DOCUMENTATION
International Media Expose
U.S. `Schmittlerian' Revival
With the spotlight being trained by the international LaRouche movement on the Nazi character of the Cheney-Bush Administration, which has adopted the Führerprinzip of Hitler's "crown jurist" Carl Schmitt, the international media has begun to pick up on this reality. Here are three examples:
Professor Peter Wagner, "Democracy in Distress," Frankfurter Rundschau, Jan, 17, 2006.
The feature article begins by contrasting the reaction of the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to the floods of 2002, with the reaction of President George W. Bush to the hurricane damage in New Orleans.
After a subhead "Exceptional Situation—according to Schmitt," the article continues: "This comparison invites you to consider anew Carl Schmitt's thesis that the sovereign is the one who controls the 'exceptional situation.' Schmitt was thinking of conflicts in which friend and foe were in a struggle for control of the state. Later his students in the current U.S. government are ready at all times to create new enemies, against whom the battle for dominance can be waged. Over and over again Schmitt and his imitators thought of the possibility that the 'enemy,' against whom he must exercise his political capability, could be nothing more than a political opponent...."
The article goes on to discuss how the Schmitt theory is used in the United States to fight "the enemy," while going against the general welfare of the citizens.
"Protest in Mexico Against Alito," Associated Press, Jan. 23, 2006. Posted as a Spanish-language wire by its Mexico City office, it was picked up by the Spanish-language TV station Univision.
"Some 20 people protested in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City against the possible confirmation of Samuel Alito, whom they compared to Hitler, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The LaRouche Youth Movement, an international organization which backs the ideas of American economist Lyndon LaRouche, who some time back had presidential aspirations, organized the demonstration.
" 'Alito puts forward a doctrine which is, frankly, Nazi,' said one of the organizers of the demo, Erick de Leon, 25 years old. 'We have to stop this ultraright policy in the U.S., before it gets to Mexico.' "
"Some of their signs mentioned Adolf Hitler and pointed out that there was no way to honestly debate including a Nazi leader in the U.S. government.
"The group also organized demonstrations in front of the U.S. Embassies in Argentina, Colombia and Peru."
\"The Sulfurous Carl Schmitt," El País, by Luis Bassets, Jan. 26, 2006. The Spanish daily exposed the philosophy behind Alito.
"We will have to urgently consult philosophers of Law, and learned and eminent jurists, for them to explain to us what is happening in the most outstanding democracy in the world, a country which moreover is a friend and ally of Spain and of the European Union. A handful of jurists—from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the candidate for the vacant Supreme Court seat Samuel Alito—have been churning out purportedly constitutional arguments designed to place the President of the United States above the law and the other powers. This deference is not gratuitous, but is driven by objectives that are as precise as they are disturbing: to give legal cover to activities so un-edifying as indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists, submitting those detainees to torture, jailing and interrogating them in clandestine dungeons situated in countries without guarantees or controls, or conducting unauthorized telephone wiretaps without any judicial oversight....
"Samuel Alito, candidate for a lifetime Supreme Court post, is the author of the unitary Executive theory, a peculiar way of defending concentration of power and turn the President into the interpreter of the Constitution. Thanks to the invention of some strange 'signing statements,' the President can correct the content of a law by later introducing his own peculiar interpretation.... Likewise, Alberto Gonzales, who promoted the memos authorizing violent interrogations, just manufactured another document justifying Presidential power to order wiretapping and taping of telephone calls without judicial oversight.
"These unscrupulous geniuses of juridical juggling appear to have come out of the same mold. Their writings have a sulphurous spitfire which weds them to Carl Schmitt, the skillful jurist who provided the conceptual arguments for the Hitler dictatorship; among them, the absolute superiority of the Executive, the glorification of political decision above the law, and the figure of the sovereign who decides on a state of exception. It is not the first time that Constitutional law has been suspended in the United States, but never has it been done with the intent to make it permanent. The legal basis used now to grant so much power to the President as to transform him into the lord of life and death, of freedom and privacy, is the mandate he received from Congress on Sept. 18 [2001] to wage the war on terrorism. It has no expiration date, because the President himself has acknowledged that this is a war without end; and with consequences as sad as they are evident. 'Our Constitutional design is in danger,' Al Gore declared a few days ago. And veteran columnist William Pfaff went further: 'the President and his advisors are putting forward an American doctrine of Presidential dictatorship.' "
