A Defence of Eurocentrism
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2016-06-14 · 2:02:30 · 17,093 words
ideologyliberalism-political-correctnesscommunism-socialismfascism-populismdemocracyrace-antisemitismpsychoanalysishegel-dialecticstechnology-ai-cyberspaceecology-climategeopolitics-warreligion-theologyhistorysubjectivitycapitalism
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging public lecture in Zurich covering ideology, belief, politeness, and the refugee crisis, arguing that ideology today operates not through sincere belief but through objective, anonymous practices people follow without personally endorsing. He mounts a defense of Eurocentrism as the tradition of abstract universality and contingent identity against both right-wing nationalism and multicultural relativism, while critiquing both traditional and permissive authority structures. The talk concludes with reflections on the exhaustion of 20th-century left models, the limits of direct democracy, and the emerging threats of bio-genetic class stratification and digital control technologies.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “Dialektik der Aufklärung”
Used to characterize Stalinist communism as the tragic high point of Enlightenment that turned into a nightmare, following Adorno and Horkheimer's diagnosis.
A Lacanian-derived figure Žižek invokes to describe how belief functions not in any individual but in an imputed anonymous other, ideology works because we assume someone else believes, even when no one actually does.
as “sincere lying”
The socially constitutive form of polite communication where both parties know the statement is not literally true yet the lie establishes genuine social connection and civility.
as “Entfremdung / alienation as positive”
Žižek argues against the standard Marxist desire to overcome alienation, proposing that a minimal alienation in language and social life is a positive condition of freedom, not an obstacle to it.
as “empty gestures”
Offers or invitations that are structurally meant to be declined, social rituals that function as communication at its zero level, where both parties understand the gesture will not be taken literally.
Implicit in the Marx discussion: money and commodities have an objective social reality as fetishes regardless of individual beliefs, what matters is how things function in practice, not in consciousness.
Used here to argue that ideology operates at the level of practice rather than belief, people know money is just paper but act as if it has inherent value, so theoretical critique alone cannot dissolve fetishism.
as “objective appearance”
Žižek's reading of Marx's commodity fetishism: neither mere illusion nor reality, but the way things function in social practice regardless of what individuals consciously know, 'they do not know it but they do it.'
as “logic of discretion”
Žižek's preferred anti-racist stance (borrowed from Sloterdijk): true tolerance is not violent empathetic appropriation ('I want to understand you') but the readiness to accept distance and irreducible otherness.
as “the neighbor (der Nächste)”
Žižek invokes the Judeo-Christian figure of the neighbor not as someone similar to us but as the irreducibly strange Other, the moment someone does something wholly unexpected that reveals we never knew them.
Žižek cites Jakobson's term to describe the Paris suburban riots: a pure outburst establishing contact ('I'm here') with no positive political content or message.
as “bureaucratic socialism”
Žižek's provocative ideal social form: a system where large-scale state mechanisms function invisibly in the background providing healthcare, water, ecological control, freeing individuals to pursue their own lives, not Stalinist hyper-politicization.
Žižek's characterization of Malcolm X's insight: the violent uprooting of black identity through slavery ('X') can be reread as the Cartesian empty subject, the opportunity to build identity from zero rather than reclaim pre-modern roots.
as “abstract universality”
The distinctively European-Cartesian idea that individuals participate in universality directly and without mediation through any particular identity, which Žižek treats as the irreplaceable basis for feminism, human rights, and authentic democracy.
Invoked in the context of European universality: the dialectical sublation by which particular identities are both cancelled and preserved, European identity's deepest achievement is to sublate itself into abstract universality.
as “fetishistic disavowal”
The structure of 'Je sais bien, mais quand même', we know the danger (war, ecological collapse) but act as if it cannot really happen, enabling the very catastrophe we nominally acknowledge.
Stories he reaches for 19
A friend finds a horseshoe over Bohr's door and asks if he believes in it. Bohr: 'Of course not, I'm a scientist.' Friend: 'Then why do you have it?' Bohr: 'Because I was told it works even if you don't believe in it.', the perfect formula for how ideology functions today.
“I don't believe in it but I have it there because I was told that it works also if you don't believe in it.”
The film ends triumphantly with people entering parliament, but Žižek says the real test of revolution is what happens the next day when normal life resumes, the film avoids this entirely.
“I would send my mother into slavery to see a film with the title V for Vendetta part But what do they do then how do they reorganize it”
Jean-Pierre Dupuy told Žižek that for several hours after Fukushima the Japanese government seriously considered evacuating the entire Tokyo area, an event requiring transnational solutions (like asking Russia for Siberian land) that the current political framework cannot handle.
“for one day a couple of hours less the Japanese government seriously thought they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area”
Native Americans Žižek met in Missoula prefer 'Indian' to 'Native American' because at least 'Indian' is a monument to white people's stupidity, and they resist being patronized as inherently spiritual or ecological, they want the dignity to be as alienated and 'evil' as anyone else.
“Allow the other non-authenticity allow him to be happily alienated whatever.”
Malcolm X reread the X (the slave's lost African name) not as catastrophe requiring roots-recovery but as the Cartesian empty subject, an opportunity to build a new universal identity from zero rather than return to pre-modern particularity.
“Malcolm X is a Cartesian cogito in politics.”
Scientists wired a rat's neurons to a computer, making it a remote-controlled animal, raising the question: if done to a human, would they experience loss of freedom or, more horrifyingly, still feel free while being controlled?
“A rat is running around. You click a button a rat is connected and then a living rat becomes a remote controlled car.”
When Hitler was applauded he accepted it as his due; when Stalin was applauded he stood up and joined the applause, signaling 'I just serve the cause.' This illustrates the structural difference between fascist Führerprinzip and Stalinist ideological fiction of serving the people.
“When Stalin or a communist leader is applauded, he stands up and joins the applause.”
Every year on Stalin's birthday, all Gulag prisoners were gathered to sign congratulatory telegrams to Stalin, a staged ritual that had no parallel in Nazi Germany, where Jews would never have been made to sign telegrams to Hitler.
“every year on Stalin's birthday in Gulag, all prisoners were gathered together and they had to sign a telegram to Stalin”
An old authoritarian father commands his child to visit grandmother; a permissive post-father says 'you are free, but remember how much she loves you.' The second form is more oppressive because it demands free internal consent, not just compliance.
“you are given a free choice on condition that you make the right choice”
When a rich person and a poor person dine together and both know the rich person will pay, they still go through the ritual of the poor person offering to pay, an empty gesture that both parties understand but that establishes dignity in communication.
“we both know it's an empty game but it serves a purpose. That's communication at its zero level.”
Three types of toilet design (German with inspection shelf, French with rear hole, Anglo-Saxon water bowl) correspond to three national attitudes toward waste and life, illustrating how even the most banal everyday practice is saturated with ideology.
“the most vulgar activity the most common phenomenon going to the toilet and you are deeply ideology there because it's a whole attitude towards life”
Haitian slaves led by Toussaint Louverture did not seek to restore tribal identity but demanded the same rights as French republicans, the most powerful example of how a distorted, limited European ideology (rights of property-owning white men) can be appropriated and universalized by the excluded.
“Haiti slave revolution they want black black slaves said we also want that's the magic of Haiti”
In Stalin's USSR it was prohibited to criticize Stalin, but it was even more prohibited to publicly announce that prohibition, you had to pretend that criticism was freely possible. This illustrates how prohibitions are themselves prohibited in ideological systems.
“It wasn't simply prohibited to criticize Stalin it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition.”
Libet's experiment showed neurons fire before conscious decision, apparently proving free will illusory. Žižek notes Libet himself argued freedom lies in the capacity to say 'no' in that split second, freedom as veto, not initiation.
In If This is a Man, Levi describes naked prisoners running before an SS doctor for a split-second selection for the gas chamber; prisoners exchanged tips on how to appear healthier. Žižek argues this is comical not because it is funny but because tragedy has become impossible, the minimal dignity tragedy requires is abolished.
“prisoners exchange tips how to appear more healthy you pinch your lips and so on. But you see my point it's not a comedy where you laugh.”
In Mexican cities with new factories, serial rape and killing of young women workers follows a precisely ritualized pattern with scissors, conveying the social message 'we men will not tolerate free women', illustrating that even the most brutal violence is symbolic, not simply animalistic.
“this is not simple brutality it's a brutality which is precisely ritualized with a certain social message we men will not tolerate free women”
Syriza won a referendum against austerity and capitulated entirely the next day, for Žižek, the metaphor for the fate of the contemporary left: spectacular democratic victory followed by structural impossibility.
“almost a year ago on the first day Syriza won referendum no to austerity one day later they totally surrender”
A friend who genuinely believed in Yugoslav self-management socialism was fired from his party position precisely because his sincerity was seen as dangerous by the bureaucrats who practiced cynical distance.
“He lost his job you know why because he sincerely believed in Yugoslav self-management socialism and the top nomenklatura bureaucrats got it correctly this is dangerous.”
A rumor circulates that there is not enough toilet paper; everyone knows it is just a rumor but each person reasons that others might believe it and stock up, so they all rush to buy, producing a real shortage from nothing. Demonstrates how objective beliefs produce real effects without anyone believing them.
“nobody believes in it you just need another one who is supposed to believe. And the effects are here.”
Works invoked 12
Capital book
Marx's 'sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es' from Capital is cited as the key formulation of objective ideology, what people don't know is not the reality behind appearances but the illusion structuring their practice.
Less Than Nothing book
Žižek's own book on Hegel (900+ pages); described as where his true scholarly heart is, mentioned to contrast his public lecture persona with his serious philosophical work.
V for Vendetta film
Žižek does not like it 'too much' despite some 'stupid leftists' endorsing it; its triumphalist ending (people storm parliament, film ends) perfectly illustrates the left's failure to think the day after.
If This Is a Man book
Praised as a 'great book on Auschwitz'; the selection scene is used to argue that the extreme necessitates comedy rather than tragedy, many of Levi's descriptions are 'in a way comical.'
Roots tv
Alex Haley's series dismissed as 'Hollywood kitsch bestseller', the bad version of the Malcolm X insight, returning to imagined African roots rather than embracing the productive emptiness of uprooting.
Homo Deus book
Yuval Harari's book (received in advance); cited for the argument that democracy requires a pre-existing shared field of values to function, used to illustrate the limits of electoral democracy in deeply divided situations.
Žižek opposes the film's 'too pathetic' ending, proposing a darker alternative where the son reveals he always knew the father's protective fiction was false, used to illustrate ideology as mutual pretense.
Žižek's own book (identified by audience member as Der neue Klassenkampf; a related English title); covers refugees, multiculturalism, and bio-political new class struggle.
Adorno and Horkheimer's framework for understanding how Enlightenment liberation turns into its opposite; applied to the trajectory of Stalinist communism.
Paul Veyne's book is recommended as 'wonderful'; its conclusion, the Greeks neither literally believed nor simply faked, illustrates the third mode of belief that structures ideology.
Žižek's own book; contains his analysis of the Mexican femicide ritual and the bio-political / new class struggle dimension; identified by a questioner.
The opening passage on Descartes realizing foreigners might find him equally stupid is called 'the most beautiful part of Descartes', the founding insight of the empty Cartesian subject and abstract universality.
People invoked 45
Described as 'my good friend'; cited for a scatological medical anecdote at the end of the Q&A.
Primo Levi positive
If This is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) cited as proof that Auschwitz necessitates comedy rather than tragedy, Levi's descriptions are in a way comical, not as humor but because tragedy is structurally impossible there.
Samuel Huntington negative
Briefly dismissed, Žižek explicitly says he does not mean 'clash of civilizations' in Huntington's sense when discussing culture contact.
Narendra Modi negative
Alongside Erdoğan, cited as an example of the new formula: economic neo-liberalism plus authoritarian religious-nationalist politics.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as 'an excellent French theorist of catastrophe' and 'a genius'; his account of the Fukushima near-evacuation of Tokyo illustrates the need for transnational political responses to catastrophe.
Marine Le Pen negative
Mentioned as an example of the right exploiting nationalism that the left should not try to counter with its own leftist nationalism.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited along with Horkheimer for the concept of Dialektik der Aufklärung as the framework for understanding communism's self-destructive trajectory.
Emmanuel Levinas positive
Cited for his notion of the neighbor (der Nächste) as not the one similar to us but the irreducibly strange Other, endorsed as part of Žižek's case for real tolerance.
Roman Jakobson positive
His term 'phatic communication' (just establishing contact: 'I'm here') is used to characterize the Paris suburban car-burning riots as pure outburst without political content.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked via 'subject supposed to believe' and for the claim that 'brutal libidinal explosions' are purely symbolic, the dark side of human cultural life, not our animal side.
Madeleine Albright negative
Attacked for saying on camera that half a million children dying in US military operations was 'worth the price,' and for implying God made a special place in hell for women who don't vote for Hillary, Žižek says if God made such a place, it was for those who accept civilian deaths as acceptable costs.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek met him and told him he was 'in principle right' that capitalism won, but the exception is that ex-communists (China, Vietnam) are now the best capitalist managers, subverting Fukuyama's liberal-democratic conclusion.
Mentioned as one of the show trial victims who was called 'scum' and 'insects' while simultaneously being addressed as a rational subject who could confess his errors.
Toussaint Louverture positive
Leader of the Haitian revolution cited as the supreme example of appropriating European universalism: slaves demanded French republican rights rather than returning to tribal identity.
Daniel Dennett positive
Cited for his counter-argument against the Libet experiment: the experiment presupposes a Cartesian theater with one center, which Dennett rejects as a valid model of mind.
Robert Pfaller positive
Austrian friend who developed the theory of 'interpassivity' or objective beliefs that exist as social facts without anyone believing in them, Žižek endorses and extends this.
Judith Butler positive
Described as a 'fantastic' friend who understands that feminism rests on the abstract universality of the empty Cartesian subject, not on substantive women's nature; compared (positively) to 'Goebbels in a good sense' for propaganda effectiveness.
Donald Trump negative
Mentioned as an example of how today's right-wingers talk dirty while the left should reclaim dignified language; also as one of the products of the current epoch of rage.
Yuval Noah Harari positive
Author of Homo Deus (Žižek got an advance copy); cited for the argument that democracy only works when there is already a shared field of values, used to illustrate the limits of democracy in conditions of radical difference.
Benedict XVI negative
Co-written book with Habermas cited as illustration that Habermas's position on cognitive science is essentially a conservative Catholic one.
Raymond Kurzweil negative
Described as cheating ontologically: he describes a transhuman singularity but still assumes individual human subjectivity will persist, 'utopia in the worst sense of the term.'
Mentioned as someone Žižek knows personally; Syriza's capitulation treated as authentic tragedy without blame, 'I don't think they had other way out.'
Used as contrast figure to Stalin to illuminate the Führer-principle vs. Stalinist servant-of-the-people fiction; also as example that more listening would not have made him less dangerous.
Mentioned as one product of the current epoch of rage, alongside Trump, on the opposite end.
Julian Assange positive
Called 'my friend'; cited for his book on Google demonstrating that Google is 'private NSA', directly collaborating with NSA and harvesting intimate reading data from users.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan negative
Cited as example of new authoritarian capitalism: neo-liberal in economics, harsh nationalist in politics, illustrating the decoupling of capitalism and democracy.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Described as 'my friend'; Žižek defends him and Syriza against left critics who demanded Grexit, but gently notes Varoufakis is 'too much in an illusion' about democratizing Europe.
Malcolm X positive
Described as having a 'stroke of genius', the Hegelian insight that the X (uprooted identity) is not merely catastrophe but opportunity to build a new identity from zero, making him a Cartesian cogito in politics.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as a right-winger but not stupid; his 'logic of discretion' as the proper form of tolerance is endorsed, and his global capitalism metaphor of the globe as cupola (some in, some out) is cited.
Leader tried in Prague show trial; cited as example of the Stalinist confessional structure where the victim narrates their own guilt as if from an external rational standpoint.
Mentioned by a questioner for the concept of 'psycho-politics'; Žižek does not directly engage the reference.
Angela Merkel positive
Used as example in the democracy-legitimacy debate: she let in a million refugees without a democratic mandate; Žižek says she was right to do so and this shows democracy is not a simple solution.
Chris Clark positive
Mentioned by the moderator in the context of the pre-WWI comparison Žižek makes; Žižek agrees he is a relevant reference.
Mao Zedong positive
Žižek identifies as 'by Maoist' and cites the saying 'there is disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent', used to express open-ended optimism about dangerous but opportunity-rich conjunctures.
Hillary Clinton negative
Attacked via Albright's 'special place in hell' comment (made in Clinton's electoral support); Žižek jokes about arranging an 'accident' for her and implies Albright's God-and-hell comment backfired.
Niels Bohr positive
Described as possibly one step above Einstein as the biggest scientist of the 20th century; his horseshoe anecdote provides the perfect formula for how ideology functions without belief.
Paul Veyne positive
French historian whose Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Gods is cited to show that literal vs. metaphorical belief is the wrong binary, the Greeks 'practiced' their belief in a third mode.
Jürgen Habermas negative
His position, that cognitive-scientific self-objectivization threatens human freedom and some things are better not known, is called 'a typical conservative Catholic view' and compared to the position in Pope Ratzinger's co-written book.
Max Horkheimer positive
Co-author with Adorno of Dialektik der Aufklärung, cited to frame communism as Enlightenment's self-destruction.
Mentioned by the moderator in the post-lecture exchange about late 19th-century France; not further engaged by Žižek.
Benjamin Libet positive
California neuroscientist whose free-will experiment is cited; Žižek notes Libet himself did not read it as disproving free will, he located freedom in the 'no' veto in the split second before action.
Joseph Stalin positive
Extensively analyzed as the structural figure of Stalinist ideology, the leader who joins the applause, demands confessions, prohibits publicizing prohibitions; negative morally but intellectually productive as a case study.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek is 'very critical' of Marx but affirms his model of finance capital and especially his theory of commodity fetishism, 'sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es', as still the most useful framework for ideology today.
René Descartes positive
The Discours de la méthode passage on seeing foreigners as potentially finding us as stupid as we find them is cited as the founding insight of the Cartesian subject, the basis of abstract universality and feminism.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Referenced multiple times: the Hegelian paradox that 'when a concept is fully realized it decays' (applied to capitalism/Marxism), and the Aufhebung structure of European identity; Less Than Nothing on Hegel described as Žižek's true scholarly heart.
What it argues
ideology without belief — objective, anonymous practices that function even when no one believes in themsincere lying and the constitutive role of empty gestures in social lifepermissive vs. authoritarian authority and the paradox of forced free choiceEurocentrism as abstract universality and the Cartesian subject as political achievementthe limits of multicultural tolerance and the need for open confrontation of cultural differencethe exhaustion of 20th-century left models and the search for new political formsbio-genetic and digital technologies as a new class distinction and threat to freedom
Dialectical moves 9
“The only way for ideology to function is by not believing in it — if you take the ruling ideology too seriously, you become a dissident.”
Belief in ideology is not its condition of possibility but its threat; cynical distance is what keeps the system running.
“What they don't know is not the illusion but the illusion that they follow in what they are doing.”
Ideological mystification is not in false beliefs but in the false framing that structures practice, inverting the standard critique-of-illusion model.
“The tragedy of communism is that it was the high point of Enlightenment liberation — and turned into a nightmare.”
Communism is not a betrayal of Enlightenment but its dialectical culmination and self-destruction, not an external deviation from it.
“Far from being a barbaric wild explosion, social violence is always a precise symbolic ritual.”
Inverts the nature/culture distinction in violence: what appears most animal is the most symbolic, the darkest expression of the cultural, not its absence.
“The X in Malcolm X — which means brutal uprooting — is at the same time a unique open opportunity to start from zero.”
The catastrophe of slavery's destruction of African identity is reread as the Cartesian liberation from particular roots, enabling a universal political subject.
“You begin not with an authentic moment that then degenerates, but with a lie — an obvious ideology — that can be turned around and universalized.”
Authentic political transformation does not recover an original moment of purity but appropriates and universalizes what began as partial, distorted ideology (e.g. French revolutionary rights claimed by Haiti).
“The problem of Stalinism was precisely that bureaucracy didn't properly function — that's why things never worked, that's why they had to invest in paranoia.”
Stalinism was not bureaucratic socialism but its negation, its dysfunction was the sign that genuine depoliticized bureaucratic administration had never been achieved.
“Anti-racism is not 'I try to understand you' — that violent appropriation wants to prove you are really like me. But you are not.”
The gesture of empathetic understanding inverts into its opposite: it erases the Other's alterity in the very act of claiming to honor it.
“Capitalism today functions better with so-called Asian values — so critique of Eurocentrism has nothing to do with Europe but legitimizes non-democratic capitalism.”
The apparently subversive anti-Eurocentric position is revealed as complicit with the dominant global order it claims to oppose.
Claims 19
asserts
Ideology today does not require sincere belief; it functions as an objective social practice that operates even when — and sometimes only when — nobody personally believes in it.ideology
asserts
The difference between Stalinism and Nazism is not one of quantity of suffering but of structure: Stalinism still formally treated victims as rational subjects capable of confessing guilt, whereas Nazism required no such performance.fascism-communism distinction
asserts
Permissive authority ('you are free to choose, but remember how much grandmother loves you') is more oppressive than traditional authoritarian command because it demands not just compliance but genuine internal consent.authority and ideology
asserts
Theoretical critique is insufficient to overcome commodity fetishism; even those who understand Marx's analysis will continue to act as fetishists in their daily social practice.Marxist critique and ideology
asserts
True tolerance of cultural difference is not empathetic understanding ('I want to know you') but the readiness to accept irreducible distance — the other is not like us and we should still respect them.multiculturalism and tolerance
asserts
The liberal-left approach to refugees — insisting they are 'just like us' — is subtly classist and racist, privileging educated refugees while implicitly dismissing those who are genuinely different.refugee discourse
asserts
Cultural differences in how immigrant communities treat women are not wild barbarism but precisely ritualized symbolic acts, and the left should openly name and confront them rather than silence discussion to avoid giving ammunition to racists.immigration and cultural difference
asserts
The right-wing populist appeal to women's and gay rights in the context of immigration is pure hypocrisy, since the same parties oppose those rights domestically.right-wing populism
asserts
Criticism of Eurocentrism today functions as a subtle legitimization of new non-democratic forms of capitalism ('Asian values'), not as genuine subversion.Eurocentrism and anti-Eurocentrism
asserts
The core of European identity is the acceptance of the abstract Cartesian X — the empty, uprooted subject who participates in universality without mediation through particular identity — and this is the irreplaceable basis of feminism and human rights.Eurocentrism and abstract universality
rejects
The direct-democracy dream of small transparent self-governing communities is the last myth the left must abandon, since complex modern societies require large-scale invisible infrastructure that cannot be democratically micro-managed.direct democracy
rejects
Personalized ecological responsibility (recycling cans, reducing one's footprint) is ideology at its purest — it deflects from structural critique while allowing individuals to feel they have done their duty.individualized ecological ethics
rejects
Leftist nationalism ('socialist nationalism') is not an answer to right-wing nationalist populism but a catastrophic capitulation — fighting global capitalism requires more universalism, not less.leftist nationalism / Brexit left
rejects
The pathos of humanist openness toward the Other ('they are really like us deep down') is a form of violence — true love and true tolerance are exclusive and grounded in the acceptance of radical otherness.humanitarian universalism
reframes
The right question about ideology today is not 'does anyone believe?' but 'what beliefs function as objective social facts?' — we may believe more than ever, precisely because belief has been externalized into anonymous practice.post-ideological thesis / cynicism
asserts
A new class distinction is emerging between those with access to bio-genetic enhancement and those without, which may produce a literally distinct ruling race — surpassing classical capitalist class divisions.technology, class, biogenetics
rejects
Habermas's solution to the challenge of cognitive science — certain things are better not known because knowing them could undermine human freedom and responsibility — is a conservative-Catholic view that is both practically unworkable and philosophically wrong.Habermas on free will and cognitive science
reframes
Authentic Marxism today means recognizing that while Marx's basic model of finance capital is more valid than ever, it has simultaneously reached its limit and must be radically rethought.Marxism today
asserts
ISIS is less a coherent organization than a phantom screen through which competing great powers (Russia, the US, Turkey, Iran) play out their antagonisms — and would dissolve without those foreign interventions.ISIS and geopolitics
Quotes 18
“I don't believe in it but I have it there because I was told that it works also if you don't believe in it. Is this not ideology heute today.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology without belief
“Nobody believes in it you just need another one who is supposed to believe. And the effects are here.”Slavoj Žižek · subject supposed to believe / objective belief
“I'm ready to be more radical and to say the only way for it to function is by not believing in it.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology functions only through cynical distance
“The biggest scientist of the 20th century I seriously suspect that he's maybe one step above Einstein — Niels Bohr.”Slavoj Žižek · Bohr on belief and practice
“I know but the chicken doesn't know. By this I mean we in our social practice act as if we don't know it.”Slavoj Žižek · commodity fetishism / ideology without knowledge
“True tolerance is not this violent appropriation I want to understand you and so on. Because what we call understanding in this case is usually just violent appropriation.”Slavoj Žižek · logic of discretion / true tolerance
“They are not like us. Now you love them. If not then you are a racist.”Slavoj Žižek · true tolerance requires accepting otherness
“Love is a properly metaphysical event. Love means that I elevate some particular contingent object into the absolute.”Slavoj Žižek · love as radical particularity
“My answer was instant: bureaucratic socialism. We need to rehabilitate it.”Slavoj Žižek · ideal social form as bureaucratic socialism
“The measure of the revolution is not oh we were all there but what happens the day after not literally but when things return to normal how do you feel the change.”Slavoj Žižek · the day-after test of revolution
“Socialist nationalism is not a way to fight the threat of national socialism.”Slavoj Žižek · against leftist nationalism
“Malcolm X is a Cartesian cogito in politics.”Slavoj Žižek · abstract universality as political subject
“Ideology is how men and women treat each other, how you treat friends, how you debate, how you eat.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as texture of everyday life
“Allow the other non-authenticity allow him to be happily alienated whatever.”Slavoj Žižek · against false authentication of the Other
“Ideology today is not to ask wrong questions but to confront the right problems in the wrong way.”Slavoj Žižek · role of the philosopher / ideological framing
“What Mother Earth? Mother Earth is the greatest bitch there ever was. Just think about oil.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of New Age ecology
“There is disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.”Slavoj Žižek · openness of the current conjuncture / Maoist optimism
“Critique of Eurocentrism today is for me a subtle legitimization of new non-democratic capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-Eurocentrism as ideological cover
Transcript 30 turns
unknown
I am very grateful to be
I am very grateful to be
Slavoj Žižek
here and I couldn't I cannot resist to react with this applause with an old observation of mine. You know maybe you know the joke I'm sorry. You know that if you watch old documentaries on Stalin, Hitler and so on, you may have noticed one big difference. Uh when Hitler or another fascist leader is applauded, he just stands up and recognizes himself as the addressee. When Stalin or a communist leader is applauded, he stands up and joins the applause. I think this is in the shortest way the difference because the position between Stalinism and Nazism. Because the position is different. In Nazism you have Führer master Herrschaft. In Stalinism you have the same but in a different form. The position of Stalin is I am like you, I'm just a servant of the people. When you applaud me you really applaud the cause which I serve so I can join the applause. And I always have a problem when people applaud me what to do. Then I applaud also. Sorry I join I am on that side and I'm so sad we don't have time to go into it because especially today when this new right European wants to blur the difference between fascism and communism. At defining to avoid a misunderstanding in any way a Stalinist communism. But I definitely don't agree with that logic which then follows that communism fascism was really a reaction to communism, so communism is guilty. But I think it's very interesting to note the difference. I think the tragedy of communism is that it was the high point of what Frankfurt Schule, Adorno, Horkheimer and so on called Dialektik der Aufklärung. Uh it was meant as a radical movement of Aufklärung, liberation and it turned into a nightmare. And here you can see all the paradoxes just to give you a simple example. Do you know that every year on Stalin's birthday in Gulag, all prisoners were uh gathered together and they had to sign a telegram to Stalin wishing him all the best and so on and so on. Now of course I'm not an idiot, this was all staged. But why this ritual? Note the difference. In Nazi Germany such a ritual would be totally meaningless. You know to gather Jews in Auschwitz to sign a telegram to Hitler and so on. Or even the most horrible aspect of one of of Stalinism, the show trials. Why these trials which are structured in a very strange way. Namely the victim is they use all these dirty words [unintelligible] no Bukharin and so on, they are a scum, a piece of shit, insects and so on. But at the same time they are treated as universal subject who have access to historical reason from where they can see their role. For example it's tragic to read of course it was all scripted. How I know the minutes of the process in Prague against Rudolf Slánský, a leader. He is asked how did you become the enemy of the people. And he answers well already when I was a small kid my parents taught me to hate the working class and so on. But the madness is as if from outside he can tell the truth about himself. Of course it's all fake. But the position is interesting. If you compare this with uh Nazism it simply is not part of the Nazi universe to organize a big trial where Jews would have confessed that there is a Jewish plot against Germany. And here although maybe at the level of suffering massive suffering total paranoia Stalinism was worse, I think that I mean it's a horrible choice I don't want to do it but I would say just for a tiny tiny little bit I would prefer Stalin. You know because beneath the mask of these horrible show trials in a totally perverted way you at least I repeat it was a comedy tragicomedy totally perverted way you were still treated as the free subject. There was a trial you were guilty found guilty. You don't need this in Nazism. If you are a Jew I don't have to prove anything I only have to prove that you are a Jew. And you know this extreme Objektivierung how should I put it is specific is specific of Nazism and so on. I would love to talk about these things you know why because they concern don't laugh at me please. I it always intrigued me why most of the good films about concentration camps are comedies. And I think there is a deep necessity in it. Don't be afraid I am not a crazy guy who will now make fun of Auschwitz. But I am trying to say to you a very simple point. When things are really terrifying you cannot anymore do the tragedy. Because in a tragedy a minimal how should I call it decency of the victim is still operative. Tragedy is you condemn me I stand up kill me but I will not surrender and all this. You cannot play these games in Auschwitz. Which is why when I reread recently the great book on Auschwitz Primo Levi If This is a Man Se questo un uomo I was struck to what extent many things there are in a way comical. You know when Levi describes the process of selection like once a two months naked prisoners had just to run in front of a of an SS doctor and he just looks at you for a split second and puts you into one of the two columns gas chamber or you still survive. This ritual is comical you know prisoners exchange tips how to appear more healthy you pinch your lips and so on. But you see my point it's not a comedy where you laugh. It's a comedy where things are so horrible that you feel that tragedy is a fake. That's also my problem with uh I hope you all saw the film but I'm opposed to it. The best known uh Auschwitz comedy La vita bella Life is Beautiful. It's the ending it's too pathetic. Let me let's make a mental experiment. I am obsessed by an idea of how to make La vita bella a truly dark film. You know how. You know the story I will not repeat it father and son in Auschwitz in order to make Auschwitz for the son more bearable father invents a story. That it is just a big competition we can leave at any moment we want but but uh if we stay here we will get a big prize at the end whatever. Wouldn't it be a much darker film if in the very last scene when they are taking the father Germans just before collapse to be shot, they would have exchanged glances father and son and son would have made it clear somehow to the father that he never believed his story. That he just pretended to believe the story that he knew what was the real situation but in the same way that father told the story to the son, son pretended to believe the story because he knew that in this way his father would be much calmer because the idea of the father is to protect the son from the horror. That would have been a truly bad ending. Why am I mentioning this because today people say ideology ideologie is over. We live in post-ideological era and so on and so on nobody believes in it. But here my psychoanalytic education comes in. Uh I mean theoretical I mean uh when people ask me why am I not an analyst my answer is look at me nervous talking can you imagine me listening in peace for more than one minute to my patient or whatever. But seriously this very interesting category of if I may use this Lacanian term subject supposed to believe. Like today we don't believe but nonetheless and my Austrian friend Robert Pfaller maybe was here developed a nice theory on it how there are beliefs which exist objectively as a social fact without anyone believing in them. And that's I think if you ask me how ideology ideology functions today. We are all cynics nobody believes in religion. All my friends I ask a Jew you respect kosher food do you really believe in it all are saying to me no I am not crazy this just part of my cultural tradition and so on and so on. Christians I asked usually friends to provoke them okay it's Santa Claus whatever uh why not you give a present to your son. Uh and they say of course I don't believe in it my god I buy the present. But I claim then when you ask the son or the daughter do you really believe in Santa Claus they will tell you no I just pretend to believe not to disappoint my parents and so on. So you see nobody believes but belief functions as an and I claim I'm sorry if I repeat this story I use it in a couple of my books that the biggest scientist of the 20th century I seriously suspect that he's maybe one step above Einstein Niels Bohr. He provided in one of his anecdotes I read this in a biography of Niels Bohr he provided a perfect formula for this. I'm sorry if you know the story I will be brief. The story is that once uh his friend visited him at the country house near Copenhagen and saw horse-shoe above the entrance door. You know that horse-shoe is I don't know how it is with you you Swiss have your own raclette whatever crazy you are uh and you appear to be a totally mysterious country. You have all those tunnels where millions of people can hide and so on so but but uh uh so again uh this ritual the idea is that a horse-shoe prevents evil spirits or whatever to enter the house. So now comes the nice story. A scientist visited uh Niels Bohr there and asked him but you are a scientist why do you have this there do you believe in it. Niels Bohr answers look I am not an idiot I am a scientist of course I don't believe in it. Then the friend insists but if you don't believe in it why do you have it there. You know Niels Bohr's answer I don't believe in it but I have it there because I was told that it works also if you don't believe in it. Is this not ideology heute today. We don't believe in democracy in justice and so on but we act on it. And I am ready to go even a step further here and this is my old Yugoslav communist experience because this was totally true for Yugoslavia. I'm not saying an ideology functions even if you even if you don't believe in it. I'm ready to be more radical and to say the only way for it to function is by not believing in it. That if you take the ruling ideology too seriously you become a dissident you and this is my personal experience. I had in mid-70s when I was young student a good friend who worked at the Central Committee of Communist Party in Slovenia in some ideological division. He lost his job you know why because he sincerely believed in Yugoslav self-management socialism and the top nomenklatura bureaucrats got it correctly this is dangerous. I mean if you look it like and this is what uh this is where today we have ideology in our everyday life. First we have all these beliefs which circulate around and you can prove it in a wonderful way how they can have real effects without anyone really believing in them. In Ex-Yugoslavia we have this wonderful story which even if it's not true it illustrates perfectly a certain logic that there is enough of toilet paper in the stores. But then a rumor starts to circulate that there is not enough toilet paper. People even know all people that this is just a rumor. But each of them reasons like this I know there is enough toilet paper in the stores but probably there are some idiots who don't believe it and they will start buying like crazy toilet paper so at the end there will really not be a toilet paper and so so that I don't run out of it it's better for me also to run there and so you see the paradox nobody believes in it you just need another one who is supposed to believe. And the effects are here. And so again uh I think that today our era is not as they say the era of total cynicism auto-belief maybe we believe even at this level maybe we even believe more than ever. Because you know it's such an enigma belief. I advise you to read it must be translated into German you find it all the time in French in English Paul Veyne the French historian who wrote a wonderful book called uh in English Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Gods. And the result is wonderful. Of course they didn't. I mean Greeks were not stupid they didn't think if you climb the Mount of Olympus you will find there I don't know uh Zeus trying to seduce Aphrodite or what. But it wasn't also a simple fake. They even if they didn't believe it literally and also not metaphorically that's the wrong way in a way they practiced their belief. And my example here would have been politeness. It's a wonderful thing I more and more maybe because I'm old I'm starting to celebrate politeness nice manners and so on. And I'm proud to do it as a leftist because you know when I was young and some of you who are also old I see here no uh I remember 60s revolution those in power were talking official language with dignity and so on. And we pseudo-revolutionaries we liked to talk dirty to uh shock those in power fuck you and so on. Now did you notice after our beloved Donald Trump and similar phenomena is those in power right-wingers who talk dirty. And I totally agree that the left should become and I am very serious here unfortunately a defender of simple human dignity politeness and so on and so on. Because what fascinates me in politeness two things. One is uh how it's and without this you cannot understand everyday ideology what I call sincere lying. Let me give you a stupid example. Let's say you yeah yeah you stand up no sorry sorry. We meet on the street we know each other but now I will be evil it's not true. Let's say we just pretend to be friends I really don't want to see you so when I see you I my inner thought is oh my god why didn't I see you five seconds earlier so that I could run to the other side. But when I see I tell you oh nice to see you how are you. I claim in normal functioning we both know that I am really lying. But it's not simply a hypocritical lie because although it's not true literally we give to each other signal that we are kind and so on and so on exactly. Yeah and these are manners. Without this let's call it sincere lie civilization falls apart absolutely. And the same I was the barbarian. In United States if you go to New York you know that there in cafeterias waiters always ask you how are you today sir. Well I was a total idiot and I took it seriously and I started to answer oh not too good I just arrived uh I have a jet lag and I noticed a moment of total panic in him. Am I crazy or what. So what I am saying is that uh uh here I am still some kind of with all the doubts that you indicated what can be Marxism today. I know I know yeah. No now we'll come that okay. I don't know what Marxism can be today but I know what would would happen to you when we Marxists took power. In Gulag you will be writing long confessions oh very horrible yes yes. You see I can tell as in Stalinist trial people consent triumphantly to your no seriously. What fascinates me now not kidding is how you know uh I want in Marxist spirit but against much of what Marx to you know what's the paradox of Marx today on one hand Marxist basic model finance capital circulating profit is true. But precisely maybe even more than in Marx's time. But at the same time we see its limit it's also totally false. In the sense you know it's an old Hegelian paradox when he says that when a certain concept is fully realized it it decayed at the same moment. So we have to radically rethink it. But let me go on uh as a Marxist I say we have to reinvent a certain Entfremdung alienation as a positive category. I think that there is a type of alienation personal political which we should assert. For example this minimal alienation in Sprachumgang in communication like hello nice to see you admitted that if I say nice to see you how are you. If you were to detect that I mean it seriously you would have full right to say wait a minute it's none of your matter how I feel and so on. Yeah so you would be yeah another question okay. This is another confession for Gulag in wait. No but let's go on seriously what fascinates me is how this minimal alienation of language that you don't really mean it as we say it's just a form. But although it's literally a lie I don't care how you feel and so on it's a sincere lie it establishes communication. And at all levels we have to become aware of it. Uh let me give you another element which is always my favorite of ideology how it functions in everyday life. A phenomenon intrigues me for a long time. So-called I've written maybe some of you know it uh abundantly about it the ultimate mystery of communication so-called empty gestures or offers which are meant to be rejected. You know like stupid example I'm sorry. We sit in a restaurant you invite me like tonight and I hope you will play this game with me and then when the bill arrives you are rich I'm poor we both know that you will pay. But I don't know how it is in your strange country but in many other countries we have to go through this ritual. I have to pretend for some time no no let me pay and then you but you know this is the beauty of communication we both know that you will pay I mean if you are really evil you can say okay if you want you pay I wouldn't consider dining tonight yeah. But what I want to say is that you see the magic of communication uh we both know it's an empty game but it serves a purpose. That's communication at its zero level. And there are many other rituals at this level for example do you know uh I don't know again how you have it in my country let's say me and my friend we both compete for a job. My friend wins. It's considered polite that he says to me listen I know you deserve it more if you want I step down you get it. We both know that he will get it but we have to go through that uh ritual. And why does this fascinate me so much because that's for me the mystery of language at everyday level. We don't just have the rules. We always have another meta-level rules about how to treat the literal rules. On the one hand we have rules of prohibition which are meant to be transgressed. Many of prohibitions especially sexual ones if you really follow them you are an idiot you are not even expected to follow them. But much more interesting is the opposite paradox where you are it's not that something you are prohibited something but expected discreetly to do it but then you are solicited to do something but it's expected that you don't do it. You know like in these examples that I listed. And I think that our permissivity today much of it and already the high genius that I mentioned at the beginning Stalin it works like that. You know what's the paradox of our modern era that uh it's not only that there are prohibitions but prohibitions themselves are prohibited. It's not only that today and here many feminists complain in a correct way it's not even if women are formally not dominated no sorry they are but it's considered it's somehow prohibited to publicly announce this domination. I always use this example I'm sorry if you say let's say it's my dream we are in Moscow I'm Stalin. I am up there you applaud and so on okay. Then there is the debate at central committee. One of you stands up and criticizes me comrade Stalin was wrong and so on okay we know what will happen. The big question next day will be who was the last one to see that guy alive no. But then ah ah ah let's say that another guy let's call it for poetic purposes Herr Meyer you know stands up and starts to shout at that guy are you crazy don't you know that we don't talk about this uh like this on Stalin we don't do this here it's prohibited. Right you would disappear even earlier. No no I'm serious you see what I mean. It wasn't simply prohibited to criticize Stalin it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition. You had to pretend that of course we can do it just ah Stalin is such a genius why to do it. And I think our permissivity often functions like that. Another story sorry to jump around but I think it's a very important lesson I always use it to illustrate the jump from traditional authority to today's permissive authority. Let's say it's Saturday or Sunday afternoon you are a small boy or girl and you your father wants you to visit the old senile stupid grandmother. An old uh authoritarian father will simply tell you this I don't care how you feel it's your duty to go to the grandmother and treat her kindly and uh behave properly. That's not a problem I claim. You feel oppressed but you can resist and so on. But then comes the monster of the permissive post-father or what who will tell you something different. He will tell you something like you are free to do whatever you want I will not force you but just remember how much your grandmother loves you. Now what's the message here. Beneath the appearance of choice the message is a much more oppressive one. The message is I don't want you only to visit grandmother I want you to visit it freely of your own choice. So you know it's this old paradox you are given a free choice on condition that you make the right choice. And I think again if you look at this texture of language all these paradoxes it's here that you find ideology today. And that's why what I write my comments some of them were even published by Spiegel I cannot understand why they uh about immigrants. My god I am not against them I just think that of course there are let's call it cultural problems because you know ideology today it's not just the big ideological floskel and so on. Ideology is something which determines your daily life. Ideology is how men and women treat each other, how you treat friends, how you debate, how you eat and so on. In my I will not repeat this for the 50th time in my stupid too popular example I'm sure most of you know it. I just make a simple look at the structure of main European toilets. You know the old German toilets they're disappearing now uh it's the like shit is out in the open there so they have this pervert rituals that after finishing defecation you inspect the shit smelling and so on. That's German toilets. French toilets are like shit a hole is in the back water shit drops directly into it. The American Anglo-Saxon are different the bowl is full of water so shit floats to it. And I spoke with many architects I mean designers and I think I read books American friend sent me two books about it and they admitted the books that all direct functional explanations fail. And then the idea came to me you know around Hegel's time there was this idea of European trinity. Three big big countries Germany, France, England each stands for a certain level of social life England is economy, France is politics, Germany is Dichtung und Denken, poetry and so on. Second thing each of them stands for a certain political stance Anglo-Saxon pragmatism, French revolution, Germany more passive. And then it came to me but that's it. The French attitude revolutionary cutoff shit must disappear quick. The Anglo-Saxon are more pragmatic let it flow there and so on. And Germans are of course metaphysics observation let's. Now as crazy as this example sounds you know that something like that maybe not quite this has to be true because my point is not just to make fun here. My point is to make it palpable to you how the most vulgar activity the most common phenomenon going to the toilet and you are deeply ideology there because it's a whole attitude towards life. You know that I am quite serious I spoke with many animal how do you call it they study animal behavior and they told me that one of the few they don't even dare distinguish that really work between humans and animals is that how to dispose of shit becomes a problem for humans. You know you cannot just do it it must disappear. So again this is one thing that fascinates me so again when I talk about immigrants and so on, I am uh always shocked how both either uh right-wing anti-populist who is our enemy and so on but the same mistake is made by this open left oh they're good people just bring them in and so on and so on. I often find this second attitude of openness of course it's more sympathetic politically we should bring them in take care of them and so on. But it's almost uh more dangerous I claim. You know why because uh first I would say uh again cultural differences are something that structures the texture of our innermost daily life and it will not work the way they do it in Germany you know they distribute those brochures two men kiss yes it's good, a man beating a woman no it's bad. Of course we should do this but you don't solve the problem in this simple way. Why what is the problem again uh my ex- my point is that and that's the big sad news that I have that social violence violence against women and so on it's not simply some kind of brutal barbarism it's clearly always a symbolic ritual behind it. And I'm here I'm not only critical of Islam but even of our civilizations and so on. For example to begin with ourselves isn't it absolutely clear that Catholic pedophilia is not simply oh there are many priests whenever there are many men there have to be some pedophiles so no wonder they are there. It's absolutely clear that in some difficult to describe way pedophilia is uh a kind of obscene other side of Catholic identity. It's absolutely clear from the way Catholic church at least till now treats it basically protecting the priests and so on and so on. And then my friends helped me to understand you remember that Köln Carnival New Year's Eve they told me but all the debates where did they really do it not blah blah but my friend my Arab friends I have many of them they told me but they don't get what happened. This is our most common ritual. For example they my Egyptian friends told me that during Tahrir Square you know the big emphatic moment oh this happened every evening all the time. It's their typical male chauvinist ritual. In the evening men gather and not rape maybe there were rapes but the typical ritual is they just squeeze harass women a little bit. It's their most common ritual and it was shocking how nobody nobody got this point. That it's not some wilderness or whatever it's a precise well established ritual. So that's the first thing to do whenever we are dealing with unacceptable behavior brutality and so on. The most the saddest thing for me is that these are not wild explosions we become like animals or whatever no they are always symbolic rituals. Even if they are I don't know how horrible in my book this Der neue Klassenkampf I give a terrifying example of uh of uh Mexico uh uh where now in some cities where there are many new factories and uh women working in them uh this uh serial rapes become uh a standard phenomenon. It's extremely brutal like uh around up to men kidnap a young girl and they first serially rape her and then they cut her slowly with scissors first they cut the breast it's pretty rough. But you know what's so horrible to see there this is not simple brutality it's a brutality which is precisely ritualized with a certain social message we men will not tolerate free women and so on and so on. So again here I follow Jacques Lacan who emphasized that what he calls [unintelligible] brutal libidinal explosions they are purely symbolic they are not our animal side they are the dark side of our human and cultural life and so on and so on. So again my point is that uh what I don't buy with all my sympathy I am help them towards refugees is that when you have a clash of cultures sorry not clash in the Huntington sense but clash in simple sense they come in contact. This is always a very difficult moment when the only way to confront it I see is not as the liberal left is doing we shouldn't talk about it because we give argument to the racists and so on but let's confront it openly let's debate it you do this we do this how to find a common way nonetheless we should not of course make certain compromises there we shouldn't allow victimization of women and so on and so on. So the first thing for me is to openly admit it as a problem because I think there is a certain paradox that you can immediately notice here. First our right wing populists are totally hypocritical in what sense. Usually in our countries didn't notice this irony they attack all the time for them is the ultimate plot uh gay rights, transgenderism, uh abortion no. But all of a sudden with immigrants they discovered gay and woman's rights you know. I mean they are absurd. In the same way there is a real problem. For example I saw a report on German TV a leftist report not some right-wing propaganda about this problem how up to girls every year escape from Muslim families and seek refuge because their family didn't tolerate that they wanted to have a German boyfriend whatever doesn't matter. But the problem is this one then the Muslim community says listen you speak about tolerance but you are really not tolerating our way of life because the way we treat girls the family authority is a fundamental constituent of our way of life. I'm just saying we should admit this as a problem. And so I just see the hypocrisy of how the same people who here if you look at a woman into her eyes for too long you're already accused of visual rape or whatever here we are hyper-sensitive but there when it comes to another culture oh it's their specific culture and so on and so on. I think that we are here confronting two errors which are symmetrical. On the one hand yes it's true uh there is a lot of European cultural imperialism if you call it like this. By this I mean many of the values norms that we impose on others as universal human rights are in reality culturally very specific. A person from Asia will easily demonstrate to you how for example our notion of human rights gives predominance to individual freedom and so on while solidarity, collective identity is much stronger in their culture and so on and so on. But you know the so this okay so what. I think that uh at the same time the opposite story is also true that quite often a reference to specific way of life is used as an excuse to tolerate brutal exploitation and so on. Like you may know now that in exact correspondence to our celebration of gay rights and so on for example in many African and Asian countries there is more and more an uh homophobic atmosphere. They are legally prohibiting homosexuality and so on and so on. And the situation is here even more tragic than you think. Because not only this now I come to the real tragedy not only this but they even experience even sincerely their homophobia and so on as their fight against colonialism. I had a misfortune in London of meeting it wasn't a pleasant meeting a guy who was an open sympathizer of Boko Haram those nice guys in the North Nigeria. He told me the story he told me listen in our daily experience the main social impact of Western global capitalism cultural influence is women no longer obey us they want to be left alone blah blah blah. This is for us the most visible face of colonialism. So consequently Boko Haram which means literally no education for women whatever it was is our way to fight capitalism. And uh I don't see that's the problem. There is no easy way out here you cannot have it both. You cannot be simply tolerant towards other cultures and so what would you do here. Would you say okay this is your culture we respect woman's rights you do whatever you want or what. But how do you do it. The only solution I see is not to look for some universal culture but its struggle. They are fighting their own struggle for freedom, corruption and so on. We have to find a common front at some level. It can be done because if we don't do it then uh we are lost. But just another remark on on ideology ideology today. That notion that I used of these objective beliefs, beliefs which function without anyone believing in them. Here I see the actuality of Marx. I'm very critical of Marx but his notion of commodity [unintelligible] commodity fetishism I develop this in many of my books is I think incredibly useful especially today. Be careful what Marx says. Marx doesn't say oh we believe in fetishism that commodities are fetish but really they are just a social product and so on. Marx says something much more interesting. He says of course in our daily experience we are like British empiricists we say what's what's money. Nothing just a piece of paper which gives you the right to part of the social product nothing mysterious but in our social practice in our social reality we treat money as a fetish and so on and so on. So the theory of Marx is that uh it's a beautiful philosophical even paradox that it's not just that we have the way things appear to us and the way things really are. In between is something that we should call objective appearance. Things appear to us in a certain way but this is not how things really appear and then we are we have how things really are. So you know when Marx says in Capital sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es it's not this common sense stupidity people have illusory representations but they don't know what they are doing. No it's what they don't know is the illusions that they follow in what they are doing. This is why Marx repeatedly says that theoretical critique is not enough for to overcome fetishism. You may study uh critical theory as much as you want but in your daily practical life you will still act as a fetishist. If you permit me another story I'm repeating my know which I use I would say about times in my books but it's a perfect story. That joke don't laugh you know it I know. You know that stupid joke a madman thinks that he is uh corn a grain of corn and he is cured now he knows he is human. So he is left out of the psychiatric hospital but he comes running back and the doctor asks him listen what's wrong. The guy says oh I saw a chicken and I was afraid that the chicken will eat me. And the doctor tells him but you know now that you are not a piece of corn. He said I know but the chicken doesn't know. So that's how ideology works. We know but we know that commodity is an ordinary object but you know the chicken doesn't know it, the commodity doesn't know it. By this I mean we in our social practice act as if we don't know it. And at this now we come back to religion. We may know very well that God doesn't exist but how should I put it God doesn't know it no he is the chicken. In other words through different superstitious practices and so on we still act as if God doesn't exist. And again the truly difficult change is there. So uh now uh I succeeded in something totally crazy. I haven't even began okay we can lay the most modern paradox that I will give a lecture which will be a lecture without the lecture just an introduction. But uh after this introduction I nonetheless would like to make some important let's hope uh some important points. I think that okay the first thing to mention based on what I said based on what I said uh here uh let me begin yes the first point would have been uh when I plead for alienation and so on and is especially concerns all this stuff about uh uh refugees multiculturalism and so on and so on. What does it mean uh accepting alienation not as something to be overcome but as a condition of freedom. Look if I think for a long time which would have been the most stupid wisdom and wisdoms are generally very stupid that you can imagine I would say I would have chosen that deep insight which you often find in multiculturalists you know an enemy is just someone to whose story we were not ready to listen to you know like we fetishize someone into the enemy but if you really listen to him you see his side of the story and ah ah. First brutal argument ah so it's good to know Hitler was our enemy because you know we just didn't listen to him enough or whatever. No the example of Hitler shows that you know unfortunately there are real enemies and the more you listen to his story the more you are terrified. But another point that I want to make here is that uh uh I don't believe in this idea let's just understand each other open ourselves to other. How can I understand you you the perverted Swiss whatever. How can I understand you when I don't even understand myself. I think that we are all totally perplexed here and uh I think that true tolerance doesn't mean this pressure I have to understand you but it's precisely and I quote here a philosopher who is a right-winger but not stupid Peter Sloterdijk where he says the way to fight intolerance is uh logic of discretion. We you know true anti-racism is not just I try to understand you Swiss your stupid uh whatever you want uh raclette and so on but it's that I accept that I don't understand it. I'm ready to accept the distance. True tolerance is not this violent appropriation I want to understand you and so on and so on. Because what we call understanding in this case is usually just violent appropriation. What I want to prove to myself is that you are really like me. But you are not. And you know here I am absolutely defending let's call it Judeo-Christian legacy where the notion of neighbor der Nächste is not what people think. Even Levinas Emmanuel made a nice point about this where he says what in Judeo-Christian tradition means neighbor der Nächste is not the other who is like me oh now I discover we like the same movies we are the same. But it's precisely the other you know let's say you have a friend you know him very well you think you know everything then all of a sudden this guy does something maybe good mostly evil like kicks a small kid says something vulgar and then you ask yourself my god did I know this person at all. At that point he becomes a neighbor. This is the dimension of the neighbor and you know that's why love your neighbor as yourself is something much more radical. It's not we are all brothers it's no neighbors are real neighbors and the true art is to love them. That's why I'm for true tolerance of refugees. Not this humanitarian no humanitarian humanitarian is good but human emotion bullshit they are really like us deeply. No they are not like us. Now you love them. If not then you are a racist because there is something so violent when I read in news how oh but some refugees they are such nice person Syrians they are so popular in our media educated Syrian refugees you know they are always used as but they are like us. Yeah with the implication what about the others you know there is a clear class dimension here. Uh Syrian educated refugees are the good refugees you know so that silently you get dismissed the others. The problem is we don't need to in this pathetic sense sympathize with refugees we have to do something to really help them. We have to stop the war there we have to I don't know we have to stop economically exploiting the third world. It's clear how we Europeans are responsible for it. You know through I don't know like African countries where there are refugees come from it's always some Western economic interest take the play take the case of Congo my god. It's one of the wealthiest countries as to its minerals and it's the worst hell on earth. Why because the way Congo is parceled with dominated by local warlords all of them directly linked to foreign companies and so on and so on. No ISIS without American occupation of Iraq and so on. And it's clear what is happening now in ISIS. I doubt more and more if ISIS even exists. I think ISIS is a kind of a phantom like entity invented as a screen through which big powers are playing their games. Shiites against Sunnis, Russians against Europe, Turks against Iran and so on. I mean the problem is not the poor ISIS the problem is all the antagonisms which are focused in Islamic state. Frankly if these foreign interventions and in- interest were to disappear ISIS would be over would be over in a matter of weeks and so on and so on. So again my main point is that uh I think that let me imagine a true non-racist tolerant way of living. It's not I want to understand you blah blah blah. I would like to live in a big building and I have here a Muslim family, a Jewish family, an African family, Latino-American family whatever you want and we politely ignore each other. And ah I'm enthusiastic when miracles happen. With some of them there can be a wonderful contact but it's as a rule exception and it will stay like this. And I think that's that's the true that's the true tolerance. And it's the same as with love. Love is not universal love is something extremely brutal. And that's why I love it of course love. What do I mean by this. When somebody tells you oh I love you all I always think as you are old enough you must remember him the great democratic German politician Erich Honecker of course. You remember when he was attacked in DDR Nationalkammer what he said in despair Aber ich liebe euch alle. That's the truth of it. Love is not this love is what I'm alone I have a pleasant life maybe some one night stands I drink I meet friends then I walk along the street I slip down a woman helps me to stand up and of course it's the love of my life totally contingent encounter. And this is a catastrophe usually. Before my life was pleasant evening with friends now I am totally obsessed everything is focused on that. That's love. Love is a properly metaphysical event. Love means that I elevate some particular contingent object into the absolute. And uh and uh so uh I think that love authentic love is by definition passionate and exclusive. It's not I love you all it's I love okay I don't want to be a harassment I love okay I love you or whoever there you know and I ignore all others. That's one thing I want to emphasize. Now since I'm spending my time I will nonetheless try to bring it to conclusion by making uh some other uh interesting I claim points. Why Eurocentrism here let me be clear. By Eurocentrism I don't mean my god I'm a communist I don't mean this stupidity of European values or whatever I mean something much more precise. I claim that in spite of all the horrors that Europe did and it did its own more than fair share of horror and it goes even now I will tell you a beautiful example from these days on the news and combined with another data years ago. Uh you know now after this tragic of course shooting in Orlando, Florida they're again asking but it's horrible and so on and it is horrible. Okay imagine some Muslim leader saying we are fighting Western decadence and although we know this is not nice what we did there the price is worth paying. There have to be innocents who die. If some Muslim leader were to say this admit it we would have exploded barbarism and so on. Okay but haha you know I have a quote here I don't want to bore you with it now you know what uh a couple of years ago Madeleine Albright at that point Secretary of State Foreign Minister said. You can check it go to YouTube you find it everywhere. She was asked by a journalist this question. Uh are you aware that according to the data in all this military operation Afghanistan, Iraq around half a million children died. Was it worth the price. She answered it's a tough question but yes it was worth the price. You see that's we who are talking we Western civilization. So my reaction to her when she Madeleine Albright made a very dirty trick for Hillary Clinton supporting her in some electoral talk she said probably God made a special place in hell for women who don't vote for women. This she meant for women who vote for Bernie Sanders no. Well I respectfully disagree for her. I think if God made a special place in hell it was more for women and men who think half a million children to die is an acceptable price and so on. So yes we Europe we have our our how should I call it our good portion of things. But nonetheless I ask you simply a question let's criticize to the end I am ready to do it the destructive side of European values colonialism horror and so on and so on. First the first thing that I find suspicious here is uh a hidden arrogance which is in it. You know this old theory of White Man's Burden it's the duty of us white men to rule others. Now with some politically correct leftists you find the opposite version of White Man's Burden which is whenever something horrible happens in the world it must be our fault it's a consequence of colonialism. Like I remember when there was the the Rwanda slaughter Hutu Tutsi oh it must be our and so on. But are we aware you know who gave me this idea my Arab and black friends. They said they told me we experience this as extremely oppressive. You pretend to defend us yeah yeah yeah we are guilty for all but what you are really saying is that we are pure passive victims that we are not agents at all. I claim we should treat also blacks Arabs and so on as agents. Arabs are oppressed they were screwed by exploitation oil in many cases is a curse for them. But what they are doing are certain political projects we should treat them with respect as responsible adults. You know where I got this lesson a wonderful adventure. I was in Missoula Montana David Lynch was born there I went to check the house and I met there some they call themselves today Native American Indians. All my Indian friends prefer the term Indian and they gave me a wonderful reason they say Native American what's this we are native nature you are culture or what. They told me I much prefer to be called Indian because in this case at least my name is a monument to the stupidity of you white people who thought you are in India or whatever. And they are so sensitive against this patronizing attitude. They start shooting if you tell them you know we Indians if somebody tells them you know we white people we just exploit nature technologically while you Indian have a holistic attitude towards nature like we ruin a nation sorry a mountain for gold. You do the same but before you do it you ask the mountain the ghost of the mountain for permission and so on. So this is one of my most beloved short books a Native American Indian uh student wrote a text where he demonstrates that Indians killed more buffaloes and ruined more forests than white men. And he told me the lesson is precisely please don't patronize us in this dirty world. His point is allow us the dignity to be evil that we can also be evil. And they are so they are so happy all the friends that I know there have this attitude. And the story that I always repeat I love it if you are here ladies or girls let's say you have two types of a boyfriend. One boyfriend let's say is an old male chauvinist he tells you listen maybe in some communist future things would be different but today you women have to do home I mean homework you have to wash my socks clean the house blah blah. If you have this type of a boyfriend stay with him you may re-educate him. But let's say you have a holistic boyfriend who tells you you know you woman have a much more women you have a much more holistic attitude towards nature we men are just mechanical manipulating nature you have a much more authentic relationship run away from him as fast as you can. This is the nastiest form of racism this how should I put it false authentication of the other. Why what the fuck why should the other be authentic. They okay they are not authentic with pleasure. You know where I got the nicest experience of this I was in New Zealand and I met there some local artists who first before we got to know each other seriously were bullshitting me with this you know again the same bullshit before we paint we ask the spirit of the river to inspire and all that. Then when we become friends they told me the truth their plan is to occupy everybody's place to conquer the American market. So they had two agencies one in LA one in New York who told them kept them in touch what is the latest fashion. And okay they still ask the mountain for permission but you know the answer of the mountain was always in the same tone as the message from America you know like like when they got the message that now and they told me that some years ago under the influence of Russian invasion of Russian artists very popular to mix sacred topics saints churches whatever rituals with sex like religious ruins with some naked women at work. The the mountain in Finland was telling them to do this and so on and I admire them. I think you know all the I mean when people uh pretend admiration for you know like this total British colonialist bullshit like we may be all colonial British managers in India hundred years ago had the same story. The more they were brutal towards ordinary Indians the more they wrote things like my god we are so vulgar in the West we care only for power technology an ordinary poor Indian farmer has more spirituality than all of us. That's the worst of racism I claim. Allow the other non-authenticity allow him to be happily alienated whatever. Now I come to politics and then I finish with you. Uh that's why uh you know uh we now that 20th century is over by this I mean the main models for the left are passé which is why it's not enough just to complain oh Caracas Americans uh special war against us. It's an immanent problem. Did you notice how uh we have one thing which worries me very much even any protest. I was deeply shocked and I was there I went there as a tourist revolutionary tourism you go to look at the you remember I think it's already ten years ago or when cars were burning in the suburbs of Paris you remember thousands of but you know what was so shocking. First the authorities thought it's Islam then they learned but the first thing they burned were their own cultural centers and so on. It was a kind of a pure outburst of rage without any not even clear positive project but even without any message. It was just what in linguistics we call okay Roman Jakobson introduced the term phatic communication you know just hi I'm here just to establish the link. And we have more and more of that on the im- okay even today we are in an epoch of rage which is open and dangerous one like rage gives us Bernie Sanders but also Donald Trump and so on. On the opposite end with Syriza and so on and I know I speak from almost inner experience my god Varoufakis is my friend I know Tsipras. And I consider this an authentic tragedy and at the same time moment of truth. If there is a metaphor for the fate of today's left it's remember almost a year ago on the first day Syriza won referendum no to austerity one day later they totally surrender. And I don't blame them I don't think they had other way out. I totally distrust I know them those left platform who said no we should have done Grexit print our own money and so on and so on it would not have worked. So my point is this one uh that not only is the 20th century over in the sense that the standard old leftist big 20th century model Stalinist state socialism and uh Western social democratic welfare state that they are disappearing. And with a very interesting twist once I met Fukuyama and he laughed so much I told him you know in principle you were right with one exception okay capitalism wins but today ex-communists where they are still in power China, Vietnam seem to be the best managers of capitalism no so you should change your prediction like capitalism with communists in power is the most efficient capitalist system today. So what I'm saying is that that's over. But a third dream now I will provoke you but not dirty story decently which I distrust you know leftists who are ready to concede this still stick to the dream of direct non-representative democracy like small transparent communities we uh where we decide our life we debate everything against political representation state alienation and so on and so on. I am I think this is the last myth to be dropped I totally oppose to this. It's wonderful when you have these authentic small communities but I have two problems. First in today's complex society you know that for such a self-transparent community to function a lot of thing has to work in the background as an invisible machine like okay we freely distribute electricity but eh eh the state has to produce electricity the state you need money in you need electricity you need water you need health care. You know what I'm trying to say is that today the big challenge of the left is not and I'm getting so tired of that these big enthusiastic moments oh Tahrir Square oh Gezi Square whatever Syntagma in Greece million people there we are all enthusiastic. I am obsessed with the day after. The true test today is and even Trotsky once wrote a wonderful point about this. The measure of the revolution is not oh we were all there but what happens the day after not literally but when things return to normal how do you feel the change at this level. This is why I hope you saw the movie which I don't like too much although some stupid leftists like it V for Vendetta. You know how the movie ends the Guy Fawkes figure mask at the end people win they enter the parliament people have won the end of the film. I would send my mother into slavery to see a film with the title V for Vendetta part But what do they do then how do they reorganize it and so on and so on. We are in a we are in a problem here. The problem is the problem of the left. Now you will tell me but why why am I bullshitting if I see this fiasco of the left why don't we simply as they say in English call it a day and say the game is over forget about big changes let's play the modest welfare state game as much as we can. Eh here comes my Marxist pessimism. I see I cannot go into it now in detail of course I see so many antagonisms in today's society that I think in the long term the type of global capitalism that we have today and even democracy the way we have today will not be able to solve it. Democracy yeah let me go at it directly. I was involved in some polemics in Germany Süddeutsche Zeitung about migrants and so on and a right-winger attacked me pretty simply this is a common argument in Germany but it's a strong argument either you leftists pretend to be for democracy but then you should criticize you know the argument Angela Merkel she called one million people more to come to Germany. Where is her democratic legitimization it's clear that if there were to be a referendum majority would have been against it. So what do you do here. Frankly I am I think she was right and what has to say screw democracy this ethically this has to be done. But are you ready to do this. It was the same with when there were negotiations with Greece. Varoufakis is too much in an illusion he thinks democratize Europe but I had contact with some politicians who told me the problem was not secret negotiations in Brussels but the opposite one like I spoke with a Slovene negotiator who told me whenever we had to make public statement we had to be much more anti-Greek because people around Europe were against helping Greece mostly like why should the lazy Greeks get the money and so on and so on. In other words democracy is not a simple solution the way we have it. For democracy to work authentically many other things have to change. Or to give you another example I read recently a book of some Jewish American sociologist uh uh forgot his name it will come to me sorry uh Yuval Harari something like this who wrote a book I got a copy in advance Homo Deus where he says the problem with democracy is that it only works precisely insofar as democracy means confronting differences this it only works if there is already a certain shared field of practices values and so on and so on. Democracy works if we agree on basic things and then we make choices. Which is why for example when you have a real problems like Middle East you cannot say let's organize big elections. Already in Germany you have a problem okay let's decide the fate of migrants democratically. Who will vote. Probably some leftists will demand and I tend to agree with them in some way uh that migrants who are there already even if their status is not yet legalized they should also vote. Then you can say but why not go further all those who are waiting to come to Europe on on the shores of Libya, Syria should also vote and so on and so on. You cannot do this. At a certain point where the divergence is too much you need negotiations you need a totally different uh a totally different logic. So what I'm saying again is that uh the problems today are not the problems of small is beautiful local democracy and so on. I mean uh you in Switzerland and I love you you are the leading proof. The result of your direct democracy is that I think you were the last place in Europe where women got to vote. So what I'm trying to say is this let me okay let me put it in another provocative way. Would you really like to live in some shitty authentic democratic society where every afternoon you had these meetings how we handle children how we distribute water or what. No I would like to live in a society where I can dedicate my life more or less to do what I like to do listen to classical music, read books, write books and in a kind of in an invisible background state mechanisms function or other social mechanisms whatever but you know it it is there healthcare is there, water is there. Environmental ecological environmental control is there and so on and so on. I would much and I think this is the problem today. This is why when a journalist recently asked me what kind of society would be your ideal type my answer was instant bureaucratic socialism. We need to rehabilitate it because the the read Stalin closely the problem of Stalinism was precisely that democracy was too politicized and never even functioned there. It's a totally wrong designation Stalinism bureaucratic socialism. Their problem was precisely that bureaucracy didn't properly function that's why things never worked that's why they had to invest in paranoia scenarios traitors and so on. So uh and also at a different level isn't it that all our problems that we have today you cannot solve them at this micro-level ecology. I think this is the worst ideology today when they personalize responsibility like don't just criticize did you recycle all Coca-Cola the cans did you put all your paper this is for me everyday ideology at its purest. On the one hand it makes you feel easy and blurs the true questions my god the solution is not is not is not uh recycling the cans the solution is to more basically change our the way our industry works and so on and so on. But the trick with this personal responsibility ecology is that it makes you personally responsible so that instead of criticizing society you worry oh my god did you do enough did I do enough to save the Mother Earth and so on. At the same time it's easy to satisfy you can say oh all the cans are there newspapers are there so I can go on consuming I did my duty and so on you know. So what I'm saying is that what is needed today more and more are precisely large scale actions which are even transnational. My good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy an excellent French theorist of catastrophe you should maybe invite him here he's a genius. He will he will yeah perfect you have my because of this your penalty is lowered to two years no longer five years of Gulag yeah yeah. He really he really is a genius he told me just imagine this he was in Fukushima as part of some European delegation sorry in Japan two days after Fukushima. And he learned a terrible story there that for one day a couple of hours less the Japanese government seriously thought they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area. How where to do it okay the rational international socialist solution would have been ask Putin, Putin, Russia to give them part of Eastern Siberia but they they cannot do it without war and so on. So you know what I mean migrant migrants are not just migrants here in Europe we will be more and more confronted large scale catastrophes desert growing global warming and so on and we desperately need even he is now becoming half communist I am just reading his last book Was geschah im Jahrhundert of Sloterdijk where he also emphasized it becomes a matter of survival transnational regulations actions and incidentally this is the only way in which I am a communist. No Leninist party don't be afraid and so on or ha ha and so easy no Leninist parties after just we get rid of uh traitors like that no. What I have to say seriously is that that's the big question today in ecology we don't need recycling we need mega actions we are confronted incredible threats. Bio-genetics it's the same are you aware what is already happening then in economy not only finances but intellectual property is the death knoll of of of of of capitalism I claim isn't it clear how more and more informations, data, movies like I don't know when was the last time in cinema a couple of years ago. Now when you mention cinema to me you know if you give me a primitive test my association is Kickass Pirate Bay you know where I get all the so what I'm saying is that I don't think that the market will be able capitalist market to integrate so-called intellectual property. Then there is the paradox of migration and so on. Here again I as a leftist follow uh Sloterdijk who in his book on global capitalism used a wonderful metaphor he said global is not just all-encompassing global is also the globe like cupola. Some are in others are out percent of us are in others are out. And the problem of migrants is precisely that those out want in if we leave this process to be played in a chaotic way we are finished. So again how to do this here I think European legacy matters why because as Sloterdijk my god quoted him. We will have to make this crucial step of freeing ourselves from our particular ethnic religious whatever identity. We have to do in our daily life what already Descartes did you know the most beautiful part of Descartes for me I think it's at the beginning of Discours de la méthode where he says when I was young when I met foreign people they appeared to me stupid idiotic. But then I thought and I came to the idea but what if we also appear in the same way idiotic to them. This insight about the contingency of our own identity I'm not saying you should abandon it. I'm just saying what that the Cartesian subject is precisely this empty uprooted subject and there is no feminism there are no human rights and so on without it. I will give you an example do you also have these debates now here uh these crazy American debates transsexual toilets should they be divided or not. I have some doubts about that. But basically they are right transgenderists that our even sexual identity is not a direct fact grounded in biology it's social construct up to a point. What does this mean. This means that we are Cartesian subject. You know the Cartesian subject is not a substance it is a void an empty point and all this this idea of a rootless contingency of our identity. And my ultra example here with this I will conclude and I can maybe hopefully shock you is Malcolm X. Okay if you saw the film Denzel Washington in the film. You know what was the genius of Malcolm X you know the black leader who was shot by Muslims there. What does it mean Malcolm X. You know no it means X means we were deprived of our roots through slavery we were torn out of our particular cultural identity but here Malcolm X got a stroke of a genius how to put it he came to this brilliant Hegelian insight but what if this is not just a catastrophe. His message was let's forget about that stupid stuff let's go back and uh search for our roots we can leave this to Hollywood kitsch bestseller you know that TV series Roots Alex Haley and so on. His insight was that this X which means brutal uprooting is at the same time a unique open opportunity to start from zero to build a new identity. In other words Malcolm X is a Cartesian cogito in politics. And this is now I'm coming back to Eurocentrism why for it. I am not Eurocentric I'm Eurocentric precisely because I think the very core of European identity is to accept this abstract X. Women's rights are based on it. We have old-fashioned women's rights which I think are very dangerous which are these substantial women's rights you know like oh there is male nature aggressive but there is woman's nature more dialogic and so on and we need to supplement male principle with woman's principle I think this is a catastrophe and my good friend Judith Butler knows it she's fantastic she is like Goebbels in a good sense she's fantastic sorry i just mentioned something you know what I'm saying is that feminism human rights human rights are precisely the rights of such an empty empty individual. That's the great Western notion that we stupid single individuals we participate at universality with no mediation in particularity. That's for me the big lesson of Christianity for example what is Holy Spirit. It's when Christ says you know if you don't hate your mother your father you are not my follower what does it mean here. Not the stupidity that you really have to I claim that father mother stand for the hierarchic social family network. The crazy wager of Holy Spirit what Christians call Holy Spirit is an egalitarian non-hierarchic community is possible. It's not as in Buddhism there in Nirvana we are not the same. No no we can do it here and I think authentic democracy is precisely this the moment of vote is like a Nirvana moment of our societies. You know you are just an abstract number when you vote that's one of the greatest achievement I think. So what I'm saying is that today critique of Eurocentrism makes me suspicious why because I think that capitalism today globally is moving in a dangerous direction. Traditionally let's face it capitalism did usually give birth to a demand for democracy no like you had years years was the usual age of dictatorship Chile, South Korea and so on but then when the thing started to function you got democracy. I doubt if this still is going on like many of my friends are waiting for the new Tiananmen in China I doubt it. I claim that a new type of capitalism is emerging which functions much better with so-called Asian values which have nothing to do with Asian values but simply with authoritarian political structure. Look at Turkey Erdoğan, look at India Modi these are beautiful paradoxes. In economy total neo-liberals, in politics harsh religious or whatever nationalist, China Confucian and so on. And I think that the reason that critique of Eurocentrism is so popular has nothing to do with Europe but is simply an in- that's why you are not so subversive if you didn't you notice this if you criticize Eurocentrism today oh it's met with pleasure in most of the world. It's for me a subtle legitimization of new non-democratic capitalism. And that's why I claim that we should that again European legacy is of course divided there are horrors in it and so on but there is a certain unique idea this of of contingency of our roots abstract universality direct access of individuals to universality. It's not this corporate structure where you know that's the organic pre-modern structure where you as an individual participate in universal society only through your particular role like as a member of a of a of a of a of a certain social group as a mother whatever. No the modern European idea is you are immediately universal. And that's something unique in what sense unique unique in the sense that it also implies ultimately the self-aufhebung of Europe. The most triumphant proof for me and with this I do conclude if you are still not in Nirvana believe me no sorry is uh look French Revolution all those human rights blah blah blah. It's so simple to say I know the Marxist criticism they were false they were in a hidden way twisted so that human rights really privileged white men of property and so on. I totally agree but precisely of their universal form things started to move immediately first Mary Wollstonecraft women we also want. Then the biggest event of the last years maybe for me. Haiti slave revolution they want black black slaves said we also want that's the magic of Haiti you know Toussaint Louverture revolution. This was the first black slave rebellion where they didn't want to go back to some tribal blah blah talking with mountains and all that that I mentioned. No they said we wanted to be the same as French democratic republic and so on and so on. And then horrors happened but mostly because of how they were treated by ex-colonial powers it was a nightmare and so on but and then all the workers movement is based on this like if there is fraternity equality why also not in the economic field. You see this is a nice example of how something can begin as a limited twisted ideological notion but it can be misappropriated, it can be universalized. For me the proper dialectical movement is not you begin with an authentic moment which then gets degenerated. But you begin with a lie with something that was obviously ideology and then you can turn it around. If you know history of Mexico you know Mary Virgin of Guadalupe, the black mother whatever. This till that moment Christianity was colonial. At that moment for the first time the exploited Mexicans tried to re-appropriate Christianity as a way to express their own demand. So again I think that precisely for the welfare of all the people equality around the world you have to go through here I remain a Marxist to this nihilistic moment of capital. Marx always emphasized it yes capital horror blah but the only path to universal freedom goes through this capitalist dissolution of particular links. Which is why I totally disagree with those who think that capitalism is global and to resist it we need local traditions. No local traditions fit perfectly global capital capitalism is ultra multiculturalist. We need universal modernity more than ever which is why incidentally I disagree with those who think in Europe now I give a hint to finish to Brexit no how there is a fashionable in the left now to say since capitalism is global we can fight it through stronger nation state like why Marine Le Pen should be led to exploit nationalism let us counteract it with leftist nationalism. I think this is a catastrophe. I think to propose a formula that I used in an article for The Guardian I think that socialist nationalism is not a way to fight the threat of national socialism. It's more important than ever today in the era where capitalism is global where threats are global and so on to cling to the European legacy of universality. I was a little bit longer but ha ha what could you have done you had to suffer it. Thank you very much. Okay the Stalinist stage gesture I also join myself thank you very much for having me. Thank you very much Slavoj for this absolutely brilliant conference of true. When you begin like this I see your already I know I know yeah something I like I know I beware of of of almost like-narian dimensions. Uh but are we friends do you like Wagner? Absolutely and you too I know you think Wagner. So uh there is a remark of the famous French critic and writer Sainte-Beuve in the 19th century entry in his diary if everybody would know what the others think about him and vice versa the world would be empty because everybody would have killed everybody which confirms one of your theories. Now there is I would say maybe two to three minutes of let's be liberal three and a half three and a half minutes in Switzerland for uh questions and then you know uh I I hesitated finally with myself if I really should pay your bill tonight but you earned it and I will do it but the necessity is that we get to this meal and a little warm meal in Switzerland in Zurich so we are a little bit honest but you know what why I like Swiss food seriously as a leftist because what you are selling as expensive food is really poor people's meals repackaged like in raclette I think probably originally you know you have some old dry cheese you bake it and you repackage it and sell and sell it as the most expensive stuff bravo bravo. We we we we won't have raclette tonight. Uh so who would like to put a question? Is so and then up there. The shorter the question the longer the answer. I try to be short. It’s difficult to be short after such a brilliant talk but I have a very personal question. Please. It has to do with the fact that the role of the philosopher in a certain time changes. Now what is in your case now today we could see you as a histrionic actor on one side on the other side we could see you also in a way because in your books this comes out maybe more than tonight that you could be even a monkish philosopher monk who thinks about very profoundly going into the details. My question is why are you um so enthusiastic about promoting thinking in a different way about what is today important what has been the many questions. My role is um my question is what how you see your role as role versus enthusiasm meditation going into and the other fields of life? I show your point yes. No first I must tell you that you know like I'm not just doing jokes like this. The last big book that I wrote is Less Than Nothing on Hegel which is over pages no. Yeah and I mean my heart is there. The reason I'm doing all this stuff is a very simple one it's so primitive and naive. I am really worried about as a citizen about what is going on today. I think the situation is extremely dangerous. I think maybe we are even approaching a new World War. I think the situation is not so much as some people say with all this neo-fascist is it fascism it's more complex uh rise of anti-immigrant racism some people say oh we are in the late 30s again. Maybe I'm more of a pessimist maybe we are in the decade before First World War where they were all preparing for war but it was this terrifying psychological mechanism for it we have a name in psychoanalysis uh fetischistische Verleugnung disavowal. No the French formula is Je sais bien, mais quand même. We know that there can be war we all the time talk about it look at the media Russia intercepts an American fighter, NATO sends troops too. But why are we so relaxed because it's Je sais bien, mais quand même. We know it but we don't really believe it that it can happen. And this mechanism is basic today. It's the same with ecology. All the stories global warming but then you know you go out my god it's beautiful sun. Okay not the last weeks it was too much. It's beautiful sun and so on can all this disappear it cannot. And that's what worries me we have a typical pre-World War situation. The role of uh Bosnia Serbia where it exploded is played obviously by the Middle East. Uh Germany at that point is Russia today okay it's more complex with China. And again we are all preparing for war but somehow we don't really believe that it will happen which is why it can seriously happen. And I'm here so again uh sorry I'm finish. My point is I don't have here easy answers. That would be my definition of what I sometimes try to be philosopher as the public person. I have to confuse people to if anything to change the way we raise questions. Because ideology today is not to ask wrong questions but to confront the right problems in the wrong way. For example ecology it's a serious problem but the way we approach it for example either in this technocratic way don't worry science will find new answers or in this New Age way even worse you know we are sinners Mother Earth uh we should reestablish balance. What Mother Earth Mother Earth is the greatest bitch there ever was. Just think about oil. Can you imagine what tremendous ecological catastrophes had to happen on our earth so that we have oil reserves and so on. So all another problem racism. It's typical how when we deal with racism in and so on we automatically translate it either in the problem of tolerance or in the problem of harassment. I think for example harassment is a term that I don't want to use no. There is serious harassment women are harassed and so on. But quite often when people talk about harassment it's really a form a form of intolerance. It means don't come too close to me. It means remain at the proper distance. So what I'm saying is that you see this is the duty of a philosopher. I don't know what we should do. I know that we should stop dreaming in 20th century categories of state socialism, welfare state and so on. I don't know how to fight racism. I do know that all this focus on tolerance is totally wrong. Look at the really big figures like Martin Luther King. He never mentions tolerance. For him it would have been an obscenity to put black struggle in the terms of what white people should tolerate us more or whatever. So it's as simple as that. I have to bring people insofar as it's possible just to you know to shift the perspective to see the problem in a new way. That's modestly what I can do. That's absolutely important to do and you mentioned the late 19th century in France and also Stefan Zweig here was Christopher Clark also yeah yeah it's this yeah yeah. He was here too by the way and we are still learning from you and from him and maybe we will be better prepared in the future. The young gentleman has a question. Yeah. What I perceive is that there is another ideology which you mention at the end of your last book, coming a new paradigm which is the technological sorry which book this Against the Double Blackmail or Der neue Klassenkampf? This one the lady will show. Yeah yeah yeah
here and I couldn't I cannot resist to react with this applause with an old observation of mine. You know maybe you know the joke I'm sorry. You know that if you watch old documentaries on Stalin, Hitler and so on, you may have noticed one big difference. Uh when Hitler or another fascist leader is applauded, he just stands up and recognizes himself as the addressee. When Stalin or a communist leader is applauded, he stands up and joins the applause. I think this is in the shortest way the difference because the position between Stalinism and Nazism. Because the position is different. In Nazism you have Führer master Herrschaft. In Stalinism you have the same but in a different form. The position of Stalin is I am like you, I'm just a servant of the people. When you applaud me you really applaud the cause which I serve so I can join the applause. And I always have a problem when people applaud me what to do. Then I applaud also. Sorry I join I am on that side and I'm so sad we don't have time to go into it because especially today when this new right European wants to blur the difference between fascism and communism. At defining to avoid a misunderstanding in any way a Stalinist communism. But I definitely don't agree with that logic which then follows that communism fascism was really a reaction to communism, so communism is guilty. But I think it's very interesting to note the difference. I think the tragedy of communism is that it was the high point of what Frankfurt Schule, Adorno, Horkheimer and so on called Dialektik der Aufklärung. Uh it was meant as a radical movement of Aufklärung, liberation and it turned into a nightmare. And here you can see all the paradoxes just to give you a simple example. Do you know that every year on Stalin's birthday in Gulag, all prisoners were uh gathered together and they had to sign a telegram to Stalin wishing him all the best and so on and so on. Now of course I'm not an idiot, this was all staged. But why this ritual? Note the difference. In Nazi Germany such a ritual would be totally meaningless. You know to gather Jews in Auschwitz to sign a telegram to Hitler and so on. Or even the most horrible aspect of one of of Stalinism, the show trials. Why these trials which are structured in a very strange way. Namely the victim is they use all these dirty words [unintelligible] no Bukharin and so on, they are a scum, a piece of shit, insects and so on. But at the same time they are treated as universal subject who have access to historical reason from where they can see their role. For example it's tragic to read of course it was all scripted. How I know the minutes of the process in Prague against Rudolf Slánský, a leader. He is asked how did you become the enemy of the people. And he answers well already when I was a small kid my parents taught me to hate the working class and so on. But the madness is as if from outside he can tell the truth about himself. Of course it's all fake. But the position is interesting. If you compare this with uh Nazism it simply is not part of the Nazi universe to organize a big trial where Jews would have confessed that there is a Jewish plot against Germany. And here although maybe at the level of suffering massive suffering total paranoia Stalinism was worse, I think that I mean it's a horrible choice I don't want to do it but I would say just for a tiny tiny little bit I would prefer Stalin. You know because beneath the mask of these horrible show trials in a totally perverted way you at least I repeat it was a comedy tragicomedy totally perverted way you were still treated as the free subject. There was a trial you were guilty found guilty. You don't need this in Nazism. If you are a Jew I don't have to prove anything I only have to prove that you are a Jew. And you know this extreme Objektivierung how should I put it is specific is specific of Nazism and so on. I would love to talk about these things you know why because they concern don't laugh at me please. I it always intrigued me why most of the good films about concentration camps are comedies. And I think there is a deep necessity in it. Don't be afraid I am not a crazy guy who will now make fun of Auschwitz. But I am trying to say to you a very simple point. When things are really terrifying you cannot anymore do the tragedy. Because in a tragedy a minimal how should I call it decency of the victim is still operative. Tragedy is you condemn me I stand up kill me but I will not surrender and all this. You cannot play these games in Auschwitz. Which is why when I reread recently the great book on Auschwitz Primo Levi If This is a Man Se questo un uomo I was struck to what extent many things there are in a way comical. You know when Levi describes the process of selection like once a two months naked prisoners had just to run in front of a of an SS doctor and he just looks at you for a split second and puts you into one of the two columns gas chamber or you still survive. This ritual is comical you know prisoners exchange tips how to appear more healthy you pinch your lips and so on. But you see my point it's not a comedy where you laugh. It's a comedy where things are so horrible that you feel that tragedy is a fake. That's also my problem with uh I hope you all saw the film but I'm opposed to it. The best known uh Auschwitz comedy La vita bella Life is Beautiful. It's the ending it's too pathetic. Let me let's make a mental experiment. I am obsessed by an idea of how to make La vita bella a truly dark film. You know how. You know the story I will not repeat it father and son in Auschwitz in order to make Auschwitz for the son more bearable father invents a story. That it is just a big competition we can leave at any moment we want but but uh if we stay here we will get a big prize at the end whatever. Wouldn't it be a much darker film if in the very last scene when they are taking the father Germans just before collapse to be shot, they would have exchanged glances father and son and son would have made it clear somehow to the father that he never believed his story. That he just pretended to believe the story that he knew what was the real situation but in the same way that father told the story to the son, son pretended to believe the story because he knew that in this way his father would be much calmer because the idea of the father is to protect the son from the horror. That would have been a truly bad ending. Why am I mentioning this because today people say ideology ideologie is over. We live in post-ideological era and so on and so on nobody believes in it. But here my psychoanalytic education comes in. Uh I mean theoretical I mean uh when people ask me why am I not an analyst my answer is look at me nervous talking can you imagine me listening in peace for more than one minute to my patient or whatever. But seriously this very interesting category of if I may use this Lacanian term subject supposed to believe. Like today we don't believe but nonetheless and my Austrian friend Robert Pfaller maybe was here developed a nice theory on it how there are beliefs which exist objectively as a social fact without anyone believing in them. And that's I think if you ask me how ideology ideology functions today. We are all cynics nobody believes in religion. All my friends I ask a Jew you respect kosher food do you really believe in it all are saying to me no I am not crazy this just part of my cultural tradition and so on and so on. Christians I asked usually friends to provoke them okay it's Santa Claus whatever uh why not you give a present to your son. Uh and they say of course I don't believe in it my god I buy the present. But I claim then when you ask the son or the daughter do you really believe in Santa Claus they will tell you no I just pretend to believe not to disappoint my parents and so on. So you see nobody believes but belief functions as an and I claim I'm sorry if I repeat this story I use it in a couple of my books that the biggest scientist of the 20th century I seriously suspect that he's maybe one step above Einstein Niels Bohr. He provided in one of his anecdotes I read this in a biography of Niels Bohr he provided a perfect formula for this. I'm sorry if you know the story I will be brief. The story is that once uh his friend visited him at the country house near Copenhagen and saw horse-shoe above the entrance door. You know that horse-shoe is I don't know how it is with you you Swiss have your own raclette whatever crazy you are uh and you appear to be a totally mysterious country. You have all those tunnels where millions of people can hide and so on so but but uh uh so again uh this ritual the idea is that a horse-shoe prevents evil spirits or whatever to enter the house. So now comes the nice story. A scientist visited uh Niels Bohr there and asked him but you are a scientist why do you have this there do you believe in it. Niels Bohr answers look I am not an idiot I am a scientist of course I don't believe in it. Then the friend insists but if you don't believe in it why do you have it there. You know Niels Bohr's answer I don't believe in it but I have it there because I was told that it works also if you don't believe in it. Is this not ideology heute today. We don't believe in democracy in justice and so on but we act on it. And I am ready to go even a step further here and this is my old Yugoslav communist experience because this was totally true for Yugoslavia. I'm not saying an ideology functions even if you even if you don't believe in it. I'm ready to be more radical and to say the only way for it to function is by not believing in it. That if you take the ruling ideology too seriously you become a dissident you and this is my personal experience. I had in mid-70s when I was young student a good friend who worked at the Central Committee of Communist Party in Slovenia in some ideological division. He lost his job you know why because he sincerely believed in Yugoslav self-management socialism and the top nomenklatura bureaucrats got it correctly this is dangerous. I mean if you look it like and this is what uh this is where today we have ideology in our everyday life. First we have all these beliefs which circulate around and you can prove it in a wonderful way how they can have real effects without anyone really believing in them. In Ex-Yugoslavia we have this wonderful story which even if it's not true it illustrates perfectly a certain logic that there is enough of toilet paper in the stores. But then a rumor starts to circulate that there is not enough toilet paper. People even know all people that this is just a rumor. But each of them reasons like this I know there is enough toilet paper in the stores but probably there are some idiots who don't believe it and they will start buying like crazy toilet paper so at the end there will really not be a toilet paper and so so that I don't run out of it it's better for me also to run there and so you see the paradox nobody believes in it you just need another one who is supposed to believe. And the effects are here. And so again uh I think that today our era is not as they say the era of total cynicism auto-belief maybe we believe even at this level maybe we even believe more than ever. Because you know it's such an enigma belief. I advise you to read it must be translated into German you find it all the time in French in English Paul Veyne the French historian who wrote a wonderful book called uh in English Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Gods. And the result is wonderful. Of course they didn't. I mean Greeks were not stupid they didn't think if you climb the Mount of Olympus you will find there I don't know uh Zeus trying to seduce Aphrodite or what. But it wasn't also a simple fake. They even if they didn't believe it literally and also not metaphorically that's the wrong way in a way they practiced their belief. And my example here would have been politeness. It's a wonderful thing I more and more maybe because I'm old I'm starting to celebrate politeness nice manners and so on. And I'm proud to do it as a leftist because you know when I was young and some of you who are also old I see here no uh I remember 60s revolution those in power were talking official language with dignity and so on. And we pseudo-revolutionaries we liked to talk dirty to uh shock those in power fuck you and so on. Now did you notice after our beloved Donald Trump and similar phenomena is those in power right-wingers who talk dirty. And I totally agree that the left should become and I am very serious here unfortunately a defender of simple human dignity politeness and so on and so on. Because what fascinates me in politeness two things. One is uh how it's and without this you cannot understand everyday ideology what I call sincere lying. Let me give you a stupid example. Let's say you yeah yeah you stand up no sorry sorry. We meet on the street we know each other but now I will be evil it's not true. Let's say we just pretend to be friends I really don't want to see you so when I see you I my inner thought is oh my god why didn't I see you five seconds earlier so that I could run to the other side. But when I see I tell you oh nice to see you how are you. I claim in normal functioning we both know that I am really lying. But it's not simply a hypocritical lie because although it's not true literally we give to each other signal that we are kind and so on and so on exactly. Yeah and these are manners. Without this let's call it sincere lie civilization falls apart absolutely. And the same I was the barbarian. In United States if you go to New York you know that there in cafeterias waiters always ask you how are you today sir. Well I was a total idiot and I took it seriously and I started to answer oh not too good I just arrived uh I have a jet lag and I noticed a moment of total panic in him. Am I crazy or what. So what I am saying is that uh uh here I am still some kind of with all the doubts that you indicated what can be Marxism today. I know I know yeah. No now we'll come that okay. I don't know what Marxism can be today but I know what would would happen to you when we Marxists took power. In Gulag you will be writing long confessions oh very horrible yes yes. You see I can tell as in Stalinist trial people consent triumphantly to your no seriously. What fascinates me now not kidding is how you know uh I want in Marxist spirit but against much of what Marx to you know what's the paradox of Marx today on one hand Marxist basic model finance capital circulating profit is true. But precisely maybe even more than in Marx's time. But at the same time we see its limit it's also totally false. In the sense you know it's an old Hegelian paradox when he says that when a certain concept is fully realized it it decayed at the same moment. So we have to radically rethink it. But let me go on uh as a Marxist I say we have to reinvent a certain Entfremdung alienation as a positive category. I think that there is a type of alienation personal political which we should assert. For example this minimal alienation in Sprachumgang in communication like hello nice to see you admitted that if I say nice to see you how are you. If you were to detect that I mean it seriously you would have full right to say wait a minute it's none of your matter how I feel and so on. Yeah so you would be yeah another question okay. This is another confession for Gulag in wait. No but let's go on seriously what fascinates me is how this minimal alienation of language that you don't really mean it as we say it's just a form. But although it's literally a lie I don't care how you feel and so on it's a sincere lie it establishes communication. And at all levels we have to become aware of it. Uh let me give you another element which is always my favorite of ideology how it functions in everyday life. A phenomenon intrigues me for a long time. So-called I've written maybe some of you know it uh abundantly about it the ultimate mystery of communication so-called empty gestures or offers which are meant to be rejected. You know like stupid example I'm sorry. We sit in a restaurant you invite me like tonight and I hope you will play this game with me and then when the bill arrives you are rich I'm poor we both know that you will pay. But I don't know how it is in your strange country but in many other countries we have to go through this ritual. I have to pretend for some time no no let me pay and then you but you know this is the beauty of communication we both know that you will pay I mean if you are really evil you can say okay if you want you pay I wouldn't consider dining tonight yeah. But what I want to say is that you see the magic of communication uh we both know it's an empty game but it serves a purpose. That's communication at its zero level. And there are many other rituals at this level for example do you know uh I don't know again how you have it in my country let's say me and my friend we both compete for a job. My friend wins. It's considered polite that he says to me listen I know you deserve it more if you want I step down you get it. We both know that he will get it but we have to go through that uh ritual. And why does this fascinate me so much because that's for me the mystery of language at everyday level. We don't just have the rules. We always have another meta-level rules about how to treat the literal rules. On the one hand we have rules of prohibition which are meant to be transgressed. Many of prohibitions especially sexual ones if you really follow them you are an idiot you are not even expected to follow them. But much more interesting is the opposite paradox where you are it's not that something you are prohibited something but expected discreetly to do it but then you are solicited to do something but it's expected that you don't do it. You know like in these examples that I listed. And I think that our permissivity today much of it and already the high genius that I mentioned at the beginning Stalin it works like that. You know what's the paradox of our modern era that uh it's not only that there are prohibitions but prohibitions themselves are prohibited. It's not only that today and here many feminists complain in a correct way it's not even if women are formally not dominated no sorry they are but it's considered it's somehow prohibited to publicly announce this domination. I always use this example I'm sorry if you say let's say it's my dream we are in Moscow I'm Stalin. I am up there you applaud and so on okay. Then there is the debate at central committee. One of you stands up and criticizes me comrade Stalin was wrong and so on okay we know what will happen. The big question next day will be who was the last one to see that guy alive no. But then ah ah ah let's say that another guy let's call it for poetic purposes Herr Meyer you know stands up and starts to shout at that guy are you crazy don't you know that we don't talk about this uh like this on Stalin we don't do this here it's prohibited. Right you would disappear even earlier. No no I'm serious you see what I mean. It wasn't simply prohibited to criticize Stalin it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition. You had to pretend that of course we can do it just ah Stalin is such a genius why to do it. And I think our permissivity often functions like that. Another story sorry to jump around but I think it's a very important lesson I always use it to illustrate the jump from traditional authority to today's permissive authority. Let's say it's Saturday or Sunday afternoon you are a small boy or girl and you your father wants you to visit the old senile stupid grandmother. An old uh authoritarian father will simply tell you this I don't care how you feel it's your duty to go to the grandmother and treat her kindly and uh behave properly. That's not a problem I claim. You feel oppressed but you can resist and so on. But then comes the monster of the permissive post-father or what who will tell you something different. He will tell you something like you are free to do whatever you want I will not force you but just remember how much your grandmother loves you. Now what's the message here. Beneath the appearance of choice the message is a much more oppressive one. The message is I don't want you only to visit grandmother I want you to visit it freely of your own choice. So you know it's this old paradox you are given a free choice on condition that you make the right choice. And I think again if you look at this texture of language all these paradoxes it's here that you find ideology today. And that's why what I write my comments some of them were even published by Spiegel I cannot understand why they uh about immigrants. My god I am not against them I just think that of course there are let's call it cultural problems because you know ideology today it's not just the big ideological floskel and so on. Ideology is something which determines your daily life. Ideology is how men and women treat each other, how you treat friends, how you debate, how you eat and so on. In my I will not repeat this for the 50th time in my stupid too popular example I'm sure most of you know it. I just make a simple look at the structure of main European toilets. You know the old German toilets they're disappearing now uh it's the like shit is out in the open there so they have this pervert rituals that after finishing defecation you inspect the shit smelling and so on. That's German toilets. French toilets are like shit a hole is in the back water shit drops directly into it. The American Anglo-Saxon are different the bowl is full of water so shit floats to it. And I spoke with many architects I mean designers and I think I read books American friend sent me two books about it and they admitted the books that all direct functional explanations fail. And then the idea came to me you know around Hegel's time there was this idea of European trinity. Three big big countries Germany, France, England each stands for a certain level of social life England is economy, France is politics, Germany is Dichtung und Denken, poetry and so on. Second thing each of them stands for a certain political stance Anglo-Saxon pragmatism, French revolution, Germany more passive. And then it came to me but that's it. The French attitude revolutionary cutoff shit must disappear quick. The Anglo-Saxon are more pragmatic let it flow there and so on. And Germans are of course metaphysics observation let's. Now as crazy as this example sounds you know that something like that maybe not quite this has to be true because my point is not just to make fun here. My point is to make it palpable to you how the most vulgar activity the most common phenomenon going to the toilet and you are deeply ideology there because it's a whole attitude towards life. You know that I am quite serious I spoke with many animal how do you call it they study animal behavior and they told me that one of the few they don't even dare distinguish that really work between humans and animals is that how to dispose of shit becomes a problem for humans. You know you cannot just do it it must disappear. So again this is one thing that fascinates me so again when I talk about immigrants and so on, I am uh always shocked how both either uh right-wing anti-populist who is our enemy and so on but the same mistake is made by this open left oh they're good people just bring them in and so on and so on. I often find this second attitude of openness of course it's more sympathetic politically we should bring them in take care of them and so on. But it's almost uh more dangerous I claim. You know why because uh first I would say uh again cultural differences are something that structures the texture of our innermost daily life and it will not work the way they do it in Germany you know they distribute those brochures two men kiss yes it's good, a man beating a woman no it's bad. Of course we should do this but you don't solve the problem in this simple way. Why what is the problem again uh my ex- my point is that and that's the big sad news that I have that social violence violence against women and so on it's not simply some kind of brutal barbarism it's clearly always a symbolic ritual behind it. And I'm here I'm not only critical of Islam but even of our civilizations and so on. For example to begin with ourselves isn't it absolutely clear that Catholic pedophilia is not simply oh there are many priests whenever there are many men there have to be some pedophiles so no wonder they are there. It's absolutely clear that in some difficult to describe way pedophilia is uh a kind of obscene other side of Catholic identity. It's absolutely clear from the way Catholic church at least till now treats it basically protecting the priests and so on and so on. And then my friends helped me to understand you remember that Köln Carnival New Year's Eve they told me but all the debates where did they really do it not blah blah but my friend my Arab friends I have many of them they told me but they don't get what happened. This is our most common ritual. For example they my Egyptian friends told me that during Tahrir Square you know the big emphatic moment oh this happened every evening all the time. It's their typical male chauvinist ritual. In the evening men gather and not rape maybe there were rapes but the typical ritual is they just squeeze harass women a little bit. It's their most common ritual and it was shocking how nobody nobody got this point. That it's not some wilderness or whatever it's a precise well established ritual. So that's the first thing to do whenever we are dealing with unacceptable behavior brutality and so on. The most the saddest thing for me is that these are not wild explosions we become like animals or whatever no they are always symbolic rituals. Even if they are I don't know how horrible in my book this Der neue Klassenkampf I give a terrifying example of uh of uh Mexico uh uh where now in some cities where there are many new factories and uh women working in them uh this uh serial rapes become uh a standard phenomenon. It's extremely brutal like uh around up to men kidnap a young girl and they first serially rape her and then they cut her slowly with scissors first they cut the breast it's pretty rough. But you know what's so horrible to see there this is not simple brutality it's a brutality which is precisely ritualized with a certain social message we men will not tolerate free women and so on and so on. So again here I follow Jacques Lacan who emphasized that what he calls [unintelligible] brutal libidinal explosions they are purely symbolic they are not our animal side they are the dark side of our human and cultural life and so on and so on. So again my point is that uh what I don't buy with all my sympathy I am help them towards refugees is that when you have a clash of cultures sorry not clash in the Huntington sense but clash in simple sense they come in contact. This is always a very difficult moment when the only way to confront it I see is not as the liberal left is doing we shouldn't talk about it because we give argument to the racists and so on but let's confront it openly let's debate it you do this we do this how to find a common way nonetheless we should not of course make certain compromises there we shouldn't allow victimization of women and so on and so on. So the first thing for me is to openly admit it as a problem because I think there is a certain paradox that you can immediately notice here. First our right wing populists are totally hypocritical in what sense. Usually in our countries didn't notice this irony they attack all the time for them is the ultimate plot uh gay rights, transgenderism, uh abortion no. But all of a sudden with immigrants they discovered gay and woman's rights you know. I mean they are absurd. In the same way there is a real problem. For example I saw a report on German TV a leftist report not some right-wing propaganda about this problem how up to girls every year escape from Muslim families and seek refuge because their family didn't tolerate that they wanted to have a German boyfriend whatever doesn't matter. But the problem is this one then the Muslim community says listen you speak about tolerance but you are really not tolerating our way of life because the way we treat girls the family authority is a fundamental constituent of our way of life. I'm just saying we should admit this as a problem. And so I just see the hypocrisy of how the same people who here if you look at a woman into her eyes for too long you're already accused of visual rape or whatever here we are hyper-sensitive but there when it comes to another culture oh it's their specific culture and so on and so on. I think that we are here confronting two errors which are symmetrical. On the one hand yes it's true uh there is a lot of European cultural imperialism if you call it like this. By this I mean many of the values norms that we impose on others as universal human rights are in reality culturally very specific. A person from Asia will easily demonstrate to you how for example our notion of human rights gives predominance to individual freedom and so on while solidarity, collective identity is much stronger in their culture and so on and so on. But you know the so this okay so what. I think that uh at the same time the opposite story is also true that quite often a reference to specific way of life is used as an excuse to tolerate brutal exploitation and so on. Like you may know now that in exact correspondence to our celebration of gay rights and so on for example in many African and Asian countries there is more and more an uh homophobic atmosphere. They are legally prohibiting homosexuality and so on and so on. And the situation is here even more tragic than you think. Because not only this now I come to the real tragedy not only this but they even experience even sincerely their homophobia and so on as their fight against colonialism. I had a misfortune in London of meeting it wasn't a pleasant meeting a guy who was an open sympathizer of Boko Haram those nice guys in the North Nigeria. He told me the story he told me listen in our daily experience the main social impact of Western global capitalism cultural influence is women no longer obey us they want to be left alone blah blah blah. This is for us the most visible face of colonialism. So consequently Boko Haram which means literally no education for women whatever it was is our way to fight capitalism. And uh I don't see that's the problem. There is no easy way out here you cannot have it both. You cannot be simply tolerant towards other cultures and so what would you do here. Would you say okay this is your culture we respect woman's rights you do whatever you want or what. But how do you do it. The only solution I see is not to look for some universal culture but its struggle. They are fighting their own struggle for freedom, corruption and so on. We have to find a common front at some level. It can be done because if we don't do it then uh we are lost. But just another remark on on ideology ideology today. That notion that I used of these objective beliefs, beliefs which function without anyone believing in them. Here I see the actuality of Marx. I'm very critical of Marx but his notion of commodity [unintelligible] commodity fetishism I develop this in many of my books is I think incredibly useful especially today. Be careful what Marx says. Marx doesn't say oh we believe in fetishism that commodities are fetish but really they are just a social product and so on. Marx says something much more interesting. He says of course in our daily experience we are like British empiricists we say what's what's money. Nothing just a piece of paper which gives you the right to part of the social product nothing mysterious but in our social practice in our social reality we treat money as a fetish and so on and so on. So the theory of Marx is that uh it's a beautiful philosophical even paradox that it's not just that we have the way things appear to us and the way things really are. In between is something that we should call objective appearance. Things appear to us in a certain way but this is not how things really appear and then we are we have how things really are. So you know when Marx says in Capital sie wissen das nicht aber sie tun es it's not this common sense stupidity people have illusory representations but they don't know what they are doing. No it's what they don't know is the illusions that they follow in what they are doing. This is why Marx repeatedly says that theoretical critique is not enough for to overcome fetishism. You may study uh critical theory as much as you want but in your daily practical life you will still act as a fetishist. If you permit me another story I'm repeating my know which I use I would say about times in my books but it's a perfect story. That joke don't laugh you know it I know. You know that stupid joke a madman thinks that he is uh corn a grain of corn and he is cured now he knows he is human. So he is left out of the psychiatric hospital but he comes running back and the doctor asks him listen what's wrong. The guy says oh I saw a chicken and I was afraid that the chicken will eat me. And the doctor tells him but you know now that you are not a piece of corn. He said I know but the chicken doesn't know. So that's how ideology works. We know but we know that commodity is an ordinary object but you know the chicken doesn't know it, the commodity doesn't know it. By this I mean we in our social practice act as if we don't know it. And at this now we come back to religion. We may know very well that God doesn't exist but how should I put it God doesn't know it no he is the chicken. In other words through different superstitious practices and so on we still act as if God doesn't exist. And again the truly difficult change is there. So uh now uh I succeeded in something totally crazy. I haven't even began okay we can lay the most modern paradox that I will give a lecture which will be a lecture without the lecture just an introduction. But uh after this introduction I nonetheless would like to make some important let's hope uh some important points. I think that okay the first thing to mention based on what I said based on what I said uh here uh let me begin yes the first point would have been uh when I plead for alienation and so on and is especially concerns all this stuff about uh uh refugees multiculturalism and so on and so on. What does it mean uh accepting alienation not as something to be overcome but as a condition of freedom. Look if I think for a long time which would have been the most stupid wisdom and wisdoms are generally very stupid that you can imagine I would say I would have chosen that deep insight which you often find in multiculturalists you know an enemy is just someone to whose story we were not ready to listen to you know like we fetishize someone into the enemy but if you really listen to him you see his side of the story and ah ah. First brutal argument ah so it's good to know Hitler was our enemy because you know we just didn't listen to him enough or whatever. No the example of Hitler shows that you know unfortunately there are real enemies and the more you listen to his story the more you are terrified. But another point that I want to make here is that uh uh I don't believe in this idea let's just understand each other open ourselves to other. How can I understand you you the perverted Swiss whatever. How can I understand you when I don't even understand myself. I think that we are all totally perplexed here and uh I think that true tolerance doesn't mean this pressure I have to understand you but it's precisely and I quote here a philosopher who is a right-winger but not stupid Peter Sloterdijk where he says the way to fight intolerance is uh logic of discretion. We you know true anti-racism is not just I try to understand you Swiss your stupid uh whatever you want uh raclette and so on but it's that I accept that I don't understand it. I'm ready to accept the distance. True tolerance is not this violent appropriation I want to understand you and so on and so on. Because what we call understanding in this case is usually just violent appropriation. What I want to prove to myself is that you are really like me. But you are not. And you know here I am absolutely defending let's call it Judeo-Christian legacy where the notion of neighbor der Nächste is not what people think. Even Levinas Emmanuel made a nice point about this where he says what in Judeo-Christian tradition means neighbor der Nächste is not the other who is like me oh now I discover we like the same movies we are the same. But it's precisely the other you know let's say you have a friend you know him very well you think you know everything then all of a sudden this guy does something maybe good mostly evil like kicks a small kid says something vulgar and then you ask yourself my god did I know this person at all. At that point he becomes a neighbor. This is the dimension of the neighbor and you know that's why love your neighbor as yourself is something much more radical. It's not we are all brothers it's no neighbors are real neighbors and the true art is to love them. That's why I'm for true tolerance of refugees. Not this humanitarian no humanitarian humanitarian is good but human emotion bullshit they are really like us deeply. No they are not like us. Now you love them. If not then you are a racist because there is something so violent when I read in news how oh but some refugees they are such nice person Syrians they are so popular in our media educated Syrian refugees you know they are always used as but they are like us. Yeah with the implication what about the others you know there is a clear class dimension here. Uh Syrian educated refugees are the good refugees you know so that silently you get dismissed the others. The problem is we don't need to in this pathetic sense sympathize with refugees we have to do something to really help them. We have to stop the war there we have to I don't know we have to stop economically exploiting the third world. It's clear how we Europeans are responsible for it. You know through I don't know like African countries where there are refugees come from it's always some Western economic interest take the play take the case of Congo my god. It's one of the wealthiest countries as to its minerals and it's the worst hell on earth. Why because the way Congo is parceled with dominated by local warlords all of them directly linked to foreign companies and so on and so on. No ISIS without American occupation of Iraq and so on. And it's clear what is happening now in ISIS. I doubt more and more if ISIS even exists. I think ISIS is a kind of a phantom like entity invented as a screen through which big powers are playing their games. Shiites against Sunnis, Russians against Europe, Turks against Iran and so on. I mean the problem is not the poor ISIS the problem is all the antagonisms which are focused in Islamic state. Frankly if these foreign interventions and in- interest were to disappear ISIS would be over would be over in a matter of weeks and so on and so on. So again my main point is that uh I think that let me imagine a true non-racist tolerant way of living. It's not I want to understand you blah blah blah. I would like to live in a big building and I have here a Muslim family, a Jewish family, an African family, Latino-American family whatever you want and we politely ignore each other. And ah I'm enthusiastic when miracles happen. With some of them there can be a wonderful contact but it's as a rule exception and it will stay like this. And I think that's that's the true that's the true tolerance. And it's the same as with love. Love is not universal love is something extremely brutal. And that's why I love it of course love. What do I mean by this. When somebody tells you oh I love you all I always think as you are old enough you must remember him the great democratic German politician Erich Honecker of course. You remember when he was attacked in DDR Nationalkammer what he said in despair Aber ich liebe euch alle. That's the truth of it. Love is not this love is what I'm alone I have a pleasant life maybe some one night stands I drink I meet friends then I walk along the street I slip down a woman helps me to stand up and of course it's the love of my life totally contingent encounter. And this is a catastrophe usually. Before my life was pleasant evening with friends now I am totally obsessed everything is focused on that. That's love. Love is a properly metaphysical event. Love means that I elevate some particular contingent object into the absolute. And uh and uh so uh I think that love authentic love is by definition passionate and exclusive. It's not I love you all it's I love okay I don't want to be a harassment I love okay I love you or whoever there you know and I ignore all others. That's one thing I want to emphasize. Now since I'm spending my time I will nonetheless try to bring it to conclusion by making uh some other uh interesting I claim points. Why Eurocentrism here let me be clear. By Eurocentrism I don't mean my god I'm a communist I don't mean this stupidity of European values or whatever I mean something much more precise. I claim that in spite of all the horrors that Europe did and it did its own more than fair share of horror and it goes even now I will tell you a beautiful example from these days on the news and combined with another data years ago. Uh you know now after this tragic of course shooting in Orlando, Florida they're again asking but it's horrible and so on and it is horrible. Okay imagine some Muslim leader saying we are fighting Western decadence and although we know this is not nice what we did there the price is worth paying. There have to be innocents who die. If some Muslim leader were to say this admit it we would have exploded barbarism and so on. Okay but haha you know I have a quote here I don't want to bore you with it now you know what uh a couple of years ago Madeleine Albright at that point Secretary of State Foreign Minister said. You can check it go to YouTube you find it everywhere. She was asked by a journalist this question. Uh are you aware that according to the data in all this military operation Afghanistan, Iraq around half a million children died. Was it worth the price. She answered it's a tough question but yes it was worth the price. You see that's we who are talking we Western civilization. So my reaction to her when she Madeleine Albright made a very dirty trick for Hillary Clinton supporting her in some electoral talk she said probably God made a special place in hell for women who don't vote for women. This she meant for women who vote for Bernie Sanders no. Well I respectfully disagree for her. I think if God made a special place in hell it was more for women and men who think half a million children to die is an acceptable price and so on. So yes we Europe we have our our how should I call it our good portion of things. But nonetheless I ask you simply a question let's criticize to the end I am ready to do it the destructive side of European values colonialism horror and so on and so on. First the first thing that I find suspicious here is uh a hidden arrogance which is in it. You know this old theory of White Man's Burden it's the duty of us white men to rule others. Now with some politically correct leftists you find the opposite version of White Man's Burden which is whenever something horrible happens in the world it must be our fault it's a consequence of colonialism. Like I remember when there was the the Rwanda slaughter Hutu Tutsi oh it must be our and so on. But are we aware you know who gave me this idea my Arab and black friends. They said they told me we experience this as extremely oppressive. You pretend to defend us yeah yeah yeah we are guilty for all but what you are really saying is that we are pure passive victims that we are not agents at all. I claim we should treat also blacks Arabs and so on as agents. Arabs are oppressed they were screwed by exploitation oil in many cases is a curse for them. But what they are doing are certain political projects we should treat them with respect as responsible adults. You know where I got this lesson a wonderful adventure. I was in Missoula Montana David Lynch was born there I went to check the house and I met there some they call themselves today Native American Indians. All my Indian friends prefer the term Indian and they gave me a wonderful reason they say Native American what's this we are native nature you are culture or what. They told me I much prefer to be called Indian because in this case at least my name is a monument to the stupidity of you white people who thought you are in India or whatever. And they are so sensitive against this patronizing attitude. They start shooting if you tell them you know we Indians if somebody tells them you know we white people we just exploit nature technologically while you Indian have a holistic attitude towards nature like we ruin a nation sorry a mountain for gold. You do the same but before you do it you ask the mountain the ghost of the mountain for permission and so on. So this is one of my most beloved short books a Native American Indian uh student wrote a text where he demonstrates that Indians killed more buffaloes and ruined more forests than white men. And he told me the lesson is precisely please don't patronize us in this dirty world. His point is allow us the dignity to be evil that we can also be evil. And they are so they are so happy all the friends that I know there have this attitude. And the story that I always repeat I love it if you are here ladies or girls let's say you have two types of a boyfriend. One boyfriend let's say is an old male chauvinist he tells you listen maybe in some communist future things would be different but today you women have to do home I mean homework you have to wash my socks clean the house blah blah. If you have this type of a boyfriend stay with him you may re-educate him. But let's say you have a holistic boyfriend who tells you you know you woman have a much more women you have a much more holistic attitude towards nature we men are just mechanical manipulating nature you have a much more authentic relationship run away from him as fast as you can. This is the nastiest form of racism this how should I put it false authentication of the other. Why what the fuck why should the other be authentic. They okay they are not authentic with pleasure. You know where I got the nicest experience of this I was in New Zealand and I met there some local artists who first before we got to know each other seriously were bullshitting me with this you know again the same bullshit before we paint we ask the spirit of the river to inspire and all that. Then when we become friends they told me the truth their plan is to occupy everybody's place to conquer the American market. So they had two agencies one in LA one in New York who told them kept them in touch what is the latest fashion. And okay they still ask the mountain for permission but you know the answer of the mountain was always in the same tone as the message from America you know like like when they got the message that now and they told me that some years ago under the influence of Russian invasion of Russian artists very popular to mix sacred topics saints churches whatever rituals with sex like religious ruins with some naked women at work. The the mountain in Finland was telling them to do this and so on and I admire them. I think you know all the I mean when people uh pretend admiration for you know like this total British colonialist bullshit like we may be all colonial British managers in India hundred years ago had the same story. The more they were brutal towards ordinary Indians the more they wrote things like my god we are so vulgar in the West we care only for power technology an ordinary poor Indian farmer has more spirituality than all of us. That's the worst of racism I claim. Allow the other non-authenticity allow him to be happily alienated whatever. Now I come to politics and then I finish with you. Uh that's why uh you know uh we now that 20th century is over by this I mean the main models for the left are passé which is why it's not enough just to complain oh Caracas Americans uh special war against us. It's an immanent problem. Did you notice how uh we have one thing which worries me very much even any protest. I was deeply shocked and I was there I went there as a tourist revolutionary tourism you go to look at the you remember I think it's already ten years ago or when cars were burning in the suburbs of Paris you remember thousands of but you know what was so shocking. First the authorities thought it's Islam then they learned but the first thing they burned were their own cultural centers and so on. It was a kind of a pure outburst of rage without any not even clear positive project but even without any message. It was just what in linguistics we call okay Roman Jakobson introduced the term phatic communication you know just hi I'm here just to establish the link. And we have more and more of that on the im- okay even today we are in an epoch of rage which is open and dangerous one like rage gives us Bernie Sanders but also Donald Trump and so on. On the opposite end with Syriza and so on and I know I speak from almost inner experience my god Varoufakis is my friend I know Tsipras. And I consider this an authentic tragedy and at the same time moment of truth. If there is a metaphor for the fate of today's left it's remember almost a year ago on the first day Syriza won referendum no to austerity one day later they totally surrender. And I don't blame them I don't think they had other way out. I totally distrust I know them those left platform who said no we should have done Grexit print our own money and so on and so on it would not have worked. So my point is this one uh that not only is the 20th century over in the sense that the standard old leftist big 20th century model Stalinist state socialism and uh Western social democratic welfare state that they are disappearing. And with a very interesting twist once I met Fukuyama and he laughed so much I told him you know in principle you were right with one exception okay capitalism wins but today ex-communists where they are still in power China, Vietnam seem to be the best managers of capitalism no so you should change your prediction like capitalism with communists in power is the most efficient capitalist system today. So what I'm saying is that that's over. But a third dream now I will provoke you but not dirty story decently which I distrust you know leftists who are ready to concede this still stick to the dream of direct non-representative democracy like small transparent communities we uh where we decide our life we debate everything against political representation state alienation and so on and so on. I am I think this is the last myth to be dropped I totally oppose to this. It's wonderful when you have these authentic small communities but I have two problems. First in today's complex society you know that for such a self-transparent community to function a lot of thing has to work in the background as an invisible machine like okay we freely distribute electricity but eh eh the state has to produce electricity the state you need money in you need electricity you need water you need health care. You know what I'm trying to say is that today the big challenge of the left is not and I'm getting so tired of that these big enthusiastic moments oh Tahrir Square oh Gezi Square whatever Syntagma in Greece million people there we are all enthusiastic. I am obsessed with the day after. The true test today is and even Trotsky once wrote a wonderful point about this. The measure of the revolution is not oh we were all there but what happens the day after not literally but when things return to normal how do you feel the change at this level. This is why I hope you saw the movie which I don't like too much although some stupid leftists like it V for Vendetta. You know how the movie ends the Guy Fawkes figure mask at the end people win they enter the parliament people have won the end of the film. I would send my mother into slavery to see a film with the title V for Vendetta part But what do they do then how do they reorganize it and so on and so on. We are in a we are in a problem here. The problem is the problem of the left. Now you will tell me but why why am I bullshitting if I see this fiasco of the left why don't we simply as they say in English call it a day and say the game is over forget about big changes let's play the modest welfare state game as much as we can. Eh here comes my Marxist pessimism. I see I cannot go into it now in detail of course I see so many antagonisms in today's society that I think in the long term the type of global capitalism that we have today and even democracy the way we have today will not be able to solve it. Democracy yeah let me go at it directly. I was involved in some polemics in Germany Süddeutsche Zeitung about migrants and so on and a right-winger attacked me pretty simply this is a common argument in Germany but it's a strong argument either you leftists pretend to be for democracy but then you should criticize you know the argument Angela Merkel she called one million people more to come to Germany. Where is her democratic legitimization it's clear that if there were to be a referendum majority would have been against it. So what do you do here. Frankly I am I think she was right and what has to say screw democracy this ethically this has to be done. But are you ready to do this. It was the same with when there were negotiations with Greece. Varoufakis is too much in an illusion he thinks democratize Europe but I had contact with some politicians who told me the problem was not secret negotiations in Brussels but the opposite one like I spoke with a Slovene negotiator who told me whenever we had to make public statement we had to be much more anti-Greek because people around Europe were against helping Greece mostly like why should the lazy Greeks get the money and so on and so on. In other words democracy is not a simple solution the way we have it. For democracy to work authentically many other things have to change. Or to give you another example I read recently a book of some Jewish American sociologist uh uh forgot his name it will come to me sorry uh Yuval Harari something like this who wrote a book I got a copy in advance Homo Deus where he says the problem with democracy is that it only works precisely insofar as democracy means confronting differences this it only works if there is already a certain shared field of practices values and so on and so on. Democracy works if we agree on basic things and then we make choices. Which is why for example when you have a real problems like Middle East you cannot say let's organize big elections. Already in Germany you have a problem okay let's decide the fate of migrants democratically. Who will vote. Probably some leftists will demand and I tend to agree with them in some way uh that migrants who are there already even if their status is not yet legalized they should also vote. Then you can say but why not go further all those who are waiting to come to Europe on on the shores of Libya, Syria should also vote and so on and so on. You cannot do this. At a certain point where the divergence is too much you need negotiations you need a totally different uh a totally different logic. So what I'm saying again is that uh the problems today are not the problems of small is beautiful local democracy and so on. I mean uh you in Switzerland and I love you you are the leading proof. The result of your direct democracy is that I think you were the last place in Europe where women got to vote. So what I'm trying to say is this let me okay let me put it in another provocative way. Would you really like to live in some shitty authentic democratic society where every afternoon you had these meetings how we handle children how we distribute water or what. No I would like to live in a society where I can dedicate my life more or less to do what I like to do listen to classical music, read books, write books and in a kind of in an invisible background state mechanisms function or other social mechanisms whatever but you know it it is there healthcare is there, water is there. Environmental ecological environmental control is there and so on and so on. I would much and I think this is the problem today. This is why when a journalist recently asked me what kind of society would be your ideal type my answer was instant bureaucratic socialism. We need to rehabilitate it because the the read Stalin closely the problem of Stalinism was precisely that democracy was too politicized and never even functioned there. It's a totally wrong designation Stalinism bureaucratic socialism. Their problem was precisely that bureaucracy didn't properly function that's why things never worked that's why they had to invest in paranoia scenarios traitors and so on. So uh and also at a different level isn't it that all our problems that we have today you cannot solve them at this micro-level ecology. I think this is the worst ideology today when they personalize responsibility like don't just criticize did you recycle all Coca-Cola the cans did you put all your paper this is for me everyday ideology at its purest. On the one hand it makes you feel easy and blurs the true questions my god the solution is not is not is not uh recycling the cans the solution is to more basically change our the way our industry works and so on and so on. But the trick with this personal responsibility ecology is that it makes you personally responsible so that instead of criticizing society you worry oh my god did you do enough did I do enough to save the Mother Earth and so on. At the same time it's easy to satisfy you can say oh all the cans are there newspapers are there so I can go on consuming I did my duty and so on you know. So what I'm saying is that what is needed today more and more are precisely large scale actions which are even transnational. My good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy an excellent French theorist of catastrophe you should maybe invite him here he's a genius. He will he will yeah perfect you have my because of this your penalty is lowered to two years no longer five years of Gulag yeah yeah. He really he really is a genius he told me just imagine this he was in Fukushima as part of some European delegation sorry in Japan two days after Fukushima. And he learned a terrible story there that for one day a couple of hours less the Japanese government seriously thought they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area. How where to do it okay the rational international socialist solution would have been ask Putin, Putin, Russia to give them part of Eastern Siberia but they they cannot do it without war and so on. So you know what I mean migrant migrants are not just migrants here in Europe we will be more and more confronted large scale catastrophes desert growing global warming and so on and we desperately need even he is now becoming half communist I am just reading his last book Was geschah im Jahrhundert of Sloterdijk where he also emphasized it becomes a matter of survival transnational regulations actions and incidentally this is the only way in which I am a communist. No Leninist party don't be afraid and so on or ha ha and so easy no Leninist parties after just we get rid of uh traitors like that no. What I have to say seriously is that that's the big question today in ecology we don't need recycling we need mega actions we are confronted incredible threats. Bio-genetics it's the same are you aware what is already happening then in economy not only finances but intellectual property is the death knoll of of of of of capitalism I claim isn't it clear how more and more informations, data, movies like I don't know when was the last time in cinema a couple of years ago. Now when you mention cinema to me you know if you give me a primitive test my association is Kickass Pirate Bay you know where I get all the so what I'm saying is that I don't think that the market will be able capitalist market to integrate so-called intellectual property. Then there is the paradox of migration and so on. Here again I as a leftist follow uh Sloterdijk who in his book on global capitalism used a wonderful metaphor he said global is not just all-encompassing global is also the globe like cupola. Some are in others are out percent of us are in others are out. And the problem of migrants is precisely that those out want in if we leave this process to be played in a chaotic way we are finished. So again how to do this here I think European legacy matters why because as Sloterdijk my god quoted him. We will have to make this crucial step of freeing ourselves from our particular ethnic religious whatever identity. We have to do in our daily life what already Descartes did you know the most beautiful part of Descartes for me I think it's at the beginning of Discours de la méthode where he says when I was young when I met foreign people they appeared to me stupid idiotic. But then I thought and I came to the idea but what if we also appear in the same way idiotic to them. This insight about the contingency of our own identity I'm not saying you should abandon it. I'm just saying what that the Cartesian subject is precisely this empty uprooted subject and there is no feminism there are no human rights and so on without it. I will give you an example do you also have these debates now here uh these crazy American debates transsexual toilets should they be divided or not. I have some doubts about that. But basically they are right transgenderists that our even sexual identity is not a direct fact grounded in biology it's social construct up to a point. What does this mean. This means that we are Cartesian subject. You know the Cartesian subject is not a substance it is a void an empty point and all this this idea of a rootless contingency of our identity. And my ultra example here with this I will conclude and I can maybe hopefully shock you is Malcolm X. Okay if you saw the film Denzel Washington in the film. You know what was the genius of Malcolm X you know the black leader who was shot by Muslims there. What does it mean Malcolm X. You know no it means X means we were deprived of our roots through slavery we were torn out of our particular cultural identity but here Malcolm X got a stroke of a genius how to put it he came to this brilliant Hegelian insight but what if this is not just a catastrophe. His message was let's forget about that stupid stuff let's go back and uh search for our roots we can leave this to Hollywood kitsch bestseller you know that TV series Roots Alex Haley and so on. His insight was that this X which means brutal uprooting is at the same time a unique open opportunity to start from zero to build a new identity. In other words Malcolm X is a Cartesian cogito in politics. And this is now I'm coming back to Eurocentrism why for it. I am not Eurocentric I'm Eurocentric precisely because I think the very core of European identity is to accept this abstract X. Women's rights are based on it. We have old-fashioned women's rights which I think are very dangerous which are these substantial women's rights you know like oh there is male nature aggressive but there is woman's nature more dialogic and so on and we need to supplement male principle with woman's principle I think this is a catastrophe and my good friend Judith Butler knows it she's fantastic she is like Goebbels in a good sense she's fantastic sorry i just mentioned something you know what I'm saying is that feminism human rights human rights are precisely the rights of such an empty empty individual. That's the great Western notion that we stupid single individuals we participate at universality with no mediation in particularity. That's for me the big lesson of Christianity for example what is Holy Spirit. It's when Christ says you know if you don't hate your mother your father you are not my follower what does it mean here. Not the stupidity that you really have to I claim that father mother stand for the hierarchic social family network. The crazy wager of Holy Spirit what Christians call Holy Spirit is an egalitarian non-hierarchic community is possible. It's not as in Buddhism there in Nirvana we are not the same. No no we can do it here and I think authentic democracy is precisely this the moment of vote is like a Nirvana moment of our societies. You know you are just an abstract number when you vote that's one of the greatest achievement I think. So what I'm saying is that today critique of Eurocentrism makes me suspicious why because I think that capitalism today globally is moving in a dangerous direction. Traditionally let's face it capitalism did usually give birth to a demand for democracy no like you had years years was the usual age of dictatorship Chile, South Korea and so on but then when the thing started to function you got democracy. I doubt if this still is going on like many of my friends are waiting for the new Tiananmen in China I doubt it. I claim that a new type of capitalism is emerging which functions much better with so-called Asian values which have nothing to do with Asian values but simply with authoritarian political structure. Look at Turkey Erdoğan, look at India Modi these are beautiful paradoxes. In economy total neo-liberals, in politics harsh religious or whatever nationalist, China Confucian and so on. And I think that the reason that critique of Eurocentrism is so popular has nothing to do with Europe but is simply an in- that's why you are not so subversive if you didn't you notice this if you criticize Eurocentrism today oh it's met with pleasure in most of the world. It's for me a subtle legitimization of new non-democratic capitalism. And that's why I claim that we should that again European legacy is of course divided there are horrors in it and so on but there is a certain unique idea this of of contingency of our roots abstract universality direct access of individuals to universality. It's not this corporate structure where you know that's the organic pre-modern structure where you as an individual participate in universal society only through your particular role like as a member of a of a of a of a of a certain social group as a mother whatever. No the modern European idea is you are immediately universal. And that's something unique in what sense unique unique in the sense that it also implies ultimately the self-aufhebung of Europe. The most triumphant proof for me and with this I do conclude if you are still not in Nirvana believe me no sorry is uh look French Revolution all those human rights blah blah blah. It's so simple to say I know the Marxist criticism they were false they were in a hidden way twisted so that human rights really privileged white men of property and so on. I totally agree but precisely of their universal form things started to move immediately first Mary Wollstonecraft women we also want. Then the biggest event of the last years maybe for me. Haiti slave revolution they want black black slaves said we also want that's the magic of Haiti you know Toussaint Louverture revolution. This was the first black slave rebellion where they didn't want to go back to some tribal blah blah talking with mountains and all that that I mentioned. No they said we wanted to be the same as French democratic republic and so on and so on. And then horrors happened but mostly because of how they were treated by ex-colonial powers it was a nightmare and so on but and then all the workers movement is based on this like if there is fraternity equality why also not in the economic field. You see this is a nice example of how something can begin as a limited twisted ideological notion but it can be misappropriated, it can be universalized. For me the proper dialectical movement is not you begin with an authentic moment which then gets degenerated. But you begin with a lie with something that was obviously ideology and then you can turn it around. If you know history of Mexico you know Mary Virgin of Guadalupe, the black mother whatever. This till that moment Christianity was colonial. At that moment for the first time the exploited Mexicans tried to re-appropriate Christianity as a way to express their own demand. So again I think that precisely for the welfare of all the people equality around the world you have to go through here I remain a Marxist to this nihilistic moment of capital. Marx always emphasized it yes capital horror blah but the only path to universal freedom goes through this capitalist dissolution of particular links. Which is why I totally disagree with those who think that capitalism is global and to resist it we need local traditions. No local traditions fit perfectly global capital capitalism is ultra multiculturalist. We need universal modernity more than ever which is why incidentally I disagree with those who think in Europe now I give a hint to finish to Brexit no how there is a fashionable in the left now to say since capitalism is global we can fight it through stronger nation state like why Marine Le Pen should be led to exploit nationalism let us counteract it with leftist nationalism. I think this is a catastrophe. I think to propose a formula that I used in an article for The Guardian I think that socialist nationalism is not a way to fight the threat of national socialism. It's more important than ever today in the era where capitalism is global where threats are global and so on to cling to the European legacy of universality. I was a little bit longer but ha ha what could you have done you had to suffer it. Thank you very much. Okay the Stalinist stage gesture I also join myself thank you very much for having me. Thank you very much Slavoj for this absolutely brilliant conference of true. When you begin like this I see your already I know I know yeah something I like I know I beware of of of almost like-narian dimensions. Uh but are we friends do you like Wagner? Absolutely and you too I know you think Wagner. So uh there is a remark of the famous French critic and writer Sainte-Beuve in the 19th century entry in his diary if everybody would know what the others think about him and vice versa the world would be empty because everybody would have killed everybody which confirms one of your theories. Now there is I would say maybe two to three minutes of let's be liberal three and a half three and a half minutes in Switzerland for uh questions and then you know uh I I hesitated finally with myself if I really should pay your bill tonight but you earned it and I will do it but the necessity is that we get to this meal and a little warm meal in Switzerland in Zurich so we are a little bit honest but you know what why I like Swiss food seriously as a leftist because what you are selling as expensive food is really poor people's meals repackaged like in raclette I think probably originally you know you have some old dry cheese you bake it and you repackage it and sell and sell it as the most expensive stuff bravo bravo. We we we we won't have raclette tonight. Uh so who would like to put a question? Is so and then up there. The shorter the question the longer the answer. I try to be short. It’s difficult to be short after such a brilliant talk but I have a very personal question. Please. It has to do with the fact that the role of the philosopher in a certain time changes. Now what is in your case now today we could see you as a histrionic actor on one side on the other side we could see you also in a way because in your books this comes out maybe more than tonight that you could be even a monkish philosopher monk who thinks about very profoundly going into the details. My question is why are you um so enthusiastic about promoting thinking in a different way about what is today important what has been the many questions. My role is um my question is what how you see your role as role versus enthusiasm meditation going into and the other fields of life? I show your point yes. No first I must tell you that you know like I'm not just doing jokes like this. The last big book that I wrote is Less Than Nothing on Hegel which is over pages no. Yeah and I mean my heart is there. The reason I'm doing all this stuff is a very simple one it's so primitive and naive. I am really worried about as a citizen about what is going on today. I think the situation is extremely dangerous. I think maybe we are even approaching a new World War. I think the situation is not so much as some people say with all this neo-fascist is it fascism it's more complex uh rise of anti-immigrant racism some people say oh we are in the late 30s again. Maybe I'm more of a pessimist maybe we are in the decade before First World War where they were all preparing for war but it was this terrifying psychological mechanism for it we have a name in psychoanalysis uh fetischistische Verleugnung disavowal. No the French formula is Je sais bien, mais quand même. We know that there can be war we all the time talk about it look at the media Russia intercepts an American fighter, NATO sends troops too. But why are we so relaxed because it's Je sais bien, mais quand même. We know it but we don't really believe it that it can happen. And this mechanism is basic today. It's the same with ecology. All the stories global warming but then you know you go out my god it's beautiful sun. Okay not the last weeks it was too much. It's beautiful sun and so on can all this disappear it cannot. And that's what worries me we have a typical pre-World War situation. The role of uh Bosnia Serbia where it exploded is played obviously by the Middle East. Uh Germany at that point is Russia today okay it's more complex with China. And again we are all preparing for war but somehow we don't really believe that it will happen which is why it can seriously happen. And I'm here so again uh sorry I'm finish. My point is I don't have here easy answers. That would be my definition of what I sometimes try to be philosopher as the public person. I have to confuse people to if anything to change the way we raise questions. Because ideology today is not to ask wrong questions but to confront the right problems in the wrong way. For example ecology it's a serious problem but the way we approach it for example either in this technocratic way don't worry science will find new answers or in this New Age way even worse you know we are sinners Mother Earth uh we should reestablish balance. What Mother Earth Mother Earth is the greatest bitch there ever was. Just think about oil. Can you imagine what tremendous ecological catastrophes had to happen on our earth so that we have oil reserves and so on. So all another problem racism. It's typical how when we deal with racism in and so on we automatically translate it either in the problem of tolerance or in the problem of harassment. I think for example harassment is a term that I don't want to use no. There is serious harassment women are harassed and so on. But quite often when people talk about harassment it's really a form a form of intolerance. It means don't come too close to me. It means remain at the proper distance. So what I'm saying is that you see this is the duty of a philosopher. I don't know what we should do. I know that we should stop dreaming in 20th century categories of state socialism, welfare state and so on. I don't know how to fight racism. I do know that all this focus on tolerance is totally wrong. Look at the really big figures like Martin Luther King. He never mentions tolerance. For him it would have been an obscenity to put black struggle in the terms of what white people should tolerate us more or whatever. So it's as simple as that. I have to bring people insofar as it's possible just to you know to shift the perspective to see the problem in a new way. That's modestly what I can do. That's absolutely important to do and you mentioned the late 19th century in France and also Stefan Zweig here was Christopher Clark also yeah yeah it's this yeah yeah. He was here too by the way and we are still learning from you and from him and maybe we will be better prepared in the future. The young gentleman has a question. Yeah. What I perceive is that there is another ideology which you mention at the end of your last book, coming a new paradigm which is the technological sorry which book this Against the Double Blackmail or Der neue Klassenkampf? This one the lady will show. Yeah yeah yeah
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yeah yeah. Der neue Klassenkampf. And it's there you mention bio-politics and everything it includes but my question would go in the direction of how do you perceive this new paradigm which in the end goes into a totally new society, Big Data,
yeah yeah. Der neue Klassenkampf. And it's there you mention bio-politics and everything it includes but my question would go in the direction of how do you perceive this new paradigm which in the end goes into a totally new society, Big Data,
Slavoj Žižek
Internet of Things society which
Internet of Things society which
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could culminate in trans and post-humanist dystopian or utopian visions. Let's assume Silicon Valley as a sort of concentration of this kind of logos. So if this is true and it operates with new perfidious and subtle methods of ideology in which we basically willingly fall into by using these technological gadgets without realizing it. So it's again it's like a a more sublime or sublimated level of perverted ideology and therefore psycho-politics as Byung-Chul Han names it. So my question would be in regard to what you said at the
could culminate in trans and post-humanist dystopian or utopian visions. Let's assume Silicon Valley as a sort of concentration of this kind of logos. So if this is true and it operates with new perfidious and subtle methods of ideology in which we basically willingly fall into by using these technological gadgets without realizing it. So it's again it's like a a more sublime or sublimated level of perverted ideology and therefore psycho-politics as Byung-Chul Han names it. So my question would be in regard to what you said at the
Slavoj Žižek
beginning by changing the
beginning by changing the
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perspective how can we really confront that because I consider it to be even a more severe problem than just the classical capitalism and the critique it necessarily requires. I tend to agree with you and I'm now working on it reading books on it. But uh my first elementary observation is how those who preach this you know whatever you call it
perspective how can we really confront that because I consider it to be even a more severe problem than just the classical capitalism and the critique it necessarily requires. I tend to agree with you and I'm now working on it reading books on it. But uh my first elementary observation is how those who preach this you know whatever you call it
Slavoj Žižek
like Ray Kurzweil singularity new post-human transhuman stage that ontologically they cheat at a certain level. Because they describe some transhuman state but from the way they argue it's as if somehow we will still be individuals the way we are in that. They they don't describe
like Ray Kurzweil singularity new post-human transhuman stage that ontologically they cheat at a certain level. Because they describe some transhuman state but from the way they argue it's as if somehow we will still be individuals the way we are in that. They they don't describe
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it radically enough. It's a I think that what Ray Kurzweil for example is describing it's utopia in the worst sense of
it radically enough. It's a I think that what Ray Kurzweil for example is describing it's utopia in the worst sense of
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the term. Now be careful here I am not a cultural pessimist. I am not sharing the opposite opinion that oh my god it's the end of humanity and so on and so on. Yeah I see it as an open undecided situation and uh you know here it's not only what you mentioned there are so many questions to raise here. Very specific question but fatal question. For example there is a common opinion sharing that uh freedom of the will is an illusion today's cognitive science can prove it. Eh ah I doubt it because the big proof that is usually
the term. Now be careful here I am not a cultural pessimist. I am not sharing the opposite opinion that oh my god it's the end of humanity and so on and so on. Yeah I see it as an open undecided situation and uh you know here it's not only what you mentioned there are so many questions to raise here. Very specific question but fatal question. For example there is a common opinion sharing that uh freedom of the will is an illusion today's cognitive science can prove it. Eh ah I doubt it because the big proof that is usually
Slavoj Žižek
quoted is maybe you know Benjamin Libet a California scientist who for the first time already years ago or where made an experiment which is now considered as the first proof that there is no free will. You know he wires you and then you have to do a totally contingent act like this. And he can prove that a split of a second before you decide your neurons already know it. In other words this is a kind of a proof that when you think you are making even the most contingent free decision you are really just registering something that already goes on in your body. Eh there is a problem here Libet himself I heard him once talking in San Francisco uh doesn't read the result of his experiment in this way. He has a wonderful Judeo-Hegelian counterpoint. He said that we are looking for freedom at the wrong place that freedom at the most radical level is not the positive decision I will do this but that in that split of a second when you decide you can sabotage it you can say no. So that the act of freedom is zero and that is authentic freedom. Even Daniel Dennett has a very intelligent counter-argument. He says that this idea that the Libet experiment demonstrates freedom presupposes this Cartesian theater that there is one center where you decide or not and then things are already decided before. But what if you reject this center. So you see what I mean what I don't agree with I wonder if you would agree
quoted is maybe you know Benjamin Libet a California scientist who for the first time already years ago or where made an experiment which is now considered as the first proof that there is no free will. You know he wires you and then you have to do a totally contingent act like this. And he can prove that a split of a second before you decide your neurons already know it. In other words this is a kind of a proof that when you think you are making even the most contingent free decision you are really just registering something that already goes on in your body. Eh there is a problem here Libet himself I heard him once talking in San Francisco uh doesn't read the result of his experiment in this way. He has a wonderful Judeo-Hegelian counterpoint. He said that we are looking for freedom at the wrong place that freedom at the most radical level is not the positive decision I will do this but that in that split of a second when you decide you can sabotage it you can say no. So that the act of freedom is zero and that is authentic freedom. Even Daniel Dennett has a very intelligent counter-argument. He says that this idea that the Libet experiment demonstrates freedom presupposes this Cartesian theater that there is one center where you decide or not and then things are already decided before. But what if you reject this center. So you see what I mean what I don't agree with I wonder if you would agree
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is although I appreciate him for his great
is although I appreciate him for his great
Slavoj Žižek
public activities intellectual is a Habermas solution which is basically for me a conservative Catholic one. No wonder that he co-wrote a book not really co-wrote they put texts together with Papa Ratzinger with uh that Pope you know because very basically the idea is this one if we go to the end in this self-objectivization scientific we threaten the basic notions of responsibility and human freedom so we should not do it. This is for me this typical conservative uh Catholic view some things are better not to be known. If we know too much it may destroy us. No I think it doesn't work if for no other things for the brutal pragmatic reasons. Whatever we decide in our decadent Europe the Chinese are already doing it like crazy. And how and how and even in our you know what is even more horrible than this simple is there freedom or not. I have my KGB spies friends in many of these laboratories yeah sorry. And they told me that it's a wonderful brutal experiment. They already are able to connect the neurons of a rat, rat the beautiful animal with a computer so that I was sent a a video shot it's wonderful. A rat is running around. You click a button a rat is connected and then a living rat becomes a remote controlled car. You can direct it.
public activities intellectual is a Habermas solution which is basically for me a conservative Catholic one. No wonder that he co-wrote a book not really co-wrote they put texts together with Papa Ratzinger with uh that Pope you know because very basically the idea is this one if we go to the end in this self-objectivization scientific we threaten the basic notions of responsibility and human freedom so we should not do it. This is for me this typical conservative uh Catholic view some things are better not to be known. If we know too much it may destroy us. No I think it doesn't work if for no other things for the brutal pragmatic reasons. Whatever we decide in our decadent Europe the Chinese are already doing it like crazy. And how and how and even in our you know what is even more horrible than this simple is there freedom or not. I have my KGB spies friends in many of these laboratories yeah sorry. And they told me that it's a wonderful brutal experiment. They already are able to connect the neurons of a rat, rat the beautiful animal with a computer so that I was sent a a video shot it's wonderful. A rat is running around. You click a button a rat is connected and then a living rat becomes a remote controlled car. You can direct it.
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Now comes the true enigma
Now comes the true enigma
Slavoj Žižek
they don't want yet to go into public they are discreetly already testing it. The true enigma is this one of course you can do the same it's a little bit more complex but you can on a human being. The enigma is this one if I do this to you or you to me whatever uh how would I experience it. Would it be like oh my god I'm no longer free some foreign power controls me or I got hint that it's much more
they don't want yet to go into public they are discreetly already testing it. The true enigma is this one of course you can do the same it's a little bit more complex but you can on a human being. The enigma is this one if I do this to you or you to me whatever uh how would I experience it. Would it be like oh my god I'm no longer free some foreign power controls me or I got hint that it's much more
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tragic is that you think you are still free. You are
tragic is that you think you are still free. You are
Slavoj Žižek
controlled but you don't know it and so on. So this is for me the greatest threat this idea of direct connection
controlled but you don't know it and so on. So this is for me the greatest threat this idea of direct connection
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of your brain to external machinery. It already works the last thing I heard about Stephen Hawking ha ha I know people who know people who know him in Cambridge is that he no longer needs that stupid finger. It's already you know the the he's wired sorry computer wired yeah. He is wired so that he just thinks strongly
of your brain to external machinery. It already works the last thing I heard about Stephen Hawking ha ha I know people who know people who know him in Cambridge is that he no longer needs that stupid finger. It's already you know the the he's wired sorry computer wired yeah. He is wired so that he just thinks strongly
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forward his wheelchair moves forward and so on and so on. But you know this is a terrible thing because okay we are God-like we can do things with our thoughts. But you know what goes in what goes out goes in. If we can influence this way the outside world they can also do it and these are for me tremendously interesting problem the level of control like already now I read a wonderful study by some Israeli sociologist who demonstrated that with a good computer program it would have been much better to leave to the your computer the decision how to vote. It can be proven that your experience when you live in a corrupted government your memory is conscious memory we all the time construct
forward his wheelchair moves forward and so on and so on. But you know this is a terrible thing because okay we are God-like we can do things with our thoughts. But you know what goes in what goes out goes in. If we can influence this way the outside world they can also do it and these are for me tremendously interesting problem the level of control like already now I read a wonderful study by some Israeli sociologist who demonstrated that with a good computer program it would have been much better to leave to the your computer the decision how to vote. It can be proven that your experience when you live in a corrupted government your memory is conscious memory we all the time construct
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stories which are extremely uh twisted, biased, false so many things you forget usually the worst experiences. But if you put into a computer your political preferences and if a computer can measure
stories which are extremely uh twisted, biased, false so many things you forget usually the worst experiences. But if you put into a computer your political preferences and if a computer can measure
Slavoj Žižek
not only what happened to you but all the pain that you felt and so on then the computer will propose a vote which will much more in a much more accurate way represent your interest than your stupid decision. What to do here and so on. I think that the two problem is double here not only doesn't it work so simply I think it doesn't because I think that we impute too much to computers in the sense as if they are divine like consistent entity no computer computers come with glitches with mistakes and the glitch of a computer is our freedom the minimal. But second thing you know computers are not neutral they are twisted. My friend ha ha again I'm boasting Julian Assange told me he wrote a book on he wrote a book on Google and he claims it's terrifying Google is private NSA. Not only do they directly corroborate with NSA but you know they are already doing it like uh for example it's not Google I know Amazon but when you have Kindle. Do you know that not only they know what you bought but they get all the data which book are you reading, how long, what page and so on. In a way they know you already better than you know yourself. So the logical so the problem is not democracy the problem is will democracy become meaningless or whatever. But the true problem is somewhere else they demonstrate that. At least in the next decade it's not oh computers will take over is that and we are already doing it medically and so on. There will be a new distinction much stronger than the classic class distinction. A distinction between those who are in, controlling and so on. For example already now uh there is uh among the rich people a fashion you know. And Chinese who don't have this our stupid ethical problems what can you do. I was there I was shown one in the suburb of Shanghai there are around clinics bio-genetic and they do everything a rich Western person comes there they analyze your your your your your genetic structure they propose changes and so on they're already doing it to earn Western money. But the problem is this one that it's more and more that the privileged class will literally this is a quite serious prospect will become a race on top itself. That's a new class system. That's a new class system yes. So again why I am here. The question is open. I remain about this as you know by Maoist you will write about this in your Gulag. The young man I already spent or the great president yeah okay no sorry I wanted to say but you know which saying by Mao I like that there is disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent you know. In other words I believe in this open time where there are tremendous dangers but my god there are also chances. Very good uh ha ha ETH is already doing research on a technique of magnetic waves which will read your thoughts maybe in years or so. Already now they can read them basically again but our research is a little bit more different and you know what you also probably know I spoke with some people working in labs for American army they told me forget about nuclear arms all that bullshit that's what all the armies are doing today. Much more like one idea is this uh you have a box like this precisely a place like this you press a button some uh how do you call it waves radiation you all lose will to fight lose your memory for half an hour and so on. That's the future it's already here it's happening all the armies are obsessed by this. Chinese at least say it openly I met once the boss of Chinese Academy of Sciences the division for biogenetics. He has shown me the programming in English you know how it begins. The task of biogenetics in People's Republic of China is to regulate uh physical bodily and psychic welfare of the Chinese people. Ha ha they are doing it. Okay now please one second. And you are a terrorist you want the yeah you are right you are right. people spontaneous outbursts they they didn't know but now it's uh everybody knows it yes true. No what I what I want to say is uh we from ICC we are totally flooded to have so many intelligent and beautiful young people here. Normally they don't come in this are you implying that I am not young and not intelligent. We can we can discuss that over dinner. Okay good good. And uh we would be really grateful if you came a little bit more because I mean he's a genius no question about that he's a superstar. My question is no how many you have the right questions but it's true but we also have other speakers and now just a a quick preview on what we are doing in the autumn can can you show that yeah. The focus Asia this is the main topic which fits totally to what we we talked about China. We have Urs Schoettli you know him he's also very strong expert and so. Then we have Kevin Rudd former prime minister. Get him to come here. Yeah Kevin Rudd former prime minister of Australia is a very good guy he's a very good guy no question about that. Then an old friend Philipp Hildebrand gives his first public lecture here again after a certain amount of time. This is not finished yet the program we have other speakers trying to persuade to come here Naomi Klein and Hillary Clinton are also on the list but it's a little bit more complicated in these cases also the fees are slightly higher. But nonetheless if you have some homegrown terrorists yeah I'm against terror but I wouldn't protest too much if you organize such slight accident for Hillary like okay you didn't. This is this is our award you can copy you can give me then your PhD dissertation and you get francs you saw that before. Another one this is a short preview on the Dada everybody talks about Dada this year it's a little bit um you know there is a Leninist theory of Dada. Lenin lived around the corner and you know in Russian Dada means yes yes. The idea is that Lenin was witnessing a performance and said Dada and that's the origin of Dada. That's the best explanation for Dada I ever heard and it even makes sense. So a Dada award little present for you this is also well it should be also a little bit different from the normal things and we found something uh which is really intelligent. Is a gin and it's a gin from Zurich
not only what happened to you but all the pain that you felt and so on then the computer will propose a vote which will much more in a much more accurate way represent your interest than your stupid decision. What to do here and so on. I think that the two problem is double here not only doesn't it work so simply I think it doesn't because I think that we impute too much to computers in the sense as if they are divine like consistent entity no computer computers come with glitches with mistakes and the glitch of a computer is our freedom the minimal. But second thing you know computers are not neutral they are twisted. My friend ha ha again I'm boasting Julian Assange told me he wrote a book on he wrote a book on Google and he claims it's terrifying Google is private NSA. Not only do they directly corroborate with NSA but you know they are already doing it like uh for example it's not Google I know Amazon but when you have Kindle. Do you know that not only they know what you bought but they get all the data which book are you reading, how long, what page and so on. In a way they know you already better than you know yourself. So the logical so the problem is not democracy the problem is will democracy become meaningless or whatever. But the true problem is somewhere else they demonstrate that. At least in the next decade it's not oh computers will take over is that and we are already doing it medically and so on. There will be a new distinction much stronger than the classic class distinction. A distinction between those who are in, controlling and so on. For example already now uh there is uh among the rich people a fashion you know. And Chinese who don't have this our stupid ethical problems what can you do. I was there I was shown one in the suburb of Shanghai there are around clinics bio-genetic and they do everything a rich Western person comes there they analyze your your your your your genetic structure they propose changes and so on they're already doing it to earn Western money. But the problem is this one that it's more and more that the privileged class will literally this is a quite serious prospect will become a race on top itself. That's a new class system. That's a new class system yes. So again why I am here. The question is open. I remain about this as you know by Maoist you will write about this in your Gulag. The young man I already spent or the great president yeah okay no sorry I wanted to say but you know which saying by Mao I like that there is disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent you know. In other words I believe in this open time where there are tremendous dangers but my god there are also chances. Very good uh ha ha ETH is already doing research on a technique of magnetic waves which will read your thoughts maybe in years or so. Already now they can read them basically again but our research is a little bit more different and you know what you also probably know I spoke with some people working in labs for American army they told me forget about nuclear arms all that bullshit that's what all the armies are doing today. Much more like one idea is this uh you have a box like this precisely a place like this you press a button some uh how do you call it waves radiation you all lose will to fight lose your memory for half an hour and so on. That's the future it's already here it's happening all the armies are obsessed by this. Chinese at least say it openly I met once the boss of Chinese Academy of Sciences the division for biogenetics. He has shown me the programming in English you know how it begins. The task of biogenetics in People's Republic of China is to regulate uh physical bodily and psychic welfare of the Chinese people. Ha ha they are doing it. Okay now please one second. And you are a terrorist you want the yeah you are right you are right. people spontaneous outbursts they they didn't know but now it's uh everybody knows it yes true. No what I what I want to say is uh we from ICC we are totally flooded to have so many intelligent and beautiful young people here. Normally they don't come in this are you implying that I am not young and not intelligent. We can we can discuss that over dinner. Okay good good. And uh we would be really grateful if you came a little bit more because I mean he's a genius no question about that he's a superstar. My question is no how many you have the right questions but it's true but we also have other speakers and now just a a quick preview on what we are doing in the autumn can can you show that yeah. The focus Asia this is the main topic which fits totally to what we we talked about China. We have Urs Schoettli you know him he's also very strong expert and so. Then we have Kevin Rudd former prime minister. Get him to come here. Yeah Kevin Rudd former prime minister of Australia is a very good guy he's a very good guy no question about that. Then an old friend Philipp Hildebrand gives his first public lecture here again after a certain amount of time. This is not finished yet the program we have other speakers trying to persuade to come here Naomi Klein and Hillary Clinton are also on the list but it's a little bit more complicated in these cases also the fees are slightly higher. But nonetheless if you have some homegrown terrorists yeah I'm against terror but I wouldn't protest too much if you organize such slight accident for Hillary like okay you didn't. This is this is our award you can copy you can give me then your PhD dissertation and you get francs you saw that before. Another one this is a short preview on the Dada everybody talks about Dada this year it's a little bit um you know there is a Leninist theory of Dada. Lenin lived around the corner and you know in Russian Dada means yes yes. The idea is that Lenin was witnessing a performance and said Dada and that's the origin of Dada. That's the best explanation for Dada I ever heard and it even makes sense. So a Dada award little present for you this is also well it should be also a little bit different from the normal things and we found something uh which is really intelligent. Is a gin and it's a gin from Zurich
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and
and
Slavoj Žižek
it's
it's
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called Turicum and it fits perfectly in the picture of the city of Zurich and it's also very healthy of course it's small doses uh or if you have a cold you can rub it on your chest but it's extremely good uh Turicum gin. Slavoj thank you very much again. That's absolutely. I thank you but another obscenity what you put. My good friend you may know him Peter Weibel the guy
called Turicum and it fits perfectly in the picture of the city of Zurich and it's also very healthy of course it's small doses uh or if you have a cold you can rub it on your chest but it's extremely good uh Turicum gin. Slavoj thank you very much again. That's absolutely. I thank you but another obscenity what you put. My good friend you may know him Peter Weibel the guy
Slavoj Žižek
was he told me of an he told me so that you know I'm sorry I
was he told me of an he told me so that you know I'm sorry I
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have to be obscene for the end if you have a heart attack get a woman to masturbate
have to be obscene for the end if you have a heart attack get a woman to masturbate
Slavoj Žižek
you and massage
you and massage
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here your sperm he claims this saved his life
here your sperm he claims this saved his life
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three
three
Slavoj Žižek
times.
times.