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The Nazi Experiment, Vol. 6: Carl Schmitt and the Total State

New Discourses

New Discourses

Education

4.82.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2025

⏱️ 169 minutes

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 176 The Nazi State was a totalitarian state. This, nobody denies. While Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party associates obviously intended to organize the Nazi State in that way, a thoroughgoing justification was provided by the so-called "Crown Jurist of the Third Reich," Carl Schmitt, who has become popular on the so-called "New Right" (Woke Right). Schmitt resisted the idea of the Nazi movement, despite his political and judicial theories that went on to justify it, but only until Hitler took the Chancellorship in January 1933. Then Schmitt joined and soon after penned an essay, "The Legal Basis for the Total State," to justify Nazi totalitarianism and the Führerprinzip in the "miracle" of legal decisionism (the dictatorial executive making decisions on top of rule of law). In this groundbreaking episode of the New Discourses Podcast, not only does host James Lindsay continue his sprawling series on the "Nazi Experiment," but he also presents this Schmittian essay in English for the first time. Join him for an introduction to Carl Schmitt and to hear "The Legal Basis for the Total State." Latest from New Discourses Press! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/ Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2025 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Nazism

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody. It's James Lindsay and you are listening to the New Discourses podcast,

0:24.1

and we are continuing today with our epic series called The Nazi Experiment, where we are

0:32.1

unveiling what was going on in the Nazi regime. So this is volume six of that sprawling series, which as we've

0:40.2

explained in all the other episodes is plus one and the total number that are in the series,

0:45.0

plus the bullet. So there are lots of episodes out there for you to go check out.

0:50.1

It will be a lot to summarize everything. I'll have to give some kind of a playsetter.

0:54.7

But in this episode, we're going to actually depart from Hitler.

1:00.0

We've been reading Mein Kampf in every one of these episodes.

1:04.5

And in the previous episode, we read carefully through chapter 12 of volume one, where he lays out, where Hitler lays out,

1:14.6

the kind of requirements he expects for the birth of a new movement, meaning the Nazi movement,

1:20.2

which will be committed to this racialist worldview that's said to be at the heart of the

1:26.6

entire Nazi experiment. And we went through the 25

1:30.4

points of the Nazi Party program, which preceded Hitler's involvement in the Nazi party actually.

1:37.9

And then we talked about the 14, as they're numbered, but really 15 additional points that Hitler gives

1:46.9

about what he expects out of the movement there in chapter 12 and kind of laid out a picture

1:53.1

of what the Nazi movement was supposed to look like. Just to remind you the running thesis

1:58.2

of this entire podcast series, the running theme thesis, I stumbled between the two words,

2:05.3

is that the Nazis faced a set of conditions. We might call them Vimar conditions if you want

2:12.7

in the Vimar Republic following World War I, all of these things. The Nazis were proposing an answer to that set of solutions.

2:21.9

They proposed a grand experiment.

2:24.5

Let's adopt a racialist worldview.

2:26.9

Let's blame the Jews for our problems.

...

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