As the dust settles in Caracas and the penny drops in Copenhagen, Germans too are facing the sobering prospect of a new world order. But there is a difference. A world of continental spaces is hardly new to them. It was devised by a German.
Four decades after his death, the theorist of authoritarianism and critic of liberalism Carl Schmitt is experiencing a sustained revival. A Nazi with links to Francoist Spain, Schmitt is not only revered by Russian and French neofascists today. In the United States too — a country whose universalizing tendencies he despised — Schmitt has acquired a sizable fan club that counts integralists, paleoconservatives, the founder of PayPal, and the US vice president in its ranks.
And yet, it was not Americans but Germans who rushed to Schmitt in early January. Many of the country’s major newspapers and magazines have, in recent days, run pieces mentioning Schmitt in relation to the “Donroe Doctrine” and the wider renaissance of geopolitics.
Political scientist Herfried Münkler, whose books have found themselves on Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen’s laps, was among the first to point to Schmitt’s geopolitical writings as a key to unlock the present moment. Like others, he sees in a world of regional blocs organized around spheres of influence the realization of Schmitt’s schema.
Centrists like Münkler are not alone. After Nicolás Maduro’s abduction, the German-speaking far right too has flocked to a 1939 pamphlet in which Schmitt proposed an order modeled on America’s Monroe Doctrine. Not just Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)’s hard-liner Maximilian “Mad Max” Krah welcomed a new Schmittian Großraumordnung (an order of great spaces) on X. The Austrian activist Martin Sellner, aka “Mr Remigration,” called for a European Monroe doctrine also:
Now more than ever, we must read Carl Schmitt. He recognized that American claims to their hemisphere and the Monroe Doctrine are not a threat, but an…
Auteur: Ian Klinke
