What’s up Wisecrack? Jared here. Today we are talking about a colossal series
with amazing fight scenes, a shit ton of crying cowards, and gargantuan steamy ken dolls:
Attack on Titan. Many anime properties explore death, but few
ruminate on the visceral reality of it quite like Attack On Titan. In a way, Titans are the physical personification
of death: walking reminders of human mortality—a sort of existential confrontation with the
inevitability of demise. It’s pretty horrifying. However, the darkest element of the series
isn’t the eerily introspective confrontations with death or the fact that Titans have no
genitals—it’s the construction of the society behind the walls itself. The show is set in an anachronistic quasi-Germanic
society full of German architecture, German war cries, and characters with German names. But the similarities to German history don’t
stop there. Upon closer inspection, the political ideology
of this society lines up with the beliefs

of one of the most notorious Nazi philosophers:
Carl Schmitt. Now just to be clear: Schmitt’s a real piece
of shit. Dude was a card-carrying Nazi, unrepentant
to the end. We are in no way saying that his ideas are
good, nor is Attack on Titan saying they're good. We are saying that the show can be understood
as an exploration of his ideas. What makes Attack on Titan so dark is that
it presents us with a society faced with a horrific enemy that maintains stability
while reflecting Nazi ideology. Is Attack on Titan one of the most provocative
shows out there? Not because of the balls-to-the-wall violence,
but because it dares to ask: is it possible that in this dystopian society—a controversial
philosophy may be the only thing keeping the fabric of society from collapsing? Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on Attack
on Titan. Spoiler alert, and oh yeah- We’re only covering
the TV show, not the manga.

They’re going to be different anyway. Also, we had to use dubs so we don’t have
subtitles all over the video. So please, don’t freak out. Central to Schmitt’s philosophy and Attack
on Titan’s civilization is the concept of what he calls “the political.” For Schmitt, there are three concepts that
situate the political and create a stable society: conflict and inequality, clear distinctions
between friends and enemies, and sovereignty. The first thing that Schmitt highlights is
that conflict, division, and inequality among human beings is inevitable. Central to this is an understanding that humanity,
in its most basic nature, is savage and hellish. People are essentially shitty and life isn’t
fair. Mikasa, Armin, and Eren all make arguments
about the way the world is that are completely in line with this thinking. When young Mikasa is kidnapped, it is the image
of a mantis eating a moth and her father with

a duck he hunted, that kick starts the killing
spree that saves her and Eren. It's a constant theme that the show returns
to: it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and you have to fight to survive. This constant war against all is in line with
philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ understanding of humanity’s most basic nature. We’re all monsters at
heart, and social structures are the only thing that can keep us at bay. Schmitt takes things a step further: it isn’t
just that people are terrible; rather, hostility is unavoidable. For Schmitt, inequality is sort of inevitable.
People will always be smarter, fitter, more attractive, and it’s not the job of politics
to fix it. If society is to function properly, according
to Schmitt, it doesn’t make sense to attempt to eliminate antagonism or inequality because
they will always exist. Instead, a strong sovereign ought to be concerned with maintaining order
and control of the population, focusing on

social issues like inequality misses the point, for him. In Attack on Titan, we see this first hand: classes are separated by literal walls. Each wall section is its own caste system. The people in wall Maria are not as safe as the people inside wall Rose and Sena. While people are being eaten in Trost—people in the inner city are chillin in castles, playing chess and shit. The scouts venture past the wall and risk their lives while the MP’s in the inner walls barely know how to use their Omnidirectional Mobility Gear—they just sort of get drunk all day. Most media narratives would see severe inequality as something to be repaired, but in Attack on Titan- we haven’t seen much evidence of that. At least yet. Trying to alleviate things like inequality, for Schmitt, is a distraction from what’s really important for “the political”: nationalism and survival—and this is where the parallels between the series and Schmitt get pretty creepy.

Nowhere is this focus on the nationalistic
duty of the warrior class more apparent than in the theme song for the first half of season
1, which looks and sounds like “triumph of the will” level nationalistic propaganda. The lyrics of the song are about fighting
past defeat, trampling over corpses, having the will of starving wolves, and piercing scarlet
holes in the twilight with bows and arrows, over scenes of the soaring military and crazy
battle scenes. It may as well have been a post-World War
I rallying cry for the defeated German people. Which gets us to Schmitt’s second element
of the political: a clear distinction between friend and enemy. The idea is—good governments need an enemy
to struggle against without completely dominating them. The titans provide a sort of check against
total conquest beyond the wall. Without a clear enemy, human nature drives
a war against all: an unending civil war full of war crimes, dehumanization, and the eradication
of your own people becomes an inevitability.

The existence of a clear enemy impedes the
quest for constant war and infighting. Both Erwin and Pyxis are concerned with this
friend-enemy distinction. On the wall with Eren, Pyxis makes this very
comment about the necessity of the Titans as the enemy: Both Pyxis and Erwin Smith worry that the
Titans aren’t the actual enemy—that they are not the real threat—the real threat
is humanity itself—the Titans merely keep people in line. They give everyone a common goal. Now, the purpose of the Titans is not yet revealed in the show. We know there is a face in the wall, and that
there are abnormal Titans that are controlled by people. It could be the case that they are merely
tools of the elite to lower the population-- they could be trying to break people out of their
cages--or they could just be evil. If Annie is in fact working for government
officials to create emergencies and lower

population. If the rogue Titans are in fact part of an inside conspiracy, then what we have is a government-fabricated enemy, a threat that is a Schmitt-ean wet dream, an intelligent, strong, naked enemy worthy of battle that will keep humanity from fighting each other. Also, incidentally, if this were the case, it would be a great criticism of Schmitt’s politics. In a way, the Titans could be read as an allegory for the perfect scapegoat, as the source of all fears that mobilizes a population and gives the people in control their very power. Even in the show’s theme of freedom, it reflects Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction. The scouts badge is the wings of freedom. Eren and Armin are constantly crying about a life beyond the walls. And humanity is likened to penned-in cattle. More than that, freedom and community, for Schmitt, is defined as denying cowardice.

the face of impending death — joining the scouts is a sort of liberation from the fear of living inside the wall waiting to die. The desire to join the scouts together cements Eren’s class as a community — but not just any community — a political community that gives life a purpose... the battlefield. For Schmitt, a political community is defined by the ability to kill your enemies for the sake of your friends or dying at the hands of your enemies for the sake your friends. The scouts that risk their lives are like the troops in the Alfred Tennyson poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Yeah, Attack on Titan characters quote Shakespeare and Tennyson. Having him quote Tennyson is particularly prescient - “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is an exemplar war poem about dying with your comrades in battle — especially given how many scouts die fighting Annie. This sense of camaraderie and political community is what binds together the remnants of humanity.

rather than letting them tear themselves apart. However, the friend-enemy distinction gets
a little fuzzier as the show progresses. Eren and Annie being Titans erodes the clear
lines between a foreign enemy and a domestic friend—it’s why the partial transformation
scene: when Eren saves Mikasa and Armin from cannon fire, is essential. It shows what happens when there isn’t a
clear division between human and titan—the line between who needs to be protected, and
from what, blurs, and it makes the task of securing the population near impossible. The final element of Schmitt’s, the political,
is the power of the sovereign itself. Sovereign entities have the ability to declare
states of emergencies that justify sacrificing populations for the greater good—like sending
a battalion to reclaim wall Maria. The ability to declare this kind of state
of emergency is crucial for the long-term stability of most societies: you don’t want
political bickering getting in the way of

fighting the giant monster about to murder
you all. The sovereign can also make exceptions in
the law—like special citizen status for the people to live inside wall Sina. In Attack on Titan, we don’t have a very
good explanation of how the political works outside of the military--it appears that the
current leadership structure is based on marshall law and military rule. Sure, we know that Premiere Dhalis Zachary
is in charge of the military tribunal that has the power to execute Eren—and we know
that the wall cultists have grown in power since the attack on Shiganshina—but the
actual structure outside of military control hasn’t been revealed. We do know that the leaders send millions
to their death to ensure the safety of the rest of the people inside the walls. Pixus explains that the retaking of wall Maria
was little more than a thinly disguised purge to ease the stress from the massive influx
of refugees--it was a decision to kill off

part of the population for the greater good. As twisted as it sounds, for Schmitt, the
sovereign must maintain this ability to do even the most horrendous of things if order
is to be maintained. So wisecrack—with this in mind, I invite
you to ponder this: what would happen if all the Titans suddenly disappeared? Would society devolve into anarchy? Would there be a civil war inside the walls
that would be even more brutal than the occasional Titan attack? Or would it be an opportunity for liberation
and greater peace? For Schmitt eradicating your enemy isn’t
an option because there is always a drive for warfare, another enemy to be found. Eliminate one enemy and another one pops up
until there are no people left to kill but your own population. Of course, we should be wary of a guy who
warned about unending war while being a principal theorist for the Nazi Party. There is still a pretty robust debate in academia
about the redeemability and use of Schmitt’s

work for understanding international conflict. People still invoke Schmitt when discussing
executive power, the pitfalls of our current system, and even the war on terror. Attack on Titan could go in so many directions. It could reverse course and become a scathing
criticism of Schmitt-style politics, or it could simply complicate them. We’ll just have til season two to find out!

The Philosophy of Attack on Titan – Wisecrack Edition

The Philosophy of Attack on Titan – Wisecrack Edition

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