The New Right has been an influential force in American politics for about a decade. Spurred by the political success of Donald Trump’s populism, this band of Euro-centric right-wing ideologues has become difficult to ignore. They gain trust by defending Trump and critiquing elite absurdities, then use that platform to normalize formerly fringe ideas and thinkers. The most famous of these figures, like Tucker Carlson, have gradually introduced their viewers to antisemitic conspiracy theorists, stans of foreign autocrats, and World War II contrarians.
Especially prominent in New Right conversations are thinkers of the right-wing European continental tradition like De Maistre, Bonald, Donoso Cortés, Maurras, and Carl Schmitt. The latter, we are told, has profound insights into politics despite his membership in the Nazi Party, and thus we should not dismiss him outright because of ideological puritanism. That was a common response to a recent article about the New Right by Phil Magness and Jack Nicastro.
There are indeed academics like Adrian Vermeule who are genuinely attracted to Schmitt’s criticisms of liberalism, his theory of history, and his views on the economic-technical rationality of liberalism, which they consider to be on the point of collapse. They also appreciate how Schmitt paints a picture of liberalism that makes it seem morally on par with the more authoritarian regimes they prefer. The rest of us may not be convinced or impressed (I certainly am not), but these Schmittian academics sincerely disagree.
Let’s not fool ourselves, however, about why the non-academic New Right appeals to Schmitt. It’s not about theoretical illumination. In popular politics, people push Carl Schmitt because he helps them rationalize their tribal politics, especially through his “friend-enemy distinction,” an idea that was elaborated most extensively in his 1932 book The Concept of the Political.
There, Schmitt makes the bold claim that while the fundamental distinction in morality is good-bad, in economics profitable-unprofitable, and in aesthetics beautiful-ugly, in politics it is the distinction between friend and enemy. He argues that the political is present wherever there is the possibility of a community to declare for itself friends and enemies:
The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.
It is not my purpose here to critique Schmitt’s account from a purely descriptive level. In my opinion, the analogy with those other domains distorts the fact that what is most fundamental to politics normatively is the political community itself and the common good of its members. Any distinction between friends and enemies, or any capacity of a political community to distinguish between them for the whole community, even if useful for identifying political phenomena, is derivative from an evaluative standpoint.
And yet, none of the cheerleaders for Schmitt’s distinction care much about it as a descriptive theory. They care only, in their view, for what it justifies at a prescriptive level. Schmitt himself saw it as a reason for critiquing the attempts of modern liberal democracy to neutralize conflict, thus leaving itself open to internal or external dangers, and perhaps, in the case of successful liberal hegemony that pacifies the world, removing what he takes to be truly meaningful. I hope that most of us can think of sources of meaning outside political contention, but what do I know?
As ideologues come to care less and less about the Constitution, and more and more about winning a total war for America’s future, we risk losing what made America great in the first place.
In any event, Schmitt does not persuasively justify the New Right’s application of this distinction. They support a kind of tribal politics that sees in the American constitutionalist framework a barrier to winning a war with the enemies of the community. “Don’t you know what time it is?” they ask rhetorically whenever someone appeals to principle. Some might see that as unfair, unprincipled, or just stupid, but they see it as an appeal to “realism” about the nature of politics, an act of rebellion against an elite class they now resent, and an opportunity to cast aside what they see as the tired platitudes of liberals. In reality, it is just a rationalization for good old-fashioned tribal politics.
Their view of Schmitt is also superficial. It is a half-understood slogan that more sophisticated Schmittians like Adrian Vermeule rightly ridicule:
An infallible sign of superficial understanding [of Schmitt], whether from liberal critics or from the New Right, is that the author appears to have read only “Political Theology” and “The Concept of the Political.” Those aren’t even Schmitt’s most interesting books.
It’s tempting to dismiss them as sophomoric idiots unlikely to do real harm, but Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction, even if poorly understood, now informs practical politics outside the ivory tower. It can be genuinely dangerous.
As ideologues come to care less and less about the Constitution, and more and more about winning a total war for America’s future, we risk losing what made America great in the first place: its constitutional-republican order, an order that requires a basic respect for reciprocal norms and processes. The New Right has seized upon popular resentment against what they sometimes call the “uniparty” or “establishment.” This resentment developed over years of frustration because of the political class’s inability to respond to what they cared about most. But in truth, much of that rigidity reflected the constraint of the median voter (e.g., the median voter does not actually want to reform entitlements); and in other cases, the obstacle was domain knowledge of the political class (e.g., knowledge of foreign affairs and national intelligence); and in still others, it was just ordinary bureaucratic incompetence. In the minds of the New Right, however, these failures are best explained by hidden actors, a cabal of the “deep state” or “globalists,” which, along with the left, is an enemy to be defeated, and by any means necessary.
What is most troubling is that these tribalists, whether on the left or right, are gaining more converts among the youth than either constitutional conservatives or old-school civil libertarians. The division and polarization are growing, not lessening, and it will get a lot worse before it gets better. So yes, we should criticize the tools of rationalizing tribal and authoritarian politics, such as Schmitt and his friend-enemy distinction, even without considering his sketchy history, character, and party affiliation. We should also be clear about what is really going on. Today’s tribalists on the far-right and far-left have allowed their resentment to dictate their politics—Schmittian slogans are just a rationalization for that. But it is most important that we do not get pulled into it. Tribalists on the right and left are wrong, but we will not preserve the blessing of constitutional democracy by behaving in a tribalist manner ourselves. Therefore, we should forget point-scoring; this isn’t sports. And a tit-for-tat strategy will not work here because it will only serve to radicalize the non-tribalists on the other party, thus escalating the problem.
Instead, we must continue to build and educate without retaliation. We must dedicate ourselves to social entrepreneurship, civic participation, voting in primaries and general elections, and encouraging others to do the same. This problem will not fix itself. We also need more emphasis in our schools and media on the blessings of constitutional democracy. We should not be feeding our youth a steady diet of resentment politics, whether it is the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn, on the left, or Carl Schmitt and Why Liberalism Failed on the right. The best antidote to resentment is, and always has been, gratitude, and our educational priorities should reflect that.