The Dark Side of Podemos?

Carl Schmitt and Contemporary Progressive Populism

Josh Booth, Patrick Baert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780815380726
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351212533
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 2014 a new progressive party, Podemos, emerged on the Spanish political scene. Within just over two years it had become the country's third-biggest party, winning a slew of seats in parliament and regularly making headline news. While some see Podemos as the saviour of Spanish democracy, others have accused it of corrosive populism. But what few have noticed is that behind its distinctive rhetoric lies a thinker closely associated with Germany's Third Reich: Carl Schmitt.

Why has an ostensibly progressive and avowedly anti-fascist political party taken up Schmitt's ideas? The puzzle only deepens when we learn of Schmitt's links with Francisco Franco's dictatorship. In The Dark Side of Podemos?, Booth and Baert explain why Schmittian theory resonated with Podemos' founders. In doing so, the authors position Podemos and the ideas that guide it within the context of recent Spanish history and ongoing politics of memory, revealing a story about how personal and political narratives have combined to produce a formidable political force.

This enlightening monograph will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as Politics, Political Theory and Sociology. It will also be relevant to those curious about contemporary Spanish politics, the nature of populism, the future of the European left, or Carl Schmitt and his links with Spain.

1 The Schmitt-Podemos connection

In 1977, almost two years after the death of Francisco Franco, the German jurist Carl Schmitt published an article in the Spanish newspaper El País calling for an amnesty, “a mutual act of forgetting” (Schmitt, 1977). “An amnesty in the true and authentic sense of the word”, Schmitt wrote, “signifies nothing less than the end of civil war”. By this time almost forty years had passed since the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), and just over thirty years since the defeat of German National Socialism, the political movement with which Schmitt is most closely associated. Since 1945 Schmitt had been unable to work in German academia because he had refused to accept his own denazification, expecting, perhaps, that he himself would be granted the dignity of amnesty. But in Spain he had found something of a second home. It was through his daughter Anima—married from the 1960s to Alfonso Otero, a Spanish professor of legal history, and living in Spain—that Schmitt authorised publication of the El País article, which he had in fact written in 1949. The family had a farm in Santiago de Compostela, where Schmitt would spend his summers with his daughter and grandchildren (Rodríguez Mourullo 2011). On Thursdays, when there was a market in the town, Schmitt could be seen on the corner of the street watching the rustic scene. “With time”, recalls sociologist Fermín Bouza, who grew up in the city, “I guessed the meaning of his gaze, which was directed towards nostalgia for rural and medieval Europe, which was already lost” (Bouza 2012).

Long an admirer of the Spanish legal theorist Juan Donoso Cortés, and a devout Catholic, Schmitt’s relationship with Spain had been close for decades (Müller 2003, p. 133). Donoso, whose notions of dictatorship and the political decision had influenced Schmitt profoundly, became—thanks to Schmitt’s writings—an important source of political thought for intellectuals under Franco’s regime, which lasted from 1939 until 1975 (López García 1996, p. 142). During this period Schmitt had come to be seen in Spain as the “last guardian of the ‘Great Christian-European Tradition’” that yoked religion to politics (p. 142); he was enough of an intellectual celebrity that Franco’s Information and Tourism minister referred to him as Spain’s “buen amigo y maestro” (Müller 2003, p. 134). Soon after a trip to Spain in 1951, Schmitt himself wrote to a friend that he was “still as if numbed by the contrast between the truly wonderful, and also honourable, welcome in Spain and the malicious persecution in my fatherland” (Mehring 2014, p. 450). In the Spain of this era, in turn, Schmitt saw the realisation of a project he had hoped to see come to fruition in Germany but which had been thwarted by the Second World War (Müller 2003, p. 147). “Essentially”, writes Schmitt scholar Jan-Werner Müller, “he inverted José Ortega y Gasset’s notion that ‘Spain is the problem, Europe is the solution’” (Müller 2003, p. 138; cf. Mehring 2014, p. 525).

For some decades after the passage of Spain’s Amnesty Law in October 1977 (nine months after the publication of Schmitt’s article), it might have seemed as if Schmitt’s influence had waned—although, as we will learn in later chapters, the politics of this period remained distinctly Schmittian. Until a few years ago, that is, when various Schmittian concepts began to reappear in Spanish politics: his belief that the will of the people must sometimes override the constitution; his notion that democratic politics must always involve exclusion and the risk of fatal violence; incitements to the release of public passion; and calls for national myths to reinvigorate political practice. The principal agent behind this reappearance was, counterintuitively, the progressive political force known as Podemos (“We Can” in Spanish), which by mid-2016 had become the third largest party in the Spanish parliament after less than three years on the political scene. Podemos’ paradoxical revival of Schmittian political thought did not go unnoticed: “until the rise of Podemos”, observes professor of constitutional law Javier Tajadura, “no political party has ever assumed—in such a clear and distinct form—Schmitt’s doctrine: decisionism” (Tajadura Tejada 2015).

The Schmitt-Podemos paradox

Schmitt’s work has been tarnished since the 1930s by his close association with German National Socialism. In the decade after the First World War, the militancy, authoritarianism and anti-pluralism that characterised Nazism rose to the surface of his writing; to any of his readers after this point they would have been unmissable. Yet, soon after the end of the Second World War, the political left began to appropriate his ideas. As early as the late 1960s in Italy, for example, the political philosopher and Communist Party activist Mario Tronti used Carl Schmitt as a corrective to Marxist theory, drawing on his ideas to propose that capitalists be treated as absolute political enemies (cf. Mandarini 2014; Müller 2003, p. 178). But what is remarkable about Podemos’ more recent appropriation is the consistency with which Schmittian ideas have been integrated into a major political party’s programme. Schmitt has not appeared in Podemos’ politics merely as a background figure who occasionally contributes to its thinking, as do other political theorists such as Machiavelli. Instead, Schmitt’s thought has unmistakably helped to structure Podemos’ political performances; it is right there on the surface, brazen and with its edges hardly blunted.

Schmitt is certainly not the only theorist whose ideas have moulded Podemos’ political thought. Thinkers on the Left have also exerted a strong influence on the party’s intellectual underpinnings. But this fact subtracts nothing from the importance of a Schmittian cosmology to Podemos’ politics: Schmitt may not be their most significant intellectual influence, but it is undeniable that—at least during the party’s first three years—Schmittian political thought came to play a major role in the way the party’s leaders thought about politics. Given the web of memory through which Schmitt’s vision of politics is likely to be read in Spain—a web in which Schmitt is tightly entangled with the fascist regime of Francisco Franco and its legacy—this requires further explanation. Our concern is not to present a comprehensive guide to the political theory behind what has become one of the most successful political formations of recent times. Nor is it to assess to what extent Podemos’ political behaviour is really Schmittian or not—though the concluding chapter will deal with this question briefly. It is simply to lay out how Schmittian ideas—whether or not they have come directly from Schmitt himself—have shaped the party leaders’ political world view, and to ask why they have been able to do so, apparently against significant odds.

As in Tronti’s Italy of the 1960s and 1970s, fascism has a recent—and to some extent an ongoing—history in Spain. While few seem aware of the Schmittian juristic justification given to Spain’s fascist regime by its intellectuals from the 1930s onwards, or of Schmitt’s proximity to the regime after the Second World War, the Schmittian aspects of Francoist politics continue to be discussed and condemned by those on the political Left even when they are not labelled as such. Yet the young Podemos’ patriotism verging on nationalism, its bellicose metaphors, and its veneration of strong leadership all bear traces of the same kind of politics, which Spain has apparently worked so hard to eradicate. If these ideas do not recall the dictatorship itself, then they certainly revive many of the themes of the Civil War that preceded it, which after the 1977 amnesty Spain’s political class made such a performance of forgetting.

Part of the story here, no doubt, is about “self-positioning” and “branding” (Baert, 2015, pp. 158–189) in that the Podemos intellectuals have drawn in part on a Schmittian perspective to locate themselves (some would say, rather skilfully) within the Spanish political context, presenting a radical agenda that ostensibly moves beyond the traditional left-right divide. In what follows, we shall uncover how their self-positioning has taken place very much through the “positioning” of others, relying on sharp juxtapositions: the intellectuals involved have portrayed the group they call “la casta” (the so-called political elite) as the enemy, the transition from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy as a charade, liberal democracy as a smokescreen, and so on. We shall also learn, however, that the political context in which Podemos’ leaders currently operate is not simply “given”: it is also one that they have helped to create and maintain. Indeed, the very same writings and speeches in which they elaborate on their political stances also depict their political context as one that is politically depleted—one that calls for the resurrection of the kind of heroism associated with an earlier period in Spanish history. Podemos has been particularly persuasive in providing a new depiction of contemporary Spanish politics and of its recent history. In this book, we will explore this unique political imaginary which allowed for the reconciliation of prima facie conflicting political positions. What we will not do, however, is evaluate how far this imaginary and its positioning effects have contributed to Podemos’ success. Our intention is not to explain Podemos’ impressive trajectory through the political sphere, analysing its reconfiguration of Spain’s political party structure; others have taken up this task (see Ramiro and Gómez 2017; Ferrada Stoehrel 2017). It is to account for an intriguing segment of its leaders’ trajectory through the realm of ideas.

To use the term “positioning”, as we just did, is not to suggest that Podemos’ leaders are always craftily and cynically manipulating their audiences or that privately they hold very different (and possibly opposing) views to the ones they publicly profess. Of course, given the nature of their activities, there has been an element of political manoeuvring, with the occasional discrepancy between private convictions and public utterances. Especially their positioning beyond the traditional left-right divide—or, to put it differently, their avoidance of a leftist label—is at least partly strategic. As our story unfolds, however, it will quickly become apparent that the main protagonists seem remarkably committed to and emotionally entangled with the stances they take and that their trajectories indicate a continuity (and, to some extent, authenticity) of their political views that cannot simply be ignored. Therefore, an exclusively instrumental-rational reading of their writings and speeches would be thoroughly misguided.

This, then, poses the question how and why Podemos took up this Schmittian tradition of political thought during the party’s infancy, given that it is redolent of a bellicose far-right politics and that its principal exponent was so closely associated with Nazism. To answer this question we will focus on the period between the party’s inception in 2014 and its second Citizen Assembly in February 2017, when the influence of Schmittian thought on Podemos’ rhetoric was at its clearest. Our investigation will take us into both Spanish and German history, and into the intellectual hinterland of Podemos’ leaders. It will take us into the theory and strategy behind a populist political party built for the twenty-first century and its institutions—an agent capable, if its leaders are to be believed, of reversing the bleak prognosis commentators have been handing down to the European left for years. It will also, briefly, bring us to the question of what it is to be a young European today, and specifically to the question of what it is to be a young academic in today’s European universities. Beyond these narrative landmarks, which make for an interesting story in their own right, investigating the apparent paradox of Schmitt’s reincarnation in contemporary Spain brings us to four further questions, the first pair more general—from the sociology of ideas and political theory—and the second pair quite specific.

The sociology of ideas poses the question of how readers who would have vehemently rejected the politics implied by a theory in its original context come to adopt the theory none the less. Just as it is fascinating how exponents of the French Nouvelle Droite such as Alain de Benoist have been adopting Gramscian theory (whilst unmistakably rejecting Gramsci’s political agenda), it is intriguing how key figures in Podemos came to flirt with Schmittian political theory. This poses a question about resonance: how has Schmittian political theory been able to resonate so strongly with these readers that its original implications have not hindered its appropriation? The answer is that the filter through which Podemos’ leaders view Spanish politics makes contemporary reality appear much more like Weimar Germany, the original context in which Schmitt was writing, than it may seem to us. This filter takes the form of a narrative in which personal and political stories are woven together—a narrative that extends into both Spain’s past and its future. It is a narrative that draws on cultural structures at play in Spanish politics for over a century, resulting in a patterning homologous to that which runs through Schmitt’s political theory. Homology of narrative structures is the key to understanding how Schmittian ideas have managed to resonate with leaders of a progressive political party a century later (see Alexander and Smith 2005). While the polarity of the narrative elements within these structures may be different, similarities between the structures themselves have in this case been sufficient for resonance to occur.

Because the Podemos leaders’ narrative connects the personal and the political, and because it extends into the future as well as the past, it tells a story not just about a prospective political transformation but about a prospective personal transformation as well. It is partly because Schmittian theory echoes the part of the Podemos leaders’ narrative that deals with personal transformation that it has successfully resonated with them—not just because it echoes the part that deals with Spain’s political transformation (though as we will see, to distinguish two different “parts” in this way, while analytically useful here, is probably misleading). Theories should be understood to attract readers not just because of their perceived accuracy, but because they appear to promise a desired personal transformation (cf. Isaac 2009, pp. 406–408). By thinking and acting in accordance with a new theory, by beginning to perform their life according to its script, readers can, or so it may seem, change their form of life. Quite significant inaccuracies and even damning associations may be passed over if a theory offers sufficient performative pull. For the Podemos intellectuals, living through Schmittian political theory promises to end the boredom and frustration produced both by the immediate milieu of academia and by liberal politics. The script of Schmitt’s theory suggests a dramatic life that takes up where their ancestors, who fought against Franco, left off, and continues the epic in which they were protagonists. When combined with its structural fit with Podemos’ narrative about Spanish politics, the performative pull of Schmitt’s decisionism has been too strong to resist.

One of the central claims in what follows is that intellectual currents or ideas in general are more likely to resonate with people if they can be incorporated into compelling individual narratives. In two other socio-historical studies of public intellectuals, we have come across a similar phenomenon. Firstly, The Existentialist Moment showed how in the 1940s Jean-Paul Sartre’s writings—his philosophy, novels, plays, journalistic pieces and public lectures—managed to resonate with sections of the French public because they spoke directly to their recent experiences. Sartre’s writings and speeches provided a vocabulary to make sense of the trauma of the war, helping to draw a line underneath it and move forward (Baert 2015). Secondly, a recent socio-historical study on the Black Consciousness Movement revealed how in the 1970s Steve Biko’s interventions were remarkably compelling and struck a chord with Black South Africans partly because he was particularly skilful in linking his political agenda to their everyday lives. His political views were not simply abstract formulations—they were intimately connected to his own biography and that of millions of others (Morgan and Baert, 2017). In both cases—the study of Sartre and Biko—new theoretical articulations were linked to the notion of rebirth, with a tabula rasa enabling the conception of new societal and political projects as well as new biographies. We shall find that Podemos and Schmittian thought follow similar patterns.

Political theory, meanwhile, poses the question of the nature of populism. Much has been written claiming that populism is inevitably a sinister mode of doing politics: that a return to populism is a return to the horrors of the 1930s. By peering directly into the darkest part of Podemos’ politics, the part influenced by Schmitt, we can test what some have claimed is an innocuous, even positive, incarnation of populism. Does this focus on Podemos’ Schmittian seam reveal something sinister within the poster party of the European populist left? Or does it instead show that in the right hands even the worst aspects of populism can be transformed into something to be embraced, rather than feared?

In his book on populism, Schmitt scholar Jan-Werner Müller argues that the phenomenon should be understood in Schmittian terms. Müller defines populism as “a particular moralistic imagination of politics, a way of perceiving the political world that sets a morally pure and fully unified … people against elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior” (Müller 2016, p. 20). Podemos’ imagination of politics certainly corresponds to this definition. Yet Müller goes on to characterise populists as anti-pluralist (p. 20), as hostile towards real participation by citizens (p. 29), and as prone to internal authoritarianism (p. 36). Schmitt would have approved of this kind of populism, and it is because of this that, as Müller writes, Schmitt’s work “served as a conceptual bridge from democracy to nondemocracy” (p. 28). But has Podemos taken up these Schmittian elements of populism, in which case might it too be the bridge from democracy to nondemocracy in Spain?

The answer is not straightforward. Though he mentions that Podemos has been labelled “populist” Müller does not have much beyond that to say about the party. He does, however, suggest that despite their anti-elitism the precursor movement to Podemos, the indignados, were not “actual populists” because they were not a part of the population claiming to represent the whole—and that distinguishing non-populist anti-elitist political actors from populist ones “is a prime task for a theory of populism in Europe today” (Müller 2016, p. 98). The fact that Podemos has drawn directly on Schmitt provides an unparalleled opportunity to see precisely how far this self-described “populist” phenomenon does correspond to the pessimistic definition espoused by political theorists such as Müller, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. The Schmitt-Podemos connection
• 2. Podemos’ encounter with Schmitt
• 3. Divergent presents
• 4. Imagining the political past
• 5. Imagining the political future
• 6. Tensions within
• Index