Radical Politics Today: Hegel’s Teaching
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2015-07-25 · 1:48:48 · 14,489 words
ideologycapitalismhegel-dialecticsreligion-theologygeopolitics-warecology-climatedemocracycommunism-socialismliberalism-political-correctnessrevolution-violencefascism-populismeveryday-lifephilosophy-general
Delivered in Istanbul (circa 2015), this talk ranges across religious fundamentalism, the refugee crisis, ecological ideology, and the limits of liberal capitalism, arguing that all these phenomena are products of global capitalist contradictions rather than archaic throwbacks. Žižek draws on Hegel to call for a reflexive turn, asking how 'we' are implicated in what we criticize, and defends the continued relevance of the emancipatory project despite the failures of 20th-century communism. The Q&A extends the lecture into Kurdish autonomy, the Gezi protests, the Greek debt crisis, political correctness, and the need for patient theoretical reflection over spectacular activism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “reflexive turn”
Hegel's injunction to ask not just how external phenomena are bad but how one is oneself implicated in and part of what one criticizes.
The ideological mechanism by which subjects are called into being, implied in the analysis of how precarity is re-presented as freedom.
as “precariat”
Workers with precarious employment who are ideologically interpellated as 'free to reinvent themselves' when in reality they live in permanent anxiety.
Used to describe Chinese Communist Party rule: an organization with no legal status that nonetheless controls everything alongside formal legal state apparatuses, a slightly different dual power than Lenin's.
Žižek's characterization of Marx's communist dream, wanting capitalism's productivity while removing its class relations, but the obstacle is also the condition of what it obstructs.
The Marxian idea that ideology is not a dream but the very form of social reality, the way people practically interact is itself structured as an illusion.
Marx's analysis showing that social reality itself can be structured like an illusion, not a perceptual error but a practical one enacted in market behavior.
A lie or supplement that must be added so that a situation can function or become legible, illustrated by the 12th camel that is added and then withdrawn.
What might have been but was not is constitutive of what is; things are never only what they are but also what they might have been.
The Hegelian idea that the identity of a thing is constituted by what it negates, illustrated by 'coffee without cream' being different from 'coffee without milk' even though the bare remainder is the same.
as “enemy propaganda”
Following Badiou, the ideological operation whose goal is not to destroy the enemy physically but to destroy the hope that change is possible.
as “TINA (There Is No Alternative)”
The hegemonic ideological message, epitomized in the Greek debt negotiations, that no alternative to the existing capitalist order is possible, which Žižek treats as enemy propaganda aimed at destroying hope.
as “the need to censor our dreams”
Žižek's formulation (title of a new text he mentions) that when we dream of a different society we reproduce existing prejudices, so our utopian imagination itself must be critically scrutinized.
as “the superego command to enjoy”
The contemporary psychoanalytic problematic: not prohibition to be lifted but the social compulsion to enjoy that constitutes the real source of suffering.
Referenced implicitly in the 'duty to enjoy' framing: the superego command to enjoy that psychoanalysis today must liberate patients from rather than lift paternal prohibitions.
as “democratic confederalism”
Öcalan's paradigm for Kurdish self-organization, cited as an example of a new political paradigm that mobilizes people without calling itself socialism.
Stories he reaches for 13
In Lubitsch's Ninotchka, a man orders coffee without cream; the waiter says they're out of cream but have milk, so he can only have coffee without milk. The absent negation differs, illustrating Hegel's determinate negation.
“Coffee without milk it's not the same as coffee without cream. Part of the definition of an entity is what it negates.”
Afghanistan 50 years ago was one of the most tolerant Muslim countries with a technocratic king and strong Communist Party; geopolitical meddling by the US and USSR turned it into a fundamentalist nightmare, proof that fundamentalism is historically produced, not culturally inherent.
“A tolerant nice country became a fundamentalist nightmare because of the way it got involved into world politics.”
Thomas Frank's 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' traces how the most progressive American state became a bedrock of Christian fundamentalism, parallel to Afghanistan, showing fundamentalism's global non-cultural character.
“Kansas... was till years ago maybe the most progressive American state. Now it's a bedrock of hardline Christian fundamentalism.”
After the Greek referendum NO, Syriza did the opposite, Žižek says he thinks they did the right thing because a Grexit would have meant years of hunger and right-wing backlash, but it was a 'theater of the absurd' tragic deadlock.
“You had on Sunday big referendum NO, and next day the government does exactly the opposite.”
Žižek cursed his young son in Serbian ('let the dog fuck your mother') and the child immediately replied 'that already happened, that's how I came to life,' producing what Žižek calls 'innocent evil', pure wit without malice.
“He instantly answered, 'This is what already happened years ago, that's how I came to life.' He didn't need even seconds to think.”
A woman is told her body would be perfect if she lost 2-3 kilos; Žižek advises her not to, the imperfection generates the fantasy of perfection, and losing it would make her 'just an average no one.' Illustrates how the obstacle is the condition of what it obstructs.
“You lose two-three kilos, you will not have a perfect body. You will be just an average no one. You need two-three kilos too much so that people dream.”
Indigenous New Zealand artists publicly perform communion with nature spirits, but privately have two agents in London and New York ensuring that what 'nature tells them' aligns with the latest art-world trends, illustrating how exotic authenticity is a marketable performance.
“They took well care that what nature is telling them to do rhymes with the latest fashion in New York.”
What in Western Europe would be an unremarkable policy was enough to have Obama called a communist in the US by Chuck Norris and others, a modest demand that reveals the radical limit of American capitalism.
“In United States to talk about universal healthcare is a very radical move.”
Žižek's utopian vision of modern sex: he and a woman connect their respective sex-toys to electricity and let the machines enjoy each other while they drink tea and talk, relieved of the superego command to enjoy, real romance can emerge without pressure.
“We already did our duty to sex. Machines are doing it for us.”
Rumor had it that a secret department of communist secret police manufactured the very jokes that mocked their own politicians, allowing people to vent anger without protesting. Though no such department was found, the idea contains a structural truth about jokes' ideological function.
“Jokes, political jokes, played a constructive role from the standpoint of those in power.”
A Polish political joke: 'What is life? Life is a disease which is transmitted by sex and always ends in death.' Žižek calls it the best definition of life he knows.
“What is life? Life is a disease which is transmitted by sex and always ends in death.”
A dying Arab merchant leaves 11 camels to three sons in ratios (½, ⅓, ⅙) that don't divide. A wise judge adds his own camel to make 12, distributes them (6+4+2=12), and the 12th camel returns to him. The supplement never needed to exist in reality, like God, or useful ideological fictions.
“Maybe since I am unfortunately some kind of atheist, maybe the 12th camel is one of the names of God — you have to add it as a fiction so that things function.”
A taxi driver in Dubai takes Žižek to the invisible housing of migrant workers whose passports are confiscated, a medieval-style slavery underpinning the most modern capitalist showcase cities, invisible to ordinary visitors.
“He took me to those totally invisible housings where immigrant workers work under terrible conditions with passport stay, in real conditions of what basically is slavery.”
Works invoked 9
Ninotchka film
Ernst Lubitsch's film; source of the 'coffee without cream/milk' joke, which Žižek calls the best Hegelian joke he knows.
Hegel's text from which Žižek quotes the line 'the evil is also always in the gaze which perceives evil everywhere'; central to the talk's call for a Hegelian reflexive turn.
Thomas Frank's account of Kansas's shift from progressive to fundamentalist; Žižek recommends it as evidence for his thesis that fundamentalism is structurally produced.
Mel Gibson's film called 'disgusting' for constructing a single linear narrative from Christ's multiple non-compatible last words.
Jesus of Nazareth film
Zeffirelli's Jesus film lumped with Gibson's Passion as 'disgusting' for the same narrative flattening.
New Statesman journal
Žižek mentions writing a recent text there comparing the Eurogroup's non-legal status to the Chinese Communist Party.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy's book from which Žižek takes the 12th camel story; he humorously threatens the publisher with arrest if they don't publish it.
Roman Polanski film based on Robert Harris novel; 'not a great film but interesting leftist paranoia' used to illustrate necessary fictions / ideological truth-in-fiction.
Žižek's own new text (mentioned as recently completed) arguing that utopian dreams reproduce existing prejudices and must therefore be critically self-censored.
People invoked 30
Mel Gibson negative
His film The Passion of the Christ is called 'disgusting' for trying to construct one linear narrative from the multiple non-compatible accounts of Christ's last words.
Thomas Frank positive
Author of What's the Matter with Kansas? cited as evidence for fundamentalism's non-cultural, structurally produced character.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
French-American theorist of catastrophe whose book Economy and the Future Žižek recommends; source for the 12th camel story and Fukushima anecdote; also connects the camel story to Luhmann.
Briefly invoked as a figure from whom we learn that 'our big enemy is this metaphysical linear notion of time', used humorously to justify Žižek talking too long.
Cited as an example of a US-supported agent whose later role illustrates how America produced the fundamentalism it now opposes.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Praised for his radical, unconditional position on national self-determination against Luxemburg; credited with establishing Ukraine as a nation; Žižek identifies as a 'Leninist' in the Q&A.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Associated with the 'end of history' thesis; Žižek notes that even Fukuyama now admits biogenetics, ecology, and financial capital cannot be resolved within liberal capitalism, using him against himself.
Abdullah Öcalan positive
His concept of democratic confederalism is cited as an example of a new political paradigm that mobilizes people; Žižek is cautiously interested but skeptical about whether it transcends global capitalism.
Explicitly disavowed ('I'm no friend of Gaddafi') but the point is that the Western intervention to remove him produced the refugee crisis.
Host of Democracy Now! who Žižek says he loves but who has refused to speak with him for years after he said we need 'left-wing racism', dirty jokes rather than politically correct respect, on her show.
Called 'the greatest American actor' ironically; cited as someone who proclaimed Obama a communist for proposing universal healthcare.
Alain Badiou positive
Called 'a good friend' who correctly predicted the Libyan intervention would produce a refugee catastrophe; also credited with the formulation that enemy propaganda aims to destroy hope.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva positive
Initially dismissed as cheap social democracy, but leftist friends convinced Žižek that Lula reduced poverty by over 20%, used to argue that even within capitalism there are spaces to act.
His reported election slogan 'Shop and pray / Consume and pray' is cited as a perfect formula for producing depoliticized subjects; Žižek is critical but treats it as analytically illuminating.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Cited approvingly for his account of the Eurogroup's non-legal-status and the Greek debt negotiation; Žižek uses his testimony to illustrate post-democratic authority.
Roman Polanski positive
Director of The Ghost, described as 'not a great film but interesting leftist paranoia,' used to illustrate necessary fictions.
Ernst Lubitsch positive
His film Ninotchka provides the 'coffee without cream/milk' joke, which Žižek calls 'the best Hegelian joke I know.'
Bill Gates negative
Represents the fake permanent humanitarian engagement ('Oh my god, children are starving in Africa') that Žižek contrasts with authentic productive disconnection.
Franco Zeffirelli negative
Lumped with Gibson as making a film about Christ that is 'disgusting' for the same reason, flattening multiple narrative layers into one.
After his 1981 coup crushing Solidarity, pornography and Eastern spirituality were made widely available to depoliticize the population, used to illustrate how power manages dissent through distraction.
Niklas Luhmann positive
Famous German sociologist who wrote about the 12th camel story, via Dupuy.
Stathis Kouvélakis positive
Called 'my friend'; described the Greek referendum reversal as 'theater of the absurd.'
Her position on national self-determination, autonomy only if 'the good guys' win, is contrasted with Lenin's more unconditional stance, with Žižek siding with Lenin on this question.
Barack Obama positive
Žižek professes 'a certain fondness' for him; the universal healthcare debate is praised as a small trigger that revealed the radical limit of American capitalism.
Mentioned as the 'big boss' backing Venezuelan local self-management, illustrating how local democracy requires a strong centralized state behind it.
Joseph Stalin negative
Attacked Lenin as a bourgeois liberal nationalist in 1922 and in the 1930s reversed Bolshevik national policies in Ukraine; also discussed as a brutal westernizing modernizer in the debate about Stalinism's origins.
Plato positive
Cited against Marx's 11th thesis: Plato wanted to change the world, not merely interpret it.
Karl Marx positive
Praised for his analysis of capitalist dynamics and commodity fetishism, but criticized for the communist vision being 'capitalism without capitalism', not radical enough, and for the 11th thesis being 'the greatest stupidity ever told.'
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central intellectual resource throughout: Žižek invokes the reflexive turn, determinate negation, Phenomenology of Spirit, and Hegel's situation after the French Revolution as analogous to our own; argues we need more Hegel today than Marx.
Quoted on 'L'enfer, c'est les autres' (hell is other people) to introduce the analysis of anti-smoking and political correctness as fear of the neighbor.
What it argues
religious fundamentalism as product of capitalist globalizationHegelian reflexive turn — we are always part of what we criticizethe unfreedom concealed inside liberal freedom of choicenecessary fictions and counterfactuals as conditions of truththe poverty of the left and the absence of an alternative paradigmpatient theoretical thinking over spectacular activismclass dimension hidden inside ecology and political correctness
Dialectical moves 10
“Far from being an archaic remainder, fundamentalism is something which exploded because of the antagonisms, tensions in the process of global capitalism.”
What appears most pre-modern is actually the most contemporary product of capitalist modernity.
“The evil is also always in the gaze which perceives evil everywhere — you are never outside, you are part of it.”
The subject who judges evil is already implicated in it; moral condemnation is itself a symptom of the system it criticizes.
“The obstacle [capitalist relations] is at the same time a condition of what it is an obstacle to.”
Marx's dream of capitalism without its antagonistic relations is incoherent because those relations produce the very dynamism that makes capitalism what it is.
“Marx's idea of communism is a utopia not because it is too crazy but because it is not radical enough.”
The traditional communist vision fails not by being excessive but by remaining within capitalism's own logic of productivity.
“We need a lie to see the truth of a situation.”
Necessary fictions, like the 12th camel or Marx's communist utopia, are not errors to be corrected but structural supplements that make a situation's real logic visible.
“Coffee without milk is not the same as coffee without cream, even though the result is the same pure coffee.”
Identity is constituted by its determinate negation, what something is not is part of what it is, not a neutral absence.
“The only way to really help [others] is to sometimes say 'fuck that, even if all children in Africa drop dead I want to relax'.”
Genuine engagement requires the capacity to disengage, permanent humanitarian compulsion is itself ideological and counterproductive.
“I am against false radicalism precisely because I am a radical.”
Truly radical politics today means apparently modest incremental demands rather than total revolutionary programs that change nothing.
“Power doesn't want active fanatics today; they want people who are silently desperate, cynical, caring just about their pleasures.”
The cynical withdrawal from politics that feels like resistance is actually the ideal form of subjection for contemporary power.
“True modernizations appear as a return to origins — especially in religious history.”
The most radical breaks dress themselves as restoration; fundamentalism is not regression but a form of modern novelty.
Claims 20
asserts
Religious fundamentalism — including ISIS — is not an archaic remnant but a product of the antagonisms and deadlocks of global capitalist society.religious fundamentalism / ISIS
asserts
The Western refugee crisis is directly caused by Western imperial and neo-colonial interventions (Iraq, Libya, Congo) rather than being an autonomous cultural clash.refugee crisis / Western responsibility
rejects
Both the conservative anti-immigrant and the liberal 'open borders' positions on the refugee crisis are deeply wrong because neither addresses the root causes.mainstream positions on refugees
asserts
True modernizations and breaks with the past characteristically appear as returns to origins, especially in religious history.modernization / Protestantism / fundamentalism
asserts
Our situation today resembles Hegel's: we must remain faithful to the emancipatory project despite the catastrophic failure of 20th-century communist attempts.left emancipatory politics after communism
asserts
Capitalism is approaching an era where it can no longer afford its own democratic freedoms, producing a new global apartheid of those who are 'in' and those who are 'out'.capitalism / democracy / apartheid
asserts
Liberal freedom of choice increasingly substitutes for genuine collective freedom to change the social structure itself, which is disappearing.freedom / liberalism / ideology
asserts
Fundamental economic and political decisions are increasingly made by bodies with no legal status (like the Eurogroup) in a non-transparent, non-democratic way.democracy / European governance / Greece
rejects
Marx's communist vision amounts to wanting capitalism without capitalism — the obstacle (capitalist relations) is simultaneously the condition of what it obstructs.Marx's conception of communist revolution
asserts
Ideology today is not a dream above reality but reality itself — the way we live and interact practically is already structured as ideological illusion.ideology / commodity fetishism / Marx
asserts
The dominant ecological ideology (individual recycling, organic consumption) perfectly serves big capital by individualizing responsibility and blocking confrontation with systemic causes.ecological ideology / individualism / capital
asserts
Political correctness often functions as a class weapon — upper-middle-class professionals using anti-harassment and sensitivity norms to maintain distance from lower classes.political correctness / class / harassment
rejects
Marx's eleventh thesis ('philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it') is the greatest stupidity ever said, because patient theoretical thinking is what actually produces change.Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach / theory vs. practice
asserts
Apparently modest demands (universal healthcare, Kurdish autonomy) are more dangerous and effective than openly radical ones because they trigger real structural contradictions.political strategy / incremental demands
asserts
Power today does not want active engaged subjects but cynical, depoliticized, privately desperate individuals — spectacular resistance and cynical jokes can serve the system rather than subvert it.political subjectivity / power / cynicism
asserts
Ukraine as a nation did not exist before the Bolsheviks, who established it with its own language and institutions — which makes the destruction of Lenin statues by Ukrainian demonstrators historically ironic.Ukrainian nationalism / Bolshevism / Lenin
asserts
Ecological problems like climate change cannot be solved at the national level and require genuinely collective international action beyond national identity.ecology / internationalism / national sovereignty
asserts
Fukuyama himself has abandoned his 'end of history' thesis, acknowledging that biogenetics, ecology, and financial capital cannot be resolved within liberal democratic capitalism.Fukuyama / end of history / capitalism
asserts
The left currently lacks a genuine alternative paradigm to global capitalism — local democracy proposals only work when backed by a strong centralized state.left politics / alternative paradigm / local democracy
asserts
Today it is the time for Hegel more than for Marx — for patient thinking about how things go wrong before acting the second time.Hegel vs. Marx / theory / political timing
Quotes 15
“The evil is also always in the gaze which perceives evil everywhere. You are never outside. You are part of it.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian reflexive turn / implication in what one criticizes
“Maybe the 12th camel is one of the names of God. God is like the 12th camel: you have to add it as a fiction so that things function.”Slavoj Žižek · necessary fiction / God as structural supplement
“Marx's idea of communism is not a utopia because it's too crazy, but a utopia because it's not radical enough.”Slavoj Žižek · critique of Marx / capitalism without capitalism
“What is life? Life is a disease which is transmitted by sex and always ends in death.”Slavoj Žižek · definition of life / communist-era joke
“The goal of enemy propaganda is not to destroy the enemy — police is doing this. It's to destroy hope.”Slavoj Žižek · enemy propaganda / TINA
“Coffee without milk is not the same as coffee without cream. Part of the definition of an entity is what it negates.”Slavoj Žižek · determinate negation
“I want an anonymous society where things function, some anonymous machinery does it, and I can do my dirty job that I enjoy, read, write books.”Slavoj Žižek · passivity / aversion to permanent engagement
“The task of psychoanalysis today is not to get you rid of paternal prohibitions so that you have to enjoy. What you have to get rid of is this pressure to enjoy.”Slavoj Žižek · superego command to enjoy / psychoanalysis today
“I am against false radicalism precisely because I am a radical.”Slavoj Žižek · radical politics / incremental demands
“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it — the greatest stupidity that was ever told.”Slavoj Žižek · Marx's 11th thesis / defense of theory
“The obstacle is at the same time a condition of what it is an obstacle to.”Slavoj Žižek · obstacle as condition / Marx's error / Hegelian dialectics
“Power doesn't want active fanatics today who fight for it. They want people who are silently desperate, cynical, caring just about their pleasures.”Slavoj Žižek · depoliticization / contemporary power / cynical subject
“We need a lie to see the truth of a situation.”Slavoj Žižek · necessary fiction / truth through falsehood
“Cell phones are for slaves — you are accessible.”Slavoj Žižek · connectivity as subjection / passivity
“More than the time for Marx it's today a time for Hegel. Hegel's dogma is when you try to do something things always go wrong and then problems begin — you have to do it the second time.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel vs. Marx / patient thinking / second attempt
Transcript 45 turns
Slavoj Žižek
When we are dealing with the rise of the so-called religious fundamentalism, we should always, always bear in mind this: no matter how archaic it seems, like ISIS, ISIL, how do you call it? You know, like, we just want faithful Islam. No, ISIS is purely a product of our postmodern global capitalist society. This is the basic insight on which we should insist. It doesn't mean, of course, I'm not an idiot, that we should celebrate ISIS. No. We should be aware that this new religious fundamentalism, that there is nothing really archaic about it. Even or especially when it appears or when it pretends to signal a return to some lost origins. I would say, especially in religious history, true modernizations, breaks with the past, as a rule, appear as a return to origins. For example, in Christianity, Protestantism, the radical break, modernization, appeared as, of course, the return to original Christianity against Catholic Roman corruption and so on and so on. So that's my point. I'm not in any way defending... tell to your son there, child, if I talk too loudly and I disturb him, tell him, tell me if I disturb him, I will try to speak more low. No, because I always think that, although I love children precisely because they are really evil, I mean... but it's a kind of innocent evil, you know? Let me give you an example, I hope I'm among friends, which really happened to me. I have a younger son who is now years old. This really happened a little time ago. I was mad at him, so I used a very vulgar Serb expression. We Slovenians don't have our own dirty language, we have to use another language, which meant, translated into English is in Serb jebote pas mater, let the dog fuck your mother. You know what my son instantly answered? Remember, he was years old. He instantly answered, "This is what already happened years ago, that's how I came to life." He didn't need even seconds to think. You know, and I love this innocent evil, you know? Like it's not this fake political evil where you pretend you want to help humanity or whatever. You just play... sorry, let's leave him alone, yes. I hope... I see from your child's age that he is already old enough to be corrupted by good computer games, I claim. Okay, sorry, sorry, let's go on. So, this... yes, historicity. I am not in any way, I am not crazy, defending fundamentalism. My insight is just this one: that fundamentalism is not a remainder of some dark past, but is something which exploded because of the antagonisms, tensions in the process of global capitalism. The proof: United States themselves. You know that according to FBI, they are observing almost million Americans who are suspected of Christian fundamentalism. You know, those who some years ago or more bombed in Oklahoma building and so on. So, but this is practically the same percentage as in Arab countries. In other words, religious fundamentalism is something which is not even dependent of a specific culture. There is something, some deadlock, uneasiness in capitalist globalization which pushes people towards fundamentalism. I am not saying that it's a progressive thing. I am saying that we should always, and that would be the first lesson of Hegel, do what in Hegel's language we call a reflexive turn. Don't just judge things, ask yourself how you yourself are implied into what you criticize. For example, in Europe now we have the big debate what to do with refugees from Syria, Iraq and so on, and especially Northern Africa. You have two basic positions, as you all know: the conservative, but usually associated sadly with lower classes, anti-immigrant populist position, "They are a threat to our way of life, let's close our borders" and so on. And the opposite, the left-liberal position, "Oh my god, we cannot allow people just to drown in the Mediterranean, we should open our borders." I think both positions are deeply wrong. Also the second one. I claim that this is typical left-liberal game, they want to show their openness because they very well know that this cannot happen. If Europe were to really totally open its borders, you would have a kind of a conservative workers' revolution mixed with extreme anti-immigrant violence and so on. We should begin with another question: why all of a sudden in the last decade this explosion of immigrants? And then, if you look at it a little bit closer, you can see that we, not even we, I'm not part of them directly, but the Western superpowers are more or less directly responsible for it. Look, Iraq. Western intervention in Iraq created all this chaos in Iraq, Syria, because of which people fly from there. North Africa, Libya. It was that totally stupid intervention in Libya. I'm no friend of Gaddafi. I'm just saying to the honor of a good friend of mine, Alain Badiou, with whom I will return here in two months or one day again. He, I remember, warned me already before the intervention to Libya. He told me, "Are they crazy? Gaddafi will be replaced by some kind of chaos and then there will be hundreds of thousands of refugees" and so on. Let's go further down. I remember two-three years ago or more, there was ethnic religious warfare in Central African Republic. The official story is: "Yes, the conflict between the Muslim minority in the northeast and the Christian majority. Oh, another of these primitive religious conflicts." But something there happened which you don't find, or very rarely you find it mentioned: without enough in the northeast, oil was discovered. And the one who was silently, discreetly behind this Muslim rebellion were the French, because the Chinese already made a deal with the majority Christian group. So you see, apparently there is a wild ethnic primitive conflict. No, economic interest. Not to mention the ultimate example: Congo, which is a state in total chaos and as such perfectly integrated into global market. So, you know, like, if we or they, the Western superpowers, if they were to stop this economic neo-colonial exploitation of black countries, most of these refugees, their flow would have stopped. But again, my point is simply: don't just judge it, ask yourself in what way we are included into it, in what way we are part of it. And again, it's the same with religious fundamentalism. The true question is not is there something specific, is a Muslim about it, should we blame the Muslims? No, the question is this one. I'm sorry if some of you know this example, I use it in some of my books already. I'm old enough to remember Afghanistan years ago. It was one of the most tolerant Muslim countries in the Middle East here. They had a relatively enlightened Western technocratic king, they had a relatively strong Communist Party even, they had great tradition of religious tolerance. It was quite a custom there that all the big religions, Islam, there were some Christians there, Muslims, that they performed even their religious rituals together. And then it happened, you know, the Communist Party made the coup d'état, when it was losing power Soviet Union intervened to counter the Soviet influence Americans mobilized their agents, one of them is well-known Osama bin Laden who was at that time supported by America and you see the paradox: a tolerant nice country became a fundamentalist nightmare because of the way it got involved into world politics. It's the same in the United States. Is it translated here in Turkey a wonderful book, very simple descriptive, Thomas Frank, I think, What Happened to Kansas? It takes the story of Kansas, you know, "Over the Rainbow," Wizard of Oz, one of the American states which was till years ago maybe the most progressive American state. All great emancipatory movements against slavery, trade unions, were done there. years ago, it started to change. Now it's a bedrock of hardline Christian fundamentalism. This, this is a problem today. So again, yes, we should fight fundamentalism and so on, but we should move a step further and ask why is it that now fundamentalism is exploding. So again, this is the next Hegelian rule. As Hegel put it wonderfully in his great book Phenomenology of Spirit: the evil is also always in the gaze which perceives evil everywhere. You know, it's not... you are never outside. You are part of it. So let's go a step further. But isn't a paradox here? That Hegel was a historicist. But isn't it that the same thing holds for Hegel also? It is no longer possible to write in this naive idealist way as Hegel does: absolute idea, everything is developed from the self-movement of the notion. Isn't this something that simply is a past? We cannot return to it. I claim it's more complex. I try to prove in my book that this is a false idea of Hegel. But the main reason, it's a political one, why I think we should return to Hegel today is that I think that our situation really resembles that of Hegel's time. What happened in Hegel's time was this: the French Revolution, the first big attempt at radical liberation, at least in the eyes of Hegel and others, went wrong. It ended in self-destructive terror. So Hegel's problem is: we have to admit that things went wrong, but nonetheless we shouldn't simply become reactionaries and say, "Okay, don't do any liberation, it just leads to terror, let's return to old times." No, Hegel's problem is how, in spite of this fiasco, deadlock, how to remain faithful to the project of Enlightenment, liberalization, emancipation and so on. And I think vaguely this is our position today. 20th century was the century of attempts of radical emancipation, mostly communist attempts. We have to admit it that although some of them did some good things, industrialization, education or whatever, basically the communist attempt in the 20th century ended in a catastrophe, unheard-of terror and so on. And our problem should be and is exactly the same as Hegel's. Not to say, "Okay, it was a wrong way, let's remain where we are, good liberal capitalists." No, how can we, in spite of this terrifying experience, remain faithful to the emancipatory project, not to betray it? Now you will say, why? Why don't we simply say, "Okay, the lesson is there is no alternative"? That the lesson of 20th century is if you try to change the fundamental form of a society you end up in murderous totalitarian dictatorship. Why don't we accept this? And this is another way of asking myself why am I still in some sense a communist. I'll say because I think that if things will go on the way they do, we are approaching a catastrophe. And I'm here in at least, if not good, respectable company. Usually this idea that we already found the best possible world, just it's a matter of making it better, better, is associated with Francis Fukuyama, the end of history. But do you know that Fukuyama himself is no longer a Fukuyamaist? He now admitted that we confront today a series of problems: biogenetics, ecology, financial capital, which it will not be possible to resolve them within the global liberal democratic capitalist network. So that's my problem. Of course, we still live, some of us, in relatively comfortable times. Relatively. Capitalism is still thriving. Of course, if you look from the capitalist standpoint, you can ask but where is the crisis? Globally it's mostly only Western Europe that is in crisis, no? Globally capitalism is doing pretty well. But nonetheless, yes, it's doing pretty well, but there is a dark side to it. Again, I see a series of problems: ecology, financial capital, intellectual property, biogenetics and so on, where I think we are confronting here problems which will not be resolved, not even controlled if we remain within the global capitalist system the way we have it now. Because, you know what is happening today more and more? It's the same paradox as at the beginning of modernity, European modernity. Remember, do you know that, for example, in 17th century there were much more slaves than in 15th century? In the 15th century, European slavery was more or less out. Then, the very explosion of capitalist order, which presented itself as based on human rights, freedoms, led to an explosion of slavery, black slaves working here, there and so on. And isn't something similar going on today? It's not direct slavery, but as a snob I like to visit these new ultra-developed countries, like I was in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar. These are slave societies. I did the elementary Marxist thing, I become friendly with a taxi driver who told me friendly, "Okay, we started to talk, he invited me for a coffee," and he told me, "Listen, for free, you don't have to pay me, I will show you the other side." And he took me to those totally invisible housings where immigrant workers work under terrible conditions with passport stay, in real conditions of what basically is slavery because they are not free to move. And all those rich emirates are based on slavery. Slaves are even already the majority. And it's really medieval logic because you don't even see them. They explained to me precisely in Dubai: whom you see? You see Western managers, then you see mid-level immigrants from other Arab countries or more educated Asian countries who do the job where they still meet you, like hotel clerks, people who sell in shopping malls. But then there are those who if you don't know how to look for them you don't even see them. And then you have de facto slavery in much of Africa. How is, for example, mining organized in Congo? It's forced labor, slaves. Not to mention even China, gulags and so on. So we, I claim, that's my pessimism, that we are approaching a new era where, how to put it, capitalism will no longer be able to follow its own democratic rules. You know, the standard functioning of capitalism is we have personal freedoms, you are free to do whatever you want, you can read whatever books you want, have sex whatever way you want, you can travel wherever you want if you have money. Of course, now problems begin. But what I want to say is that now capitalism cannot afford this. There is more and more need for larger and larger groups of people which are simply outside. And it's not just somewhere out there in some Chinese gulag or Indonesia. Do you remember, was it reported in your media some two years ago, I think, a small town in the suburb of Florence, Firenze, Italy? A small wooden building burnt and some Chinese died. Then they discovered that in that area there are tens of thousands of Chinese illegal immigrant workers who effectively worked like slaves there. And that was a shock for us Europeans. It's easy to be sympathetic towards poor workers exploited in China or Indonesia. No, sorry, we have them there in the suburb of Florence, the very model of European high civilization and so on and so on. So again, what I am saying is that that's the problem today. If we do nothing, if we just say, "Let's, we are not living so bad, let's just go on slowly, slowly," I don't like what I see if we allow our societies to move spontaneously the way they do. Maybe it will not be a new catastrophe, but I claim we are approaching a new apartheid society. There are people who are in, there are people who are out. And there is even, why not put it like this, less and less democracy even. Democracy does survive, but in what form? I made this experiment often in the United States. I asked people when they claim to me, "Oh, why are you a communist? We are having quite a nice life here, we are free." I told them, "Okay, tell me precisely what do you mean by claiming I am free." And they always enumerated to me a series of personal freedoms of choice. You know, "I'm free means nobody will tell me what to do, I can go where I want, I can read what I want, I can listen to the music what whatever." This is a very nice thing, personal freedoms. I'm not against it. But I see two problems here. The first part is that in the authentic European tradition, which is not a monopoly of Europe, I as coming from Europe I try to isolate this again, is that true freedom is not just I as an individual can do what I want at the personal level. It's that I'm well aware that I live in a certain social context. And I want more than to choose among the options that I have, those which I prefer. What if I don't like, what if I feel that the entire social structure is oppressive, inefficient? Freedom should always include a freedom of a collective social action to change society itself. And that freedom is disappearing, I claim. It's becoming more and more unthinkable. And here you can see how ideology today functions in our everyday life. I don't know how much this is developed here in Turkey, but in the West, I admire the ruling ideology how it presents you as new freedoms the very form of unfreedom. For example, I don't know how it is again here with you, but in my own country, Slovenia... sorry? Ah, smoking, yes, I found this because I don't smoke but my wife is a chain smoker and you know that this is the greatest compliment I can give to you Turks. You know that in Slovenia, if somebody smokes like crazy we say, the everyday language expression, "But you are smoking like a Turk," you know. But you Turks are no longer smoking as a Turk, I discovered. You also have all this, you know. Let me be clear. I don't smoke, yes, we should punish tobacco companies and so on. But isn't it obvious that much more than just a fear of cancer is in this anti-smoking campaign? I claim you can clearly discern a very well articulated fear of the neighbor. Neighbor in the sense of your neighbor people. This is the our maybe it's more Christian obsession with, you know, as Sartre put it, L'enfer, c'est les autres, hell are others. The whole point of political correctness, of fight against harassment is how to keep the other at a proper distance. So that whatever you do, you shouldn't come too close to me. What is usually called sex... I am against harassment when it really means rape, threat and so on. But it often simply means keeping the other at a distance. So again, let me go on with this freedom-unfreedom. From another, not smoking, another example. In my country with shock I discovered that, I was not aware, of the people are already how do you call it? Precariat, with just precarious employment. And it's of course a horror if you are used to the old-fashioned workplace where, okay, you complain you are not well paid, but you have social security, health care, a stable job. This is now almost a privilege. More and more people what? You have to worry all the time, "Will I get a new contract?" or whatever. But the ruling ideology presents to you this as a new freedom. They say, "You see, you are not fixed, alienated, every year you can reinvent yourself again." And the nicest ideology here is the ideology of "we are all capitalists." The idea is then this one: let's say you are a poor worker who somehow gets a credit, you get a credit of I don't know, liras here, and then you are free to choose: will you take your family to a big holiday, will you invest it into university for your children, will you take better take care of your... and the idea is this one: "You see, you are acting like a small capitalist. You have a certain capital and you are investing it the way you want." You see how a situation which is in reality the situation of terrible anxiety, you cannot rely on it, you are not sure what happens, is presented to you as a new freedom. And this is why I think the category of the freedom of choice is a very ambiguous one. Of course, there is an authentic moment in it. Of course, I want to choose what books I read and so on and so on. But you know, there is a big problem about choices which are forced choices. First, these are choices where you don't even know the conditions of what you are choosing and so on and so on. So this would be my first point: that today freedom is more and more limited to this personal freedom of choice. On the other hand, and that's why I think we are right to protest, all those TISA, TiSA, TTIP, all those secret trade agreements. Are we aware what is happening here? Things are negotiated, agreements which will affect all of us in detail. If all these agreements, TiSA and so on, are enacted, then the coordinates of what our governments can do are severely limited. You cannot, for example, one of the secret clauses of this agreement is that let's say a foreign company invests in Turkey under present laws. Let's say years from now you will get a new more leftist government which will raise the taxes for the rich company. According to this agreement, the company has the right to prosecute your state. And the judge is not Turkish Supreme Court but some international monetary institution, whatever. What I am saying is that fundamental decisions are being taken, half in secret, we learned about TISA, TiSA when WikiLeaks disclosed them. And in a totally non-transparent non-democratic way. It's the same thing with... you have a clear idea of this with Greece and Brussels negotiations now. Varoufakis told me, he also wrote about this or talked about this in one interview. I love this detail. When he was negotiating, Varoufakis in Brussels, he was negotiating with some body, some finance ministers, they called that body European Board, something like this. And at some point he got furious and said, "What you are doing to us, it's illegal, it's blackmail, I want to prosecute you." And they looked at him and said, "Okay, try it, we'll see." Some bureaucrats left the room, came back one hour later and said, "You cannot prosecute us, why? Because we don't exist. We don't have a legal status." And as I wrote in a text recently for New Statesman, this reminded me of China, today's China. Do you know, it's a beautiful data, that in today's China, Communist Party doesn't legally exist. A dissident, a friend of my friend, I met his friend, not him, did something crazy. He went to a court and put a charge against Communist Party of China for the murder, for Tiananmen massacre. You know what happened? Two months after, he got a reply, "Sorry, we cannot work on your charge because we established that in all our registers, no organization called Communist Party of China exists." It's wonderfully done. You have an organization with no legal status, you know, this is which nonetheless controls everything. You know, Lenin spoke about dual power: state power but also workers organized. Here you have a slightly different dual power. You have all the legal state apparatuses and so on, they endorse, they accept laws. But then you have the Communist Party structure which has no legal status but in an almost obscene way everyone follows her. And in the same way we are approaching this... what horrified me with this Greece negotiations. It's not, okay, I don't think Greeks are innocent. They did exploit European Union and profit a lot. I'm not celebrating them as the heroes of independence and so on. I mean, everybody knows that Greece was till now a terribly inefficient clientelist state. But what I'm saying is that crucial decisions were taken. To whom, to whom did the Greek representatives spoke? To some body which had no legal status but nonetheless it decided about everything. That's, I claim, unfortunately, the type of authority that we are future that we are approaching. On the one hand we have our personal freedoms but the social context of our lives is more and more totally determined in advance. Let me go on. So where do we have move forward from Marx here? I think that, you find all this developed much more widely in my books, also in this big fat book... This was my dream, to write a book which is longer than the Bible and I think I've succeeded. Yeah, everyone has small obscene dreams, you know. Okay, let me go on. You know, for me, the problem with Marx, to simplify it very much, is that his... the communist dream is still capitalism without capitalism. Marx was deeply fascinated by capitalist productivity, immanent self-renovation. Marx wanted capitalism without what he perceived as the obstacle. Marx's idea is that at a certain point capitalist relations become an obstacle to its further development. At that point you have to make a social revolution and so on. I don't think that this works. I think that this obstacle is at the same time a condition of what it is an obstacle to. What do I mean by this? Now, okay, I'm a dirty old man, so I will give you a really problematic example, obscene slightly, so that you will get my point. Some time ago I was in Portugal, and an old lady, but not too old and still sexually attractive, voluptuous... I don't know, was she flirting with me or what, but she told me, "You know, my last lover, when he saw me naked, he told me that if I would just have lost two or three kilos my body would have been perfect." I told her, "Just don't do that. Because, you know, often when you have something which appears as a feature which spoils your beauty, but in reality it doesn't. Like precisely in so far as it disturbs your beauty, it creates the vision of this beauty." I told to this lady, "You lose two-three kilos, you will not have a perfect body. You will be just an average no one. You need two-three kilos too much so that people dream, 'Oh, without this two-three kilos you would be perfect.' But you lose two-three kilos, you also lose perfection, you know." And so something like this was Marx's mistake, if I may put it like this. He wanted capitalism without the two-three kilos of capitalist relations, you know. So we have to rethink again. I still think that Marx provided a wonderful definition of analysis of capitalist dynamics. But I think that his vision of revolution is obviously too short. If nothing else, the big problem is today: who is today's proletariat? Are these precarious workers? Are these the standard working class? Are these the unemployed? Are these all those who simply live outside in countries which, like Congo, which are simply outside our so-called civilized relations? We have to rethink everything. The main point, again I'm coming back to Hegel, the main point we should analyze is how... and here we should learn something from Hegel. Marx knew it but not always clearly. The material force of ideology. Ideology is not some high dream. No, ideology is our reality itself. In the sense of ideology is the way we in our reality live and interact with others. Marx made this very clear in his wonderful analysis of commodity fetishism. Where it's clear for Marx that the illusion that is commodity fetishism is not in our perception. We follow this illusion when we interact on the market. You know, is this very refined idea that our social reality itself can be structured like an illusion, but it's still reality. What do I mean by this? Let me give you now... I'm already probably talking too much. Where am I now? Could you tell me what, where time? to Okay, you know, as we learn from Derrida and deconstructionists, our big enemy is this metaphysical linear notion of time. So I will fight this by talking too much. Okay, sorry. Do you know this story? It's wonderful example of what I want to say of this power of symbolic fiction. Jean-Pierre Dupuy is a wonderful French and American theorist of catastrophes. He recently published a wonderful short book, Economy and the Future, which you should publish, otherwise you will be arrested for sabotaging progressive theory. And he mentions a story which is probably an old Arab story but then through him, Dupuy, it became popular and even Niklas Luhmann, the famous German sociologist, wrote a book about it. You probably know it: the story of the 12th camel. The story is that a rich Arab merchant dies... okay, not too rich. And he leaves to his three sons camels. He has three sons, he leaves to them as his heritage camels with precise instruction how they should be divided. He says: "The first son should get half of the camels, the second son one third and the third son one sixth." Of course, you cannot do it. You cannot get five and a half camel. Then a wise judge comes and he says: "I have a solution. I will add one camel of my own." And they ask him, "But will you get it back?" He tells them, the three sons, "Don't worry. I add one camel. Now we have camels. So now it works. The first son gets half, half of is The second son gets three, no, one quarter... no... one quarter of is And the third one gets two, one sixth is Now, remember, and is So one camel remains, I take it back. And everything works out. You see, this is my point is, of course, you don't even need in reality this camel. I claim maybe since I am unfortunately some kind of atheist, maybe the 12th camel is one of the names of God, you know. God is like the 12th camel: you have to add it as a fiction so that things function, you know. But it doesn't matter if it exists or not. And I don't have time to go into it now, but my idea was precisely to develop this logic of necessary fictions, of how at some point things... we need a lie to see the truth of a situation. You can... if you, like here, we have to invent another camel to do it. Let me give you some simple examples. Did you see a film which is not a great film but interesting leftist paranoia, Roman Polanski, The Ghost, based on the novel by Robert Harris? Where the story is wonderful simple one: a journalist discovers that Tony Blair was from the very beginning trained, was planted to the United Kingdom as an American agent. That his wife was a CIA agent and that Americans educated Tony Blair to have a perfect pro-American president. And in a review of this film, some American newspaper, I forgot which one, said, "Although we know this is not true, but once you accept it everything becomes clear," you know. Like this is what Tony Blair was effectively doing. Another example here, similar one. I remember when I was young, in communist Yugoslavia, we had these political jokes, which incidentally were not so much in Yugoslavia as especially in Central European communist countries like Czech Republic, East Germany and Poland. They were excellent. When people ask me, "Did Europe lose anything with the fall of communism?", I say, "Yes, the spiritual loss is the disappearance of good political jokes." Because they were not just jokes, they had an excellent melancholic spirituality. Like my favorite Polish one, maybe you heard it, there was even a movie on this. This is the best definition of life that I know. What is life? Life is a disease which is transmitted by sex and always ends in death. Isn't this absolutely a true definition of life? Okay. So, I remember when I was young, we were obsessed by the idea that political jokes are not really subversive. Rumors were that there was an ultra-secret department of the secret police where they were fabricating political jokes. Not the jokes about the enemies, but the jokes about our own politicians. The idea was a very primitive one but I think basically true. In this way people instead of protesting too much were telling jokes to each other, in this way they were able to express their anger, it made situation much more bearable. Now although, and I spoke with many people who afterwards when the archives were open investigated this, unfortunately no, there were no ultra-secret departments producing political jokes. But nonetheless there is something true in this idea. Precisely. The truth is that jokes, political jokes, played, played a constructive role from the standpoint of those in power. Or, my last example here. Unfortunately, I think that Marx's idea, traditional, of communism is also this type of a lie. It's not true, it's a utopia. Not a utopia because it's too crazy, but a utopia because it's not radical enough. But still it allows us to see bourgeois capitalist society the way it really is and so on and so on. Now, to return to Hegel again. Because what I wanted to do from here, I don't have time, read it in the book, is to go from this idea of necessary lies to the idea of so-called counterfactuals. You know, like, you imagine not only how things are but how things might have been. And the point is that the way things might have been is crucial for how things are. Things are not just what they are, what they might have been but are not is part of their definition. And I think in another book that you were kind or crazy enough to publish of mine, on Lubitsch, I think I probably quote there the joke which is for me, I'm sorry if you know the story, the best Hegelian joke that I know, a very simple one. It's from Ernst Lubitsch's film Ninotchka. The joke you must know, it's a very simple one, it's a joke told as a joke within the film. A guy enters a cafeteria and says, "Can I have coffee but without cream?". You know what the waiter answers? "Sorry, we ran out of coffee but we still have milk, so I can only give you coffee without milk. I cannot give you coffee without cream because we don't have it." You see, this is what Hegel means by determinate negation. Although it's materially the same, but the same just pure coffee. But coffee without milk it's not the same as coffee without cream. It... you see, part of the definition of an entity is what it negates. And in the same way then I wanted... I didn't have time, read it in the book, to develop this idea of multiple narratives. That what one has, the story that one tells, should always be read against the background of other stories. And the best example for me is first the Bible. You remember, you must, the seven last words of, of, of Jesus Christ. You remember, like, what are they? I don't know. "It's finished", "I am thirsty", "forget them, they don't know what they are doing, father", blah-blah-blah. I think it's totally wrong and this is why the two religious films, Mel Gibson's Passion and the one which is really Franco Zeffirelli's, which are disgusting, are wrong. They try to construct one linear narrative: first Christ says "I am thirsty", then he gets a drink and says "now it's finished" and so on. No, the point is that all of them are true but not at the same level of reality. And the truth is not one of them. You know, it's precisely one has to think this... one has to think this, as it were, this multiplicity as original. And this I think is again so terribly important today when we live under pressure of what I cannot but call enemy propaganda. It's not the old-fashioned communist propaganda. But what are we repeatedly told, like the Greeks were told recently? It's what with a feminine name we designate as TINA: T-I-N-A, There Is No Alternative. The one big message to Greece was, "Sorry, don't even dream about it, there is no alternative." Or as they put it in a nicer way: every alternative will mean just catastrophe, economic chaos or whatever and so on and so on. And things are really getting crazy because as I've written repeatedly, I know closely Syriza. And it's crazy if you look at what Varoufakis and others wanted from Europe, it's something which years ago would have been a very elementary modest middle-of-the-road social democratic program. In what crazy times do we live so that what half a century ago was a totally acceptable social democratic program, much less radical than what at that time they were doing in Sweden, today you are proclaimed crazy radically leftist lunatic or whatever. So in these times when again enemy propaganda, as Alain Badiou put it nicely, the goal of enemy propaganda is not to destroy the enemy, police is doing this, it's to destroy hope. Enemy propaganda tries to convince us no change is possible, it will only make things worse and so on and so on. Here I think we should at least learn to dream. But to dream in a correct way, because dreams are a very dangerous thing. I now finished a new text, the title of which is The Need to Censor Our Dreams. You know because precisely when we dream about a different society, we usually reproduce all the prejudices and so on and so on. So again, why do we have to learn this? Because you know what makes me sad? For example, Greece. It's easy to bring million people to the street to demonstrate. I'm tired of these left triumphs and then we all cry out of pleasure, "So beautiful, sublime, million people". The only thing that interests me more and more is the day after. Like the true measure of social change are not the ecstatic moments we were all there but how will the change be felt well, weeks later when things return to normal. For example with you here, I'm not making fun of your, of your Gezi or whatever demonstrations, no. Taksim Square demonstrations. It was something like I claim the results of the last elections, the success of HDP and the social democratic Kemalist party, however you call them, something did remain. Even in Egypt, something did remain. Friends are telling me Egypt is nonetheless not the same as before. You have civil society, trade unions, students, families. But don't you agree with me that I don't like just these big pathetic explosions. I mean, we... you know it's easy to oppose capital. That's the tragic thing in big... you know for me this was the worst Greek tragedy what happened two weeks ago, almost theater of the absurd as my friend Stathis Kouvelakis said. You had on Sunday big referendum NO, and next day the government does exactly the opposite. The government which was... I don't blame them, Syriza. Incidentally, if you ask me personally, I think they did the right thing in making this compromise, although it makes me terribly sad. Because they told me that the situation was so incredibly probably if they were to do Grexit, Varoufakis thinks that for at least the next two-three years the standard of living would have fallen for another minimal There would have been hunger, chaos, probably right-wing demonstrations and so on. But it was a total deadlock, a tragic situation. And that's the problem today. It's easy to have demonstrations for democracy, these rights, those rights, but then you touch a certain limit, capital, when you really disturb the capital. At that point things get serious. And just a very short, you are now my superego, conclude. I also think that you know, I never like this leftist mantra against the representative democracy, I know it has its limits. "We should be active, engaged" and so on. Well first let's be frank: majority is never really engaged. I hope you were aware of this even when you had your great moments Taksim Square and so on, let's be frank. You had what? Maybe support. Maybe more in Istanbul but not all around. Like in... sorry? Less even. Yes. And we should be aware... and I don't despise ordinary people. My god, they are desperate, they worry how they will survive and so on. So what I'm... my society, the society which we should fight for, it's not some stupid society where every afternoon we would be engaged in some local democracy, how we provide for children, for health care. I want an anonymous society where things function, some anonymous machinery does it, and I can do my dirty job that I enjoy, read, write books and so on. I think we should stop with this obsession of permanent engagement. We have to learn passivity. And to conclude, now really conclude, with a joke. I warn you it's a softly dirty joke. I hope I'm not repeating myself but there are so many people here, majority of you did not hear it. An example of what I mean by passivity. Two years ago, I think, maybe some of you know it, I'm sorry, Guardian magazine asked me a stupid question, "Is sexual romance still possible today?". And my answer was "Yes, but how?". You know that in sexuality you have now all those plastic instruments: plastic penis, vibrator. And I claim this would have been true modern sex. I make a date with a lady. "Okay, we will make love." Then on the top of it you must, I hope you know, we not only have these vibrators, we also have... they have a terrible name: stamina training unit. Plastic vaginas, which you also put on electricity and they shake and you have all possible entrances: anus, mouth, okay. My idea sex would be this one. I come there with my stamina training unit, lady comes at a date with her plastic penis. And we connect with electricity both machines, we put plastic penis into vagina and the two machines are buzzing enjoying each other. Then I sit down with the lady and we have tea and it's wonderful. We have no duty to enjoy, machines are already enjoying there. And then the journalist asked me, "But where is romance here, sex?". I said, "Okay, we talk and talk and maybe at some point when I pour tea to her our hands meet and they meet more and who knows, maybe even we end up in bed, but without any pressure." You know, we already did our duty to sex. Machines are doing it for us. And this is a serious problem because I don't know how it is with you, but in Western Europe where we live in hedonism, all my psychoanalytic friends are telling me that the problem today is not prohibition. The problem is that patients feel a kind of a social command: it's your duty to enjoy. If you don't have good sexual pressure... So the big task here is to get rid of this pressure to enjoy. The task of psychoanalysis today is not to get you rid of paternal prohibitions so that you have to enjoy. No, what you have to get rid of is this pressure to enjoy. You know, we have to learn to to step back, to take a distance. Maybe we are even in some way too much engaged today. Sometimes reflection, a moment of reflection is crucial. Because what is happening today? Are we aware in what strange times we live? What is happening with ecology, what is happening, I always repeat this, I'm fascinated: brain sciences and, and biogenetics. My god, we're already able to connect our brain to machines and so on. Everything will change. What does this mean? We don't know it. The time for patient thinking is now. That's why I think more than the time for Marx it's today a time for Hegel. Hegel's dogma is when you try to do something things always go wrong and then problems begin. How you... you have to do it the second time, you know. And that's our task today. I'm very grateful to you for this patience. I also enjoyed this class privilege, you know: there are those who are in the shadow and there are those who are not in the shadow. I was privileged but I'm really grateful for your patience. Thank you very much. I hope that you did it in a good communist Stalinist way, that you distributed the questions and now you organize everything. Yes, because you know this is a nice joke. Some years ago I spoke in my country with an old communist and I asked him, "Are you afraid or do you allow a free debate?". He said, "No, we communists want to hear what people think, we like free open debate. But we know that in order to prevent enemy provocations, free debate has to be especially well prepared," you know. That's why... I can easily respond you, especially as a Leninist, because the great... we can accuse Lenin of whatever we want, terrorism and so on, but in national question he was radical. You know that Lenin even had a debate with Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxemburg's position to simplify it was Russia should give autonomy or independence to small nations, but only if the good guys win there, you know, our allies. And Lenin said, "No, it doesn't matter. Finland, Baltic Republic, even if reactionaries take power there, we should give all of them freedom." Which is why it's important to know already in '22 Stalin attacked Lenin as a bourgeois liberal nationalist because of this. And this is why it made me a little bit sad when I saw a year ago or when, demonstrators in Kyiv destroying Lenin's statues. Okay, I understand them, Lenin was for them Soviet Union. But nonetheless do you know that Ukraine as a nation didn't exist before Bolsheviks? In Tsarist Russia they didn't have their language, it was prohibited. Only Russian was and so on. It's Bolsheviks in 1920s that established Ukraine as a full nation with their own language, university, literature. And then Stalin counter-attacked in early '30s. So precisely as a Leninist I would say... I don't know in detail the situation but I would say I don't know what the concrete solution should be. But definitely not only freedom to Kurds but even some kind of I don't know how to do it formally, informally, unification. Why not? Kurds in Syria, in Iraq, in Turkey somehow. I'm not saying anything against any of the existing states. And now I must apologize to my Turkish friends, because when I was here years ago I made some unfortunate remarks about progressive aspects of Ottoman Empire. And they told me, "Are you crazy?" and so on. No, but what I found attractive in the idea of Ottoman Empire is precisely that it was multinational, much more open, confederate. Don't forget that the two crimes as it looks committed by Turks, Armenian genocide and the treatment of Kurds, as far as I know this began precisely with Young Turks, that is to say when Turkey wanted to imitate a modern Western nation state. So you know what I mean. I am not idealizing, it was a decadent regime, horrible, I don't have any soft spot for Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Empire is for me just the same as in my country Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was horror. But it was a much more tolerant multinational unity. In this sense, of course, I support it. I just don't know enough to... I don't know the... what would have been for me the best solution. One solution but I am now totally dreaming would have been Kurds from the north of Iraq joining Turkish Kurds and making an autonomous republic, maybe within a larger Turkey, maybe I don't know with whom. You know this is political contingency. But absolutely, I absolutely support it. I think that the only true internationalism goes through this recognition of nations' rights. And Lenin also... we should also be very careful about something else. Quite often when you have a big nation and a smaller oppressed nation, this nation can be even worse towards its own minorities down there. Like my Canadian friends and their French Canadians, Quebec, told me that although Quebecois, Quebec people wanted independence against English oppression, but they are much more brutal towards Eskimos and Indians, towards their own, you know. So here things are very sensitive and I'm here... I'm here pretty open. I think that national ethnic autonomy functions perfectly in global capitalism, so I don't think there is even anything very revolutionary here. I think that the frame of global capitalism is no longer nation state. So I don't see... some people even think, maybe they are right, that we are approaching a model of nation states which is the mega success story today, Singapore, which is a nation state. I heard in China that there are tendencies in the more developed south, Shanghai and so on, to develop it. So again I'm now just turning in circle repeating myself but my point would have been that maybe this is a dream, but a truly great Turkish politician should have invented a formula in which full autonomy of Kurds would make Turkey stronger. It can be done, I claim, in a way with intelligent politics. It's false dilemma: either you screw the Kurds or they threaten your identity. This is not necessary. This choice is necessary only within a certain logic. So yes, all my sympathy. What can I say? I don't know. You know, we always talk about how the leftists go crazy over some unity at some point and then they define an alternative society but then talk about it in the future as a dream. Yes, yes, I agree. Like what I think is that nowadays there needs to be kind of like, because the real social project, the real social... socialism failed. Yeah. And leftists are always kind of bringing that back into the picture. So nowadays capitalism... But sorry, I will immediately give you the word back. You know, the paradox is that not only it failed, but, and this is for me the ultimate perversion: in most of the countries where old communists are still in power, they are the most brutal managers of capitalism. That's the paradox. I mean, this is what I told once to Fukuyama. I said, "Okay, you won. But are you aware that Chinese Communist Party is the best manager of it?". Sorry, please go on. My point is that what needs to be done in my opinion is that we need to have new paradigms that we can maybe mystify as well to get people behind them. No, I agree with you deeply. That is to say, first, I like that you use the word paradigm, paradigma, because that's how I play with my Greek friends. I tell them the big name now is Syntagma Square. You know, Syntagma means in linguistics syntagme, but it's also constitution. And I told them, you need to move from syntagma to paradigm, you know. Syntagma are big demonstrations. Then where is the paradigm then, where is the new paradigm? And here there is the poverty of the left, I claim. So I was going to bring it back to the Kurdish issue and was going to say that they have a new paradigm. Do they? I'm glad, no, it's not a cynical skeptical question. I would like to know, do they have it? They have a paradigm based on Öcalan's unit, it's called democratic confederalism. So instead of calling it socialism they call it democratic confederalism. It's not as anti-capitalist maybe as the real socialism, but nonetheless it manages to take people behind it, you know. So it creates a mass movement and it gives purpose to the people, which... Okay, but I still am, you know at what level skeptical? First, it would do to Kurdish people a lot of good, I don't doubt it. But what will be... will it be anything more than just a new successful unit in global capitalism? That's what's going to be the question. It's an experimental thing, it's open-minded at least. Yeah. So, I mean, I was going to ask you what you think about the project in Rojava or what the PKK... Well, I will not bluff my way here. I mean, I don't know enough about it here, but maybe this will be an answer. I don't like the left like in Greece, that official KKE or what they have also a three-letter Communist Party which is a very radical Stalinist one. For them, the traitor is not Gorbachev but Khrushchev. They still celebrate... and their position is: "Syriza are cheap social democratic reformists, we should wait for the authentic proletarian revolution." I claim: yes, you wait and do nothing. I claim that today in the situation that we are, our procedure should be this metaphor I propose. The art today is not to wait for a big radical change, but to do small steps which may even appear totally acceptable. But in reality, once you try to do this, you will have to do more and more. I will give you an example here which may surprise you. I still have a certain fondness for President Obama. I know all the stupid things he did or didn't do. But the debate on universal healthcare that he triggered in the United States was obviously such a shock. You know, Republicans brought him to Supreme Court and so on. The greatest American actor, Chuck Norris, you remember, proclaimed him a communist or whatever. You see, in United States to talk about universal healthcare is a very radical move. And what I like about it is that it appears a very modest question. You can say: wait a minute, Western Europe has it, Canada has it. That's, you know, it's like I will give you this metaphor that I like. I like this naive science fiction stories where as they say, "You press a wrong button." You know, you think it's just one button, you press it and then water here, everything disappears around. It happened in one of my early books I recorded it. Sorry, it's an old story, maybe some of you know it but it's my favorite book. Once I was with friends staying in a small flat in Paris. And there was a cold wave, everything was frozen. I went to the toilet, I flushed the water at the end. And later it was easy to explain what was frozen, defrozen. But the effect for me was horror. All I did is I pushed the button, the water to flush. Then the water went on, on, the water started to drop from the top. At the end, the whole apartment was flooded, police had to come to take me out on their hands because they were afraid that water was already dangerous for... But you see what I mean? You press something and everything falls, no? We have to find such... like in United States this is one point. In Europe, obviously the Greek demands were such point. And I totally agree here that what Kurds are demanding there is another such point. We should not be afraid of apparently modest demands. I learned this also from my communist past where we were, okay not big but small dissident, and we learned this in communism: to make at least at the end when nobody believed in communism, to make a big demand: "End of communism, capitalism is better", you didn't risk a lot because you threatened no one. But if you just said, "That functionary should step down, we should replace that bloc", a very modest thing, it was much more dangerous, you know. Often apparently modest proposals are much more dangerous because they really trigger a movement. So again, in this sense, all I can say without knowing any details because you know, I am a decadent guy, I watch my films and so on, for me reality is something which imitates films but fails, you know. So I cannot give you a concrete judgment. But basically I agree with you, I am against false radicalism precisely because I am a radical. I want to... you see the Greek Communist Party with its radicalism did nothing. Syriza with its modesty at least it did introduce some movement. It's so good to see you. I come... the first comment is there was the Lenin, I think the very... I see this as a success of the communist as well... sorry, please, please. The International, the Big International, also their song. And I think the way Lenin looks like, he looks like a Tatar. And I think that he... But he was one, one quarter, yes. Yeah, yeah. Because the town he studied was Kazan, that is now the capital of the Tatars and so on. And I think this is... Nationalism is a result of the French Revolution and also it brings Nazis and so on. So I think it's better we leave all the nationalisms and also the ethnic nationalisms behind us. Yeah but you know, I see your point. But my problem is this one: from where are you saying this? For example, in ex-Yugoslavia, the Serbs, I have nothing against them, but who were the biggest nation, were also saying this because they knew if we leave this aside they win, you know. They have... In China, the Han majority is also saying this. You know what I mean, you cannot simply leave it behind because when you leave it behind you have to have some common language shared medium. Who will determine that medium? Another thing I want to answer when you said Lenin, Tatar and so on. You know what fascinated me in Russia terribly, how if you ask Russians where did Stalinism come from, you get two totally opposed answers. From Eurocentric and maybe Western people they claim, "Oh, Stalinism came because revolution happened at the wrong place. If it were to happen in Western Europe, it would have been democratic. In Russia because of its Asiatic past, primitive people, it was that." Now, it's so interesting if you talk with conservative Russians, they give you exactly the opposite story. They say the tragedy of Russia is that every to years a despot wants in a brutal way to westernize, modernize. First it was Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Terrible, then it was Peter the Great, at the end it was basically Stalin. So for them Bolshevism, communism is not authentically Russian, but it's a brutal Western modernization. And you see, so again I think that both of them are in a way right, but I think there is here I agree maybe with you that it's... there is
When we are dealing with the rise of the so-called religious fundamentalism, we should always, always bear in mind this: no matter how archaic it seems, like ISIS, ISIL, how do you call it? You know, like, we just want faithful Islam. No, ISIS is purely a product of our postmodern global capitalist society. This is the basic insight on which we should insist. It doesn't mean, of course, I'm not an idiot, that we should celebrate ISIS. No. We should be aware that this new religious fundamentalism, that there is nothing really archaic about it. Even or especially when it appears or when it pretends to signal a return to some lost origins. I would say, especially in religious history, true modernizations, breaks with the past, as a rule, appear as a return to origins. For example, in Christianity, Protestantism, the radical break, modernization, appeared as, of course, the return to original Christianity against Catholic Roman corruption and so on and so on. So that's my point. I'm not in any way defending... tell to your son there, child, if I talk too loudly and I disturb him, tell him, tell me if I disturb him, I will try to speak more low. No, because I always think that, although I love children precisely because they are really evil, I mean... but it's a kind of innocent evil, you know? Let me give you an example, I hope I'm among friends, which really happened to me. I have a younger son who is now years old. This really happened a little time ago. I was mad at him, so I used a very vulgar Serb expression. We Slovenians don't have our own dirty language, we have to use another language, which meant, translated into English is in Serb jebote pas mater, let the dog fuck your mother. You know what my son instantly answered? Remember, he was years old. He instantly answered, "This is what already happened years ago, that's how I came to life." He didn't need even seconds to think. You know, and I love this innocent evil, you know? Like it's not this fake political evil where you pretend you want to help humanity or whatever. You just play... sorry, let's leave him alone, yes. I hope... I see from your child's age that he is already old enough to be corrupted by good computer games, I claim. Okay, sorry, sorry, let's go on. So, this... yes, historicity. I am not in any way, I am not crazy, defending fundamentalism. My insight is just this one: that fundamentalism is not a remainder of some dark past, but is something which exploded because of the antagonisms, tensions in the process of global capitalism. The proof: United States themselves. You know that according to FBI, they are observing almost million Americans who are suspected of Christian fundamentalism. You know, those who some years ago or more bombed in Oklahoma building and so on. So, but this is practically the same percentage as in Arab countries. In other words, religious fundamentalism is something which is not even dependent of a specific culture. There is something, some deadlock, uneasiness in capitalist globalization which pushes people towards fundamentalism. I am not saying that it's a progressive thing. I am saying that we should always, and that would be the first lesson of Hegel, do what in Hegel's language we call a reflexive turn. Don't just judge things, ask yourself how you yourself are implied into what you criticize. For example, in Europe now we have the big debate what to do with refugees from Syria, Iraq and so on, and especially Northern Africa. You have two basic positions, as you all know: the conservative, but usually associated sadly with lower classes, anti-immigrant populist position, "They are a threat to our way of life, let's close our borders" and so on. And the opposite, the left-liberal position, "Oh my god, we cannot allow people just to drown in the Mediterranean, we should open our borders." I think both positions are deeply wrong. Also the second one. I claim that this is typical left-liberal game, they want to show their openness because they very well know that this cannot happen. If Europe were to really totally open its borders, you would have a kind of a conservative workers' revolution mixed with extreme anti-immigrant violence and so on. We should begin with another question: why all of a sudden in the last decade this explosion of immigrants? And then, if you look at it a little bit closer, you can see that we, not even we, I'm not part of them directly, but the Western superpowers are more or less directly responsible for it. Look, Iraq. Western intervention in Iraq created all this chaos in Iraq, Syria, because of which people fly from there. North Africa, Libya. It was that totally stupid intervention in Libya. I'm no friend of Gaddafi. I'm just saying to the honor of a good friend of mine, Alain Badiou, with whom I will return here in two months or one day again. He, I remember, warned me already before the intervention to Libya. He told me, "Are they crazy? Gaddafi will be replaced by some kind of chaos and then there will be hundreds of thousands of refugees" and so on. Let's go further down. I remember two-three years ago or more, there was ethnic religious warfare in Central African Republic. The official story is: "Yes, the conflict between the Muslim minority in the northeast and the Christian majority. Oh, another of these primitive religious conflicts." But something there happened which you don't find, or very rarely you find it mentioned: without enough in the northeast, oil was discovered. And the one who was silently, discreetly behind this Muslim rebellion were the French, because the Chinese already made a deal with the majority Christian group. So you see, apparently there is a wild ethnic primitive conflict. No, economic interest. Not to mention the ultimate example: Congo, which is a state in total chaos and as such perfectly integrated into global market. So, you know, like, if we or they, the Western superpowers, if they were to stop this economic neo-colonial exploitation of black countries, most of these refugees, their flow would have stopped. But again, my point is simply: don't just judge it, ask yourself in what way we are included into it, in what way we are part of it. And again, it's the same with religious fundamentalism. The true question is not is there something specific, is a Muslim about it, should we blame the Muslims? No, the question is this one. I'm sorry if some of you know this example, I use it in some of my books already. I'm old enough to remember Afghanistan years ago. It was one of the most tolerant Muslim countries in the Middle East here. They had a relatively enlightened Western technocratic king, they had a relatively strong Communist Party even, they had great tradition of religious tolerance. It was quite a custom there that all the big religions, Islam, there were some Christians there, Muslims, that they performed even their religious rituals together. And then it happened, you know, the Communist Party made the coup d'état, when it was losing power Soviet Union intervened to counter the Soviet influence Americans mobilized their agents, one of them is well-known Osama bin Laden who was at that time supported by America and you see the paradox: a tolerant nice country became a fundamentalist nightmare because of the way it got involved into world politics. It's the same in the United States. Is it translated here in Turkey a wonderful book, very simple descriptive, Thomas Frank, I think, What Happened to Kansas? It takes the story of Kansas, you know, "Over the Rainbow," Wizard of Oz, one of the American states which was till years ago maybe the most progressive American state. All great emancipatory movements against slavery, trade unions, were done there. years ago, it started to change. Now it's a bedrock of hardline Christian fundamentalism. This, this is a problem today. So again, yes, we should fight fundamentalism and so on, but we should move a step further and ask why is it that now fundamentalism is exploding. So again, this is the next Hegelian rule. As Hegel put it wonderfully in his great book Phenomenology of Spirit: the evil is also always in the gaze which perceives evil everywhere. You know, it's not... you are never outside. You are part of it. So let's go a step further. But isn't a paradox here? That Hegel was a historicist. But isn't it that the same thing holds for Hegel also? It is no longer possible to write in this naive idealist way as Hegel does: absolute idea, everything is developed from the self-movement of the notion. Isn't this something that simply is a past? We cannot return to it. I claim it's more complex. I try to prove in my book that this is a false idea of Hegel. But the main reason, it's a political one, why I think we should return to Hegel today is that I think that our situation really resembles that of Hegel's time. What happened in Hegel's time was this: the French Revolution, the first big attempt at radical liberation, at least in the eyes of Hegel and others, went wrong. It ended in self-destructive terror. So Hegel's problem is: we have to admit that things went wrong, but nonetheless we shouldn't simply become reactionaries and say, "Okay, don't do any liberation, it just leads to terror, let's return to old times." No, Hegel's problem is how, in spite of this fiasco, deadlock, how to remain faithful to the project of Enlightenment, liberalization, emancipation and so on. And I think vaguely this is our position today. 20th century was the century of attempts of radical emancipation, mostly communist attempts. We have to admit it that although some of them did some good things, industrialization, education or whatever, basically the communist attempt in the 20th century ended in a catastrophe, unheard-of terror and so on. And our problem should be and is exactly the same as Hegel's. Not to say, "Okay, it was a wrong way, let's remain where we are, good liberal capitalists." No, how can we, in spite of this terrifying experience, remain faithful to the emancipatory project, not to betray it? Now you will say, why? Why don't we simply say, "Okay, the lesson is there is no alternative"? That the lesson of 20th century is if you try to change the fundamental form of a society you end up in murderous totalitarian dictatorship. Why don't we accept this? And this is another way of asking myself why am I still in some sense a communist. I'll say because I think that if things will go on the way they do, we are approaching a catastrophe. And I'm here in at least, if not good, respectable company. Usually this idea that we already found the best possible world, just it's a matter of making it better, better, is associated with Francis Fukuyama, the end of history. But do you know that Fukuyama himself is no longer a Fukuyamaist? He now admitted that we confront today a series of problems: biogenetics, ecology, financial capital, which it will not be possible to resolve them within the global liberal democratic capitalist network. So that's my problem. Of course, we still live, some of us, in relatively comfortable times. Relatively. Capitalism is still thriving. Of course, if you look from the capitalist standpoint, you can ask but where is the crisis? Globally it's mostly only Western Europe that is in crisis, no? Globally capitalism is doing pretty well. But nonetheless, yes, it's doing pretty well, but there is a dark side to it. Again, I see a series of problems: ecology, financial capital, intellectual property, biogenetics and so on, where I think we are confronting here problems which will not be resolved, not even controlled if we remain within the global capitalist system the way we have it now. Because, you know what is happening today more and more? It's the same paradox as at the beginning of modernity, European modernity. Remember, do you know that, for example, in 17th century there were much more slaves than in 15th century? In the 15th century, European slavery was more or less out. Then, the very explosion of capitalist order, which presented itself as based on human rights, freedoms, led to an explosion of slavery, black slaves working here, there and so on. And isn't something similar going on today? It's not direct slavery, but as a snob I like to visit these new ultra-developed countries, like I was in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar. These are slave societies. I did the elementary Marxist thing, I become friendly with a taxi driver who told me friendly, "Okay, we started to talk, he invited me for a coffee," and he told me, "Listen, for free, you don't have to pay me, I will show you the other side." And he took me to those totally invisible housings where immigrant workers work under terrible conditions with passport stay, in real conditions of what basically is slavery because they are not free to move. And all those rich emirates are based on slavery. Slaves are even already the majority. And it's really medieval logic because you don't even see them. They explained to me precisely in Dubai: whom you see? You see Western managers, then you see mid-level immigrants from other Arab countries or more educated Asian countries who do the job where they still meet you, like hotel clerks, people who sell in shopping malls. But then there are those who if you don't know how to look for them you don't even see them. And then you have de facto slavery in much of Africa. How is, for example, mining organized in Congo? It's forced labor, slaves. Not to mention even China, gulags and so on. So we, I claim, that's my pessimism, that we are approaching a new era where, how to put it, capitalism will no longer be able to follow its own democratic rules. You know, the standard functioning of capitalism is we have personal freedoms, you are free to do whatever you want, you can read whatever books you want, have sex whatever way you want, you can travel wherever you want if you have money. Of course, now problems begin. But what I want to say is that now capitalism cannot afford this. There is more and more need for larger and larger groups of people which are simply outside. And it's not just somewhere out there in some Chinese gulag or Indonesia. Do you remember, was it reported in your media some two years ago, I think, a small town in the suburb of Florence, Firenze, Italy? A small wooden building burnt and some Chinese died. Then they discovered that in that area there are tens of thousands of Chinese illegal immigrant workers who effectively worked like slaves there. And that was a shock for us Europeans. It's easy to be sympathetic towards poor workers exploited in China or Indonesia. No, sorry, we have them there in the suburb of Florence, the very model of European high civilization and so on and so on. So again, what I am saying is that that's the problem today. If we do nothing, if we just say, "Let's, we are not living so bad, let's just go on slowly, slowly," I don't like what I see if we allow our societies to move spontaneously the way they do. Maybe it will not be a new catastrophe, but I claim we are approaching a new apartheid society. There are people who are in, there are people who are out. And there is even, why not put it like this, less and less democracy even. Democracy does survive, but in what form? I made this experiment often in the United States. I asked people when they claim to me, "Oh, why are you a communist? We are having quite a nice life here, we are free." I told them, "Okay, tell me precisely what do you mean by claiming I am free." And they always enumerated to me a series of personal freedoms of choice. You know, "I'm free means nobody will tell me what to do, I can go where I want, I can read what I want, I can listen to the music what whatever." This is a very nice thing, personal freedoms. I'm not against it. But I see two problems here. The first part is that in the authentic European tradition, which is not a monopoly of Europe, I as coming from Europe I try to isolate this again, is that true freedom is not just I as an individual can do what I want at the personal level. It's that I'm well aware that I live in a certain social context. And I want more than to choose among the options that I have, those which I prefer. What if I don't like, what if I feel that the entire social structure is oppressive, inefficient? Freedom should always include a freedom of a collective social action to change society itself. And that freedom is disappearing, I claim. It's becoming more and more unthinkable. And here you can see how ideology today functions in our everyday life. I don't know how much this is developed here in Turkey, but in the West, I admire the ruling ideology how it presents you as new freedoms the very form of unfreedom. For example, I don't know how it is again here with you, but in my own country, Slovenia... sorry? Ah, smoking, yes, I found this because I don't smoke but my wife is a chain smoker and you know that this is the greatest compliment I can give to you Turks. You know that in Slovenia, if somebody smokes like crazy we say, the everyday language expression, "But you are smoking like a Turk," you know. But you Turks are no longer smoking as a Turk, I discovered. You also have all this, you know. Let me be clear. I don't smoke, yes, we should punish tobacco companies and so on. But isn't it obvious that much more than just a fear of cancer is in this anti-smoking campaign? I claim you can clearly discern a very well articulated fear of the neighbor. Neighbor in the sense of your neighbor people. This is the our maybe it's more Christian obsession with, you know, as Sartre put it, L'enfer, c'est les autres, hell are others. The whole point of political correctness, of fight against harassment is how to keep the other at a proper distance. So that whatever you do, you shouldn't come too close to me. What is usually called sex... I am against harassment when it really means rape, threat and so on. But it often simply means keeping the other at a distance. So again, let me go on with this freedom-unfreedom. From another, not smoking, another example. In my country with shock I discovered that, I was not aware, of the people are already how do you call it? Precariat, with just precarious employment. And it's of course a horror if you are used to the old-fashioned workplace where, okay, you complain you are not well paid, but you have social security, health care, a stable job. This is now almost a privilege. More and more people what? You have to worry all the time, "Will I get a new contract?" or whatever. But the ruling ideology presents to you this as a new freedom. They say, "You see, you are not fixed, alienated, every year you can reinvent yourself again." And the nicest ideology here is the ideology of "we are all capitalists." The idea is then this one: let's say you are a poor worker who somehow gets a credit, you get a credit of I don't know, liras here, and then you are free to choose: will you take your family to a big holiday, will you invest it into university for your children, will you take better take care of your... and the idea is this one: "You see, you are acting like a small capitalist. You have a certain capital and you are investing it the way you want." You see how a situation which is in reality the situation of terrible anxiety, you cannot rely on it, you are not sure what happens, is presented to you as a new freedom. And this is why I think the category of the freedom of choice is a very ambiguous one. Of course, there is an authentic moment in it. Of course, I want to choose what books I read and so on and so on. But you know, there is a big problem about choices which are forced choices. First, these are choices where you don't even know the conditions of what you are choosing and so on and so on. So this would be my first point: that today freedom is more and more limited to this personal freedom of choice. On the other hand, and that's why I think we are right to protest, all those TISA, TiSA, TTIP, all those secret trade agreements. Are we aware what is happening here? Things are negotiated, agreements which will affect all of us in detail. If all these agreements, TiSA and so on, are enacted, then the coordinates of what our governments can do are severely limited. You cannot, for example, one of the secret clauses of this agreement is that let's say a foreign company invests in Turkey under present laws. Let's say years from now you will get a new more leftist government which will raise the taxes for the rich company. According to this agreement, the company has the right to prosecute your state. And the judge is not Turkish Supreme Court but some international monetary institution, whatever. What I am saying is that fundamental decisions are being taken, half in secret, we learned about TISA, TiSA when WikiLeaks disclosed them. And in a totally non-transparent non-democratic way. It's the same thing with... you have a clear idea of this with Greece and Brussels negotiations now. Varoufakis told me, he also wrote about this or talked about this in one interview. I love this detail. When he was negotiating, Varoufakis in Brussels, he was negotiating with some body, some finance ministers, they called that body European Board, something like this. And at some point he got furious and said, "What you are doing to us, it's illegal, it's blackmail, I want to prosecute you." And they looked at him and said, "Okay, try it, we'll see." Some bureaucrats left the room, came back one hour later and said, "You cannot prosecute us, why? Because we don't exist. We don't have a legal status." And as I wrote in a text recently for New Statesman, this reminded me of China, today's China. Do you know, it's a beautiful data, that in today's China, Communist Party doesn't legally exist. A dissident, a friend of my friend, I met his friend, not him, did something crazy. He went to a court and put a charge against Communist Party of China for the murder, for Tiananmen massacre. You know what happened? Two months after, he got a reply, "Sorry, we cannot work on your charge because we established that in all our registers, no organization called Communist Party of China exists." It's wonderfully done. You have an organization with no legal status, you know, this is which nonetheless controls everything. You know, Lenin spoke about dual power: state power but also workers organized. Here you have a slightly different dual power. You have all the legal state apparatuses and so on, they endorse, they accept laws. But then you have the Communist Party structure which has no legal status but in an almost obscene way everyone follows her. And in the same way we are approaching this... what horrified me with this Greece negotiations. It's not, okay, I don't think Greeks are innocent. They did exploit European Union and profit a lot. I'm not celebrating them as the heroes of independence and so on. I mean, everybody knows that Greece was till now a terribly inefficient clientelist state. But what I'm saying is that crucial decisions were taken. To whom, to whom did the Greek representatives spoke? To some body which had no legal status but nonetheless it decided about everything. That's, I claim, unfortunately, the type of authority that we are future that we are approaching. On the one hand we have our personal freedoms but the social context of our lives is more and more totally determined in advance. Let me go on. So where do we have move forward from Marx here? I think that, you find all this developed much more widely in my books, also in this big fat book... This was my dream, to write a book which is longer than the Bible and I think I've succeeded. Yeah, everyone has small obscene dreams, you know. Okay, let me go on. You know, for me, the problem with Marx, to simplify it very much, is that his... the communist dream is still capitalism without capitalism. Marx was deeply fascinated by capitalist productivity, immanent self-renovation. Marx wanted capitalism without what he perceived as the obstacle. Marx's idea is that at a certain point capitalist relations become an obstacle to its further development. At that point you have to make a social revolution and so on. I don't think that this works. I think that this obstacle is at the same time a condition of what it is an obstacle to. What do I mean by this? Now, okay, I'm a dirty old man, so I will give you a really problematic example, obscene slightly, so that you will get my point. Some time ago I was in Portugal, and an old lady, but not too old and still sexually attractive, voluptuous... I don't know, was she flirting with me or what, but she told me, "You know, my last lover, when he saw me naked, he told me that if I would just have lost two or three kilos my body would have been perfect." I told her, "Just don't do that. Because, you know, often when you have something which appears as a feature which spoils your beauty, but in reality it doesn't. Like precisely in so far as it disturbs your beauty, it creates the vision of this beauty." I told to this lady, "You lose two-three kilos, you will not have a perfect body. You will be just an average no one. You need two-three kilos too much so that people dream, 'Oh, without this two-three kilos you would be perfect.' But you lose two-three kilos, you also lose perfection, you know." And so something like this was Marx's mistake, if I may put it like this. He wanted capitalism without the two-three kilos of capitalist relations, you know. So we have to rethink again. I still think that Marx provided a wonderful definition of analysis of capitalist dynamics. But I think that his vision of revolution is obviously too short. If nothing else, the big problem is today: who is today's proletariat? Are these precarious workers? Are these the standard working class? Are these the unemployed? Are these all those who simply live outside in countries which, like Congo, which are simply outside our so-called civilized relations? We have to rethink everything. The main point, again I'm coming back to Hegel, the main point we should analyze is how... and here we should learn something from Hegel. Marx knew it but not always clearly. The material force of ideology. Ideology is not some high dream. No, ideology is our reality itself. In the sense of ideology is the way we in our reality live and interact with others. Marx made this very clear in his wonderful analysis of commodity fetishism. Where it's clear for Marx that the illusion that is commodity fetishism is not in our perception. We follow this illusion when we interact on the market. You know, is this very refined idea that our social reality itself can be structured like an illusion, but it's still reality. What do I mean by this? Let me give you now... I'm already probably talking too much. Where am I now? Could you tell me what, where time? to Okay, you know, as we learn from Derrida and deconstructionists, our big enemy is this metaphysical linear notion of time. So I will fight this by talking too much. Okay, sorry. Do you know this story? It's wonderful example of what I want to say of this power of symbolic fiction. Jean-Pierre Dupuy is a wonderful French and American theorist of catastrophes. He recently published a wonderful short book, Economy and the Future, which you should publish, otherwise you will be arrested for sabotaging progressive theory. And he mentions a story which is probably an old Arab story but then through him, Dupuy, it became popular and even Niklas Luhmann, the famous German sociologist, wrote a book about it. You probably know it: the story of the 12th camel. The story is that a rich Arab merchant dies... okay, not too rich. And he leaves to his three sons camels. He has three sons, he leaves to them as his heritage camels with precise instruction how they should be divided. He says: "The first son should get half of the camels, the second son one third and the third son one sixth." Of course, you cannot do it. You cannot get five and a half camel. Then a wise judge comes and he says: "I have a solution. I will add one camel of my own." And they ask him, "But will you get it back?" He tells them, the three sons, "Don't worry. I add one camel. Now we have camels. So now it works. The first son gets half, half of is The second son gets three, no, one quarter... no... one quarter of is And the third one gets two, one sixth is Now, remember, and is So one camel remains, I take it back. And everything works out. You see, this is my point is, of course, you don't even need in reality this camel. I claim maybe since I am unfortunately some kind of atheist, maybe the 12th camel is one of the names of God, you know. God is like the 12th camel: you have to add it as a fiction so that things function, you know. But it doesn't matter if it exists or not. And I don't have time to go into it now, but my idea was precisely to develop this logic of necessary fictions, of how at some point things... we need a lie to see the truth of a situation. You can... if you, like here, we have to invent another camel to do it. Let me give you some simple examples. Did you see a film which is not a great film but interesting leftist paranoia, Roman Polanski, The Ghost, based on the novel by Robert Harris? Where the story is wonderful simple one: a journalist discovers that Tony Blair was from the very beginning trained, was planted to the United Kingdom as an American agent. That his wife was a CIA agent and that Americans educated Tony Blair to have a perfect pro-American president. And in a review of this film, some American newspaper, I forgot which one, said, "Although we know this is not true, but once you accept it everything becomes clear," you know. Like this is what Tony Blair was effectively doing. Another example here, similar one. I remember when I was young, in communist Yugoslavia, we had these political jokes, which incidentally were not so much in Yugoslavia as especially in Central European communist countries like Czech Republic, East Germany and Poland. They were excellent. When people ask me, "Did Europe lose anything with the fall of communism?", I say, "Yes, the spiritual loss is the disappearance of good political jokes." Because they were not just jokes, they had an excellent melancholic spirituality. Like my favorite Polish one, maybe you heard it, there was even a movie on this. This is the best definition of life that I know. What is life? Life is a disease which is transmitted by sex and always ends in death. Isn't this absolutely a true definition of life? Okay. So, I remember when I was young, we were obsessed by the idea that political jokes are not really subversive. Rumors were that there was an ultra-secret department of the secret police where they were fabricating political jokes. Not the jokes about the enemies, but the jokes about our own politicians. The idea was a very primitive one but I think basically true. In this way people instead of protesting too much were telling jokes to each other, in this way they were able to express their anger, it made situation much more bearable. Now although, and I spoke with many people who afterwards when the archives were open investigated this, unfortunately no, there were no ultra-secret departments producing political jokes. But nonetheless there is something true in this idea. Precisely. The truth is that jokes, political jokes, played, played a constructive role from the standpoint of those in power. Or, my last example here. Unfortunately, I think that Marx's idea, traditional, of communism is also this type of a lie. It's not true, it's a utopia. Not a utopia because it's too crazy, but a utopia because it's not radical enough. But still it allows us to see bourgeois capitalist society the way it really is and so on and so on. Now, to return to Hegel again. Because what I wanted to do from here, I don't have time, read it in the book, is to go from this idea of necessary lies to the idea of so-called counterfactuals. You know, like, you imagine not only how things are but how things might have been. And the point is that the way things might have been is crucial for how things are. Things are not just what they are, what they might have been but are not is part of their definition. And I think in another book that you were kind or crazy enough to publish of mine, on Lubitsch, I think I probably quote there the joke which is for me, I'm sorry if you know the story, the best Hegelian joke that I know, a very simple one. It's from Ernst Lubitsch's film Ninotchka. The joke you must know, it's a very simple one, it's a joke told as a joke within the film. A guy enters a cafeteria and says, "Can I have coffee but without cream?". You know what the waiter answers? "Sorry, we ran out of coffee but we still have milk, so I can only give you coffee without milk. I cannot give you coffee without cream because we don't have it." You see, this is what Hegel means by determinate negation. Although it's materially the same, but the same just pure coffee. But coffee without milk it's not the same as coffee without cream. It... you see, part of the definition of an entity is what it negates. And in the same way then I wanted... I didn't have time, read it in the book, to develop this idea of multiple narratives. That what one has, the story that one tells, should always be read against the background of other stories. And the best example for me is first the Bible. You remember, you must, the seven last words of, of, of Jesus Christ. You remember, like, what are they? I don't know. "It's finished", "I am thirsty", "forget them, they don't know what they are doing, father", blah-blah-blah. I think it's totally wrong and this is why the two religious films, Mel Gibson's Passion and the one which is really Franco Zeffirelli's, which are disgusting, are wrong. They try to construct one linear narrative: first Christ says "I am thirsty", then he gets a drink and says "now it's finished" and so on. No, the point is that all of them are true but not at the same level of reality. And the truth is not one of them. You know, it's precisely one has to think this... one has to think this, as it were, this multiplicity as original. And this I think is again so terribly important today when we live under pressure of what I cannot but call enemy propaganda. It's not the old-fashioned communist propaganda. But what are we repeatedly told, like the Greeks were told recently? It's what with a feminine name we designate as TINA: T-I-N-A, There Is No Alternative. The one big message to Greece was, "Sorry, don't even dream about it, there is no alternative." Or as they put it in a nicer way: every alternative will mean just catastrophe, economic chaos or whatever and so on and so on. And things are really getting crazy because as I've written repeatedly, I know closely Syriza. And it's crazy if you look at what Varoufakis and others wanted from Europe, it's something which years ago would have been a very elementary modest middle-of-the-road social democratic program. In what crazy times do we live so that what half a century ago was a totally acceptable social democratic program, much less radical than what at that time they were doing in Sweden, today you are proclaimed crazy radically leftist lunatic or whatever. So in these times when again enemy propaganda, as Alain Badiou put it nicely, the goal of enemy propaganda is not to destroy the enemy, police is doing this, it's to destroy hope. Enemy propaganda tries to convince us no change is possible, it will only make things worse and so on and so on. Here I think we should at least learn to dream. But to dream in a correct way, because dreams are a very dangerous thing. I now finished a new text, the title of which is The Need to Censor Our Dreams. You know because precisely when we dream about a different society, we usually reproduce all the prejudices and so on and so on. So again, why do we have to learn this? Because you know what makes me sad? For example, Greece. It's easy to bring million people to the street to demonstrate. I'm tired of these left triumphs and then we all cry out of pleasure, "So beautiful, sublime, million people". The only thing that interests me more and more is the day after. Like the true measure of social change are not the ecstatic moments we were all there but how will the change be felt well, weeks later when things return to normal. For example with you here, I'm not making fun of your, of your Gezi or whatever demonstrations, no. Taksim Square demonstrations. It was something like I claim the results of the last elections, the success of HDP and the social democratic Kemalist party, however you call them, something did remain. Even in Egypt, something did remain. Friends are telling me Egypt is nonetheless not the same as before. You have civil society, trade unions, students, families. But don't you agree with me that I don't like just these big pathetic explosions. I mean, we... you know it's easy to oppose capital. That's the tragic thing in big... you know for me this was the worst Greek tragedy what happened two weeks ago, almost theater of the absurd as my friend Stathis Kouvelakis said. You had on Sunday big referendum NO, and next day the government does exactly the opposite. The government which was... I don't blame them, Syriza. Incidentally, if you ask me personally, I think they did the right thing in making this compromise, although it makes me terribly sad. Because they told me that the situation was so incredibly probably if they were to do Grexit, Varoufakis thinks that for at least the next two-three years the standard of living would have fallen for another minimal There would have been hunger, chaos, probably right-wing demonstrations and so on. But it was a total deadlock, a tragic situation. And that's the problem today. It's easy to have demonstrations for democracy, these rights, those rights, but then you touch a certain limit, capital, when you really disturb the capital. At that point things get serious. And just a very short, you are now my superego, conclude. I also think that you know, I never like this leftist mantra against the representative democracy, I know it has its limits. "We should be active, engaged" and so on. Well first let's be frank: majority is never really engaged. I hope you were aware of this even when you had your great moments Taksim Square and so on, let's be frank. You had what? Maybe support. Maybe more in Istanbul but not all around. Like in... sorry? Less even. Yes. And we should be aware... and I don't despise ordinary people. My god, they are desperate, they worry how they will survive and so on. So what I'm... my society, the society which we should fight for, it's not some stupid society where every afternoon we would be engaged in some local democracy, how we provide for children, for health care. I want an anonymous society where things function, some anonymous machinery does it, and I can do my dirty job that I enjoy, read, write books and so on. I think we should stop with this obsession of permanent engagement. We have to learn passivity. And to conclude, now really conclude, with a joke. I warn you it's a softly dirty joke. I hope I'm not repeating myself but there are so many people here, majority of you did not hear it. An example of what I mean by passivity. Two years ago, I think, maybe some of you know it, I'm sorry, Guardian magazine asked me a stupid question, "Is sexual romance still possible today?". And my answer was "Yes, but how?". You know that in sexuality you have now all those plastic instruments: plastic penis, vibrator. And I claim this would have been true modern sex. I make a date with a lady. "Okay, we will make love." Then on the top of it you must, I hope you know, we not only have these vibrators, we also have... they have a terrible name: stamina training unit. Plastic vaginas, which you also put on electricity and they shake and you have all possible entrances: anus, mouth, okay. My idea sex would be this one. I come there with my stamina training unit, lady comes at a date with her plastic penis. And we connect with electricity both machines, we put plastic penis into vagina and the two machines are buzzing enjoying each other. Then I sit down with the lady and we have tea and it's wonderful. We have no duty to enjoy, machines are already enjoying there. And then the journalist asked me, "But where is romance here, sex?". I said, "Okay, we talk and talk and maybe at some point when I pour tea to her our hands meet and they meet more and who knows, maybe even we end up in bed, but without any pressure." You know, we already did our duty to sex. Machines are doing it for us. And this is a serious problem because I don't know how it is with you, but in Western Europe where we live in hedonism, all my psychoanalytic friends are telling me that the problem today is not prohibition. The problem is that patients feel a kind of a social command: it's your duty to enjoy. If you don't have good sexual pressure... So the big task here is to get rid of this pressure to enjoy. The task of psychoanalysis today is not to get you rid of paternal prohibitions so that you have to enjoy. No, what you have to get rid of is this pressure to enjoy. You know, we have to learn to to step back, to take a distance. Maybe we are even in some way too much engaged today. Sometimes reflection, a moment of reflection is crucial. Because what is happening today? Are we aware in what strange times we live? What is happening with ecology, what is happening, I always repeat this, I'm fascinated: brain sciences and, and biogenetics. My god, we're already able to connect our brain to machines and so on. Everything will change. What does this mean? We don't know it. The time for patient thinking is now. That's why I think more than the time for Marx it's today a time for Hegel. Hegel's dogma is when you try to do something things always go wrong and then problems begin. How you... you have to do it the second time, you know. And that's our task today. I'm very grateful to you for this patience. I also enjoyed this class privilege, you know: there are those who are in the shadow and there are those who are not in the shadow. I was privileged but I'm really grateful for your patience. Thank you very much. I hope that you did it in a good communist Stalinist way, that you distributed the questions and now you organize everything. Yes, because you know this is a nice joke. Some years ago I spoke in my country with an old communist and I asked him, "Are you afraid or do you allow a free debate?". He said, "No, we communists want to hear what people think, we like free open debate. But we know that in order to prevent enemy provocations, free debate has to be especially well prepared," you know. That's why... I can easily respond you, especially as a Leninist, because the great... we can accuse Lenin of whatever we want, terrorism and so on, but in national question he was radical. You know that Lenin even had a debate with Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxemburg's position to simplify it was Russia should give autonomy or independence to small nations, but only if the good guys win there, you know, our allies. And Lenin said, "No, it doesn't matter. Finland, Baltic Republic, even if reactionaries take power there, we should give all of them freedom." Which is why it's important to know already in '22 Stalin attacked Lenin as a bourgeois liberal nationalist because of this. And this is why it made me a little bit sad when I saw a year ago or when, demonstrators in Kyiv destroying Lenin's statues. Okay, I understand them, Lenin was for them Soviet Union. But nonetheless do you know that Ukraine as a nation didn't exist before Bolsheviks? In Tsarist Russia they didn't have their language, it was prohibited. Only Russian was and so on. It's Bolsheviks in 1920s that established Ukraine as a full nation with their own language, university, literature. And then Stalin counter-attacked in early '30s. So precisely as a Leninist I would say... I don't know in detail the situation but I would say I don't know what the concrete solution should be. But definitely not only freedom to Kurds but even some kind of I don't know how to do it formally, informally, unification. Why not? Kurds in Syria, in Iraq, in Turkey somehow. I'm not saying anything against any of the existing states. And now I must apologize to my Turkish friends, because when I was here years ago I made some unfortunate remarks about progressive aspects of Ottoman Empire. And they told me, "Are you crazy?" and so on. No, but what I found attractive in the idea of Ottoman Empire is precisely that it was multinational, much more open, confederate. Don't forget that the two crimes as it looks committed by Turks, Armenian genocide and the treatment of Kurds, as far as I know this began precisely with Young Turks, that is to say when Turkey wanted to imitate a modern Western nation state. So you know what I mean. I am not idealizing, it was a decadent regime, horrible, I don't have any soft spot for Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Empire is for me just the same as in my country Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was horror. But it was a much more tolerant multinational unity. In this sense, of course, I support it. I just don't know enough to... I don't know the... what would have been for me the best solution. One solution but I am now totally dreaming would have been Kurds from the north of Iraq joining Turkish Kurds and making an autonomous republic, maybe within a larger Turkey, maybe I don't know with whom. You know this is political contingency. But absolutely, I absolutely support it. I think that the only true internationalism goes through this recognition of nations' rights. And Lenin also... we should also be very careful about something else. Quite often when you have a big nation and a smaller oppressed nation, this nation can be even worse towards its own minorities down there. Like my Canadian friends and their French Canadians, Quebec, told me that although Quebecois, Quebec people wanted independence against English oppression, but they are much more brutal towards Eskimos and Indians, towards their own, you know. So here things are very sensitive and I'm here... I'm here pretty open. I think that national ethnic autonomy functions perfectly in global capitalism, so I don't think there is even anything very revolutionary here. I think that the frame of global capitalism is no longer nation state. So I don't see... some people even think, maybe they are right, that we are approaching a model of nation states which is the mega success story today, Singapore, which is a nation state. I heard in China that there are tendencies in the more developed south, Shanghai and so on, to develop it. So again I'm now just turning in circle repeating myself but my point would have been that maybe this is a dream, but a truly great Turkish politician should have invented a formula in which full autonomy of Kurds would make Turkey stronger. It can be done, I claim, in a way with intelligent politics. It's false dilemma: either you screw the Kurds or they threaten your identity. This is not necessary. This choice is necessary only within a certain logic. So yes, all my sympathy. What can I say? I don't know. You know, we always talk about how the leftists go crazy over some unity at some point and then they define an alternative society but then talk about it in the future as a dream. Yes, yes, I agree. Like what I think is that nowadays there needs to be kind of like, because the real social project, the real social... socialism failed. Yeah. And leftists are always kind of bringing that back into the picture. So nowadays capitalism... But sorry, I will immediately give you the word back. You know, the paradox is that not only it failed, but, and this is for me the ultimate perversion: in most of the countries where old communists are still in power, they are the most brutal managers of capitalism. That's the paradox. I mean, this is what I told once to Fukuyama. I said, "Okay, you won. But are you aware that Chinese Communist Party is the best manager of it?". Sorry, please go on. My point is that what needs to be done in my opinion is that we need to have new paradigms that we can maybe mystify as well to get people behind them. No, I agree with you deeply. That is to say, first, I like that you use the word paradigm, paradigma, because that's how I play with my Greek friends. I tell them the big name now is Syntagma Square. You know, Syntagma means in linguistics syntagme, but it's also constitution. And I told them, you need to move from syntagma to paradigm, you know. Syntagma are big demonstrations. Then where is the paradigm then, where is the new paradigm? And here there is the poverty of the left, I claim. So I was going to bring it back to the Kurdish issue and was going to say that they have a new paradigm. Do they? I'm glad, no, it's not a cynical skeptical question. I would like to know, do they have it? They have a paradigm based on Öcalan's unit, it's called democratic confederalism. So instead of calling it socialism they call it democratic confederalism. It's not as anti-capitalist maybe as the real socialism, but nonetheless it manages to take people behind it, you know. So it creates a mass movement and it gives purpose to the people, which... Okay, but I still am, you know at what level skeptical? First, it would do to Kurdish people a lot of good, I don't doubt it. But what will be... will it be anything more than just a new successful unit in global capitalism? That's what's going to be the question. It's an experimental thing, it's open-minded at least. Yeah. So, I mean, I was going to ask you what you think about the project in Rojava or what the PKK... Well, I will not bluff my way here. I mean, I don't know enough about it here, but maybe this will be an answer. I don't like the left like in Greece, that official KKE or what they have also a three-letter Communist Party which is a very radical Stalinist one. For them, the traitor is not Gorbachev but Khrushchev. They still celebrate... and their position is: "Syriza are cheap social democratic reformists, we should wait for the authentic proletarian revolution." I claim: yes, you wait and do nothing. I claim that today in the situation that we are, our procedure should be this metaphor I propose. The art today is not to wait for a big radical change, but to do small steps which may even appear totally acceptable. But in reality, once you try to do this, you will have to do more and more. I will give you an example here which may surprise you. I still have a certain fondness for President Obama. I know all the stupid things he did or didn't do. But the debate on universal healthcare that he triggered in the United States was obviously such a shock. You know, Republicans brought him to Supreme Court and so on. The greatest American actor, Chuck Norris, you remember, proclaimed him a communist or whatever. You see, in United States to talk about universal healthcare is a very radical move. And what I like about it is that it appears a very modest question. You can say: wait a minute, Western Europe has it, Canada has it. That's, you know, it's like I will give you this metaphor that I like. I like this naive science fiction stories where as they say, "You press a wrong button." You know, you think it's just one button, you press it and then water here, everything disappears around. It happened in one of my early books I recorded it. Sorry, it's an old story, maybe some of you know it but it's my favorite book. Once I was with friends staying in a small flat in Paris. And there was a cold wave, everything was frozen. I went to the toilet, I flushed the water at the end. And later it was easy to explain what was frozen, defrozen. But the effect for me was horror. All I did is I pushed the button, the water to flush. Then the water went on, on, the water started to drop from the top. At the end, the whole apartment was flooded, police had to come to take me out on their hands because they were afraid that water was already dangerous for... But you see what I mean? You press something and everything falls, no? We have to find such... like in United States this is one point. In Europe, obviously the Greek demands were such point. And I totally agree here that what Kurds are demanding there is another such point. We should not be afraid of apparently modest demands. I learned this also from my communist past where we were, okay not big but small dissident, and we learned this in communism: to make at least at the end when nobody believed in communism, to make a big demand: "End of communism, capitalism is better", you didn't risk a lot because you threatened no one. But if you just said, "That functionary should step down, we should replace that bloc", a very modest thing, it was much more dangerous, you know. Often apparently modest proposals are much more dangerous because they really trigger a movement. So again, in this sense, all I can say without knowing any details because you know, I am a decadent guy, I watch my films and so on, for me reality is something which imitates films but fails, you know. So I cannot give you a concrete judgment. But basically I agree with you, I am against false radicalism precisely because I am a radical. I want to... you see the Greek Communist Party with its radicalism did nothing. Syriza with its modesty at least it did introduce some movement. It's so good to see you. I come... the first comment is there was the Lenin, I think the very... I see this as a success of the communist as well... sorry, please, please. The International, the Big International, also their song. And I think the way Lenin looks like, he looks like a Tatar. And I think that he... But he was one, one quarter, yes. Yeah, yeah. Because the town he studied was Kazan, that is now the capital of the Tatars and so on. And I think this is... Nationalism is a result of the French Revolution and also it brings Nazis and so on. So I think it's better we leave all the nationalisms and also the ethnic nationalisms behind us. Yeah but you know, I see your point. But my problem is this one: from where are you saying this? For example, in ex-Yugoslavia, the Serbs, I have nothing against them, but who were the biggest nation, were also saying this because they knew if we leave this aside they win, you know. They have... In China, the Han majority is also saying this. You know what I mean, you cannot simply leave it behind because when you leave it behind you have to have some common language shared medium. Who will determine that medium? Another thing I want to answer when you said Lenin, Tatar and so on. You know what fascinated me in Russia terribly, how if you ask Russians where did Stalinism come from, you get two totally opposed answers. From Eurocentric and maybe Western people they claim, "Oh, Stalinism came because revolution happened at the wrong place. If it were to happen in Western Europe, it would have been democratic. In Russia because of its Asiatic past, primitive people, it was that." Now, it's so interesting if you talk with conservative Russians, they give you exactly the opposite story. They say the tragedy of Russia is that every to years a despot wants in a brutal way to westernize, modernize. First it was Ivan Grozny, Ivan the Terrible, then it was Peter the Great, at the end it was basically Stalin. So for them Bolshevism, communism is not authentically Russian, but it's a brutal Western modernization. And you see, so again I think that both of them are in a way right, but I think there is here I agree maybe with you that it's... there is
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more truth in the Western, sorry, in the in this Russian reaction because I never like this racist idea of you know, "only we in the West can really understand democracy". You know and Greeks are my mega-friends now, but I must tell you that when I was in Greece years ago, I will not name them of course, some of my Greek friends, radical
more truth in the Western, sorry, in the in this Russian reaction because I never like this racist idea of you know, "only we in the West can really understand democracy". You know and Greeks are my mega-friends now, but I must tell you that when I was in Greece years ago, I will not name them of course, some of my Greek friends, radical
Slavoj Žižek
leftists, privately
leftists, privately
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told me like, "But you know, we have to admit it, democracy is for civilized people and for some others it is not." And then I told him, "Okay, cut the bullshit, you too?"
told me like, "But you know, we have to admit it, democracy is for civilized people and for some others it is not." And then I told him, "Okay, cut the bullshit, you too?"
Slavoj Žižek
Basically he meant it's for us Greeks but not for the Turks, you know. Like I mean it's incredible how even with leftists who appear to be so progressive or whatever you encounter a certain limit, you encounter a certain limit here, no? So again, I agree with you. I am totally if you want an internationalist. I only know that you know, there is internationalism and internationalism. I mean, for example, and I don't care,
Basically he meant it's for us Greeks but not for the Turks, you know. Like I mean it's incredible how even with leftists who appear to be so progressive or whatever you encounter a certain limit, you encounter a certain limit here, no? So again, I agree with you. I am totally if you want an internationalist. I only know that you know, there is internationalism and internationalism. I mean, for example, and I don't care,
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we were a small nation then, the right-wingers even now in Slovenia always bring out what not so much Marx and Engels wrote against southern Slavs.
we were a small nation then, the right-wingers even now in Slovenia always bring out what not so much Marx and Engels wrote against southern Slavs.
Slavoj Žižek
Engels uses a wonderful metaphor, he says: "No wonder these nations are reactionary when their very existence is a reaction, like a remainder of an ancient past, so they will have to disappear." And Engels then ironically says because at that time they were building this how to call it, railway to Turkey, no? He said, "Okay, we should give them autonomy but not the right to mess with pan-European railway
Engels uses a wonderful metaphor, he says: "No wonder these nations are reactionary when their very existence is a reaction, like a remainder of an ancient past, so they will have to disappear." And Engels then ironically says because at that time they were building this how to call it, railway to Turkey, no? He said, "Okay, we should give them autonomy but not the right to mess with pan-European railway
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to Turkey," you know. Turkey you were the good guys, Germany was the good
to Turkey," you know. Turkey you were the good guys, Germany was the good
Slavoj Žižek
guys, all in between were bad
guys, all in between were bad
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guys. So you know, like, you know, this is one of the lessons of Hegel. Something appears a neutral universality, but then you look closely and you see that this universality is not really neutral. Ah, sorry, another argument that you find from, is very interesting
guys. So you know, like, you know, this is one of the lessons of Hegel. Something appears a neutral universality, but then you look closely and you see that this universality is not really neutral. Ah, sorry, another argument that you find from, is very interesting
Slavoj Žižek
one because it's true: from Russians who claim that Bolshevism is not Russian. It's true but I find this rather sympathetic. You know that if you look at the original national structure of Cheka and then NKVD, Soviet secret police, you
one because it's true: from Russians who claim that Bolshevism is not Russian. It's true but I find this rather sympathetic. You know that if you look at the original national structure of Cheka and then NKVD, Soviet secret police, you
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know
know
Slavoj Žižek
that at the beginning the strongest groups were Baltic people and Jews, Only in Stalin's time Russians became a majority there. Of course, for conservative Russians this is the proof that you know, Russia was, Russians were the victims and so on and so on. So again, generally I agree with you: internationalism. Especially because I claim we are approaching a state where we will no longer be able to solve problem at national level. Look, I was telling this to my friends before, I spoke with that guy Fukuyama, no, Dupuy, who told me, "Do you know that when Fukushima exploded for one day Japanese government was in a panic, they thought they will have to remove the entire Tokyo area that it will be too contaminated." Can you imagine how to do this? Where? It wouldn't be possible to remain on Japanese island. Probably they would have to ask Russia for some Kamchatka or whatever. So what I'm saying is that ecological topic is one of the eras, sorry, one of the domains where it's no longer question of national identities. We have to do it together or we will die together. And just if I finish with this old improvisation of mine, I like ecology as an example of how ideology functions today. I don't know how much is it developed here in Turkey but in my country, in Western Europe, America, the predominant ecological ideology is this one. It serves perfectly big capital. They tell you: "Don't criticize society, that's easy. Ask yourself as an individual, what did you do against ecology? Did you recycle all Coca-Cola cans? Did you put all newspapers...". And this is wonderful operation. It blocks you, it makes you feel responsible personally so that then instead of confronting the big problems, our industry and so on, you as an obsessionals you put all the newspapers aside and so on and then even you feel satisfied: "You see, I did my duty towards mother nature and so on." And no one is disturbed, just you feel better and so on. No, in ecology precisely we should not individualize in this way: "Like what, what did you do?". No, I mean the problem is not that, it's ridiculous to mention this. Ecology is I think a problem which is a mega serious problem but at the same time full of ideology, of mystifications and so on. Hi, hi, how you doing? Oh, I'm still alive unfortunately, yes. Well, that's actually my question. Uh, what? You're going to kill yourself? No, no, no, please don't. You're such an intense guy and I've been listening to your lectures for years, I'm sure everyone else has. What do you do to relax? Oh, no, I am unfortunately, I am not kidding. Once or a week, at least once a month I go to emergency ward for having fake heart attack, for having panic attacks and so on and so on. No, no, no, no, it's you know, I am imitating a little bit you know that ridiculous racist image of a, of a manic-depressive Russian. High active, active and then he is down. Well, you see me when I am active, no? I can guarantee you that one hour from now I will be in the hotel room, maybe reading a good South Korean detective novel, probably, no? No, you know, seriously now. You know how I do it? I learn to disconnect, you know. That's why I like, you know what's my idea of paradise? That once I flew I don't know from what country to what, there were some flights were canceled and for two days I stayed I think in Los Angeles but I didn't go to the city. At the airport, in an anonymous hotel room for two days no one knew me there, it was paradise. I was just reading, listening to music and so on, you
that at the beginning the strongest groups were Baltic people and Jews, Only in Stalin's time Russians became a majority there. Of course, for conservative Russians this is the proof that you know, Russia was, Russians were the victims and so on and so on. So again, generally I agree with you: internationalism. Especially because I claim we are approaching a state where we will no longer be able to solve problem at national level. Look, I was telling this to my friends before, I spoke with that guy Fukuyama, no, Dupuy, who told me, "Do you know that when Fukushima exploded for one day Japanese government was in a panic, they thought they will have to remove the entire Tokyo area that it will be too contaminated." Can you imagine how to do this? Where? It wouldn't be possible to remain on Japanese island. Probably they would have to ask Russia for some Kamchatka or whatever. So what I'm saying is that ecological topic is one of the eras, sorry, one of the domains where it's no longer question of national identities. We have to do it together or we will die together. And just if I finish with this old improvisation of mine, I like ecology as an example of how ideology functions today. I don't know how much is it developed here in Turkey but in my country, in Western Europe, America, the predominant ecological ideology is this one. It serves perfectly big capital. They tell you: "Don't criticize society, that's easy. Ask yourself as an individual, what did you do against ecology? Did you recycle all Coca-Cola cans? Did you put all newspapers...". And this is wonderful operation. It blocks you, it makes you feel responsible personally so that then instead of confronting the big problems, our industry and so on, you as an obsessionals you put all the newspapers aside and so on and then even you feel satisfied: "You see, I did my duty towards mother nature and so on." And no one is disturbed, just you feel better and so on. No, in ecology precisely we should not individualize in this way: "Like what, what did you do?". No, I mean the problem is not that, it's ridiculous to mention this. Ecology is I think a problem which is a mega serious problem but at the same time full of ideology, of mystifications and so on. Hi, hi, how you doing? Oh, I'm still alive unfortunately, yes. Well, that's actually my question. Uh, what? You're going to kill yourself? No, no, no, please don't. You're such an intense guy and I've been listening to your lectures for years, I'm sure everyone else has. What do you do to relax? Oh, no, I am unfortunately, I am not kidding. Once or a week, at least once a month I go to emergency ward for having fake heart attack, for having panic attacks and so on and so on. No, no, no, no, it's you know, I am imitating a little bit you know that ridiculous racist image of a, of a manic-depressive Russian. High active, active and then he is down. Well, you see me when I am active, no? I can guarantee you that one hour from now I will be in the hotel room, maybe reading a good South Korean detective novel, probably, no? No, you know, seriously now. You know how I do it? I learn to disconnect, you know. That's why I like, you know what's my idea of paradise? That once I flew I don't know from what country to what, there were some flights were canceled and for two days I stayed I think in Los Angeles but I didn't go to the city. At the airport, in an anonymous hotel room for two days no one knew me there, it was paradise. I was just reading, listening to music and so on, you
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know.
know.
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I want to be disconnected. I hate cell phones. Cell phones are for slaves,
I want to be disconnected. I hate cell phones. Cell phones are for slaves,
Slavoj Žižek
you are accessible. I disconnect my, I connect my cell phone when I want to call others. I
you are accessible. I disconnect my, I connect my cell phone when I want to call others. I
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don't want to be accessible to others, you know. So again, the, that's why I have,
don't want to be accessible to others, you know. So again, the, that's why I have,
Slavoj Žižek
as you must have felt minutes ago, this aversion against engagement, you know. No, I
as you must have felt minutes ago, this aversion against engagement, you know. No, I
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want to live in peace. And I hate this fake idea... this is how Bill Gates talks like, "Oh my god, children are starving in Africa, how can you..." and so on and so on. And this will sound horrible because of course I don't mean it literally. But at a certain point you
want to live in peace. And I hate this fake idea... this is how Bill Gates talks like, "Oh my god, children are starving in Africa, how can you..." and so on and so on. And this will sound horrible because of course I don't mean it literally. But at a certain point you
Slavoj Žižek
should say "fuck that, even if all children in Africa drop dead I want to relax", you know. That's the only way to really help them. And now he's giving his secret freemason communist sign for... conclusion. Hello. Um, although although it doesn't have any concrete solutions yet, what do you think of the Zeitgeist movement proposed by Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph if you're familiar with it? I will tell you something horrible. I will not bluff, I bluff enough otherwise. Except knowing the names, I don't know anything about it to give
should say "fuck that, even if all children in Africa drop dead I want to relax", you know. That's the only way to really help them. And now he's giving his secret freemason communist sign for... conclusion. Hello. Um, although although it doesn't have any concrete solutions yet, what do you think of the Zeitgeist movement proposed by Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph if you're familiar with it? I will tell you something horrible. I will not bluff, I bluff enough otherwise. Except knowing the names, I don't know anything about it to give
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a qualified
a qualified
Slavoj Žižek
judgment. My... I am very narrow, you know. I read... I feel almost obscene mentioning politics because when I write or talk about politics it's all kind of a common sense, everyone knows it. My love is deep Hegelian theory, psychoanalytic theory and so on and so on. I would love to live in a society where I wouldn't have to deal with politics. But just with totally abstract theory. So I... and I think again, we need... I think we need more of that. That's why to give you the last provocation... also I apologize if you heard this already... You know everybody praises that statement by Marx, you know, thesis "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it." The greatest stupidity that was ever told. First, who were these philosophers who only wanted to interpret it? None of them. Plato wanted to... All great philosophers have a plan how to change it. I know only one philosopher who didn't have such a plan: Hegel. And he contributed most to really change it. So I think we shouldn't be terrorized by this attitude which is today deeply conformist, you know. Things should be useful. No, all great inventions of humanity happened as a byproduct. You didn't tell to you, yourself, "I want to do something useful." You just play by an idea and by some strange chance as a byproduct of... This is a wonderful point with which I, if I understood you correctly, I deeply agree because I used this example and I was already physically once attacked by some ecologists because of this, when I make a simple statement and
judgment. My... I am very narrow, you know. I read... I feel almost obscene mentioning politics because when I write or talk about politics it's all kind of a common sense, everyone knows it. My love is deep Hegelian theory, psychoanalytic theory and so on and so on. I would love to live in a society where I wouldn't have to deal with politics. But just with totally abstract theory. So I... and I think again, we need... I think we need more of that. That's why to give you the last provocation... also I apologize if you heard this already... You know everybody praises that statement by Marx, you know, thesis "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it." The greatest stupidity that was ever told. First, who were these philosophers who only wanted to interpret it? None of them. Plato wanted to... All great philosophers have a plan how to change it. I know only one philosopher who didn't have such a plan: Hegel. And he contributed most to really change it. So I think we shouldn't be terrorized by this attitude which is today deeply conformist, you know. Things should be useful. No, all great inventions of humanity happened as a byproduct. You didn't tell to you, yourself, "I want to do something useful." You just play by an idea and by some strange chance as a byproduct of... This is a wonderful point with which I, if I understood you correctly, I deeply agree because I used this example and I was already physically once attacked by some ecologists because of this, when I make a simple statement and
unknown
some friends of mine told me that it's
some friends of mine told me that it's
Slavoj Žižek
even as far as they can tell empirically true, namely: I claim the majority of people who buy organic apples whatever, they don't buy it because they really believe it's better. They buy it because it makes them feel better for ideology. "My god you see, I did something for mother earth, I'm part of a great movement" and... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an extra product. You pay more for ideological effect. "Isn't it wonderful, I did something" and so on. It's... it's... it's ideological. And my, here I'm evil, it's probably not. But my idea is that let's say I'm growing apples. First I select all the beautiful apples and I sell them as normal corrupted whatever. Then the half-rotten apples I double the price and sell them as ecological apples. I always have a... no, it's not as simple as that, I know. But what you said, you know where you have this effect even worse? I hate when people present to you these they call them sustainable houses, you know, where solar electricity or... yeah, but you know that to produce one such house you spend more energy than the whole workers' block. I spoke with a very intelligent German ecologist, I love him, who told me from real ecological standpoint the best thing would have been not these ecological houses in the middle of the forest but people living in big crowded cities like Istanbul, all packed there. Because you know if we are all here we mostly pollute each other and much of nature remains clean. This ecologically correct, "let's go back to nature", and then each of us a small house, we produce water from the local streams... ecological catastrophe, it's over I mean. I mean, the only... second thing, I think we should get rid of... first what you said yes again this that yes, definitely that's the problem for me not only with ecology but even more with political correctness. For example harassment. Of course my god we women, minorities are harassed, I totally agree. But you know if you visit many American academic institutions, you can see that there is a much more obscure and dark ideological dimension. When all these well-paid professors talk about harassment, they are really afraid of coming too close to lower classes. Because when they talk about violence against women, talking dirty, they mean the poor people who don't have these exquisite manners and so on. So for example it's so... harassment and so on but you are not allowed to say "black person" with them, you should say "African American", you are not allowed to say "Indian", you should say "Native American", incidentally a term which Indians hate. Because they say "we are native Americans, so you white are cultural Americans or what", you know. They are well aware. So what I am saying is that the lesson I am getting from you and I agree with you is how behind all these pseudo-emancipatory movements, ecology and so on, there are so many class and class investments, ideological investments, we should be... we should be very careful about it. And again that's my problem with political correctness. For example, once I was interrupted in United States... it's an old story, you must know it... when I was telling a dirty joke. And I told them, "But are you afraid what you are doing now? All working class ordinary people
even as far as they can tell empirically true, namely: I claim the majority of people who buy organic apples whatever, they don't buy it because they really believe it's better. They buy it because it makes them feel better for ideology. "My god you see, I did something for mother earth, I'm part of a great movement" and... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an extra product. You pay more for ideological effect. "Isn't it wonderful, I did something" and so on. It's... it's... it's ideological. And my, here I'm evil, it's probably not. But my idea is that let's say I'm growing apples. First I select all the beautiful apples and I sell them as normal corrupted whatever. Then the half-rotten apples I double the price and sell them as ecological apples. I always have a... no, it's not as simple as that, I know. But what you said, you know where you have this effect even worse? I hate when people present to you these they call them sustainable houses, you know, where solar electricity or... yeah, but you know that to produce one such house you spend more energy than the whole workers' block. I spoke with a very intelligent German ecologist, I love him, who told me from real ecological standpoint the best thing would have been not these ecological houses in the middle of the forest but people living in big crowded cities like Istanbul, all packed there. Because you know if we are all here we mostly pollute each other and much of nature remains clean. This ecologically correct, "let's go back to nature", and then each of us a small house, we produce water from the local streams... ecological catastrophe, it's over I mean. I mean, the only... second thing, I think we should get rid of... first what you said yes again this that yes, definitely that's the problem for me not only with ecology but even more with political correctness. For example harassment. Of course my god we women, minorities are harassed, I totally agree. But you know if you visit many American academic institutions, you can see that there is a much more obscure and dark ideological dimension. When all these well-paid professors talk about harassment, they are really afraid of coming too close to lower classes. Because when they talk about violence against women, talking dirty, they mean the poor people who don't have these exquisite manners and so on. So for example it's so... harassment and so on but you are not allowed to say "black person" with them, you should say "African American", you are not allowed to say "Indian", you should say "Native American", incidentally a term which Indians hate. Because they say "we are native Americans, so you white are cultural Americans or what", you know. They are well aware. So what I am saying is that the lesson I am getting from you and I agree with you is how behind all these pseudo-emancipatory movements, ecology and so on, there are so many class and class investments, ideological investments, we should be... we should be very careful about it. And again that's my problem with political correctness. For example, once I was interrupted in United States... it's an old story, you must know it... when I was telling a dirty joke. And I told them, "But are you afraid what you are doing now? All working class ordinary people
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that I know in my country talk like that. When you oppose this type of talking, you are basically asserting your safe upper middle class existence, it means no contact with..." and then I... you know some of
that I know in my country talk like that. When you oppose this type of talking, you are basically asserting your safe upper middle class existence, it means no contact with..." and then I... you know some of
Slavoj Žižek
you maybe know her, Amy Goodman, that Democracy Now!. Okay, I love her and so on. But she is mad at me, she no longer wants to talk for some years with me. Because once she was crazy enough to invite me to her talk show and then she asked me, "How should we fight white racism, right-wing racism?". I told her, "Through left-wing racism," no? And then she thought it's a bad joke. But then I told her, "No, listen. When you meet people from another ethnic group, isn't the only way to establish real contact with them, to exchange some obscenities and so on? Without this you have this nightmarish politically correct respect: 'Oh what interesting food you have, oh what interesting folklore songs you have.' I want dirty jokes! I'm not interested in your original food or whatever," you know. And that's why my greatest friends are people from third world countries who master, who know this game. Like, I'm sorry if I repeat myself, I have some good friends, some artists from New Zealand. Their official ideology is, "You know you Western rationalists, you don't hear how nature is talking to us, the spirits of rivers, of mountains, all that bullshit." Then after I become friendly with them, they told me the truth: "Yeah, yeah, they play the artists who talk with nature and so on." But then they have two agents: one in London and one in New York who inform them of what are the latest trends. And then they took well care that what nature is telling them to do rhymes with the latest fashion in New York, you know. And I totally agree with them! I mean, I mean, you know I hate rich
you maybe know her, Amy Goodman, that Democracy Now!. Okay, I love her and so on. But she is mad at me, she no longer wants to talk for some years with me. Because once she was crazy enough to invite me to her talk show and then she asked me, "How should we fight white racism, right-wing racism?". I told her, "Through left-wing racism," no? And then she thought it's a bad joke. But then I told her, "No, listen. When you meet people from another ethnic group, isn't the only way to establish real contact with them, to exchange some obscenities and so on? Without this you have this nightmarish politically correct respect: 'Oh what interesting food you have, oh what interesting folklore songs you have.' I want dirty jokes! I'm not interested in your original food or whatever," you know. And that's why my greatest friends are people from third world countries who master, who know this game. Like, I'm sorry if I repeat myself, I have some good friends, some artists from New Zealand. Their official ideology is, "You know you Western rationalists, you don't hear how nature is talking to us, the spirits of rivers, of mountains, all that bullshit." Then after I become friendly with them, they told me the truth: "Yeah, yeah, they play the artists who talk with nature and so on." But then they have two agents: one in London and one in New York who inform them of what are the latest trends. And then they took well care that what nature is telling them to do rhymes with the latest fashion in New York, you know. And I totally agree with them! I mean, I mean, you know I hate rich
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people who come to Africa and say to poor people there, "Oh you can be lucky, you live an authentic life, non-consumerist." No! I like people who say, "No, I want to be more consumerist
people who come to Africa and say to poor people there, "Oh you can be lucky, you live an authentic life, non-consumerist." No! I like people who say, "No, I want to be more consumerist
Slavoj Žižek
than you!". For example, my... I made a visit in São Paulo to a favela, slum there. I haven't seen so much kitsch as there. All some kitschy golden, cheap pseudo-golden yellow models and so on and so on, you know. So I think that when somebody tells you, "Let's step out of consumerism, we should have simple functional forms," I'm sure he is upper class rich guy, you know. Poor people like kitsch and so on. I'm not saying we should all become like that. I'm just saying how much secret class dimension is there in this even in pseudo-respect for the poor and so on. Now we have just [unintelligible] so we have to be as quickly as possible. Yeah, this good idea, yes. [Unintelligible Turkish speech]. [Unintelligible]. Hello. You will be Turkish or English? It will be English. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. So first of all, thank you for this amazing lecture. When you begin like this, you are already sharpening your knife. Go directly. Yeah. So the question that I have, I think you already somehow answered in this lecture, but I just want you to open it up a bit more because... I'm personally from Georgia, the country... Ah, Gruziya, ex- yeah, yeah. Country of Stalin that we don't like. Stalin, Beria. My friend from there is a nephew of Beria, but that's another story. Yeah, mostly ashamed of these people, but anyway, the reality is that in Georgia also we have this problem that is a very contemporary I think, with the social media and so on, we have this explosion of social movements. And they are mostly of the time carrying some values. And at some point these values hit this capitalist economy, you know. This is where they block. The best example for me of these social movements and we got really inspired from this Gezi event in Istanbul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really lots of people and lots of intellectuals and as a mass people also, everything was supporting it but as you said, it didn't make any change, you know. It just when it hit this kind of economy... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And we see it just we just have a good memory, nothing else. So it's just a kind of a question that would you just open up this issue like: then what is the role of ordinary citizen if not this and how it has to happen? Like here you just say that we just have to step back and relax... No, no, no, not relax. I was saying that first, more reflect than relax. Don't be afraid of thinking. Second point that I indicated is I do believe in these small demands, apparently small demands like universal health care here and so on and so on. Third thing is that even capitalism, it's not totally determined. Look, for a lot of time I thought that the presidency of Lula in Brazil is just another cheap social democracy, but now my leftist friends convinced me: my god, he did diminish poverty by over I mean. You can, you know, even capitalism is full of its own contradictions, it's not totally pre-determined. You can, you have spaces to act a little bit here and there. Yeah, we believe with you but let's speak directly on the real facts. Like if you were back during Gezi events in its peak point, like what could you do there? If I were to be here? Yeah, and if you were, let's say supporter in here in this place, like how would you criticize at this point, like how could it have a chance to make any change? Like if we speak on the real facts, not generalize in some abstract way, you know. First I think the problem we all know what it was: there is, not in the Richard Nixon sense but in another, there is the so-called moral or okay, silent majority. And there probably Erdoğan is still majoritarian. So the way I would reformulate this, and it was the same problem in Egypt for example, you know, you never really had a majority, very rarely, in these movements. So for me the problem is, first, you must set very clear goals and then you must find some point where, even for a short time, you get if not an active support, at least a kind of a benevolent sympathy from the majority. The tragedy of this protest movement for me, for example in Egypt, now it's clear is that all the Tahrir Square thing there, these were educated middle class children and so on. They, they moved totally without any connection with that silent mass of majority and so on, which then immediately, of course, you get free election and then you get Muslim Brotherhood voted in and so on and so on. So I think that the art is to find some topic where you can, at least briefly, mobilize the majority. If you... on the other hand we... one has to be here very... very brutal, pragmatic and inventive. Everything is permitted, not crime of course, but what I mean is like tactical alliances, international pressure and so on, all that. But I think that there is one tragic fact to which I don't see an easy solution, which is that effectively, and my leftist friends are so angry at me when I say this, we effectively don't have an alternative model of global economy that we can oppose to global capitalism. We can play games here and there, make it a little bit more effective and so on and so on. But I am distrustful to all people who pretend to have visions. The one against which I am most opposed is the so-called local democracy.
than you!". For example, my... I made a visit in São Paulo to a favela, slum there. I haven't seen so much kitsch as there. All some kitschy golden, cheap pseudo-golden yellow models and so on and so on, you know. So I think that when somebody tells you, "Let's step out of consumerism, we should have simple functional forms," I'm sure he is upper class rich guy, you know. Poor people like kitsch and so on. I'm not saying we should all become like that. I'm just saying how much secret class dimension is there in this even in pseudo-respect for the poor and so on. Now we have just [unintelligible] so we have to be as quickly as possible. Yeah, this good idea, yes. [Unintelligible Turkish speech]. [Unintelligible]. Hello. You will be Turkish or English? It will be English. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. So first of all, thank you for this amazing lecture. When you begin like this, you are already sharpening your knife. Go directly. Yeah. So the question that I have, I think you already somehow answered in this lecture, but I just want you to open it up a bit more because... I'm personally from Georgia, the country... Ah, Gruziya, ex- yeah, yeah. Country of Stalin that we don't like. Stalin, Beria. My friend from there is a nephew of Beria, but that's another story. Yeah, mostly ashamed of these people, but anyway, the reality is that in Georgia also we have this problem that is a very contemporary I think, with the social media and so on, we have this explosion of social movements. And they are mostly of the time carrying some values. And at some point these values hit this capitalist economy, you know. This is where they block. The best example for me of these social movements and we got really inspired from this Gezi event in Istanbul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really lots of people and lots of intellectuals and as a mass people also, everything was supporting it but as you said, it didn't make any change, you know. It just when it hit this kind of economy... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And we see it just we just have a good memory, nothing else. So it's just a kind of a question that would you just open up this issue like: then what is the role of ordinary citizen if not this and how it has to happen? Like here you just say that we just have to step back and relax... No, no, no, not relax. I was saying that first, more reflect than relax. Don't be afraid of thinking. Second point that I indicated is I do believe in these small demands, apparently small demands like universal health care here and so on and so on. Third thing is that even capitalism, it's not totally determined. Look, for a lot of time I thought that the presidency of Lula in Brazil is just another cheap social democracy, but now my leftist friends convinced me: my god, he did diminish poverty by over I mean. You can, you know, even capitalism is full of its own contradictions, it's not totally pre-determined. You can, you have spaces to act a little bit here and there. Yeah, we believe with you but let's speak directly on the real facts. Like if you were back during Gezi events in its peak point, like what could you do there? If I were to be here? Yeah, and if you were, let's say supporter in here in this place, like how would you criticize at this point, like how could it have a chance to make any change? Like if we speak on the real facts, not generalize in some abstract way, you know. First I think the problem we all know what it was: there is, not in the Richard Nixon sense but in another, there is the so-called moral or okay, silent majority. And there probably Erdoğan is still majoritarian. So the way I would reformulate this, and it was the same problem in Egypt for example, you know, you never really had a majority, very rarely, in these movements. So for me the problem is, first, you must set very clear goals and then you must find some point where, even for a short time, you get if not an active support, at least a kind of a benevolent sympathy from the majority. The tragedy of this protest movement for me, for example in Egypt, now it's clear is that all the Tahrir Square thing there, these were educated middle class children and so on. They, they moved totally without any connection with that silent mass of majority and so on, which then immediately, of course, you get free election and then you get Muslim Brotherhood voted in and so on and so on. So I think that the art is to find some topic where you can, at least briefly, mobilize the majority. If you... on the other hand we... one has to be here very... very brutal, pragmatic and inventive. Everything is permitted, not crime of course, but what I mean is like tactical alliances, international pressure and so on, all that. But I think that there is one tragic fact to which I don't see an easy solution, which is that effectively, and my leftist friends are so angry at me when I say this, we effectively don't have an alternative model of global economy that we can oppose to global capitalism. We can play games here and there, make it a little bit more effective and so on and so on. But I am distrustful to all people who pretend to have visions. The one against which I am most opposed is the so-called local democracy.
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You know, "forget about the
You know, "forget about the
Slavoj Žižek
state, organize yourself locally, local communities" and so on. This all works when you have an efficient state, even a very strong state. For example, once I laughed so much when some of my friends from Venezuela told me, "But we have local self-management." "Yes," I told them, "and you have the big boss, Hugo Chávez, no?". You know, it's very interesting how all this local democracy
state, organize yourself locally, local communities" and so on. This all works when you have an efficient state, even a very strong state. For example, once I laughed so much when some of my friends from Venezuela told me, "But we have local self-management." "Yes," I told them, "and you have the big boss, Hugo Chávez, no?". You know, it's very interesting how all this local democracy
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works
works
Slavoj Žižek
even better with a relatively
even better with a relatively
unknown
authoritarian state.
authoritarian state.
Slavoj Žižek
But I want to ask you something else, you... Okay, you overthrew you people
But I want to ask you something else, you... Okay, you overthrew you people
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there whatever,
there whatever,
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Saakashvili. Now you have another oligarch, is he any better? And actually what I wanted to ask is that I don't find this radical change is right. I mean, like
Saakashvili. Now you have another oligarch, is he any better? And actually what I wanted to ask is that I don't find this radical change is right. I mean, like
Slavoj Žižek
the social movements that are bringing some values. I don't think that the situation
the social movements that are bringing some values. I don't think that the situation
unknown
is as fast-changing as previously, if you ask me about my country, but it's more as I said like some values came on the top that was not there before. And we are just afraid not to lose these values right now. And this is my question: like what is the point when like values and money, they don't talk always well, but like what is the point like to find the dialogue between them? Like... What do you mean by money? People who have money or...? Let's say in another way like for example... like the very good example was this one: Gezi Park because here was a particular plan to implement particular project by government. And for example, I don't know, third bridge of Istanbul or whatever.
is as fast-changing as previously, if you ask me about my country, but it's more as I said like some values came on the top that was not there before. And we are just afraid not to lose these values right now. And this is my question: like what is the point when like values and money, they don't talk always well, but like what is the point like to find the dialogue between them? Like... What do you mean by money? People who have money or...? Let's say in another way like for example... like the very good example was this one: Gezi Park because here was a particular plan to implement particular project by government. And for example, I don't know, third bridge of Istanbul or whatever.
Slavoj Žižek
That all the intellectual society is opposing it, let's say so, the public is opposing it and so on, but at some point they are just not heard and the process is going on. So I just ask myself this question like all the time. It's like a strange question: like what is my role, you know? Like can... shall I participate anymore in anything? Because in reality nothing changed in the end of the day. Yeah, here I wouldn't be again
That all the intellectual society is opposing it, let's say so, the public is opposing it and so on, but at some point they are just not heard and the process is going on. So I just ask myself this question like all the time. It's like a strange question: like what is my role, you know? Like can... shall I participate anymore in anything? Because in reality nothing changed in the end of the day. Yeah, here I wouldn't be again
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such a pessimist. For example, I know relatively better, yet still situation in Egypt. Some people say, "Oh, it's even worse now, military dictatorship." Other people are telling me, precisely at the level that you mentioned, "No, Egypt is not the same as it was five years ago.
such a pessimist. For example, I know relatively better, yet still situation in Egypt. Some people say, "Oh, it's even worse now, military dictatorship." Other people are telling me, precisely at the level that you mentioned, "No, Egypt is not the same as it was five years ago.
Slavoj Žižek
The whole society is alive in the sense that free trade unions, feminists, students, this, that, you know, the whole civil society is alive." And the military did not succeed in crushing this. And this is there, waiting, there will be a new opportunity, it will go better and so on and so on. So here at this level again I'm not such a pessimist. I gave before the example of here Turkey. Okay, you can say you've lost, Erdoğan is back. It's not as simple. Look at the last elections... I'm not fetishizing election results, but the fact how the Kurds succeeded, other parties and so on. This does signal nonetheless something changing in, something changing in society. So I would say, of course, it's a long patient struggle and so on and so on. You know what's for me the sad thing, and if I understand you correctly, you hinted at this. Even communist regimes which official... this was for me the most depressing things about my experience of living in a communist regime. Official ideology was "people are constructing socialism" blah blah. But no, what those in power really wanted was people's apathy and indifference. You know, it took me long time to understand this. Socialist education was, if you look at it from official values, total fiasco. Nobody took the ruling ideology seriously, people were cynics, mocking it. But then I asked myself, "What did those in power want?". They wanted cynical, depoliticized people who think, "Don't mess with politics, politics is a horror" and so on. And it's perfect, you know. This is why I had here disagreement with some of my Greek friends, even with Russian Pussy Riot friends, who still believe in this power of scandal, obscenity, you know. I
The whole society is alive in the sense that free trade unions, feminists, students, this, that, you know, the whole civil society is alive." And the military did not succeed in crushing this. And this is there, waiting, there will be a new opportunity, it will go better and so on and so on. So here at this level again I'm not such a pessimist. I gave before the example of here Turkey. Okay, you can say you've lost, Erdoğan is back. It's not as simple. Look at the last elections... I'm not fetishizing election results, but the fact how the Kurds succeeded, other parties and so on. This does signal nonetheless something changing in, something changing in society. So I would say, of course, it's a long patient struggle and so on and so on. You know what's for me the sad thing, and if I understand you correctly, you hinted at this. Even communist regimes which official... this was for me the most depressing things about my experience of living in a communist regime. Official ideology was "people are constructing socialism" blah blah. But no, what those in power really wanted was people's apathy and indifference. You know, it took me long time to understand this. Socialist education was, if you look at it from official values, total fiasco. Nobody took the ruling ideology seriously, people were cynics, mocking it. But then I asked myself, "What did those in power want?". They wanted cynical, depoliticized people who think, "Don't mess with politics, politics is a horror" and so on. And it's perfect, you know. This is why I had here disagreement with some of my Greek friends, even with Russian Pussy Riot friends, who still believe in this power of scandal, obscenity, you know. I
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claim: no. For already under communism, especially when it was losing, communists were using jokes, obscenity and so on just to demoralize people. For example, one of the most depressing thing I heard from Poland is that after Jaruzelski made coup d'état to crush Solidarność in you
claim: no. For already under communism, especially when it was losing, communists were using jokes, obscenity and so on just to demoralize people. For example, one of the most depressing thing I heard from Poland is that after Jaruzelski made coup d'état to crush Solidarność in you
Slavoj Žižek
know what those in power
know what those in power
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consciously did? All of a sudden, Western pornography was widely available, Oriental spirituality, Buddhism training, drugs, all available. Just to keep people depoliticized, distracted and so on. And that's the problem today, because precisely by staying out you are a perfect subject. Those in power
consciously did? All of a sudden, Western pornography was widely available, Oriental spirituality, Buddhism training, drugs, all available. Just to keep people depoliticized, distracted and so on. And that's the problem today, because precisely by staying out you are a perfect subject. Those in power
Slavoj Žižek
don't want you to participate too much. They want you desperate, privatized and so on and so on. That's why... that's where people are often wrong in relationship to Hollywood, where you have a Hollywood individualist hero who fights the state, is totally cynical and so on. But this is a perfect subject today. Subject in the sense of Untertan, subordinate to power. Power doesn't want active fanatics today who fight for it. No, they want people who are silently desperate, cynical, caring just about their pleasures and so on. Maybe even your Erdoğan knows it. Didn't he propose... you told me... a perfect variation of that old Christian Ora et Labora, you know, work and pray. Somebody told me, was it here who that one of the election slogans of Erdoğan was, "Shop and pray. Consume and pray," you know. It's a perfect slogan for today, I claim, no? But listen, tell me, you didn't answer me, I'm really interested: is the new guy any better from Saakashvili? Ah, is this organized, you [unintelligible]?
don't want you to participate too much. They want you desperate, privatized and so on and so on. That's why... that's where people are often wrong in relationship to Hollywood, where you have a Hollywood individualist hero who fights the state, is totally cynical and so on. But this is a perfect subject today. Subject in the sense of Untertan, subordinate to power. Power doesn't want active fanatics today who fight for it. No, they want people who are silently desperate, cynical, caring just about their pleasures and so on. Maybe even your Erdoğan knows it. Didn't he propose... you told me... a perfect variation of that old Christian Ora et Labora, you know, work and pray. Somebody told me, was it here who that one of the election slogans of Erdoğan was, "Shop and pray. Consume and pray," you know. It's a perfect slogan for today, I claim, no? But listen, tell me, you didn't answer me, I'm really interested: is the new guy any better from Saakashvili? Ah, is this organized, you [unintelligible]?