Trumpism and the Friend-Enemy Distinction

So I read this insightful article by Mark S. Weiner – Climate Change Denial as the Historical Consciousness of Trumpism: Lessons From Carl Schmitt

Sure, I was interested in the particular systematic and/or philosophical reasons for climate change denial within Trumpism.  More than that though, I was interested in hearing his take on “historical consciousness” and Trump.  To what is the administration referring with the tagline “Make America Great Again”?  To what historical moment and/or narrative do they point?

Early in the article, the author argues for an awareness of the philosophy and ideologies undergirding Trumpism.  Buried beneath an avalanche of Tweets, he argues, is a set of philosophical convictions that must be acknowledged and understood.  To do nothing more than ridicule Trumpism is “mistaken and self-defeating” and “a signal of our own intellectual weakness.”

Truth be told, I don’t get this “substance below the surface” sentiment from Trump.  I don't think there's anything there.  But I do get it from, say, Steve Bannon.  He’s a dangerously smart guy.  Listen to this interview on The Daily. 

But back to the article.  I got to this part:

According to Schmitt, a political community arises when its members coalesce around some aspect of their common existence. On this basis, they distinguish between their “friends” and “enemies,” the latter of whom they are ultimately prepared to fight and kill to defend their way of life.

A political community, that is, is created through an animating sense of common identity and existential threat—indeed, that’s how “the political” as a fundamental sphere of human value comes into being, and how it provides the cultural foundation of sovereignty and the state for a community of equals. 

Schmitt believes that this pugilistic view of politics rings true as a conceptual matter, but he also regards drawing the friend-enemy distinction as a quasi-theological duty and part of what it means to be fully human. 

Without the friend-enemy distinction, he argues, political life would vanish, and without it something essential to humanity would vanish, too—human existence would be reduced to mere private hedonism. This gives Schmittianism, like the Bannon-affiliated elements of Trumpism, a family affinity to traditionalism in Russia—a link highlighted by Bannon’s discussion of the traditionalist underpinnings of Eurasianism in his 2014 remarks to a gathering of the Human Dignity Institute. 

One could equally express the Schmittian worldview in more theologically positive terms, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, as a politics based on love. For Schmitt, the political is founded on the essential mutual regard of community members for what they share beneath their surface-level differences. That recognition justifies the state’s demand that citizens be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in its name, and for Schmitt it forms the philosophical precondition of law itself. 

(bold italics mine)

It’s goes like this.  A political community requires a common identity to exist, something that it’s members share beneath their surface-level differences.  Absolutely fundamental to this identity is the friend-enemy distinction.  To lose this distinction is to lose something essential to human existence.  In what way?  The friend-enemy distinction and the conflict that inevitably follows is necessary both to create the construct of “sovereignty” and to avoid private hedonism.  Conflict is woven into the very fabric of existence.  There must be an in-group and there must be an out-group.  This is in no small part because the friend-enemy distinction provides an “other” by which and to which the community can point to an existential threat.  This existential threat, this shared fear, provides no small portion of the purposes for which the community exists.  The existential threat strengthens the belonging.  Without the friend-enemy distinction, something essential to humanity would vanish.  

This is very useful lens through which to view Trumpism.

We see the campaigning on hatred and fear of the immigrant and the Muslim.  It explains the twitter tirades, the stunning amount of blatant lies, the minimization of the state department, and the policy-of-withdrawal.  The only possible “peace” in such a worldview is an absence of immediate military conflict that comes through endless preparation for war, a peace brokered by highly militarized nations equipped to wipe each other out hundreds of times over.  Aspects of what is referred to as “globalism” threaten the entire meaning making apparatus, not just for tangible economic reasons but because we have no “other” to provide the existential threat, the shared fear, that promises to unify.  Because if we are truly all in this together, the ultimacy and necessity of the friend-enemy distinction is a lie. 

The identity of a group comes primarily from “us” not being “them”.  Whoever they are.

It’s at this point that I realized that this is not just a Trumpism thing.  This is a human thing.  Trumpism may assume a particular way of defining the enemy – nationally (which is inevitably cultural/racial) -  but it’s become apparent to me that human society revolves around the need for an enemy to serve as a scapegoat.  Uniting around a shared victim brings "peace".  The thought of Rene Girard (filtered through others) has illuminated this for me.

The friend-enemy distinction leads to and is reinforced by contempt for the enemy.

This is not a new thing.  Again, Girard illuminates the scapegoat mechanism present and revealed in the Gospels.

We see that the hatred of Jesus temporarily dissolves the animosity between Pilate and Herod:

Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him.  Then, dressing him in elegant clothes, Herod sent him back to Pilate.  That very day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other, for prior to this they had been enemies.
--Luke 23-11-12

Or for a less appropriate, more contemporary, and more comical take, here is Jay Mohr on “similar hates”.

I'm increasingly recognizing that Trumpism can't be so easily dismissed just because of the actions & character of the man who heads it.  Trumpism is certainly a cult of personality but it is also more.  That's why it's dangerous.  It plays to the worst in us.

More than anything, it makes me want to explore the ways in which my Christian faith and the Gospel of Jesus counters and critiques this narrative and might visibly offer an alternative to the existential threat narrative that characterizes the friend-enemy framework so prevalent in our time.