How the Friend Enemy Distinction Poisons Politics
February 27, 2026
4,064
277
141
10.29%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
New Discourses Episodes Around February 27, 2026
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
20:52Now PlayingHow the Friend Enemy Distinction Poisons Politics
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelNew Discourses Bullets, Ep. 145
Carl Schmitt captured the essence of totalitarian politics in his book The Concept of the Political (1932) (). 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 usversusthem nature of the declaration of friend and enemy that poisons politics and societies; it's the logic of the friendenemy political program entirely. Host James Lindsay explains this dangerous logic in this new episode of New Discourses Bullets. Join him to understand.
Latest from New Discourses Press! The Queering of the American Child
Support New Discourses
Follow New Discourses on other platforms
Follow James Lindsay
© 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #friendenemy
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.