Is the Far Right Channeling German Theorist Carl Schmitt’s Divisive Script?: The pro-Nazi political philosopher predicted the crisis of liberal democracy and would have enjoyed watching it struggle (Zack Beauchamp, Aug 13, 2024, The UnPopulist)
A government is “democratic,” Schmitt argues, if it bases its legitimacy on support from the people’s will. But this depends on how you define the “people” and choose to assess their “will.” Every democracy depends on excluding some people, most notably foreigners, from participating in the selection of its leaders; that means, by definition, no democracy rests on universal human equality before the law. Instead, the idea of “equality” in democracy really means equality amongst the people in a political community that shares a certain identity and core agreements.
“There has never been a democracy that did not recognize the concept ‘foreign’ and that could have realized the equality of all men,” he wrote in a 1926 preface to the second edition of Crisis. “Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises—elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.”
The false notion of universal equality, Schmitt argues, is a liberal concept rather than a democratic one—and “modern mass democracy rests on the confused combination of both.” Politics, for Schmitt, is primarily and essentially about defining who is a “friend” (inside the political community) and who is an “enemy” (outside of it and, thus, a potential target for violence). Democracy is no exception to this general rule, meaning that in practice it will necessarily come into conflict with liberalism—which seeks to supplant conflict and exclusion, the true essences of politics, with impossible attempts at universality. This tension is the source of the “crisis” in his book’s title: though democracy was ideologically triumphant in the interwar period, its ascendancy is forcing its leaders and citizens to grapple with the ways in which actual political life is at odds with its liberal ideals.
People get awfully worked up when conservatives differentiate a republic from a democracy, but you can see here why we valorize the former and abhor the latter. Republican liberty requires equal treatment under law.