Keith Preston

It was in the context of the extraordinarily difficult times of the Weimar period that Carl Schmitt produced what are widely regarded as his two most influential books. The first of these examined the failures of liberal democracy as it was being practiced in Germany at the time. Schmitt regarded these failures as rooted in the weaknesses of liberal democratic theory itself. In the second work, Schmitt attempted to define the very essence of politics.

Schmitt's The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy was first published in 1923.^* In this work, Schmitt described the dysfunctional workings of the Weimar parliamentary system. He regarded this dysfunction as symptomatic of the inadequacies of the classical liberal theory of government. According to this theory as Schmitt interpreted it, the affairs of states are to be conducted on the basis of open discussion between proponents of competing ideas as a kind of empirical process. Schmitt contrasted this idealized view of parliamentarianism with the realities of its actual practice, such as cynical appeals by politicians to narrow self-interests on the part of constituents, bickering among narrow partisan forces, the use of propaganda and symbolism rather than rational discourse as a means of influencing public opinion, the binding of parliamentarians by party discipline, decisions made by means of backroom deals, rule by committee and so forth.

Schmitt recognized a fundamental distinction between liberalism, or "parliamentarianism," and democracy. Liberal theory advances the concept of a state where all retain equal political rights. Schmitt contrasted this with actual democratic practice as it has existed historically. Historic democracy rests on an "equality of equals," for instance, those holding a particular social position (as in ancient Greece), subscribing to particular religious beliefs or belonging to a specific national entity. Schmitt observed that democratic states have traditionally included a great deal of political and social inequality, from slavery to religious exclusionism to a stratified class hierarchy. Even modern democracies ostensibly organized on the principle of universal suffrage do not extend such democratic rights to residents of their colonial possessions. Beyond this level, states, even officially "democratic" ones, distinguish between their own citizens and those of other states.

Richard has posted the first of my four-part series on Carl Schmitt. The primary source of biographical information on Schmitt utilized for this series was Joseph Bendersky's Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich. Paul Gottfried's book on Schmitt also proved to be quite helpful. Any interpretive analysis I provide concerning Schmitt's ideas is derived from my own analysis of his works, and is therefore my own responsibility, for good or ill.

Among the many fascinating figures that emerged from the intellectual culture of Germany’s interwar Weimar Republic, perhaps none is quite as significant or unique as Carl Schmitt. An eminent jurist and law professor during the Weimar era, Schmitt was arguably the greatest political theorist of the 20th century. He is also among the most widely misinterpreted or misunderstood.

The misconceptions regarding Schmitt are essentially traceable to two issues. The first of these is obvious enough: Schmitt’s collaboration with the Nazi regime during the early years of the Third Reich. The other reason why Schmitt’s ideas are so frequently misrepresented, if not reviled, in contemporary liberal intellectual circles may ultimately be the most important. Schmitt’s works in political and legal theory provide what is by far the most penetrating critique of the ideological and moral presumptions of modern liberal democracy and its institutional workings.

Like his friend and contemporary Ernst Junger, Schmitt lived to a very old age. His extraordinarily long life allowed him to witness many changes in the surrounding world that were as rapid as they were radical. He was born in 1888, the same year that Wilhelm II became the emperor of Germany, and died in 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev became the final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Schmitt wrote on legal and political matters for nearly seven decades. His earliest published works appeared in 1910 and his last article was published in 1978. Yet it is his writings from the Weimar period that are by far the most well known and, aside from his works during his brief association with the Nazis, his works during the Weimar era are also his most controversial.

As part of the process of developing what might be called a “revolutionary Right” for North America, I have endorsed both anarchism and secession. Yet anarchism is merely a theory of the state (or against the state) and secession is simply a tactic. Anarchist theory per se has little to say about what kinds of communities might exist independently of an overarching state, and no one is going to endorse secession for its own sake without some wider end in sight. I suggested in a recent interview with Dr. Tomislav Sunic that anarchism, secession, and white nationalism have something of natural triangular relationship with each other. While I do, indeed, believe this to be the case, the question remains as to whether white nationalism is an adequate intellectual or strategic paradigm for the growing alternative right. I would maintain that it is not.

This is not to say that white nationalists do not raise many perfectly reasonable and legitimate issues. Such issues include affirmative action and other forms of “reverse discrimination,” mass immigration and immigration abuse, the high rates of violent crime in minority communities, the formal or informal forms of censorship associated with “political correctness,” state interference with associational liberties, anti-white bias in hate crimes reporting, the desire for cultural self-preservation, the double standards involved with the label of “racist,” the extra-legal actions by left-wing vigilantes against those with views on race that defy liberal orthodoxy, the suppression of scientific inquiry in the name of egalitarian ideology, the influence of foreign lobbies on U.S. foreign policy, and a good number of other things. Nor should we be interested in taking seriously the liberal dogma that any sort of expression of political and racial self-interest, or ethnic pride and celebration, by whites constitutes “hate” or “racism.” One can love one’s wife or mother without hating all other women. One can have a preference for one’s own family without feuding with other families. One can favor one’s own children without abusing or mistreating other children. So the issue is not whether white nationalism violates this or that liberal taboo, but whether white nationalism “alone and unaided” is the most effective way of addressing matters such as the aforementioned.

The first order of business is the identification of the enemy, and the enemy is clearly those who are currently in control of the institutions that rule us: the state, the corporate plutocracy, the banking cartel, the mass media, academia, the legal system, and others whom our fearless editor has with great perspicacity dubbed the “sociopathocracy.” Nowadays, even an ostensibly “conservative” institution such as the military has succumbed to political correctness. White nationalists and those who share their concerns are certainly under attack by these institutions, but so are plenty of other people. Consequently, a resistance movement that defines itself exclusively, or even primarily, under the banner of race will be unnecessarily self-limiting. Far better to incorporate the issues raised by white nationalists, immigration restrictionists, and others with related concerns into a wider paradigm that packages together the issues raised by parallel movements and overlapping interests who are under attack by the same institutional authorities. There is a nearly inexhaustible list of such tendencies, including advocates for fathers’ rights, men’s rights, family sovereignty, religious liberty, the right to bear arms and act in self-defense, anti-tax, pro-life, national sovereignty, property rights, cultural preservation, quality and freedom in education, local autonomy, and many other things. Additionally, there is the growing list of economic issues generated by the ongoing dispossession and eradication of the traditional middle class courtesy of our plutocratic overlords.

The label of “white nationalism” brings with it a good deal of baggage that is not easily discarded. What do most people think of when they hear the term “white nationalism”? Do they think of Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, and Steve Sailer or do they think of the KKK, David Duke, Tom Metzger, uniform fetishists, the Aryan Nations, and The Turner Diaries? If we must choose a label, would not something along the lines of “conservative revolution” be more appropriate? Such self-identification puts us squarely in the tradition of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Junger, Schmitt, Spengler, Pareto, Mosca, Michels, Evola, De Benoist, and Faye. Such a label allows us to group together a wide assortment of issues and movements under a common banner and against a common enemy. Beyond that, we need to consider the not insignificant number of minority, mixed race, or persons from mixed families that share many of our ideological and cultural concerns, or at least sympathize with many of our issues. Is it wise to push away an Elizabeth Wright, Paul Gottfried, Norman Finkelstein, David Yeagley, Carol Swain, Michael Hart, Michael Levin, Jesse Lee Peterson, Israel Shamir, or Mayer Schiller?

“Conservative Revolution” is conceptually broad enough to accommodate an array of anti-liberal forces within a framework of respect for natural hierarchies and particular attachments to family, community, religion, tribe, ethnicity, and other primary reference groups, and in a way that is compatible with traditional conservative and libertarian skepticism of “big government” and overly centralized power. On a horizontal level, it can accommodate tendencies ranging from fervent white nationalists to religious conservatives who are indifferent to race issues per se but oppose Cultural Marxist attacks on their faith and traditions to Jews and African-Americans who oppose mass immigration from the Third World. On a vertical level, it can include scholars of Machiavelli, Burke, and Nietzsche on the high end and conspiracy-mongers or Alex Jones fans on the low end. Such a framework also opens the door to wider acceptance by a threatened middle class that is rapidly sinking into the ranks of the lower proletariat and lumpen sectors. It is those sectors that will ultimately feed the numerical ranks of our movement, and in politics there is no victory without numbers.



It is often amusing to observe the attempts of left-wing proponents of “immigrants’ rights” to depict themselves as noble defenders of the oppressed and downtrodden against tyrannical and exploitive elites. As is often the case with leftists, reality diverges sharply from their beliefs. There are few issues where elite opinion and the views of “the common people” are more in conflict than on the immigration issue, and “the people” come down firmly against open borders. One study on this question from 2002, and commissioned by no less than the Council on Foreign Relations, indicated that among others discrepancies between elite and popular opinion, 60 percent of the public regards the present level of immigration to be a "critical threat to the vital interests of the United States," compared to only 14 percent of the nation’s leadership, a 46 percentage point gap.” The study concluded that “even on such divisive issues as globalization or strengthening the United Nations, the public and the elite are much closer together than they are on immigration.” Of course, the first epithet to be thrown against advocates of immigration restriction is “racist.” Yet, the research shows that a majority of each of America’s largest minority groups likewise opposes open borders. Sixty-eight percent of African-Americans, fifty-seven percent of Asian-Americans, fifty-six percent of Hispanics, and fifty-percent of Jews agree that immigration rates are too high at present. Plenty of voices that are critical of mass immigration can be found among other minority ethnic groups as well.

Thinkers of the Right often tend towards pessimism because, as Carl Schmitt noted, "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil." Consequently, many on our side see a future where our civilization continues to devolve into something resembling a multicultural, feminist, pornographic, New Age rendition of totalitarianism, to be followed by complete dispossession generated by demographic overrun.  While prevailing trends may at present lend themselves to such a conclusion, there is every reason to believe this state of affairs will eventually be reversed in our favor.

Recall that the repentant Communist Whittaker Chambers told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948: "I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side. . .but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism." Such was the perspective of many on the Right during the decades of the Cold War. But there were others, ranging from Lawrence Dennis to George Kennan to Ludwig von Mises, who begged to differ and regarded Communism as an aberration and deformation that would eventually meet its end. History proved these optimists to be correct, and forty years later it was Communism that was dead. It is likely forty years from now that the paradigm of military Keynesianism, welfare-capitalism, and what some have characterized as "Cultural Marxism" (though my preferred term for this phenomenon is "totalitarian humanism") that rules the present day West will likewise be deceased or in severe retreat.

The late, great George Kennan was not only one of the most influential and important diplomats in American history, but he was also a serious man of the Right in every important aspect of his thought. With regards to foreign policy, he combined humility with unsentimental realism. Kennan recognized the ideological threat posed by Soviet Communism, but considered the militarization of U.S. foreign policy and extravagant interventions in places such as Indochina to be an inappropriate and unnecessary response. He was particularly opposed to entangling American foreign policy objectives with ideological crusades. In an interview with The New York Review of Books in 1999, the 95-year-old Kennan remarked, "This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as un-thought-through, vainglorious and undesirable." What was Kennan's preferred alternative? He insisted, "I would like to see our government gradually withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights. I submit that governments should deal with other governments as such, and should avoid unnecessary involvement, particularly personal involvement, with their leaders."

Perhaps the most interesting, and definitely the most threatening type of writer, is the one who not only defies conventional categorizations of thought but also offers a deeply penetrating critique of those illusions many hold to be the most sacred.

Ernst Jünger (1895-1998), who first came to literary prominence during Germany's Weimar era as a diarist of the experiences of a front line stormtrooper during the Great War, is one such writer. Both the controversial nature of his writing and its staying power are demonstrated by the fact that he remains one of the most important yet widely disliked literary and cultural figures of 20th-century Germany. As recently as 1993, when Jünger was 98 years of age, he was the subject of an intensely hostile exchange in the New York Review of Books between an admirer and a detractor of his work. On the occasion of his one-hundredth birthday in 1995, Jünger was the subject of a scathing, derisive musical performed in the former East Berlin. Yet Jünger was also the recipient of Germany's most prestigious literary awards, the Goethe Prize and the Schiller Memorial Prize. Jünger, who converted to Catholicism at the age of 101, received a commendation from Pope John Paul II and was an honored guest of French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Franco-German reconciliation ceremony at Verdun in 1984.

Ernst Jünger was born on March 29, 1895. His father was an academically trained chemist who became wealthy as the owner of a pharmaceutical manufacturing business, finding himself successful enough to retire while still in his forties. Jünger's parents' politics seem to have been liberal, though not radical, in the manner not uncommon to the rising bourgeoisie of Germany's upper middle class during the pre-war period. It was in this affluent, secure bourgeois environment that Jünger grew up. Indeed, many of Jünger's later activities and professed beliefs are easily understood as a revolt against the comfort and safety of his upbringing.

Patrick Ford's recent discussion of the "libertarian problem" observed how resistance to the neoconservatives had produced an unusual alliance on the Right between such divergent elements as "hedonistic anarchists and medieval Catholics." Patrick expressed skepticism of whether the libertarian-traditionalist alliance can be a durable one, given the sharp differences to be found among the respective philosophical foundations of the two camps. Traditionalist objections to libertarianism are usually rooted in what is often described as libertarianism's "atomistic individualism" whereby an ideologically constructed conception of "abstract liberty" is elevated over and above more concrete and immediately tangible matters of culture, history, tradition, community, family, religion, and so forth. Libertarians are accused of deifying the economy as an end unto itself, rather than as a means to the end of meeting human needs and irrespective of the impact of economic forces on non-material values. The traditionalists will say that while libertarians may deny the innate equality of individuals, libertarians implicitly endorse an egalitarian ethos regarding human groups such as nations, cultures, religions, regions, races, and genders. Libertarian economism simply regards these things as interchangeable commodities, and no more significant than different brands of deodorant or fast food. In other words, libertarians are simply liberals who reject the welfare state, according to the traditionalist critique. For this reason, many libertarians see mass immigration from the Third World into the West as no big deal, as human cultures and ethnic populations are interchangeable, with economics and political ideology being what really matters.

One of the most significant characteristics exhibited by those of us who are adherents or fellow travelers of the Alternative Right is our capability of thinking about or discussing matters of race and immigration in a rational and open-minded manner. This distinction, as much as any other, is what separates us from our rivals on the Left and among the ranks of the mainstream "Right." For instance, most of us would probably agree that the overwhelming majority of anti-discrimination legislation of the kind that has been enacted over the past fifty years should be repealed. This stance ensures a pariah status for our camp in polite society. Yet our general opposition to discrimination prohibition serves to establish us as the vanguard of those seeking to fully uphold the venerable principle of freedom of association, supposedly one of those cherished classically liberal liberties along with the freedoms of religion and speech, due process and trial by jury, and so forth.

Whenever I have defended "freedom to discriminate" to the usual suspects-liberals, necons, left-libertarians, supposed "conservatives"-the frequent reaction is not unlike what I might expect to receive if I were defending gang rape or pedophilia. But the taboo nature of this issue should not inhibit us from confronting it with neither fear nor favor. Liberal propaganda not withstanding, the actual historical record of multiracial societies is not a pleasant one. The near-universal norm in such societies is that the ruling classes maintain political control by playing off different ethnic populations against others. Consequently, some populations are relegated to the status of second class citizens (or worse), or civil peace becomes impossible to maintain and horror emerges (see India/Pakistan 1947, Rwanda 1994 or the former Yugoslavia 1992).