Monday, November 10, 2008

Khoj-Ahmed Noukhaev

Announcing a 73-page paper by Philippe Botto, Khoj-Ahmed Noukhaev et le nationalisme tchétchène, just published by a French think tank, R2R.

Noukhaev's "Barbarism" is, in my view, one of the most remarkable recent manifestations of Traditionalism. What Guénon would have thought of it, I cannot imagine!

The paper is in French, but has an abstract in English:

With regards to the fullness and complexity of his biography, Noukhaev is an emblematic figure of this chaotic sequence of history that saw players from organized criminality enter the Russian political and entrepreneurial scenes. Prosperous businessman, Noukhaev is also the author of numerous papers and essays on the “Chechnya matter”. The ideology that he promotes outlines a nationalist, tribal fundamentalist and “barbarian” utopia. Although his ideology reaches only a marginal range – that close to intelligentsia – it clearly gives us an opportunity to gain knowledge of certain aspects of the Chechnya nationalist discourse. Noukhaev’s work is all the more worthy of interest as he has tried, in his own way, to throw his weight around the evolution of the Russo-Chechnya conflict by promoting a complex and original roadmap to peace.