In December 2020, the Atlantic published an article titled ‘The Nazi Inspiring China’s Communists’. The key fact behind the story was this: Chinese law professors, from its most prestigious universities – Tsinghua University, Peking University and others – have been inspired by the work of Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt. And the author argues that this inspiration reflects the ideological and historical links between the Chinese Communist Party and Nazism.

There was one problem. The Atlantic had published an article earlier that same year by the Harvard constitutional law professor Adrian Vermeule. The same Nazi legal theorist who apparently animates the Chinese legal academe also happens to be a rich source of inspiration for Vermeule. One article he co-wrote is titled ‘Demystifying Schmitt’, which aims to ‘make some of Schmitt’s ideas usable for research in other disciplines’. Another article is ‘Our Schmittian Administrative Law’ which claims that ‘American administrative law is Schmittian [and] … inevitably so’. He has called Schmitt’s writings ‘profound and underappreciated’ and containing a ‘freshness of thought’. And in fact, the very article published in the Atlantic has been described by Canadian law professor David Dyzenhaus as reproducing ‘all the elements of Schmitt’s pre-1933 position’.

So the Atlantic has tarred the Chinese government as linked to the Nazis because Chinese law professors are inspired by Schmitt. At the same time, it has been happy to publish an article reflecting Schmitt’s ideas in its own hallowed pages. What are we to make of this?

There is, of course, the hypocrisy. It makes apparent the true nature of the article, which aims to strike fear and enmity rather than to illuminate. Something insightful might have been written about why the ideas of Carl Schmitt are making such a powerful comeback in both China and the US. Perhaps Schmitt’s ideas themselves or how particular Chinese legal scholars used them might have been analysed and critiqued. Instead, we were treated with a reductive narrative that intertwined the Nazis with China, provoking horror rather than clarity. I admit that when I first read the article, I took at face value the narrative it portrayed (which is why this post comes four years late) and my anger toward the Chinese regime grew based on their apparent associations with Nazi ideology.

We can extend our sympathy to the Atlantic by acknowledging that its China article came amidst some intense repression by the Chinese government against many Hong Kong people. It might be said to reflect an emotional response to the sights of police brutality against democracy protestors. But that is no excuse for its narrow and misleading interpretation of the facts. A useful question to ask is whether the article promotes a better understanding of the situation and therefore promotes a better means to resolve it. It clearly does not, because the story implies that China is exceptional in its Schmittian revival when in fact the revival is present in the US and elsewhere (and the Atlantic has itself contributed to it).

The author might justify their demagogic approach as an expedient to increase attention and support for a democratic Hong Kong. But this argument from expediency is precisely the justification for propaganda. It says that because the audience would not be attentive or supportive in response to sober analysis it is right to terrorise them with fear. That reasoning is unacceptable. Such tactics degrade us by preying on our base instincts. We must be more vigilant. If we are not, we encourage these behaviours and do harm to ourselves as we move further from the truth. But crucially, we also harm the potential for a just resolution to complex issues, which requires clear-sightedness and empathy to pursue.   

The context of the Schmittian revival raises another question: how ought we ascribe guilt by association? Schmitt was a terrible man and many of his ideas helped support an evil regime. Does that mean those who draw inspiration from him should be viewed with automatic suspicion? The Atlantic had an answer both ways. Yes, when it comes assessing Chinese legal theorists. No, when it comes to assessing its own contributors. We need a better answer.

It must be reasonable to say that citing the work of a Nazi theorist ought to raise some suspicions. Theories and ideas are not atoms; they rely on, draw from and are connected to other theories and ideas like the roots, trunks, branches of a tree. So if we see at a branch a heinous idea, there is a real possibility that its germ lies in the apparently plain theories at the roots. However, raising a suspicion is not enough to make an article. The Atlantic needed to draw upon some more substantive analysis to link the work of these Chinese theorists and by extension the Chinese state to the Nazis. And in fact, it did, but in an incoherent way. It pointed to the context of admiration of China’s former leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, for the Nazi regime, with his hiring of a German artillery expert as a military adviser in 1927 (before the rise of the Nazis, and as if the US did not hire German rocket scientists after the full extent of Nazi crimes was evident after the war), and the fact that his adopted son served in the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Austria (as a cadet studying in a German military school, and he later also attended the Armored Force Center at Fort Knox). More importantly, these links seem to ignore the fact that Chiang Kai-Shek was fought and defeated in a brutal civil war by the current Chinese regime (the author describes this as power being ‘transferred’). These are only the most egregious examples of the shoddy analysis that pervades the article. They do little to vindicate the rightful suspicions that a reliance on Schmitt must generate.   

This episode leaves us then with two helpful conclusions. First, we must demand more from our media, and that requires demanding more from ourselves. We should not fall for incitements dressed up as analysis. The Atlantic has continued in this inciting mode, including in more recent pieces. We must be attentive when reading such articles. Secondly, and relatedly, it may be right to raise suspicions about inspiration from rotten sources, but if something more useful is to be said, these suspicions ought to be properly justified or dispelled. That would, at the very least, bring us closer to truth.