Trump & the Problem with Politics | Philosophy Tube

at time of filming the results of the usa presidential election are not in so whilst i wait to find out what color i should paint my doomsday bunker i invite you to the idea that this election particularly mr trump's role in it has revealed something very interesting about politics particularly if you aren't usually interested in politics at all carl schmidt was a very influential political philosopher he was also a nazi literally a member of the nazi party and as we will see his ideas very much tied into that but what's interesting is that they have influenced people not just on the right wing like him but also on the left wing schmidt thought that all politics ultimately relies on a distinction between friend and enemy the friend enemy distinction is often pretty arbitrary it's just about what people choose to identify as american british liberal conservative whatever and who they think is not a part of that identity enemy makes it sound like these are people that we are trying to actively kill but that's not quite what schmidt means your political enemies he thought are people that you might not have anything personally against you might even like some of them but when push comes to shove you will sacrifice them that might mean killing them but it might mean just letting them die you may feel bad about that but you're still gonna do it because they don't share your identity so it's not so much friend and enemy as friend and other us versus them it should come as no surprise to you that the friend enemy distinction is often pretty vague and arbitrary a lot of political distinctions are take the distinction between migrant and refugee refugees are to be taken in and cared for whereas migrants can just be left to die at least that's what my country seems to be doing this distinction is literally life and death but if you actually look at the causes of migration the distinction isn't really very clear at all but these distinctions don't need to make sense they just need us to believe in them and that schmidt thought is what makes political conflict so deadly if the blue team believe that the red team pose a threat to their identity just by existing just by having a different identity then even if the red team aren't a threat even if the distinction between reds and blues doesn't make sense and even if the red team themselves don't believe in that distinction no amount of evidence schmidt says is ever going to change the blue team's minds he thought that a true political conflict isn't about facts it's about the fight against other identities however arbitrarily we might point them out so you can chat all you want about what the best way to run the market is or how to manage the economy liberal governments in the west love talking about that stuff just turn on the news and you'll find out but for schmidt those aren't really political conflicts they're just management disagreements and if your government can only talk about how to change the economy by one or two tenths of a percentage how are you going to cope when someone genuinely comes along and says that they think muslims should be banned from entering the country how are you going to cope when someone genuinely says that they don't believe trans people exist and therefore that they shouldn't have rights those are capital p political issues issues about who is allowed to have power over themselves and who is not and schmidt says that liberalism allows people not to care about politics it doesn't give them a sense of identity strong enough that they will kill for it i invite you to the idea that some of what trump has said over the course of this election truly embraces the capital p political the restriction of power to certain identities and here comes the twist schmidt worried that if you have a liberal government with no strong sense of identity an enemy group might come along and they might have a very strong sense of identity and be very unified and very determined and they might take you over and that is how schmidt justified becoming a nazi because in 1920s germany he thought oh crap some enemy group is going to come along and take us over so we have to strike first we have to unify in a very aggressive very nationalist way and crush that enemy before they can get us and in nazi germany that enemy became jewish people like i said the distinction between friend and enemy doesn't need to be real or make sense it just needs people to believe in it and what we get is fascism authoritarian governments that don't treat people equally and don't care because the people they treat like crap are the enemy and who cares about the enemy do you care about the enemy are you a traitor are you sympathizing with them you traitor in an ironic way schmidt kind of became the very thing he was worried about the distinction between friend and enemy has been very influential in political philosophy but where he took the next step was with this strike first idea i invite you to the thought that a version of this strike first mentality is something that we can see some people using today with regards to muslims some people see muslims as a threat and say that they need to destroy that identity and that they have no choice and that it's all in the name of freedom well just be aware that that move has been made before but i said earlier on that schmidt's ideas have influenced people both on the right wing and on the left wing and they have the left has also used this friend enemy distinction but in a bit of a different way the left traditionally defines itself in opposition to those who are rich and powerful if you are rich and powerful you can give it up if you're oppressing somebody that's something that you can stop doing so if you're a political enemy of the left you can become a friend if you're a political enemy of the right though because you're gay trans jewish brown disabled whatever the only way you can make them happy is to stop existing the right wing says people who don't share my identity shouldn't have power over themselves the left wing says those who currently have power should not because they got there and stay there by oppressing others this is where we get so-called identity politics people on the left talking about which identities are allowed to have power and seeking to redress the imbalances liberalism can sometimes overlook the differences in the ways that the right and the left use the friend enemy distinction in fact it can sometimes overlook the relationship between power and identity entirely remember when bernie sanders suggested that all americans should get free college or when people say that americans should have free health care or that the us and uk shouldn't have armies that they use to invade other countries liberalism sometimes laughs that off as unrealistic or idealistic or even dangerous and radical that's because schmidt would say liberalism is only good if the person you're talking to basically already agrees with you if you're in the center politically it can look like the people either side of you are banging similar drums but they're really asking for very different things part of the criticism of liberalism from the left is that it can sometimes look a little hollow even hypocritical take john stuart mill one of the fathers of modern liberalism who loved to talk about the value of liberty and freedom but supported the british invasion of india or the u.s founding fathers who talked about the values of life liberty in the pursuit of happiness but owned slaves or maybe the biggest hypocrisy of all some people in britain worry that foreigners will come and destroy our way of life and steal our resources but we only have a country as rich as we do because we spent centuries doing those very things to the rest of the world and never paid it back that apparent hypocrisy is what has inspired criticisms of liberalism from people as far-ranging as lenin and marx to martin luther king jr and many of those critics faced with this apparent hypocrisy began to doubt whether liberals really mean what they say about freedom and equality at all the black activist kwame turey said that liberals love to talk about how they don't like violence but is it not violent for a child to go to bed hungry in the richest country in the world i think that is violent but that type of violence is so institutionalized that it becomes a part of our way of life not only do we accept poverty we even find it normal tire says that the liberal propensity to avoid talking about power and identity perpetuates oppression because liberalism doesn't look at those schmitty and categories of power and identity it doesn't realize that actually all politics is identity politics in this video we've looked at liberalism both from the right wing and from the left wing most people when pushed will describe themselves as center or moderate reasonable and if that's you then okay cool maybe you can think of some replies to these criticisms there are definitely some that you could make i've inhabited the characters of carl schmidt and kwame turi if you like but you don't have to agree with them the idea i invite you to though is that this election for better or worse has shown that liberalism is not the only way of looking at the world the people who criticize liberalism on both sides are not mad or joking they are serious and they are political concerned about the distribution of power maybe that's something we could all think a little bit more about patreon.com philosophytube helps me pay the rent i do need some help with that so if you can give even one dollar a month that would be amazing and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Philosophy Tube

Views: 257,418

Rating: 4.8412528 out of 5

Keywords: trump, politics, hillary clinton, economics, liberalism, presidential election, Carl Schmitt, Nazis, left-wing, right-wing, philosophy

Id: 0BcsKdvERZA

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/yippiekayeey]

His most recent video on Locke and the state of nature, was also a beauty.

[u/nahmayne]

I know people here might have already but if you haven't you should read Stokely speaks and Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.