Comparison of two ridiculous fascists: Carl Schmitt and Wyndham Lewis


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. I draw attention to four differences between Carl Schmitt and Wyndham Lewis:
(A) Schmitt characterizes certain war-mongering liberals as naive and Lewis
characterizes them as wicked; (B) Schmit is not aware of the thought of running an
authoritarian regime with a liberal surface, but Lewis is; (C) Schmitt, unlike Lewis,
allocates no role to divinity in protecting the ways of a nation; and (D) Lewis is prepared
to resign himself to the end of a nation’s way of life but Schmitt is not.
Draft version: Version 4 (19th June 2025)
PDF available at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWCOT-13

My dear beloved right-wing intellectual
--A comparison of two fools perpetual!


     The fascist philosopher Carl Schmitt is increasingly being introduced to British
philosophers. Someone is sure to ask, "What is the difference between him and this
fascist of ours?" Below I draw attention to four differences between Carl Schmitt and
Wyndham Lewis. (There may be more.) These differences mostly arise, I think, because
Lewis lived in a liberal country and had slightly greater acquaintance with liberal culture.


      A. Naive versus wicked liberals. World War Two began in 1939. In a 1936
book, Lewis writes:
       "Peace for the next twenty-five years - there is a sensible notion now. But the man
       who comes along with a plan for Eternal Peace – which he guarantees he will
       secure for you if you only enter another world-war – just one more war (a really
       bad one this time – far worse than the last): you should only have one answer for
       that gentleman. Very short and sharp; it should be such an uncompromising
       answer that he would never be tempted to come 'hawking' that kind of peace
       again on your doorstep." (1936: 13)
Reading this, various scholars are sure to think of Schmitt. This argument for one more
war is famously addressed by Schmitt. (By the way, who devised it?) He does not want
a great war himself. He thinks liberalism requires such a war and criticizes liberalism for
this reason. Liberals cannot settle for driving the enemy out of their nation, Schmitt
thinks. Since the enemy is perceived as immoral by the liberal rather than merely
different - as violating rights that any decent person should respect - a moral war to
destroy or change the enemy, wherever he may be, ensues. Now our focus is on
differences between Schmitt and Lewis. Schmitt portrays the liberal as naively optimistic
about human nature: the immoral qualities of human beings cannot be eliminated. For
Lewis, in contrast, the liberals who recommend one more war are wicked and
pretending to be clever:
       "To assert that these people, who are doing their best to ensure the outbreak of
       another war, are wicked, is true: but it is beside the point. They do not pretend to
       be good. They pretend to be clever." (1936: 11)


      B. Dictatorship and democracy. Lewis is alive to the possibility of running a
dictatorship from within a democracy:
       "Fascist revolution is not suited to the English people – such is the argument of
       the British parliamentary statesman and his henchmen. But the undeniable
       benefits of such an 'authoritarian' regime as that of Hitler or Mussolini can be
       secured without anyone being aware of the change! It is, in fact, quite surprising
       how totalitarian you can be without anybody so much as guessing that they are a
       whit less free than they were before." (1936: 61-62)
Schmitt was a Nazi. But his illiberal preferences would never be realized in Britain,
Lewis suggests, because British politicians think that (i) fascist revolution is not suited to
the English and (ii) they can gain the advantages of an authoritarian system while
preserving a surface appearance of a liberal British state. It does not seem Schmitt is
aware of this response. The fact that Lewis is aware of thought (ii) is another difference
between them. (Is Schmitt even aware of (i)?)

     More precisely, we can represent Schmitt and Lewis as reacting somewhat
differently to an argument which begins with two premises and infers a conclusion.
    (1) If authoritarian regimes have great benefits over liberal ones, then we ought to
       have a fascist revolution.
    (2) Authoritarian regimes have great benefits over liberal ones.
Therefore:
    (3) We ought to have a fascist revolution.
Lewis is aware of an objection to premise (1) which Schmitt does not show awareness
of: we can preserve the surface of a liberal regime while being authoritarian, rather than
have a fascist revolution.


    C. Divine protection. England is renowned as a literary country: a country of
writers and of great literature. This is Lewis on what might happen to a generation of
outstanding painters he observed:
       "I have experienced so much that is exceptionally tragic that, were they all
       gathered in the Festival Hall, by some mischance, to listen to a new symphony
       by Benjamin Britten, and should the hall be struck, and set on fire by a meteorite,
       and should they all perish in the flames, I should be horrified, but I should see
       that God did not mean England to have painters, and I would accept this,
       perhaps, as another example of those actions of the divinity which we find it
       impossible to understand." (1954: 6)
Schmitt does not appeal to divinity to protect the ways of a nation. He thinks the identity
of a nation should sometimes be protected by suspending the law, in order to better
deal with an enemy.


     D. Categorical survival versus resignation. In his splendidly written book on
the English, Lewis writes:
       "What the conservative wants, in essence, is a prolongation of the past. He
       regards the society to which he belongs as something alive, and subject to laws
       of growth, like a tree – not an inorganic matter to be made up into any shape that
       the intellect may decide. He sees it evolving, more or less slowly, until, in the
       fullness of time it shall have to die, as have other human societies, nations, or
       empires, before it." (1938: 226)
As I understand Lewis, he accepts this mortal tree conception of society. But I don’t
think Schmitt does. The way of life of a nation is something regarding which individual
members must do everything they can to ensure it survives, if it is under threat. One
does not say, “Now its time is up. Just leave it to die.” (I think Lewis would be prepared
to say that in various circumstances.) Most famously, Schmitt thinks that the law should
be suspended in some contexts to better protect the way of life of a nation, notably from
an enemy to that way of life. The thought that this way of life is sure to die at some point
and the further thought that it is best for it to die now are not Schmittian thoughts, as I
understand the German fascist.


References
Lewis, Wyndham. 1936. Left Wings over Europe: or, How to Make a War About Nothing.
London: Jonathan Cape.
Lewis, Wyndham. 1938. The Mysterious Mr Bull. London: Robert Hale.
Lewis, Wyndham. 1954. The Demon of Progress in the Arts. London: Methuen.
Schmitt, Carl. (translated by G. Schwab) 1976. The Concept of the Political. NJ: Rutgers
University Press.