Left in Dark Times
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2008-09-16 · 1:38:00 · 14,257 words
with Paul Holdengräber, Bernard-Henri Lévy
communism-socialismideologyliberalism-political-correctnessfascism-populismrace-antisemitismrevolution-violencegeopolitics-warreligion-theologyecology-climatedemocracyhistory
A live debate at the New York Public Library between Slavoj Žižek and Bernard-Henri Lévy, moderated by Paul Holdengräber, covering the legacy of May 1968, the 2005 French suburban riots, charity and depoliticization, the Israel-Palestine conflict and anti-Semitism, Islamic fundamentalism versus liberalism, and the continuing relevance of left politics. Žižek argues that the true antagonisms of our time, ecology, intellectual property, new walls, cannot be resolved within the framework of liberal capitalism, and that fundamentalism is itself a symptom generated by that framework. The two thinkers disagree sharply on whether liberal universalism is sufficient to combat fundamentalism, on the nature of Islamofascism, and on the limits of charity as a political response.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek invokes Jakobson's concept to describe the 2005 suburban riots as a message whose content is the act of messaging itself, 'we are here, we want to be included', with no deeper programmatic demand.
A protest without a positive program or concrete demands, pure negation and refusal of inclusion, which Žižek treats as the sad endpoint of the utopian trajectory of 1968.
as “perverted fake liberation”
Žižek uses this phrase to describe how Serbian nationalist violence was experienced by perpetrators as a liberation from the over-regulated constraints of liberal democratic society.
Žižek's term for the 2005 riots as a zero-level political gesture, a minimal, contentless act of pure negation analogous to Malevich's black square, which strips art to its barest form.
as “the new spirit of capitalism”
Referencing Boltanski, Žižek argues that May 1968 provided a new cultural logic of self-realization that capitalism absorbed, making consumer identity and ethical purchase part of its operation.
as “the cunning of reason”
Žižek applies Hegel's concept to argue that May 1968, despite its radical intentions, was instrumentalized by capitalism to generate a new, more flexible spirit of marketing and self-realization.
as “charity as humanitarian mask”
Žižek's claim that contemporary charity functions to make consumers feel good while obscuring the underlying economic exploitation that produces the suffering charity ostensibly addresses.
as “ideological depoliticization”
Žižek's diagnosis of today's dominant ideology: rather than demanding sacrifice, it addresses subjects through spiritualized self-realization, charity, and ethical consumption, neutralizing systemic political critique.
as “carnivalesque transgressive model”
Žižek's critical label for the post-68 cultural logic that celebrates rule-breaking, jouissance, and perpetual transgression as liberation, which he argues can lead to nationalist violence.
Bernard-Henri Lévy's term for the effect of humanitarian charity on its recipients: reducing complex human beings to mere bodies in need of feeding, stripping them of political and moral subjecthood.
Implicitly invoked when Žižek discusses how local warlords and foreign mining companies form a perfectly functioning system in Congo, showing how abstract capital relations sustain concrete violence.
Žižek's paradoxical term for a tendency within certain Zionist discourse that reproduces anti-Semitic logics, categorizing diaspora or critical Jews as internal enemies in the same structure that European anti-Semitism used.
as “la part de non-part”
Žižek invokes this French political-philosophical concept (the part that has no part) to describe the Jewish tradition as standing for universality precisely through exclusion from the organic community.
Drawing on Foucault's microphysics of power, Žižek uses this to describe the systematic network of small measures in the West Bank, water restrictions, movement controls, designed to humiliate Palestinians.
Bernard-Henri Lévy's concept of the dual intellectual obligation: to remain loyal to one's tradition, but to contest it from within when it betrays its own best values.
as “global capitalism with a human face”
Žižek's characterization of the Third Way left's actual aspiration: not socialism but a kinder, more tolerant capitalism, analogous to the old dream of socialism with a human face.
as “the problem of the commons”
Žižek's argument that ecology, intellectual property, and biogenetics are all problems of shared substance that resist privatization, making some form of collective communist management necessary.
as “soft revolution”
Žižek's term for the slow, imperceptible regression of ethical standards and political norms under liberal capitalism, not a dramatic revolutionary break but a quiet erosion of what was once unthinkable.
Taking the posture of Melville's Bartleby ('I prefer not to'), Žižek proposes a politics of strategic withdrawal and refusal, arguing that sometimes not-acting is more subversive than apparent critical engagement.
Žižek's diagnosis of the American academic left: political action is replaced by legal redress and moral condemnation, depoliticizing genuine antagonisms.
as “false engagement”
Žižek's concept of activist and intellectual activity that keeps things going precisely by staging the appearance of critique, preventing truly pertinent questions from emerging, like the analysand talking to avoid the analyst's question.
Stories he reaches for 6
Žižek notes that in fascism the leader accepts the crowd's applause passively, while in Stalinism the leader joins the applause, ostensibly placing himself on the side of the people, as a paradoxical illustration of totalitarian participation.
“in stalinism, the leader joins the applause. so we are on the good side”
Žižek observes that MLK never framed the struggle for racial equality in terms of tolerance, because that framing would be humiliating, racism is a problem of universal rights and economic exploitation, not cultural difference to be tolerated.
“it would be for him humiliating to say blacks need to be more tolerant. no, as you said, for him, racism is the problem of not enough universal values, legal rights, economic exploitation”
Žižek confesses his own psychoanalysis failed because he talked incessantly to prevent the analyst from asking a truly pertinent question, used as a metaphor for how intellectual engagement can be a form of avoidance.
“i talked all the time why? because i was afraid that if i stop talking for a second, the analyst may ask me a truly pertinent question”
A Russian friend told Žižek that Bakhtin's private papers from the 1930s reveal his model of carnival was Stalinist purges, today you are a Central Committee member, tomorrow an English spy, undercutting the celebratory use of carnival theory.
“you know what was his model of carnival? stalinist pur. that's the true carnival. today you are a member of central committee, tomorrow you are english spy”
Žižek reads a poem by war criminal Radovan Karadžić that presents itself as a joyful, permissive spiritual invitation, 'nothing is forbidden in my faith', to illustrate how nationalist violence presents itself as liberation.
“Convert to my new faith, oh crowd. i offer you what no one has had before. i offer you inclemency and wine.”
Žižek uses the Congo crisis, where 4 million died while foreign mining companies and local warlords formed a perfect symbiotic system, to argue that the problem is political-economic, not a matter of charity.
“an average congolese citizen would probably have sold his mother into slavery to be able to move to the west bank or they put it”
Works invoked 7
Violence book
Žižek's own book, referenced by the moderator as the source of the Bartleby politics argument.
Underground film
Žižek calls it 'one of the most horrible films I've seen,' arguing it glorifies the carnivalesque orgy (fornication, drinking, fighting) that he connects to the path leading to Karadžić-style violence.
Bakhtin's book on carnival theory is undermined by Žižek's anecdote that the private papers show Bakhtin's model of carnival was Stalinist terror.
Gone with the Wind film
Cited for the 'frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn' line and its Japanese subtitle translation, used as a joke to introduce discussion of Israel-Palestine.
Referenced (attributed to Boltanski) to support the argument that May 1968 provided a new cultural logic that capitalism absorbed.
Left in Dark Times book
BHL's book that provides the occasion for the debate; Žižek engages with its arguments throughout the conversation.
American Vertigo book
BHL's earlier book, mentioned by him in connection with his shock at the American torture debate.
People invoked 27
BHL cites Atta's reported shock at Hamburg's freedoms (women, cafes, free speech) as evidence that fundamentalism reacts to liberal freedoms themselves, not to their absence.
BHL references Maalouf in discussion of Arab-world democrats; not directly engaged by Žižek.
Radovan Karadžić negative
Žižek reads a poem by Karadžić to illustrate how nationalist violence presents itself as liberation and the carnivalesque model leads to atrocity.
Roman Jakobson positive
Cited for the concept of phatic communication to analyze the 2005 riots as a message whose meaning is the act of messaging itself.
BHL cites Deleuze's language of 'pure intensity' to characterize the utopian dimension of May 1968.
Mikhail Bakhtin negative
Žižek uses a story about Bakhtin's private papers showing his carnival model was Stalinist terror to undercut the celebratory use of carnival theory.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Žižek targets the end-of-history thesis as the position the left too often accepts, and notes even Fukuyama had to revise it given biogenetics.
Referenced as the philosopher of al-Qaeda who studied in America and was repelled by its freedoms, cited to illustrate how fundamentalism is a reaction to liberalism.
BHL cites her case to criticize left liberals who frame death threats against her as an 'opinion' requiring tolerance, illustrating a moral collapse of the left.
Paul Claudel positive
Žižek says he loves Claudel and that his trilogy is his favorite piece of French theater, and endorses his quip that 'we have houses for tolerance' (brothels).
Luc Boltanski positive
Referenced (with the 'new spirit of capitalism' framework) to support the argument that May 1968 gave capitalism a new cultural dynamic.
Alain Badiou positive
Žižek notes that his reading of the 2005 riots, as about inclusion rather than Islamic fundamentalism, is also Badiou's reading, calling him 'your probably enemy' to BHL but endorsing the shared analysis.
Bernard-Henri Lévy positive
Žižek's debate partner throughout; they find extensive agreement on anti-Semitism, torture, and cosmopolitanism while disagreeing on liberalism vs. fundamentalism and the value of engagement.
George Orwell positive
Cited for the observation that the British liberal left talks about change as a superstitious ritual so that nothing will really change, used to support Žižek's critique of false engagement.
BHL invokes Spinoza's categories to describe May 1968's aspiration to pure activity without mastery.
Sarah Palin negative
Žižek analyzes Palin as embodying the weakness of the left (its abandonment of the working class) and as a new post-phallic female politician who appropriated liberal ideals for the right.
BHL tells an anecdote about Robespierre's gaze causing fear in the National Assembly, illustrating the terror of revolutionary surveillance.
Michel Foucault positive
Cited for the concept of microphysics of power to describe the bureaucratic humiliation of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Mentioned as a historical contrast to today's ubiquitous charity culture, once idiosyncratic, now mainstream, and as the founder of libraries through philanthropic giving.
Jacques-Alain Miller positive
Described as a 'common friend,' cited for an article in Le Point analyzing Sarah Palin as a new type of post-phallic female politician.
Cited by Žižek as emblematic of how charity today serves the interests of the wealthy, who no longer need to be forced to give because it suits their image.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for the claim that every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution, used to argue that today's fundamentalism reflects the absence of the left.
Barack Obama positive
BHL expresses hope that an Obama election would bring financial regulation to prevent the liberalism-gone-wrong of the 2008 crisis.
Martin Luther King Jr. positive
Cited as evidence that the civil rights movement never used the language of tolerance, racism was framed as a failure of universal rights and economic justice, not cultural difference.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked for the cunning of reason (used to analyze May 1968's absorption by capitalism) and alluded to in discussion of dialectics.
Emir Kusturica negative
Žižek calls Underground one of the most horrible films he has seen, arguing it sets the Karadžić poem to film and glorifies the carnivalesque orgiastic excess that leads to nationalist violence.
Cited as a source on the systematic microhumiliations of Palestinians in the West Bank, used as a non-radical authority to lend credibility to the observation.
What it argues
legacy and limitations of May 1968charity as depoliticization and ideological maskanti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Israel-Palestine conflictIslamic fundamentalism as product of global capitalismliberalism's internal flaw generating its own oppositionthe case for communism in the age of commonsBartleby politics: the subversive force of doing nothing
Dialectical moves 8
“The Soviet intervention in Prague paradoxically kept the dream alive—far from crushing the dream, it preserved it by preventing it from being forced to confront its own impossibility.”
What appears as the destruction of hope was actually its preservation; without the intervention, the experiment would have dissolved into Western liberalism with no revolutionary remainder.
“The experience of becoming a nationalist was for them a kind of perverted fake liberation—the real oppression was not ethnic but the rules of liberal democratic society.”
Nationalist violence is not a return to tradition but a distorted experience of freedom from liberal constraints, showing that transgression and emancipation share a structure.
“May 1968 helped—through the Hegelian cunning of reason—to give a new push to capitalism. Its emancipatory content was its opposite: the engine of a new marketing logic.”
The very event meant to challenge capitalism ended up renewing it by generating the cultural logic of self-realization that contemporary consumerism runs on.
“The conflict between liberal democracy and fundamentalism is not the true conflict—it is a false conflict. Both poles are caught into each other, part of the same self-propelling movement.”
The apparent opposition between liberalism and fundamentalism conceals their co-production; fundamentalism is liberalism's own symptom, not its external enemy.
“Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation—the very gesture that appears as care reproduces the system causing the suffering.”
Charitable giving does not oppose exploitation but is its ideological supplement, allowing the system to reproduce itself while appearing humane.
“What presents itself today as a radical politically correct left is strictly a radicalized liberalism—its apparent radicalism is only an intensification of the liberal framework, not its negation.”
The American academic left mistakes the intensification of liberal values for a critique of liberalism, thereby remaining within the very framework it claims to oppose.
“What worries me is not that they are cheating, but that they are not cheating—that they will really change something, and I don't like what they will change.”
The danger of right-wing populism (here Sarah Palin) is not cynical manipulation but sincere transformation, the 'change' is real, just regressive.
“Often what we intellectuals engage in—all these protest activities—are there so that nothing will really change. The truly subversive thing is sometimes to do nothing.”
Apparent critical engagement is itself a mechanism for stabilizing the existing order; withdrawal and refusal can be more genuinely disruptive than activism.
Claims 20
asserts
The 2005 French suburban riots represent a zero-level politics—a pure gesture of negation with no positive program—marking the sad endpoint of the utopian trajectory of May 1968.2005 French riots / legacy of May 1968
asserts
The Soviet intervention in Prague in 1968 paradoxically kept the dream of democratic socialism alive, because without it Czechoslovakia would simply have been absorbed into the West or forced to stop the experiment itself.Prague Spring / Soviet intervention
asserts
May 1968 was co-opted by capitalism through the Hegelian cunning of reason, providing a new cultural logic of self-realization and lifestyle marketing.May 1968 / capitalism
asserts
Charity functions ideologically to depoliticize structural economic exploitation, making consumers feel they have discharged their social obligation without challenging the system.charity / ideology
asserts
The conflict between liberal democracy and fundamentalism is a false conflict that obscures the true missing term: the left.liberalism vs. fundamentalism
asserts
Liberalism is not sufficient to fight fundamentalism because liberalism itself generates fundamentalism as its internal symptom and reaction.liberalism / fundamentalism
asserts
Today's fundamentalism has nothing to do with ancient traditions but is generated by today's global capitalist process.Islamic fundamentalism / capitalism
asserts
Intellectual property is in its nature communist—it cannot ultimately be subsumed under the logic of private property.intellectual property / commons
asserts
The ecological crisis, biogenetics, intellectual property, and new forms of apartheid are structural antagonisms that global capitalism as it currently exists cannot solve.limits of liberal capitalism
asserts
The normalization of the torture debate is a symptom of a slow ethical regression—a soft revolution—under liberal capitalism.torture / ethical regression
asserts
What presents itself in the US as a radical politically correct left is in fact only a radicalized, depoliticized liberalism, not a genuine left.American academic left
asserts
The carnivalesque model of liberation—transgression as freedom—has a path that leads to ethnic nationalist violence, as exemplified by Radovan Karadžić.transgressive politics / nationalism
asserts
American Christian fundamentalists support Israel not out of genuine friendship but because they need a prepared Israel for their eschatological Second Coming narrative—making them an unreliable ally.Christian Zionism / Israel
asserts
Some currents within Zionist discourse reproduce the structural logic of anti-Semitism by treating diaspora or critical Jews as traitors in exactly the way European nationalism dismissed Jews as non-authentic members.Zionism / anti-Semitism
asserts
The West made a catastrophic error in Afghanistan and elsewhere by backing religious fundamentalists over the secular left.Western foreign policy / fundamentalism
reframes
Racism today is wrongly framed as a problem of tolerance rather than universal legal rights and economic exploitation—Martin Luther King never used the language of tolerance.racism / tolerance vs. universality
asserts
Sometimes the truly subversive political act is to do nothing—to refuse false engagement and return to thinking—rather than to participate in activist activity that keeps things going.political action / Bartleby politics
reframes
The Congo catastrophe is not a charity problem but a political-economic one driven by multinational mining interests and their relationship to local warlords.Congo humanitarian crisis
asserts
May 1968 was a unique event in which people said 'here, now, and us'—rejecting the Communist Party's deferral of revolution—and it marked the end of the old relationship between governors and governed.May 1968 · Bernard-Henri Lévy
asserts
Charity that replaces politics is a disaster and can constitute a form of racism by reducing human beings to bodies without souls or political agency.charity / humanitarianism · Bernard-Henri Lévy
Quotes 15
“it's kind of a zero level politics... the only protest that we can afford a more radical form is this kind of empty gesture of just saying no without any positive project.”Slavoj Žižek · zero-level protest / end of utopia
“for me, maybe i'm wrong, you can correct me, this is for me like the last nail in the coffin of 68 in the sense that after all those utopian projects, now you have just this zero level protest.”Slavoj Žižek · May 1968 legacy exhausted
“the experience of becoming a nationalist was for them a kind of a perverted fake liberation.”Slavoj Žižek · nationalism as distorted emancipation
“ideally may 68... helped to give a new push to capitalism. and i'm not saying this is bad. i'm just saying as a diagnosis.”Slavoj Žižek · May 1968 / cunning of reason / capitalism
“today's ideology is the ideology of depoliticization. we are no longer predominantly addressed as sacrifice... how are we today addressed by a society? isn't the main address kind of a spiritualized orientalism, like be truly yourself.”Slavoj Žižek · contemporary ideology as spiritualized self-realization
“charity is a humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation.”Slavoj Žižek · charity as ideology
“every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · Walter Benjamin on fascism and revolution
“there is something in intellectual property which is as it were in its nature communist. it resists private property.”Slavoj Žižek · intellectual property as communal commons
“i would be very worried if i were to live in a society where one would have to argue all the time that one shouldn't rape women.”Slavoj Žižek · normalization of torture as ethical regression
“what most of the left today effectively strives after is global capitalism with a human face, a little bit more tolerance, more this, more that.”Slavoj Žižek · Third Way left as capitalism with a human face
“the conflict which is presented to us by the media as the main conflict between tolerant democratic openness and fundamentalism... is not the true conflict. something is missing in the equation. what is missing is the left.”Slavoj Žižek · liberalism vs. fundamentalism as false conflict
“sometimes when with your apparent, even critical activity, you keep things going on. the truly subversive thing is not to be violent, to do nothing.”Slavoj Žižek · Bartleby politics / subversive withdrawal
“do we really know where we are today? do we even have a good theory about what goes on.”Slavoj Žižek · epistemological modesty about the present
“what i'm afraid, it's not that they are cheating. but they are not cheating. that they will really change something.”Slavoj Žižek · danger of right-wing populism being sincere
“one should always bear in mind of this most precious inheritance of jewish tradition, which comes precisely of them being la part de non-part—the ones who precisely not being part of the organic social community stand directly for the dimension of universality.”Slavoj Žižek · Jewish universalism / la part de non-part
Transcript 146 turns
Slavoj Žižek
okay, what i want, first let me say that although many of my friends were shocked, how can you talk with him no, traitor and so on, i nonetheless think that there are antagonisms but as we may say as old maoists, all our antagonisms are not antagonisms between people and the enemies of people, some are within the people to be resolved through dialogue. so let me be quite frank. a couple of points. i agree with you. first, i totally agree with your basic reading, which to shock you, is also a reading of your probably enemy Alain Badiou, namely that it's wrong to read these riots as some kind of islamic fundamentalism or what. you were totally right. the problem is purely that of exclusion, inclusion. basically, it was an attempt of what we are old enough for unfortunately, to remember the great era of structuralism, Jakobson, the so-called thesis of phatic communication, where the point of the message is the message itself. the message was, hey, we are here, we want to be included or whatever. there was no deeper demand. but nonetheless, this makes me a little bit sad. it it is as if for me, maybe i'm wrong, you can correct me, this is for me like the last nail in the coffin of 68 in the sense that after all those utopian projects, now you have just this zero level protest. protest without a program so can i do something to transcribe? to this briefly where i see how could this have happened after 68, the limitation of 68.
okay, what i want, first let me say that although many of my friends were shocked, how can you talk with him no, traitor and so on, i nonetheless think that there are antagonisms but as we may say as old maoists, all our antagonisms are not antagonisms between people and the enemies of people, some are within the people to be resolved through dialogue. so let me be quite frank. a couple of points. i agree with you. first, i totally agree with your basic reading, which to shock you, is also a reading of your probably enemy Alain Badiou, namely that it's wrong to read these riots as some kind of islamic fundamentalism or what. you were totally right. the problem is purely that of exclusion, inclusion. basically, it was an attempt of what we are old enough for unfortunately, to remember the great era of structuralism, Jakobson, the so-called thesis of phatic communication, where the point of the message is the message itself. the message was, hey, we are here, we want to be included or whatever. there was no deeper demand. but nonetheless, this makes me a little bit sad. it it is as if for me, maybe i'm wrong, you can correct me, this is for me like the last nail in the coffin of 68 in the sense that after all those utopian projects, now you have just this zero level protest. protest without a program so can i do something to transcribe? to this briefly where i see how could this have happened after 68, the limitation of 68.
Paul Holdengräber
is this the part where you disagree?
is this the part where you disagree?
Slavoj Žižek
no, here i think up to a point we would even agree. don't be afraid. there will be disagreements at the end. i also want to read a poem. a beautiful poem, okay? short one, don't be afraid. let me read it. Convert to my new faith, oh crowd. i offer you what no one has had before. i offer you inclemency and wine. the one who won't have bread will be fed by the light of my sun. people, nothing is forbidden in my faith. there is laughing and drinking and looking at the sun for as long as you want. and this godhead forbids you nothing. so obey my call, brothers, people, crowd. i hope you got the joke. the author of this poem is Radovan Karadžić. who is now in hague. and i think there is, if we want to understand where we are today, all the cases of so-called fundamentalist violence, i think there is a very important message here, which is the utter stupidity of the usual sociological clichliche, which says something like, you know, people have too much freedom today we are in a society of choice where you have to choose everything, your sex and so on. so people feel insecure, they look for old values, firm coordinates, so they run back into some traditional system. i visited belgrade in the early 90s and by chance met in a cafeteria. it was a horrible encounter some people who probably were so-called ethnic slaughterers and they gave me a lesson of my lifetime. they told me no, are you crazy? they told me no it's modern democratic society which is for us oppressive over-regulated. they told me as a man you are not free. you see a beautiful woman, you cannot rape her you cannot beat your wife you cannot steal, you cannot kill an enemy and so on. and they made it very clear to me that the experience of becoming a nationalist was for them a kind of a perverted fake liberation and to come back to the right. yeah.
no, here i think up to a point we would even agree. don't be afraid. there will be disagreements at the end. i also want to read a poem. a beautiful poem, okay? short one, don't be afraid. let me read it. Convert to my new faith, oh crowd. i offer you what no one has had before. i offer you inclemency and wine. the one who won't have bread will be fed by the light of my sun. people, nothing is forbidden in my faith. there is laughing and drinking and looking at the sun for as long as you want. and this godhead forbids you nothing. so obey my call, brothers, people, crowd. i hope you got the joke. the author of this poem is Radovan Karadžić. who is now in hague. and i think there is, if we want to understand where we are today, all the cases of so-called fundamentalist violence, i think there is a very important message here, which is the utter stupidity of the usual sociological clichliche, which says something like, you know, people have too much freedom today we are in a society of choice where you have to choose everything, your sex and so on. so people feel insecure, they look for old values, firm coordinates, so they run back into some traditional system. i visited belgrade in the early 90s and by chance met in a cafeteria. it was a horrible encounter some people who probably were so-called ethnic slaughterers and they gave me a lesson of my lifetime. they told me no, are you crazy? they told me no it's modern democratic society which is for us oppressive over-regulated. they told me as a man you are not free. you see a beautiful woman, you cannot rape her you cannot beat your wife you cannot steal, you cannot kill an enemy and so on. and they made it very clear to me that the experience of becoming a nationalist was for them a kind of a perverted fake liberation and to come back to the right. yeah.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
yeah, paul wants fight and order. fight and order.
yeah, paul wants fight and order. fight and order.
Paul Holdengräber
that is a problem too much to ask for.
that is a problem too much to ask for.
Slavoj Žižek
to come back to which riots too. the riots of 2005. i think that they represent something that i'm tempted to call malevich in politics. you know, malevich, the reduction to a minimal difference. like i think it's black square on white surface or whatever. it's kind of a zero level politics, which is why i claim they are even formally similar to what people call the so-called flash mobs. you know you just collect you do a certain gesture and i think it's a sad monument. it tells something about our state of things if the situation in which we are is that the only protest that we can afford a more radical form is this kind of empty gesture of just saying no without any positive project. but nonetheless to go back to your point, i think that it's precisely this as it were closure which then shows
to come back to which riots too. the riots of 2005. i think that they represent something that i'm tempted to call malevich in politics. you know, malevich, the reduction to a minimal difference. like i think it's black square on white surface or whatever. it's kind of a zero level politics, which is why i claim they are even formally similar to what people call the so-called flash mobs. you know you just collect you do a certain gesture and i think it's a sad monument. it tells something about our state of things if the situation in which we are is that the only protest that we can afford a more radical form is this kind of empty gesture of just saying no without any positive project. but nonetheless to go back to your point, i think that it's precisely this as it were closure which then shows
Paul Holdengräber
it up the space. i mean, to remind you of what you wrote in the book, you speak about hermeneutic temptation, the hermeneutic temptation to try to interpret the riots of 2005, and your interpretation is that everybody got it wrong. no, but i wish...
it up the space. i mean, to remind you of what you wrote in the book, you speak about hermeneutic temptation, the hermeneutic temptation to try to interpret the riots of 2005, and your interpretation is that everybody got it wrong. no, but i wish...
Slavoj Žižek
basically paraphrasing what he was saying, which is that it's wrong to look at this as a specific group with specific demands and translate it into concrete demands like we want more, i don't know, education, social services or whatever. no, as we both know, the first thing these young people burned were their own mosques and community centers and so on and so on. let's go backwards in time if we could, since we're celebrating.
basically paraphrasing what he was saying, which is that it's wrong to look at this as a specific group with specific demands and translate it into concrete demands like we want more, i don't know, education, social services or whatever. no, as we both know, the first thing these young people burned were their own mosques and community centers and so on and so on. let's go backwards in time if we could, since we're celebrating.
Paul Holdengräber
in some form or fashion 40 years of amazing.
in some form or fashion 40 years of amazing.
Slavoj Žižek
now you are booming back to my yeah. okay, sorry, yeah. sorry.
now you are booming back to my yeah. okay, sorry, yeah. sorry.
Paul Holdengräber
no, no, no, please. no, no, you go on. you go on. i think it's a fair question to ask you both. how you view the legacy of 1968. how you understand it, how retrospectively now you interpret it. bernard, let's start with you. you write about it in that chapter that i quoted with victor hugo.
no, no, no, please. no, no, you go on. you go on. i think it's a fair question to ask you both. how you view the legacy of 1968. how you understand it, how retrospectively now you interpret it. bernard, let's start with you. you write about it in that chapter that i quoted with victor hugo.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
um... in that chapter and in other chapters when there is a part of the book where i try. to retrace the. history of the intellectual history of my generation. and one of the important steps, stages of this history is may 68. for me, may 68 is a very key. important. unique event. for many reasons. for at least two or three reasons. number one, it was the first time in may 68 where people said, the old communist party about the revolution always said, not here. not today. and not you. not here. in cuba, in china, in soviet union. not today, tomorrow, the tomorrow which we'll sing. not you. simple students, simple workers, but the bolshevik parti. may 68 was the first time, this was part of the uniqueness of the event when some a crowd of youngsters said, here, now and us. here in france. now, at this very moment, without waiting anything, no tomorrow who sings, and us, not the party, all of us, number one. number two, the originality of may 68 is that it was a sort of reversal in act. of the old philosophy, political philosophy. it happens that a whole philosophical tradition can be reversed by an event. the old philosophical tradition said what is asked the question of the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. should we reverse the relationship? should we reform the relationship? would the people who are governed take the place of those who govern? and so on and so on. this was the political question since aristotle. to hegel, to the dialectical of the slave and the master. me 68 for me. was the first time during a few weeks when it was said we want a world where is the very relationship explodes, the very relationship is suppressed. un univers, un world de pure to speak it again in the categories of the philosophy of spinoza, for example. la société où il sera être no passité, activ, où être activ, pas être un master. not everybody will be a chief, no. everybody will be. gilles deleuze said pure intensivity, others would say pure affirmation, and so on. this was the second point. and the third point on which maybe we shall disagree, slavoy and i. in that it was also, i think, the grave. and the burial off the what would i say? of marxism-leninism, surely. of the proletarian them probably. also. may 68 was the first revolution or attempt of revolution. which had, at the end of the day, nothing to do with the le monde ouvrier, la classe ouvrière, de prolétariariat classe.
um... in that chapter and in other chapters when there is a part of the book where i try. to retrace the. history of the intellectual history of my generation. and one of the important steps, stages of this history is may 68. for me, may 68 is a very key. important. unique event. for many reasons. for at least two or three reasons. number one, it was the first time in may 68 where people said, the old communist party about the revolution always said, not here. not today. and not you. not here. in cuba, in china, in soviet union. not today, tomorrow, the tomorrow which we'll sing. not you. simple students, simple workers, but the bolshevik parti. may 68 was the first time, this was part of the uniqueness of the event when some a crowd of youngsters said, here, now and us. here in france. now, at this very moment, without waiting anything, no tomorrow who sings, and us, not the party, all of us, number one. number two, the originality of may 68 is that it was a sort of reversal in act. of the old philosophy, political philosophy. it happens that a whole philosophical tradition can be reversed by an event. the old philosophical tradition said what is asked the question of the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. should we reverse the relationship? should we reform the relationship? would the people who are governed take the place of those who govern? and so on and so on. this was the political question since aristotle. to hegel, to the dialectical of the slave and the master. me 68 for me. was the first time during a few weeks when it was said we want a world where is the very relationship explodes, the very relationship is suppressed. un univers, un world de pure to speak it again in the categories of the philosophy of spinoza, for example. la société où il sera être no passité, activ, où être activ, pas être un master. not everybody will be a chief, no. everybody will be. gilles deleuze said pure intensivity, others would say pure affirmation, and so on. this was the second point. and the third point on which maybe we shall disagree, slavoy and i. in that it was also, i think, the grave. and the burial off the what would i say? of marxism-leninism, surely. of the proletarian them probably. also. may 68 was the first revolution or attempt of revolution. which had, at the end of the day, nothing to do with the le monde ouvrier, la classe ouvrière, de prolétariariat classe.
Slavoj Žižek
and you fought in the streets. yes, but it...
and you fought in the streets. yes, but it...
Bernard-Henri Lévy
it was first of all, it was the centre of paris. it was not as today, the suburbs. the center of paris, the paris of Walter Benjamin and of charles baudelaire who was in riots. it was... the intellectual petite bourgeoisie. and it was of course some workers, the world of the unions, but precisely not the union, not the communist party. note de prolariat as it is embodied by the old institutions of before. the workers which were involved in may 19668 were, for example, unemployed workers or fired workers or the part of the working class which was relied to, which looked like, which has something to do with this petite bourgeoisie intellectuelle. so a very strange event. end. the proof of that. is that the end of the movement of 68. came. when of course, the left, françois mitterrand and so on, whistled the end of the game. when the right, general de gaulle whistled also the end but... when the union said, there was a very famous sentence at this time. il faut reprendre la révolution des mains tremblantes des étudiants.. the revolutionary dream from the shivering hands. of the students. the moment when this was expressed. when the common program of the left and the right was to take all this poetic dream of this woman from the supposed shivering hands of the students, it was over. it meant that the unions will speak with the patrona, with the tycoons, with the government, and that the order will come back again in the streets and in the heads.
it was first of all, it was the centre of paris. it was not as today, the suburbs. the center of paris, the paris of Walter Benjamin and of charles baudelaire who was in riots. it was... the intellectual petite bourgeoisie. and it was of course some workers, the world of the unions, but precisely not the union, not the communist party. note de prolariat as it is embodied by the old institutions of before. the workers which were involved in may 19668 were, for example, unemployed workers or fired workers or the part of the working class which was relied to, which looked like, which has something to do with this petite bourgeoisie intellectuelle. so a very strange event. end. the proof of that. is that the end of the movement of 68. came. when of course, the left, françois mitterrand and so on, whistled the end of the game. when the right, general de gaulle whistled also the end but... when the union said, there was a very famous sentence at this time. il faut reprendre la révolution des mains tremblantes des étudiants.. the revolutionary dream from the shivering hands. of the students. the moment when this was expressed. when the common program of the left and the right was to take all this poetic dream of this woman from the supposed shivering hands of the students, it was over. it meant that the unions will speak with the patrona, with the tycoons, with the government, and that the order will come back again in the streets and in the heads.
Slavoj Žižek
slav grave or burial? no,... agree vaguely with this diagnosis, but no, no, no, i will tell you where i see the problem, just in how to interpret it. the problem i see, i will try to be very frank, is the following one. it's basically the same at a different level as the problem of what happened a couple of months later, august 68 in prague. the commonplace is, oh brutal soviet invasion, the tanks crushed the spring of the prague, crushed the hope of the prague spring. i claim the opposite. they shaved the... the dream. in what sense? let's be cynical and the soviet union would not intervene in prague. i don't think there was a serious possibility of a new truly democratic socialist country state. what would have happened if the soviet union were not to integrate is that? either czechoslovakia would simply have become part of the west or at a certain point, like before and after with liberal commun gomulka, they would have to stop it. i think that paradoxically, the very soviet intervention kept the dream alive. or what would have been if the soviet union were not to intervene? and i have the same problem with may 68. my problem is, yes, i agree with what you said, this pure revolution, intensity, no party state to take it over. but did it, what was the... ultimate possibility into it. did it really hurt if the communist party wouldn't manipulate or others would allow them, would support them. do you really think there was a chance of a new society or what? i think no. i think that the lesson for the left is.
slav grave or burial? no,... agree vaguely with this diagnosis, but no, no, no, i will tell you where i see the problem, just in how to interpret it. the problem i see, i will try to be very frank, is the following one. it's basically the same at a different level as the problem of what happened a couple of months later, august 68 in prague. the commonplace is, oh brutal soviet invasion, the tanks crushed the spring of the prague, crushed the hope of the prague spring. i claim the opposite. they shaved the... the dream. in what sense? let's be cynical and the soviet union would not intervene in prague. i don't think there was a serious possibility of a new truly democratic socialist country state. what would have happened if the soviet union were not to integrate is that? either czechoslovakia would simply have become part of the west or at a certain point, like before and after with liberal commun gomulka, they would have to stop it. i think that paradoxically, the very soviet intervention kept the dream alive. or what would have been if the soviet union were not to intervene? and i have the same problem with may 68. my problem is, yes, i agree with what you said, this pure revolution, intensity, no party state to take it over. but did it, what was the... ultimate possibility into it. did it really hurt if the communist party wouldn't manipulate or others would allow them, would support them. do you really think there was a chance of a new society or what? i think no. i think that the lesson for the left is.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
no.
no.
Slavoj Žižek
do you think there was a possibility for a new society there?
do you think there was a possibility for a new society there?
Bernard-Henri Lévy
of course not. there was the possibility of what happened after, which was a huge intellectual, moral and politic reform of france. the world changed in france because of this attempt of 68. the women were more free. the gays were more affirmative, the power had less power, the people had more rights. it is an important moment for that also, because there was a multiplication of rights after may 68 and because of may 68, which we did not see in the last decades. and this is the real product of this miraculous moment. a few weeks of it a few weeks where, because i remember this moment well myself. i was 20, 18, 19,, 20. it was a moment, maybe because of material conditions. it was the epoch of the 30 glorieuse, as we say, period of great prosperity, period where the western europe believed stupidly, but believed that the resources were infinite, that the scarcity did not exist and so on. and there was a feeling of youth and of immortalité. and immortal youth was the feeling, the main whiff, the main smell of all those people demonstrating and so on and so on.
of course not. there was the possibility of what happened after, which was a huge intellectual, moral and politic reform of france. the world changed in france because of this attempt of 68. the women were more free. the gays were more affirmative, the power had less power, the people had more rights. it is an important moment for that also, because there was a multiplication of rights after may 68 and because of may 68, which we did not see in the last decades. and this is the real product of this miraculous moment. a few weeks of it a few weeks where, because i remember this moment well myself. i was 20, 18, 19,, 20. it was a moment, maybe because of material conditions. it was the epoch of the 30 glorieuse, as we say, period of great prosperity, period where the western europe believed stupidly, but believed that the resources were infinite, that the scarcity did not exist and so on. and there was a feeling of youth and of immortalité. and immortal youth was the feeling, the main whiff, the main smell of all those people demonstrating and so on and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
but here i see, again, here, michael, this is a nice debate because now you appear more leftist than me in the sense of trusting the. i have two problems here. i think that this dimension, i'm first to agree.
but here i see, again, here, michael, this is a nice debate because now you appear more leftist than me in the sense of trusting the. i have two problems here. i think that this dimension, i'm first to agree.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
this is my thesis in the book, by the way, if you read me well.
this is my thesis in the book, by the way, if you read me well.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i. and to be more leftist than you.
i. and to be more leftist than you.
Slavoj Žižek
i. okay. and we know that there is nothing but pretension in the world. okay, let me go on. so but you know where i see the problem? first, i'm the first to agree with you that these are real achievements. we shouldn't make fun of them, like gay rights, feminism, even the way authority functions and so on. but nonetheless, it fascinates me how... and again, i'm here referring vaguely, not only to to the, the new spirit of capitalism by luke baltanski and so on, in what how ideally the new. how ideally may 68, that's for me a kind of hegelian cunning of reason helped to give a new push. and to capitalism. and i'm not saying this is bad. i'm just saying as a diagnosis, it's not only new freedoms, it's the entire new logic, i claim of marketing. say it's not bad. do you mean it? sorry you said it's not necessarily bad. no, it's just a new face. i mean... everything in the world, most of the things, okay, are bad and good. that i mean, that's the paradox. but let me make a point that i want to make. the way how let me... go here to the united states, how do we consume today? when you have a commodity to buy, it's no longer the primitive level buy this car because it's the best, uses less gasoline, whatever. it's also no longer the competitive logic of keeping up with the jones, like status symbol. isn't it that today we are more and more addressed even by publicity as by this car because, for example the land rover, you can drive into nature, you can realize your authentic self, it's part of self-realization and so on and so on. and let me go to the extreme here. this is why i find so problematic this all stuff with organic food and so on. do you really believe that if you buy the apples or so-called organic apples, which are usually more rotten and cost half more, do you really believe that they are more healthy? no. it's also not competition, but it makes you feel well, you know, like, my god, i participate in something great. i'm not just a stupid consumer. i show solidarity with it. it's the trap that i encounter here every day when i unfortunately have to go to starbucks coffee. you know, like practically they make you feel that with each cup of coffee you save some guatemala kid from starvation or whatever. i mean, let's just be aware. where's one dimension of 68 which, again, i sincerely mean that it's not bad, that it's not a priori bad. no, i think there are... h putin ethical awareness did grow up with this. i'm the first to admit it all i'm saying is as an old-fashioned. half marxist pessimist, how should i put it now let's look what baggage comes with it. you know, for example, what do you think about, i want to ask you now a question, what i find dangerous with charity. charity is in now. it's no longer as it was 100 years ago with carnegie, some idiosyncratic guys today everybody does charity. what's the message we get? you see that poster everywhere, some deformed black child, and then for a price of one cappuccino, you can save his life, whatever. the message, i think, if you read it between the lines, it's pretty cynical one is pay a little bit and it will make you feel better and you don't have to worry about it and you don't have to politicize it and so on and so on. i think that charity, no wonder bill gates likes it today. no wonder, did you notice something there? a certain rhetoricics which 20 years ago when we were young was the rhetoricorics of the left saying to us who live in relatively comfortable lives, are we aware of that we live in ivory tower and other their people are starving. today the mainstream is saying this all the time. it's one way to to. to depoliticize us. my idea is that today's ideology is the ideology of depoliticization. we are no longer predominantly. addressed as sacrifice except for strange countries, strange parties where you see the poster, our country first, but that's another thing. it's no longer sacrifice yourself. how are we today addressed by a society to be what we are? isn't the main address kind of a spiritualized orient orientalism, like be truly yourself, realize your potentials and so on and all that stuff. and i think this legacy of 68 i find problematic, which is why let me find a further contact with you and i will stop now and return a question to you. i hope we share another point. welich to be brutal hatred of emir kla. i we do agree here. underground, i think, is one of the most horrible films that i've seen. because it's as if this poem that i quoted was set to film there. what kind of society you see, yugoslav society in costa rica underground. a society where people all the time fornicate, drink, fight, a kind of eternal orgy. and here what you referred to as this eternal youth, excessive energy. one path, i'm not saying the only one. one path leads to radovan karadic, i claim. i claim that the duty, moral duty today, i'm maybe in a different way, a moralist like you, the moral duty today is precisely to problematize this, how shall i call it, caralesque transgressive model. order is bad. let's suspend the rules, let's have a free access and so on. do you know a detail which may maybe will interest you. you know he's more popular in france than here he's the guy called sorry, michael bachtin, the great author of theory of carnival. you know that a russian friend told me that now they discovered some private papers from the 30s when he was writing his book on franancoçois rabelais. and you know what was his model of carnival? stalinist pur. that's the true carnival. today you are a member of central committee, tomorrow you are english spy, piece of shit, and so on. so i claim that there also is a legacy of we have to see 68 in all its ambiguity. strike back. strike back. strike back. no, my god. i sorry no, i'm sorry for this stalinist gesture. did you notice this point that in stalinism in fascism, you are a leader, you give a speech, people applaud, you just accept it. in stalinism, the leader joins the applause. so we are on the good side okay. give
i. okay. and we know that there is nothing but pretension in the world. okay, let me go on. so but you know where i see the problem? first, i'm the first to agree with you that these are real achievements. we shouldn't make fun of them, like gay rights, feminism, even the way authority functions and so on. but nonetheless, it fascinates me how... and again, i'm here referring vaguely, not only to to the, the new spirit of capitalism by luke baltanski and so on, in what how ideally the new. how ideally may 68, that's for me a kind of hegelian cunning of reason helped to give a new push. and to capitalism. and i'm not saying this is bad. i'm just saying as a diagnosis, it's not only new freedoms, it's the entire new logic, i claim of marketing. say it's not bad. do you mean it? sorry you said it's not necessarily bad. no, it's just a new face. i mean... everything in the world, most of the things, okay, are bad and good. that i mean, that's the paradox. but let me make a point that i want to make. the way how let me... go here to the united states, how do we consume today? when you have a commodity to buy, it's no longer the primitive level buy this car because it's the best, uses less gasoline, whatever. it's also no longer the competitive logic of keeping up with the jones, like status symbol. isn't it that today we are more and more addressed even by publicity as by this car because, for example the land rover, you can drive into nature, you can realize your authentic self, it's part of self-realization and so on and so on. and let me go to the extreme here. this is why i find so problematic this all stuff with organic food and so on. do you really believe that if you buy the apples or so-called organic apples, which are usually more rotten and cost half more, do you really believe that they are more healthy? no. it's also not competition, but it makes you feel well, you know, like, my god, i participate in something great. i'm not just a stupid consumer. i show solidarity with it. it's the trap that i encounter here every day when i unfortunately have to go to starbucks coffee. you know, like practically they make you feel that with each cup of coffee you save some guatemala kid from starvation or whatever. i mean, let's just be aware. where's one dimension of 68 which, again, i sincerely mean that it's not bad, that it's not a priori bad. no, i think there are... h putin ethical awareness did grow up with this. i'm the first to admit it all i'm saying is as an old-fashioned. half marxist pessimist, how should i put it now let's look what baggage comes with it. you know, for example, what do you think about, i want to ask you now a question, what i find dangerous with charity. charity is in now. it's no longer as it was 100 years ago with carnegie, some idiosyncratic guys today everybody does charity. what's the message we get? you see that poster everywhere, some deformed black child, and then for a price of one cappuccino, you can save his life, whatever. the message, i think, if you read it between the lines, it's pretty cynical one is pay a little bit and it will make you feel better and you don't have to worry about it and you don't have to politicize it and so on and so on. i think that charity, no wonder bill gates likes it today. no wonder, did you notice something there? a certain rhetoricics which 20 years ago when we were young was the rhetoricorics of the left saying to us who live in relatively comfortable lives, are we aware of that we live in ivory tower and other their people are starving. today the mainstream is saying this all the time. it's one way to to. to depoliticize us. my idea is that today's ideology is the ideology of depoliticization. we are no longer predominantly. addressed as sacrifice except for strange countries, strange parties where you see the poster, our country first, but that's another thing. it's no longer sacrifice yourself. how are we today addressed by a society to be what we are? isn't the main address kind of a spiritualized orient orientalism, like be truly yourself, realize your potentials and so on and all that stuff. and i think this legacy of 68 i find problematic, which is why let me find a further contact with you and i will stop now and return a question to you. i hope we share another point. welich to be brutal hatred of emir kla. i we do agree here. underground, i think, is one of the most horrible films that i've seen. because it's as if this poem that i quoted was set to film there. what kind of society you see, yugoslav society in costa rica underground. a society where people all the time fornicate, drink, fight, a kind of eternal orgy. and here what you referred to as this eternal youth, excessive energy. one path, i'm not saying the only one. one path leads to radovan karadic, i claim. i claim that the duty, moral duty today, i'm maybe in a different way, a moralist like you, the moral duty today is precisely to problematize this, how shall i call it, caralesque transgressive model. order is bad. let's suspend the rules, let's have a free access and so on. do you know a detail which may maybe will interest you. you know he's more popular in france than here he's the guy called sorry, michael bachtin, the great author of theory of carnival. you know that a russian friend told me that now they discovered some private papers from the 30s when he was writing his book on franancoçois rabelais. and you know what was his model of carnival? stalinist pur. that's the true carnival. today you are a member of central committee, tomorrow you are english spy, piece of shit, and so on. so i claim that there also is a legacy of we have to see 68 in all its ambiguity. strike back. strike back. strike back. no, my god. i sorry no, i'm sorry for this stalinist gesture. did you notice this point that in stalinism in fascism, you are a leader, you give a speech, people applaud, you just accept it. in stalinism, the leader joins the applause. so we are on the good side okay. give
Bernard-Henri Lévy
to. strike back. there is a famous story of robespierre speaking on the tribune of the national assembly. and he's looking at two mp in the balcony. and suddenly one is... seems frightened, he's shaken by fear. and his neighbor says, what is the matter? why are you shaken by fear? and he said, robespierre is looking at me. he will believe i think something.
to. strike back. there is a famous story of robespierre speaking on the tribune of the national assembly. and he's looking at two mp in the balcony. and suddenly one is... seems frightened, he's shaken by fear. and his neighbor says, what is the matter? why are you shaken by fear? and he said, robespierre is looking at me. he will believe i think something.
Paul Holdengräber
so of course, we have to upload.
so of course, we have to upload.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
does it. no, to answer your two questions.
does it. no, to answer your two questions.
Paul Holdengräber
sorry.
sorry.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
no, cust and the, the charity. on costa rica, strangely enough, this... this event is really an opening event of the season because everything is unpredictable. for you.
no, cust and the, the charity. on costa rica, strangely enough, this... this event is really an opening event of the season because everything is unpredictable. for you.
Paul Holdengräber
just as i like it.
just as i like it.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
just as you like. i don't agree on Kusturica. uh... about the man, of course.
just as you like. i don't agree on Kusturica. uh... about the man, of course.
Paul Holdengräber
yes.
yes.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
of of course. not that i'm his enemy. i'm the enemy of nobody except putin, milosevic, kar,. but i think i am his enemy. underground is not a bad movie not a bad movie. and i think that formally speaking, on the level of narrative and so on, i would not be so severe. and i would say that costa rica is one of the cases. we have some writers like this. where the man is so, so, so more stupid. than his work. you have cline, you have a lot of writers who are stupid in the life and who make great books.
of of course. not that i'm his enemy. i'm the enemy of nobody except putin, milosevic, kar,. but i think i am his enemy. underground is not a bad movie not a bad movie. and i think that formally speaking, on the level of narrative and so on, i would not be so severe. and i would say that costa rica is one of the cases. we have some writers like this. where the man is so, so, so more stupid. than his work. you have cline, you have a lot of writers who are stupid in the life and who make great books.
Paul Holdengräber
co de calidad.
co de calidad.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
no, better. i prefer that the man is less stupid than his work than the reverse. if k rard was brilliant and the movie was zero, it would be much worse. we have the... the good thank.
no, better. i prefer that the man is less stupid than his work than the reverse. if k rard was brilliant and the movie was zero, it would be much worse. we have the... the good thank.
Paul Holdengräber
about charity.
about charity.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i you allowed to answer. for the time.
i you allowed to answer. for the time.
Slavoj Žižek
being guests. okay.
being guests. okay.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
you will whistle the end of the recreation as the goalist communist power in 68. about charity. i agree partly with you partly only because i think that nevertheless there is a sort of grandeur and nobility in the charity and so on. all that makes that one is concerned by the other. all that can make that i am ashamed even one second of what is happening outside my private world is good. i really believe that.
you will whistle the end of the recreation as the goalist communist power in 68. about charity. i agree partly with you partly only because i think that nevertheless there is a sort of grandeur and nobility in the charity and so on. all that makes that one is concerned by the other. all that can make that i am ashamed even one second of what is happening outside my private world is good. i really believe that.
Paul Holdengräber
i really believe this library wouldn't be here, quite frankly, if it weren't for carnegie and charity. i think that there is a good use.
i really believe this library wouldn't be here, quite frankly, if it weren't for carnegie and charity. i think that there is a good use.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
un un bon usage de la honte. of the scruple, of the shame in politics. and that to terrorize a little the people, even if it is at dinner time, even if it is between the soup and the cheese, even five minutes is not so bad. and that's why i was involved in my youth in some car movement. that's why i was a fellow companion of the movement inventing the devoir d'ingant, the duty of involvement and so on. all these car things are not so bad. and when you travel a little, as you do, as i do, qu you go in really d places of the world, when youz dans the black holes of the plan, en africa, places like that, in angola, burundi, sometimes the more clever people, the most informed, the only who maintain alive a little spark of the universality of humanity are these charity guys or women who are trying to help and so on. it is a sort of little spark of universal values in a world which
un un bon usage de la honte. of the scruple, of the shame in politics. and that to terrorize a little the people, even if it is at dinner time, even if it is between the soup and the cheese, even five minutes is not so bad. and that's why i was involved in my youth in some car movement. that's why i was a fellow companion of the movement inventing the devoir d'ingant, the duty of involvement and so on. all these car things are not so bad. and when you travel a little, as you do, as i do, qu you go in really d places of the world, when youz dans the black holes of the plan, en africa, places like that, in angola, burundi, sometimes the more clever people, the most informed, the only who maintain alive a little spark of the universality of humanity are these charity guys or women who are trying to help and so on. it is a sort of little spark of universal values in a world which
Paul Holdengräber
but you know, i mean, gac didn't... say what he writes in the book but in the book he says charity is a humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation actually. do do.
but you know, i mean, gac didn't... say what he writes in the book but in the book he says charity is a humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation actually. do do.
Slavoj Žižek
and it's a...
and it's a...
Paul Holdengräber
it's a strong comment. i mean, you speak about cannegie as a man of steel and a heart of gold. let me finish.
it's a strong comment. i mean, you speak about cannegie as a man of steel and a heart of gold. let me finish.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
to ask carnegie to give a little will be never bad, i will never cry if we help carnegie to empty a little his pocket.
to ask carnegie to give a little will be never bad, i will never cry if we help carnegie to empty a little his pocket.
Paul Holdengräber
he did it himself.
he did it himself.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
no, he does not do it himself. he does it because he is under moral blackmail of some opinion leader, of some journalist, of some titles of the tv and so on. that is never bad. now the real problem with charity, and on this point i would agree with you, but i will maybe express in other words. number one it replace politics. and when it replaced politics, it's a disaster. and i saw that myself with my you should know this. i saw it, i more than noticed, i shot a movie about that, the way in which the great powers said... we deliver to you blankets in which we shall put your corpse and for the price of that, let us in peace and don't ask us anything else was really disgusting. and the charity people themselves, the average humanitarian girls and boys, knew that they were doing this task. knew that they were manipulated by the powers, by the states who washed their hands of the flesh and the blood of the bosnians and who just asked as an illusion, as a cloud of ink, the humanitarian to do the job. this is one real modern limit, one real... perverse effect of the humanitarian and the charitable. the other one. which i observed not in bosnia, but in rwanda. and in africa in general, but especially in rwanda, and my friend philippe gurevich, who is here, knows that also, and maybe better than i, he devoted a book to that, a part of a book to that. the charity movement, the way the fact of seeing the world with the eyes of charity has also the effect of transforming. the human being which is a complicated thing at the end of the day, which is not a thing, which is a body. which is a mind an articulation between the two and so on. the charity business has the result of transforming the human being into a single, a simple body. there is a bodification of the subject, a fleshization of the human being. and in rwanda, it was very clear how many times i heard the politics of my country or some big humanitarian consciousness of my country but we did a lot in rwanda. okay, but what did they do? after the genocide, when the genocide was over, they went to give food and to give gut aut, drop by drop, to the murderers, to the people who did the genocide. they did not even ask the question, people being just bodies without soul, or the charity having the duty, the task to manage the bodies and not to know anything about the souls, the question to know if one was an... executioner or a victim which sort of execution was not raised at all. so this is the other perverse effect, terrible one and i saw that. again in rwanda, but not only in rwanda, it was caricatural. it is something terrible and it might be in this sort of case, one of the worst and most terrible form of despise of the other and even of racism. you, black people from rwanda, are just good to be fed and shallap, your soul, your destiny, your political role in this tragedy, we don't want to know anything about that.
no, he does not do it himself. he does it because he is under moral blackmail of some opinion leader, of some journalist, of some titles of the tv and so on. that is never bad. now the real problem with charity, and on this point i would agree with you, but i will maybe express in other words. number one it replace politics. and when it replaced politics, it's a disaster. and i saw that myself with my you should know this. i saw it, i more than noticed, i shot a movie about that, the way in which the great powers said... we deliver to you blankets in which we shall put your corpse and for the price of that, let us in peace and don't ask us anything else was really disgusting. and the charity people themselves, the average humanitarian girls and boys, knew that they were doing this task. knew that they were manipulated by the powers, by the states who washed their hands of the flesh and the blood of the bosnians and who just asked as an illusion, as a cloud of ink, the humanitarian to do the job. this is one real modern limit, one real... perverse effect of the humanitarian and the charitable. the other one. which i observed not in bosnia, but in rwanda. and in africa in general, but especially in rwanda, and my friend philippe gurevich, who is here, knows that also, and maybe better than i, he devoted a book to that, a part of a book to that. the charity movement, the way the fact of seeing the world with the eyes of charity has also the effect of transforming. the human being which is a complicated thing at the end of the day, which is not a thing, which is a body. which is a mind an articulation between the two and so on. the charity business has the result of transforming the human being into a single, a simple body. there is a bodification of the subject, a fleshization of the human being. and in rwanda, it was very clear how many times i heard the politics of my country or some big humanitarian consciousness of my country but we did a lot in rwanda. okay, but what did they do? after the genocide, when the genocide was over, they went to give food and to give gut aut, drop by drop, to the murderers, to the people who did the genocide. they did not even ask the question, people being just bodies without soul, or the charity having the duty, the task to manage the bodies and not to know anything about the souls, the question to know if one was an... executioner or a victim which sort of execution was not raised at all. so this is the other perverse effect, terrible one and i saw that. again in rwanda, but not only in rwanda, it was caricatural. it is something terrible and it might be in this sort of case, one of the worst and most terrible form of despise of the other and even of racism. you, black people from rwanda, are just good to be fed and shallap, your soul, your destiny, your political role in this tragedy, we don't want to know anything about that.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you for defending me because you see, that's my point. my problem with charity, let me make a step further where i think it's the clear-cut case we all know and again my source here are not some crazy marginal leftists, but mainstream united states. two years ago there in the summer there was a cover story in the time magazine about congo claiming that in the last 10 years, around 4 million people died there of unnatural causes and so on and so on. of course, you can approach in in this patronizing way as a problem of charity with mixed with despising the local military because that's the refined form of racism. poor africans are good as victims in the sense of objects of charity. the moment they take things into their own hands, they become warlords and so on. but the problem i have in congo is this one. we have there what? a state which de facto more or less doesn't exist as a state. it's cut into local areas where local warlords, local armies rule. but what keeps all of it alive? here a little bit of marxist analysis is helpful. all these local warlords are of course connected, each with another foreign company doing mining, diamond, zinc, and so on and so on. and that's how the entire system perfectly. works. it's the best deal. local warlords got their money, get rich foreign companies don't have to do with taxes, all that stuff and so on and so on. and you have the greatest probably at this moment humanitarian catastrophe in the world like if i may put it in my extravagant words an average congolese citizen would probably have sold his mother into slavery to be able to move to the west bank or they put it. no it's infinitely worse, but it's not in. it's not in because it, it fits perfectly all agents, local warlords, military and foreign companies. so isn't it a nice example of instead of playing charity there, let's just do something at the level of how we control companies, relations of capital, and maybe we can do something. it's not basically a problem of charity, which is always also a problem then of implicitly treating others, as you know. we must teach them democracy and all that stuff. but since i mentioned west bank, i propose, if we all agree, like comrade stalin says, i put this to the central committee, shall we move to more difficult topic? since i mentioned west bank, where is the misunderstanding about israel, palestina, anti-seemitism today and so on? do you want to start with your statement or? no, you are misunderstanding between who and who. maybe there is, you know, i'll tell you a nice story. you know wait for the story. the story it's a very short story. it's one sentence. no okay yeah it's a haiku. the end of gone with the wind. red butler says to the woman, scarlett o'hara, frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn, like f3 points off. in japan, i was told where they are very polite, you know how they translated this line when they subtitled the film? something like, frankly, my dear, i think there is a slight misunderstanding between the two of us. so in this sense, maybe there is a slight misunderstanding. maybe.
thank you for defending me because you see, that's my point. my problem with charity, let me make a step further where i think it's the clear-cut case we all know and again my source here are not some crazy marginal leftists, but mainstream united states. two years ago there in the summer there was a cover story in the time magazine about congo claiming that in the last 10 years, around 4 million people died there of unnatural causes and so on and so on. of course, you can approach in in this patronizing way as a problem of charity with mixed with despising the local military because that's the refined form of racism. poor africans are good as victims in the sense of objects of charity. the moment they take things into their own hands, they become warlords and so on. but the problem i have in congo is this one. we have there what? a state which de facto more or less doesn't exist as a state. it's cut into local areas where local warlords, local armies rule. but what keeps all of it alive? here a little bit of marxist analysis is helpful. all these local warlords are of course connected, each with another foreign company doing mining, diamond, zinc, and so on and so on. and that's how the entire system perfectly. works. it's the best deal. local warlords got their money, get rich foreign companies don't have to do with taxes, all that stuff and so on and so on. and you have the greatest probably at this moment humanitarian catastrophe in the world like if i may put it in my extravagant words an average congolese citizen would probably have sold his mother into slavery to be able to move to the west bank or they put it. no it's infinitely worse, but it's not in. it's not in because it, it fits perfectly all agents, local warlords, military and foreign companies. so isn't it a nice example of instead of playing charity there, let's just do something at the level of how we control companies, relations of capital, and maybe we can do something. it's not basically a problem of charity, which is always also a problem then of implicitly treating others, as you know. we must teach them democracy and all that stuff. but since i mentioned west bank, i propose, if we all agree, like comrade stalin says, i put this to the central committee, shall we move to more difficult topic? since i mentioned west bank, where is the misunderstanding about israel, palestina, anti-seemitism today and so on? do you want to start with your statement or? no, you are misunderstanding between who and who. maybe there is, you know, i'll tell you a nice story. you know wait for the story. the story it's a very short story. it's one sentence. no okay yeah it's a haiku. the end of gone with the wind. red butler says to the woman, scarlett o'hara, frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn, like f3 points off. in japan, i was told where they are very polite, you know how they translated this line when they subtitled the film? something like, frankly, my dear, i think there is a slight misunderstanding between the two of us. so in this sense, maybe there is a slight misunderstanding. maybe.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i i don't know what you think about that. as for myself...
i i don't know what you think about that. as for myself...
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i think the same. i have the same opinion since... unfortunately, 40 years. it might even have been the first article i ever wrote in 69. two years after the war of the six days, i believe in the solution of two states, a palestinian state and an israeli state, recognizing each other and living in peace. this is my position. i never moved from that. uh... i think that you have some enemies of this solution. in the israeli society. but i think that you have... also enemies and more enemies in the arab world and in the palestinian world, in the palestinian camp. more enemies because you have today. but you had already seen the beginning. inside the palestinian people and the palestinian leadership. a real split. between some democrats. who really want a compromise, who really want a good divorce, a good political solution, a sharing of the earth. and some people who were the the inheritors of a very well-known arab leader called hi, the grand mufti of jerusalem, who was a nazi. who was in berlin during the second world war. who was very proud to have met hitler. who went to auschwitz and who said that he had never seen something more great than auschwitz. and who was the mentor? of some of the leaders of the palestinian movement, including yasser arafat. so this part of the palestinian leadership, of course.
i think the same. i have the same opinion since... unfortunately, 40 years. it might even have been the first article i ever wrote in 69. two years after the war of the six days, i believe in the solution of two states, a palestinian state and an israeli state, recognizing each other and living in peace. this is my position. i never moved from that. uh... i think that you have some enemies of this solution. in the israeli society. but i think that you have... also enemies and more enemies in the arab world and in the palestinian world, in the palestinian camp. more enemies because you have today. but you had already seen the beginning. inside the palestinian people and the palestinian leadership. a real split. between some democrats. who really want a compromise, who really want a good divorce, a good political solution, a sharing of the earth. and some people who were the the inheritors of a very well-known arab leader called hi, the grand mufti of jerusalem, who was a nazi. who was in berlin during the second world war. who was very proud to have met hitler. who went to auschwitz and who said that he had never seen something more great than auschwitz. and who was the mentor? of some of the leaders of the palestinian movement, including yasser arafat. so this part of the palestinian leadership, of course.
Slavoj Žižek
mm
mm
Bernard-Henri Lévy
cannot believe in this political, reasonable, acceptable solution of a good divorce and a good sharing of the earth because they do believe before the existence of israel, they already believed that the jewish people here and elsewhere. should be... erased and exterminated.
cannot believe in this political, reasonable, acceptable solution of a good divorce and a good sharing of the earth because they do believe before the existence of israel, they already believed that the jewish people here and elsewhere. should be... erased and exterminated.
Slavoj Žižek
let me let me enumerate. maybe two, three points of where i, while basically agreeing with many things that you put, i would just... shift the accent maybe if i can have now my three, four minutes and then i'm looking at you as my superere ego. okay first, i agree with you unconditionally that there should be no compromise with anti-semitism in the sense that i totally reject those so-called leftists who claim, you know, arabs are, they don't say it but they mean it arabs are primitive so we should excuse them if they sound sometimes anti-semitic they sound so so much under israeli occupation and so on and so on. yes, ruthlessly. no compromise here. but my but is the following one. now comes the problematic thesis. would you agree with it or not? when i visited a couple of times israel i encountered in the the way they. some of the israeli establishment. criticizes those g who have doubts about the politics of the state of israel. i couldn't. not have noticed it that they criticize them in how do they construct those jews who are not fully zionist. i'm sorry to tell you there is only one historical analogy. they categorize them in exactly the same way as 100 years ago at that point of the beginning of the early 20th century anti-seemitism in europe. local nation states dismissed the jews. the idea is you appear to be one of us, jews, but you are not really one of us. you are ruthless and so on. and a proof, a shocking proof. i defy you to visit it. this is an extreme point of this development. there is a website which shocked me pretty much. it's called www.mada.com. it has a list of 4,000 jews who are designated at this side as shit, shit la merda. shit which then they interpret self-hate. israel terrorizing jews. it's horrible list. each of them it's as evil a photography as possible evil blah blah blah. and my first idea was, my god, did these guys hire an old nazi to do this? so i will i see your nervosity. let me just finish the thought. you know where my problem started? when something unnatural happened in this country, my big basic hypothesis is that if ever there is a group which should be by its nature anti-semitic, it american christian fundamentalists. it's in their nature to be anti-semitic. so how is it, my god, that all of a sudden now, did you notice they fanatically support the zionist project? i think because they sympathize with what runs against a certain aspect of being jewish. let me finish with a joke. wonderful caricature recently in austria making fun, you know, of the usual defense of jewish establishment. which say, of course you can criticize israel as much as you want, but don't misuse the critique of israel, state of israel, for anti-semitic purposes. this caricature shows two big fat, nastyy looking austrians. one shows to the other an article and says, look, yet another example of how a totally justified anti-semitism is brutally misused for an unfair critique of the state of israel and so on. no. that's the logic of them. that's where i see the danger. one should always bear in mind of this most precious inheritance of jewish tradition, which comes precisely of them being, as french political philosophers would have said, la part de non-part. the ones who precisely not being part of the organic social community stand directly for the dimension of universality. and i'm not simply accusing israel. i see this as a very tragic development that now even something that i'm tempted to call with all respect as a defense of all of my jewish friends, zionist anti-seemitism is appearing in the sense that what they criticize is precisely a certain figure which sounds familiar in europe. do you find this problematic?
let me let me enumerate. maybe two, three points of where i, while basically agreeing with many things that you put, i would just... shift the accent maybe if i can have now my three, four minutes and then i'm looking at you as my superere ego. okay first, i agree with you unconditionally that there should be no compromise with anti-semitism in the sense that i totally reject those so-called leftists who claim, you know, arabs are, they don't say it but they mean it arabs are primitive so we should excuse them if they sound sometimes anti-semitic they sound so so much under israeli occupation and so on and so on. yes, ruthlessly. no compromise here. but my but is the following one. now comes the problematic thesis. would you agree with it or not? when i visited a couple of times israel i encountered in the the way they. some of the israeli establishment. criticizes those g who have doubts about the politics of the state of israel. i couldn't. not have noticed it that they criticize them in how do they construct those jews who are not fully zionist. i'm sorry to tell you there is only one historical analogy. they categorize them in exactly the same way as 100 years ago at that point of the beginning of the early 20th century anti-seemitism in europe. local nation states dismissed the jews. the idea is you appear to be one of us, jews, but you are not really one of us. you are ruthless and so on. and a proof, a shocking proof. i defy you to visit it. this is an extreme point of this development. there is a website which shocked me pretty much. it's called www.mada.com. it has a list of 4,000 jews who are designated at this side as shit, shit la merda. shit which then they interpret self-hate. israel terrorizing jews. it's horrible list. each of them it's as evil a photography as possible evil blah blah blah. and my first idea was, my god, did these guys hire an old nazi to do this? so i will i see your nervosity. let me just finish the thought. you know where my problem started? when something unnatural happened in this country, my big basic hypothesis is that if ever there is a group which should be by its nature anti-semitic, it american christian fundamentalists. it's in their nature to be anti-semitic. so how is it, my god, that all of a sudden now, did you notice they fanatically support the zionist project? i think because they sympathize with what runs against a certain aspect of being jewish. let me finish with a joke. wonderful caricature recently in austria making fun, you know, of the usual defense of jewish establishment. which say, of course you can criticize israel as much as you want, but don't misuse the critique of israel, state of israel, for anti-semitic purposes. this caricature shows two big fat, nastyy looking austrians. one shows to the other an article and says, look, yet another example of how a totally justified anti-semitism is brutally misused for an unfair critique of the state of israel and so on. no. that's the logic of them. that's where i see the danger. one should always bear in mind of this most precious inheritance of jewish tradition, which comes precisely of them being, as french political philosophers would have said, la part de non-part. the ones who precisely not being part of the organic social community stand directly for the dimension of universality. and i'm not simply accusing israel. i see this as a very tragic development that now even something that i'm tempted to call with all respect as a defense of all of my jewish friends, zionist anti-seemitism is appearing in the sense that what they criticize is precisely a certain figure which sounds familiar in europe. do you find this problematic?
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i agree. no, i agree on two points. and i disagree strongly on the third one.
i agree. no, i agree on two points. and i disagree strongly on the third one.
Slavoj Žižek
okay.
okay.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
the american neo-christians, the nature of their support to israel. i am like you, i am suspicious. as a friend of israel, as a very devoted friend of israel, i know that israel has so many support, so okay. when i often say to my friends in tel aviv or in jerusalem, take the support, mais keep the gun under the pillow. because they are probably not the most sincere friends that you can have. and a friendship based on a misunderstanding... is not a true one and you know on what. point this friendship is based the neo-christian americans just want an israel clean, ready and in peace for the landing of the
the american neo-christians, the nature of their support to israel. i am like you, i am suspicious. as a friend of israel, as a very devoted friend of israel, i know that israel has so many support, so okay. when i often say to my friends in tel aviv or in jerusalem, take the support, mais keep the gun under the pillow. because they are probably not the most sincere friends that you can have. and a friendship based on a misunderstanding... is not a true one and you know on what. point this friendship is based the neo-christian americans just want an israel clean, ready and in peace for the landing of the
Slavoj Žižek
no.
no.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
exactly. azam madinejad. who asks the streets of tehran to be enlarged.
exactly. azam madinejad. who asks the streets of tehran to be enlarged.
Slavoj Žižek
because in a few minutes...
because in a few minutes...
Bernard-Henri Lévy
the last imam, hidden imam is going to arrive and we have to make big avenues like baron hosman in paris. you have exact the même in a way. some american christianians who say, israel has to be in order of march for the day of the return of the messiah. on this, i agree. they are strange friends and i would advise to be very careful about that. israel and my friends of israel. i agree also i more than agree i'm glad to hear that in your voice that of course no compromise with anti-seemitism whatsoever and i even feel that in this way which some have to ask some accounts to all countries in the world about their past nazism. we ask germany to be accountable of their nazism. we ask italy to be accountable, to tell us about, to bear the sorrow, to make the mourning of their fascism. we ask it to france, except the arabs. they are, for some so-called liberals, for some people of left in dark times, the only one who should not be accountable of who should not be asked about, who should not be helped to go out also of the nightmare of nazism is the arabs. and this is unbearable and this supposes, yes, a sort of racism. they are not really responsible, they are not really political subjects and we do not have to have the same exigence, the same demands toward them that toward civilized people. this is disgusting. them and i know again a lot of people, intellectuals, average citizens in many arab countries who say that who say why should we be the only one treated as children who should not be bothered too much about their past fascism because it is going to make us mad. it's unacceptable. about israel and the birth of zionist anti-seemitism. i... i think, my dear sloy, maybe on this point, maybe you don't know enough israel. maybe you don't know enough israel because... probably this exists. you have stupid people everywhere, you have an extreme right everywhere, and also in israel, you have also a great rabbi who said a few years ago that the shoah, the holocaust, was...
the last imam, hidden imam is going to arrive and we have to make big avenues like baron hosman in paris. you have exact the même in a way. some american christianians who say, israel has to be in order of march for the day of the return of the messiah. on this, i agree. they are strange friends and i would advise to be very careful about that. israel and my friends of israel. i agree also i more than agree i'm glad to hear that in your voice that of course no compromise with anti-seemitism whatsoever and i even feel that in this way which some have to ask some accounts to all countries in the world about their past nazism. we ask germany to be accountable of their nazism. we ask italy to be accountable, to tell us about, to bear the sorrow, to make the mourning of their fascism. we ask it to france, except the arabs. they are, for some so-called liberals, for some people of left in dark times, the only one who should not be accountable of who should not be asked about, who should not be helped to go out also of the nightmare of nazism is the arabs. and this is unbearable and this supposes, yes, a sort of racism. they are not really responsible, they are not really political subjects and we do not have to have the same exigence, the same demands toward them that toward civilized people. this is disgusting. them and i know again a lot of people, intellectuals, average citizens in many arab countries who say that who say why should we be the only one treated as children who should not be bothered too much about their past fascism because it is going to make us mad. it's unacceptable. about israel and the birth of zionist anti-seemitism. i... i think, my dear sloy, maybe on this point, maybe you don't know enough israel. maybe you don't know enough israel because... probably this exists. you have stupid people everywhere, you have an extreme right everywhere, and also in israel, you have also a great rabbi who said a few years ago that the shoah, the holocaust, was...
Slavoj Žižek
if.
if.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
it was the punishment for crimes committed by the most innocent people of the whole history, which were the poor jews of eastern europe and so on and so on. so you have stupid guys in israel too. and you have also this, you are right, you have a real movement which is called the cananean movement. people who do believe that there is no other destinyée for a jew than to be down-rooted, solid lay in the earth and in the race and in the blood of the men who are against any solution, diaspora and so on and who would say that the values of diaspora are bad values, corrupted and so on. it is true, but i think really it is a tiny, tiny minority. and the proof of that proof of that. is that israel is the only country in the world, i don't know so many. where you have not only in the society, but in the political debate, and not only in the political debate, but in the parliament, you have some people who are officially, whose program is anti-zionism. you have some members of parliament who are anti-zionism. it is as if we had in france some some members of parliament who were in favor of the destruction of france, in favor of the illegitimacy of france. that as kn said. you have some member of parliament who said that. you have some political parties of extreme left. you have an arab party who do really believe that zionism is a mistake, that the creation of israel is a mistake, and not only they are tolerated, but they are members of the debate. i say extreme leftist movement et je say un arab mais pas seulement. you have also in a great part of jerusalem, which is called meim, which is a place vibrant of faith and of creed and of spirituality. the people there, the men in black, who are completely devoted to the torah, to the study and so on, they don't recognize israel. they are like the amish in america. they do believe that israel is a mistake, that they are here only because they are closer. to the sky, but they don't recognize this state and so on. so a state which admits in its cities, in its political institution, in the core of the debate, the denial of its very essence is a country which does not look like the caricature which was offered to you by the friends you met. so i make you a proposal, seriously. let's go together in israel and i will show you another face of the country.
it was the punishment for crimes committed by the most innocent people of the whole history, which were the poor jews of eastern europe and so on and so on. so you have stupid guys in israel too. and you have also this, you are right, you have a real movement which is called the cananean movement. people who do believe that there is no other destinyée for a jew than to be down-rooted, solid lay in the earth and in the race and in the blood of the men who are against any solution, diaspora and so on and who would say that the values of diaspora are bad values, corrupted and so on. it is true, but i think really it is a tiny, tiny minority. and the proof of that proof of that. is that israel is the only country in the world, i don't know so many. where you have not only in the society, but in the political debate, and not only in the political debate, but in the parliament, you have some people who are officially, whose program is anti-zionism. you have some members of parliament who are anti-zionism. it is as if we had in france some some members of parliament who were in favor of the destruction of france, in favor of the illegitimacy of france. that as kn said. you have some member of parliament who said that. you have some political parties of extreme left. you have an arab party who do really believe that zionism is a mistake, that the creation of israel is a mistake, and not only they are tolerated, but they are members of the debate. i say extreme leftist movement et je say un arab mais pas seulement. you have also in a great part of jerusalem, which is called meim, which is a place vibrant of faith and of creed and of spirituality. the people there, the men in black, who are completely devoted to the torah, to the study and so on, they don't recognize israel. they are like the amish in america. they do believe that israel is a mistake, that they are here only because they are closer. to the sky, but they don't recognize this state and so on. so a state which admits in its cities, in its political institution, in the core of the debate, the denial of its very essence is a country which does not look like the caricature which was offered to you by the friends you met. so i make you a proposal, seriously. let's go together in israel and i will show you another face of the country.
Slavoj Žižek
back. i'm okay, okay no, but i often go to israel but then but then let me make you another proposal. do you agree to go with me to west bank then? no, no, no, no, wait a minute. to see, because that's what is for me missing in your book. you know, first, let me make it clear. i don't buy these stupid stories, you know, israelis are the new nazis and, you know, this standard story. yeah, yeah, maybe they suffered a little bit, the jews in the world war ii, but what they were doing, what nazis were doing to them, they are now doing to the arabs. i don't buy that. but nonetheless, it's very instructive to visit the west bank. and to observe. the what? my short is not some... crazy leftinger it's tony blair. i read an interview with him and he said he was shocked by what maybe in the terms of michel foucault, we can call this microphysique of bureaucracy. power, this incredible network of small measures to annoy the arabs, to humiliate and so on, that was breathtaking to me. you cannot sorry justify it by any rational security measures. for example, the example is from tony blair, not from my sources in al-qaeda or whatever. that, for example, if you are a farmer palestinian or jewish in the west bank. you know how much more water per capita you get if you are a jewish farmer? do you know that if you want to dig for water, blair is my source, as a palestinian farmer, you can dig three feet deep. i don't know what they're afraid that they a tunnel for terrorists or what. you know this is what is making life so unbearable for them. and it's a systematic politics. you you know where i'm a little bit more pessimist than you? unfortunately, i don't think now i think you simplified it a little bit. it's not as simple as bad arabs and they are bad. i agree there with you. i don't think as some of my ex-friends think that hamas is the new leninist party or whatever no but you don't give on the one hand hamas, on the other hand some more secular democratic blah blah blah. first, i claim that there is a long-standing catastrophe of western politics there. do you know again my source is new york times here do you know that till five, six years ago that's what i read in new york times. the state of israel, or maybe now it's seven, eight years ago, was supporting financially hamas because they wanted to weaken arafat, divide and rule and so on. what the catastrophe for me is that. some time ago, don't ask me when, i hope we agree here, the west made, it started in afghanistan and elsewhere, a fateful wrong decision claiming that... religious fundamentalists are better than the secular left and we are all paying a terrible terrible price for that.
back. i'm okay, okay no, but i often go to israel but then but then let me make you another proposal. do you agree to go with me to west bank then? no, no, no, no, wait a minute. to see, because that's what is for me missing in your book. you know, first, let me make it clear. i don't buy these stupid stories, you know, israelis are the new nazis and, you know, this standard story. yeah, yeah, maybe they suffered a little bit, the jews in the world war ii, but what they were doing, what nazis were doing to them, they are now doing to the arabs. i don't buy that. but nonetheless, it's very instructive to visit the west bank. and to observe. the what? my short is not some... crazy leftinger it's tony blair. i read an interview with him and he said he was shocked by what maybe in the terms of michel foucault, we can call this microphysique of bureaucracy. power, this incredible network of small measures to annoy the arabs, to humiliate and so on, that was breathtaking to me. you cannot sorry justify it by any rational security measures. for example, the example is from tony blair, not from my sources in al-qaeda or whatever. that, for example, if you are a farmer palestinian or jewish in the west bank. you know how much more water per capita you get if you are a jewish farmer? do you know that if you want to dig for water, blair is my source, as a palestinian farmer, you can dig three feet deep. i don't know what they're afraid that they a tunnel for terrorists or what. you know this is what is making life so unbearable for them. and it's a systematic politics. you you know where i'm a little bit more pessimist than you? unfortunately, i don't think now i think you simplified it a little bit. it's not as simple as bad arabs and they are bad. i agree there with you. i don't think as some of my ex-friends think that hamas is the new leninist party or whatever no but you don't give on the one hand hamas, on the other hand some more secular democratic blah blah blah. first, i claim that there is a long-standing catastrophe of western politics there. do you know again my source is new york times here do you know that till five, six years ago that's what i read in new york times. the state of israel, or maybe now it's seven, eight years ago, was supporting financially hamas because they wanted to weaken arafat, divide and rule and so on. what the catastrophe for me is that. some time ago, don't ask me when, i hope we agree here, the west made, it started in afghanistan and elsewhere, a fateful wrong decision claiming that... religious fundamentalists are better than the secular left and we are all paying a terrible terrible price for that.
Paul Holdengräber
i... i would... what i propose to both of you is that i go on these journeys with you, but what i would like to say now is that let's move away from israel for a moment, come back to it.
i... i would... what i propose to both of you is that i go on these journeys with you, but what i would like to say now is that let's move away from israel for a moment, come back to it.
Slavoj Žižek
in fact. i want islamofascism. no, i don't want it. i want to debate it. no, very sincere, can i make it a short point, please? yes i will ask you a question. what i like in your idea of islamo-fascism is to politicize it. islamic fundamentalism is to my god, we are not talking about a spiritual movement. we are talking of a violent political movement. so let's at least use some political term. okay. i find nonetheless two things problematic. first one, then let's call it. youasc know if we talk about islam-fascism, would you agree to call mussolini or hitler christo fascismism or what? but a more fundamental problem, i see and this is not please, this is not a refined way to try to diminish it claiming they are any better and so on. but there is for me one big difference which strikes the eye for the nis and european fascists. the dangerous jew was not the jew with a state, was the stateless jew who was like, you know, mik spreading it great but it's a question the question is, don't you find... this big difference that for the old nazis the enemy is the stateless jew who penetrates everywhere, which is why the nazis before they decided on holocaust, they even supported the idea of the state of israel just to have the jews then together out of us. while whatever you say, except osaf madman, for the majority of arabs, the problem is on the contrary the jewish state. they don't mind if the jews are wandering around. just don't give them land and state. it's for me an important opposition.
in fact. i want islamofascism. no, i don't want it. i want to debate it. no, very sincere, can i make it a short point, please? yes i will ask you a question. what i like in your idea of islamo-fascism is to politicize it. islamic fundamentalism is to my god, we are not talking about a spiritual movement. we are talking of a violent political movement. so let's at least use some political term. okay. i find nonetheless two things problematic. first one, then let's call it. youasc know if we talk about islam-fascism, would you agree to call mussolini or hitler christo fascismism or what? but a more fundamental problem, i see and this is not please, this is not a refined way to try to diminish it claiming they are any better and so on. but there is for me one big difference which strikes the eye for the nis and european fascists. the dangerous jew was not the jew with a state, was the stateless jew who was like, you know, mik spreading it great but it's a question the question is, don't you find... this big difference that for the old nazis the enemy is the stateless jew who penetrates everywhere, which is why the nazis before they decided on holocaust, they even supported the idea of the state of israel just to have the jews then together out of us. while whatever you say, except osaf madman, for the majority of arabs, the problem is on the contrary the jewish state. they don't mind if the jews are wandering around. just don't give them land and state. it's for me an important opposition.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
you done. i don't think so. no, because i listen carefully what... hassan nasralas, the leader of hezbollah, says, he gave many interviews where he said precisely the contrary. my enemies are not only the jews living in israel, but they are the jews living out of israel. i know que before the création de israel, you had an arab nazism, an arab fascism, who said exactly what hitler said, i hate the jews. as a virus, microbe infiltrating everywhere. when husini was in berlin, when the muslim brothers were founded in egypt, there was not israel, there was a little y, that was the balfour declaration, and a little group of 200 or 300,000 people. in the place of palestine. there was no state and the anti-semitism was rabic also in the arab world. so i think that an anti-seite has a peculiarity. he really hates jews. in any form. when they have a state, he hates the state. when they don't have a state, he hates them stateless. and when they have both a state and where they are dispersed spread, he hates the two and he tries to fight the two. this is really the peculiarity of this strange and weird hatred. it hates jews in all forms. should i call the mussolini christianiano fascism and hitler? why not? i would, but then let's be precise. i. i could call. mussolini latin fascism. i could call hitler a pagan fascism. yes, why not? a pagan fascism, hitler, it was not a christian fascism. the nazism was also an anti-christian movement, as you know. the project of hitler. was to build a sort of new national church of the third reich and so on.
you done. i don't think so. no, because i listen carefully what... hassan nasralas, the leader of hezbollah, says, he gave many interviews where he said precisely the contrary. my enemies are not only the jews living in israel, but they are the jews living out of israel. i know que before the création de israel, you had an arab nazism, an arab fascism, who said exactly what hitler said, i hate the jews. as a virus, microbe infiltrating everywhere. when husini was in berlin, when the muslim brothers were founded in egypt, there was not israel, there was a little y, that was the balfour declaration, and a little group of 200 or 300,000 people. in the place of palestine. there was no state and the anti-semitism was rabic also in the arab world. so i think that an anti-seite has a peculiarity. he really hates jews. in any form. when they have a state, he hates the state. when they don't have a state, he hates them stateless. and when they have both a state and where they are dispersed spread, he hates the two and he tries to fight the two. this is really the peculiarity of this strange and weird hatred. it hates jews in all forms. should i call the mussolini christianiano fascism and hitler? why not? i would, but then let's be precise. i. i could call. mussolini latin fascism. i could call hitler a pagan fascism. yes, why not? a pagan fascism, hitler, it was not a christian fascism. the nazism was also an anti-christian movement, as you know. the project of hitler. was to build a sort of new national church of the third reich and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
hitler was the new ager ahead of his time.
hitler was the new ager ahead of his time.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
of course, of course. of course. we have to, why not, to precise and i'm ready to make the precision in each case. the only thing i ask... is to relieve this sort of strange extraterritoriality and fear which size us when the moment comes to characterize and to denounce for the sake of the muslims themselves. the fascism which enrages parts of the muslim world.
of course, of course. of course. we have to, why not, to precise and i'm ready to make the precision in each case. the only thing i ask... is to relieve this sort of strange extraterritoriality and fear which size us when the moment comes to characterize and to denounce for the sake of the muslims themselves. the fascism which enrages parts of the muslim world.
Paul Holdengräber
let me take back the power. just for one minute. did you think you ever lost power? you lost
let me take back the power. just for one minute. did you think you ever lost power? you lost
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i never had and you are invited in israel and in ravalah. we'll make the.
i never had and you are invited in israel and in ravalah. we'll make the.
Paul Holdengräber
's a marvelous proposition. now, i would like to come back bernard henri lévy to your book. and to on the one hand, the elegiac quality of it and the hopeful quality, you were talking about being rather more pessimistic. you, in some way, and maybe you can start by relating this famous phone call you got from sarkozy, you are in some way telling us that it still makes sense. to be a man on the left. you have this one line that you quote from aragon, i am irreducibly a man of the left. and if that expression makes you laugh, you're nothing but a buffoon. and in some way, i would like you to... explore with us to unpack for us what it means for you to still in this day and age be a man on the left, if it makes any sense really to differentiate left and right quite as much as you do and to speak generally speaking of your hope for mf.
's a marvelous proposition. now, i would like to come back bernard henri lévy to your book. and to on the one hand, the elegiac quality of it and the hopeful quality, you were talking about being rather more pessimistic. you, in some way, and maybe you can start by relating this famous phone call you got from sarkozy, you are in some way telling us that it still makes sense. to be a man on the left. you have this one line that you quote from aragon, i am irreducibly a man of the left. and if that expression makes you laugh, you're nothing but a buffoon. and in some way, i would like you to... explore with us to unpack for us what it means for you to still in this day and age be a man on the left, if it makes any sense really to differentiate left and right quite as much as you do and to speak generally speaking of your hope for mf.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
number one, yes, i think that... we have to. it's a duty if not there is no politics and maybe no society any longer. we have to distinguish the right and the left. we have to feed all that can make debates, the cities, the societies where there is no longer political debates, which could be the dream of some, and maybe of sarkozy. i think that they are mature for the worst, which is for dictatorship. so i do believe, of course, i do believe that you have to have a right, you have to have a left. it is not the only opposition. you have to have also inside the left, you have some debates. this is the purpose of my book. you have a left which is faithful to anti-colonialist tradition and you have a left also who being faithful to the anti-colonist tradition tries to be faithful to the anti-totalitarian movement and so on. so the more you have debates, the more you have dividing lines, the more you have political quarrels. the best, the better for the democracy, the better for the multiplication of powers, rights for the simple people.
number one, yes, i think that... we have to. it's a duty if not there is no politics and maybe no society any longer. we have to distinguish the right and the left. we have to feed all that can make debates, the cities, the societies where there is no longer political debates, which could be the dream of some, and maybe of sarkozy. i think that they are mature for the worst, which is for dictatorship. so i do believe, of course, i do believe that you have to have a right, you have to have a left. it is not the only opposition. you have to have also inside the left, you have some debates. this is the purpose of my book. you have a left which is faithful to anti-colonialist tradition and you have a left also who being faithful to the anti-colonist tradition tries to be faithful to the anti-totalitarian movement and so on. so the more you have debates, the more you have dividing lines, the more you have political quarrels. the best, the better for the democracy, the better for the multiplication of powers, rights for the simple people.
Paul Holdengräber
you talk about.
you talk about.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
left you dream of, even though it is a corpse.
left you dream of, even though it is a corpse.
Paul Holdengräber
about.
about.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
about sarkozy in this conversation which opened the book and which was the... impetus. yes, the occasional cause, i would say, of the book. i say two things to sarkozy, because he calls me to enlist me, to ask me. why don't you what are you waiting to endorse me? your friends.
about sarkozy in this conversation which opened the book and which was the... impetus. yes, the occasional cause, i would say, of the book. i say two things to sarkozy, because he calls me to enlist me, to ask me. why don't you what are you waiting to endorse me? your friends.
Paul Holdengräber
your friends have a
your friends have a
Bernard-Henri Lévy
endorsed me. of of your friends have done it, have written articles in le monde and so on. what are you waiting? four. we knew each other, we were even in the past years sort of buddies. he married my brother, we were rather close.
endorsed me. of of your friends have done it, have written articles in le monde and so on. what are you waiting? four. we knew each other, we were even in the past years sort of buddies. he married my brother, we were rather close.
Paul Holdengräber
bro.
bro.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
he didn't marry your brother. he married my brother with his wife. yes. he was the mayor of the city.
he didn't marry your brother. he married my brother with his wife. yes. he was the mayor of the city.
Paul Holdengräber
oh, he met.
oh, he met.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
very.
very.
Paul Holdengräber
i no, no, no. i know. no no. because, i mean, i thought that's a i thought even in france. in france.
i no, no, no. i know. no no. because, i mean, i thought that's a i thought even in france. in france.
Slavoj Žižek
.
.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i told you this would have been one of the results of may 68, nicolas sarkozy marrying my brother. you would have support. a mix between may 68 and my terrible english could give this sort of atypical aberration. no, he, he organized the wedding, he celebrated the wedding of my brother, so we had reasons to be close and he had reasons. to call me this day in this kind and gentle way, to which i replied in a gentle but very firm way, i said him no. and then i said to him, no, but i told him two things which are really for me the bottom of this book, the depth of this book. i told him that as an intellectual, as a writer, as a citizen, as everybody, i think that we have two duties. we have a duty of... of faithfulness and we have a duty of unfaithfulness. we have a duty to be faithful to our tradition. to our intellectual family, to the patterns, the models which made, molded each of us. and for me, my family is that. my father was a former fighter in the spanish war. i was bred in the idea that the left was better than the right, that there was a part of dream there which knew no equivalent on the right. and so i was faithful to that. that. and i told him also, and this is the real spark of the book, that a duty of faithfulness is worth nothing if it is not accompanied by a duty of unfaithfulness, which means when your family turns back to what you believe to be the justice, the truth and so on. then you have to be unfaithful to your family, then you have to contest, to fight against, but from inside your family. and when i see... so many leftists in my country today. who in name of anti-imperialism, for example, accept some crimes, who in name of anti-colonialism, because sudan is a former colony. refuse to condemn what is happening in darfur because condemning what is happening in darfur would mean to reproduce the old argument of the colonial time. when i see some of,es, in the name de tolerance, in the name of the id that each opinion is equal to everyone, refuse to cond those who condemn to death aan ir ali because it is an opinion, they say, you have some left today, some liberals in france, who say it is ayan iriali has an opinion. which is a provocative one, which consists in saying that islam is a bad thing and that she wants to go out. provocative means that it provokes another opinion which consists in banning her. and not only banning, but, prosecuting, and not only prosecuting, but condemning her to death. so when i see that in the left, i do believe that i have. i would not be faithful to myself if i was not also unfaithful. to this. well you know the left.
i told you this would have been one of the results of may 68, nicolas sarkozy marrying my brother. you would have support. a mix between may 68 and my terrible english could give this sort of atypical aberration. no, he, he organized the wedding, he celebrated the wedding of my brother, so we had reasons to be close and he had reasons. to call me this day in this kind and gentle way, to which i replied in a gentle but very firm way, i said him no. and then i said to him, no, but i told him two things which are really for me the bottom of this book, the depth of this book. i told him that as an intellectual, as a writer, as a citizen, as everybody, i think that we have two duties. we have a duty of... of faithfulness and we have a duty of unfaithfulness. we have a duty to be faithful to our tradition. to our intellectual family, to the patterns, the models which made, molded each of us. and for me, my family is that. my father was a former fighter in the spanish war. i was bred in the idea that the left was better than the right, that there was a part of dream there which knew no equivalent on the right. and so i was faithful to that. that. and i told him also, and this is the real spark of the book, that a duty of faithfulness is worth nothing if it is not accompanied by a duty of unfaithfulness, which means when your family turns back to what you believe to be the justice, the truth and so on. then you have to be unfaithful to your family, then you have to contest, to fight against, but from inside your family. and when i see... so many leftists in my country today. who in name of anti-imperialism, for example, accept some crimes, who in name of anti-colonialism, because sudan is a former colony. refuse to condemn what is happening in darfur because condemning what is happening in darfur would mean to reproduce the old argument of the colonial time. when i see some of,es, in the name de tolerance, in the name of the id that each opinion is equal to everyone, refuse to cond those who condemn to death aan ir ali because it is an opinion, they say, you have some left today, some liberals in france, who say it is ayan iriali has an opinion. which is a provocative one, which consists in saying that islam is a bad thing and that she wants to go out. provocative means that it provokes another opinion which consists in banning her. and not only banning, but, prosecuting, and not only prosecuting, but condemning her to death. so when i see that in the left, i do believe that i have. i would not be faithful to myself if i was not also unfaithful. to this. well you know the left.
Paul Holdengräber
that line of saul bellow when he says one doesn't love because, but in spite. in some ways, you remain faithful to the
that line of saul bellow when he says one doesn't love because, but in spite. in some ways, you remain faithful to the
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i remain faithful to the left, yes, in spite, but not only in spite. i do believe i think that there is an emergency to explain to the left, for example, that tolerance is good, but secularism is good too. it is urgent to say to the left that even if america supports darfur, darfur remains a cause that they have to support. i think it is urgent to say to the left that even when it is said in leftist rhetoric, anti-semitism is unbearable and so on. so not only in spite, i think that the battle has to be waged inside the left, which is in a terrible state in europe and also in america. and this battle has to be waged and that is why i wrote this book.
i remain faithful to the left, yes, in spite, but not only in spite. i do believe i think that there is an emergency to explain to the left, for example, that tolerance is good, but secularism is good too. it is urgent to say to the left that even if america supports darfur, darfur remains a cause that they have to support. i think it is urgent to say to the left that even when it is said in leftist rhetoric, anti-semitism is unbearable and so on. so not only in spite, i think that the battle has to be waged inside the left, which is in a terrible state in europe and also in america. and this battle has to be waged and that is why i wrote this book.
Paul Holdengräber
i think for you, lavoche, remaining faithful to the left, if indeed you are, means something slightly different.
i think for you, lavoche, remaining faithful to the left, if indeed you are, means something slightly different.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah yeah. it means... crazy, and if you allow me to explain it briefly, why? in some sense, i still consider myself a communist. why? when we talk about the left today, for me in a somewhat simplified way, the problem is fukuyama or not. that is to say, in the same sense as 30, 40 years ago we were dreaming about socialism with the human face, what most of the left today, so-called third way left and so on, effectively strives after is global capitalism with a human face, a little bit more tolerance, more this, more that and so on. against this, i still believe what first and i cannot emphas this strongly enough i accept all your points about antiemitism and so on and so on but on one point i insist the conflict which is presented to us by the media and so on as the main conflict between tolerant democratic openness, whatever, human rights and fundamentalism, this conflict with which we are bombarded is not the true conflict. it's in some sense a false conflict. something is missing in the equation between... liberal democracy, let's call it vaguely and fundamental. i think that both poles are here caught into each other, are part of the same self-propelling movement. what is missing is the left. and i hear thoro walter benjamin, who said that if i accept your designation of fundamentalism as fascism, that every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution. that's say it's easy to mock the left over it died. yes, that's why we have what we have today. second thing, the next question. now i will be here very rational, not in any way pathetic. i know, i'm open here. my god, maybe liberal capitalism works. i'm the first to admit that, let's be frank, that probably... no society in human history, large group. there was no society, in entire human history where such a large number of people lived such a relatively comfortable, safe and free lives as they did in western europe in the last. 50, 60 years. one has to admit it. but i see dark spots, dangers on the horizon. and now i come to the crucial question. to put it in these bombastic old marxist terms, are there antagonisms visible which i think it will not be able to solve them with the means of global capitalism we have it today? i think there are. a, ecology. i know market works wonders and so on. but but i claim the risk yeah yeah not these days yeah yeah yeah yeah the risks are too high. b. biogenetics. even fukuyama, as we know, he changed his position. he admits now that the biogenetic prospect ruins his notion of the end of history. then we we have the problem of intellectual property. i claim intellectual property. ich. notion which in the long term it will not be able to include it into private property. it cannot. there is something in intellectual property which is as it were in its nature communist. it resists private property. and the last point, new walls everywhere, new forms of apartheid and so on and so on. it is as if ironically the truth of globalization is not just the berlin wall fell. berlin wall fell, but now we have new walls all around. and again, i't have any naivety here. i'm not saying, oh, there will be a new leninist party. no, that story is definitely over. i agree with you. but some kind, why communism? because a, all these problems that i indicated, ecology, intellectual property and so on, are problems of commons, of something which is the shared substance of our life. and some in ecology it's clear, some kind of new form of collective activity but i totally agree with you nothing to do with communist party state or whatever that story is over we'll have to be will have to be invested. if not, if the system as it is will go on and on and on, then i think something will be going on which i fear very much. what in some of my books i called a soft revolution. we are not even aware of how slowly things are already regressing at a level of ethical standards even. for example, do you agree with this? when friends tell me, why such a fuss about guantanamo, torturing? but isn't it clear that in china they torture infinitely more? i say absolutely. i agree. i am not a hypocrite here. what matters to me is surface appearances. don't you find it what worries me is that 20, 30 years ago, if somebody were to advocate publicly torture, he or she would have been dismissed as an idiot. like you don't even have to argue. it would have been the same as to argue about rape. i would be very worried if i were to live in a society where one would have to argue all the time that one shouldn't rape women, how they put it? and it's not only the fact that we talk about torture in this way and numerous other facts. point towards something which i find a little bit worrisome and here in a strange way i find some contacts with you when you attack false notions of tolerance and so on the problem is how a certain way of false politically correct tolerance is is how tolerance overlaps with new forms of oppression paradoxically with new forms of censorship and so on and so on. so i find that although apparently we don't live in dynamic times in the sense of big struggles. it seems that we all agree somehow things are happening and put it sooner or later we will have somehow to confront the problem which was at the same time the basic problem of communism and the problem basically also of 68. let's not forget 68 was also a radical questioning of the existing global system. them.
yeah yeah. it means... crazy, and if you allow me to explain it briefly, why? in some sense, i still consider myself a communist. why? when we talk about the left today, for me in a somewhat simplified way, the problem is fukuyama or not. that is to say, in the same sense as 30, 40 years ago we were dreaming about socialism with the human face, what most of the left today, so-called third way left and so on, effectively strives after is global capitalism with a human face, a little bit more tolerance, more this, more that and so on. against this, i still believe what first and i cannot emphas this strongly enough i accept all your points about antiemitism and so on and so on but on one point i insist the conflict which is presented to us by the media and so on as the main conflict between tolerant democratic openness, whatever, human rights and fundamentalism, this conflict with which we are bombarded is not the true conflict. it's in some sense a false conflict. something is missing in the equation between... liberal democracy, let's call it vaguely and fundamental. i think that both poles are here caught into each other, are part of the same self-propelling movement. what is missing is the left. and i hear thoro walter benjamin, who said that if i accept your designation of fundamentalism as fascism, that every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution. that's say it's easy to mock the left over it died. yes, that's why we have what we have today. second thing, the next question. now i will be here very rational, not in any way pathetic. i know, i'm open here. my god, maybe liberal capitalism works. i'm the first to admit that, let's be frank, that probably... no society in human history, large group. there was no society, in entire human history where such a large number of people lived such a relatively comfortable, safe and free lives as they did in western europe in the last. 50, 60 years. one has to admit it. but i see dark spots, dangers on the horizon. and now i come to the crucial question. to put it in these bombastic old marxist terms, are there antagonisms visible which i think it will not be able to solve them with the means of global capitalism we have it today? i think there are. a, ecology. i know market works wonders and so on. but but i claim the risk yeah yeah not these days yeah yeah yeah yeah the risks are too high. b. biogenetics. even fukuyama, as we know, he changed his position. he admits now that the biogenetic prospect ruins his notion of the end of history. then we we have the problem of intellectual property. i claim intellectual property. ich. notion which in the long term it will not be able to include it into private property. it cannot. there is something in intellectual property which is as it were in its nature communist. it resists private property. and the last point, new walls everywhere, new forms of apartheid and so on and so on. it is as if ironically the truth of globalization is not just the berlin wall fell. berlin wall fell, but now we have new walls all around. and again, i't have any naivety here. i'm not saying, oh, there will be a new leninist party. no, that story is definitely over. i agree with you. but some kind, why communism? because a, all these problems that i indicated, ecology, intellectual property and so on, are problems of commons, of something which is the shared substance of our life. and some in ecology it's clear, some kind of new form of collective activity but i totally agree with you nothing to do with communist party state or whatever that story is over we'll have to be will have to be invested. if not, if the system as it is will go on and on and on, then i think something will be going on which i fear very much. what in some of my books i called a soft revolution. we are not even aware of how slowly things are already regressing at a level of ethical standards even. for example, do you agree with this? when friends tell me, why such a fuss about guantanamo, torturing? but isn't it clear that in china they torture infinitely more? i say absolutely. i agree. i am not a hypocrite here. what matters to me is surface appearances. don't you find it what worries me is that 20, 30 years ago, if somebody were to advocate publicly torture, he or she would have been dismissed as an idiot. like you don't even have to argue. it would have been the same as to argue about rape. i would be very worried if i were to live in a society where one would have to argue all the time that one shouldn't rape women, how they put it? and it's not only the fact that we talk about torture in this way and numerous other facts. point towards something which i find a little bit worrisome and here in a strange way i find some contacts with you when you attack false notions of tolerance and so on the problem is how a certain way of false politically correct tolerance is is how tolerance overlaps with new forms of oppression paradoxically with new forms of censorship and so on and so on. so i find that although apparently we don't live in dynamic times in the sense of big struggles. it seems that we all agree somehow things are happening and put it sooner or later we will have somehow to confront the problem which was at the same time the basic problem of communism and the problem basically also of 68. let's not forget 68 was also a radical questioning of the existing global system. them.
Paul Holdengräber
things are happening, but the response on both of your sides, it's quite different. for you. in your book violence, basically one of the things you're saying is we should have a kind of bartleby politics. i prefer not to. i remain disengaged. i will.
things are happening, but the response on both of your sides, it's quite different. for you. in your book violence, basically one of the things you're saying is we should have a kind of bartleby politics. i prefer not to. i remain disengaged. i will.
Slavoj Žižek
i talked too much. if you want to
i talked too much. if you want to
Paul Holdengräber
first, because i would love to explain this, but then i monopolize. and in your case, there is no doubt whether it's malot or sartre or other people who matter to you today, l'engagement, ça continue. you continue to believe in a world that you confront yourself with and that by knowing it, you will try in some form or another to change it. you say in the book violence, i don't have time now to read those passages, but basically let's... sometimes there's an urgency for us to act. stay out of it. no, no, i will ask. but then don't ask me my.
first, because i would love to explain this, but then i monopolize. and in your case, there is no doubt whether it's malot or sartre or other people who matter to you today, l'engagement, ça continue. you continue to believe in a world that you confront yourself with and that by knowing it, you will try in some form or another to change it. you say in the book violence, i don't have time now to read those passages, but basically let's... sometimes there's an urgency for us to act. stay out of it. no, no, i will ask. but then don't ask me my.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
ask what? i reply to sloy. what is your question?
ask what? i reply to sloy. what is your question?
Paul Holdengräber
my question is that for you, engagement... is still paramount.
my question is that for you, engagement... is still paramount.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i reply to slavoy first and i will go. to your question.
i reply to slavoy first and i will go. to your question.
Slavoj Žižek
reply okay sorry for things before
reply okay sorry for things before
Bernard-Henri Lévy
yes yes, you... you ask me.
yes yes, you... you ask me.
Paul Holdengräber
about torture, about guantanamo.
about torture, about guantanamo.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
t.
t.
Paul Holdengräber
more?
more?
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i do agree 100%. and for me, when i wrote american vertigo a few years ago, one of the most shocking things through which i went during my journey and my journey among intellectuals. was the fact that there was a debate about dossha. these and among leftists. among intellectual leftists, i don't want to call them here, they might not be here.
i do agree 100%. and for me, when i wrote american vertigo a few years ago, one of the most shocking things through which i went during my journey and my journey among intellectuals. was the fact that there was a debate about dossha. these and among leftists. among intellectual leftists, i don't want to call them here, they might not be here.
Slavoj Žižek
right.
right.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
or they might be here. if they are here, they can raise hands. but the resurgence in america of a debate on the question of under which circumstances torture should be tolerated, the ticking bomb theory, if there is a bomb ticking somewhere and that if you can spare some thousands of lives, would you not accept torture and so on. all these debates among scholars and intellectuals were such a regression. um related to just the text of albert camus about torture saying that torture is in every case unacceptable. on this i agree. if communism means this i'm surprised. if communism means just... that we have some things in common. that we have a common world to prendre care of, like ecology and so on. if communism is just that, then i am a communist too. and... and that's what you said. if communism is that, if it means that we are living again a strange time which is also a regression. regarding to our youth. where nations are building borders more and more constraining when a world where the sense of internationalism is withdrawing and so on. i agree with that. and for me, one of the most despairing characteristics of this time is, for example, the dream of internationalism, the dream of cosmopolitism, the dream of a world where of course there will be some borders, but some borders which are made to be respected and to be crossed. this dream is fading more and more because of souverainism, as we say in europe, because of nationalism, as it is said in other parts of the world and so on. so against that, i would love more community, a world more in common, and if that is communism, i take it. about fundamentalism and liberalism. then we don't agree at all. i'm ready to accept, of course, that liberalism produces some monsters, produces some horrors and produces some chaos. and we know it yesterday and today, in this very place, we saw how liberalism at the bush sauce, at the cut tax sauce and so on, can produce nearly disasters. fanny and freddy. and m l, all that is the product of a certain liberalism and it might lead this society to chaos, of course. nevertheless, i think that there is a great difference with fundamentalism, which is that i do believe that america will correct that. i do believe that if barack obama is elected according to what he said to his record track about this subject, there will be some regulation on financial speculation and so on, which will make that this sort of madness will not happen or not in the same way. s societies are societies closed on themselves based on humiliation and humiliation in particular. against those this part of humanity. which we saw in our youth, the liberation of which are the women. the fundamentalism, the thing which is unforgivable. the political fundamentalism is the status of the women, a world. where half of the humanity has to veil his face. a world où half de la humanity est consid not to être un real human being, but a living provocation. a world where you are a tool to reproduce the species, the human gender, and not a normal human being is a world which is deeply, on moral grounds, corrupted. and this cannot be accepted and cannot be compared to the mistakes and even to the crimes of liberalism.
or they might be here. if they are here, they can raise hands. but the resurgence in america of a debate on the question of under which circumstances torture should be tolerated, the ticking bomb theory, if there is a bomb ticking somewhere and that if you can spare some thousands of lives, would you not accept torture and so on. all these debates among scholars and intellectuals were such a regression. um related to just the text of albert camus about torture saying that torture is in every case unacceptable. on this i agree. if communism means this i'm surprised. if communism means just... that we have some things in common. that we have a common world to prendre care of, like ecology and so on. if communism is just that, then i am a communist too. and... and that's what you said. if communism is that, if it means that we are living again a strange time which is also a regression. regarding to our youth. where nations are building borders more and more constraining when a world where the sense of internationalism is withdrawing and so on. i agree with that. and for me, one of the most despairing characteristics of this time is, for example, the dream of internationalism, the dream of cosmopolitism, the dream of a world where of course there will be some borders, but some borders which are made to be respected and to be crossed. this dream is fading more and more because of souverainism, as we say in europe, because of nationalism, as it is said in other parts of the world and so on. so against that, i would love more community, a world more in common, and if that is communism, i take it. about fundamentalism and liberalism. then we don't agree at all. i'm ready to accept, of course, that liberalism produces some monsters, produces some horrors and produces some chaos. and we know it yesterday and today, in this very place, we saw how liberalism at the bush sauce, at the cut tax sauce and so on, can produce nearly disasters. fanny and freddy. and m l, all that is the product of a certain liberalism and it might lead this society to chaos, of course. nevertheless, i think that there is a great difference with fundamentalism, which is that i do believe that america will correct that. i do believe that if barack obama is elected according to what he said to his record track about this subject, there will be some regulation on financial speculation and so on, which will make that this sort of madness will not happen or not in the same way. s societies are societies closed on themselves based on humiliation and humiliation in particular. against those this part of humanity. which we saw in our youth, the liberation of which are the women. the fundamentalism, the thing which is unforgivable. the political fundamentalism is the status of the women, a world. where half of the humanity has to veil his face. a world où half de la humanity est consid not to être un real human being, but a living provocation. a world where you are a tool to reproduce the species, the human gender, and not a normal human being is a world which is deeply, on moral grounds, corrupted. and this cannot be accepted and cannot be compared to the mistakes and even to the crimes of liberalism.
Slavoj Žižek
i totally agree. my problem is only the following one. let's take today's fundamentalism. where does it come from? we all know and i hope we agree, today's fundamentalism has nothing to do with some ancient traditions, even when it has the form of returning to an ancient tradition. it's something which is generated by today's global capitalist process.
i totally agree. my problem is only the following one. let's take today's fundamentalism. where does it come from? we all know and i hope we agree, today's fundamentalism has nothing to do with some ancient traditions, even when it has the form of returning to an ancient tradition. it's something which is generated by today's global capitalist process.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
it depends no. why where did that come from? sorry, but...
it depends no. why where did that come from? sorry, but...
Slavoj Žižek
okay, it's a reaction to it. of course it's a reaction to it.
okay, it's a reaction to it. of course it's a reaction to it.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
yes, okay, reaction to it. it's already not the same sort of causality. okay, reaction to the capitalism, maybe. so... for this reason, you think that what we should
yes, okay, reaction to it. it's already not the same sort of causality. okay, reaction to the capitalism, maybe. so... for this reason, you think that what we should
Slavoj Žižek
what i think is that you cannot really fight fundamentally. my problem is not. i don't want to do any kind of a compromise in the sense of, no, fundamental, you know, i'm not this pseudo-hegelian dialectician, i hope none of us is, who says on the one hand, fundamentalism't too much. community, on the other hand, liberalism, too much individualism, so let's strike the proper measure. no, what i'm saying is that liberalism is not enough to fight fundamentalism. it always gets caught into liberalism, as it were, generates it, cannot stand of its own, for theoretical reasons, for other reasons, and so on.
what i think is that you cannot really fight fundamentally. my problem is not. i don't want to do any kind of a compromise in the sense of, no, fundamental, you know, i'm not this pseudo-hegelian dialectician, i hope none of us is, who says on the one hand, fundamentalism't too much. community, on the other hand, liberalism, too much individualism, so let's strike the proper measure. no, what i'm saying is that liberalism is not enough to fight fundamentalism. it always gets caught into liberalism, as it were, generates it, cannot stand of its own, for theoretical reasons, for other reasons, and so on.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
there are many reasons of the fundamentalism. there are, of course, these reasons you say.
there are many reasons of the fundamentalism. there are, of course, these reasons you say.
Slavoj Žižek
did did you read the wonderful book of kai chu that that fundamental how is it called, the philosopher of al-qaeda. who was studying in america, sh kw, i think. yeah, you know him, no, the big guy. okay. isn't it absolutely clear that he was shocked by what he saw in its reaction to liberalism, only in this sense.
did did you read the wonderful book of kai chu that that fundamental how is it called, the philosopher of al-qaeda. who was studying in america, sh kw, i think. yeah, you know him, no, the big guy. okay. isn't it absolutely clear that he was shocked by what he saw in its reaction to liberalism, only in this sense.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
but he was shocked by what? he was shocked by the freedom. he was shocked by the free speech. he was shocked by the face of the women in the street. so should we suppress the face of the women in the street in order to help them not to react and not to be fundamentalist? i think there is another way. no. because what he says, what this sort of guys say is that mohamed atta said that. we have the confession of his roommate in hamburg who says exactly that. mohamed atta, the man who was on the world trade center, was shocked. to see these girls with mini-skirts, was shocked to see this free speech in cafes and so on in berlin, was shocked by this atmosphere of corruption in the great city. and that's why he became a terrorist. so two ways of reacting to that. first way, we have to suppress big cities. we have to imprison our women not to provoke the reaction of m. i think it is not the right way to do. the other way to do... is to say that the free speech the equality between hommes and femmes. the human rights in general are values which can be generalized, universalized, without breaking the balance, the cultural ecology of this or that country. we can imagine and we have to imagine, and this is the demand of all the democrats of the arab countries. we have to imagine, for example, arab countries, but not only, also in asia. yeah. whoent what they sont, whoent faithful to the meilleure de their culture, whoent faithful to the best de tradition and who ajout à that. theé entre hommes et femmes, qui add that the fact de pas killing les gays parce they sont gay, who add to that the freedom de press. we had this debate en europe. 20 years ago in france, 20 years ago we had some people, some great thinkers, some real philosophers who said, don't touch the death penalty in france. if you touch the death penalty, read hegel, read kant, emmanuel kant, read all the big minds, beccaria and so on, you will destroy the state. the whole system holds by the key of the death penalty. if you suppress the key, everything will fall into ruins. thanks god. if i dare say, we had this guy, this man you are going to invite in a few days, robert badinter. who said, wait a minute, we are going to suppress death penalty? and you will see. the french soviet society will stay alive, the state will continue to function. and he was right and françois mitterrand was right. one century ago, two centuries ago, you had people in france who said... if you accept the right to mock god, if you accept the right to blaspheme, if you accept the right to go out of christianity, it is the end of the world. and people thought that so much that people like chevalier de la barre, defended by voltaire, was tortured. cut into pieces because he refused to take off his hat on a procession of priests. these people said, if you accept this way of being irreligious, if you accept the secularism, it's the end of the world. at the end of the day, the secularisme triumphs in france. you have the right to mock god, you have the right to say that you don't believe in god, you have the right to say to make some cartoons. about islam. and about christianity. and the real faithful to islam, the real worshippers of christianity remain. maybe they are offended, but the society works like this. the same should, can and should happen in the rest of the world. there is no reason. to accept the moral blackmail of those who tell us, if you impose us the equality between men and women, if you impose us the right to mock god, our societies
but he was shocked by what? he was shocked by the freedom. he was shocked by the free speech. he was shocked by the face of the women in the street. so should we suppress the face of the women in the street in order to help them not to react and not to be fundamentalist? i think there is another way. no. because what he says, what this sort of guys say is that mohamed atta said that. we have the confession of his roommate in hamburg who says exactly that. mohamed atta, the man who was on the world trade center, was shocked. to see these girls with mini-skirts, was shocked to see this free speech in cafes and so on in berlin, was shocked by this atmosphere of corruption in the great city. and that's why he became a terrorist. so two ways of reacting to that. first way, we have to suppress big cities. we have to imprison our women not to provoke the reaction of m. i think it is not the right way to do. the other way to do... is to say that the free speech the equality between hommes and femmes. the human rights in general are values which can be generalized, universalized, without breaking the balance, the cultural ecology of this or that country. we can imagine and we have to imagine, and this is the demand of all the democrats of the arab countries. we have to imagine, for example, arab countries, but not only, also in asia. yeah. whoent what they sont, whoent faithful to the meilleure de their culture, whoent faithful to the best de tradition and who ajout à that. theé entre hommes et femmes, qui add that the fact de pas killing les gays parce they sont gay, who add to that the freedom de press. we had this debate en europe. 20 years ago in france, 20 years ago we had some people, some great thinkers, some real philosophers who said, don't touch the death penalty in france. if you touch the death penalty, read hegel, read kant, emmanuel kant, read all the big minds, beccaria and so on, you will destroy the state. the whole system holds by the key of the death penalty. if you suppress the key, everything will fall into ruins. thanks god. if i dare say, we had this guy, this man you are going to invite in a few days, robert badinter. who said, wait a minute, we are going to suppress death penalty? and you will see. the french soviet society will stay alive, the state will continue to function. and he was right and françois mitterrand was right. one century ago, two centuries ago, you had people in france who said... if you accept the right to mock god, if you accept the right to blaspheme, if you accept the right to go out of christianity, it is the end of the world. and people thought that so much that people like chevalier de la barre, defended by voltaire, was tortured. cut into pieces because he refused to take off his hat on a procession of priests. these people said, if you accept this way of being irreligious, if you accept the secularism, it's the end of the world. at the end of the day, the secularisme triumphs in france. you have the right to mock god, you have the right to say that you don't believe in god, you have the right to say to make some cartoons. about islam. and about christianity. and the real faithful to islam, the real worshippers of christianity remain. maybe they are offended, but the society works like this. the same should, can and should happen in the rest of the world. there is no reason. to accept the moral blackmail of those who tell us, if you impose us the equality between men and women, if you impose us the right to mock god, our societies
Slavoj Žižek
will be destroyed.
will be destroyed.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
and we'll explore. so the real point is, should we universalize or not the human rights? or should we under the pretext that there are european values coming from the western world and so on not do it. i think that we have to do it and that it is what the... average. a silent majority of these countries are waiting for us.
and we'll explore. so the real point is, should we universalize or not the human rights? or should we under the pretext that there are european values coming from the western world and so on not do it. i think that we have to do it and that it is what the... average. a silent majority of these countries are waiting for us.
Slavoj Žižek
not surprised.
not surprised.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
keep.
keep.
Slavoj Žižek
not.
not.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
these yeah, yeah.
these yeah, yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
i think this solution doesn't work. it's utopia. this is the true utopia.
i think this solution doesn't work. it's utopia. this is the true utopia.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
two minutes.
two minutes.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry?
sorry?
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i give you... no, no, no.
i give you... no, no, no.
Slavoj Žižek
i give you four. dom.
i give you four. dom.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
go ahead.
go ahead.
Slavoj Žižek
okay, let me be as short as possible. first, i think that okay, i don't have time to go it i would need half an hour, but i think that... when you check that is...
okay, let me be as short as possible. first, i think that okay, i don't have time to go it i would need half an hour, but i think that... when you check that is...
Bernard-Henri Lévy
i.
i.
Slavoj Žižek
we shouldn't abandon feminine equality and so on and so on. but the whole point is what to do. i think the standard predominant liberal answer, inclusive your formula, doesn't work. fundamentalism is a false, pathological... socially pathological, sorry, oh my god.
we shouldn't abandon feminine equality and so on and so on. but the whole point is what to do. i think the standard predominant liberal answer, inclusive your formula, doesn't work. fundamentalism is a false, pathological... socially pathological, sorry, oh my god.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
thank you.
thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
want me fired for. uh. i think that fundamentalism is... which is why i think that fundamentalism will not disappear. my god you think you praise this country when this country is now in the works of a catastrophe. where do you see this liberalism? you will have sarah palin as a president. and now i come to the weakness of liberalism you will have her exploiting precisely the weaknesses of the left. what are her advantages? first i claim the left is paying the price a reach total ignorance of the working class. the united states multiculturalist left, they don't like the working class. so you have now the first youth, thought palealing, blah, blah, blah. they want that. b. b, our common friend, i think, jacqueline miller, wrote a nice comment, maybe you read it in le point, where he made another wonderful simple point that sarah palin is a new type of women politician. it's no longer the old type which was, to use somewhat descriptively naive terms, more phallic than men themselves, like margaret thatler, indira gandhi, we may be women, but we are tougher than and so on. no, she fully displays her feminism and so on. isn't this an incredible paradox that the republicans took over what was supposed to be the democratic ideal and so on and so on? things are, of course, more complicated here because i think that there are many paradoxes here. the main one is this one. when republicans say change, we stand for change. of course, the message between the lines is like plus change plus reste le même, we will do the necessary change. to to make it sure that nothing will really change, as it is clear from their program. but i fear something and i share your fears. they of course are probably cynics and... consciously manipulate with it. like to use the famous lipstick metaphor, mccain is bush with lipstick. with lipstick of no bullshitting and so on and so on. it's the same politics. what i'm afraid of is, as we are both aware, works are never only works. so what i'm afraid, it's not that they are cheating. but they are not cheating. that they will really change something. and i don't like to think what they will change, how put it. but to go back to your point, you see, that's my simple problem. yes, liberalism, of course i am for everything there, what you said. my god, of course. my point is only that... there is something, a flaw in liberal. project which generates fundamentalism. i don't have time to develop it now. it's not even very original. and my problem is the same as yours. of course i don't want the fundamentalists to fill in this gap. i totally agree with you. that's where we need the left. liberalist legacy for which both of us care. what you said, my god, automatically, i admit it, equality of sexes, no, blah, blah, blah, can only be.
want me fired for. uh. i think that fundamentalism is... which is why i think that fundamentalism will not disappear. my god you think you praise this country when this country is now in the works of a catastrophe. where do you see this liberalism? you will have sarah palin as a president. and now i come to the weakness of liberalism you will have her exploiting precisely the weaknesses of the left. what are her advantages? first i claim the left is paying the price a reach total ignorance of the working class. the united states multiculturalist left, they don't like the working class. so you have now the first youth, thought palealing, blah, blah, blah. they want that. b. b, our common friend, i think, jacqueline miller, wrote a nice comment, maybe you read it in le point, where he made another wonderful simple point that sarah palin is a new type of women politician. it's no longer the old type which was, to use somewhat descriptively naive terms, more phallic than men themselves, like margaret thatler, indira gandhi, we may be women, but we are tougher than and so on. no, she fully displays her feminism and so on. isn't this an incredible paradox that the republicans took over what was supposed to be the democratic ideal and so on and so on? things are, of course, more complicated here because i think that there are many paradoxes here. the main one is this one. when republicans say change, we stand for change. of course, the message between the lines is like plus change plus reste le même, we will do the necessary change. to to make it sure that nothing will really change, as it is clear from their program. but i fear something and i share your fears. they of course are probably cynics and... consciously manipulate with it. like to use the famous lipstick metaphor, mccain is bush with lipstick. with lipstick of no bullshitting and so on and so on. it's the same politics. what i'm afraid of is, as we are both aware, works are never only works. so what i'm afraid, it's not that they are cheating. but they are not cheating. that they will really change something. and i don't like to think what they will change, how put it. but to go back to your point, you see, that's my simple problem. yes, liberalism, of course i am for everything there, what you said. my god, of course. my point is only that... there is something, a flaw in liberal. project which generates fundamentalism. i don't have time to develop it now. it's not even very original. and my problem is the same as yours. of course i don't want the fundamentalists to fill in this gap. i totally agree with you. that's where we need the left. liberalist legacy for which both of us care. what you said, my god, automatically, i admit it, equality of sexes, no, blah, blah, blah, can only be.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
but everywhere.
but everywhere.
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely everywhere. no, no, absolutely everywhere. wait a minute, i am not any kind of cultural relativist and so on. i wrote even a treaty. here we agree against tolerance, against the falsity of tolerance, against how today we tend to mystify and use the term tolerance to justify moral indifference and so on and so on like racism. did you notice this is where my and i hope i will now awaken some of your old marxism if i say this. you need to be don't be afraid. when we take over, you will not go to gul like just two years of re-education camp would be. good for you. so the beginning of re-education. didn't you find it strange how today when we talk about racism, it's automatically a question of tolerance but as we oldists, know. rich martin luther king, he, as far as i know, never uses the term tolerance. it would be for him humiliating to say blacks need to be more tolerant. no, as you said, for him, racism is the problem of not enough universal values, legal rights, economic exploitation and so on and so on and so on. why do we today automatically transform racism into a problem of tolerance? because, as you said, politics is receding in a new technological. world, the only conflicts which remain are cultural conflicts and all you can do there is to tolerate differences and so on and so on. so on this question of universality, i'm here even more than you. i would do one step further against aggressive universality and i will say, no who is at the end of this universal line. not me, robespierre, no, but that's another question, where we may be disagree.
absolutely everywhere. no, no, absolutely everywhere. wait a minute, i am not any kind of cultural relativist and so on. i wrote even a treaty. here we agree against tolerance, against the falsity of tolerance, against how today we tend to mystify and use the term tolerance to justify moral indifference and so on and so on like racism. did you notice this is where my and i hope i will now awaken some of your old marxism if i say this. you need to be don't be afraid. when we take over, you will not go to gul like just two years of re-education camp would be. good for you. so the beginning of re-education. didn't you find it strange how today when we talk about racism, it's automatically a question of tolerance but as we oldists, know. rich martin luther king, he, as far as i know, never uses the term tolerance. it would be for him humiliating to say blacks need to be more tolerant. no, as you said, for him, racism is the problem of not enough universal values, legal rights, economic exploitation and so on and so on and so on. why do we today automatically transform racism into a problem of tolerance? because, as you said, politics is receding in a new technological. world, the only conflicts which remain are cultural conflicts and all you can do there is to tolerate differences and so on and so on. so on this question of universality, i'm here even more than you. i would do one step further against aggressive universality and i will say, no who is at the end of this universal line. not me, robespierre, no, but that's another question, where we may be disagree.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
we have even a great french writer who said, tolerance, we have houses for that.
we have even a great french writer who said, tolerance, we have houses for that.
Paul Holdengräber
con.
con.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
and paul claudel and houses for that. c is maison de tolérance,'est le, le code de bordel, brothels. so paulel said, tolerance. common.
and paul claudel and houses for that. c is maison de tolérance,'est le, le code de bordel, brothels. so paulel said, tolerance. common.
Slavoj Žižek
we have houses. thank you and him claudel, i love him. trilogy is my favorite piece of french.
we have houses. thank you and him claudel, i love him. trilogy is my favorite piece of french.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
clud, by the way, in 1941, i quote that in a chapter of the book. uh... evokes the nazism, evokes this sort of barbarity taking birth in the heart of europe and says is a.
clud, by the way, in 1941, i quote that in a chapter of the book. uh... evokes the nazism, evokes this sort of barbarity taking birth in the heart of europe and says is a.
Paul Holdengräber
of islamic fundamentalism, very strangely enough.
of islamic fundamentalism, very strangely enough.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
in his diary. so... on sarah paline, ok, what do you want? of course she is... the race today is barack obama against sarah palin. john mccain has disappeared. there is, not even a candidacy john mccain. it is sarah paline against barack obama. and we have just to hope that this does not turn to the catastrophe. the real point of this agreement is nevertheless about liberalism. i do believe that you can turn it the way you want. there is a part, a real part of the inherit of the left which is linked to liberalism. liberalism is not only wall street, the tycoons of the big companies and so on. liberalism is delacroix, liberalism is gavroche, liberalism is la commune. la commune de paris had the flag of liberalism. they praise the liberalism of the press, the. considered as a freedom of meeting and so on and so on. liberalism belongs to the tradition, to the heritageherit, to the wealth of the left. and what i see today... really, and it is a... this despairing tendency on the left in europe and in america to let to drop flat the heritage, to leave the liberalism to the right and to the tycoon of wall street. and this is very strange because the same leftists, for example when they come to the question of nation, they say, we have not to abandon the question of nation. nation does not belong to the right. we should wage the battle. okay, why not? sometimes about the flag, they say we have to deliver to wage the battle of the flag ok, strangely enough, they don't do the same about liberalism. they quit the field. they abandoned the fight. and this for me is one of the worst symptomatic signs of the period in which we live. this amputation of the progressive camp, of the liberal camp in america and in france, of this whole part of its heritage is mysterious. and dramatic and deserves at least a reflection.
in his diary. so... on sarah paline, ok, what do you want? of course she is... the race today is barack obama against sarah palin. john mccain has disappeared. there is, not even a candidacy john mccain. it is sarah paline against barack obama. and we have just to hope that this does not turn to the catastrophe. the real point of this agreement is nevertheless about liberalism. i do believe that you can turn it the way you want. there is a part, a real part of the inherit of the left which is linked to liberalism. liberalism is not only wall street, the tycoons of the big companies and so on. liberalism is delacroix, liberalism is gavroche, liberalism is la commune. la commune de paris had the flag of liberalism. they praise the liberalism of the press, the. considered as a freedom of meeting and so on and so on. liberalism belongs to the tradition, to the heritageherit, to the wealth of the left. and what i see today... really, and it is a... this despairing tendency on the left in europe and in america to let to drop flat the heritage, to leave the liberalism to the right and to the tycoon of wall street. and this is very strange because the same leftists, for example when they come to the question of nation, they say, we have not to abandon the question of nation. nation does not belong to the right. we should wage the battle. okay, why not? sometimes about the flag, they say we have to deliver to wage the battle of the flag ok, strangely enough, they don't do the same about liberalism. they quit the field. they abandoned the fight. and this for me is one of the worst symptomatic signs of the period in which we live. this amputation of the progressive camp, of the liberal camp in america and in france, of this whole part of its heritage is mysterious. and dramatic and deserves at least a reflection.
Paul Holdengräber
not strangely enough, might i say, not strangely enough, all the questions i got here have been amply covered in this conversation. but
not strangely enough, might i say, not strangely enough, all the questions i got here have been amply covered in this conversation. but
Bernard-Henri Lévy
evening is a disaster, by the way. you hoped a fight. and the quarrel and you had not so much
evening is a disaster, by the way. you hoped a fight. and the quarrel and you had not so much
Paul Holdengräber
even failure.
even failure.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
um.
um.
Paul Holdengräber
lav, you want to say something very. really. you have 60 seconds.
lav, you want to say something very. really. you have 60 seconds.
Slavoj Žižek
really quickly yes first maybe at the level of facts, i don't quite follow your diagnosis because for example, let's take here concretely in the united states maybe i should take you a tour to the united states another one. what here presents itself as a radical left yeah a radical politically correct left. it's for me strictly a radicalized liberalism. what is political correctness? it's not a certain kind false i even tend to agree with you. liberalism brought brought to extreme. so maybe, of course it's true at the level of some debates, but basically i think that the left on the contrary, perceives itself as a radicalization of liberalism and even worse, it's a kind of a totally depoliticized liberalism. what and i hope you agree here where i opposed today's predominant american academic left is that instead of politics we get legalism and moralizing. it's moralizing, horror, racism and so on and then legalism and the proper place for political action political action is disappearing. very briefly, i will stop there. as to your point of engagement and so on no, i am also very engaged and so on. what i only mean is the following thing and if you read closely my book, i put it in this way. first, isn't it that often there is a false engagement in the sense that, okay, in what sense? let me tell you a short story don't be afraid. what happened to me in my psychoanalysis? as you can imagine, i talked all the time. it wasn't successful. yeah i talked all the time why? because i was afraid that if i stop talking for a second, the analyst may ask me a truly pertinent question i have been feeling this all evening yeah thank you often what we intellectuals engage in, all these protest activities and so on are, as it was very well described already by george orwell in the late 30s. he said the left, the british liberal, liberal, official socialist left, talks so much about change as a superstitious item, let's talk about it so that nothing will really change, how to put it. all i'm saying is that sometimes when with your apparent, even critical activity, you keep things going on. the truly subversive thing is not to be violent, to do nothing. and that's what i say in the book. that maybe it's a very modest proposal. maybe i'm much more modest than i appear here. do we really know where we are today? do we even have a good theory about what goes on but your reaction is
really quickly yes first maybe at the level of facts, i don't quite follow your diagnosis because for example, let's take here concretely in the united states maybe i should take you a tour to the united states another one. what here presents itself as a radical left yeah a radical politically correct left. it's for me strictly a radicalized liberalism. what is political correctness? it's not a certain kind false i even tend to agree with you. liberalism brought brought to extreme. so maybe, of course it's true at the level of some debates, but basically i think that the left on the contrary, perceives itself as a radicalization of liberalism and even worse, it's a kind of a totally depoliticized liberalism. what and i hope you agree here where i opposed today's predominant american academic left is that instead of politics we get legalism and moralizing. it's moralizing, horror, racism and so on and then legalism and the proper place for political action political action is disappearing. very briefly, i will stop there. as to your point of engagement and so on no, i am also very engaged and so on. what i only mean is the following thing and if you read closely my book, i put it in this way. first, isn't it that often there is a false engagement in the sense that, okay, in what sense? let me tell you a short story don't be afraid. what happened to me in my psychoanalysis? as you can imagine, i talked all the time. it wasn't successful. yeah i talked all the time why? because i was afraid that if i stop talking for a second, the analyst may ask me a truly pertinent question i have been feeling this all evening yeah thank you often what we intellectuals engage in, all these protest activities and so on are, as it was very well described already by george orwell in the late 30s. he said the left, the british liberal, liberal, official socialist left, talks so much about change as a superstitious item, let's talk about it so that nothing will really change, how to put it. all i'm saying is that sometimes when with your apparent, even critical activity, you keep things going on. the truly subversive thing is not to be violent, to do nothing. and that's what i say in the book. that maybe it's a very modest proposal. maybe i'm much more modest than i appear here. do we really know where we are today? do we even have a good theory about what goes on but your reaction is
Paul Holdengräber
not to step back.
not to step back.
Slavoj Žižek
no, back into thinking, into thinking. we need to think to.
no, back into thinking, into thinking. we need to think to.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
not to step
not to step