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- [00:00]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Hi gang. I'm here doing something that I don't normally do, which is an introduction to the episode, and that's because this is not a normal episode. This is the first Patreon unlocked episode, which means that it originally was a Patreon exclusive, but we've decided to release it to free listeners as well. There are three reasons behind our thinking for that. One, so that free listeners know what they're missing by not being a subscriber. Two, because I was traveling or working on things like the live show and doing some interesting cool like other stuff that I can't super talk about right now yet until it's I'm officially allowed to release the information. But that all made recording pretty hard. And three, because the stuff we talk about in this episode is much more important than we had originally anticipated when we recorded it. So for context, this episode with Jonathan Fein was recorded at the beginning of April of this year 2025, when things were starting to look like they might get a little dicey politically. It's almost six months later while I'm recording this, and they are in fact very dicey for reasons that we discuss in this episode. So because of that, I thought it would be a good candidate for our first unlocked episode. It's had a complete overhaul, including a fully new mix down, and hopefully it has been long enough that Patreon subscribers aren't too annoyed by needing to listen to it again. Or maybe they'll listen to it now if they never got around to it the first time because it didn't have as exciting of a title or recognizable of a name attached to it. And Schmidt is now more, I think more famous since we released the the first part of this episode. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and I'll catch you again at the ad breaks. A list of sensitive themes and topics included in this episode can be found in the episode Descript. Welcome to this Guy Sucked, the show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I'm your host, Dr. Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer, and most importantly, certified haters. On this show, we talk about people from throughout history with legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior, or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked. And we bring in a new scholar every week to tell us why. With me today is Dr. Jonathan Fein, who is a Germanist. So a scholar of German stuff with expertise in comparative Literature and intellectual history, and probably one of my favorite online academics. My partner Ben and I regularly send each other his tweets because they're like, exactly our brand of humor. So inviting him on was really just all a big ruse for me to get a chance to talk to him. Welcome to the show.
- [03:01]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Oh, hi, Claire. I'm really excited to be here today talking with you.
- [03:06]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Thank you so much. I'm super excited too. Here is where I usually try to say something like timely about what's happening in the present day world. While we're recording this for context, everyone at home. This episode is being recorded Monday, April 7, 2025, aka the day the stock markets open after President Trump announced import tariffs on basically everywhere in the world except Russia. And stocks are currently plummeting. So on that note, John, what would your job on the post apocalyptic commune be?
- [03:40]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Is hater a job can, you know, can certified haters. I. I like that. Yeah, Tweeter. If I can still tweet on the. The post apocalyptic commune, I'll be happy that.
- [03:54]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, I think the guy who tweets on it is like, what's it. Oh, this is bad for a historian. Not to the guy who like, stands in the town square and like yells.
- [04:03]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
About market crier or.
- [04:05]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, yeah, be the town crier. I've said this before, but I'm the person who sews things. I've decided that I'm happy to be the embroiderer. I'm not learning karate. I'm not hu. And gathering none of that, I will retreat into sort of trad wifely duties immediately. Immediately. Let's get into what we're actually here for. Who are we talking about? Today?
- [04:28]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
We are talking about Carl Schmidt.
- [04:31]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Wonderful. So this is going to be a theory heavy episode for people at home, but I promise we will make it as interesting and as painless as humanly possible. Partially because I am not a theory slash philosophy slash intellectual history girl. And also partially because you have to know about and understand this guy in order to get what's happening in the world right now. So we're gonna try to make this as accessible for you as we possibly can. So rest assured, we're talking about philosophy, but you can do it. You can do it. It's gonna be great. Before we talk about why Schmidt sucked, we have to establish what his original sort of popular historical narrative is. So why is he famous slash? What to the world would you say he's best known for?
- [05:17]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes, and I'm just going to start by saying that Carl Schmitt was a Nazi, and that is the fundamental fact that you really should take away. He was an unrepentant Nazi from when he joined the party in 1933 to the moment he died in 1985 at the age of 96. Unlike figures like Martin Heidegger, who at least went through the process of denazification, were penalized for a certain amount of time and then and got back to their lives, Schmidt never went through any denazification and remained quite. He was interrogated, he was in prison after the war, but he remained a proud Nazi for a very long time. And in addition to being a Nazi, just to state at the very beginning he was a very militant anti Semite for a while. We didn't have access to some of his diaries from before the war and from his time just stewing at home for 40 years. But we now do. And so we know that his anti Semitism started young. So there are remarks, you know, as a. In his 20s, talking about Jews as insects. And he continued on into the Third Reich, which was really disinhibiting for him. And his anti Judaism antisemitism continued as he found himself out of a job and just watching Jews take control as he felt. So in addition to those fundamental facts of Nazism and antisemitism, he's known for a set of ideas that have been incredibly influential, starting when he was alive, but still today among thinkers on both the right and the left. We're going to kind of go back to the very beginning he made his name in the Weimar Republic. So he was confronted every day with what he felt was great disorder. And he saw it as his task to set that into order to determine what was wrong and to set the world right. So one of his first major ideas is what's called the state of exception. And that's from a starts to be developed in a text called the Dictator. It's about dictatorship. One of his earliest pieces and what he's interested in, particularly if you look at a concrete level, is Article 48 of the Weimar Republic's constitution. And what that does, or what that did is gave the President of the Reich the ability to. To suspend the laws, to create a state of emergency, a state of exception in response to any disorder that the president felt was being perpetrated. And to Schmidt, that was important. He wanted to reinvigorate dictatorship, which is. It's an ancient political office. He, you know, was fully in support of the Romans having it. At this point, he's still really thinking about it. As a time delimited, you know, you have a state of exception, a state of emergency, and that ends and you go back to a better order than you presumably had before the state of exception.
- [08:43]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Just to hop in here also, and I'm sure that you are planning on explaining this at some point also, but the state of exception that we're talking about, just for Clarity's purposes, it's the idea that you can suspend laws, norms, et cetera. Like is in the Weimar Constitution, you can suspend laws, norms and rights in order to address some emergent situation. Situation. Right. Or allegedly address some emergent situation. So for people thinking of this at home, the idea is that a case or a circumstance can be so extreme that it's okay to erode these democratic norms and rights that we would typically call civil liberties in order to transfer more decision making power to a leader. So for example, when we have a national emergency or like a terrorist attack, or things where we're that were normally meant to have like a right to privacy are basically suspended as a result of rulers exercising their powers as sovereigns in order to address whatever the alleged emergency is. And that is the state of exception.
- [09:46]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Exactly. So he develops this relatively early. This is, you know, far before Hitler was on the scene. And the state of exception was actually used quite a lot in Weimar. So it's not something that was abnormal. And it was defending one particular use of it that actually got him the attention of the Nazis. So he defended a coup in the state of Prussia. The Chancellor at the time had the president take control of Prussia, the government which was dominated by socialists, who Schmidt hated, as he hated all leftists. And that he lost to some extent. But the Nazis noticed that he was zealously committed to causes that they would then make their own. So the state of exception, sovereignty, that's one huge thing that, you know, continues to be with us to this day.
- [10:45]
Dr. Claire Aubin
This is also the sovereignty thing is also a big part of his theorizing in general. Right. Like he comes up with something called decision or not comes up. It already exists ambiently in the world. But within his theorizing he talks about decisionist sovereignty, which again, for people at home, it will be explained. It just means that someone who is in charge or a ruler, a sovereign, just all that is, is having the power to make decisions. Most famously, he talks about sovereigns as people who have the right to make decisions in terms of things like the state of exception. So it's just like to have decision as sovereignty or to. To think about this theory which he is a huge proponent of and is the guy behind sort of like making this popular as a sort of solid political theory, is about this decision making power. And that's what's really inherent to political leadership. According to Schmidt, if you make decisions, then you are a decisionist sovereign, or you are a sovereign with decisionist powers. Wow, that is a hard thing to say.
- [11:49]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah. So Schmidt, the idea of sovereignty, that's something that he develops further in a book called Political Theology, which is also from the 1920s. And he's not the first originator, but certainly the popularizer of that term. And he declares that the sovereign is the person who decides on the state of exception. So the sovereign gets to make the choice, whether that applies or not. And he. Yes, we will probably should talk about decisions later, because the most fundamental decision, the most fundamental political decision for Schmidt, which he expounds upon in Concept of the political in the 20s, you've revised it even during the Third Reich, is the friend, enemy, distinction. So he argues that in many different fields there is a fundamental distinction that needs to be made. So if you're talking about ethics and morality, you have to decide what is good and what is bad. If you're in economics, you decide what is profitable, what is unprofitable. Aesthetics, you decide what's beautiful, what's ugly. And he thinks about politics because politics decisions are fundamental for him. And he thinks that politics is deciding who is one's friend and who is one's foe. And that that is the fundamental distinction that is at the core of everything that is. He calls it the political. It's not politics. This distinction becomes quite important later. The politics versus the political. Politics would be the everyday institutions, votes, things that he really didn't care about or he cared about because he didn't like them. But the political, that's the underlying reality. That is what is covered up by everything that, the superstructure that tries to obscure that. And he's very clear that this is not just someone who I disagree with. It's not, you know, we, we have different ideas about this or that the enemy is someone that has to be killed. It has to be physically annihilated. And he. The violence is at the core of that.
- [14:06]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And we haven't even gotten into what's wrong with him really. But yeah, he's saying that politics and the political are defined by conflict. And that politics and the political, in sort of his terminology, are basically just about survival and require this identification of an enemy. That the identification of the enemy is at its core the purpose of the political, which is pretty straightforward when you think about it. In that sense, whether or not people agree with it is worth, you know, what we're going to be talking about later. Can you talk a little bit more about this sort of idea of violence as being at the core of the political?
- [14:43]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes. So in terms of violence, what's. What's kind of interesting in Schmidt is that he is always asserting these distinctions, these binary distinctions, and it's either black or white in basically everything that he writes. So the violence is part of humanity. What's interesting about that is you can see in some Schmidt texts that he is kind of working with the tradition. He has a great understanding of these texts, great thinkers. He's elaborating upon what they said. So, you know, dissecting it like a scholar would. Other times he's making claims that are just transcendental, fundamental claims about human nature. The friend foe distinction is one of those. It's not grounded in any empirical evidence. It's not grounded in any really understanding of politics as it's been thought of in the millennia since Aristotle. It's just his uncovering of this great hit Hidden Truth, which other thinkers have of course addressed. One of the key ones and one who Schmidt talks a lot about would being Thomas Hobbes, with the state being what the people naturally are in a war of all against all. So kind of similar to what Schmidt is saying. And then the state comes in. So we delegate to the sovereign the ability to keep us safe and we then our natural violence is submerged under the state and the state has the monopoly on that violence, that use of force.
- [16:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Hi, it's Claire. I'm here to quickly say that this episode is free for everybody, but the next one won't be. That's because we switch off between free weeks and Patreon weeks. So if you're a fan of public history made by actual experts, consider supporting our Patreon. It's only one tier, which means everyone who subscribes gets access to the same perks across the board. Because we're not trying to get rich, we're just trying to make good history that is engaging and accessible at the same time. For the price of a fancy muffin, you'll get access to a new episode every week instead of just the bi weekly free ones. And they'll all be ad free for you. You'll also get access to the full episode archive, bonus content, early access to merch, and lots of other fun Patreon exclusives to sweeten the deal, just head over to patreon.com this guy sucked. And join the honorary haters club. I think one of the things that's interesting here is especially with the idea that this is not. There's no necessarily like empirical evidence for these is he really highlights what I would call the sort of research vibes distinction of intellectual history versus other forms of history where like one of the things that is hard for non intellectual historians. And when I say intellectual historians, I'm talking about people who study the history of thought, not like historians who aren't intellectuals. Is that so many things? When you're looking at intellectual history or history of thinkers and thought, like, you're like, okay, and what's. What are their sources? And the answer is there aren't any. They just. It was just vibes. They read something and they thought, I'm just gonna keep going with that one and come up with something. And I think he's a very good example of that where you're like, hold on, what is making you say this? Other than I guess the context of the world around you? But like a lot of this is him being like, look, I have access to truths that none of the rest of you have access to and I'm gonna lay them out for you. Aren't you so lucky that I the guy telling you this? And it's just so wild to me because that's so not like the kind of people that I'm studying are not doing that for the most part.
- [18:25]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah, the research vibes distinction is crucial with him. He went on vibes fives were very. Yeah, very important. You know, his training was academic. He studied at several different universities, wrote a dissertation, worked on habilitation, taught at universities until he was banned because of not undergoing denazification. So he's definitely part of the milieu that knows how to work with texts that understands where political tradition, political philosophy has developed over centuries. He's well aware of that. So it is very clear when you read his writings, the points where he is going from that and the points where he is just kind of riffing and he carries that quite far.
- [19:19]
Dr. Claire Aubin
The points where he's just going rogue on all of these things. One of the things also. So he's. I wanted to make sure that we talk about this because I think it's important to the what's wrong with him later. And this isn't necessarily what's wrong with him, but is important to. That is he's very opposed to liberalism and particularly liberal constitutionalism. And that is sort of a key feature in both his writing and also sort of his activist lawyer work stuff within the context of him, you know, working as a lawyer and he's editor in chief of a legal journal or kind of a legal magazine for people who aren't as well versed in this stuff. Liberal constitutionalism is the political theory slash system of governance that basically combines liberal values with constitutional democracy, or democracy that constrains its government in accordance with a set of agreed upon rules, AKA a constitution. It means a liberal democracy that both allows for majority rule and protects individual and minority rights. And he doesn't like it. He's not a fan of this at all. He's also very anti cosmopolitan. He particularly does not like the cosmopolitan ideals, or what they call a sort of cosmopolitan set of ideals regarding universal moral values. He doesn't like that one either. And it, I think that fits with this friend, enemy distinction thing where he says you can't have. Why do we have a universal set of moral values when everything is about violence and having foes and et cetera, et cetera. But in being highly critical of liberalism, particularly what he calls the sort of liberal emphasis on legalism as well as neutrality and compromise, perhaps this is foreshadowing, but I feel like you kind of have to hope the famous thinker who doesn't like compromise is on your side, because he says that these things like compromising weaken a country or state and prevent it from decisively responding to threats. Because everything is about this state of exception, is about threats, is about, you know, this villain about a foe. And a lot of people like his critiques here, which as we talked about on an episode that will come out before this, the Andrew Hartman episode, liberal democracies often struggle to address deep and long standing social and political divides because of this tendency towards compromise. He talks about this as being something that leads to endless circular parliamentary debates rather than action. And these are again, we still haven't even really gotten to what's wrong with all these things, but this, on the face of it, seems like a reasonable critique. Again, at the beginning it feels like a reasonable critique because it's true. You know, things like compromise can make it harder for a state to function theoretically in terms of taking decisive action. Sure. We can sort of be like, yeah, okay, that makes sense. He's also very influential. All of these things we, we've talked about here. He's very influential on other 20th century thinkers, particularly those who work on power relationships like Giorgio Agamben or Michel Foucault. They start pulling from his stuff very Very quickly. So this is the part where we move to what the problem is. So what's your personal issue with him?
- [22:24]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
My personal issue? I hate Schmidt in only the way that you can do when he's someone you almost write a dissertation about. So I almost wrote a dissertation on Schmidt, or in what Schmidt would have played a very important role. So go back 20 years ago. I was an undergrad at NYU, and like many undergrads still today, I fell hard for something kind of amorphous known as critical theory, which is a set of ideas taken from fields like philosophy, politics, anthropology, many different fields, and it's used to analyze culture and society. And because of historical and disciplinary reasons, this is mostly housed in departments of literature in the United States, even if it's departments of politics in Europe. So 2004, I'm taking introduction to Comparative Literature, falling for every critical theorist that we talked about. And Giorgio Agamben, a very famous Italian philosopher, is scheduled to teach a course at the university. What?
- [23:43]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, cool. There's a whole lot of stuff with him, but also I can see how that would immediately be like, okay, incredible, I have to take this class.
- [23:52]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah. I mean, it was a graduate seminar, so I don't even know if I would have been allowed to, but I think it's so cool. I want to take it. And the day he's supposed to show up, he publishes an article in Le Monde saying that he refuses to come to the United States, that the Bush administration had then instituted rules that any visitors from abroad, even from countries with which we have, didn't require visas, that they would have to be fingerprinted. And he thought that that was biopolitical tattooing, in his words, equivalent to what happened in Auschwitz. And he said that he would not come to teach, and screwed over a lot of people, as it turned out, that I didn't know of at the time. But I just saw someone standing up to Bush, went out and bought every book he wrote. And so I, yeah, fall for Agamben really hard. I end up writing my master's thesis on Giorgio Agamben and his idea of the Homo saka, which is a ancient Roman legal fixture. A man who's set apart, who's deprived of all his rights and can be killed with impunity. That's something that Agamben has talked about for decades now. So when it comes time to continue on, get my PhD, I apply to the University of California, Irvine. And Agamben is a person who talks quite a lot about Schmidt. He comes, broadly speaking, or at least in his past, from the left. But the idea of the state of exception, that has become the rule, which is a Walter Benjamin turn.
- [25:36]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Can I also just say, as just a. I'm wearing a Walter Benjamin shirt right now. And I specifically wore it because we were going to have this episode. Sorry, I just needed to say that before I forgot.
- [25:46]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Perfect. Yeah. So Walter Benjamin, a man with his own relationship to Schmidt, we could talk about. So Schmidt I know of at that time, through Agamben, that's really all. I hadn't read much Schmidt, so I wanted to go to Irvine, because that was where you went for theory. Derrida was still Jacques Derrida, eminent French deconstructionist. He was only freshly dead then. So I went not into comparative literature, but into German studies with an emphasis on critical theory. And one of the people that I worked with was a Schmidian who. And that was one of the attractions. Kind of continue your work on Agamben and now we'll get deeper into it. We'll go to the Schmidt. And so I took coursework, read the texts, read Schmidt in quite a few courses for my comprehensive exams, reading Moorsmidt. And then it came time to decide on what dissertation topic that I would go. And kind of. I had developed this interest both in the Schmidt side, but also in the more historical kind of German philosophy, the more Hegelian side. So I was torn between the Hegelian professor or the Schmittian professor. And this all came down to a long meeting at the UC Irvine Student Center Starbucks with a Schmidt's book, the Nomos of the Earth, his book on international relations was on the table. And I think that if it had gone differently, maybe I would have been asked to, you know, swear an oath on it. And I. That would have been the path that I went down, the Schmittian path. But it became clear kind of in discussion that that wasn't for me. And we can talk maybe more about the reasons for that. But I ended up going the Hegelian path. I kind of let Schmidt fall by the wayside after that, even as we more and more live in a Schmittian dystopia. And the scholars that I was in conversation with are an important part of that Schmidtian dystopia. So they have gone on to major public roles.
- [28:10]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I feel like that is gonna be a good conversation really quickly. But I also feel like the sort of Hegel vs Schmidt thing is a very like which way west man thing was being a Schmidian versus a Hegelian, very different experience. And I mean again, a lot of people at home aren't like gonna know that, but just know that these are, these are not, this is not the thing.
- [28:32]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
It's really polar opposites. It's, it's. Yeah. So Hegel being the noted thinker of sublation, when two things collide and then they sublate together to form the synthesis, even though it's more fishta language and Schmidt being the person of the binaries, the stark oppos, that there is absolutely no way that these two things can be reconciled. So it's really completely diametrically opposed models of thought. Schmidt was against the Hegelian tradition that had privileged the state and that it was very powerful and very important when Schmidt was starting out as a young scholar. Yeah, so I went the Hegel route.
- [29:15]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And thank God for that, by the way. I mean again, you might be much richer and much more famous, however morally, perhaps more questionable, I think.
- [29:26]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes. So the Schmittians, they are important not only on their own. You know, they've been appointed to boards, the National Endowment of the Humanities, for instance, their, their Executive Council, when it still existed. I don't know how much it exists anymore. Given that Trump is, I think trying to wind it down. There were several Schmidians in the first Trump administration that were appointed to a Department of State Commission on Unalienable Rights, which is kind of interesting because Schmidt rejected rights.
- [29:58]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Schmidt said no, all, all rights are alienable. Let's be very clear about this.
- [30:04]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
And these are the people that they are in dialogue with. Peter Thiel, the one time employer of Vice President J.D. vance, who definitely is aware of his Schmidt. They've taught courses co taught with him. So Peter Thiel and Russell Berman. So these are very much part of the intellectual set of ideas that hold sway in Washington right now.
- [30:35]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And that could have been you.
- [30:37]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Let's be clear, it could have been me. I remember I was 22, I was invited to the Telos. It's a journal that really is kind of the HQ for Schmittians in the United States, publishing a lot of Schmidt. Also European right wing thinkers. You know, they invited me to their 40th anniversary party. I was 22. Yeah, I'm going to go to this, this cocktail party, hang out with all these famous scholars. Yeah, I mean I, I didn't know exactly what that would come. Of course, you know, Obama was, had just been elected, it was the time of the Tea Party. But I mean I could tell that was one of the things that Gave me qualms about kind of going in the Schmidt direction, was I kind of. I had approached it from, you know, more leftist thinking. And what I could tell about the people that I would potentially be in dialogue with is that being intellectually interested in Schmidt and right wing politics, that they were intimately. They informed one another, they were intimately, intimately connected, they could not be separated. And that was something that I did not want to be a part of and still don't. But we increasingly live under the ideas that are promulgated because of that.
- [31:57]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, I think there are also very currently active attempts on both the right and the left to rehabilitate his image and sort of resurrect and revitalize his theories, devoid of the social and political context in which he formed them, which I think is interesting. This sort of his rise on the right, his relationship to major influential right wing thinkers and political figures, are unwilling to acknowledge some of the things that we talked about earlier, like the fact that he was absolutely a Nazi. For extra research on this episode, I read several articles written relatively recently on Schmidt, so written in the last four to five years on him. One of which was published in 2023 by Chronicles magazine, which is itself pub by the Charlemagne Institute. So here's some this guy sect continuity since the episode of ours about Charlemagne was released four days before recording this. I thought that was funny. But in the Chronicles article, which is called Remembering Carl Schmidt, the author spends the entire article talking about how great Schmidt was and why new young scholars find him so valuable, slash, why they should be using him more. And then at the end of this very long article, there's a very quick paragraph about three sentences saying he might have been a bit of a Nazi, but not really, because, quote, he was married to a Serb rather than a Nordic spouse and had attracted as a teacher many Jewish students and admirers. That is a real defense being offered literally a year and a half ago by a very influential paleoconservative magazine editor. And we should feel worried about this, that there really is an attempt to talk about him as this sort of amorphous thinking character with no relationship to power in his own time period and in. During his own life, that he just had thoughts about what power relations looked like and at no point had any influence over power relations that ended up privileging him. Well, I mean, ultimately he gets kicked out of the Nazi party and remains a Nazi afterwards, which is also wild or kicked out of Nazi leadership, I should say. But we should be worried about the fact that the right is so actively embracing him and also actively sort of pushing down the story about him again as an unrepentant Nazi in the way that they talk about him.
- [34:14]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes, so we should probably talk about the Nazism because it is a, as you said, it's something that some people, you know, kind of try to do the. Of course he was a Nazi, but. And that was something I didn't want to have to do in my dissertation, kind of that rhetorical move. So Schmidt was, at least at the beginning, in the early 1930s, he was an opponent of the Nazis. He did publish some kind of mild criticism of Hitler. But as soon as Hitler came into power in 1933, he went gung ho, just completely into Nazism. He joined the party. So not one of the early followers, but still relatively early in the Third Reich. And he was someone who provided external legitimacy to the Nazi regime. So he already had the conservative bona fides from his work in the Weimar Republic. He was known as a scholar, someone who was very learned. And so he was someone the Nazis were interested in using. So he was appointed to several councils by Hermann Hitler's number two. And so Nazi legal journals that he edited, he got a professorship in Berlin, so right at the center of where everything Nazi was taking place.
- [35:42]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And by the end of November 1933, so within, you know, only a few months of officially joining the Nazi party, because he joins in May 1933, by the end of that, he is the president of the association of National Socialist German Jurists. Like he already immediately is sort of put forward as the sort of legal thinker that they are most attracted to in terms of the way they want to structure the. Their underlying legal ideologies. Essentially, yes.
- [36:07]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
And he was working in the Nazi regime not just at a theoretical level, but on a very hands on level. So the kind of. The legal measure that Nazi legitimacy rested upon was the Enabling act. And he was part of the legal justifications for why that applied. He also worked on several other Nazi laws. And he was, he was high up and seemed to, you know, enjoy his role.
- [36:36]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And in July 1934, this is one of the things that I found interesting when I was looking at some of the stuff about him. In July 1934, he publishes an article titled the Leader Protects the Law in the sort of Nazi run legal news magazine that he was the editor for. And it is very literally a legal defense and justification of the political assassinations that had taken place a week earlier during the Night of Long Knives, which are very famously like, like a Moment when Hitler and the people around him say, we just need to start killing off our opponents even within our own party. And Schmidt publishes an article saying, well, as a legal scholar, it's totally fine that he did this. And he says that these are legally and ideologically sound on the basis that Hitler was exercising a form of exceptional justice in this sort of state of exception. Exceptional justice in his role as the sovereign. So there very early on, from his relationship to the Nazi Party, he is like, all for it and finding ways to provide that legal justification for the things that Hitler and the people around him are hoping they can get, like legal approval and validation for.
- [37:41]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah, things didn't go too well for him in terms of Nazi officialdom. And even though he had powerful advocates, he wasn't able to, you know, advance as far as he perhaps could have. And he was purged from all of his offices. In 1936, the SS started to criticize him that his anti Semitism wasn't real, that he was just in it for the career and he wasn't a true Nazi. That, you know, because he had criticized Hitler before Hitler seized power, that showed that he wasn't a really intellectually convicted to the Nazis. So he still was a professor after that. That, and he was until 1945. But he @ least did not have the same operational level of involvement in Nazi law.
- [38:32]
Dr. Claire Aubin
It's also so funny to say, like, this guy's not a real anti Semite. He like, he's a fake Nazi, especially because one of the things that he's very popular for before getting removed from the Nazi party is that he very fervently or from Nazi leadership, I should say he very fervently supports the idea, like loudly publicly talks about this, writes about it. The idea that Yudisham Geist, or Jewish spirit was endangering German law and should be purged from German law, that like that Jewishness has had infiltrated the law there too. And he would very publicly present himself that way. So it is very funny that the Nazis were like, I don't believe this guy. I don't think he's. I don't think he's really on board with this after he's really tied himself to it very publicly.
- [39:14]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes. And that. That came right away. So right away he, as soon as he became a Nazi, he was celebrating that people like Albert Einstein were purged because of Judaism and he repeatedly denounced the Jewish spirit affecting Germany. So what's kind of interesting though, about Schmidt is that he felt the need to be at the center of attention. He was a striver, he was from the remote provinces, but he felt that he had a world historical role to play. And so most people, when they fell out of favor with the Nazis, they underwent something called inner immigration, which meant that they were still in Nazi Germany physically, but mentally they were kind of elsewhere. They weren't participating in these discussions. They were just going to stand aside. So there's a long list of figures that did that. Ernst Junger, Gottfried Ben and so on. Schmidt couldn't handle that. If he were to undergo that, that meant that he wasn't important. So he continued lecturing, he continued formulating theories of international law. And so he comes up with his whole theory, publishes after the war. It's inspired by the Monroe Doctrine about, you know, great powers carving up the world into spheres of influence and the total warfare that will result from this. And he, he really wants to be taken seriously by the Nazis, even though he's been purged from the Nazis party structure. And he kept trying, he, he, he never stopped. And that, that got him detained after the war because he was seen as someone in the public eye who was a major contributor to Nazi law, even if the Nazis weren't paying attention to him as much as he wanted them to.
- [41:05]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I think it's also interesting that it's like instead of interimmigration or inner immigration or you know, basically just like mental dissociation of the experience you're living through. I think it's, it's interesting that if you just say you like Nazi stuff enough for long enough, even if the Nazi party has said you're a poser, basically that you're like a fake Nazi afterwards, you will still get lumped in with the Nazis in terms of like being imprisoned because you were still, even while you were trying to seek their attention, you were still furthering their goals. So you're not saved from the sort of consequences that they're facing as a party or as a former member of their leadership or of their establishment. So yeah, it is, there is, I think some small amount of poetic justice in the idea that like he's basically like hoping that they all keep paying attention to him and they don't really, and then he still goes to prison for it afterwards. Like I think that is a little, not funny as in haha, but also like a little bit. But the Schadenfreude of it is fun, I think.
- [42:11]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes. So what's interesting about Schmidt is one of the important ideas of the Third Reich is Gleichaldung, which is the kind of shifting of gears so that all of society adjusts to the fact that the Nazis are in power. So the Nazis didn't have to come and say you have to do this because you obediated, you anticipated what you needed to do and automatically aligned yourself with that. There are however some intellectuals who didn't think that they needed to adjust the Nazis, but they thought the Gleichaltung should go the other direction. So kind of the Nazis should adjust to them. So you kind of see that with Martin Heidegger, his idea of kind of this German privileged part of history of being metaphysics, kind of a German national renewal. He wants to be the philosopher of Nazism and learns that, that they're not interested in that. And an his conservatism kind of heroism that Nazis also weren't interested. And Schmidt wanted the Nazis to be this kind of dictator sovereign. He really saw them as potentially the Fuhrer, the divine sovereign on earth who could bring order to the world. And then the Nazis party became the same bureaucratized rule based system that he thought was so horrible with liberalism. And he critiqued that kind of undercover a bit in one of his Nazi writings. But consistently he wanted them to come to what he saw was the right way to conduct politics and international affairs.
- [43:54]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, and I do think it is also interesting that later, even though there are all of these sort of like moments or fractures with him and the Nazi establishment and he's imprisoned and he does all these things, he's still later he says kind of, I guess I regret being part of the party, but I don't revoke any of the endorsements I have of the ideas that I've been espousing re acceptable uses of authority. He still is like, no, I was right about that. And the problem is actually that they didn't implement it the way that they should have, the way that I would have recommended that they implement it. And that's the real problem there. Which now looking at that is a wild thing to think. But like he still, you know, goes to his grave essentially. Like he's less notorious, he is less famous. Later in life he kind of like falls out of, out of the public eye other than sort of doing professor Y things. But he still says, well I was right all along. And that's, that's the real problem here. So there's no point at which he says hold on, maybe I fucked this one up a little bit. Which is crazy.
- [45:01]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah. And, and at least you know, Heidegger we kind of know based on a posthumous interview that, yeah, he still had some commitments to Nazism, even if he was, you know, rehabilitated. Schmidt was open about it. You know, he continued to defend other Nazis. After the war, he met with all of the people who had come to his villa in his hometown, which, you know, kind of in keeping with his idea of himself as world historically significant. The name he gave it was the same as Machiavelli's villa when he was in exile. So he's clearly seeing himself as part of the, you know, 2000 year tradition, 2000 year plus tradition of political thought. And he sought to cultivate disciples and, you know, bring himself in dialogue with the people who, you know, were important.
- [46:01]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Hi haters, it's Claire again with my regular shout out to tell you about other Multitude shows you might want to listen to this week. I want to talk about Spirits, which is the first ever Multitude show to invite me to be a guest on it. Spirits is a history and comedy podcast focused on everything folklore, mythology and the occult. Sick told through the lens of feminism, queerness and modern adulthood. Every week, mythology buffs and childhood best friends, Julia and Amanda. We love them. That includes Julia, our editor, Julia. Hey Julia. Who is editing this right now. Julia and Amanda get together to learn about a different story from mythology and folklore over drinks. That's everything from the mythological origins of major franchises like Lord of the Rings and Wonder Woman to modern urban legend to a roundup of werewolf stories from around the world. Like I said, they had me on the show a couple of years ago to talk about Nazi zombies. And despite how dark and terrible the topic was, being on the show was really a delight. It was so delightful, in fact, that I assigned it to my students as extra credit last year. So sorry. If you're one of those students and you're listening to me more, go do your homework. You can start listening to Spirits with any of the 400 plus episodes they've released over the last seven years. There's so much to enjoy. Whether you're here for analyses of mental health and mythology or creepy modern ghost stories, you can dive in@spiritspodcast.com or search for spirits in the same app you're using right now to listen to me yap at you. Look, if you're like me, gift giving holidays sneak up really, really fast. So consider this right now, what you're hearing, your reminder to start thinking about the people you love and the things that they might love to receive as gifts. 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And a bonus, not only does it support small businesses and independent artisans with every purchase you make at Uncommon Goods, they give back $1 to a nonprofit partner of your choice. They've donated more than $3 million to date, so it's a company you can feel pretty good supporting. So get your shopping done early this year. Have Fun and get 15% off your next gift by going to UncommonGoods.com TGS that's UncommonGoods.com TGS for 15% off your order. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Shop at Uncommon Goods because we're all out of the ordinary. It's Claire again. I don't know if you've noticed, but fall is here and with it comes cooler nights, heartier meals, and at least for me, the craving for something warm and satisfying. Satisfying. That's where America's number one choice for home cooking, HelloFresh, comes in. They're bringing comforting chef designed recipes and fresh seasonal ingredients right to your door. This season they've taken things to the next level with their biggest menu refresh yet. Firstly, they've doubled their menu. Now you can choose from 100 options each week, including new seasonal dishes and recipes from around the world. Secondly, it's also an even healthier menu filled with high protein and veggie packed recipes which I really appreciate as a very active person in I've been really enjoying my most recent HelloFresh box which was delivered last week. The creamy zucchini orzotto that I made was the most comforting thing that I've had in a while on a night that was surprisingly cold after a really hot day. So it was really like the exact right meal for me and I'VE also been really enjoying the rice bowls that I got, and I'm looking forward to having some more in the future between my book, which is due soon, academia, and the pod that you're currently listening to. I have been working really crazy hours lately, so I'm being very genuine when I say that having hellofresh has made my life a lot, a lot easier just because I don't have the time or energy to grocery shop or even come up with recipes. Like pretty frequently the best and easiest way to cook just got better. Go to hellofresh.com tgs10fm now to get 10 free meals and a free item for life. You'll get one per box with an active subscription, and the free meals are applied as a discount on the first box to new subscribers only, and it varies by planning. That's hellofresh.com TGS10FM to get 10 free meals and a free item for life or head to the link in our episode description for the same discount. Why choose a sleep number Smart bed? Can I make my site softer?
- [50:48]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Can I make my site firmer? Can we sleep cooler?
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Dr. Claire Aubin
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Dr. Jonathan Fein
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Dr. Claire Aubin
Save on beds, bases and more. Plus get free home delivery on any smart bed with base limited time. Check it out at a sleep number store near you or@sleepnumber.com today. How annoying is it that he's right right now in terms of like, like him seeing himself as world historically important, him seeing himself as having disciples, it kind of falls off while he's alive. And then now he actually kind of does have those. That's so annoying that he like at some point actually gets the thing. I mean, he's dead, so whatever. But at some point he gets the thing that he said he was always gonna have in terms of having such a strong relationship to political power in a person that's not Hitler. Like, that sucks.
- [51:53]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
It does. And. And you know, Germany wasn't fascist. He was living in West Germany. He tried to find his own kind of fascism. He was popular in Spain for a while, so he kept looking for sources to, you know, kind of satiate his need for the sovereign, the divine sovereign. But yeah, he would be very pleased that he still talked about he wanted to be at the center of attention.
- [52:17]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I mean, it's just like, it's one of those things that I think is not. It's just a little bit unredeemable to me. Like I said, there are really attempts on, on both sides of the aisle, obviously much more on the right, but on both sides of the aisle to kind of pull a little bit out of his ideas and say, well, devoid of context. This is worth talking about and thinking about. But I do think it's. There's a level of unredeemability to me in that people who openly admit to liking, loving, wanting to reinstate, slash, instate authoritarianism and liking the concepts that underpin fascism really like this guy, like that to me is like, you can't avoid. The fact that those are his sort of major proponents now is also deeply worrying that there is an attempt to rehabilitate him on the left for these critiques of liberalism, like I mentioned, because they're not good faith critiques. These critiques are not designed to strengthen democracy, to strengthen minority rights or anything like that. Because they say that the solution to weak or ineffectual or, or compromising liberal democracy is strong authoritative and authoritarian leadership. That is his solution to the problems he says to. He's critiquing. And it's so baffling to me, and I say things are baffling on this show all the time. But it's so wild to me that people on the left now are saying like, well, he has a point. No, because the point he was trying to make is that the answer to this is basically a dictator slash monarch. Like, that's. He doesn't have a point. I'm sorry.
- [53:44]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yes. And he's popular on the left for, you know, kind of the leftist response is, okay, we take these oppositions and we show that actually it's about the ruling class that, you know, to bring it kind of a Marxist lens to it. But the thing about reading Schmidt is that he's a good writer. He's really good. You know, he makes it clear when you open a Schmidt book, he's a prosecutor. He sets out immediately his theory of the case, what he's going to tell you about. And then he hits it, you know, keeps going back to it again and again and again. So that you, the reader, then the judge and jury perhaps can only agree with him. You know, he's trying to win his case with you, you know, convince you that this is the decision that you have to make. It's either this or that. And there's nothing else you have to go with what I'm saying. And that's something I think Teodor Adorno, one of the people that Schmidt hated quite a lot, and he wrote a nasty anti Semitic poem about in the 1960s. So Adorno wrote about Schmidt in Minima Morale, which is kind of his aphorisms, essays for his collaborator Max Horkheimer. And he wrote about Schmidt and fascism and saying that philosophically, what's wrong with it is that if you want to talk about Kantian ethics, when you just see everyone as a friend or a foe, you're instrumentalizing them. You're not treating them as ends in themselves. They're all means to some end, that it's about you, you. And psychologically, that's narcissistic to just center yourself. And it's childish. Children react. They either like something or they don't like something. And freedom is to say, schmidt, you're wrong. This is not the fundamental choice to say that there are other choices that, you know, you're just. This is not right. You know, you have to kind of stand there and say your binary is a fake binary. That's not how we interact with the world. It's not the decision we're making. And then that's his. Where he comes at Schmidt, who is writing mean things about him in his diary.
- [55:56]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I need to find this poem, by the way, because I did not know that this exists. And I'm a huge Adorno fan, just in part because he is a hater like me. And so in this house, we Stan Adorno. But I mean, I think it's important to understand that regardless of where you're approaching Schmidt from, you're not immune to the thing that he's doing, which is. Is lawyering. You. Like telling you, here are your options. You can't do anything. And you're totally right that the response to that is not to say, well, yeah, I guess he's right about it. It's to say, hold on, hold on. I have been forced into saying that there is a yes or no answer to this, when in actuality, like, that position I'm being put in is one that he's actively putting me in, especially because he's saying the only answer is yes. Really. And I think it's really important to understand that when we think about. About Schmidt, and I think this is true of kind of any historical figure that I'm talking about on the show or that comes up sort of in the conversations that I have in my daily life with historians and I'm sure you're having with others, which is. It's very easy to pick and choose philosophically or in terms of entertainment or whatever, and say, I like this part of a person's thinking, but I don't like this other part. So we can ignore that, but one informs the other. They are not separate from one another. And it's the way we think is shaped by the world around us. And reciprocally, the world around us is shaped by the way that we think. So when we think about someone like Schmidt, it's not about throwing something out wholesale, but it is about understanding that something like Schmidt's conceptions of exceptional sovereignty are inextricably linked with his conceptions of the weakness of liberal democracy, et cetera. Like, these things are not separable from one another because they inform each other, and that's why we have to understand them. The fact that to bring this back home, the fact that the politicians currently stealing your money, disappearing people threatening your rights and getting rich doing so, are inspired by men who love Carl Schmidt. So talking about Peter Thiel, like you said, but also Curtis Yarvin, people like Richard Spencer love Schmidt means that you should know who Schmidt is and what his thinking did and how it all works together to create a world that's, I would argue, shittier than the one it needs to be. Which I think is the argument for this episode. Just very straightforwardly, like, straight up.
- [58:07]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah. So just, you know, kind of going back to that poem. I posted it on Twitter not too long ago, and someone accused me of making it up, fabricating it, presumably to kind of slander Schmidt, this notorious Nazi and anti Semite. But, yes, this is why you should know Schmidt. You're living in Schmidt's world, even if you don't want to. So Peter Thiel, I think his introduction to Schmidt was more through Rene Girard, a critical theorist at Stanford who's really known for his mimetic theory of desire, which is the idea that I don't want what I want, I want what the other wants. And there's always this triangular relationship between what people desire and these other people who want the same thing. And the way you deal with conflict in that is that you kill a scapegoat. Something has to be scapegoated and murdered, and that is the friend, enemy distinction right there, there. So the enemy is the scapegoat, and the friend is the people that you kill the scapegoat with being. It's. It's not exactly clear what. What else you do with the friend besides murder together. But that's kind of where he comes into it, you know, Alex Karp, the founder Of Palantir with Teal. He wrote his dissertation on Adorno aggression in Adorno. I haven't read credit, I'll admit that I, I think I saw some one say it's, you know, Adorno, but make.
- [59:41]
Dr. Claire Aubin
It evil, which Adorno would love, by the way.
- [59:46]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
And you know, these are people that, they are very deeply informed by this philosophical tradition. And that's not to say that Donald Trump in the White House is reading Schmidt in the original German and commenting on it and he has something insightful to say, say, of course not. But JD Vance knows who Schmidt is. JD Vance has talked about Schmidt. The people that JD Vance follows on Twitter love Schmidt. So they are, you know, if not getting these ideas, you know, directly the ideas, they percolate up and they, they inform what happens.
- [60:25]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, certainly I found your post about the poem. It's wild by the way, that first of all terrible poem. But secondly, there are things like he calls him a schmuck, which by the way. Well, he calls him the German version, schmuck, which is German from Yiddish. So also using Yiddish to insult a Jew is bananas. But it's. Yeah, that all of this is just to say I think you're right and I think he does absolutely suck, like so much. And I think that would have been obvious from him being a Nazi, obviously, but he sucks on sort of a world historical level in terms of the way that our lives now are being still impacted by some ideas he has which were eventually rejected by people around him and now are being readily resurrected or if they, if they didn't ever like fully die out, they're, they're certainly being revitalized and getting sort of an injection of life into them. And it's really worrisome. And I think you've made a very good argument for people listening for why this actually really strongly matters for their life. And why, why understanding theory, regardless of the occasionally opaque feelings around it or the inaccessibility of it, why it actually matters and it is impacting your life. Because even if you, the person at home are not reading theory, the people who fucking hate you certainly are. And that's a problem. Or, or some of the people who have power over your lives, they have, and they're using it, they're weaponizing it against you. You just don't know that they are. And that's, I think the argument here.
- [61:57]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Like ultimately, yeah, and fuck Nazis. You just gotta come and say fuck Nazis.
- [62:03]
Dr. Claire Aubin
We'll, we'll say that all day long on here. Thank you so much for coming on here. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited for people to hear this. Dr. Fine can be found on Twitter onathanbfine. BlueSky is also Jonathan B. Fine, and you can head over to his website and see all of his wonderful work at the link in our episode description as well. And that's jonathanblakefine.com, right?
- [62:26]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yep.
- [62:27]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Amazing.
- [62:28]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Thank you. This is great. I have not talked about Schmidt in quite a long time, so this is fun for me.
- [62:36]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Amazing. Perfect.
- [62:38]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
Yeah. I mean, he was someone that. Maybe I should have gone down that path. Maybe, you know, I would have gotten. You know, they get. These people hang out with Peter Thiel. They're professors. They, you know, they. They are. You know, they're hanging out with billionaires now.
- [62:53]
Dr. Claire Aubin
You could be an anti Schmittian.
- [62:54]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
That could be an anti Schmidian.
- [62:56]
Dr. Claire Aubin
You could have been like a Wario for all these people, but instead you became a Hegelian.
- [63:02]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
I could have. I mean, maybe that was my role. It's just, you know, like, I was in class. I mean, I didn't know. I mean, looking back, I was just such an idiot, you know, and then I would be, you know, David Pan, who was the Schmittian I could have worked with, you know, little remarks, you know. Yeah, Obama reminds me of Hitler.
- [63:22]
Dr. Claire Aubin
That's a real thing that was said in class.
- [63:24]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
That is a real thing that was said in class.
- [63:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Oh, my God.
- [63:28]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
And so, I mean, David Pan, he's a really nice guy. I got along great with him. He's the one I had coffee with and kind of, you know, turned down. But yeah, he, you know, he ran for Congress last year. He lost, but, you know, he's. He was on the State Department board. These people, they. They go places.
- [63:48]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. I mean, that could have been you and I. One of the other main takeaways that people need to understand from the show is that being evil can get you literally everywhere.
- [63:57]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
It can.
- [63:58]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And it pays great.
- [63:59]
Dr. Jonathan Fein
It does.
- [64:00]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Unlike starting a history podcast. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of this Guy Sucked. A member of the Multitude Podcast collective. This episode was hosted by me, Claire Aubin, featuring special guest Jonathan Fein, and edited by Julia Sheffini. All of our theme music was written and produced by the fun and funky fresh Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month and access to our full archive of episodes, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or to our patreon@patreon.com thiscloud I sucked. See you next week. Look, it's okay to make some financial mistakes. Mistakes? We've all missed payments, signed up for cards we didn't need, or ignored our credit scores. You're not alone. That's why you need Experian, your big financial friend. The Experian app helps you check your FICO score, find ways to save, and get matched with credit card offers that fit your needs. Some cards are labeled no Ding Decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. So, yeah, it's okay if you haven't been the best with your finances. That's why you've got Experian on your side. Download the app for free today. Applying for no Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores. If you aren't initially approved, initial approval will result in a hard inquiry, which may impact your credit scores. Experian.