Again, I can't help but notice the canned responses of those who defend Dugin (or say that Dugin is too irrelevant to be discussed).

Dugin is rather irrelevant but he's also wrong. It's perhaps worth mentioning that at least in my experience generally, though especially lately, I have seen a lot of people trying to smear others as "Duginists" and then posting stuff like your OP image in order to make their target look bad by association. This might explain why you were on the receiving end of a stronger reaction.