131214840-Carl-Schmitt

Page 76
October 1922 in Naples before the March on Rome, Mussolini said, "We have created a
myth, this myth is a belief, a noble enthusiasm; it does not need to be reality, it is a striving
and a hope, belief and courage. Our myth is the nation, the great nation which we want to
make into a concrete reality for ourselves." 26 In the same speech he called socialism an
inferior mythology. Just as in the sixteenth century, an Italian has once again given
expression to the principle of political realism. The meaning in intellectual history of this
example is especially great because national enthusiasm on Italian soil has until now been
based on democratic and constitutional parliamentary tradition and has appeared to be
completely dominated by the ideology of Anglo-Saxon liberalism.
The theory of myth is the most powerful symptom of the decline of the relative rationalism of
parliamentary thought. If anarchist authors have discovered the importance of the mythical
from an opposition to authority and unity, then they have also cooperated in establishing the
foundation of another authority, however unwillingly, an authority based on the new feeling
for order, discipline, and hierarchy. Of course the abstract danger this kind of irrationalism
poses is great. The last remnants of solidarity and a feeling of belonging together will be
destroyed in the pluralism of an unforeseeable number of myths. For political theology that is
polytheism, just as every myth is polytheistic. But as the strongest political tendency today,
one cannot simply ignore it. Perhaps a parliamentary optimism still hopes even now that this
movement can be relativized, and as in Fascist Italy, it will let all this happen around it,
patiently waiting until discussion can be resumed. Perhaps discussion itself will be discussed,
if there is only discussion. But the resumed discussion cannot content itself with repeating
the question, "Parliamentarism, what else?" 27 and insist that at present there is no alternative.
That argument would be irrelevant, one never capable of renewing the age of discussion.
Create PDF with PDF4U. If you wish to remove this line, please click here to purchase the full version