Modern How-To Guide
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-05-05 · 1:23:04 · 11,411 words
ideologyhegel-dialecticscommunism-socialismfascism-populismpsychoanalysisreligion-theologydemocracyliberalism-political-correctnesshistorygeopolitics-wareconomicssubjectivityrevolution-violenceeveryday-lifephilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging lecture in Warsaw touching on the failures of the Frankfurt School to theorize Stalinism as a product of Enlightenment, the structural differences between Stalinism and Nazism (show trials, public confession, applause rituals), and the politicization of religion as a symptom of the depoliticization of public life under late capitalism. He then examines how freedom in Western liberal societies is paradoxically constrained by non-transparent structural frameworks (TISA, debt), how power reproduces itself through inherent obscene transgression, and why Syriza's modest social-democratic demands are treated as radical threats, illustrating the ideological logic of control through debt and the permissive super-ego.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “Dialektik der Aufklärung”
Žižek invokes Adorno/Horkheimer's thesis that 20th-century horrors are immanent potentials of modernity itself, arguing Stalinism is a clearer case than fascism of this dialectic.
Žižek's characterization of fascism: an impossible dream of having capitalism without class struggle, requiring an external enemy (the Jews) to displace internal contradiction.
as “show trials / public confession”
Žižek treats the Stalinist show trial, where the accused confesses publicly as a rational subject, as evidence that Stalinism, unlike Nazism, preserves a (perverted) Enlightenment structure of universal reason.
Žižek's characterization of the communist project: it began as a genuine emancipatory explosion, had no viable alternative path, yet turned into a nightmare, making it a tragedy in the classical sense rather than a simple betrayal or contingent failure.
as “instrumentelle Vernunft”
Žižek references the Frankfurt School's concept of instrumental reason, tracing it back to primitive magic thinking, but finds this genealogy too broad to do explanatory work for Stalinism.
Žižek argues (following Boris Buden) that religion today is not invading politics but replacing politics entirely, functioning as the return of the political in a depoliticized society.
Žižek's Marxist principle that formal rights, even when initially exclusionary, have emancipatory potential because people can demand their expansion rather than dismissing them as 'merely formal'.
as “self-entrepreneur”
Žižek's label for the postmodern ideological fiction that each individual is a small capitalist freely managing their own human capital, which generates anxiety while masking structural unfreedom.
as “precarious work as new freedom”
Žižek identifies a postmodern ideological trick whereby the anxiety-producing precarity of flexible labour is repackaged by theorists like Giddens as liberation from state prescription.
Žižek distinguishes individual freedom of choice within a given social frame from the collective freedom to change that frame itself, arguing the latter is increasingly unimaginable.
as “super-ego (Über-ich)”
Žižek highlights the Freudian paradox that the more you obey the super-ego the guiltier you feel, applying it to the way European creditors position Greece, permanently guilty regardless of compliance.
as “the indebted man”
Žižek borrows Lazzarato's figure of the indebted man to argue that debt replaces direct domination (Herrschaft) as the primary mechanism of social control under contemporary capitalism.
as “big Other”
Implicitly operative in Žižek's discussion of symbolic authority: the impersonal order that speaks through even an idiotic official once they wear the proper insignia.
Žižek uses Lacan's term to describe the fetishist logic of traditional authority: even knowing the person is an idiot, one defers to the insignia of power as a higher symbolic function.
as “je sais bien, mais quand même”
Žižek invokes this Lacanian/fetishist formula, 'I know very well, but nonetheless', to describe how subjects defer to authority even while knowing it is contingent.
Žižek's term for the obscene, unofficial underside of any institution, dirty jokes, perverse rituals, homosocial innuendo in the army, which is not subversive but constitutive and necessary for formal power to reproduce itself.
as “cynicism as ideological necessity”
Žižek argues late ideology does not merely function despite cynical distance, it requires not being taken seriously; true belief is dangerous to the system, as shown by Yugoslav nomenklatura expelling those who sincerely believed in self-management.
Stories he reaches for 11
Unlike Hitler who stands still and accepts applause as its proper addressee, the Stalinist leader joins the applause after his own speech, because the ideological position is not that of a leader but of the perfect servant of historical necessity.
“When you have a Stalinist leadership, after Stalin's speech people applaud, always the leader joins the applause. Does he applaud himself? No, because the logic is totally different.”
Every year on Stalin's birthday, even the harshest Gulag camp inmates were gathered and required to sign a collective telegram wishing him well. Žižek notes this would have been meaningless in Nazi Germany, you cannot imagine Auschwitz inmates sending birthday wishes to Hitler.
“Even in the harshest times, every year on Stalin's birthday all prisoners in a Gulag camp were gathered and had to sign each of them a telegram to Comrade Stalin wishing him all the best.”
A traditional patriarchal father simply orders the son to visit grandmother; the postmodern permissive father says 'you are free to go or not' but elaborates on how much grandmother loves him, effectively commanding not just the act but the desire, which is a deeper terror.
“He is not just ordering you to go—he is ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. This is the true terror: not just you have to do it but you have to want to do it.”
When a rich acquaintance invites a poor friend to dinner and everyone knows in advance the rich one will pay, the poor guest must still ritually insist on paying, a performance of politeness that illustrates ideology at its most elementary: the freedom of choice that must produce the correct outcome.
“Although we all know in advance that you will pay, there is a ritual that I have to insist a little bit—no, no, no, let me pay—and then we play this game.”
To resolve the tension between declaring a Black Republic and recognizing Polish allies, Haiti's constitution declared all citizens black regardless of skin color, a formal-universal solution to the contradiction of racial solidarity.
“Haiti is a Black Republic, all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. I think this is an absolutely ingenious solution.”
A friend's acquaintance, at the moment of signing the military pledge, told the officer he did not want to sign. Trapped between insisting on free will and issuing an order, the officer eventually gave him a written statement ordering him to freely sign the oath, a perfect example of ideological contradiction made visible.
“The officer gave him a written statement claiming that he, the officer, is ordering him, the soldier, to freely sign the oath.”
As a young half-dissident, Žižek and colleagues on a student journal published a special issue treating communist elections as real: reporting live results as if genuine competition. The party bureaucrat was furious but could not say the elections were fake, ending with the admission 'you know very well what I mean.'
“They couldn't have told us 'no, they were not free elections.' He just said: boys, don't fuck with me, you know very well what I mean.”
Two friends who worked in the Central Committee in the 1970s lost their jobs, not for dissidence but for sincerely believing in the official self-management ideology. The nomenklatura treated true belief as more threatening than cynicism.
“The biggest fear for the late communist was people who would really still believe in Marxism; immediately they expelled them from party.”
Žižek cites the film's opening, where a contestant accused of cheating is tortured by police, as a realistic depiction of Indian policing that his Indian friends confirmed: if you are not very rich, the police simply torture you.
“Did you see Slumdog Millionaire? The guy who is just accused of cheating a little bit at some TV quiz is taken to a police station and there tortured with electricity.”
Putin's reaction to Conchita Wurst winning Eurovision was almost a step towards Boko Haram, citing the Bible's two kinds of people, men and women, illustrating the link between sexual politics and religious-fundamentalist reaction to modernity.
“Putin said: I read in the Bible there are two kinds of people, men and women. What is going on now here?”
When Venezuela-backed Argentina unexpectedly repaid its IMF debt, the IMF's first reaction was horror, they perceived it as catastrophic news, revealing that permanent indebtedness, not repayment, is the system's actual goal.
“The official first reaction from IMF was: oh my god, what does it mean now? They perceived it as catastrophic news that Argentina returned the debt.”
Works invoked 9
Roots tv
Žižek mentions it as an example of ruling ideology easily accommodating the pre-Haiti model of Black rebellion as return-to-roots identity politics, contrasted with the universalist rupture of the Haitian Revolution.
Žižek endorses Lazzarato's thesis that debt has replaced direct domination as the primary mechanism of social control, describing it as a 'simple but true' theory.
Slumdog Millionaire film
Žižek calls it 'a shitty movie' but acknowledges 'a moment of truth' in the opening torture scene, which his Indian friends confirmed accurately depicts routine police practice.
Soviet Marxism book
Žižek read it decades ago and dismisses it as a very specific analysis of Khrushchev's 20th Congress speech, not the systematic theory of Stalinism he is looking for.
Gulag: A History book
Žižek cites Applebaum's book as the source for the birthday telegram detail; used to illustrate the Enlightenment dimension of Stalinism.
Žižek invokes it as the essential framework for understanding totalitarianism as immanent to Enlightenment, but criticizes its application, it traces instrumental reason all the way back to primitive magic, making it too broad to explain Stalinism specifically.
Žižek cites Kołakowski's first volume as doing the theoretical work the Frankfurt School failed to do: tracing the emergence of totalitarianism from Enlightenment from a Marxist revisionist perspective.
Politeia (Republic) book
Žižek defends the Republic against liberal anti-Platonic critics, citing its exclusion of slavery and explicit gender equality as making Plato more progressive than Aristotle.
Žižek calls it a 'sacred text of Stalinism' and quotes its language ('piece of shit, vermin, insect') applied to the show trial condemned, illustrating the paradoxical co-presence of degradation and universal reason.
People invoked 34
Ivan Hvala positive
Žižek names him as a friend who lost his Central Committee position for sincerely believing in self-management ideology, evidence that true belief was dangerous in late socialism.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Žižek credits Zupančič and other Lacanian colleagues in Slovenia for the analysis of how traditional power operates through fetishist logic of symbolic castration.
Mentioned as one of the American-mobilized allies against the Soviet-backed Afghan communists, illustrating how the West created the conditions for fundamentalism.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Žižek invokes Adorno's Dialektik der Aufklärung positively as a framework, while criticizing the Frankfurt School's failure to apply it to Stalinism; he reads Adorno's biography.
Leszek Kołakowski positive
Žižek cites the first volume of Main Currents of Marxism as a work by a Marxist revisionist behind the Iron Curtain that does theorize the emergence of totalitarianism from Enlightenment.
Žižek mentions Bukharin as the paradigmatic figure of the Stalinist show trial and public confession.
Žižek quotes Zhirinovsky's claim that Europe now has no men and women but only 'it', a Stephen King monster, as an extreme example of the fundamentalist-adjacent reaction to LGBT rights.
Arundhati Roy positive
Žižek invokes Roy's letter to him about middle-class media bias in rape coverage vs. the hidden nightmare of child sex trafficking in Bombay brothels, to illustrate bourgeois freedom's selective visibility.
Judith Butler positive
Despite many polemics, Žižek agrees with Butler's point that the most dangerous oppression of women is masked oppression dressed as false fraternal equality; he endorses her proposal that demanding the master act as master is genuinely subversive.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens negative
Žižek mockingly notes Giddens is 'now happily half forgotten' and criticizes him as a postmodern social theorist who rebranded precarious work as new freedom.
Franco Berardi positive
Žižek groups Berardi with Lazzarato as post-Negri Italian thinkers now popular for theorizing contemporary capitalism and control.
Anne Applebaum positive
Žižek cites Applebaum's book on the Gulag as the source for the detail about prisoners signing birthday telegrams to Stalin.
Mentioned only as the intellectual tradition (post-Negri) from which Berardi and Lazzarato emerge.
Alexis Tsipras positive
Žižek describes Tsipras as a personal friend and expresses heartbreak at Syriza's treatment by European institutions.
Not mentioned; excluded.
Leon Trotsky negative
Žižek distances himself from 'crazy Trotskyists' who claim Lenin surviving longer would have produced a happy social democracy with Trotsky; he considers such counterfactual thinking naive.
Mentioned as the subject of Marcuse's Soviet Marxism (his 20th Congress speech) and as the figure the Greek KKE (Stalinist Communist Party) considers a traitor for criticizing Stalin.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Žižek defends Varoufakis against the media caricature, argues his actual proposals amount to very modest social democracy by 1970s European standards, and that his logic about debt is correct and rational.
Žižek cites Slánský's show trial as an example where the accused confesses a bourgeois family origin as explanation of his treachery, illustrating Stalinist public confession as participation in universal reason.
Žižek describes Napoleon's decision to send an army including Polish freedom fighters to crush the Haitian Revolution and enslave its population as 'cynical.'
Invoked humorously by an interlocutor comparing him to Žižek (who is running overtime), as a Polish communist leader; the exchange prompts a remark about how cynicism operated in the late communist regime.
Herbert Marcuse negative
Žižek acknowledges Marcuse's Soviet Marxism but dismisses it as merely a specific analysis of Khrushchev's 20th Congress speech, not a systematic theory of Stalinism.
Ernst Nolte negative
Žižek describes the revisionist trajectory, equating Nazism and Stalinism, then arguing fascism was a reaction to communism, associated with historians like Nolte, as a dangerous game leading to rehabilitation of fascist collaborators.
Barack Obama positive
Žižek defends Obama against fashionable criticism, arguing the Affordable Care Act, though modest by European standards, was a traumatic concrete demand that triggered genuine systemic resistance, illustrating good radical politics.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek argues that reading all of Habermas you would not even guess Germany had two parts; Habermas behaves as if he lives in West Germany and his immanent critique is blind to Stalinism.
Max Horkheimer negative
Žižek notes that in the early 1950s Horkheimer was so anti-communist he even opposed Social Democrats taking power in West Germany, aligning him with the most conservative liberal politicians.
Vladimir Putin negative
Žižek cites Putin's reaction to Conchita Wurst as illustrating a reaction that is 'almost one step towards Boko Haram' in its politicization of sexuality and religion.
Karl Popper negative
Žižek radically disagrees with Popper's anti-Platonic premise and his basic Enlightenment liberalism, though he notes Popperians do at least theorize totalitarianism.
Mentioned as the financier of Argentina's IMF debt repayment, illustrating the debt-as-control thesis.
Central figure of analysis throughout; Žižek studies Stalinism as a theoretical problem, maintaining it was an authentic emancipatory explosion that turned into a nightmare, with no sympathy for it politically.
Plato positive
Žižek defends Plato against liberal anti-Platonism (Popper), highlighting that the Republic excludes slaves and mandates gender equality, making Plato more progressive than Aristotle.
Aristotle negative
Žižek criticizes Aristotle for defining slaves as 'talking tools' and ontologizing sexual difference (male/female as form/matter), contrasting him unfavorably with Plato.
Boris Buden positive
Žižek endorses Buden's argument (from a book on the phenomenon) that politicization of religion today represents religion replacing politics rather than invading it.
Maurizio Lazzarato positive
Žižek endorses Lazzarato's theory in The Rise of the Indebted Man, that debt replaces direct domination as the primary mechanism of social control.
What it argues
Stalinism as an Enlightenment phenomenon, not a regressionStructural difference between Stalinism and NazismFrankfurt School's blind spot on StalinismPoliticization of religion as substitute for disappearing politicsThe non-transparent structural frame of liberal freedomDebt as a mechanism of ideological controlInherent transgression and obscene underside of powerPermissive super-ego and the command to enjoy freely
Dialectical moves 10
“Stalinism is part of the Enlightenment movement—not its negation. The show trial, in which even the lowest prisoner participates in universal reason and can tell the truth about himself, is what makes Stalinism unimaginable in Nazism.”
The horror of Stalinism is not that it abandoned Enlightenment reason but that it was its perverted continuation.
“Not only was it prohibited to criticize Stalin—it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition.”
The meta-prohibition (the ban on naming the ban) reveals how the deepest domination is one that cannot even be spoken as domination.
“Today the boss is allowed to display his castration—to make fun of himself, to appear ridiculous and weak—and this in no way limits his power; it makes it even more absolute.”
The visibility of the leader's human weakness does not undermine authority but renders domination unspeakable and thus more total.
“The true subversive gesture is not the obscene transgression—it is the demand to be directly oppressed. When domination is masked as equality, demanding the master act as a master is what unmasks it.”
Apparent transgression (dirty jokes, rule-bending) is constitutive of the system; real subversion is demanding transparency about the actual power relation.
“You are given the freedom of choice on one condition: that you make the right choice.”
Liberal freedom is always already constrained at its core by a non-optional correct answer, so the form of freedom masks a deeper unfreedom.
“It's not just that you have to do it—you have to want to do it. The postmodern permissive father orders you to go to your grandmother freely.”
The permissive super-ego is worse than direct prohibition because it commands not just the act but the desire itself.
“Ideology today has to not be taken seriously to work. It functions precisely through cynical distance—sincere belief is the real threat.”
The classic Enlightenment critique of ideology as false belief is inverted: ideology now requires disbelief; it is cynicism, not naïveté, that sustains it.
“When Argentina returned its debt to the IMF, the IMF was horrified. The secret ideal of creditors is precisely that the debt should not be returned.”
The apparent goal of lending (repayment) is the opposite of the real goal (permanent dependency); debt is control, not finance.
“If you say 'we want communist revolution' it means nothing. If you just say 'let's renegotiate debts a little bit' everyone is in a panic.”
Maximalist abstract demands are systemically harmless; modest concrete demands are genuinely threatening because they expose the system's constraints.
“Haiti's Constitution declares: Haiti is a Black Republic; all citizens of Haiti, independently of the color of their skin, are black.”
The universalization of blackness, including Poles, solves the contradiction between racial exclusivity and political solidarity through a formal-universal move rather than biological essentialism.
Claims 19
asserts
Stalinism is a clearer instance of Dialektik der Aufklärung than fascism, because fascism was a conservative modernization whereas Stalinism genuinely emerged from within the Enlightenment tradition.Stalinism vs. fascism as Enlightenment phenomena
asserts
The Frankfurt School's failure to systematically theorize Stalinism is a major blind spot, reflecting their implicit confinement to a West German perspective.Frankfurt School / Habermas
asserts
The Stalinist show trial and public confession—requiring the condemned to account for themselves as rational subjects—demonstrate that Stalinism, unlike Nazism, preserved a perverted Enlightenment structure.structural difference between Stalinism and Nazism
asserts
Fascism, unlike Stalinism, had no internal dissidents reproaching the leader for betraying the true fascist legacy, which shows Stalinism retained an authentic emancipatory core that fascism lacked.Stalinism vs. Nazism / inner-party dissidence
rejects
The current right-wing revisionist tendency—equating Stalinist and Nazi crimes, then claiming fascism was a reaction to communism, then rehabilitating collaborators—is a dangerous political trajectory.right-wing revisionism / Holocaust relativization
asserts
The politicization of religion today is not religion invading politics but religion replacing a politics that has itself disappeared from public life under depoliticizing late capitalism.religious fundamentalism / depoliticization
rejects
Islamic fundamentalism is not a remnant of the past but a product of global capitalist processes, as demonstrated by Afghanistan's transformation from a secular state into a fundamentalist one through Cold War intervention.fundamentalism as pre-modern regression
asserts
In Western liberal societies we are increasingly free at the level of personal choice, but the structural frame determining the range and meaning of those choices is more and more non-transparent and impenetrable.liberal freedom / ideology
asserts
Syriza's demands—as documented by Varoufakis—are so moderate they would have been standard centrist social democracy in Western Europe forty or fifty years ago; treating them as radical leftism reveals the rightward shift of the ideological centre.Syriza / European austerity politics
asserts
The secret ideal of creditors is that debt should not be repaid, because permanent indebtedness is the mechanism for controlling individuals and states; Argentina's repayment of IMF debt was perceived as catastrophic news.debt as control / IMF / Greece
asserts
Today's egalitarian boss who displays his castration and mocks himself exercises power that is more absolute—not less—than traditional authoritarian power, because domination becomes unspeakable.contemporary forms of authority / power
asserts
Every power structure requires an inherent transgression—an obscene unofficial underside of dirty jokes, perversions, and rule-violations—which appears subversive but is in fact constitutive of the structure's reproduction.power / transgression / ideology
asserts
The worst oppression is not direct oppression but one in which the dominated are required to act as if domination does not exist, making domination itself unspeakable.ideology / domination / false equality
asserts
Late ideology does not work despite people not taking it seriously—it requires cynical distance to function; sincere belief in the official ideology is treated as dangerous by the system itself.cynicism / ideology / late socialism
asserts
The art of radical politics today is to formulate a specific, modest demand that, in its concrete constellation, is traumatic and triggers systemic change—not abstract maximalist demands that threaten no one.political strategy / radical left
asserts
Form matters: even formal rights that are initially exclusionary carry genuine emancipatory potential because their scope can be expanded by those excluded.Marxist theory of formal rights / Human Rights
asserts
Plato is preferable to Aristotle on political grounds: Plato's Republic excludes slaves and explicitly mandates gender equality, while Aristotle naturalizes both slavery and sexual hierarchy.Plato vs. Aristotle / anti-Platonic liberalism
asserts
Western Europe's treatment of Greece will in the long term be a catastrophe for the European Union itself, splitting Europe and undermining European political elite's capacity to govern.European Union / Greek debt crisis
asserts
The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Libya were counterproductive even on purely Western strategic grounds: overthrowing Saddam empowered Iran in Iraq, and overthrowing Gaddafi produced worse conditions than the dictatorship.U.S. foreign policy / Middle East
Quotes 15
“Even in the harshest times, every year on Stalin's birthday all prisoners in a Gulag camp were gathered and had to sign a telegram to Comrade Stalin. Can you even imagine something like this in Nazi Germany?”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinism retains Enlightenment universality even in the Gulag
“It wasn't only prohibited to criticize Stalin—it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition.”Slavoj Žižek · meta-prohibition / unspeakable domination
“You are given the freedom of choice on one condition: that you make the right choice.”Slavoj Žižek · liberal freedom as constrained choice
“Not just you have to do it—you have to want to do it. That's the true terror.”Slavoj Žižek · permissive super-ego commands desire itself
“If you say 'we want communist revolution' it means nothing. If you just say 'let's renegotiate debts a little bit' everyone is in a panic.”Slavoj Žižek · modest concrete demands are more threatening than maximalist abstractions
“Haiti is a Black Republic; all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. I think this is an absolutely ingenious solution.”Slavoj Žižek · formal universalism as emancipatory logic
“The biggest fear for the late communist were people who would really still believe in Marxism. Immediately they expelled them from party or isolated them.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology functions through cynicism not sincerity
“No power structure can reproduce itself without what I call inherent transgression—apparent dirty transgressions which may appear even subversive but they are part of the game.”Slavoj Žižek · inherent transgression as condition of power's reproduction
“He couldn't have told us 'no, they were not free elections.' He just said: boys, don't fuck with me, you know very well what I mean.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology works through the unspeakable wink
“The secret ideal of those banks and countries who give debts is precisely that the debt should not be returned—that you have to be permanently in this controlled position feeling guilty.”Slavoj Žižek · debt as ideological control not financial instrument
“The officer gave him a written statement claiming that he, the officer, is ordering him, the soldier, to freely sign the oath.”Slavoj Žižek · formal contradiction of commanded freedom
“Fascism was an impossible dream: how to have capitalism without capitalism, without class struggle. For this you need an external enemy—die Juden.”Slavoj Žižek · fascism as conservative modernization requiring an external scapegoat
“An authentic Marxist will never tell you 'all this is just formal freedom.' Things begin as a form. Look at Human Rights—form matters.”Slavoj Žižek · the emancipatory potential of formal rights
“I think we live in a complex world where whatever you do is in a way wrong.”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism about geopolitical agency
“European political elite is more and more losing its ability to govern. And it worries me.”Slavoj Žižek · diagnosis of European political crisis
Transcript 29 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Let me also express my gratitude and how honored I feel to be here and I especially feel at home, this is my old socialist training. Look what's there, Marx Engels Werke, no, from my youth. But to avoid a misunderstanding here with all these jokes about a Palace of Culture and so on, not only am I not, as some stupid people accuse me, a kind of a secret closet Stalinist or whatever, on the contrary, this is I think still the big trauma. I don't think we have a proper theory. What went wrong? In what way? How was something like Stalinism even possible, imaginable? And I, this is one of the reasons of my eternal tension with some followers of Frankfurter Schule or Habermasians. Look, one great argument against Habermas for me is this one. If you were to read all of Habermas, I doubt if you, let's say all about you knew about Germany in the last fifty years you would have learned it from reading Habermas's books. Would you even have guessed that there are two Germanys? I don't think. Habermas strictly behaves as he lived as if he lives in West Germany. It's an immanent critique and so on. And that's what always, already when I was a student, that's what shocked me about Frankfurter Schule. On the one hand, what is their basic project? Dialektik der Aufklärung, which means, to simplify it, the horrible things that happened in the 20th century, Gulag, Holocaust, and so on, are not simply some regression into pre-modern logic like barbarism returned. No, they were something which was there as an immanent potential of the project of modernity itself. Okay. But then why did they focus in their analysis only, almost exclusively on fascism? I mean, it should be done, no doubt here. It intrigued me that isn't Stalinism a much clearer example, case of Dialektik der Aufklärung? Because fascism was not Aufklärung. It was, as we all know, a conservative modernization, like these impossible dreams, dream how to have capitalism without capitalism, without class struggle. For this you need an external enemy, die Juden, and so on and so on. But and incidentally I've written about it, it's so nice in what way you can account for this basic difference, which doesn't make Stalinism any better, between Stalinism and fascism, even at the level of these apparently totally superficial rituals and so on. To give you one example. Do you know, I read this in Anne Applebaum's book on Gulag, that even in the harshest times, mid-30s and then till every year on Stalin's birthday all prisoners in a Gulag camp were gathered and had to sign each of them a telegram to Comrade Stalin wishing him all the best and so on and so on. Now, of course I'm not an idiot, I'm not claiming they really meant it. What I'm claiming is this, and here you can see one aspect of the difference. Can you even imagine something like this in Nazi Germany? It would have been totally meaningless in the Nazi universe, I don't know, to gather once a year all Auschwitz inmates and make them sign a telegram all for wishing all the best to Hitler and so on. Another thing which makes accounts for this difference precisely this so-called show trials, monstrous trials. You have something which is specific to Stalinism there, this public confession. You know how it looks, like Bukharin and all of them. You were, let's forget in what way, it wasn't even primarily physical torture, it was more pressure like if you don't confess, we we arrest also your children, whatever. Okay, but the mystery is why the need for this public confession. And you discover something very strange how although the one who was at these show trials condemned and so on and confessed, although he was treated as the lowest of the lowest, you know it's very interesting to read sacred texts of Stalinism like Short History of Communist Party, the sacred text, with regard to expressions they use, like he is piece of shit, vermin, insect, and so on. So at the same time you are the lowest of the lowest but at the same time it is as if you still participate in universal human mind, that you can account for yourself. For example, I remember reading in in in the Czech trial, Slánský I think it was, no, Rudolf Slánský, how at the beginning the prosecutor asks him how did you become a traitor and he says I come from a bourgeois family, already when I was a young boy my parents taught me to hate workers and so on and so on. What's so interesting is that you see you are shit, scum of scum, but at the same time you participate in universal reason and can tell the truth about yourself. This is unimaginable in Nazism. That's why, not because they were better, you cannot, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the Nazis to organize a big trial where through torture and so on they would have made some Jewish leaders whatever to confess the plot against Germany. It never happened. It's a my point is that precisely in this perverse details, every prisoner still sending a telegram to Stalin or this confession, this is what makes Stalinism part of Enlightenment movement. That we all participate in it and again this is what shocked me. Why don't you find a theory of it in Frankfurter Schule? Now I did my homework, I know you have Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, but this is, I read it decades ago, but this is just a very specific analysis of Khrushchev his speech on the 20th Congress, it's not more. Then you have a couple of texts here there, but no systematic approach to it. And I'm not accusing them, Frankfurter Schule of being secretly communist. No, they were quite normal anti-communists, believe me. I read in this big biography of Adorno that for example in the early 50s Horkheimer was so anti-communist that he even thought that Social Democrats shouldn't be allowed to take power, Social Democrats in West Germany. So he was much closer to that first generation Theodor Heuss and so on, liberal politicians, no. So you see here I think, that's why I'm so practically obsessed by Stalinism. Why there is an I'm not right-wing revisionist, definitely not. I'm not playing the game which is a very dangerous game going on today of subtly rehabilitating fascism. You know how, the first in my country also Slovenia it's happening, the first step is to say all sides were doing horrible things to just apparently equalize them, no, like you know this is an old story like okay, okay, Germans did horrible things but Western Allies bombed Dresden and so on, all that, all that. Then you go a step further and you say very interesting that you follow this, who is that historian Nolte, no? Yeah, who wrote a book on Heidegger also. Then you say that nonetheless fascism was a reaction to communism, that it took all bad features from communism like already in Soviet Union before Hitler they had concentration camps and so on and so on. Then you just have to go one step further and say those who collaborated with the Nazis they were just confronted with a desperate choice and they have tragically chosen the lesser of two evils. And in a way we should understand them, maybe even support them and so on and so on. And I think this is a very tragic tendency. Not that I have again any sympathy for Stalinism, but still I think, not that I think Stalinism was better. You know what is for me one argument for Stalinism, that it had dissidents. Dissidents also in the sense of inner-party dissidents. Stalin all the time had to fight from Trotsky to others who reproached him for you betrayed the true greatness of communist project and so on and so on. In in Nazism you don't find this. Okay, we can play the game if Georg Strasser or those early SA Nazis were this but afterwards once Hitler established himself, sorry I'm not aware of any tendency in Nazi Germany reproaching Hitler for betraying the true fascist legacy or whatever. And I think precisely this radical inner tension in Stalinism is a perverted effect of the fact that there was an authentic core at the beginning. I think that whatever you say and we can play this game, I'm ready to play it. I'm not saying I'm not a crazy Trotskyist who claims, oh if you know this Trotsky's dream, if only Lenin were to survive three, four years more and made the pact with Trotsky there would be no Stalin, we would have what, a kind of a happy social democracy or what. No, I think the tragedy was authentic. I really don't think there was a possibility of another way to be taken. But nonetheless it was an authentic tragedy in the sense of it did begin as an incredible emancipatory explosion, it turned into a nightmare. And I don't think we have yet a good theory about it. Either we go too far into blaming I don't know entire history of humanity, like are we aware, that's why I like it, how crazy is Dialektik der Aufklärung the book. It traces manipulative reason, so-called instrumentelle Vernunft, which begins which culminates in 20th century horrors. It traces it basically to the very beginning of humanity, the first magic thinking which is already manipulation. So basically the thesis there is that Stalinism in an ironic sense is the peak, the climax of the entire history of humanity, no, in the sense of what began with the first magic primitive so-called manipulations it culminated in Stalinism. So this for me doesn't do the work. I don't I don't believe in this. At the same time I don't believe in this simple delimitations but you know what, I'm now getting caught into my own trap of two, three times it did happen to me that I gave a talk and all of the talk consisted of preliminary improvisations you know. So actually so let me only yeah, only tell you that um like two things. One is that actually it was also Stalin himself who supposed to send letters to himself as he was also like differently than Hitler was putting his hands together after his own speeches. Yeah, I remember this is one of my big jokes and you can check it empirically if you don't believe me that Hitler gives a speech, people applaud, he just stands and recognizes himself as the addressee. When you have a Stalinist leadership, after Stalin's speech people applaud, always the leader joins the applause. It may appear nonsense, like does he applaud himself? No, because the logic is totally different. Stalin's position is not symbolically that of a leader but that of a perfect servant of the people. That's that's the basic dogma of Stalinism. We are just instruments of historical necessity or or whatever and so on and so on. But actually you have the theories on the explanation tracing the emergence of totalitarianism in Enlightenment but in the like Marxist revisionist behind the Iron Curtain. Kołakowski book, the first volume of Main Currents of Marxism is exactly about this. But actually you have many other like Popperians also the same like. Yeah but okay for reasons into which we cannot go now I The reason is probably because they are coming from Enlightenment tradition differently than the Frankfurter Schule. Yes but what I don't for example let's take Popper, you know. I for reasons we don't have time now I'm afraid it will really be just an some introductory remarks exchange between the two of us. You know for me I I radically disagree with Popper's basic anti-Platonic premise that you know Plato... Yes there are of course ominous things in Plato but my god if I were to choose between Plato and Aristotle, Plato absolutely. First let's not forget this. First, of course I hope this is a rhetorical question, did you read Plato's Politeia or what, Republic, whatever you translate it, State? Did you notice two things there? Which are extremely important. A, there are no slaves there. Plato Plato's vision excludes slaves, while the good liberal Aristotle, you know his definition, slaves are talking tools or whatever and so on. Second thing, maybe even more important. I'm sorry to inform you this but Plato explicitly says in my ideal state women are equal to men, all posts are accessible to women also. He explicitly says the fact that
Let me also express my gratitude and how honored I feel to be here and I especially feel at home, this is my old socialist training. Look what's there, Marx Engels Werke, no, from my youth. But to avoid a misunderstanding here with all these jokes about a Palace of Culture and so on, not only am I not, as some stupid people accuse me, a kind of a secret closet Stalinist or whatever, on the contrary, this is I think still the big trauma. I don't think we have a proper theory. What went wrong? In what way? How was something like Stalinism even possible, imaginable? And I, this is one of the reasons of my eternal tension with some followers of Frankfurter Schule or Habermasians. Look, one great argument against Habermas for me is this one. If you were to read all of Habermas, I doubt if you, let's say all about you knew about Germany in the last fifty years you would have learned it from reading Habermas's books. Would you even have guessed that there are two Germanys? I don't think. Habermas strictly behaves as he lived as if he lives in West Germany. It's an immanent critique and so on. And that's what always, already when I was a student, that's what shocked me about Frankfurter Schule. On the one hand, what is their basic project? Dialektik der Aufklärung, which means, to simplify it, the horrible things that happened in the 20th century, Gulag, Holocaust, and so on, are not simply some regression into pre-modern logic like barbarism returned. No, they were something which was there as an immanent potential of the project of modernity itself. Okay. But then why did they focus in their analysis only, almost exclusively on fascism? I mean, it should be done, no doubt here. It intrigued me that isn't Stalinism a much clearer example, case of Dialektik der Aufklärung? Because fascism was not Aufklärung. It was, as we all know, a conservative modernization, like these impossible dreams, dream how to have capitalism without capitalism, without class struggle. For this you need an external enemy, die Juden, and so on and so on. But and incidentally I've written about it, it's so nice in what way you can account for this basic difference, which doesn't make Stalinism any better, between Stalinism and fascism, even at the level of these apparently totally superficial rituals and so on. To give you one example. Do you know, I read this in Anne Applebaum's book on Gulag, that even in the harshest times, mid-30s and then till every year on Stalin's birthday all prisoners in a Gulag camp were gathered and had to sign each of them a telegram to Comrade Stalin wishing him all the best and so on and so on. Now, of course I'm not an idiot, I'm not claiming they really meant it. What I'm claiming is this, and here you can see one aspect of the difference. Can you even imagine something like this in Nazi Germany? It would have been totally meaningless in the Nazi universe, I don't know, to gather once a year all Auschwitz inmates and make them sign a telegram all for wishing all the best to Hitler and so on. Another thing which makes accounts for this difference precisely this so-called show trials, monstrous trials. You have something which is specific to Stalinism there, this public confession. You know how it looks, like Bukharin and all of them. You were, let's forget in what way, it wasn't even primarily physical torture, it was more pressure like if you don't confess, we we arrest also your children, whatever. Okay, but the mystery is why the need for this public confession. And you discover something very strange how although the one who was at these show trials condemned and so on and confessed, although he was treated as the lowest of the lowest, you know it's very interesting to read sacred texts of Stalinism like Short History of Communist Party, the sacred text, with regard to expressions they use, like he is piece of shit, vermin, insect, and so on. So at the same time you are the lowest of the lowest but at the same time it is as if you still participate in universal human mind, that you can account for yourself. For example, I remember reading in in in the Czech trial, Slánský I think it was, no, Rudolf Slánský, how at the beginning the prosecutor asks him how did you become a traitor and he says I come from a bourgeois family, already when I was a young boy my parents taught me to hate workers and so on and so on. What's so interesting is that you see you are shit, scum of scum, but at the same time you participate in universal reason and can tell the truth about yourself. This is unimaginable in Nazism. That's why, not because they were better, you cannot, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the Nazis to organize a big trial where through torture and so on they would have made some Jewish leaders whatever to confess the plot against Germany. It never happened. It's a my point is that precisely in this perverse details, every prisoner still sending a telegram to Stalin or this confession, this is what makes Stalinism part of Enlightenment movement. That we all participate in it and again this is what shocked me. Why don't you find a theory of it in Frankfurter Schule? Now I did my homework, I know you have Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, but this is, I read it decades ago, but this is just a very specific analysis of Khrushchev his speech on the 20th Congress, it's not more. Then you have a couple of texts here there, but no systematic approach to it. And I'm not accusing them, Frankfurter Schule of being secretly communist. No, they were quite normal anti-communists, believe me. I read in this big biography of Adorno that for example in the early 50s Horkheimer was so anti-communist that he even thought that Social Democrats shouldn't be allowed to take power, Social Democrats in West Germany. So he was much closer to that first generation Theodor Heuss and so on, liberal politicians, no. So you see here I think, that's why I'm so practically obsessed by Stalinism. Why there is an I'm not right-wing revisionist, definitely not. I'm not playing the game which is a very dangerous game going on today of subtly rehabilitating fascism. You know how, the first in my country also Slovenia it's happening, the first step is to say all sides were doing horrible things to just apparently equalize them, no, like you know this is an old story like okay, okay, Germans did horrible things but Western Allies bombed Dresden and so on, all that, all that. Then you go a step further and you say very interesting that you follow this, who is that historian Nolte, no? Yeah, who wrote a book on Heidegger also. Then you say that nonetheless fascism was a reaction to communism, that it took all bad features from communism like already in Soviet Union before Hitler they had concentration camps and so on and so on. Then you just have to go one step further and say those who collaborated with the Nazis they were just confronted with a desperate choice and they have tragically chosen the lesser of two evils. And in a way we should understand them, maybe even support them and so on and so on. And I think this is a very tragic tendency. Not that I have again any sympathy for Stalinism, but still I think, not that I think Stalinism was better. You know what is for me one argument for Stalinism, that it had dissidents. Dissidents also in the sense of inner-party dissidents. Stalin all the time had to fight from Trotsky to others who reproached him for you betrayed the true greatness of communist project and so on and so on. In in Nazism you don't find this. Okay, we can play the game if Georg Strasser or those early SA Nazis were this but afterwards once Hitler established himself, sorry I'm not aware of any tendency in Nazi Germany reproaching Hitler for betraying the true fascist legacy or whatever. And I think precisely this radical inner tension in Stalinism is a perverted effect of the fact that there was an authentic core at the beginning. I think that whatever you say and we can play this game, I'm ready to play it. I'm not saying I'm not a crazy Trotskyist who claims, oh if you know this Trotsky's dream, if only Lenin were to survive three, four years more and made the pact with Trotsky there would be no Stalin, we would have what, a kind of a happy social democracy or what. No, I think the tragedy was authentic. I really don't think there was a possibility of another way to be taken. But nonetheless it was an authentic tragedy in the sense of it did begin as an incredible emancipatory explosion, it turned into a nightmare. And I don't think we have yet a good theory about it. Either we go too far into blaming I don't know entire history of humanity, like are we aware, that's why I like it, how crazy is Dialektik der Aufklärung the book. It traces manipulative reason, so-called instrumentelle Vernunft, which begins which culminates in 20th century horrors. It traces it basically to the very beginning of humanity, the first magic thinking which is already manipulation. So basically the thesis there is that Stalinism in an ironic sense is the peak, the climax of the entire history of humanity, no, in the sense of what began with the first magic primitive so-called manipulations it culminated in Stalinism. So this for me doesn't do the work. I don't I don't believe in this. At the same time I don't believe in this simple delimitations but you know what, I'm now getting caught into my own trap of two, three times it did happen to me that I gave a talk and all of the talk consisted of preliminary improvisations you know. So actually so let me only yeah, only tell you that um like two things. One is that actually it was also Stalin himself who supposed to send letters to himself as he was also like differently than Hitler was putting his hands together after his own speeches. Yeah, I remember this is one of my big jokes and you can check it empirically if you don't believe me that Hitler gives a speech, people applaud, he just stands and recognizes himself as the addressee. When you have a Stalinist leadership, after Stalin's speech people applaud, always the leader joins the applause. It may appear nonsense, like does he applaud himself? No, because the logic is totally different. Stalin's position is not symbolically that of a leader but that of a perfect servant of the people. That's that's the basic dogma of Stalinism. We are just instruments of historical necessity or or whatever and so on and so on. But actually you have the theories on the explanation tracing the emergence of totalitarianism in Enlightenment but in the like Marxist revisionist behind the Iron Curtain. Kołakowski book, the first volume of Main Currents of Marxism is exactly about this. But actually you have many other like Popperians also the same like. Yeah but okay for reasons into which we cannot go now I The reason is probably because they are coming from Enlightenment tradition differently than the Frankfurter Schule. Yes but what I don't for example let's take Popper, you know. I for reasons we don't have time now I'm afraid it will really be just an some introductory remarks exchange between the two of us. You know for me I I radically disagree with Popper's basic anti-Platonic premise that you know Plato... Yes there are of course ominous things in Plato but my god if I were to choose between Plato and Aristotle, Plato absolutely. First let's not forget this. First, of course I hope this is a rhetorical question, did you read Plato's Politeia or what, Republic, whatever you translate it, State? Did you notice two things there? Which are extremely important. A, there are no slaves there. Plato Plato's vision excludes slaves, while the good liberal Aristotle, you know his definition, slaves are talking tools or whatever and so on. Second thing, maybe even more important. I'm sorry to inform you this but Plato explicitly says in my ideal state women are equal to men, all posts are accessible to women also. He explicitly says the fact that
unknown
women today are not in that position it's a historical contingency should be abolished. While Aristotle on the contrary, he naturalizes, ontologizes even sexual difference, you know, basically male versus female is form versus morphe versus
women today are not in that position it's a historical contingency should be abolished. While Aristotle on the contrary, he naturalizes, ontologizes even sexual difference, you know, basically male versus female is form versus morphe versus
Slavoj Žižek
hyle, form versus matter and so on and so on. So no, I think that you know when we accuse some past thinkers of proto-totalitarianism we should be very, very careful. The same for Robespierre and company, Jacobins, Jacobiner, Jacobins. My god, I mean one thing, there is one reason for which I will forever love them. Their relationship to Haiti Revolution. You know Haiti Revolution was something for me one of the greatest events in the history of humanity. Why? Because till then, you know black slaves rebelled in Haiti around the time of French Revolution. Till that point all slave rebellions were let's return home, back to our roots to whatever, no? And this ruling ideology easily finds it. You remember if you are old enough, I am unfortunately, some thirty, forty years ago there was a Hollywood hit miniseries precisely The Roots of how an an American
hyle, form versus matter and so on and so on. So no, I think that you know when we accuse some past thinkers of proto-totalitarianism we should be very, very careful. The same for Robespierre and company, Jacobins, Jacobiner, Jacobins. My god, I mean one thing, there is one reason for which I will forever love them. Their relationship to Haiti Revolution. You know Haiti Revolution was something for me one of the greatest events in the history of humanity. Why? Because till then, you know black slaves rebelled in Haiti around the time of French Revolution. Till that point all slave rebellions were let's return home, back to our roots to whatever, no? And this ruling ideology easily finds it. You remember if you are old enough, I am unfortunately, some thirty, forty years ago there was a Hollywood hit miniseries precisely The Roots of how an an American
unknown
black guy finally establish succeed in retracing to the begin and so on. No, the Haiti the shock of Haiti Revolution was that black slaves rebelled there but not on this program returning to our roots, but we want to do the same as French are doing, French Revolution. And here not that I'm flattering to you, this is one of the most glorious moments for me of Polish history. Because first all glory goes here to Jacobins.
black guy finally establish succeed in retracing to the begin and so on. No, the Haiti the shock of Haiti Revolution was that black slaves rebelled there but not on this program returning to our roots, but we want to do the same as French are doing, French Revolution. And here not that I'm flattering to you, this is one of the most glorious moments for me of Polish history. Because first all glory goes here to Jacobins.
Slavoj Žižek
When Haiti delegation, they won first, visited
When Haiti delegation, they won first, visited
unknown
Paris, Assemblee Nationale, they got a triumphant reception in Assemblee Nationale, immediately
Paris, Assemblee Nationale, they got a triumphant reception in Assemblee Nationale, immediately
Slavoj Žižek
recognized as equals and so on. Then Napoleon took over and not only he sent the army to Haiti to crush the rebellion, but he even wrote that this precedent is so dangerous, blacks liberated, that all should be killed, women, children, and new slaves brought there. And he sent there the army where a strong contingent was of Polish soldiers. And I must tell you, I hope you know it, it's one of the most beautiful stories that I know. French army was approaching the black army of liberated slaves. And they heard some singing. They thought oh some stupid tribal songs probably. When they come closer, they heard what the black slaves were singing, La Marseillaise, of course. And all the glory to Poland. But the most cynical in this Napoleon's move was that he sent not just soldiers but the Polish uprisers against partition, so the people who actually were fighting for freedom and they were the way to. Yeah but that's the beauty. You know what they did then, the Polish regiment? They simply, I simplify the story, realized my god we are fighting on the wrong side. And they changed sides. This is why, even when there was the darkest temptation around to kill the white people, just Black Republic, they always exempted the Poles. And I love this as a nonsensical manipulation but which worked so nicely. You know in Haiti Constitution they wanted to have a Black Republic but they at the same time wanted to recognize the Poles. So you know what the Article I think of this constitution, you know what it says? It says Haiti is a Black Republic, all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. I think this is an absolutely ingenious solution. No but you see what I'm saying to go back to the point. Yes, horrible things did happen in French Revolution although you know for me it's all a matter of statistics in the sense of like read any precise history and you will see that there were much more liquidations, killings by state before Jacobins and after in the Thermidor. That it's very simple. Jacobins didn't just kill ordinary poor people, you know, they dared also to kill some notable people, you know. It's like my friend the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, you know, she wrote to me you remember two years no, yeah, two, three years ago there were some public rapes in India and we were all protesting like five people raped a girl in a bus. I agree, to avoid it's horrible. But she wrote me, you know why this exploded so widely as news? Because the girl was in both cases, there were two, three cases, middle class and the rapists were poor. She wrote to me if you want to see horror go to Bombay or as you say now politically correct go to Mumbai and visit brothels there. You discover absolute nightmares. Uh, these middlemen are buying from Nepal and poor parts of India girls from the age four and five and simply then you can have her buy her relatively cheaply as a sex slave permanently or just I mean it's nightmare and it's not a secret, everybody knows where this happens. You see nobody writes about this. And we are talking about thousands of cases like this. Here I have I am returning to my old-fashioned paranoiac attitude of our freedom is bourgeois freedom and so on. Yes we are free but to what extent, what do we learn in our media? For example, back to India. You read so little bit about this in our media. You know that now in India there is a big Maoist rebellion, so-called Naxalite, going on. Probably around maybe million rebels fighting for their survival in the jungle, those poor tribal areas, army is now decimating them to develop mining there and so on. But it's not it's incredibly worse than all the top hits of our news West Bank, Palestine and so on. No, India is supposed to be the biggest democracy, good, so you you don't mention this. Did you see the movie, which is a shitty movie I admit, but it has a moment of truth. Did you see Slumdog Millionaire? You remember what happens there at the very beginning. The guy who is just accused of cheating a little bit at some TV quiz is taken to a police station and there tortured with electricity and so on. And I asked my Indian friends is this happening? Yes, they told me, if you are not very
recognized as equals and so on. Then Napoleon took over and not only he sent the army to Haiti to crush the rebellion, but he even wrote that this precedent is so dangerous, blacks liberated, that all should be killed, women, children, and new slaves brought there. And he sent there the army where a strong contingent was of Polish soldiers. And I must tell you, I hope you know it, it's one of the most beautiful stories that I know. French army was approaching the black army of liberated slaves. And they heard some singing. They thought oh some stupid tribal songs probably. When they come closer, they heard what the black slaves were singing, La Marseillaise, of course. And all the glory to Poland. But the most cynical in this Napoleon's move was that he sent not just soldiers but the Polish uprisers against partition, so the people who actually were fighting for freedom and they were the way to. Yeah but that's the beauty. You know what they did then, the Polish regiment? They simply, I simplify the story, realized my god we are fighting on the wrong side. And they changed sides. This is why, even when there was the darkest temptation around to kill the white people, just Black Republic, they always exempted the Poles. And I love this as a nonsensical manipulation but which worked so nicely. You know in Haiti Constitution they wanted to have a Black Republic but they at the same time wanted to recognize the Poles. So you know what the Article I think of this constitution, you know what it says? It says Haiti is a Black Republic, all citizens of Haiti independently of the color of their skin are black. I think this is an absolutely ingenious solution. No but you see what I'm saying to go back to the point. Yes, horrible things did happen in French Revolution although you know for me it's all a matter of statistics in the sense of like read any precise history and you will see that there were much more liquidations, killings by state before Jacobins and after in the Thermidor. That it's very simple. Jacobins didn't just kill ordinary poor people, you know, they dared also to kill some notable people, you know. It's like my friend the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, you know, she wrote to me you remember two years no, yeah, two, three years ago there were some public rapes in India and we were all protesting like five people raped a girl in a bus. I agree, to avoid it's horrible. But she wrote me, you know why this exploded so widely as news? Because the girl was in both cases, there were two, three cases, middle class and the rapists were poor. She wrote to me if you want to see horror go to Bombay or as you say now politically correct go to Mumbai and visit brothels there. You discover absolute nightmares. Uh, these middlemen are buying from Nepal and poor parts of India girls from the age four and five and simply then you can have her buy her relatively cheaply as a sex slave permanently or just I mean it's nightmare and it's not a secret, everybody knows where this happens. You see nobody writes about this. And we are talking about thousands of cases like this. Here I have I am returning to my old-fashioned paranoiac attitude of our freedom is bourgeois freedom and so on. Yes we are free but to what extent, what do we learn in our media? For example, back to India. You read so little bit about this in our media. You know that now in India there is a big Maoist rebellion, so-called Naxalite, going on. Probably around maybe million rebels fighting for their survival in the jungle, those poor tribal areas, army is now decimating them to develop mining there and so on. But it's not it's incredibly worse than all the top hits of our news West Bank, Palestine and so on. No, India is supposed to be the biggest democracy, good, so you you don't mention this. Did you see the movie, which is a shitty movie I admit, but it has a moment of truth. Did you see Slumdog Millionaire? You remember what happens there at the very beginning. The guy who is just accused of cheating a little bit at some TV quiz is taken to a police station and there tortured with electricity and so on. And I asked my Indian friends is this happening? Yes, they told me, if you are not very
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rich police is simply torturing people there. And I was told this is a wonderful detail, that some Indian democratic intellectuals even organized a protest, a petition, wonderfully ironic petition, where they claimed they demanded from the
rich police is simply torturing people there. And I was told this is a wonderful detail, that some Indian democratic intellectuals even organized a protest, a petition, wonderfully ironic petition, where they claimed they demanded from the
Slavoj Žižek
police to at least raise at the level of Chinese police in Tibet. Because they are torturing there in Tibet but not if you cheat at a TV quiz, you know. There you are tortured of course we know when, if there is a suspicion of contacts with Dalai Lama, political, no? So their demand what please just follow the Chinese there, torture us only if there is a political suspicion or what, don't torture everybody and so on. So how how much do we know but I am losing time, short after this short introduction, we have oh my god we have some no okay I will try to can we go a little bit over like it's not that after minutes I have to stop? Go with your flow. I hope okay. Sorry. A little bit? Yeah but you know that I always fight this metaphysical notion of linear time. And this is how I concretely fight it, you know. No no okay, sorry. Now I want what I wanted to do let me do some serious theory at least is my starting now I will small report on what I wanted to do. My starting point was the three levels of what we confront as problems today and how they are structured. On the one hand it is the absolute external enemy, ISIS, Islamic State, Boko Haram, this totally brutal irrational other. Then we have the mid level, let's call it new geopolitical tensions, United States-China or Putin-Russia and so on. And then we have the renewed a little bit more radical left in our Europe itself, Syriza, maybe Podemos and so on and so on. My point of course is that the most danger is the last one, Syriza and so on. That ISIS is it's even so so non-transparent to know I have good connections with Israel I'm informed what is going on there, who is supporting whom. There are some good reasons that Americans and Israelis are not totally innocent there. What is now confirmed, it was published in our press, you just have to look at it, you know, these are the small news. For example do you know that in South Lebanon the main the most of the border is controlled by Hezbollah and then you have one part of the border eastern part which is controlled by Al-Qaeda. Because Al-Qaeda is Sunni and fights Hezbollah, Israel is systematically with arms, food and medical help supporting Al-Qaeda there. And it's not a crazy story, it's documented. I mean they admit it and so on. So who knows what game people are playing there. The reason I like, not like, I find interesting this Islamic fundamentalism is we should we are not surprised enough of the strangeness of what is going on there. For example isn't this strange that we have Boko Haram a big social movement which wants to restructure entire society and its main programmatic point is women at their own place. That is to say no western education for women which means no education and so on and so on. Isn't this something so weird how could this have happened that all of a sudden we are back to the 60s when we were saying sexuality is political but not exactly in the same sense, you know. And it's also interesting to what extent it's easy to make fun of Boko Haram, you know. But they are just the extreme point. There is more and more this is I think what is also behind this fear of gay rights or even you remember you were part of it here two, three years ago when that crazy Conchita Wurst won Eurovision, the Russian reaction was very interesting. It was almost one step towards Boko Haram reaction, no. Like Putin said I read in the Bible there are two kinds of people, men and women. What is going on now here and so on, you know. My favorite statement was made by Zhirinovsky, the nationalist, who says in Europe there are now no longer men and women, there is only it, you know, some kind of Stephen King monster. But still okay, that's this so-called fundamentalism. What what I find strange here is is are a couple of things. The first thing is that and here we should become more self-critical, why is this happening? Why this also in our country with fundamentalists this politicization on of religion. Don't blame just Islam. You know that these are official data. FBI in United States has under ob they have under observation million Americans Christian fundamentalists as potential threat. Wait a minute, this is almost the same percentage as in in Muslim countries. So of course we should fight fundamentalism but we should also raise the question what is it in the process of global capitalism which generates fundamentalism? Because fundamentalism is not simply a remainder of the past. You know which example I always quote here. Afghanistan. If some of you are old enough, I am unfortunately, I remember forty years ago, fifty, Afghanistan was maybe the most secular of the Middle East Islam countries. They had a pro-Western king, kind of a technocrat. They had kind of yeah, they had a very sorry, they have a even a strong local communist party and so on. Then you know what happened, communists made coup d'etat when it failed Soviet Union intervened to support them, then Americans mobilized their allies like Osama bin Laden and so on. So you see what's the tragedy. The most one of the most tolerant countries it became fundamentalist as part of being caught in global process. So we shouldn't play innocent here and mock them. There are fundamentalists in Arab countries. There are also fundamentalists in United States themselves. Or which country is probably apart from ISIS the most fundamentalist? Saudi Arabia. But are we aware what strange country Saudi Arabia is? It's nothing. It's something that survives strictly from American and other countries' money. It's something which has no substance. They are getting billions from oil. It's it's western capitalism organized as a state there. So again this would be my first point. Second point, why this politicization? Maybe did he even visit you here, my Croat friend Boris Buden? Yeah. He wrote a wonderful book on this phenomena where he developed something with which I deeply agree. That uh this politicization of religion today that we are witnessing, it's not simply religion invading politics but literally religion replacing politics itself. It's what we all know it's happening. We are approaching an era where our societies are more and more depoliticized, depoliticized in the sense that we have all our private freedoms but then experts run economy and all politics that remains is mostly cultural politics. So it's as if politics which is disappearing, losing its substance, authentic politics, political struggle is returning in the guise of religion. We effect I think that this politicization of religion is strictly correlative to the disappearance of politics from our from our societies. Now okay I will improvise a little bit then you cut me short whenever you want. Uh, next thing I would like to develop here is uh what does this mean I've written about it for our notion of freedom. Are we free or not in the west? Maybe some of you know this line of thought of mine but I would like to repeat it. Uh, of course we are free and I'm not a stupid Marxist who I'm not trying to sell you this shit, you know oh it's just formal freedom and so on. No, the ABC lesson of Marx is form matters. So an authentic Marxist will never tell you all this is just a formal freedom. Things begin as a form. Look at Human Rights. We all know that at the beginning, 18th century, Human Rights were basically rights of white people of property and so on. There was a subtle network of exclusions. But instead of saying okay these were just formal rights, people did something differently. They simply expanded these rights. First women said why not also us, then blacks in Haiti said, so form matters. So but let me go on. Nonetheless, let's say I ask you are you free? You would say yes, I also ask myself, I'm not treating you as idiots or if I am I'm also part of the group of idiots. Okay, then I ask you in what sense are you free? I claim that most what you would have told me is something like freedom of personal choices, no? You would have told me I'm free because I can read whatever I want, I can do whatever I want in sexuality, I can travel whatever I want, I can up to a point, here things get complex, I can say publicly whatever I want, I can take a job whatever I want, now again I would add if you get it and so on. But okay this freedom of choices, it's a nice thing but is this enough? My thesis is and this is the lesson of what was disclosed by WikiLeaks and now everyone is talking about it, this is the lesson of this all famous secret like TiSA, TISA, secret trade agreements. That we are free but the social texture, frame, which underlies our freedom, which determines what are our choices, is more and more non-transparent. Things are that's the horror of TiSA agreement, trade and flow of information agreement which as we all know if accepted will determine in detail coordinates of financial life and other which will seriously restrain governments of what they can do and so on. And uh there was no debate, in the original plan of this agreement it even said that it should remain secret for five years after it is accepted. So this is what fascinated me how we are free at the personal level, maybe even more and more free but the very frame of our freedom, you know you are free in a certain context to choose this or that, that frame is more and more impenetrable. And here ideology enters I claim. In what sense ideology? Uh in the sense that uh the trick is that your very form of unfreedom is presented to you as a new freedom. You can see this curious in the the the mode of work, precarious work, which is getting more and more important. It's in a way horrible. You are all the time in anxiety you will will my contract be prolonged and so on, you health insurance is not covered, retirement you have to do it yourself and so on and so on. But here come postmodern social theorists like Anthony Giddens who is now happily half forgotten, who tell you but these are new forms of freedom. Look, state no longer prescribes to you how to be what health insurance, you are free to choose it. Or you know like or they say basically that the wonderful trick is to treat each of us as a small capitalist, no? The official postmodern theory is this one. We are all self-entrepreneurs. Let's say I'm a poor worker, I get a credit for euros and then I'm free to choose. Will I go take my family to a big holiday? Will I put money aside for studies of my children? Will I invest in health or whatever? It's true you have this choice but at the same time this the constellation of this choice causes incredible anxiety, effectively limits your freedom and so on and so on. So I think that again this is our paradox. What is more and more disappearing from our societies is freedom which should be part of our western freedoms and not communist but even ordinary democratic freedoms. The freedom not just the freedom of choice within the existing social framework but the freedom to collectively decide how to change this framework itself. And this is I claim more and more becoming impenetrable becoming almost unimaginable. I mean uh this is why and I don't have any naive hopes for them, this is why I admire Syriza. My heart is breaking about how they are treated because I know them personally. I met a couple of times Tsipras, Varoufakis, my god we are friends and so on. I can tell you this, forget about this mediatized Varoufakis, a crazy eccentric guy who walks around without a tie and makes provocations and so on and so on. Read try to get hold of what Varoufakis basically proposes to Brussels to European Union. It's something if you look at all his proposals, is some it's something so modest that literally what he is demanding from Brussels is forty, fifty years ago this would have been an extremely centrist modest social democracy. Much less than Sweden was doing at that at that point. Now this is the first thing you should think about. Where are we when something that was part of the totally acceptable normal social mainstream social democracy, to do this today you appear as a crazy lunatic radical leftist. No, uh there is then there is another interesting thing. The topic of super-ego. Namely uh you know since I'm here also to speak in Freudhaus, we know Über-ich, super-ego. Super-ego is something very interesting. You know super-ego, Freudian, it's not simply an ethical agency, but it's an obscene ethical agency. Freud described it nicely how the paradox of super-ego, Über-ich is that the more you follow it, the more you are guilty. You know you are like your failure is part of the game in advance. And it's incredible to what extent this is confirmed. Uh what look if you look at the statements by Varoufakis and others. They are not claiming no, we Greeks don't want to pay the debt. No, they my god read them. Their language is extremely rational. They say yes, we screwed it up. Yes. Their only criticism or a couple of criticisms are very rational. They claim first, listen it's not Greeks as such. Which government is most responsible for the Greek debt? New Democracy government. Okay, we had elections. Whom did Western Europe support? New Democracy. Sorry, isn't this a little bit strange? That you have a fia it's like you know fighting criminal and then supporting the main criminal. Second thing, uh not only the conditions how this debt was acquired but second thing it's clear that and here I would like to make you read they are now popular some of these post-Negri thinkers, Italian like Franco Berardi or Maurizio Lazzarato, Lazzarato wrote a wonderful book called The Rise of the Indebted Man. Where he has a wonderful simple but I think true theory of how in today's society where you no longer can afford direct command, Herrschaft, domination, debt is the main way to control individuals and states. Because if you are indebted you are controlled. You have to work for the debt and so on to repay it and so on. And so the basic dialectic here is that it's absolutely clear that the question is not should the Greeks return the debt or not. I think that the secret ideal of those banks and countries who give debts is precisely that the debt should not be returned. That you have to be permanently in this controlled position feeling guilty and so on. You know where I tested this empirically? Some ten years ago with the help from Chávez who still had money at that point, I mean Venezuela. Argentina surprisingly returned its debt to IMF. And I remember the official first reaction from IMF, which was oh my god, what does it mean now? They will behave irresponsible. How you know they were really literally shocked, they perceived as catastrophic news that Argentina returned covered up the debt from them. So this is the next thing. What is so annoying for the West in Greeks is that they admit their debt. This is even their reason. Varoufakis's reasoning is listen, in we had billion of debt. Now after seven years of your austerity politics the country is almost ruined economically but our debt is up to, as we all know, billion. So obviously your solution doesn't work not even for you. It's not that they are destroying Greece to get the debt at least repaid. They are not getting it. They are still throwing money. So Varoufakis extremely modestly is proposing them let's make an arrangement like give us a little bit break here so that productivity raises so that we can at least pay you some debt back. And it's I think irrationality is on the side of Europe here. You know how you can detect this. That even for example when Varoufakis visited Cameron, sorry I'm sorry, Cameron and Osborne, the two conservative central figures of British government, they had great sympathy for Syriza. You know where I heard great sympathy for Syriza? When I was in United States recently. I listen, I always like right-wing TV, I listen to Fox News. There was a round table there practically pro-Syriza. So you should always be aware that what is happening now here it's not at all about rational Europe encountering a crazy country who just wants to spend and so on and so on. No, it's a lesson of ideology of control, it's an ideological phenomenon and so on and so on. My next point, so let's go further. Uh another and then maybe I can stop so that we don't go too far or how? Just one point I would love to make. Namely uh the point about sorry the point about structure of power. Uh how is power how this is I think an extremely interesting phenomenon. Namely uh how does authority function today because I think this is part of this democratic game of you know we are all self-entrepreneurs and so on. Here I refer to the work of Alenka Zupančič and some other of my Lacanian colleagues in Slovenia. Traditional power works in a fetishist way. In the sense of you may know personally that that guy who embodies power is an idiot like you but if he has the proper insignia then when he speaks power, the law speaks through him. Is this fetishist logic of what in psychoanalysis we call we call symbolic castration. Like uh for example Socrates when he was condemned to death, no? His point is basically I know those judges who condemned me are idiots but nonetheless they are legal power, law speaks through them. So it's this je sais bien, mais quand même. I know very well but I know very well you are an idiot like me but nonetheless through you a higher authority acts. So okay, what I claim is that today and this is maybe the big result of 60s rebellion and how this rebellion was reappropriated in a triumphant way by ruling ideology. Today costumes, masks, these insignia of power are no longer no longer necessary. Today power uh the okay I'll put it in this way, how does a typical, typical, not all of them of course, boss act today? It's no longer insisting on this dignity and so on. It's more like listen, I'm the same guy like you, let's be equal. You know a typical boss today, I don't know you come on Monday to the job he kicks you, did you have a good sex, a nice or you know like we are the colleagues displaying the same weaknesses as as you but the paradox is all this in no way undermines his or her power, it makes it even stronger. The paradox is that uh the boss, the leader, authority whatever is allowed as we say in psychoanalytic jargon to display his castration, make fun of himself, ridiculous guy, weak and so on and so on, and this in no way limits his power but makes it makes it in a way even more absolute. In what sense? Uh because I claim that when you have this egalitarian boss the oppression is even worse. Because it's not so much that there is no Herrschaft, domination, but that domination itself becomes unspeakable. What do I mean by this? Once I had a debate with Judith Butler, who I think was here a couple of times in Vienna, you know her and we have many, I had many polemics with her but at one point I agree with her. Where she said that the most dangerous oppression, I simplify her argument, on women is not when they are directly oppressed but when they are de facto oppressed but this is masked by a superficial oh but we are the same you know like false spirit of fraternal equality and so on and so on. So she had a wonderful proposal. She said that in such a situation the most subversive gesture of a woman is to demand men to act as a master like. You are de facto master, so don't give me this bullshit that we are all equal, give me orders and this is the way to maybe to undermine domination. In what way? Let me return to the beginning to our beloved Stalinism. An example that I always like to use, a fictional example. Let's say we are in Moscow Let's say to be modest you are a Central Committee, I am Stalin, someone has to be. I give a big speech, you applaud, you know you applaud, I applaud and so on. Then we have a debate. One of you attacks me. Uh uh next day probably the big debate will be who has seen that guy alive the last, no? But ah, that's not all. Let's say then that another of you stands up and starts to shout at this first guy who attacked me. Are you crazy? We don't do this here, we don't attack Comrade Stalin. I claim the second guy would disappear even faster. You see the point? It wasn't only prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition. It's not only that Stalin was a master but if you said this you were, well you disappeared or whatever. So this paradox I find so fascinating. And here we learn so much about how ideology works, about how okay we have relations of domination but precisely the worst domination is a domination in which you if you are the dominated one you have to pretend as if act as if there is no domination. I could go on here, there are many paradoxes here uh which are not abstract theoretical paradoxes but determine our daily life. Like one of the basic ideological mechanisms and this tells a lot about the freedom of choice is that to put it brutally you are given the freedom of choice on one condition that you make the right choice, you know. And now you will say this is crazy. No, I think this is maybe even the fundamental feature of our symbolic universe in a way. Look, don't you have these rituals, I repeat now some of my old topics. Don't you have these rituals for example let's say you are rich, I am poor. You invite me to dinner. And although we all know in advance that you will pay but there is at least in my country, I think which a ritual that I have when the bill arrives I have to insist a little bit no, no, no let me pay and then we play this game for I mean if you really hate me you should say okay pay no then. But you see, but it's too easy to say that this is a hypocrisy. This is how politeness works. And at this level ideology at its most elementary enters. I hope you don't know it, there is a story which was told to me by a friend of mine who served military service when he did his military service decades ago in old Yugoslavia. I don't know how it is in your army but now you don't know when you still had conscript army with Yugoslavia it was like this, probably most of the armies. Once you are there uh in the army for some two weeks you have elementary training and then the big moment uh arrives where all of you are gathered there you repeat the pledge, I am ready blah and then you sign your name in some book and you are a soldier now. Okay. What a friend of a friend of mine, this friend of mine was just there saw this, did is something ingenious. After this ceremony when he had to sign the book, he approached the officer and said I don't want to sign it. And the officer told him are you crazy? You will be arrested. Then my friend the friend of my friend told him but wait a minute are you ordering me to sign it or is this a free pledge? Officer told him of course it's free. Your free decision. Then the guy said but if it's free why should I sign it then and so on. So they got engaged in a paradox and at the end my the friend of my friend got a paper, I have a photocopy, where this officer gave him a written statement claiming that he the officer is ordering him the soldier is ordering him to freely sign the oath. I think again you have this mechanism at the very beginning and I think we should do all these studies today if you want to get at how we are controlled today. For example another story that I repeated ten, twenty times of how this permissivity can be even worst oppression. Imagine that you are a small boy it's Sunday afternoon your father wants you to visit your grandmother and you hate it of course you would prefer to play with friends. If you have a traditional patriarchal father everything is okay no? The father will simply tell you listen, I don't care how you feel, it's your duty to do this, do it and behave properly. If this happens everything is okay. You will rebel, you will become a normal young guy okay. But now enters the monster called postmodern permissive father. What does he do? Ah ah, he does something like this, I know because I experienced this, he tells you you are free to go or not but please be aware of how much your grandmother loves you and misses you and so on. So you know what he is really telling you. He is subtly not just ordering you to go. But he is ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. You know this is the true terror. Not just you have to do it but you have to want to do it. And I think again mechanisms like that are absolutely crucial today. This is what I'm sorry we don't have time more time to go into this because this is I think so fundamental. That's why if there is an era that I remember as a pure paradise it was my military service. No I'm not crazy. No precisely I was shocked, disappointed, in my psychological structure I'm kind of a fascist probably. I like discipline and order. And what shocked me in the army was how it's not really like that at least Yugoslav army. Beneath the discipline and order there is an obscure domain of obscene jokes, perversions and so on, and it took me a long time to guess how there is nothing subversive in these jokes. They are absolutely crucial for the military discipline to reproduce itself. You know and then more and more I'm convinced that every institution has something like this. For example in United States the top colleges, you know you have all these fraternities, sororities with their obscene rituals and so on. In Yugoslav military, ah another thing fascinated me. This is what my gay friends don't like to hear. Officially officially, publicly the army was extremely brutally homophobic. And it really meant it, if a soldier was discovered to be gay he was every night nobody dared to talk to him, he was usually every night beaten, you know this standard ritual. Somebody pulls puts a a pillow on your head and others beat you with their belts and so on. Okay, you will say okay. Ah, it's not so simple because at the same time the entire army life was penetrated by homosexual innuendos and so on. I remember for example in my unit uh when you met your friend in the morning, you didn't say good morning, you say you say smoke mine. This was an euphemism for fellatio, you know. Like it was every I could give you dozens of examples. So you know what fascinates me so much that no power structure can reproduce it you need what I call inherent transgression, apparent dirty transgressions which may appear even subversive but they are part of the game, they are crucial for the reproduction of power structure. So why is this so important today? Because I think that today uh the official public structure is more and more egalitarian. Yes but relations of domination survive at this implicit obscene unspoken level. You know this secretly like when do you really admit something? When do you really belong to a community? From the nation to a family. It's not enough just to follow the explicit rules it's also to know how and when to violate these rules. I think a community is never defined any communal body just by the explicit rules. You not only have this is why people who to learn manners go but nobody cares about it today. You know when I was still young you had these people who taught you good manners so that you know how to behave in high class society and it always failed why? Because they taught you the rules but they didn't teach you how to violate the rules. You are really a member of a community if you know all these implicit rules of which rules are you to take seriously, which rules you have to violate how. For example there are rules which are meant to be transgressed, especially in sexuality, when for example in traditional patriarchal sexuality when father tells you not to mix with girls it's really a call do it discreetly and so on and so on. There are many rules like this which just you know this is the St. Paul Paul bible dimension of you need prohibition to generate your desire and so on. But much more interesting for me is the opposite example. Not when something is prohibited but the message of the law is to do it but when something you are permitted even solicited to do it, you know that you're given a freedom on condition that you don't use it. So if I may conclude with a story from my youth I wasn't a big dissident, I was kind of a half dissident. And I remember when I was young I was in a student journal and we were there were elections. Now in Ex-Yugoslavia elections were not as bad as in Soviet Union. The party didn't get they had enough about percent but we knew it, no, how it will be. So we at that journal asked ourselves what should we do? Some radical idiots proposed why don't we simply openly do a heroic gesture, let's publish an issue of this journal where we claim these were not free elections, these were a fake and so on. Okay, we said but everyone knows this, what would be the point? We would just appear idiots, you know. So then one of us, not me, had an ingenious idea which worked. We said they are claiming that these are real democratic elections. So let's just treat them like that. And on the evening of elections we published an extraordinary issue of the journal with big titles, latest election results, it looks that communists will remain in power, you know. Like and it was such a wonderful act because they were so furious at us at the Central Committee not really, we didn't reach being and they called us there and said boys don't do this, you provoke us. Then we just naively said listen, these were free elections and we felt the duty to inform people of the result. And it was so tragic, this party bureaucrat because he couldn't have told us no, they were not free elections. He just said boys don't fuck with me, you know very well what I mean. We ask him but what do you mean? Don't mess with me, you know like I almost felt the sympathy for that guy, you know. And now to really finish because you once when we had the last debate asked me where am I, revolution, social democracy whatever. Ah, I combined the two, not in some stupid synthetic way. That's why I like Syriza, that's why I like up to a point, it's so fashionable today to be against President Obama. He did some good things, why? Take Obama and universal healthcare. It's nothing revolutionary my god, most of the Western liberal state have still some kind of universal healthcare. But in America in United States it's a traumatic point. You know what happened to Obama, he was dragged up to the Supreme Court and so on. So I think the art of politics today is to formulate a specific demand which is a very modest one, nobody can accuse you you want Stalinism or whatever. Like Obama healthcare, it's something that Canada has, but in that concrete constellation it is extremely traumatic, you trigger a whole process. So not big demands, big demands can often be meaningless, you know. I mean I remember this from my communist youth in communist Yugoslavia in the last years when they allowed dissidents, up to a point dissidents become a profession. These were wonderful times, you know. Communist Party financed like there was a dissident congress anti-communist in Paris and the government okay you can go there blah blah we finance you the trip. The catch was just what? Don't be too concrete, you know. Like communism is worse than than fascism, they didn't care about that. But don't say repeal that law here in our country, you know. Like and that's my lesson from those times that the art is often not to make big radical demands. For example take Greece today. They have a Communist Party which is still pretty strong one, usually it gets between and percent now they lost, and it's the last big as far as I know Stalinist Communist Party. By Stalinist I really mean Stalinist. They still reprint the collected works of Stalin which is their sacred literature and even for example their enemy is not Gorbachev, their enemy is Khrushchev who betrayed it by criticizing and they said no Syriza is social democratic, no let's wait, we want authentic revolution and to be cynical all right-wingers love them. Because they know that it's totally meaningless, they don't threaten anyone, nothing changes, it's just a very comfortable position of sitting there in the back with your radical demands and so on and so on. You know that's the tragedy. If you say we want communist revolution it means nothing. If you just say like Varoufakis let's renegotiate debts a little bit everyone is in a panic. And that's what we should learn and here we should be very specific to specific countries. For example in United States universal healthcare triggers a process which you never know where it will end. Uh in our countries multiculturalism is a manipulated phrase, in Turkey it means something with Armenians, Kurds and so on and so on. Here I see an option you know because what I'm I love movies so Slavoj but we are very prominent members of this community we broke all the disciplines rules and everything especially beginning with the time rule. So You see now I understand how it was in Poland. You're like Jaruzelski now, no. Of course, of course. However however as for Jaruzelski this was this part of the communist regime that already started to uh look uh in a certain dimension as what you hate in capitalism which is the cynical uh the cynical I didn't have time I totally agree no I will not talk again but just to confirm that's crucial how cynicism works today. I claim it's not only that ideology works even if you don't take it seriously. I'm ready to go a step further. It has to be not taken not seriously to work. We have this and again I know this from my youth in Yugoslavia. I know two friends who worked as Central Committee in 70s they lost their job, one of them Ivan Hvala the other if my friend there no why? Because they took self-management system seriously. They really believed in the system and for nomenklatura this was a horror. This was the first step towards dissidence. This was exactly my point. The biggest fear for the late communist was were the people who will really believe still in Marxism and immediately they they expelled them from party or like at least they isolated them somehow. Um actually you know there were so many questions asked to you but I realized that maybe one is or never or rarely I don't believe that there is any question not already asked but one cannot and not already answered yeah but um um actually the I collected all the examples of those paradoxes that you invented that you mentioned that you mentioned like the one with Syriza um the one with Fox News that actually is like a big fan of No I couldn't believe it Fox. But I think if you would like uh give no sorry can I just very briefly explain to you and you will immediately understand me. Very reasonably the point was what really made them afraid Fox right-wingers was but in this way we are pushing Greeks to Putin. No actually this is the the problem is that actually you can explain all those paradoxes pretty easily giving the small answers which and the only disadvantage of the small answers is that they are not really spectacular. Give me an example. I can I can actually answer to almost all of your paradoxes like why the why the western powers prefer um prefer New Democracy so the people who are responsible than Syriza because they think that Syriza is a even bigger danger even though Why? Why? Okay but this is another discussion if they are right or not but they are coherent Why? Syriza extremely moderate social democracy For you but not for the people Why? Why? Okay I'm telling you what's the No it's not for me, it's not for me, it's by Western European standards of years ago it's extremely moderate social democracy. Really moderate, like they even now to give you the last proof the latest news I have they are not a priori against privatization. Actually I'm not it's the discussion about Syriza an agenda of Syriza. This is one thing but there is nothing paradoxical actually in the behavior of western powers if in the ranking of the dangers Syriza is in a higher position than the previous powers responsible. So actually I don't see I also don't see anything really paradoxical in why Fox News is like a big fan of the left wing uh or even Putin. Actually because behind this stays very coherent and exactly the same reason that they are anti-Americanist themselves. So anybody who actually is a puts any pressure on United States or like uh or is a or can harm in any sense the the western alliance or whatever will be appreciated because an enemy of my enemy is my friend, which is like very coherent logic. I mean at least from the pragmatic point of view. So um and and also you said something which a lot of those paradoxes are based on the very Foucaultian point that like this you know discipline and punishment. You said that so you said that like about this like the behavior in the capitalist countries or like this the debt man. I totally agree this is exactly what happens all my friends that are indebted they will be a hostage of the mainstream they will always vote for the ruling party and like and it's even if they totally know that they are doing the thing against themselves. Actually this is something new in this late capitalism. The fact that we know that we're doing something bad to us or or generally uh and we do it still. This is I mean solving this question how to how to overcome it would be probably the the solving the question of the left generally. You didn't convince me but let's go back. Okay Foucaultian point would be easy just and I will answer you with a question like if you really prefer the the previous solution than the control or the discipline is like to ask Foucault what he really prefers. Torture of the state with the king or control with the kind with the with the which is the advanced model of like economy society or whatever. Are you really sure that you're gonna choose the previous version of it without a control of capitalist country without the cynicism without all those things that are like. Okay this is the complex question because I am one of the few madmen whom I know who is still for death penalty. But this is another topic. No I I think that now now you are too abstract in opposing in in in first when you say torture, no? My god it's today that torture is legalized. You don't have to look into some dark past. This is another find point of ethical regression that I want. Are you afraid that the way even those who oppose torture, the way we in the liberal West are talking about torture today is something that if you were to talk like this thirty years
police to at least raise at the level of Chinese police in Tibet. Because they are torturing there in Tibet but not if you cheat at a TV quiz, you know. There you are tortured of course we know when, if there is a suspicion of contacts with Dalai Lama, political, no? So their demand what please just follow the Chinese there, torture us only if there is a political suspicion or what, don't torture everybody and so on. So how how much do we know but I am losing time, short after this short introduction, we have oh my god we have some no okay I will try to can we go a little bit over like it's not that after minutes I have to stop? Go with your flow. I hope okay. Sorry. A little bit? Yeah but you know that I always fight this metaphysical notion of linear time. And this is how I concretely fight it, you know. No no okay, sorry. Now I want what I wanted to do let me do some serious theory at least is my starting now I will small report on what I wanted to do. My starting point was the three levels of what we confront as problems today and how they are structured. On the one hand it is the absolute external enemy, ISIS, Islamic State, Boko Haram, this totally brutal irrational other. Then we have the mid level, let's call it new geopolitical tensions, United States-China or Putin-Russia and so on. And then we have the renewed a little bit more radical left in our Europe itself, Syriza, maybe Podemos and so on and so on. My point of course is that the most danger is the last one, Syriza and so on. That ISIS is it's even so so non-transparent to know I have good connections with Israel I'm informed what is going on there, who is supporting whom. There are some good reasons that Americans and Israelis are not totally innocent there. What is now confirmed, it was published in our press, you just have to look at it, you know, these are the small news. For example do you know that in South Lebanon the main the most of the border is controlled by Hezbollah and then you have one part of the border eastern part which is controlled by Al-Qaeda. Because Al-Qaeda is Sunni and fights Hezbollah, Israel is systematically with arms, food and medical help supporting Al-Qaeda there. And it's not a crazy story, it's documented. I mean they admit it and so on. So who knows what game people are playing there. The reason I like, not like, I find interesting this Islamic fundamentalism is we should we are not surprised enough of the strangeness of what is going on there. For example isn't this strange that we have Boko Haram a big social movement which wants to restructure entire society and its main programmatic point is women at their own place. That is to say no western education for women which means no education and so on and so on. Isn't this something so weird how could this have happened that all of a sudden we are back to the 60s when we were saying sexuality is political but not exactly in the same sense, you know. And it's also interesting to what extent it's easy to make fun of Boko Haram, you know. But they are just the extreme point. There is more and more this is I think what is also behind this fear of gay rights or even you remember you were part of it here two, three years ago when that crazy Conchita Wurst won Eurovision, the Russian reaction was very interesting. It was almost one step towards Boko Haram reaction, no. Like Putin said I read in the Bible there are two kinds of people, men and women. What is going on now here and so on, you know. My favorite statement was made by Zhirinovsky, the nationalist, who says in Europe there are now no longer men and women, there is only it, you know, some kind of Stephen King monster. But still okay, that's this so-called fundamentalism. What what I find strange here is is are a couple of things. The first thing is that and here we should become more self-critical, why is this happening? Why this also in our country with fundamentalists this politicization on of religion. Don't blame just Islam. You know that these are official data. FBI in United States has under ob they have under observation million Americans Christian fundamentalists as potential threat. Wait a minute, this is almost the same percentage as in in Muslim countries. So of course we should fight fundamentalism but we should also raise the question what is it in the process of global capitalism which generates fundamentalism? Because fundamentalism is not simply a remainder of the past. You know which example I always quote here. Afghanistan. If some of you are old enough, I am unfortunately, I remember forty years ago, fifty, Afghanistan was maybe the most secular of the Middle East Islam countries. They had a pro-Western king, kind of a technocrat. They had kind of yeah, they had a very sorry, they have a even a strong local communist party and so on. Then you know what happened, communists made coup d'etat when it failed Soviet Union intervened to support them, then Americans mobilized their allies like Osama bin Laden and so on. So you see what's the tragedy. The most one of the most tolerant countries it became fundamentalist as part of being caught in global process. So we shouldn't play innocent here and mock them. There are fundamentalists in Arab countries. There are also fundamentalists in United States themselves. Or which country is probably apart from ISIS the most fundamentalist? Saudi Arabia. But are we aware what strange country Saudi Arabia is? It's nothing. It's something that survives strictly from American and other countries' money. It's something which has no substance. They are getting billions from oil. It's it's western capitalism organized as a state there. So again this would be my first point. Second point, why this politicization? Maybe did he even visit you here, my Croat friend Boris Buden? Yeah. He wrote a wonderful book on this phenomena where he developed something with which I deeply agree. That uh this politicization of religion today that we are witnessing, it's not simply religion invading politics but literally religion replacing politics itself. It's what we all know it's happening. We are approaching an era where our societies are more and more depoliticized, depoliticized in the sense that we have all our private freedoms but then experts run economy and all politics that remains is mostly cultural politics. So it's as if politics which is disappearing, losing its substance, authentic politics, political struggle is returning in the guise of religion. We effect I think that this politicization of religion is strictly correlative to the disappearance of politics from our from our societies. Now okay I will improvise a little bit then you cut me short whenever you want. Uh, next thing I would like to develop here is uh what does this mean I've written about it for our notion of freedom. Are we free or not in the west? Maybe some of you know this line of thought of mine but I would like to repeat it. Uh, of course we are free and I'm not a stupid Marxist who I'm not trying to sell you this shit, you know oh it's just formal freedom and so on. No, the ABC lesson of Marx is form matters. So an authentic Marxist will never tell you all this is just a formal freedom. Things begin as a form. Look at Human Rights. We all know that at the beginning, 18th century, Human Rights were basically rights of white people of property and so on. There was a subtle network of exclusions. But instead of saying okay these were just formal rights, people did something differently. They simply expanded these rights. First women said why not also us, then blacks in Haiti said, so form matters. So but let me go on. Nonetheless, let's say I ask you are you free? You would say yes, I also ask myself, I'm not treating you as idiots or if I am I'm also part of the group of idiots. Okay, then I ask you in what sense are you free? I claim that most what you would have told me is something like freedom of personal choices, no? You would have told me I'm free because I can read whatever I want, I can do whatever I want in sexuality, I can travel whatever I want, I can up to a point, here things get complex, I can say publicly whatever I want, I can take a job whatever I want, now again I would add if you get it and so on. But okay this freedom of choices, it's a nice thing but is this enough? My thesis is and this is the lesson of what was disclosed by WikiLeaks and now everyone is talking about it, this is the lesson of this all famous secret like TiSA, TISA, secret trade agreements. That we are free but the social texture, frame, which underlies our freedom, which determines what are our choices, is more and more non-transparent. Things are that's the horror of TiSA agreement, trade and flow of information agreement which as we all know if accepted will determine in detail coordinates of financial life and other which will seriously restrain governments of what they can do and so on. And uh there was no debate, in the original plan of this agreement it even said that it should remain secret for five years after it is accepted. So this is what fascinated me how we are free at the personal level, maybe even more and more free but the very frame of our freedom, you know you are free in a certain context to choose this or that, that frame is more and more impenetrable. And here ideology enters I claim. In what sense ideology? Uh in the sense that uh the trick is that your very form of unfreedom is presented to you as a new freedom. You can see this curious in the the the mode of work, precarious work, which is getting more and more important. It's in a way horrible. You are all the time in anxiety you will will my contract be prolonged and so on, you health insurance is not covered, retirement you have to do it yourself and so on and so on. But here come postmodern social theorists like Anthony Giddens who is now happily half forgotten, who tell you but these are new forms of freedom. Look, state no longer prescribes to you how to be what health insurance, you are free to choose it. Or you know like or they say basically that the wonderful trick is to treat each of us as a small capitalist, no? The official postmodern theory is this one. We are all self-entrepreneurs. Let's say I'm a poor worker, I get a credit for euros and then I'm free to choose. Will I go take my family to a big holiday? Will I put money aside for studies of my children? Will I invest in health or whatever? It's true you have this choice but at the same time this the constellation of this choice causes incredible anxiety, effectively limits your freedom and so on and so on. So I think that again this is our paradox. What is more and more disappearing from our societies is freedom which should be part of our western freedoms and not communist but even ordinary democratic freedoms. The freedom not just the freedom of choice within the existing social framework but the freedom to collectively decide how to change this framework itself. And this is I claim more and more becoming impenetrable becoming almost unimaginable. I mean uh this is why and I don't have any naive hopes for them, this is why I admire Syriza. My heart is breaking about how they are treated because I know them personally. I met a couple of times Tsipras, Varoufakis, my god we are friends and so on. I can tell you this, forget about this mediatized Varoufakis, a crazy eccentric guy who walks around without a tie and makes provocations and so on and so on. Read try to get hold of what Varoufakis basically proposes to Brussels to European Union. It's something if you look at all his proposals, is some it's something so modest that literally what he is demanding from Brussels is forty, fifty years ago this would have been an extremely centrist modest social democracy. Much less than Sweden was doing at that at that point. Now this is the first thing you should think about. Where are we when something that was part of the totally acceptable normal social mainstream social democracy, to do this today you appear as a crazy lunatic radical leftist. No, uh there is then there is another interesting thing. The topic of super-ego. Namely uh you know since I'm here also to speak in Freudhaus, we know Über-ich, super-ego. Super-ego is something very interesting. You know super-ego, Freudian, it's not simply an ethical agency, but it's an obscene ethical agency. Freud described it nicely how the paradox of super-ego, Über-ich is that the more you follow it, the more you are guilty. You know you are like your failure is part of the game in advance. And it's incredible to what extent this is confirmed. Uh what look if you look at the statements by Varoufakis and others. They are not claiming no, we Greeks don't want to pay the debt. No, they my god read them. Their language is extremely rational. They say yes, we screwed it up. Yes. Their only criticism or a couple of criticisms are very rational. They claim first, listen it's not Greeks as such. Which government is most responsible for the Greek debt? New Democracy government. Okay, we had elections. Whom did Western Europe support? New Democracy. Sorry, isn't this a little bit strange? That you have a fia it's like you know fighting criminal and then supporting the main criminal. Second thing, uh not only the conditions how this debt was acquired but second thing it's clear that and here I would like to make you read they are now popular some of these post-Negri thinkers, Italian like Franco Berardi or Maurizio Lazzarato, Lazzarato wrote a wonderful book called The Rise of the Indebted Man. Where he has a wonderful simple but I think true theory of how in today's society where you no longer can afford direct command, Herrschaft, domination, debt is the main way to control individuals and states. Because if you are indebted you are controlled. You have to work for the debt and so on to repay it and so on. And so the basic dialectic here is that it's absolutely clear that the question is not should the Greeks return the debt or not. I think that the secret ideal of those banks and countries who give debts is precisely that the debt should not be returned. That you have to be permanently in this controlled position feeling guilty and so on. You know where I tested this empirically? Some ten years ago with the help from Chávez who still had money at that point, I mean Venezuela. Argentina surprisingly returned its debt to IMF. And I remember the official first reaction from IMF, which was oh my god, what does it mean now? They will behave irresponsible. How you know they were really literally shocked, they perceived as catastrophic news that Argentina returned covered up the debt from them. So this is the next thing. What is so annoying for the West in Greeks is that they admit their debt. This is even their reason. Varoufakis's reasoning is listen, in we had billion of debt. Now after seven years of your austerity politics the country is almost ruined economically but our debt is up to, as we all know, billion. So obviously your solution doesn't work not even for you. It's not that they are destroying Greece to get the debt at least repaid. They are not getting it. They are still throwing money. So Varoufakis extremely modestly is proposing them let's make an arrangement like give us a little bit break here so that productivity raises so that we can at least pay you some debt back. And it's I think irrationality is on the side of Europe here. You know how you can detect this. That even for example when Varoufakis visited Cameron, sorry I'm sorry, Cameron and Osborne, the two conservative central figures of British government, they had great sympathy for Syriza. You know where I heard great sympathy for Syriza? When I was in United States recently. I listen, I always like right-wing TV, I listen to Fox News. There was a round table there practically pro-Syriza. So you should always be aware that what is happening now here it's not at all about rational Europe encountering a crazy country who just wants to spend and so on and so on. No, it's a lesson of ideology of control, it's an ideological phenomenon and so on and so on. My next point, so let's go further. Uh another and then maybe I can stop so that we don't go too far or how? Just one point I would love to make. Namely uh the point about sorry the point about structure of power. Uh how is power how this is I think an extremely interesting phenomenon. Namely uh how does authority function today because I think this is part of this democratic game of you know we are all self-entrepreneurs and so on. Here I refer to the work of Alenka Zupančič and some other of my Lacanian colleagues in Slovenia. Traditional power works in a fetishist way. In the sense of you may know personally that that guy who embodies power is an idiot like you but if he has the proper insignia then when he speaks power, the law speaks through him. Is this fetishist logic of what in psychoanalysis we call we call symbolic castration. Like uh for example Socrates when he was condemned to death, no? His point is basically I know those judges who condemned me are idiots but nonetheless they are legal power, law speaks through them. So it's this je sais bien, mais quand même. I know very well but I know very well you are an idiot like me but nonetheless through you a higher authority acts. So okay, what I claim is that today and this is maybe the big result of 60s rebellion and how this rebellion was reappropriated in a triumphant way by ruling ideology. Today costumes, masks, these insignia of power are no longer no longer necessary. Today power uh the okay I'll put it in this way, how does a typical, typical, not all of them of course, boss act today? It's no longer insisting on this dignity and so on. It's more like listen, I'm the same guy like you, let's be equal. You know a typical boss today, I don't know you come on Monday to the job he kicks you, did you have a good sex, a nice or you know like we are the colleagues displaying the same weaknesses as as you but the paradox is all this in no way undermines his or her power, it makes it even stronger. The paradox is that uh the boss, the leader, authority whatever is allowed as we say in psychoanalytic jargon to display his castration, make fun of himself, ridiculous guy, weak and so on and so on, and this in no way limits his power but makes it makes it in a way even more absolute. In what sense? Uh because I claim that when you have this egalitarian boss the oppression is even worse. Because it's not so much that there is no Herrschaft, domination, but that domination itself becomes unspeakable. What do I mean by this? Once I had a debate with Judith Butler, who I think was here a couple of times in Vienna, you know her and we have many, I had many polemics with her but at one point I agree with her. Where she said that the most dangerous oppression, I simplify her argument, on women is not when they are directly oppressed but when they are de facto oppressed but this is masked by a superficial oh but we are the same you know like false spirit of fraternal equality and so on and so on. So she had a wonderful proposal. She said that in such a situation the most subversive gesture of a woman is to demand men to act as a master like. You are de facto master, so don't give me this bullshit that we are all equal, give me orders and this is the way to maybe to undermine domination. In what way? Let me return to the beginning to our beloved Stalinism. An example that I always like to use, a fictional example. Let's say we are in Moscow Let's say to be modest you are a Central Committee, I am Stalin, someone has to be. I give a big speech, you applaud, you know you applaud, I applaud and so on. Then we have a debate. One of you attacks me. Uh uh next day probably the big debate will be who has seen that guy alive the last, no? But ah, that's not all. Let's say then that another of you stands up and starts to shout at this first guy who attacked me. Are you crazy? We don't do this here, we don't attack Comrade Stalin. I claim the second guy would disappear even faster. You see the point? It wasn't only prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition. It's not only that Stalin was a master but if you said this you were, well you disappeared or whatever. So this paradox I find so fascinating. And here we learn so much about how ideology works, about how okay we have relations of domination but precisely the worst domination is a domination in which you if you are the dominated one you have to pretend as if act as if there is no domination. I could go on here, there are many paradoxes here uh which are not abstract theoretical paradoxes but determine our daily life. Like one of the basic ideological mechanisms and this tells a lot about the freedom of choice is that to put it brutally you are given the freedom of choice on one condition that you make the right choice, you know. And now you will say this is crazy. No, I think this is maybe even the fundamental feature of our symbolic universe in a way. Look, don't you have these rituals, I repeat now some of my old topics. Don't you have these rituals for example let's say you are rich, I am poor. You invite me to dinner. And although we all know in advance that you will pay but there is at least in my country, I think which a ritual that I have when the bill arrives I have to insist a little bit no, no, no let me pay and then we play this game for I mean if you really hate me you should say okay pay no then. But you see, but it's too easy to say that this is a hypocrisy. This is how politeness works. And at this level ideology at its most elementary enters. I hope you don't know it, there is a story which was told to me by a friend of mine who served military service when he did his military service decades ago in old Yugoslavia. I don't know how it is in your army but now you don't know when you still had conscript army with Yugoslavia it was like this, probably most of the armies. Once you are there uh in the army for some two weeks you have elementary training and then the big moment uh arrives where all of you are gathered there you repeat the pledge, I am ready blah and then you sign your name in some book and you are a soldier now. Okay. What a friend of a friend of mine, this friend of mine was just there saw this, did is something ingenious. After this ceremony when he had to sign the book, he approached the officer and said I don't want to sign it. And the officer told him are you crazy? You will be arrested. Then my friend the friend of my friend told him but wait a minute are you ordering me to sign it or is this a free pledge? Officer told him of course it's free. Your free decision. Then the guy said but if it's free why should I sign it then and so on. So they got engaged in a paradox and at the end my the friend of my friend got a paper, I have a photocopy, where this officer gave him a written statement claiming that he the officer is ordering him the soldier is ordering him to freely sign the oath. I think again you have this mechanism at the very beginning and I think we should do all these studies today if you want to get at how we are controlled today. For example another story that I repeated ten, twenty times of how this permissivity can be even worst oppression. Imagine that you are a small boy it's Sunday afternoon your father wants you to visit your grandmother and you hate it of course you would prefer to play with friends. If you have a traditional patriarchal father everything is okay no? The father will simply tell you listen, I don't care how you feel, it's your duty to do this, do it and behave properly. If this happens everything is okay. You will rebel, you will become a normal young guy okay. But now enters the monster called postmodern permissive father. What does he do? Ah ah, he does something like this, I know because I experienced this, he tells you you are free to go or not but please be aware of how much your grandmother loves you and misses you and so on. So you know what he is really telling you. He is subtly not just ordering you to go. But he is ordering you to go voluntarily, to freely go. You know this is the true terror. Not just you have to do it but you have to want to do it. And I think again mechanisms like that are absolutely crucial today. This is what I'm sorry we don't have time more time to go into this because this is I think so fundamental. That's why if there is an era that I remember as a pure paradise it was my military service. No I'm not crazy. No precisely I was shocked, disappointed, in my psychological structure I'm kind of a fascist probably. I like discipline and order. And what shocked me in the army was how it's not really like that at least Yugoslav army. Beneath the discipline and order there is an obscure domain of obscene jokes, perversions and so on, and it took me a long time to guess how there is nothing subversive in these jokes. They are absolutely crucial for the military discipline to reproduce itself. You know and then more and more I'm convinced that every institution has something like this. For example in United States the top colleges, you know you have all these fraternities, sororities with their obscene rituals and so on. In Yugoslav military, ah another thing fascinated me. This is what my gay friends don't like to hear. Officially officially, publicly the army was extremely brutally homophobic. And it really meant it, if a soldier was discovered to be gay he was every night nobody dared to talk to him, he was usually every night beaten, you know this standard ritual. Somebody pulls puts a a pillow on your head and others beat you with their belts and so on. Okay, you will say okay. Ah, it's not so simple because at the same time the entire army life was penetrated by homosexual innuendos and so on. I remember for example in my unit uh when you met your friend in the morning, you didn't say good morning, you say you say smoke mine. This was an euphemism for fellatio, you know. Like it was every I could give you dozens of examples. So you know what fascinates me so much that no power structure can reproduce it you need what I call inherent transgression, apparent dirty transgressions which may appear even subversive but they are part of the game, they are crucial for the reproduction of power structure. So why is this so important today? Because I think that today uh the official public structure is more and more egalitarian. Yes but relations of domination survive at this implicit obscene unspoken level. You know this secretly like when do you really admit something? When do you really belong to a community? From the nation to a family. It's not enough just to follow the explicit rules it's also to know how and when to violate these rules. I think a community is never defined any communal body just by the explicit rules. You not only have this is why people who to learn manners go but nobody cares about it today. You know when I was still young you had these people who taught you good manners so that you know how to behave in high class society and it always failed why? Because they taught you the rules but they didn't teach you how to violate the rules. You are really a member of a community if you know all these implicit rules of which rules are you to take seriously, which rules you have to violate how. For example there are rules which are meant to be transgressed, especially in sexuality, when for example in traditional patriarchal sexuality when father tells you not to mix with girls it's really a call do it discreetly and so on and so on. There are many rules like this which just you know this is the St. Paul Paul bible dimension of you need prohibition to generate your desire and so on. But much more interesting for me is the opposite example. Not when something is prohibited but the message of the law is to do it but when something you are permitted even solicited to do it, you know that you're given a freedom on condition that you don't use it. So if I may conclude with a story from my youth I wasn't a big dissident, I was kind of a half dissident. And I remember when I was young I was in a student journal and we were there were elections. Now in Ex-Yugoslavia elections were not as bad as in Soviet Union. The party didn't get they had enough about percent but we knew it, no, how it will be. So we at that journal asked ourselves what should we do? Some radical idiots proposed why don't we simply openly do a heroic gesture, let's publish an issue of this journal where we claim these were not free elections, these were a fake and so on. Okay, we said but everyone knows this, what would be the point? We would just appear idiots, you know. So then one of us, not me, had an ingenious idea which worked. We said they are claiming that these are real democratic elections. So let's just treat them like that. And on the evening of elections we published an extraordinary issue of the journal with big titles, latest election results, it looks that communists will remain in power, you know. Like and it was such a wonderful act because they were so furious at us at the Central Committee not really, we didn't reach being and they called us there and said boys don't do this, you provoke us. Then we just naively said listen, these were free elections and we felt the duty to inform people of the result. And it was so tragic, this party bureaucrat because he couldn't have told us no, they were not free elections. He just said boys don't fuck with me, you know very well what I mean. We ask him but what do you mean? Don't mess with me, you know like I almost felt the sympathy for that guy, you know. And now to really finish because you once when we had the last debate asked me where am I, revolution, social democracy whatever. Ah, I combined the two, not in some stupid synthetic way. That's why I like Syriza, that's why I like up to a point, it's so fashionable today to be against President Obama. He did some good things, why? Take Obama and universal healthcare. It's nothing revolutionary my god, most of the Western liberal state have still some kind of universal healthcare. But in America in United States it's a traumatic point. You know what happened to Obama, he was dragged up to the Supreme Court and so on. So I think the art of politics today is to formulate a specific demand which is a very modest one, nobody can accuse you you want Stalinism or whatever. Like Obama healthcare, it's something that Canada has, but in that concrete constellation it is extremely traumatic, you trigger a whole process. So not big demands, big demands can often be meaningless, you know. I mean I remember this from my communist youth in communist Yugoslavia in the last years when they allowed dissidents, up to a point dissidents become a profession. These were wonderful times, you know. Communist Party financed like there was a dissident congress anti-communist in Paris and the government okay you can go there blah blah we finance you the trip. The catch was just what? Don't be too concrete, you know. Like communism is worse than than fascism, they didn't care about that. But don't say repeal that law here in our country, you know. Like and that's my lesson from those times that the art is often not to make big radical demands. For example take Greece today. They have a Communist Party which is still pretty strong one, usually it gets between and percent now they lost, and it's the last big as far as I know Stalinist Communist Party. By Stalinist I really mean Stalinist. They still reprint the collected works of Stalin which is their sacred literature and even for example their enemy is not Gorbachev, their enemy is Khrushchev who betrayed it by criticizing and they said no Syriza is social democratic, no let's wait, we want authentic revolution and to be cynical all right-wingers love them. Because they know that it's totally meaningless, they don't threaten anyone, nothing changes, it's just a very comfortable position of sitting there in the back with your radical demands and so on and so on. You know that's the tragedy. If you say we want communist revolution it means nothing. If you just say like Varoufakis let's renegotiate debts a little bit everyone is in a panic. And that's what we should learn and here we should be very specific to specific countries. For example in United States universal healthcare triggers a process which you never know where it will end. Uh in our countries multiculturalism is a manipulated phrase, in Turkey it means something with Armenians, Kurds and so on and so on. Here I see an option you know because what I'm I love movies so Slavoj but we are very prominent members of this community we broke all the disciplines rules and everything especially beginning with the time rule. So You see now I understand how it was in Poland. You're like Jaruzelski now, no. Of course, of course. However however as for Jaruzelski this was this part of the communist regime that already started to uh look uh in a certain dimension as what you hate in capitalism which is the cynical uh the cynical I didn't have time I totally agree no I will not talk again but just to confirm that's crucial how cynicism works today. I claim it's not only that ideology works even if you don't take it seriously. I'm ready to go a step further. It has to be not taken not seriously to work. We have this and again I know this from my youth in Yugoslavia. I know two friends who worked as Central Committee in 70s they lost their job, one of them Ivan Hvala the other if my friend there no why? Because they took self-management system seriously. They really believed in the system and for nomenklatura this was a horror. This was the first step towards dissidence. This was exactly my point. The biggest fear for the late communist was were the people who will really believe still in Marxism and immediately they they expelled them from party or like at least they isolated them somehow. Um actually you know there were so many questions asked to you but I realized that maybe one is or never or rarely I don't believe that there is any question not already asked but one cannot and not already answered yeah but um um actually the I collected all the examples of those paradoxes that you invented that you mentioned that you mentioned like the one with Syriza um the one with Fox News that actually is like a big fan of No I couldn't believe it Fox. But I think if you would like uh give no sorry can I just very briefly explain to you and you will immediately understand me. Very reasonably the point was what really made them afraid Fox right-wingers was but in this way we are pushing Greeks to Putin. No actually this is the the problem is that actually you can explain all those paradoxes pretty easily giving the small answers which and the only disadvantage of the small answers is that they are not really spectacular. Give me an example. I can I can actually answer to almost all of your paradoxes like why the why the western powers prefer um prefer New Democracy so the people who are responsible than Syriza because they think that Syriza is a even bigger danger even though Why? Why? Okay but this is another discussion if they are right or not but they are coherent Why? Syriza extremely moderate social democracy For you but not for the people Why? Why? Okay I'm telling you what's the No it's not for me, it's not for me, it's by Western European standards of years ago it's extremely moderate social democracy. Really moderate, like they even now to give you the last proof the latest news I have they are not a priori against privatization. Actually I'm not it's the discussion about Syriza an agenda of Syriza. This is one thing but there is nothing paradoxical actually in the behavior of western powers if in the ranking of the dangers Syriza is in a higher position than the previous powers responsible. So actually I don't see I also don't see anything really paradoxical in why Fox News is like a big fan of the left wing uh or even Putin. Actually because behind this stays very coherent and exactly the same reason that they are anti-Americanist themselves. So anybody who actually is a puts any pressure on United States or like uh or is a or can harm in any sense the the western alliance or whatever will be appreciated because an enemy of my enemy is my friend, which is like very coherent logic. I mean at least from the pragmatic point of view. So um and and also you said something which a lot of those paradoxes are based on the very Foucaultian point that like this you know discipline and punishment. You said that so you said that like about this like the behavior in the capitalist countries or like this the debt man. I totally agree this is exactly what happens all my friends that are indebted they will be a hostage of the mainstream they will always vote for the ruling party and like and it's even if they totally know that they are doing the thing against themselves. Actually this is something new in this late capitalism. The fact that we know that we're doing something bad to us or or generally uh and we do it still. This is I mean solving this question how to how to overcome it would be probably the the solving the question of the left generally. You didn't convince me but let's go back. Okay Foucaultian point would be easy just and I will answer you with a question like if you really prefer the the previous solution than the control or the discipline is like to ask Foucault what he really prefers. Torture of the state with the king or control with the kind with the with the which is the advanced model of like economy society or whatever. Are you really sure that you're gonna choose the previous version of it without a control of capitalist country without the cynicism without all those things that are like. Okay this is the complex question because I am one of the few madmen whom I know who is still for death penalty. But this is another topic. No I I think that now now you are too abstract in opposing in in in first when you say torture, no? My god it's today that torture is legalized. You don't have to look into some dark past. This is another find point of ethical regression that I want. Are you afraid that the way even those who oppose torture, the way we in the liberal West are talking about torture today is something that if you were to talk like this thirty years
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ago you would be considered a totalitarian madman. You know what
ago you would be considered a totalitarian madman. You know what
Slavoj Žižek
I mean that even those who reject torture
I mean that even those who reject torture
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already accept it as a as a topic of debate and argumentation like they say but it's not really efficient, you cannot rely on. No I'm here for total dogmatism. I think we should rehabilitate dogma. Progress
already accept it as a as a topic of debate and argumentation like they say but it's not really efficient, you cannot rely on. No I'm here for total dogmatism. I think we should rehabilitate dogma. Progress
Slavoj Žižek
of humanity is the more good dogmas you have all the better. So that you will not think that I'm crazy let me give you another example. Rape. Sorry I wouldn't like to live in a society where you would have to argue all the time you know women really don't like to be raped or whatever. I would like to live in a society where you don't argue about this, where if somebody
of humanity is the more good dogmas you have all the better. So that you will not think that I'm crazy let me give you another example. Rape. Sorry I wouldn't like to live in a society where you would have to argue all the time you know women really don't like to be raped or whatever. I would like to live in a society where you don't argue about this, where if somebody
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starts with this bullshit you know eh but women really secretly enjoy the enjoy it, he simply appears as a miserable idiot you. Like you know and again it's easy to agree with this on rape. I would say the same about torture. But actually it's like what the difference between one step of feminism and the second one. First you have to
starts with this bullshit you know eh but women really secretly enjoy the enjoy it, he simply appears as a miserable idiot you. Like you know and again it's easy to agree with this on rape. I would say the same about torture. But actually it's like what the difference between one step of feminism and the second one. First you have to
Slavoj Žižek
show the difference then to like overcome it and to forget it in an active way. So like um so this is why you have to like open
show the difference then to like overcome it and to forget it in an active way. So like um so this is why you have to like open
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the question of rape exactly to close it and then to put it as a part of consensus which is behind the discussion. But I again I don't see anything paradoxical. Actually I already I also don't see anything paradoxical in this like Saudi Arabia example. Saudi Arabia is supported by the western powers because this is the one of the very not too many solutions to
the question of rape exactly to close it and then to put it as a part of consensus which is behind the discussion. But I again I don't see anything paradoxical. Actually I already I also don't see anything paradoxical in this like Saudi Arabia example. Saudi Arabia is supported by the western powers because this is the one of the very not too many solutions to
Slavoj Žižek
control the region. Like Libya for example was is a country that that was defeated like a dictatorship and created much more horrible problem exactly for the people to whom It was not only Libya, Afghanistan is the same exactly,
control the region. Like Libya for example was is a country that that was defeated like a dictatorship and created much more horrible problem exactly for the people to whom It was not only Libya, Afghanistan is the same exactly,
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it's the same, it's the same. I seriously claim that with regard to the position of women Iraq now is worse under than under Saddam. And I have no sympathy for Saddam. But whatever you say about Saddam, this he was his regime was basically a secular regime with pretty important posts for women, education of women, in his good years before he and that's the problem with dictators, before he went crazy. But actually these are the not easy questions like would you really like to like I don't know invade Saudi Arabia or like cut Saudi Arabia from any cooperation with western powers and what you get is for the total mess in the in the or like the internal war which as any civil war in Islam countries totally bloody. The biggest victim of Islamism are Islamists
it's the same, it's the same. I seriously claim that with regard to the position of women Iraq now is worse under than under Saddam. And I have no sympathy for Saddam. But whatever you say about Saddam, this he was his regime was basically a secular regime with pretty important posts for women, education of women, in his good years before he and that's the problem with dictators, before he went crazy. But actually these are the not easy questions like would you really like to like I don't know invade Saudi Arabia or like cut Saudi Arabia from any cooperation with western powers and what you get is for the total mess in the in the or like the internal war which as any civil war in Islam countries totally bloody. The biggest victim of Islamism are Islamists
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themselves of course. I no I see your point and I'm here very very pragmatic. I'm I'm the last I'm not a naive idiot who claims you know just give them democratic freedom and so on and so on. I'm just saying that and this is not even a very original point. If you
themselves of course. I no I see your point and I'm here very very pragmatic. I'm I'm the last I'm not a naive idiot who claims you know just give them democratic freedom and so on and so on. I'm just saying that and this is not even a very original point. If you
Slavoj Žižek
already
already
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return to this the original scene is the end of World War I, when you had Lawrence of Arabia and all that bullshit, let's not idealize it, but you have a kind of a genuine movement among Arabs and then I think that this not even the United States, it was mostly England and France when they cut it with this total all all states that we have now there are totally artificial. Afghanistan is artificial
return to this the original scene is the end of World War I, when you had Lawrence of Arabia and all that bullshit, let's not idealize it, but you have a kind of a genuine movement among Arabs and then I think that this not even the United States, it was mostly England and France when they cut it with this total all all states that we have now there are totally artificial. Afghanistan is artificial
Slavoj Žižek
state, Pakistan is artificial state and so on and so on. So all I'm saying is that the first thing to I I'm not proposing any any easy solution. But if you ask me these two cases, Saddam and Gaddafi. No please I they were disgusting and I know horrors my friends told me who were there as journalists but I think it would have been much wiser. Now I will be cynical and I will say especially from the western interest not to overthrow Saddam and not to overthrow Saddam and and and and Gaddafi. Look at Saddam. Listen that's why United States practically supported Saddam. I think if you ask me step further the original sin of the West is. But you know that then then Slavoj Žižek or someone else would exactly challenge this or like actually would say why West doesn't like invade Iraq or Saudi Arabia if there is like and so on. So like actually No I agree this is a very complex topic. I agree. I agree there are no easy solutions.
state, Pakistan is artificial state and so on and so on. So all I'm saying is that the first thing to I I'm not proposing any any easy solution. But if you ask me these two cases, Saddam and Gaddafi. No please I they were disgusting and I know horrors my friends told me who were there as journalists but I think it would have been much wiser. Now I will be cynical and I will say especially from the western interest not to overthrow Saddam and not to overthrow Saddam and and and and Gaddafi. Look at Saddam. Listen that's why United States practically supported Saddam. I think if you ask me step further the original sin of the West is. But you know that then then Slavoj Žižek or someone else would exactly challenge this or like actually would say why West doesn't like invade Iraq or Saudi Arabia if there is like and so on. So like actually No I agree this is a very complex topic. I agree. I agree there are no easy solutions.
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This is an extremely. Okay so we I understand that we should um absolutely, absolutely. So but what I'm saying is that okay let me put it like this sorry. They are making the wrong invasions. Okay. Why you know what I mean? They as if they have an incredible instinct to make the look uh the big fear of United States is Iran. They
This is an extremely. Okay so we I understand that we should um absolutely, absolutely. So but what I'm saying is that okay let me put it like this sorry. They are making the wrong invasions. Okay. Why you know what I mean? They as if they have an incredible instinct to make the look uh the big fear of United States is Iran. They
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invaded Iraq, what's the result of
invaded Iraq, what's the result of
Slavoj Žižek
this? That the main political force in today's Iraq is Iran, who controls the Shia and so on and so on. It's
this? That the main political force in today's Iraq is Iran, who controls the Shia and so on and so on. It's
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just breathtaking. And ah but but sorry to make another no I precisely I'm if you ask me
just breathtaking. And ah but but sorry to make another no I precisely I'm if you ask me
Slavoj Žižek
I'm pretty much a pessimist here. I think we live in a complex world where whatever you do is in a way wrong. But my counter-argument to what you said about Greece and so on. I'm not talking about justice here. I think that what Western Europe is doing now with Greece will be in the long term a catastrophe for European Union itself. That's my very simple prediction. It will cut Europe
I'm pretty much a pessimist here. I think we live in a complex world where whatever you do is in a way wrong. But my counter-argument to what you said about Greece and so on. I'm not talking about justice here. I think that what Western Europe is doing now with Greece will be in the long term a catastrophe for European Union itself. That's my very simple prediction. It will cut Europe
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into two, who knows what will happen. I think or put it in this way, as an old dogmatic Marxist. You know people say oh
into two, who knows what will happen. I think or put it in this way, as an old dogmatic Marxist. You know people say oh
Slavoj Žižek
there is a we pretend we think we read democracy but there is some secret ruling class. I hope there would be, there is not. Europe European rule political elite is more and more losing its ability to govern. And it worries me. Okay.
there is a we pretend we think we read democracy but there is some secret ruling class. I hope there would be, there is not. Europe European rule political elite is more and more losing its ability to govern. And it worries me. Okay.