How the Friend-Enemy Distinction Poisons Politics

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. The post How the Friend-Enemy Distinction Poisons Politics appeared first on New Discourses.