Is Trump "the Sovereign"? Does MAGA Speak For "the People"?
Sam Mace on Carl Schmitt and Donald Trump.
Several people have argued that — consciously or not — Trump and Vance are following the thought of Carl Schmitt, a Nazi jurist and legal philosopher who developed influential ideas about executive power, popular sovereignty, the reduction of politics to the conflict between friends and enemies, and the so-called “state of exception.”
In the last decades, legal theorists like Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule have applied Schmitt’s ideas to the American context, while political commentators like and are critical of those ideas.
Today we have an essay by , a political theorist and writer who writes the Substack, , and thoughtful comments have appeared several times on CrowdSource. Looking for an explanation in Trump’s behavior in the philosophy of Carl Schmitt is a red herring, Mace argues. Trump is actually more unpredictable than the Schmittian Sovereign.
— Santiago Ramos, executive editor
He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.
— Donald J. Trump, Truth Social, Feb. 15, 2025
The words above are ominous. They speak of a man who does not believe in law but in action. This is arguably something unique in American history, although as the theorist Giorgio Agamben points out, American Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush have not been shy of abrogating the constitution to save the Union. Yet, Trump feels different not only from the obvious case of Lincoln but also from the Texan who set up Guantanamo. It appears as if the US has entered a new era.
The above has led some, such as
, to explain away Trump as a modern-day representative of the fascist past. To do so, these writers tend to point to the jurist Carl Schmitt. There are good reasons why, on the surface, this makes sense. Trump’s rhetoric of migrants moved from xenophobic to overtly threatening in the last election cycle, and his actions on January 6 should make us doubt his respect for the law. These things can be interpreted via Schmitt’s friend-enemy dichotomy and the notion of sovereign decisionism acting as direct attacks on the liberal values which underpin modern ethics and law.Yet, Schmitt’s notions of politics and constitutionalism have been widely misinterpreted. The friend-enemy dichotomy is not about disagreement, no matter how strong. Rather, the dichotomy refers to the fight to the death to secure the body politic. When George Bush said that “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists,” he was evoking the Schmittian notion of the dichotomy. For Bush, there was no possibility of a third position in the War on Terror. There was no possibility of compromise, because compromise would put lives at risk. Instead, when Trump talks about his enemies, he is talking in terms of personal vendetta, not the security of the body politic.
Neither is the sovereign decision merely about the sovereign doing as they please. Often people misinterpret Schmitt’s famous line from his book, Political Theology — “The sovereign is he who decides on the exception” — to mean just that. But this interpretation of Schmitt does not explain by what right the sovereign proclaims himself the sovereign in the first place. Yes, the sovereign can declare an emergency, and in that moment, he can act outside the law to defend the “people.” But this interpretation misses what constitutes a “people” in Schmitt’s work, thereby not only misinterpreting Schmitt’s ideas but also how to analyze modern formations of politics. Moreover, this leads to the misapplication of Schmitt’s idea of the sovereign, and of the “people,” to Trump and the MAGA base, respectively.
In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt locates the constitution as distinct from other forms of law. It is the constitution which forms the boundary of the polity. As Jeffrey Seitzer and Christopher Thornhill have argued, “[Schmitt] sees the constitution as united with the state, representing a uniform political will that cannot be reduced to formal or autonomous legal principles.” The constitution, therefore, for Schmitt, is not merely any other law but the practical representation of the people, which the defined people give to its purpose. Such a people must be united as a homogenous block, which he identifies in Constitutional Theory as either via race, tradition, a common destiny or a shared purpose within the confines of the friend-enemy distinction. There is, after all, a reason why Schmitt frequently returns to Revolutionary France and Communist Russia in his writings. It is not simply to show historical and analytical skill, but to emphasize the complex relationship between unity and political formation outside of legal mechanisms.
Therefore, if the sovereign is to be a legitimate representative in a Schmittian world, they must embody the people. Despite what the earlier quote in Political Theology states, the sovereign can only act as they do once they have garnered legitimacy. But even that comes under contestation when you peek past the short pamphlet. In his earlier work, Dictatorship, Schmitt recognized the act of defending a political state, but was trepidatious about handing ultimate power to any singular figure beyond a specific time frame and threat level. Schmitt’s sovereign decisionism is not the blank cheque Richard the Second demanded of the English Parliament, as is regularly imagined, but more constrained, dependent upon prior legitimacy being found from the body of the people.
The people, the nation, remains the origin of all political action, the source of all power, which expresses itself in continually new forms, producing from itself these ever renewing forms and organizations.
— Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory
The question, therefore, must be whether America is reconstituting itself as a new form of body politic and, if so, is that new form Trumpism? And does Trumpism and/or Trump believe it is doing the will of the people as so defined? Given the close margins of the last three electoral races, it would be difficult to argue that America as a people wishes to reconstitute itself via a Trumpian Presidency. Because America is viscerally divided to the point of physical threat it is not in any real sense homogenous. America is no longer “a people” as Schmitt would define it, and we may question more deeply if it ever could be seen as such given the arguments from the Founding Fathers over the morality and legality of slavery. The strength of negative polarization, fears of secession, and long held racialized politics make America difficult to imagine today as the collective, unified force required by Schmittian standards.
Trumpism is no different. It is a movement which is simultaneously less substantial than a Schmittian proposition and altogether more horrifying. Elected on a narrow mandate, Trumpism has not brought the country together but left citizens feeling even further apart from one another. It is destructive in its nature, but unlike Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty, there is nothing to replace it. Disrespect for legal norms can be located in Schmitt, but abrogating sovereign responsibility is nowhere to be found. Trump’s use of law to detain, deport, and persecute non-enemies of the American people represents not the apotheosis of sovereignty but its ultimate demise.
MAGA does not act to defend “the people,” but rather only a minority who give the project its unbounded support. MAGA is not only a movement devoid of respect for law but a movement whose moral edifice is crumbling, if it was ever there to begin with. Acting in defense and subservience to a singular person is no representative sovereign, but the act of a cult defending a petty tyrant. For that reason, we should not treat it as a Schmittian alternative to liberal democracy but a dangerous attack on the people by an angry, vengeful minority. In my book, Trump is no Schmittian sovereign.
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Dear Sam,
Thank you again for this cogent piece. I would actually respectfully disagree, particularly on this point:
"MAGA does not act to defend “the people,” but rather only a minority who give the project its unbounded support. MAGA is not only a movement devoid of respect for law but a movement whose moral edifice is crumbling, if it was ever there to begin with. Acting in defense and subservience to a singular person is no representative sovereign, but the act of a cult defending a petty tyrant."
When one looks at the exit polls from November, 57% of white people in America voted for Trump. I think your piece actually misunderstands and misrepresents how ubiquitous racism is in America. Trump's campaign, which prominently featured the slogan "Mass Deportations Now!" played on American's anxieties to scapegoat Black people, Muslims, and immigrants.
Americans by and large accept the ruse, except for those in urban settings.
In fact, when you say that "MAGA is not only a movement devoid of respect for law but a movement whose moral edifice is crumbling," I believe that you misrepresent American law and the foundations of America.
Trump is not an exception.
Obama and Musk were talking just a day or two ago.
As I wrote back in December (https://thereis1.wordpress.com/2024/12/03/trump-stands-for-slavery-we-need-to-stand-for-abolition/), Trump stands for slavery vis-a-vis the 13th Amendment exception clause, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
That part about "whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" has always been applied in a racist fashion. So the Black codes meant that if Black people crossed the street, ate or drank in certain places, appeared in certain places, or looked at anyone in a particular way, they would be once again subject to enslavement once again.
Frederick Douglass' 1888 speech, in which he said, "I denounce the emancipation proclamation as a stupendous lie," is just as relevant today:
"I admit that the Negro, and especially the plantation Negro, the tiller of the soil, has made little progress from barbarism to civilization, and that he is in a deplorable condition since his emancipation. That he is worse off, in many respects, than when he was a slave, I am compelled to admit, but I contend that the fault is not his, but that of his heartless accusers. He is the victim of a cunningly devised swindle, one which paralyzes his energies, suppresses his ambition, and blasts all his hopes; and though he is nominally free he is actually a slave. I here and now denounce his so-called emancipation as a stupendous fraud — a fraud upon him, a fraud upon the world. It was not so meant by Abraham Lincoln; it was not so meant by the Republican party; but whether so meant or not, it is practically a lie, keeping the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to the heart."
"Do you ask me why the Negro of the plantation has made so little progress, why his cupboard is empty, why he flutters in rags, why his children run naked, and why his wife hides herself behind the hut when a stranger is passing? I will tell you. It is because he is systematically and universally cheated out of his hard earnings."
If Douglass said this in 1888, then is it not just as true today, when, according to a report released by fwd.us last week, "Incarceration Costs American Families Nearly $350 Billion Each Year"?
As I said in my piece in December, "Less than a week after the election, Forbes Magazine reported that the stocks of the multibillion-dollar private prison companies CoreCivic and Geo Group—which are Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractors—were up 76% and 75% since Election Day, respectively."
As such, we need to acknowledge America's slavery system as the problem that it is, one that Trump and Stephen Miller seek to exploit for many purposes. And we need to actually revise the US Constitution and eliminate the exception clause from the 13th Amendment.
Otherwise, it won't be lawlessness. The US law will continue to function exactly as it has, in its racist, morally insidious ways, sanctioning the government's kidnappings and murder.
“Trump’s use of law to detain, deport, and persecute non-enemies of the American people represents not the apotheosis of sovereignty but its ultimate demise.” Doesn’t this precisely beg the real question which you seem to hint at earlier in your piece? How do you know those who are deported are “non-enemies”? So far, Trump has targeted illegal aliens (who one could argue are enemies by their very nature of violating our immigration laws) and those legal aliens who express radical anti-Semitic or anti-American views; not a stretch to consider them enemies! Oh - let’s not forget Chinese spies; again, a fair enemy category!!