Carl Schmitt captured the essence of totalitarian politics in his book The Concept of the Political (1932). It is the distinction between friend and enemy. The poison of this kind of thinking is in the ugly fact that the declared enemy must be treated as the declared enemy once a political faction has declared one, and anyone who doesn't go along with that declaration declares himself one of the enemy.
As normal people who value ideological and logical consistency, we tend to find movements like the Red-Green Alliance (Communists and Islamists) and "Queers for Palestine" confusing.
In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay goes back into the text of Milestones to discuss this important concept and its profound parallels to Marxist Communism.
What gets called Woke, especially on the Left, is a complete worldview (or ersatz theology) that therefore provides all the usual philosophical elements.
Watch James Lindsay and Michael O’Fallon in Dallas, TX, recorded August 22–23, 2025, to learn more about this rising threat and how we can save American liberty.