Slavoj Žižek: I’m against pseudo use of psychoanalysis
Interview · The Žižek Times ·
published 2026-01-25 · 0:22:52 · 2,829 words
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communism-socialismideologypsychoanalysisfascism-populismtechnology-ai-cyberspaceecology-climateliberalism-political-correctnesslanguagesubjectivityhegel-dialectics
Žižek addresses the left's crisis of vision and mobilization, arguing it should abandon its fascination with subversive transgression and instead champion a new decent order. He defends communism as a pragmatic necessity for global cooperation on ecology and AI, while critiquing both Trumpian populism (its internal tension between Bannon-style leftism and Silicon Valley network-state accelerationism) and liberal orthodoxies around identity. He closes with reflections on the limits of artificial intelligence, particularly its inability to genuinely swear, perform meaningless daily rituals, or embody the negative gap between subject and language, and skepticism toward the singularity.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 11
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's own term for the strategic stance of retaining emancipatory principles (freedom, equality) while radically updating one's concrete analysis and tactics as conditions change.
Implicit in the discussion of pseudo-fundamentalism: the right-winger's secret fascination with the Other's enjoyment is surplus enjoyment displaced onto the Other.
A non-expansionist, non-envious identification with one's own way of life that accepts others' right to their own ways, exemplified by Amish and Tibetans, contrasted with pseudo-fundamentalism driven by resentful obsession with the Other.
as “left-Trumpians”
Žižek's ironic label for figures like Steve Bannon who represent a populist-redistributive strand within Trumpism (e.g. demanding higher taxes on the rich), distinct from the Silicon Valley libertarian wing.
as “network states”
The Silicon Valley techno-libertarian project (associated with Musk and allies) of purchasing or emptying territory and rebuilding society from zero through algorithmic governance, which Žižek reads as a new form of the Stalinist 'new man' project.
as “Neuralink”
Elon Musk's brain-computer interface project, used by Žižek as an emblem of the danger that the inside/outside distinction (thought vs. world) constitutive of human freedom will be dissolved.
as “daily rituals as meaningless ordering”
Žižek's observation that humans spontaneously generate private meaningless rituals (e.g. not stepping on the same tile twice) that produce the effect of order without genuine meaning, something AI can only simulate if programmed.
as “swearing as zero-form of language”
Following Lacan, Žižek treats profanity not as mere frustration-release but as a reflexive act exposing the gap between the subject and language, the human inability to ever be fully at home in language.
Invoked implicitly in the analysis of language: the symbolic order in which subjects are never fully at home, the gap from which swearing and negativity arise.
as “subjectivity as negativity”
The subject is constituted by not being fully identical with its place in society or language, a gap or non-coincidence that Žižek sees as the minimal condition of human freedom and also what AI currently cannot replicate.
The transhumanist hypothesis that all human self-awarenesses will merge into one unified digital intelligence, which Žižek dismisses as a false human dream of transcendence.
Stories he reaches for 3
Žižek contrasts the Amish (who accept modernity's tools situationally, have no envy of 'Englishmen', and simply wish to live their own way) and Tibetans (who harbor no expansionist hatred of Han Chinese) with pseudo-fundamentalists driven by resentful obsession with the Other.
“Tibetans it shocked me they don't have any expansionist logic or any hatred towards others their idea is we found our way of life you can have yours there is no envy”
Žižek discloses he received personal invitations from Elon Musk's Neuralink group and from Peter Thiel (whom he dubs 'the robot father of Vance') after his book on Hegel and the digital world, both of which he declined, to frame his critique of brain-computer interfaces.
“I got an invitation not from Elon Musk himself but from his group who are doing this Neuralink and then you know who personally contacted me I didn't want to my god what connections I have Peter Thiel”
A two-to-three-minute scene in The Wire where two detectives inspect a crime scene speaking entirely in variations of 'fuck', Žižek cites it as 'communication at its purest', illustrating how swearing demonstrates the gap between subject and language.
“the whole dialogue two-three minute scene is fuck it oh fuck fuck fuck and so on that's communication at its purest”
Works invoked 3
The Wire tv
Žižek says it was overestimated and 'too naively leftist', he didn't like it much, but uses its famous all-'fuck' detective scene as a philosophical illustration of swearing as communication at its purest.
Žižek's own book, which he explicitly says he doesn't like and didn't feel he succeeded in, though it attracted invitations from Neuralink and Peter Thiel.
Witness film
The Harrison Ford film about the Amish is cited as one of Žižek's sources on Amish life, though he also supplemented it with books and direct encounters.
People invoked 10
Žižek uses the ironic label 'left-Trumpian' for Bannon, noting he was fired for demanding higher taxes on the rich, evidence of a populist redistributive strand within Trumpism that differs from the Silicon Valley wing.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek explicitly follows Lacan's reading of swearing as the zero-form of language, a reflexive act exposing the gap between subject and language, endorsing and extending it.
Donald Trump negative
Žižek treats Trump as an internally contradictory figure: officially championing common sense and American values, but functionally the 'ultimate postmodern relativist obscene person' whose administration enables the destruction of the very common sense he invokes.
Mentioned only in passing as someone Peter Thiel is the 'robot father' of, a sarcastic aside.
Elon Musk negative
Associated with the network-state and Neuralink projects; Žižek declined Neuralink's invitation to engage and treats Musk's project as a dangerous techno-utopian accelerationism worse than Stalinism.
Bernie Sanders positive
Žižek genuinely admires Sanders as a model of authentic common-sense decency and non-performative ordinariness, walking around Burlington chatting with people, as the kind of left figure he wants emulated, though he notes he is not without criticism.
Peter Thiel negative
Personally contacted Žižek (who declined); labeled sarcastically the 'robot father of Vance', associated with the network-state ideology Žižek critiques as hyper-Stalinist.
Mentioned only as the star of a film about the Amish (Witness, though not named) as one of Žižek's sources on Amish life.
Sigmund Freud positive
Mentioned alongside Hegel as one who understood the constitutive gap between subject and language.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited alongside Freud as having understood that humans live in language but are never fully at home there; also background to Žižek's own book 'Hegel in a Wired World'.
What it argues
the left's abandonment of subversive transgression in favor of decent ordercommunism as transnational cooperation rather than central committee dogmaTrumpian populism's internal contradiction between Bannon populism and Musk accelerationismauthentic versus pseudo-fundamentalism and the question of envyartificial intelligence and the limits of machine subjectivityswearing as the zero-form of language and marker of the human gapprincipled opportunism: changing tactics while retaining emancipatory principles
Dialectical moves 8
“The Trumpians even took from us the revolution — they did, that is my point.”
The right has seized the transgressive, insurrectionary form that the left once claimed as its own, which is precisely why the left must abandon that form.
“Trump appears to stand for neocon American values, yet in the way he functions isn't he the ultimate postmodern relativist obscene person?”
Trump's official content (traditional values, common sense) is inverted by his form of functioning, which is radically postmodern and transgressive, his style undermines his message.
“All this babble about return to common sense, but what they are effectively doing is enabling an explosive process of destroying the last vestiges of common sense.”
The Trumpian appeal to common sense is self-undermining: the technological and social forces it unleashes destroy the very common-sense world it claims to restore.
“We are worst Stalinists than Stalin himself — this idea of recreating a new man.”
The Silicon Valley techno-libertarian project of building network states and recreating humanity from zero is more radically utopian-totalitarian than classical Stalinism.
“Paradoxically, European unity gives local communities more space — stronger Europe and more local identities are not in contradiction.”
Supranational unity does not suppress particularity but enables it, since localities no longer depend entirely on the nation-state for protection.
“What goes out goes in: the machine that lets a crippled man move a chair with his thoughts can also read his mind — and who controls the machine?”
The humanitarian interface of brain-computer technology conceals a reversal: the outward capacity of thought-to-action is inseparable from the inward capacity of machine-to-read-thought.
“We live in language absolutely, but we are never fully at home in language — there is always a gap.”
Full immersion in language and radical non-coincidence with language are not opposites but co-constitutive: the gap is not a defect but the condition of humanity.
“The problem with identifying with a specific way of life is not the particularity itself but the implied universal claim that 'we are the best'.”
Cultural particularism is not inherently racist; it becomes so only when it secretly smuggles in a universalist claim to superiority, authentic particularism is non-expansionist.
Claims 15
rejects
The left's problem is not unconscious ideological manipulation (as psychoanalytic Marxists claim) but a genuine lack of emancipatory vision.psychoanalytic explanations for left's failure to mobilize
asserts
The left should abandon its fascination with transgressive, subversive acts and instead position itself as the champion of a new decent order.left political strategy
asserts
To remain faithful to emancipatory principles today requires radically changing many concrete positions — 'principled opportunism'.political faithfulness and strategic adaptation
asserts
Communism in the relevant sense today simply means large-scale transnational cooperation to address global crises such as ecology and AI — not central-committee governance.the meaning of communism today
rejects
A world government is neither feasible nor desirable; a better model is the European Union's supranational structure, which paradoxically amplifies rather than suppresses local identities.world government as solution to global crises
reframes
The identification with a specific way of life is not inherently racist; the problem is when it implies a universal claim of superiority over others.cultural particularism and racism
asserts
Trump's rhetoric of 'common sense and sanity' is internally contradictory because the very processes his administration enables (AI, ecological disruption) shatter the common sense he claims to restore.Trumpian populism's internal contradiction
asserts
Silicon Valley's 'network state' project is effectively a more extreme version of the Stalinist 'new man' program.techno-libertarian accelerationism
asserts
Neuralink and brain-computer interfaces threaten the inside/outside distinction that is the very basis of human freedom.AI and the dissolution of subjective interiority
asserts
Swearing is not a mere expression of frustration but a reflexive linguistic act that marks the irreducible gap between subject and language.the nature of profanity and human language
asserts
Artificial intelligence in its current form cannot perform genuine spontaneous daily rituals or genuine swearing because both require a minimum of irreducible subjectivity.limits of artificial intelligence
rejects
The singularity hypothesis is a false human dream of transcendence, not a real prospect.singularity / transhumanism
asserts
AI may develop a form of spirituality that is simply different from human self-awareness rather than an imitation of it.artificial intelligence and consciousness
asserts
Pseudo-fundamentalists (right-wing anti-LGBTQ, antisemites, anti-Arab racists) are secretly obsessed with the Other's enjoyment, whereas authentic fundamentalists like the Amish or Tibetans have no such envious fixation.pseudo-fundamentalism vs. authentic fundamentalism
asserts
The January 6th Capitol occupation showed the right appropriating the left's own revolutionary gesture of popular insurrection.January 6th and the theft of revolutionary form
Quotes 12
“The Trumpians even took from us the revolution — they did, that is my point.”Slavoj Žižek · the right's appropriation of insurrectionary form
“We are the true moral majority — I think that we should say this.”Slavoj Žižek · the left should reclaim decency and order, not transgression
“Communism in the very elementary sense of larger transnational trans-state cooperation — that is all for me that is communism.”Slavoj Žižek · communism redefined as global cooperation
“We are worst Stalinists than Stalin himself — this idea of recreate a new man.”Slavoj Žižek · Silicon Valley network-state project as hyper-Stalinism
“What goes out goes in: this means that the machine can read your mind up to a point — and who controls the machine?”Slavoj Žižek · the reversibility of brain-computer interface cuts both ways
“Freedom means I am asked to do something and without acting directly in reality I can play different options in my mind — this is in danger of disappearing.”Slavoj Žižek · human freedom as subjective interiority threatened by AI
“We live in language absolutely but at the same time we are never fully at home in language — there is always a gap.”Slavoj Žižek · the constitutive gap between subject and language
“Swearing is always a reflexive act of language itself — you are mad that you confront a problem for which you don't even have a proper way to formulate it within the language.”Slavoj Žižek · swearing as linguistic reflexivity
“Subjectivity is always negative — not in a complicated sense — in the sense of you don't feel easy in what you are, you are not fully identified with it.”Slavoj Žižek · subjectivity as non-self-coincidence
“When I read about singularity is approaching I tend to have a reaction of this guy — but singularity is a typical human dream about what would have been a beyond. It's false.”Slavoj Žižek · singularity dismissed as false transcendence
“The problem for me with when white people say we want our way of life is that usually between the lines they imply a universal dimension — because we are the best.”Slavoj Žižek · the crypto-universalism hidden in white cultural particularism
“These rituals don't have any meaning, they just have the effect of meaning — it appears that you introduce some minimal order.”Slavoj Žižek · private rituals as effect of meaning without content
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Look the usual complaint of the left is we know the global situation what is going on but we cannot mobilize people and then for false reasons many stupid leftists discover psychoanalysis the reasoning is well according to the Marxist dogma working class should arise they don't so it must be ideological manipulation of unconscious motive bring psychoanalysis no no I'm totally against this use of pseudo-use of psychoanalysis there really is a lack of vision and I I don't have I my idea is here what I call strictly in one of my texts principled opportunism or pragmatism I don't mean by this do anything I mean when the circumstances are changing we must retain our principles emancipation and so on but the situation has changed so radically that precisely to remain faithful to our principal position we have to change many detailed analysis for example what I mentioned before feminism no sorry patriarchal order is no longer the big threat women are still subordinated and so on I take it all but but again it's a new form of authority which is openly obscene and so on the story that you must know I always repeat it that's why you remember 6th of January when was it years ago or whatever no when Trump lost my friends were crying there you know no because they cried when they saw crowd of people occupying Congress they said but this is what we should be doing people gather occupy now the Trumpians even took from us the revolution you know yes they did is my point yes they did so many what I would advise the left to drop is this fascination with provocative subversive acts there is enough of these obscenities on the right and I always you must know this line of me like to contrast at this level Trump and Bernie Sanders Trump appears neocon American values fuck it in the way he functions isn't he the ultimate postmodern relativist obscene person his the style how he works undermines his message while what I sincerely admire I'm not without criticism of Bernie Sanders but what I really admire in him is that as a person isn't he some kind of a I would almost say decent moral majority decent order I like this out of any cheap radical statements you know this common sense decency and I met friends once I almost met him because I have friends in Burlington Vermont he really functions like this it's not a fake now that he is older you meet him sometime simply walking around Burlington chatting with ordinary people and so on so I wouldn't be afraid as a leftist to stop with this obsession of subversiveness and so on no our answer should be being subversive chaotic undermining thing leave this to the new right we should speak for a new decent order I I think that we should say we are the true moral majority to say like this you know but at the same time don't misunderstand me then you will say but in what sense are you still calling yourself a communist well I have a very simple reason it will be too simple maybe for you but please counter-attack me I mean it sincerely not rhetorically just look we are facing a series of crisis today no there is of course ecology there is artificial intelligence how will be deal with it there is there's militarization this social disorder it's for me absolutely clear that not in the old sense central committee and so on but the only solution is communism in the very elementary sense of larger transnational trans-state cooperation look just as ecological crisis there has to be global cooperation look at what is happening around the Northern Pole do you remember a couple of years ago three four summers ago when temperatures in Vancouver Seattle that part were the temperatures of Emirates degrees Celsius now you cannot say they should take care of it no it's clear they were relatively well doing with their ecological measures but the whole air circulation around the Northern Pole is perturbed that's why they also get now in Northern Siberia temperatures up to degrees and so on so it's not a local problem it must be approached globally that's all for me that is communism we will have to find a solution now you will say so it's a world government no no no no in today's conditions don't you think first it's not possible but also if you imagine it in today's condition a world government would have implied breathtaking corruption and so on but my idea is something else look at the effect of European Union when it appeared that it's getting stronger the stronger European Union as a unity got it didn't squash oppress local identities I think this is what fascinated me Basque Basque country Catalonia even here Wales and so on the idea is that this reliance of Europe as up to a point a super-state meant that local communities ethnic or whatever no longer had to totally rely on their own nation state you know that paradoxically European unity gives them more space so I don't see a contradiction between stronger Europe and less local unities the although we need an efficient state more than ever but a state will have to learn to reach beyond itself international cooperation and this will then open up the space I have nothing against local communities and so on I'm even all for you know when you say today local ways of life our way of life should be maintained and if you say this in a wrong circle you are accused of being a fascist racist I say no the problem for me with when white people say we want our way of life is that usually between the lines they imply a universal dimension which is because we are the best and so on that's why I have no you know who is my model here it may appear ridiculous to you I don't even like them I met them Tibetans and Amish you know what's so beautiful about Amish my source is not only that movie by Harrison Ford or whatever my sources I then read some books even met some of them they don't have any envy they don't hate they call them the Englishmen other whites their idea is we found our way of life you have yours nice we can be friends and you know how wonderfully they collaborate for example they are not most of them they have subgroups they are not allowed to have how do you call these phones so it's part of the deal you need an emergency you run to a neighbor who phones the emergency what is important is that our pseudo-fundamentalists I'm ready to go so far as to distinguish between authentic fundamentalists and pseudo pseudo-fundamentalists have envy a typical right-winger in the US they're secretly obsessed by can you imagine what gay people or LGBTQs are doing although every antisemitism works like this every hatred of Arabs what they are doing among themselves no and it's the same with Tibetans it shocked me they don't have any expansionist logic or any hatred towards others their idea is we found our way of life you can have yours there is no envy and so on so the problem for me again is that when people refer to a specific way of life it's not that this notion as such is racist you can be fully identified with a specific way of life of course I'm not an idiot there are problems like to what extent should a larger community tolerate I don't know how you treat women and so on and so on I'm for certain minimal standards but we should be aware of this distinction again between between let's call it naively authentic fundamentalism which is simply I found my way of life you stick with yours we can be good friends none of this destructive envy for example for Tibetans it's unimaginable to say Han Chinese or who they are our ur-enemies we have to fight them and so on but to conclude if you want back to Trump you know where I see I did say this in I see an antagonism in Trumpian populism which may but not necessarily destroy it they may survive and even use it and to strengthen them on the one hand Trump line is this populism and I like ironically although I'm ashamed to use the term to refer to people like Steve Bannon as the left-Trumpians you know why why Steve Bannon was fired during the first Trump rule from the White House because you know what he demanded publicly that the taxes for the rich be raised from now it's maximum to so but then you have guys like Elon Musk and so on and they have a whole theoretical background it's something totally different through their secret dream and that's behind I think Trump's Gaza project is to slowly recreate new societies from the zero point they call this network states you empty a certain space or you buy it from a state and through algorithms benevolent dictator experts you recreate society from the zero point so and they even use the term recreate a new man you know what this means we are worst Stalinists than Stalin himself I mean this idea of recreate a new man so this is the problem for me with Trumpianism but at the same time unfortunately its strength do you remember his inaugural speech oh my god you remember he opens up with and then repeated it a couple of times two horrible terms common sense and sanity yeah but first you cannot return to old common sense it's obvious because all the problems that we have today artificial intelligence ecology and others they do defy our common sense our common sense tells us nature is the natural background we can screw things up but nature is a big circle it will survive no nature is no longer the same background on which you can rely it's the same with artificial intelligence for years I'm attentive to that horror and this is the you know I got two invitations I didn't accept them which quite shocked me after my book which I don't like I didn't really succeed Hegel in a Wired World I got an invitation not from Elon Musk himself but from his group who are doing this Neuralink and then you know who personally contacted me I didn't want to my god what connections I have Peter Thiel the father of I mean robot father of Vance you know and so I think that that's the paradox of Trump all this babble about return to common sense but what they are effectively doing is enabling an explosive process of destroying the last vestiges of what we are usually perceiving as common sense and you we cannot prevent it I think that's the true revolution today Trump-ians are escaping from it but doesn't the very prospect of artificial intelligence even if you don't go to the end this is for me pure horror Neuralink you know the idea of a direct link between not just your brain your thoughts and digital machine so that digital machine can read your thoughts okay as usual people cheat here those who p they always give an example humanitarian example look a guy is crippled isn't it nice that he just thinks about something like move that chair and it happens yeah but what goes out goes in this means that the machine can read your mind up to a point and who controls the machine then we know where this leads so I'm not necessarily a pessimist here I'm not saying we will turn into robots I'm just saying that something that we identified till now as a basic feature of being human which is reality is out there my thought is in here this is the basis of our freedom freedom means I am asked to do something and without acting directly in reality I can play different options in my mind this is this is in danger of disappearing so I I'm not necessarily again a pessimist here it will happen I just think we should really think about it in an open-up way for example this may amuse you or riddles I recently thought about is it there something that artificial intelligence cannot do my point is not this conservative one I'm much more open here I think that first who knows artificial intelligence doesn't have a self-awareness in our sense what if it will develop some kind of a spirituality of its own which simply doesn't fit our our our hierarchy you know it will have it will be something totally different but on the other hand I tried to think naively about what artificial intelligence at least in its today's form cannot do and we came debating with them to a very naive but nice option one daily rituals of course you can make it do but you program it but you know this this always fascinated me how all of us practically but I think all of us have some stupid daily rituals like you walk on a floor where there are tiles in square and you shouldn't step on the same one two times or what this is something very interesting because I'm against some stupid psychoanalytic interpretation here it's just that you are confused and these rituals don't have any meaning they just have the effect of meaning it appears that you introduce some minimal order I think that artificial intelligence cannot do it of its own you can program it to do it but that's different another thing more interesting I follow Jacques Lacan who says that the zero form of language is swearing curses fuck off and so on he says that this is and he gives a very Lacan a very nice reading of it his idea is is that swearing is not just frustration like you try to do something you spill it it goes wrong you say fuck it my god no swearing is always a reflexive act of language itself you are mad that you confront a problem for which you don't even have a proper way to formulate it within the language swearing is for me a sign of what Hegel knew Freud knew and so on that we live in language absolutely but at the same time we are never fully at home in language there is always a gap our whole humanity depends on the fact that you cannot say what you want what you say can always mean socially something that you didn't intend and so on and this gap opens up the space for swearing which is why my favorite scene in did you see I think it was overestimated I didn't like it so much too naively leftist The Wire the TV series you saw it do you remember in episode or where there is a wonderful scene where the two detectives enter a crime scene and they made something noticed here there and the whole dialogue two-three minute scene is fuck it oh fuck fuck fuck and so on that's communication at its purest now again you can plan you can program artificial intelligence like this but I wonder if they can do it in this specifically human way which implies minimum of subjectivity and subjectivity is always negative negative not in a complicated [unintelligible] in the sense of you don't feel easy in what you are you are at an you have certain place in society in language but you don't you are not fully identified identified with it here I see problems but again I'm very open who knows I don't believe in that bullshit of singularity you know all our self-awarenesses will be united in one big one I would say no thanks you know what's my reaction to it there is an wonderful old it's not even wonderful primitive old joke from Brezhnev era Soviet Union there is a big poster there good news in years we will live in fully developed communism no and a guy starts to jump then and sing and people ask him why are you doing this he said ah it's wonderful I have I have cancer I will not be alive in years so when I read about singularity is approaching I tend to have a reaction of this guy but singularity is I think a typical human dream about what would have been a beyond it's false but I'm totally open to the idea of something being beyond
Look the usual complaint of the left is we know the global situation what is going on but we cannot mobilize people and then for false reasons many stupid leftists discover psychoanalysis the reasoning is well according to the Marxist dogma working class should arise they don't so it must be ideological manipulation of unconscious motive bring psychoanalysis no no I'm totally against this use of pseudo-use of psychoanalysis there really is a lack of vision and I I don't have I my idea is here what I call strictly in one of my texts principled opportunism or pragmatism I don't mean by this do anything I mean when the circumstances are changing we must retain our principles emancipation and so on but the situation has changed so radically that precisely to remain faithful to our principal position we have to change many detailed analysis for example what I mentioned before feminism no sorry patriarchal order is no longer the big threat women are still subordinated and so on I take it all but but again it's a new form of authority which is openly obscene and so on the story that you must know I always repeat it that's why you remember 6th of January when was it years ago or whatever no when Trump lost my friends were crying there you know no because they cried when they saw crowd of people occupying Congress they said but this is what we should be doing people gather occupy now the Trumpians even took from us the revolution you know yes they did is my point yes they did so many what I would advise the left to drop is this fascination with provocative subversive acts there is enough of these obscenities on the right and I always you must know this line of me like to contrast at this level Trump and Bernie Sanders Trump appears neocon American values fuck it in the way he functions isn't he the ultimate postmodern relativist obscene person his the style how he works undermines his message while what I sincerely admire I'm not without criticism of Bernie Sanders but what I really admire in him is that as a person isn't he some kind of a I would almost say decent moral majority decent order I like this out of any cheap radical statements you know this common sense decency and I met friends once I almost met him because I have friends in Burlington Vermont he really functions like this it's not a fake now that he is older you meet him sometime simply walking around Burlington chatting with ordinary people and so on so I wouldn't be afraid as a leftist to stop with this obsession of subversiveness and so on no our answer should be being subversive chaotic undermining thing leave this to the new right we should speak for a new decent order I I think that we should say we are the true moral majority to say like this you know but at the same time don't misunderstand me then you will say but in what sense are you still calling yourself a communist well I have a very simple reason it will be too simple maybe for you but please counter-attack me I mean it sincerely not rhetorically just look we are facing a series of crisis today no there is of course ecology there is artificial intelligence how will be deal with it there is there's militarization this social disorder it's for me absolutely clear that not in the old sense central committee and so on but the only solution is communism in the very elementary sense of larger transnational trans-state cooperation look just as ecological crisis there has to be global cooperation look at what is happening around the Northern Pole do you remember a couple of years ago three four summers ago when temperatures in Vancouver Seattle that part were the temperatures of Emirates degrees Celsius now you cannot say they should take care of it no it's clear they were relatively well doing with their ecological measures but the whole air circulation around the Northern Pole is perturbed that's why they also get now in Northern Siberia temperatures up to degrees and so on so it's not a local problem it must be approached globally that's all for me that is communism we will have to find a solution now you will say so it's a world government no no no no in today's conditions don't you think first it's not possible but also if you imagine it in today's condition a world government would have implied breathtaking corruption and so on but my idea is something else look at the effect of European Union when it appeared that it's getting stronger the stronger European Union as a unity got it didn't squash oppress local identities I think this is what fascinated me Basque Basque country Catalonia even here Wales and so on the idea is that this reliance of Europe as up to a point a super-state meant that local communities ethnic or whatever no longer had to totally rely on their own nation state you know that paradoxically European unity gives them more space so I don't see a contradiction between stronger Europe and less local unities the although we need an efficient state more than ever but a state will have to learn to reach beyond itself international cooperation and this will then open up the space I have nothing against local communities and so on I'm even all for you know when you say today local ways of life our way of life should be maintained and if you say this in a wrong circle you are accused of being a fascist racist I say no the problem for me with when white people say we want our way of life is that usually between the lines they imply a universal dimension which is because we are the best and so on that's why I have no you know who is my model here it may appear ridiculous to you I don't even like them I met them Tibetans and Amish you know what's so beautiful about Amish my source is not only that movie by Harrison Ford or whatever my sources I then read some books even met some of them they don't have any envy they don't hate they call them the Englishmen other whites their idea is we found our way of life you have yours nice we can be friends and you know how wonderfully they collaborate for example they are not most of them they have subgroups they are not allowed to have how do you call these phones so it's part of the deal you need an emergency you run to a neighbor who phones the emergency what is important is that our pseudo-fundamentalists I'm ready to go so far as to distinguish between authentic fundamentalists and pseudo pseudo-fundamentalists have envy a typical right-winger in the US they're secretly obsessed by can you imagine what gay people or LGBTQs are doing although every antisemitism works like this every hatred of Arabs what they are doing among themselves no and it's the same with Tibetans it shocked me they don't have any expansionist logic or any hatred towards others their idea is we found our way of life you can have yours there is no envy and so on so the problem for me again is that when people refer to a specific way of life it's not that this notion as such is racist you can be fully identified with a specific way of life of course I'm not an idiot there are problems like to what extent should a larger community tolerate I don't know how you treat women and so on and so on I'm for certain minimal standards but we should be aware of this distinction again between between let's call it naively authentic fundamentalism which is simply I found my way of life you stick with yours we can be good friends none of this destructive envy for example for Tibetans it's unimaginable to say Han Chinese or who they are our ur-enemies we have to fight them and so on but to conclude if you want back to Trump you know where I see I did say this in I see an antagonism in Trumpian populism which may but not necessarily destroy it they may survive and even use it and to strengthen them on the one hand Trump line is this populism and I like ironically although I'm ashamed to use the term to refer to people like Steve Bannon as the left-Trumpians you know why why Steve Bannon was fired during the first Trump rule from the White House because you know what he demanded publicly that the taxes for the rich be raised from now it's maximum to so but then you have guys like Elon Musk and so on and they have a whole theoretical background it's something totally different through their secret dream and that's behind I think Trump's Gaza project is to slowly recreate new societies from the zero point they call this network states you empty a certain space or you buy it from a state and through algorithms benevolent dictator experts you recreate society from the zero point so and they even use the term recreate a new man you know what this means we are worst Stalinists than Stalin himself I mean this idea of recreate a new man so this is the problem for me with Trumpianism but at the same time unfortunately its strength do you remember his inaugural speech oh my god you remember he opens up with and then repeated it a couple of times two horrible terms common sense and sanity yeah but first you cannot return to old common sense it's obvious because all the problems that we have today artificial intelligence ecology and others they do defy our common sense our common sense tells us nature is the natural background we can screw things up but nature is a big circle it will survive no nature is no longer the same background on which you can rely it's the same with artificial intelligence for years I'm attentive to that horror and this is the you know I got two invitations I didn't accept them which quite shocked me after my book which I don't like I didn't really succeed Hegel in a Wired World I got an invitation not from Elon Musk himself but from his group who are doing this Neuralink and then you know who personally contacted me I didn't want to my god what connections I have Peter Thiel the father of I mean robot father of Vance you know and so I think that that's the paradox of Trump all this babble about return to common sense but what they are effectively doing is enabling an explosive process of destroying the last vestiges of what we are usually perceiving as common sense and you we cannot prevent it I think that's the true revolution today Trump-ians are escaping from it but doesn't the very prospect of artificial intelligence even if you don't go to the end this is for me pure horror Neuralink you know the idea of a direct link between not just your brain your thoughts and digital machine so that digital machine can read your thoughts okay as usual people cheat here those who p they always give an example humanitarian example look a guy is crippled isn't it nice that he just thinks about something like move that chair and it happens yeah but what goes out goes in this means that the machine can read your mind up to a point and who controls the machine then we know where this leads so I'm not necessarily a pessimist here I'm not saying we will turn into robots I'm just saying that something that we identified till now as a basic feature of being human which is reality is out there my thought is in here this is the basis of our freedom freedom means I am asked to do something and without acting directly in reality I can play different options in my mind this is this is in danger of disappearing so I I'm not necessarily again a pessimist here it will happen I just think we should really think about it in an open-up way for example this may amuse you or riddles I recently thought about is it there something that artificial intelligence cannot do my point is not this conservative one I'm much more open here I think that first who knows artificial intelligence doesn't have a self-awareness in our sense what if it will develop some kind of a spirituality of its own which simply doesn't fit our our our hierarchy you know it will have it will be something totally different but on the other hand I tried to think naively about what artificial intelligence at least in its today's form cannot do and we came debating with them to a very naive but nice option one daily rituals of course you can make it do but you program it but you know this this always fascinated me how all of us practically but I think all of us have some stupid daily rituals like you walk on a floor where there are tiles in square and you shouldn't step on the same one two times or what this is something very interesting because I'm against some stupid psychoanalytic interpretation here it's just that you are confused and these rituals don't have any meaning they just have the effect of meaning it appears that you introduce some minimal order I think that artificial intelligence cannot do it of its own you can program it to do it but that's different another thing more interesting I follow Jacques Lacan who says that the zero form of language is swearing curses fuck off and so on he says that this is and he gives a very Lacan a very nice reading of it his idea is is that swearing is not just frustration like you try to do something you spill it it goes wrong you say fuck it my god no swearing is always a reflexive act of language itself you are mad that you confront a problem for which you don't even have a proper way to formulate it within the language swearing is for me a sign of what Hegel knew Freud knew and so on that we live in language absolutely but at the same time we are never fully at home in language there is always a gap our whole humanity depends on the fact that you cannot say what you want what you say can always mean socially something that you didn't intend and so on and this gap opens up the space for swearing which is why my favorite scene in did you see I think it was overestimated I didn't like it so much too naively leftist The Wire the TV series you saw it do you remember in episode or where there is a wonderful scene where the two detectives enter a crime scene and they made something noticed here there and the whole dialogue two-three minute scene is fuck it oh fuck fuck fuck and so on that's communication at its purest now again you can plan you can program artificial intelligence like this but I wonder if they can do it in this specifically human way which implies minimum of subjectivity and subjectivity is always negative negative not in a complicated [unintelligible] in the sense of you don't feel easy in what you are you are at an you have certain place in society in language but you don't you are not fully identified identified with it here I see problems but again I'm very open who knows I don't believe in that bullshit of singularity you know all our self-awarenesses will be united in one big one I would say no thanks you know what's my reaction to it there is an wonderful old it's not even wonderful primitive old joke from Brezhnev era Soviet Union there is a big poster there good news in years we will live in fully developed communism no and a guy starts to jump then and sing and people ask him why are you doing this he said ah it's wonderful I have I have cancer I will not be alive in years so when I read about singularity is approaching I tend to have a reaction of this guy but singularity is I think a typical human dream about what would have been a beyond it's false but I'm totally open to the idea of something being beyond