As the dust settles in Caracas and the penny drops in Copenhagen, Germans too are facing the sobering prospect of a new world order. But there is a difference. A world of continental spaces is hardly new to them. It was devised by a German.

Four decades after his death, the theorist of authoritarianism and critic of liberalism Carl Schmitt is experiencing a sustained revival. A Nazi with links to Francoist Spain, Schmitt is not only revered by Russian and French neofascists today. In the United States too — a country whose universalizing tendencies he despised — Schmitt has acquired a sizable fan club that counts integralists, paleoconservatives, the founder of PayPal, and the US vice president in its ranks.

And yet, it was not Americans but Germans who rushed to Schmitt in early January. Many of the country’s major newspapers and magazines have, in recent days, run pieces mentioning Schmitt in relation to the “Donroe Doctrine” and the wider renaissance of geopolitics.