Fake Friends: The Friend-Enemy Distinction in a Deracinated Mass Society

We live in a mass society where people have been shorn of their connections to each other and to the past, even to themselves in favour of absolute personal autonomy. What is friend in this context?

68. Fake Friends: The Friend-Enemy Distinction in a Deracinated Mass Society

One of those ideas that gets thrown around a lot these days very loosely and freely is Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction. Schmitt had a very specific idea in mind when he introduced this concept, which is quite powerful if properly understood and applied. Unfortunately, the idea is very catchy and simple in its formulation, such that it easily gets domesticated, misapplied and overused. The danger is that it is emptied of its power to incisively understand the current situation and what must be done in response.

Of the two words “friend” and “enemy,” the more challenging of the two for us to wrap our heads around in the North American context is that of “friend.” Until you understand properly who your friends are, you cannot properly identify the enemy and the threat he represents. Nor can you properly understand the role that the state should play in the life of a people. Part of what Schmitt is doing in The Concept of the Political is challenging liberal conceptions of how a state is formed and when it is properly constituted. A big question that Schmitt grapples with across multiple books, through differing lines of reasoning, is the legitimacy of modern liberal forms of government. What are the conditions by which a government can make a claim to legitimacy? One of those foundational conditions is the relationship of the governing institutions to the people and the role those institutions play in the life of the people on their behalf.

“The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.”

The state and its institutions, properly constituted, emerge out of this reality which Schmitt calls “the political.” You cannot rightly understand the role and purpose of your governing institutions, the state, unless you understand this state of being that Schmitt labels as “the political.” But what is “the political”? Much of the power of this concept flows out of properly understanding these twin ideas of “friend” and “enemy.” One of things that we should try to avoid doing, a pitfall many fall into when discussing this important set of ideas in Schmitt’s writing, is to attempt to merely use the labels to classify the realities we see in our context instead of using them to challenge our thinking about the very foundations of how we are governed. The idea of a “friend” is a very specific notion. The idea and role of “the state” is built on “the political” which flows out of the friend-enemy distinction. His argument is that if your governing institutions are built on another foundation, they lack proper legitimacy. Or, worse, they might not be an actual “state” at all. They may be an “anti-state.” This was Schmitt’s assessment of the United States, that its governing institutions are not in fact a properly constituted “state.” Much of our current troubles are downstream from this reality.

To understand this, we must begin with the “friend.” “Who is friend?”, is the decisive question for understanding “Who is enemy?” A friend is someone with whom you have an existential bond. You are family, a tribe, a people. You share a communal bond that transcends mere practicality, proximity or utility. Economic and transactional relationships do not forge you into a people. Friends have something larger than themselves that grounds the existence of themselves as a people. There is a shared culture. There is likely a shared religious devotion. There are probably family, tribal or ethnic ties. They are bound to a particular place, the land shaping the character of who they are. They understand implicitly in their collective memory of a people all the rules and mechanisms for resolving disputes. This is not an ideological project. You do not have to like all of those who are friend. Your bond to them is unchosen. If you were not born into the group, there was likely some forging experience that fashioned you into a people. It is not something complicated. It is something that you can hold in your hand, and is entirely intuitive. These are a people, like them, love them or despise them, you would not think twice about dying for them or killing for them.

“To the enemy concept belongs the ever present possibility of combat.”

There is a profound sense of “us” and “them.” For Schmitt, this grouping, this collective, is the foundation of “the political.” The individual is not the foundational political unit. This does not mean that the person is lost or subsumed within the people and loses the protection of law; rather, it is at the level of “the people” that the concept of the political gains its force. The decisive reality is that the state emerges out of the people’s struggle for survival and well being. Everyone knows exactly who “we” are and is committed to the long-term welfare of “us.”

This creates a challenge in the American context in particular for a number of reasons. Schmitt argues that in the process of the formation of the Union, the primary driver was not first and foremost the people and their shared existential bond; but rather, there was a concern to protect the affairs of the individual from state interference. Because of the process of rebellion and the economic concerns which were a significant driver of the process, there was an emphasis placed on trying to limit the power of the state to negatively impact the private business interests of the citizen. Also, care was taken to try to prevent the accumulation of power into a single hand, using the division of powers to play the ambitions of men off against each other.

This sets up an adversarial relationship between the citizen and the state. The state does not flow out of the needs of the people. It is seen as fundamentally tyrannical in the Aristotelian sense, that is, it not is seen as always possessing the quality of working for its own advantage and not that of the people. Its purpose is not primarily the welfare of “us” against interests that would threaten our welfare, whether they be other people groups or even business interests that would threaten the people. In this sense, because of this fear of tyranny, it seems that the American governing system was destined to become the thing from which it was designed to protect. It is a subtle distinction, but this happens in part because they believed that state does not exist to protect the people; but rather, that the constitutional framework exists, in theory, to protect the people from the state. The state is an entity that exists ontologically independent of the American people, always threatening, always tyrannical. The American state is an entity from which the people must be protected by laws. It is not seen or understood to flow ontologically out of the necessities of the people’s existential struggle for survival. The idea of a non-tyrannical state seems almost alien to the American mindset. It is because of this dynamic, though, that Schmitt called the American form of governance an “anti-state.”

This problem is exacerbated by the extensive break down of community, the deracination and massification of the American society. This process happened in part because the state was not there to protect “the people” from the resultant effects of liberalism, especially in its economic form. This idea that businesses should be free to operate with minimal regulation or interference from the government — that ever tyrannical entity from which we must be protected — allowed an easy severing of the bond between businesses and the communities in which they were born, nurtured and operated. When you can easily uproot a factory and move it to Mexico or China to pursue ever greater profits for shareholders, thus undermining the economic fabric of a community, you commit harm against the people. Combine this with the increasing embrace of consumer choice as a way of life, that the making of free autonomous decisions is considered the foundation of liberty, and you have a recipe for the rapid erosion of the social fabric of society. Combine that with the increased mobility of the automobile, and the arrival of mass communication in the form of newspapers, radio, television, the internet and now smart phones, it is not surprising that the presence of real communities are almost non-existent. Layer on top of that the reality of mass-immigration and it is very difficult to establish the notion of “the people.”

This question, “what is an American?” is profoundly difficult to answer. The current regime would have it defined in a way that is as thin as possible. “America is an idea.” The ideas themselves are purposelessly vague and indistinct. A belief in “democracy.” The pursuit of the “American dream.” These days, merely crossing the border seems to be a sufficient warrant to consider someone an American.

Some make attempts at defining the true or real Americans as those who are “heritage Americans,” having histories which stretch back to the period of settlement. There is something to this. But this identity has also thinned. It is hard to hold in one’s hand and know instantly this is who we are and what we are about. Perhaps, given a real threat that would force this segment of the population together, this deep intuitive bond with one’s own could emerge among heritage Americans, but it is not there yet. They too have endured the effects of deracination and massification and whatever bond there is, it still too loose at this point to generate this dynamic that Schmitt calls, “the political.” That clear, undeniable, “us.” A similar phenomenon exists within the Christian community. There is bond, but it too has grown thin and weak and does not yet possess the strength of “the political.”

This is in part due to the nature of how we bond in today’s mass media and information society. The primary breakdown of our society occurred mostly as a result of the unrestrained growth and presence of the market in the form of industrialization. It undermined the “household” and the village as the basic organizing units of society, drawing people into cities to operate machines. We were increasingly individualized and isolated. But, we began to be related to through mass media. We were broken down as people rooted in families and communities so that we could be related to as individuals who are part of the masses. There are new groupings. The “worker.” The “proletariat.” The “bourgeoisie.” These groupings are abstractions, imposed upon us. We used to be rooted by place, family, community, and our role in society. Now we are part of a new mass man, formed and shaped by ideas and abstractions. We are the products of propaganda. Whether it is commercial advertising or political, we became a mere collection of ideas or brands. For most of us, we are largely unaware of the degree to which we have been shaped by propaganda. Let me share a couple of quotes from Jacques Ellul’s seminal work on the subject, “Propaganda: the Formation of Men’s Attitudes.”

“Such activities [like commercial advertising, movies and television shows] are propaganda to the extent that the combination of advertising, public relations, social welfare and so on produces a certain conception of society, a particular way of life…just as with ordinary propaganda, it is a matter of propagating behavior and myths both good and bad. Furthermore, such propaganda becomes increasingly effective when those subjected to it accept its doctrines on what is good or bad.”

What one has to understand is that all the roles which the older community used to play in our lives, grounding us in place, people, shared traditions and stories, a shared faith and so forth, have all been replaced by mass media propaganda. We feel like we are part of a group, but in fact we are always alone, isolated, at the mercy of the propagandist. We are familiar with the scene of a group of people all sitting around together, each on their own phone. Mass man.

“One trait of vertical propaganda is that the propagandee remains alone even though he is part of the crowd. His shouts of enthusiasm or hatred, though part of the shout of the crowd do not put him in communication with others; his shouts are only a response to the leader. … Finally, this kind of propaganda requires a passive attitude from those subjected to it. They are seized, they are manipulated, they are committed; they experience what they are asked to experience; they are transformed into objects. … His actions are not his own, though he believes it is.”

This is why I remain suspicious of attempts to create mass identities. Far too often they are thin, the products of mass media. They are like a clothing brand that we wear. Would you die or kill for those who wear the same brand of shirt as you?

There is also the problem of ideology. When you are bound together by a commitment to a set of abstract ideas, there is nothing to prevent the inevitable “purity spiral.” In real communities where there is a real sense of “us,” these groupings are grounded in something larger, something that transcends mere agreement. You might not like or agree with everyone who is part of the “us,” you might even hate one or two of them, but you know without a doubt they are one of “us” and not one of “them.” You will die for that person you hate when they are part of the grouping that is “us,” that is the “friend.” Today’s ideas of instrumental or “curated” friend groups are not “friends” in the political sense. They are part of your brand. They are a construct of mass society, completely fungible based on your current needs and aspirations. If your shirt is no longer in style, you change your shirt. So too with curated friend lists. “The political” will not emerge in this environment.

Even the churches following the Protestant Reformation struggle with this. The Reformation, while seeking the admirable goal of a better, truer theology, had the inadvertent side effect of allowing theology to take on some of the characteristics of an ideology, in that we allowed purity spirals to divide us again and again and again. This is further undermined by the voluntarist understanding of Christian association. We tend to see “church” as yet another part of the collection of brands that makes up the totality of our lives. If “church” is adding something to our lives, we keep it. “Church” becomes yet another curated friend. Even though many are seeing glimmers of an emerging political consciousness within the Christian community, it will not be there more broadly until we are able to live quite comfortably with a wide variety of unresolved internal conflicts and disagreements, likes and dislikes, yet still knowing that in spite of them, there is a clear “us” and “them.” Perhaps it will take some form of open persecution to forge this identity. Time will tell.

All of this is to say that in spite of all the fervor and discontent, we are still quite some ways away from a real political consciousness emerging in opposition to the current left-liberal regime. We want to identify friends and enemies and use this tool for understanding the things we see happening. For example, the common phrase you hear: “reward your friends and punish your enemies” does not really flow out of Schmitt’s distinction. It might be good, practical, realpolitik advice to heap largess on your allies and supporters and to punish those who oppose you, but this is not what Schmitt is talking about in the “friend-enemy” distinction. He is talking about the foundation of a people as a political entity and then the role that the state is supposed to play on behalf of the people. His argument is that the reason the government exists, its sole purpose, is to defend the interests of the people against anyone who would undermine them. The degree to which the state does this, it is legitimate. Any state that would allow the unpunished offshoring of factories or the influx of millions of foreigners illegally is illegitimate. Truth be told, in the American context, the government works for the business interests and the foreigner against the “American people,” in spite of the difficulties we might have in answering the question, “what is an American?” It is clear that in the friend-enemy distinction, the American state sees the illegal immigrant as “friend” as they work tirelessly for their interests.

A big part of what prevents a real friend-enemy distinction to emerge is the very deracinated, mass-man nature of the American society. We may look at the so-called golden age of the mid-century consensus as a good thing, but, truth be told, that consensus was built on mass media control. People were already broken out of their former communities, isolated and rebuilt as a massified whole through propaganda, manipulated by mass media and given an identity. Because it happened through the soft propaganda of television shows and a unified evening news, does not make it any less artificial or any less a product of propaganda. It may be that the catalyst which draws people together and grounds them in new, reborn communities of “friends” is some form of hardship or oppression. It may be that until that emerges, it is all LARPing. Maybe I retain enough optimism, born out of my personal experience in a somewhat tight-knit ethno-religious community, but I am of the mind that these kinds of communities can be formed intentionally. This is really the heart of the discipleship process among Christians. I also believe that we can take back sovereignty from the government is some areas of our life, such as the education of our children as but one example. But we have to be very clear in understanding this notion of “friend.” Far too often today we understand this idea as deracinated mass-men who are the products of propaganda and ideology. And so we gather together fake friends, or rather, some weak simulacrum of the “friend” and then wonder why we cannot build what it takes to meaningfully resist the regime.