1. So I have some thoughts on Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Herman Melville, slave revolts, Leo Strauss, allegorical & esoteric reading, & that anonymous New York Times op-ed.https://twitter.com/scottjshapiro/status/1038127090728615937 …
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12. I'll leave aside the grossness of equating revolting slaves to Nazis for another day, but it is very tied to how order-loving German conservatives saw the 1930s: Nazis were an insurgency from below which elites failed to quell.
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13. The subtext of Schmitt's letters are clear. "I am Benito Cereno -- when it looks like I was collaborating with the regime I was actually a prisoner with no agency."
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14. (Tangentially: the exact relationship between Carl Schmitt & Leo Strauss is a subject of intense scholarly controversy, but the two read each others work. Strauss' discovery of esoteric writing came later, but was surely informed by aware of lived reality of tyranny).
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15. When I read the anonymous Times op-ed, it called to mind many of the dilemmas faced by Junger & Scmitt, about conservative elites trying to tame racist demagogues, about the need for secret communication, about how quickly the adult in the room can become a prisoner.
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16. To wrap up: both Junger and Schmitt overlapped socially with the members of the Officer's Plot, who tried to kill Hitler in 1944 but neither participated in the coup. Junger spent the war administrating Paris, which actually helped his post-war reputation.
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17. Post-1945 Schmitt was arrested & jailed for 2 years, stripped of his academic titles, and lived on as a contaminated figure. Junger, much admired not only in Germany but also in France, continued to be a literary hero, hailed by, among others, Mitterrand.
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End of conversation
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Great. A spoiler. Another Saturday night at the Cinema Odeon all shot to hell.
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(such a great spoiler alert :)
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The Benito Cereno reference for conservatives faced by fascism might be more apt in the character of Capt. Delano - unable to understand the situation, unable to trust his vague malaise, because of he is blinded by his own racism.
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