “evil”: the Western alliance.
“And you are absolutely right, when you say that it is the West, now Europe primarily, and not all of Europe, by the way, but this aggressive core, led by [British prime minister Keir] Starmer, [German chancellor Friedrich]Merz, [French president Emmanuel] Macron, in addition to the fact that they are fighting against us, supplying Ukraine with weapons,” Lavrov said.
All of this was after Musk’s father posed for pictures on Red Square on Sunday with a smile from ear to ear. He complained to Tsargrad in an interview about his son suffering from PTSD after his conflict with Trump, and said that, “Russians are some of the smartest people on the planet, others remind me of sheep… it’s boring for me to travel to other countries.”
Should the West be seriously worried about the far-right gathering? Putin’s former speech writer, Abbas Galiamov, is not, noting Duin’s influence in the Kremlin is debated. “I worked at the Kremlin for years, constantly meeting with the top players – Dugin’s name was never mentioned, at least before 2020,” Galiamov told the Daily Beast.
That date, of course, was before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Dugin represents the most hawkish voices in Putin’s FSB. In contrast, Galiamov, suggested, Putin’s daughter Yekaterina Tikhonova and those close to her, including the CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriyev, are looking for a different path.
“To make daddy Putin happy, Tikhonova might even say she likes Dugin; but deep down, she and her team are creating a different ideology, which is closer to socialism; they might be a hope, it’s too early to say.”
But Musk Sr.’s new friends were not looking for socialism or accommodation with the West.
Some of the topics discussed on Tsagrad’s stage, including the colonization of Mars—a favorite topic of Errol Musk’s son—or how to teach Christian values to artificial intelligence, sound futuristic or obscure enough to be harmless.
But some were more practical, like replacing foreign servers with Russian-made models. “These decisions are not made at the forum, but they dictate the tone of modern times, its policy,” said Verkhovsky.
Putin has always used opposing ideologies—and more importantly, ideologues—to control power in Russia. The so-called liberals help him to avoid the worst of Western sanctions and keep the economy from collapsing during the war in Ukraine, while his “power block” of uniformed men march onward to occupy more square miles in Ukraine.
For years, Putin ruled in a fog of unclear ideology. The enemy could be Muslim terrorists one day, the United States or Europe the next.
But Dugin’s wing is unambiguous in its beliefs. The man endorsed by Errol Musk spelled it out in May. “Nuclear conflict will come to fight globalism, that is unavoidable.”
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