Bruno Latour, Column for Domus May 2005

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— Did you hear the good news that in the next election the French are going to vote Pétain down and give full powers to de Gaulle instead?
— How is that possible?
— Well, because they have now learned to detect fascism and collaborationism even in their most hidden corners. Look, one of their philosophers even claims that reading Heidegger is “un crime d’idées”. What do you think of this “thought crime”?[1] Quite Orwellian, no?
— Indeed. But where are the “thought police”?
— Oh in France they are everywhere.
— One thing is sure: this guy does not risk being caught red-handed in the middle of the act of thinking!
— Apparently not. But now he and his compatriots are going to fight fascism with utter determination. Is this not comforting?
— Well, better seventy years late than never.
— Of course, it gives them no better cue to avoid the crimes they risk committing at the present.
— Like what?
— That’s precisely the point: we don’t know. As in the 1930s, we are totally confused. European integration, the admission of Turkey, not supporting the Iraq war, I don’t know. It may be that horrendous ecological crimes are being perpetrated right now and we are totally blind to them. Our descendants will reproach us with indignation and say “You knew and you did not lift a finger!” And what about poverty? What about Darfur?”
— I agree that discerning friend from foe is much easier when you do it retrospectively.
— But if it takes you seventy years to make a decision, it means your political-moral detector lacks sensitivity, no?
— At least every French student is now fully aware of the dangers of reading Heidegger. They now know that he is a bad guy.
— That’s why I dislike those French moralists so much: it’s never enough for them to have political enemies because they also want them to be morally flawed.
— Yeah, that’s Carl Schmitt’s theory: there is politics only if the State can create a sharp divide between friends and enemies. Have you noticed that everyone loves Schmitt these days? Left or right, they all want to have enemies.
— Funny you say that because Schmitt is just one of the guys accused of committing a “crime of ideas”. Moreover, Schmitt never says that enemies are moral, psychological, personal foes, only that there is no notion of the political without them. He is very precise on that.[2] Enemies should be designated but also respected precisely because they are not outlaws, morally inferior, thrown out of humanity. He says it very explicitly dozens of time.
— Do you mean to say that Schmitt does not want enemies to be defeated?
— Defeated? Why yes, of course, but not morally condemned. That’s his whole point. That’s why he was so against the Versailles treaty. For him it was the moral condemnation of the defeated foe, the end of politics.
— But surely you don’t want politics to be freed from moral considerations. That would be realpolitik.
— Oh, there is much worse than realpolitik: there is “moralpolitik”! For Schmitt the difference between friend and foe defines politics on the condition that you don’t add moral stigma to it.
— But what’s wrong with that? You need good reasons to fight.
— Yes, but that’s the whole point. You also need to win! Which means that political enemies may become allies in the next round —that’s the secret of politics. What do you want to do with moral adversaries? Let them burn in Hell for eternity? Do you want to add insult to injury and say: Vae victis!
— You want politics to be immoral?
— Amoral, at least. Don’t pollute it by taking the moral high ground. Also, you have a strange idea of morality if you always link it with stigma, disgust, horror, etc. If you had a moral view of your political enemies, it seems to me, you would rather try to save them, not to precipitate them in Hell’s fire pits.
— You are confusing morality with Christian charity, “love thy neighbour” and all that. Surely I should be allowed to say that Heidegger stinks.
— My political enemies don’t stink, no, I don’t think so. If you really want to add moral considerations to political fights, then add scruples, hesitations, appeals. Consider that you might be mistaken.
— You should tell that to President Bush! He is big on moral stigmatisation of his political foes.
— Good example. All this talk of the “Axis of Evil” shows us the wrong way to wage a political war.
— Oh, I see you are one of those appeasers, one of those weak-kneed European pacifists; you pray to Venus instead of Mars. You try to weasel out of the war on terror. Munich is near.
— Don’t be ridiculous.
— But doesn’t terrorism have to be fought with the utmost determination?
— Depends what you mean by “utmost”. If you face political enemies you might defeat them —and in this case you will certainly defeat them. But what can you do against moral monsters? They are not even beatable.
— Negotiations then? Do you pretend by any chance to negotiate with al-Qaeda!
— Of course not. I want to see them defeated but political fights end only if enemies can be destroyed and, in some cases, when they are turned into allies. If they are morally tainted then you will never win. You wind up being crusaders. This is idolatry. It’s no longer politics.
— But what you have is terrorism and that does not allow for your usual conflict-of-interest types. It’s terror.
— What you don’t get is that in terrorism there is embedded the word “error”. And terrorism will win only if it is able to blind you to the point where you can’t tell friend from foe. This is what Schmitt says.
— But you can’t just end it by winning this sort of war. There is no frontline, no territory, no camps, not even two parties.
— Is this not exactly the reason why you should be extremely suspicious of those who talk of a war on terror? Every new threat requires its own detector, its own touchstone.
— Well, I sort of agree and that’s the reason why I don’t want to be an appeaser.
— You remind me of the 1940s generals, like those French “thinkers” who are always a war late. Finally ready to fight Nazism and blinded by terrorism.
— You mean blinded to terrorism.
— Okay, I’ll go vote against Pétain!
— And I against Mussolini.

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[1] Roger-Pol Droit, “Les crimes d’idées de Schmitt et de Heidegger”, Le Monde, March 25, 2005.
[2] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, translated by George Schwab, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1976 [1963].