ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the very idea of bringing ethics and politics together in the light of realpolitik (within political bureaucracies) and skepticism about ethics as a viable response to power. Carl Schmitt is considered an exemplary advocate of such skepticism and the rejection of any “moralized” politics in favor of a view based around friends and enemies. Such a view treats alignment (the judgment about who is a friend and who is an enemy) as more important than everything else. The spirit of Schmitt seems to be alive and well and living on the internet, an arena where rapid and absolutist binary polarization as well as extreme animosity easily takes hold. The chapter defends the importance of ethics in the navigation of a more complex set of political realities.
