New Discourses Bullets 145 - How the Friend-Enemy Distinction Poisons Politics

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 145

Carl Schmitt captured the essence of totalitarian politics in his book The Concept of the Political (1932) (https://amzn.to/4sf2Rpk). It is the distinction between friend and enemy. The poison of this kind of thinking is in the ugly fact that the declared enemy must be treated as the declared enemy once a political faction has declared one, and anyone who doesn't go along with that declaration declares himself one of the enemy. That is, it's not just the us-versus-them nature of the declaration of friend and enemy that poisons politics and societies; it's the logic of the friend-enemy political program entirely. Host James Lindsay explains this dangerous logic in this new episode of New Discourses Bullets. Join him to understand.

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