Slavoj Žižek Interview
Interview · SCI-Arc Channel ·
2017-04-05 · 0:54:47 · 8,490 words
ideologydemocracygeopolitics-warcapitalismpsychoanalysisphilosophy-generalcinema-art-culturefascism-populismsubjectivityeveryday-life
Žižek argues that the state and transnational organizations remain essential in neoliberal times, rejecting the leftist myths of local self-sufficiency and performative protest in favor of pragmatic, large-scale infrastructural management. He defends the subversive potential of abstract human rights and Enlightenment universalism against cultural relativism, while critiquing the 'liberal fascism' of contemporary authoritarian capitalism. Finally, he redefines the 'neighbor' not as a figure of empathetic fusion but as an opaque, distant other, drawing on Freud, Levinas, and John Ford’s The Searchers to illustrate the necessity of respectful distance. Žižek analyzes the paradox of 'freedom of non-movement' in Occupy Wall Street, contrasting it with the liberal fantasy of free settlement, and critiques the 'left Fukuyamaism' of figures like Yanis Varoufakis for fetishizing democracy. He argues that true politics often requires going against the majority, citing Merkel’s refugee policy, and uses anecdotes about manners and survival to argue that suffering does not guarantee ethical purity. Finally, he diagnoses a regression in public discourse under Trump, characterized by 'Zionist anti-Semitism' and the vulgarization of politics into 'deals,' while questioning the political utility of empathy and human rights.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 15
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The leftist dream of direct, self-organizing local communities, which Žižek dismisses as a 'myth' that cannot function without a strong state infrastructure.
as “organization of what to do after an alcoholic evening”
A metaphor for the mundane, infrastructural work of governance and social organization required after the 'morning after' of a protest or revolution, contrasting with the 'pathetic admiration' of big demonstrations.
The idea that human rights are not merely masks for Western privilege but have a 'genuinely subversive potential' because their abstract nature allows marginalized groups (women, blacks) to claim them.
A racist term Žižek cites to describe the emerging form of authoritarian capitalism in countries like Russia, India, and China, which he views as a greater danger than Western liberalism.
A political form where individual freedoms (sexual, consumer) are preserved, but major economic and geopolitical decisions are made by impenetrable expert systems, creating a new, subtle authoritarianism.
The core of true anti-racism: acknowledging that we cannot fully understand or empathize with others, and that respect consists in maintaining a distance from this opacity rather than forcing fusion.
as “neighbor”
The Lacanian concept of the 'inhuman' neighbor, whom we must respect as a foreigner/stranger rather than trying to empathize with or make 'the same' as ourselves through false humanism.
as “the abyss in this guy”
The moment when a familiar person acts in a way that reveals an unknowable, terrifying depth, transforming them from a 'fellow man' into a 'neighbor' (an opaque other).
The political potential of Occupy Wall Street, defined not by demands but by the active, immobility-based occupation of public space, akin to Bartleby's refusal.
as “left Fukuyamaism”
Žižek's pejorative term for the mainstream liberal left (including Bernie Sanders supporters) who accept Fukuyama's premise of democratic capitalism as the final form, seeking only to make it more humane rather than transcending it.
The ancient Greek term having two opposite meanings: static immobility and civil war, illustrating that the step toward change is often immobility/occupation rather than mobility.
Žižek's preferred ethical motto (from Alcoholics Anonymous), arguing that we should trust in superficial manners and external forms rather than mystifying an inner 'natural goodness' that rarely exists.
The tragic reality that extreme suffering (like the Holocaust) does not produce ethical saints; instead, it often ruins individuals from within, revealing that survival does not equal moral purity.
A dangerous political tendency, exemplified by Trump and historically by Heydrich, where Jews are supported abroad as strategic allies ('bandit defenders') but rejected or persecuted domestically due to their perceived influence or presence.
as “disintegration regression of public morals”
The current era's characteristic regression where vulgarity, conspiracy theories, and racist statements (like those by Netanyahu or the IDF rabbi) enter public discourse, which Hollywood dystopias predict.
Stories he reaches for 3
Žižek mocks the movie V for Vendetta for ending with the 'morning after', people breaking into parliament, without showing the boring, necessary work of governing, which he argues is what true social change requires.
“what happens the day after when the people take over... what measures what do we want”
Jean-Pierre Dupuy recounts how Japanese authorities panicked over the logistical impossibility of evacuating Tokyo, illustrating the need for massive, transnational state organization beyond local capacity.
“Japanese authorities were in total panic because it looked as if they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area”
Žižek praises the Haitian Revolution for rejecting 'roots' (Alex Haley's Roots) and demanding modern democratic republic status, showing how human rights exploded beyond their original white, male, property-owning limits.
“Haiti the greatest thing I think greater more important than French Revolution Haiti Revolution black people said there we also want it”
Works invoked 8
V for Vendetta film
Žižek explicitly states 'I didn't like it' and mocks its ending for ignoring the 'morning after' and the boring work of governance.
Elysium film
Cited as an example of Hollywood dystopias that accurately predict our socio-economic future.
The Hunger Games film
Cited alongside 'Elysium' as a dystopian prediction of our future.
Roots tv
Cited as a 'shitty' example of returning to roots, which the Haitian Revolution rejected in favor of modern democracy.
Cited for Freud's line on loving one's neighbor, which Žižek uses to support his psychoanalytic definition of the neighbor.
The Searchers film
Called 'maybe the greatest Western of all times'; used to illustrate the psychoanalytic concept of the neighbor as an abyss through John Wayne's final expression.
Occupy Wall Street other
Praised as 'the beginning' of a new political form, valued for its 'immobility' and occupation of space rather than its demands.
Sullivan's Travels film
Used to critique Frank Capra's view that poverty makes people good; Žižek aligns with Sturges' more critical view.
People invoked 29
Preston Sturges positive
Cited for 'Sullivan's Travels' which critiques the Capra-esque view of poverty.
Ruth Klüger positive
Holocaust survivor and author, quoted by Žižek to argue that Auschwitz was an 'ethical catastrophe' that ruins survivors rather than purifying them.
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
Cited as a figure who expanded the abstract concept of human rights to include women.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as a 'good friend' and 'theorist of catastrophes' who teaches at Stanford; cited for his analysis of the Fukushima evacuation logistics.
Marine Le Pen negative
Cited as an example of the right-wing backlash (alongside UKIP and Pegida) that results from the failure to organize refugee flows and cultural tensions.
Emmanuel Levinas positive
Žižek disagrees with Levinas but acknowledges he 'made this point correctly' that commandments aim to keep the neighbor at a proper distance.
Mentioned in the context of Netanyahu's conspiracy theory about meeting Hitler.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced implicitly through the concept of the 'neighbor' and the 'inhuman'.
John Rawls positive
Cited alongside Habermas as a theorist of 'bundles of rights' and Enlightenment universalism, with whom Žižek aligns more than cultural particularists.
Described as a 'despicable person' whose violent overthrow was a 'geopolitical catastrophe' leading to refugee crises.
Jon Stewart negative
Referenced in the 'John Stewart trap': the left-liberal habit of making fun of Trump, which Žižek warns is losing the game.
Donald Trump negative
Described as the 'paradox of liberal fascism,' representing a new authoritarian capitalism where individual freedoms mask impenetrable power structures.
Saskia Sassen positive
Cited for her work on how 'occupy' is still a work in progress.
Alex Haley negative
Cited in the context of Roots; Žižek praises the Haitian Revolution for rejecting the 'shitty return to their roots' that Roots represents.
Cited as part of the tradition of state sovereignty.
John Wayne positive
Actor in The Searchers; his 'perplexed face' at the end is used to illustrate the moment of recognizing the neighbor's abyss.
Yanis Varoufakis negative
A good friend and supporter of his DiEM movement, but Žižek critiques his 'utopian' belief that open debate will fix manipulated public opinion, failing to answer why democracy might be worse for immigrants.
Cited as part of the tradition of state sovereignty, alongside Hobbes and Schmitt.
Benjamin Netanyahu negative
Cited for promoting conspiracy theories (Husseini-Hitler meeting) as part of the regression of public discourse.
Herman Melville positive
Cited for the character Bartleby, whose 'I prefer not to' illustrates the political power of immobility/refusal.
John Ford positive
Director of The Searchers, which Žižek calls 'maybe the greatest Western of all times' and uses for a 'wonderful reading' of the neighbor.
Frank Capra negative
Criticized for the 'mystification' that poor people are inherently good.
Angela Merkel positive
Praised for her courageous refugee policy ('come will see') which went against the majority, exemplifying true political action.
Reinhard Heydrich positive
Quoted by Žižek to illustrate the historical roots of 'Zionist anti-Semitism' (supporting Jews abroad, excluding them domestically).
Jürgen Habermas positive
Žižek states he is 'very critical of Habermas' but aligns with him over cultural relativists regarding the necessity of universal rights.
Cited as part of the tradition of state sovereignty and the friend-enemy distinction.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the concept of the 'virtual pauper' and for being 'too quick' to dismiss human rights in favor of citizens' rights.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited from Civilization and Its Discontents regarding the ethic of loving one's neighbor as oneself, which Žižek uses to frame the psychoanalytic view of the neighbor.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Referenced as a 'Hegelian philosopher' colleague who provided a 'wonderful reading' of the final scene of The Searchers.
Transcript 41 turns
unknown
campaña para adaptarnos a los nuevos tiempos reinventarnos desaparecer para crear un nuevo sistema moderno y eficaz que ya se entiende por todas partes
campaña para adaptarnos a los nuevos tiempos reinventarnos desaparecer para crear un nuevo sistema moderno y eficaz que ya se entiende por todas partes
unknown
My name is Jake Matatyaou Welcome to the SCI-Arc Channel I'm joined here today with Slavoj Žižek Žižek is a public intellectual who's published over books ranging from philosophy to psychoanalysis theology aesthetics film and politics He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and global distinguished professor of German at New York University Slavoj Žižek it is a pleasure welcoming you to SCI-Arc
My name is Jake Matatyaou Welcome to the SCI-Arc Channel I'm joined here today with Slavoj Žižek Žižek is a public intellectual who's published over books ranging from philosophy to psychoanalysis theology aesthetics film and politics He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and global distinguished professor of German at New York University Slavoj Žižek it is a pleasure welcoming you to SCI-Arc
Slavoj Žižek
I hope it will not be only pleasure but also a more intense enjoyment Thanks very much
I hope it will not be only pleasure but also a more intense enjoyment Thanks very much
unknown
In your publication Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors you argue for collective action capable of addressing the large flow of refugees into Europe one that would establish reception centers proximate to the core of the crisis the organized transportation of those registered by the
In your publication Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors you argue for collective action capable of addressing the large flow of refugees into Europe one that would establish reception centers proximate to the core of the crisis the organized transportation of those registered by the
Slavoj Žižek
army that where I got attacked that army should be mobilized to do this
army that where I got attacked that army should be mobilized to do this
unknown
right and and Fredric Jameson recently published a book on on mobilizing the army I'd like to hear more about that and so the redistribution of the the refugees to possible sites of resettlement throughout Europe right so this would be a collective organizational effort right so you also make the case for the establishment of a minimum set of norms that would be obligatory for everyone without fear that these norms would appear Eurocentric Within these limits you argue for the unconditional tolerance of difference in different forms of life So if as you write most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible with Western European notions of rights who do you think will decide on the bundle of rights and norms that would be applicable to all and what organizational body will coordinate and execute this logistical task of resettlement Lastly what role do you envision states the traditional nation-state playing in the global coordination and organizational effort
right and and Fredric Jameson recently published a book on on mobilizing the army I'd like to hear more about that and so the redistribution of the the refugees to possible sites of resettlement throughout Europe right so this would be a collective organizational effort right so you also make the case for the establishment of a minimum set of norms that would be obligatory for everyone without fear that these norms would appear Eurocentric Within these limits you argue for the unconditional tolerance of difference in different forms of life So if as you write most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible with Western European notions of rights who do you think will decide on the bundle of rights and norms that would be applicable to all and what organizational body will coordinate and execute this logistical task of resettlement Lastly what role do you envision states the traditional nation-state playing in the global coordination and organizational effort
Slavoj Žižek
My first point is that I'm totally opposed to this idea that in our neoliberal times the role of the states is less and less important and so on I think states are more important than ever because for example if years ago you wanted to establish a company you basically just needed the state to guarantee the rule of law or whatever today you have education ecological measures and so on and so on and especially with refugees we see how even nation-state are not enough We desperately need a transnational larger big organization I think that the left should stop with that horror of there is two things are passé they belong to 20th century we know the Stalinist really existing socialism and also the good old it was good as long as it lasted today it no longer obviously works the good old welfare state that's over but there is a third dream which still persists the dream of this anti-representative local democracy you know people organizing directly their life coordinating it you can call this a communal life local democracy whatever this will not do the work it is more and more clear that this is the first myth we should abandon I had friends in Venezuela other places even in Spain they have cooperatives but you know for to have a good cooperative or local communities which work there must be a very efficient state behind which organizes water electricity health education and so on and so on So when people ask me what’s my political ideal I shamelessly like to say more alienation Are we aware that precisely if we want to enjoy this local life locally democratic many thing has to happen has to function beyond our outside our visibility and this is especially clear at the level of ecology Listen I don’t believe in this ideology of making us local people feel guilty and then don’t just criticize what did you do about it did you recycle your coke cans did you set aside all paper to be recycled and so on and so on Of course we should do this but I think this operation of a making us feel responsible individually and then at the same time offering us an easy way out basically the message is do properly your recycling buy some stupid organic apples and so on and you did your duty that's not enough In what is happening now mega acts will be sooner or later required Like a good friend of mine the theorist of catastrophes who teaches at Stanford Jean-Pierre Dupuy was in Fukushima two days after that earthquake and tsunami and he told me you know that for one day Japanese authorities were in total panic because it looked as if they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area million people How do you do this who will organize so we will have to move even beyond this organization that's the first myth of the left that should be dropped The second myth is this leftist pathetic admiration of big assemblages oh my god one million people there on Tahrir Square on Gezi Square wherever you want or in Madrid and so on That’s nice this collective display demonstration but isn’t it that what the left is needing today is not so much to organize these big emphatic events but what I call the organization of what to do how do you say after an alcoholic evening the morning after You know these emphatic moments are nice but they are limited in time The true social change is for me not this wonderful we all cry promise we you see people protest but how will ordinary people feel the change when things return to normal That’s why I hope our viewers know the movie I didn't like it V for Vendetta You know how the movie ends The ending it’s the morning after yeah sorry yeah yeah just people break into the parliament the people take over as I like to say in an obscene way of course I’m ready to sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part But what happens the day after when the people take over Because as I heard on TV in United States also now if one is to believe your president the people took over no what I mean is what measures what do we want we see capitalism is approaching a crisis ecologically with refugees who will control biogenetics intellectual property and so on but with what to replace it how to reform it we don’t have a vision That’s for me what is behind all this My big desire is this let’s call it away from this big pathetics of protest of performances big public to reorganization of the everyday life So two questions follow one I guess would be are the existing transnational organizations like the UN and NATO are they capable of doing this big infrastructural task I’m here extremely pragmatic I would say like this in principle no but maybe you never know Even NATO I wouldn't write it off totally NATO is we know what it is but there may be a situation where something like NATO which is nonetheless a transnational military force can do
My first point is that I'm totally opposed to this idea that in our neoliberal times the role of the states is less and less important and so on I think states are more important than ever because for example if years ago you wanted to establish a company you basically just needed the state to guarantee the rule of law or whatever today you have education ecological measures and so on and so on and especially with refugees we see how even nation-state are not enough We desperately need a transnational larger big organization I think that the left should stop with that horror of there is two things are passé they belong to 20th century we know the Stalinist really existing socialism and also the good old it was good as long as it lasted today it no longer obviously works the good old welfare state that's over but there is a third dream which still persists the dream of this anti-representative local democracy you know people organizing directly their life coordinating it you can call this a communal life local democracy whatever this will not do the work it is more and more clear that this is the first myth we should abandon I had friends in Venezuela other places even in Spain they have cooperatives but you know for to have a good cooperative or local communities which work there must be a very efficient state behind which organizes water electricity health education and so on and so on So when people ask me what’s my political ideal I shamelessly like to say more alienation Are we aware that precisely if we want to enjoy this local life locally democratic many thing has to happen has to function beyond our outside our visibility and this is especially clear at the level of ecology Listen I don’t believe in this ideology of making us local people feel guilty and then don’t just criticize what did you do about it did you recycle your coke cans did you set aside all paper to be recycled and so on and so on Of course we should do this but I think this operation of a making us feel responsible individually and then at the same time offering us an easy way out basically the message is do properly your recycling buy some stupid organic apples and so on and you did your duty that's not enough In what is happening now mega acts will be sooner or later required Like a good friend of mine the theorist of catastrophes who teaches at Stanford Jean-Pierre Dupuy was in Fukushima two days after that earthquake and tsunami and he told me you know that for one day Japanese authorities were in total panic because it looked as if they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area million people How do you do this who will organize so we will have to move even beyond this organization that's the first myth of the left that should be dropped The second myth is this leftist pathetic admiration of big assemblages oh my god one million people there on Tahrir Square on Gezi Square wherever you want or in Madrid and so on That’s nice this collective display demonstration but isn’t it that what the left is needing today is not so much to organize these big emphatic events but what I call the organization of what to do how do you say after an alcoholic evening the morning after You know these emphatic moments are nice but they are limited in time The true social change is for me not this wonderful we all cry promise we you see people protest but how will ordinary people feel the change when things return to normal That’s why I hope our viewers know the movie I didn't like it V for Vendetta You know how the movie ends The ending it’s the morning after yeah sorry yeah yeah just people break into the parliament the people take over as I like to say in an obscene way of course I’m ready to sell my mother into slavery to see a movie called V for Vendetta Part But what happens the day after when the people take over Because as I heard on TV in United States also now if one is to believe your president the people took over no what I mean is what measures what do we want we see capitalism is approaching a crisis ecologically with refugees who will control biogenetics intellectual property and so on but with what to replace it how to reform it we don’t have a vision That’s for me what is behind all this My big desire is this let’s call it away from this big pathetics of protest of performances big public to reorganization of the everyday life So two questions follow one I guess would be are the existing transnational organizations like the UN and NATO are they capable of doing this big infrastructural task I’m here extremely pragmatic I would say like this in principle no but maybe you never know Even NATO I wouldn't write it off totally NATO is we know what it is but there may be a situation where something like NATO which is nonetheless a transnational military force can do
unknown
some good work and let's return to your first question the refugees it's not that I'm a militarist my idea of using NATO was not to protect the Fortress Europe but to do the transfer of refugees in and I cannot emphasize the importance of this in an organized way what effectively happened was a catastrophe when hundreds of thousand were just chaotically walking even through my country Greece Macedonia Serbia Croatia
some good work and let's return to your first question the refugees it's not that I'm a militarist my idea of using NATO was not to protect the Fortress Europe but to do the transfer of refugees in and I cannot emphasize the importance of this in an organized way what effectively happened was a catastrophe when hundreds of thousand were just chaotically walking even through my country Greece Macedonia Serbia Croatia
Slavoj Žižek
way in Russia yeah yeah the result was incredible profits of smuggling organizations the estimates are about billions of dollars plus the incredible rise of local racisms resistances and not that I agree with this horror of ordinary people but my god I can understand them there were farmers in Slovenia who literally awakened there are people in your front yard no organization and so on So precisely on behalf of the welfare of refugees one has to organize thing if not my god we will have the anti-immigrant right Pegida in Germany Le Pen in France UKIP in Germany sorry in Britain we will have them ruling Europe Europe will pay the price of it all that is good in European legacy Enlightenment universal rights and so on is threatened Point two let me go further when you mentioned human rights I don't agree and I think this was not what what Marx meant with this old stupid pseudo-Marxist doxa human rights are abstract rights in reality they cover up they privilege secretly whatever man of wealth white man and so on Of course this is true but from the very beginning precisely because of their abstract nature human rights had a genuinely subversive potential Look they began as of course human rights effectively it meant at the beginning the rights of the white people of property usually men and so on but it immediately exploded Mary Wollstonecraft and so women said why not us Haiti the greatest thing I think greater more important than French Revolution Haiti Revolution black people said there we also want it and the greatness of Haiti Revolution is that they didn't want any shitty return to their roots Alex Haley Roots we leave this to Hollywood no they wanted a modern democratic republic like the French and so on So I think that we should definitely not just condemn human rights I’m the first to agree that human rights are often used as a mask to cover particular Western interests and so on but nonetheless there is an explosive potential in them Second thing that you said this incompatibility of ways of life I don't mean this in a stupid Eurocentric sense like we Europeans are more civilized they are primitive I’m just saying first that there are obvious problems Each community has a certain way of life which is not so much abstract ideology in what God you believe but which determines these everyday routines how women are treated children relations of authority and so on and it is absolutely crucial to prevent tensions to establish explicit rules to talk about all this openly The catastrophe in Europe was that the liberal left prefers not to talk about it if you mention these problems you are already Islamophobic racist and so on and the result is what that you get you know Marine Le Pen UKIP and so on and so on All I'm saying is let's recognize that there is a problem here for example in Germany you have thousands of girls every year who escape their family because they fell in love with a German boy or whatever they want to live the usual Western more open permissive hedonist daily life Then of course their families want them back they go to the police you have to do something here and I just think it would be good to have the rules to set some limits like okay you live your way of life but what do we do if a girl in despair turns to police I don’t see anything racist in it when you said but which rule we will establish here who decides on the bundles of rights norms and values I mean I'm trying to sort of situate that position vis-à-vis like a Rawls bundle of rights or Habermasian deliberative democracy kind of bundle of rights that we you know it's the continuation of the Kantian-Rousseauian Enlightenment project as to settle that question once and for all Well I don't I don't want to go into that debate now but I must say I am although I’m very critical of Habermas and not at all end of Rawls but at this level I’m more on their side than on the side of this cultural particularism we have all different ways of life and so on and so on No I think that the very multiculturalist who demand respect for particular ways of life already argue in a European way as part of European tradition and so on and why shouldn’t we use this tradition I’m not abstractly against Eurocentrism because what we tend to forget that those who criticize Eurocentric racism and so on do it in a way which is directly in accordance with the basic principles of Enlightenment and so on that's right I’m well aware of all the horrors that Europe did but I think that the fact that today anti-Eurocentrism is so popular is an effect of a much darker phenomenon the decline of meaningful democracy civil freedoms and so on isn't it clear that even in the United States now in Trump not to mention Russia India China and so on a new political form of capitalism is emerging a much more authoritarian capitalism this is the true danger for me we can call it which is a racist term I don’t like it capitalism with Asian values or whatever but and even we feel this in daily lives because we feel free if you ask an average citizen today okay you feel free if you feel free but in what sense are you free it’s mostly the freedom of choice well I can read whatever I want I can travel where I want I can get a job that I want haha here already begins if you can get
way in Russia yeah yeah the result was incredible profits of smuggling organizations the estimates are about billions of dollars plus the incredible rise of local racisms resistances and not that I agree with this horror of ordinary people but my god I can understand them there were farmers in Slovenia who literally awakened there are people in your front yard no organization and so on So precisely on behalf of the welfare of refugees one has to organize thing if not my god we will have the anti-immigrant right Pegida in Germany Le Pen in France UKIP in Germany sorry in Britain we will have them ruling Europe Europe will pay the price of it all that is good in European legacy Enlightenment universal rights and so on is threatened Point two let me go further when you mentioned human rights I don't agree and I think this was not what what Marx meant with this old stupid pseudo-Marxist doxa human rights are abstract rights in reality they cover up they privilege secretly whatever man of wealth white man and so on Of course this is true but from the very beginning precisely because of their abstract nature human rights had a genuinely subversive potential Look they began as of course human rights effectively it meant at the beginning the rights of the white people of property usually men and so on but it immediately exploded Mary Wollstonecraft and so women said why not us Haiti the greatest thing I think greater more important than French Revolution Haiti Revolution black people said there we also want it and the greatness of Haiti Revolution is that they didn't want any shitty return to their roots Alex Haley Roots we leave this to Hollywood no they wanted a modern democratic republic like the French and so on So I think that we should definitely not just condemn human rights I’m the first to agree that human rights are often used as a mask to cover particular Western interests and so on but nonetheless there is an explosive potential in them Second thing that you said this incompatibility of ways of life I don't mean this in a stupid Eurocentric sense like we Europeans are more civilized they are primitive I’m just saying first that there are obvious problems Each community has a certain way of life which is not so much abstract ideology in what God you believe but which determines these everyday routines how women are treated children relations of authority and so on and it is absolutely crucial to prevent tensions to establish explicit rules to talk about all this openly The catastrophe in Europe was that the liberal left prefers not to talk about it if you mention these problems you are already Islamophobic racist and so on and the result is what that you get you know Marine Le Pen UKIP and so on and so on All I'm saying is let's recognize that there is a problem here for example in Germany you have thousands of girls every year who escape their family because they fell in love with a German boy or whatever they want to live the usual Western more open permissive hedonist daily life Then of course their families want them back they go to the police you have to do something here and I just think it would be good to have the rules to set some limits like okay you live your way of life but what do we do if a girl in despair turns to police I don’t see anything racist in it when you said but which rule we will establish here who decides on the bundles of rights norms and values I mean I'm trying to sort of situate that position vis-à-vis like a Rawls bundle of rights or Habermasian deliberative democracy kind of bundle of rights that we you know it's the continuation of the Kantian-Rousseauian Enlightenment project as to settle that question once and for all Well I don't I don't want to go into that debate now but I must say I am although I’m very critical of Habermas and not at all end of Rawls but at this level I’m more on their side than on the side of this cultural particularism we have all different ways of life and so on and so on No I think that the very multiculturalist who demand respect for particular ways of life already argue in a European way as part of European tradition and so on and why shouldn’t we use this tradition I’m not abstractly against Eurocentrism because what we tend to forget that those who criticize Eurocentric racism and so on do it in a way which is directly in accordance with the basic principles of Enlightenment and so on that's right I’m well aware of all the horrors that Europe did but I think that the fact that today anti-Eurocentrism is so popular is an effect of a much darker phenomenon the decline of meaningful democracy civil freedoms and so on isn't it clear that even in the United States now in Trump not to mention Russia India China and so on a new political form of capitalism is emerging a much more authoritarian capitalism this is the true danger for me we can call it which is a racist term I don’t like it capitalism with Asian values or whatever but and even we feel this in daily lives because we feel free if you ask an average citizen today okay you feel free if you feel free but in what sense are you free it’s mostly the freedom of choice well I can read whatever I want I can travel where I want I can get a job that I want haha here already begins if you can get
unknown
it but my point is this is not enough in European tradition and not only European even other traditions to define freedom freedom for me is not just the freedom of choice within the existing scope panoply of possibilities freedom at a more radical level means also to change the very frame not just freedom of choice within because isn’t this our basic paradox in the West today that the more we emphasize these
it but my point is this is not enough in European tradition and not only European even other traditions to define freedom freedom for me is not just the freedom of choice within the existing scope panoply of possibilities freedom at a more radical level means also to change the very frame not just freedom of choice within because isn’t this our basic paradox in the West today that the more we emphasize these
Slavoj Žižek
intimate freedoms of sexual freedom whatever the larger social process is becoming more or less totally impenetrable nobody knows what is happening big decisions are made by experts and so on and so on this is what makes me suspicious about all this LGBT and separated toilets stuff of course I’m for them but my god isn’t it that those in power are offering this as topics of debate to obfuscate the big economic transnational choices of how global capitalism functions and so on we don’t even debate about that Without this we are lost we are approaching to a new authoritarian society that's why I disagree with those who claim oh with Trump we are in fascism it's not as simple as that Donald Trump as president is for me the paradox of let's call it liberal fascism in the sense that at individual level you can buy pornography maybe even take drugs whatever all that is kept but nonetheless the power relations are more impenetrable than ever that's the problem for me and back to refugees which is why my last point I also don’t agree with this unilateral emphasis of humanitarian aspect like oh my god do we Europeans still have a heart hundreds of thousands waiting there can we just watch it and so on I agree we should be more open there but my god what we need is a much larger socio-economic geopolitical vision we all agree that the solution is not just let’s open our borders they all come to Europe the solution is to change international economic relations geopolitical relations and so on and here of course Europe is responsible and United States like the recent wave of refugees from Syria and Iraq let’s be clear without Syrian war which is war between superpowers fought by proxies and Iraq occupation we wouldn't have probably this wave of refugees it's the same although it doesn't appear the same in Northern Africa we can now clearly see that the violent overthrow of Gaddafi of course he was a despicable person but nonetheless was a geopolitical catastrophe and are we aware what is happening in Africa at a silent invisible level like big food companies and here it’s more Arab countries and some Asian countries like Japan who are guilty they are buying the best tracts of land for export industrial plants and so on and introducing then chaos forcing people to flee and so on and so on that’s all I’m pleading for don’t make it a just a humanitarian problem approach it as geopolitical and economic problem if we don't do this we will just bring this humanitarianism to the end we will get a chaotic situation where we will all be losers refugees and we in Western Europe Maybe we can transition to speaking more directly close to home since we're in California in Los Angeles close to the border between the United States and Mexico and in your most recent book you've written about the figure of the neighbor yeah so I'd like to ask you a question about the global phenomena of walling and fencing the proliferation of border infrastructure both hard and soft material and immaterial can be read as either a symptom of the waning influence and impotence of the state or like the doubling down of state power its re-articulation and expansion through performances of territorialization and demarcation Today's refugee crisis as we know throws in relief the relation of governmentality to sovereignty troubling the state sovereignty under pressures of global capitalism so following the tradition of Thucydides and Hobbes all the way through Schmitt do you think that state sovereignty still matters and where does the neighbor precisely the figure of the neighbor figure in this in between the friend-enemy distinction my claim here is of course very problematic for some humanists you know it's very paradoxical maybe I think we shouldn’t idealize neighbors not in the sense that they are less than ourselves but for me true anti-racism is that we admit a basic impenetrability of neighbors you know what I fear in this multiculturalist approach we we should open ourselves to others understand each other and so on and so on this can't be done because others don’t understand themselves we don’t understand ourselves all to put it in a very simplified way for me an ideal non-racist society is not I’m friends with Iranians blacks Jews whatever but I live in a big condominium my neighbor is an Arab the other neighbor is a Jew the third neighbor is Latino American the fourth neighbor is a Chinese whatever you want and we respectfully ignore each other it’s wonderful when from time to time miracles happen you know like I engage in a conversation with someone and so on but it’s stupid to expect this to go to the end we need precisely to learn a distance I think distances are a true respect because you know a true respect is the respect of someone whom you don’t like and don’t understand that's the trick in liberalism as if we have all the time to worry how do I know what you mean do I really understand you no that's a path to catastrophe I claim yes there's this lovely line as as you well know from Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents about if the ethic was love thy neighbor as thy neighbor loves thee then I could subscribe to that you know that's what Freud
intimate freedoms of sexual freedom whatever the larger social process is becoming more or less totally impenetrable nobody knows what is happening big decisions are made by experts and so on and so on this is what makes me suspicious about all this LGBT and separated toilets stuff of course I’m for them but my god isn’t it that those in power are offering this as topics of debate to obfuscate the big economic transnational choices of how global capitalism functions and so on we don’t even debate about that Without this we are lost we are approaching to a new authoritarian society that's why I disagree with those who claim oh with Trump we are in fascism it's not as simple as that Donald Trump as president is for me the paradox of let's call it liberal fascism in the sense that at individual level you can buy pornography maybe even take drugs whatever all that is kept but nonetheless the power relations are more impenetrable than ever that's the problem for me and back to refugees which is why my last point I also don’t agree with this unilateral emphasis of humanitarian aspect like oh my god do we Europeans still have a heart hundreds of thousands waiting there can we just watch it and so on I agree we should be more open there but my god what we need is a much larger socio-economic geopolitical vision we all agree that the solution is not just let’s open our borders they all come to Europe the solution is to change international economic relations geopolitical relations and so on and here of course Europe is responsible and United States like the recent wave of refugees from Syria and Iraq let’s be clear without Syrian war which is war between superpowers fought by proxies and Iraq occupation we wouldn't have probably this wave of refugees it's the same although it doesn't appear the same in Northern Africa we can now clearly see that the violent overthrow of Gaddafi of course he was a despicable person but nonetheless was a geopolitical catastrophe and are we aware what is happening in Africa at a silent invisible level like big food companies and here it’s more Arab countries and some Asian countries like Japan who are guilty they are buying the best tracts of land for export industrial plants and so on and introducing then chaos forcing people to flee and so on and so on that’s all I’m pleading for don’t make it a just a humanitarian problem approach it as geopolitical and economic problem if we don't do this we will just bring this humanitarianism to the end we will get a chaotic situation where we will all be losers refugees and we in Western Europe Maybe we can transition to speaking more directly close to home since we're in California in Los Angeles close to the border between the United States and Mexico and in your most recent book you've written about the figure of the neighbor yeah so I'd like to ask you a question about the global phenomena of walling and fencing the proliferation of border infrastructure both hard and soft material and immaterial can be read as either a symptom of the waning influence and impotence of the state or like the doubling down of state power its re-articulation and expansion through performances of territorialization and demarcation Today's refugee crisis as we know throws in relief the relation of governmentality to sovereignty troubling the state sovereignty under pressures of global capitalism so following the tradition of Thucydides and Hobbes all the way through Schmitt do you think that state sovereignty still matters and where does the neighbor precisely the figure of the neighbor figure in this in between the friend-enemy distinction my claim here is of course very problematic for some humanists you know it's very paradoxical maybe I think we shouldn’t idealize neighbors not in the sense that they are less than ourselves but for me true anti-racism is that we admit a basic impenetrability of neighbors you know what I fear in this multiculturalist approach we we should open ourselves to others understand each other and so on and so on this can't be done because others don’t understand themselves we don’t understand ourselves all to put it in a very simplified way for me an ideal non-racist society is not I’m friends with Iranians blacks Jews whatever but I live in a big condominium my neighbor is an Arab the other neighbor is a Jew the third neighbor is Latino American the fourth neighbor is a Chinese whatever you want and we respectfully ignore each other it’s wonderful when from time to time miracles happen you know like I engage in a conversation with someone and so on but it’s stupid to expect this to go to the end we need precisely to learn a distance I think distances are a true respect because you know a true respect is the respect of someone whom you don’t like and don’t understand that's the trick in liberalism as if we have all the time to worry how do I know what you mean do I really understand you no that's a path to catastrophe I claim yes there's this lovely line as as you well know from Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents about if the ethic was love thy neighbor as thy neighbor loves thee then I could subscribe to that you know that's what Freud
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says as opposed to love thy neighbor so I wonder is that the ethic of alienation that you well maybe but I would say I prefer another mega stupidity with which I don't agree namely I quote it in my book that you kindly referred to this is the big motto of multiculturalist an enemy is someone to whose story we were not ready to listen I explode here this is the greatest stupidity I’ve ever heard so why don’t they apply to Hitler will you say Hitler was our enemy ah because we were not ready to listen to him no those who did listen to Hitler like Winston Churchill from the beginning
says as opposed to love thy neighbor so I wonder is that the ethic of alienation that you well maybe but I would say I prefer another mega stupidity with which I don't agree namely I quote it in my book that you kindly referred to this is the big motto of multiculturalist an enemy is someone to whose story we were not ready to listen I explode here this is the greatest stupidity I’ve ever heard so why don’t they apply to Hitler will you say Hitler was our enemy ah because we were not ready to listen to him no those who did listen to Hitler like Winston Churchill from the beginning
Slavoj Žižek
knew
knew
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that he really is an enemy the this is here I am not a Schmidtian in his specific sense but Schmidtian in the sense that you know all is not just a miscommunication there are real enemies like here I agree although otherwise I don’t like him too much overall with George Orwell who said forget about cultural respect the task now is to destroy Germany point we need all the arms we can get and so on and so on This is my this is my big problem here so more
that he really is an enemy the this is here I am not a Schmidtian in his specific sense but Schmidtian in the sense that you know all is not just a miscommunication there are real enemies like here I agree although otherwise I don’t like him too much overall with George Orwell who said forget about cultural respect the task now is to destroy Germany point we need all the arms we can get and so on and so on This is my this is my big problem here so more
Slavoj Žižek
philosophically even about the neighbor as psychoanalysis can demonstrate very well already in the Bible and good Bible readers know this I don’t agree with Emmanuel Levinas but he made this point correctly in a way all the commandments are commandments whose aim is how to keep the neighbor at a proper distance you know what is for me the best definition of neighbor at everyday level let’s say I know you or you know me let’s say we know each other for years you think you know me as such I’m not a neighbor I’m your fellow man the one who is like you you can identify with me but then all of a sudden I do something it can be a great thing I unexpectedly sacrifice myself or it can be something horrible like I beat a child I squash some animal whatever you and at that point you know you have this experience my god did I really know that guy what is the abyss in this guy that's the neighbor that's the neighbor so again even in authentic love relationships I claim I hate I very much sorry to use this stupid tautology love to be in love but I don't trust in this total fusion you know all great poets knew that in an authentic love relationship a distant the distance must be kept the other remains an abyss for you which also means an abyss for themselves if we look deep into ourselves we are that maybe some of the guys who will listen to us like classical Westerns my colleague Hegelian philosopher
philosophically even about the neighbor as psychoanalysis can demonstrate very well already in the Bible and good Bible readers know this I don’t agree with Emmanuel Levinas but he made this point correctly in a way all the commandments are commandments whose aim is how to keep the neighbor at a proper distance you know what is for me the best definition of neighbor at everyday level let’s say I know you or you know me let’s say we know each other for years you think you know me as such I’m not a neighbor I’m your fellow man the one who is like you you can identify with me but then all of a sudden I do something it can be a great thing I unexpectedly sacrifice myself or it can be something horrible like I beat a child I squash some animal whatever you and at that point you know you have this experience my god did I really know that guy what is the abyss in this guy that's the neighbor that's the neighbor so again even in authentic love relationships I claim I hate I very much sorry to use this stupid tautology love to be in love but I don't trust in this total fusion you know all great poets knew that in an authentic love relationship a distant the distance must be kept the other remains an abyss for you which also means an abyss for themselves if we look deep into ourselves we are that maybe some of the guys who will listen to us like classical Westerns my colleague Hegelian philosopher
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Robert Pippin gave along this lines
Robert Pippin gave along this lines
Slavoj Žižek
a wonderful reading of the final scene of maybe the greatest Western of all times John Ford searchers you know John Wayne wants to kill the young girl because she became like an Indian and then when he sees her there at the end you see for a brief moment his perplexed face and
a wonderful reading of the final scene of maybe the greatest Western of all times John Ford searchers you know John Wayne wants to kill the young girl because she became like an Indian and then when he sees her there at the end you see for a brief moment his perplexed face and
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then he grabs her and doesn’t kill her brings her home and Pippin gives a wonderful description of what happens there it’s not that he sees her humanity and so on is the moment of perplexion he sees that she is a neighbor for him that he is also a neighbor to himself he doesn’t get it that moment of existential openness is what defines the neighbor let’s go back to this
then he grabs her and doesn’t kill her brings her home and Pippin gives a wonderful description of what happens there it’s not that he sees her humanity and so on is the moment of perplexion he sees that she is a neighbor for him that he is also a neighbor to himself he doesn’t get it that moment of existential openness is what defines the neighbor let’s go back to this
Slavoj Žižek
idea of freedom and we’ll talk about the freedom of movement and the freedom of settlement as you discuss in your book so there you write that there is no Norway even in Norway in this you argue is one of the difficult lessons refugees must come to terms with those who mistake the freedom of movement as the freedom of settlement live in an ideological fantasy for they unlike commodities are unable to circulate freely The problem as you rightly point out is that capitalism relies on free labor as cheap labor while also needing to control the movement and position of this labor in other words the distribution of the distribution of bodies as living labor capacity the virtual pauper from Marx yeah so my question here has to do with two related words occupy and occupation occupy as it was used during the protest of suggested and I loved this that they didn't try to sell us occupy Wall Street some bullshit of passive resistance I like it that they used this word occupy which has this very active connotation sorry to interrupt you please go on not a problem as it was used during the protest the word occupy suggested a freedom in non-movement freedom in non-movement that is with the literal taking place of public space the protesters occupied their occupation so how would you characterize this freedom of non-movement in contrast to the prevailing conception of freedom as movement of open borders etc my god it almost sound that you are sorry to be so obscene towards myself that you are in this last question almost too philosophical for me you know but I will say this thing for me occupy Wall Street was just the beginning they what matters is not what they demanded but the very fact that they did it this was for me the immobility in the sense that Bartleby it's like Bartleby's refusal yeah it's like Bartleby yeah yeah I prefer not to it opened up a certain space but I don’t know even if it was possible for them to move further I debated with hundreds of them I didn't get even an elementary answer to the question this new version of famous Freud’s question was will das Weib what does a woman want which is of course a male chauvinist question but I think we have the right to ask the protesters what do you want they didn’t know it I don’t reproach them for that you know most of them were I would characterize them as with all viciousness as left Fukuyamaists or humanitarian Keynesians you know less corruption more health care more and so on and so on but there are big questions here is this enough what to do and so on and so on For me what we are witnessing today in the United States with the election of Trump and so on is to put it again in this ironic terms the end of left Fukuyamaism even the majority of American liberal left they basically accepted the premise of Fukuyama which is we found the ultimate form de facto we cannot think beyond it some kind of democratic capitalism okay we try to make it as good as possible
idea of freedom and we’ll talk about the freedom of movement and the freedom of settlement as you discuss in your book so there you write that there is no Norway even in Norway in this you argue is one of the difficult lessons refugees must come to terms with those who mistake the freedom of movement as the freedom of settlement live in an ideological fantasy for they unlike commodities are unable to circulate freely The problem as you rightly point out is that capitalism relies on free labor as cheap labor while also needing to control the movement and position of this labor in other words the distribution of the distribution of bodies as living labor capacity the virtual pauper from Marx yeah so my question here has to do with two related words occupy and occupation occupy as it was used during the protest of suggested and I loved this that they didn't try to sell us occupy Wall Street some bullshit of passive resistance I like it that they used this word occupy which has this very active connotation sorry to interrupt you please go on not a problem as it was used during the protest the word occupy suggested a freedom in non-movement freedom in non-movement that is with the literal taking place of public space the protesters occupied their occupation so how would you characterize this freedom of non-movement in contrast to the prevailing conception of freedom as movement of open borders etc my god it almost sound that you are sorry to be so obscene towards myself that you are in this last question almost too philosophical for me you know but I will say this thing for me occupy Wall Street was just the beginning they what matters is not what they demanded but the very fact that they did it this was for me the immobility in the sense that Bartleby it's like Bartleby's refusal yeah it's like Bartleby yeah yeah I prefer not to it opened up a certain space but I don’t know even if it was possible for them to move further I debated with hundreds of them I didn't get even an elementary answer to the question this new version of famous Freud’s question was will das Weib what does a woman want which is of course a male chauvinist question but I think we have the right to ask the protesters what do you want they didn’t know it I don’t reproach them for that you know most of them were I would characterize them as with all viciousness as left Fukuyamaists or humanitarian Keynesians you know less corruption more health care more and so on and so on but there are big questions here is this enough what to do and so on and so on For me what we are witnessing today in the United States with the election of Trump and so on is to put it again in this ironic terms the end of left Fukuyamaism even the majority of American liberal left they basically accepted the premise of Fukuyama which is we found the ultimate form de facto we cannot think beyond it some kind of democratic capitalism okay we try to make it as good as possible
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welfare health care education and so on but that’s it I think that we got the reply now no it’s not enough that doesn’t work You know Trump is a symptom of the failure of this mainstream liberal left and if we just fight Trump we are doing what in medicine they call I think symptomal healings you have a serious illness you just take some pills to ease the pain but it’s not enough the democratic liberal left has to make a step further That's why I sincerely admire Bernie Sanders he did something that was considered till now impossible what is infinitely important in Bernie Sanders' movement is that he mobilized people who otherwise would have voted and did vote for Trump this popular discontent and so on and so on If Bernie Sanders will in the long term fail fail in his
welfare health care education and so on but that’s it I think that we got the reply now no it’s not enough that doesn’t work You know Trump is a symptom of the failure of this mainstream liberal left and if we just fight Trump we are doing what in medicine they call I think symptomal healings you have a serious illness you just take some pills to ease the pain but it’s not enough the democratic liberal left has to make a step further That's why I sincerely admire Bernie Sanders he did something that was considered till now impossible what is infinitely important in Bernie Sanders' movement is that he mobilized people who otherwise would have voted and did vote for Trump this popular discontent and so on and so on If Bernie Sanders will in the long term fail fail in his
Slavoj Žižek
effort to get on his side the bulk of Democratic Party then we are condemned to Trump that's that's my my big problem here no but you wanted to ask me please repeat the beginning of your question it was very interesting just the
effort to get on his side the bulk of Democratic Party then we are condemned to Trump that's that's my my big problem here no but you wanted to ask me please repeat the beginning of your question it was very interesting just the
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idea just the idea of um there’s a freedom we usually think ah freedom movement yeah freedom is equated with movement it seemed like there was something else going on with the occupy protest the demonstrations where there was actually the freedom of non-movement of taking place of of claiming space yeah but you know
idea just the idea of um there’s a freedom we usually think ah freedom movement yeah freedom is equated with movement it seemed like there was something else going on with the occupy protest the demonstrations where there was actually the freedom of non-movement of taking place of of claiming space yeah but you know
Slavoj Žižek
why I like what you said now because we have from the beginning this paradox you know that in ancient Greek already the word I think stasis has two opposite meanings it means static immobility and it means civil war and so on immobility stasis
why I like what you said now because we have from the beginning this paradox you know that in ancient Greek already the word I think stasis has two opposite meanings it means static immobility and it means civil war and so on immobility stasis
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from Thucydides yeah yeah yeah so the nice point is that to begin the first
from Thucydides yeah yeah yeah so the nice point is that to begin the first
Slavoj Žižek
step towards change is not mobility it’s immobility yes it's you have to insist on a certain place but I’m nonetheless adding this is just the beginning I’m not saying I’m not simply criticizing occupy Wall Street I I agree with those who claim although occupy Wall Street then dissipated itself although there were some attempts up from here I think on Oakland Oakland Oakland yes okay but you know this is the big exception you know other but nonetheless I doubt if Bernie Sanders' movement would have been possible without occupy Wall Street you know you shouldn’t judge a movement by its immediate results there’s a different temporality at work with these and Saskia Sassen I believe has gone a great lengths to to talk about the way in which that occupy is is still a work in it’s still a work it’s still a work in progress yeah but another thing I wanted to add when you talk about this right to move and so on and so on You know I and I say this in my book and of course I was criticized by many people even my very good friend I admire him Yanis Varoufakis You know I support his DiEM movement bring democracy to Europe but I didn't get from him a simple answer to an elementary question he wants more transparent Brussels decisions there representatives in this European EU bureaucracy should be responsible to people yeah but is he aware that if the decision to what to do with immigrants the decisions were to be left to people themselves in the simple vulgar sense of the majority of voters it would have been much worse for for immigrants to put it very simply in most if not all countries at least to percent of the people would have been against it So the first sad lesson is that we shouldn’t fetishize democracy in this sense of at least not in this vulgar sense of the majority is always right What Angela Merkel did when she formulated her famous come come will see are we aware that she did something courageous in the sense of consciously going against the majority and she did what a true politician is obliged to do you go against the majority with the hope that by imposing what you want in the process of actualizing it you will as it were retroactively convert recreate the opinion So that's my problem here those who I find it funny how those who advocate opening of Europe to refugees at the same time
step towards change is not mobility it’s immobility yes it's you have to insist on a certain place but I’m nonetheless adding this is just the beginning I’m not saying I’m not simply criticizing occupy Wall Street I I agree with those who claim although occupy Wall Street then dissipated itself although there were some attempts up from here I think on Oakland Oakland Oakland yes okay but you know this is the big exception you know other but nonetheless I doubt if Bernie Sanders' movement would have been possible without occupy Wall Street you know you shouldn’t judge a movement by its immediate results there’s a different temporality at work with these and Saskia Sassen I believe has gone a great lengths to to talk about the way in which that occupy is is still a work in it’s still a work it’s still a work in progress yeah but another thing I wanted to add when you talk about this right to move and so on and so on You know I and I say this in my book and of course I was criticized by many people even my very good friend I admire him Yanis Varoufakis You know I support his DiEM movement bring democracy to Europe but I didn't get from him a simple answer to an elementary question he wants more transparent Brussels decisions there representatives in this European EU bureaucracy should be responsible to people yeah but is he aware that if the decision to what to do with immigrants the decisions were to be left to people themselves in the simple vulgar sense of the majority of voters it would have been much worse for for immigrants to put it very simply in most if not all countries at least to percent of the people would have been against it So the first sad lesson is that we shouldn’t fetishize democracy in this sense of at least not in this vulgar sense of the majority is always right What Angela Merkel did when she formulated her famous come come will see are we aware that she did something courageous in the sense of consciously going against the majority and she did what a true politician is obliged to do you go against the majority with the hope that by imposing what you want in the process of actualizing it you will as it were retroactively convert recreate the opinion So that's my problem here those who I find it funny how those who advocate opening of Europe to refugees at the same time
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advocate democracy democracy in the simple sense of transparent decisions and so on and so on don't explain what this means in the recent situation Again if the decision would have been left to people in individual
advocate democracy democracy in the simple sense of transparent decisions and so on and so on don't explain what this means in the recent situation Again if the decision would have been left to people in individual
Slavoj Žižek
nation-states it would have been a catastrophe for refugees and so on So here I am on the side of human rights and and and Brussels bureaucracy against democracy at least against democracy in the sense of simply listening to the will of the majority Now Varoufakis’s answer to me was yes but it’s because the opinion of the people is so manipulated we just need two weeks of really open debate I think he is utopian here I think that he still has this old naive maybe Marxist belief that ordinary people are basically good we just have to present them with facts I'm much more a pessimist here I always like to emphasize no people on averages on average are filthy egotist hypocrites and so on and what I trust a little bit are precisely superficial manners For example very briefly a South African friend told me years ago and there was still apartheid a wonderful thing happened there there was some black demonstration and police was dispersing it so there was a
nation-states it would have been a catastrophe for refugees and so on So here I am on the side of human rights and and and Brussels bureaucracy against democracy at least against democracy in the sense of simply listening to the will of the majority Now Varoufakis’s answer to me was yes but it’s because the opinion of the people is so manipulated we just need two weeks of really open debate I think he is utopian here I think that he still has this old naive maybe Marxist belief that ordinary people are basically good we just have to present them with facts I'm much more a pessimist here I always like to emphasize no people on averages on average are filthy egotist hypocrites and so on and what I trust a little bit are precisely superficial manners For example very briefly a South African friend told me years ago and there was still apartheid a wonderful thing happened there there was some black demonstration and police was dispersing it so there was a
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scene a white policeman with the stick was pursuing running running after a black lady obviously
scene a white policeman with the stick was pursuing running running after a black lady obviously
Slavoj Žižek
of a middle class because she had high heels and so on you will see why this is important and then at a certain point the lady lost one shoe you know what happened not because of his innate goodness but because of his superficial manners how you treat a lady the policeman stopped pick up the shoe and gave it to her and she put it on and then they looked at each other and like what should we play the game now we go again the policeman was so embarrassed that he turned around and walked away You know why I like this example again it’s totally wrong to read it as oh his natural goodness came out no what came out was this automatic reaction of good manners and so on My belief in the great I think Alcoholics Anonymous motto fake it till you make it you know like don’t don’t mystify the other you know I quote her in the book this is maybe the quote which I like the most in my book you remember Ruth something the Jewish lady who was so surprised when after World War II she was a Holocaust survivor she met a Jew who was also Auschwitz survivor and who in Israel was talking about Arabs in a totally racist way and so on and then Ruth Kluger I think was her name she was even teaching somewhere here at UCLA I think even now she unfortunately died and then she said first I was shocked my god that guy went through all the suffering how could he behave sorry in such a racist way then it did strike her she said but you know Auschwitz was not just a physical catastrophe it was also an ethical catastrophe for most of the inmates it is not true that when you go through extreme suffering this is a kind of an ethical catharsis you you survive if you survive of course as a good guy no it ruins you from within that’s the most tragic lesson of poverty exploitation and so on they are not saints that’s why I quote in my movie Preston Sturges' Sullivan’s Travels against Frank Capra Frank Capra has this you know if you are poor you must be good and so on this is such mystification such patronizing mystification We live in a time when the disorder of language is increasingly experienced through the disorder of politics For me the word deal best crystallizes this disorder in so far as it re you mean deal when Trump says I want to make a deal like running like a big manager exactly the word deal best crystallizes this disorder in so far as it reduces politics to a zero-sum game of winners and losers So what do you think the word deal is doing in the Trump lexicon but it’s it’s you know Trump has so many paradoxes and inconsistencies because precisely what he is doing in his actual politics the way he approaches the Mexican immigrants and so on it's precisely not a deal and also for example there are so many inconsistencies with Trump for example it's absolutely crucial the in the inconsistency towards Jews of his politics on the one hand okay although there are some oscillations he supports Israel but at the same time at least people around him at least some of them many of them are anti-Semitic but I claim this is not a simple inconsistency this is a tendency I used the term already years ago together with some of my Jewish friends and they thought I'm crazy now it's becoming reality Zionist anti-Semitism the politics of you support Jews if they are far there defending us from Arab bandits but here no no no there are too many Jews too much influence and so on and so on this is an extremely dangerous tendency I claim you know who was the first Zionist anti-Semitic politician I quote him at least in my new book Reinhard Heydrich You know that he wrote a text I quote it in I think when he says Jewish people are incredibly capable we wish for them to have a homeland where they will be totally free to develop their ability and we should respect them establish good economic relations with them we just don’t want them here and then they made a deal because of this they tolerated till Jews were allowed to go out peacefully if they promise to go to Palestine they even were allowed to keep some money if they spend that money for German industrial products and so on and so on but what I want to say is this with Trump you know what I'm afraid now don't fall into what I call John Stewart trap just this eternal left liberal making fun of Trump we will lose this game I'm not saying he is personally not stupid but I'm just saying that at least for a couple of years his solution may work for example with all his anti-immigrant propaganda it’s already clear now that he is doing something much more tricky he will deport some so-called criminals and so on but he will be very careful not to disturb middle classes who still want their illegal immigrants gardeners and so on to do the work and so on it’s and it's the same with many other maybe he will with many other of his projects maybe for some time it will work to put it simply but for me one of the true dangers of Trump is the let’s call it disintegration regression of public morals of how you are allowed to speak in public and this is not just Trump this is a general regression for example can you
of a middle class because she had high heels and so on you will see why this is important and then at a certain point the lady lost one shoe you know what happened not because of his innate goodness but because of his superficial manners how you treat a lady the policeman stopped pick up the shoe and gave it to her and she put it on and then they looked at each other and like what should we play the game now we go again the policeman was so embarrassed that he turned around and walked away You know why I like this example again it’s totally wrong to read it as oh his natural goodness came out no what came out was this automatic reaction of good manners and so on My belief in the great I think Alcoholics Anonymous motto fake it till you make it you know like don’t don’t mystify the other you know I quote her in the book this is maybe the quote which I like the most in my book you remember Ruth something the Jewish lady who was so surprised when after World War II she was a Holocaust survivor she met a Jew who was also Auschwitz survivor and who in Israel was talking about Arabs in a totally racist way and so on and then Ruth Kluger I think was her name she was even teaching somewhere here at UCLA I think even now she unfortunately died and then she said first I was shocked my god that guy went through all the suffering how could he behave sorry in such a racist way then it did strike her she said but you know Auschwitz was not just a physical catastrophe it was also an ethical catastrophe for most of the inmates it is not true that when you go through extreme suffering this is a kind of an ethical catharsis you you survive if you survive of course as a good guy no it ruins you from within that’s the most tragic lesson of poverty exploitation and so on they are not saints that’s why I quote in my movie Preston Sturges' Sullivan’s Travels against Frank Capra Frank Capra has this you know if you are poor you must be good and so on this is such mystification such patronizing mystification We live in a time when the disorder of language is increasingly experienced through the disorder of politics For me the word deal best crystallizes this disorder in so far as it re you mean deal when Trump says I want to make a deal like running like a big manager exactly the word deal best crystallizes this disorder in so far as it reduces politics to a zero-sum game of winners and losers So what do you think the word deal is doing in the Trump lexicon but it’s it’s you know Trump has so many paradoxes and inconsistencies because precisely what he is doing in his actual politics the way he approaches the Mexican immigrants and so on it's precisely not a deal and also for example there are so many inconsistencies with Trump for example it's absolutely crucial the in the inconsistency towards Jews of his politics on the one hand okay although there are some oscillations he supports Israel but at the same time at least people around him at least some of them many of them are anti-Semitic but I claim this is not a simple inconsistency this is a tendency I used the term already years ago together with some of my Jewish friends and they thought I'm crazy now it's becoming reality Zionist anti-Semitism the politics of you support Jews if they are far there defending us from Arab bandits but here no no no there are too many Jews too much influence and so on and so on this is an extremely dangerous tendency I claim you know who was the first Zionist anti-Semitic politician I quote him at least in my new book Reinhard Heydrich You know that he wrote a text I quote it in I think when he says Jewish people are incredibly capable we wish for them to have a homeland where they will be totally free to develop their ability and we should respect them establish good economic relations with them we just don’t want them here and then they made a deal because of this they tolerated till Jews were allowed to go out peacefully if they promise to go to Palestine they even were allowed to keep some money if they spend that money for German industrial products and so on and so on but what I want to say is this with Trump you know what I'm afraid now don't fall into what I call John Stewart trap just this eternal left liberal making fun of Trump we will lose this game I'm not saying he is personally not stupid but I'm just saying that at least for a couple of years his solution may work for example with all his anti-immigrant propaganda it’s already clear now that he is doing something much more tricky he will deport some so-called criminals and so on but he will be very careful not to disturb middle classes who still want their illegal immigrants gardeners and so on to do the work and so on it’s and it's the same with many other maybe he will with many other of his projects maybe for some time it will work to put it simply but for me one of the true dangers of Trump is the let’s call it disintegration regression of public morals of how you are allowed to speak in public and this is not just Trump this is a general regression for example can you
unknown
even imagine years ago that we would be allowed to even debate about torture now it’s a legitimate topic of debate here I am for dogmatism as I always emphasize
even imagine years ago that we would be allowed to even debate about torture now it’s a legitimate topic of debate here I am for dogmatism as I always emphasize
Slavoj Žižek
for example let’s take rape I wouldn’t like to live in a
for example let’s take rape I wouldn’t like to live in a
unknown
society where you have to argue why rape shouldn’t be tolerated a society where somebody who for example brings out the terrible vulgar argumentation you know women
society where you have to argue why rape shouldn’t be tolerated a society where somebody who for example brings out the terrible vulgar argumentation you know women
Slavoj Žižek
really want it they just out of false shame protested but blah blah blah I don’t want to argue with such guy I want to live in a society in which when somebody talks like that he is simply dismissed as an idiot or whatever we should be dogmatics here and that's what worries me today that this good side of dogmatism in the sense of certain things were simply not tolerated they are tolerated again even public decency the tragedy if I may use this ridiculous word of Trump is that even when he likes to celebrate good manners nobility he does it in a totally wrong way like I don't know why it impressed me so traumatically a month or two before elections maybe you remember he was praising Melania to demonstrate what a refined lady she is she said I don't want to use that word F not the F F another F I will use a more noble she said in all years of living with her she she he sorry he didn’t hear her even once making the flatulence sound Oh yeah but you know what's the problem even to take talk about this publicly is a vulgarity he you know that's the paradox of Trump he didn’t see it that at that point he was vulgar because the point is not you don’t do it the point is we simply out of decency don’t talk about this in public again it’s not just Trump it’s incredible how the same thing is happening all around what was still now a matter of this you know private conspiracy theories from in close circles is now becoming part of public discourse for example wasn’t it said you may remember when Netanyahu proposed that totally crazy theory that it was really Palestinians that Husseini who suggested to Hitler Holocaust I mean there is no Hitler met him once Husseini when Holocaust was already in process and there is no document that this really happened but Netanyahu quoted it as a fact or for example and I’m taking Jews who are top people intellectuals and so on you know what happened half a year ago I was shocked in the Middle East the chief religious authority in the army claimed that it's in accordance with sacred books that when an army occupies an enemy territory soldiers can rape local girls you know who said this not some ISIS guy the chief rabbi of the IDF of Israeli Defence Forces of course Arab countries are probably doing the same but what I’m saying is that can you even imagine such a statement years ago we effectively live in an era of regression and I think that since I trust in Hollywood no that in a way even Hollywood knows it that’s why we have this obsession of Hollywood with these dystopias you know effectively if something will not change in our entire socio-economic outlook we are approaching a state which is of things which is the one depicted in I don’t know Elysium Hunger Games and so on even Hollywood knows it this is our future I'd like to return to this the the idea of the human that we've already briefly talked about human rights or throughout your writing you've drawn our attention to the shortcomings of the concept of humanity which upholds our notions of human rights and humanitarianism the universal human dimension you argue must be sought beyond sympathy and understanding beyond the we're all human level at the level of the inhuman that is at the level of the neighbor Two questions follow is empathy a properly political emotion and if humanity is a troubled concept is there an operative term that you would replace it with first empathy let’s be clear I’m not an idiot of course we should use empathy I’m just saying and we clearly see with refugees and so on it’s not enough I mean when you meet a true foreigner it’s a fake to claim I can have empathy with him and so on they are real foreigners and the problem is to respect them as such so empathy it happens it happens and they are wonderful these moments of sudden communication although even here my position is not acceptable for many politically correct guys because I like to emphasize what may appear but it’s not racist jokes in this dimension listen I remember when I was in China we went through all these disgustingly let us oh I respect your culture blah blah blah but then you know how we became friends I told them a dirty joke they told me a dirty joke and so on it’s incredibly helpful when it works I’m not saying this is a universal rule I’m well aware that obscene jokes also play a crucial role in racist regimes you know they are also a form of domination humiliating the opponent but like these are my fond memories of the old Yugoslavia before everything disintegrated into civil war national wars I remember when I met my friends from other republics a Serb guy a Montenegrin guy and so on it was our ritual always to begin to tell each other dirty jokes not so much racist in the sense of I tell you a joke about your nation but we were competing who will tell a a more nasty joke about one’s own nation each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified by a certain racist cliché we Slovenians were misers Montenegrin people were lazy and so on and we all assumed this cliché with pleasure making fun of it you know like for example a Montenegrin joke sorry for repeating it you know Montenegro you should know to understand is also an earthquake country how does a Montenegrin guy they are lazy remember masturbate he digs a small hole in the earth puts a penis in and waits for the earthquake because they are even too lazy to do the gesture and it was such a pleasure we were immediately friends doing this you know there are I totally admit it magic moments of miracle of communication like all of a sudden we recognize each other but they are rare don’t expect too much for from it again the really difficult thing
really want it they just out of false shame protested but blah blah blah I don’t want to argue with such guy I want to live in a society in which when somebody talks like that he is simply dismissed as an idiot or whatever we should be dogmatics here and that's what worries me today that this good side of dogmatism in the sense of certain things were simply not tolerated they are tolerated again even public decency the tragedy if I may use this ridiculous word of Trump is that even when he likes to celebrate good manners nobility he does it in a totally wrong way like I don't know why it impressed me so traumatically a month or two before elections maybe you remember he was praising Melania to demonstrate what a refined lady she is she said I don't want to use that word F not the F F another F I will use a more noble she said in all years of living with her she she he sorry he didn’t hear her even once making the flatulence sound Oh yeah but you know what's the problem even to take talk about this publicly is a vulgarity he you know that's the paradox of Trump he didn’t see it that at that point he was vulgar because the point is not you don’t do it the point is we simply out of decency don’t talk about this in public again it’s not just Trump it’s incredible how the same thing is happening all around what was still now a matter of this you know private conspiracy theories from in close circles is now becoming part of public discourse for example wasn’t it said you may remember when Netanyahu proposed that totally crazy theory that it was really Palestinians that Husseini who suggested to Hitler Holocaust I mean there is no Hitler met him once Husseini when Holocaust was already in process and there is no document that this really happened but Netanyahu quoted it as a fact or for example and I’m taking Jews who are top people intellectuals and so on you know what happened half a year ago I was shocked in the Middle East the chief religious authority in the army claimed that it's in accordance with sacred books that when an army occupies an enemy territory soldiers can rape local girls you know who said this not some ISIS guy the chief rabbi of the IDF of Israeli Defence Forces of course Arab countries are probably doing the same but what I’m saying is that can you even imagine such a statement years ago we effectively live in an era of regression and I think that since I trust in Hollywood no that in a way even Hollywood knows it that’s why we have this obsession of Hollywood with these dystopias you know effectively if something will not change in our entire socio-economic outlook we are approaching a state which is of things which is the one depicted in I don’t know Elysium Hunger Games and so on even Hollywood knows it this is our future I'd like to return to this the the idea of the human that we've already briefly talked about human rights or throughout your writing you've drawn our attention to the shortcomings of the concept of humanity which upholds our notions of human rights and humanitarianism the universal human dimension you argue must be sought beyond sympathy and understanding beyond the we're all human level at the level of the inhuman that is at the level of the neighbor Two questions follow is empathy a properly political emotion and if humanity is a troubled concept is there an operative term that you would replace it with first empathy let’s be clear I’m not an idiot of course we should use empathy I’m just saying and we clearly see with refugees and so on it’s not enough I mean when you meet a true foreigner it’s a fake to claim I can have empathy with him and so on they are real foreigners and the problem is to respect them as such so empathy it happens it happens and they are wonderful these moments of sudden communication although even here my position is not acceptable for many politically correct guys because I like to emphasize what may appear but it’s not racist jokes in this dimension listen I remember when I was in China we went through all these disgustingly let us oh I respect your culture blah blah blah but then you know how we became friends I told them a dirty joke they told me a dirty joke and so on it’s incredibly helpful when it works I’m not saying this is a universal rule I’m well aware that obscene jokes also play a crucial role in racist regimes you know they are also a form of domination humiliating the opponent but like these are my fond memories of the old Yugoslavia before everything disintegrated into civil war national wars I remember when I met my friends from other republics a Serb guy a Montenegrin guy and so on it was our ritual always to begin to tell each other dirty jokes not so much racist in the sense of I tell you a joke about your nation but we were competing who will tell a a more nasty joke about one’s own nation each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified by a certain racist cliché we Slovenians were misers Montenegrin people were lazy and so on and we all assumed this cliché with pleasure making fun of it you know like for example a Montenegrin joke sorry for repeating it you know Montenegro you should know to understand is also an earthquake country how does a Montenegrin guy they are lazy remember masturbate he digs a small hole in the earth puts a penis in and waits for the earthquake because they are even too lazy to do the gesture and it was such a pleasure we were immediately friends doing this you know there are I totally admit it magic moments of miracle of communication like all of a sudden we recognize each other but they are rare don’t expect too much for from it again the really difficult thing
unknown
is to relate to the other precisely insofar as he she it they remains a neighbor I don’t believe in this saying that ultimately we are all humans we are all the same no this is this can cover up the worst racism and violence like I remember when I was in Israel all media reported on a story which I find pretty disgusting a special unit of Israel anti-terrorist forces violently in the middle of the night broke into a house which the father of the family was a suspected terrorist the father was not at home it was only his
is to relate to the other precisely insofar as he she it they remains a neighbor I don’t believe in this saying that ultimately we are all humans we are all the same no this is this can cover up the worst racism and violence like I remember when I was in Israel all media reported on a story which I find pretty disgusting a special unit of Israel anti-terrorist forces violently in the middle of the night broke into a house which the father of the family was a suspected terrorist the father was not at home it was only his
Slavoj Žižek
wife and a couple of small children of course when soldiers suddenly break in a small daughter five six years old started to cry and her mother called her Sarah come here and one soldier discovered that he has a daughter with the same name and then cameras were there went to mother you see I also have a daughter with the same name this why I don't trust this beyond all political differences we are the same people no we are not that's why we need political solidarity and so on I got lost so go back and oh just that no it’s not lost at all just the idea of is there something like you know this the concept of human is so troubled in the sense that it it’s Schmidt goes that lengths to to talk about you know the reason that humanity is not a useful political category ah but it still is for two reasons first the term humanism is for me too much identified with this empathy and so on and so on but I believe in human universality that's that's why I even believe in human rights as opposed to citizens' rights citizens' rights it Marx was way too quick here when he dismissed human rights as the right of the bourgeois individual no citizens' rights are rights that you get when you are in a certain community citizens' rights are usually a matter of customs political and so on but it’s a great European idea very good for anti-racism when you insist that above being citizens of a particular country we have a certain inalienable human rights right of speech freedom and so on and so on it means simply that the particular culture to which we belong into which we are born shouldn’t set the ultimate standard is is the right of place the right of home is is that a universal human right or is that a right of citizenship and uh that’s the problem how do you relate the right to have a place with the right to move like you know this is an open question there is no simple answer that's why I’m skeptical about those who claim you know like we Slovenians were a little bit shocked thousands of everyday average for some time four to ten thousand immigrants a year ago pass through Slovenia and uh they were interviewed by journalists you know like do you want to stay here where do you want to go and we were a little bit annoyed because you know most of them replied no we looked around you are too poor a country no we want Norway UK Germany whatever the problem is this one how far do you go here of course the communist ideal should be you go you move everywhere but listen it’s a very brutal realist question what should Norway do if for example Norway has only I think four four and a half million people when another two three millions want all to move
wife and a couple of small children of course when soldiers suddenly break in a small daughter five six years old started to cry and her mother called her Sarah come here and one soldier discovered that he has a daughter with the same name and then cameras were there went to mother you see I also have a daughter with the same name this why I don't trust this beyond all political differences we are the same people no we are not that's why we need political solidarity and so on I got lost so go back and oh just that no it’s not lost at all just the idea of is there something like you know this the concept of human is so troubled in the sense that it it’s Schmidt goes that lengths to to talk about you know the reason that humanity is not a useful political category ah but it still is for two reasons first the term humanism is for me too much identified with this empathy and so on and so on but I believe in human universality that's that's why I even believe in human rights as opposed to citizens' rights citizens' rights it Marx was way too quick here when he dismissed human rights as the right of the bourgeois individual no citizens' rights are rights that you get when you are in a certain community citizens' rights are usually a matter of customs political and so on but it’s a great European idea very good for anti-racism when you insist that above being citizens of a particular country we have a certain inalienable human rights right of speech freedom and so on and so on it means simply that the particular culture to which we belong into which we are born shouldn’t set the ultimate standard is is the right of place the right of home is is that a universal human right or is that a right of citizenship and uh that’s the problem how do you relate the right to have a place with the right to move like you know this is an open question there is no simple answer that's why I’m skeptical about those who claim you know like we Slovenians were a little bit shocked thousands of everyday average for some time four to ten thousand immigrants a year ago pass through Slovenia and uh they were interviewed by journalists you know like do you want to stay here where do you want to go and we were a little bit annoyed because you know most of them replied no we looked around you are too poor a country no we want Norway UK Germany whatever the problem is this one how far do you go here of course the communist ideal should be you go you move everywhere but listen it’s a very brutal realist question what should Norway do if for example Norway has only I think four four and a half million people when another two three millions want all to move
unknown
to Norway Another paradox of this refugee ideologies was that they wanted chaotic freedom of movement when police tried to register them they said no we are not cattle
to Norway Another paradox of this refugee ideologies was that they wanted chaotic freedom of movement when police tried to register them they said no we are not cattle
Slavoj Žižek
you register cattle but at the same time they wanted Norway but Norway is a well organized welfare state where everyone is categorized up to the details and so on and so on That’s for me the tragedy of refugees they had a certain idea of Norway they have to accept that they will not get it in Norway Also we should talk openly about these problems You know we in Europe like to like to criticize ourselves that we didn’t do enough for integration Here we go back to the neighbor problem but and I understand them it's not a criticism of immigrants why do we automatically presuppose that they want to be integrated what do we mean by integration usually by integration we mean they should be integrated into our society do they really want this obviously not they want to keep their way of life and then again we have to establish rules but you see my point it's a desperate point that precisely to avoid tensions we have to talk openly about these problems if we avoid them we will have anti-immigrant explosions and so on and so on so yes in principle it sounds nice freedom of movement but to what extent does freedom of movement also cover freedom of settlement which means basically from wherever I come I can pick up my country and not only move there because usually they want more they want the social services of that country then to organize their employment and so on and so on I’m just saying let’s approach this in a rational organized way if not we are approaching a catastrophe
you register cattle but at the same time they wanted Norway but Norway is a well organized welfare state where everyone is categorized up to the details and so on and so on That’s for me the tragedy of refugees they had a certain idea of Norway they have to accept that they will not get it in Norway Also we should talk openly about these problems You know we in Europe like to like to criticize ourselves that we didn’t do enough for integration Here we go back to the neighbor problem but and I understand them it's not a criticism of immigrants why do we automatically presuppose that they want to be integrated what do we mean by integration usually by integration we mean they should be integrated into our society do they really want this obviously not they want to keep their way of life and then again we have to establish rules but you see my point it's a desperate point that precisely to avoid tensions we have to talk openly about these problems if we avoid them we will have anti-immigrant explosions and so on and so on so yes in principle it sounds nice freedom of movement but to what extent does freedom of movement also cover freedom of settlement which means basically from wherever I come I can pick up my country and not only move there because usually they want more they want the social services of that country then to organize their employment and so on and so on I’m just saying let’s approach this in a rational organized way if not we are approaching a catastrophe
unknown
well Slavoj Žižek it’s been a pleasure thank you so much for joining us today
well Slavoj Žižek it’s been a pleasure thank you so much for joining us today
Slavoj Žižek
the pleasure was also mine although let's be patient when we will awaken tomorrow morning maybe it will be remembered as a nightmare but maybe it will be a pleasure thanks very much
the pleasure was also mine although let's be patient when we will awaken tomorrow morning maybe it will be remembered as a nightmare but maybe it will be a pleasure thanks very much
unknown
thank you and thank you for watching the SCI-Arc Channel campaña para
thank you and thank you for watching the SCI-Arc Channel campaña para
unknown
adaptarnos a los nuevos tiempos reinventarnos desaparecer para crear un nuevo sistema moderno y eficaz que ya se entiende por todas partes
adaptarnos a los nuevos tiempos reinventarnos desaparecer para crear un nuevo sistema moderno y eficaz que ya se entiende por todas partes