Pervert’s Guide to Europe
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-11-21 · 1:52:33 · 15,381 words
ideologygeopolitics-warliberalism-political-correctnessreligion-theologyhegel-dialecticspsychoanalysiscapitalismcommunism-socialismdemocracyrace-antisemitismfascism-populismeveryday-liferevolution-violenceecology-climatesubjectivityethics
Žižek delivers a public lecture in Germany (context: 'A Pervert's Guide to Europe') addressing the refugee crisis, multiculturalism, European identity, and the left's political failures. He argues against both anti-immigrant nationalism and liberal humanitarian sentimentality, insisting that true emancipation requires confronting structural economic antagonisms rather than celebrating ecstatic revolutionary moments or fetishizing democratic procedure. The Q&A extends into debates about Islam, gay rights, the Roma arranged-marriage case, Modi's India, the role of the state versus local communities, and the limits of multiculturalism.
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
Used ironically at the opening to describe the structural logic of the propaganda clip shown, each iteration escalates toward a final reversal that was missing; Žižek provides his own obscene completions.
The object-cause of desire; Žižek illustrates it as the 'two or three kilos of overweight' that retroactively create the illusion of possible perfection, remove the excess and the very fantasy of perfection collapses.
as “retroactive illusion of perfection”
The mechanism by which an apparent obstacle (excess) generates a fantasy that its removal would yield the ideal; once the obstacle is removed the fantasy dissolves too, leaving only an ordinary body.
as “capitalism ohne zwei drei kilos”
Žižek's formulation for Marx's vision of communism: capitalism stripped of exploitation, missing the insight that productive dynamism is constitutively enabled by the capitalist 'obstacle' it seeks to remove.
Implicitly invoked when Žižek argues that global capitalism cannot accommodate intellectual property or ecological requirements, systemic contradictions that function as real material limits, not merely conceptual ones.
The true test of a radical movement: not the ecstatic mass moment (Tahrir, Gezi, Occupy) but whether ordinary people feel the change in everyday life the day after the revolutionary orgy.
as “humanitarianization”
The ideological displacement that converts the structural economic causes of refugee flows into an occasion for individual sympathy and charity, thereby perpetuating rather than challenging the system that produces the problem.
as “liberal Über-Ich / superego”
The liberal guilt-drive that compels constant self-examination for unconscious racism; produces paralysis rather than solidarity.
as “der Nächste (the neighbor)”
Žižek rehabilitates the Judeo-Christian concept: the neighbor is not the 'fellow-man who is like me' but the one in whom you discover an irreducible, unexpected abyss, the stranger you cannot fully comprehend.
Žižek's alternative to liberal 'we are all the same warm humans' universalism: true universality is achieved only through concrete shared struggles, 'we have our fights here, they have their fights, can we bring these fights together?'
as “fetish (democracy as fetish)”
In the strict Freudian sense, democracy functions as the last thing we see before confronting radical social antagonism, the belief 'yes, we have struggles, but we have democracy' forestalls deeper structural critique.
as “point of the impossible”
A specific local demand that appears modest but, if pushed, triggers a systemic rupture, e.g., universal healthcare in the US, which Republicans brought to the Supreme Court, revealing it as something that cannot be achieved within the existing system without transforming it.
as “de facto slavery”
Žižek's term for the growing category of legally free but structurally enslaved workers, migrant laborers in the Gulf, illegal Chinese workers in Florence, that capitalism is reverting to as a structural feature.
as “Christianity as religious form of atheism”
The Crucifixion kills the God of the Beyond (the transcendent guarantor of cosmic meaning), leaving only the human community (Heiliger Geist), making Christianity structurally atheist at its core.
as “harmonious society (Confucian capitalism)”
The Chinese state-ideological term Žižek decodes as fascist corporatism: each person at their proper place (father, pupil, worker), a pagan balance-restoration logic opposed to the Christian/communist insistence on direct universal equality.
as “Heiliger Geist as emancipatory community”
Žižek reads the Holy Spirit not theologically but as the egalitarian community of believers without any transcendent guarantee, effectively the first form of a communist party, bypassing particularity to achieve direct contact with universality.
as “enlightened hedonist Buddhism”
Žižek's label for the spontaneous ideology of late capitalism: Silicon Valley managers who earn billions while meditating and telling themselves that material success is 'just a game of appearances', providing an inner-life alibi for outer brutality.
Stories he reaches for 11
The film ends with jubilant people storming parliament. Žižek wants to see Part 2: what happens the next day? The film refuses this question because the ecstatic moment is the entire political vision.
“I would sell my mother into slavery to see another film V for Vendetta part two what happens then the next day”
Jean-Pierre Dupuy told Žižek that for one day after Fukushima the Japanese government panicked thinking they might need to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, a scale of problem impossible to solve through market mechanisms or liberal governance.
“this is not something that you can put on the market through higher taxation or whatever”
A Roma girl in Slovenia escaped to police claiming her father sold her into an arranged marriage; the Roma community leader argued this practice is essential to their way of life's reproduction, removing it destroys them as a community. Žižek presents this as a genuine deadlock between universal rights and cultural self-determination.
“if you protect the girl you don't respect their way of life — what do you do here?”
Wannsee architect Heydrich spent his evenings playing violin with friends, performing Beethoven's late string quartets. Žižek uses this to demolish the idea that inner spiritual authenticity protects against moral horror.
“in the evenings he was very good violin player he was playing with friends late Beethoven's Streichquartette — inner authenticity in no way helps you not to do horrors”
Žižek cites Himmler's Poznań speech as the clearest case of ideology enabling atrocity: Himmler told SS officers that ordinary Germans can sacrifice themselves for Germany, but SS must be those ready to sacrifice their good soul, to kill children, as the true heroism.
“we have to teach our SS officers... people who are ready to sacrifice their good soul to kill children — that's the true heroism”
An Israeli anti-terrorist unit breaks into a Palestinian home at night; a soldier discovers the child has the same name as his daughter and bonds with the mother over it, all while having just violently invaded the home. Žižek calls this 'ideology at its purest.'
“we brutally invaded your home we are all the same warm humans — this is for me ideology at its purest at its most disgusting”
A woman tells Žižek her last lover said she'd be perfect if she lost two or three kilos. Žižek launches into a Lacanian lesson: those kilos ARE the objet petit a, remove them and the illusion of possible perfection collapses with them.
“these two three kilos precisely because they are too much create a kind of a retroactive illusion that if you lose them you would be perfect”
Ruth Klüger in Israel meets a Hungarian Jew with Auschwitz numbers tattooed on his arm who explodes in racist hate speech against Palestinians. Her initial shock gives way to the realization: Auschwitz was not an ethical education, it ruined people morally as well as physically.
“Auschwitz was not only a physical catastrophe... Auschwitz ruined you also ethically don't idealize the victims”
During a visit to China, Žižek asked officials to explain 'harmonious society.' Their answer: everyone is at their proper place, good father, good pupil, good worker. Žižek replied: 'In Europe we call this fascist corporatism.'
“oh my God now there is no multicultural misunderstanding we call this fascist corporatism in Europe”
Žižek quotes Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism at length: people sentimentally try to cure poverty by keeping the poor alive or amusing them, but this merely prolongs the disease. The proper aim is to reconstruct society so poverty is impossible.
“their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it... the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim”
Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar fights both Israeli oppression and honor killings in his own community. At a US campus talk, pseudo-radical leftists accused him of collaborating with the oppressor by criticizing honor killings. His response: 'When you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors, I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood.'
“when you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood”
Works invoked 10
V for Vendetta film
Žižek 'didn't like it so much' but uses it as the paradigm of revolutionary politics that stops at the ecstatic moment and refuses the morning-after question.
The Book of Job other
Called 'the first ideology critique text'; read against the grain as showing God vindicating Job's refusal of theodicy and admitting via Chesterton's reading that the universe is a mess.
The Pelican Brief film
Paired with All the President's Men as an example of Hollywood pseudo-leftism that ultimately reinforces faith in democratic institutions.
The Republic book
Defended against liberal dismissal: explicitly excludes slaves and opens highest posts to women, making it more radical than the democratic Aristotle in these respects.
A Hollywood 'left' film Žižek hates for being ideological: its apparent critique of power affirms democracy's efficiency and produces ideological satisfaction with the system.
Grey Eminence book
Aldous Huxley's book on Cardinal Richelieu's secretary; Žižek always recommends it to show that inner mystical authenticity coexists with outer brutality.
Oscar Wilde's essay is quoted at length and fits 'perfectly' the argument that charity perpetuates rather than cures poverty.
Discourse on Method book
The moment where Descartes realizes his own customs may appear strange from outside is identified as the beginning of true multiculturalism.
Otto Weininger's book, from which Žižek quotes the formula 'socialism is Aryan, communism is Jewish' to make the case for communism as the term that still makes the right critical division.
Steven Weinberg's book on the Big Bang is referenced as the source of his claim that religion makes good people do bad things.
People invoked 32
Ruth Klüger positive
Her memoir provides the 'saddest lesson': the Hungarian Auschwitz survivor's racist hate speech toward Palestinians shows that surviving atrocity does not confer ethical wisdom.
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
First to demand extension of rights to women, exemplifying the dialectic whereby the lie of universal rights becomes genuine through its own appropriation.
Narendra Modi negative
Called 'a Hindu racist nationalist and at the same time the most brutal neoliberal'; his statement that rising Chinese labor costs are India's chance to offer cheaper workers is cited as evidence.
Robert Mugabe negative
His rejection of gay rights as Western Kulturimperialismus is the central case of the deadlock between cultural relativism and universal rights, Žižek engages with the argument while rejecting its conclusion.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as 'an excellent French theorist of catastrophes'; his firsthand account of post-Fukushima Japanese government panic is used to argue that liberal capitalism cannot handle ecological mega-crises.
Žižek is 'certainly no friend of Saddam' but notes that his secular regime left women better off than post-invasion Islamic militia control.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical resource; Žižek invokes objet petit a to explain desire, and uses Lacanian theory as his immediate response to the voluptuous lady anecdote.
Steven Weinberg positive
Žižek partially agrees with Weinberg's claim that religion is what makes good people do bad things, while noting 'it's not the entire truth about it.'
G. K. Chesterton positive
Called 'my favorite theologian'; his reading of the Book of Job, that God's 'Where were you?' is an abdication rather than an affirmation of transcendence, is the key to Žižek's theological argument.
Francis Fukuyama positive
Noted as 'no longer a Fukuyamaist' precisely because biogenetics has shown him that liberal capitalism cannot contain it, used as evidence that even former end-of-history ideologues concede the system's limits.
Judith Butler negative
A 'vulgarized Judith Butler' question about performative feminine identity appears in the American feminist questionnaire sent to Bosnian women, cited as an example of cultural imperialism.
Paul Claudel positive
Called 'a conservative theologian' who nonetheless accepted the Hegelian reading that what dies on the Cross is God of the Beyond itself.
Oscar Wilde positive
Quoted at length from 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' to argue that charitable remedies perpetuate poverty; described as a 'funny guy' whose text 'fits perfectly' the refugee question.
Fredric Jameson positive
Described as 'my friend Fred Jameson, who is directly there' in the project of thinking about subverting the army as a large progressive organizational force outside of capital.
Julian Assange positive
Credited with 'the best definition of Google: privatized corporate NSA', used to argue that Silicon Valley is more dangerous than the military.
Heinrich Himmler positive
His Poznań speech formula, SS must be ready to sacrifice their 'good soul' to do horrible things, is described as 'wonderful by wonderful I mean disgusting' and used to illustrate how ideology enables atrocity.
Frank Capra negative
Called 'no leftist, he was pro-Mussolini'; his films embody the reactionary ideology that poor people are good if you just listen to them, the warm-humans-beneath-the-skin fantasy.
Bill Gates negative
Emblematic of liberal billionaire philanthropy that prolongs poverty by keeping the poor alive rather than changing the system.
Cited approvingly for inviting refugees without asking the German people for permission, Žižek is 'for' Merkel while arguing that this shows the fetishization of democracy is wrong (people can be radically wrong).
Reinhard Heydrich positive
The Wannsee architect's habit of playing late Beethoven string quartets with friends is used to demolish inner-authenticity ethics.
Žižek has 'a little bit of a soft spot for Obama' despite calling his presidency 'ultimately a failure'; universal healthcare is cited as Obama's 'point of the impossible.'
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek is 'tired' of the Habermasian motive of deploring the EU's 'democratic deficit' as if the EU were basically okay but just needs more democracy, comparing it to communist friends who said the USSR only had a 'democratic deficit.'
Tamer Nafar positive
Palestinian rapper who fights both Israeli oppression and honor killings in his community; called 'a wonderful figure' and 'my friend.' His answer to pseudo-radical critics is Žižek's formula for universality.
Otto Weininger positive
His formula 'socialism is Aryan, communism is Jewish' from Geschlecht und Charakter is quoted approvingly by Žižek as making the case for communism as the term that still cuts.
Aldous Huxley positive
His book Grey Eminence (on Cardinal Richelieu's secretary) is recommended as evidence that inner mystical authenticity coexists with, and enables, external political brutality.
Hugo Chávez positive
Venezuela's local-community politics only worked because of Chávez's strong military-supported state, used to argue against pure localist politics.
Plato positive
Defended against liberal dismissal: the Republic explicitly excludes slaves and opens top posts to women, making Plato more radical on these points than Aristotle.
Aristotle negative
Contrasted unfavorably with Plato: Aristotle accepts slaves as a natural fact and calls them 'talking instruments,' while Plato's Republic has no slaves.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek calls Marx's analysis of capitalism 'still absolutely the only true one' but criticizes his vision of communism as 'capitalism without two or three kilos', failing to see the constitutive role of the obstacle.
René Descartes positive
The Discourse on Method moment where Descartes realizes his own way of life may appear strange from outside is identified as the beginning of true multiculturalism.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked for the insight that secrets of the Egyptians were secrets for the Egyptians too; and that what dies on the Cross is God of the Beyond itself. Žižek credits a 'subtler Hegelian point' for the retroactive illusion argument.
John Locke negative
Representative early liberal who justified the exclusion of women and workers from full human rights by claiming they were not 'truly free' rational beings, the originary lie of universal rights.
What it argues
refugee crisis and the limits of liberal humanitarianismthe morning-after problem of revolutionary movementsEuropean identity and the ambivalence of Eurocentrismmulticulturalism versus universal rights (women, gay rights, religious freedom)fetishization of democracy as ideological obstaclecommunism as pessimistic necessity versus socialist meliorismChristianity, Holy Spirit, and emancipatory egalitarian community
Dialectical moves 10
“The two or three kilos that are too much are exactly the objet petit a — far from being an obstacle to perfection, they are the very thing that creates the retroactive illusion of possible perfection; remove them and you lose the perfection too.”
The obstacle and the desired object are not opposed; the obstacle is constitutive of the desire for the ideal.
“Marx's communism is capitalism without the obstacle — but the obstacle is what makes capitalism dynamic; remove it and you get not the ideal body of productivity but nothing.”
The Marxist utopia misidentifies the constitutive obstacle of capitalism as a mere excess to be subtracted.
“The greatest threat to Europe are precisely the defenders of Europe — anti-immigrant nationalists.”
Those who claim to protect European values are the very force destroying them.
“The true utopia is not 'another society is possible' — the true utopia is to believe we can survive the present system with a few compromises here and there.”
The charge of utopianism belongs not to radical communists but to reformist liberals who think incremental adjustment can contain systemic contradictions.
“The ideology of 'we are all the same warm humans beneath the skin' is not anti-racism but ideology at its purest and most disgusting — a form of extreme violence.”
Liberal humanist universalism, by dissolving otherness into sameness, performs an erasure of difference that is itself a kind of violence.
“The secrets of ancient Egyptians were secrets for the Egyptians themselves — so the other is not mysterious to us because we fail to understand them; they do not understand themselves.”
Invoking Hegel's insight: radical opacity is not a failure of cross-cultural understanding but an irreducible feature of subjectivity itself.
“Something begins as an obvious ideological manipulation but then in its use gets unexpectedly authentic — human rights began as a lie privileging white male property owners, yet this lie became the lever of emancipation for women, blacks, and workers.”
Historical dialectic runs not from authentic origin to corruption but from inauthentic mystification to unexpected genuine appropriation.
“Christianity is the religious form of atheism — what dies on the cross is the God of the Beyond, leaving only the human community (Heiliger Geist) without transcendent guarantee.”
The Crucifixion kills transcendence itself, making Christianity structurally atheist at its deepest level.
“Far from being free in Nirvana, Buddhism's trap is that ultimate equality is equality in death — Christianity's mad hope is that equality can be materialized as actual social organization.”
The Christian/communist wager exceeds Buddhism by insisting that egalitarian universality can be lived, not only dissolved into.
“Hollywood 'left' films like All the President's Men are ideological precisely because they affirm democracy's efficiency — they make you feel good about the system by showing two ordinary guys overthrowing the mightiest man in the world.”
The apparent critical gesture reinforces ideological satisfaction in the very system it seems to challenge.
Claims 24
asserts
Marx's vision of communism was 'capitalism without two or three kilos' — it retained the logic of capitalist productive dynamism while hoping to strip out exploitation, failing to see that the obstacle constitutively enables the dynamic.Marxist concept of communism
asserts
The true test of a radical movement is not the ecstatic mass moment but what happens the morning after — whether everyday life concretely improves.criteria for genuine political change
asserts
The main threat to Europe today is not immigrants but anti-immigrant nationalists and right-wing populists (Pegida, Le Pen, UKIP).European crisis
rejects
The patronizing elevation of refugees into a new revolutionary proletariat by pseudo-radical leftists is a fantasy and a political error.left-wing humanitarianization of refugees
rejects
The liberal proverb 'an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard' is dangerously wrong — there are real enemies, and hearing Hitler's sincere warm story changes nothing.liberal empathy ideology
asserts
True anti-racism requires accepting the other as a foreigner whose inner life you will never fully penetrate — not the liberal fantasy of mutual understanding.anti-racism and intersubjectivity
asserts
Beneath the surface of multiculturalist tolerance lies the ideological fantasy that all people are 'the same warm humans,' which is a form of extreme violence masking real antagonisms.liberal multiculturalism
asserts
We have the right — indeed the obligation — to insist on minimum standards of sexual, religious, and personal freedom against all communities (including Western Christian fundamentalists), without this constituting cultural imperialism.universal rights vs. cultural relativism
reframes
The critique of Eurocentrism is suspiciously popular precisely at the moment when global capitalism no longer needs liberal-democratic ideology and new authoritarian capitalisms (Russia, China, Singapore) work fine with patriarchal values.anti-Eurocentrism discourse
asserts
Communism is a European Enlightenment idea and Marx is part of the Western tradition; one should be proud of the European legacy of equality, women's rights, and justice even while criticizing European limitations.Eurocentrism and communist legacy
reframes
Democracy, like socialism, is too vague a word to make the right critical divisions — it can name both emancipatory struggles and imperialist military interventions.democracy as political concept
asserts
Democracy functions as a fetish in Freud's sense: the last illusion that prevents confronting radical social antagonism.ideological function of democracy
asserts
People can be radically wrong — we must reject the fetishization of popular will and accept that ordinary people and political elites alike require struggle and correction, not just demystification.populism and democratic legitimacy
asserts
The art of radical politics is finding 'points of the impossible' — locally specific demands (universal healthcare in the US) that seem modest but reveal systemic impossibilities when pushed.strategy of radical politics
asserts
The long-term solution to the refugee crisis is not to receive the victims but to change the global economic system that produces them; charitable remedies prolong the disease.refugee crisis / global capitalism
asserts
Socialism is a toothless word today — everyone from Hitler to Bill Gates uses it; 'communism' is the term that still cuts, that still makes the right critical division.communism vs. socialism as political concepts
asserts
In late capitalism, the state is not automatically the enemy — the enemy is global capital; the state can be misused but also used, and mega-scale organizations will be indispensable for ecological and biogenetic crises.Marxist theory of the state
asserts
Intellectual property and ecology are structural contradictions that capitalism cannot resolve within its own logic — they will contribute to capitalism's eventual failure.limits of capitalism
asserts
Auschwitz was not an ethical education — surviving mass atrocity does not grant moral wisdom or solidarity; victims can become perpetrators of racism.ethics of victimhood / Holocaust memory
reframes
Plato's Republic, contrary to liberal orthodoxy, explicitly excludes slaves and opens the highest posts to women — making Plato in some respects more radical than Aristotle.Plato vs. Aristotle / political philosophy
asserts
What dies on the Cross is not a representative of God but God of the Beyond itself — killing the notion of a transcendent cosmic guarantor of meaning.theology / Christology
asserts
Good people doing bad things require a powerful poetic, religious, or mythological narrative to justify the horror — making organized ideology (not individual evil) the cause of mass atrocity.ideology and mass violence
asserts
Google is a privatized corporate NSA — Silicon Valley tech corporations are more dangerous than the military.technology / surveillance capitalism
rejects
An anti-representational politics of small local communities is insufficient; large-scale organizational capacity (even military) is needed for the scale of ecological and refugee crises.horizontal / localist left politics
Quotes 18
“these two three kilos precisely because they are too much create a kind of a retroactive illusion that if you lose them you would be perfect but I absolutely guarantee you that if the lady were to lose two three kilos she would have lost also this retroactive illusion of possible perfection”Slavoj Žižek · objet petit a / constitutive obstacle
“I want a boring revolution revolution which becomes real precisely when it is translated into a little bit better everyday life”Slavoj Žižek · boring revolution / morning after
“I would sell my mother into slavery to see another film V for Vendetta part two what happens then the next day you know they don't like to think about it”Slavoj Žižek · the morning after / failure of spectacular politics
“an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard — it sounds deep... Hitler was our enemy because you know we were not open to his side of the story”Slavoj Žižek · critique of liberal empathy ideology
“we brutally invaded your home we are all the same warm humans — this is for me ideology at its purest at its most disgusting”Slavoj Žižek · liberal humanist ideology as violence
“the secrets of ancient Egyptians for us they appear mysterious... were also the secrets for the Egyptians themselves”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel / radical opacity of the self
“when you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood”Slavoj Žižek · universality of struggle / anti-patronizing leftism
“my formula of universality is not we are all part of the great human race — the only universality is the universality of a struggle”Slavoj Žižek · universality of struggle
“Auschwitz was not only a physical catastrophe Auschwitz was not some kind of an educational community where if you survived it you saw suffering you gained some deeper truth solidarity no Auschwitz ruined you also ethically don't idealize the victims”Slavoj Žižek · do not idealize the victims / ethics of victimhood
“the true utopia is not another society is possible the true utopia is to think that with a little compromises here and there we can nonetheless survive in a society in which we live”Slavoj Žižek · communism as pessimistic realism
“I hate optimists you know why because they are always disappointed... I prefer to be a pessimist because then you have Syriza here this there and it's always like a little bit better than you expected”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism as political stance
“socialism is not a word which divides enough — everyone is today a socialist... I still prefer the term communism”Slavoj Žižek · communism vs. socialism
“today to be a Stalinist is probably the greatest dissident position”Slavoj Žižek · self-deprecating joke on communism
“I fear much more Google than the army — Julian Assange gave the best definition of Google which is privatized corporate NSA”Slavoj Žižek · surveillance capitalism more dangerous than military
“my enemy is not the state my enemy is big capital”Slavoj Žižek · Marxist theory of the state
“I want a certain level of nice alienation — some institutions take care of this I can do my stupid work and so on”Slavoj Žižek · defense of institutional alienation / against permanent assembly
“Otto Weininger said beautifully: socialism is Aryan communism is Jewish — I agree with him and that's for me the case for communism”Slavoj Žižek · communism as radical cut / anti-reformism
“their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it — indeed their remedies are part of the disease”Slavoj Žižek · charity as perpetuation of poverty / Oscar Wilde on socialism
Transcript 51 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I'm I will try to mix here and there some joke but I am afraid or that maybe I hope it will not be too boring for you because I want to address also the very sensitive topics nonetheless a reaction to these clips know especially tell me something I was so shocked the second one it wasn't meant as a joke it's meant No no no it's really propaganda because I was I was expecting two things at the end you know in Hollywood we or they call this running gag you know always the same joke like ich habe zwei kollegen blah blah blah and then that at the end there will be the final reversal I have two ideas I warn you the second one is schmutzig obscene the first one would be that when die Frau sagte you know ja dieser Zimmer ist für sie no then dieser pseudo Turk turns to the other says oh die alte Hure hat endlich kapiert dass wir die Zimmer brauchen you know that or the other I warn you much more vulgar is that at the end when they finished I warn you I'm ashamed to say it but you know we communists say everything to the end that she would say but hier gibt es auch eine Höhle die mein mein Mann der er ist zu alt nicht mehr eigentlich erfüllen kann können sie mir helfen und dann sagt er ja ich habe einen Freund der macht das That would be
I'm I will try to mix here and there some joke but I am afraid or that maybe I hope it will not be too boring for you because I want to address also the very sensitive topics nonetheless a reaction to these clips know especially tell me something I was so shocked the second one it wasn't meant as a joke it's meant No no no it's really propaganda because I was I was expecting two things at the end you know in Hollywood we or they call this running gag you know always the same joke like ich habe zwei kollegen blah blah blah and then that at the end there will be the final reversal I have two ideas I warn you the second one is schmutzig obscene the first one would be that when die Frau sagte you know ja dieser Zimmer ist für sie no then dieser pseudo Turk turns to the other says oh die alte Hure hat endlich kapiert dass wir die Zimmer brauchen you know that or the other I warn you much more vulgar is that at the end when they finished I warn you I'm ashamed to say it but you know we communists say everything to the end that she would say but hier gibt es auch eine Höhle die mein mein Mann der er ist zu alt nicht mehr eigentlich erfüllen kann können sie mir helfen und dann sagt er ja ich habe einen Freund der macht das That would be
unknown
my version
my version
Slavoj Žižek
of this of this okay no but seriously I'm still so shocked this wasn't meant as a joke
of this of this okay no but seriously I'm still so shocked this wasn't meant as a joke
unknown
No no no really
No no no really
Slavoj Žižek
oh my God I'm okay okay no I almost have a nostalgia for these times when it was possible to be how should I call it gemütlich racist in this directly obscene way you know because today it would be all that können wir ihnen ein bisschen Hummus geben um Toleranz zu zeigen für ihre Kultur you know it would be all done in a much more polite way and so on so I have a a great nostalgia for So do I yeah yeah it reminded me on when I was young not young now I bought a DVD of DDR propaganda you know Reklamefilme I mean yeah and it reminded me of this a little bit okay but that's another story okay let me go on now comes I'm sorry you will have to suffer half an hour I will try to cover some of these sensitive things points going on today as you said the Linke the Chernyshevsky Lenin Frage Was zu tun and so on What is to be done Let me begin with a dirty detail which happened to me in once I was in Portugal and there a voluptuous lady in her early 40s I don't know was she flirting with me or what she told me that you know although I am late my last lover when he saw me naked he told me that if I just were to lose two or three kilos my body would have been perfect and then I exploded I don't know what she expected from me sex she didn't get she got a long lesson on Lacanian theory objet petit a because what I tried to explain to her is that these two three kilos of overweight too much is exactly what Lacan calls objet petit a l'objet a the object cause of desire because I told her the greatest mistake is to think that if you lose these two three kilos you would be perfect no now I come to a little bit subtler Hegelian point these two three kilos precisely because they are too much create a kind of a retroactive illusion that if you lose them you would be perfect but I absolutely guarantee you that if the lady were to lose two three kilos she would have lost also this retroactive illusion of possible perfection it would be just an ordinary body so you see this is the finesse of what Lacan calls object of desire there is something which functions as an obstacle to perfection just two three kilos too much but when you take this excess away you lose that very thing to which it appeared as an obstacle and why I'm making this point although I still consider myself some kind of a Marxist I claim that in some sense maybe we can see today although the analysis of capitalism by Marx is still absolutely the only true one but that what Marx imagined as communism was a little bit like capitalism ohne zwei drei kilos that is to say he his idea of communism was too much capitalism on a capitalism that is to say that Marx's idea of communism was still we have and Marx admired this to the end this unglaubliche Dynamik capitalism always self-reproduces itself the permanent growth of productive capacities and so on that if we just take away the capitalist form of profit exploitation we will have the pure ideal body of productivity but he didn't see that this self-expanding circle of growing productivity is possible only through the obstacle in exactly the same way that the lady had a beautiful body only with this apparent obstacle now I'm not saying so we are condemned to capitalism I'm just saying that it's often when we dream when we imagine a wild alternate future and so on we often make this mistake that we really imagine and Marx already made this criticism of Plato he said the problem with Plato's Republic is not that it's too idealized but in its very ideality the ideal state is just an idealist version of the existing order although incidentally just as another philosophical hint I wouldn't underestimate Plato the liberal tradition is telling us good more democratic Aristotle versus oppressive Plato but whatever you think about Plato you have to admit two things which are today extremely important I claim first read Plato's Republic did you notice that first there are no slaves in it and Plato is explicit here no slaves in his ideal state while as we all know Aristotle takes slaves as a fact and he even calls them how is it talking instruments or whatever second point even more surprising Plato says explicitly the fact that women play a lower role that they are not allowed to occupy the highest posts that this is a total contingency in existing society that in his ideal Republic all even the top political posts will be open to men and to women and so on and so on so that's good to remember before you dismiss Plato as a conservative and so on but so again to my main point so that's the problem how to imagine the future I think our and by our I mean precisely all this from Podemos to Occupy Wall Street up to a point they were more serious even to Syriza all this movement that gave to all of us a kind of a new impetus oh my God change is possible and so on I claim they were all too utopian but utopian in a very precise sense of imagining a certain ecstatic transgressive moment like you remember Gezi Square Tahrir Square we were all crying oh my God one million people there all solidary and so on I'm getting tired of this in what sense I think that and I hope we will agree here the true test of a radical movement for social change is not the big revolutionary orgy one million of us so beautiful we are there but what in English they call the morning after after the night of being the drunk like when after a month half a year a year things return to normal how will ordinary people feel the change at that point I think that all conservatives like this idea that people to relax they need every years kind of a pseudo-revolutionary explosion and then they can dream about it for the next years and so on the problem is the morning after I'm tired of these ecstatic moments let me give you another cinema example did I hope most of you did see the famous but I didn't like it so much film V for Vendetta where you remember at the end people's rebellion they break through the police cordon and they occupy it takes place in some futuristic totalitarian United Kingdom they occupy the parliament victory everybody is dancing happy my God I would sell my mother into slavery to see another film V for Vendetta part two what happens then the next day you know they don't like to think about it I think that more than ever we should think about this otherwise all those great moments '68 or Occupy Wall Street I will tell you what they will become like with some of my friends who were on Occupy Wall Street it happened to me two months ago I was sitting with one of them close to Wall Street in New York in on the bench of the same park where it happened and he told me it was so enthusiastic I was crying we were here then his phone rang and he said I'm sorry I have to run to my bank now and so on and so on you know it becomes kind of a nostalgic memory no I'm tired of that I want a boring revolution revolution which becomes real precisely when it is translated into a little bit better everyday life and this is again the really difficult thing to do so let's go further here with the I'm jumping a little bit I have to improvise with with all the refugees coming now and so on it again triggers that's why I oppose them not my God some idiots even wrote that I'm going over to Pegida or whatever no don't be afraid I'm not I'm just saying that I think that the reaction with some okay on the one hand there are total horror I'm absolutely not it's even too humiliating to say I'm against them they don't deserve this all that anti-immigrant stuff the threat to Europe and so on yes I think Europe is threatened today yes and the main threat to Europe are precisely anti-immigrant nationalists and so on I still appeal to your naive faith in Europe feminism egalitarianism social justice just imagine Pegida here Le Pen in France UKIP in England with some miracle taking power would that still have been Europe no so the greatest threat to Europe are definitely defenders of Europe but I also don't like the way some pseudo-radical I claim leftists patronizingly elevate the pure refugees poor sorry refugees into what you know when I'm unfortunately old enough to remember late '60s new left movement and this was already the ironic joke they were with a big light looking for the new revolutionary subject you know like who will be students or who know and a friend of mine from a distant European country put this in a message to me in such a pure naive way he wrote to me the problem of the left in Europe is we don't have a revolutionary working class it's a wonderful chance let's allow five million refugees to come and they will become the proletarian class I wrote him are you totally crazy so you want to import the revolutionary class to do the revolution this is mixed with another thing now I come to more touchy topic you will see why some people think and I hope I will convince you at the end that I'm not Pegida but it's it's this we have to stop for inherent theoretical reasons but also for practical political reasons this totally false humanitarianization sympathy for the refugees you know this this is the worst reactionary tradition for example in Hollywood you find it with Frank Capra films the poor are good you just have to listen to them to get them really to know the reactionary idea beneath this is that we are all the same warm humans they may appear strangers but you know like one form of this mega stupidity is the proverb which appears deep deep I despise it the proverb which says and I'm not kidding I will quote it to you from some book on how to bring peace to Europe an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard it sounds deep you know like somebody is an enemy because I fetishize him but if I were to now I will tell you oh it's good to learn so Hitler was our enemy because you know we were not open to his side of the story and so on that's my first reproach no sorry there are real enemies and I'm sure that Hitler will be able to tell you a wonderful sincere warm story but I think and here I am anti-postmodernist the story we tell ourselves to ourselves this is not a deeper truth this is a lie we are telling to ourselves to mask not some of in our true inner essence but to mask the horror of what we are really doing this is although I've written three books on emancipatory potential of Christianity but here I partially agree with Steven Weinberg you know the great quantum cosmologist he wrote that famous book on Big Bang The First Three Seconds where he said somewhere that without religion good people would be doing good things and bad people bad things but you need something like a religion to make good people do bad things and I think okay it's not the entire truth about it but listen let me imagine something and you will be haha my victim here let's say I get an order to with a knife take the knife and pick out your eyes I must say unfortunately I'm a weak man I would have some problems to do it so what do I need I need an ultra strong poetic or religious or mythological narrative which convinces me that this my horrible act is my greatest sacrifice so that I know I'm doing a horrible thing but my country my political credo is worth doing it that's you know who knew this very well you should read him a great thinker I'm mocking Heinrich Himmler in that famous Poznań speech he saw the problem and he said precisely that we have to teach our SS officers he has a wonderful by wonderful I mean disgusting of course formula he says every ordinary German is more or less patriotic he can sacrifice himself for Germany but what SS needs today is people who are ready to sacrifice their good soul to kill children murder and so on that's the true heroism that's the true danger and that's how this I don't like the terms because it's too universal but like strategically I say in Nazism Holocaust or even in Gulag it's very interesting for example to read I got hold of them Soviet propaganda when in the late '20s they were collectivizing farms the propaganda to get propagandists communists ready for it it was precisely you will have to do horrible things you will see children there starving and so on but beware that you have to overstep your small bourgeois concerns to be able to do the really great thing and so on and so on so let me go on so what I'm saying here is that what we have to renounce is this idea typical liberal dream of universal understanding and sympathy again that the other remains other only insofar as we didn't hear his side of the story and so on and so on I think it's typical liberal Überich superego you know of course then you are always guilty and left liberals like this my God how can I be sure that that expression that I used wasn't a little bit racist so you know they like to discover how even if you are most politically correct you you are somehow still a little bit guilty and so on and so on what I'm saying is why don't we accept a couple of things first no the true anti-racism today for me let's say I live in a big building with Turks Arabs Jews Latin Americans blacks and I don't have any I was doing this in New York what I liked so much is that I didn't try to understand them they didn't try to understand me we politely ignore each other we treated each other extremely respectfully but the point was not to understand each other why not because my God I'm a Freudian I don't understand myself they probably don't understand myself let's drop this myth of understanding each other I claim that understanding each other is almost an impossible it's almost an impossible task the problem is precisely to accept the other let's say refugee as a foreigner the one whom you will never be able to penetrate with your understanding and so on and so on because all this idea if we just talk to them and like these two your nice German colleagues there the lady and the husband you know if we are just friendly we will understand each other no we are really different why should we I think that this was always part of the most reactionary ruling ideology this idea beneath our skin we are all the same warm humans no we are not you know why is this horrible and you can find this in Ernst Lubitsch films and Preston Sturges and again Frank Capra who was no leftist he was pro-Mussolini and so on it's good to know Capra's idea was poor people are good you just have to listen to them to understand them listen I remember when I was in Israel all the media reported on a sublime event an anti-terrorist unit broke brutally in the middle of the night in a Palestinian home searching for the head of the family who was a allegedly a terrorist of course he was not at home it was only his wife and some small children of course since the soldiers brutally broke in the children started to cry then mother called them I don't know what names Sarah or whatever Sarah come here come here and then one of the Israeli soldiers the attackers discovered that my God I have a daughter with the same name and he went to the mother you see I also have a daughter the same name and so on like you know forget about that we brutally invaded your home we are all the same warm humans warm humans beneath and so on this is for me ideology at its purest at its most disgusting it's difficult to sympathize with the poor the refugees if you can if you have this guarantee which is I think the form of extreme violence that basically they are the same warm people as me here we should rehabilitate the Judeo-Christian notion of neighbor der Nächste as good interpreters have shown Nächste is not neighbor in the sense that the fellowman the one who is like me if you really read closely the Bible already you learn that der Nächste is your neighbor close one but you reach him at the level of the neighbor when you discover that there is a totally unexpected abyss in him like let's say you have a closest friend all of a sudden you discover when you catch him at home imagine something disgusting that he is slowly torturing a cat to death that he is raping a girl or that he is doing something incredibly noble or whatever at that point when you see that even if he seemed to be close to you there is an abyss he was a foreigner this is love your neighbor accept this otherness so why do I emphasize so much on this because it's Hegelian you know Hegel has here a wonderful formula where he says that the secrets of ancient ancient ancient Egyptians for us they appear mysterious what does this sphinx mean were also the secrets for the Egyptians themselves so that's what we have to accept we cannot understand them not because they have some evil inner essence but because they don't understand they are foreigners to themselves we are foreigners to ourselves and so on so again my point is a very simple one but it's pro-refugee point don't idealize them yes when you get hundreds of thousands coming I'm absolutely sure that there are thieves there are rapists again them and so on and you are a true racist if you then say no cordon throw them out and so on and so on you really have to accept them as you really have to accept them as neighbors now I'm making the next even more problematic point this is why I think now you will say of course what I'm saying is an obvious obscenity we simply have to respect different ways of life now I come to my even more problematic point this logic of multiculturalism simple multiculturalism respect different ways of life it covers up not the racist lesson that you know they are such barbarians how can you respect them but it covers up the antagonisms in their and in our way of life which is why what do I mean I will tell you immediately what what do I mean by this we how to how to react for example for the fact that from China to Zimbabwe many Third World leaders and the tragedy is that they are not simply wrong when you mention to them human rights and so on they immediately shout Kulturimperialismus like what you are selling us as human rights are not truly universal human rights they already privilege a certain way of life and to some level they are right for example when we formulate human rights we emphasize effectively much more than their cultures do the autonomy of the individual so what to do here I think it's really a deadlock there is no simple formula what do I mean by this for example recently Robert Mugabe gave a speech and I don't want to make fun of him he brutally attacked gay rights as a Western invention as a case of Kulturimperialismus you are trying to impose on us your values your way of life and so on and of course the same goes for women's rights and so on and so on again let me emphasize my point I'm fully aware to what extent reference to Western human rights can serve as a justification not only of Kulturimperialismus but even of actual military imperialism for example it's a great scandal that American many American feminists supported the invasion of Iraq claiming it's basically to help Iraqi women and so on the brutal irony of history is that they were extremely brutally wrong because you know whatever you say against Saddam and I'm certainly no friend of Saddam Hussein but his regime Iraqi was formally secular the only two Arab regimes which are formally secular are Iraq and Syria precisely the two one already disappeared the other one will disappear so it's madness the paradox is that they went there to redeem for among other things for women's rights the result is that now with regime falling and control of Muslim militias the situation of women is infinitely worse than under Saddam the second irony is this one United States a Christian country invades Iraq under Saddam there were there two million Christians now because of this confusion and again Islamic militias pressure almost all of the Christians left Iraq that's the price you pay for stupid Western politics but what I'm saying is this so where do you set the limit in respecting the other way of life I see and I want to provoke you here consciously I see two limits why because I don't think there are simply different ways of life first every way of life has its own antagonisms covering them up second thing every way of life is universal in the sense that it incorporates some norms how to treat others other ways of life so okay let me tell you so that we don't go into this refugee problem where things are much more complex I know let me tell you a thing that happened in my own country Slovenia I think some ten years ago we have a minority but there are some of them Roma the racist way gypsies no and from one of the Roma family a girl escaped to the police claiming my family my father did a pre-arranged marriage and sold me to another man I don't want this and so on okay then what to do then the Roma leader of their group said but and he was right but are you aware that arranging marriages is a key feature of how our community reproduces itself if you take away this from us then maybe we will survive as doing some stupid folkloric dances music or some some some Gypsy barbecue or whatever but as a way of life we will disappear so what do you do here he is totally right to claim that if you protect the girl you don't respect their way of life again what do you do here and here this is my what idiots call Pegida moment I think that we should just when they accuse me of defending Western rights no I don't mean Christianity and oppression and so on I simply mean a certain level of sexual and religious sexual religious and so on freedom and tolerance I think that for example whichever minority including Christian minorities like all those fundamentalists who terrorize their children that we have the right to say hop sorry this is terror on children or women the state has to intervene it goes without saying that the state should punish even more any violence against them against others but that's a crucial point and the second point here things for me get problematic the problem for me with different ways of life is that what if one way of life finds intolerable some features in another way of life like what if they find intolerable homosexuality and publicly attack it and so on and this would be if you ask me my my limitation in other words people who criticized me emphasize how refugees are not simply foreigners to whom we should show hospitality we should accept them absolutely as equals and we should recognize them they should enjoy the same rights as the members of the diverse communities that make up Europe I totally agree I'm just adding but which are these same rights where do you stop with women's rights and so on and so on why am I emphasizing this ah here things get a little bit more complex because you know don't be I claim that those who say but listen Arabs or whatever Muslims were oppressed they don't yet have our sense of women's right we are now fighting other bigger battles let's tolerate that a little bit and so on I think that you are terribly under pat patronizingly this is true racism underestimating them for example since I know well the situation in on the West Bank Palestine Ramallah and so on there is a they have a couple of rapper bands like the most famous one the lead singer is Tamer Nafar he is a wonderful figure I'm proud of him to be my friend he is at the same time fighting Israeli oppression he was arrested all you want but also singing rapper songs against honor killings in his own community starting a movement there and you know what's so typical one would have expected liberal Israelis who pretend to be friends of Palestinians to support him no everyone is embarrassed why because he doesn't fit this idea of a primitive Palestinian that needs no sorry he is totally enlightened and so on and then something this is the point of my story happened there which I found so breathtakingly disgusting this guy Tamer Nafar gave recently a talk I think it was UCLA some big American campus and he sang a couple of songs among others also this song protesting honor killings of course there were stupid pseudo-radical leftists there who attacked him immediately claiming that but you know even if Palestinians are doing this honor killings of their women who allegedly betrayed them they are doing this only because of Israeli oppression we shouldn't mention this now and so on and you know what he said a friend of mine recorded his answer it's a beautiful one to his critics there when you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood and so on so that's my formula not let's tolerate all that they are doing because of the higher struggle against whatever no what we should do is desperately fight for somehow I know it's difficult but bringing together our struggles gay rights whatever you want abortion and so on and so on and their their rights if we make any compromises here either the Western cultural imperialist compromise fuck their rights they are too primitive we should just impose on on them our struggles this is horrible and I will give you a funny example which happened in ex-Yugoslavia years ago when the war was going on in Bosnia some Bosnian feminists showed me a letter they received from some American feminist who wanted to show sympathy for Bosnians poor women victims of rape and in order to establish communication they sent them a questionnaire a letter and it was so implicitly racist like first question was do you like kind of a vulgarized Judith Butler do you think that woman has an eternal essence or do you think that feminine identity is performatively constructed through discursive practices and so on you see my point if cultural imperialism exists this is it but on the on the other hand I also reject this Mugabe China line which is you know if we do what we do to our women and so on this is our specific way of life and so on I think everything depends on bringing together these two what these two dimensions and I can guarantee you it can be it can be done otherwise all the talk of respect is bullshit I mean I had for example an unpleasant I must admit it I will be again accused of racism very friendly debate friendly up to a certain point with my Muslim friends in London and one of them told me and he was right it's not enough for you Western people to tolerate me I want not to be tolerated I want to be respected and I want to be respected not just as an abstract human being in spite of what I am Muslim but I want to be respected as what I am as a Muslim okay maybe I went too far but I immediately answered him I agree but I am an atheist totally rejecting religion are you you ready to respect me not in spite of me being an atheist but for being an atheist well it didn't end good that's all I can tell you so what I'm saying is this now I come furthest in this my problematic topic I'm sick and tired of this European self-humiliating attitude whatever happens we are guilty we are cultural imperialist whatever happens in Third World it must be an effect of neocolonialism of European exploitation to a large extent this is true and I am fully aware of it just think about the present wave of refugees of course it's more complex but it's first economic exploitation ruining local economies especially in Africa then military interventions they totally screwed up the whole so we are responsible for that but nonetheless I still think that I'm a little bit suspicious of this almost universal fashion of criticizing Eurocentrism like if you say something is Eurocentric ah it has to be rejected look my first problem is this one but you know it's significant that this is happening precisely today where global capitalism no longer needs the standard European liberal ideology new forms of capitalism from Russia to China Singapore and so on they work to India they work very well with some kind of much more patriarchal or at least authoritarian ideology and so on and so on so that's the first thing that makes me deeply suspicious here that this popularity of critique of Eurocentrism is a sad sign of how as I have and I've written texts on it of how this eternal marriage it appeared eternal between capitalism and democracy okay bourgeois democracy but somehow democracy is reaching its its limit so I'm saying my God I'm sorry to tell you but communism is a European idea if there was a guy who was part of Western Enlightenment it was Marx I hope you will not accuse me of Pegida if I say that I am that I am in this sense there are still parts of European legacy of which I am very proud and I think it's precisely the reference to this European legacy of equality women's rights justice and so on which allows us to overcome the very European limitations which we justly criticize to return to your guy Descartes you know where true multiculturalism in a good sense begins in Descartes I think it's Discourse on Method maybe it's the other one where he says when I was young foreign others ways of life appeared to me strange but he says but then it did strike me what if my own way of life may also appear strange and stupid from their own gaze and so on this here it begins the true multiculturalism not with tolerance I'm deeply suspicious of the very term tolerance you know why because it culturalizes conflicts no conflicts do not occur because we don't tolerate each other enough no conflicts occur because of economic antagonisms exploitation political domination here and there so my formula is not not clash of civilization but understanding between civilizations no my formula of universality is not we are all part of the great human race my formula of universality is we have our own fights here they have their fights can we bring these fights together universality the only universality is the universality of a struggle the second thing that bothers me with refugees and I am for them whatever you want my God and I mean it really like bring them here and so on we are responsible for them is the what I call humanitarianization sorry but we should be aware that the ultimate solution is not it's almost self-evident for me to say this is not to what so that all the poverty that because in the Third World we will remediate so that we will take the victims to us no the the the tough questions has to be asked what is in the global economic system that makes them what they are and how to change I think in the long term the only change is a radical economic change and you know who said this don't be afraid slowly slowly I'm approaching the end yeah yeah it's that you know Oscar Wilde a funny guy in his wonderful essay The Soul of Man under Socialism he has some lines which I think fit perfectly refugees here is a quote at the very beginning of this essay people find themselves surrounded with hideous poverty hideous ugliness starvation and so on it is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this accordingly with admirable though misdirected intentions they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying of curing the evils that they see but their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it indeed their remedies are part of the disease they try to solve the problem of poverty for instance by keeping the poor alive or in the case of a very advanced school by amusing the poor but this is not a solution it is an aggravation of the difficulty the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible and the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim which is why all today's liberal billionaire capitalist repeat this story you know we are not alone what about millions starving them we have to help them no we shouldn't be there of course we should do but we should be more radical not helping them but help ourselves change the economic system my God this is otherwise it will just be this endless cycle of ruining them and then through big donors like Bill Gates and so on helping them in this sense I still prefer the term communism because you know socialism is not a word which divides enough everyone is today a socialist my God not only der Führer Hitler was a National Socialist but Bill Gates somewhere if by socialism you mean taking care of the poor trying to make the world a better place with more solidarity then I am a so everyone is a socialist today it's just meant you know like or as Otto Weininger you know Geschlecht und Charakter he said beautifully he said socialism is Aryan communism is Jewish I agree with him and that's for me the case although I'm not a Jew for the case for communism so let me just conclude slowly kalitische no [unintelligible] ah ja in [unintelligible] okay okay in the same sense of bitter necessity you see this is why I'm also tired by this Habermasian motive of deploring the democratic deficit of the European Union the idea is European Union is basically okay but it has a democratic deficit this reminds me of some of my communist friends from my youth who said Soviet Union is still okay they just have a little bit of a democratic deficit you know it's ridiculous the point is in what democratic deficit was a necessary part of their of their system and my conclusion here is the one I'm not pleading for any totalitarian party rule but precisely in democracy is for me the same problematic term as socialism of course in some sense I'm for it who is not but it is a word which does not allow us to make the right critical division you know there are good things happening under the name of democracy there are horrible things military intervention and so on happening in the name of democracy what do I mean by this maybe some of you know the story I gave an interview some two-three weeks ago to Süddeutsche Zeitung and then additionally they asked me two-three some six-seven sorry questions of readers and the question which provoked the greatest echo hundreds of readers replying to it was the question democracy yes but who gave Angela Merkel the right to invite refugees to come here did she ask the German people for permission where is democratic legitimization here I am here of course for Angela Merkel but I'm saying and this is something very tough to accept for the standard leftist I'm saying we shouldn't fetishize democracy don't be afraid not in the sense we need some Stalinist leader to tell us what but we have brutally to accept that people can be wrong they can be radically wrong you know there is no guarantee we have to fight it's not that ordinary so-called ordinary people and political elite even more are somehow they know the truth we just have to help them to get rid of ideological mystifications and so on and so on it's a it's a tough serious struggle the next problem for me apropos democracy is that it's the ultimate fetish in our societies fetish in the strict Freudian sense you know what Freud means by fetish in a naive way the last thing before you see castration no isn't democracy the last thing we see before we have to confront some radical social antagonism like every liberal we admit to you yeah we live in a society of struggles and so on but we have democracy this is why incidentally I hate films like All the President's Men or Pelican Brief so-called Hollywood left where the story appears leftist like you know an ordinary journalist or whatever discovers a great corruption where even the president of the United States is involved and at the end the president has to step down but why are these films ideological precisely because they too naively believe in the efficiency of democracy why are you so satisfied after seeing such a film because basically the message is what a great country America is when two ordinary guys like you and me can overthrow the mightiest man in the world and so on and so on you see this is for me the problem and please don't misunderstand me the solution is not that we need some enlightened dictatorship or whatever but what is the solution haha now I'm concluding with your Leninist question and then you know I think the battle is not lost you know why because the global system capitalist is inconsistent it has all the time it has to break its own rules what in one part of the world it's considered commonly accepted in another part it's intolerable for example in United States that's why I still have a little bit of a soft spot even for Obama although it was ultimately a failure his universal healthcare reform but by promoting universal healthcare he obviously disturbed an extremely sensitive point you know that Republicans brought him to Supreme Court and so on and so on so in United States the universal healthcare actual healthcare universalized is what I call the point of the impossible something that appears just a modest point in Canada they have it we can do it no you cannot do it without triggering a deep change of the system you know it's a little bit like another my last example from cinema you know I like this motive in science fiction films where when you are in a room and by mistake you press a button you think this is just whatever light water but then by pressing that button walls start to fall apart you know like the whole universe is ruined and that's the art of politics in different countries you have different points of the impossible in some countries it can even be human rights for example in Turkey you know what is Turkey it's the country which now officially is demanding for ISIS for the Islamic State to be recognized legalized and so on and so on so much about that but what I'm saying is that and of course it's the same time the greatest American ally there it's exactly the same as Saudi Arabia no but what I want to say is that that should be the art of politics not great revolution this is such a comfortable position specific points for which you can be sure that points which are in themselves totally acceptable like nobody can accuse you of communist revolution if you demand universal healthcare in America you can always say but in Europe they have it in Canada they have it or another example another struggle like this did you notice something extremely sad that in the last decades we have a growth of de facto slavery that is to say I claim that capitalism is more and more approaching a state where it will not be able to maintain even the human rights democratic rights that we are used to what is happening de facto now in Arab countries I mean in those wealthy countries Saudi Arabia Qatar and so on they are not called slaves but they have hundreds of thousands of de facto slaves we have them even in Europe it was a wonderful terrifying news you remember some three years ago there was a fire in a suburb of Firenze a small wooden hut burned down and Chinese workers burned to death and then they discovered there are just in small city Chinese workers who totally illegal living in de facto slavery and so on and so on so you know we can be fighting all these struggles I am for why do I believe in relative efficiency of these struggles I remember from my youth when I was not a great dissident but kind of a modest dissident and I learned this at least in the last decade of communism when nobody took it seriously as an ideology if you were a philosopher and wrote a book decrying communism as worse than fascism and whatever Marx origin of Stalinist Gulag no problem they by they I mean communists in power the regime they paid you a ticket to visit a Western anti-communist conference but if you made just a specific precise local very particular demand for example covering some article in penal code like we cannot have these verbal delicts like did it was and you even was you were even able to justify it in the terms of the ruling ideology it was much more risky to demand this small change than the big thing and friends from China are telling me it's more or less the same there now yes you can be liberal decry communism nobody cares you make a specific demand against ecology workers' right whatever you are finished and the very last I promise you here it is point the very pessimistic sad conclusion I recently read memoirs by Ruth Klüger this was a German girl who survived Jewish who survived Auschwitz and then as a small girl and then after the war something horrible happened to her she visited Israel where she met a Hungarian Jew who was highly educated and also survived Auschwitz but he there when they met some Arabs Palestinians he this Hungarian Jew although she he survived Auschwitz he had the numbers tattooed he exploded into hate speech those dirty Arabs we should throw them all out and so on and so on and she was first shocked her message was her reaction was my God but he saw real suffering he saw what racism it how could he be saying that and then and this is maybe the saddest lesson of all these ethnic hatreds then the truth hit her you know Auschwitz was not only a physical catastrophe Auschwitz was not some kind of an educational community where if you survived it you saw suffering you gained some deeper truth solidarity no Auschwitz ruined you also ethically don't idealize the victims this is the saddest lesson for me so my message is we have chances small patient work but then you tell me but why don't then simply become a social democratic reformist it's very simple because I'm too much of a pessimist I think and my God even many people who are definitely not communists agree with me from ecology to to biogenetics and so on we are confronting problems for which I don't see how in the long term they can be solved not solved but even contained within the scope of let's call it liberal democratic capitalism just take ecology a friend of mine an excellent French theorist of catastrophes Jean-Pierre Dupuy he told me he's part of some high European committees and visited immediately after Fukushima Japan and he told me that for one day there was panic in the Japanese government because they thought that the the radiation will spread down and that they will have to evacuate millions the entire Tokyo area how to do this who would do this you know what I mean this is not something that you can put on the market through higher taxation or whatever they would have to move people probably out of Japan okay in the old days primitive it's warfare you invade Siberia maybe they win they maybe you win now we cannot do this so I think that here or biogenetics Fukuyama is no longer a Fukuyamaist precisely because of biogenetics he admits now we cannot do it in liberal capitalist way stronger measures are needed to coordinate this I claim intellectual property it's the same it will be the death of capitalism capitalism is not able to incorporate it and so on and so on so you see I'm almost I'm tempted to say a communist out of pessimism I'm saying this that the true utopia is not another society is possible the true utopia is to think that with a little compromises here and there we can nonetheless survive in a society in which we live my real fear is what will become of our societies spontaneously if we don't introduce some economic and so on changes so I am a moderate not even moderate pessimist but maybe this is the only position of hope today I hate optimists you know why because they are always disappointed you know if you are an optimist it's never like this I prefer to be a pessimist because you know then you have Syriza here this there and it's always like a little bit better than you expected you know so don't don't lose hope precisely in situations which are like ours miracles do happen from time to time like Egypt Tahrir Square Syriza and so on and so on don't lose nerves miracles happen I'm sorry if I spoke too long thank you very much for your patience I promised him that he can ask me some question you know in his Stasi nature you know like that he can now so please genosse wir haben im Grunde haben aus wir wir müssen jetzt vorher ein Ende vereinbaren Wann soll das We have to agree on an end When will this end Three questions or half an hour or if das ist mehr dialektisch say sagen wir Viertelstunde okay Let's say minutes Okay Viertelstunde okay Okay minutes wir müssen jetzt irgendwie ich meine das hieße ja The Pervert's Guide to Europe No pervert's guide to Europe Ja mach Yes but you can speak German Well I do I speak German Neonazi ja okay Neonazi okay Okay I'll ask my questions in a perfect Germanized English Und ich werde auf Englisch antworten And I will answer in English wir sind hier in Deutschland hat mein Außenminister mal gesagt We are here in Germany after all as my Foreign Minister once said Yeah I would too like Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and this is your private wie heißt My my my own private Idaho this is your own private Pegida or what okay don't expect an Hinkel who speaks English please Jetzt müssen wir mal wieder zurückkommen auf dieses Pervert's Guide to Europe oder ich fühl mich da immer verpflichtet weil wir haben ja diesen Titel gesagt und ich hab da mal was Now we have to come back to the topic of a Pervert's Guide to Europe at least I always feel obliged to do so because we chose this title Now I read a bit about it Europe nun wenn man hier einen Lacanianer hat und einen Psychoanalytiker Now if we have a Lacanian here and a psychoanalyst ja aber ich bin nicht praktizierend als Psychoanalytiker Yes but I am not practicing as a psychoanalyst ja aber du bist Theoretiker das heißt ich mein stell dir mal vor du wärst in großer psychischer Not würdest du überhaupt in Erwägung ziehen zu mir zu kommen Yes but you're a theoretician I mean imagine yourself in great psychic trouble would you even consider coming to me Wenn du das bist dann bist du wirklich in psychischer Not If you are then you are really in psychic trouble Ja ja Ich würde kommen ich würde intensive von dir If I were I would come I think you know what you're talking about Okay nee aber dieser alte dieser alte Mythos das hat mich jetzt interessiert Welcher Mythos Which myth Na ja dieses Europa eine phönizische Prinzessin Prinzessin aus ja ja ja aus Syrien Jordanien wird dann von einem als Stier verkleideten Zeus nach Kreta entführt weil er sich in die verliebt hat bla bla bla und jetzt wäre irgendwie die Frage und das ist eine dann find ich doch als Psychoanalytiker Well this myth of Europa a Phoenician princess princess from yeah yeah yeah from Syria from Jordan she is taken kidnapped so to speak to Crete by Zeus disguised as a bull because he had fallen in love with her now this is a question that arises might be interesting to a psychoanalyst und Lacanianer auch interessant wer ist denn heute unser Stier wer ist unser Stier für Europa und was will der and a Lacanian as well if we say Europe today then who is our Taurus who is our bull Ah it seems to me clear there are two thieves American liberalism and on the other hand what people call but it has nothing to do with Asia capitalism with Asian values I now I will tell you something precise when people tell me and my God I know this I was writing about this how you know in Europe human rights these are just a mask of neocolonialism and so on but I claim the dialectic is here much more refined the typical historical dialectic No I will answer your question is not something is at the beginning authentic and then it gets perverted a much more interesting political process is where something begins as an obvious ideological manipulation but then in its use it gets unexpectedly authentic for example every Mexican will tell you when when was it I think around please correct me if I'm wrong Virgen de Guadalupe the Black Virgin appeared and everyone knows this is the exact point when Christianity was no longer simply the religion of the imposed brutal Spanish colonizers but also became a medium for the brutalized original people there to express their troubles and so on and so on it's the same with universal human rights yes I know at the beginning they were clearly the rights privileging people who are white male and of certain social standing and so on so at the beginning it was a lie and you can see wonderfully if you read early liberal texts how this lie was justified like John Locke and all of them the logic was this one yes every human being has the right to enjoy the human rights but then they added insofar as he is really a truly free human being and then it begins women are too confused impressed by senses they cannot really act as a rational beings workers work too much they cannot really freely think and so it goes but that was the miracle it was a mystification but then Mary Wollstonecraft began why not also we women the blacks in Haiti why not also blacks and so on in other words what I'm saying is that I don't care how much the notion of Europe European Union was manipulated and so on maybe what I like about European Union and I know that it's now practically a lost case is that we have a transnational network which in some way with all illusions behind and so on nonetheless isn't this some kind of a silent presupposition that it stands for a civilization which should look neither like pure Anglo-Saxon American liberalism neither that nor that famous capitalism with Asian values and so on and maybe the case is lost what do I know but that's so there are two thieves I agree and I'm not saying we are returning to some original core of Europe or whatever although I'm tempted to say maybe we do you know because with all the limitations only men not slaves but you know what was the miracle nonetheless of limited as it was Greek democracy it's not only that those who were poor or whatever also had the right to vote but it was that they like let me jump from Greece to French Revolution when did the revolution really begin not when the Third Estate said simply the first two estates had too much power we also want our voice to be here no when they said the first two estates just stand for themselves we are the people we the Third Estate this moment of universality which you find even in Christianity that's what I like in Christianity Christianity is for me religious form of atheism in Christianity the message is God dies what survives is Heiliger Geist which means emancipatory egalitarian community that's what even I had debates in München with bishops and so on and I confused them by asking them the most elementary simple questions like for example when Christ says if you don't hate your mother father sister you are not my follower what exactly did Christ mean there my God it was incredible how yeah we have to think about it blah blah and the load of fuck you you know this for years I didn't bring some new thing you know and then it's incredible what stupid answer I got one of their answers was we shouldn't absolutize Christ like my God I thought my God in medieval times I would burn you for this day they told me God just meant you shouldn't like your parents too much excessively then I told them this is an obscenity you are making God a kind of a jealous guy like you know I can love you you but God says
oh my God I'm okay okay no I almost have a nostalgia for these times when it was possible to be how should I call it gemütlich racist in this directly obscene way you know because today it would be all that können wir ihnen ein bisschen Hummus geben um Toleranz zu zeigen für ihre Kultur you know it would be all done in a much more polite way and so on so I have a a great nostalgia for So do I yeah yeah it reminded me on when I was young not young now I bought a DVD of DDR propaganda you know Reklamefilme I mean yeah and it reminded me of this a little bit okay but that's another story okay let me go on now comes I'm sorry you will have to suffer half an hour I will try to cover some of these sensitive things points going on today as you said the Linke the Chernyshevsky Lenin Frage Was zu tun and so on What is to be done Let me begin with a dirty detail which happened to me in once I was in Portugal and there a voluptuous lady in her early 40s I don't know was she flirting with me or what she told me that you know although I am late my last lover when he saw me naked he told me that if I just were to lose two or three kilos my body would have been perfect and then I exploded I don't know what she expected from me sex she didn't get she got a long lesson on Lacanian theory objet petit a because what I tried to explain to her is that these two three kilos of overweight too much is exactly what Lacan calls objet petit a l'objet a the object cause of desire because I told her the greatest mistake is to think that if you lose these two three kilos you would be perfect no now I come to a little bit subtler Hegelian point these two three kilos precisely because they are too much create a kind of a retroactive illusion that if you lose them you would be perfect but I absolutely guarantee you that if the lady were to lose two three kilos she would have lost also this retroactive illusion of possible perfection it would be just an ordinary body so you see this is the finesse of what Lacan calls object of desire there is something which functions as an obstacle to perfection just two three kilos too much but when you take this excess away you lose that very thing to which it appeared as an obstacle and why I'm making this point although I still consider myself some kind of a Marxist I claim that in some sense maybe we can see today although the analysis of capitalism by Marx is still absolutely the only true one but that what Marx imagined as communism was a little bit like capitalism ohne zwei drei kilos that is to say he his idea of communism was too much capitalism on a capitalism that is to say that Marx's idea of communism was still we have and Marx admired this to the end this unglaubliche Dynamik capitalism always self-reproduces itself the permanent growth of productive capacities and so on that if we just take away the capitalist form of profit exploitation we will have the pure ideal body of productivity but he didn't see that this self-expanding circle of growing productivity is possible only through the obstacle in exactly the same way that the lady had a beautiful body only with this apparent obstacle now I'm not saying so we are condemned to capitalism I'm just saying that it's often when we dream when we imagine a wild alternate future and so on we often make this mistake that we really imagine and Marx already made this criticism of Plato he said the problem with Plato's Republic is not that it's too idealized but in its very ideality the ideal state is just an idealist version of the existing order although incidentally just as another philosophical hint I wouldn't underestimate Plato the liberal tradition is telling us good more democratic Aristotle versus oppressive Plato but whatever you think about Plato you have to admit two things which are today extremely important I claim first read Plato's Republic did you notice that first there are no slaves in it and Plato is explicit here no slaves in his ideal state while as we all know Aristotle takes slaves as a fact and he even calls them how is it talking instruments or whatever second point even more surprising Plato says explicitly the fact that women play a lower role that they are not allowed to occupy the highest posts that this is a total contingency in existing society that in his ideal Republic all even the top political posts will be open to men and to women and so on and so on so that's good to remember before you dismiss Plato as a conservative and so on but so again to my main point so that's the problem how to imagine the future I think our and by our I mean precisely all this from Podemos to Occupy Wall Street up to a point they were more serious even to Syriza all this movement that gave to all of us a kind of a new impetus oh my God change is possible and so on I claim they were all too utopian but utopian in a very precise sense of imagining a certain ecstatic transgressive moment like you remember Gezi Square Tahrir Square we were all crying oh my God one million people there all solidary and so on I'm getting tired of this in what sense I think that and I hope we will agree here the true test of a radical movement for social change is not the big revolutionary orgy one million of us so beautiful we are there but what in English they call the morning after after the night of being the drunk like when after a month half a year a year things return to normal how will ordinary people feel the change at that point I think that all conservatives like this idea that people to relax they need every years kind of a pseudo-revolutionary explosion and then they can dream about it for the next years and so on the problem is the morning after I'm tired of these ecstatic moments let me give you another cinema example did I hope most of you did see the famous but I didn't like it so much film V for Vendetta where you remember at the end people's rebellion they break through the police cordon and they occupy it takes place in some futuristic totalitarian United Kingdom they occupy the parliament victory everybody is dancing happy my God I would sell my mother into slavery to see another film V for Vendetta part two what happens then the next day you know they don't like to think about it I think that more than ever we should think about this otherwise all those great moments '68 or Occupy Wall Street I will tell you what they will become like with some of my friends who were on Occupy Wall Street it happened to me two months ago I was sitting with one of them close to Wall Street in New York in on the bench of the same park where it happened and he told me it was so enthusiastic I was crying we were here then his phone rang and he said I'm sorry I have to run to my bank now and so on and so on you know it becomes kind of a nostalgic memory no I'm tired of that I want a boring revolution revolution which becomes real precisely when it is translated into a little bit better everyday life and this is again the really difficult thing to do so let's go further here with the I'm jumping a little bit I have to improvise with with all the refugees coming now and so on it again triggers that's why I oppose them not my God some idiots even wrote that I'm going over to Pegida or whatever no don't be afraid I'm not I'm just saying that I think that the reaction with some okay on the one hand there are total horror I'm absolutely not it's even too humiliating to say I'm against them they don't deserve this all that anti-immigrant stuff the threat to Europe and so on yes I think Europe is threatened today yes and the main threat to Europe are precisely anti-immigrant nationalists and so on I still appeal to your naive faith in Europe feminism egalitarianism social justice just imagine Pegida here Le Pen in France UKIP in England with some miracle taking power would that still have been Europe no so the greatest threat to Europe are definitely defenders of Europe but I also don't like the way some pseudo-radical I claim leftists patronizingly elevate the pure refugees poor sorry refugees into what you know when I'm unfortunately old enough to remember late '60s new left movement and this was already the ironic joke they were with a big light looking for the new revolutionary subject you know like who will be students or who know and a friend of mine from a distant European country put this in a message to me in such a pure naive way he wrote to me the problem of the left in Europe is we don't have a revolutionary working class it's a wonderful chance let's allow five million refugees to come and they will become the proletarian class I wrote him are you totally crazy so you want to import the revolutionary class to do the revolution this is mixed with another thing now I come to more touchy topic you will see why some people think and I hope I will convince you at the end that I'm not Pegida but it's it's this we have to stop for inherent theoretical reasons but also for practical political reasons this totally false humanitarianization sympathy for the refugees you know this this is the worst reactionary tradition for example in Hollywood you find it with Frank Capra films the poor are good you just have to listen to them to get them really to know the reactionary idea beneath this is that we are all the same warm humans they may appear strangers but you know like one form of this mega stupidity is the proverb which appears deep deep I despise it the proverb which says and I'm not kidding I will quote it to you from some book on how to bring peace to Europe an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard it sounds deep you know like somebody is an enemy because I fetishize him but if I were to now I will tell you oh it's good to learn so Hitler was our enemy because you know we were not open to his side of the story and so on that's my first reproach no sorry there are real enemies and I'm sure that Hitler will be able to tell you a wonderful sincere warm story but I think and here I am anti-postmodernist the story we tell ourselves to ourselves this is not a deeper truth this is a lie we are telling to ourselves to mask not some of in our true inner essence but to mask the horror of what we are really doing this is although I've written three books on emancipatory potential of Christianity but here I partially agree with Steven Weinberg you know the great quantum cosmologist he wrote that famous book on Big Bang The First Three Seconds where he said somewhere that without religion good people would be doing good things and bad people bad things but you need something like a religion to make good people do bad things and I think okay it's not the entire truth about it but listen let me imagine something and you will be haha my victim here let's say I get an order to with a knife take the knife and pick out your eyes I must say unfortunately I'm a weak man I would have some problems to do it so what do I need I need an ultra strong poetic or religious or mythological narrative which convinces me that this my horrible act is my greatest sacrifice so that I know I'm doing a horrible thing but my country my political credo is worth doing it that's you know who knew this very well you should read him a great thinker I'm mocking Heinrich Himmler in that famous Poznań speech he saw the problem and he said precisely that we have to teach our SS officers he has a wonderful by wonderful I mean disgusting of course formula he says every ordinary German is more or less patriotic he can sacrifice himself for Germany but what SS needs today is people who are ready to sacrifice their good soul to kill children murder and so on that's the true heroism that's the true danger and that's how this I don't like the terms because it's too universal but like strategically I say in Nazism Holocaust or even in Gulag it's very interesting for example to read I got hold of them Soviet propaganda when in the late '20s they were collectivizing farms the propaganda to get propagandists communists ready for it it was precisely you will have to do horrible things you will see children there starving and so on but beware that you have to overstep your small bourgeois concerns to be able to do the really great thing and so on and so on so let me go on so what I'm saying here is that what we have to renounce is this idea typical liberal dream of universal understanding and sympathy again that the other remains other only insofar as we didn't hear his side of the story and so on and so on I think it's typical liberal Überich superego you know of course then you are always guilty and left liberals like this my God how can I be sure that that expression that I used wasn't a little bit racist so you know they like to discover how even if you are most politically correct you you are somehow still a little bit guilty and so on and so on what I'm saying is why don't we accept a couple of things first no the true anti-racism today for me let's say I live in a big building with Turks Arabs Jews Latin Americans blacks and I don't have any I was doing this in New York what I liked so much is that I didn't try to understand them they didn't try to understand me we politely ignore each other we treated each other extremely respectfully but the point was not to understand each other why not because my God I'm a Freudian I don't understand myself they probably don't understand myself let's drop this myth of understanding each other I claim that understanding each other is almost an impossible it's almost an impossible task the problem is precisely to accept the other let's say refugee as a foreigner the one whom you will never be able to penetrate with your understanding and so on and so on because all this idea if we just talk to them and like these two your nice German colleagues there the lady and the husband you know if we are just friendly we will understand each other no we are really different why should we I think that this was always part of the most reactionary ruling ideology this idea beneath our skin we are all the same warm humans no we are not you know why is this horrible and you can find this in Ernst Lubitsch films and Preston Sturges and again Frank Capra who was no leftist he was pro-Mussolini and so on it's good to know Capra's idea was poor people are good you just have to listen to them to understand them listen I remember when I was in Israel all the media reported on a sublime event an anti-terrorist unit broke brutally in the middle of the night in a Palestinian home searching for the head of the family who was a allegedly a terrorist of course he was not at home it was only his wife and some small children of course since the soldiers brutally broke in the children started to cry then mother called them I don't know what names Sarah or whatever Sarah come here come here and then one of the Israeli soldiers the attackers discovered that my God I have a daughter with the same name and he went to the mother you see I also have a daughter the same name and so on like you know forget about that we brutally invaded your home we are all the same warm humans warm humans beneath and so on this is for me ideology at its purest at its most disgusting it's difficult to sympathize with the poor the refugees if you can if you have this guarantee which is I think the form of extreme violence that basically they are the same warm people as me here we should rehabilitate the Judeo-Christian notion of neighbor der Nächste as good interpreters have shown Nächste is not neighbor in the sense that the fellowman the one who is like me if you really read closely the Bible already you learn that der Nächste is your neighbor close one but you reach him at the level of the neighbor when you discover that there is a totally unexpected abyss in him like let's say you have a closest friend all of a sudden you discover when you catch him at home imagine something disgusting that he is slowly torturing a cat to death that he is raping a girl or that he is doing something incredibly noble or whatever at that point when you see that even if he seemed to be close to you there is an abyss he was a foreigner this is love your neighbor accept this otherness so why do I emphasize so much on this because it's Hegelian you know Hegel has here a wonderful formula where he says that the secrets of ancient ancient ancient Egyptians for us they appear mysterious what does this sphinx mean were also the secrets for the Egyptians themselves so that's what we have to accept we cannot understand them not because they have some evil inner essence but because they don't understand they are foreigners to themselves we are foreigners to ourselves and so on so again my point is a very simple one but it's pro-refugee point don't idealize them yes when you get hundreds of thousands coming I'm absolutely sure that there are thieves there are rapists again them and so on and you are a true racist if you then say no cordon throw them out and so on and so on you really have to accept them as you really have to accept them as neighbors now I'm making the next even more problematic point this is why I think now you will say of course what I'm saying is an obvious obscenity we simply have to respect different ways of life now I come to my even more problematic point this logic of multiculturalism simple multiculturalism respect different ways of life it covers up not the racist lesson that you know they are such barbarians how can you respect them but it covers up the antagonisms in their and in our way of life which is why what do I mean I will tell you immediately what what do I mean by this we how to how to react for example for the fact that from China to Zimbabwe many Third World leaders and the tragedy is that they are not simply wrong when you mention to them human rights and so on they immediately shout Kulturimperialismus like what you are selling us as human rights are not truly universal human rights they already privilege a certain way of life and to some level they are right for example when we formulate human rights we emphasize effectively much more than their cultures do the autonomy of the individual so what to do here I think it's really a deadlock there is no simple formula what do I mean by this for example recently Robert Mugabe gave a speech and I don't want to make fun of him he brutally attacked gay rights as a Western invention as a case of Kulturimperialismus you are trying to impose on us your values your way of life and so on and of course the same goes for women's rights and so on and so on again let me emphasize my point I'm fully aware to what extent reference to Western human rights can serve as a justification not only of Kulturimperialismus but even of actual military imperialism for example it's a great scandal that American many American feminists supported the invasion of Iraq claiming it's basically to help Iraqi women and so on the brutal irony of history is that they were extremely brutally wrong because you know whatever you say against Saddam and I'm certainly no friend of Saddam Hussein but his regime Iraqi was formally secular the only two Arab regimes which are formally secular are Iraq and Syria precisely the two one already disappeared the other one will disappear so it's madness the paradox is that they went there to redeem for among other things for women's rights the result is that now with regime falling and control of Muslim militias the situation of women is infinitely worse than under Saddam the second irony is this one United States a Christian country invades Iraq under Saddam there were there two million Christians now because of this confusion and again Islamic militias pressure almost all of the Christians left Iraq that's the price you pay for stupid Western politics but what I'm saying is this so where do you set the limit in respecting the other way of life I see and I want to provoke you here consciously I see two limits why because I don't think there are simply different ways of life first every way of life has its own antagonisms covering them up second thing every way of life is universal in the sense that it incorporates some norms how to treat others other ways of life so okay let me tell you so that we don't go into this refugee problem where things are much more complex I know let me tell you a thing that happened in my own country Slovenia I think some ten years ago we have a minority but there are some of them Roma the racist way gypsies no and from one of the Roma family a girl escaped to the police claiming my family my father did a pre-arranged marriage and sold me to another man I don't want this and so on okay then what to do then the Roma leader of their group said but and he was right but are you aware that arranging marriages is a key feature of how our community reproduces itself if you take away this from us then maybe we will survive as doing some stupid folkloric dances music or some some some Gypsy barbecue or whatever but as a way of life we will disappear so what do you do here he is totally right to claim that if you protect the girl you don't respect their way of life again what do you do here and here this is my what idiots call Pegida moment I think that we should just when they accuse me of defending Western rights no I don't mean Christianity and oppression and so on I simply mean a certain level of sexual and religious sexual religious and so on freedom and tolerance I think that for example whichever minority including Christian minorities like all those fundamentalists who terrorize their children that we have the right to say hop sorry this is terror on children or women the state has to intervene it goes without saying that the state should punish even more any violence against them against others but that's a crucial point and the second point here things for me get problematic the problem for me with different ways of life is that what if one way of life finds intolerable some features in another way of life like what if they find intolerable homosexuality and publicly attack it and so on and this would be if you ask me my my limitation in other words people who criticized me emphasize how refugees are not simply foreigners to whom we should show hospitality we should accept them absolutely as equals and we should recognize them they should enjoy the same rights as the members of the diverse communities that make up Europe I totally agree I'm just adding but which are these same rights where do you stop with women's rights and so on and so on why am I emphasizing this ah here things get a little bit more complex because you know don't be I claim that those who say but listen Arabs or whatever Muslims were oppressed they don't yet have our sense of women's right we are now fighting other bigger battles let's tolerate that a little bit and so on I think that you are terribly under pat patronizingly this is true racism underestimating them for example since I know well the situation in on the West Bank Palestine Ramallah and so on there is a they have a couple of rapper bands like the most famous one the lead singer is Tamer Nafar he is a wonderful figure I'm proud of him to be my friend he is at the same time fighting Israeli oppression he was arrested all you want but also singing rapper songs against honor killings in his own community starting a movement there and you know what's so typical one would have expected liberal Israelis who pretend to be friends of Palestinians to support him no everyone is embarrassed why because he doesn't fit this idea of a primitive Palestinian that needs no sorry he is totally enlightened and so on and then something this is the point of my story happened there which I found so breathtakingly disgusting this guy Tamer Nafar gave recently a talk I think it was UCLA some big American campus and he sang a couple of songs among others also this song protesting honor killings of course there were stupid pseudo-radical leftists there who attacked him immediately claiming that but you know even if Palestinians are doing this honor killings of their women who allegedly betrayed them they are doing this only because of Israeli oppression we shouldn't mention this now and so on and you know what he said a friend of mine recorded his answer it's a beautiful one to his critics there when you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood and so on so that's my formula not let's tolerate all that they are doing because of the higher struggle against whatever no what we should do is desperately fight for somehow I know it's difficult but bringing together our struggles gay rights whatever you want abortion and so on and so on and their their rights if we make any compromises here either the Western cultural imperialist compromise fuck their rights they are too primitive we should just impose on on them our struggles this is horrible and I will give you a funny example which happened in ex-Yugoslavia years ago when the war was going on in Bosnia some Bosnian feminists showed me a letter they received from some American feminist who wanted to show sympathy for Bosnians poor women victims of rape and in order to establish communication they sent them a questionnaire a letter and it was so implicitly racist like first question was do you like kind of a vulgarized Judith Butler do you think that woman has an eternal essence or do you think that feminine identity is performatively constructed through discursive practices and so on you see my point if cultural imperialism exists this is it but on the on the other hand I also reject this Mugabe China line which is you know if we do what we do to our women and so on this is our specific way of life and so on I think everything depends on bringing together these two what these two dimensions and I can guarantee you it can be it can be done otherwise all the talk of respect is bullshit I mean I had for example an unpleasant I must admit it I will be again accused of racism very friendly debate friendly up to a certain point with my Muslim friends in London and one of them told me and he was right it's not enough for you Western people to tolerate me I want not to be tolerated I want to be respected and I want to be respected not just as an abstract human being in spite of what I am Muslim but I want to be respected as what I am as a Muslim okay maybe I went too far but I immediately answered him I agree but I am an atheist totally rejecting religion are you you ready to respect me not in spite of me being an atheist but for being an atheist well it didn't end good that's all I can tell you so what I'm saying is this now I come furthest in this my problematic topic I'm sick and tired of this European self-humiliating attitude whatever happens we are guilty we are cultural imperialist whatever happens in Third World it must be an effect of neocolonialism of European exploitation to a large extent this is true and I am fully aware of it just think about the present wave of refugees of course it's more complex but it's first economic exploitation ruining local economies especially in Africa then military interventions they totally screwed up the whole so we are responsible for that but nonetheless I still think that I'm a little bit suspicious of this almost universal fashion of criticizing Eurocentrism like if you say something is Eurocentric ah it has to be rejected look my first problem is this one but you know it's significant that this is happening precisely today where global capitalism no longer needs the standard European liberal ideology new forms of capitalism from Russia to China Singapore and so on they work to India they work very well with some kind of much more patriarchal or at least authoritarian ideology and so on and so on so that's the first thing that makes me deeply suspicious here that this popularity of critique of Eurocentrism is a sad sign of how as I have and I've written texts on it of how this eternal marriage it appeared eternal between capitalism and democracy okay bourgeois democracy but somehow democracy is reaching its its limit so I'm saying my God I'm sorry to tell you but communism is a European idea if there was a guy who was part of Western Enlightenment it was Marx I hope you will not accuse me of Pegida if I say that I am that I am in this sense there are still parts of European legacy of which I am very proud and I think it's precisely the reference to this European legacy of equality women's rights justice and so on which allows us to overcome the very European limitations which we justly criticize to return to your guy Descartes you know where true multiculturalism in a good sense begins in Descartes I think it's Discourse on Method maybe it's the other one where he says when I was young foreign others ways of life appeared to me strange but he says but then it did strike me what if my own way of life may also appear strange and stupid from their own gaze and so on this here it begins the true multiculturalism not with tolerance I'm deeply suspicious of the very term tolerance you know why because it culturalizes conflicts no conflicts do not occur because we don't tolerate each other enough no conflicts occur because of economic antagonisms exploitation political domination here and there so my formula is not not clash of civilization but understanding between civilizations no my formula of universality is not we are all part of the great human race my formula of universality is we have our own fights here they have their fights can we bring these fights together universality the only universality is the universality of a struggle the second thing that bothers me with refugees and I am for them whatever you want my God and I mean it really like bring them here and so on we are responsible for them is the what I call humanitarianization sorry but we should be aware that the ultimate solution is not it's almost self-evident for me to say this is not to what so that all the poverty that because in the Third World we will remediate so that we will take the victims to us no the the the tough questions has to be asked what is in the global economic system that makes them what they are and how to change I think in the long term the only change is a radical economic change and you know who said this don't be afraid slowly slowly I'm approaching the end yeah yeah it's that you know Oscar Wilde a funny guy in his wonderful essay The Soul of Man under Socialism he has some lines which I think fit perfectly refugees here is a quote at the very beginning of this essay people find themselves surrounded with hideous poverty hideous ugliness starvation and so on it is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this accordingly with admirable though misdirected intentions they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying of curing the evils that they see but their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it indeed their remedies are part of the disease they try to solve the problem of poverty for instance by keeping the poor alive or in the case of a very advanced school by amusing the poor but this is not a solution it is an aggravation of the difficulty the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible and the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim which is why all today's liberal billionaire capitalist repeat this story you know we are not alone what about millions starving them we have to help them no we shouldn't be there of course we should do but we should be more radical not helping them but help ourselves change the economic system my God this is otherwise it will just be this endless cycle of ruining them and then through big donors like Bill Gates and so on helping them in this sense I still prefer the term communism because you know socialism is not a word which divides enough everyone is today a socialist my God not only der Führer Hitler was a National Socialist but Bill Gates somewhere if by socialism you mean taking care of the poor trying to make the world a better place with more solidarity then I am a so everyone is a socialist today it's just meant you know like or as Otto Weininger you know Geschlecht und Charakter he said beautifully he said socialism is Aryan communism is Jewish I agree with him and that's for me the case although I'm not a Jew for the case for communism so let me just conclude slowly kalitische no [unintelligible] ah ja in [unintelligible] okay okay in the same sense of bitter necessity you see this is why I'm also tired by this Habermasian motive of deploring the democratic deficit of the European Union the idea is European Union is basically okay but it has a democratic deficit this reminds me of some of my communist friends from my youth who said Soviet Union is still okay they just have a little bit of a democratic deficit you know it's ridiculous the point is in what democratic deficit was a necessary part of their of their system and my conclusion here is the one I'm not pleading for any totalitarian party rule but precisely in democracy is for me the same problematic term as socialism of course in some sense I'm for it who is not but it is a word which does not allow us to make the right critical division you know there are good things happening under the name of democracy there are horrible things military intervention and so on happening in the name of democracy what do I mean by this maybe some of you know the story I gave an interview some two-three weeks ago to Süddeutsche Zeitung and then additionally they asked me two-three some six-seven sorry questions of readers and the question which provoked the greatest echo hundreds of readers replying to it was the question democracy yes but who gave Angela Merkel the right to invite refugees to come here did she ask the German people for permission where is democratic legitimization here I am here of course for Angela Merkel but I'm saying and this is something very tough to accept for the standard leftist I'm saying we shouldn't fetishize democracy don't be afraid not in the sense we need some Stalinist leader to tell us what but we have brutally to accept that people can be wrong they can be radically wrong you know there is no guarantee we have to fight it's not that ordinary so-called ordinary people and political elite even more are somehow they know the truth we just have to help them to get rid of ideological mystifications and so on and so on it's a it's a tough serious struggle the next problem for me apropos democracy is that it's the ultimate fetish in our societies fetish in the strict Freudian sense you know what Freud means by fetish in a naive way the last thing before you see castration no isn't democracy the last thing we see before we have to confront some radical social antagonism like every liberal we admit to you yeah we live in a society of struggles and so on but we have democracy this is why incidentally I hate films like All the President's Men or Pelican Brief so-called Hollywood left where the story appears leftist like you know an ordinary journalist or whatever discovers a great corruption where even the president of the United States is involved and at the end the president has to step down but why are these films ideological precisely because they too naively believe in the efficiency of democracy why are you so satisfied after seeing such a film because basically the message is what a great country America is when two ordinary guys like you and me can overthrow the mightiest man in the world and so on and so on you see this is for me the problem and please don't misunderstand me the solution is not that we need some enlightened dictatorship or whatever but what is the solution haha now I'm concluding with your Leninist question and then you know I think the battle is not lost you know why because the global system capitalist is inconsistent it has all the time it has to break its own rules what in one part of the world it's considered commonly accepted in another part it's intolerable for example in United States that's why I still have a little bit of a soft spot even for Obama although it was ultimately a failure his universal healthcare reform but by promoting universal healthcare he obviously disturbed an extremely sensitive point you know that Republicans brought him to Supreme Court and so on and so on so in United States the universal healthcare actual healthcare universalized is what I call the point of the impossible something that appears just a modest point in Canada they have it we can do it no you cannot do it without triggering a deep change of the system you know it's a little bit like another my last example from cinema you know I like this motive in science fiction films where when you are in a room and by mistake you press a button you think this is just whatever light water but then by pressing that button walls start to fall apart you know like the whole universe is ruined and that's the art of politics in different countries you have different points of the impossible in some countries it can even be human rights for example in Turkey you know what is Turkey it's the country which now officially is demanding for ISIS for the Islamic State to be recognized legalized and so on and so on so much about that but what I'm saying is that and of course it's the same time the greatest American ally there it's exactly the same as Saudi Arabia no but what I want to say is that that should be the art of politics not great revolution this is such a comfortable position specific points for which you can be sure that points which are in themselves totally acceptable like nobody can accuse you of communist revolution if you demand universal healthcare in America you can always say but in Europe they have it in Canada they have it or another example another struggle like this did you notice something extremely sad that in the last decades we have a growth of de facto slavery that is to say I claim that capitalism is more and more approaching a state where it will not be able to maintain even the human rights democratic rights that we are used to what is happening de facto now in Arab countries I mean in those wealthy countries Saudi Arabia Qatar and so on they are not called slaves but they have hundreds of thousands of de facto slaves we have them even in Europe it was a wonderful terrifying news you remember some three years ago there was a fire in a suburb of Firenze a small wooden hut burned down and Chinese workers burned to death and then they discovered there are just in small city Chinese workers who totally illegal living in de facto slavery and so on and so on so you know we can be fighting all these struggles I am for why do I believe in relative efficiency of these struggles I remember from my youth when I was not a great dissident but kind of a modest dissident and I learned this at least in the last decade of communism when nobody took it seriously as an ideology if you were a philosopher and wrote a book decrying communism as worse than fascism and whatever Marx origin of Stalinist Gulag no problem they by they I mean communists in power the regime they paid you a ticket to visit a Western anti-communist conference but if you made just a specific precise local very particular demand for example covering some article in penal code like we cannot have these verbal delicts like did it was and you even was you were even able to justify it in the terms of the ruling ideology it was much more risky to demand this small change than the big thing and friends from China are telling me it's more or less the same there now yes you can be liberal decry communism nobody cares you make a specific demand against ecology workers' right whatever you are finished and the very last I promise you here it is point the very pessimistic sad conclusion I recently read memoirs by Ruth Klüger this was a German girl who survived Jewish who survived Auschwitz and then as a small girl and then after the war something horrible happened to her she visited Israel where she met a Hungarian Jew who was highly educated and also survived Auschwitz but he there when they met some Arabs Palestinians he this Hungarian Jew although she he survived Auschwitz he had the numbers tattooed he exploded into hate speech those dirty Arabs we should throw them all out and so on and so on and she was first shocked her message was her reaction was my God but he saw real suffering he saw what racism it how could he be saying that and then and this is maybe the saddest lesson of all these ethnic hatreds then the truth hit her you know Auschwitz was not only a physical catastrophe Auschwitz was not some kind of an educational community where if you survived it you saw suffering you gained some deeper truth solidarity no Auschwitz ruined you also ethically don't idealize the victims this is the saddest lesson for me so my message is we have chances small patient work but then you tell me but why don't then simply become a social democratic reformist it's very simple because I'm too much of a pessimist I think and my God even many people who are definitely not communists agree with me from ecology to to biogenetics and so on we are confronting problems for which I don't see how in the long term they can be solved not solved but even contained within the scope of let's call it liberal democratic capitalism just take ecology a friend of mine an excellent French theorist of catastrophes Jean-Pierre Dupuy he told me he's part of some high European committees and visited immediately after Fukushima Japan and he told me that for one day there was panic in the Japanese government because they thought that the the radiation will spread down and that they will have to evacuate millions the entire Tokyo area how to do this who would do this you know what I mean this is not something that you can put on the market through higher taxation or whatever they would have to move people probably out of Japan okay in the old days primitive it's warfare you invade Siberia maybe they win they maybe you win now we cannot do this so I think that here or biogenetics Fukuyama is no longer a Fukuyamaist precisely because of biogenetics he admits now we cannot do it in liberal capitalist way stronger measures are needed to coordinate this I claim intellectual property it's the same it will be the death of capitalism capitalism is not able to incorporate it and so on and so on so you see I'm almost I'm tempted to say a communist out of pessimism I'm saying this that the true utopia is not another society is possible the true utopia is to think that with a little compromises here and there we can nonetheless survive in a society in which we live my real fear is what will become of our societies spontaneously if we don't introduce some economic and so on changes so I am a moderate not even moderate pessimist but maybe this is the only position of hope today I hate optimists you know why because they are always disappointed you know if you are an optimist it's never like this I prefer to be a pessimist because you know then you have Syriza here this there and it's always like a little bit better than you expected you know so don't don't lose hope precisely in situations which are like ours miracles do happen from time to time like Egypt Tahrir Square Syriza and so on and so on don't lose nerves miracles happen I'm sorry if I spoke too long thank you very much for your patience I promised him that he can ask me some question you know in his Stasi nature you know like that he can now so please genosse wir haben im Grunde haben aus wir wir müssen jetzt vorher ein Ende vereinbaren Wann soll das We have to agree on an end When will this end Three questions or half an hour or if das ist mehr dialektisch say sagen wir Viertelstunde okay Let's say minutes Okay Viertelstunde okay Okay minutes wir müssen jetzt irgendwie ich meine das hieße ja The Pervert's Guide to Europe No pervert's guide to Europe Ja mach Yes but you can speak German Well I do I speak German Neonazi ja okay Neonazi okay Okay I'll ask my questions in a perfect Germanized English Und ich werde auf Englisch antworten And I will answer in English wir sind hier in Deutschland hat mein Außenminister mal gesagt We are here in Germany after all as my Foreign Minister once said Yeah I would too like Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and this is your private wie heißt My my my own private Idaho this is your own private Pegida or what okay don't expect an Hinkel who speaks English please Jetzt müssen wir mal wieder zurückkommen auf dieses Pervert's Guide to Europe oder ich fühl mich da immer verpflichtet weil wir haben ja diesen Titel gesagt und ich hab da mal was Now we have to come back to the topic of a Pervert's Guide to Europe at least I always feel obliged to do so because we chose this title Now I read a bit about it Europe nun wenn man hier einen Lacanianer hat und einen Psychoanalytiker Now if we have a Lacanian here and a psychoanalyst ja aber ich bin nicht praktizierend als Psychoanalytiker Yes but I am not practicing as a psychoanalyst ja aber du bist Theoretiker das heißt ich mein stell dir mal vor du wärst in großer psychischer Not würdest du überhaupt in Erwägung ziehen zu mir zu kommen Yes but you're a theoretician I mean imagine yourself in great psychic trouble would you even consider coming to me Wenn du das bist dann bist du wirklich in psychischer Not If you are then you are really in psychic trouble Ja ja Ich würde kommen ich würde intensive von dir If I were I would come I think you know what you're talking about Okay nee aber dieser alte dieser alte Mythos das hat mich jetzt interessiert Welcher Mythos Which myth Na ja dieses Europa eine phönizische Prinzessin Prinzessin aus ja ja ja aus Syrien Jordanien wird dann von einem als Stier verkleideten Zeus nach Kreta entführt weil er sich in die verliebt hat bla bla bla und jetzt wäre irgendwie die Frage und das ist eine dann find ich doch als Psychoanalytiker Well this myth of Europa a Phoenician princess princess from yeah yeah yeah from Syria from Jordan she is taken kidnapped so to speak to Crete by Zeus disguised as a bull because he had fallen in love with her now this is a question that arises might be interesting to a psychoanalyst und Lacanianer auch interessant wer ist denn heute unser Stier wer ist unser Stier für Europa und was will der and a Lacanian as well if we say Europe today then who is our Taurus who is our bull Ah it seems to me clear there are two thieves American liberalism and on the other hand what people call but it has nothing to do with Asia capitalism with Asian values I now I will tell you something precise when people tell me and my God I know this I was writing about this how you know in Europe human rights these are just a mask of neocolonialism and so on but I claim the dialectic is here much more refined the typical historical dialectic No I will answer your question is not something is at the beginning authentic and then it gets perverted a much more interesting political process is where something begins as an obvious ideological manipulation but then in its use it gets unexpectedly authentic for example every Mexican will tell you when when was it I think around please correct me if I'm wrong Virgen de Guadalupe the Black Virgin appeared and everyone knows this is the exact point when Christianity was no longer simply the religion of the imposed brutal Spanish colonizers but also became a medium for the brutalized original people there to express their troubles and so on and so on it's the same with universal human rights yes I know at the beginning they were clearly the rights privileging people who are white male and of certain social standing and so on so at the beginning it was a lie and you can see wonderfully if you read early liberal texts how this lie was justified like John Locke and all of them the logic was this one yes every human being has the right to enjoy the human rights but then they added insofar as he is really a truly free human being and then it begins women are too confused impressed by senses they cannot really act as a rational beings workers work too much they cannot really freely think and so it goes but that was the miracle it was a mystification but then Mary Wollstonecraft began why not also we women the blacks in Haiti why not also blacks and so on in other words what I'm saying is that I don't care how much the notion of Europe European Union was manipulated and so on maybe what I like about European Union and I know that it's now practically a lost case is that we have a transnational network which in some way with all illusions behind and so on nonetheless isn't this some kind of a silent presupposition that it stands for a civilization which should look neither like pure Anglo-Saxon American liberalism neither that nor that famous capitalism with Asian values and so on and maybe the case is lost what do I know but that's so there are two thieves I agree and I'm not saying we are returning to some original core of Europe or whatever although I'm tempted to say maybe we do you know because with all the limitations only men not slaves but you know what was the miracle nonetheless of limited as it was Greek democracy it's not only that those who were poor or whatever also had the right to vote but it was that they like let me jump from Greece to French Revolution when did the revolution really begin not when the Third Estate said simply the first two estates had too much power we also want our voice to be here no when they said the first two estates just stand for themselves we are the people we the Third Estate this moment of universality which you find even in Christianity that's what I like in Christianity Christianity is for me religious form of atheism in Christianity the message is God dies what survives is Heiliger Geist which means emancipatory egalitarian community that's what even I had debates in München with bishops and so on and I confused them by asking them the most elementary simple questions like for example when Christ says if you don't hate your mother father sister you are not my follower what exactly did Christ mean there my God it was incredible how yeah we have to think about it blah blah and the load of fuck you you know this for years I didn't bring some new thing you know and then it's incredible what stupid answer I got one of their answers was we shouldn't absolutize Christ like my God I thought my God in medieval times I would burn you for this day they told me God just meant you shouldn't like your parents too much excessively then I told them this is an obscenity you are making God a kind of a jealous guy like you know I can love you you but God says
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but you should love me more I said no and I told him it's total obscenity if you read
but you should love me more I said no and I told him it's total obscenity if you read
Slavoj Žižek
the New Testament Jesus said I will return when there will be love among you Jesus is not the one to be love
the New Testament Jesus said I will return when there will be love among you Jesus is not the one to be love
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he is the authentic love whenever
he is the authentic love whenever
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there is authentic love among people Jesus is there and this is what I admire
there is authentic love among people Jesus is there and this is what I admire
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in Christianity
in Christianity
Slavoj Žižek
Hegel was right when
Hegel was right when
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he said that what dies
he said that what dies
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on the cross is not a messenger representative of God like God sent his son oh sorry guys it didn't work my son come back to me you know I think that if I may bore you with this a little bit but it's crucial I think the first
on the cross is not a messenger representative of God like God sent his son oh sorry guys it didn't work my son come back to me you know I think that if I may bore you with this a little bit but it's crucial I think the first
Slavoj Žižek
Ideologiekritik text it's the book of how do you pronounce it here Job Hiob Hiob are you
Ideologiekritik text it's the book of how do you pronounce it here Job Hiob Hiob are you
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aware what we read there first things
aware what we read there first things
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go wrong for Hiob then what happens ideologie three theological friends come each tries to justify his suffering one said even if you don't know God is just you must have done something wrong the second one says says God is testing but whatever and Hiob doesn't say I'm innocent he just insists on one
go wrong for Hiob then what happens ideologie three theological friends come each tries to justify his suffering one said even if you don't know God is just you must have done something wrong the second one says says God is testing but whatever and Hiob doesn't say I'm innocent he just insists on one
Slavoj Žižek
simple fact I don't accept that my suffering has
simple fact I don't accept that my suffering has
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some deeper meaning and now comes the miracle
some deeper meaning and now comes the miracle
Slavoj Žižek
you know then God comes
you know then God comes
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Jehovah and says
Jehovah and says
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Hiob is right all that those three idiots or four I don't know friends
Hiob is right all that those three idiots or four I don't know friends
Slavoj Žižek
theological
theological
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were thing is wrong and then comes the true miracle then Hiob nonetheless asks God I'm giving you kind of a reader's digest simplified version of it I know then Hiob asks God but nonetheless why did I suffer why it happened and then God answers those famous with those famous arrogant words but where were you when I created this that and this is usually read I claim in a totally wrong way it's usually read I claim in a kind of a as affirmation of a radical gap between man like who are
were thing is wrong and then comes the true miracle then Hiob nonetheless asks God I'm giving you kind of a reader's digest simplified version of it I know then Hiob asks God but nonetheless why did I suffer why it happened and then God answers those famous with those famous arrogant words but where were you when I created this that and this is usually read I claim in a totally wrong way it's usually read I claim in a kind of a as affirmation of a radical gap between man like who are
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you ordinary idiot there to understand
you ordinary idiot there to understand
Slavoj Žižek
what were my plans but my favorite theologian Gilbert Keith Chesterton gives a wonderful reading I couldn't believe my years his reading is that God's answer is you think you are in trouble but look at the universe I screwed up everything everything is a big mess like it's some kind of abdication of God and I think this is what Jesus Christ means it means what dies is God of the beyond the deepest message of humanity of Christianity and I'm not alone here even a conservative theologian like Paul Claudel accepted this is that God is helpless without us humans as Hegel put it nicely what dies on the cross is not a representative of God is God of beyond itself it's this idea of God like you know this for me the most disgusting metaphor that you can imagine of that when you see evil it's like if you look too close at the painting and you think it's just a stain but if you look at it from a proper distance you can see that what appeared to you as a stain is part of a global harmony this I think is what the death of Christ symbolically prevents you it's an obscenity for example to say Holocaust Gulag or Congo slaughter this just appears to us as a stain because from our limited view we cannot see how this contributes to some global harmony and so on and so on no the death of Christ means no you don't have the right to take this abstract view towards some presupposed meaning inaccessible to us and that's for me the message Heiliger Geist Heiliger Geist is simply the community of believers without any transcendent guarantee in God or whatever now you will say but what about the finale of the Bible all the well there I have Stalinist problems I think Book of Apocalypse and so on this is return to paganism I should no you see this beautiful this beautiful view of God and God means any transcendent guarantee there is some big historical necessity whatever no we are radically unknown left to ourselves when Christians say that the highest gift of God is freedom yes but it's this radical freedom freedom of being fully responsible of being about okay I talk too much but all this is for me part of ah-ah European legacy because what I like in Europe is that if you look at the notion of justice the usual pagan notion of justice is restored balance you know like some particular part of society or wants too much and then if you want too much it's too much balance has to be restored like when I was in China two years ago maybe you know the story I had the same experience I asked the Chinese because you know they no longer use now the term communism they use the Confucian term harmonious society so I asked them could you please explain to me what do you mean and they gave me a perfect explanation they say in a harmonious society every individual does his her job is at his or her proper place father is a good father pupil is a good pupil master is a good master worker is a good worker and so on no and I told them oh my God now there is no multicultural misunderstanding we call this fascist corporatism in Europe no what I want to say is that Christianity stands precisely against this against Christianity the whole idea of Heiliger Geist means that no we are not part of totality in the sense of you know harmonious totality and you just have to play your role everyone of us has the right to direct contact with universality bypassing particularity that's the message of Heiliger Geist and so on which later realized in I'm crazy here I am tempted to say that Heiliger Geist is the first form of communist party or whatever that is to say this idea even okay Buddhism also has this we are all equal in Nirvana but in Nirvana the catch of Christianity is this crazy hope that our ultimate equality is not just equality in death that equality can be materialized as an actual social organization and so on so okay I can go on indefinitely I will not but you see all this I think is part of European legacy which is threatened today because today I claim more and more the spontaneous ideology of late capitalism is some kind of let's call it enlightened hedonist Buddhism no no no it's empirically true most I even read that among American top managers most of them have this idea you know meditation is their fetish their spontaneous idea is this one I earn billions but ultimately I have to be aware that this is not really what life is about it's just all is just a game of appearances and so on my true self is somewhere else and so on and so on I don't accept this I don't believe in this inner authenticity or whatever you know this is why the greatest Zen master could organize torture this is why read the book that I like I always mention it Aldous Huxley Gray Eminence it was the secretary of Cardinal Richelieu the most brutal manipulator of Thirty Years War at the same time he every evening he was writing the most beautiful authentic mystical meditations and that's what or even let me take an example from your own past it did strike me so much when I learned that Reinhard Heydrich you know the the Wannsee guy you know that in the evenings he was very good violin player he was playing with his friends late Beethoven's Streichquartette you know this is the horror that inner authenticity or whatever in no way helps you to do to do horrors the truth is outside in what you actually do in along this lines again I would have claimed that that like it's a more paradoxical position yes we should overcome Eurocentrism but European tradition is the one to give us the tools to do this Where are the questions Sorry Audience no definitely no I can I can I am ready I thought I will be falling apart I will speak up I will ask you about the militarization of the border deportation of refugees and you mentioned the phobia and sexism in Berlin there are more gay lesbians and trans Muslims than are probably in the gay community in your country the as well in the Islamic community in Berlin Then it's okay but where did you get that I simply disclaim the truth of what you are saying where did I advocate this is sorry a direct lie where did I advocate the deportation of the refugees show me one passage and I kill myself here now no my point was this one that Western powers on purpose make it difficult for the refugees you know this humiliating transport through why not do something like this establish basis in Libyan coast there there and organize it through airlift or whatever why this humiliating process and so on and so on as to sorry what what was your second when you say militarization what militarization closing border did I ever say this no Yes I did I do to provoke I admit this but not militarization in the sense of we have big armies which are there masturbating doing it they can be very usefully used to organize large projects like moving hundreds of thousands of people and so on I don't and this is part of a much larger project that I have it may be crazy with my friend Fred Jameson who is directly there you will get the explosion he thinks that the army can be subverted as the only large force which functions outside and incidentally this is a long tradition of once and so on I mean I'm not afraid of the term militarization because my enemy is not the state my enemy is big capital my God the problem is any I'm ready to make a pact with the devil to to limit capital my problem is this which is a deadly serious one how to prevent the right-wing radicalization of Europe that's the true problem now and through this leftist sentimentality you will not do it I know I know you know what I fear the right-wingers will silently win and then as always there will be wonderful leftist analysis of why it had to fail you know like the leftists are at their best when a revolution fails and then they write an excellent theory of why of why it had to of why it has to fail I mean I'm simply thinking about no yeah I know this is a radical position but look look at Venezuela and so on I simply don't think that army is necessarily a reactionary institution I think that now I will be very brutal all those Silicon Valley corporate hippies are much more dangerous like I fear much more Google than the army I fear you know who convinced me Julian Assange he gave the best definition of Google which is privatized corporate NSA and they are directly connected they collaborate with it and so on and so on so that's the first thing second thing when you said gay community yes I know all this my God I was even I know even maybe I'm sorry I don't know from where you are from I was in Ramallah and visited a gay club there and so on Ramallah is an exceptionally vibrant city and so on and so on but you know what I don't get because people who criticize me and when I insist on that minimum you know gay rights women's rights and so on they tell me but this is a pseudo-problem but my answer is okay so it's a pseudo-problem perfect then there is no problem but from what I hear it's not purely a pseudo-problem I read a leftist analysis which claims that for example left I underline three times the word leftist which claims for example that here in Germany over Muslim girls per year escape home and they have to be put escaping from them family and so on and so on I'm not saying that we should in any way censor censor censor Muslim communities for this I'm just saying if now you will say this is exaggeration no girl does this I say perfect so it's okay but if a girl does this the state has to protect her that's all I'm saying that's all I'm saying it you know and okay when you say this exaggeration and so on did you follow and I checked it through my leftist friends did you follow what happened now it's almost a year ago in England in Rotherham where it was it exploded in the media that Pakistani gangs in a city of about close to Liverpool somewhere there Pakistani gangs systematically by systematically I mean for a period of six seven years serially raped poor poor white girls am I saying we should demonize Islam for this no I've written quite a lot celebrating Islam I'm well aware of the wonders in Islam and so on and so on I just think that this how should I call it this leftist attitude of proclaiming any criticism of Islam oh Islamophobia and so on no I totally agree with you that it's not only Islam my God it's horrible that's why I'm going literally two weeks from now to Ramallah to participate then it's an ingenious move we are organizing with my friends a Walter Benjamin conference in Ramallah to steal it from them and I'm going there and I know what horrors religious fundamentalist for example Israel is doing now for example you know that Israel is really something ominous now why because they combine this self-presentation as enlightened open society with elements of very strong religious fundamentalism for example I my prediction is that in two three years they will simply drop all this bullshit two-state solution and they are already lay the ground for this solution of West Bank is ours don't bullshit bullshit us and you have now already a couple of ministers in Netanyahu movement sorry government who openly say West Bank is ours why because it says so in the Bible I mean if this is not religious fundamentalism then I don't know and all the other things I'm well for example direct racism in American press more and more there was a text a report in New York Times apparently neutral deploring new wave of violence there but you know be careful listen to to verbs how it said it's tragic in the last month nine Israelis were murdered and Palestinians were killed on the West Bank eh-eh murder killing and so on I mean I have so many all I'm and I went very far here for example the same thing that I'm doing to Islam I'm doing to Judaism I'm doing to Christianity my God I for example a touchy subject in some southern European Catholic countries I claim it's absolutely clear that pedophilia among priests is the obscene background it's part of the Catholic identity how can you guess this be simply because of the reaction of the church it's in okay maybe now it will be better I don't know let's wait and see but how church is incredibly protective like in Slovenia small city Slovenia a priest was caught serially raping children what the church did is that they prohibited parents of the abused children to talk about it and publicly and they simply put the priest onto another sorry into a other into a other part of Slovenia and so on and so on and to be even clearer I don't agree with I think it's ridiculous and it is racist the French state imposed prohibition of wearing how do you call it a burqa veil yes my problem is only one if the girl woman wants to wear it absolutely no problem my problem is what if the girl doesn't want to wear it and she really doesn't want it like not just a little bit these are and I'm not even saying what we should do maybe we should allow it I'm just saying these are serious problems and okay I put it like this I hope this will be tolerant enough for you I hated as racist not I as a racist I hope but as an example of racism I hated all that after Charlie Hebdo killings you know all that bullshit of we are tolerant in the west they are primitive and so on they are intolerant no every civilization has here some points and it's good that it has them where what you don't tolerate of course it's easy to claim how tolerant we are towards making fun of Muhammad but and it's good that we can but just to give you nonetheless it's an example imagine someone making fun of of Holocaust imagine someone making fun of raped women in our society our tolerance ends there and I think it's right that it ends but my message is only the opposition is in no way as simple as simple as simple as that you know So what is the problem what that you mean that rapes in our society here are totally acceptable Well I don't know enough to what extent this is really acceptable is it really look at Julian Assange where you have okay but that's politics I know it's different but I think frankly that here your position is a little bit too simplified to women here is it really that if you are raped you can do nothing no sorry I don't I don't I don't believe that but I'm asking you another question counter-question so I find something so mysterious the more immigrants are coming here the more Europe is blamed for intolerance and so on what about countries like Saudi Arabia Kuwait Qatar Emirates Sunni Muslim countries incredibly wealthy countries why don't they receive sorry Yes please Just wonder because you were talking about the buttons which need to be pushed the great buttons right in society Yeah for example in Germany there are unchangeable or meant to be unchangeable rules in the constitution one of them is the right to asylum that has been changed especially in the last two years in a never-seen face into exactly the opposite with intricate little texts like aside Yeah yeah from the other side into the exact opposite this is a concrete situation this is legislation going on now when we talk about it why do we end in talking about rapes and how Muslims may treat women this has nothing to do with it but this is something which is happening from state authority right at the moment on a completely different level of violence What is happening you mean limitation of the right No no sorry I just wanted to give you more time you mean why do we talk about Muslims' rapes and so on when Europe is limiting the right to asylum or what I think you are too simplified here first you see this is so absurd I know in Germany there is much to criticize but okay I will answer you with a simple counter-question why do you criticize Europe which nonetheless is serially accepting migrants people are passing daily through Slovenia why are we not talking about Qatar about Saudi Arabia and so on why are we not talking about Lebanon with like almost its own population refugees why are we not talking about Jordan which is taking more people in relation I know I agree just one more sentence five okay Saudi Arabia is shit I agree with you its political system but do we want to become and no we want to preserve what we regard as good in our political system always with finding better versions This is a simple What do you mean by our political system but if it's the right to asylum in the constitution I want to keep it and I don't want someone tells me Saudi Arabia is much worse they don't take anyone okay fine but I don't like Saudi Arabia for that No no no no no wait this is a key debate you know why because because what is beneath this your point of right to asylum it practically means and I know it sounds so noble but let's talk frankly the underlying idea is everyone can come to Europe and demand to be instantly a citizen because nobody really checks asylum rights and so on the idea is Europe should simply open borders up to a point I agree with it No but you know no you're saying here from look it's not as simple as that you know why not for example I was in Turkey when you know they had a referendum in Switzerland prohibiting how to call it minarets in mosques they said hypocrisy West horrible you should judge it but then I learned that in Turkey you are not even allowed to build other religious objects then I if you ask me frankly yes the right to asylum but now I know I'll be again accused of racism and so on but I think it's totally crazy and provocative to treat the right of asylum in this way that okay millions can come here stop no there first it has to be organized I claim and it can be organized why not why not organize it I'm excluding no one but why not organize it why this is so humiliating 21st century and tens of thousands of people are walking through there I but don't you say let's not talk about Saudi Arabia and so on okay then I ask you but isn't it symptomatic that you are now criticizing Germany which in spite of all criticism and so on showed relatively the most openness you see again this is the superego logic you criticize a country which was doing relatively the best here criticize England criticize France criticize them and so on and also I don't accept what you are saying like we don't want to go to to Saudi Arabia Es freut mich jetzt wirklich sehr damit bin ich tendenziell würde ich sagen Es freut mich sehr aus Ihrem Munde es freut mich als deutschen Patrioten aus Ihrem Munde noch ich bin kein deutscher Patriot ich bin ein starke Schande Verteidigung der Position Deutschlands zu hören nein das meine ich ganz ehrlich das find ich irgendwie ganz gut und ich find's irgendwie nicht so produktiv nach zwei Stunden über die in denen man über etwas geredet hat zu sagen warum haben wir nicht über was anderes geredet Žižek hat glaube ich hier Texte erzählt über den man selber nachdenken kann und hat glaube ich an vielen Punkten Positionen gebracht wo man die Fragen die hier gestellt worden sind sich selber hätte No but I can answer quickly because this was touchy clarify my position yes Europe should bring in a couple of millions of refugees no problem for me but in an organized way with clear rules this I see as the only way to prevent because you said you squeeze out of democracy democracy what do you want then the right-wingers to win because if it goes on like this the greatest victim will be the refugees I mean and I think one should be very precise when you are telling me but there are negligible there are also rapes here and so on then okay then there is no problem you know it's a little bit strange when you criticize me for wanting to limit something that at the same time you claim it's marginal and doesn't exist practically and so on if it doesn't exist okay okay what's the problem I think if you ask me and my God I was in Arab country you know it's so strange that you expect from Europe this multicultural openness but these are
what were my plans but my favorite theologian Gilbert Keith Chesterton gives a wonderful reading I couldn't believe my years his reading is that God's answer is you think you are in trouble but look at the universe I screwed up everything everything is a big mess like it's some kind of abdication of God and I think this is what Jesus Christ means it means what dies is God of the beyond the deepest message of humanity of Christianity and I'm not alone here even a conservative theologian like Paul Claudel accepted this is that God is helpless without us humans as Hegel put it nicely what dies on the cross is not a representative of God is God of beyond itself it's this idea of God like you know this for me the most disgusting metaphor that you can imagine of that when you see evil it's like if you look too close at the painting and you think it's just a stain but if you look at it from a proper distance you can see that what appeared to you as a stain is part of a global harmony this I think is what the death of Christ symbolically prevents you it's an obscenity for example to say Holocaust Gulag or Congo slaughter this just appears to us as a stain because from our limited view we cannot see how this contributes to some global harmony and so on and so on no the death of Christ means no you don't have the right to take this abstract view towards some presupposed meaning inaccessible to us and that's for me the message Heiliger Geist Heiliger Geist is simply the community of believers without any transcendent guarantee in God or whatever now you will say but what about the finale of the Bible all the well there I have Stalinist problems I think Book of Apocalypse and so on this is return to paganism I should no you see this beautiful this beautiful view of God and God means any transcendent guarantee there is some big historical necessity whatever no we are radically unknown left to ourselves when Christians say that the highest gift of God is freedom yes but it's this radical freedom freedom of being fully responsible of being about okay I talk too much but all this is for me part of ah-ah European legacy because what I like in Europe is that if you look at the notion of justice the usual pagan notion of justice is restored balance you know like some particular part of society or wants too much and then if you want too much it's too much balance has to be restored like when I was in China two years ago maybe you know the story I had the same experience I asked the Chinese because you know they no longer use now the term communism they use the Confucian term harmonious society so I asked them could you please explain to me what do you mean and they gave me a perfect explanation they say in a harmonious society every individual does his her job is at his or her proper place father is a good father pupil is a good pupil master is a good master worker is a good worker and so on no and I told them oh my God now there is no multicultural misunderstanding we call this fascist corporatism in Europe no what I want to say is that Christianity stands precisely against this against Christianity the whole idea of Heiliger Geist means that no we are not part of totality in the sense of you know harmonious totality and you just have to play your role everyone of us has the right to direct contact with universality bypassing particularity that's the message of Heiliger Geist and so on which later realized in I'm crazy here I am tempted to say that Heiliger Geist is the first form of communist party or whatever that is to say this idea even okay Buddhism also has this we are all equal in Nirvana but in Nirvana the catch of Christianity is this crazy hope that our ultimate equality is not just equality in death that equality can be materialized as an actual social organization and so on so okay I can go on indefinitely I will not but you see all this I think is part of European legacy which is threatened today because today I claim more and more the spontaneous ideology of late capitalism is some kind of let's call it enlightened hedonist Buddhism no no no it's empirically true most I even read that among American top managers most of them have this idea you know meditation is their fetish their spontaneous idea is this one I earn billions but ultimately I have to be aware that this is not really what life is about it's just all is just a game of appearances and so on my true self is somewhere else and so on and so on I don't accept this I don't believe in this inner authenticity or whatever you know this is why the greatest Zen master could organize torture this is why read the book that I like I always mention it Aldous Huxley Gray Eminence it was the secretary of Cardinal Richelieu the most brutal manipulator of Thirty Years War at the same time he every evening he was writing the most beautiful authentic mystical meditations and that's what or even let me take an example from your own past it did strike me so much when I learned that Reinhard Heydrich you know the the Wannsee guy you know that in the evenings he was very good violin player he was playing with his friends late Beethoven's Streichquartette you know this is the horror that inner authenticity or whatever in no way helps you to do to do horrors the truth is outside in what you actually do in along this lines again I would have claimed that that like it's a more paradoxical position yes we should overcome Eurocentrism but European tradition is the one to give us the tools to do this Where are the questions Sorry Audience no definitely no I can I can I am ready I thought I will be falling apart I will speak up I will ask you about the militarization of the border deportation of refugees and you mentioned the phobia and sexism in Berlin there are more gay lesbians and trans Muslims than are probably in the gay community in your country the as well in the Islamic community in Berlin Then it's okay but where did you get that I simply disclaim the truth of what you are saying where did I advocate this is sorry a direct lie where did I advocate the deportation of the refugees show me one passage and I kill myself here now no my point was this one that Western powers on purpose make it difficult for the refugees you know this humiliating transport through why not do something like this establish basis in Libyan coast there there and organize it through airlift or whatever why this humiliating process and so on and so on as to sorry what what was your second when you say militarization what militarization closing border did I ever say this no Yes I did I do to provoke I admit this but not militarization in the sense of we have big armies which are there masturbating doing it they can be very usefully used to organize large projects like moving hundreds of thousands of people and so on I don't and this is part of a much larger project that I have it may be crazy with my friend Fred Jameson who is directly there you will get the explosion he thinks that the army can be subverted as the only large force which functions outside and incidentally this is a long tradition of once and so on I mean I'm not afraid of the term militarization because my enemy is not the state my enemy is big capital my God the problem is any I'm ready to make a pact with the devil to to limit capital my problem is this which is a deadly serious one how to prevent the right-wing radicalization of Europe that's the true problem now and through this leftist sentimentality you will not do it I know I know you know what I fear the right-wingers will silently win and then as always there will be wonderful leftist analysis of why it had to fail you know like the leftists are at their best when a revolution fails and then they write an excellent theory of why of why it had to of why it has to fail I mean I'm simply thinking about no yeah I know this is a radical position but look look at Venezuela and so on I simply don't think that army is necessarily a reactionary institution I think that now I will be very brutal all those Silicon Valley corporate hippies are much more dangerous like I fear much more Google than the army I fear you know who convinced me Julian Assange he gave the best definition of Google which is privatized corporate NSA and they are directly connected they collaborate with it and so on and so on so that's the first thing second thing when you said gay community yes I know all this my God I was even I know even maybe I'm sorry I don't know from where you are from I was in Ramallah and visited a gay club there and so on Ramallah is an exceptionally vibrant city and so on and so on but you know what I don't get because people who criticize me and when I insist on that minimum you know gay rights women's rights and so on they tell me but this is a pseudo-problem but my answer is okay so it's a pseudo-problem perfect then there is no problem but from what I hear it's not purely a pseudo-problem I read a leftist analysis which claims that for example left I underline three times the word leftist which claims for example that here in Germany over Muslim girls per year escape home and they have to be put escaping from them family and so on and so on I'm not saying that we should in any way censor censor censor Muslim communities for this I'm just saying if now you will say this is exaggeration no girl does this I say perfect so it's okay but if a girl does this the state has to protect her that's all I'm saying that's all I'm saying it you know and okay when you say this exaggeration and so on did you follow and I checked it through my leftist friends did you follow what happened now it's almost a year ago in England in Rotherham where it was it exploded in the media that Pakistani gangs in a city of about close to Liverpool somewhere there Pakistani gangs systematically by systematically I mean for a period of six seven years serially raped poor poor white girls am I saying we should demonize Islam for this no I've written quite a lot celebrating Islam I'm well aware of the wonders in Islam and so on and so on I just think that this how should I call it this leftist attitude of proclaiming any criticism of Islam oh Islamophobia and so on no I totally agree with you that it's not only Islam my God it's horrible that's why I'm going literally two weeks from now to Ramallah to participate then it's an ingenious move we are organizing with my friends a Walter Benjamin conference in Ramallah to steal it from them and I'm going there and I know what horrors religious fundamentalist for example Israel is doing now for example you know that Israel is really something ominous now why because they combine this self-presentation as enlightened open society with elements of very strong religious fundamentalism for example I my prediction is that in two three years they will simply drop all this bullshit two-state solution and they are already lay the ground for this solution of West Bank is ours don't bullshit bullshit us and you have now already a couple of ministers in Netanyahu movement sorry government who openly say West Bank is ours why because it says so in the Bible I mean if this is not religious fundamentalism then I don't know and all the other things I'm well for example direct racism in American press more and more there was a text a report in New York Times apparently neutral deploring new wave of violence there but you know be careful listen to to verbs how it said it's tragic in the last month nine Israelis were murdered and Palestinians were killed on the West Bank eh-eh murder killing and so on I mean I have so many all I'm and I went very far here for example the same thing that I'm doing to Islam I'm doing to Judaism I'm doing to Christianity my God I for example a touchy subject in some southern European Catholic countries I claim it's absolutely clear that pedophilia among priests is the obscene background it's part of the Catholic identity how can you guess this be simply because of the reaction of the church it's in okay maybe now it will be better I don't know let's wait and see but how church is incredibly protective like in Slovenia small city Slovenia a priest was caught serially raping children what the church did is that they prohibited parents of the abused children to talk about it and publicly and they simply put the priest onto another sorry into a other into a other part of Slovenia and so on and so on and to be even clearer I don't agree with I think it's ridiculous and it is racist the French state imposed prohibition of wearing how do you call it a burqa veil yes my problem is only one if the girl woman wants to wear it absolutely no problem my problem is what if the girl doesn't want to wear it and she really doesn't want it like not just a little bit these are and I'm not even saying what we should do maybe we should allow it I'm just saying these are serious problems and okay I put it like this I hope this will be tolerant enough for you I hated as racist not I as a racist I hope but as an example of racism I hated all that after Charlie Hebdo killings you know all that bullshit of we are tolerant in the west they are primitive and so on they are intolerant no every civilization has here some points and it's good that it has them where what you don't tolerate of course it's easy to claim how tolerant we are towards making fun of Muhammad but and it's good that we can but just to give you nonetheless it's an example imagine someone making fun of of Holocaust imagine someone making fun of raped women in our society our tolerance ends there and I think it's right that it ends but my message is only the opposition is in no way as simple as simple as simple as that you know So what is the problem what that you mean that rapes in our society here are totally acceptable Well I don't know enough to what extent this is really acceptable is it really look at Julian Assange where you have okay but that's politics I know it's different but I think frankly that here your position is a little bit too simplified to women here is it really that if you are raped you can do nothing no sorry I don't I don't I don't believe that but I'm asking you another question counter-question so I find something so mysterious the more immigrants are coming here the more Europe is blamed for intolerance and so on what about countries like Saudi Arabia Kuwait Qatar Emirates Sunni Muslim countries incredibly wealthy countries why don't they receive sorry Yes please Just wonder because you were talking about the buttons which need to be pushed the great buttons right in society Yeah for example in Germany there are unchangeable or meant to be unchangeable rules in the constitution one of them is the right to asylum that has been changed especially in the last two years in a never-seen face into exactly the opposite with intricate little texts like aside Yeah yeah from the other side into the exact opposite this is a concrete situation this is legislation going on now when we talk about it why do we end in talking about rapes and how Muslims may treat women this has nothing to do with it but this is something which is happening from state authority right at the moment on a completely different level of violence What is happening you mean limitation of the right No no sorry I just wanted to give you more time you mean why do we talk about Muslims' rapes and so on when Europe is limiting the right to asylum or what I think you are too simplified here first you see this is so absurd I know in Germany there is much to criticize but okay I will answer you with a simple counter-question why do you criticize Europe which nonetheless is serially accepting migrants people are passing daily through Slovenia why are we not talking about Qatar about Saudi Arabia and so on why are we not talking about Lebanon with like almost its own population refugees why are we not talking about Jordan which is taking more people in relation I know I agree just one more sentence five okay Saudi Arabia is shit I agree with you its political system but do we want to become and no we want to preserve what we regard as good in our political system always with finding better versions This is a simple What do you mean by our political system but if it's the right to asylum in the constitution I want to keep it and I don't want someone tells me Saudi Arabia is much worse they don't take anyone okay fine but I don't like Saudi Arabia for that No no no no no wait this is a key debate you know why because because what is beneath this your point of right to asylum it practically means and I know it sounds so noble but let's talk frankly the underlying idea is everyone can come to Europe and demand to be instantly a citizen because nobody really checks asylum rights and so on the idea is Europe should simply open borders up to a point I agree with it No but you know no you're saying here from look it's not as simple as that you know why not for example I was in Turkey when you know they had a referendum in Switzerland prohibiting how to call it minarets in mosques they said hypocrisy West horrible you should judge it but then I learned that in Turkey you are not even allowed to build other religious objects then I if you ask me frankly yes the right to asylum but now I know I'll be again accused of racism and so on but I think it's totally crazy and provocative to treat the right of asylum in this way that okay millions can come here stop no there first it has to be organized I claim and it can be organized why not why not organize it I'm excluding no one but why not organize it why this is so humiliating 21st century and tens of thousands of people are walking through there I but don't you say let's not talk about Saudi Arabia and so on okay then I ask you but isn't it symptomatic that you are now criticizing Germany which in spite of all criticism and so on showed relatively the most openness you see again this is the superego logic you criticize a country which was doing relatively the best here criticize England criticize France criticize them and so on and also I don't accept what you are saying like we don't want to go to to Saudi Arabia Es freut mich jetzt wirklich sehr damit bin ich tendenziell würde ich sagen Es freut mich sehr aus Ihrem Munde es freut mich als deutschen Patrioten aus Ihrem Munde noch ich bin kein deutscher Patriot ich bin ein starke Schande Verteidigung der Position Deutschlands zu hören nein das meine ich ganz ehrlich das find ich irgendwie ganz gut und ich find's irgendwie nicht so produktiv nach zwei Stunden über die in denen man über etwas geredet hat zu sagen warum haben wir nicht über was anderes geredet Žižek hat glaube ich hier Texte erzählt über den man selber nachdenken kann und hat glaube ich an vielen Punkten Positionen gebracht wo man die Fragen die hier gestellt worden sind sich selber hätte No but I can answer quickly because this was touchy clarify my position yes Europe should bring in a couple of millions of refugees no problem for me but in an organized way with clear rules this I see as the only way to prevent because you said you squeeze out of democracy democracy what do you want then the right-wingers to win because if it goes on like this the greatest victim will be the refugees I mean and I think one should be very precise when you are telling me but there are negligible there are also rapes here and so on then okay then there is no problem you know it's a little bit strange when you criticize me for wanting to limit something that at the same time you claim it's marginal and doesn't exist practically and so on if it doesn't exist okay okay what's the problem I think if you ask me and my God I was in Arab country you know it's so strange that you expect from Europe this multicultural openness but these are
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exactly the parts of the world which are probably at this point among the most open United States is already less open I claim and so on it's much greater ideological pressure not to mention about all those so much celebrated Latino American countries my God they
exactly the parts of the world which are probably at this point among the most open United States is already less open I claim and so on it's much greater ideological pressure not to mention about all those so much celebrated Latino American countries my God they
Slavoj Žižek
have quite a lot of racism of their own not to mention I know what I'm saying now if you want to see real everyday racism sorry go to China I saw incredible things there of how the Han majority they treat like dog the non-Han people like I was in a bookstore buying books ahead of me
have quite a lot of racism of their own not to mention I know what I'm saying now if you want to see real everyday racism sorry go to China I saw incredible things there of how the Han majority they treat like dog the non-Han people like I was in a bookstore buying books ahead of me
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there was obviously a non-Han Chinese some Tibetan Urdu I don't know what and the lady behind the cashier simply made a sign to me you know like fuck this guy come ahead and so on so much so much everyday so much everyday so much everyday racism here but I think sorry how to put it different cultures
there was obviously a non-Han Chinese some Tibetan Urdu I don't know what and the lady behind the cashier simply made a sign to me you know like fuck this guy come ahead and so on so much so much everyday so much everyday so much everyday racism here but I think sorry how to put it different cultures
Slavoj Žižek
ways of life are a very delicate fact and all I'm saying is that the simple pure multiculturalist formula everything comes they just retain their own culture absolutely doesn't work you need some basic rules shared by all the same rules for all I totally subscribe to this And
ways of life are a very delicate fact and all I'm saying is that the simple pure multiculturalist formula everything comes they just retain their own culture absolutely doesn't work you need some basic rules shared by all the same rules for all I totally subscribe to this And
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I think Danke ich glaube das war jetzt irgendwie No I'm ready to go
I think Danke ich glaube das war jetzt irgendwie No I'm ready to go
Slavoj Žižek
on but this is this is Stasi this is Stasi points who's talking now Ja ja und du sagst du bist der Stalinist und wenn dann aber mal die Ansage kommt dann kommt der slowenische Dissident hoch der sich but heute Stalinist zu sein ist heute die größte Dissident wahrscheinlich no but let's be serious I make bad bad day jokes here of course I to make my position clear only you are not allowed to know only only one thing there is only one thing that I like about
on but this is this is Stasi this is Stasi points who's talking now Ja ja und du sagst du bist der Stalinist und wenn dann aber mal die Ansage kommt dann kommt der slowenische Dissident hoch der sich but heute Stalinist zu sein ist heute die größte Dissident wahrscheinlich no but let's be serious I make bad bad day jokes here of course I to make my position clear only you are not allowed to know only only one thing there is only one thing that I like about
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Stalin you know what he was horror the
Stalin you know what he was horror the
Slavoj Žižek
greatest ethico-political
greatest ethico-political
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catastrophe
catastrophe
Slavoj Žižek
and so on one thing I like a little bit he was the only one who made the Western powers really scared he scared them shit you know that's the only tiny thing that I like about Stalin they were really afraid of him you know Ja verdammt noch mal das ist ein großartiges Schlusswort Slavoj Žižek vielen Dank Thank you very much Žižek Thank you very much although Danke schön es sollte ein Abend über Europa werden Sie haben über die Welt gesprochen aber um Horkheimer zu zitieren wer von Europa will reden will darf von der Welt nicht schweigen vielen Dank nochmal although no I agree okay would you agree with this form would you f- Yes please Yes okay yes please Fuck off you Stasi guy please please do it yeah no sorry I didn't mean it literally yeah yeah the party will tell you when to really disappear not now please please do it just I am not going to attack you and don't take it personally sorry my point is I'm going to comment on one thing which is happening in India in this present context where there is a fascist regime where there is a fascist government in power which is led by Prime Minister Modi I'm sorry if there is any Indian in yeah I don't know but the point you are making is on one hand that we have to identify the localization of the politics on this plank only the RSS which is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which is the fascist organization in India and operates yeah the entire India they are also banking
and so on one thing I like a little bit he was the only one who made the Western powers really scared he scared them shit you know that's the only tiny thing that I like about Stalin they were really afraid of him you know Ja verdammt noch mal das ist ein großartiges Schlusswort Slavoj Žižek vielen Dank Thank you very much Žižek Thank you very much although Danke schön es sollte ein Abend über Europa werden Sie haben über die Welt gesprochen aber um Horkheimer zu zitieren wer von Europa will reden will darf von der Welt nicht schweigen vielen Dank nochmal although no I agree okay would you agree with this form would you f- Yes please Yes okay yes please Fuck off you Stasi guy please please do it yeah no sorry I didn't mean it literally yeah yeah the party will tell you when to really disappear not now please please do it just I am not going to attack you and don't take it personally sorry my point is I'm going to comment on one thing which is happening in India in this present context where there is a fascist regime where there is a fascist government in power which is led by Prime Minister Modi I'm sorry if there is any Indian in yeah I don't know but the point you are making is on one hand that we have to identify the localization of the politics on this plank only the RSS which is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which is the fascist organization in India and operates yeah the entire India they are also banking
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on this same
on this same
Slavoj Žižek
localization of
localization of
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things and at the same time
things and at the same time
Slavoj Žižek
when you say that yes we have to identify these local localization Now I see what you're saying the dialectic is that the left also it approaches at the same time with the figure of saying that yes the
when you say that yes we have to identify these local localization Now I see what you're saying the dialectic is that the left also it approaches at the same time with the figure of saying that yes the
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state has to be the
state has to be the
Slavoj Žižek
main determinant so either you are contradicting your yeah yeah because if you are saying
main determinant so either you are contradicting your yeah yeah because if you are saying
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that you believe in
that you believe in
Slavoj Žižek
communism then either the universality of all these localized politics has to go directly and attack the state Now I see what you're saying first let me say a little bit that I know about India it may surprise you they they no his point is that in India you have localization politics but there is a tension on the one hand if I understood you correctly I support localization but at the same time I'm for state and so on listen here I do have problems yeah okay but here I have problems even with Marx and so on I think we can struggle about the name we use is it a state or not but I think the present situation ecological biogenetic and so on will absolutely demand mega large organizations to deal with them I radically don't believe into all this you know anti-representational politics we have small communities collaborating doing that work and so on people then tell me in Venezuela it worked local communities I tell them yes fuck you because they have the big boss Hugo Chávez with an extremely strong military supported state and so on so my but I think I think that the opposition that you made it's not a necessary opposition my ideal is what for example up to a point before they screwed it up was happening in Venezuela you have very strong local struggles but in collaboration with a strong progressive as for India I totally agree with you and even more horrible because Modi is not only a Hindu racist nationalist but at the same time the most brutal neoliberal I was horrified when Modi said in an interview Modi the Indian Prime Minister that the price of Chinese labor force is getting a little bit too high and that this is a chance for India to sell its workers I mean to employ them in an even cheaper way so to make it
communism then either the universality of all these localized politics has to go directly and attack the state Now I see what you're saying first let me say a little bit that I know about India it may surprise you they they no his point is that in India you have localization politics but there is a tension on the one hand if I understood you correctly I support localization but at the same time I'm for state and so on listen here I do have problems yeah okay but here I have problems even with Marx and so on I think we can struggle about the name we use is it a state or not but I think the present situation ecological biogenetic and so on will absolutely demand mega large organizations to deal with them I radically don't believe into all this you know anti-representational politics we have small communities collaborating doing that work and so on people then tell me in Venezuela it worked local communities I tell them yes fuck you because they have the big boss Hugo Chávez with an extremely strong military supported state and so on so my but I think I think that the opposition that you made it's not a necessary opposition my ideal is what for example up to a point before they screwed it up was happening in Venezuela you have very strong local struggles but in collaboration with a strong progressive as for India I totally agree with you and even more horrible because Modi is not only a Hindu racist nationalist but at the same time the most brutal neoliberal I was horrified when Modi said in an interview Modi the Indian Prime Minister that the price of Chinese labor force is getting a little bit too high and that this is a chance for India to sell its workers I mean to employ them in an even cheaper way so to make it
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very clear when I was in India
very clear when I was in India
Slavoj Žižek
I established
I established
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contacts with two only organizations
contacts with two only organizations
Slavoj Žižek
the lowest untouchable those who are cleaning dry toilets and the Naxalite these
the lowest untouchable those who are cleaning dry toilets and the Naxalite these
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this was these were
this was these were
Slavoj Žižek
my only links in India on the other hand I made some statements because of which immediately after I returned to Slovenia there was an official depêche from Indian government to Slovene government like how could they allow such a citizen like how will the state punish me the Slovene so here I simply totally agree with you I just don't like this vision you know local communities no I want everything we should want all power local communities and state and
my only links in India on the other hand I made some statements because of which immediately after I returned to Slovenia there was an official depêche from Indian government to Slovene government like how could they allow such a citizen like how will the state punish me the Slovene so here I simply totally agree with you I just don't like this vision you know local communities no I want everything we should want all power local communities and state and
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so on let's grab the state where
so on let's grab the state where
Slavoj Žižek
we can let's use it and so on don't you know don't paint the state as our I don't think the state is automatically our enemy the enemy is capital the global organization state is something which can be misused but it can also be used I know it's problematic what I'm saying here but as you probably know better than me there is a long debate in Marxism about the weakness of the Marxist theory of state and so on I mean my basic thing is again imagine Fukushima it would have been just a little bit stronger catastrophe you have to move million people there how will you do that with local communities no with mega strong larger than state organization only we will simply need this if there will be this type of large disturbances and so on here I am I know this sounds authoritarian large organizations and so on but it's even worse than you think now because at the same level now I will do something really low I appear appeal to your lower instincts I wouldn't like to live in some small shitty local mobilization community where every afternoon you have to meet how we will distribute water kindergarten I want a certain level of nice alienation some institutions take takes care of this I can do my stupid work and so on I I think that the true problem is to organize in a democratic authentic way efficiently this everyday life not this permanent emergency state every afternoon we have to meet water electrical plant and so on and so on I don't think that it's automatically a fascist vision to say things should function you know I like a little bit of this boring regular life life where things function in an anonymous way sorry for I'm really sad that where is that Stasi guy who prevented me there now you can come here do you confess do you confess what shall I confess this is how traitors answer you know first confess then we will tell you what the what okay I will confess Slavoj Žižek vielen Dank tschüss thank you very much Adieu [applause] [unintelligible]
we can let's use it and so on don't you know don't paint the state as our I don't think the state is automatically our enemy the enemy is capital the global organization state is something which can be misused but it can also be used I know it's problematic what I'm saying here but as you probably know better than me there is a long debate in Marxism about the weakness of the Marxist theory of state and so on I mean my basic thing is again imagine Fukushima it would have been just a little bit stronger catastrophe you have to move million people there how will you do that with local communities no with mega strong larger than state organization only we will simply need this if there will be this type of large disturbances and so on here I am I know this sounds authoritarian large organizations and so on but it's even worse than you think now because at the same level now I will do something really low I appear appeal to your lower instincts I wouldn't like to live in some small shitty local mobilization community where every afternoon you have to meet how we will distribute water kindergarten I want a certain level of nice alienation some institutions take takes care of this I can do my stupid work and so on I I think that the true problem is to organize in a democratic authentic way efficiently this everyday life not this permanent emergency state every afternoon we have to meet water electrical plant and so on and so on I don't think that it's automatically a fascist vision to say things should function you know I like a little bit of this boring regular life life where things function in an anonymous way sorry for I'm really sad that where is that Stasi guy who prevented me there now you can come here do you confess do you confess what shall I confess this is how traitors answer you know first confess then we will tell you what the what okay I will confess Slavoj Žižek vielen Dank tschüss thank you very much Adieu [applause] [unintelligible]