Avigdor Eskin, the Zionist Fanatic behind Duginism

by Sean Jobst
6 November 2017

A hardcore Jewish-Zionist named Avigdor Eskin operates a leading position in the Kabbalist Dugin's Eurasianist networks. This adds another overlap between the Duginist and Zionist programs to destabilize Europe, while advancing the interests of Russia and Israel among certain co-opted "nationalist" and "far-right" movements that form Trojan Horses within our nations.

Eskin is the fanatic who extolled Russians and Jews as "the spiritual and messianic people" to a thunderous applause on Russian State TV in 2014. Eskin was born in Moscow in 1960, into an assimilated Jewish family with no connection to Judaism. He had an "awakening" as a youth, rediscovering his Jewishness and converting to Orthodox Judaism. He also became a devoted Zionist, only too eager to make "aliyah" to Israel while still maintaining a "foot in the door" back in Russia.

While still in Moscow, Eskin studied Hebrew under Leo Ginblum, a member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), the Jewish terrorist group associated with the Kach movement of Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane. Eskin was so impressed by Kahane that he translated Kahane's "Never Again" into Russian and upon immigrating to Israel in 1979, he met Kahane and became one of his leading spokesman and associates. Kach is an extremist group that calls for the establishment of a Jewish theocracy within an expansionist Israel, devoted to the Torah and Talmud. Yet, this didn't stop Kahanists from fighting against "anti-Semitism" and opposition to Israel in the U.S. and Europe with a series of terrorist bombings and street attacks, forming a Zionist terror network within our societies.

Eskin served a stint in the Israeli Army in Lebanon and also began working as a journalist for several Russian media in Israel. He travelled to the U.S. on a JDL fundraising trip for Soviet Jewry in the early 1980s. He actively lobbied politicians and was credited as the one who turned Senator Jesse Helms, a conservative then known for his opposition to U.S. foreign aid to Israel, into a staunch Zionist. Eskin made a successful deal with Helms, that he would support Reagan's policies in Central America in exchange for Helms' crucial support for Israel. Eskin admits involvement with some elements in the Iran-Contra Affair.

Dugin and Eskin at a Kabbalistic conference in France

He left the Kach movement over tactical issues, but still maintained a close friendship with Kahane, and a close overlap remains between Eskin's groups and Kach members. It was a shared interest in the Kabbalah that first drew Eskin and Dugin together. "The Russians consider him a very interesting figure. He has good ties in the Kremlin and is considered a distinguished representative of Israeli
society," Dugin told Haaretz about his fellow Kabbalist. Eskin introduced Dugin to several oligarchs who funded the Eurasianist movement from its inception:

"The main benefit to Dugin from the acquaintance, however, was one Mikhail Gagloev, a wealthy South Ossetian banker and friend of Eskin's, who came to sponsor Dugin's various political activities for much of the coming decade. Gagloev's business activities focused on Moscow's army football club, CSKA, and he was a key player in a 'business group' known informally in Moscow circles as the Luzhniki group, after the city's main football stadium where CSKA played. The business front for the group - which included a Ukrainian ex-mobster, Evgeny Giner, and the deputy speaker of Russia's parliament, Alexander Babakov - was a UK Channel Islands-registered company called Bluecastle Enterprises. Gagloev's Tempbank had the distinction of financing all Bluecastle's transactions." (Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015)

Gagloev was both CEO of the Kremlin-linked Tempbank and vice-chairman of Dugin's International Eurasianist Movement (MED). Yevgeny Giner is a Jewish businessman very active in Russian football clubs. In 2012, Putin appointed Babakov as his envoy to Russian organizations abroad, a role which includes subverting countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic states through Russian-speaking minorities. Babakov met with two officers from Marine Le Pen's Front National to arrange a loan with a Latvian bank known for its links to the Kremlin. Both Dugin and Eskin have close links with Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Duma's foreign affairs committee and then ambassador to NATO.

Along with his Kach associate Yossi Dayan, Eskin participated in a Kabbalistic ritual called pulsa dinura (lashes of fire), which invoked a "death curse" against Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for the Oslo Accords in 1995. Rabin was assassinated, but after the 30 day period that the "death curse" is supposed to work. In December 1997, Eskin was arrested with Chaim Pakovitch for plotting to throw a pig's head with the Qur'an stuffed in its mouth, into the complex housing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. They also planned on placing a pig's head on the tomb of Izzadin Qassam, the Palestinian guerilla fighter who fought the Zionists in the 1930s, and set fire to the offices of the leftist Dor Shalom organization, the Jerusalem Post revealed during their trial for incitement.

After his brief prison sentence, Eskin returned to Russia where Dugin gave him a seat on the newly-founded Eurasia Party in 2001. He continued his Zionist activities within Russia, appearing on a TV program hosted by Vladimir Solovyev, a member of the Russian Jewish Congress whose other prominent members includes the Chabad Rabbi Berel Lazar and oligarch Mikhail Fridman. On the program, Eskin called for the destruction of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and its replacement by a Jewish Temple, and called Palestinians "the people of Antichrist". An undoubted boon for Dugin's idolization of "chaos" for the sake of chaos and his transcontinental effort at destabilization.

Working alongside Eskin and Dugin are Russian-born, West Bank-based Rabbi Avram Shmulevich, co-leader with Eskin of Be'ad Artzeinu (For Our Land), a fanatical Zionist group that supports an anti-Western, pro-Russian Eurasianist policy for an expansionist Israel. Shmulevich was elected to the leadership of the Eurasian movement at its constituent congress in Moscow on 21 April 2001, an event where he praised the examples of "the ancient Mongol empire and the Khazar kaganate" and where he represented Berel Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Russia and member of the Jewish supremacist Chabad movement. They represent a growing segment of Israeli leaders who advocate the Russian-Israeli alliance, with Eskin promoting the false line of Israel allegedly being "subservient" to the United States rather than AIPAC subverting U.S. foreign policy. This fits in perfectly with the Duginist propaganda that identifies "the West" as the epitome of evil.

Member of the Israeli wing of the Eurasian Youth
Movement tears up Ukrainian flags in Tel Aviv

Towards this end, Eskin is a leader of the Israeli branch of the Eurasian Youth Movement, whose members have held anti-Ukrainian protests where they tear up and desecrate Ukrainian flags while adopting the Dugin/Boris Spiegel/Kremlin line of Ukrainians being "Nazis". From the very beginning of the Maidan Revolution, Eskin called for a Russian invasion of Ukraine and has lobbied the Israeli government for support of the Donbass and Novorussia separatists. According to Haaretz: "Although Eskin is currently persona non grata in the United States (possibly because of his Kach background; ten years ago he was refused entry to the country) he still possesses a certain political power there. Thus he was able to help muster the support of 10 congressmen for his candidate for presidency of Ukraine: Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian candidate who won the election in February. Eskin also appended the signatures of 36 Israeli MKs to letters opposing the glorification of Ukrainian heroes [Stephan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych], who collaborated with the Germans during the Nazi occupation."

Alarmed at the cooperation between Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists, such as at a March 2015 rally in Vilnius that brought together thousands of nationalists from countries targeted by the Kremlin, Eskin has referred to "European thugs" forming a "Neo-Nazi international". He is a frequent guest on Russia Today, whether its slandering "Neo-Banderists" in Ukraine or guilt-tripping Poles for their history of "anti-Semitism". Banned from the Republic of Georgia for his subversive activities, Eskin is nevertheless a frequent guest in both Armenia and Azerbajan, where he plays off those two countries' hostility towards each other for the benefit of Duginite-Zionist destabilization. The two causes are linked, as Eskin's Knesset friends sent a letter to the European Parliament, against the "anti-Semitism and Russophobia" among "the Nazi trend" in Ukraine. And not surprising given the role of both Israeli and Russian interests in Catalonia, Eskin has also expressed support for Catalan separatists in their destabilization efforts against Spain.

Eskin is a leading figure in the outreach of right-wing Zionist Jews to American alt-right and certain nationalist movement in Western Europe, turning them into useful "goyim" in their own civil war against the more leftist, liberal Zionist Jews. Like Dugin, Eskin misdirects all their attention away from Jewish dominance and towards "Globalists" instead, downplaying the Jewish role in the media and banking system or the power of Israel's lobbies. One Alt-Right linked publication known for its watering-down of the J.Q. gave a glowing interview of Eskin as "a fascinating figure".

It should be clear to any true European nationalist that such right-wing Zionists are not our allies. Eskin is a perfect example of why, because not satisfied with just living in Israel he actively promotes subversive activities in our midst. He slanders our nationalist brothers in Ukraine and the Baltic states, promoting secession whenever it serves Israel and Russia's interests, and he promotes the breakup of European countries such as Spain, parroting the same claims made on Kremlin media outlets and even on Marxist outlets sympathetic towards Putin. And he constantly guilt-trips entire European nations for "anti-Semitism" and their "Nazi" past. This belies all his ideological claims of an alliance, because what unites all of these trends is a shared hatred of Europa.