LEFFEST'24 Udi Aloni conversa com Slavoj Žižek
Interview · LEFFEST ·
2024-11 · 1:18:06 · 9,967 words
with Julian Assange
geopolitics-warpsychoanalysisideologycapitalismrace-antisemitismcinema-art-culturefascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracyrevolution-violenceethics
Žižek argues that the contemporary political crisis is defined by a collapse of shame and a demand for dignity, illustrated by the IDF's normalization of torture and the 'Mosquito protocol' in Gaza. He contrasts this shamelessness with Lacan's concept of 'minimum shame' and uses Barenboim’s staging of Tristan und Isolde to depict Palestinians as dying alone despite global solidarity. He critiques the media's disproportionate reaction to antisemitic clashes in Amsterdam versus the normalized death toll in Gaza, concluding that true patriotism requires shame for one's state, citing Israeli Holocaust survivors who condemned the Gaza war. Žižek analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of Shylock and international law, arguing that the oppressed are trapped by the very legal frameworks that oppress them. He critiques the moralization of politics, the failure of non-violent resistance, and the self-destructive nature of modern liberal capitalism, concluding with a pessimistic view of political awakening and a call for solidarity over moralizing.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Lacan's definition of the goal of psychoanalysis in an era of permissiveness: not repression, but the restoration of a basic sense of dignity and shamelessness vs. shame.
An Israeli military term for the practice of forcing Palestinian civilians to enter booby-trapped houses/tunnels first to test for traps, protecting Israeli troops.
Used ironically by Žižek to describe the media's labeling of the Amsterdam football clashes as a new pogrom, contrasting it with the normalized genocide in Gaza.
Lacan's term for the ridiculous, clownish behavior of protesters, which Lacan argued they lacked sufficient shame to restrain.
as “prohibition on prohibiting”
The core difficulty of contemporary capitalism, which is not the repression of enjoyment, but the prohibition against forbidding or restricting it.
A Frankfurt School concept referenced by Žižek to describe a capitalism of permissiveness that openly encourages doing what hysterics only dream about, leading to a generalized perversion.
as “shame for one's country”
Carlo Ginzburg's notion that authentic patriotism is marked not by love, but by shame for one's country's actions.
Žižek's metaphor for Israel's role in supporting US/Western geopolitical interests, analogous to how the Wagner Group serves Putin.
The oppressed's reliance on international law as their only weapon, which ultimately serves the oppressor by framing the oppressed's resistance as a violation of grace/mercy rather than a political act.
The framing of Hamas not as the primary cause but as a 'symptom' of the underlying 'disease' of settler colonialism and Jewish supremacy.
The defining feature of current political discourse and state violence, where opponents are treated as subhuman and their suffering is normalized.
The contemporary political economy where shame is not absent but is actively produced, traded, and weaponized by the oppressor to suppress dissent.
as “Shooting and Crying”
Žižek's term for Israeli cinema/politics, describing a strategy of using emotional vulnerability and shame to mask and justify military violence.
The concept that Trump represents the fusion of neo-fascism (nationalism/protectionism) with vulgar liberalism (media deregulation/racism), rather than a simple opposition to liberalism.
Žižek's inversion of Lincoln's quote, arguing that in the current ideological field, it is possible to deceive everyone continuously because people do not 'awaken' to the truth.
The strategic hypothesis that the oppressor's system is so perverse and self-contradictory that it will eventually destroy itself if the oppressed simply 'stay there' and endure without interfering.
Žižek's ironic, self-deprecating punchline to the moderator's comment about his unpaid solidarity, reclaiming the antisemitic slur as a badge of his political stance.
Stories he reaches for 2
Lacan tells May '68 protesters they lack shame, fearing they are carried away by 'buffonnerie' (clownishness). Žižek uses this to argue that leftist protesters should rehabilitate shame/decency against state shamelessness.
“All you are lacking is a bit of shame.”
An Israeli minister defends torture (rectal insertion of sticks) against a Palestinian MP, claiming it is legitimate for 'Nukhba' Hamas terrorists. Žižek presents this as the lowest point of shamelessness.
“To insert a stick into a person's rectum, is this legitimate? ... Yes, if he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do, everything.”
Works invoked 8
Tristan und Isolde opera
Used as a central metaphor; Barenboim's staging where Tristan dies alone illustrates the isolation of Palestinians.
Lacan's seminar containing the crucial insight that protesters lack 'shame' and fear 'buffonnerie'.
Used as the central allegory for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically the dynamic between Shylock (the oppressed insisting on law) and Portia (the master offering mercy).
Junction film
A film by Udi Aloni, referenced as a place where the model of Palestinian citizens of Israel might be further explored.
New York Times Ad other
A full-page ad by Holocaust survivors condemning the Gaza war, cited as an example of 'shame for one's country'.
Salò film
Cited by the moderator to define fascism as a 'shameless world' where power has no boundaries, a concept Žižek engages with.
Village Voice journal
Cited as the source of the article about the US Army's pill to remove trauma/guilt, which validated Žižek's 'surrealistic' artistic invention.
Title of the speaker's book, referencing Freud's 'What does a woman want?' to explore the position of the psychoanalyst/Jew.
People invoked 24
BDS positive
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement; Žižek acknowledges it wasn't the 'best thing' but defends the heroic nature of the demonstrations.
Carlo Ginzburg positive
Proposed the notion that 'shame for one's country' is the true mark of authentic patriotism.
Daniel Barenboim positive
Conducted the definitive staging of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde used by Žižek as a central metaphor for Palestinian isolation.
Franz Kafka positive
Cited by the speaker as a pre-Zionist Jewish thinker.
Primo Levi positive
Cited by the speaker for the quote: 'Every nation has its own Jew and the Palestinians are the Jew of Israel.'
Udi Aloni positive
A collaborator/friend who worked with Žižek on the 'surrealistic text' about the Israeli psychiatrist's pill; Žižek defends him against the moderator's criticism.
Narendra Modi negative
The Indian Prime Minister who imprisoned Yasin Malik, representing the strong oppressor.
Leonard Cohen positive
Quoted by the speaker (post-Žižek) regarding shame and fear.
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle positive
Director of the Bayreuth version of Tristan und Isolde, whose staging Žižek analyzes.
Friedrich Rosenzweig positive
Cited by the speaker as a pre-Zionist Jewish thinker.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek relies on Lacan's concept of 'minimum shame' and his critique of May '68 protesters (buffonnerie) to frame his argument about dignity and shamelessness.
Donald Trump negative
Cited as an example of 'shameless populists' and Latino immigrants voting for him because they are 'immanently conservative' and want to integrate, not revolutionize.
Shylock positive
The speaker states he adores Shylock, debating Marxist readings of him as a capitalist representative.
Pier Paolo Pasolini positive
Cited by the moderator (and implicitly agreed with by Žižek) for defining fascism in Salò as a 'shameless world' where power has no boundaries.
Porcia negative
Represents the master's appeal to 'Christian mercy' and 'grace,' which Žižek argues is a tool to disarm the oppressed by shifting the debate from law to morality.
Elon Musk negative
Cited as someone supported by Trump, representing the 'total liberalization of media' which allows racist and sexist content.
Hamas negative
Described not as the primary cause but as a 'symptom' of the underlying disease of settler colonialism and Jewish supremacy.
Yasin Malik positive
A Kashmiri leader who chose non-violence but was imprisoned for life by Modi, used to illustrate the failure of non-violent resistance.
Jean-Luc Nancy positive
Author of a book on Nazi mythology cited by the speaker to discuss the mythological supremacy in Zionism.
Hannah Arendt positive
Cited by the speaker as a pre-Zionist Jewish thinker whose legacy the speaker tries to uphold.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited by the speaker as a pre-Zionist Jewish thinker.
Abraham Lincoln negative
Cited for the quote 'You can cheat deceive some people all the time, all people some time, but you cannot deceive all people all the time,' which Žižek claims is false in the modern era.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the insight that the unconscious is most repressed in perversion, and referenced by the speaker (post-Žižek) regarding 'What does a woman want?'
Max Weber positive
Referenced for his analysis of capitalism relying on the repression of enjoyment, which Žižek contrasts with modern permissiveness.
Transcript 30 turns
unknown
Hello everyone, thank you for coming. My name is Juan Branco, I'm here with Udi Aloni and Slavoj Žižek to have a discussion on images of war. So we have the chance to reunite two dear friends, one of whom is a philosopher and he's on Zoom with us, and the other is a filmmaker. And Slavoj Žižek has talked about your films, Udi, as a very—as the most beautiful films on the dramas of the region talking about Israel and Palestine, if I have it correctly. Thank you for that. So I think this is critical in the discussion we're going to try to have because of course the representation of war is very much related to morals. Anyone who has studied cinema has in mind the theory of Rivette, which was then also adopted by the Nouvelle Vague in general regarding, for example, the tracking shots and the necessity to have a certain way, a moral way to film a certain number of things and to represent them. And more broadly, our societies and civilizations are structured around a certain number of taboos regarding representation, and in particular regarding death. And we feel the effects of this every day, including in our perception of reality, and the powers that try to work on this perception of reality are very much aware of the importance of that. So we can see it now with the current conflicts and specifically with the war in Israel and Palestine with the question of the showing of the images in the social networks which have become the main source of information and understanding of what is going on in the world with a very different treatment of images of death according whether you're on a certain platform, for example, Meta platforms, which is Instagram, Facebook, where they are heavily censored, and others like Twitter. And so this is the immediate perception of reality. And then you have a second layer is how do you create and generate art over this question. So we will maybe try to advance from one to the other and see if there are porosities, if there are bridges between those layers of representation of reality and also bridges between the perception of an artist and of a philosopher. So we were thinking maybe of starting with you, Udi, for a first, I mean, introduction on the subject, and then we will go to Slavoj and then we will start a discussion. Thank you very much for being here.
Hello everyone, thank you for coming. My name is Juan Branco, I'm here with Udi Aloni and Slavoj Žižek to have a discussion on images of war. So we have the chance to reunite two dear friends, one of whom is a philosopher and he's on Zoom with us, and the other is a filmmaker. And Slavoj Žižek has talked about your films, Udi, as a very—as the most beautiful films on the dramas of the region talking about Israel and Palestine, if I have it correctly. Thank you for that. So I think this is critical in the discussion we're going to try to have because of course the representation of war is very much related to morals. Anyone who has studied cinema has in mind the theory of Rivette, which was then also adopted by the Nouvelle Vague in general regarding, for example, the tracking shots and the necessity to have a certain way, a moral way to film a certain number of things and to represent them. And more broadly, our societies and civilizations are structured around a certain number of taboos regarding representation, and in particular regarding death. And we feel the effects of this every day, including in our perception of reality, and the powers that try to work on this perception of reality are very much aware of the importance of that. So we can see it now with the current conflicts and specifically with the war in Israel and Palestine with the question of the showing of the images in the social networks which have become the main source of information and understanding of what is going on in the world with a very different treatment of images of death according whether you're on a certain platform, for example, Meta platforms, which is Instagram, Facebook, where they are heavily censored, and others like Twitter. And so this is the immediate perception of reality. And then you have a second layer is how do you create and generate art over this question. So we will maybe try to advance from one to the other and see if there are porosities, if there are bridges between those layers of representation of reality and also bridges between the perception of an artist and of a philosopher. So we were thinking maybe of starting with you, Udi, for a first, I mean, introduction on the subject, and then we will go to Slavoj and then we will start a discussion. Thank you very much for being here.
unknown
Thank you so much and thank you so much for having us here. At the beginning we thought we'd have a full discussion but after the election I feel that I have less and less what to say and more to hear. So I will move this discussion today that Slavoj will speak mostly and I'll try not like usual not to interrupt him. Now Slavoj, are you there? Slavoj? Yeah. So I think that I'll just speak a little bit but I think that you will speak like minutes straight after after I speak, just give your thoughts. Yes, no debate, I don't want to hear others. I want to hear myself only. Okay. How surprising! It's—whoa. So this is experience of many years being with this gentleman. And I just want to open—first that I'm really feel privileged to be in this festival, in this time of censorship, to have a festival that dedicate a full section for Palestine, I want to like bravo, bravo, I'm serious. Secondly, for me it's a bit emotional because Mariam Said is sitting with us here and it's a
Thank you so much and thank you so much for having us here. At the beginning we thought we'd have a full discussion but after the election I feel that I have less and less what to say and more to hear. So I will move this discussion today that Slavoj will speak mostly and I'll try not like usual not to interrupt him. Now Slavoj, are you there? Slavoj? Yeah. So I think that I'll just speak a little bit but I think that you will speak like minutes straight after after I speak, just give your thoughts. Yes, no debate, I don't want to hear others. I want to hear myself only. Okay. How surprising! It's—whoa. So this is experience of many years being with this gentleman. And I just want to open—first that I'm really feel privileged to be in this festival, in this time of censorship, to have a festival that dedicate a full section for Palestine, I want to like bravo, bravo, I'm serious. Secondly, for me it's a bit emotional because Mariam Said is sitting with us here and it's a
unknown
big privilege for us to be here. And she knows that for me Edward Said was a light for many years to—for optimism in a way, for being in struggle and optimism. Because of his book, I really thought I can develop bi-nationalism concept. Because of his book, *Freud and the Non-European*, I felt easier to go to live in Jenin refugee camp and to work in the Freedom Theatre and feel that I can really feel truly that the Palestinians are my brother and the sisters. I have to admit that now when genocide is going on, I'm less optimistic. And I'm less optimistic to see that with all the grassroots America before Trump already was very strong part of this genocide and after Trump I even cannot imagine what will happen. And we are very weak, we are very—and and a lot of dreams and a lot of things we work about are falling apart in a way. And it's not only that Israel fought apart totally to hyper-fascist concept of the Jew supremacy that they almost feel like they stole it from the white supremacy. And not only that America gave the power now to white supremacy. There is a whole feeling that Europe, America, everyone gave totally the—gave up on the working class. The only place that I feel that people still care on really working class is South America and that's why maybe the only place that we can still see some some socialism running the place it's in South America. In Europe, the left is arrogant. In America, they are not even left whatever the Democratic Party is. And the way that here in Europe when a bunch, a huge group of Israelis are walking in Amsterdam so arrogant and screaming celebrating the murder of kids—I don't know if you guys even saw what happened but they went in Amsterdam saying, "Haha, there are no school in Gaza because there are no kids in Gaza." Like a whole group of Israeli celebrating, celebrating murdering of kids. And when some people beat the shit out of them, people call them anti-Semitic and it's the head of Holland and it's in Germany, this reverse of logic. Because if I wrote and if I said something very clear, if I see a group of neo-Nazis walking in the street and said "death to Jews," I would beat the shit out of them. And somehow something goes so wrong that I'm feel lost. And I hope that my older friend Slavoj, as yet before he have dementia, maybe can give me some some hope or some strategy or some way how we go from this place that have no more control of truth, that imagery control all our way of thinking. Where are we going there from here? I have to admit I don't know and therefore I choose to listen today more than to speak and whoever knows me, it's not typical to me. So it's it's really hard. And Slavoj, you have minutes to convince me that it's worth fighting for. All right, so it's your stage now and be strong. It's you, baby. Okay, I will begin but since I'm also in a very not only critical but also self-critical mood, let me begin by not a critical note about what you said, but just another reflexive twist. You said how in all these struggles, racist, religious today, we forget about the working class. I'm
big privilege for us to be here. And she knows that for me Edward Said was a light for many years to—for optimism in a way, for being in struggle and optimism. Because of his book, I really thought I can develop bi-nationalism concept. Because of his book, *Freud and the Non-European*, I felt easier to go to live in Jenin refugee camp and to work in the Freedom Theatre and feel that I can really feel truly that the Palestinians are my brother and the sisters. I have to admit that now when genocide is going on, I'm less optimistic. And I'm less optimistic to see that with all the grassroots America before Trump already was very strong part of this genocide and after Trump I even cannot imagine what will happen. And we are very weak, we are very—and and a lot of dreams and a lot of things we work about are falling apart in a way. And it's not only that Israel fought apart totally to hyper-fascist concept of the Jew supremacy that they almost feel like they stole it from the white supremacy. And not only that America gave the power now to white supremacy. There is a whole feeling that Europe, America, everyone gave totally the—gave up on the working class. The only place that I feel that people still care on really working class is South America and that's why maybe the only place that we can still see some some socialism running the place it's in South America. In Europe, the left is arrogant. In America, they are not even left whatever the Democratic Party is. And the way that here in Europe when a bunch, a huge group of Israelis are walking in Amsterdam so arrogant and screaming celebrating the murder of kids—I don't know if you guys even saw what happened but they went in Amsterdam saying, "Haha, there are no school in Gaza because there are no kids in Gaza." Like a whole group of Israeli celebrating, celebrating murdering of kids. And when some people beat the shit out of them, people call them anti-Semitic and it's the head of Holland and it's in Germany, this reverse of logic. Because if I wrote and if I said something very clear, if I see a group of neo-Nazis walking in the street and said "death to Jews," I would beat the shit out of them. And somehow something goes so wrong that I'm feel lost. And I hope that my older friend Slavoj, as yet before he have dementia, maybe can give me some some hope or some strategy or some way how we go from this place that have no more control of truth, that imagery control all our way of thinking. Where are we going there from here? I have to admit I don't know and therefore I choose to listen today more than to speak and whoever knows me, it's not typical to me. So it's it's really hard. And Slavoj, you have minutes to convince me that it's worth fighting for. All right, so it's your stage now and be strong. It's you, baby. Okay, I will begin but since I'm also in a very not only critical but also self-critical mood, let me begin by not a critical note about what you said, but just another reflexive twist. You said how in all these struggles, racist, religious today, we forget about the working class. I'm
Slavoj Žižek
claiming working class is also forgetting about itself. They lost innocence. I read very interesting statistic there I think absolutely crucial. How did Latino immigrants vote in the present US elections? The large majority of them voted for Trump. Why? For us it's—many of my friends it was a shock, for me not. They are immanently conservative. They didn't emigrate, immigrate to the United States to do their revolution as marginals and so on. No, they want to—they don't want to change the system. They want to succeed, integrate themselves into the system. So absolutely we have to stop this mythology of some authentic working class revolutionary subjects and so on. But that's just introductory provocation, let me begin with a reference to Daniel Barenboim who is sadly not here with us. Barenboim conducted what is for me the definitive staging of Wagner's opera *Tristan und Isolde*. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's Bayreuth version from In his staging, in Act III, Tristan dies alone. The implication is that Isolde stayed with her husband, King Marke, and her appearance at the opera's end is only the dying Tristan's hallucination. So when Isolde stops singing her *Liebestod*, the entire stage is enveloped in darkness for a couple of seconds and then a much weaker and greyish light returns showing the dead Tristan alone under a gigantic also dead tree. How is this connected with the ongoing war in the Middle East? Psychoanalysis is needed here. Psychoanalysis is as a rule misunderstood either in a pseudo-leftist way, we should strive for abolishing all forms of repression, for fully liberating sexuality, or in a conservative way, a level of repression is necessary to prevent social disintegration and so on. Jacques Lacan offers here a surprise. He defines the goal of psychoanalytic treatment today in our era of permissiveness as the restoration of the minimum of shame. The true opposition is not the one between free sexuality and repression, but one between shamelessness and dignity. And this idea came to me to include Lacan when I read an interview with a grandparent, grandfather from Gaza whose kids were killed and he said to a camera, "We don't compassion and help, we want dignity." It is difficult to overestimate the political relevance of this Lacan's stance today. Today protesters attack the shamelessness of their opponent and demand to be treated with dignity. I'm not talking just about shameless populists like Donald Trump. Here is the latest example of utter shamelessness from Israel. In July this year, a number of ministers and members of Knesset as well as journalists and TV commentators criticized a raid by the IDF military police on the Sde Teiman base, a prison south of Jerusalem, in which the IDF police—they did a good thing for a change—arrested a number of guards, reservists, accused of abusing imprisoned Palestinians. This arrest, which also triggered large public protests in Israel, sadly, happened after, horrified at what they saw, some Israeli guards in the prison heroically rendered public that, among other forms of abuse and torture, the security personnel in this prison was torturing Palestinians by pushing mental sticks with needles into their rectum, which made some of them, dozens, bleed to death. Here is a passage, it's shocking for me, from a debate in Knesset, Israeli parliament. A guy defending soldiers is saying, "This is insanity. Someone in the prosecutor's office thinks it's possible to arrest soldiers for the things they do to Nukhba, Hamas unit terrorists? We can't continue as usual." Somebody, probably a Palestinian member of parliament, interjects, "To insert a stick into a person's rectum, is this legitimate?" The Zionist guy answers, "Shut up! Yes, if he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do, everything." Then not to take too much time, here is another passage from an Israeli TV debate. A one guy with a minimum of decency says, "Soldiers are suspected of raping a shackled prisoner. This doesn't concern you?" Another hard Zionist guy says, "I don't give a rat's ass what they do to that Hamas man. The only problem I see is that it is not state policy to abuse detainees. First, they deserve it and it's a great form of revenge. Secondly, maybe it will act as a deterrent." End of quote. This is the lowest point of shamelessness I can imagine. Although maybe things will go even further. Maybe, you never know, I think this is a serious possibility, we will get a live TV transmission of torture. However, just imagine the outcry if Hamas were publicly boasting of doing the same to some of the remaining hostages in Gaza. This then is what we get from the only democracy in the Middle East. Can one imagine, again, our reaction what our reaction would have been if the same thing were to happen in Russia, what they are doing in Ukraine? Another example, which is for me even more depressing. Recently we learned that Eliraz Mizrahi, a 40-years-old father of four and an Israeli military reservist, returned from Gaza deeply traumatized by what he had witnessed and what he did in the war. He was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder back at home, and before he was due to redeploy, he killed himself. He took his own life. During his deployment in Gaza, Mizrahi was tasked with driving a big bulldozer, an armored vehicle that can withstand bullets and explosives. Guy Zaken, Mizrahi's friend and co-driver, said, "We saw very, very difficult things, things that are difficult to accept. On many occasions, we had to run over terrorists dead and alive in the hundreds." End of quote. This then is the true cost of Mizrahi's post-traumatic disorder: massive brutal killings that he not only witnessed but also committed. Now comes the obscenity for me. An IDF Israeli Defense Forces psychologist said that, quote, "One of the ways the military helps traumatized troops resume their lives is to try to normalize what they went through, partly by reminding them of the horrors committed on October the 7th." End of quote. So let's be clear, the aim of such therapy is to normalize the profoundly abnormal criminal brutality. To make Mizrahi's massive crime into normal justifiable experience. In short, to obliterate the last remainders of shame and unbearable guilt which made Mizrahi a person, which made Mizrahi a human person, and to turn him into someone who will be able to run over hundreds of dead and alive persons in cold blood. The mystification is here double. Not only is Mizrahi's criminal activity neutralized into a traumatic experience, the focus on his inner suffering also ignores the painful death of hundreds overrun by the bulldozer. Are we aware that we are here just one step from helping in the same way the perpetrators of the Holocaust to normalize what they went through, pushing bodies into gas chambers and so on? Shamelessness reigns fully here. So one can more and more see a pattern in how we again and again face the fact that IDF is doing itself what it is accusing Hamas of doing. I have no sympathy for Hamas, but this repetition is horrible. For a year, we were listening to the mantra that Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields on the battlefield, which is why, that's the story, so many civilians were killed in Gaza. However, Israeli media reported on October two weeks ago, that the IDF has regularly forced Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped houses and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting their own Israeli troops in harm's way. A soldier reported, "We told them to enter the building before us. If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us." This procedure was so common that the Israeli military even coined a name for it: it's called "Mosquito protocol." The latest obscenity already mentioned, which deserves analysis, already mentioned by Udi, took place now a couple of days ago in—on November when clashes between Maccabi Tel Aviv, an Israeli football club, Tel Aviv fans from Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters exploded in Amsterdam after the football match between Ajax and Maccabi. Now, media presented the clashes as the attack of pro-Palestinian protesters against the Jews, and the clashes were condemned by Dutch and Israeli government as the new dangerous outburst of anti-Semitism comparable to October Hamas attack and even qualified as a new Kristallnacht. You know, the German Nazi first public pogrom of Jews in '37, I think. The mayor of Amsterdam even advised Jewish citizens of Amsterdam to stay at home for a couple of days. But the truth is now gradually emerging. Already before the match, hundreds of Maccabi fans circulated in the center of Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags from apartment windows, shouting obscene and openly racist slogans like "Fuck the Arabs" or the one mentioned by Udi, "There are no schools open in Gaza because there are no children in Gaza." Implication: because we kill them. At the beginning of the match, the Maccabi fans in the tribunes interrupted the minute of silence for Spanish flood victims with shouts like "Kill the Arabs" and so on. Why? Because Spain recognized the state of Palestine. Now it is not clear who started the physical clashes, but indications point towards the Maccabi fans. A video clip typically is circulating in the media as a proof of the Palestinian violence: a Jewish man running away from a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators pursuing him. Now that's the good side of our mass media, which are partially not controlled. The author of this video clip responded publicly by pointing out that his clip shows an ordinary Dutch person pursued by the Maccabi mob. As expected, police protected Maccabi mob and even accompanied them to their hotels to guarantee their safety. However, the most depressing thing in this affair is a simple comparison: tens of thousands of dead children and women in Gaza are normalized. A small daily news, today Palestinians died. Today it was even, I'm talking literally when I read, it was just or "Ooh, it's normal." While when a clash occurred in Amsterdam with no deaths, this is big news, new Kristallnacht and so on and so on. So I'm approaching conclusion. Where does shame enter here? In his seminar *The Other Side of Psychoanalysis* from '69-'70, Lacan's reaction to the May '68 events—in this seminar he makes a much more important point than his decried provocative statement, "You, the protesters, aspire to—what you protesters aspire to as revolutionaries is a new master, you will get one." It's much more important what Lacan says in his critique of protesting students. He surprisingly says, "All you are lacking is a bit of shame." Lacan repeatedly varies this motive, saying that students, quote, "fear they might be carried away by buffonnerie. Let us start rather from the fact that buffonnerie is already here. Perhaps by mixing in a little shame, who knows, we may be able to hold it death." End of quote. And Lacan even concluded his seminar with, these are the last words, "What I put forward for the majority of you, it is just that, just that. I managed to make you ashamed, not too much but precisely enough." End of quote. What's the point of Lacan here? We have to read contemporary shamelessness from the perspective of a certain mutation in capitalism. It's no longer a capitalism that relies on repression of enjoyment as in Max Weber's famous analysis. It's rather—today's capitalism is rather one of permissiveness where what can something be the cause of difficulty is the prohibition on prohibiting. Lacan doesn't advocate here a minimum of morality or repression that should be maintained to prevent social disintegration. On the contrary, he draws attention to what already back in 1940s some Frankfurt School members referred to as the repressive desublimation. What we are getting today is a kind of generalized perversion, openly doing what hysterics only dream about. And as Freud already knew, nowhere is the unconscious more inaccessible, more repressed than in perversion. The catch is that desire is in itself immanently inconsistent, self-contradictory. Which is why the permissiveness of perversion ends up in self-destructive deadlock which gives birth to the call for a new master. But as the ongoing wave of new populism aptly demonstrated, this new master's shamelessness by far exceeding the shamelessness of the old leftist protesters. Again, that was Lacan's point. You are doing by—that was fashionable when I was young—you show power acted with dignity, we the protesters were doing obscene gestures, shouting, provoking. But Lacan's point is, "Wait, wait, if you are shameless, the reaction will be not more moral oppression but that those in power will become even more shameless." So that we, leftist protesters, should today rehabilitate simple—I'm not afraid to use the term—moral values like decency, shame and so on. Let me conclude. Carlo Ginzburg proposed the notion that a shame for one's country, being ashamed of it, not love for one's country, may be the true mark of patriotism, authentic patriotism. A supreme example of such shame occurred back in when hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their descendants bought an ad in *New York Times*, whole page ad, condemning what they referred to as the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Here is a quote from this courageous statement: "We are alarmed by the extreme racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever pitch." End of quote. Those Israelis who gathered the courage to feel shame apropos what IDF is doing in Gaza and on the West Bank, not of course shame in the sense of being Jewish, but on the contrary, the shame for what the Israeli politics is doing to the most precious legacy of Judaism itself. In some pathetic sense, they are the only true Jews today. This brings me back to Barenboim and Ponnelle's version of *Tristan* where, as I already said, Tristan dies alone. Are Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank not like Tristan? Many around us around the world profess solidarity with them, but this solidarity mostly consists of severe war—severe warnings to Israel, compassion and so on. So like Tristan, Palestinians in Gaza maybe dream about compassion, but they are really like Tristan dying alone in half-darkness. This is what should make all of us ashamed. Thank you very much. Hello, thanks Slavoj. I took some notes in a way what always you—don't get embarrassed, I have to compliment you a bit—but always what you did is always helped me to think when I lost the way the way, sometimes to the wrong direction but this time it helps. So I thought I just wrote myself few notes while you were speaking. Once first I thought about this song of Leonard Cohen, I just quote: "I asked my father, I said, 'Father, change my name. The name I'm using now, it's covered up with fear and filth and shame.'" And I feel I use this because I ran away in a way to Judaism because I try to run away from the name Israel. Because I'm full with shame. And and then I felt that as a Jew I can speak louder. And then the book I published I called it *What Does a Jew Want?*. And the *What Does a Jew Want?* it's referred to Freud when he said what does a woman want, so some people said that he was very arrogant "oh, what does a woman want," others said he was very compassionate but still patriarch "what does a woman want, I will help her." And when I read him saying "what does a woman want," I see him like "what the fuck Dora want? I don't get it, I don't understand." And only when the psychoanalyst became the hysteric psychoanalyst when he doesn't know nothing then psychoanalysisism started. And I think my journey now is to be in this position. What is to be a Jew now in this situation? Israel I know what it is. And it's much worse than to said anti-Zionist. Because everyone try to speak against Zionism, but ideologically I can go with people and prove them that ideology of Zionism could be different if I go to the beginning of Zionism. But then I read this book of Jean-Luc Nancy about the Nazi myth, Nazi mythology, and I realized that there is something in Zionism that's much worse than the ideology that can be read in different ways: the mythology. They created us there, I grew up there with the song, with the music, with the land, when they tell us wherever is the last—last land that we work the land like farmers this is where the border is of of Jewishness. There is a whole mythology that purely based totally on Jew supremacy. And once every little kid grew up with this Jew supremacy there, so also orthodox Jews that are anti-Zionist they still treating the Arabs as a supreme—like as a subhuman being and they taking the land and they building their community there and when you do statistics they want even though they don't join the army they still want all the Arab to die. So there is something how how mythology function. But then I feel it's too easy to blame the us, the Jew or the Israeli, of course, because the Jews as we know in in United States most of us or not most of us but the new generation are the one who stand with Palestine more than anyone else almost. But I thought on Primo Levi when he said, "Every nation have its own Jew and the Palestinians are the Jew of Israel." And this is amazing quote. But for you European, I want to said every—every continent have their own Jew and your Jew are the Muslims. And and there is something what we saw in Amsterdam, it's not so much about the Israeli, the crazy fascist Israeli, is about what we suffering now in Germany. In Germany, if I speak against Israel, they, those motherfucker grandson of Nazis, dare to call me anti-Semitic. And they can silence me and I'm still privileged because I'm still a Jew. When Palestinian do it on the street, he get beaten. They don't need that—that Muslim will go and beat the shit out of those Israeli fascist. The the police doing it to the Palestinian there when they try to fight for freedom. And how we in Europe go against Germany? I don't know, because I don't know what we can do, but at least I can call here in Portugal or in in film festivals in Europe, we have to go against them because I try to keep Jewishness that was pre-Zionist, Jewishness like Hannah Arendt, like Rosenzweig, like Walter Benjamin, like Kafka. None of them were Zionist. Today if those people would be alive, the German government would silence them. So in a way the only anti-Semitic people I know in Germany now it's the German government. That they force the Israeli to be the Wagner Group of the West. What we are for—what the Wagner Group was for Putin, I feel that we are for America. Of course, they send us billion dollar, wouldn't we be monsters? I put Swedish people there and I'll send them billion dollar and tell them "go go control the the natives," they will do the same. So my responsibility is to sit here and yes, speak against Israel and and create Jewishness that see people equal and see that my brother and sister are the Palestinian. But European and the Christian and Muslim or whatever you want to called it and man woman, I don't know all the identity politics, you have responsibility seriously to go against your countries because they are part of this genocide. They are really part. The the way that they silence—the way they allowed group of Israelis to walk there and celebrating murdering of kids, they would never let neo-Nazis to walk like that. In a way they are now becoming the neo-Nazis one country after the other. So this is something that for me for me is very strong. And I thought what is the weapon—what is really the weapon for for the for the for the oppressed now? And this something we were in debate once with Slavoj about Shylock. I adore Shylock. I mean, because many Marxists they read Shylock, they try to do another reading, but they still see him as the representative of capitalism. But for me Shylock is the only thing the oppressed do is keep the international law. And that's what Shylock do. He said, "There is a law. You screw me, I keep the law as it is. That's the only weapon I have." And of course the Portia playing as judge, she come and said, "Where is your—where is your Christian mercy? Where is your Christian grace?" Of course the the the master can ask from grace from the oppressed. And but the oppressed said, "No, I want international law. I want each one of them of BB and Gantz and you know because in Israel there are two group. There is a big opposition, they are the one who do genocide not for the own purpose, and then there is the government who do genocide for the own purpose. But both side are part of the genocide. And I want to
claiming working class is also forgetting about itself. They lost innocence. I read very interesting statistic there I think absolutely crucial. How did Latino immigrants vote in the present US elections? The large majority of them voted for Trump. Why? For us it's—many of my friends it was a shock, for me not. They are immanently conservative. They didn't emigrate, immigrate to the United States to do their revolution as marginals and so on. No, they want to—they don't want to change the system. They want to succeed, integrate themselves into the system. So absolutely we have to stop this mythology of some authentic working class revolutionary subjects and so on. But that's just introductory provocation, let me begin with a reference to Daniel Barenboim who is sadly not here with us. Barenboim conducted what is for me the definitive staging of Wagner's opera *Tristan und Isolde*. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's Bayreuth version from In his staging, in Act III, Tristan dies alone. The implication is that Isolde stayed with her husband, King Marke, and her appearance at the opera's end is only the dying Tristan's hallucination. So when Isolde stops singing her *Liebestod*, the entire stage is enveloped in darkness for a couple of seconds and then a much weaker and greyish light returns showing the dead Tristan alone under a gigantic also dead tree. How is this connected with the ongoing war in the Middle East? Psychoanalysis is needed here. Psychoanalysis is as a rule misunderstood either in a pseudo-leftist way, we should strive for abolishing all forms of repression, for fully liberating sexuality, or in a conservative way, a level of repression is necessary to prevent social disintegration and so on. Jacques Lacan offers here a surprise. He defines the goal of psychoanalytic treatment today in our era of permissiveness as the restoration of the minimum of shame. The true opposition is not the one between free sexuality and repression, but one between shamelessness and dignity. And this idea came to me to include Lacan when I read an interview with a grandparent, grandfather from Gaza whose kids were killed and he said to a camera, "We don't compassion and help, we want dignity." It is difficult to overestimate the political relevance of this Lacan's stance today. Today protesters attack the shamelessness of their opponent and demand to be treated with dignity. I'm not talking just about shameless populists like Donald Trump. Here is the latest example of utter shamelessness from Israel. In July this year, a number of ministers and members of Knesset as well as journalists and TV commentators criticized a raid by the IDF military police on the Sde Teiman base, a prison south of Jerusalem, in which the IDF police—they did a good thing for a change—arrested a number of guards, reservists, accused of abusing imprisoned Palestinians. This arrest, which also triggered large public protests in Israel, sadly, happened after, horrified at what they saw, some Israeli guards in the prison heroically rendered public that, among other forms of abuse and torture, the security personnel in this prison was torturing Palestinians by pushing mental sticks with needles into their rectum, which made some of them, dozens, bleed to death. Here is a passage, it's shocking for me, from a debate in Knesset, Israeli parliament. A guy defending soldiers is saying, "This is insanity. Someone in the prosecutor's office thinks it's possible to arrest soldiers for the things they do to Nukhba, Hamas unit terrorists? We can't continue as usual." Somebody, probably a Palestinian member of parliament, interjects, "To insert a stick into a person's rectum, is this legitimate?" The Zionist guy answers, "Shut up! Yes, if he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do, everything." Then not to take too much time, here is another passage from an Israeli TV debate. A one guy with a minimum of decency says, "Soldiers are suspected of raping a shackled prisoner. This doesn't concern you?" Another hard Zionist guy says, "I don't give a rat's ass what they do to that Hamas man. The only problem I see is that it is not state policy to abuse detainees. First, they deserve it and it's a great form of revenge. Secondly, maybe it will act as a deterrent." End of quote. This is the lowest point of shamelessness I can imagine. Although maybe things will go even further. Maybe, you never know, I think this is a serious possibility, we will get a live TV transmission of torture. However, just imagine the outcry if Hamas were publicly boasting of doing the same to some of the remaining hostages in Gaza. This then is what we get from the only democracy in the Middle East. Can one imagine, again, our reaction what our reaction would have been if the same thing were to happen in Russia, what they are doing in Ukraine? Another example, which is for me even more depressing. Recently we learned that Eliraz Mizrahi, a 40-years-old father of four and an Israeli military reservist, returned from Gaza deeply traumatized by what he had witnessed and what he did in the war. He was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder back at home, and before he was due to redeploy, he killed himself. He took his own life. During his deployment in Gaza, Mizrahi was tasked with driving a big bulldozer, an armored vehicle that can withstand bullets and explosives. Guy Zaken, Mizrahi's friend and co-driver, said, "We saw very, very difficult things, things that are difficult to accept. On many occasions, we had to run over terrorists dead and alive in the hundreds." End of quote. This then is the true cost of Mizrahi's post-traumatic disorder: massive brutal killings that he not only witnessed but also committed. Now comes the obscenity for me. An IDF Israeli Defense Forces psychologist said that, quote, "One of the ways the military helps traumatized troops resume their lives is to try to normalize what they went through, partly by reminding them of the horrors committed on October the 7th." End of quote. So let's be clear, the aim of such therapy is to normalize the profoundly abnormal criminal brutality. To make Mizrahi's massive crime into normal justifiable experience. In short, to obliterate the last remainders of shame and unbearable guilt which made Mizrahi a person, which made Mizrahi a human person, and to turn him into someone who will be able to run over hundreds of dead and alive persons in cold blood. The mystification is here double. Not only is Mizrahi's criminal activity neutralized into a traumatic experience, the focus on his inner suffering also ignores the painful death of hundreds overrun by the bulldozer. Are we aware that we are here just one step from helping in the same way the perpetrators of the Holocaust to normalize what they went through, pushing bodies into gas chambers and so on? Shamelessness reigns fully here. So one can more and more see a pattern in how we again and again face the fact that IDF is doing itself what it is accusing Hamas of doing. I have no sympathy for Hamas, but this repetition is horrible. For a year, we were listening to the mantra that Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields on the battlefield, which is why, that's the story, so many civilians were killed in Gaza. However, Israeli media reported on October two weeks ago, that the IDF has regularly forced Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped houses and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting their own Israeli troops in harm's way. A soldier reported, "We told them to enter the building before us. If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us." This procedure was so common that the Israeli military even coined a name for it: it's called "Mosquito protocol." The latest obscenity already mentioned, which deserves analysis, already mentioned by Udi, took place now a couple of days ago in—on November when clashes between Maccabi Tel Aviv, an Israeli football club, Tel Aviv fans from Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters exploded in Amsterdam after the football match between Ajax and Maccabi. Now, media presented the clashes as the attack of pro-Palestinian protesters against the Jews, and the clashes were condemned by Dutch and Israeli government as the new dangerous outburst of anti-Semitism comparable to October Hamas attack and even qualified as a new Kristallnacht. You know, the German Nazi first public pogrom of Jews in '37, I think. The mayor of Amsterdam even advised Jewish citizens of Amsterdam to stay at home for a couple of days. But the truth is now gradually emerging. Already before the match, hundreds of Maccabi fans circulated in the center of Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags from apartment windows, shouting obscene and openly racist slogans like "Fuck the Arabs" or the one mentioned by Udi, "There are no schools open in Gaza because there are no children in Gaza." Implication: because we kill them. At the beginning of the match, the Maccabi fans in the tribunes interrupted the minute of silence for Spanish flood victims with shouts like "Kill the Arabs" and so on. Why? Because Spain recognized the state of Palestine. Now it is not clear who started the physical clashes, but indications point towards the Maccabi fans. A video clip typically is circulating in the media as a proof of the Palestinian violence: a Jewish man running away from a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators pursuing him. Now that's the good side of our mass media, which are partially not controlled. The author of this video clip responded publicly by pointing out that his clip shows an ordinary Dutch person pursued by the Maccabi mob. As expected, police protected Maccabi mob and even accompanied them to their hotels to guarantee their safety. However, the most depressing thing in this affair is a simple comparison: tens of thousands of dead children and women in Gaza are normalized. A small daily news, today Palestinians died. Today it was even, I'm talking literally when I read, it was just or "Ooh, it's normal." While when a clash occurred in Amsterdam with no deaths, this is big news, new Kristallnacht and so on and so on. So I'm approaching conclusion. Where does shame enter here? In his seminar *The Other Side of Psychoanalysis* from '69-'70, Lacan's reaction to the May '68 events—in this seminar he makes a much more important point than his decried provocative statement, "You, the protesters, aspire to—what you protesters aspire to as revolutionaries is a new master, you will get one." It's much more important what Lacan says in his critique of protesting students. He surprisingly says, "All you are lacking is a bit of shame." Lacan repeatedly varies this motive, saying that students, quote, "fear they might be carried away by buffonnerie. Let us start rather from the fact that buffonnerie is already here. Perhaps by mixing in a little shame, who knows, we may be able to hold it death." End of quote. And Lacan even concluded his seminar with, these are the last words, "What I put forward for the majority of you, it is just that, just that. I managed to make you ashamed, not too much but precisely enough." End of quote. What's the point of Lacan here? We have to read contemporary shamelessness from the perspective of a certain mutation in capitalism. It's no longer a capitalism that relies on repression of enjoyment as in Max Weber's famous analysis. It's rather—today's capitalism is rather one of permissiveness where what can something be the cause of difficulty is the prohibition on prohibiting. Lacan doesn't advocate here a minimum of morality or repression that should be maintained to prevent social disintegration. On the contrary, he draws attention to what already back in 1940s some Frankfurt School members referred to as the repressive desublimation. What we are getting today is a kind of generalized perversion, openly doing what hysterics only dream about. And as Freud already knew, nowhere is the unconscious more inaccessible, more repressed than in perversion. The catch is that desire is in itself immanently inconsistent, self-contradictory. Which is why the permissiveness of perversion ends up in self-destructive deadlock which gives birth to the call for a new master. But as the ongoing wave of new populism aptly demonstrated, this new master's shamelessness by far exceeding the shamelessness of the old leftist protesters. Again, that was Lacan's point. You are doing by—that was fashionable when I was young—you show power acted with dignity, we the protesters were doing obscene gestures, shouting, provoking. But Lacan's point is, "Wait, wait, if you are shameless, the reaction will be not more moral oppression but that those in power will become even more shameless." So that we, leftist protesters, should today rehabilitate simple—I'm not afraid to use the term—moral values like decency, shame and so on. Let me conclude. Carlo Ginzburg proposed the notion that a shame for one's country, being ashamed of it, not love for one's country, may be the true mark of patriotism, authentic patriotism. A supreme example of such shame occurred back in when hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their descendants bought an ad in *New York Times*, whole page ad, condemning what they referred to as the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Here is a quote from this courageous statement: "We are alarmed by the extreme racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever pitch." End of quote. Those Israelis who gathered the courage to feel shame apropos what IDF is doing in Gaza and on the West Bank, not of course shame in the sense of being Jewish, but on the contrary, the shame for what the Israeli politics is doing to the most precious legacy of Judaism itself. In some pathetic sense, they are the only true Jews today. This brings me back to Barenboim and Ponnelle's version of *Tristan* where, as I already said, Tristan dies alone. Are Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank not like Tristan? Many around us around the world profess solidarity with them, but this solidarity mostly consists of severe war—severe warnings to Israel, compassion and so on. So like Tristan, Palestinians in Gaza maybe dream about compassion, but they are really like Tristan dying alone in half-darkness. This is what should make all of us ashamed. Thank you very much. Hello, thanks Slavoj. I took some notes in a way what always you—don't get embarrassed, I have to compliment you a bit—but always what you did is always helped me to think when I lost the way the way, sometimes to the wrong direction but this time it helps. So I thought I just wrote myself few notes while you were speaking. Once first I thought about this song of Leonard Cohen, I just quote: "I asked my father, I said, 'Father, change my name. The name I'm using now, it's covered up with fear and filth and shame.'" And I feel I use this because I ran away in a way to Judaism because I try to run away from the name Israel. Because I'm full with shame. And and then I felt that as a Jew I can speak louder. And then the book I published I called it *What Does a Jew Want?*. And the *What Does a Jew Want?* it's referred to Freud when he said what does a woman want, so some people said that he was very arrogant "oh, what does a woman want," others said he was very compassionate but still patriarch "what does a woman want, I will help her." And when I read him saying "what does a woman want," I see him like "what the fuck Dora want? I don't get it, I don't understand." And only when the psychoanalyst became the hysteric psychoanalyst when he doesn't know nothing then psychoanalysisism started. And I think my journey now is to be in this position. What is to be a Jew now in this situation? Israel I know what it is. And it's much worse than to said anti-Zionist. Because everyone try to speak against Zionism, but ideologically I can go with people and prove them that ideology of Zionism could be different if I go to the beginning of Zionism. But then I read this book of Jean-Luc Nancy about the Nazi myth, Nazi mythology, and I realized that there is something in Zionism that's much worse than the ideology that can be read in different ways: the mythology. They created us there, I grew up there with the song, with the music, with the land, when they tell us wherever is the last—last land that we work the land like farmers this is where the border is of of Jewishness. There is a whole mythology that purely based totally on Jew supremacy. And once every little kid grew up with this Jew supremacy there, so also orthodox Jews that are anti-Zionist they still treating the Arabs as a supreme—like as a subhuman being and they taking the land and they building their community there and when you do statistics they want even though they don't join the army they still want all the Arab to die. So there is something how how mythology function. But then I feel it's too easy to blame the us, the Jew or the Israeli, of course, because the Jews as we know in in United States most of us or not most of us but the new generation are the one who stand with Palestine more than anyone else almost. But I thought on Primo Levi when he said, "Every nation have its own Jew and the Palestinians are the Jew of Israel." And this is amazing quote. But for you European, I want to said every—every continent have their own Jew and your Jew are the Muslims. And and there is something what we saw in Amsterdam, it's not so much about the Israeli, the crazy fascist Israeli, is about what we suffering now in Germany. In Germany, if I speak against Israel, they, those motherfucker grandson of Nazis, dare to call me anti-Semitic. And they can silence me and I'm still privileged because I'm still a Jew. When Palestinian do it on the street, he get beaten. They don't need that—that Muslim will go and beat the shit out of those Israeli fascist. The the police doing it to the Palestinian there when they try to fight for freedom. And how we in Europe go against Germany? I don't know, because I don't know what we can do, but at least I can call here in Portugal or in in film festivals in Europe, we have to go against them because I try to keep Jewishness that was pre-Zionist, Jewishness like Hannah Arendt, like Rosenzweig, like Walter Benjamin, like Kafka. None of them were Zionist. Today if those people would be alive, the German government would silence them. So in a way the only anti-Semitic people I know in Germany now it's the German government. That they force the Israeli to be the Wagner Group of the West. What we are for—what the Wagner Group was for Putin, I feel that we are for America. Of course, they send us billion dollar, wouldn't we be monsters? I put Swedish people there and I'll send them billion dollar and tell them "go go control the the natives," they will do the same. So my responsibility is to sit here and yes, speak against Israel and and create Jewishness that see people equal and see that my brother and sister are the Palestinian. But European and the Christian and Muslim or whatever you want to called it and man woman, I don't know all the identity politics, you have responsibility seriously to go against your countries because they are part of this genocide. They are really part. The the way that they silence—the way they allowed group of Israelis to walk there and celebrating murdering of kids, they would never let neo-Nazis to walk like that. In a way they are now becoming the neo-Nazis one country after the other. So this is something that for me for me is very strong. And I thought what is the weapon—what is really the weapon for for the for the for the oppressed now? And this something we were in debate once with Slavoj about Shylock. I adore Shylock. I mean, because many Marxists they read Shylock, they try to do another reading, but they still see him as the representative of capitalism. But for me Shylock is the only thing the oppressed do is keep the international law. And that's what Shylock do. He said, "There is a law. You screw me, I keep the law as it is. That's the only weapon I have." And of course the Portia playing as judge, she come and said, "Where is your—where is your Christian mercy? Where is your Christian grace?" Of course the the the master can ask from grace from the oppressed. And but the oppressed said, "No, I want international law. I want each one of them of BB and Gantz and you know because in Israel there are two group. There is a big opposition, they are the one who do genocide not for the own purpose, and then there is the government who do genocide for the own purpose. But both side are part of the genocide. And I want to
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see them in Hague. And I think that it's our job to try to put them in Hague. But can we? Now I don't know and this I want to close with Slavoj and from there to go: you spoke about shame. And when in the end I did vote for Kamala and it wasn't easy because she is part of the government that support the genocide. I felt that if there is a big difference between the Kamala group that are—all I have is to criticize them and I blame the Democrats for all the loss—but to the Trump group is the shame. It seems that the Trump people, they don't even have unconscious, they don't even have super-ego, they don't—like when I said genocide, at least Kamala has a shame, she she thinks she should do something. She doesn't do nothing but at least in her party there is a discourse that we can start to speak. With the new where the world is going now, it feel that it's a world—shameless world. So I don't know how we fight with them. What? I said "international law," they said "we don't care." I said "BDS," "we don't care." So I lost—I lost all my weapons to to try to change something. Now yeah, I can go to change and go back to fight for the working class and what you said it's true Slavoj that the working class go against their own interest but they always was like that. That that's why we always try to bring Marxism and all that to to teach them not to go against their own interest. But they have the power, they have Musk and the billionaires to control all the—reconstruct their knowledge. But we don't have time. Every—every day children are being murdered in Gaza now. And I don't know, I cannot speak too much theory when this shit happen and I don't know what we can do as a community to stop it. What what the minimum me as a person what I can do and what as European can do because now we in Europe, but we have to do something. And I lost and and and what we do I I'm coming to you, as you know, I don't know, but you know better than me. So it's a question to you: what what is the action, not the philosophy right now? Even though many times you said we should stop action and think, and I agreed with you in the past, but now maybe we should stop think and act, but I don't know what the act should be. And that's why we should think. Only thinking—I knew it, I did it for you to say it! Again can I just answer very briefly, no criticism of you Udi. What? Can I briefly answer? It's your stage, man. Okay, no, okay.
see them in Hague. And I think that it's our job to try to put them in Hague. But can we? Now I don't know and this I want to close with Slavoj and from there to go: you spoke about shame. And when in the end I did vote for Kamala and it wasn't easy because she is part of the government that support the genocide. I felt that if there is a big difference between the Kamala group that are—all I have is to criticize them and I blame the Democrats for all the loss—but to the Trump group is the shame. It seems that the Trump people, they don't even have unconscious, they don't even have super-ego, they don't—like when I said genocide, at least Kamala has a shame, she she thinks she should do something. She doesn't do nothing but at least in her party there is a discourse that we can start to speak. With the new where the world is going now, it feel that it's a world—shameless world. So I don't know how we fight with them. What? I said "international law," they said "we don't care." I said "BDS," "we don't care." So I lost—I lost all my weapons to to try to change something. Now yeah, I can go to change and go back to fight for the working class and what you said it's true Slavoj that the working class go against their own interest but they always was like that. That that's why we always try to bring Marxism and all that to to teach them not to go against their own interest. But they have the power, they have Musk and the billionaires to control all the—reconstruct their knowledge. But we don't have time. Every—every day children are being murdered in Gaza now. And I don't know, I cannot speak too much theory when this shit happen and I don't know what we can do as a community to stop it. What what the minimum me as a person what I can do and what as European can do because now we in Europe, but we have to do something. And I lost and and and what we do I I'm coming to you, as you know, I don't know, but you know better than me. So it's a question to you: what what is the action, not the philosophy right now? Even though many times you said we should stop action and think, and I agreed with you in the past, but now maybe we should stop think and act, but I don't know what the act should be. And that's why we should think. Only thinking—I knew it, I did it for you to say it! Again can I just answer very briefly, no criticism of you Udi. What? Can I briefly answer? It's your stage, man. Okay, no, okay.
unknown
Just three—first not to misunderstand me. I I agree with you Udi, it's not just about Israel. I am absolutely admitting Holocaust, the greatest crime there is, anti-Semitism in Europe, in Muslim world and so on, but I was very precise. What shocked me is that Israel fully became part of this trend of shamelessness. And here I am for hypocrisy against shamelessness. You know, it's incredible how what those in power were doing—they were I have no doubt Israeli, Arab, Americans, they are all torturing doing unspeakable things. But for me words are never just words. If you publicly say this and even make fun of it, in some sense it's the end of the world. Second point where I agree with you, I take very seriously not just as a vague metaphor when you Udi hinted at that link between what Israel today is doing and Nazism. It's a point that I often make but many people don't like it. Do you know that—take the harshest guys, Nazis. Take the darkest of them, Reinhard Heydrich. You know, Wannsee Conference, the founder of—he organized and then let the other do the performance of Holocaust. You know—I quote it, sorry some of you know it—you know that in '37 I think Heydrich wrote a text where he said wrote "where there are two types of Jews: those who want to integrate into our societies, assimilationists, and Zionists who want to make their state given in Palestine." And he says, "We are afraid only of the assimilationists. They should be out. But all our support goes to Zionists." And you know who says the same? This is the the true neo-Nazi line. You remember Breivik, the crazy Norwegian right-winger? My friends from Norway sent me extracts from his memoirs whatever, where he says "in the Western Europe there are too many Jews, we have to throw them out liquidate them, but in the Middle East we should fully support Israel because they are..." and then we are at that rhetoric, you know, the last defense line, Western civilization and so on and so on. First thing—first thing is the problem of peace. Now I will say something which may appear problematic. What—let's be serious—what is the lesson of relatively—we know the problems—relatively successful anti-racist movements? Relatively successful: Martin Luther King, Mandela and so on. They were able to do negotiations because in the background there was a harsher line advocating violence. And Mandela was well aware and Martin Luther King also. You needed Black Panthers and so on as a threat as a proof that you mean it seriously. Only in this way Martin Luther King was able to do his deal with at that time President Lyndon Johnson. The same with Mandela. They needed a more radical background threat. And in this sense I was totally misunderstood when I finished a text that what Hamas should have done is do it and instead of killing in that kibbutz people bringing them flowers and so on. But my point was not "go there peacefully," wouldn't a true act be this one: of course you break the wall, the border post with arms, you make this clear, but
Just three—first not to misunderstand me. I I agree with you Udi, it's not just about Israel. I am absolutely admitting Holocaust, the greatest crime there is, anti-Semitism in Europe, in Muslim world and so on, but I was very precise. What shocked me is that Israel fully became part of this trend of shamelessness. And here I am for hypocrisy against shamelessness. You know, it's incredible how what those in power were doing—they were I have no doubt Israeli, Arab, Americans, they are all torturing doing unspeakable things. But for me words are never just words. If you publicly say this and even make fun of it, in some sense it's the end of the world. Second point where I agree with you, I take very seriously not just as a vague metaphor when you Udi hinted at that link between what Israel today is doing and Nazism. It's a point that I often make but many people don't like it. Do you know that—take the harshest guys, Nazis. Take the darkest of them, Reinhard Heydrich. You know, Wannsee Conference, the founder of—he organized and then let the other do the performance of Holocaust. You know—I quote it, sorry some of you know it—you know that in '37 I think Heydrich wrote a text where he said wrote "where there are two types of Jews: those who want to integrate into our societies, assimilationists, and Zionists who want to make their state given in Palestine." And he says, "We are afraid only of the assimilationists. They should be out. But all our support goes to Zionists." And you know who says the same? This is the the true neo-Nazi line. You remember Breivik, the crazy Norwegian right-winger? My friends from Norway sent me extracts from his memoirs whatever, where he says "in the Western Europe there are too many Jews, we have to throw them out liquidate them, but in the Middle East we should fully support Israel because they are..." and then we are at that rhetoric, you know, the last defense line, Western civilization and so on and so on. First thing—first thing is the problem of peace. Now I will say something which may appear problematic. What—let's be serious—what is the lesson of relatively—we know the problems—relatively successful anti-racist movements? Relatively successful: Martin Luther King, Mandela and so on. They were able to do negotiations because in the background there was a harsher line advocating violence. And Mandela was well aware and Martin Luther King also. You needed Black Panthers and so on as a threat as a proof that you mean it seriously. Only in this way Martin Luther King was able to do his deal with at that time President Lyndon Johnson. The same with Mandela. They needed a more radical background threat. And in this sense I was totally misunderstood when I finished a text that what Hamas should have done is do it and instead of killing in that kibbutz people bringing them flowers and so on. But my point was not "go there peacefully," wouldn't a true act be this one: of course you break the wall, the border post with arms, you make this clear, but
unknown
when you meet civilians there—this can you imagine what crazy act this would have been? And in my style let me conclude, I'm sorry Udi, nobody will be offended, it's a vulgar joke which I think nonetheless hits some very sensitive truth about what's going on today. This one—don't be afraid. I give you, I just said it's a trigger warning, that's the way he said trigger warning. Yes, continue. Yeah, you know it's my favorite joke. A guy, his wife is seriously ill and needs an emergency operation. This guy has a good friend who is a doctor surgeon and the doctor does the operation. And after two-three hours, doctor comes out and the guy husband asks him, "Listen, how did the operation go through?" Doctor says, "Everything okay, your wife will live even longer than you. But," he says, "there are a couple of minor problems. First, her face muscles no longer function so you will have to spoon-feed her. Second point: her anal and vaginal muscles are inoperative, you will have to take care artificially that she will be able to urinate, to shit," and he goes on and on. And then of course the husband goes more and more pale. And you know what then the doctor does? He embraces him and says, "Don't worry, I was just kidding. Everything is okay, your wife died two hours into operation." This is what I feel will be. You know, we worry for Palestinians "how are they," and some Israeli doctor comes and says, "Okay, we are the most humanitarian army, we blah blah blah, just there are some minor problems, we had to kill this that," and then we grow more and more pale and the Israeli representative knowing what we are as you Udi said, Europeans, where we are, said, "Don't worry, everything is okay, we killed all the children, we killed Palestinians." It's a stupid joke but my god this is what is happening. Thank you very much, sorry. So I think that I would like—by the way, it's funny, you know the the first story you said about the the medicine of the shameless to make people not to have guilt feeling—it's I made this film in I think, *Forgiveness*. It's your best film, it's the only film where I didn't fall asleep. You know why? Because the name of the dog is Žižek there. I know this is—yeah yeah yeah, we're even. So in *Forgiveness* really there is this—this part that I wrote there
when you meet civilians there—this can you imagine what crazy act this would have been? And in my style let me conclude, I'm sorry Udi, nobody will be offended, it's a vulgar joke which I think nonetheless hits some very sensitive truth about what's going on today. This one—don't be afraid. I give you, I just said it's a trigger warning, that's the way he said trigger warning. Yes, continue. Yeah, you know it's my favorite joke. A guy, his wife is seriously ill and needs an emergency operation. This guy has a good friend who is a doctor surgeon and the doctor does the operation. And after two-three hours, doctor comes out and the guy husband asks him, "Listen, how did the operation go through?" Doctor says, "Everything okay, your wife will live even longer than you. But," he says, "there are a couple of minor problems. First, her face muscles no longer function so you will have to spoon-feed her. Second point: her anal and vaginal muscles are inoperative, you will have to take care artificially that she will be able to urinate, to shit," and he goes on and on. And then of course the husband goes more and more pale. And you know what then the doctor does? He embraces him and says, "Don't worry, I was just kidding. Everything is okay, your wife died two hours into operation." This is what I feel will be. You know, we worry for Palestinians "how are they," and some Israeli doctor comes and says, "Okay, we are the most humanitarian army, we blah blah blah, just there are some minor problems, we had to kill this that," and then we grow more and more pale and the Israeli representative knowing what we are as you Udi said, Europeans, where we are, said, "Don't worry, everything is okay, we killed all the children, we killed Palestinians." It's a stupid joke but my god this is what is happening. Thank you very much, sorry. So I think that I would like—by the way, it's funny, you know the the first story you said about the the medicine of the shameless to make people not to have guilt feeling—it's I made this film in I think, *Forgiveness*. It's your best film, it's the only film where I didn't fall asleep. You know why? Because the name of the dog is Žižek there. I know this is—yeah yeah yeah, we're even. So in *Forgiveness* really there is this—this part that I wrote there
Slavoj Žižek
and I
and I
unknown
I make that there is a
I make that there is a
Slavoj Žižek
medicine that the Israeli psychiatrist create for the kid that murder Palestinian in the West Bank will not have guilt anymore and can free from the trauma. And the people who work with me on this said, "Udi we so tired from your surrealistic text and the impossibility text." Lucky me or terrible me, the night after the the *Village Voice*—the *Village Voice* came out with a huge article that the American army just developed a pill to go to let soldiers—American soldiers—to go over the trauma after they killed civilian. So everything we invented as art, the reality become worse than what we invented. And today it's really—they so much energy to to kill the shame, to keep the to kill the guilt. And and we are so—we are so involved with it. And and then the all the time they blame the violence, the violence. And we spoke about the violence. I don't want the criticism if should be on the Hamas if they have—it's not that violence is wrong. But if you allowed to have violence, because oppressed have to allowed to have violence, the question if you have to go according to the international law when you use violence because you're an entity that fight for humanity. And the other thing and this is the fight we have to said, we have also to acknowledge that the violence of the oppressed is justified. It's not always necessary. If we would be stronger supporting BDS, if we were stronger supporting a non-violence mean for the Palestinian, if all—but when we start the BDS to create a a non-violent place, the entire Europe called us anti-Semitic by using BDS for example. And I don't said that BDS was the best thing, but we did demonstration, you spoke about the flowers. People forget that that's was the most heroic things: for long time Palestinian from Gaza they was marching to the wall without weapons. They was marching day after day to the wall and the Israeli soldier was shooting them. And nobody speak about that. So right now—right now I don't know what what is the right strategy, but the the energy really we have to stop all this comparison. Like there is one huge terror, it's the terror of the oppressor now with our money, with United States money. And the shame—I don't know how we give back the shame. This is—this is kind of my my issue. And and I want to said that either you whatever you think on Hamas right now, Slavoj, we don't have each time to start and said "I condemn Hamas." Like I think we are kind of over it in this stage of now when when the—and the reason, you know I don't support Hamas because I thought that the Popular Front had a much better ideology and run and all that. But in this situation when the genocide is coming, we know that Hamas whatever it is is a symptom. The the disease is the is the Jew supremacy, is the colonialism, is the settler colonialism that everyone that if I said in Germany "settler colonialism" I can be kicked out from Germany right now no with the new law? It's crazy, guys. You don't and Europe, you are still EU, I don't see you millions on the street going against the way you all part of this genocide. It's important to mention it. Like every voice now—and the youth becoming more right-wing, so something we do wrong. Something we do wrong, I don't know what it is. But so— I would like to let you maybe ask a question and to control the audience and when Slavoj—you get—I move you to see the audience one second. You see they are still stayed with you for some reason. Hmm. Okay. Here, audience say hi to Slavoj. Hi! Here, you see? Okay, so the mic's yours. Yes, thank you. You should be the moderator actually. Yes. I I would have to maybe ask a question to both of you before we give it to the audience. It's—you've been talking a lot about moral and about shamelessness but—and Pasolini, for example, represented fascism in *Salò* as a shameless world and he was defining fascism as a world in which power would have no boundaries and therefore no shame. But—and and Slavoj
medicine that the Israeli psychiatrist create for the kid that murder Palestinian in the West Bank will not have guilt anymore and can free from the trauma. And the people who work with me on this said, "Udi we so tired from your surrealistic text and the impossibility text." Lucky me or terrible me, the night after the the *Village Voice*—the *Village Voice* came out with a huge article that the American army just developed a pill to go to let soldiers—American soldiers—to go over the trauma after they killed civilian. So everything we invented as art, the reality become worse than what we invented. And today it's really—they so much energy to to kill the shame, to keep the to kill the guilt. And and we are so—we are so involved with it. And and then the all the time they blame the violence, the violence. And we spoke about the violence. I don't want the criticism if should be on the Hamas if they have—it's not that violence is wrong. But if you allowed to have violence, because oppressed have to allowed to have violence, the question if you have to go according to the international law when you use violence because you're an entity that fight for humanity. And the other thing and this is the fight we have to said, we have also to acknowledge that the violence of the oppressed is justified. It's not always necessary. If we would be stronger supporting BDS, if we were stronger supporting a non-violence mean for the Palestinian, if all—but when we start the BDS to create a a non-violent place, the entire Europe called us anti-Semitic by using BDS for example. And I don't said that BDS was the best thing, but we did demonstration, you spoke about the flowers. People forget that that's was the most heroic things: for long time Palestinian from Gaza they was marching to the wall without weapons. They was marching day after day to the wall and the Israeli soldier was shooting them. And nobody speak about that. So right now—right now I don't know what what is the right strategy, but the the energy really we have to stop all this comparison. Like there is one huge terror, it's the terror of the oppressor now with our money, with United States money. And the shame—I don't know how we give back the shame. This is—this is kind of my my issue. And and I want to said that either you whatever you think on Hamas right now, Slavoj, we don't have each time to start and said "I condemn Hamas." Like I think we are kind of over it in this stage of now when when the—and the reason, you know I don't support Hamas because I thought that the Popular Front had a much better ideology and run and all that. But in this situation when the genocide is coming, we know that Hamas whatever it is is a symptom. The the disease is the is the Jew supremacy, is the colonialism, is the settler colonialism that everyone that if I said in Germany "settler colonialism" I can be kicked out from Germany right now no with the new law? It's crazy, guys. You don't and Europe, you are still EU, I don't see you millions on the street going against the way you all part of this genocide. It's important to mention it. Like every voice now—and the youth becoming more right-wing, so something we do wrong. Something we do wrong, I don't know what it is. But so— I would like to let you maybe ask a question and to control the audience and when Slavoj—you get—I move you to see the audience one second. You see they are still stayed with you for some reason. Hmm. Okay. Here, audience say hi to Slavoj. Hi! Here, you see? Okay, so the mic's yours. Yes, thank you. You should be the moderator actually. Yes. I I would have to maybe ask a question to both of you before we give it to the audience. It's—you've been talking a lot about moral and about shamelessness but—and Pasolini, for example, represented fascism in *Salò* as a shameless world and he was defining fascism as a world in which power would have no boundaries and therefore no shame. But—and and Slavoj
unknown
you tried to connect this question to
you tried to connect this question to
Slavoj Žižek
capitalism and the and the modern world but what we are seeing also is that shaming the other is one of the main instruments of Israel today. Shaming the Palestinians for being what they are, shaming the Palestinians for what they do, shaming the Palestinians for being activists. So I don't see shame—I don't see this capitalist world in which there would be no shame anymore no boundaries. On the contrary, like there is a market of shame and of morals which is heavily used and invested by Israel to try to suppress any kind of adversity. And you were talking about BDS, Udi, now. I mean the way they fought against BDS was saying that this was boycott like they tried to boycott Jews before the Second World War and how I mean this would trigger massacres and maybe extermination of Jews again and so we should like block it because we couldn't boycott anything that was related to Israel because it would be the first step for then shaming more broadly Jews and so forth. So I would like maybe to have you both of you try to react on on this situation and this use of morals because in that case we're competing one against the other on the moral ground, on the shame ground but I mean is there a winning to there and how do we structure something out of there? Once I think it's a great question. I want to answer for a second. For years the Israeli were so smart because all they do they were play with with shame. And what we we used to call all the Israeli films we called it "shooting and crying." I don't know if
capitalism and the and the modern world but what we are seeing also is that shaming the other is one of the main instruments of Israel today. Shaming the Palestinians for being what they are, shaming the Palestinians for what they do, shaming the Palestinians for being activists. So I don't see shame—I don't see this capitalist world in which there would be no shame anymore no boundaries. On the contrary, like there is a market of shame and of morals which is heavily used and invested by Israel to try to suppress any kind of adversity. And you were talking about BDS, Udi, now. I mean the way they fought against BDS was saying that this was boycott like they tried to boycott Jews before the Second World War and how I mean this would trigger massacres and maybe extermination of Jews again and so we should like block it because we couldn't boycott anything that was related to Israel because it would be the first step for then shaming more broadly Jews and so forth. So I would like maybe to have you both of you try to react on on this situation and this use of morals because in that case we're competing one against the other on the moral ground, on the shame ground but I mean is there a winning to there and how do we structure something out of there? Once I think it's a great question. I want to answer for a second. For years the Israeli were so smart because all they do they were play with with shame. And what we we used to call all the Israeli films we called it "shooting and crying." I don't know if
unknown
you know this term but the idea was that you see Israeli is going to war, ta-ta-ta, by mistake they kill a kid or something but they're all very sad about
you know this term but the idea was that you see Israeli is going to war, ta-ta-ta, by mistake they kill a kid or something but they're all very sad about
Slavoj Žižek
it. And by doing all this you already—they pretend that they're part of the
it. And by doing all this you already—they pretend that they're part of the
unknown
Western morality and everyone loved them and they continue to control everything. And one of the reason in the election I think the first election of Trump that Slavoj suggest in a way maybe it will better that Trump will be in power there is we said we are so tired of the liberal mask that by using this shame and this mask they do all the
Western morality and everyone loved them and they continue to control everything. And one of the reason in the election I think the first election of Trump that Slavoj suggest in a way maybe it will better that Trump will be in power there is we said we are so tired of the liberal mask that by using this shame and this mask they do all the
unknown
horrific things. And let's take this mask off. And and this was a lot our project. Our project as radical was to take the mask off the liberals that do all this shit with the liberal mask. And we took the mask off and we saw the monster and what the fuck, people in love with the monster! And and this was a big surprise because we thought they'll see the monster and they'll fight him and instead they they fall in love with the monster. In Israel for so long we try to prove that the Nakba was right. We tried we we did so much research and and I was fighting I remember going I was interviewing Pappe and interviewing Rashid Khalidi, I want to learn everything that I can prove the Israelis that the Nakba was really a horror event of ethnic cleansing. And the minute I had was so strong they told me, "You know what, you're right. So what? So if if our grandfathers did it, why we cannot do it?" And in one—so the moment the shame disappear that we work so much to do it in order that people will see the truth, people look at the truth and they became blind. And the way I saw in the past—Slavoj might not agree with me I want to see that's the way I interpreted you Slavoj—but I think there was a big argument the way I read it between Slavoj and and Noam Chomsky. And I felt that I'm on the side of Slavoj but maybe he never meant to say it, so I don't know, that's in my head. But Noam Chomsky have this naivete—and I adore him—but he have this naivete that if we just show the people the truth, if we just don't have all the manipulation of media and all that, if they see the truth they will choose the good. And and I felt all the time with Slavoj the way I see that he read *The Look in the Rye* and all that that if they see the truth, they get in in trauma they they paralyzed and and they do the opposite. And more and more I see that it's not all about the lies that we lose because Musk controlling the media, Elon Musk and you know—not not the reason we losing is not only because of the lies. The reason we losing is also when we see the when the truth is there, people are terrifying from it. So should be a third place how we get to people heart or or brain that they'll they'll function in a in a moral way. What do you—what do you say Slavoj because this debate is also—Can I just reply briefly?
horrific things. And let's take this mask off. And and this was a lot our project. Our project as radical was to take the mask off the liberals that do all this shit with the liberal mask. And we took the mask off and we saw the monster and what the fuck, people in love with the monster! And and this was a big surprise because we thought they'll see the monster and they'll fight him and instead they they fall in love with the monster. In Israel for so long we try to prove that the Nakba was right. We tried we we did so much research and and I was fighting I remember going I was interviewing Pappe and interviewing Rashid Khalidi, I want to learn everything that I can prove the Israelis that the Nakba was really a horror event of ethnic cleansing. And the minute I had was so strong they told me, "You know what, you're right. So what? So if if our grandfathers did it, why we cannot do it?" And in one—so the moment the shame disappear that we work so much to do it in order that people will see the truth, people look at the truth and they became blind. And the way I saw in the past—Slavoj might not agree with me I want to see that's the way I interpreted you Slavoj—but I think there was a big argument the way I read it between Slavoj and and Noam Chomsky. And I felt that I'm on the side of Slavoj but maybe he never meant to say it, so I don't know, that's in my head. But Noam Chomsky have this naivete—and I adore him—but he have this naivete that if we just show the people the truth, if we just don't have all the manipulation of media and all that, if they see the truth they will choose the good. And and I felt all the time with Slavoj the way I see that he read *The Look in the Rye* and all that that if they see the truth, they get in in trauma they they paralyzed and and they do the opposite. And more and more I see that it's not all about the lies that we lose because Musk controlling the media, Elon Musk and you know—not not the reason we losing is not only because of the lies. The reason we losing is also when we see the when the truth is there, people are terrifying from it. So should be a third place how we get to people heart or or brain that they'll they'll function in a in a moral way. What do you—what do you say Slavoj because this debate is also—Can I just reply briefly?
Julian Assange
Yes of course. Sorry. Can I reply briefly? Yes
Yes of course. Sorry. Can I reply briefly? Yes
unknown
yes yes. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. You know I would answer
yes yes. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. You know I would answer
unknown
first I basically agree with what Udi said and I know a long tradition of this in Israel. Was it you Udi I think who told me that your mother told you who knew Golda Meir that the first to propose the key formula here was Golda Meir? It's a wonderful sophistry. Didn't she say that she hates the Palestinians not so much for the crimes in the Zionist view they did, but because Palestinians force Israel to do horrible things? You know, this is the ultimate sophistry for me. It's really masterful. So my answer would be this one. For me yes, I totally agree, shaming is strategy today, one of the main strategies and I would especially emphasize the role of shaming in woke culture, political correctness, cancel culture and so on and so on. But for me as a Hegelian—I know the answer will not satisfy you, I cannot develop it now—I am not talking about shaming the other, the white racist or the primitive Arab or the Zionist. I'm that's why Udi it was crucial for me when you said that "Don't focus on how horrible Israel is, ask—begin with ourselves, with Europeans we here." You know I a friend who knows my vulgar taste gave me a
first I basically agree with what Udi said and I know a long tradition of this in Israel. Was it you Udi I think who told me that your mother told you who knew Golda Meir that the first to propose the key formula here was Golda Meir? It's a wonderful sophistry. Didn't she say that she hates the Palestinians not so much for the crimes in the Zionist view they did, but because Palestinians force Israel to do horrible things? You know, this is the ultimate sophistry for me. It's really masterful. So my answer would be this one. For me yes, I totally agree, shaming is strategy today, one of the main strategies and I would especially emphasize the role of shaming in woke culture, political correctness, cancel culture and so on and so on. But for me as a Hegelian—I know the answer will not satisfy you, I cannot develop it now—I am not talking about shaming the other, the white racist or the primitive Arab or the Zionist. I'm that's why Udi it was crucial for me when you said that "Don't focus on how horrible Israel is, ask—begin with ourselves, with Europeans we here." You know I a friend who knows my vulgar taste gave me a
unknown
so do you call it a badge with image of Stalin and of course it's an invented apocryphal quote where Stalin said then words "I don't trust anyone, not even myself." Unfortunately Stalin did trust himself you know. So the moment of shame for me is strictly self-shame, being truly ashamed of what you are doing without any tricky excuses and so on. And next thing, I'm nonetheless not a total pessimist here because I think that I was pleasantly surprised how in the West on American campuses and so on there were demonstrations and so on and also all the effort of Israeli Western propaganda and so on. They are leading a big fight although they claim "pro-Palestinians are should be ashamed" but isn't all this fight as in that case of that Israeli soldier they're trying to kill in us the last remainder of decency and shame. I think in this sense if the system forget about rhetorics of shaming the other, they are terribly afraid—afraid and I mean this in a quite naive moralist way of the fact that we many of us—I'm afraid to say most—are still have still some core of decency and shame. And the whole problem of ideology today with cynical distance and so on, that's the tragedy. The system tries to kill this last remainders of decency and shame in us. Thank you. I would give the audience to have two three question. I think to Slavoj, I'm still here so concentrate on Slavoj and then we can send him—I don't know to do what. To write
so do you call it a badge with image of Stalin and of course it's an invented apocryphal quote where Stalin said then words "I don't trust anyone, not even myself." Unfortunately Stalin did trust himself you know. So the moment of shame for me is strictly self-shame, being truly ashamed of what you are doing without any tricky excuses and so on. And next thing, I'm nonetheless not a total pessimist here because I think that I was pleasantly surprised how in the West on American campuses and so on there were demonstrations and so on and also all the effort of Israeli Western propaganda and so on. They are leading a big fight although they claim "pro-Palestinians are should be ashamed" but isn't all this fight as in that case of that Israeli soldier they're trying to kill in us the last remainder of decency and shame. I think in this sense if the system forget about rhetorics of shaming the other, they are terribly afraid—afraid and I mean this in a quite naive moralist way of the fact that we many of us—I'm afraid to say most—are still have still some core of decency and shame. And the whole problem of ideology today with cynical distance and so on, that's the tragedy. The system tries to kill this last remainders of decency and shame in us. Thank you. I would give the audience to have two three question. I think to Slavoj, I'm still here so concentrate on Slavoj and then we can send him—I don't know to do what. To write
unknown
another anti-Semitic piece. Okay so let's—let's let the audience ask few question. Hi Slavoj, I wanted to ask how can we fight the consent that's being manufactured by the media to support this horrific genocide? How can we as regular people do something? I must admit something here. I don't offer any easy direct solutions. I'm much more radically—I will say something horrible now. You know what I don't like—you will hate me—is this secretly patronizing radical pseudo-radical leftist attitude when they say ordinary people are seduced by big capital propaganda and so on and we have to just as you Udi said tell them who the true enemy is: not the immigrants but the big capital and so on. You know what's the problem here? It's easy to make fun of the new populist right but they are ready to admit this although it's approaching absurdity like Trump representing himself as working-class hero but look look look, he was elected by big help by help from Elon Musk, the richest man on
another anti-Semitic piece. Okay so let's—let's let the audience ask few question. Hi Slavoj, I wanted to ask how can we fight the consent that's being manufactured by the media to support this horrific genocide? How can we as regular people do something? I must admit something here. I don't offer any easy direct solutions. I'm much more radically—I will say something horrible now. You know what I don't like—you will hate me—is this secretly patronizing radical pseudo-radical leftist attitude when they say ordinary people are seduced by big capital propaganda and so on and we have to just as you Udi said tell them who the true enemy is: not the immigrants but the big capital and so on. You know what's the problem here? It's easy to make fun of the new populist right but they are ready to admit this although it's approaching absurdity like Trump representing himself as working-class hero but look look look, he was elected by big help by help from Elon Musk, the richest man on
Slavoj Žižek
earth. But remember the new populist ideology: it's not "we should reject the terrain of their reasoning which is doubly wrong." Whenever I meet an anti-immigrant I'm not just telling him "you are stupid, you don't see that capital is the true danger." The first thing to explain—I don't know how it is in Portugal but do you know that in Western European countries, most of them: Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, if you throw too many immigrants out the whole economy collapses? Because we have clear racial class distinction. All the—but not just the lower labor, for example construction, cleaning the streets but also caretaking in homes for the old and so on—this is already almost exclusively a task of immigrants. So that's the first thing I would do. The second thing when you ask what to do, stop patronizing the ordinary people, stop treating them as idiots. Begin with self-critique. Don't now focus on "Trump, ooh, a fascist is in power" and so on and so on. No, Trump is a crazy mixture of a fascist and radical liberal. Never forget Trump supports Musk: total liberalization of media—liberalization here means of course allow all the racist, sexist stuff and so on and so on. The sad lesson of what is going on is that I think it's totally wrong to see the opposition now in the United States as the Democratic Party, old liberals versus Donald Trump as a neo-fascist. No, Trump is the point where neo-fascism—by this I mean strong nationalist ideology, protectionism and so on—meets liberalism at its most vulgar. And now to conclude, sorry I don't have time but these are crucial questions, I'm writing a text now on them, is are you ready to follow me here? I don't think so. We should renounce something. What? You know the Abraham Lincoln legendary statement: "You can cheat deceive some people all the time, all people some time, but you cannot deceive all people all the time." I claim maybe you can. Maybe you can. I don't believe in this basic naive leftist attitude, although I consider myself a communist still, that you know we are all waiting that at some point people will awaken, they will finally see and so on and so on. No, what if they will not see? I'm not a total pessimist but I don't think
earth. But remember the new populist ideology: it's not "we should reject the terrain of their reasoning which is doubly wrong." Whenever I meet an anti-immigrant I'm not just telling him "you are stupid, you don't see that capital is the true danger." The first thing to explain—I don't know how it is in Portugal but do you know that in Western European countries, most of them: Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, if you throw too many immigrants out the whole economy collapses? Because we have clear racial class distinction. All the—but not just the lower labor, for example construction, cleaning the streets but also caretaking in homes for the old and so on—this is already almost exclusively a task of immigrants. So that's the first thing I would do. The second thing when you ask what to do, stop patronizing the ordinary people, stop treating them as idiots. Begin with self-critique. Don't now focus on "Trump, ooh, a fascist is in power" and so on and so on. No, Trump is a crazy mixture of a fascist and radical liberal. Never forget Trump supports Musk: total liberalization of media—liberalization here means of course allow all the racist, sexist stuff and so on and so on. The sad lesson of what is going on is that I think it's totally wrong to see the opposition now in the United States as the Democratic Party, old liberals versus Donald Trump as a neo-fascist. No, Trump is the point where neo-fascism—by this I mean strong nationalist ideology, protectionism and so on—meets liberalism at its most vulgar. And now to conclude, sorry I don't have time but these are crucial questions, I'm writing a text now on them, is are you ready to follow me here? I don't think so. We should renounce something. What? You know the Abraham Lincoln legendary statement: "You can cheat deceive some people all the time, all people some time, but you cannot deceive all people all the time." I claim maybe you can. Maybe you can. I don't believe in this basic naive leftist attitude, although I consider myself a communist still, that you know we are all waiting that at some point people will awaken, they will finally see and so on and so on. No, what if they will not see? I'm not a total pessimist but I don't think
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history is on our side in the sense of "let's just wait and people will see, they will awaken" and so on and so on. Another conclusion then I stop, I have to run here I have other obligations, another point to shock you. Let's
history is on our side in the sense of "let's just wait and people will see, they will awaken" and so on and so on. Another conclusion then I stop, I have to run here I have other obligations, another point to shock you. Let's
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say some of our old leftist—my leftist friends—still claim Europe '68 student rebellion was the greatest only serious revolutionary event. Please bear in mind something
say some of our old leftist—my leftist friends—still claim Europe '68 student rebellion was the greatest only serious revolutionary event. Please bear in mind something
Slavoj Žižek
that even intelligent conservatives pointed out and here I think they did hit something. Do you know that the '60s in France till '68 were the most prosperous era of welfare state? Never had the majority did enjoy such a good standard of healthcare, retirement and so on. And bam, you get I think a fake—I don't believe in '68 revolution at that point. So the situation is much more complex. The first thing is to stop this patronizing. I think that on—every these arrogant liberals who for years were making these cynical comments on Trump, making fun of him and so on and so on, they simply missed the point. Trump functions in a different way. Don't they see that whenever Trump was caught lying, this helped him. This is how his supporters function. It was not that "oh, now we caught him lying" or "now we caught him at some vulgarity" and so on and so on. I mean the whole ideological field is much more twisted and corrupted. Sorry to end up with this pessimism. Udi cried back. Yeah I have to a little bit fight back because I will continue a bit your pessimism in the way because in one hand we see the violence of revolution and in this time I think it doesn't work. Forget moral issue: the violence of the oppressor is so strong, the weapons he have, the killing machine, that it's not like in Algiers time. Like in in no time you can destroy the whole nation. So violence maybe doesn't function so well. And I speak not violence against civilians but violence even then. Then I I follow the the non-violence movement in Kashmir, you know when I shot the film there, and I saw the guy who chose the non-violence movement to create Kashmir better, Yasin Malik, and now he is in prison for life and fucking Modi want to execute him. So that's also didn't work. But there is another model that we we have to check and maybe I can do it later in the other screening of *Junction but there is the model of the Palestinian in '48, the citizen of Israel. And it's so easy to think about them as weak because they don't do armed resistance and all that. But they do something else: they stay there and they stay there and they stay there. And they really suffer a lot because the racism, the apartheid within Israel is horrific, but they can still breathe there. And maybe—because what we see and you spoke about it in Occupy Wall Street if you remember—we have to wait for the power to destroy himself sometimes because he become so perverse. And and there is sometimes a feeling the oppressor if you don't try too much to interfere in him, he will destroy himself if we stay strong enough in the place. And this is the little hope that maybe I'm inventing it because I have to wake up tomorrow. And I would like to thank very much to everyone and thank you Slavoj for staying with us much longer than you promise, than we pay you—we didn't pay him anything—and the reason he came here I want to said mostly he did because he want to be in solidarity with Palestine. That's the main reason he spending the time with us so I would like to thank you for that. Slavoj! No, I'm grateful. Let me just finish. I'm grateful to you and you Udi pointed at something with which I agree. I also think that—and let me take not only—you know the Western legal state of law? I wrote a text on it. It's gradually self-destroying itself in what sense? A lot was written about Haiti where now gangs control of the territory. Public power—but is it? Just take the game that for long years now the masks are falling. Settlers were playing with Israeli government officially till a couple of years ago. Israeli government was opposing them but
that even intelligent conservatives pointed out and here I think they did hit something. Do you know that the '60s in France till '68 were the most prosperous era of welfare state? Never had the majority did enjoy such a good standard of healthcare, retirement and so on. And bam, you get I think a fake—I don't believe in '68 revolution at that point. So the situation is much more complex. The first thing is to stop this patronizing. I think that on—every these arrogant liberals who for years were making these cynical comments on Trump, making fun of him and so on and so on, they simply missed the point. Trump functions in a different way. Don't they see that whenever Trump was caught lying, this helped him. This is how his supporters function. It was not that "oh, now we caught him lying" or "now we caught him at some vulgarity" and so on and so on. I mean the whole ideological field is much more twisted and corrupted. Sorry to end up with this pessimism. Udi cried back. Yeah I have to a little bit fight back because I will continue a bit your pessimism in the way because in one hand we see the violence of revolution and in this time I think it doesn't work. Forget moral issue: the violence of the oppressor is so strong, the weapons he have, the killing machine, that it's not like in Algiers time. Like in in no time you can destroy the whole nation. So violence maybe doesn't function so well. And I speak not violence against civilians but violence even then. Then I I follow the the non-violence movement in Kashmir, you know when I shot the film there, and I saw the guy who chose the non-violence movement to create Kashmir better, Yasin Malik, and now he is in prison for life and fucking Modi want to execute him. So that's also didn't work. But there is another model that we we have to check and maybe I can do it later in the other screening of *Junction but there is the model of the Palestinian in '48, the citizen of Israel. And it's so easy to think about them as weak because they don't do armed resistance and all that. But they do something else: they stay there and they stay there and they stay there. And they really suffer a lot because the racism, the apartheid within Israel is horrific, but they can still breathe there. And maybe—because what we see and you spoke about it in Occupy Wall Street if you remember—we have to wait for the power to destroy himself sometimes because he become so perverse. And and there is sometimes a feeling the oppressor if you don't try too much to interfere in him, he will destroy himself if we stay strong enough in the place. And this is the little hope that maybe I'm inventing it because I have to wake up tomorrow. And I would like to thank very much to everyone and thank you Slavoj for staying with us much longer than you promise, than we pay you—we didn't pay him anything—and the reason he came here I want to said mostly he did because he want to be in solidarity with Palestine. That's the main reason he spending the time with us so I would like to thank you for that. Slavoj! No, I'm grateful. Let me just finish. I'm grateful to you and you Udi pointed at something with which I agree. I also think that—and let me take not only—you know the Western legal state of law? I wrote a text on it. It's gradually self-destroying itself in what sense? A lot was written about Haiti where now gangs control of the territory. Public power—but is it? Just take the game that for long years now the masks are falling. Settlers were playing with Israeli government officially till a couple of years ago. Israeli government was opposing them but
unknown
really they were supporting them. In other words, Israel is also a failed state. It cannot survive without—look who is Itamar Ben-Gvir. He is political prisoner, ex—condemned by Israeli court and he is now part of the government. It's the same with Trump. You have Proud Boys and so on, openly even anti-Semitic violence. Of course Trump says "de-sa," but what definition of a failed state for me today is that it itself doesn't believe or seriously practice the rule of law. It needs a support of illegal violence which then moralistically distances itself from it, but partially but basically tolerates to survive. Here I see—but I'm not glad about it when you said Udi power will destroy itself—but again, optimist and pessimist note. Yes but this can also turn into an imaginable—unimaginable catastrophe you know. I think that systems get most violent precisely when they are disintegrating. Here I respectfully disagree with Mao Zedong who said "oh United States is just a paper tiger." We all old enough to remember this from years ago. My point is, yeah, that's why I'm even more afraid of American imperialism: paper tigers are more dangerous. Thank you very much, sorry. Thank you so much. Thank you Udi. Udi! I want to tell you if you said one more thing it remind me exactly the weak father in *The Judgment* of Kafka. The most dangerous father is the weak father. No no no! I wanted to tell you that Udi—you see
really they were supporting them. In other words, Israel is also a failed state. It cannot survive without—look who is Itamar Ben-Gvir. He is political prisoner, ex—condemned by Israeli court and he is now part of the government. It's the same with Trump. You have Proud Boys and so on, openly even anti-Semitic violence. Of course Trump says "de-sa," but what definition of a failed state for me today is that it itself doesn't believe or seriously practice the rule of law. It needs a support of illegal violence which then moralistically distances itself from it, but partially but basically tolerates to survive. Here I see—but I'm not glad about it when you said Udi power will destroy itself—but again, optimist and pessimist note. Yes but this can also turn into an imaginable—unimaginable catastrophe you know. I think that systems get most violent precisely when they are disintegrating. Here I respectfully disagree with Mao Zedong who said "oh United States is just a paper tiger." We all old enough to remember this from years ago. My point is, yeah, that's why I'm even more afraid of American imperialism: paper tigers are more dangerous. Thank you very much, sorry. Thank you so much. Thank you Udi. Udi! I want to tell you if you said one more thing it remind me exactly the weak father in *The Judgment* of Kafka. The most dangerous father is the weak father. No no no! I wanted to tell you that Udi—you see
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we are friends with Udi.
we are friends with Udi.
Slavoj Žižek
Why? That's what I'm missing in our politically correct times because you noticed it, we insult each other all the way. But the message of this insulting
Why? That's what I'm missing in our politically correct times because you noticed it, we insult each other all the way. But the message of this insulting
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is "you see we are such good
is "you see we are such good
Slavoj Žižek
friends that we can do it." So my reaction to your "Slavoj you will be paid" and then you added "but he will not be paid anything": "Be, you are the Jew! You are the Jew!" Thanks very much. Bye!
friends that we can do it." So my reaction to your "Slavoj you will be paid" and then you added "but he will not be paid anything": "Be, you are the Jew! You are the Jew!" Thanks very much. Bye!