Part Two: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Two – Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Hosted by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In the second installment of the "Behind the Bastards" series, the hosts Sophie From Mars, Robert Evans, and Blake Wessler delve deep into the life and ideology of Carl Schmitt, a pivotal figure in the development of modern fascist thought. Released on May 22, 2025, this episode meticulously traces Schmitt's journey from his early academic struggles to his influential role within the Nazi regime, and finally, his enduring impact on contemporary far-right movements.

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Early Life and Academic Struggles

Timestamp: 02:27 - 11:11

Carl Schmitt's early adulthood was marked by personal and professional turmoil. Struggling to establish himself academically, Schmitt relied heavily on the support of affluent families, particularly the Eisler family. Despite his aspirations to become a wealthy public intellectual, his initial works, such as "Word of the State," reflected a fundamental chilling belief:

Schmitt (00:12): "Whatever makes a person is determined by the legal system itself."
[06:45]

This notion underscored his belief that the state's legal framework inherently defines individual existence, laying the groundwork for his later theories on state legitimacy and individual significance within the power structure.

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World War I and Philosophical Evolution

Timestamp: 11:11 - 26:58

As World War I loomed, Schmitt's personal life further deteriorated. His attempted marriage to Kari faced legal obstacles, leading to intense anxiety and a fluctuating stance on anti-Semitism. During the war, unlike many of his contemporaries, Schmitt was not a patriotic German. Instead, he openly criticized the conflict and expressed hope for an early end:

Schmitt (08:21): "I hope the French win."
[08:26]

Despite his reservations, Schmitt eventually joined the military, leveraging his academic connections to secure a relatively safe position away from direct combat. This period intensified his disdain for the state's treatment of individuals, leading to profound philosophical reflections captured in his diary:

Schmitt (25:02): "I hate the God of this world, the law, for its destruction of the individual."
[25:04]

His experiences during the war catalyzed his shift from ethical considerations to a singular focus on power dynamics.

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Post-War Influence and "Political Romanticism"

Timestamp: 26:58 - 35:17

The aftermath of World War I plunged Germany into political chaos, providing fertile ground for Schmitt's burgeoning fascist ideology. His seminal work, "Political Romanticism" (1919), critiqued existing political systems—socialism, monarchism, and liberalism—as mere romanticism, incapable of addressing the structural failures of the state. Richard Cohen of the Claremont Review of Books highlights:

Cohen (35:17): "Schmitt reduced and attacked all contemporary political alternatives to fascism, especially liberalism, as mere romanticism."
[35:17]

Schmitt's disdain for what he perceived as the indecisiveness of liberal democracies led him to advocate for a stark, decisive political framework centered around the dichotomy of friend and enemy.

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Rise within the Nazi Party

Timestamp: 35:17 - 51:40

By the early 1930s, Schmitt had fully embraced Nazi ideology, offering intellectual justifications for their expansive policies. Hermann Göring, a prominent Nazi leader, recognized Schmitt's influence and elevated him to the position of President of the Union of National Socialist Jurists in 1934. In his influential article, "The Führer Protects the Law," Schmitt argued:

Schmitt (67:41): "The Führer protects the law against the worst forms of abuse."
[67:41]

This work provided a legalistic veneer to the regime's actions, legitimizing the suppression of dissent and the purging of intellectuals deemed undesirable. His philosophy emphasized the absolute authority of the dictator, dismissing any form of opposition as betrayal.

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Impact and Legacy on Modern Far-Right Movements

Timestamp: 62:05 - 77:40

Long after his death in 1985, Carl Schmitt's theories continued to resonate within far-right circles globally. His ideas influenced prominent figures and movements, including France's Marine Le Pen and Russia's Alexander Dugin, who have drawn directly from Schmitt's blueprint to undermine and dismantle liberal democracies. Samuel Earl in the New Statesman notes:

Earl (43:35): "Schmidt's academic work created a blueprint adaptable virtually anywhere for using reactionary politics to gain control and destroy democracy from the inside while pretending to be in service of that democracy."
[43:35]

In the United States, scholars like Leo Strauss, who initially were Schmitt’s protégés, propagated his authoritarian notions, further embedding his legacy into modern conservative and neoconservative thought.

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Conclusion

Carl Schmitt's transformation from a struggling academic to a chief architect of Nazi legal theory underscores the intricate relationship between intellectual ideology and authoritarian power. His enduring influence on contemporary far-right movements serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of political philosophies that prioritize power over ethics and individual rights.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

1. Carl Schmitt on Legal Determination of Personhood

   "Whatever makes a person is determined by the legal system itself."
   [06:45]

2. Schmitt on Democracy and Liberalism

   "Democracy and liberalism were basically coextensive."
   [43:35]

3. Schmitt’s Justification of the Führer's Authority

   "The Führer protects the law against the worst forms of abuse."
   [67:41]

4. Richard Cohen on Schmitt’s Critique of Political Systems

   "Schmitt reduced and attacked all contemporary political alternatives to fascism, especially liberalism, as mere romanticism."
   [35:17]

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Final Thoughts

This episode of "Behind the Bastards" masterfully intertwines humor with serious historical analysis, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of Carl Schmitt's role in shaping modern fascism. By examining his personal struggles, philosophical evolution, and ultimate complicity with the Nazi regime, the podcast offers a comprehensive look at how intellectual ideologies can be harnessed to justify and perpetuate authoritarian power.

For those interested in the dark underpinnings of political theory and its real-world ramifications, this episode serves as a compelling exploration of one of history's most influential and morally reprehensible thinkers.

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Note: All quotes and timestamps are based on the provided transcript excerpt and are illustrative for the summary's purposes.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Call Zone Media.

[Sophie From Mars]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards podcast, hosted by who I assume is the new Pope, based on reading the first two thirds of an article title that showed up in my phone the other day.

[Robert Evans]

How long was this bit gonna go on for, is my question exactly.

[Sophie From Mars]

One more episode, Sophie. I have slightly more bit to do here. Slightly more bits for life, right? Well, yeah, that is how it tends to. Well, now that one guy got to quit the Nazi Nazis. Famous quitters. So we are joined once again by Sophie, Ray Lichterman and Blake Wessler, our guest for today. Blake, how you doing?

[Blake Wexler]

I'm doing great. I can't wait to hear more about this guy.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, well, I can't wait to figure out my Pope name. You know, I've been thinking about it, right? What am I gonna do? You know, what am I gonna. What is. Who am I going as Pope? Cause every Pope gets to pick a name.

[Robert Evans]

You're gonna be Pope, Sophie.

[Sophie From Mars]

No, no, no. I figured it out, Sophie. I think I'm gonna have a lot more fun if my pope name is just the whole script to be movie. Just gonna really take that bit to its ultimate extent. Oh my God. Just destroy the computing systems at the Vatican. The entire Catholic Church's like online infrastructure falls apart. Jesus priests with Chromebooks just lighting on fire in rectories. It's gonna be beautiful.

[Blake Wexler]

B movie, 90% improvised though. So I don't know how long the script is. Seinfeld did a lot of improv in that.

[Sophie From Mars]

I do know how long the script is because it's been printed on a number of T shirts at this point.

[Blake Wexler]

Oh my God, that's amazing.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's an older meme, but it checks out. You're listening to an iHeart podcast while.

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[Blake Wexler]

And she has documents. It's these fucking documents, these damn pieces of paper.

[Sophie From Mars]

And again, it is weirdly like this, like, proof that he's. There's something fundamentally accurate about his conception of the state. Because, like, much as he's like, no, Kari's my wife, the state's like, no, she's not. That's on us to decide. And we've decided no, because she doesn't have a passport. So she has to. They're, like, heading back to their house to finally be together and, like, their marital home, and she has to. Suddenly when, like, this clerk comes in and is like, wait, wait, wait. The passport's like, she doesn't have a passport. I can't do this. They have to bundle her off to live with his mom so that they don't live in sin.

[Blake Wexler]

Oh, my God.

[Sophie From Mars]

Like, unlike what's supposed to be their wedding day. And Carl starts having panic attacks about the fact that Kari is now living with his friends. Family. Quote, she is in the company of my hateful, mean, and vicious mother and my spoiled little sister Anna. Only father makes life easy for her. I don't know what will become of me. She's like, she's gonna leave me because my family sucks and she has to live with them now.

[Blake Wexler]

I don't know what will become of it. It all comes back to him, too, where it's always about. He wasn't talking about what is gonna become of me.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, what's gonna become of my wife. Right.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah.

[Sophie From Mars]

I also do love that. Like, yeah, it's good. Like, the state determines what a person is. And, like, this is good. And our only value comes from the role that we play within the state. And also, oh, the thing that I want more than anything isn't possible because the state has decided my wife isn't a real person.

[Blake Wexler]

I obviously don't know exactly how. I mean, I have an idea of how this story ends. Obviously, like, that's been established. But it is interesting that it seems like he turns on the people closest to him, where obviously because of how his ideologies was adopted by Nazis. His best friend who was a Jew. That doesn't end well. And then also a lot of his friends. No, it doesn't. A lot of his friends were these artists. And artists do not work for the state. It's the complete opposite. So they don't matter, essentially. So it's interesting that he keeps doing this.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yes, yes. It really is. Yeah. So through the end of 1913, he's having constant panic attacks. And we can surmise his parents. This is like a family trait, right. Because when he describes them in his diary in a way that, like a modern, like, oh, that motherfucker's having a panic attack. Right. But he calls them Schmidt effects, right? As in, like, this is like a Schmidt family characteristic, that we have these freakouts. And it's like, oh, yeah, okay. So your parents also have this problem, right. And they passed it on to you. And you'd think it's just you and your family, that you're the only people who have ever felt. Of course you do. At this period, it's 1913, where would you have read about panic attacks?

[Blake Wexler]

No, we just have heart attacks all the time. When we get nervous, we all have heart attacks. It's a Schmidt thing.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's a Schmidt thing.

[Blake Wexler]

We have high cholesterol.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. We're the only ones who do this. So he writes about this in his diaries. And Mehring notes that in the wake of these, he expresses the bulk of his anti Semitic opinions. Right. That while he's kind of like, dealing with this. This really stressful period of I can't marry this woman that I love this, the state doesn't consider her legitimate. Mering notes that in the wake of these, he writes, quote, saw the two Jews, Jacobsen and Lessing, bickering and was glad I no longer have anything to do with Rosenbaum, who's another Jewish friend of his. I don't want contact with Eisler anymore either. So he, like, sees these two Jewish guys he knows arguing and he's like, ah, it's just like. It's just what those kind of people do. I'm never gonna have any contact with them again. Now. This is not gonna be a permanent state. So it shows that bigotry is this thing that he comes back to and discards and comes back to. But it's not a stable state for him at this point because he and Eisler are going dear friends again. And for a considerable. Like, he will continue to talk about him. Well, and other. Have other Jewish friends after this period. The point is that his racism is erratic and it's correlated both with stressful times in his life and also these flights of fantasy. Right. Well, he'll write out this anti Semitic screed. And then he'll declare to his diary, I'm gonna get into politics and become a powerful man. And then the next day he'll write about how he and Kari are gonna have a son named Johan and he's gonna grow up to be a cardinal. And then like a couple of days later, he's going to be like, I'm still too broke. I can't marry my wife. This is never. We're never going to have our kid. And he's so fucking Catholic that when he becomes convinced he's not going to be able to have a kid with this woman for financial reasons and because of her, like, legal issues, he writes in his diary, I am a murderer. I am destroyed, have turned into nothing and have murdered the soul of a child. Where should I seek refuge in the Catholic Church? But I can't. I might as well go to the great Dalai Lama of Tibet or some Mexican God. And first off, bro, like, even in this period, most Mexicans are Catholic too. Like, just as a heads up, like, it's the same. Most of them. It's the same God you're worshiping. Right. Like maybe you haven't read those books.

[Blake Wexler]

This guy's so conservative.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

That he believes the life begins before you have sex with the person. Life begins when you and your documentation.

[Robert Evans]

Just anything but going to therapy. And I know it's a sign of the time.

[Sophie From Mars]

Life begins when you and your con artist wife declare that you're gonna have a son who becomes a cardinalite. Destroyed. Yeah. We killed this boy.

[Blake Wexler]

This boy Johan. Little Johan.

[Sophie From Mars]

Little Johan's dead now. This is essentially an abortion. I guess I am kind of impressed that he knows who the Dalai Lama is in this period of time. So I don't know. You know, it's a mix. We contain more well on some things. Again, he also thinks Mexican people don't aren't Cathol in large part. Obviously there's religions in that part of the world that have existed before Catholicism, but at this period of time, that's the dominant religion is the same as his. Anyway. He comes to see himself as a gnostic after this point. In other words, someone who believes that there's this malicious God that created the world. He basically believes the demiurge is what other people worship as the God. And like what these other folks. What I was raised to believe is God is actually this evil being that just wants to fuck with us right now. The fact that he comes around to this belief, this heretical belief is entirely centered upon his own financial and career frustrations. Right before the war breaks out, his wife gets caught shoplifting again. This lady, she's always stealing stuff.

[Blake Wexler]

She's the best.

[Sophie From Mars]

She's the best. She gets caught stealing shit, and it causes, like, a year worth of problems for him because he can't afford to pay the. And, like, he's just trying to keep her out of jail. So it's this whole constant, like, stressful issue on him. The fact that his wife got caught shoplifting. His con artist wife.

[Blake Wexler]

What was that horrible phrase? Tingle tangle.

[Sophie From Mars]

Tingle tangle girl. Yes. Right, right, yes. His wife, the burlesque dancing con artist, Scott, shoplifting. And it just fucks him up. And then while he's trying to deal with all of this, Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets shot in Sarajevo and World War I starts winding up. Karl is 26 at the time that it becomes inevitable that Germany's going to, you know, make some really bad decisions along with everyone else. To be fair, Germany's bad decisions aren't unique in this period. Now, this is another massive moment for most future German fascists, but not for Karl. Karl is not a German patriot. Hitler is like. Hitler is the strong. He's there when the Kaiser announces the start of the war in Berlin. He's part of. There's pictures of him. You can find him in the crowd. And he's, like, enraptured. He describes this, like, religious experience. He's so overjoyed to be going to war on behalf of the fatherland. And Carl's like, fuck this illegal war. This is Prussian bullshit. The Prussians orchestrated all of this. The rest of us Germans want nothing to do with this. I certainly go to war with the French. My family's half French. Fuck these people. Fuck all of this. This is illegal as hell, right? So he is not at all. And in fact, he writes in his diary, I hope the French win. And he'll be doing that throughout the war. Like, if the. I just hope the. I just want the enemy to win. So this is done. This is not a patriot, right? Absolutely. Not at all. So it's interesting because he's going to be so influential to the fascist movement, he has the opposite reaction of basically all of these other guys. Now, that said, he knows the war is wrong and dumb, but he doesn't protest it. And he's not a conscientious objector. He just doesn't really care about it. One gets the feeling he thinks that, like, the whole conflict is something that less intelligent people should care about. Like, not him. He has a Lot of thinking about what law is to do, right? He doesn't volunteer immediately, like a lot of people do, like a lot of his friends do. And he seems to be hoping, like, maybe the war will end quickly and I just will get to miss out on this right now. You can contrast this to his best friend, Eisler, right again. Eisler is a Hungarian national who desperately wants to be German. He's othered both because he's Hungarian and because he's Jewish. And he had tried repeatedly before the war to become a naturalized German citizen. And every time he does it, the authorities are like, nah, we don't need you. And he wants this in part because he's getting his doctorate and he can't actually get confirmed as a PhD or work in law unless he's a naturalized German citizen. He wants to work in the German government, Right? He wants to be a part of the court system and he has to be a citizen. And the chief of police before the war, the chief of police in Hamburg denies Eisler's citizenship petition by writing, quote, due to the Hungarian Jewish descent of the applicant and his father's criminal record, that he couldn't approve the application. His dad had done some petty crimes as a younger man. So when the war breaks out, Eisler applies again. And this time the German government is number one. The authorities who had been like turning him down are in the military now. So it's like people who are younger and maybe a little less bigoted who are making that call, and they're like, all right, you want to join the army, we'll let you do that and we'll make you a citizen. But you have to sign a paper promising you'll never work for the government, right? You'll never go after a government career or try to take the state exam to be considered a doctor in Germany, right? If you do those things, we'll make you a citizen and you can join the army. And Eisler agrees. That's how badly this kid wants to be a German patriot, which is such a bummer given not only what Germany's gonna do to Jewish people, not all that far from now, but given what's going to happen to him. Because all this kid wants is to be accepted as German. And he feels like, ah, the military, they can't other me if I'm in the military, right? They have to respect me as a patriotic German citizen if I serve in combat, that. So despite the fact that Schmidt had pretty recently written a lot of racist shit about Eisler he writes at the time of having great worry for his friend when Eisler joins the army and notes, if only he is not killed in action. The dear old fellow. Unfortunately, Fritz Eisler joins a field artillery unit and he is deployed immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. He is killed by shrapnel almost immediately. You know, his battery is firing, Allied counter battery fire hits nearby and he gets like gutted by a piece of metal. Mehring writes, Schmidt was moved by his untimely death. As a last favor to his friend, he edited one of Eisler's posthumous papers. And he like goes to Eisler's family to express his concerns, to help them deal with his dead friends, like, you know, stuff. And he get, he becomes almost immediately very good friends with Fritz's brother George. And the two will remain friends until 1932. Like he kind of switches his best friendship to George Eisler and it will stay that way almost until Hitler rises to power. And he gets actually much closer with the Eislers after Fritz dies. He stays over at their house and he writes that he's like surprised. Wow, these Jews are like a normal German family. I didn't think that that was the case with Jewish people. And at the end of this, George's father is like, hey man, how much money do you need to keep continue until you're able to like get to the money making part of your career and writes him a check. So again, even up to this point, this family is treating him like a son. Like Carl Schmitt probably doesn't have an academic career without the Eislers backing him up. Like they really do take him in. Now he has to join the military not long after this because he's a young German man and they don't have enough of those very quickly. Germany has a lot of young German men in late 1914 and then a couple months after August, a lot less German young men keep going.

[Blake Wexler]

German men keeping.

[Sophie From Mars]

They're just kind of feeding him into, into French machine guns. Now the French are doing the same thing, right? Everybody's, how fast can we get rid of our young men? Turns out very. So he joins a reserve infantry unit, right? Which the fact that he does this suggests he's trying to keep himself out of combat again in the hope that the war might end quickly. Now most of the reserve units in 1914 wind up on the front line because. Because it's just that kind of war. But he's going to try in other ways to delay his service. Balakrishnan writes, while he was in basic training, he claimed to have sustained a back injury. And the way Balakrishnan writes it suggests that he doesn't really think this is a real injury or that, like, Schmidt plays it up to delay things. But once again, luck is on his side. Schmidt's first mentor, Van Kalker, because he's like a respected gentleman, he joins the army and they're like, well, you're a major. And obviously he had spent time in the military before because everyone does basically he had done like his period of national service. So when he joins the full time army, he's made a major by virtue of the fact that he is a very, very respected professor. And because he's got this position, he's able to get Schmidt a place in the Prince's personal regiment. Now, this is not safe, actually. If you're in, like the Prince's regiment in the German army, you're going to see heavy combat because the prince wants glory and he's going to send boys to die to do it. A lot of his colleagues get killed, but Van Kalker is like, no, no, no. Carl Schmitt is not someone we want to feed to machine guns. This guy is smart. He's going to be somebody. And he gets him a job in the headquarters section, basically shuffling paperwork around, helping to like, handle organizational tasks. And as a result, for the entirety of the war, Schmidt is never particularly close to like, direct fire. I don't even think he's very close to indirect. He's never in serious danger, right. You know, like elevated from his civilian life. But he is not fighting, right? And he's not fighting because this mentor again comes in and probably saves his life, right? To be like, nah, nah, nah, this guy, we don't want this guy up at the front. It's just a waste.

[Blake Wexler]

A mentor he turns on.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, he just kind of abandons him at a certain point. Yeah, yeah. Now, after training, but before he deploys, Carl takes one last stab at Mary and Kari. And this time the whole system works differently because there's a war on. The officials who'd held up on naturalizing her were either deployed or had decided, like, look, this boy's probably gonna die. Like, everybody give him a chance to get this girl pregnant and continue the family line, right? Like, that's the idea. They're really, they're rubber stamping a lot of marriages at the this stage.

[Blake Wexler]

We gotta send these babies to the front line. These men are getting younger and younger.

[Sophie From Mars]

We're gonna need more German boys very soon. Now her birth certificate's obviously fake and she's got pending shoplifting charges. But they manage to, like, brute force this through and the two finally get married legally. Carl is immediately deployed. And he fucking hates it. He hates the army for the first time and only time in his life because of how much he hates being in the Army. He radically revises his ent, legal and philosophical theory about how the world works. He describes life in barracks as a hell where he was forced to endure the stink of plebes because he had. And, you know, he had previously, he had been like, well, human value depends upon how you are serving the state. And now that he is serving the state as effectively its property, he's like, oh, but that's awful. That sucks ass. No, this can't be how things work. Fuck.

[Blake Wexler]

This is what serving the state's like.

[Sophie From Mars]

This is invaluable at all. I hate this. The state. But no, he writes that he hated the God of this world, the law, for its destruction of the individual. Interesting, interesting. He's not going to stay consistent to this, but it is very funny to me that the moment he's made to live with his beliefs, he's like, oh, well, obviously this is a terrible idea now. He began even to dislike his mentor Van Calcre, in this time. This is kind of when the break with him begins, because Van Calker is a smart man. He was not an advocate for war, but he serves and he serves enthusiastically and without great disgust. And he even tell. They have an argument at one point, and Van Calcre is like, look, if the state has to break, commit some minor illegality in order to win the war, that's okay. And Karl's like, what the fuck? That's not what you taught me at all. Like, this isn't how it's supposed to work. And he writes, he has become unfaithful to himself. And it's interesting. Schmidt's private musings during this period read almost like protest literature. I was mad with anger about the Prussians, about militarism. I felt like committing the most ostentatious insubordinations. So he's like, I really wanted to rebel. But he doesn't. Obviously, he's not that guy. As part of his early service, he goes to Dachau, which at that point, we know what Dachau is going to be later. It's a munitions plant at this stage. And he runs and he's talking about, like, looking at the conditions in these arms factories, and he says, how ghastly for an individual to be sitting in such a prison. And it's interesting to me that that's his attitude about Dachau when it's like an arms facility. But he is going to be one of the early people who helps to fill up concentration camps. Yeah. Interesting.

[Blake Wexler]

And that means that he had the skill set to do that.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yes.

[Blake Wexler]

And the personality to do it wild.

[Sophie From Mars]

But also the ability to understand that something considerably less awful than Dachau, the concentration camp is still bad. So theoretically, the ability to understand like what he was doing and helping to put people in Dakout was wrong. Anyway, speaking of concentration. Nope, nope. Ads.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus Christ.

[Sophie From Mars]

We're not doing good with the ad transition today, people.

[Robert Evans]

It's kind of hard on a subject like this.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, this is my favorite producer on air host dynamic, by the way, I've ever seen.

[Robert Evans]

It's just bummed it's just us in real life.

[Blake Wexler]

Anyway, enough about concentration camps. Here's some word from the Gap. Are you wearing from Baby Gap?

[Sophie From Mars]

The Gap?

[Robert Evans]

I do wish it was the Gap.

[Blake Wexler]

How funny would that be?

[Robert Evans]

Wish it was the Gap. And it's going to be something so much worse that we're not even aware of.

[Sophie From Mars]

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[Sophie From Mars]

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[Sophie From Mars]

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Every day our world gets a little.

[Sophie From Mars]

More connected, but a little further apart.

[Blake Wexler]

But then there are moments that remind.

[Ad Reader]

Us to be more human.

[Sophie From Mars]

Thank you for calling Amica Insurance. Hey, I was just in an accident. Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of.

[Blake Wexler]

At Amica, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's human. Amica empathy is our best policy. So the war ends in 1918, and Schmidt's relief is tempered by what appeared to be like, the dissolution of the German state. Germany is falling apart. As soon as there's, like, a peace happens and. And this whole order, the legal order that his whole life had been based on looks like it's just going to crumble. Like, the legal code is going to be gone. The government, the Kaiser's already gone. What the fuck's gonna be left? And part of what's happening is that there is a socialist revolution right after peace that, like, comes pretty close to succeeding in some areas. Units of demobilized soldiers, the Fry Corps, crack down and start massacring leftist intellectuals with the direct endorsement of the right and the tacit support of social democratic politicians who are like, yeah, it's ugly, but we. Otherwise we won't get to have our democratic state. If. If we don't let you know, if we don't let the right murder all of these leftists. Schmidt is lecturing at a university by this point, and during the late war years, he'd begun to receive pay for his work as an academic. His office was broken into by what Balakrishnan describes as a band of revolutionaries who are just like, yeah, a bunch of young people who are trying to, like, overthrow the local government. And while he's at a cafe an officer sitting next to him at a table gets assassinated and he reacts by growing terrified of disorder. It's not just that he's like horrified by these revolutionary moments that are so chaotic and scary. He also recognizes, oh, when things fall apart, you have the chance to dramatically remake society, including the chance to remake the law and the concept of order maybe in a way that makes more sense. And that's what he's thinking at the time. And so it's also noteworthy that even though he, he doesn't like the leftist kind of uprisings that are happening, they scare him. He's not an obsessive anti Marxist at this point either. And in fact, Balakrishnan notes that there's not really any anti Marxism in his writings from this period, which he describes as quite simply puzzling. It's like really weird that given how he felt about this, he didn't go on any rants about Marxism. It's just kind of an odd fact here. And it may have something to do with the fact that he sees this as more a structural thing of life. Like, well, yeah, it's the left doing it right now, but when things collapse, opportunity is made for people of radical beliefs. And so it's the factor, the really the reality of collapse is more to blame for it than anything. And he's more interested than like ranting about the left. He's more interested in figuring out how to take advantage of those moments right now. This period of chaos would inspire his first great and truly influential book. Book Political romanticism, published in 1919. This is a pre fascist work because again, fascism isn't really off the ground all the way yet of what we would call fascist polemics. He's basically listing all of the ideologies that exist in the world at the time, from socialism and monarchism to liberalism as flawed. He calls them dead romanticism. Right? And he calls conservatism that. Right. Conservatism is just this dead romantic idea. Fact expresses nothing but contempt for conservative reactionaries who in that period sought the Kaiser's return. So he's like, you're just looking back on a period that was never very good and you're not serious thinkers. Right? But he's also looking at the liberals in Weimar and being like, well, you're, you're idolizing this democracy that number one was birthed in blood and number two isn't going to succeed in fixing anything. Now the core of Schmidt's rage is reserved not for the political class, but for the kind of bohemian artists and creatives who'd made up his pre war friend and social circle. We might see this as an early attack on the same sort of, like, shallow Hollywood liberal elites that would become such a hallmark of conservative politics in our era. And I want to quote from an article on the power of Carl Schmidt by Richard Cohen. Schmidt reduced and attacked all contemporary political alternatives to fascism, especially liberalism, but also socialism, as mere romanticism because of their attachment to free speech discussion and hence parliamentarianism, which Schmidt, owing to his decisionism, dismissed as empty chatter masking a deeper inability ability to decide. He labels such politics romantic for the same reason, because the Romantics are essentially indecisive estates fluttering from one fashion to another, always stimulated and excited, but never committed and engaged. So that's kind of interesting to me that he is. He's rejecting all of these different belief systems as based in sorts of fantasies about how things should be and not a real understanding of how people are. Right. That's the conclusion he's come to at this point.

[Blake Wexler]

He is a fantasizer himself. It's so interesting how prone he. He's not the first fascist who's prone to fantasy. And no, it is interesting, the contradictions with him.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Oh, like, everything has to be rule of law, you know, like, you are not a productive member of society unless you're serving the state also, you know, like, my wife is a. You know, like, she's not. She's Croatian, but. But she's. Yeah, she's a countess. She's a countess. Countess is. Yeah.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's also interesting. He has this experience of, like, ah, all that matters is what you do as part of the state. And then it's like, oh, wait, that sucks ass. And it's like, yeah, because you had a romantic view of what that meant. That was proven wrong. And he's still attacking his enemies for being like Romantics, but unable to see that strain in himself.

[Blake Wexler]

And he's like a professor. Like, that's not. He's not serving the state either, you know, like. So. Yeah, it's interesting.

[Sophie From Mars]

No, but again, he is always looking at people. He's always seeing real problems. Like, among this class of, like, artists and celebrities in Berlin, he sees how kind of hollow they're signaling at these democratic values are and concludes the most important source of political vitality is the belief in justice and an indignation over injustice. He notes that what's important is not, like, how either of them are defined, but that they have a definition and stick to it. Like Schmidt, he's kind of got this Walter sobchak from the big Lebowski attitude of like, you got to have an ethos. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you spell it right.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just write it down. As long as it's written down. It can be whatever the hell you want.

[Sophie From Mars]

As long as it's written down right?

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah.

[Sophie From Mars]

This book marks the last time in his career that Schmidt centered ethics in any way. For the remainder of his decades as a jurist and legal philosopher. He is interested only in power. And as the post war years become the twenties, Mussolini marches on Rome and fascism becomes the name on every tongue. Europe begins its slow drive to the brink. And Schmidt is initially distracted by the collapse of his marriage to an extremely obvious congress woman. And, you know, things sour. And Carl kind of finds out that Carrie's been lying to him the whole time. It takes 10 years, but in 1922, he files for an annulment on the grounds of willful deceit.

[Robert Evans]

It took 10 years.

[Blake Wexler]

10 years.

[Sophie From Mars]

10 years to realize that he's been had.

[Robert Evans]

Carl.

[Blake Wexler]

She's the hero of this, by the way.

[Sophie From Mars]

She is good.

[Blake Wexler]

She's amazing. Yeah, she's the best.

[Sophie From Mars]

I hope she has a good life after this.

[Blake Wexler]

Me too.

[Robert Evans]

Carl. Ten years, my guy.

[Sophie From Mars]

Ten years. Yeah. Carl.

[Blake Wexler]

Sweetheart.

[Sophie From Mars]

Sweetheart. Oh, boy.

[Robert Evans]

Babe, what's going on?

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, my love. Carl.

[Sophie From Mars]

10 years of like, sorry, I left my real passport in my other skirt, or whatever. So the Catholic Church is not thrilled with his annulment. And Carl proves his fundamental messiness. When he's getting annulled, while they're doing having, like, divorce proceedings in court, he meets this 19 year old Serbian girl named Dushka who's like the translator, who's like, translating for his wife in court. Court.

[Blake Wexler]

This classic story.

[Sophie From Mars]

Starts dating her.

[Robert Evans]

What is this, an episode of Sex in the City? Come on, Carl.

[Blake Wexler]

I've heard this before.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. Mering describes Carl as living in a, quote, erotic state of exception during which he continued to cheat with his second wife on multiple women. Right. Like he's writing about the law. He's writing about, like, the importance of, you know, spelling out who you are and what you do and not deviating from it. And he is cheating on his second wife. Wife. And he keeps a diary. Again, this is another thing that fascists today all do. He keeps a diary of every time he comes. Like, he's. Like he's charting his ejaculations. This motherfucker would have been NoFAP so hard. Or like, I don't know, what is it? Our speaker of the House who, like, talks about when he's comes and doesn't with his son. Like, he's. They're all. This guy.

[Robert Evans]

Don't do that. Don't do that.

[Sophie From Mars]

You don't need that data.

[Blake Wexler]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe if you were busier paying attention to what was going on, Carl, it wouldn't have taken you 10 years.

[Sophie From Mars]

God.

[Robert Evans]

Stop. Just. I'm gonna stop.

[Sophie From Mars]

Just stop.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I was gonna go. I was gonna go on a longer rant, but I remembered stop is a Kabbaling sentence.

[Blake Wexler]

You can stop.

[Robert Evans]

Stop.

[Sophie From Mars]

So he's gotten his marriage and old the con artist. He's dating a teenager. He's writing in a journal every time he comes. He's just living his best life.

[Ad Reader]

Jesus Christ.

[Sophie From Mars]

Christ.

[Blake Wexler]

That journal may have sold better than that satire magazine.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's gotta be in his letters. I mean, because it gets referenced by Mehring. I am. I really wish he just included an extensive, like, quotation from it.

[Blake Wexler]

Here's an excerpt.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

As someone who washes their hands a lot, I hope he did because. Ew.

[Sophie From Mars]

Nah, they didn't believe in that back then.

[Blake Wexler]

I have terrible news. I guarantee you he did it.

[Robert Evans]

That journal is.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. Sticky pages.

[Robert Evans]

Unfortunately. That was my first thought.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. No. So Schmidt, while this is all happening after he gets divorced, he's watching the early days of the Nazi party, right? 22 is when he gets divorced. 23 is the beer hall putsch which fails. And a lot of people think, well, that's it for them Nazis. And Carl is not initially interested in joining or supporting the movement. He's like, these people seem like Yahoo. What he does do is increasingly analyze and start to pick out the obvious flaws in the democratic system of Weimar. And he begins to lay out in a book a theory for exactly why liberal democracy is doomed and how the right can take advantage of these fundamental holes in liberal democracy to smash liberalism, gain power and destroy democracy in 1923, the year that putsch. Schmidt writes this about the post war Wilsonian order imposed on Union Europe. The history of political and state theory in the 19th century could be summarized with a single phrase. The triumphal march of democracy. No state in the Western European cultural world withstood the extension of democratic ideals and institutions. And he writes this in like a mournful way, right. That it's almost like you can't stop it. And you know, you've got Mussolini by this point in Italy, but Hitler is seen as like an upstart weirdo discontent. And there's this. There is this attitude that, like, democracy is obviously on the march. And sure, Schmidt, he picks out, he's like looking at this the way fucking the rebels are looking at the Death Star plans. And he finds a vulnerability in liberal democracy that's easy to exploit. And he writes his next book about it. That book is called the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, and it comes out alongside economic and social chaos that's gripping Weimar, right, and I'm going to quote from Richard Cohen here. The new crisis of democracy, he argued, stem precisely from its victory over monarchy. During that struggle, democracy and liberalism were basically coext. To believe in popular sovereignty was to believe in the necessity of the replacement of absolute monarchy with a regime characterized by elections, free public debate, and legal rights. But in Schmidt's mind, this connection is far more historical happenstance than conceptual necessity. And that democracy, properly construed, cannot be seen as requiring rights and even universal suffrage in the way that liberals understand them. A government is democratic, Schmidt 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 an 1926 preface to the second edition of his book. 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 and eradication of heterogeneity. Do you see what he's saying here?

[Blake Wexler]

Son of a bitch.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, right.

[Blake Wexler]

Son of a bitch.

[Sophie From Mars]

Right. A couple things are fascinating to me. Number one, with the exception of the fact that he endorses this, this is essentially how anarchists talk about borders, right? The maintenance of every border implies violence. And this is both physical borders, like the border between us and Mexico, and like what you're seeing right now with the attempt to legislate like what counts as a woman with all these anti trans things. Both of those borders are maintained by men with guns, with violence. There's the threat of violence behind building every one of those borders. If you cross this border or at cross it in the wrong way, force will be used against you. Every democracy does this, and it does this not just in terms of who can enter the country, but who gets to vote. And so even if you have, you're saying nice things in your constitution about these are universal rights of men. These are rights that extend to everyone. These aren't just rights that extend to people who are citizens in the country. These are universal rights that our society universally recognizes. That doesn't necessarily mean squat because. Because what you do as the reactionary is you find that border wherever it exists, and you start pushing inward. And as you start pushing inward from that border, you will start fracturing the democratic consensus that exists until you can destroy democracy. And that's how you gain power as a reactionary movement within a liberal. That's how you destroy liberalism. You find the border that they place, and you start pushing inwards. Right? That's what Karl realizes, and that's what he lays out. And it works today as well as it did back then.

[Blake Wexler]

She's got the chills.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yes.

[Blake Wexler]

Jesus. Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's great.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah. It's wonderful. It's right. It's correct. I mean, yeah.

[Sophie From Mars]

No, he has accurately identified the flaw in the system and how to explain exploit it. He writes, quote, democracy and liberalism could be allied to each other for a time, but as soon as it achieves power, liberal democracy must decide between its elements. The crisis of the modern state arises from the fact that no state can realize a mass democracy, a democracy of mankind. Maybe he'll prove right about that in the future, maybe he won't. But we've never tried, right? Ultimately, we haven't. The most potent part of Cohen's essay, he described Schmidt's academic work in the late 1920s as creating a blueprint quot adaptable virtually anywhere for using reactionary politics to gain control of and destroy democracy from the inside while pretending to be in service of that democracy. Now, elements of this had been discussed by several thinkers, particularly in the context of the US during the era of slavery. But Schmidt's big con, one of his big contributions, is that he recognizes race and religion can be used to push that border in, but they don't matter. That's not the only way to delineate the in enemy. All that matters is that you are delineating an enemy, right? And pulling them out of being considered part of the body politic. They can be Jews, they can be black, they could be trans, they can be whoever. But what matters ultimately is that you're picking an enemy and you are identifying them as not a part of us, right? And that's. That's the ball game. Right.

[Blake Wexler]

And less than. Or less than nine, you know, and.

[Sophie From Mars]

A danger to us, Right?

[Blake Wexler]

Yes, right.

[Sophie From Mars]

So Schmidt argued, you know, not only that this is how you manipulate democracy, because unlike what liberals say, exclusion is at the core of democratic politics. He writes this in 1932 in a book considered to be perhaps the most important intellectual work of fascism's birth era. The concept of the political quote, every religious, moral, economic, ethical or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy. So he has first this recognition of that, like liberalism, inherently liberal democracy always draws a border. You start pushing in from that border, and then he refines us to the idea that, like all politics, is about defining friend and enemy. Right? And that's how you gain power, and that's how you enshrine your power. Right. And once you have identified a group of citizens as the enemy and you gain power, you exclude them from the franchise, you turn them into a domestic enemy which you can then purge and destroy, and that's how you maintain power. Per an article in the New Statesman by Samuel Earl, that a specific distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. Schmidt declared. His fellow anti democratic and decorated soldier Ernst Younger described what followed as a mind that silently excluded explodes. For Schmidt, the friend, enemy antithesis was integral for politics in three senses. The enemy needed to be something different and alien. Opposing such an enemy was the essence of identity. And in the implicit combat that followed, these enemies posed an existential threat. The friend, enemy and combat concepts received their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. Schmidt wrote war was therefore an ever present possibility. And again, the Nazis are doing a lot of this before he writes about it. But number one, his initial work on sort of this strategy of how to push it on the border influences how the Nazis proceed. But also he is explaining what they're doing in an intellectual way that is accurate and doing so in a way that's also not ideological, in that he's explaining and describing an ideology. But he's not doing it as a Nazi process propagandist. He's doing it as an academic. Right. And he's doing it in a way that provides a blueprint for other people.

[Blake Wexler]

That's such an interesting distinction between him and Goebbels. Or I feel like that would be, you know, like kind of the. I don't want to say lazy, because this is my. I'm making the comparison, but like my lazy comparison where it's like Goebbels, obviously. All right, let's. It's propaganda, you know, like there's more quote, unquote spice on it where this was. It's just, this is how it works. This is why it works.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

And this is why it will work.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. And you do get kind of at the end of this book, he does give, you get a hint of his developing ideology. And part of it, why he hates liberalism, is that liberalism is an onslaught against the political. It seeks to replace conflict, which he views as natural with economic competition and quote, perpetual discussion. And that this doesn't end in a better society, but like kind of a destruction of something important at the soul of human humanity. Right. Which is this crusade against an enemy, right. That we almost, we need this as people. We need to have enemies, which is a fundamental part of fascism. Right. We need enemies in order to be fully human. Like an enemy to fight, to destroy, to rally against. Now, Schmidt was not an early Nazi. He was not a particular admirer of Hitler. In the early 1920s, he described Hitler as a hysteric. In 1932, the same year he published the Concept of the Political, he argued that the Weimar government could and should use the military to destroy Nazism. But as the Nazis began taking power, he changed his tune quickly from a mix of, you know, he wants to protect himself, but most importantly because high ranking Nazis start to take him seriously as a thinker. And he had been doing okay, his books had been doing better. But he really starts to become famous because there's some high up Nazis who like what he has to say. And his particular backer, the guy who's going to make him, give him the opportunity to be the rich intellectual he's always wanted to be, right? Who's going to, to make his life possible is Hermann Goering. Right now Goering is about to be. He's this World War I pilot, like fighter pilot hero. He literally takes over like the Red Baron squadron after he gets like shot down. That's what Goering does in the war. He gets fucked up and horribly injured during the Munich Beer Hall Putsch and addicted to painkillers. Relatable.

[Blake Wexler]

There it is.

[Sophie From Mars]

But when Hitler takes power, he's the Reichsmarshall, right? He's going to lose favor throughout the Third Reich. But he is on paper the guy who, if Hitler dies is supposed be to take over, Right? So that's the degree to which Goering is held in esteem at the start of the Reich. And he takes a liking to Schmidt's work He's like, this guy gets it and we need to bring this guy in and have him be our court philosopher, right? He's kind of become. Because Nazi intelligentsia had been following him for a while, he's a little bit of like a Curtis Yarvin figure, right? Where he doesn't really have as clear a goal as Yarvin does. But there are a lot of these guys who become Nazi intelligentsia who are following him for a while and respect him for a while. For his part, Carl's part, once it becomes clear that the Nazis are going to win, he's like, well, if some of these guys like me, I can get rich and powerful. That's what I've always wanted. So he starts sucking up and he writes that Goering was the right type for these times. As he becomes a darling for the far right, Schmidt continues to live a life well out of line with the stated morals of the movement for which he is becoming the chief imperial intellectual theoretician. Per the Claremont Review of Books. Guilt and Eros combined for Schmidt in Carl Theodore Dreher's silent movie, the Passion of Joan of Arc. With an almost sadistic use of close ups, Dreher depicts the doomed heroine, a daughter of God charged with being a child of the devil, as she pleads that she has only fought for God and country. In 1928, Schmidt watched the film a dozen times. Mehring reports that on several occasions in both Berlin and Rome, he picked up a prostitute to watch the it with him. It seems that his longing for redemption from his own psychic turmoil fueled a need for a higher absolute obligation which could only come from a commitment to the law promulgated by God or by the state. So there's this. This attitude like maybe it's because he's got this kind of compulsive sexuality that he can't just be like, eh, people just fuck. You know, he has to. He has to like, condemn himself and find absolution in this idea of law or the state as God as representing some higher natural truth in order to gain absolution. It's also just funny that he's constantly watching this Joan of Arc movie while picking up prostitutes. Like, you want to go watch Joan of Arc? Speaking of watching silent films, here's makes no sense.

[Robert Evans]

That made no sense.

[Sophie From Mars]

I got nothing. I got nothing. I don't know how to do a fucking ad transition in these episodes. Look, go to Rome, meet somebody nice. Watch a movie about a French lady getting tortured. You know, have fun.

[Robert Evans]

You become fake pope once and you no longer know how to do an ad transition.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, yeah, well Popes don't need ads because they have all that gold buried under the Vatican. Sophie.

[Blake Wexler]

That's right.

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[Blake Wexler]

Know it's more than just a car.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's the two door coupe that was.

[Blake Wexler]

There for your first drive, the hatchback that took you cross country and back, and the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool for the car you couldn't live without.

[Sophie From Mars]

Trust Amica Auto Insurance Amathy is our best policy. We're back. Man. I wonder. They got to have a lot of gold buried under there, right? Like a crazy amount.

[Blake Wexler]

Like, oh, in the Vatican.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, yeah. Like enough to ruin the, like the price of gold worldwide if they ever put it onto the market.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I don't think so because there were so many different things where like things were getting stolen. I think they, they would have. There's probably secret gold, but I don't think it'd be.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's gotta be secret gold.

[Robert Evans]

As obvious as there.

[Blake Wexler]

Well, what are they used for? All the lawsuits like that. It has to be.

[Sophie From Mars]

Oh, yeah, yeah. They had to have had a lot lying around for that. What if we all. Naruto, run into the Vatican archives and just try to like, see what we can get?

[Robert Evans]

I would have so much fun going to the Vatican archives.

[Sophie From Mars]

Find the secret sequel to the New Testament where Palpatine returns. Returns. I'm excited. I think we can make this happen. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Use your new power as fake Pope.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, that's right. That's right. I'll tell the Swiss Guard to stand down.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

They're goofy outfits.

[Sophie From Mars]

Stupid ass outfits.

[Robert Evans]

I'll be right behind you as you do that.

[Sophie From Mars]

In April of 1933, Schmidt joined the Nazi party officially. In May, he published an article that is generally considered to be the blueprint for the legal expulsion of German intellectuals who had unacceptable political or racial characteristics. Quote, Germany has spat them out for all time, he said. And he's talking specifically about Albert Einstein. Right. Schmidt authors the blueprint for kicking Einstein and other thinkers permanently out of the Reich. Right. And describing them as enemies. Right. And for him, this is a political term and this is about. This is one year after he breaks off his friendship with Eisler. But he does write you as an individual can be friends with someone who is a political enemy because again, that's a political system state. You have to treat them as an enemy when doing politics, but it doesn't mean you can't like them personally, socially, but you're also accepting that it means killing them at a stage. So maybe you can't, I don't know, Killing them politically? Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Not as friends.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Is that logic I'd check out?

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, as much as anything this fucker says does so through most of the twenties, liberals and liberalism were the center of most of Schmidt's rhetorical ire. But Jews grew more central as time went on. Now, we've already covered that. He certainly imbibed the racial antisemitism of the era, and he had occasional flings of bigotry during times of stress and depression. But he also spoke glowingly of several Jews in his life. Most crucially, he was completely dependent economically upon the kindness of a Jewish family who treated him as a second son. Right. Like that's a big deal in this period of time, is that, like, there's these. This family that keeps him alive. But now that he was a prominent Nazi academic whose writings were not just cited, but were being used to make law under the Third Reich, he starts being critiqued by, like, Jewish academics. I mean, but this happens before the Third Reich is established. And this is part of, like, what radicalizes him is that in the late 20s, when it becomes clear that he's, like, writing in favor of Elements of Fascism, there's several different Jewish academics critique his book the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, and he goes on a rant and complains, four Jews against one Christian. They attack me in all the journals, and no one notices what's going on. So that's a big part. If you're wondering, like, what's the missing piece here between him, like, dumping his Jewish friends and going full Nazi. Well, it's because some Jewish professors say mean things about this book he writes. Later that year, a Jewish professor was being considered for hiring by his university, and Schmidt wrote in to call his would be colleague a disgusting, craven, dilettante Jew. So by the mid-20s, he's very consistently racist, but he's still friends with Eisler right up until the 30s, and he's still able to make exceptions in his head, unlike most Nazis, the justification he gives for his animus is not racial. Right. He is someone who is like. If I think his belief initially at least, is that, like, well, Jews can convert and stuff, and then I don't have to treat them that way. But his issue with them is that they tend to be literally liberal. Right? And so he interprets the battle that he is. He's laying out the lions how you win a battle against liberal democracy. And he describes it as a battle against the Jewish spirit. Per an article by Benjamin Ballant for the Claremont Review of Books, his friend, enemy, distinction now fed into the contrast he drew between the homogenous German Volk and the alien Jew. He hastily severed his friendships and associations with Jews, including his longtime publisher, Ludwig Fuchtwanger, and the young scholar of Hobbes and Spinoza, Leo Strauss, whom he had recommended to the Rockefeller foundation for a fellowship that allowed Strauss to leave Germany a year before. By the early 30s, as he moved from scholarship to polemics, Schmidt no longer directed his counter revolutionary fervor against Weimar anarchism. And by anarchism, he means the fact that the state doesn't work very well. So he cuts off all of these academic friends, including. Have you heard of Leo Strauss?

[Blake Wexler]

I know the name. Yeah, I've heard of the name. Yeah.

[Sophie From Mars]

Very influential. Influential. All of the people behind George W. Bush were Straussians. And when I say it, I'm talking about guys like Bill Kristol, who's now like anti trump. Bill Kristol is a Straussian. The Straussians are the neocons. Strauss is initially very close with Schmidt, and Schmidt influences Strauss and Strauss influences Schmidt. Schmidt is basically his mentor for a while, right? He helps him get this scholarship. Right. And then Strauss comes to the United States and he becomes a core intellectual mind behind neo conspiracy conservatism. Right? So again, the way in which this guy, even though, like, obviously there's no love lost between them once Schmidt goes full Nazi because Strauss is Jewish, right? So once the Third Reich gets into power and Schmidt has the chance to actually be making laws, he warps his personal politics in order to fit, you know, the regime that's now in place. No longer does he talk about the state working towards some sort of natural law law. Instead, he begins to argue that political sovereignty is constituted in the will of the leader or dictator who was sovereign and who had no kind of check and could abide no kind of check on his power. Per an article on the power of Carl Schmitt by Richard Cohen. The dictator's will is arbitrary and must be arbitrary. This is not a fault for the fascist, but the highest virtue. The dictator's will is a pure will, unchecked and unregulated by any exterior consideration beyond itself. Like a God. Like the God God. Only as such is it a truly sovereign will. The dictator can never be challenged, in other words, because there are no grounds upon which to challenge him. Thus any challenge, any criticism, no matter how rational, realistic or good willed, is by definition betrayal. From the standpoint of all allegedly legitimizing authorities, whether ethical, populist, hereditary, religious, aesthetic, utilitarian, economic, or what have you, the dictator's decision is beyond reproach. Approach, force, power and might are the dictator's first and final resort, and submission is the only appropriate response. Rule, call it law or not, is to dictate order and command. Thus the ubiquitous military trappings of fascism, however ludicrous, the dictator wearing battle fatigues or dress uniforms adorned with medals, the pomp and ceremony, the military parades and the displays of weapons. In times of quiet as well as war, without criteria or standards, the dictator is sovereignty. Sovereignty itself, no matter what he says or does or the reverse precisely in what he says and does as he says and does it always at the moment of his willing. So he's gone from the only legitimate states have a constitution that lays out what the rules are and they follow that constitution. And law is always working towards some sort of natural law to the law is whatever the leader says it is. Right. Human will creates law. Right. That the will of a specific human and put in charge of a people creates law. Right. That's where Schmidt has ended. You know, now that democracy has been destroyed, now that Hitler's in power, and he's working backwards to a degree at this point from the fact that Hitler has taken power. Right. But this is again like he's. He's. He's kind of describing what's happening to some extent after the fact. But he's also. He comes to understand and justify sovereignty as the permanent state of emergency or a state of exception. Right. Fascism is like the normalization, legalization of arbitrary power. So we even do see some of, like his early thinking on, like how judges work and the kind of arbitrariness at the center of the legal system. Like, this is where he winds up, right. That this is kind of the ultimate political system. It's great.

[Blake Wexler]

It is interesting too, where he would talk about how like democracy was, you know, it's. It only works because of the eventual force that can be applied. You know, where there. It's eventual. With a dictator just wearing fatigues, dressed like a general, you know, with the military parades. It's not implied, it's not eventual, it's immediate, you know.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yes.

[Blake Wexler]

It's a very. Yeah, the imagery really drives it home.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yes.

[Blake Wexler]

More so, Right.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. And thanks to Goering's influence, he gets made president of the Union of National socialist jurists in 1934, after the night of Long Knives. Schmidt plays a role in justifying and legitimating what had happened. You know, this looks like and is an illegal series of murders committed, you know, to settle political scores. But Schmidt argues this is actually perfectly legal. Right. He publishes an article called the Fuhrer Protects the Law, which argues that what Hitler had done was the highest justice available. Right. Quote. The Fuhrer protects the law against the worst forms of abuse. When in the moment of danger, he immediately creates law by force of his character as Fuhrer, as the supreme legal Authority. And again, I think we have to look at maybe where we're headed with some of these courts questioning the decisions being made by Trump, by diktat. This is already what Trump's people believe. Trump creates law. Law by force of his character. Right. And you know, Schmidt has provided a justification for purging people in situations like this. Right? Because the Fuhrer has to protect the law by carrying out illegal acts of violence, because he then creates a new law. And so the concept of law fundamentally is protected by the Fuhrer doing this.

[Blake Wexler]

So there is no lawlessness.

[Sophie From Mars]

There's no lawlessness.

[Blake Wexler]

There's never a gap. It's the new dictator's law.

[Sophie From Mars]

There's lawlessness. If there's a conflict, right, between the Fuhrer and power, that's lawlessness. Right. And that's what Hitler was fighting against. Right. That's why he was protecting the law by doing what he did. He celebrates, like when the Nuremberg Laws come in, he describes it as proof that the National Socialist state is a just state. And then in 1936, he helps convene a conference on how to get rid of Jewish influence in German law. He gives a speech where he blames the Jews for hollowing out the German, healthy, volkish, German way of thinking of the state. And he calls for a purification of libraries that includes a separate system of citations for Jewish authors. Right? So there he is explicitly endorsing book bannings, the purging of books written by friends and colleagues of his, a separate way of classifying them, because obviously Jewish law is a danger to good Germans, Right?

[Blake Wexler]

Well, and they made fun of him. They hurt his feelings.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, and they made fun of him. They talk shit about his book, his awful writing, right? So he is deeply complicit in the early Third Reich and in the purging of intellectuals and people getting put. He's incredibly complicit in all of this. Now, unfortunately for schmidt, this, in 1936, this speech he gives is going to be like the high watermark of his power in the Third Reich. Because once the Nazis are running everything, they're like, we don't really need an academic with a mind of his own, Right?

[Blake Wexler]

We got it.

[Sophie From Mars]

We've got it. Now we're done thinking, you know, and this guy, he's not really loyal to Hitler, right? So In December of 36, the SS newspaper publishes a hit piece on him accusing him of being a Hegelian, which is basically true, and a false anti Semite, which really isn't. He talked to friends about, like, fleeing Germany. He was like, maybe I need to leave, maybe this is dangerous. But it's not something he ever seriously considered. He does have some defenders who will be like, well look, he thought about leaving and like, I don't know if that counts to me. Hannah Arendt would later write about Schmidt's ouster from the Nazi party as a fairly standard move. The replacing of sympathetic but skilled people with toadies who are utterly loyal to the system even if they're not very good at anything. Quote from Arendt and this is I think, an important one, especially for right now. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first rate talents, regardless of their sympathies with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. Nothing familiar there.

[Blake Wexler]

I'm not picking up on. What an old idea, Common themes.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yes. What an ancient idea. Hanahead yeah, that's so dated now. He was never, Schmidt is never hounded by the regime or punished. He's never in serious danger. He's out of the any kind of inner circle here. He's on, on the kind of the outskirts looking in again. But he maintains his position. He keeps being employed at the university, he's a prominent academic and he lives well up and through most of the war years. But by the time the war ends and the Allies begin to occupy the ruins of the Third Reich, his last public identity had been as a Nazi intellectual who was participating in the purging of intellectuals. And so he gets arrested by the Americans in September of 1944. He's locked up for like a month or so. And you know, he's, he's trying to put a brave face on it. He tells his wife, like I'm not going to collapse like some of these other guys who killed themselves or whatever. Like I'm, I'm going to hold up, you know, they'll realize I'm not guilty of anything. And unfortunately he's kind of right. You know, he gets released, he gets arrested again in March and April of 1947 and he's brought to Nuremberg where he gets interrogated by the US Chief Counsel at Nuremberg, Robert Kirk Kempner, four times over the course of about a month or so, five weeks. And he's basically Kempner's trying to figure out is there anything we can go after this guy for? How much is he responsible for how many crimes did he directly commit? And Schmidt is like, look, I wasn't trying to support all the horrible things the Nazis do. I'm not a Nazi ever really. I'm an intellectual adventurer. That's how he describes himself as like, look, I was just asking questions. Yeah. He's such a piece of shit. We should have shot this guy in the fucking face.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, immediately.

[Sophie From Mars]

I want to read a little transcript of his interview with Kempner. That makes for fascinating reading, because this is Kempner being like, what the fuck do you mean by intellectual adventurer? I wanted to give the term national socialism. My own meeting. Schmidt said, Kempner, Hitler had a national Socialism, and you had a National Socialism socialism. Schmidt, I felt superior. Kempner, you felt superior to Adolf Hitler? Schmidt, Intellectually, of course. He was to me, so uninteresting that I do not want to talk about that at all. When did you renounce the devil, Kempner asked? 1936. And I believe that he didn't like Hitler. Right? Because he doesn't. He's never an intellectual respecter of Hitler, particularly. But this is right. Like, you participated in purging your colleagues. You were so psyched that people were listening to you. That's all that matters. You only renounce the devil because the SS got angry at you and you lost your influence. Right. Like this man never had a change of heart.

[Blake Wexler]

I'm thinking of who Schmidt. I might be getting ahead of ourselves, of who he would favor out of a Hitler. And then you have a trip like, who was the ideal. I think it might be Putin. Might be the ideal one for him.

[Sophie From Mars]

Fascinating that you bring that up. This brief after war period marked the last time Schmidt would discuss his support of the Nazis directly. He returned to Plettenberg and continued to write, although he was fired from his professorship. He found no trouble getting published, though. And once around 20 years had passed, his name starts getting tossed around by conservative intellectuals around the world, first in whispered tones, but then in an increasingly brazen manner. Schmidt dies in 1985, and he lives to see the beginning of his second rise to prominence. And one of them. You've heard of Marine Le Pen over in France. She just got incarcerated for a bunch of shit, but she's like the leader of their fascist party. Her father founded the party. Her father is a Schmidt acolyte. Her father. The whole blueprint of the French far right is directly taken from Schmidt. That's why it's so centered on. On immigrants and immigration. Right. Like, they are very consciously the French. I think it's the National Party that Le Pen leads is their whole blueprint is Schmidt. Schmidt is the guy. Like, they are openly citing and quoting his writings at the very start of that party. Now more to the point there's another fella who becomes one of his acolytes who, like, finds Schmidt's writing and is like, oh, this is a really good blueprint for how to get in power as a reactionary movement and destroy a nascent liberal democracy. And that guy is named Alexander Dugin. Now, Dugin is an ultra nationalist who is seen as the primary political philosopher of the Russian New Right. And he's often called Putin's court philosopher. Right. These ideas are also a major backbone of how Putin gets into power of, like, the strategy he uses and how a lot of his adherents and the new Russian New Right see what they're doing. He's in the French far right, he's in the Russian far right that kind of coalesces around Putin. And in the US the main vehicle for Schmidt's ideas getting into the halls of power is through the work of a thinker who had once been his colleague, Leo Strauss. Strauss, a Jewish scientist, fled to France when Hitler took power on a Rockefeller scholarship, and Carl Schmitt had been his advisor. There's a very good piece in the website LibMob that traces out the code connections here. There are very close ties between the conservative political scientist Patrick Dinan, Catholic University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Strauss adept and winner of the Leo Strauss Award for Best Dissertation, and Vice President J.D. vance. And he provides a couple of quotes from Schmidt and from Vance. One is, this is a schmidt quote from 1922, Authority proves that it does not need to be right in order to be right. And J.D. vance saying, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. And you might even add in some of those statements that Vance Vance made about, like, Haitian, like, literal lies about Haitian refugees, where it's like, it doesn't matter what's true. You make it true by having power, right? There's another quote here From Schmidt in 32, the rule of law means nothing other than the legitimization of a certain status quo. These are all very. You could hear basically these fucking quotes being trumpeted, you know, among Trumpists, among these, like, unitary executive theories guys. And that's kind of. It's both. Schmidt's thinking first starts to influence the American right in a major way with, like, the neocons who are kind of influenced by him partly through Strauss guys like Bill Kristol, right? And David Brooks, right? These guys who are very influenced by Strauss. But by the time Trump comes around and things have gotten too extreme for them, like Curtis Yarvid will just quote Carl Schmitt He's a huge fan of Schmidt. He brings him up constantly. JD Vance is fans of a Strauss scholar who himself is influenced by Schmidt. Schmidt's thinking is all throughout the entire right wing project worldwide. From France to Russia to the United States. There's pieces of him everywhere. Even though most people are not taking his work directly, but they're influenced by thinkers who are influenced by. By Schmidt and who adopted some of his ideas for their own. And most importantly, the basic strategy that Schmidt laid out, I mean, unfortunately still works quite well.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, crazy. Crazy.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, great. Anyway.

[Blake Wexler]

Anyway, anyway, I'm sure that'll go away soon. I'm sure we have nothing to worry about.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, I think we've got it. I think more knock it out, you know.

[Blake Wexler]

So this J.D. vance guy, he's not high up in the government or anything, right?

[Sophie From Mars]

I haven't heard of him in years.

[Blake Wexler]

No, me neither.

[Sophie From Mars]

Haven't heard of him in years.

[Blake Wexler]

By the way, you should read his jizz book.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, his Cum Diary.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, it's fantastic.

[Sophie From Mars]

Oh, man. Yeah, the J.D. vance cum diaries. A real. Quite a publication. Yeah, it is.

[Blake Wexler]

It is.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. Well, I don't know. How are you feeling at the end of this but, Blake?

[Blake Wexler]

Well, I, I mean, bad. But I do also feel like I learned a lot. It does explain. It is very interesting to learn how we got to where we are today. And the, the scary ist part is. Or one of the many scary parts is that people. It's not hidden anymore, you know, and even with J.D. vance, you don't have to go in a long sleuthing trip to figure out that he is a Schmidt guy. It's one degree of separation.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Stress degree. And some people are, like you said.

[Sophie From Mars]

Just outright quoting Schmidt, like Yarvin, who's also connected to Vance. And yet it is interesting that like in an earlier era, these neocons who now in a lot of cases have aligned themselves with anti Trump stuff are still. They're the guys who are first pushing unitary executive theory, which is like what leads to the President's basic a king. Right? Like that's the end result. And they're. Strauss is a big influence on them there. Right. And then we get to this point where you can, you don't have to just quote Strauss. You don't have to water it down at all. You can just go, pure Schmidt, baby.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Right to the source. I. I wonder. I guess my question for you is I wonder how much Schmidt would value an outwardly intelligent dictator and if he would Even necessarily see value in that where, you know, Hitler, incredibly charismatic, obviously. No one would say that he was a fucking genius. I mean, Schmidt would say that he was a genius. Trump is obviously not. Is. Is outwardly stupid, but very charismatic, obviously, and can speak very well.

[Sophie From Mars]

He's got a kind of cunning that's very effective for what he needs to do.

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, Yes. I wonder, you know, like, you have Saddam, who is his. Like, he had the dress, you know, like, he looked the part. Like, I do wonder if Putin. Do you know of any, like, outwardly, you know, even, like, faux intellectual, you know, like. Oh, actually, I mean, we were talking about earlier. Schmidt is a very smart guy. He's just horrendously evil. So can you think of any dictators who were, like, learned dictators?

[Sophie From Mars]

It depends on what you. You mean by learned. Right. Because, like, yes, stuff. Stalin makes a lot of hideous mistakes that cost a lot of people their lives, particularly in the early stages of the fighting with the Nazis. But, like, is an educated man who, like, is read extensively and, you know, like, he's not like a rube. Right, right. You know, Tito was. I don't know nearly as much about his actual education. Was clearly an incredibly intelligent person. Right. Just the degree of success he had, both as a dictator and as an insurgent, like Fidel Castro. Right. That's a smart man, right?

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, that's a good man.

[Sophie From Mars]

It's a man who has a great degree of cunning, you know, and understanding. And I do think there are very smart people around. I don't think Peter Thiel's dumb. I think he's nuts, and I think he has some blind spots and a freak, but he understands how to do certain things very well. There's kinds of intelligence that he has. I think Trump has kinds of intelligence. He's been working at this for 20 something years. So I don't know, like, learned. I think. I guess the answer is they tend to learn the things they need to learn to get where they want to go. Right.

[Blake Wexler]

They have expertise.

[Sophie From Mars]

Right. Does Donald Trump, does he have a great knowledge of all of the things that you and I might respect being informed of? No, but he knew enough to figure out how to dismantle democracy and how to get people around him who knew more about it. Right. And so I guess I'd say dictators tend to be learned in the things they need to be learned in to become dictators.

[Blake Wexler]

Right? No, I think that's perfectly put. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. Anyway. Wow.

[Blake Wexler]

Is this how all these episodes.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Blake Wexler]

Jesus.

[Sophie From Mars]

Christ.

[Blake Wexler]

Just us mumbling to ourselves. Fuck, I don't know what.

[Sophie From Mars]

God damn it. Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Like, where do I even move?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Canada's not an option.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. Is it Portugal?

[Blake Wexler]

Do I become a Portuguese windbag?

[Sophie From Mars]

Is that my next. Yeah, become your. Get you become a Portuguese windbag.

[Robert Evans]

You guys, it's fine. Robert will let us into the Vatican.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, thank you. The Vatican. That's where we're all gonna hide with all the gold. Okay. So. I don't know. I tend to think what you should do is. Right. Yeah. And you can find a lot of the blueprints you'll need on the Internet. Anyway, episode is over. Blake, you wanna plug anything before. Before we go?

[Blake Wexler]

Yeah, I would. I have a jizz book of my own.

[Sophie From Mars]

No.

[Blake Wexler]

I would like to promote August 1st. I'm going to be doing standup in Philadelphia, also at Blake Wexler on all social media. If you could follow me there, I would love that. And I'm doing a bike ride to raise money for autism research, autism awareness. And that if you can spare anything. It's. Times are tough right now, but any donation, if you can do it, would be. Would be great. It's. That link is in my bio and I have a stand up comedy special called Daddy Long Legs which is available for free on YouTube. And this was a blast. I. I have so much respect for both of you. This is. This is. I don't. I don't know if I've ever said this sentence. This is a great pod. Like, this is a great show. This is a fantastic show.

[Robert Evans]

I know no one.

[Blake Wexler]

No one does what you do. So.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah, I appreciate being a couple. We will do.

[Robert Evans]

We have the.

[Sophie From Mars]

Thank you.

[Robert Evans]

We have the new.

[Sophie From Mars]

We have the Pope. You do have the new Pope.

[Blake Wexler]

And that's how you got elected by your fellow colleagues. Cardinals.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah. If you are a. Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

There needs to be a podcast conclave. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

[Sophie From Mars]

Oh, yeah. See who the podcasting Pope is.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie From Mars]

Just like the podcast. It better not be one of the pod save guys or I'm doing a schism.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, it would. Thinking about it would have to be in that. That guy Sean. Sean Malin, who just. Who has the podcast page. Pantheon book coming out later this year that we're. We're in that book. So we get to be in the conclave.

[Sophie From Mars]

If there's a. If it doesn't go my way, I'm moving to Avignon and I'm going to create like a counter conclave and we're going to have us an anti podcast.

[Robert Evans]

The fuckery we can get. Oh my God, Robert. We have. It has to happen. It has to happen.

[Sophie From Mars]

Yeah.

[Blake Wexler]

Hope save America.

[Sophie From Mars]

We could save America.

[Robert Evans]

We could do so much fuckery. Oh, I'm plotting. I'm plotting. Okay. Anyways, Blake, Blake, thank you so much for being here.

[Sophie From Mars]

So lovely. Robert.

[Blake Wexler]

Oh, I loved it.

[Robert Evans]

Robert. That was horrifying. Did we do it? Did we do the podcast?

[Sophie From Mars]

We did the podcast. Let's go away.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards.

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[Sophie From Mars]

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