Erich Mielke 'I love you all'
example · historical/German ·
retold in 10 talks
As East Germany was collapsing, Stasi chief Erich Mielke appeared in the East German parliament and declared 'But I love you all', Žižek presents this as the perfectly appropriate statement from the head of a secret police: universal love as the logic of liquidating all who disturb it.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“Aber ich liebe euch alle ... that's appropriate statement for the chief of secret police he loves you all that's why he liquidates all those who disturb this love”
“Erich Mielke came to the parliament and said: Aber ich liebe euch alle. When they say I love you all, it always means except the traitors who have to be liquidated.”
“But I love you all. I think this was not irony, it has to be taken literal. I love you all is the universal proposition which grounded his hatred of the enemies of socialism.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
love as ontological catastrophe
×3
polite indifference (condominium ethics)
×1
the big Other
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Erich Mielke6Paul Mason3Léon Brunschvicg1Grace Gelder1Orhan Pamuk1John Updike1Kathryn Bigelow1Alfred Bown1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
As East Germany was collapsing, Stasi chief Erich Mielke appeared in the East German parliament and declared 'But I love you all', Žižek presents this as the perfectly appropriate statement from the head of a secret police: universal love as the logic of liquidating all who disturb it., illustrating ontological catastrophe (of love),praising hypocrisy and external manners
When the DDR collapsed, Stasi chief Erich Mielke addressed parliament saying 'Aber ich liebe euch alle' (I love you all), Žižek uses this as the paradigm of totalitarian love that secretly excludes the traitors to be liquidated., illustrating totalitarian love,the big Other,political universality
In the last days of the GDR, Stasi chief Erich Mielke defended himself before the People's Chamber with the declaration 'but I love you all', Žižek argues this was not irony but the literal universal-love proposition that grounded his systematic hatred of socialism's enemies., illustrating formulas of sexuation,universal love breeds hatred of exceptions
At an East German Central Committee meeting in 1989, Stasi chief Erich Mielke, accused of illegal killings, declared 'Aber ich liebe euch alle!' (I love you all!), Žižek's emblem of the hypocrisy of universal political love., illustrating political/universal love as fake,love must be singular not universal
At the fall of East Germany, Stasi chief Erich Mielke addressed a hostile parliament with 'But I love you all' (Aber ich liebe euch alle), used by Žižek to illustrate that love is not holistic ('I love you all') but partial and one-sided., illustrating power of abstraction,one-sidedness vs. holism,love as partial
35:25 Down with ideology? Talk with Slavoj Žižek | Sternstunde Philosophie | SRF Kultur2016-06-19 · 55:47
As the GDR disintegrated and Volkskammer members attacked him, Mielke made the legendary gesture and said 'aber ich liebe alle', for Žižek the ultimate statement of universal love, i.e. of ideology., illustrating true love is a catastrophe,ideology