Carl Schmitt´s Ghost

Dangerous Ideas That Haunt the World

There’s a political ghost still haunting the world, and most people don’t even know his name. I didn´t know his name. I´d heard of him, but it is lost in memory where or when I did. Maybe at the university. The troublesome reality is that his thoughts are everywhere today.

From what I´ve researched, Carl Schmitt was a German legal scholar who lived through the collapse of democracy in Germany and later aligned himself with the Nazis. That kind of gives you a nice perspective of where his thinking was headed, what his thinking was about. What is really sad is the resurgence of many of his ideas in the world today. Slowly but surely, they’ve quietly crept into modern politics, showing up in democracies, dictatorships, and everything in between.

These concrete ideas are becoming the weapons of those that believe they have the right to control society, control everyone, even control the world. 

You will see what I mean as we read on.

The State of Emergency Becomes the New Normal

Schmitt’s most famous idea was simple and complicated at the same time, if you don´t give it enough thought to clarify its meaning: 

“The sovereign is the one who decides the exception.” 

In other words, real power isn’t about following the rules, it’s about deciding when the rules no longer apply. Or said in another way, if the leader has complete control, then he can decide who the rules are for. Obviously that means the rules are not for him.

Look around today. Governments all over the world are using emergencies to hold onto power claiming their need due to terrorism, a pandemic, or immigration.

• After 9/11, the U.S. created laws that allowed surveillance and indefinite detentions.

• Hungary’s leader used COVID-19 to rule by decree.

• In many countries, temporary emergency powers seem to never go away.

What was once an “exception” is now the way things are done.

Politics as “Us vs. Them”

Schmitt believed politics wasn’t about ideas, beliefs, concepts, policies, no. It was about enemies. You’re either with us, or you’re against us.

Mmm, where have I heard that before?

That’s the core strategy of modern populism. Leaders rise by dividing society:

• Trump did it by targeting immigrants and “fake news.”

• Putin uses it to blame the West for Russia’s problems.

• In India, Muslims are often treated as outsiders by Hindu nationalists.

This friend vs. enemy thinking doesn’t lead to healthy debate. It leads to fear, hate, and eventually violence.

Why Debate, When You Can Just Rule?

Schmitt hated liberal democracy. He thought all the debate and compromise made it weak. He preferred strong leaders who could act without delay. Again, where have I heard this before. We’re seeing this attitude everywhere. For example when,

• Presidents rule by executive orders instead of laws.

• Parliaments are ignored, or slowly stripped of power.

• Bureaucracy is blamed, and strongmen are praised.

Democracy dies, not with a bang, but with applause for someone “who gets things done.” And the lies that those followers believe to be truth. It´s an intimidating moment to live in because it is actually very easy to recognize what´s happening.

Using the Law as a Weapon

Schmitt didn’t believe the law was neutral. He saw it as a tool that should be used by those in power. Today, this idea is everywhere.

• In Russia, the legal system jails anyone who challenges the regime.

• In the U.S., courts are stacked with partisan judges.

• In China, laws are used to crush free speech and protest.

• 
  

When law becomes a weapon, justice dies quietly and legally.

A Common Enemy

Schmitt believed people need a shared enemy to feel like a nation. That’s how you create unity, he said: give people someone to fear. This tactic is being used all over the world:

• Blame migrants.

• Blame foreign powers.

• Blame “traitors” within your own country. (The press, the lawyers that oppose me, the other political party etc.)

It’s a cheap trick, but it works. Fear brings people together, but only for a while. Then it destroys them from the inside. People suddenly start to eat each other.

Democracy Undone From Within

Maybe the most dangerous idea of all from Schmidt; you don’t need a revolution to destroy democracy. You can hollow it out from the inside, and do it legally. How to accomplish this? First step, Change the constitution. Then, control the courts. Then, rewrite the rules while still pretending it’s all democratic. That’s how democracies die today. A nice combination of fear, tanks, hate, laws and silence.

Carl Schmitt’s name isn’t on any campaign poster. But his fingerprints are all over the way power is used and abused today. His ideas are dangerous not because they’re false, but because they’re sharp, seductive, and often effective. It only requires a specific cyclical moment in history, where feelings and tendencies and economic disappointments and fears grow a bit, are felt a bit more, and we all end up where we are now and possibly worse.

Democracy is fragile. It doesn’t break all at once. It erodes slowly, one emergency, one enemy, one “necessary” exception at a time. All brought to you by the hateful and insidious and patriotic and a ´we are better than others´ talk from a charismatic leader and voilà, life is changed.

And that’s how Carl Schmitt’s ghost still walks among us.

Thanks for Reading. Abrazos.

Diego Rojas