Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semite and Jew
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2009 · 1:12:54 · 9,668 words
ideologyrace-antisemitismpsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsreligion-theologyfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnesscommunism-socialismgeopolitics-warcapitalismphilosophy-generalrevolution-violence
Žižek delivers a lecture at the European Graduate School on antisemitism as a theoretical and political problem, tracing its transformation from theological to racial form and introducing the concept of 'Zionist antisemitism' to describe how the Israeli state deploys antisemitic rhetorical structures against Jews who refuse full identification with it. He develops a theoretical distinction between symptomatic and fetishist modes of ideology to explain why antisemitic mystification is structurally harder to demystify than liberal false universality. The lecture then pivots to Islamic fundamentalism, drawing on Walter Benjamin's thesis that every fascism is a symptom of a failed left revolution, and concludes by arguing that the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is a false antagonism that the left must transcend through a revival of discipline, community, and emancipatory struggle.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 31
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The structural limit internal to a system (mathematical, capitalist, libidinal) which, rather than simply blocking the system, propels its perpetual self-revolutionizing when internalized.
as “imaginary number (as model for internalized impossibility)”
Used as the model for how the impossible (e.g. √−1) is not eliminated but rendered calculable and internal to the system, shifting the entire dynamic, applied to capitalism and human desire.
Lacanian object-cause of desire, implicitly operative in the discussion of antisemitic fantasy as providing access to the impossible Real.
An imaginary scenario that provides a (distorted) insight into the impossible Real; not mere illusion but a structural relation to the constitutive impossibility of desire.
as “noumenon as impossible phenomenon”
Redefines the Kantian noumenon not as transcendently inaccessible but as a phenomenon too intense for our perceptual apparatus, experienced as an encounter with the Real.
The ideological figure that emerges when specific Jewish properties disappear from social life: Jewishness inscribed into being itself, laying the ground for racial antisemitism and annihilation.
as “the wandering eternal Jew”
The Romantic-era ideological figure that emerged precisely when empirical Jews were emancipated and assimilated, condensing their guilt into their very being rather than their acts.
Le Goff's historical thesis used by Žižek to link the 11th-12th century rise of market economy and money to the theological invention of Purgatory, a third place where one can 'make a deal' and pay for sins, mirroring money logic.
Kant's concept invoked to characterize Jews' historical role as figures of universality through their subtraction from state power; the 'uncanny Jew' who refuses identification with Israel is its last inheritor.
Rancière's term for those who have no proper place in the organic nation-state community; Žižek applies it to Jews as figures of immediate embodiment of universality precisely through their subtraction from state power.
as “Zionist antisemitism”
The phenomenon whereby Zionism attacks Jews who refuse full identification with the State of Israel using the same rhetorical apparatus as 19th-century antisemitism: untrustworthiness, rootlessness, cosmopolitan free-floating.
A mode of ideological functioning in which a fetish object embodies the lie that enables one to sustain unbearable truth, as opposed to the symptomatic mode in which repressed truth returns through cracks.
The classical mode of ideological critique in which the lie is threatened by symptoms as returns of the repressed that disturb the surface of false appearance.
Object that embodies disavowal of an unbearable reality (following Freud: the last thing seen before confronting lack), enabling cynical acceptance of reality while suspending its full symbolic efficiency.
Lévi-Strauss's 'efficacité symbolique': the real performative force of symbolic/ideological facts; the fetish works by suspending this efficiency even while one formally acknowledges the fact.
Marx's concept operative in the analysis of money as fetish: money embodies disavowed belief even when one consciously knows it is merely a social convention.
Popularized transcendental meditation and Oriental spirituality as ideological fetish enabling full participation in capitalism while sustaining the illusion of inner distance from the spectacle.
A mode of fetishism in which one cynically knows how things are but clings to a fetish (e.g. Western Buddhism) that maintains distance towards reality and enables comfortable participation in the system.
as “populist fascist fetishism”
The antisemitic-fascist mode of fetishism in which the Jew serves as the fetish that displaces class antagonism, blocking direct confrontation with capitalist exploitation.
The standard ideological mystification in which a claim to universality (freedom, equality) secretly carries implicit qualifications that undermine it, the classical target of ideology critique.
as “class struggle displaced onto struggle against the Jews”
The structural mechanism of fascist antisemitism: popular rage at capitalist exploitation is redirected from capitalist relations to the Jewish plot, making the Jew the fetish of the antagonism.
The fetishist mystification operative in antisemitism: class antagonism is displaced onto struggle against the Jews, so the 'bad explicit content' (antisemitism) covers 'good implicit content' (hatred of exploitation).
Badiou's logical-political concept (referenced in the talk) for the space of positions that can accommodate contradiction without collapsing, the field liberal democrats navigate when confronted with their own inconsistencies.
Lacan's 'le Réel': the point of impossibility within a field of reality, that which cannot be positivized but whose relation to the system structures the entire dynamic.
as “je sais bien, mais quand même”
The formula of disavowal: 'I know very well, but nonetheless', the structure of the cynic who accepts argumentation but ignores its symbolic efficiency.
as “fascism as symptom of failed revolution”
Benjamin's thesis, endorsed by Žižek, that every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed leftist revolution whose revolutionary potential was not mobilized, applied to both historical Nazism and contemporary Islamism.
as “Islamo-fascism”
A contested term Žižek critically examines: he argues Islamic fundamentalism does not play the same structural antisemitic role as Nazism and that the term obscures the real dynamic of a failed left revolution.
as “mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre”
Badiou's motto ('better a disaster than a non-event'): one must take the risk of fidelity to an emancipatory event even if it ends in catastrophe, rather than settling for comfortable non-evental existence.
The claim that the authoritarian personality is not the external enemy of liberal openness but its own return of the repressed, generated by the inconsistencies of liberal democracy itself.
Adorno et al.'s sociological type; Žižek argues it is not simply opposed to liberal-democratic personality but is the repressed obverse and structural outcome of liberal permissiveness itself.
A third personality structure distinct from both liberal-tolerant and fascist-authoritarian: disciplined, collective, proud, yet committed to radical egalitarianism, invisible to liberal critics who can only see it as authoritarian.
Stories he reaches for 6
Afghanistan, now seen as the archetype of Islamic fundamentalism, once had a strong secular tradition including a powerful communist party that took power independently of the Soviet Union. The secular left did not disappear, it transformed into Islamic fundamentalism.
“Who still remembers that years ago it was a country with a strong secular tradition, up to a powerful communist party which took power there independently of Soviet Union.”
Kansas, once the bedrock of radical leftist populism (John Brown, anti-racism), is today the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism, confirming Benjamin's thesis that fascism is the index of a failed revolution.
“Kansas is the US homegrown version of Afghanistan. The very state which till 1970s was the bedrock of radical leftist populism... is today the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism.”
A man whose wife died of cancer coped calmly, always holding her pet hamster while speaking of her. When the hamster died a year later, he had a total breakdown requiring hospitalization. The hamster was the fetish embodying the disavowal of his wife's death.
“While talking about her, he always held a hamster, his dead wife's favorite pet object, gently playing with it. This hamster was his fetish: a living disavowal of her death.”
History teacher Ron Jones created a mock fascist movement ('The Third Wave') at Palo Alto's Cubberley High School to show how Germans could accept Nazism; students became enthusiastically involved, denouncing peers, until he terminated it. Liberals celebrated it as proof of universal fascist potential. Žižek calls it a liberal fake.
“I think this is a liberal fake, a false lying experiment.”
A single NYT article about Taliban taking the Swat Valley noted it was partly a class revolt, landless peasants against landlords, then framed this as Taliban 'exploiting' divisions, as if their true agenda was elsewhere. Žižek reads this against the grain: the 'exploitation' reveals what liberal democracy refuses to address.
“The Taliban's ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency... The militants for their part are promising more than just prescriptions on music and schooling. They are promising justice.”
Popularized transcendental meditation and Eastern spirituality function as ideological fetish: they let you fully participate in the capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, your inner peace is what truly matters.
“It enables you to fully participate in the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is.”
Works invoked 7
Shoah film
Lanzmann's film cited approvingly; Lanzmann's position that he would burn discovered concentration camp footage is used to illustrate the prohibition on encountering the Raw Real.
Thomas Frank's popular book warmly recommended as confirmation of Benjamin's thesis: Kansas transformed from radical leftist populism to Christian fundamentalism.
Adorno et al.'s landmark study; Žižek praises it for identifying the authoritarian personality type and Adorno's reluctance to simply oppose it to liberal personality, though he criticizes the book's failure to make explicit that authoritarian personality is the product of liberal democracy.
Left in Dark Times book
Bernard-Henri Lévy's book containing the 'pathetic proclamation' that 21st-century antisemitism will be progressive, which Žižek rejects.
Shakespeare's play cited as an example of the historical problem of forced Jewish conversion and the question of whether converted Jews could be trusted.
Lord of the Flies book
William Golding's novel cited as the kind of 'deep liberal insight', that civilization thinly covers fascist beasts, that the Third Wave experiment falsely confirms.
Jean-Claude Milner's book arguing that progressive Europe's universalism targets Jewish fidelity to law; Žižek argues this comes dangerously close to Zionist antisemitism.
People invoked 36
Franz Kafka positive
One of three great 20th-century writers cited as bank officers/insurance agents whose professional discipline was essential to their literary greatness.
Jacques Le Goff positive
Cited for the historical thesis of 'the birth of Purgatory' in 11th-12th century Europe, linked to the rise of money economy.
Jean-Pierre Taguieff negative
Liberal historian of antisemitism who argues Islam is the Marxism of the 21st century; Žižek partly accepts the inversion but reframes it through Benjamin's failed-revolution thesis.
Thomas Frank positive
His popular book What's the Matter with Kansas? is warmly recommended as confirmation of Benjamin's thesis about failed revolutions.
Udi Aloni positive
Described as a friend ('a little bit crazy like me but basically a good guy'); the anecdote of Israeli audiences accusing Aloni of exploiting Žižek illustrates Zionist antisemitism.
Cited as the German idealist partisan of the French Revolution who condemned Jews as too particularist for refusing to become abstract citizens.
Claude Lévi-Strauss positive
Cited for 'efficacité symbolique' (symbolic efficiency), the concept used to explain how the fetish suspends the real impact of reality.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Praised for the study on authoritarian personality and for the (partly unrealized) insight that liberal democracy generates authoritarianism rather than simply opposing it, his greatness is that he did not make Habermas's regressive step.
Wallace Stevens positive
Cited as an insurance agent whose financial discipline was structurally necessary to his poetry.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical reference: the Real (le Réel) as point of impossibility, fantasy, objet petit a, and the impossible as constitutive of desire.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Cited for the motive of pre-human perception, 'the iridescent chaos of a world before men', used to develop the concept of noumenon as impossible phenomenon.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Mentioned as one of the proponents of the term 'Islamo-fascism', which Žižek finds problematic.
John Brown positive
Mentioned as the greatest figure of the struggle against slavery from Kansas, to illustrate the state's radical past before its transformation into Christian fundamentalist territory.
Cited for the historical fact of the 1938-39 Hagana deal, used to demonstrate that the Nazis' problem was Jewish rootlessness, not Jewish statehood.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited for the definition of a world through its point of impossibility, the motto 'mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre', paraconsistency, and the secret quote on popular discipline; presented as a close intellectual ally.
Bernard-Henri Lévy negative
Among those Žižek sardonically says must be shot before debating abolition of death penalty; attacked for the thesis that 'antisemitism of the 21st century will be progressive' and for concluding that anti-capitalism is antisemitism.
Jean-Claude Milner negative
His thesis (The Criminal Tendencies of Democratic Europe) that progressive Europe erases all limits while Jews stand for fidelity to law is criticized as dangerously close to Zionist antisemitism.
Mentioned in connection with a NYT report confirming that Iran recognizes other religions of the book and Jews live relatively normally there, evidence that what bothers Islamists is the State of Israel, not the free-floating Jew.
Benedictus de Spinoza positive
Mentioned as the prototype of the Jew who subtracts from his own community, the 'uncanny Jew' who insists on public use of reason.
T. S. Eliot positive
Cited as a bank officer whose financial discipline was structurally necessary to his poetry.
Author of Lord of the Flies; cited as the kind of 'deep' insight liberals see in the Third Wave experiment, that beneath civilization lies the fascist beast.
Jacques Rancière positive
Cited for the concept 'part of no part' applied to Jews as the figure of immediate universality through subtraction from state power.
Claude Lanzmann positive
Director of Shoah; cited in debate with Godard, Lanzmann's position that he would burn discovered concentration camp footage illustrates the prohibition on seeing the Real.
Cited as taking the opposite position from Lanzmann: he would use found concentration camp footage.
Mao Zedong positive
His motto 'everything under heaven is in utter chaos so the situation is excellent' is endorsed by Žižek as more pertinent than ever for left politics in times of crisis.
Walter Benjamin positive
His thesis 'every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution' is cited as 'not only still holding today but perhaps more pertinent than ever'.
Moishe Postone negative
Described as someone for whom Žižek has 'otherwise great estimation' but whose logic, support capitalism to avoid crisis and thus antisemitism, is criticized as leading to the conclusion that the left should never risk revolution.
Jacques Vergès negative
French lawyer cited as the embodiment of the problematic solidarity between fascism and anti-colonialism.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Criticized for regressing from Adorno: Habermas treats authoritarianism as an external enemy of liberal democracy (unfinished project) rather than its structural product.
Max Horkheimer positive
Cited for the formula 'those who don't want to talk critically about capitalism should keep silent about fascism', which Žižek extends: those who don't critically discuss liberal democracy should keep quiet about fundamentalism.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for bourgeois equality as false universality, money as fetish, and the mystery of Homer's persistence; also noted to have embarrassingly dismissed imaginary numbers as nonsense.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the impossible Real as point of reference of desire, for the definition of the fetish, and for the structure of disavowal.
Immanuel Kant positive
Invoked for the distinction between phenomena and noumena (reread as libidinal/ethical rather than epistemological) and the concept of public use of reason.
John Maynard Keynes positive
Quoted for 'In the long run we are all dead' as the formula of capitalism's postponement of its point of impossibility.
Ron Jones negative
Creator of the Third Wave experiment; Žižek calls it 'a liberal fake' whose function is to assert liberal openness as the fundamental struggle while obliterating mutual complicity between liberalism and authoritarianism.
Mentioned via Deleuze: 'those who fully endorse the Nietzschean return of the same' should sustain the vision of pre-human chaos.
What it argues
antisemitism as ideological fetish versus symptomZionist antisemitism and the Jew who subtracts from the statethe failed revolution thesis and Islamic fundamentalismfalse antagonism between liberalism and fundamentalismthe impossible Real and the structure of fantasydiscipline and emancipatory politicsfetishism vs. symptom as modes of ideological mystification
Dialectical moves 11
“The square root of minus one is still an impossibility—what changes is not that it becomes possible, but the way the entire system relates to this point of impossibility.”
Impossibility is not resolved but internalized, restructuring the whole system, the model for capitalism's perpetual crisis and for human desire.
“It was precisely when the specific figure of the Jew disappeared that the absolute Jew emerged.”
Jewish emancipation and assimilation did not dissolve antisemitism but intensified it by shifting guilt from acts to being, the condition of possibility for racial genocide.
“The State of Israel itself has become antisemitic—in the formal sense of Zionist antisemitism.”
Zionism, by attacking Jews who refuse full identification with the Israeli state, has ironically adopted the very rhetorical structure of the antisemitism it was meant to combat.
“Far from being a solution to antisemitism, the Christian fundamentalist support for Israel is possible only because Zionism itself has become antisemitic in the formal sense.”
The apparent paradox of antisemites supporting Israel dissolves once we see that Zionism has adopted the antisemitic structure of targeting the free-floating, rootless Jew.
“The fetish is the inversion (envers) of the symptom: where the symptom is the exception that disturbs the surface of the lie, the fetish is the embodiment of the lie that enables us to sustain the unbearable truth.”
Ideology does not only repress through symptoms but enables through fetishes, a structural reversal that makes contemporary ideology harder to critique.
“In liberal false universality, good explicit content covers bad implicit content; in fascist antisemitism, bad explicit content (Jew-hatred) covers good implicit content (hatred of exploitation)—but the asymmetry means demystification works in the first case and fails in the second.”
The two main forms of ideological mystification have inverse structures, which explains why Marxist demystification works against liberalism but not against fascism.
“Every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution—fascism literally replaces, takes the place of, the leftist revolution.”
Fascism is not an independent force but the symptom and consequence of the left's failure to mobilize available revolutionary potential.
“In fighting fundamentalism, liberalism is not fighting its opponent—it is fighting its own outgrowth.”
The antagonism between liberal permissiveness and religious fundamentalism is false because fundamentalism is the return of the repressed of liberalism itself.
“The authoritarian personality is the repressed obverse of the liberal open personality itself—not its opposite but its symptom.”
Adorno's insight (which Habermas regresses from) is that liberal democracy does not simply oppose authoritarianism but generates it through its own inconsistencies.
“The noumenon is not transcendently inaccessible—it is an impossible phenomenon, too intense for our perceptual apparatus attuned to constituted reality.”
Reframes the Kantian gap between phenomena and noumena as libidinal/ethical rather than epistemological: the Real is that which we are prohibited from seeing, not that which is cognitively beyond reach.
“Anti-capitalism today is antisemitic—that is the secret conclusion of those who argue the left should fear crisis.”
Žižek cites this as a reductio: the logic of supporting capitalism to avoid antisemitism ends in identifying anti-capitalism with antisemitism, which he rejects.
Claims 20
asserts
Antisemitic fantasies function as imaginary scenarios providing distorted insight into the impossible Real of social antagonism, which is why they are so persistent and structurally resistant to rational demystification.antisemitism / the Real / ideological fantasy
asserts
What ultimately distinguishes humans from animals is not positive features like speech or tool-making, but the rise of a new point of impossibility (the Freudian-Lacanian Real) around which desire endlessly circles without abandoning its object.human subjectivity / the Real
asserts
Capitalism is structurally always in crisis, perpetually expanding because it can only reproduce itself by borrowing from the future and internalizing its point of impossibility rather than resolving it.capitalism / crisis
asserts
The decisive shift from theological to racial antisemitism occurred precisely when Jews were politically emancipated and their specific distinguishing properties dissolved into general society, so that Jewishness became inscribed in their very being.history of antisemitism / emancipation
asserts
Zionism, in its attacks on Jews who refuse full identification with the State of Israel, has paradoxically become antisemitic in the formal sense, deploying the same rhetorical apparatus as 19th-century antisemitism.Zionism / Zionist antisemitism
rejects
The claim that anti-capitalism today is a mask for antisemitism (Bernard-Henri Lévy, Moishe Postone) must be rejected; it leads to the disastrous conclusion that the left should support capitalism to avoid crisis.left anti-capitalism / antisemitism conflation
asserts
In our post-ideological era, ideology functions more and more in a fetishist mode rather than a symptomatic mode—fetishes enable cynical acceptance of reality by suspending its full symbolic impact.ideology / fetishism / postmodern cynicism
asserts
Fetishist mystification (as in antisemitism) is structurally far more resistant to interpretive demystification than symptomatic mystification (as in liberal false universality), because fetishes cannot be dissolved through interpretation.ideology critique / fetishism vs. symptom
asserts
Islamic fundamentalist movements like the Taliban represent a failed revolution: they fill the vacuum left by the disappearance of secular leftist movements, not an autonomous religious phenomenon.Islamic fundamentalism / failed revolution
rejects
The designation 'Islamo-fascism' is problematic because Arab antisemitism does not play the same structural role as Nazi antisemitism: what bothers Islamists is the State of Israel, not the free-floating rootless Jew that was the Nazi obsession.Islamo-fascism / structural antisemitism
asserts
The conflict between liberal permissiveness and religious fundamentalism is a false antagonism: the two poles mutually generate each other, and liberalism fighting fundamentalism is fighting its own outgrowth.liberalism vs. fundamentalism
asserts
The authoritarian personality is not simply the opposite of the liberal-democratic personality but its repressed obverse, generated by the very inconsistencies of liberal democracy.Adorno / authoritarian personality / liberalism
rejects
The liberal Third Wave experiment is a fake whose ideological function is to assert liberal openness against totalitarian closure as the fundamental struggle, thereby obliterating their mutual complicity and blocking the search for a genuine third alternative.Third Wave experiment / liberal ideology
asserts
The left must re-appropriate discipline, community, collective action, and pride—these values have nothing inherently fascist about them and are essential to radical emancipatory politics.emancipatory politics / discipline
rejects
The European Parliament resolution equating communism and Nazism is dishonestly asymmetrical: it uses the universal term 'communism' for the left while limiting the right to 'Nazism', leaving space for rehabilitation of softer fascisms.European Parliament / totalitarianism equation
asserts
US Christian fundamentalists support Zionist policy not because they have abandoned antisemitism but because Zionism itself has taken on the antisemitic structure of attacking the rootless, free-floating Jew.Christian fundamentalism / Zionism / antisemitism
asserts
Today's left should embrace crisis rather than fear it; Mao's dictum 'everything under heaven is in utter chaos, the situation is excellent' is more pertinent than ever.left politics / crisis / revolution
asserts
The Nazis' initial logic was not simply to annihilate Jews but to normalize them into a nation-state (Madagascar, Palestine proposals), because what bothered them was Jewish rootlessness—not Jewish statehood.Nazi antisemitism / Zionism / historical facts
rejects
Muslim leftists who argue that anti-Jewish rhetoric in fundamentalist movements 'really means' anti-Zionism follow the same logic that would make Hitler an anti-imperialist ally—a reductio ad absurdum that must be rejected.apologetics for Islamist antisemitism
asserts
True poetry, like emancipatory politics, requires discipline: the art of poetry is a constant struggle against the free flow of inspiration, and the greatest poets (Kafka, Eliot, Stevens) needed the discipline of banking and insurance.poetry / discipline / emancipatory politics
Quotes 20
“What happens is not that the impossible simply becomes possible. The square root of minus one is still an impossible number; you cannot positivize it. But the way the system relates to this point of impossibility changes.”Slavoj Žižek · internalized impossibility / capitalism's structural crisis
“It was precisely when the specific figure of the Jew disappeared that the absolute Jew emerged.”Slavoj Žižek · emancipation as precondition for racial antisemitism
“They were not guilty for what they did... but for what they were.”Slavoj Žižek · racial antisemitism / being vs. act
“Okay, but where is your hamster? That is to say, where is the fetish which enables you to pretend to accept reality the way it is?”Slavoj Žižek · fetishism / cynical ideology
“The fetish is the envers, inversion of the symptom... symptom is the exception which disturbs the surface; fetish is the embodiment of the lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth.”Slavoj Žižek · fetish vs. symptom
“Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private world. They are very realist. They are able to accept the way things are in this brutal realistic, cynical way, since they have a fetish to which they can cling.”Slavoj Žižek · fetishism enables cynical realism
“When the subject says 'Jews are the cause of our misery,' he really means big capital is the cause of our misery.”Slavoj Žižek · fascist mystification / displaced antagonism
“Every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · Benjamin's thesis / fascism as failed revolution
“In fighting fundamentalism, liberalism is not fighting its opponent, it's fighting its own outgrowth.”Slavoj Žižek · false antagonism liberalism vs. fundamentalism
“Everything under heaven is in utter chaos so the situation is excellent.”Slavoj Žižek · Maoist embrace of crisis / left politics
“Mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre. Better a disaster... than to persist in a non-evental empty lifeless life.”Slavoj Žižek · Badiou's motto / fidelity to the event
“Those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy and its noble principles should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism.”Slavoj Žižek · Horkheimer's formula applied to fundamentalism
“What is wrong about this terrible motto: strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride? Sorry, I fully accept this as a motto.”Slavoj Žižek · re-appropriating fascist slogans for emancipatory politics
“Those who have nothing have only their discipline. The poor... all they have is their discipline, their capacity to act together. This discipline is already a form of organization.”Alain Badiou · Badiou on popular discipline / emancipatory politics
“The art of poetry is a constant struggle against its own source.”Slavoj Žižek · discipline / poetry as negation of inspiration
“If you really get a poem, it's more like a message you get from tax authorities... It hurts, because poetry is truth and truth hurts.”Slavoj Žižek · poetry / truth / discipline
“Zionism itself, in its hatred of the Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the State of Israel, paradoxically became in this formal sense antisemitic.”Slavoj Žižek · Zionist antisemitism
“The same text of mine was attacked in Israel... as the worst antisemitic propaganda and was attacked by Al-Ahram Sunday supplement as disgusting Zionist propaganda. So I'm on the right way, I think.”Slavoj Žižek · caught between antisemitism and Zionism charges / rhetorical self-positioning
“Capitalism is structurally always in a crisis. This is why it is expanding all the time. It can only reproduce itself by way of borrowing from the future.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism / perpetual crisis
“Noumena are phenomenal things which are too strong, too intensive for our perceptual apparatus attuned to constituted reality.”Slavoj Žižek · noumenon as impossible phenomenon / the Real
Transcript 2 turns
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But I'm also happy that there is a guy who is here since the first year who sometimes tells the people in Toronto or other places that he is with the European Graduate School. And then they report back to me, Žižek says this. Is that an advantage? Yes. Because he is certainly one of our role models here in all his singularity. Rebel without a cause but with a lot of thinking power. Please welcome Slavoj Žižek.
But I'm also happy that there is a guy who is here since the first year who sometimes tells the people in Toronto or other places that he is with the European Graduate School. And then they report back to me, Žižek says this. Is that an advantage? Yes. Because he is certainly one of our role models here in all his singularity. Rebel without a cause but with a lot of thinking power. Please welcome Slavoj Žižek.
Slavoj Žižek
You see, this is maybe the difference between the two of us. You are looking for the man behind the book; I'm looking for the book behind the man. I claim behind every man there is a book and okay. So, since I'm doing in my class every morning a lot of philosophy, I decided this year to do here something a little bit more political, to confront or at least to focus on a very traumatic topic which for sure brings trouble upon you: antisemitism. I mean, I think I'm fully qualified to do it because I have the honor of having been proclaimed and that's the catch, for the same text, so that you cannot say I'm cheating, I'm showing this for the same text. The same text of mine was attacked in Israel, I think in Jerusalem Post, as the worst antisemitic propaganda and was attacked by Al-Ahram Sunday supplement as disgusting Zionist propaganda. So I'm on the right way, I think. So let me approach it slowly systematically. One of the definitions of what Jacques Lacan calls real, le Réel, is the point of impossibility within a field of reality. Along the same lines, what for Alain Badiou defines a world and I think this is crucial when you read him is not primarily the positive qualities, features of a world, but the way its structure, the structure of a world relates to its inherent point of impossibility. Sometimes the whole world changes not because there are some new positive qualities but because the way this world relates to an impossibility changes. Badiou's classical example of course is how classical mathematics dismissed the square root of minus one as an irrelevant externality, as nonsense to be ignored. And incidentally, this is one of the not very glorious moments of Karl Marx. Somebody showed to me the page from his so-called mathematical manuscript where he says square root of minus one, it's pure nonsense, and so on and so on. While modern mathematics, as we all know, makes this impossible the calculable, marking it with the letter small i, so-called imaginary number, and then we know the story: mathematics historically splits, remakes itself by creating constants which occupy these impossible places. So let's be clear: what happens is not that the impossible simply becomes possible. The square root of minus one is still an impossible number; you cannot positivize it. But the way the system, the whole system of numbers relates to this point of impossibility changes. Maybe the same holds for capitalism. The capitalist dynamic of perpetual self-revolutionizing relies on the endless postponing of its point of impossibility: the final crisis, the collapse. I mean, the best the best formula for this is when John Maynard Keynes was asked, "But what about aren't will your politics work in the long run?" He says, "In the long term we are all dead," no? And the whole point is to postpone it. What is for other earlier modes of production a dangerous exception is for capitalism normality. Crisis is in capitalism internalized, taken into account as the point of impossibility which pushes it, the system, to continuous activity. Capitalism is structurally always in a crisis. This is why it is expanding all the time. It can only reproduce itself by way of borrowing from the future. So you see how you see the parallel I'm making. It's still an impossibility, but it's made internal to the system, which changes the entire dynamics. And perhaps that's my global philosophical hypothesis one should extend this to the very definition of humanity. Maybe what ultimately distinguishes men from other animals are not some primarily at the most radical level some positive features speech, tool-making, reflexive thinking, whatever but the rise of a new point of impossibility designated by Freud and Lacan as the impossible real, ultimate point of reference of desire, and so on and so on. There are even very primitive experiments I was told by some people who study animal behavior to demonstrate this point. For example, when an ape is presented with an object beyond reach for example, an attractive sexual partner it tries to gain access to it, but if it doesn't work, it abandons it and moves to another object, maybe not such a nice partner but accessible. While humans persist, transfixed; even if it's a failure, you indefinitely repeat a failure. And this brings me now to let's make a step further to a possible simple definition of what is within the Freudian edifice fantasy. Fantasy is an imaginary scenario which precisely tries to provide an insight into this point of impossibility. Let me explain this via a detour through Gilles Deleuze, who often varies a motive, the motive of how, in becoming post-human, we should learn to practice quote from Deleuze a perception of the world as it was before men, before man released, a perception released from the human coordinates. So for Deleuze, those who fully endorse the Nietzschean return of the same should be strong enough to sustain the vision of, as Deleuze puts it, the iridescent chaos of a world before men. Now, we should be very careful here. Although Deleuze resorts here openly to Kant's language, talking about the direct access to Ding an sich, to things the way they are in themselves, his point is precisely that one should subtract the opposition between phenomena, the way things appear to us, and things in themselves, from its Kantian functioning where noumena are transcendent, inaccessible things which forever elude our grasp. What Deleuze refers to as things in themselves is in a way even more phenomenal than our shared phenomenal reality. It is, let's call it an impossible phenomenon: the phenomenon that is excluded from our standard shared reality. The gap that separates us from noumena is thus primarily not epistemological, but practico-ethical or libidinal. There is no true reality behind or beneath phenomena. Noumena are phenomenal things which are too strong, too intensive for our perceptual apparatus attuned to constituted reality. Imagine, for example, someone being forced to witness a terrifying torture. In a way, the monstrosity of what he or she sees would make this an experience of the noumenal impossible real, which would shatter the coordinates of our common reality. In this sense, for example, if we were to discover some films shot in a concentration camp showing the systematic torture, burning of prisoners, in a way we would have seen too much. We would have entered some kind of prohibited, forbidden noumenal territory. This was the point between, if I remember it correctly, between Godard and Claude Lanzmann. Godard said he would have used these shots; Lanzmann, Claude Lanzmann, precisely the author of Shoah, said no, if he were to stumble upon such movies, he would have immediately burned them. This is also what makes it so unbearable to witness the last moments of people who know they are shortly going to die and are in this sense already living dead. Again, imagine that we would have discovered among the ruins of the Twin Towers a video camera which somehow survived the crash intact and is full of shots of what went on among the passengers of one of the planes just in those last minutes before they crashed into one of the towers. In all these cases, it is that effectively we would have seen things, as it were, as they are in themselves, outside human coordinates, outside our human reality. Incidentally, my fancy is that maybe the US authorities have these shots and don't want to show them or whatever. But now again, my claim is that it is at this level that we should locate the antisemitic fantasies. They are precisely providing, of course within the antisemitic ideological space, an insight into this impossible otherness. Why? One of the supreme ironies of the history of antisemitism is that Jews can stand of course within the antisemitic space for both poles of an opposition. They are stigmatized as upper class, rich merchants exploiting us, and low class, filthy. They are perceived as too intellectual you know, just working all the time, reading books and too earthly, sexual predators and so on; as lazy and workaholics. Sometimes they stand for the stubborn attachment to their particular life form, which prevents them from becoming full citizens of the state they live in. Sometimes they stand for a homeless, uprooted universal cosmopolitanism indifferent towards all particular life forms. The focus changes with different historical epochs. In the era of the French Revolution, the Jews were sometimes, for example by the great partisan of the French Revolution among the German idealists, Fichte, they were condemned as too particularist. The reproach was they continue to stick to their identity, rejecting to become abstract citizens of a state like everyone else. In the late 19th century, with the rise of imperialist patriotism, the accusation was turned around. Jews are no longer perceived as too particular but on the contrary as too cosmopolitan, rootless, lacking their proper place. The key change in the history of Western antisemitism paradoxically occurred with the political emancipation of the Jews, the granting of civil rights to the Jews which followed the French Revolution. In the early modernity, the pressure on the Jews was to convert to Christianity. And the problem was, can one trust them? You know, from Shakespeare Merchant of Venice and so on, it's always this problem: first let's force them to convert to Christianity and then, but did they really become Christians or do they secretly continue to practice their rituals? However, in the later 19th century, a shift occurs which culminates in the Nazi antisemitism. Conversion is now out of the question, meaningless. Did you notice this difference, how all of a sudden after the French Revolution it's no longer the question of converting the Jews? Hitler never was thinking in these terms: let's convert them. Why? For the Nazis, the guilt of the Jews is directly rooted in their biological constitution. One does not have to prove that they are guilty. They are guilty already by being Jews. Why? The key is provided, I think, by the sudden rise in the Western ideological imaginary of the figure of the wandering eternal Jew in the age of Romanticism. That is to say, precisely when in real life, with the explosion of capitalism, features attributed to Jews expanded into the whole of society since commodity exchange became hegemonic. It was thus at the very moment when Jews were deprived of their specific properties which made it easy to distinguish them from the rest of the population, and when the Jewish question was resolved at the political level by the formal emancipation of the Jews that is to say, by granting Jews the same rights as to all other normal Christian citizens that their curse was inscribed into their very being. They were no longer ridiculous misers and so on, but demoniac heroes of eternal damnation, haunted by an unspecified unspeakable guilt, condemned to wander around, longing to find redemption in death. So it was precisely when the specific figure of the Jew disappeared that the absolute Jew emerged. And this transformation conditioned the shift of antisemitism from theology to race. Their damnation was their race. They were not guilty for what they did: exploit the Christian, murder their children, rape their women, or ultimately betray and murder Jesus Christ; but for what they were. And of course, it is this shift which laid the foundations for the Holocaust, for the physical annihilation of the Jews as the only appropriate final solution of their so-called problem. Insofar as Jews were specified by a series of their properties, the goal was to convert them, to turn them into Christians. But from the moment that Jewishness began to concern their very being, only annihilation can solve the so-called Jewish question. However, the true mystery of antisemitism is why is it such a constant? Why does it persist through all historical mutations? Things are a little bit as with what Marx says about Homer. The true mystery to explain is not the origins, how Homer's poetry is rooted in early Greek society, but why does it persist to exert its artistic charm till today, long after the social conditions that gave birth to it disappeared. It is easy to date, to determine the original moment of European antisemitism. It all started, I claim, not in ancient Rome, but in the 11th-12th century Europe, which was awakening from the inertia of the so-called dark ages and experienced a fast growth of market exchange and the role of money. At that precise point, the Jew emerged as the enemy, the usurper, the parasitic intruder who disturbs the harmonious social edifice. Incidentally, theologically, this moment is also the moment of what Jacques Le Goff called the birth of the Purgatory. The idea that the choice is not only between heaven and hell; there has to be a third mediating place where one can, as it were, make a deal: pay for one's sins, if they are not too great, with a determined amount of repentance. Money economy again. So where are we today? I claim we are witnessing the last version of antisemitism which, as I'm tempted to say as a Hegelian, reached the extreme point of self-relating. That is to say, the privileged role of Jews in the establishment of the sphere of what Kant calls public use of reason hinges on their subtraction from state power. This position of the, to use Jacques Rancière's term, part of no part of every organic nation-state community, this, not the abstract universal nature of their monotheism, makes them one of the figures of the immediate embodiment of universality. No wonder then that with the establishment of the Jewish nation-state in '48-'49, a new figure of the Jew emerged: a Jew resisting identification with the State of Israel, refusing to accept the State of Israel as his or her true home. A Jew who subtracts himself also from his own state. A Jew who includes the State of Israel among the states towards which he or she insists on maintaining a distance. And it is this uncanny Jew who is the object of what I think one cannot but designate as and I warn you, this expression brought me a lot of trouble as Zionist antisemitism. The foreign excess disturbing the nation-state community. These Jews, the Jews of the Jews themselves, worthy successors of Spinoza, are today the only Jews who continue to insist on the public use of reason. Again, the idea came to me when I was for this when I was with my friend who was also here a couple of times, Udi Aloni. He is a little bit crazy like me but basically a good guy. So I was once in Israel debating one of his films, and then some people in the hall addressed me, typically, not him, he is a Jew, me, claiming, "How could you be duped by this guy? Don't you see that he just wants to exploit you? He is just after your money, fame, and so on and so on." So I told them, "Ah, I got your point. You are telling me he is a dirty Jew or what, basically, no?" And then I noticed how how Zionists attack those Jews who do not fully identified with their nation state. They use exactly the same apparatus as it was used in the great epoch of the late 19th century antisemitism. You cannot trust them. They appear to be one of us but they are not really one of us rooted in our community. They are too free-floating, and so on and so on. So the thesis of Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the people whom I mention you know, when people asked me, it is well known that I am for death penalty, no? And people asked me, "How can you be for death penalty? Let's debate it." I said, "Okay, okay, but first a couple of people has to be shot, then let's debate the abolition." And okay, this guy is among them, no. In his Left in Dark Times, Bernard-Henri Lévy makes one of these pathetic proclamations that the antisemitism of the 21st century will be progressive or none. That is to say that today antisemitism is the main new form of the emergence of whatever remained of the new transfiguration of the left. This of course implicitly at least refers to another of our best friends, to Jean-Claude Milner's thesis on what he calls the title of one of his books, The Criminal Tendencies of Democratic Europe. The thesis is that progressive Europe stands for the universal fluidification, the erasure of all limits; and Jews, with their fidelity to their way of life grounded in their law and tradition, stand for the ultimate obstacle to this fluidification. But my counter-question: is the logic of antisemitism not the exact opposite? Does the antisemitic perspective not perceive Jews precisely as agents of global fluidification, of the erasure of all particular identities? Therein resides the irony of Milner's argumentation. It comes, I claim, dangerously close to the Zionist antisemitism, since what it effectively attacks, this universal rootlessness, fluidification, is precisely the other side of the Jewish identity itself. That is to say, what Milner attacks as the antisemitic core of democratic Europe is grounded precisely in the greatest all honor goes to them Jewish contribution to European identity. Rootless Jews were the first and most radical European universalists. This fact also enables us to solve another enigma, which was always weird, a weird fact for me. How can it be that the United States Christian fundamentalists who are we can say or should be by their very nature antisemitic; my God, the whole world is falling apart if they are not antisemitic how can they now, as you probably know, passionately support the Zionist policy of the State of Israel? I claim there is only one solution to this enigma: the State of Israel itself is become antisemitic in the sense, of course, only of Zionist antisemitism. That is to say, it is not that the US fundamentalists have changed, it is that Zionism itself, in its hatred of the Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the State of Israel, paradoxically became in this formal sense antisemitic. That is to say, is constructing the figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project along the antisemitic lines. The standard Zionist argument, again, against the critic of the politics of the State of Israel is that, of course, like every other state, the State of Israel can and should be judged and eventually criticized, but that that's the usual proviso isn't it that the critics of Israel often misuse the justified critique of Israeli policy for antisemitic purposes? I claim that when the unconditional Christian fundamentalist supporters of the Israeli politics reject the leftist critics of the Israeli politics, is thus their implicit line of argumentation not best rendered by a wonderful caricature I really admire it published in July in the Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse. It shows two stocky, caricature-like Nazi-looking Austrians. One of them has in his hands a newspaper and comments to his friend: "Here you can see again how a totally justified antisemitism is misused for a cheap critique of Israel." That's how they function. Okay. So why? What's the logic behind of this? Why this ambiguous renaissance of antisemitism even in the guise of Zionist antisemitism? Here, please allow me a little bit of a theory now. I claim that in our allegedly post-ideological era, ideology functions more and more in a fetishist mode as opposed to the traditional symptomatic mode. In the symptomatic mode, the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptoms as returns of the repressed, cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie. While fetish is effectively a kind of envers, inversion of the symptom. That is to say, symptom is the exception which disturbs the the surface of the false appearance of a lie, the point at which the repressed other scene intrudes, while fetish is the embodiment of the lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth. What do I mean by this? Let me take a case of a death of a beloved person. If my reaction is a symptomatic one, I repress this death. I try not to think about it. I throw myself in in in in activity, in traveling, in other love liaisons. But the repressed traumas trauma returns in symptoms. Whatever I do, I am somehow reminded of it. I cannot really avoid it, like I already mentioned this in my class, like that I like it, totally ridiculous joke, you know, of an adolescent who is traumatized by sexuality, so he tries to avoid it and escapes into mathematics. But whatever he does there is that, like all of a sudden he has a task: how much energy is released when the two bodies hit hit each other? Or how much how much do you need to fill such a tube, a volume, and so on? And you cannot escape it. Okay. But in the case of a fetish on the contrary, I rationally fully accept the death of a beloved person. And yet I cling to the fetish, to some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role of allowing us to cope with the harsh reality. Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private world. They are very realist. They are able to accept the way things are in this brutal realistic, cynical way, since they have a fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full to suspend the full impact of reality. Here is a story I often repeat I know, of a case that I know, of a husband whose young beautiful wife died of breast cancer. He survived her death without big problems. He was able to talk about her painful dying to his friends without stress. His friends wondered how this was possible. Did he really love her at all? Was he secretly even glad that she died? Then they got the clue. While talking about her, he always held a hamster, his dead wife's favorite pet object, gently playing with it. This hamster was his fetish: a living disavowal of her death, enabling him to rationally accept that she is dead, while suspending what Levi-Strauss called efficacité symbolique, the symbolic efficiency of this fact. The proof: a year after his wife's death, the hamster also died. And the effect of this second death was devastating. The widowed husband immediately suffered a total breakdown, had to be hospitalized after repeated suicide attempts. In this precise sense, money is also for Marx a fetish. I pretend to be a rational utilitarian subject, well aware how things truly stand, but I embody my disavowed belief in the money fetish. So when we are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological cynical era nobody believes in the proclaimed ideals, or when we encounter a person who claims he is cured of any beliefs, he accepts reality the way it really is, he said usually it's all about pleasure, money, I don't have any illusions you should always ask the question: "Okay, but where is your hamster?" That is to say, where is the fetish which enables you to pretend to accept reality the way it is? I claim that what I ironically refer to as Western Buddhism, this popularized version of transcendental meditation, oriental spirituality, is such a fetish. It enables you to fully participate in the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is. What really matters is the peace of your inner self to which you can always withdraw, and so on and so on. Now let me go a couple of steps, make a couple of steps further. Of course one should note that fetish can function in two opposite ways. Either its role remains unconscious, as in the case of the unfortunate husband who was unaware of the fetish role of the hamster; or you think that fetish is that which really matters, as is the case of the Western Buddhist unaware that the truth of his existence is the social involvement, which he tends to dismiss as, "Oh, it's only a social game," and so on and so on. But even more important is to introduce another distinction between two different modes of fetishism. First we have what I described now: this, let's call it permissive cynical fetishism. You are cynical, you know how things are, but you cling to your fetish which allows you to maintain a distance towards reality. It should be opposed to, let's call it populist fascist fetishism, where exact precisely we encounter antisemitism. Let me explain this difference by opposing again two types of ideological mystification. The first type would have been that of false universality. This is the standard critique of ideology. For example, you advocate you say to your liberal friend you advocate freedom, equality, and so on, but you are not aware of implicit qualifications which in their very form undermine what you are officially for. For example, your definition of equality secretly privileges rich male belonging to a certain race, culture, and so on and so on. That's the standard critique of ideology. The reproach is false universality. You claim your your value, your motive is really universal. You know this classical Marx's point: bourgeois equality is really be equality for those who for a limited part of society. But there is another mystification which would be the fetishist properly mystification as it is operative in antisemitism. This mystification proceeds in a different way. It concerns the false identification of the antagonism and of the enemy. As we all know, class struggle or another social antagonism is displaced onto the struggle against the Jews. So that the popular rage at being exploited is redirected from capitalist relations as such to the Jewish plot. So, to put it in very naive terms: in the first case, the liberal guy who argues for universal freedom, equality, and so on, you can say when the subject says "freedom and equality," he really means only freedom of trade, equality in front of the law, and so on and so on. In the second case, fascist antisemitism, you can say when the subject says "Jews are the cause of our misery," he really means big capital is the cause of our misery. But the asymmetry is clear. To put it again in naive terms: in the first case I use these terms with all qualifications, very naively, of course the good explicit content, freedom, equality, covers up the bad implicit content: class and other privileges and exclusions. We don't reproach a liberal for being for equality; we reproach him that the way he that the way his notion of equality is secretly qualified makes it inconsistent with itself. But in the second case, the bad explicit content, antisemitism, covers up the good implicit content: hatred of exploitation, and so on and so on. So you notice I know this is very naive, but I think there is something to it this we like in the first case the good cover explicit has a bad secret behind. Here it's as if the cover is bad, hatred of the Jews and so on, but allegedly there is a good content behind. Like as we usually say, workers have the right to be furious at exploitation, they just direct it at the wrong target. So as we can clearly see, the inner structure of these two mystifications is again that of the couple symptom-fetish. The implicit limitations are the symptoms of liberal egalitarianism: singular returns of the repressed truth. While Jew is the fetish of antisemitic fascists. As it were, you know how Freud defines the fetish: the last thing you see before you see that woman doesn't have a penis. Here the Jew would have been the last thing you see before confronting, let's say, class struggle openly. This asymmetry has crucial consequences for the critical process of demystification. Apropos liberal egalitarianism, the interpretive demystification is relatively relatively easy, since you can directly mobilize the tension between form and content. You argue with a liberal democrat: "Listen, but don't you see that your notion of equality is really secretly qualified?" And to be consequent, your liberal friend maybe will have to admit that the content of his ideological premises effectively belies its form. And then he can do one of the two things: either move a little bit towards he can then, okay, have he has many options in the space of what Badiou yesterday so nicely defined as this space of paraconsistency and so on; he can say, "Yes, in principle in the long term, but we have to be realists, if we do it immediately we will ruin it." Or he can adopt a pure cynical position. He can say, "Listen, this is an illusion equality, but for society to function we need these illusions," whatever whatever. But what I'm arguing is that in the case of Jew as the fascist fetish, paradoxically, the interpretive demystification is much more difficult. It this confirms also the clinical insight, incidentally, that a fetishist it is almost impossible through interpretation to undermine a fetish. You can have not always some success by interpreting a hysterical, neurotic symptoms. Their interpretation can work. Not with a fetish. In practical political terms, the conclusion is pretty sad. It is that it is very difficult to enlighten an exploited worker who blames Jews for his misery. You know, explaining to him like, "Can't you see how Jew is the wrong enemy, how your true enemy is the ruling class and how his antisemitism is just a manipulation by the ruling class so that they are free to not attacked by the workers, free to free to free to exploit them," and so on and so on. And this is even up to a point as far as I was able to establish empirically true. While many communists joined Nazis in Germany in the late 20s and 1930s and so on, the opposite process is very rare. So you see my point: although it may seem to be much easier to say to an antisemitic worker, "But can't you see you are duped, the real enemy is elsewhere," this process is de facto a very difficult one. So again: today's hegemonic ideological scene is split between two modes of fetishism: cynical and fundamentalist. While the fundamentalist directly ignores or at least mistrusts argumentation, blindly clinging to his fetish, the cynic pretends to accept argumentation but ignores its symbolic efficiency. In other words, while the fundamentalist not so much believes as directly knows the truth embodied in his fetish, the cynic practices the logic of disavowal, je sais bien, mais quand même I know very well but. With regard to today's situation of ideological struggle, this means that one should at least view with profound suspicion those leftists who argue that the so-called I will tell you immediately the other side of the story that the so-called Muslim fundamentalist populist movements are basically ours: emancipatory anti-imperialist movements, and that the fact that they sometimes formulate their program in, if not antisemitic at least anti-European enlightenment, anti-universalist terms, is just a confusion that results from their being caught in the immediacy of their struggle. Like when they say that's how some French Arab were telling me you should always bear in mind that when they attack the Jews, what they really mean is just that they are against Zionist colonialism. I think that we should resist this logic, because once we accept it, we make the first step on the path at the end of which is the quite logical conclusion that, since Hitler also really meant capitalists when he spoke of Jews, he should be ultimately our ally in the global anti-imperialist struggle with the Anglo-American Empire as the principal enemy. And this line of reasoning is not just a funny rhetorical exercise. Are do you know that the Nazis effectively did promote anti-colonialist struggle in Arab countries, in India, and so on and so on? So what makes the unique figure of Jacques Vergès, the French lawyer, a universal phenomenon is that I claim he embodies precisely this option of solidarity between fascism and anti-colonialism. But as I already said, this is one side of the story, this unconditional rejection of any antisemitism. The other side of the story, which is crucial, I'll give you one version of it. You remember how when in the spring of this year Taliban took over the Swat Valley in the north of Pakistan, the usual reports: "Oh my God, fundamentalists won, crazy," and so on and so on. Of all the media that I know, only you see how sometimes truth emerges where you wouldn't expect it only one short article in New York Times, which just then disappeared, nobody as far as I know reacted to it, hinted at the other dimension. It was it made it clear how, I quote New York Times, "how a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants is what was going on there." Now I quote not a Palestinian terrorist propaganda, I quote New York Times, I quote: "In Swat Valley, accounts from those who have fled from Taliban make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops. The Taliban's ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency, and its raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal." And then they quote one advisor to Obama who said, "The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution. Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan. The militants for their part are promising more than just prescriptions on music and schooling. They are promising justice." End of quote. Now, you notice the ideological bias of this New York Times article. It says that the it refers to "Taliban's ability to exploit class divisions," as if Taliban's true agenda is elsewhere, in religious fundamentalism, and they are only taking advantage of the plight of the poor landless farmers. To this one should simply add two things. First, such a distinction between the true agenda and instrumental manipulation is externally imposed onto Taliban, as if the poor landless farmers themselves do not experience their plight already in what we refer to as fundamentalist religious terms. Second, if by taking advantage of the farmers' suffering the Taliban are "raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal," what prevents liberal democrats in Pakistan, as well as the United States, to simply take advantage of this same plight and try to help the landless farmer? The sad implication of the fact that this obvious question is not raised in the New York Times article is that the feudal forces in Pakistan are considered the natural ally of liberal democracy. What phenomena like Taliban demonstrate is that Walter Benjamin's old thesis, "every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution," not only still holds today but is perhaps more pertinent than ever. Liberals like to point out similarities between left and right-wing extremisms. Hitler's terror camps imitated Bolshevik terror, the Leninist party is today alive in Al-Qaeda. Yes, but I agree, but what does all this mean? It can also be read as an indication of how fascism if we accept, that's another question, that this Muslim fundamentalism is fascism, I will immediately approach this problem that how fascism literally replaces, take the place of the leftist revolution. Its rise is the left's failure, but simultaneously a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, dissatisfaction, which the left was not able to mobilize. And does again the same not hold for today's so-called by some people Islamo-fascism? Is the rise of radical Islamism not strictly correlative to the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries? Today, when Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that years ago it was a country with a strong secular tradition, up to a powerful communist party which took power there independently of Soviet Union. Soviet Union intervene only later when the communist power was crumbling. Again, where did this secular radical tradition disappear? It transformed itself, of course, into so-called Islamic fundamentalism. The same goes for United States. I hope you read the wonderful popular it's not big theory book by Thomas Frank called What's the Matter with Kansas? Kansas is the US homegrown version of Afghanistan. The very state which till 1970s was the bedrock of radical leftist populism. They were always in the first place to fight racism and so on. Even politically, no; my God, the greatest figure of the struggle against against slavery, John Brown, is from Kansas, and so on; is today the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism. Again, does this not confirm Benjamin's thesis that every fascism is an index of a failed revolution? Furthermore, is the term Islamo-fascism proposed, among others, by Francis Fukuyama and the above-mentioned friend of mine, Bernard-Henri Lévy, justified? What renders it problematic is not only the religious qualification I mean, then we should also talk about Christo-fascism and so on. Fascism itself is enough I claim. But the very designation of today's fundamentalist so-called Islamic movements as fascist I think is a is problematic. Why? It is a fact that sometimes we find traces of more or less open antisemitism in these movements and states. And there are, I know, historical links between Arab nationalism and European fascism, and so on and so on. However, I claim that even if there is antisemitism in these countries, it does not play the same structural role. Why not? Do you remember, for the Nazis, the enemy were Jews as nomadic, stateless, rootless people, corrupting the community within which they live. So that for them, the State of Israel was a solution, one of them at least. No wonder that before deciding to kill all the Jews, the Nazis played with the idea of giving them a land to form a state. Incidentally, not only Madagascar, but Palestine itself. I don't you know this is one of the dark chapters of the history of Israel and I was ferociously attacked for it. But when I asked the guys, "Okay, are the facts wrong?" they said, "No no no, I just," you know the usual excuse, "I put them in a totally wrong context." Okay, what are the facts? The fact is that in '38-'39 Adolf Eichmann took a train for Palestina because only of some strike he met representatives of Hagana in Alexandria and they made a deal that if European Jews leave Germany for Palestine they will be able to take most of their property if they are rich with them on condition that they spend this property for German products. The irony is that many of these products were even arms. The irony is that in '48 many of the Jewish soldiers fighting the Arabs were doing it with German arms. Now let me be clear here: I don't condemn the Jews here. I would have done the same. They were in a desperate situation. What I'm saying it's let's be very precise that what bothered the Nazis was the Jew as the rootless, free-floating, and so on. For them, how to put it, the first option even was, let's change them into normal people, nation state, you know, Madagascar, wherever. With today with Arabs it's exactly the same and I can tell you, okay, not first hand but second hand, from my friends who not only from my friends who visited, for example, Iran which is supposed to be the bad guy, they are doing the bomb to kill to bomb Israel and so on. What bothers them is precisely the opposite: it's the State of Israel. They have no problem with what was the horror for the Nazis: free-floating Jews. The proof is again I try to be here honest so that you will not accuse me that I'm spreading some secretly antisemitic whatever propaganda my source here is again good old liberal pro-Israel New York Times, where they had a report on Ahmadinejad confirming that because for very specific reason, because as you probably know Iran recognizes the other two religions of the book also as legitimate that it's relatively there are no antisemitic pogroms, you can live totally normally as a Jew, more or less, but yes yes, I mean simply it's not a problem. So again you see this radical opposition. It's totally different figure of a Jew which bothers them. So let me go further. We we and the truly provocative thing comes in ten minutes at the end, have patience. We all know the anti-communist characterization of Marxism as the Islam of 20th century, secularizing Islam's abstract fanaticism. Jean-Pierre Taguieff, the liberal historian of antisemitism, turned this characterization around: Islam is turning out to be for him the Marxism of the 21st century, prolonging after the decline of communism the Marxist violent anti-capitalism. However, I claim if we take into account the above-mentioned Benjamin's idea of fascism as occupying the place of a failed revolution, the rational core of such inversions can be easily accepted. However, that is to say of course, if if religious fundamentalism will be the Marxism of the 21st century, it simply means a failed revolution and its void will be filled in by religious fundamentalism. But it would have been totally wrong to draw from this the conclusion that the most the left can do is to hope that the crisis will be limited, that capitalism will survive. This seems to be the conclusion of some of the Zionist leftists, for example, a guy for whom I have otherwise great estimation, Moishe Postone in Chicago. His logic is the following one: since every crisis which opens up a space for radical left also gives rise to antisemitism, it is better for us to support successful capitalism and hope there will be no crisis. Brought to its conclusion, this reasoning implies and this is the conclusion that I don't I'm not sure he is ready to say it publicly in Europe, but he again my good friend Bernard-Henri Lévy said it once he gave an interview on that PBS Public Broadcast he said that ultimately, and that's the secret I think, ultimately anti-capitalism today is antisemitic. That anti-capitalism is a mask for antisemitism today. It is against such reasoning then one has to evoke Alain Badiou's motto, mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre. Better a disaster, that is to say, an event turned catastrophe, than désêtre, that is to say, to persist in a non-evental empty lifeless life. One has to take the risk of the fidelity to an event, even if eventually the event ends up in an obscure disaster. The best indicator of the lack of trust of today's left into itself is its fear of crisis. Such a left fears for its own comfortable position of a critic fully integrated into the system, ready to risk nothing. Which is why today more than ever I claim Mao Zedong's old motto is pertinent. You remember that wonderful phrase: "everything under heaven is in utter chaos so the situation is excellent." A true leftist takes crisis seriously, without illusions, but as a chance to be fully exploited. So now the concluding problematic points. What this means is that the difference between liberalism and the radical left although I am like Alain Badiou more and more skeptical if we should still even use the term left, let's call it radical emancipatory politics is that although they refer to the same three elements in the political space: liberal democratic center, populist proto-fascist right, radical left, they locate them in a radically different topology. For the liberal center, radical left and right are the two forms of appearance of the same totalitarian excess. Although the liberal center likes to cheat here. You know that now a couple of days ago, the European Parliament adopted a disgusting resolution condemning communism and Nazism as two versions of the same, basically equalizing them. But did you notice a disgusting asymmetry? They should have done one of the two things I claim if they were to be even I'm measuring now by their own standards honest liberals. Either condemn the entire movement and say communism and fascism are the same crime, or limit themselves to the evil extreme in both cases and to say, I don't know, Stalinism and Nazism are. No, they have chosen the universal term for the left: communism, and the selective for the right: only Nazism. Which means, of course, the space is open for the favorable sport of exercise hobby of the right-liberal historians today to demonstrate how this soft Latino fascism Mussolini, Salazar, Franco isn't so bad at all, and so on and so on. So that's for the right or for the liberal center. While for the left, the only true alternative is the one between itself and the liberal mainstream, while the populist radical right is nothing but the symptom of the liberalism's inability to deal with the leftist threat. So when we hear today a politician or an ideologist offering us a choice between liberal freedom and fundamentalist oppression and triumphantly asking us this rhetorical question: "But do you want women to be excluded from public life? Do you want every critic criticism or making fun of religion to be punished by death?" and so on. What should make us suspicious is the very self-evidence of the answer. Of course we don't want this. The problem is that such simplistic liberal universalism long ago lost its innocence. This is why for a true leftist the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict. The two opposites form a vicious cycle of two poles presupposing generating each other. One should accomplish here a Hegelian step back and put in question the very measure from which fundamentalism appears in all its horror. What Horkheimer of Frankfurt School had said long ago should also be applied to today's fundamentalism. He said as you know that those who don't want to talk about fascism should also keep silent about about sorry, that those who don't want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep silent about fascism. We should repeat this today: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy and its noble principles should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism. How then so this is my point and now just if you permit me a provocative conclusion. My point is that the ABC and this is connected to what Badiou was developing yesterday as this paraconsistency and so on that we are caught in a certain antagonism that imposes itself as the principal antagonism today: the free West against fundamentalism. The first thing to do is to render problematic this antagonism itself, to perceive it as a false antagonism. In the sense of, although I agree sometimes strategically we should support liberals here and there, but basically we should see that this is a false struggle. That to cut a long story short that in fighting fundamentalism, liberalism is not fighting its opponent, it's fighting its own outgrowth. That the only thing that can save what is worth saving, liberalism itself, is a more radical left. Now just empirical proof, I'm close to the end. What are the consequences of this? Now I will try to conclude with a little bit more unpleasant consequence. I will try to present you with a clear empirical example of how this step out of the two of the false opposition, to see beneath the false opposition the true opposition. Let me begin with you will think it has nothing to do with what I was talking, it is directly linked. Do you know what is the Third Wave? No no, nothing to do with those futurists, we are entering a new era, it's not we will all die but humanity will be reborn as no, it is the social experiment made by a history teacher called Ron Jones at a Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California in Is this standard liberal experiment and again this was a trial, he wrote later a book, then this then it was made a TV movie, it was even recently I think made a version in Germany here. I radically disagree with this experiment. Why? What did he do? In order to explain to his students how the German populace could claim ignorance of the Holocaust how could good Germans do what they did? Jones started in his class a movement, he called it the Third Wave, and convinced his students that the movement is meant to eliminate democracy. He emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride. On the fourth day however, Jones decided to terminate the experiment, which was slipping out of his control. He discovered that students became increasingly involved in the project, and their discipline and loyalty were becoming breathtaking; like, some of them even denounced to Jones to Jones their peers whom they suspected of not really believing in the project, and so on and so on. So Jones ordered students on the fourth day to attend a rally at noon next day where, instead of a televised address of their leader, the student were presented confronted by an empty screen and then, after a couple of minutes of waiting, Jones announced that they have been part of an experiment in fascism and that they all willingly created a sense of discipline, superiority which German citizens displayed in the period of Nazi Germany. I think this is a liberal fake, a false lying experiment. Why? As expected, liberals were fascinated by the Third Wave, discerning in it the deep Lord of the Flies I'm referring to William Golding novel insight into how you know, liberals like this topic beneath the civilized surface we are all potentially fascist beasts. The barbarian beast is lurking in all of us, awaiting its opportunity. But what if we shift the perspective a little bit and conceive the authoritarian personality as the repressed obverse of the liberal open personality itself? I want to refer here to the well-known legendary study by Adorno and others you may have heard about it on so-called authoritarian personality. The features of authoritarian personality which Adorno tried to then identify through sociological investigations and so on are clearly opposed to the standard figure of open democratic personality. You know, Adorno simply thought: what is democratic personality? Open to debate; okay, so the other is dogmatic. Tolerant; intolerant, and so on and so on. But I think at some point, liberal critics of Adorno were right when they pointed as to one big hole in the entire book. Adorno doesn't make it clear what is the underlying point of his experiment. His experiment, of course as expected, demonstrated that many of us are potentially fascist blah-blah-blah prepare and so on. The problem where what Adorno didn't want to decide is the simple dilemma: are we dealing when we talk about these two types of personality let's call it authoritarian personality and whatever you want to call the opposite, open democratic personality are these simply to be opposed as good versus bad, so we simply should fight against one, support the other; or is the bad one the symptom of the good one? So that the solution is not simply: fight the bad one for the good one, but determine, analyze how the good one itself through its inconsistency generates the bad one. To put it bluntly, how authoritarian personality is the result outcome of the very liberal universe. It's typical that Habermas makes this step. And here I think he regresses from Adorno, who is more radical. Adorno always had this suspicion that you cannot simply oppose good democratic openness towards the bad totalitarian temptation; that they form a totality. While again the whole point of Habermas, he would have said, "Yes, the persistence of authoritarian personality demonstrates how how the democratic process is an unfinished project; we should fight more and more for for liberal democracy, tolerance," and so on and so on. But again I think that the reluctance of Adorno to do this he did not precisely that's his greatness that he did not want to make this step and to say, "Obviously if authoritarian personality is bad, then its opposite must be must be good." And this brings us to what I think is false in this liberal enthusiasm for the Third Wave phenomenon. Its function is to assert the struggle of liberal openness against totalitarian closure as our fundamental ideological struggle and thus to obliterate their mutual complicity. That is to say, the fact that totalitarianism so-called is the return of the repressed of liberalism itself. This obliteration also enables us to condense fascism and communism into one and the same anti-liberal totalitarian figure, and thus to block the search for a third option, not third in the compromise sense but for the true alternative. Let's call it naively a personality structure of a subject engaged in a radical emancipatory struggle; a subject who is not a liberal tolerant subject but also definitely not a a fascist authoritarian personality. A subject who and now comes my maybe provocation, but you are used for everything from me, nothing provokes people today my temptation was this one: my God, sorry to tell you, what is wrong about this terrible motto: strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride? Sorry, I fully accept this as a motto. What is bad about it? Strength through discipline: of course, if we are poor, screwed up, we must be disciplined. Strength through community: of course we must hold together. Strength through action: of course. Strength through pride: of course, we should be proud of our struggle. We can do this and yet remain engaged in a radical egalitarian emancipatory struggle. What a liberal can do apropos such a subject is either dismiss it as another version of the authoritarian personality or this is the game they like to play, liberal critics to claim that there is contradiction in the left, that while their task is egalitarian, the very mode they approach it is authoritarian. In both cases, the specificity of the subject of let's call it radical emancipatory struggle is invisible. Here I would like to conclude with a quote from Badiou where he makes the same point. Namely, the it's the idea is that in today's era of hedonist permissivity as the ruling ideology, I think the time is coming for the left to re-appropriate discipline, the spirit of sacrifice, and so on. There is nothing inherently fascist about these values. Or a quote from Badiou this is the secret Badiou, it's a little bit too radical for his public image, he said this in an interview in LA, but I'm the evil guy, this is everything is in my black book. He says: "We need a popular discipline. I would even say that those who have nothing have only their discipline. The poor, those with no financial or military means, those with no power, all they have is their discipline, their capacity to act together. This discipline is already a form of organization." And to conclude, because there were some proto-fascist rumors that I'm against poetry, I claim that true poetry also requires great discipline. No wonder that three of the greatest poets of the 20th century, more precisely a writer and two poets, were bank officers and insurance agents: Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens. They needed the discipline of dealing with money not only as a counterpoint to poetic license, but as a means to install order in the flow of this stupid poetic inspiration. The art of poetry is a constant struggle against its own source. The art proper art of poetry consists in the way one dams the free flow of poetic inspiration. This is why, in compliance with the banking metaphor, I think there is nothing cheaply liberating in getting message of a poem. If you really get a poem, it's more like a message you get from tax authorities; you know, "Oh, you have to pay this that," and so on and so on. Why? It hurts, because poetry is truth and truth hurts. Thank you very much.
You see, this is maybe the difference between the two of us. You are looking for the man behind the book; I'm looking for the book behind the man. I claim behind every man there is a book and okay. So, since I'm doing in my class every morning a lot of philosophy, I decided this year to do here something a little bit more political, to confront or at least to focus on a very traumatic topic which for sure brings trouble upon you: antisemitism. I mean, I think I'm fully qualified to do it because I have the honor of having been proclaimed and that's the catch, for the same text, so that you cannot say I'm cheating, I'm showing this for the same text. The same text of mine was attacked in Israel, I think in Jerusalem Post, as the worst antisemitic propaganda and was attacked by Al-Ahram Sunday supplement as disgusting Zionist propaganda. So I'm on the right way, I think. So let me approach it slowly systematically. One of the definitions of what Jacques Lacan calls real, le Réel, is the point of impossibility within a field of reality. Along the same lines, what for Alain Badiou defines a world and I think this is crucial when you read him is not primarily the positive qualities, features of a world, but the way its structure, the structure of a world relates to its inherent point of impossibility. Sometimes the whole world changes not because there are some new positive qualities but because the way this world relates to an impossibility changes. Badiou's classical example of course is how classical mathematics dismissed the square root of minus one as an irrelevant externality, as nonsense to be ignored. And incidentally, this is one of the not very glorious moments of Karl Marx. Somebody showed to me the page from his so-called mathematical manuscript where he says square root of minus one, it's pure nonsense, and so on and so on. While modern mathematics, as we all know, makes this impossible the calculable, marking it with the letter small i, so-called imaginary number, and then we know the story: mathematics historically splits, remakes itself by creating constants which occupy these impossible places. So let's be clear: what happens is not that the impossible simply becomes possible. The square root of minus one is still an impossible number; you cannot positivize it. But the way the system, the whole system of numbers relates to this point of impossibility changes. Maybe the same holds for capitalism. The capitalist dynamic of perpetual self-revolutionizing relies on the endless postponing of its point of impossibility: the final crisis, the collapse. I mean, the best the best formula for this is when John Maynard Keynes was asked, "But what about aren't will your politics work in the long run?" He says, "In the long term we are all dead," no? And the whole point is to postpone it. What is for other earlier modes of production a dangerous exception is for capitalism normality. Crisis is in capitalism internalized, taken into account as the point of impossibility which pushes it, the system, to continuous activity. Capitalism is structurally always in a crisis. This is why it is expanding all the time. It can only reproduce itself by way of borrowing from the future. So you see how you see the parallel I'm making. It's still an impossibility, but it's made internal to the system, which changes the entire dynamics. And perhaps that's my global philosophical hypothesis one should extend this to the very definition of humanity. Maybe what ultimately distinguishes men from other animals are not some primarily at the most radical level some positive features speech, tool-making, reflexive thinking, whatever but the rise of a new point of impossibility designated by Freud and Lacan as the impossible real, ultimate point of reference of desire, and so on and so on. There are even very primitive experiments I was told by some people who study animal behavior to demonstrate this point. For example, when an ape is presented with an object beyond reach for example, an attractive sexual partner it tries to gain access to it, but if it doesn't work, it abandons it and moves to another object, maybe not such a nice partner but accessible. While humans persist, transfixed; even if it's a failure, you indefinitely repeat a failure. And this brings me now to let's make a step further to a possible simple definition of what is within the Freudian edifice fantasy. Fantasy is an imaginary scenario which precisely tries to provide an insight into this point of impossibility. Let me explain this via a detour through Gilles Deleuze, who often varies a motive, the motive of how, in becoming post-human, we should learn to practice quote from Deleuze a perception of the world as it was before men, before man released, a perception released from the human coordinates. So for Deleuze, those who fully endorse the Nietzschean return of the same should be strong enough to sustain the vision of, as Deleuze puts it, the iridescent chaos of a world before men. Now, we should be very careful here. Although Deleuze resorts here openly to Kant's language, talking about the direct access to Ding an sich, to things the way they are in themselves, his point is precisely that one should subtract the opposition between phenomena, the way things appear to us, and things in themselves, from its Kantian functioning where noumena are transcendent, inaccessible things which forever elude our grasp. What Deleuze refers to as things in themselves is in a way even more phenomenal than our shared phenomenal reality. It is, let's call it an impossible phenomenon: the phenomenon that is excluded from our standard shared reality. The gap that separates us from noumena is thus primarily not epistemological, but practico-ethical or libidinal. There is no true reality behind or beneath phenomena. Noumena are phenomenal things which are too strong, too intensive for our perceptual apparatus attuned to constituted reality. Imagine, for example, someone being forced to witness a terrifying torture. In a way, the monstrosity of what he or she sees would make this an experience of the noumenal impossible real, which would shatter the coordinates of our common reality. In this sense, for example, if we were to discover some films shot in a concentration camp showing the systematic torture, burning of prisoners, in a way we would have seen too much. We would have entered some kind of prohibited, forbidden noumenal territory. This was the point between, if I remember it correctly, between Godard and Claude Lanzmann. Godard said he would have used these shots; Lanzmann, Claude Lanzmann, precisely the author of Shoah, said no, if he were to stumble upon such movies, he would have immediately burned them. This is also what makes it so unbearable to witness the last moments of people who know they are shortly going to die and are in this sense already living dead. Again, imagine that we would have discovered among the ruins of the Twin Towers a video camera which somehow survived the crash intact and is full of shots of what went on among the passengers of one of the planes just in those last minutes before they crashed into one of the towers. In all these cases, it is that effectively we would have seen things, as it were, as they are in themselves, outside human coordinates, outside our human reality. Incidentally, my fancy is that maybe the US authorities have these shots and don't want to show them or whatever. But now again, my claim is that it is at this level that we should locate the antisemitic fantasies. They are precisely providing, of course within the antisemitic ideological space, an insight into this impossible otherness. Why? One of the supreme ironies of the history of antisemitism is that Jews can stand of course within the antisemitic space for both poles of an opposition. They are stigmatized as upper class, rich merchants exploiting us, and low class, filthy. They are perceived as too intellectual you know, just working all the time, reading books and too earthly, sexual predators and so on; as lazy and workaholics. Sometimes they stand for the stubborn attachment to their particular life form, which prevents them from becoming full citizens of the state they live in. Sometimes they stand for a homeless, uprooted universal cosmopolitanism indifferent towards all particular life forms. The focus changes with different historical epochs. In the era of the French Revolution, the Jews were sometimes, for example by the great partisan of the French Revolution among the German idealists, Fichte, they were condemned as too particularist. The reproach was they continue to stick to their identity, rejecting to become abstract citizens of a state like everyone else. In the late 19th century, with the rise of imperialist patriotism, the accusation was turned around. Jews are no longer perceived as too particular but on the contrary as too cosmopolitan, rootless, lacking their proper place. The key change in the history of Western antisemitism paradoxically occurred with the political emancipation of the Jews, the granting of civil rights to the Jews which followed the French Revolution. In the early modernity, the pressure on the Jews was to convert to Christianity. And the problem was, can one trust them? You know, from Shakespeare Merchant of Venice and so on, it's always this problem: first let's force them to convert to Christianity and then, but did they really become Christians or do they secretly continue to practice their rituals? However, in the later 19th century, a shift occurs which culminates in the Nazi antisemitism. Conversion is now out of the question, meaningless. Did you notice this difference, how all of a sudden after the French Revolution it's no longer the question of converting the Jews? Hitler never was thinking in these terms: let's convert them. Why? For the Nazis, the guilt of the Jews is directly rooted in their biological constitution. One does not have to prove that they are guilty. They are guilty already by being Jews. Why? The key is provided, I think, by the sudden rise in the Western ideological imaginary of the figure of the wandering eternal Jew in the age of Romanticism. That is to say, precisely when in real life, with the explosion of capitalism, features attributed to Jews expanded into the whole of society since commodity exchange became hegemonic. It was thus at the very moment when Jews were deprived of their specific properties which made it easy to distinguish them from the rest of the population, and when the Jewish question was resolved at the political level by the formal emancipation of the Jews that is to say, by granting Jews the same rights as to all other normal Christian citizens that their curse was inscribed into their very being. They were no longer ridiculous misers and so on, but demoniac heroes of eternal damnation, haunted by an unspecified unspeakable guilt, condemned to wander around, longing to find redemption in death. So it was precisely when the specific figure of the Jew disappeared that the absolute Jew emerged. And this transformation conditioned the shift of antisemitism from theology to race. Their damnation was their race. They were not guilty for what they did: exploit the Christian, murder their children, rape their women, or ultimately betray and murder Jesus Christ; but for what they were. And of course, it is this shift which laid the foundations for the Holocaust, for the physical annihilation of the Jews as the only appropriate final solution of their so-called problem. Insofar as Jews were specified by a series of their properties, the goal was to convert them, to turn them into Christians. But from the moment that Jewishness began to concern their very being, only annihilation can solve the so-called Jewish question. However, the true mystery of antisemitism is why is it such a constant? Why does it persist through all historical mutations? Things are a little bit as with what Marx says about Homer. The true mystery to explain is not the origins, how Homer's poetry is rooted in early Greek society, but why does it persist to exert its artistic charm till today, long after the social conditions that gave birth to it disappeared. It is easy to date, to determine the original moment of European antisemitism. It all started, I claim, not in ancient Rome, but in the 11th-12th century Europe, which was awakening from the inertia of the so-called dark ages and experienced a fast growth of market exchange and the role of money. At that precise point, the Jew emerged as the enemy, the usurper, the parasitic intruder who disturbs the harmonious social edifice. Incidentally, theologically, this moment is also the moment of what Jacques Le Goff called the birth of the Purgatory. The idea that the choice is not only between heaven and hell; there has to be a third mediating place where one can, as it were, make a deal: pay for one's sins, if they are not too great, with a determined amount of repentance. Money economy again. So where are we today? I claim we are witnessing the last version of antisemitism which, as I'm tempted to say as a Hegelian, reached the extreme point of self-relating. That is to say, the privileged role of Jews in the establishment of the sphere of what Kant calls public use of reason hinges on their subtraction from state power. This position of the, to use Jacques Rancière's term, part of no part of every organic nation-state community, this, not the abstract universal nature of their monotheism, makes them one of the figures of the immediate embodiment of universality. No wonder then that with the establishment of the Jewish nation-state in '48-'49, a new figure of the Jew emerged: a Jew resisting identification with the State of Israel, refusing to accept the State of Israel as his or her true home. A Jew who subtracts himself also from his own state. A Jew who includes the State of Israel among the states towards which he or she insists on maintaining a distance. And it is this uncanny Jew who is the object of what I think one cannot but designate as and I warn you, this expression brought me a lot of trouble as Zionist antisemitism. The foreign excess disturbing the nation-state community. These Jews, the Jews of the Jews themselves, worthy successors of Spinoza, are today the only Jews who continue to insist on the public use of reason. Again, the idea came to me when I was for this when I was with my friend who was also here a couple of times, Udi Aloni. He is a little bit crazy like me but basically a good guy. So I was once in Israel debating one of his films, and then some people in the hall addressed me, typically, not him, he is a Jew, me, claiming, "How could you be duped by this guy? Don't you see that he just wants to exploit you? He is just after your money, fame, and so on and so on." So I told them, "Ah, I got your point. You are telling me he is a dirty Jew or what, basically, no?" And then I noticed how how Zionists attack those Jews who do not fully identified with their nation state. They use exactly the same apparatus as it was used in the great epoch of the late 19th century antisemitism. You cannot trust them. They appear to be one of us but they are not really one of us rooted in our community. They are too free-floating, and so on and so on. So the thesis of Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the people whom I mention you know, when people asked me, it is well known that I am for death penalty, no? And people asked me, "How can you be for death penalty? Let's debate it." I said, "Okay, okay, but first a couple of people has to be shot, then let's debate the abolition." And okay, this guy is among them, no. In his Left in Dark Times, Bernard-Henri Lévy makes one of these pathetic proclamations that the antisemitism of the 21st century will be progressive or none. That is to say that today antisemitism is the main new form of the emergence of whatever remained of the new transfiguration of the left. This of course implicitly at least refers to another of our best friends, to Jean-Claude Milner's thesis on what he calls the title of one of his books, The Criminal Tendencies of Democratic Europe. The thesis is that progressive Europe stands for the universal fluidification, the erasure of all limits; and Jews, with their fidelity to their way of life grounded in their law and tradition, stand for the ultimate obstacle to this fluidification. But my counter-question: is the logic of antisemitism not the exact opposite? Does the antisemitic perspective not perceive Jews precisely as agents of global fluidification, of the erasure of all particular identities? Therein resides the irony of Milner's argumentation. It comes, I claim, dangerously close to the Zionist antisemitism, since what it effectively attacks, this universal rootlessness, fluidification, is precisely the other side of the Jewish identity itself. That is to say, what Milner attacks as the antisemitic core of democratic Europe is grounded precisely in the greatest all honor goes to them Jewish contribution to European identity. Rootless Jews were the first and most radical European universalists. This fact also enables us to solve another enigma, which was always weird, a weird fact for me. How can it be that the United States Christian fundamentalists who are we can say or should be by their very nature antisemitic; my God, the whole world is falling apart if they are not antisemitic how can they now, as you probably know, passionately support the Zionist policy of the State of Israel? I claim there is only one solution to this enigma: the State of Israel itself is become antisemitic in the sense, of course, only of Zionist antisemitism. That is to say, it is not that the US fundamentalists have changed, it is that Zionism itself, in its hatred of the Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the State of Israel, paradoxically became in this formal sense antisemitic. That is to say, is constructing the figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project along the antisemitic lines. The standard Zionist argument, again, against the critic of the politics of the State of Israel is that, of course, like every other state, the State of Israel can and should be judged and eventually criticized, but that that's the usual proviso isn't it that the critics of Israel often misuse the justified critique of Israeli policy for antisemitic purposes? I claim that when the unconditional Christian fundamentalist supporters of the Israeli politics reject the leftist critics of the Israeli politics, is thus their implicit line of argumentation not best rendered by a wonderful caricature I really admire it published in July in the Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse. It shows two stocky, caricature-like Nazi-looking Austrians. One of them has in his hands a newspaper and comments to his friend: "Here you can see again how a totally justified antisemitism is misused for a cheap critique of Israel." That's how they function. Okay. So why? What's the logic behind of this? Why this ambiguous renaissance of antisemitism even in the guise of Zionist antisemitism? Here, please allow me a little bit of a theory now. I claim that in our allegedly post-ideological era, ideology functions more and more in a fetishist mode as opposed to the traditional symptomatic mode. In the symptomatic mode, the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptoms as returns of the repressed, cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie. While fetish is effectively a kind of envers, inversion of the symptom. That is to say, symptom is the exception which disturbs the the surface of the false appearance of a lie, the point at which the repressed other scene intrudes, while fetish is the embodiment of the lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth. What do I mean by this? Let me take a case of a death of a beloved person. If my reaction is a symptomatic one, I repress this death. I try not to think about it. I throw myself in in in in activity, in traveling, in other love liaisons. But the repressed traumas trauma returns in symptoms. Whatever I do, I am somehow reminded of it. I cannot really avoid it, like I already mentioned this in my class, like that I like it, totally ridiculous joke, you know, of an adolescent who is traumatized by sexuality, so he tries to avoid it and escapes into mathematics. But whatever he does there is that, like all of a sudden he has a task: how much energy is released when the two bodies hit hit each other? Or how much how much do you need to fill such a tube, a volume, and so on? And you cannot escape it. Okay. But in the case of a fetish on the contrary, I rationally fully accept the death of a beloved person. And yet I cling to the fetish, to some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role of allowing us to cope with the harsh reality. Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private world. They are very realist. They are able to accept the way things are in this brutal realistic, cynical way, since they have a fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full to suspend the full impact of reality. Here is a story I often repeat I know, of a case that I know, of a husband whose young beautiful wife died of breast cancer. He survived her death without big problems. He was able to talk about her painful dying to his friends without stress. His friends wondered how this was possible. Did he really love her at all? Was he secretly even glad that she died? Then they got the clue. While talking about her, he always held a hamster, his dead wife's favorite pet object, gently playing with it. This hamster was his fetish: a living disavowal of her death, enabling him to rationally accept that she is dead, while suspending what Levi-Strauss called efficacité symbolique, the symbolic efficiency of this fact. The proof: a year after his wife's death, the hamster also died. And the effect of this second death was devastating. The widowed husband immediately suffered a total breakdown, had to be hospitalized after repeated suicide attempts. In this precise sense, money is also for Marx a fetish. I pretend to be a rational utilitarian subject, well aware how things truly stand, but I embody my disavowed belief in the money fetish. So when we are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological cynical era nobody believes in the proclaimed ideals, or when we encounter a person who claims he is cured of any beliefs, he accepts reality the way it really is, he said usually it's all about pleasure, money, I don't have any illusions you should always ask the question: "Okay, but where is your hamster?" That is to say, where is the fetish which enables you to pretend to accept reality the way it is? I claim that what I ironically refer to as Western Buddhism, this popularized version of transcendental meditation, oriental spirituality, is such a fetish. It enables you to fully participate in the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is. What really matters is the peace of your inner self to which you can always withdraw, and so on and so on. Now let me go a couple of steps, make a couple of steps further. Of course one should note that fetish can function in two opposite ways. Either its role remains unconscious, as in the case of the unfortunate husband who was unaware of the fetish role of the hamster; or you think that fetish is that which really matters, as is the case of the Western Buddhist unaware that the truth of his existence is the social involvement, which he tends to dismiss as, "Oh, it's only a social game," and so on and so on. But even more important is to introduce another distinction between two different modes of fetishism. First we have what I described now: this, let's call it permissive cynical fetishism. You are cynical, you know how things are, but you cling to your fetish which allows you to maintain a distance towards reality. It should be opposed to, let's call it populist fascist fetishism, where exact precisely we encounter antisemitism. Let me explain this difference by opposing again two types of ideological mystification. The first type would have been that of false universality. This is the standard critique of ideology. For example, you advocate you say to your liberal friend you advocate freedom, equality, and so on, but you are not aware of implicit qualifications which in their very form undermine what you are officially for. For example, your definition of equality secretly privileges rich male belonging to a certain race, culture, and so on and so on. That's the standard critique of ideology. The reproach is false universality. You claim your your value, your motive is really universal. You know this classical Marx's point: bourgeois equality is really be equality for those who for a limited part of society. But there is another mystification which would be the fetishist properly mystification as it is operative in antisemitism. This mystification proceeds in a different way. It concerns the false identification of the antagonism and of the enemy. As we all know, class struggle or another social antagonism is displaced onto the struggle against the Jews. So that the popular rage at being exploited is redirected from capitalist relations as such to the Jewish plot. So, to put it in very naive terms: in the first case, the liberal guy who argues for universal freedom, equality, and so on, you can say when the subject says "freedom and equality," he really means only freedom of trade, equality in front of the law, and so on and so on. In the second case, fascist antisemitism, you can say when the subject says "Jews are the cause of our misery," he really means big capital is the cause of our misery. But the asymmetry is clear. To put it again in naive terms: in the first case I use these terms with all qualifications, very naively, of course the good explicit content, freedom, equality, covers up the bad implicit content: class and other privileges and exclusions. We don't reproach a liberal for being for equality; we reproach him that the way he that the way his notion of equality is secretly qualified makes it inconsistent with itself. But in the second case, the bad explicit content, antisemitism, covers up the good implicit content: hatred of exploitation, and so on and so on. So you notice I know this is very naive, but I think there is something to it this we like in the first case the good cover explicit has a bad secret behind. Here it's as if the cover is bad, hatred of the Jews and so on, but allegedly there is a good content behind. Like as we usually say, workers have the right to be furious at exploitation, they just direct it at the wrong target. So as we can clearly see, the inner structure of these two mystifications is again that of the couple symptom-fetish. The implicit limitations are the symptoms of liberal egalitarianism: singular returns of the repressed truth. While Jew is the fetish of antisemitic fascists. As it were, you know how Freud defines the fetish: the last thing you see before you see that woman doesn't have a penis. Here the Jew would have been the last thing you see before confronting, let's say, class struggle openly. This asymmetry has crucial consequences for the critical process of demystification. Apropos liberal egalitarianism, the interpretive demystification is relatively relatively easy, since you can directly mobilize the tension between form and content. You argue with a liberal democrat: "Listen, but don't you see that your notion of equality is really secretly qualified?" And to be consequent, your liberal friend maybe will have to admit that the content of his ideological premises effectively belies its form. And then he can do one of the two things: either move a little bit towards he can then, okay, have he has many options in the space of what Badiou yesterday so nicely defined as this space of paraconsistency and so on; he can say, "Yes, in principle in the long term, but we have to be realists, if we do it immediately we will ruin it." Or he can adopt a pure cynical position. He can say, "Listen, this is an illusion equality, but for society to function we need these illusions," whatever whatever. But what I'm arguing is that in the case of Jew as the fascist fetish, paradoxically, the interpretive demystification is much more difficult. It this confirms also the clinical insight, incidentally, that a fetishist it is almost impossible through interpretation to undermine a fetish. You can have not always some success by interpreting a hysterical, neurotic symptoms. Their interpretation can work. Not with a fetish. In practical political terms, the conclusion is pretty sad. It is that it is very difficult to enlighten an exploited worker who blames Jews for his misery. You know, explaining to him like, "Can't you see how Jew is the wrong enemy, how your true enemy is the ruling class and how his antisemitism is just a manipulation by the ruling class so that they are free to not attacked by the workers, free to free to free to exploit them," and so on and so on. And this is even up to a point as far as I was able to establish empirically true. While many communists joined Nazis in Germany in the late 20s and 1930s and so on, the opposite process is very rare. So you see my point: although it may seem to be much easier to say to an antisemitic worker, "But can't you see you are duped, the real enemy is elsewhere," this process is de facto a very difficult one. So again: today's hegemonic ideological scene is split between two modes of fetishism: cynical and fundamentalist. While the fundamentalist directly ignores or at least mistrusts argumentation, blindly clinging to his fetish, the cynic pretends to accept argumentation but ignores its symbolic efficiency. In other words, while the fundamentalist not so much believes as directly knows the truth embodied in his fetish, the cynic practices the logic of disavowal, je sais bien, mais quand même I know very well but. With regard to today's situation of ideological struggle, this means that one should at least view with profound suspicion those leftists who argue that the so-called I will tell you immediately the other side of the story that the so-called Muslim fundamentalist populist movements are basically ours: emancipatory anti-imperialist movements, and that the fact that they sometimes formulate their program in, if not antisemitic at least anti-European enlightenment, anti-universalist terms, is just a confusion that results from their being caught in the immediacy of their struggle. Like when they say that's how some French Arab were telling me you should always bear in mind that when they attack the Jews, what they really mean is just that they are against Zionist colonialism. I think that we should resist this logic, because once we accept it, we make the first step on the path at the end of which is the quite logical conclusion that, since Hitler also really meant capitalists when he spoke of Jews, he should be ultimately our ally in the global anti-imperialist struggle with the Anglo-American Empire as the principal enemy. And this line of reasoning is not just a funny rhetorical exercise. Are do you know that the Nazis effectively did promote anti-colonialist struggle in Arab countries, in India, and so on and so on? So what makes the unique figure of Jacques Vergès, the French lawyer, a universal phenomenon is that I claim he embodies precisely this option of solidarity between fascism and anti-colonialism. But as I already said, this is one side of the story, this unconditional rejection of any antisemitism. The other side of the story, which is crucial, I'll give you one version of it. You remember how when in the spring of this year Taliban took over the Swat Valley in the north of Pakistan, the usual reports: "Oh my God, fundamentalists won, crazy," and so on and so on. Of all the media that I know, only you see how sometimes truth emerges where you wouldn't expect it only one short article in New York Times, which just then disappeared, nobody as far as I know reacted to it, hinted at the other dimension. It was it made it clear how, I quote New York Times, "how a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants is what was going on there." Now I quote not a Palestinian terrorist propaganda, I quote New York Times, I quote: "In Swat Valley, accounts from those who have fled from Taliban make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops. The Taliban's ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency, and its raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal." And then they quote one advisor to Obama who said, "The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution. Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan. The militants for their part are promising more than just prescriptions on music and schooling. They are promising justice." End of quote. Now, you notice the ideological bias of this New York Times article. It says that the it refers to "Taliban's ability to exploit class divisions," as if Taliban's true agenda is elsewhere, in religious fundamentalism, and they are only taking advantage of the plight of the poor landless farmers. To this one should simply add two things. First, such a distinction between the true agenda and instrumental manipulation is externally imposed onto Taliban, as if the poor landless farmers themselves do not experience their plight already in what we refer to as fundamentalist religious terms. Second, if by taking advantage of the farmers' suffering the Taliban are "raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal," what prevents liberal democrats in Pakistan, as well as the United States, to simply take advantage of this same plight and try to help the landless farmer? The sad implication of the fact that this obvious question is not raised in the New York Times article is that the feudal forces in Pakistan are considered the natural ally of liberal democracy. What phenomena like Taliban demonstrate is that Walter Benjamin's old thesis, "every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution," not only still holds today but is perhaps more pertinent than ever. Liberals like to point out similarities between left and right-wing extremisms. Hitler's terror camps imitated Bolshevik terror, the Leninist party is today alive in Al-Qaeda. Yes, but I agree, but what does all this mean? It can also be read as an indication of how fascism if we accept, that's another question, that this Muslim fundamentalism is fascism, I will immediately approach this problem that how fascism literally replaces, take the place of the leftist revolution. Its rise is the left's failure, but simultaneously a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, dissatisfaction, which the left was not able to mobilize. And does again the same not hold for today's so-called by some people Islamo-fascism? Is the rise of radical Islamism not strictly correlative to the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries? Today, when Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that years ago it was a country with a strong secular tradition, up to a powerful communist party which took power there independently of Soviet Union. Soviet Union intervene only later when the communist power was crumbling. Again, where did this secular radical tradition disappear? It transformed itself, of course, into so-called Islamic fundamentalism. The same goes for United States. I hope you read the wonderful popular it's not big theory book by Thomas Frank called What's the Matter with Kansas? Kansas is the US homegrown version of Afghanistan. The very state which till 1970s was the bedrock of radical leftist populism. They were always in the first place to fight racism and so on. Even politically, no; my God, the greatest figure of the struggle against against slavery, John Brown, is from Kansas, and so on; is today the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism. Again, does this not confirm Benjamin's thesis that every fascism is an index of a failed revolution? Furthermore, is the term Islamo-fascism proposed, among others, by Francis Fukuyama and the above-mentioned friend of mine, Bernard-Henri Lévy, justified? What renders it problematic is not only the religious qualification I mean, then we should also talk about Christo-fascism and so on. Fascism itself is enough I claim. But the very designation of today's fundamentalist so-called Islamic movements as fascist I think is a is problematic. Why? It is a fact that sometimes we find traces of more or less open antisemitism in these movements and states. And there are, I know, historical links between Arab nationalism and European fascism, and so on and so on. However, I claim that even if there is antisemitism in these countries, it does not play the same structural role. Why not? Do you remember, for the Nazis, the enemy were Jews as nomadic, stateless, rootless people, corrupting the community within which they live. So that for them, the State of Israel was a solution, one of them at least. No wonder that before deciding to kill all the Jews, the Nazis played with the idea of giving them a land to form a state. Incidentally, not only Madagascar, but Palestine itself. I don't you know this is one of the dark chapters of the history of Israel and I was ferociously attacked for it. But when I asked the guys, "Okay, are the facts wrong?" they said, "No no no, I just," you know the usual excuse, "I put them in a totally wrong context." Okay, what are the facts? The fact is that in '38-'39 Adolf Eichmann took a train for Palestina because only of some strike he met representatives of Hagana in Alexandria and they made a deal that if European Jews leave Germany for Palestine they will be able to take most of their property if they are rich with them on condition that they spend this property for German products. The irony is that many of these products were even arms. The irony is that in '48 many of the Jewish soldiers fighting the Arabs were doing it with German arms. Now let me be clear here: I don't condemn the Jews here. I would have done the same. They were in a desperate situation. What I'm saying it's let's be very precise that what bothered the Nazis was the Jew as the rootless, free-floating, and so on. For them, how to put it, the first option even was, let's change them into normal people, nation state, you know, Madagascar, wherever. With today with Arabs it's exactly the same and I can tell you, okay, not first hand but second hand, from my friends who not only from my friends who visited, for example, Iran which is supposed to be the bad guy, they are doing the bomb to kill to bomb Israel and so on. What bothers them is precisely the opposite: it's the State of Israel. They have no problem with what was the horror for the Nazis: free-floating Jews. The proof is again I try to be here honest so that you will not accuse me that I'm spreading some secretly antisemitic whatever propaganda my source here is again good old liberal pro-Israel New York Times, where they had a report on Ahmadinejad confirming that because for very specific reason, because as you probably know Iran recognizes the other two religions of the book also as legitimate that it's relatively there are no antisemitic pogroms, you can live totally normally as a Jew, more or less, but yes yes, I mean simply it's not a problem. So again you see this radical opposition. It's totally different figure of a Jew which bothers them. So let me go further. We we and the truly provocative thing comes in ten minutes at the end, have patience. We all know the anti-communist characterization of Marxism as the Islam of 20th century, secularizing Islam's abstract fanaticism. Jean-Pierre Taguieff, the liberal historian of antisemitism, turned this characterization around: Islam is turning out to be for him the Marxism of the 21st century, prolonging after the decline of communism the Marxist violent anti-capitalism. However, I claim if we take into account the above-mentioned Benjamin's idea of fascism as occupying the place of a failed revolution, the rational core of such inversions can be easily accepted. However, that is to say of course, if if religious fundamentalism will be the Marxism of the 21st century, it simply means a failed revolution and its void will be filled in by religious fundamentalism. But it would have been totally wrong to draw from this the conclusion that the most the left can do is to hope that the crisis will be limited, that capitalism will survive. This seems to be the conclusion of some of the Zionist leftists, for example, a guy for whom I have otherwise great estimation, Moishe Postone in Chicago. His logic is the following one: since every crisis which opens up a space for radical left also gives rise to antisemitism, it is better for us to support successful capitalism and hope there will be no crisis. Brought to its conclusion, this reasoning implies and this is the conclusion that I don't I'm not sure he is ready to say it publicly in Europe, but he again my good friend Bernard-Henri Lévy said it once he gave an interview on that PBS Public Broadcast he said that ultimately, and that's the secret I think, ultimately anti-capitalism today is antisemitic. That anti-capitalism is a mask for antisemitism today. It is against such reasoning then one has to evoke Alain Badiou's motto, mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre. Better a disaster, that is to say, an event turned catastrophe, than désêtre, that is to say, to persist in a non-evental empty lifeless life. One has to take the risk of the fidelity to an event, even if eventually the event ends up in an obscure disaster. The best indicator of the lack of trust of today's left into itself is its fear of crisis. Such a left fears for its own comfortable position of a critic fully integrated into the system, ready to risk nothing. Which is why today more than ever I claim Mao Zedong's old motto is pertinent. You remember that wonderful phrase: "everything under heaven is in utter chaos so the situation is excellent." A true leftist takes crisis seriously, without illusions, but as a chance to be fully exploited. So now the concluding problematic points. What this means is that the difference between liberalism and the radical left although I am like Alain Badiou more and more skeptical if we should still even use the term left, let's call it radical emancipatory politics is that although they refer to the same three elements in the political space: liberal democratic center, populist proto-fascist right, radical left, they locate them in a radically different topology. For the liberal center, radical left and right are the two forms of appearance of the same totalitarian excess. Although the liberal center likes to cheat here. You know that now a couple of days ago, the European Parliament adopted a disgusting resolution condemning communism and Nazism as two versions of the same, basically equalizing them. But did you notice a disgusting asymmetry? They should have done one of the two things I claim if they were to be even I'm measuring now by their own standards honest liberals. Either condemn the entire movement and say communism and fascism are the same crime, or limit themselves to the evil extreme in both cases and to say, I don't know, Stalinism and Nazism are. No, they have chosen the universal term for the left: communism, and the selective for the right: only Nazism. Which means, of course, the space is open for the favorable sport of exercise hobby of the right-liberal historians today to demonstrate how this soft Latino fascism Mussolini, Salazar, Franco isn't so bad at all, and so on and so on. So that's for the right or for the liberal center. While for the left, the only true alternative is the one between itself and the liberal mainstream, while the populist radical right is nothing but the symptom of the liberalism's inability to deal with the leftist threat. So when we hear today a politician or an ideologist offering us a choice between liberal freedom and fundamentalist oppression and triumphantly asking us this rhetorical question: "But do you want women to be excluded from public life? Do you want every critic criticism or making fun of religion to be punished by death?" and so on. What should make us suspicious is the very self-evidence of the answer. Of course we don't want this. The problem is that such simplistic liberal universalism long ago lost its innocence. This is why for a true leftist the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict. The two opposites form a vicious cycle of two poles presupposing generating each other. One should accomplish here a Hegelian step back and put in question the very measure from which fundamentalism appears in all its horror. What Horkheimer of Frankfurt School had said long ago should also be applied to today's fundamentalism. He said as you know that those who don't want to talk about fascism should also keep silent about about sorry, that those who don't want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep silent about fascism. We should repeat this today: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy and its noble principles should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism. How then so this is my point and now just if you permit me a provocative conclusion. My point is that the ABC and this is connected to what Badiou was developing yesterday as this paraconsistency and so on that we are caught in a certain antagonism that imposes itself as the principal antagonism today: the free West against fundamentalism. The first thing to do is to render problematic this antagonism itself, to perceive it as a false antagonism. In the sense of, although I agree sometimes strategically we should support liberals here and there, but basically we should see that this is a false struggle. That to cut a long story short that in fighting fundamentalism, liberalism is not fighting its opponent, it's fighting its own outgrowth. That the only thing that can save what is worth saving, liberalism itself, is a more radical left. Now just empirical proof, I'm close to the end. What are the consequences of this? Now I will try to conclude with a little bit more unpleasant consequence. I will try to present you with a clear empirical example of how this step out of the two of the false opposition, to see beneath the false opposition the true opposition. Let me begin with you will think it has nothing to do with what I was talking, it is directly linked. Do you know what is the Third Wave? No no, nothing to do with those futurists, we are entering a new era, it's not we will all die but humanity will be reborn as no, it is the social experiment made by a history teacher called Ron Jones at a Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California in Is this standard liberal experiment and again this was a trial, he wrote later a book, then this then it was made a TV movie, it was even recently I think made a version in Germany here. I radically disagree with this experiment. Why? What did he do? In order to explain to his students how the German populace could claim ignorance of the Holocaust how could good Germans do what they did? Jones started in his class a movement, he called it the Third Wave, and convinced his students that the movement is meant to eliminate democracy. He emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride. On the fourth day however, Jones decided to terminate the experiment, which was slipping out of his control. He discovered that students became increasingly involved in the project, and their discipline and loyalty were becoming breathtaking; like, some of them even denounced to Jones to Jones their peers whom they suspected of not really believing in the project, and so on and so on. So Jones ordered students on the fourth day to attend a rally at noon next day where, instead of a televised address of their leader, the student were presented confronted by an empty screen and then, after a couple of minutes of waiting, Jones announced that they have been part of an experiment in fascism and that they all willingly created a sense of discipline, superiority which German citizens displayed in the period of Nazi Germany. I think this is a liberal fake, a false lying experiment. Why? As expected, liberals were fascinated by the Third Wave, discerning in it the deep Lord of the Flies I'm referring to William Golding novel insight into how you know, liberals like this topic beneath the civilized surface we are all potentially fascist beasts. The barbarian beast is lurking in all of us, awaiting its opportunity. But what if we shift the perspective a little bit and conceive the authoritarian personality as the repressed obverse of the liberal open personality itself? I want to refer here to the well-known legendary study by Adorno and others you may have heard about it on so-called authoritarian personality. The features of authoritarian personality which Adorno tried to then identify through sociological investigations and so on are clearly opposed to the standard figure of open democratic personality. You know, Adorno simply thought: what is democratic personality? Open to debate; okay, so the other is dogmatic. Tolerant; intolerant, and so on and so on. But I think at some point, liberal critics of Adorno were right when they pointed as to one big hole in the entire book. Adorno doesn't make it clear what is the underlying point of his experiment. His experiment, of course as expected, demonstrated that many of us are potentially fascist blah-blah-blah prepare and so on. The problem where what Adorno didn't want to decide is the simple dilemma: are we dealing when we talk about these two types of personality let's call it authoritarian personality and whatever you want to call the opposite, open democratic personality are these simply to be opposed as good versus bad, so we simply should fight against one, support the other; or is the bad one the symptom of the good one? So that the solution is not simply: fight the bad one for the good one, but determine, analyze how the good one itself through its inconsistency generates the bad one. To put it bluntly, how authoritarian personality is the result outcome of the very liberal universe. It's typical that Habermas makes this step. And here I think he regresses from Adorno, who is more radical. Adorno always had this suspicion that you cannot simply oppose good democratic openness towards the bad totalitarian temptation; that they form a totality. While again the whole point of Habermas, he would have said, "Yes, the persistence of authoritarian personality demonstrates how how the democratic process is an unfinished project; we should fight more and more for for liberal democracy, tolerance," and so on and so on. But again I think that the reluctance of Adorno to do this he did not precisely that's his greatness that he did not want to make this step and to say, "Obviously if authoritarian personality is bad, then its opposite must be must be good." And this brings us to what I think is false in this liberal enthusiasm for the Third Wave phenomenon. Its function is to assert the struggle of liberal openness against totalitarian closure as our fundamental ideological struggle and thus to obliterate their mutual complicity. That is to say, the fact that totalitarianism so-called is the return of the repressed of liberalism itself. This obliteration also enables us to condense fascism and communism into one and the same anti-liberal totalitarian figure, and thus to block the search for a third option, not third in the compromise sense but for the true alternative. Let's call it naively a personality structure of a subject engaged in a radical emancipatory struggle; a subject who is not a liberal tolerant subject but also definitely not a a fascist authoritarian personality. A subject who and now comes my maybe provocation, but you are used for everything from me, nothing provokes people today my temptation was this one: my God, sorry to tell you, what is wrong about this terrible motto: strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride? Sorry, I fully accept this as a motto. What is bad about it? Strength through discipline: of course, if we are poor, screwed up, we must be disciplined. Strength through community: of course we must hold together. Strength through action: of course. Strength through pride: of course, we should be proud of our struggle. We can do this and yet remain engaged in a radical egalitarian emancipatory struggle. What a liberal can do apropos such a subject is either dismiss it as another version of the authoritarian personality or this is the game they like to play, liberal critics to claim that there is contradiction in the left, that while their task is egalitarian, the very mode they approach it is authoritarian. In both cases, the specificity of the subject of let's call it radical emancipatory struggle is invisible. Here I would like to conclude with a quote from Badiou where he makes the same point. Namely, the it's the idea is that in today's era of hedonist permissivity as the ruling ideology, I think the time is coming for the left to re-appropriate discipline, the spirit of sacrifice, and so on. There is nothing inherently fascist about these values. Or a quote from Badiou this is the secret Badiou, it's a little bit too radical for his public image, he said this in an interview in LA, but I'm the evil guy, this is everything is in my black book. He says: "We need a popular discipline. I would even say that those who have nothing have only their discipline. The poor, those with no financial or military means, those with no power, all they have is their discipline, their capacity to act together. This discipline is already a form of organization." And to conclude, because there were some proto-fascist rumors that I'm against poetry, I claim that true poetry also requires great discipline. No wonder that three of the greatest poets of the 20th century, more precisely a writer and two poets, were bank officers and insurance agents: Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens. They needed the discipline of dealing with money not only as a counterpoint to poetic license, but as a means to install order in the flow of this stupid poetic inspiration. The art of poetry is a constant struggle against its own source. The art proper art of poetry consists in the way one dams the free flow of poetic inspiration. This is why, in compliance with the banking metaphor, I think there is nothing cheaply liberating in getting message of a poem. If you really get a poem, it's more like a message you get from tax authorities; you know, "Oh, you have to pay this that," and so on and so on. Why? It hurts, because poetry is truth and truth hurts. Thank you very much.