A Brief Introduction to the Ideas of Carl Schmitt

Posted by DanielS on January 11, 2013, 09:23 AM | #

Hmmm.

Schmitt’s friend / enemy distinction is fundamental enough.

I would hope that our definition of “friend” would be native Europeans (to include Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians) who respect the national bounds of other European nations, in particular, as sovereign.

Who thereupon view non-Europeans and those who aid and abet non-European transgression en mass, upon European people’s habitats as the enemy, especially.

It would seem that didactic incitement and its kindred mockery and kicking others when they are down will make this friendship and alliance more difficult as relational trust is broken - in fact, just the opposite,  an unsympathetic, ‘unfriendly’ rule is invoked on a relational level.

Posted by Leon Haller on January 11, 2013, 09:31 AM | #

It’s post-modernity after modernity not pre-modernity (such as the bizarro ideal-world of Mr. Bowery et al. deadly duels and all); or some foundationally religious revival - sociologically no society under the conditions of modernity (let alone post-modernity) can possibly foundationally understand itself in the religious terms of say the the middle age; i.e. the notion that Christianity is an unquestionably solid meta-narrative explaining everything in the world – the social, the cultural, the political etc., which cannot be imagined or convinced of as being in error or not true. The Nietzschean insight – that WE have killed God in that socio-cultural sense of we can never return to that (in retrospect) naïve position of total trust in the Christian meta-narrative as true beyond all reasonable doubt. The radical historicity of Daesin prevents it. At the risk of being pretentious we must deal with the actual territory in which historic Daesin finds itself – technologically, scientifically, conceptually/philosophically, socio-culturally not some previous modality of being. We can’t recreate the Roman world or the Athens of Plato, or the American of 1795 (or whatever) in toto.

It’s an impossible task, thus in political terms a form of masturbatory ‘displacement activity’ – that is why when I hear chatter about the socio-political ‘centrality’ of Christianity I stop paying serious attention because a deluded fool (of sorts) is speaking. Even a highly articulate and educated ‘fool’ like Mr. Haller. And of course God might be objectively real – but that form of Christianity is dead to historic Daesin. Yes individuals might buy into that story but no social totality (under the background conditions we confront and are thrown within) will at any deep ‘ontological’ level ‘buy into’ that story anymore – hence Christainity is of no substantively positive meta-political importance. (Lister)

Christian theology, at least in its Catholic form, doesn’t claim to explain the totality of the world, nor does it conceptually preclude the possibility of growth in philosophical as well as empirical understanding (some Protestant sects, the real hardline fundamentalists, OTOH, well might - I don’t know enough about them to pronounce definitively). Catholic Christianity is not an ossified, take-it-or-leave-it ideology. It does make some foundational claims about reality (though even many of these - eg, about the very nature and attributes of God Himself - are open to endless investigation and conceptual ‘fine-tuning’), but who or what doesn’t? “Scientific atheists” certainly do. There is no wholly neutral ontological or ethical (or perhaps even epistemological) standpoint.

All that seems to be contained in the above paragraphs is a rejection of either the existence of God as an objective independent/physical reality (as opposed to the reality of the idea of God), or of Christianity as a correct description (or interpretive framework for better future understanding) of the world (with the possible existence of a god which isn’t the one worshipped by traditional Christianity implicitly left open - but only as a theoretical possibility, not as a belief which is sufficiently plausible to serve as the basis for purposeful actions in the physical world). Throw out all the extraneous references to “Dasein”, and all Dr. Lister is really saying is that modern thought and science have rendered Christianity philosophically and empirically untenable, and thus a Christian politics will never appeal to more than a minority of ‘modern’ (for our purposes, ‘Western’) men. In other words, if God is dead, then Christian politics is dead, too. But insofar as Christianity constituted the ‘metanarrative’ for the bulk of white men, as well as the intellectual center of the West, for centuries, really until the postwar period (I would say “until The Great Disruption of the 1960s” [I nod to Lister’s references to the neoconservative intellectual Francis Fukuyama] for ‘mass-men’), then what must be needed is a new philosophical foundation for WN (actually for all Western) politics.

This is at bottom an empirical sociological argument. Is Christianity of use to White Preservation? Or is it actually inimical to European EGI, as many WNs argue?

I have broached answers to these questions at several points in the past here at MR. For serious Christians, any ideology had better be shown to be compatible with the faith. If Christians are forced to choose between personal and racial salvation, which do you think most (all?) will choose? To put the matter more crudely than I really believe, if I thought being pro-WP would send my soul to Hell, then I would reluctantly disavow any type of racial nationalism, and focus my ideological energies on advocating race-neutral conservative policies (such as regularized capital punishment, ‘concealed carry’, truth in school textbooks, free enterprise, lower welfare-state expenditures) which would at least mitigate the disaster of Diversity (note I support these policies anyway). But I would not advocate a ‘conflict’ style of politics, the intent of which is to build up mass white, Us v Them consciousness for the ultimate purpose of imposing racial separatism or resegregation on some particular territory, in order that our race and its indigenous ethnocultural expressions might organically endure indefinitely.

So what Lister is really implying is that there are simply not enough white Christians anymore such that their collective conversion to WN would decisively tip the political scale in favor of WP, and thus a pro-white politics rooted in a reactionary Christian traditionalism would not be as effective as one rooted in other philosophical superstructures. This may well be true for most white nations today, though certainly not for all. I can think of several exceptions: the USA, Poland, Serbia, possibly Ireland and Italy. In America, as I have argued ad nauseam, the chief obstacle to the growth of WN (loosely defined) is not, I believe, MSM (Jewish) propaganda, but precisely the Christian commitment of so many conservative Americans, and the contemporaneous sense that any type of pro-white politics is “racist”, which is (reluctantly, I think in many cases) considered immoral. Most white conservative Christian Americans will not inflict racial harms on “innocent individuals” even for overcompensating collective goals. A Christianity-compatible ethical case must demonstrate that the moral value of white American community preservation supersedes the individual rights to life, liberty and property of some substantial quantum of nonwhites. I don’t believe this Christian racial ethics has been adequately formulated and/or presented yet.       

Furthermore, even if Christianity is now only a minority belief system in, say, Scotland, that doesn’t negate the value of working to demonstrate theologically its compatibility with WP. There are still some Christians even in Scotland, and every white man is needed for our uphill struggle. Moreover, I strongly suspect that the type of mentality which would continue to hew to religious traditionalism in Scotland would also be one far more open to racial traditionalism, and that Christian Scotland, however diminished from ‘days of old’, is thus probably a more fertile demographic to which to preach race-realism and ethnopatriotism than, say, Marxist Scotland would be. 

(to be contd -LH)

Posted by DanielS. on January 11, 2013, 09:58 AM | #

I want to be clear, that it is the non-Europeans (and those who facilitate them) who transgress European habitats without consent upon established borders, who should be viewed as enemies.

Posted by Guessedworker on January 12, 2013, 07:13 PM | #

Graham,

Did you see friend/enemy as ethnic in-group/out-group irrespective of the actual politics of our kinfolk, or is it particular to politics (in which case, where do you draw the line for “friend”)?

Posted by Guessedworker on January 14, 2013, 07:15 AM | #

My own, very brief intro to Schmitt, written in February 2008:

http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/an_interest_in_carl_schmitt

Posted by Graham_Lister on January 14, 2013, 02:52 PM | #

@GW

I promise I will get back to you on this question but mega-busy at the moment so it will be in a couple of days.