Putin and Xi’s shared inspiration

The legacy of Hitler’s favoured ideologue lives on.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have been inspired by the same political philosopher, writes Rowan Callick.

Today’s dominant authoritarian leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have become, as Xi intriguingly confesses, ‘best, most intimate’ friends.

This intimacy is driven by more than a shared common-cause. They also share a common muse – and, promisingly for those who favour freedom and democracy – it is a muse who promoted an ideology that failed disastrously in the first half of the 20th century.

The worldviews of the coteries of Putin and Xi are driven significantly by the same resurgent thinker: the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was the Crown Jurist of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party, which he joined and helped guide. Born in Prussia in 1888, Schmitt elevated the primacy of the state to a theological level and detested representative democracy, liberalism and the rule of law. He would have applauded the invasion of Ukraine, and supported the seizure by Beijing of Taiwan.

One of the most influential Russian figures to have urged Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is Aleksandr Dugin, a leading member of Putin’s United Russia Party. Dugin is the author of Foundations of Geopolitics which has, on Putin’s insistence, become an official text book of the Russian military’s General Staff Academy. Dugin has been deeply influenced by Schmitt. Indeed, he has written a much-cited essay: Carl Schmitt’s Five Lessons for Russia.

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