Matthew Raphael Johnson

Matthew Raphael Johnson is a scholar of Russian Orthodox history and philosophy. His research agenda centers around ethnic nationalism, Eurasianism and the Orthodox tradition as forms of rebellion against globalism. He has recently completed a lengthy book on the history of Ukrainian political thought from Mazepa to the present. Now, he is in the midst of a substantial book on nominalism and its condemnation by Patristic and Platonic authors. His website can be found at www.rusjournal.org.

He completed his doctorate at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1999 as a recipient of the Sennen, as well as the Clare and Marguerite MacPhee Fellowships, focusing on anti-modernist social philosophy. His dissertation detailed the critique of Positivism from Michael Oakeshott and the British Hegelians. The central philosophical thesis running through all his philosophical work is that nominalism is the root ontological evil. It lies at the foundation of the 20th century and it is termed by Johnson as “the ontology of death.”

He is a former professor of both history and political science at the University of Nebraska (as a graduate student), Penn State University and Mount St. Mary’s University. Since 1999, he has been the editor (and is presently Senior Researcher) at The Barnes Review, a well-known renegade journal of European history. In addition, he continues to translate, write and lecture in defense of the Russian Orthodox monarchist and nationalist social vision. His idiosyncratic non-conformity is many things, but unoriginal is never, ever one of them. The massive increase in writing on Russian politics over the last few years has granted him the honor of being one the most plagiarized men on the internet.

On July 28 2016, Andrew Carrington Hitchcock in London interviewed Dr. Johnson on his personal biography and background. Not comfortable with talking about himself, Dr. Johnson accepted this request for the sake of better understanding the origin of his political point of view. Hitchcock, in Johnson’s opinion, is one of the best and most interesting radio personalities in the west. This interview sheds a great amount of light on how this Irishman from suburban New Jersey became one of the most literate, albeit idiosyncratic, advocates of Russian Orthodox nationalism in the English-speaking world.

Dr. Johnson is the author of several books, the newest being The Foreign Policy of Mass Society: The Failure of Western Engagement in the Islamic World. His other books include Sobornosti: Essays on the Old Faith; Heavenly Serbia and the Medieval Idea; Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality: Lectures on Medieval Russia; The Ancient Orthodox Tradition in Russian Literature; The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy; and Russian Populist: The Political Thought of Vladimir Putin.

The first five of these books have been brought under Hromada Books, a new publishing house, using Lulu Inc. as a binder and retail intermediary. His author spotlight has been recently revised and book prices lowered. University students are mercilessly exploited by academics whose six figure salary is apparently insufficient for them. Students spend an average of $1168 on books and materials per semester. Worse, academics use graduate student serfs to change a few semicolons and then put the book out as a “new edition,” rendering the previous edition impossible to return. Students then must buy the new edition for each following semester, making buying used versions impossible. This is from an academic class that condemns “economic self seeking” on a daily basis.