Fascist Elements in Neoconservative Realism

Like Donald Kagan, Leo Strauss (1899-1973) looked to Thucydides for inspiration on foreign policy. This chapter examines the implications of Strauss’s admiration for Sparta’s militancy and religious nationalism. Unlike Kagan, Strauss was no admirer of Athens; she was too much like America. Nevertheless, he found a receptive audience among the neoconservatives. The Presidency of Donald Trump facilitated the shift of neoconservatives from the globetrotting imperial confidence of Donald Kagan to the inward-looking religious ethno-nationalism of Strauss and his mentor Carl Schmitt. Trump may be the face of American fascism; but Strauss and Schmitt are its intellectual gurus. The shift in the direction of religious ethno-nationalism is not necessarily an embrace of a more moderate foreign policy. As my analysis of Schmitt will illustrate, the shift  is inseparable from nostalgia for the colonial legacy of the West and its political theology.