Carl Schmitt: Monster or Teacher?

never mind, just understand his ideas

Was Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt an enthusiast for the reduction of everything to the friend / enemy distinction of politics, or was he issuing a warning?

Jeffrey A Tucker prefers the monster designation:

In Schmitt’s mind, the friend/enemy distinction is the best method of rallying the people around a grand cause that gives life meaning. This impulse is what gives strength to the state. He goes further: the friend/enemy distinction is best ignited in the reality of bloodshed:

“The state as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies.”

I prefer to think of Schmitt as issuing a warning. If you are a would-be political leader then you need to gussie up an enemy to rally people to your flag. And there’s nothing like spilling some blood to get people committed, Hamas.

Or perhaps this: you can understand Carl Schmitt and his writings if you wish, as I do, as knowledge that helps you find a way to a society where the Us vs. Them, friend vs. enemy, distinction is diminished.

Thus Schmitt helps us understand the rabid hate politics of Hamas in Gaza. Why, we Americans might ask, do the leaders of the Gazans reduce their rule to an existential war against Israel and its destruction? Because that is the logic of the Schmittian friend / enemy distinction. You fight your enemy to the death. That is all. We should not imagine that the Gazans are crazy so much as realize that we, in our prosperous land, can afford to relax our politics. That is why our national song, “America the Beautiful” can warble on about “amber waves of grain” and and Rush Limbaugh’s “fruited plain.” We really don’t have an enemy. And that is why our very political liberal friends have to conjure enemies out of whole cloth — patriarchs, racists, white oppressors, ultra-MAGA extremists — and constantly beat the drum about the horror of the helpless victims.

We, in our expansive ease, can advise Gazans to abandon the folly of driving Israel into the Dead Sea, and turn instead to the commerce and trading of their ancient ancestors, the Phoenicians. No doubt. But the Gazans are led by Hamas, and all Hamas knows is the destruction of the enemy. And the Phoenicians got a nasty blow in the solar plexus when Rome decided Carthago delenda est, and delivered on their threat.

That’s the problem with any political regime. It is staffed by politicians, and politicians only know sticking it to the enemy. That is what Carl Schmitt teaches us.

Another Schmittian idea is the definition of dictatorship. To be effective, a head of state must have the power to declare an emergency, a “state of exception,” where he can grab total power and use that power to fight the existential peril. Such as COVID. Did Schmitt think that the “state of exception” was a good thing? Never mind. We who are very reluctant to grant our leaders such power need to understand it, in and out, and appreciate its attraction for people like our liberal friends that think that politics is the royal road to justice. And we need to practice the art of rising up as one and saying “No!”

THe point is that if you understand the Schmittian concepts then it makes it easier to understand our liberal and Democratic friends and their constant need to be defending the helpless victims against the supposed enemies of the victims. It’s easy to ask: what’s the point of this neverending parade of victims? Answer: because that is what our liberal friends use to justify their political power: going to war against the enemy of the victims.

One fine day we will install a new ruling class with a different political formula. And we may also hope that the new political formula is more worthy than the vile and twisted fiend / enemy distinction of noble allies fighting for the helpless oppressed peoples against the monsterous white oppressors. For instance, the new ruling class could determine that the enemy is any conceited educated chump that imagines himself the ally of the oppressed, rather than the cynical exploiter of the lower class.

Meanwhile the ideas of Nazi jurist help us understand our liberal friends and how to outfox them on the stage of politics.