In his foreword to the 2007 edition of Carl Schmitt’s 1932 book The Concept of the Political, philosopher Tracy B. Strong writes: “Schmitt claimed that liberalism’s reliance on procedure led to a depoliticization and dehumanization of the world.”
If you want to understand the rise of Brexit, Trump and nationalism, that sentence might start you on a journey.
People want to feel something.
One day after working 12 hours in an office, I chose to walk two miles home through the pouring rain. I knew it was going to be miserable, but I wanted to feel something.
I did feel something quickly — pure misery. It was far worse than I expected. I had to take off my glasses to see anything, but then the driving rain made it painful to leave my eyes open for long.
For many Brits who voted for Brexit and Americans who voted for Trump, I suspect they wanted to feel something and afterward they did, good and hard.
Carl Schmitt’s critique suggests that when we try to replace hard political decisions with neutral “procedures” (like bureaucracy, markets, or endless parliamentary debate), we don’t actually get rid of conflict—we just make it more dangerous.
Here is a breakdown of the argument Strong is highlighting and why it feels so familiar today.
1. The Trap of Procedure
Schmitt argued that Liberalism fundamentally fears conflict. It tries to neutralize the “struggle” of politics by turning everything into either:
Ethics/Discussion: Endless parliamentary debate where we assume we can just “talk it out” until we agree.
Economics/Administration: Treating political problems as technical glitches to be managed by experts or the market.
The Result: “Depoliticization.” We stop talking about who has power and who is the enemy, and instead talk about “efficiency,” “GDP,” or “compliance.” Politics becomes mere management.
2. Why this leads to “Dehumanization”
This is the most counter-intuitive and chilling part of Schmitt’s (and Strong’s) argument. You might think that focusing on procedure and universal human rights would humanize the world. Schmitt argues the opposite.
If you acknowledge a political enemy (the “Friend/Enemy” distinction), you treat them as an equal adversary. You fight them, you might kill them, but you recognize them as a sovereign entity.
However, if you claim to represent “Humanity” or universal “Rationality,” then your opponent is no longer just a political enemy—they are an enemy of humanity itself.
They are not just “wrong”; they are an outlaw, a monster, or a “disturber of the peace.”
Because they are outside the bounds of “rational procedure,” extreme violence against them is justified to “police” the world.
As Schmitt famously paraphrased Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: “Whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat.”
3. Relevance to the Current Moment
Strong’s 2007 observation feels even sharper now. We can see this dynamic playing out in three distinct areas:
The Technocratic vs. Populist Split
Many citizens today feel that “democracy” has become a hollow procedure—a series of bureaucratic levers pulled by un-elected experts (central bankers, health officials, judges) rather than a space for genuine political decision.
The Feeling: “We vote, but the policies are decided by procedure/bureaucracy.”
The Reaction: This fuels the “return of the political” (often in the form of populism), where people crave a Decisionist leader who will smash the procedure and assert sovereignty.
The Moralization of Politics
We rarely view political opponents as “adversaries” with whom we legitimate disagree on tax policy. We increasingly view them as existential threats.
In the US and Europe, the opposing party is often framed not as “mistaken,” but as illegitimate, anti-democratic, or evil.
When you view the opponent as “irrational” or “phobic,” you don’t debate them (procedure); you attempt to banish them from the public sphere (dehumanization).
“Policing” the World
Schmitt predicted the rise of “police actions” rather than declared wars. When we intervene globally now, it is rarely for national interest (which is honest politics); it is often for “human rights” or “global stability.”
This frames the intervention not as War (State vs. State) but as Policing (Order vs. Criminal).
This justifies “forever wars” because you cannot sign a peace treaty with “crime” or “terror.”
Strong is pointing out that by pretending we have moved beyond the “us vs. them” nature of politics, we have actually removed the guardrails that kept conflict contained. We exchanged the “duel” of politics for the “extermination” of moral crusade.
Strong later writes: “An intellectual consequence of the experience with Nazism was to effectively shrink, perhaps one might say homogenize, the language and terms of political debate in the subsequent period. As the Nazi experience fades from consciousness (at just over sixty years of age, I am among the last to have been born during the war and to have been taught by those with adult consciousness during the war), so also possibilities excluded by the specter of Auschwitz have returned. The revival of interest in Schmitt is consequent, I believe, to this increasing distance from the 1930s.”
This sheds light on the rise of Nick Fuentes and his mocking of the Holocaust.
Nick Fuentes and the “Groyper” movement are the living proof of Strong’s thesis: when the living memory of the Holocaust fades, the taboo against Nazism stops being a visceral moral barrier and becomes merely a set of “rules” to be broken for attention and political power.
Here is how Strong’s insight explains the rise of Fuentes and his specific brand of rhetoric.
1. The End of “Homogenization”
Strong argues that after 1945, Western political debate was “homogenized.” The unspoken rule was: We can disagree on taxes or healthcare, but we all agree that Hitler was the ultimate evil. This created a boundary that defined legitimate politics.
Fuentes’ Strategy: He recognizes that for people born in the 2000s, “Hitler” is often just a historical abstraction or a meme, not a lived memory of terror.
The Result: He deliberately shatters the homogenization. By praising Hitler (calling him “cool” or “awesome” in livestreams) or questioning the Holocaust, he is signaling that he refuses to play by the post-WWII rules. He is stepping outside the “procedures” of liberal democracy.
2. Mockery as a Weapon (“Cookie Monster” Rhetoric)
You mentioned his mocking of the Holocaust. This is a specific tactic that fits into Schmitt’s critique of liberalism.
The Tactic: Fuentes and his followers often use “irony” and coded language (like the “Cookie Monster” analogy to question the feasibility of the gas chambers/crematoria numbers).
Why it works: If he made a serious, dry academic argument, he would be easily debunked and ignored. But by turning it into a joke or a meme, he bypasses the “moral immune system.”
Schmittian Angle: This turns the “sacred” (the memory of the victims) into the “profane.” It is a way of declaring that nothing is off-limits—which is the ultimate assertion of sovereignty.
3. The “Return of Excluded Possibilities”
Strong wrote that “possibilities excluded by the specter of Auschwitz have returned.”
For 60 years, explicit White Nationalism and antisemitism were “excluded possibilities”—you simply couldn’t advocate for them and be part of the conversation.
The “Genocide” Flip: In recent interviews (like with Piers Morgan), Fuentes inverts the “excluded” language. He claims that white Christians are the ones facing “genocide.” He steals the moral gravity of the Holocaust and repurposes it for his own “Friend/Enemy” distinction.
The “Cool” Factor: Because the Nazi era is now distant history, Fuentes frames the aesthetics of fascism—the uniforms, the rallies, the certainty—as “cool” and “counter-cultural” to a generation that feels suffocated by modern bureaucracy and “wokeness.” He pitches fascism as the only rebellion left.
Nick Fuentes is not an accident; he is the inevitable result of the dynamic Strong described. As the “adult consciousness” of WWII dies, the “Never Again” guardrails degrade into mere words. Fuentes steps into that void, offering the one thing liberalism tried to banish: The Enemy. He offers his followers a world of high stakes, where they are not just voters, but soldiers in a civilizational struggle.
