The Anti-Semite and the Jew
example · Hegel ·
retold in 3 talks
Žižek imagines debating an anti-Semite who claims Jews dominate art criticism or seduce German girls. Žižek argues the problem isn't verifying these claims, but why the Nazi identity needs the figure of the Jew.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“The problem is not are Jews really like that? The problem is why did the Nazis to sustain their sense identity need a figure like a Jew?”
“the essence of the Jews is that they're not only what they are, greedy evil, but they know how to mask their evil with superficial kindness”1:03:52 Slavoj Žižek: Wokeness, Psychoanalysis, and Quantum Mechanics | Robinson's Podcast #109pub. 2023-07-02 · 1:36:25
“you are anti-semitic if you say you are dirty exploiting because you are a Jew and then if I ask you but what is that X? you say I don't know it's that mysterious something in you more than you.”
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)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Rider Haggard1Stella Assange1Haniyeh Eyvani1Yevgeny Yevtushenko1Edoardo Weiss1Mahmoud Abbas1Janet Yellen1Florence Pugh1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Žižek imagines debating an anti-Semite who claims Jews dominate art criticism or seduce German girls. Žižek argues the problem isn't verifying these claims, but why the Nazi identity needs the figure of the Jew., illustrating radicalize the question
1:03:52 Slavoj Žižek: Wokeness, Psychoanalysis, and Quantum Mechanics | Robinson's Podcast #109pub. 2023-07-02 · 1:36:25
When told that many Jews are nice people, a true anti-Semite responds that this makes them even more dangerous because 'the essence of Jews is they know how to mask their evil with superficial kindness', showing how factual refutation strengthens racist logic., illustrating fetishist disavowal,antisemitism
Žižek's analysis: it is not enough to attribute negative properties to Jews to be antisemitic; the antisemite reverses causality, 'you do this because you are a Jew', producing the mysterious objet petit a of the Jew as a X that cannot be identified with any property., illustrating Master Signifier,objet petit a,ideology of antisemitism