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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Replying to @SWGoldman
There is an argument to be made that Junger was the more savvy opportunist.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @SWGoldman
I don't think Junger's actions (which he admittedly never gave transparent account of) reducible to opportunism. Or else he wouldn't have declined down honours offered by Nazi regime post-1933. If anything, it's his elitist disdain for baseness of actual Nazis that saved him.
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Right, which is why many in the French cultural elite (including those on left) embrace Junger.
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