Slavoj Žižek | Full Address & Q&A
Talk · TCDPhil ·
2019-11-18 · 1:07:47 · 9,031 words
fascism-populismecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspaceideologyreligion-theologyhistoryphilosophy-generalcapitalismpsychoanalysisliberalism-political-correctnesscinema-art-culturerace-antisemitismcommunism-socialismgeopolitics-warrevolution-violencedemocracy
Žižek analyzes the contemporary 'apocalyptic' imagination, arguing that both right-wing and left-wing narratives fail to grasp the true nature of current crises. He critiques the 'poetic-military complex' in nationalism, deconstructs ecological ideology as a form of liberal guilt and 'opium', and warns against the digital apocalypse of direct brain-computer interfaces. He concludes with a discussion of Auschwitz jokes, arguing that extreme horror transcends tragedy and challenges theological teleology. Žižek analyzes the 'obscene laughter' of singularity and the theological nature of capitalism, arguing that our era is deeply religious despite its atheism. He discusses the political utility of Trump in breaking ideological hegemony, critiques the film 'The Lives of Others' for misrepresenting systemic evil, and defends his controversial views on cultural 'political unconsciouses' regarding sexual violence against accusations of racism. In a Q&A defending his 'don't act, just think' slogan, Žižek argues the left engages but lacks a positive program, the cognitive mapping Jameson names. He presents Bolivia under Morales-Linera as a rare left success, contrasts it with Chávez's failure and Occupy's vague anti-corruption stance, and reads yellow-vest-style protests as the final death of Fukuyama and proof that liberal capitalism is not history's endpoint. He diagnoses an emerging authoritarian capitalism (China, Russia, Turkey) as the real threat, expresses pessimism about Trump's re-election and European disintegration, but grounds a non-total pessimism in unexpected political miracles like Syriza and the potential to win Trump voters back to the left via class rather than identity politics, ending with Marx's panic letter to Engels during the Paris Commune as a vindication of theory.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 27
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Fredric Jameson's term used by Žižek to describe Atwood's novel, which sentimentalizes the liberal present by contrasting it with a fundamentalist dystopia, thereby blinding us to the present's own failures.
Günther Anders' concept of an apocalypse that is mere downfall or obliteration without the promise of a new positive state or kingdom, exemplified by nuclear catastrophe.
Žižek's coinage for the alliance between nationalist poets who outline beautiful, emotional visions and soldiers who execute them, as seen in the ethnic cleansing of ex-Yugoslavia.
as “domestication of the wild animal culture”
Peter Sloterdijk's concept referring to the historical process where states discipline their own members to guarantee civil peace, while maintaining 'wild barbarian' relations with other states.
Žižek's term for the contemporary ideological function of environmentalism, which acts as a new 'opium' by imposing an unquestionable authority and personal guilt rather than addressing systemic issues.
The agency of ecological ideology that addresses individuals as a priori guilty, constantly pressuring them with moral demands (recycling, etc.) to suspend the critical political dimension.
as “climate apartheid”
Žižek's prediction that the consequences of ecological crisis will disproportionately burden the poor of the Third World, creating a new global hierarchy.
Shoshana Zuboff's term for the registration and control of all human acts, which Žižek acknowledges as crucial but secondary to the threat of direct neural interfacing.
as “distance of thought”
The standard self-perception of freedom where thoughts remain internal and distant from material processes; Žižek argues this distance is lost when neural interfaces allow thoughts to directly interact with material reality.
The transgressive, dark joy found in the prospect of technological singularity, mirroring the Joker's laughter, which escapes the logic of the collective mind.
as “capitalism as a perverted form of religion”
The view that capitalism functions as a theological system demanding sacrifice to the divine entity of capital/profit, rather than mere economic exchange.
as “theological dimension of capitalism”
Marx's insight that commodities are full of 'theological subtleties,' revealing that social activity is more religious than common sense suggests.
as “believing through not believing”
The social mechanism where individuals know a belief (like Santa Claus or communist ideology) is false but enact it anyway to maintain social bonds or avoid disappointment.
as “cynical belief”
A belief that functions socially only when participants do not take it seriously in the first person, as seen in communist Yugoslavia.
The paradoxical claim that Trump's disruptive presence was necessary to break the hegemony of ruling ideology, thereby opening political space for genuine leftist alternatives.
as “political unconscious of a culture”
The idea that every culture has an 'obscene underside' or hidden ritualistic drive (e.g., Catholic pedophilia, Pakistani gang rape) that structures its identity, distinct from its official moral code.
as “dark obscene underground of culture”
Every culture has an unofficial, transgressive supplement (e.g. KKK lynchings beneath Southern Christian respectability) that must be confronted rather than repressed.
The reframing of migration not as a humanitarian issue but as the structural consequence of Western military interventions (Iraq, Syria, Libya) requiring systemic rather than liberal-tolerant responses.
Upper-middle-class liberals benefit by pitting immigrants against the domestic working class, using tolerance discourse to reproach workers while avoiding structural critique.
as “nachholende Revolution”
Habermas's 'catch-up revolution': his dismissive framing of 1989 Eastern European revolts as merely wanting to join the West, which Žižek criticizes as foreclosing any learning from Eastern dissidents.
as “left Fukuyamaism”
The position of leftists who tacitly accept liberal capitalism as the final horizon and only seek to humanize it (healthcare, gay rights) rather than transcend it.
as “communism (vs. socialism)”
Žižek insists on 'communism' over 'socialism' because socialism has been diluted to meaninglessness (even Bill Gates qualifies), and only communism names the radical reorganization needed when neither market nor state can address planetary crises.
Fredric Jameson's concept for a global narrative orientation, understanding the totality of what is happening socially and economically, which the left currently lacks.
as “authoritarian capitalism”
A new socio-economic model combining unbridled market competition with a strong authoritarian state, exemplified by China and spreading to Russia, Turkey, and India.
An unexpected rupture in the political field (Syriza, Morales-Linera) that proves liberal-capitalist closure is not total and grounds a non-religious, non-naive political hope.
as “false opposition”
Spurious either/or choices (old white man vs. young marginal candidate; theory vs. action) that the left must overcome rather than reinforce.
The insistence that theoretical understanding must precede or accompany political action, vindicated by Marx's panic that the Paris Commune might happen before Capital was finished.
Stories he reaches for 6
After Fukushima, the Japanese government faced the prospect of evacuating the entire Tokyo metropolitan area, illustrating that planetary crises exceed both market and state capacity and require a communist-style collective response.
“It looked as though they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area: million people... we are facing problems where neither market nor state... will be able to do it.”
Parents know Santa isn't real but buy presents; children know it's fake but pretend to believe to not disappoint parents, showing belief is socially enacted.
“ask a child, ask parents, 'do you believe in Santa Claus?' They say 'no, I'm not stupid, I buy the presents, of course I don't believe in it.'”
During the Paris Commune, when a European revolution seemed imminent, Marx wrote Engels in panic that revolutionaries wanted action before he had finished Capital, an anecdote Žižek deploys to vindicate the left's need for theory.
“Marx wrote in a letter to Engels in a panic... 'My god, they want a revolution now. I didn't yet finish Capital... Can't they wait?'”
Although Syriza ultimately failed, its very emergence was an unpredictable political miracle that proves liberal-capitalist closure is not total and grounds a non-total pessimism.
“who would have thought that Syriza something like Syriza was possible? Who would have thought things happen.”
At Occupy Wall Street, Žižek kept asking protesters what they actually wanted, finding only vague anti-corruption sentiments, a position any honest moderate fascist could endorse, illustrating the left's lack of a distinct positive vision.
“I was asking them all the time... 'what do you want?' And I found they were just, you know, abstractly against corruption, against this, against that”
Critiques the film for showing horror only when a corrupt minister wants to screw a wife, ignoring that the horror of the GDR was total observation regardless of individual corruption.
“The horror of the German Democratic Republic was that you would have been under total observation even if no minister wanted to screw your wife”
Works invoked 9
Capital book
Marx's work, specifically Chapter 1, cited for its insight into the 'theological subtleties' of commodities.
The Handmaid's Tale book
Atwood's novel, criticized for its 'nostalgia for the present' and failure to question the liberal paradigm that allows for the Republic of Gilead.
Trouble in Paradise book
Cited by Žižek as his own book where he compares Trump to a shitter at a party and discusses cultural parallels regarding sexual violence.
Frankenstein book
Mary Shelley's novel, used as a literary example of 'hearing the other side of the story' through the monster's perspective.
Critiqued for its 'wrong message' that horror requires a corrupt individual, ignoring the systemic nature of observation in the GDR.
Paul Veyne's book, used to illustrate the concept of believing through not believing.
Cited by Žižek as the source of his parallel between Pakistani youth gangs and Catholic pedophilia.
Günther Anders' essay introducing the concept of 'naked apocalypse,' used by Žižek to frame the discussion of modern threats.
Current Affairs journal
The journal that published an article branding Žižek a racist, which he finds sad and attributes to Chomsky's revenge.
People invoked 43
Frankenstein (Monster) positive
Character from Mary Shelley's novel, used to illustrate the perspective of the 'other' or monster.
Mary Shelley positive
Cited as a literary example of 'hearing the other side of the story' via Frankenstein's monster, though Žižek argues this has limits.
Nathan Robinson negative
Boss of Current Affairs journal, accused of writing a text branding Žižek a racist.
Marine Le Pen negative
Contrasted with Trump; argues we cannot afford Le Pen in France, implying she is more dangerous than Trump.
Mentioned in the context of Putin's lack of sympathy for him, illustrating the ruthlessness of state logic.
Referenced in a right-wing conspiracy theory as having been created by Stalin to destroy the moral foundations of the West.
Shoshana Zuboff positive
Cited for the term 'surveillance capitalism,' which Žižek acknowledges as a crucial but not the primary apocalyptic threat.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced via 'Lacanians are in power' at a Vermont university department; the Freudian/Lacanian question 'what does the woman want' is reworked as 'what do you want?' directed at Occupy protesters.
Steven Weinberg positive
Cited for the claim that religion/poetry can make good people do bad things, supporting Žižek's critique of moralizing narratives.
Oliver Stone negative
Reports Stone told him capitalism is the only thing that works; notes Stone is 'too corrupted by Putin now'; uses Stone as a prime example of left Fukuyamaism.
Boris Johnson negative
Argued to be worse than Trump because the UK relies on unwritten rules which he exploits.
Margaret Atwood negative
Žižek critiques her novel (The Handmaid's Tale) for its 'fundamental blindness' and 'nostalgia for the present,' arguing it fails to question the liberal present that birthed the dystopia.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Contemporary protests (yellow vests, Chile) are read as the 'final death of Fukuyama', proof liberal capitalism is not history's endpoint; many leftists are implicitly 'Fukuyama leftists.'
Referenced as the Libyan leader whose toppling was 'the mega-mistake' contributing to the migration crisis; cited as evidence that migration is a politico-economic, not humanitarian, problem.
Donald Trump negative
Cited as a proponent of denying global warming and declaring a national emergency over immigrants, exemplifying right-wing apocalyptic narratives.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Described as 'almost friends, not quite' and 'a top intellectual'; Žižek admires the Morales-Linera pairing as a model of overcoming false opposites (popular leader + intellectual). ASR renders as 'Linera.'
Cited as the proponent of the 'singularity' and wired brain collective awareness.
Chelsea Manning positive
Cited as an example of systemic digital control.
Alain Badiou positive
Called 'my friend'; quoted approvingly for his formula on yellow vests: 'Tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge' (not all that moves is red).
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited as the source of the concept 'nostalgia for the present,' which Žižek uses to analyze Atwood's work.
Appears only as the recipient of Marx's panic letter during the Paris Commune; no independent assessment.
Adolf Hitler negative
Used as a counter-example to the 'enemy is someone whose story you have not heard' slogan; Žižek argues that learning about Hitler confirms he is an enemy.
Bernie Sanders positive
Fully supports Sanders, agreeing that focus should remain on real issues like healthcare rather than impeachment.
Mentioned alongside Snowden as figures Putin helps to annoy his enemies.
Named alongside Poland and the Czech Republic as part of the Eastern European movements Habermas dismissed as 'catch-up revolutions' merely seeking Western consumer society.
Evo Morales positive
Cited as proof radical left governance can work; Bolivia's decade in power with economic success and social justice was a 'true thorn in the flesh' for the establishment, requiring a coup to end it.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Cited for the concept of 'domestication of the wild animal culture,' which Žižek uses to critique the ethical foundation of the nation-state.
Bill Gates negative
Used as an example that 'socialism' has become so diluted even Gates qualifies, supporting Žižek's insistence on retaining the term 'communism' for the radical content needed.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez positive
Praised for saying she supports Bernie Sanders 'not in spite of him being an old white man, but because he is'; used as an example of overcoming the identity-vs-class false opposition.
Viktor Orbán negative
Described as 'the greatest' (in a negative sense) among current populist leaders.
Mentioned only as the wife of Günther Anders.
Günther Anders positive
Author of 'Apocalypse Without Kingdom'; Žižek uses his concept of 'naked apocalypse' (apocalypse without a new kingdom) to frame the discussion of modern threats.
Walter Benjamin positive
Agrees with Benjamin that capitalism is a perverted form of religion and that critique requires understanding its theological dimension.
Hillary Clinton negative
Implicitly criticized via 'the Clinton opposition', the centrist strategy of moderation to capture the center, contrasted with Žižek's preferred approach of winning back working-class Trump voters.
Paul Veyne positive
Author of 'Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Myths?', used to illustrate the complex status of belief (knowing it's not true but believing it anyway).
Jürgen Habermas negative
Criticized for coining the 'horrible term' nachholende Revolution (catch-up revolution), which reduced 1989 Eastern European revolts to simply wanting Western consumer goods, foreclosing genuine alternatives.
Cited for his statement on treason and spies, which Žižek uses to illustrate the dangerous logic of nation-state competition.
Hugo Chávez negative
Acknowledged U.S. interventions against him, but Žižek argues Chávez's attempts to invent new economic forms more or less failed, illustrating the left's lack of a positive program.
Joseph Stalin negative
Cited in a right-wing conspiracy theory as having ordered the formation of the Frankfurt School to destroy Western morality.
Plato positive
Žižek defends Plato's claim that poets should be banned from the city, citing the 'poetic-military complex' of the Yugoslav wars as validation.
Noam Chomsky negative
Accused of being behind Robinson's attack, described as 'Chomsky's revenge.'
Karl Marx positive
Cites Marx's 'theological subtleties' of commodities to argue that everyday social activity is more religious than we think.
Sigmund Freud positive
Referenced via his famous question 'what does the woman want,' which Žižek reworks as 'what do you want?' directed at Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Transcript 14 turns
Slavoj Žižek
The logic of this ambiguity is, I think, the fundamental blindness of Atwood's novel for the limitation of our liberal permissive universe. The entire story is an exercise in what Fredric Jameson called nostalgia for the present. It is permeated by the sentimental admiration for our liberal permissive present ruined by the new Christian fundamentalist rule. And it never even approaches the question of what is wrong in this present so that it gave birth to the nightmarish Republic of Gilead. Nostalgia for the present falls into the trap of ideology because it is blind for the fact that this present permissive paradigm is boring and, exactly like the blessed souls in paradise, it needs a look into the hell of religious fundamentalism to sustain itself. But today hell acquired a new apocalyptic face. In his essay "Apocalypse Without Kingdom", Günther Anders to be vulgar, husband of Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of naked apocalypse: the apocalypse that consists of mere downfall, which doesn't represent the opening of a new positive state of affairs, of a new kingdom. Anders' idea was that a nuclear catastrophe would be precisely such a naked apocalypse. No new kingdom will arise out of it, just the obliteration of ourselves and of our world. My question is here, how will apocalypses that haunt us today affect us? Will they involve the entrance into a new higher posthuman kingdom or just the disappearance of humanity the way we know it, or in some sense both at the same time? The first thing, just think about it, that strikes the eye is the multiplicity of apocalyptic threats today. The predominant right-wing reaction to the warnings about the looming apocalypse, ecological or digital, is that these warnings are part of the desperate radical leftist strategy to sustain its revolutionary zeal after the triumph of capitalism in 1990s. What the left cannot accept is that in spite of all problems, we live in a relatively peaceful and prosperous era. There never were so little wars, poverty is diminishing even in the Third World countries, life will go on as usual, maybe even it will even get better for most of us. To maintain a minimum of credibility, such a vision has to cling on the leftist vision that's the rightist critique has to cling on any bad news that come along: a melting glacier here, a tornado there, a heatwave somewhere else. They are all read as signs of a forthcoming catastrophe. But my reply to this, my reply as a leftist, is not just the enumeration of data which confirm apocalyptic predictions, but another way I think we should reply to it. Recall that Donald Trump, one of the great proponents of the denial of global warming, proclaimed national emergency because of the wave of Latino immigrants into the United States. In Europe also, rightist populists paint a catastrophic vision of our entire civilization under the threat from Muslim refugees. They say that if today's trends go on, in a decade or so Europe will be the Muslim province of Europa-Stan or whatever you call it. And as it befits every good conspiracy theory, there has to be a secret agent controlling this attack on our way of life. So again, now we have the right-wing conspiracy theory: after European communist revolutions failed, the communist center realized that one has first to destroy the moral foundations of the West. So this is a beautiful, disgusting right-wing paranoia. That's why Stalin directly ordered the construction of sorry, the formation of Frankfurt School; he laundered the money through Argentina to Frankfurt. The idea was, we made it wrong the first time, we first had to destroy the West morally. And today we get LGBT, gay marriage, and so on and so on. And then they even go I always like these crazy ideas a step further and claim that Muslim fundamentalists and LGBT people are really two sides of the same coin: they share the same enemy. So again, this is the first enigmatic thing, that apocalypses are everywhere, just different apocalypses. For the left, ecology and digital control; for the right, immigration and new forms of feminism, LGBT, gay rights, and so on and so on. So let me focus on the three apocalypses that I think should be taken seriously: refugees/migrations, ecology, and digital control. Let me begin with the apocalypse shared by right and left: the apocalypse of refugees. Of course, right and left perceive it in the opposite way. For the right-wingers, immigrants arriving is the apocalyptic threat to our way of life. For the left, the true apocalypse is our reaction to it: building walls and so on. While of course I'm here on the side of the leftist, now trigger warning as they say in politically correct jargon I will try to provoke you a little bit. We should nonetheless reject the simple lesson of tolerance, best rendered by a well-known utter fatuity masquerading as deep wisdom. If there is a saying that I think is totally stupid, it's the following one: "An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard." Of course, I see the good side of this. Maybe the best literary example is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; how when we see the situation from the perspective in the middle part of the novel of the monster itself, or himself, whatever, you see the other side of the story. There is, however, a clear limit to this procedure. Are you ready to affirm, for example I always like to extrapolate some wisdoms into the extreme form would you also say that Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to hear his story? No, I think it's the opposite: the more you learn about Hitler, the more he is our enemy. And now I draw a radical conclusion from this to provoke you even more. It's not true that when somebody is doing something which may appear horrible, look at his side of the story and you will understand. No, the stories we are telling ourselves about our acts are basically lies. There is no inner deep truth in those stories. That's why now I go to the end these stories that are usually used to justify crimes are written or instigated by poets. Soldiers are not bad per se. What is bad are soldiers with poets. Soldiers mobilized by nationalist poetry. Of course, there are cases of pathological atheists who are able to commit mass murder just for the pleasure of it, but they are rare exceptions. The majority of people needs to be anesthetized against their elementary decency or sensitivity to the other's suffering, and for this, a sacred cause is needed. Religious ideologists usually claim that, true or not, a religion makes some otherwise bad people do some good things. From today's experience, I think that we should rather stick to Steven Weinberg's claim that while without religion, good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things, only religion or something like religion or poetry can make good people do bad things. And I can go very long in justifying this in the debate. So Plato's reputation suffers because of his claim that poets should be banned from polis, from the city. I think, judging from what happened in my own ex-country, ex-Yugoslavia, this is a rather sensible advice. Ethnic cleansing was prepared by poets' dangerous dreams. What we had in ex-Yugoslavia was what I call a poetic-military complex: gentle poets outlining a beautiful you can cry nationalist vision, and then soldiers doing it. Let me go a step further here. There was a point in Vladimir Putin's recent interview at which one can feel how he really speaks from his heart. It occurred when Putin solemnly declared his zero tolerance for spies who betray their country. I quote Putin: "Treason is the gravest crime possible, and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident you read about it is the way to do it, but traitors must be punished." End of quote. Now it is clear from this outburst that Putin has no personal sympathy for Snowden or Assange. He just helps them to annoy his enemies, and one can only imagine the fate of an eventual Russian Snowden or Assange. The logic of nation-state competition is extremely dangerous because it runs directly against the urgent need to establish a new mode of relating to our environment a radical politico-economic change called by Peter Sloterdijk the domestication of the wild animal culture. What does he mean by this? Till now, each culture disciplined and educated its own members and guaranteed civil peace among them in the guise of state power, but the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under the shadow of potential war. Each state of peace was nothing more than a temporary armistice. The entire ethic of a state culminates in the highest act of heroism: your readiness to sacrifice your life for your nation-state, which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state. Now, I think that if we really care for the fate of the people who compose our nation, our motto should be exactly the opposite one: America last, China last, Russia last, and so on. Because the threat today is precisely well beyond nation-state: it's ecology. So this brings me to the second threat, ecological apocalypse. Here also I want to provoke you with some unconventional views. The recent burning, you remember a couple of months ago, of the Amazon forests of course triggered an alarm. Are we really heading towards a collective suicide? By destroying the Amazon rainforests, Brazilians were killing the lungs of our Earth. However, if we want to confront seriously threats to our environment, what we should avoid are precisely such quick extrapolations which fascinate our imagination. Three, four decades ago, I remember everyone in Europe was talking about Waldsterben, the dying of forests. The topic was present on the covers of all popular weeklies. There were calculations on how in half a century Europe will be without forests. Now, are you aware of this? There are more forests in Europe than ever in the 20th century. And we are becoming aware of other, maybe more serious dangers. For example, of what is going on in the depth of the oceans. Ecology of fear has all the chances of developing into the predominant form of ideology today a new opium for the masses replacing the declining religion. It takes over the old religion's fundamental function, that of installing an unquestionable authority which imposes limits. And I think, as a Marxist that I still am in some sense, we should maybe you know this line of thought of mine we should precisely turn around and change this old Marxist motto "religion is the opium of the people". As I developed in already two of my books I repeat myself, I know there are today at least two new opiums of the people: opium and the people. Opium, the amount of drugs we use, and people new populism. So let me go back to this deep ecology, why I think it's a catastrophe. What's fashionable to say today is that we have to reject anthropocentrism. You know, we are just one species on our Earth, we are not at the center of the universe and so on and so on. I think there is a deep hypocrisy in this claim. What all the talk about how we humanity pose a threat to the life on and of the Earth really amounts to is our worry about our own fate. Earth in itself is indifferent. Even if we destroy life on it, it will just be one not even the greatest of catastrophes that befell our Earth. When we worry about environment, we worry about our own environment. We want our own good and safe life. The predominant ecological ideology treats us as a priori guilty, indebted to Mother Nature, under the constant pressure of the ecological superego agency. And here ideology enters. Did you notice this? It addresses us as individuals. Let's say you criticize society, industry, pollution, but then the message you subtly get from society is: "But who are you just to complain? Did you put aside all Coke bottles? Did you recycle all the newspapers?" and so on and so on. "Why did you use air conditioning instead of just opening wide the windows?" and so on and so on. You see, this is ideology. The threat is recognized, but the critical dimension is suspended. You are personally treated as responsible for it. More precisely, there are I think today five main strategies to obfuscate the true dimension of our ecological predicament. First, simple ignorance: Donald Trump and so on, there is no global warming and so on. Then, second idea: technology, science, they can save us. Third idea: leave the solution to the market higher taxation of the polluters and so on. Fourth idea: advocating a return to natural balance, to a more modest traditional life by means of which we renounce human hubris and become again respectful children of our Mother Nature. I think we should totally reject this view. The first step of serious ecology is for me: "Screw Mother Nature." Mother Nature is a nightmare bitch. Are you aware just think about it there is no natural balance. Nature is a series of catastrophes. Just think about our main sources of energy today: oil, coal. Can you just imagine what catastrophes had to happen on our Earth before humanity emerged for us to have our sources of energy? So I think that the situation is much worse. My message is not "don't exaggerate", but that we have nowhere to return. There is no natural state, no natural balance which we should just return to. And then, as already said, maybe the worst of all ecological ideologies: the pressure on personal responsibility. Here ideology reigns unopposed. I recently an American friend sent me an analysis which I like. He interviewed people: why do they buy organic apples? You know, you go to a store, you get those beautiful genetically manipulated green apples; they remain green even if they are exposed to the sun for months, you know. And then you get those half-rotten so-called organic apples which cost more. And the result he got was a horrible one. The majority of people are cynical, of course. They claim probably we are cheated; so-called organic apples are the same shit, maybe even worse. Then they were asked, "But why are you then buying them?" The answer was a beautiful one: "Because it makes me feel good. I do something for our solidarity, for Mother Nature," and so on and so on. This, I think, is ideology at its purest. So again, my message is not that we should just relax and don't get into panic. Things are catastrophic. What we are approaching now is climate apartheid. The poor of the Third World will pay for it. But where I'm even more of a pessimist is that I don't believe this simplistic catastrophism of some deep ecologists, especially when they deal with magic numbers. Usually it's or percent of global warming. If it's that, it's still okay; if it goes over no, we don't know what is still okay, we don't know what to do, we don't how little we know. For example, there are ideas for radical measures, like solar radiation management: the continuous massive dispersal of aerosols into our atmosphere to absorb sunlight. Nice idea, but it can trigger other catastrophes and so on. So that's my here it's my pessimism. We don't know what to do. There is no simple way out, like recycle a little bit more and it'll be okay. We simply don't know. And also now it will sound strange for a leftist to say this but we cannot just say, "Oh, scientists are bribed by big companies; trust people." This cheap populist Maoist trick: "learn from ordinary people". No, ordinary people are totally confused; they know even less. There is no simple way. Nobody knows what to do. The third apocalypse, I'm approaching the end now: the digital apocalypse. I don't mean here so much the phenomenon called by Shoshana Zuboff "surveillance capitalism". It is a crucial thing happening today: the amount to which everything is registered, all our acts and so on are controlled. That's important, but I see a true game changer, a true apocalyptic threat in something else which is clearly on the horizon: this idea of whatever you call it Neuralink, wired brain, directly linking our mental processes to a computer. Now, it sounds fascinating and nice, and when they those in power try to sell you this, they always use some pathetic example from medicine, like: "You see that guy, he is totally crippled, but now through the help of his wired brain, he can communicate what he wants," and so on and so on. I know, they always give you these examples. Now, the other defense against this is when people tell you, "Yeah, but we are far from it." We are not so far from it. I will not bore you with details, but just I don't like to focus on China, but it's interesting to follow what goes on in China because they are doing the same thing as we are doing, just more openly. For example, I read in some Chinese province, and my Chinese friends confirmed this to me, they already oblige people in some small children in some elementary schools to wear a couple of hours during their classes in school some kind of a small helmet which reports their mental state to a computer on the teacher's table. The idea is, in this way, without looking at them, we can control: are they dozing off or are they active? and so on. I mean, it's incredible how much these things already progressed. Why do I consider this option really catastrophic, but maybe in a good sense? Just catastrophic in the sense that it will be a radical change. Because just think about it: our most standard self-perception is that of our freedom of thought. I am deep in myself, I think whatever I want, you are out there. There is a distance. The moment we lose this distance, the moment my thoughts, my thinking can directly interact with material processes in the sense of I think about something and it happens, or also the other way around something radically changes. So what does this mean? To really conclude, I would like to finish, as always, with an obscene but very decent and tragic joke. Do you know that there is a whole subspecies of Jewish jokes about Auschwitz? Making fun of Auschwitz. I love these jokes not because I'm a secret Auschwitz admirer, but because that's my big lesson that I learned: when things are really horrible, we are beyond tragedy. Tragedy still implies a certain dignity of the victim. Tragedy is: "No, you can beat me or torture me, but I remain proud," and so on. To refer to the term tragedy in Auschwitz is an obscenity. No, the Jews and other prisoners there were even deprived of the role of tragic victim. So another thing you have to know with this joke, if I may call it like this, is that there was a big problem in Jewish and also Christian theology: how to deal with phenomena like Auschwitz? To cut a long story short: how could God have allowed it? Because the premise of every religious teleology is that what appears to us as horror or nightmare serves some deeper purpose. You know, evil doesn't happen just like that. As some theologians claim and they use this absolutely disgusting metaphor what appears to us as evil is the same as if you have a beautiful painting. If you look too close to a painting, you just see a stain. But from a proper distance, you see those stains contribute to divine harmony. Okay, I would still like to see that distance from which the Holocaust or the Gulag contribute to human harmony. So, one of the solutions, maybe even theological, the predominant one, was: God died at Auschwitz, or God abstained, or God was not there. Now comes this very modest it's not even one to laugh at joke. In paradise, a couple of Jews who died at Auschwitz enjoy their life. I'm returning to paradise for the end. They sit at a table in a nice garden and talk, and they're telling each other jokes. They are laughing about how they died. Like one says to another: "Do you remember how when they were dragging you towards the gas chamber, you slipped on a piece of soap and broke your skull, and you died even before the gas touched you?" and they all laugh, "Ho ho ho, yes." Then God comes by, taking a walk there, and tells them: "Oh my god guys, I don't get it. You suffered so much there, how can you laugh at it now?" And one old Jew steps to God, puts his hand around God's arm and says: "Don't worry, my Lord. Of course you cannot understand it, because you were not there." And I think something like this I believe about this prospect of singularity. Singularity, as you know Ray Kurzweil and so on this idea that through a wired brain we will soon be part of some collective awareness; kind of a God materialized as a collective mind of all humanity. Maybe something will escape singularity: this type of obscene laughter. And this laughter even has a political dimension. Not that I celebrate it, but isn't this laughter exactly the same as the laughter of Joker from the film? Thank you very much. [Applause] Moderator: Thank you for the presentation, Slavoj. My first question is just: throughout your writings, in one way or another, you seem to hint at this sort of dislike for the individual the individual's petty materialism, the ideologies they buy into, and stuff like that. Why is it that you seem to simultaneously hold these sorts of views and also lamented just then the sort of death of the individual via this sort of weird digital process? Žižek: Oh my god, I would have to try not to get lost. First, I say many things; maybe I'm not always consistent. Because my answer to you here would have been that, you know, usually even some people who worry about capitalism, ecology, and destruction claim capitalism means unbridled individualism. No, I agree with Walter Benjamin: capitalism is a perverted form of religion. The way to fight capitalism is not to sacrifice yourself for humanity, but to be a good egotist: think how you and your children will survive. Walter Benjamin saw this very clearly: capitalism is a religious phenomenon in the sense that you have a circulation of capital, profit expanded circulation, and it's like a divine entity you are ready to sacrifice everything for it. So I don't think the critique of capital here, I don't have time to go into it but here I think we still have to learn things from Marx. He saw this clearly, this let's call it theological dimension of capitalism. You know, for me the beginning of that sub-chapter of chapter one of Capital, where Marx says: "In a first approach a commodity seems an ordinary thing. But a close analysis demonstrates that it's full of mysteries and theological subtleties." What is Marx saying here? Exactly the opposite of what we expect. It's not that in everyday life we are caught in ideology. No, we in everyday life are common sense British utilitarians. In our social activity, we are more religious than we think. So I would just like to complicate things here a little bit. That far from being atheist, our era is, I think, maybe the most but in the bad sense of the term religious era in the history of humanity. Only I will stop immediately so that I don't get lost you know, as a philosopher where I would immediately complicate things: what is religion? What is to believe in something? Do we really believe? You know which book was one of my experiences which formed me? Paul Veyne, the French guy, he already died I think, who wrote a wonderful book called "Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Myths?" where he demonstrates undoubtedly that no, ancient Greeks were not stupid; they did not believe if you climb Mount Olympus you will see Zeus screwing Aphrodite or whatever. They knew it. But nonetheless, it was not a metaphor for them. It's not also that Zeus was a metaphor for cosmic power or whatever. This status of belief fascinates me, where you know that it's not true, but in some sense you still believe it. And even in our everyday life, we usually most of my friends we believe through not believing. There is a whole complicated process of believing through others. My stupid example, you must know it: ask a child, ask parents, "do you believe in Santa Claus?" They say "no, I'm not stupid, I buy the presents, of course I don't believe in it." Then you ask the children, they will also tell you "I'm not stupid, I know, but I just pretend so as not to disappoint my parents" and so on and so on. So this stupidly simple example shows how a belief can function socially without anybody in the first person taking it seriously and believing in it. Beliefs are socially enacted. And what I learned from my socialist past by this I mean living in communist Yugoslavia now comes the cynical point, is that not only can beliefs function without anybody in the first person believing in them, there are strange beliefs which function only if you don't believe in them. It's catastrophic if you take them seriously. That was my experience in ex-Yugoslavia. I knew too many good friends who worked as employees at the Central Committee and they lost their job. Why?
The logic of this ambiguity is, I think, the fundamental blindness of Atwood's novel for the limitation of our liberal permissive universe. The entire story is an exercise in what Fredric Jameson called nostalgia for the present. It is permeated by the sentimental admiration for our liberal permissive present ruined by the new Christian fundamentalist rule. And it never even approaches the question of what is wrong in this present so that it gave birth to the nightmarish Republic of Gilead. Nostalgia for the present falls into the trap of ideology because it is blind for the fact that this present permissive paradigm is boring and, exactly like the blessed souls in paradise, it needs a look into the hell of religious fundamentalism to sustain itself. But today hell acquired a new apocalyptic face. In his essay "Apocalypse Without Kingdom", Günther Anders to be vulgar, husband of Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of naked apocalypse: the apocalypse that consists of mere downfall, which doesn't represent the opening of a new positive state of affairs, of a new kingdom. Anders' idea was that a nuclear catastrophe would be precisely such a naked apocalypse. No new kingdom will arise out of it, just the obliteration of ourselves and of our world. My question is here, how will apocalypses that haunt us today affect us? Will they involve the entrance into a new higher posthuman kingdom or just the disappearance of humanity the way we know it, or in some sense both at the same time? The first thing, just think about it, that strikes the eye is the multiplicity of apocalyptic threats today. The predominant right-wing reaction to the warnings about the looming apocalypse, ecological or digital, is that these warnings are part of the desperate radical leftist strategy to sustain its revolutionary zeal after the triumph of capitalism in 1990s. What the left cannot accept is that in spite of all problems, we live in a relatively peaceful and prosperous era. There never were so little wars, poverty is diminishing even in the Third World countries, life will go on as usual, maybe even it will even get better for most of us. To maintain a minimum of credibility, such a vision has to cling on the leftist vision that's the rightist critique has to cling on any bad news that come along: a melting glacier here, a tornado there, a heatwave somewhere else. They are all read as signs of a forthcoming catastrophe. But my reply to this, my reply as a leftist, is not just the enumeration of data which confirm apocalyptic predictions, but another way I think we should reply to it. Recall that Donald Trump, one of the great proponents of the denial of global warming, proclaimed national emergency because of the wave of Latino immigrants into the United States. In Europe also, rightist populists paint a catastrophic vision of our entire civilization under the threat from Muslim refugees. They say that if today's trends go on, in a decade or so Europe will be the Muslim province of Europa-Stan or whatever you call it. And as it befits every good conspiracy theory, there has to be a secret agent controlling this attack on our way of life. So again, now we have the right-wing conspiracy theory: after European communist revolutions failed, the communist center realized that one has first to destroy the moral foundations of the West. So this is a beautiful, disgusting right-wing paranoia. That's why Stalin directly ordered the construction of sorry, the formation of Frankfurt School; he laundered the money through Argentina to Frankfurt. The idea was, we made it wrong the first time, we first had to destroy the West morally. And today we get LGBT, gay marriage, and so on and so on. And then they even go I always like these crazy ideas a step further and claim that Muslim fundamentalists and LGBT people are really two sides of the same coin: they share the same enemy. So again, this is the first enigmatic thing, that apocalypses are everywhere, just different apocalypses. For the left, ecology and digital control; for the right, immigration and new forms of feminism, LGBT, gay rights, and so on and so on. So let me focus on the three apocalypses that I think should be taken seriously: refugees/migrations, ecology, and digital control. Let me begin with the apocalypse shared by right and left: the apocalypse of refugees. Of course, right and left perceive it in the opposite way. For the right-wingers, immigrants arriving is the apocalyptic threat to our way of life. For the left, the true apocalypse is our reaction to it: building walls and so on. While of course I'm here on the side of the leftist, now trigger warning as they say in politically correct jargon I will try to provoke you a little bit. We should nonetheless reject the simple lesson of tolerance, best rendered by a well-known utter fatuity masquerading as deep wisdom. If there is a saying that I think is totally stupid, it's the following one: "An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard." Of course, I see the good side of this. Maybe the best literary example is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; how when we see the situation from the perspective in the middle part of the novel of the monster itself, or himself, whatever, you see the other side of the story. There is, however, a clear limit to this procedure. Are you ready to affirm, for example I always like to extrapolate some wisdoms into the extreme form would you also say that Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to hear his story? No, I think it's the opposite: the more you learn about Hitler, the more he is our enemy. And now I draw a radical conclusion from this to provoke you even more. It's not true that when somebody is doing something which may appear horrible, look at his side of the story and you will understand. No, the stories we are telling ourselves about our acts are basically lies. There is no inner deep truth in those stories. That's why now I go to the end these stories that are usually used to justify crimes are written or instigated by poets. Soldiers are not bad per se. What is bad are soldiers with poets. Soldiers mobilized by nationalist poetry. Of course, there are cases of pathological atheists who are able to commit mass murder just for the pleasure of it, but they are rare exceptions. The majority of people needs to be anesthetized against their elementary decency or sensitivity to the other's suffering, and for this, a sacred cause is needed. Religious ideologists usually claim that, true or not, a religion makes some otherwise bad people do some good things. From today's experience, I think that we should rather stick to Steven Weinberg's claim that while without religion, good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things, only religion or something like religion or poetry can make good people do bad things. And I can go very long in justifying this in the debate. So Plato's reputation suffers because of his claim that poets should be banned from polis, from the city. I think, judging from what happened in my own ex-country, ex-Yugoslavia, this is a rather sensible advice. Ethnic cleansing was prepared by poets' dangerous dreams. What we had in ex-Yugoslavia was what I call a poetic-military complex: gentle poets outlining a beautiful you can cry nationalist vision, and then soldiers doing it. Let me go a step further here. There was a point in Vladimir Putin's recent interview at which one can feel how he really speaks from his heart. It occurred when Putin solemnly declared his zero tolerance for spies who betray their country. I quote Putin: "Treason is the gravest crime possible, and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident you read about it is the way to do it, but traitors must be punished." End of quote. Now it is clear from this outburst that Putin has no personal sympathy for Snowden or Assange. He just helps them to annoy his enemies, and one can only imagine the fate of an eventual Russian Snowden or Assange. The logic of nation-state competition is extremely dangerous because it runs directly against the urgent need to establish a new mode of relating to our environment a radical politico-economic change called by Peter Sloterdijk the domestication of the wild animal culture. What does he mean by this? Till now, each culture disciplined and educated its own members and guaranteed civil peace among them in the guise of state power, but the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under the shadow of potential war. Each state of peace was nothing more than a temporary armistice. The entire ethic of a state culminates in the highest act of heroism: your readiness to sacrifice your life for your nation-state, which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state. Now, I think that if we really care for the fate of the people who compose our nation, our motto should be exactly the opposite one: America last, China last, Russia last, and so on. Because the threat today is precisely well beyond nation-state: it's ecology. So this brings me to the second threat, ecological apocalypse. Here also I want to provoke you with some unconventional views. The recent burning, you remember a couple of months ago, of the Amazon forests of course triggered an alarm. Are we really heading towards a collective suicide? By destroying the Amazon rainforests, Brazilians were killing the lungs of our Earth. However, if we want to confront seriously threats to our environment, what we should avoid are precisely such quick extrapolations which fascinate our imagination. Three, four decades ago, I remember everyone in Europe was talking about Waldsterben, the dying of forests. The topic was present on the covers of all popular weeklies. There were calculations on how in half a century Europe will be without forests. Now, are you aware of this? There are more forests in Europe than ever in the 20th century. And we are becoming aware of other, maybe more serious dangers. For example, of what is going on in the depth of the oceans. Ecology of fear has all the chances of developing into the predominant form of ideology today a new opium for the masses replacing the declining religion. It takes over the old religion's fundamental function, that of installing an unquestionable authority which imposes limits. And I think, as a Marxist that I still am in some sense, we should maybe you know this line of thought of mine we should precisely turn around and change this old Marxist motto "religion is the opium of the people". As I developed in already two of my books I repeat myself, I know there are today at least two new opiums of the people: opium and the people. Opium, the amount of drugs we use, and people new populism. So let me go back to this deep ecology, why I think it's a catastrophe. What's fashionable to say today is that we have to reject anthropocentrism. You know, we are just one species on our Earth, we are not at the center of the universe and so on and so on. I think there is a deep hypocrisy in this claim. What all the talk about how we humanity pose a threat to the life on and of the Earth really amounts to is our worry about our own fate. Earth in itself is indifferent. Even if we destroy life on it, it will just be one not even the greatest of catastrophes that befell our Earth. When we worry about environment, we worry about our own environment. We want our own good and safe life. The predominant ecological ideology treats us as a priori guilty, indebted to Mother Nature, under the constant pressure of the ecological superego agency. And here ideology enters. Did you notice this? It addresses us as individuals. Let's say you criticize society, industry, pollution, but then the message you subtly get from society is: "But who are you just to complain? Did you put aside all Coke bottles? Did you recycle all the newspapers?" and so on and so on. "Why did you use air conditioning instead of just opening wide the windows?" and so on and so on. You see, this is ideology. The threat is recognized, but the critical dimension is suspended. You are personally treated as responsible for it. More precisely, there are I think today five main strategies to obfuscate the true dimension of our ecological predicament. First, simple ignorance: Donald Trump and so on, there is no global warming and so on. Then, second idea: technology, science, they can save us. Third idea: leave the solution to the market higher taxation of the polluters and so on. Fourth idea: advocating a return to natural balance, to a more modest traditional life by means of which we renounce human hubris and become again respectful children of our Mother Nature. I think we should totally reject this view. The first step of serious ecology is for me: "Screw Mother Nature." Mother Nature is a nightmare bitch. Are you aware just think about it there is no natural balance. Nature is a series of catastrophes. Just think about our main sources of energy today: oil, coal. Can you just imagine what catastrophes had to happen on our Earth before humanity emerged for us to have our sources of energy? So I think that the situation is much worse. My message is not "don't exaggerate", but that we have nowhere to return. There is no natural state, no natural balance which we should just return to. And then, as already said, maybe the worst of all ecological ideologies: the pressure on personal responsibility. Here ideology reigns unopposed. I recently an American friend sent me an analysis which I like. He interviewed people: why do they buy organic apples? You know, you go to a store, you get those beautiful genetically manipulated green apples; they remain green even if they are exposed to the sun for months, you know. And then you get those half-rotten so-called organic apples which cost more. And the result he got was a horrible one. The majority of people are cynical, of course. They claim probably we are cheated; so-called organic apples are the same shit, maybe even worse. Then they were asked, "But why are you then buying them?" The answer was a beautiful one: "Because it makes me feel good. I do something for our solidarity, for Mother Nature," and so on and so on. This, I think, is ideology at its purest. So again, my message is not that we should just relax and don't get into panic. Things are catastrophic. What we are approaching now is climate apartheid. The poor of the Third World will pay for it. But where I'm even more of a pessimist is that I don't believe this simplistic catastrophism of some deep ecologists, especially when they deal with magic numbers. Usually it's or percent of global warming. If it's that, it's still okay; if it goes over no, we don't know what is still okay, we don't know what to do, we don't how little we know. For example, there are ideas for radical measures, like solar radiation management: the continuous massive dispersal of aerosols into our atmosphere to absorb sunlight. Nice idea, but it can trigger other catastrophes and so on. So that's my here it's my pessimism. We don't know what to do. There is no simple way out, like recycle a little bit more and it'll be okay. We simply don't know. And also now it will sound strange for a leftist to say this but we cannot just say, "Oh, scientists are bribed by big companies; trust people." This cheap populist Maoist trick: "learn from ordinary people". No, ordinary people are totally confused; they know even less. There is no simple way. Nobody knows what to do. The third apocalypse, I'm approaching the end now: the digital apocalypse. I don't mean here so much the phenomenon called by Shoshana Zuboff "surveillance capitalism". It is a crucial thing happening today: the amount to which everything is registered, all our acts and so on are controlled. That's important, but I see a true game changer, a true apocalyptic threat in something else which is clearly on the horizon: this idea of whatever you call it Neuralink, wired brain, directly linking our mental processes to a computer. Now, it sounds fascinating and nice, and when they those in power try to sell you this, they always use some pathetic example from medicine, like: "You see that guy, he is totally crippled, but now through the help of his wired brain, he can communicate what he wants," and so on and so on. I know, they always give you these examples. Now, the other defense against this is when people tell you, "Yeah, but we are far from it." We are not so far from it. I will not bore you with details, but just I don't like to focus on China, but it's interesting to follow what goes on in China because they are doing the same thing as we are doing, just more openly. For example, I read in some Chinese province, and my Chinese friends confirmed this to me, they already oblige people in some small children in some elementary schools to wear a couple of hours during their classes in school some kind of a small helmet which reports their mental state to a computer on the teacher's table. The idea is, in this way, without looking at them, we can control: are they dozing off or are they active? and so on. I mean, it's incredible how much these things already progressed. Why do I consider this option really catastrophic, but maybe in a good sense? Just catastrophic in the sense that it will be a radical change. Because just think about it: our most standard self-perception is that of our freedom of thought. I am deep in myself, I think whatever I want, you are out there. There is a distance. The moment we lose this distance, the moment my thoughts, my thinking can directly interact with material processes in the sense of I think about something and it happens, or also the other way around something radically changes. So what does this mean? To really conclude, I would like to finish, as always, with an obscene but very decent and tragic joke. Do you know that there is a whole subspecies of Jewish jokes about Auschwitz? Making fun of Auschwitz. I love these jokes not because I'm a secret Auschwitz admirer, but because that's my big lesson that I learned: when things are really horrible, we are beyond tragedy. Tragedy still implies a certain dignity of the victim. Tragedy is: "No, you can beat me or torture me, but I remain proud," and so on. To refer to the term tragedy in Auschwitz is an obscenity. No, the Jews and other prisoners there were even deprived of the role of tragic victim. So another thing you have to know with this joke, if I may call it like this, is that there was a big problem in Jewish and also Christian theology: how to deal with phenomena like Auschwitz? To cut a long story short: how could God have allowed it? Because the premise of every religious teleology is that what appears to us as horror or nightmare serves some deeper purpose. You know, evil doesn't happen just like that. As some theologians claim and they use this absolutely disgusting metaphor what appears to us as evil is the same as if you have a beautiful painting. If you look too close to a painting, you just see a stain. But from a proper distance, you see those stains contribute to divine harmony. Okay, I would still like to see that distance from which the Holocaust or the Gulag contribute to human harmony. So, one of the solutions, maybe even theological, the predominant one, was: God died at Auschwitz, or God abstained, or God was not there. Now comes this very modest it's not even one to laugh at joke. In paradise, a couple of Jews who died at Auschwitz enjoy their life. I'm returning to paradise for the end. They sit at a table in a nice garden and talk, and they're telling each other jokes. They are laughing about how they died. Like one says to another: "Do you remember how when they were dragging you towards the gas chamber, you slipped on a piece of soap and broke your skull, and you died even before the gas touched you?" and they all laugh, "Ho ho ho, yes." Then God comes by, taking a walk there, and tells them: "Oh my god guys, I don't get it. You suffered so much there, how can you laugh at it now?" And one old Jew steps to God, puts his hand around God's arm and says: "Don't worry, my Lord. Of course you cannot understand it, because you were not there." And I think something like this I believe about this prospect of singularity. Singularity, as you know Ray Kurzweil and so on this idea that through a wired brain we will soon be part of some collective awareness; kind of a God materialized as a collective mind of all humanity. Maybe something will escape singularity: this type of obscene laughter. And this laughter even has a political dimension. Not that I celebrate it, but isn't this laughter exactly the same as the laughter of Joker from the film? Thank you very much. [Applause] Moderator: Thank you for the presentation, Slavoj. My first question is just: throughout your writings, in one way or another, you seem to hint at this sort of dislike for the individual the individual's petty materialism, the ideologies they buy into, and stuff like that. Why is it that you seem to simultaneously hold these sorts of views and also lamented just then the sort of death of the individual via this sort of weird digital process? Žižek: Oh my god, I would have to try not to get lost. First, I say many things; maybe I'm not always consistent. Because my answer to you here would have been that, you know, usually even some people who worry about capitalism, ecology, and destruction claim capitalism means unbridled individualism. No, I agree with Walter Benjamin: capitalism is a perverted form of religion. The way to fight capitalism is not to sacrifice yourself for humanity, but to be a good egotist: think how you and your children will survive. Walter Benjamin saw this very clearly: capitalism is a religious phenomenon in the sense that you have a circulation of capital, profit expanded circulation, and it's like a divine entity you are ready to sacrifice everything for it. So I don't think the critique of capital here, I don't have time to go into it but here I think we still have to learn things from Marx. He saw this clearly, this let's call it theological dimension of capitalism. You know, for me the beginning of that sub-chapter of chapter one of Capital, where Marx says: "In a first approach a commodity seems an ordinary thing. But a close analysis demonstrates that it's full of mysteries and theological subtleties." What is Marx saying here? Exactly the opposite of what we expect. It's not that in everyday life we are caught in ideology. No, we in everyday life are common sense British utilitarians. In our social activity, we are more religious than we think. So I would just like to complicate things here a little bit. That far from being atheist, our era is, I think, maybe the most but in the bad sense of the term religious era in the history of humanity. Only I will stop immediately so that I don't get lost you know, as a philosopher where I would immediately complicate things: what is religion? What is to believe in something? Do we really believe? You know which book was one of my experiences which formed me? Paul Veyne, the French guy, he already died I think, who wrote a wonderful book called "Did the Ancient Greeks Believe in Their Myths?" where he demonstrates undoubtedly that no, ancient Greeks were not stupid; they did not believe if you climb Mount Olympus you will see Zeus screwing Aphrodite or whatever. They knew it. But nonetheless, it was not a metaphor for them. It's not also that Zeus was a metaphor for cosmic power or whatever. This status of belief fascinates me, where you know that it's not true, but in some sense you still believe it. And even in our everyday life, we usually most of my friends we believe through not believing. There is a whole complicated process of believing through others. My stupid example, you must know it: ask a child, ask parents, "do you believe in Santa Claus?" They say "no, I'm not stupid, I buy the presents, of course I don't believe in it." Then you ask the children, they will also tell you "I'm not stupid, I know, but I just pretend so as not to disappoint my parents" and so on and so on. So this stupidly simple example shows how a belief can function socially without anybody in the first person taking it seriously and believing in it. Beliefs are socially enacted. And what I learned from my socialist past by this I mean living in communist Yugoslavia now comes the cynical point, is that not only can beliefs function without anybody in the first person believing in them, there are strange beliefs which function only if you don't believe in them. It's catastrophic if you take them seriously. That was my experience in ex-Yugoslavia. I knew too many good friends who worked as employees at the Central Committee and they lost their job. Why?
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They took the Yugoslav ideology of self-management too seriously. And for those in power, this was already one step towards dissidents. I find this fascinating, how it's not just this fetishist formula of disavowal, "Je sais bien, mais quand même" I know it's not true, but I nonetheless believe in it. No, it's precisely the fact that I know that it's not true that makes the belief possible. So okay, I will stop so as not to get lost. Sorry. Moderator: So the next question is: before I know that people have pressed you on this before, you supported Trump because
They took the Yugoslav ideology of self-management too seriously. And for those in power, this was already one step towards dissidents. I find this fascinating, how it's not just this fetishist formula of disavowal, "Je sais bien, mais quand même" I know it's not true, but I nonetheless believe in it. No, it's precisely the fact that I know that it's not true that makes the belief possible. So okay, I will stop so as not to get lost. Sorry. Moderator: So the next question is: before I know that people have pressed you on this before, you supported Trump because
Slavoj Žižek
you thought it would energize the left-wing. Žižek: And it did! Moderator: Well, at the same time, Buttigieg is ten points ahead in Iowa, which skews like whiter and more liberal. I mean, do you think that that is evidence that it either didn't work, or do you think the historical trajectory will keep becoming more... Žižek: No, I don't know. I don't know what happened. First, from the very beginning, listen look at my book, I think "Trouble in Paradise". As far as my opinion on Trump goes, I there compared Trump to this image from Virgil literature of: you are at a nice party and then somebody is there sitting in a corner, shitting in the same room. The only under quotation marks good thing about Trump, and he did this, is that he disturbed the hegemony of the ruling ideology in the United States. He did this. The space is open. That's why I claim: no Democratic Socialism without Trump. Trump inadvertently, of course, opened up the space. That's why I don't know if you read my text that's why I'm also not that I like Trump, he is disgusting but I am very doubtful about this process of impeachment. As Bernie Sanders, whom I fully support, says: all this focus on Trump and so on. No, let's keep to the real issues, healthcare and so on and so on. You know why I am doubtful about this impeachment? Because I will try to be as precise as possible the establishment always likes to be self-critical if you can locate the guilt into a single corrupted individual. All this impeachment against Trump for me means: "No, our system is okay; it's Trump, the corrupted individual, who misused it," and so on and so on. But the real problems today for me are problems which are, as it were, immanent to the functioning of the system. All that the CIA and NSA are doing, digital control and so on: this goes on even if there are no corrupted individuals like Trump. I will give you another example that I often use, I hope you saw the movie. That's why I find it problematic: too soft on communism. Did you see "Das Leben der Anderen", "The Lives of Others"? Moderator: No, I didn't. Žižek: You didn't? Okay, it's a film about East Germany where, to cut a long story short, a corrupted Minister of Culture wants to screw the beautiful wife of a famous theater writer, and he had him under close observation to find something to ruin him so that blah blah blah. Sorry, but for me the message of this is a totally wrong one. The horror of the German Democratic Republic was that you would have been under total observation even if no minister wanted to screw your wife, my god, it was part of the system. And that's what I find false in this focus on Trump. And the lesson of Assange, of Snowden, of Manning and so on, is that it's how our system functions. That's, for me, the greatest, most depressive tragedy always: how evil can be committed by people who are just good patriots; they think they are doing a good job for their country. You don't need obscene figures like Trump. Now back to your question. Yes, I sincerely think first, sorry, just one clarification: many people approach me with another argument, "Ah, this is the logic 'the worse it gets, the better'," like "would you vote for Hitler for the same reason?" No. I think, to put it very simply, Trump is not simply Hitler. We can afford Trump, but I was very precise here. We cannot afford Le Pen in France; Orbán is the greatest; and even I would say for your friend-enemies across the sea here, I think in some sense Boris Johnson is worse than Trump. Moderator: Oh. Žižek: Because I think that the problem with the United Kingdom is that they are a country without a constitution that is written. They have laws, but many things I think the United Kingdom is one of the countries in the world which to an incredible degree, so friends are telling me, relies on unwritten rules. You have manners; "this is how it is done." This gap is incidentally already exploited by Trump. Trump doesn't usually break the law. He just breaks the unwritten rules. For example, when Trump declared a national emergency because of immigrants. He did something he didn't break any law; the President has the right to declare a national emergency, no? And my point is that we on the left should learn, as some American leftists said: "No, don't criticize Trump here. Let's hope that the next President will be ours and will declare a national emergency for ecology, for global warming, or whatever." You know, the only thing that I it's not like I even don't like Melania Trump,
you thought it would energize the left-wing. Žižek: And it did! Moderator: Well, at the same time, Buttigieg is ten points ahead in Iowa, which skews like whiter and more liberal. I mean, do you think that that is evidence that it either didn't work, or do you think the historical trajectory will keep becoming more... Žižek: No, I don't know. I don't know what happened. First, from the very beginning, listen look at my book, I think "Trouble in Paradise". As far as my opinion on Trump goes, I there compared Trump to this image from Virgil literature of: you are at a nice party and then somebody is there sitting in a corner, shitting in the same room. The only under quotation marks good thing about Trump, and he did this, is that he disturbed the hegemony of the ruling ideology in the United States. He did this. The space is open. That's why I claim: no Democratic Socialism without Trump. Trump inadvertently, of course, opened up the space. That's why I don't know if you read my text that's why I'm also not that I like Trump, he is disgusting but I am very doubtful about this process of impeachment. As Bernie Sanders, whom I fully support, says: all this focus on Trump and so on. No, let's keep to the real issues, healthcare and so on and so on. You know why I am doubtful about this impeachment? Because I will try to be as precise as possible the establishment always likes to be self-critical if you can locate the guilt into a single corrupted individual. All this impeachment against Trump for me means: "No, our system is okay; it's Trump, the corrupted individual, who misused it," and so on and so on. But the real problems today for me are problems which are, as it were, immanent to the functioning of the system. All that the CIA and NSA are doing, digital control and so on: this goes on even if there are no corrupted individuals like Trump. I will give you another example that I often use, I hope you saw the movie. That's why I find it problematic: too soft on communism. Did you see "Das Leben der Anderen", "The Lives of Others"? Moderator: No, I didn't. Žižek: You didn't? Okay, it's a film about East Germany where, to cut a long story short, a corrupted Minister of Culture wants to screw the beautiful wife of a famous theater writer, and he had him under close observation to find something to ruin him so that blah blah blah. Sorry, but for me the message of this is a totally wrong one. The horror of the German Democratic Republic was that you would have been under total observation even if no minister wanted to screw your wife, my god, it was part of the system. And that's what I find false in this focus on Trump. And the lesson of Assange, of Snowden, of Manning and so on, is that it's how our system functions. That's, for me, the greatest, most depressive tragedy always: how evil can be committed by people who are just good patriots; they think they are doing a good job for their country. You don't need obscene figures like Trump. Now back to your question. Yes, I sincerely think first, sorry, just one clarification: many people approach me with another argument, "Ah, this is the logic 'the worse it gets, the better'," like "would you vote for Hitler for the same reason?" No. I think, to put it very simply, Trump is not simply Hitler. We can afford Trump, but I was very precise here. We cannot afford Le Pen in France; Orbán is the greatest; and even I would say for your friend-enemies across the sea here, I think in some sense Boris Johnson is worse than Trump. Moderator: Oh. Žižek: Because I think that the problem with the United Kingdom is that they are a country without a constitution that is written. They have laws, but many things I think the United Kingdom is one of the countries in the world which to an incredible degree, so friends are telling me, relies on unwritten rules. You have manners; "this is how it is done." This gap is incidentally already exploited by Trump. Trump doesn't usually break the law. He just breaks the unwritten rules. For example, when Trump declared a national emergency because of immigrants. He did something he didn't break any law; the President has the right to declare a national emergency, no? And my point is that we on the left should learn, as some American leftists said: "No, don't criticize Trump here. Let's hope that the next President will be ours and will declare a national emergency for ecology, for global warming, or whatever." You know, the only thing that I it's not like I even don't like Melania Trump,
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even if she is Slovene, my own nationality I'm just saying this: we are in a confused, open situation. The basic ideological coordinates get blurred. Instead of getting into a panic and that's my reproach to American liberals. They just see it as a catastrophe like "The Handmaid's Tale": "let's return" no, there is no return. Let's use the opportunity. But I am not an old-fashioned Marxist; I'm not saying Trump is a step in this
even if she is Slovene, my own nationality I'm just saying this: we are in a confused, open situation. The basic ideological coordinates get blurred. Instead of getting into a panic and that's my reproach to American liberals. They just see it as a catastrophe like "The Handmaid's Tale": "let's return" no, there is no return. Let's use the opportunity. But I am not an old-fashioned Marxist; I'm not saying Trump is a step in this
Slavoj Žižek
train of history which leads us no. Although you know, I will tell you something else: in his absolute manipulations and so on, who knows what Trump will do? I read some good leftist analysis which said that I don't know who duped whom or whatever but probably if Hillary were to be President, there are serious arguments that there would already have been a war either with Iran or with North Korea. Not because Trump is good, but because Trump is so deep in his manipulations and so on. So let's not lose nerves. Whenever there is a confused situation, don't go into a panic but try to use the opportunity. Moderator: Okay. And then this is my last question. So on leftist analysis, have you read the recent Current Affairs article which brands Slavoj Žižek a racist, reactionary, repetitive charlatan, and what is your response to it? Žižek: It made me sad, not for the reasons that you think. I even replied briefly; now the guy wrote another short text claiming that I'm even more of a charlatan and so on, you know. Okay, now it's difficult to answer generally because there are detailed quotes and so on, yeah. What made me sad because, as a good old Stalinist and I mean this ironically; we live in such stupid times that you always have to emphasize that I mean it ironically I have spies in their circles, so I know who is behind it. It's the boss of that Current Affairs journal, Nathan Robinson, and behind him is Chomsky. It's Chomsky's revenge. Moderator: Oh, okay. Žižek: Yeah, so it's very sad. It's interesting; it's a leftist, as it were, revenge against me. But you know what really did hurt me a little bit? That reproach which I all the time get: that I am secretly a racist and so on and so on. You know what's the first thing that fascinates me here? I'm often criticized as an Islamophobic racist and so on. But it's very interesting: never or almost never from Muslims themselves. My books are pirated, they are popular; I visited the West Bank, it was wonderful there. They accepted my distances towards the predominant form of Islam and so on and so on. I consider this my enemy here is this West European liberal guilt feeling: "We Europeans are the worst, responsible for everything," and so on and so on. Are they aware that political correctness is something exclusively Western? I cannot imagine a more Western cultural phenomenon than political correctness. As to that part okay, let me see where the guy appears to be relatively convincing. He quotes me and then claims that I, in a totally unjustified way, attribute to Muslim youth pedophilia. It's a total lie! Precisely read my text. This is in which book of mine? I think "Trouble in Paradise" no, it's "Against the Double Blackmail". Precisely not to appear Islamophobic, I draw a parallel and this is what fascinates me in all countries today I draw a parallel between and the left doesn't want to talk about it here, but I think we should you remember three, four years ago the Rotherham scandal, where Pakistani youth gangs were raping white girls? But my point is not white girls in the racist sense. They selected them very well: poor white girls, to be sure. Okay, and I draw a parallel between this and the phenomenon well-known also in your beautiful country: Catholic pedophilia. My thesis is just this one: that every cultural forum usually has its own what I call political unconscious. And my point is that in the same way that obviously what Pakistani youth people did there to girls they were raping was not simply youthful brutality that's my point it's part of a culture. Every culture has also its obscene underside. In the same way that and I read very good critical Catholic analysis pedophilia is a kind of underground of Catholic identity. If nothing else, you can clearly see this from how the Church reacts to it. In Slovenia at least, we have the same problem. The line of the Church is: "This is our problem," and they put pressure on parents not to report it to the police and so on and so on. So and it's not only them. For example, I forgot in which of my books, I think in "Trouble in Paradise", I give also examples from other cultures like Mexico and Canada. Because it's so fashionable to be against the United States today. But I read a good analysis Mexican friends sent them to me about this. Mexico and South Africa are emerging as a new capitals of rape. And you know that in Mexico City the situation is so horrible that they introduced separate cars for men and women because rapes were so regular in the subway of Mexico City. And cars for women are protected by police, which means rapes go on and so on. And the obscenity is incredible. Some parents and girls tried to prosecute rapists, because everybody knows who they are. You know what the police did? Not only did they do nothing, but they published the name, address, and photo
train of history which leads us no. Although you know, I will tell you something else: in his absolute manipulations and so on, who knows what Trump will do? I read some good leftist analysis which said that I don't know who duped whom or whatever but probably if Hillary were to be President, there are serious arguments that there would already have been a war either with Iran or with North Korea. Not because Trump is good, but because Trump is so deep in his manipulations and so on. So let's not lose nerves. Whenever there is a confused situation, don't go into a panic but try to use the opportunity. Moderator: Okay. And then this is my last question. So on leftist analysis, have you read the recent Current Affairs article which brands Slavoj Žižek a racist, reactionary, repetitive charlatan, and what is your response to it? Žižek: It made me sad, not for the reasons that you think. I even replied briefly; now the guy wrote another short text claiming that I'm even more of a charlatan and so on, you know. Okay, now it's difficult to answer generally because there are detailed quotes and so on, yeah. What made me sad because, as a good old Stalinist and I mean this ironically; we live in such stupid times that you always have to emphasize that I mean it ironically I have spies in their circles, so I know who is behind it. It's the boss of that Current Affairs journal, Nathan Robinson, and behind him is Chomsky. It's Chomsky's revenge. Moderator: Oh, okay. Žižek: Yeah, so it's very sad. It's interesting; it's a leftist, as it were, revenge against me. But you know what really did hurt me a little bit? That reproach which I all the time get: that I am secretly a racist and so on and so on. You know what's the first thing that fascinates me here? I'm often criticized as an Islamophobic racist and so on. But it's very interesting: never or almost never from Muslims themselves. My books are pirated, they are popular; I visited the West Bank, it was wonderful there. They accepted my distances towards the predominant form of Islam and so on and so on. I consider this my enemy here is this West European liberal guilt feeling: "We Europeans are the worst, responsible for everything," and so on and so on. Are they aware that political correctness is something exclusively Western? I cannot imagine a more Western cultural phenomenon than political correctness. As to that part okay, let me see where the guy appears to be relatively convincing. He quotes me and then claims that I, in a totally unjustified way, attribute to Muslim youth pedophilia. It's a total lie! Precisely read my text. This is in which book of mine? I think "Trouble in Paradise" no, it's "Against the Double Blackmail". Precisely not to appear Islamophobic, I draw a parallel and this is what fascinates me in all countries today I draw a parallel between and the left doesn't want to talk about it here, but I think we should you remember three, four years ago the Rotherham scandal, where Pakistani youth gangs were raping white girls? But my point is not white girls in the racist sense. They selected them very well: poor white girls, to be sure. Okay, and I draw a parallel between this and the phenomenon well-known also in your beautiful country: Catholic pedophilia. My thesis is just this one: that every cultural forum usually has its own what I call political unconscious. And my point is that in the same way that obviously what Pakistani youth people did there to girls they were raping was not simply youthful brutality that's my point it's part of a culture. Every culture has also its obscene underside. In the same way that and I read very good critical Catholic analysis pedophilia is a kind of underground of Catholic identity. If nothing else, you can clearly see this from how the Church reacts to it. In Slovenia at least, we have the same problem. The line of the Church is: "This is our problem," and they put pressure on parents not to report it to the police and so on and so on. So and it's not only them. For example, I forgot in which of my books, I think in "Trouble in Paradise", I give also examples from other cultures like Mexico and Canada. Because it's so fashionable to be against the United States today. But I read a good analysis Mexican friends sent them to me about this. Mexico and South Africa are emerging as a new capitals of rape. And you know that in Mexico City the situation is so horrible that they introduced separate cars for men and women because rapes were so regular in the subway of Mexico City. And cars for women are protected by police, which means rapes go on and so on. And the obscenity is incredible. Some parents and girls tried to prosecute rapists, because everybody knows who they are. You know what the police did? Not only did they do nothing, but they published the name, address, and photo
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of this girl, and she is now threatened and so on. Canada, similar. I have some contacts in Vancouver and know how they are dealing with there is a whole subculture, and this is my point. It's not just a wild subconscious explosion; it's a culture. A culture of
of this girl, and she is now threatened and so on. Canada, similar. I have some contacts in Vancouver and know how they are dealing with there is a whole subculture, and this is my point. It's not just a wild subconscious explosion; it's a culture. A culture of
Slavoj Žižek
kidnapping and raping local indigenous Inuit or Native American whatever you call them girls there. And this is what we should be attentive to: these brutal rapes and so on. Like in which is the city south of El Paso? the big Mexican city on the border, they also have a big culture of gang rapes. It's totally ritualized; it's not a wild explosion. A group of boys kidnap a poor girl who works in a factory which renders her independent, and that annoys the men and I will not go into details, cutting her breasts with a knife a nightmare. But you know what's my point here? It's not "oh my god, crazy, irrational." It's part of a culture. And this is my point. I was not blaming Pakistanis
kidnapping and raping local indigenous Inuit or Native American whatever you call them girls there. And this is what we should be attentive to: these brutal rapes and so on. Like in which is the city south of El Paso? the big Mexican city on the border, they also have a big culture of gang rapes. It's totally ritualized; it's not a wild explosion. A group of boys kidnap a poor girl who works in a factory which renders her independent, and that annoys the men and I will not go into details, cutting her breasts with a knife a nightmare. But you know what's my point here? It's not "oh my god, crazy, irrational." It's part of a culture. And this is my point. I was not blaming Pakistanis
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as
Slavoj Žižek
something particular. I say, when you want
something particular. I say, when you want
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to understand a
to understand a
Slavoj Žižek
culture, be courageous enough and look at its obscene subconscious, as it were. In the same way that that's my ultra-classical model for example in the American South in the golden era of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, "we are all Christians," blah blah blah, but it was part of their culture white culture, of course, there that during the weekend, let's kidnap some black boys, let's lynch them, and so on and so on. This is my big obsession: this dark, obscene underground of a culture. And within this context, I think that we should not be afraid. You know what is really my fear? For example, in Germany and some other countries. Of course there are problems with immigrants. Of course they have other ethical standards. But it's absolutely prohibited to mention it. I mean, for example even now, in newspapers, if an immigrant rapes somebody, it's usually not mentioned that he was an immigrant. I think this is a catastrophic mistake because in this way you open up the way to right-wing populist paranoia and so on and so on. So my point is that we should approach the problem of immigrants and so on in a slightly different way. Yes, we should take full responsibility. We Europeans, but also Americans and Russians, are guilty of it. There would have been no wave of immigration without the American intervention in Iraq, without the mess in Syria, without the mega-mistake of toppling Gaddafi there and so on. That's true. But that's why we should not approach it as a humanitarian problem, but as a global politico-economic problem. What happens if you are a little bit more open towards immigrants, but the war in Yemen is going on now? The mega-catastrophe what we allowed Turkey to do with the Kurds and so on and so on. So my true paranoia is this one: those in power like to play tolerant liberals, and they like nothing more than to bring into conflict the underprivileged. Now it's ideal in Europe: upper-middle classes, liberal tolerant, and they can reproach their own working classes, "you don't tolerate the immigrants," and so on. Nothing nicer than this. So again, I think that the only way and it can be done to deal with these problems is to talk openly about them. I'm not saying we Europeans should impose our values as higher or whatever. I think that we should nonetheless talk about differences openly. And the way of solidarity for me is to always the way of solidarity is not "we are all brothers, humans", but it's "you have your own dark side, we also have it. Let's build a solidarity here." I'm just a little bit more of a pessimist. If you ask me if things will go on the way they are going now the greatest catastrophe at this point in the United States is what is happening in the Democratic Party: the way they try to systematically undermine the more radical left. So I think I don't want to predict, but I'm quite a serious pessimist. I think Trump will be re-elected; it's quite possible if there is not some catastrophic contingency. I think Europe will probably fall apart because, in a nice irony, although they are officially opposites, all the three big powers United States, China, Russia have all one and the same target: destroy the European Union. This at least is what makes me a little bit sympathetic towards Europe. But I talk too much, sorry. But if there is any concrete question, I would love to, about that Current Affairs text, I would love to go into it. Moderator: No, I don't have any more. We'll open it up to questions from the floor if anyone has any questions. Raise your hand. Okay, yeah. Audience member: You have said in the past "don't act, just think." You've implored revolutionaries to stay home and think of what would happen in the perfect world. Considering the rise of revolutions in South America, what do you propose leftists to do today to combat the capitalist system? Žižek: First, I of course didn't mean stay at home and think. What I mean is that I know pretty well listen, I personally knew we were almost friends, not quite Linera. I was almost absolutely pro-Bolivia. I think why Bolivia was such a trauma that a coup was needed? You know okay, I will not go into all the detailed story but basically what they did there is a miracle. The radical left took power and everybody expected them "oh, it will be a new Cuba, a new Venezuela," you know. No, they didn't screw it up. They were in power for over ten years; the economy thrived; they did great things for social justice, healthcare, and so on and so on. They proved this is why they were a true thorn in the flesh, I think, Bolivia they proved how so no, I'm not just for thinking. My god, quite often I was engaged. I was engaged with Bolivia; I was engaged before they screwed it up with Syria and so on. What I meant by thinking is just that I wouldn't nonetheless idealize Latin America. You know, for me let's take Chávez. I know, I don't underestimate American interventions and so on, all that. But let's face it. I heard this from Chávez's partisans. Chávez, while he was still alive, desperately tried to how should I call it naively invent new forms of public space, of economy and so on. We have to admit it that more or less it failed. I don't think that and it's the same with Cuba for me, all the sympathy, yes, they defended their independence and so on. Basically, they don't have this is what I mean, thinking: what do we have even and it's not just Latin America. That was my problem; I was there on Occupy Wall Street and so on and so on. I was asking them all the time this not Freudian question, "what does the woman want," but "what do you want?" And I found they were just, you know, abstractly against corruption, against this, against that, and so on and so on. So to provoke them, I always tell them "are you aware that what you are telling me, a kind of a honest moderate fascist would totally agree with you? We need more organic unity, we have to cut off this vile," and so on and so on. So the left on the one hand, I remain a communist in what sense? You know who is for me the saddest person? I wonder if you would agree. Habermas you're too young to remember his reaction to German unification. Habermas's primordial fear was the idea that maybe the West can learn something from East German dissidents. That's why Habermas coined this horrible term "nachholende Revolution". For him, Poland, Havel, the Czech Republic, East Germany was just usually it's translated like this a catch-up revolution. They should join the West; they just want what we have. I don't think this works. I think that the reason of all these confused protests that we are having today yellow vests, Chile, whatever you want is precisely the final death of Fukuyama. That is to say no, it's easy to laugh at Fukuyama. But I claim till now percent even of the leftists that I know were Fukuyama leftists. They basically thought you know, even I spoke with people like he is too corrupted by Putin now, I don't like him Oliver Stone. He told me: "Listen, capitalism is the only thing that works and we just have to make it a little bit more, you know, women's rights, gay rights, healthcare," and so on and so on. But that's, for me, left Fukuyamaism. You accept the system. I think that these confused protests coming today make it clear that no, liberal capitalism is not the ultimate form. It will not work. And precisely that's why I spoke about all those problems just three today migrants, ecology, digital control. None of them could be solved in a liberal capitalist
culture, be courageous enough and look at its obscene subconscious, as it were. In the same way that that's my ultra-classical model for example in the American South in the golden era of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, "we are all Christians," blah blah blah, but it was part of their culture white culture, of course, there that during the weekend, let's kidnap some black boys, let's lynch them, and so on and so on. This is my big obsession: this dark, obscene underground of a culture. And within this context, I think that we should not be afraid. You know what is really my fear? For example, in Germany and some other countries. Of course there are problems with immigrants. Of course they have other ethical standards. But it's absolutely prohibited to mention it. I mean, for example even now, in newspapers, if an immigrant rapes somebody, it's usually not mentioned that he was an immigrant. I think this is a catastrophic mistake because in this way you open up the way to right-wing populist paranoia and so on and so on. So my point is that we should approach the problem of immigrants and so on in a slightly different way. Yes, we should take full responsibility. We Europeans, but also Americans and Russians, are guilty of it. There would have been no wave of immigration without the American intervention in Iraq, without the mess in Syria, without the mega-mistake of toppling Gaddafi there and so on. That's true. But that's why we should not approach it as a humanitarian problem, but as a global politico-economic problem. What happens if you are a little bit more open towards immigrants, but the war in Yemen is going on now? The mega-catastrophe what we allowed Turkey to do with the Kurds and so on and so on. So my true paranoia is this one: those in power like to play tolerant liberals, and they like nothing more than to bring into conflict the underprivileged. Now it's ideal in Europe: upper-middle classes, liberal tolerant, and they can reproach their own working classes, "you don't tolerate the immigrants," and so on. Nothing nicer than this. So again, I think that the only way and it can be done to deal with these problems is to talk openly about them. I'm not saying we Europeans should impose our values as higher or whatever. I think that we should nonetheless talk about differences openly. And the way of solidarity for me is to always the way of solidarity is not "we are all brothers, humans", but it's "you have your own dark side, we also have it. Let's build a solidarity here." I'm just a little bit more of a pessimist. If you ask me if things will go on the way they are going now the greatest catastrophe at this point in the United States is what is happening in the Democratic Party: the way they try to systematically undermine the more radical left. So I think I don't want to predict, but I'm quite a serious pessimist. I think Trump will be re-elected; it's quite possible if there is not some catastrophic contingency. I think Europe will probably fall apart because, in a nice irony, although they are officially opposites, all the three big powers United States, China, Russia have all one and the same target: destroy the European Union. This at least is what makes me a little bit sympathetic towards Europe. But I talk too much, sorry. But if there is any concrete question, I would love to, about that Current Affairs text, I would love to go into it. Moderator: No, I don't have any more. We'll open it up to questions from the floor if anyone has any questions. Raise your hand. Okay, yeah. Audience member: You have said in the past "don't act, just think." You've implored revolutionaries to stay home and think of what would happen in the perfect world. Considering the rise of revolutions in South America, what do you propose leftists to do today to combat the capitalist system? Žižek: First, I of course didn't mean stay at home and think. What I mean is that I know pretty well listen, I personally knew we were almost friends, not quite Linera. I was almost absolutely pro-Bolivia. I think why Bolivia was such a trauma that a coup was needed? You know okay, I will not go into all the detailed story but basically what they did there is a miracle. The radical left took power and everybody expected them "oh, it will be a new Cuba, a new Venezuela," you know. No, they didn't screw it up. They were in power for over ten years; the economy thrived; they did great things for social justice, healthcare, and so on and so on. They proved this is why they were a true thorn in the flesh, I think, Bolivia they proved how so no, I'm not just for thinking. My god, quite often I was engaged. I was engaged with Bolivia; I was engaged before they screwed it up with Syria and so on. What I meant by thinking is just that I wouldn't nonetheless idealize Latin America. You know, for me let's take Chávez. I know, I don't underestimate American interventions and so on, all that. But let's face it. I heard this from Chávez's partisans. Chávez, while he was still alive, desperately tried to how should I call it naively invent new forms of public space, of economy and so on. We have to admit it that more or less it failed. I don't think that and it's the same with Cuba for me, all the sympathy, yes, they defended their independence and so on. Basically, they don't have this is what I mean, thinking: what do we have even and it's not just Latin America. That was my problem; I was there on Occupy Wall Street and so on and so on. I was asking them all the time this not Freudian question, "what does the woman want," but "what do you want?" And I found they were just, you know, abstractly against corruption, against this, against that, and so on and so on. So to provoke them, I always tell them "are you aware that what you are telling me, a kind of a honest moderate fascist would totally agree with you? We need more organic unity, we have to cut off this vile," and so on and so on. So the left on the one hand, I remain a communist in what sense? You know who is for me the saddest person? I wonder if you would agree. Habermas you're too young to remember his reaction to German unification. Habermas's primordial fear was the idea that maybe the West can learn something from East German dissidents. That's why Habermas coined this horrible term "nachholende Revolution". For him, Poland, Havel, the Czech Republic, East Germany was just usually it's translated like this a catch-up revolution. They should join the West; they just want what we have. I don't think this works. I think that the reason of all these confused protests that we are having today yellow vests, Chile, whatever you want is precisely the final death of Fukuyama. That is to say no, it's easy to laugh at Fukuyama. But I claim till now percent even of the leftists that I know were Fukuyama leftists. They basically thought you know, even I spoke with people like he is too corrupted by Putin now, I don't like him Oliver Stone. He told me: "Listen, capitalism is the only thing that works and we just have to make it a little bit more, you know, women's rights, gay rights, healthcare," and so on and so on. But that's, for me, left Fukuyamaism. You accept the system. I think that these confused protests coming today make it clear that no, liberal capitalism is not the ultimate form. It will not work. And precisely that's why I spoke about all those problems just three today migrants, ecology, digital control. None of them could be solved in a liberal capitalist
unknown
frame. It's clear that ecology okay, it's good of course to play the capitalist game, to tax more
frame. It's clear that ecology okay, it's good of course to play the capitalist game, to tax more
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polluters, but the catastrophes that are waiting... Maybe you know this story; I love it. My good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, an excellent you should invite him here the best theorist of catastrophes that I know, told me he was there as part of some European community delegation two days after Fukushima. He told me that for a couple
polluters, but the catastrophes that are waiting... Maybe you know this story; I love it. My good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, an excellent you should invite him here the best theorist of catastrophes that I know, told me he was there as part of some European community delegation two days after Fukushima. He told me that for a couple
Slavoj Žižek
of hours the Japanese government was in total panic. It looked as though they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area: million people. Then, maybe they didn't have to, maybe they hushed up something, I didn't care. But what I want to say is that it's clear that we are facing problems where neither market nor state, the way we have them today, will be able to do it. And that's, for me, the space for something that I prefer to call communism, not socialism, because today everybody is a socialist. I read an interview: Bill Gates is a socialist in his way. Socialism means today: "Yeah, what you said not too much egotism, we should take care of each other," and so on and so on. So again: no, be active, but don't forget just that we lack and I quote here my Marxist friend Fred Jameson we still lack what Jameson calls cognitive mapping: a kind of a global narrative, in a good sense I'm never a postmodernist we need big global narratives of what goes on today. You know what's for me the true tragedy today? China. Let's admit no, when people say "Communists always screwed up the economy," I tell them: "Sorry, do I hear you correctly?" Was there ever in the history of humanity I exaggerate a little bit, but not a lot such an economic triumph as China in the last years? Hundreds of millions were raised from poverty and so on. And how did they do it? The European left really hated two things always: unbridled market competition and a strong authoritarian state. The Chinese precisely combined these two, you know. So what I and this is the future: India is much worse than China, of course, Turkey, Putin a new authoritarian capitalism is coming up. And I'm just a pessimist. And I think that if you ask me what will happen, I'm so sad to say this... I wonder if you have a better... I mean, I got engaged. Do you remember when there were elections half a year ago unfortunately the left guy lost in Colombia? I supported the guy; he even thanked me with a letter, the leftist candidate. So I do get involved. But I still think that I don't have this old Marxist reliance: "we know the general situation, we just need to mobilize the people." No, people are getting mobilized outside our scope, you know. Like take the yellow vests in France, where my friend Alain Badiou proposed a wonderful formula. You know what was his answer to yellow vests? He said in French: "Tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge" all that moves is not necessarily red, you know. That's we live in such a confused time where what was still years ago a sign of the active left social movements, even obscenity, aggressiveness, protest is taken over by the right, and the big temptation of the left is to play the law-and-order card. For example, in my own as beloved President I prefer to refer to him now as S.G. I don't use the term Trump, S.G. You know why? He repeatedly referred to himself as a stable genius, you know. So as Trump would have put it, shithole of a country, Slovenia, where it's horrible. Of course one has to prosecute hate speech and so on. But this desperate move of the left in my country now they are all of a sudden for police investigation, punish them and so on and so on. Nothing against I certainly don't want to defend human rights of whatever racists. I'm just saying that if you focus on this, it means again the lack of a certain positive vision and so on and so on. You know what we should not forget? I was really furious when after Trump won, three publishers approached me: "We need here psychoanalysis; would you like to do a psychoanalysis of Trump?" I said no. Trump is doing something which is in some crazy sense rational from his standpoint. He addresses... I think the only way psychoanalysis is needed is for the total stupidity of the Democratic Party's liberal reaction to Trump. There you need psychoanalysis, you know. So no, I hope in and you know why I'm not a total pessimist? Not in the religious sense, but in a political sense. Miracles happen! Although they screwed it up finally, who would have thought that Syriza something like Syriza was possible? Who would have thought things happen. Things happen here and there. Again, Morales-Linera were interesting. I think they are a couple. Because Morales okay, and not in a racist way he was traditional, blah, all that. But Linera is a top intellectual, you know. I always like that's the condition of the left: these false opposites, to overcome them. That's why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said something wonderful recently when she supported Bernie Sanders. She said: "Yes, I support him not in spite of him being an old white man, but because he is an old white man." Because this is the worst false opposition: to say we need this young marginal... No, Bernie got this. You know who are Bernie's voters in Vermont? I know; I go often there because my friends there run the only department in the United States where Lacanians are in power. His voters are precisely the people who otherwise would have voted for Trump. This impoverished lower-middle class... This axis is crucial. The leftist plan in the United States shouldn't be this Clinton opposition: "Let's be more moderate to get the center." No, let's get to us some of the Trump voters who are disappointed. So no, I'm not a total pessimist. The point that you emphasized... Listen, let me finish with an anecdote which is my most beloved anecdote from Marx. You know in the Paris Commune, for a moment it appeared falsely, we know now that there would be a European revolution. And Marx wrote in a letter to Engels in a panic, you know: "My god, they want a revolution now. I didn't yet finish Capital," and so on. "Can't they wait?" I think we should not be ashamed of this trust in theory. We need theory, we need to understand what goes on. Moderator: Thank you very much, Slavoj Žižek. I think that's all the time we have tonight, folks. Can we get another round of applause... Žižek: My god! You are more Stalinist than me! You call this a democratic discussion, you know? One guy, probably you gave him the question before, you know. Thanks very much, I talked too much, I know, I am grateful to you, thank you. [Applause]
of hours the Japanese government was in total panic. It looked as though they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area: million people. Then, maybe they didn't have to, maybe they hushed up something, I didn't care. But what I want to say is that it's clear that we are facing problems where neither market nor state, the way we have them today, will be able to do it. And that's, for me, the space for something that I prefer to call communism, not socialism, because today everybody is a socialist. I read an interview: Bill Gates is a socialist in his way. Socialism means today: "Yeah, what you said not too much egotism, we should take care of each other," and so on and so on. So again: no, be active, but don't forget just that we lack and I quote here my Marxist friend Fred Jameson we still lack what Jameson calls cognitive mapping: a kind of a global narrative, in a good sense I'm never a postmodernist we need big global narratives of what goes on today. You know what's for me the true tragedy today? China. Let's admit no, when people say "Communists always screwed up the economy," I tell them: "Sorry, do I hear you correctly?" Was there ever in the history of humanity I exaggerate a little bit, but not a lot such an economic triumph as China in the last years? Hundreds of millions were raised from poverty and so on. And how did they do it? The European left really hated two things always: unbridled market competition and a strong authoritarian state. The Chinese precisely combined these two, you know. So what I and this is the future: India is much worse than China, of course, Turkey, Putin a new authoritarian capitalism is coming up. And I'm just a pessimist. And I think that if you ask me what will happen, I'm so sad to say this... I wonder if you have a better... I mean, I got engaged. Do you remember when there were elections half a year ago unfortunately the left guy lost in Colombia? I supported the guy; he even thanked me with a letter, the leftist candidate. So I do get involved. But I still think that I don't have this old Marxist reliance: "we know the general situation, we just need to mobilize the people." No, people are getting mobilized outside our scope, you know. Like take the yellow vests in France, where my friend Alain Badiou proposed a wonderful formula. You know what was his answer to yellow vests? He said in French: "Tout ce qui bouge n'est pas rouge" all that moves is not necessarily red, you know. That's we live in such a confused time where what was still years ago a sign of the active left social movements, even obscenity, aggressiveness, protest is taken over by the right, and the big temptation of the left is to play the law-and-order card. For example, in my own as beloved President I prefer to refer to him now as S.G. I don't use the term Trump, S.G. You know why? He repeatedly referred to himself as a stable genius, you know. So as Trump would have put it, shithole of a country, Slovenia, where it's horrible. Of course one has to prosecute hate speech and so on. But this desperate move of the left in my country now they are all of a sudden for police investigation, punish them and so on and so on. Nothing against I certainly don't want to defend human rights of whatever racists. I'm just saying that if you focus on this, it means again the lack of a certain positive vision and so on and so on. You know what we should not forget? I was really furious when after Trump won, three publishers approached me: "We need here psychoanalysis; would you like to do a psychoanalysis of Trump?" I said no. Trump is doing something which is in some crazy sense rational from his standpoint. He addresses... I think the only way psychoanalysis is needed is for the total stupidity of the Democratic Party's liberal reaction to Trump. There you need psychoanalysis, you know. So no, I hope in and you know why I'm not a total pessimist? Not in the religious sense, but in a political sense. Miracles happen! Although they screwed it up finally, who would have thought that Syriza something like Syriza was possible? Who would have thought things happen. Things happen here and there. Again, Morales-Linera were interesting. I think they are a couple. Because Morales okay, and not in a racist way he was traditional, blah, all that. But Linera is a top intellectual, you know. I always like that's the condition of the left: these false opposites, to overcome them. That's why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said something wonderful recently when she supported Bernie Sanders. She said: "Yes, I support him not in spite of him being an old white man, but because he is an old white man." Because this is the worst false opposition: to say we need this young marginal... No, Bernie got this. You know who are Bernie's voters in Vermont? I know; I go often there because my friends there run the only department in the United States where Lacanians are in power. His voters are precisely the people who otherwise would have voted for Trump. This impoverished lower-middle class... This axis is crucial. The leftist plan in the United States shouldn't be this Clinton opposition: "Let's be more moderate to get the center." No, let's get to us some of the Trump voters who are disappointed. So no, I'm not a total pessimist. The point that you emphasized... Listen, let me finish with an anecdote which is my most beloved anecdote from Marx. You know in the Paris Commune, for a moment it appeared falsely, we know now that there would be a European revolution. And Marx wrote in a letter to Engels in a panic, you know: "My god, they want a revolution now. I didn't yet finish Capital," and so on. "Can't they wait?" I think we should not be ashamed of this trust in theory. We need theory, we need to understand what goes on. Moderator: Thank you very much, Slavoj Žižek. I think that's all the time we have tonight, folks. Can we get another round of applause... Žižek: My god! You are more Stalinist than me! You call this a democratic discussion, you know? One guy, probably you gave him the question before, you know. Thanks very much, I talked too much, I know, I am grateful to you, thank you. [Applause]