Slavoj Žižek | Philomathean Annual Oration 2025
Talk · Moderator of the Philomathean Society ·
2025-03-17 · 1:39:48 · 11,902 words
with Ashwin Laksumunage
ideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsfascism-populismcapitalismsexuality-genderdemocracyliberalism-political-correctnesstechnology-ai-cyberspaceecology-climategeopolitics-warcommunism-socialismrace-antisemitismphilosophy-general
Žižek analyzes the Trump phenomenon not as a contingent accident or simple fascism, but as a symptom of the failure of the liberal welfare state and the 'techno-feudal' transformation of capitalism. He argues that Trump represents a 'liberal fascism' and a postmodern relativism that exploits the 'hysterical' critique of ideology by adopting a 'perverse' stance of shameless, un-repressed enjoyment. Drawing on Hegel, Lacan, and Freud, he contrasts the 'hysterical' subject who questions their role with the 'pervert' who embodies the system's obscene enjoyment, illustrating how this dynamic reproduces power structures rather than subverting them. Žižek argues that Lacan’s view on shame reveals that sexual liberation without repression is itself oppressive, as it allows desire to be captured by the system. He then analyzes Trumpian populism as a split between a populist facade and a 'techno-corporate' reality where elites like Musk and Zuckerberg act as neo-feudal masters seeking monopoly rather than market competition. He concludes by discussing the catastrophic nature of current crises (climate, AI) and the three strategies of denial, enjoyment, and disavowal that prevent effective political response. Žižek argues for a 'dialectical negative fatalism' regarding climate catastrophe, citing Jean-Pierre Dupuy, and critiques modern 'unfreedom' experienced as freedom through the privatization of digital commons by figures like Musk and Gates. He contrasts traditional liberalism's public space of reason with its current self-cancellation under Trumpism, then analyzes post-modernism's 'end of history' and the return of fascism as a failed revolution, concluding with reflections on multiculturalism, racism, and materialist feminism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 31
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “techno-feudism”
A term by Yanis Varoufakis that Žižek references (with doubt) to describe the radical change in capitalism, where traditional capitalist dynamics are replaced by feudal-like power structures.
as “primordial obscene father”
A Freudian concept Žižek uses to describe Trump (and potentially Stalin/Hitler in specific contexts), not as a bearer of social authority/law, but as an all-enjoying, un-repressed figure who bypasses symbolic repression.
A term Žižek proposes to describe the Trumpian project, capturing the tension where liberal democratic forms mask a fascist-like, shameless, and obscene enjoyment that reproduces the power structure.
as “alternative truth”
A term coined by Trump's assistant (Kayleigh McEnany) that Žižek uses to illustrate Trump's relativist, postmodern stance, where truth is flexible and serves the speaker's immediate needs.
The Trumpian pretense of bringing all 'dirt' and 'shit' out, which Žižek argues does not lead to liberation but to a much worse, more radical form of repression and mystification.
as “jouir sans entrave”
The French slogan of 1968 ('enjoy without hindrance'), which Žižek critiques as the basis for the 'perverse' stance of figures like Elon Musk, leading to the exposure of dirty fantasies rather than liberation.
The fundamental question of the hysterical subject: 'Why am I what you (ideology/master) say I am?' It serves as the elementary form of critique of ideology, contrasting with the pervert who simply acts out.
Žižek's term for the Chinese concept of 'harmonious society' (where everyone plays their proper role), arguing that this rigid assignment of roles is the true fascist dream, contrasting it with the hysterical critique.
A Lacanian concept Žižek invokes to explain how power structures reproduce themselves through an obscene, extra-legal enjoyment that is necessary for the system's functioning, even if officially denied.
as “proper amount of shame”
Lacan's advice to students in 'The Other Side of Psychoanalysis': one must discover a proper amount of shame to avoid the trap of the pervert who, by being shameless, inadvertently supports the master's power.
The explicit unleashing of unconscious desires, which Lacan argues is not liberation but the worst form of oppression because it incorporates desire into the system's manipulation.
A coinage for the neo-feudal elite (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg) who use populist rhetoric of 'free markets' to justify monopolistic control and deregulation for themselves.
Curtis Yarvin’s concept of erasing existing society to reboot it from zero, allowing corporate entities to construct new states without traditional legal constraints.
Žižek’s interpretation of Trump’s proposal as a 'network state' project: throwing natives to zero level and building a new forum from scratch, mirroring historical colonial monopolies.
as “neuralink”
Elon Musk’s technology, cited by Žižek as the 'ultimate horror' because it allows machines to read and implant thoughts, bypassing human awareness.
The shift from ideology as a spontaneous, anonymous system to one that is actively manipulated and regulated by private corporate algorithms.
Žižek’s self-definition: retaining the communist goal of global cooperation and universalism while accepting the conservative reality of a multipolar world order (BRICS) to avoid nuclear war.
Meaningless, repetitive human behaviors (like stepping on squares) that produce an 'effect of meaning' and are essential for human survival, which AI cannot generate out of an 'imminent need'.
as “swearing as symbolic act”
Drawing on Lacan, Žižek argues swearing is the first zero-level symbolic act, a fundamental reaction to the frustration of living in language without being fully at home in it.
as “disavowal (verleugnung)”
Freud’s concept 'I know very well, but nevertheless,' where one formally admits a truth (like climate change) but does not subjectively engage with it, using it as an excuse for inaction.
The position of admitting catastrophe is our destiny while simultaneously acting madly against it, hoping our knowledge of the catastrophe is not strong enough to make it inevitable.
as “unfreedom that you experience as freedom”
The most dangerous form of modern unfreedom, where control and manipulation (e.g., surfing the web) are felt as liberation.
A modern economic phenomenon where entities like Amazon or Musk's companies control the commons (digital space, markets) while claiming to merely mediate, unlike early privatization which simply removed the common status.
A form of liberalism that self-cancels by diminishing the state so radically that the public space of freedom itself disappears, resulting in a stronger-than-ever state.
as “public space”
The great discovery of modernity (following Kant), distinguished from the state, where reason is not subordinated to specific social or state needs but is open and self-questioning.
The critical practice of questioning the formulation of a problem itself, rather than offering immediate solutions, as the first step toward a solution.
as “post-modernism”
Defined by Fredric Jameson as a stage of capitalism where historical tension disappears, and different traditions are incorporated into a non-historical eternal present.
Fukuyama's thesis, which Žižek interprets literally as the state where past is incorporated into an eternal present, now being cancelled by the return of history/fascism.
A provocative formulation suggesting fascism is the only form of anti-capitalist regulation (state control of banks) permitted within capitalism, making it a 'failed revolution'.
as “white multiculturalism”
A form of multiculturalism that prohibits white people from retaining their specific way of life, secretly asserting white universalism while appearing to humble themselves.
as “exchange of obscenities”
A mechanism for establishing authentic contact and friendship, particularly among marginalized groups, where the ability to trade 'dirty' jokes signals trust and lack of patronizing distance.
Stories he reaches for 3
A Native American friend prefers 'Indian' over 'Native American' because 'Native American' implies 'nature,' whereas 'Indian' is a monument to white men's stupidity for thinking they were in India.
“i much prefer to be called indian because at least my name is a monument to white men's stupidity”
The Haiti Revolution challenged the French Revolution to be more egalitarian and enlightened than the French themselves, representing an open challenge within the liberal space.
“it's not regain our traditional way of life. no. it was open challenge to french revolution.”
Perón introduced paid leave for menstruation in Argentina, which Žižek cites as a concrete, materialist feminist achievement that addresses daily practical troubles better than symbolic rules.
“she introduced every month for a woman who is in her period two or three days... that's for me anti-femitism, concrete, daily.”
Works invoked 9
The German Ideology book
Žižek ironically re-reads Marx's enumeration of communist activities to describe Elon Musk's life, suggesting a perverse realization of Marx's vision.
1984 book
Orwell’s novel, cited for its vision of three megastates, which Žižek argues is becoming the reality of the BRICS multipolar order.
Neuralink other
Musk’s technology, described as the 'ultimate horror' for its potential to read and implant thoughts.
Žižek cites Lacan's 1969-70 seminar, specifically the advice to 'discover a proper amount of shame' as a counter to the pervert's shamelessness.
Surplus Enjoyment book
Žižek references his own book 'surplus enjoyment' (likely 'Enjoy Your Symptom!') to explain how power structures reproduce themselves through obscene enjoyment.
James Bond film
Mentioned by Fredric Jameson as a movie they discuss, illustrating their normalcy and shared post-modern view.
Žižek’s 'favorite' series, specifically episode 5, used to illustrate the ambiguous enjoyment of catastrophe and the irony of finding 'communism' in a functioning city.
Network State book
Srinivasan’s book, cited for the concept of starting a new country via special territories and corporate construction from zero point.
Metaverse other
Zuckerberg’s project, described as an attempt by private corporations to control and manipulate our social environment through algorithms.
People invoked 37
Frantz Fanon positive
Cited as finding the insight about the universal potential of the deprived in Fanon, which Malcolm X later developed.
Prince Charles negative
Cited as giving a speech at a Glasgow ecology conference that was 'just in order not to do anything,' exemplifying the strategy of using death/catastrophe as an excuse for inaction.
Kamala Harris negative
Žižek criticizes Harris as a 'trained puppet' who avoids controversy and offers 'pure, absolute platitude' on Gaza.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as 'my good friend' and 'the greatest maybe theorist of catastrophes'; Žižek follows his idea of dialectical negative fatalism.
Fabio Vighi negative
Described as an 'ex-friend' who attacks Žižek. Vighi is criticized for claiming crises like COVID and ecology are just capitalist strategies for control, a view Žižek finds 'way too optimistic'.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Žižek cites Adorno's late 30s text arguing that Hitler was not a 'paternal figure' but something else, a point Žižek extends to Trump.
Steve Bannon positive
Žižek admits a 'marginal, don't be afraid, sympathy' for Bannon, noting he was fired for demanding higher corporate taxes, representing the populist side of Trumpism.
Jacques Lacan positive
Žižek relies heavily on Lacan, citing his 'hysterical question,' 'surplus enjoyment,' and 'The Other Side of Psychoanalysis' (advice on shame) as key to understanding ideology and power.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Called 'a very honest guy' for proposing the 'end of history,' but Žižek critiques the thesis as being over by the return of history/fascism, noting Fukuyama's vote for Bernie Sanders.
Curtis Yarvin positive
Cited as formulating the 'non-populist' aspect of Trumpian ideology through his concept of the 'network state' and erasing society to reboot from zero.
Jon Stewart negative
Žižek dismisses liberal critics like John Stewart for making 'endless jokes' and 'fact-checking' Trump, arguing they fail to understand the deeper ideological structure.
Donald Trump positive
Žižek views Trump as a 'symptom' of the liberal welfare state's failure and a 'postmodern' relativist figure who embodies the 'primordial obscene father' and 'liberal fascism,' rather than a traditional fascist.
Jeff Bezos negative
Grouped with Musk and Zuckerberg as 'neo-feudal masters' who function as monopolies rather than market competitors.
Elon Musk positive
Žižek uses Musk as an example of the 'obscene' figure who is not a paternal authority but embodies the 'end of repression' and 'jouir sans entrave' (enjoy without hindrance).
George Orwell positive
Cited for '1984' and the vision of three megastates (Oceania, Eurasia, East Asia), which Žižek argues is becoming reality through BRICS.
Fredric Jameson positive
Described as a 'wonderful person' and 'good friend'; Žižek credits him with grounding post-modernism in capitalism and notes their shared views on movies and history.
Adolf Hitler positive
Cited via Adorno as not a 'paternal figure,' but rather something else, a point Žižek applies to Trump.
Bernie Sanders positive
Žižek praises Sanders as the 'symptom' of the inauguration who 'stole the show' through his authentic, non-spectacular presence.
Mark Zuckerberg negative
Cited as a 'techno-corporate tramp' whose 'metaverse' is an attempt to control and manipulate social environment through algorithms. Žižek mocks his name as 'sugar mountain'.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Cited for the term 'neo-feudal masters' to describe tech billionaires.
Eva Perón positive
Cited for introducing monthly paid leave for menstruation in Argentina in 1951, which Žižek values as a materialist feminist act.
Malcolm X positive
Described as 'the guy' who really worked it out; Žižek appreciates his insight that being deprived of African roots gives blacks a chance to be more truly universal than white people.
Ernesto Laclau positive
Žižek admits Laclau 'hated me at the end' but appreciates his emphasis that fascism is not an ideology with fixed elements but a specific articulation.
Napoleon positive
Used as Hegel's example of repetition: first loss seen as contingent mistake, second (Waterloo) as necessary.
Bill Gates negative
Cited as an example of someone who privatizes commons through digital control.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez positive
Žižek praises AOC for realizing that her voters also chose Trump because both appeared 'sincere' and untrained, unlike Harris.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for the formula that 'fascism is always a sign of a failed revolution' and that one should never dismiss fascism just as a mistake.
Joe Biden negative
Žižek criticizes Biden's inauguration as a 'tremendous politically correct... spectacle' and 'inclusive' in a bad sense.
Jürgen Habermas positive
Cited as someone Žižek doesn't agree with but acknowledges knew the importance of the public space as a great discovery of modernity.
Mentioned in the context of Trump’s deal with him to divide the world into megastates (Ukraine/Baltics for Russia, Canada/Mexico for US) within a BRICS framework.
Joseph Stalin positive
Žižek states Stalin was 'definitely not a paternal figure,' grouping him with Hitler and Trump in terms of not being a traditional authority bearer.
Balaji Srinivasan positive
Author of 'The Network State,' cited for the idea that corporate companies should construct new states from zero point to save society.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek ironically reinterprets Marx's 'German Ideology' to describe Musk's lifestyle, suggesting Marx's vision of free activity is realized in a perverse, obscene way.
Sigmund Freud positive
Žižek uses Freud's concepts of 'primordial obscene father' and the idea that 'nowhere is the unconscious more out of reach than in perversion' to analyze Trump and 1968.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek calls Hegel his 'favorite philosopher' and uses his theory of repetition (Napoleon) to explain the necessity of Trump's rise.
Immanuel Kant positive
Identified as the great philosopher who distinguished between private and public use of reason; Žižek uses Kant's distinction to define the public space.
Juan Perón positive
Described as 'half fascist' and someone Žižek has 'great problems with,' but praised for introducing menstrual leave in Argentina as a concrete feminist achievement.
Transcript 14 turns
Ashwin Laksumunage
ladies and gentlemen. it is my deepest honor and privilege to welcome you all to the 2025 philomathan society annual oration. my name is ashwin laksumunage and as the annual oration director for the past year, this has been a grueling and difficult challenge. in the midst of a funding drought, we found it much more difficult to raise funds this year compared to years prior. and yet, in spite of this, we have been able to pull off one of the most highly anticipated, high-profile annual orations in recent history. before going any further, i would like to thank our fantastic partners without whom this event would have been completely impossible. first and foremost, our event co-sponsor the andrea mitchell center for the study of democracy. the andrea mitchell center for the study of democracy aims not just to promote but to understand democracy. global in its outlook, multifaceted in its purposes, the mitchell center seeks to contribute to the ongoing quest for democratic values, ideas, and insights. institutions throughout the world. in addition to hosting speakers from the fields of academia, journalism, politics, and public policy, the mitchell center supports undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral research. amc also co-sponsors another philomathean society event every semester, politics on the edge, or port, where we bring in some of the most provocative and sharp-witted thinkers in the us or even from around the world to present their thoughts. my heartfelt thanks go out to dr. jeff green. Ibrahim Bakri and everyone else at amc without whom this event would be impossible. it was just last week that i was enjoying my spring break on a beach in puerto rico when i received an email from dr. green about logistics and immediately jumped up to give him a call. thank you for everything amc and we hope our partnership continues to grow even stronger. i would also like to give a huge thank you to our other partners, the SNF Paideia program and dr. daniele lorenzini and dr. Sukaina Hirji from the philosophy department for their organizing help, the wolf humanities center, penn english, NSO, AS, fye and sye, penn history, benjamin franklin scholars, specifically dr. Kim Bowes and Audrey Margolene, spec connaissance, spec fully planned, the REES department and dr. Kristen Ghodsee, skew, penn traditions alumni, engagement fund and sec thank you, thank you, thank you. i would like to take a moment to convey just how important this event is to us here at philo. the philomethean society is penn's oldest organization and the oldest continuously running collegiate literary society in the united states. we have always been shapers of this campus and at the forefront of its intellectual boundaries. at this moment, i think it would be fair to say philo is going through a renaissance. after a year out of our historic philomethean halls due to renovations, we have regained our prestige. space on the top floor of college hall. we are publishing zines and full magazines again. we are doing art again. we are doing music again. the art of our society has been rejuvenated and the philylos spark in all of us has been reignited. to all the philylos in the audience, i ask you to see this event as a true symbol of our resurgence as a society, as an intellectual community, and as a force that paves the way for this campus's intellectual and cultural life. we are back we we are not going away. do not let that philo spark fade. let it be the beginnings of a flame that will roar for years to come, long past our time at penn. philo re, philoora sic itur ad astra. lastly, i would like to thank some people who have made this journey possible for me. ao director is one of the hardest jobs in philo, but these people have made that burden lighter through their presence, guidance, and friendship. k sorino senior member meg seniorard seniorwis senior hannah guptaigail d, ab. the caucus, amar mehman, jan meia toruro, nishant bhava, eric wang, zach mcgrath, henry franklin, aiden ford, mark hellwig, my parents and both my grandmothers, my late grandfather, and all the other philos that have impacted my life in unimaginable ways. thank you. a quick note on logistics. our speaker, who shall not remain named just yet, will give a talk for as long as he sees fit. i'm presuming about an hour. we will then have a q&a period where we will have volunteer walking around with a mic, so have questions ready, and then we'll have a book signing once the q&a period is over. finally, the moment you have all been waiting for. once referred to as the most dangerous philosopher in the west, he is a prominent slovenian philosopher, cultural critic and psychoanalyst known for his provocative and influential ideas on politics, ideology, and popular culture. drawing on thinkers like hegel, marx, and lacan, he has explored topics ranging from capitalism and global politics to film theory and religion, often with a sharp and humorous edge. he has published over 50 books, including the sublime object of ideology and less than nothing and has become widely recognized for his unique style blending complex theoretical insights with references to pop culture and current events. his work challenges conventional insights with references to oh sorry, conventional wisdom, urging audiences to question underlying assumptions in contemporary society. his engaging, often controversial approach has made him one of today's most talked about and widely read philosophers, alongside his constant sniffling, of course. he was even so kind as to provide me with a topic for this oration, which would have been nice earlier because we might have been able to get stem funding. speaking on why quantum mechanics helps us survive in a time of obscenity, i welcome to the stage none other than the one, the only dr. slavoj jijk.
ladies and gentlemen. it is my deepest honor and privilege to welcome you all to the 2025 philomathan society annual oration. my name is ashwin laksumunage and as the annual oration director for the past year, this has been a grueling and difficult challenge. in the midst of a funding drought, we found it much more difficult to raise funds this year compared to years prior. and yet, in spite of this, we have been able to pull off one of the most highly anticipated, high-profile annual orations in recent history. before going any further, i would like to thank our fantastic partners without whom this event would have been completely impossible. first and foremost, our event co-sponsor the andrea mitchell center for the study of democracy. the andrea mitchell center for the study of democracy aims not just to promote but to understand democracy. global in its outlook, multifaceted in its purposes, the mitchell center seeks to contribute to the ongoing quest for democratic values, ideas, and insights. institutions throughout the world. in addition to hosting speakers from the fields of academia, journalism, politics, and public policy, the mitchell center supports undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral research. amc also co-sponsors another philomathean society event every semester, politics on the edge, or port, where we bring in some of the most provocative and sharp-witted thinkers in the us or even from around the world to present their thoughts. my heartfelt thanks go out to dr. jeff green. Ibrahim Bakri and everyone else at amc without whom this event would be impossible. it was just last week that i was enjoying my spring break on a beach in puerto rico when i received an email from dr. green about logistics and immediately jumped up to give him a call. thank you for everything amc and we hope our partnership continues to grow even stronger. i would also like to give a huge thank you to our other partners, the SNF Paideia program and dr. daniele lorenzini and dr. Sukaina Hirji from the philosophy department for their organizing help, the wolf humanities center, penn english, NSO, AS, fye and sye, penn history, benjamin franklin scholars, specifically dr. Kim Bowes and Audrey Margolene, spec connaissance, spec fully planned, the REES department and dr. Kristen Ghodsee, skew, penn traditions alumni, engagement fund and sec thank you, thank you, thank you. i would like to take a moment to convey just how important this event is to us here at philo. the philomethean society is penn's oldest organization and the oldest continuously running collegiate literary society in the united states. we have always been shapers of this campus and at the forefront of its intellectual boundaries. at this moment, i think it would be fair to say philo is going through a renaissance. after a year out of our historic philomethean halls due to renovations, we have regained our prestige. space on the top floor of college hall. we are publishing zines and full magazines again. we are doing art again. we are doing music again. the art of our society has been rejuvenated and the philylos spark in all of us has been reignited. to all the philylos in the audience, i ask you to see this event as a true symbol of our resurgence as a society, as an intellectual community, and as a force that paves the way for this campus's intellectual and cultural life. we are back we we are not going away. do not let that philo spark fade. let it be the beginnings of a flame that will roar for years to come, long past our time at penn. philo re, philoora sic itur ad astra. lastly, i would like to thank some people who have made this journey possible for me. ao director is one of the hardest jobs in philo, but these people have made that burden lighter through their presence, guidance, and friendship. k sorino senior member meg seniorard seniorwis senior hannah guptaigail d, ab. the caucus, amar mehman, jan meia toruro, nishant bhava, eric wang, zach mcgrath, henry franklin, aiden ford, mark hellwig, my parents and both my grandmothers, my late grandfather, and all the other philos that have impacted my life in unimaginable ways. thank you. a quick note on logistics. our speaker, who shall not remain named just yet, will give a talk for as long as he sees fit. i'm presuming about an hour. we will then have a q&a period where we will have volunteer walking around with a mic, so have questions ready, and then we'll have a book signing once the q&a period is over. finally, the moment you have all been waiting for. once referred to as the most dangerous philosopher in the west, he is a prominent slovenian philosopher, cultural critic and psychoanalyst known for his provocative and influential ideas on politics, ideology, and popular culture. drawing on thinkers like hegel, marx, and lacan, he has explored topics ranging from capitalism and global politics to film theory and religion, often with a sharp and humorous edge. he has published over 50 books, including the sublime object of ideology and less than nothing and has become widely recognized for his unique style blending complex theoretical insights with references to pop culture and current events. his work challenges conventional insights with references to oh sorry, conventional wisdom, urging audiences to question underlying assumptions in contemporary society. his engaging, often controversial approach has made him one of today's most talked about and widely read philosophers, alongside his constant sniffling, of course. he was even so kind as to provide me with a topic for this oration, which would have been nice earlier because we might have been able to get stem funding. speaking on why quantum mechanics helps us survive in a time of obscenity, i welcome to the stage none other than the one, the only dr. slavoj jijk.
Slavoj Žižek
i will not words in repeating how glad and honored i am to be here. also as a warning, some of you may be a little bit disappointed because i know i'm always it's getting so boring, expected to engage in some dirty jokes or whatever. but we live in a very sad time. and what i will tell you and, i think, is a key element if you want to understand what goes on today. remember, when was it, five years ago or when, the 6th of january, my leftist friends were crying. you remember when the trumpian crowd entered congress? they said, what's going on? when we were young? unk. our site was supposed to do this. popular crowd occupying the seat of power. they said now. the bad guys took even a revolution from us. yes, i will try to develop some of the consequences, implications of this. let me tell you. how let me just begin with an indication how complex this situation is. what do i mean by this complexity? yeah, i will tell many things about trump criticizing his movement, but never forget that. trump is an effect, a consequence, a symptom, if you want, of the. inner weakness and failure of what? oui! you in the states, we in europe usually designated as the, not even social democratic, but like liberal welfare state. and when trump won the first time, the reaction of the majority, not only. here but even more i would say in europe was. this is a kind of evil thing, an accident, freakish accident of history. we should just wait a little bit. trump will destroy himself and the normal democratic welfare state will return. hegel, my favorite philosopher, has a wonderful theory of repetition in history. his point is that a thing first happens, we perceive it as something contingent. with a better strategy, it may have been avoided. but when a thing repeats itself, we see its necessity. hegel's wonderful example is napoleon after losing in 1800, sorry, 13, the first time he thought, oh, i did some bad strategic planning, so he returned when he lost at waterloo, i think. the second time it was clear it wasn't his strategic mistake or what it was over. and i think if we want to remain some kind of left, we have to fully accept this. lesson apropos trump. again, the first time it may have looked, oh, it's a contingency, blah blah, and so on. but, you know, when things became clear to me, did you what? the uh... biden's inauguration event, when was it? years five years ago. it was for me. such a tremendous politically correct in the bad sense of the term. spectacle. inclusive of that. nothing against her. that, sorry, i'm old, senile, names are slipping out, the black young lady who read her poems. i'm not saying they are bad poems. i'm just saying that she should have been more careful. she became part of that big liberal spectacle. but as a freudian, i always look for symptoms, marginal moments which... betray the truth. you know who was the symptom there? remember bernie sanders sitting alone? and stealing the show. it was, so you see, i'm not despising you. you americans are definitely not stupid. how did you prove that you are not stupid? because his image. explode that all around the media. stole the show and now you will say but. if you are stupid, you will say, but we are stupid. what about trump? no, you know what was for me one of the nice surprises? you remember that shooting accident which happened, did not happen, i don't know when. a bullet from a gun, no and then you had that, my god, was it states or not, you know trump raising his hat american flag with a little bit of blood and so on. ah, you are not stupid because we... in spite of all the trumpian attempts, that image didn't become. s. universal meme or whatever you call it. so again. let's follow this. path of why not non-stupidity i emphasize this because i'm not making fun here of the. trump populist but of the left liberal. critics, you know, like john stewart, all of them, making endless jokes of trump, endlessly fun of him and so on and so on. or all this fact-checking, you know. he tells something not true here, he told trump something not true there. are these guys really crazy? don't they get it? a, alessandria ocasio-cortes got it finally. that she noticed, it's a crucial data, remember that the same people who locally voted at her in local elections voted for trump, many of them, of course not the majority, at the federal presidential elections. so she, i don't know how she got the list, contacted many of them with a simple question, just explain me please, how come that you could vote for me locally and for trump forump for the president and she got a very nice correct answer not true but correct expected. it was that what you and trump share is that you don't seem to be a trained puppet, you know like unfortunately with kamala harris. obviously she was trained to avoid anything controversial. i was ashamed for you you i remember. when she boss. just before elections ask what would you have done if you are president apro propos gaza, israel and so on. she immediately sends, oh, dangerous territory. and she gave an answer something like, people suffer there too much, it's time to put that suffering to a stop. pure, absolute platitude. at that point, i asked myself, would i maybe not also vote for trump? it's a nightmare. and you know, if we have to learn something for trump, it, and bernie sanders said this, it's don't fall into the trap of moderate democrats, which is let's avoid extremes. the big worry of democrats was let's not move too much to the left so that we don't lose the middle ground. are we really unable to learn anything from trump, which is that he won precisely by going to the extremes? but okay, i will not lose time with these obvious things. i just want... to say that that's why, although i'm well aware of the mega dangers of trump's presidency, the analysis, what is trump? is. still awaiting us unfortunately the left especially the liberal one again. displayed intellectual laziness. usually they dismiss trump as, oh, it's fascism again, trumpian fascism. maybe in a way, but in what way? what i don't like is this laziness. you still think in the old categories. then something new that most of us, at least in our circle, we intensely dislike. and then when asked, but what is this? you think in a lazy way. oh, the really bad thing is fascism, so this has to be. fascism. it's not as simple as that. there are many. economists sociologists philosophers who are aware of this and desperately try to propose a new formula. for example, although i don't agree. otherwise, always with my good friend, the greek guy, you know, Yanis Varoufakis. he at least tried to propose a new term, techno-feudism. i have some doubts with this term but the important thing is that he tries to. make us see that while we leftists worry about is it possible to overcome capitalism, how you do it? capitalism itself is already radically changing into something for which i doubt if it still is the old capitalism. here i will not get lost into details. here but here... concerning this capitalism, i would say with all my support for feminism that it should also again rethink in terms, since in the standard feminist view the mega bad thing of the past is patriarchy so oh oh oh when women are oppressed, not only women, it must be patriarchy maybe in some very mediated way. but i'm following here theodor adorno, frankfurt school guy, who already in late 30s. wrote a text. where he clearly states, whatever hitler is, he is not a paternal figure. he is not a father figure. and similarly, although i don't put them in the same league, it's totally different, of course, i would say no, even, okay, on the opposite hand, stalin was definitely not a paternal figure. and i think also... you're trump. he is not a paternal figure in the usual sense. maybe if you stretch the term, trump comes close to something that freud calls this primordial obscene father, all-enjoying father. but it's not father as the bearer of social authority. and especially if you want to understand a person like elon musk. i hope we agree, whatever he is, he is not a paternal authority. i think even now i will propose to you something i like to play we a truly obscene. definition, you know, marx uh uh in his, i think worst big text, german ideology. presents a figure communism with the idea in communism individuals would live in a truly free society of choices and then marx so ironically enumerates in the morning you do fishing or whatever one in the afternoon you read theory, you become a critical theorist in the evening my god, this is mar almost, i must say. you know in the morning he does his tesla, then he dreams about then, then he plays politics, then i don't know what, then he breeds children. doesn't he have like 13 children by as many women as that. so what i'm saying is that. now i will be really evil. these are my doubts about the 68, so much celebrated more in europe than with you, 68 rebellion. i think the way this rebellion was, at least in europe, incorporated into the system. this was something incredibly successful. in paris, i remember i was very young, but i was already there in 68. protesters had three big demands. and of this for this manual, boring, repetitive labor. then sexual liberation and then. end of alienated university up their elitist education. they in some perverted sense got what they. wanted now you have precarious work and so on and many people almost. long for the good old foricht. manual work because now the problem i think with precarious work is that it's much more intense. you feel self-responsible, you worry all the time, will it succeed. education. that's why i love you. here they heard us and what some of these trian populists are saying, like they mockingly, as you know, refer to universities as the cathedral. alienated knowledge up there without contact to ordinary people yeah so. you will get what you, not you you, but students, me included, want that in 68. okay, the alienated academia, academic institutions are. gradually very limited, at least. not to mention sexuality. i will not lose time with that. so,... i think that we have to. rethink think from hiro. point. i don't have a good term. i don't quite agree withakis's techno-feudalism. i'm just now playing with the term liberal fascism. why? because at least it reproduces the tension. in in the trian project. this tension inner antagonism is not simply its limitation. it's at the same time it's strength. what do i mean by this? uh you know what? people usually don't. mm the importance of and here i'm coming back maybe to a critique of 68 because again,. conclude my point there. if there is a reincarnation of a 68 person, i remember when i was young, it was considered subversive to do obscene gestures, speak in a vulgar way, subvert the fake dignity of those in power. yeah, and now we have the power itself speaking in such obscene. terms and so on. so i think this would be my first very superficial approach to trump. uh. trump is. obviously. not uh a remainder a relic of old moral majority of old conservative stance he is, i think, and that's one of the keys, trump is, for me at least, the first truly post, although his trumpian conservatives attack all the time postmodernist historicicism, but sorry, he is that. he is very relativist, changes his position all the time. you remember, i forgot her name. his assistant lady who proposed the term alternate truth and so on, he speaks in a vulgar way and so on. so i think that this this. false effect of trump, at least, because that's the result alessandria ocasio-cortes got. again, the message was you and trump seem to speak in a sincere way. and you know what's so tragic? i read somewhere that that's why when trump was caught lying, it usually helped him. the people explained it in this way, at least by making mistakes, it means he is not totally controlled but advisors, he brings it out. now comes my first, let's call it theoretical point. this is at a superficial level still, one of the antagonisms for me of the trian universe. it pretends to be almost in the freudian terms. the end of repression, verdrängung. you bring all the dirt. the. in new out. but the catch is that the effect is not that of liberation. but even... an effect of much worse repression. that's lesson number one. and i think i will try to explain you why. i think that this is something that. freud was already aware of when he said that. nowhere is. the unconscious more. out of reach than in perversion. this goes against the spirit of 68, which was the french term jouir sans entrave. enjoy fully this elon musk for me. enjoy as the ultimate 68 figure. enjoy fully without obstacles and so on. no. what you bring out in this way are the dirty fantasies which are mystification at its most radical. that's why. i remember it. this was what was wrong in 68. i remember when i was young, this was the hidden anti-feminist dimension of 68. the idea was to mock hysterics. hysterics are confused. they want something, but they don't want really to get rid of it. as they say, they criticize the master, but with the wish to get a new master, while perverts go to the end. as we to say what hysterics only dream about perverts. do it. i think already in 68 there was an anti-feminist twist in this because, you know, perverts are usually men. in psychoanalysis there is a great debate. does feminine perversion even exist at all? but i'm here absolutely on the side of... we. it's true that sorry hysteria is... structurally for reasons i will go on now feminine stance but i think that first hysteria is the i would even go as far as to say this, the most elementary form of the critique of ideology, as laccon pointed out. the hysterical question to the master. is the following one in our society, ideology, social symbolic structure imposes on all of us a certain role. you are a teacher, you are even not, why not, this is systematized. you are a subversive protest, you are whatever. and don't underestimate the strength of it. when i was in china, five years ago. they told me we no longer talk about communism. we talk they use now the confucian term harmonious society. and i asked them, okay, fuck it, sorry. tell me please, what is harmonious society? and they told me, society in which... everyone plays its proper role. father is a good father, pupil is a good pupil. woman is a good mother, whatever. and then i started to laugh and tell them, you see, in spite of all cultural relativism, what do we know, what the chinese mean and so on, i understand you perfectly. in europe, we call this corporate fascism, you know. because that's the fascist dream. each at, here, there, whatever. aotted so so that's the beauty this is why i think. psychoanalysis is part of every critique of ideology. the psychoanalytic theory the hysterical question is not. is's a question of desire, but not in the sense of oh what, you know, all this fake ideology of lack. i do not really know what i want. whenever i get what i want, i'm disappointed. no. the hysterical question is, others, society want something from me, but... why am i what you, ideology, really usually patriarchal authority, what you claim that i am? and this is for me the fundamental. feminine question. the oppression tells you till now. now it's get all confused, i know. play a proper feminine role. and d. counter question of you should be why am i what you are saying that i am, that role that i should play? perverts don't have that problem. which is why, and this is a wise insight, said already in late 50s, early 60s that far from being subversive, truly. perversion is always needed for power structure to reproduce itself, to function. because as i developed in my book, surplus enjoyment, i don't have time to go into it now, you know. every power structure at some point reproduces that. it's a very simple joke, but one of my favorite jokes. you know, some group of investigators come to a primitive tribe, so-called, and asked, are, because they heard this rumor, are there still cannibals among you? you know what's the answer they got? no, we ate the last last week, you know. that's how our societies. still work. legal system n. illegal some form of violence to. uh. reproduce itself so that's the first insight. there is no nothing. liberating in this. pseudo-subversive aspect of let's bring your nastiest fantasy, let's bring all the shit out. now, here repression is at its worst. this is still at the superficial level, the first way for me to locate. the new right-wing trump, we have others in europe. populism is to use this standard moralistic term in a shameless way, sorry, precisely, openly and to say. shamelessness. i don't want now to talk about israel, gaza, we know all the critique that we have. i just, and i don't mean in any way in an anti-semitic way, because others are also more and more doing it. you know what? it for me one of the most depressive experiences when i followed israeli politics. we know all regimes, i'm a pessimist here, torture people in unspeakable ways and so on. but i was quite surprised looking to my last book, i quoted there, give exact references. this was for me one of the most depressive scandals that i can imagine. half a year ago, some guys, guards, honest, guards, jewish escaped from a prison south of jerusalem and brought even some video clips out. from shot by their iphones of what? israeli guards there are doing with palestinian prisoners. like one thing is confirmed. they were torturing palestinians in such a way they were putting big iron sticks up there as whole, but sticks in which there were blades, needles and so on, and they put them in and, well, at least a dozen of them died from bleeding. now here i say. sorry for a bad joke okay why not they are all doing it but what really depressed me. and you find. sources just i don't want to bore you with it. clips. then there was a debate in knesset where the large majority defended this no, those who are fighting terrorists are our heroes. whatever they do it's fully. justified. another. think. similar. you remember in november of the last year, there was a big soccer, european football match in amsterdam where thousands came from israel. uh to fans allegedly and they demonstrated there and again you find them easily on the web. thousands shouting, among other things, there are no schools open in gaza because we killed all the children and so on. so you see what i am aiming at here. i'm aiming at this open obscenity. those in power no longer even feel the need, which is, i always say, hypocrisy in these matters is better than openness. because hypocrisy at least allows a minimum of criticism. you can embarrass those in power to say, wait a minute, you talk about human rights, look what you are doing. no, in the new state of things, they mockingly admit it in advance. and this again uh brings me... to. shame. now it's translated into english lacon's seminar the other side of psychoanalysis from 69 seventy which is his answer to 68. and laccon says there's something very interesting. he doesn't play this game of, you know, you want total liberation of sexuality and total... protest, social disorder. he said, your buffoonery may cost you. dearly. you. are subverting a master, maybe the new master that you will get will be even worse than the previous one. they thought that by their obscene acts and so on, being subversive and so on, they are destroying the structure of power. you play this game, then you get trump and similar. that is to say, a master who is himself, usually it's him who is himself. self-mocking, vulgar, ironic, and so on. so surprisingly, you find this in my books. i contain the line here so i will not go on too long. yeah lacon's advice is. to message to students is all i can tell you is discover a proper amount of shame. shame is needed. now to avoid misunderstanding. laccon is not here for a compromise. he's not saying, on the one hand we get total sexual liberation, which means people exploiting each other, torturing each other, like in marquis de sade. no wealth and but we have to control this so we need a little bit of oppression, sense of shame, like i'm not allowed to do everything. no, lacon is not preaching this right measure of a compromise between sexual or other freedoms and oppression. what he is saying is that bringing out. not the true unconscious, but this perverted fantasies and so on is the worst form of oppression. what laccon is saying is that a proper sense of shame is not directed at against your desire, do not bring out all, but it's a way to... redeem, save your authentic desire from perversion. which is the way desire is incorporated into. into the system that brains and manipulates us. so let's go on so that i will not run out of time.. this, of course, is just the first approach. in the next step, i would like to talk a little bit about something that people tend to ignore. what i already hinted at this inconsistency of trump populism. on the one hand, we have... ironically, i refer to him the steve bannon trump left. and i don't mean this just ironically. i have a certain very, marginal, don't be afraid, sympathy for steve bannon. you remember, in trump's first period, four years, he was fired from the white house because he demanded to raise corporate taxes for the wealthiest from 25 to 40%. so we have this trumpian populism, american way of life, ordinary people against all possible perversions, lgbt plus cancel culture and so on. but... then we have what i like to call techno-corporate tramp. which moved a totally different level. people like, of course, the names are here, elon musk, jeff bezos, zuckerberg and so on. uh what they are trying to do is this. let's take elon musk. musk promises to get the government off the back of americans and out of their pockets. less taxation, less regulation, lower military budget, even decentralization, free initiatives from below and so on and so on. but my common sense, not even leftist view, is that if you look at the history of capitalism in the last hundred years or so, you can see that market itself was saved through strong state regulation. i read in a wonderful history of how tv sets and all that exploded in early 50s. i forgot which one, but one company invented the key mechanism. and then the state, good american state, become aware that if this company maintains monopoly, it's over. on this invention. they will dominate the entire field. so they force this company to remove the copyright. so you see, that's my first paradox. to have an effective market, you need strong regulation. and logical consequence from this is obvious. you can feel it every day. why do people like mark, bezos and so on then iue against state. because... they, as Varoufakis would have put it, they function as neo-feudal masters. they are no longer old-style capitalists competing on the market. they're a new type of power. they want nothing less than monopoly over a certain domain. so when they... talk about free market it means free market for them without any limitation that they can control. uh. society so i want now to speak briefly about two people. with whom i don't agree, but i think they. formulate this aspect of trampionism this non-populist aspect at its purest one is. Curtis Yarvin, who develops this. notion of network state the idea is no longer people should maintain against the lgbt, all the horrors, maintain their own proper way of life. no, it's that. society should be erased and as it were rebooted from the zero ground. along these lines... for example, Srinivasan in his book the network state, how to start a new country. thinks that the only way to save not our way of life, but whatever our societies, is to first locally. through special territories and so on allow big corporate companies to construct from zero point a new form of. state. now you will say, i don't want, again you find all this in my last text. i'm just what i want to say is that you see how far we are here from standard fascism, which is let's maintain german, american, whatever way of life. no, they want to erase it all and start from a zero point. this is not even so new. read the history of capitalism. there were already examples from, especially in the 17th century, the dutch east india company. they created their megaperium. where they were not bound by the dutch laws. from the zero point that they imposed their power. and i think that's why i was so fascinated by what trump was doing in in. he he will not succeed, obviously, but tried to do with this idea of take over and own gaza. it was this. i'm not talking about colonization. he will not make gaza 52nd state and nominate trudeau maybe or whomever, the governor of gaza. no, but this idea was, you know, throw the natives zero level and then built from zero. a new a new forum oh okay okay. i try to be as fast as possible, so let me recapitulate this tension even at a more radical level that runs across trumpian ideology. on the one hand, do you remember how trump in his inaugural speech a couple of times referred to two key notions, common sense and sanity. this is the populist trampianism. but don't you see how? people like elon musk and those, let's call it network take digital tr. they are an absolute threat to our common sense. in what way? look at, for example, mark zuckerberg. i always like these dirty jokes. it's not really dirty. warren, you know what? the meaning of the term zuckerberg in german. zucker, sugar, berg mountain. he is really, his meta or whatever it's called now is sugar he's throwing on us to put us asleep. so what i'm saying is that. they are talking about old sanity, decency, but what they are mobilizing, for example, i've written a book on it. both elon musk and... zuckerberg. are now fastly developing what? elon musk calls neuralink. which is, i think, the ultimate horror. a direct link between our thoughts, not just our brain, our thoughts, and some digital machine. in other words, now still at a very primitive level, but it's already moving. a digital machine, if i'm connected to it, can read the flow. in my mind of my thoughts. what's the problem here? the problem is not only that the machine can read it. the problem is that it goes also the other way around. the guy who controls machine can implant thoughts into my mind, me not being aware. even not being aware of it. and so what is metaverse by zuckerberg. it is precisely. an attempt of a private cooperation in the long term to literally control, regulate and manipulate our social environment which becomes to such an of course our social environment environment is always structured by ideology but here ideology is not just a spontaneous anonymous system, the ideology that regulates out is formed through algorithms, it can be manipulated and so on. and so on. that would be... my paradox. trump on one hand plays the populist game. appealing to ordinary people and vulgar like you and so on. the same so my critique of trump would be a trian critique in the first day. you are saying you are doing this. sorry, you are not doing this. the way you are doing this is exactly the opposite. imagine a society in which ne neuralink will work in which algorithms control our lives and so on this society is absolutely not a society of common sense and sanity. it's an unimaginable artificially constructed society. so, to appeal. with irony but not totally to your american liberal anti-communist instinct. my god some trampians go much further than the vilest communists even dared do you know communists were dreaming about this erase tradition, construct a new man and so on. they are doing it. now, be careful. i'm not saying here that trump will fail for this maybe in the long term, but i'm much more of a pessimist if you aptly manipulate this contradiction. you can. survive for quite a long time so... what we are getting with tramp. ideology ich and from this, what i described now this comes out what we are getting from trumpian ideology are to. all these references to freedom, let's get rid of the state and so on and so on. but they soon got the communist lesson, you know, often me coming from eastern europe. i i say, this sounds familiar, you know, because the basic trick of hardline communists was, we stand for freedom. and when we imprison somebody or censor him, we are doing it just in defense of freedom, of true freedom, which we know what it means. exactly the same are doing. musk or trump himself when, for example, and it's not only reactionaries, didn that trump now threatened to prosecute wall street journal because there was a critical text there about the efficiency of tariff measures and so on. i'm just saying that this paradox is. necessary the type of freedom that trumpians advocate. not only can coexist with. but nick strong oppressive state regulation. so tell me. am i allowed just to finish? where am i now temporarily? 50ifty. perfect. cutting it short maybe too much. so i will then just to conclude i will first what i promised you, if you will be patient enough, i will... before passing to conclusion proper, i will tell my god, it's in my nature, i cannot help it. a really dirty joke. which i think encapsulates where we are with trump. here is a joke. i used it already in some of my books. sorry, some of you know it. after his wife underwent a long and risky surgery, her husband approaches the surgeon, the doctor, who is his friend, and inquires about the outcomes, like,, did it turn out well and so on. the doctor begins, your wife survived, she will probably live longer than you, but there are some minor complications. she will no longer be able to control her anal muscles, so she it will drift. continuously out of her inos there will also be a continuous flow of a bad-smelling yellow jelly from her vagina, so sex is out. plus her mouth will malfunction and foot will be falling out all the time. of course, the husband gets more and more worried, his look, and then i like this obscenity. it's a critique of male. knowing, seeing this, what it look, you know what the doctor says? don't worry, i was just joking. everything turned out okay. she died in the first 10 minutes of the operation. i can imagine the same. think with. trump. this is how he will explain his reign our democracy is well and alive there are just some minor complications we have to throw out millions of immigrants limit abortion. make it de facto impossible, probably use the national guard to crush protests and so on and so on. so you get more and more worried. and then trump turns towards you and say, don't worry, i was just joking. democracy will quickly die under my reign and so on. and i think in some sense... no it. so... what? we have to do here. as you already guessed from my beginning. first, concerning shamelessness and so on. why not doing this, i'm provoking you now, you'll find it problematic. why not say that if the the new op. conserv. took over obscenity and so on. why should we not look over moral majority in the very naive sense of referring to the common sense of decency and so on. now you will say i'm dreaming. no, i'm not. here i would refer again, i'm also critical of him, but look at him now as a figure to bernie sanders. trump has already said is officially neoconservative american values and so on. but he is. a living obscenity. just remember all his stuff about grabbing the pussy, about i don't know what. bernie. who is more critical? look at him as a person. isn't he just a common, decent man? no dirty words, respective and so on. so that would be my first point, but it gets more. complicated. we are in a difficult predicament. the world now is, i believe, we may disagree on more than one level approaching a catastrophic. end. first, we have politics i think trump is just one of the tendencies of what i. try to call the bad bricks, you know, bricks. brazilia, russia, india, china. and even south africa and others joining present itself as a new multipolar world order no longer just under control of american or western imperialism. i think that we are now getting what brics will probably be in all reality. and my reproach to trump would have been, no, you are making united states just one of the brics countries. why did trump immediately... found common language with putin. it is. you know what will be brics? i don't like. i think it's totally false vision of totalitarianism, orwell's 1984. but at some point... he was right. you know, in 1984, the world is divided with three megast states. oceania. euroasia and i don't know, i think east asia. isn't this now what brics is becoming? three megap powers, united states, europe, disturbs the image here, russia and china, each with its own domain of influence. and that's where i see the deal of trump. with putin. okay, you get ukraine, maybe baltic states, whatever you want, we get canada, mexico, i don't know, greenland, where it will stop. so it's you know, you will say why not? it's better than... imperialist domination. in some sense maybe, but in some sense it's not because i remained an old-fashioned leftist. for me. we need more than ever today ethical universalism, more than just ethical universalism. global cooperation. in this sense, i am. to provoke you, as i like to define myself a moderately conservative communist, no what do you mean by communism? not central committee and new stalin, but something very simple. imagine future. natural catastrophes. not just global warming, but many things can happen. i was in contact with my friend who went to fukushima, when was it, more than ten years ago. with that megaatastrophe and he told me that he had access to top officials there. he was official delegate, this guy of european union. he told me that for one day, japanese government was in pure panic. they thought they are lost. they thought they will have to evacuate the whole tokyo area. 30,40 millions of people. like like that will it happened. the solution is either war, but war is today more complex with atomic nuclear weapons, or global cooperation. then the same goes for artificial intelligence. it's a very complex question. i'm not simply a pessimist. i'm just saying that, you know, we should drop this usual humanism and say, oh but machines will never be able to think. no, we should not compete with machines, but we should ask a very modest question. what is it that machines... cannot do, maybe they can do other things that we cannot do. and would you agree or not? i can imagine at least two things. one is daily rituals. i think they make us human. you know, these stupid rituals like immediately when i see those, the floor here, i'm tempted to construct a ritual. i must never step if i were to walk across on a black square. these are absolutely essential to our survival. there is no deeper meaning in it. it's just... it has no meaning. it only produces an effect of empty effect of meaning. if i do it, maybe it's a minimum of order and the opposite of, okay, you will say but... artificial intelligence can do it. yes, if you program it in this way. i wonder, and i spoke with many specialists, if it will. developed it out of its imminent need. at least with the present state of artificial intelligence, i doubt it. the other aspect is, it may sound comic, swearing, dirty words, curses. jacques laccon says somewhere, it's a wonderful insight, that swearing is maybe the first zero-level symbolic act. speech act. why? swearing is not just frustration. i try to do something, i fail and so on. swearing is means, oh my god, i even cannot put it in language. swearing is for me the fundamental reaction of a human being to what? to the fact that we live in language, but at the same time we are not at home in language. language frustrates us. so it's at this level that i would confront it. but okay, so with all these big problems that we have today, danger of nuclear weapons, ecology, artificial intelligence, whatever. how are we to react. to eat. the first ich outright. denial. that's what mostly trumpians are doing. the left or whoever exaggerate, nature is not really in trouble, don't exaggerate, life goes on as normal and so on and so on. and what's so ironic is that you even get some leftists today, more and more strong, who claim this, like my ex-friend, now he attacks me, Fabio Vighi, who is definitely not an idiot. he develops how all crises that we experience today, covid is for him. a capitalist invention. covid, ecology and so on are for him strategies of global capital to control us, to be able to enforce austerity and so on and so on. i think this vision is way too optim. as if you know, without these obsessions, we would just live in a relatively harmonious society and so on. i think that one good thing about covid is that, i like to say this with all my malice, my evil character, is that it made even politicians who are... as far from communism as imaginable to take some communist measures. you remember trump. he had to. uh mobilize an act from late forties i don't know where which gives in a time of crisis the state. the right to order industries what to produce. at some point didn't even distribute to like all families or got 2000 yes, i will finish $200, dollars so... it was an implicit admission that we have to. maybe keep the market. it's efficient at its own level. okay, so this is one strategy. ignore the trouble. the second strategy is, and although it's not openly admitted, we enjoy in it much more than it may appear. it's enjoyment itself. enjoy, you know, you step back and... we don't say this openly, but let's enjoy the catastrophe. although this enjoyment is ambiguous, like, did you see the series the last of us? my favorite of course, fifth episode. the two guys, that is to say, the elder man and the young girl, come to a city where everything functions smoothly and they say with surprise. my god, but you are you live in communism here and the guy said, look, what's wrong? yes, of course, we have communism here, you know. so i think that maybe, maybe strange things will happen here. but nonetheless, we have to avoid this fascination. now, i really am coming to an end. the third. predominant strategy is that of freud what freud calls disavowal, verleugnung. it's not denial. you know what's the formula of disavowal? je sais bien, mais quand même. i know very well, but we formally admit it, but we are not really subjectively engaged. we don't practice it. like, how does disavowal look with ecology? yeah, i know all the studies and so on, but look, don't take it too seriously. go out, the sun is shining. you hear the stupid birds singing, whatever they do, and so life goes on. and uh now the latest trick. is death. you don't even... disavow something but you mentioned it all the time. as an excuse for not doing nothing. i remember, for example, three years ago there was a big ecology conference in glasgow, i think, prince, at that point still prince. charles gave a speech. yeah, they were talking for three days and it was obvious that they were talking just in order not to do anything. this is, i think, the most dangerous attitude. so what are we? do. here i think the think. to do here is not simply to realistically accept. the danger. but... i would almost say the opposite disavowable. because you know, the problem is that yes, we know many things, but we don't know it all. even what presents as knowledge is biased and so on. so my attitude is very weird here. and with this, believe me or not, you are my bad conscience now. i will, sorry, i mean talking so much, i really mean what i will say now. namely... i think, and i follow here my good friend, the greatest maybe theorist of catastrophes, who is split between, i think, seattle and paris, jean-pierre dupuy. his idea is death. if we don't do anything, we are bound for a catastrophe. and we shouldn't simply play realistic pragmatic games and say. okay, maybe it's not yet lost, maybe we can do something. no. we should accept catastrophe is our fate, but we should nonetheless act madly against it. with the hope that our knowledge of catastrophe is not strong enough. this is, i think, a much more subversive position. not to say we are not doomed, but to admit it. we are doomed. it's in our destiny, destiny in the sense of if our society moves the way it does, it's in our destiny to end in a collective suicide of humanity. but it's in our force to change destiny itself. destiny doesn't. rain doesn't control us. totally. so again, my idea is this kind of a more dialectical negative fatalism. it's the opposite maybe of traditional marxism where you say in the future there will be communism. okay, there may be some problems and so on, but if we don't screw it up, no. i would rather say in the future there will be... new forms of barbarism, maybe soft fascism, this kind of a brics universe, maybe new more global barbarism and even if we don't see a clear way out, we are not. helpless we should mobilize. i'm sorry if i was too long. i'm very grateful for your attention. thank you very much. stop, stop. now i usually say this when i get the applause. you are talking with an old stalin. so he'll say you, if you applaud, people like me will get in power. you will have to applaud. so keep the energy for that time when.
i will not words in repeating how glad and honored i am to be here. also as a warning, some of you may be a little bit disappointed because i know i'm always it's getting so boring, expected to engage in some dirty jokes or whatever. but we live in a very sad time. and what i will tell you and, i think, is a key element if you want to understand what goes on today. remember, when was it, five years ago or when, the 6th of january, my leftist friends were crying. you remember when the trumpian crowd entered congress? they said, what's going on? when we were young? unk. our site was supposed to do this. popular crowd occupying the seat of power. they said now. the bad guys took even a revolution from us. yes, i will try to develop some of the consequences, implications of this. let me tell you. how let me just begin with an indication how complex this situation is. what do i mean by this complexity? yeah, i will tell many things about trump criticizing his movement, but never forget that. trump is an effect, a consequence, a symptom, if you want, of the. inner weakness and failure of what? oui! you in the states, we in europe usually designated as the, not even social democratic, but like liberal welfare state. and when trump won the first time, the reaction of the majority, not only. here but even more i would say in europe was. this is a kind of evil thing, an accident, freakish accident of history. we should just wait a little bit. trump will destroy himself and the normal democratic welfare state will return. hegel, my favorite philosopher, has a wonderful theory of repetition in history. his point is that a thing first happens, we perceive it as something contingent. with a better strategy, it may have been avoided. but when a thing repeats itself, we see its necessity. hegel's wonderful example is napoleon after losing in 1800, sorry, 13, the first time he thought, oh, i did some bad strategic planning, so he returned when he lost at waterloo, i think. the second time it was clear it wasn't his strategic mistake or what it was over. and i think if we want to remain some kind of left, we have to fully accept this. lesson apropos trump. again, the first time it may have looked, oh, it's a contingency, blah blah, and so on. but, you know, when things became clear to me, did you what? the uh... biden's inauguration event, when was it? years five years ago. it was for me. such a tremendous politically correct in the bad sense of the term. spectacle. inclusive of that. nothing against her. that, sorry, i'm old, senile, names are slipping out, the black young lady who read her poems. i'm not saying they are bad poems. i'm just saying that she should have been more careful. she became part of that big liberal spectacle. but as a freudian, i always look for symptoms, marginal moments which... betray the truth. you know who was the symptom there? remember bernie sanders sitting alone? and stealing the show. it was, so you see, i'm not despising you. you americans are definitely not stupid. how did you prove that you are not stupid? because his image. explode that all around the media. stole the show and now you will say but. if you are stupid, you will say, but we are stupid. what about trump? no, you know what was for me one of the nice surprises? you remember that shooting accident which happened, did not happen, i don't know when. a bullet from a gun, no and then you had that, my god, was it states or not, you know trump raising his hat american flag with a little bit of blood and so on. ah, you are not stupid because we... in spite of all the trumpian attempts, that image didn't become. s. universal meme or whatever you call it. so again. let's follow this. path of why not non-stupidity i emphasize this because i'm not making fun here of the. trump populist but of the left liberal. critics, you know, like john stewart, all of them, making endless jokes of trump, endlessly fun of him and so on and so on. or all this fact-checking, you know. he tells something not true here, he told trump something not true there. are these guys really crazy? don't they get it? a, alessandria ocasio-cortes got it finally. that she noticed, it's a crucial data, remember that the same people who locally voted at her in local elections voted for trump, many of them, of course not the majority, at the federal presidential elections. so she, i don't know how she got the list, contacted many of them with a simple question, just explain me please, how come that you could vote for me locally and for trump forump for the president and she got a very nice correct answer not true but correct expected. it was that what you and trump share is that you don't seem to be a trained puppet, you know like unfortunately with kamala harris. obviously she was trained to avoid anything controversial. i was ashamed for you you i remember. when she boss. just before elections ask what would you have done if you are president apro propos gaza, israel and so on. she immediately sends, oh, dangerous territory. and she gave an answer something like, people suffer there too much, it's time to put that suffering to a stop. pure, absolute platitude. at that point, i asked myself, would i maybe not also vote for trump? it's a nightmare. and you know, if we have to learn something for trump, it, and bernie sanders said this, it's don't fall into the trap of moderate democrats, which is let's avoid extremes. the big worry of democrats was let's not move too much to the left so that we don't lose the middle ground. are we really unable to learn anything from trump, which is that he won precisely by going to the extremes? but okay, i will not lose time with these obvious things. i just want... to say that that's why, although i'm well aware of the mega dangers of trump's presidency, the analysis, what is trump? is. still awaiting us unfortunately the left especially the liberal one again. displayed intellectual laziness. usually they dismiss trump as, oh, it's fascism again, trumpian fascism. maybe in a way, but in what way? what i don't like is this laziness. you still think in the old categories. then something new that most of us, at least in our circle, we intensely dislike. and then when asked, but what is this? you think in a lazy way. oh, the really bad thing is fascism, so this has to be. fascism. it's not as simple as that. there are many. economists sociologists philosophers who are aware of this and desperately try to propose a new formula. for example, although i don't agree. otherwise, always with my good friend, the greek guy, you know, Yanis Varoufakis. he at least tried to propose a new term, techno-feudism. i have some doubts with this term but the important thing is that he tries to. make us see that while we leftists worry about is it possible to overcome capitalism, how you do it? capitalism itself is already radically changing into something for which i doubt if it still is the old capitalism. here i will not get lost into details. here but here... concerning this capitalism, i would say with all my support for feminism that it should also again rethink in terms, since in the standard feminist view the mega bad thing of the past is patriarchy so oh oh oh when women are oppressed, not only women, it must be patriarchy maybe in some very mediated way. but i'm following here theodor adorno, frankfurt school guy, who already in late 30s. wrote a text. where he clearly states, whatever hitler is, he is not a paternal figure. he is not a father figure. and similarly, although i don't put them in the same league, it's totally different, of course, i would say no, even, okay, on the opposite hand, stalin was definitely not a paternal figure. and i think also... you're trump. he is not a paternal figure in the usual sense. maybe if you stretch the term, trump comes close to something that freud calls this primordial obscene father, all-enjoying father. but it's not father as the bearer of social authority. and especially if you want to understand a person like elon musk. i hope we agree, whatever he is, he is not a paternal authority. i think even now i will propose to you something i like to play we a truly obscene. definition, you know, marx uh uh in his, i think worst big text, german ideology. presents a figure communism with the idea in communism individuals would live in a truly free society of choices and then marx so ironically enumerates in the morning you do fishing or whatever one in the afternoon you read theory, you become a critical theorist in the evening my god, this is mar almost, i must say. you know in the morning he does his tesla, then he dreams about then, then he plays politics, then i don't know what, then he breeds children. doesn't he have like 13 children by as many women as that. so what i'm saying is that. now i will be really evil. these are my doubts about the 68, so much celebrated more in europe than with you, 68 rebellion. i think the way this rebellion was, at least in europe, incorporated into the system. this was something incredibly successful. in paris, i remember i was very young, but i was already there in 68. protesters had three big demands. and of this for this manual, boring, repetitive labor. then sexual liberation and then. end of alienated university up their elitist education. they in some perverted sense got what they. wanted now you have precarious work and so on and many people almost. long for the good old foricht. manual work because now the problem i think with precarious work is that it's much more intense. you feel self-responsible, you worry all the time, will it succeed. education. that's why i love you. here they heard us and what some of these trian populists are saying, like they mockingly, as you know, refer to universities as the cathedral. alienated knowledge up there without contact to ordinary people yeah so. you will get what you, not you you, but students, me included, want that in 68. okay, the alienated academia, academic institutions are. gradually very limited, at least. not to mention sexuality. i will not lose time with that. so,... i think that we have to. rethink think from hiro. point. i don't have a good term. i don't quite agree withakis's techno-feudalism. i'm just now playing with the term liberal fascism. why? because at least it reproduces the tension. in in the trian project. this tension inner antagonism is not simply its limitation. it's at the same time it's strength. what do i mean by this? uh you know what? people usually don't. mm the importance of and here i'm coming back maybe to a critique of 68 because again,. conclude my point there. if there is a reincarnation of a 68 person, i remember when i was young, it was considered subversive to do obscene gestures, speak in a vulgar way, subvert the fake dignity of those in power. yeah, and now we have the power itself speaking in such obscene. terms and so on. so i think this would be my first very superficial approach to trump. uh. trump is. obviously. not uh a remainder a relic of old moral majority of old conservative stance he is, i think, and that's one of the keys, trump is, for me at least, the first truly post, although his trumpian conservatives attack all the time postmodernist historicicism, but sorry, he is that. he is very relativist, changes his position all the time. you remember, i forgot her name. his assistant lady who proposed the term alternate truth and so on, he speaks in a vulgar way and so on. so i think that this this. false effect of trump, at least, because that's the result alessandria ocasio-cortes got. again, the message was you and trump seem to speak in a sincere way. and you know what's so tragic? i read somewhere that that's why when trump was caught lying, it usually helped him. the people explained it in this way, at least by making mistakes, it means he is not totally controlled but advisors, he brings it out. now comes my first, let's call it theoretical point. this is at a superficial level still, one of the antagonisms for me of the trian universe. it pretends to be almost in the freudian terms. the end of repression, verdrängung. you bring all the dirt. the. in new out. but the catch is that the effect is not that of liberation. but even... an effect of much worse repression. that's lesson number one. and i think i will try to explain you why. i think that this is something that. freud was already aware of when he said that. nowhere is. the unconscious more. out of reach than in perversion. this goes against the spirit of 68, which was the french term jouir sans entrave. enjoy fully this elon musk for me. enjoy as the ultimate 68 figure. enjoy fully without obstacles and so on. no. what you bring out in this way are the dirty fantasies which are mystification at its most radical. that's why. i remember it. this was what was wrong in 68. i remember when i was young, this was the hidden anti-feminist dimension of 68. the idea was to mock hysterics. hysterics are confused. they want something, but they don't want really to get rid of it. as they say, they criticize the master, but with the wish to get a new master, while perverts go to the end. as we to say what hysterics only dream about perverts. do it. i think already in 68 there was an anti-feminist twist in this because, you know, perverts are usually men. in psychoanalysis there is a great debate. does feminine perversion even exist at all? but i'm here absolutely on the side of... we. it's true that sorry hysteria is... structurally for reasons i will go on now feminine stance but i think that first hysteria is the i would even go as far as to say this, the most elementary form of the critique of ideology, as laccon pointed out. the hysterical question to the master. is the following one in our society, ideology, social symbolic structure imposes on all of us a certain role. you are a teacher, you are even not, why not, this is systematized. you are a subversive protest, you are whatever. and don't underestimate the strength of it. when i was in china, five years ago. they told me we no longer talk about communism. we talk they use now the confucian term harmonious society. and i asked them, okay, fuck it, sorry. tell me please, what is harmonious society? and they told me, society in which... everyone plays its proper role. father is a good father, pupil is a good pupil. woman is a good mother, whatever. and then i started to laugh and tell them, you see, in spite of all cultural relativism, what do we know, what the chinese mean and so on, i understand you perfectly. in europe, we call this corporate fascism, you know. because that's the fascist dream. each at, here, there, whatever. aotted so so that's the beauty this is why i think. psychoanalysis is part of every critique of ideology. the psychoanalytic theory the hysterical question is not. is's a question of desire, but not in the sense of oh what, you know, all this fake ideology of lack. i do not really know what i want. whenever i get what i want, i'm disappointed. no. the hysterical question is, others, society want something from me, but... why am i what you, ideology, really usually patriarchal authority, what you claim that i am? and this is for me the fundamental. feminine question. the oppression tells you till now. now it's get all confused, i know. play a proper feminine role. and d. counter question of you should be why am i what you are saying that i am, that role that i should play? perverts don't have that problem. which is why, and this is a wise insight, said already in late 50s, early 60s that far from being subversive, truly. perversion is always needed for power structure to reproduce itself, to function. because as i developed in my book, surplus enjoyment, i don't have time to go into it now, you know. every power structure at some point reproduces that. it's a very simple joke, but one of my favorite jokes. you know, some group of investigators come to a primitive tribe, so-called, and asked, are, because they heard this rumor, are there still cannibals among you? you know what's the answer they got? no, we ate the last last week, you know. that's how our societies. still work. legal system n. illegal some form of violence to. uh. reproduce itself so that's the first insight. there is no nothing. liberating in this. pseudo-subversive aspect of let's bring your nastiest fantasy, let's bring all the shit out. now, here repression is at its worst. this is still at the superficial level, the first way for me to locate. the new right-wing trump, we have others in europe. populism is to use this standard moralistic term in a shameless way, sorry, precisely, openly and to say. shamelessness. i don't want now to talk about israel, gaza, we know all the critique that we have. i just, and i don't mean in any way in an anti-semitic way, because others are also more and more doing it. you know what? it for me one of the most depressive experiences when i followed israeli politics. we know all regimes, i'm a pessimist here, torture people in unspeakable ways and so on. but i was quite surprised looking to my last book, i quoted there, give exact references. this was for me one of the most depressive scandals that i can imagine. half a year ago, some guys, guards, honest, guards, jewish escaped from a prison south of jerusalem and brought even some video clips out. from shot by their iphones of what? israeli guards there are doing with palestinian prisoners. like one thing is confirmed. they were torturing palestinians in such a way they were putting big iron sticks up there as whole, but sticks in which there were blades, needles and so on, and they put them in and, well, at least a dozen of them died from bleeding. now here i say. sorry for a bad joke okay why not they are all doing it but what really depressed me. and you find. sources just i don't want to bore you with it. clips. then there was a debate in knesset where the large majority defended this no, those who are fighting terrorists are our heroes. whatever they do it's fully. justified. another. think. similar. you remember in november of the last year, there was a big soccer, european football match in amsterdam where thousands came from israel. uh to fans allegedly and they demonstrated there and again you find them easily on the web. thousands shouting, among other things, there are no schools open in gaza because we killed all the children and so on. so you see what i am aiming at here. i'm aiming at this open obscenity. those in power no longer even feel the need, which is, i always say, hypocrisy in these matters is better than openness. because hypocrisy at least allows a minimum of criticism. you can embarrass those in power to say, wait a minute, you talk about human rights, look what you are doing. no, in the new state of things, they mockingly admit it in advance. and this again uh brings me... to. shame. now it's translated into english lacon's seminar the other side of psychoanalysis from 69 seventy which is his answer to 68. and laccon says there's something very interesting. he doesn't play this game of, you know, you want total liberation of sexuality and total... protest, social disorder. he said, your buffoonery may cost you. dearly. you. are subverting a master, maybe the new master that you will get will be even worse than the previous one. they thought that by their obscene acts and so on, being subversive and so on, they are destroying the structure of power. you play this game, then you get trump and similar. that is to say, a master who is himself, usually it's him who is himself. self-mocking, vulgar, ironic, and so on. so surprisingly, you find this in my books. i contain the line here so i will not go on too long. yeah lacon's advice is. to message to students is all i can tell you is discover a proper amount of shame. shame is needed. now to avoid misunderstanding. laccon is not here for a compromise. he's not saying, on the one hand we get total sexual liberation, which means people exploiting each other, torturing each other, like in marquis de sade. no wealth and but we have to control this so we need a little bit of oppression, sense of shame, like i'm not allowed to do everything. no, lacon is not preaching this right measure of a compromise between sexual or other freedoms and oppression. what he is saying is that bringing out. not the true unconscious, but this perverted fantasies and so on is the worst form of oppression. what laccon is saying is that a proper sense of shame is not directed at against your desire, do not bring out all, but it's a way to... redeem, save your authentic desire from perversion. which is the way desire is incorporated into. into the system that brains and manipulates us. so let's go on so that i will not run out of time.. this, of course, is just the first approach. in the next step, i would like to talk a little bit about something that people tend to ignore. what i already hinted at this inconsistency of trump populism. on the one hand, we have... ironically, i refer to him the steve bannon trump left. and i don't mean this just ironically. i have a certain very, marginal, don't be afraid, sympathy for steve bannon. you remember, in trump's first period, four years, he was fired from the white house because he demanded to raise corporate taxes for the wealthiest from 25 to 40%. so we have this trumpian populism, american way of life, ordinary people against all possible perversions, lgbt plus cancel culture and so on. but... then we have what i like to call techno-corporate tramp. which moved a totally different level. people like, of course, the names are here, elon musk, jeff bezos, zuckerberg and so on. uh what they are trying to do is this. let's take elon musk. musk promises to get the government off the back of americans and out of their pockets. less taxation, less regulation, lower military budget, even decentralization, free initiatives from below and so on and so on. but my common sense, not even leftist view, is that if you look at the history of capitalism in the last hundred years or so, you can see that market itself was saved through strong state regulation. i read in a wonderful history of how tv sets and all that exploded in early 50s. i forgot which one, but one company invented the key mechanism. and then the state, good american state, become aware that if this company maintains monopoly, it's over. on this invention. they will dominate the entire field. so they force this company to remove the copyright. so you see, that's my first paradox. to have an effective market, you need strong regulation. and logical consequence from this is obvious. you can feel it every day. why do people like mark, bezos and so on then iue against state. because... they, as Varoufakis would have put it, they function as neo-feudal masters. they are no longer old-style capitalists competing on the market. they're a new type of power. they want nothing less than monopoly over a certain domain. so when they... talk about free market it means free market for them without any limitation that they can control. uh. society so i want now to speak briefly about two people. with whom i don't agree, but i think they. formulate this aspect of trampionism this non-populist aspect at its purest one is. Curtis Yarvin, who develops this. notion of network state the idea is no longer people should maintain against the lgbt, all the horrors, maintain their own proper way of life. no, it's that. society should be erased and as it were rebooted from the zero ground. along these lines... for example, Srinivasan in his book the network state, how to start a new country. thinks that the only way to save not our way of life, but whatever our societies, is to first locally. through special territories and so on allow big corporate companies to construct from zero point a new form of. state. now you will say, i don't want, again you find all this in my last text. i'm just what i want to say is that you see how far we are here from standard fascism, which is let's maintain german, american, whatever way of life. no, they want to erase it all and start from a zero point. this is not even so new. read the history of capitalism. there were already examples from, especially in the 17th century, the dutch east india company. they created their megaperium. where they were not bound by the dutch laws. from the zero point that they imposed their power. and i think that's why i was so fascinated by what trump was doing in in. he he will not succeed, obviously, but tried to do with this idea of take over and own gaza. it was this. i'm not talking about colonization. he will not make gaza 52nd state and nominate trudeau maybe or whomever, the governor of gaza. no, but this idea was, you know, throw the natives zero level and then built from zero. a new a new forum oh okay okay. i try to be as fast as possible, so let me recapitulate this tension even at a more radical level that runs across trumpian ideology. on the one hand, do you remember how trump in his inaugural speech a couple of times referred to two key notions, common sense and sanity. this is the populist trampianism. but don't you see how? people like elon musk and those, let's call it network take digital tr. they are an absolute threat to our common sense. in what way? look at, for example, mark zuckerberg. i always like these dirty jokes. it's not really dirty. warren, you know what? the meaning of the term zuckerberg in german. zucker, sugar, berg mountain. he is really, his meta or whatever it's called now is sugar he's throwing on us to put us asleep. so what i'm saying is that. they are talking about old sanity, decency, but what they are mobilizing, for example, i've written a book on it. both elon musk and... zuckerberg. are now fastly developing what? elon musk calls neuralink. which is, i think, the ultimate horror. a direct link between our thoughts, not just our brain, our thoughts, and some digital machine. in other words, now still at a very primitive level, but it's already moving. a digital machine, if i'm connected to it, can read the flow. in my mind of my thoughts. what's the problem here? the problem is not only that the machine can read it. the problem is that it goes also the other way around. the guy who controls machine can implant thoughts into my mind, me not being aware. even not being aware of it. and so what is metaverse by zuckerberg. it is precisely. an attempt of a private cooperation in the long term to literally control, regulate and manipulate our social environment which becomes to such an of course our social environment environment is always structured by ideology but here ideology is not just a spontaneous anonymous system, the ideology that regulates out is formed through algorithms, it can be manipulated and so on. and so on. that would be... my paradox. trump on one hand plays the populist game. appealing to ordinary people and vulgar like you and so on. the same so my critique of trump would be a trian critique in the first day. you are saying you are doing this. sorry, you are not doing this. the way you are doing this is exactly the opposite. imagine a society in which ne neuralink will work in which algorithms control our lives and so on this society is absolutely not a society of common sense and sanity. it's an unimaginable artificially constructed society. so, to appeal. with irony but not totally to your american liberal anti-communist instinct. my god some trampians go much further than the vilest communists even dared do you know communists were dreaming about this erase tradition, construct a new man and so on. they are doing it. now, be careful. i'm not saying here that trump will fail for this maybe in the long term, but i'm much more of a pessimist if you aptly manipulate this contradiction. you can. survive for quite a long time so... what we are getting with tramp. ideology ich and from this, what i described now this comes out what we are getting from trumpian ideology are to. all these references to freedom, let's get rid of the state and so on and so on. but they soon got the communist lesson, you know, often me coming from eastern europe. i i say, this sounds familiar, you know, because the basic trick of hardline communists was, we stand for freedom. and when we imprison somebody or censor him, we are doing it just in defense of freedom, of true freedom, which we know what it means. exactly the same are doing. musk or trump himself when, for example, and it's not only reactionaries, didn that trump now threatened to prosecute wall street journal because there was a critical text there about the efficiency of tariff measures and so on. i'm just saying that this paradox is. necessary the type of freedom that trumpians advocate. not only can coexist with. but nick strong oppressive state regulation. so tell me. am i allowed just to finish? where am i now temporarily? 50ifty. perfect. cutting it short maybe too much. so i will then just to conclude i will first what i promised you, if you will be patient enough, i will... before passing to conclusion proper, i will tell my god, it's in my nature, i cannot help it. a really dirty joke. which i think encapsulates where we are with trump. here is a joke. i used it already in some of my books. sorry, some of you know it. after his wife underwent a long and risky surgery, her husband approaches the surgeon, the doctor, who is his friend, and inquires about the outcomes, like,, did it turn out well and so on. the doctor begins, your wife survived, she will probably live longer than you, but there are some minor complications. she will no longer be able to control her anal muscles, so she it will drift. continuously out of her inos there will also be a continuous flow of a bad-smelling yellow jelly from her vagina, so sex is out. plus her mouth will malfunction and foot will be falling out all the time. of course, the husband gets more and more worried, his look, and then i like this obscenity. it's a critique of male. knowing, seeing this, what it look, you know what the doctor says? don't worry, i was just joking. everything turned out okay. she died in the first 10 minutes of the operation. i can imagine the same. think with. trump. this is how he will explain his reign our democracy is well and alive there are just some minor complications we have to throw out millions of immigrants limit abortion. make it de facto impossible, probably use the national guard to crush protests and so on and so on. so you get more and more worried. and then trump turns towards you and say, don't worry, i was just joking. democracy will quickly die under my reign and so on. and i think in some sense... no it. so... what? we have to do here. as you already guessed from my beginning. first, concerning shamelessness and so on. why not doing this, i'm provoking you now, you'll find it problematic. why not say that if the the new op. conserv. took over obscenity and so on. why should we not look over moral majority in the very naive sense of referring to the common sense of decency and so on. now you will say i'm dreaming. no, i'm not. here i would refer again, i'm also critical of him, but look at him now as a figure to bernie sanders. trump has already said is officially neoconservative american values and so on. but he is. a living obscenity. just remember all his stuff about grabbing the pussy, about i don't know what. bernie. who is more critical? look at him as a person. isn't he just a common, decent man? no dirty words, respective and so on. so that would be my first point, but it gets more. complicated. we are in a difficult predicament. the world now is, i believe, we may disagree on more than one level approaching a catastrophic. end. first, we have politics i think trump is just one of the tendencies of what i. try to call the bad bricks, you know, bricks. brazilia, russia, india, china. and even south africa and others joining present itself as a new multipolar world order no longer just under control of american or western imperialism. i think that we are now getting what brics will probably be in all reality. and my reproach to trump would have been, no, you are making united states just one of the brics countries. why did trump immediately... found common language with putin. it is. you know what will be brics? i don't like. i think it's totally false vision of totalitarianism, orwell's 1984. but at some point... he was right. you know, in 1984, the world is divided with three megast states. oceania. euroasia and i don't know, i think east asia. isn't this now what brics is becoming? three megap powers, united states, europe, disturbs the image here, russia and china, each with its own domain of influence. and that's where i see the deal of trump. with putin. okay, you get ukraine, maybe baltic states, whatever you want, we get canada, mexico, i don't know, greenland, where it will stop. so it's you know, you will say why not? it's better than... imperialist domination. in some sense maybe, but in some sense it's not because i remained an old-fashioned leftist. for me. we need more than ever today ethical universalism, more than just ethical universalism. global cooperation. in this sense, i am. to provoke you, as i like to define myself a moderately conservative communist, no what do you mean by communism? not central committee and new stalin, but something very simple. imagine future. natural catastrophes. not just global warming, but many things can happen. i was in contact with my friend who went to fukushima, when was it, more than ten years ago. with that megaatastrophe and he told me that he had access to top officials there. he was official delegate, this guy of european union. he told me that for one day, japanese government was in pure panic. they thought they are lost. they thought they will have to evacuate the whole tokyo area. 30,40 millions of people. like like that will it happened. the solution is either war, but war is today more complex with atomic nuclear weapons, or global cooperation. then the same goes for artificial intelligence. it's a very complex question. i'm not simply a pessimist. i'm just saying that, you know, we should drop this usual humanism and say, oh but machines will never be able to think. no, we should not compete with machines, but we should ask a very modest question. what is it that machines... cannot do, maybe they can do other things that we cannot do. and would you agree or not? i can imagine at least two things. one is daily rituals. i think they make us human. you know, these stupid rituals like immediately when i see those, the floor here, i'm tempted to construct a ritual. i must never step if i were to walk across on a black square. these are absolutely essential to our survival. there is no deeper meaning in it. it's just... it has no meaning. it only produces an effect of empty effect of meaning. if i do it, maybe it's a minimum of order and the opposite of, okay, you will say but... artificial intelligence can do it. yes, if you program it in this way. i wonder, and i spoke with many specialists, if it will. developed it out of its imminent need. at least with the present state of artificial intelligence, i doubt it. the other aspect is, it may sound comic, swearing, dirty words, curses. jacques laccon says somewhere, it's a wonderful insight, that swearing is maybe the first zero-level symbolic act. speech act. why? swearing is not just frustration. i try to do something, i fail and so on. swearing is means, oh my god, i even cannot put it in language. swearing is for me the fundamental reaction of a human being to what? to the fact that we live in language, but at the same time we are not at home in language. language frustrates us. so it's at this level that i would confront it. but okay, so with all these big problems that we have today, danger of nuclear weapons, ecology, artificial intelligence, whatever. how are we to react. to eat. the first ich outright. denial. that's what mostly trumpians are doing. the left or whoever exaggerate, nature is not really in trouble, don't exaggerate, life goes on as normal and so on and so on. and what's so ironic is that you even get some leftists today, more and more strong, who claim this, like my ex-friend, now he attacks me, Fabio Vighi, who is definitely not an idiot. he develops how all crises that we experience today, covid is for him. a capitalist invention. covid, ecology and so on are for him strategies of global capital to control us, to be able to enforce austerity and so on and so on. i think this vision is way too optim. as if you know, without these obsessions, we would just live in a relatively harmonious society and so on. i think that one good thing about covid is that, i like to say this with all my malice, my evil character, is that it made even politicians who are... as far from communism as imaginable to take some communist measures. you remember trump. he had to. uh mobilize an act from late forties i don't know where which gives in a time of crisis the state. the right to order industries what to produce. at some point didn't even distribute to like all families or got 2000 yes, i will finish $200, dollars so... it was an implicit admission that we have to. maybe keep the market. it's efficient at its own level. okay, so this is one strategy. ignore the trouble. the second strategy is, and although it's not openly admitted, we enjoy in it much more than it may appear. it's enjoyment itself. enjoy, you know, you step back and... we don't say this openly, but let's enjoy the catastrophe. although this enjoyment is ambiguous, like, did you see the series the last of us? my favorite of course, fifth episode. the two guys, that is to say, the elder man and the young girl, come to a city where everything functions smoothly and they say with surprise. my god, but you are you live in communism here and the guy said, look, what's wrong? yes, of course, we have communism here, you know. so i think that maybe, maybe strange things will happen here. but nonetheless, we have to avoid this fascination. now, i really am coming to an end. the third. predominant strategy is that of freud what freud calls disavowal, verleugnung. it's not denial. you know what's the formula of disavowal? je sais bien, mais quand même. i know very well, but we formally admit it, but we are not really subjectively engaged. we don't practice it. like, how does disavowal look with ecology? yeah, i know all the studies and so on, but look, don't take it too seriously. go out, the sun is shining. you hear the stupid birds singing, whatever they do, and so life goes on. and uh now the latest trick. is death. you don't even... disavow something but you mentioned it all the time. as an excuse for not doing nothing. i remember, for example, three years ago there was a big ecology conference in glasgow, i think, prince, at that point still prince. charles gave a speech. yeah, they were talking for three days and it was obvious that they were talking just in order not to do anything. this is, i think, the most dangerous attitude. so what are we? do. here i think the think. to do here is not simply to realistically accept. the danger. but... i would almost say the opposite disavowable. because you know, the problem is that yes, we know many things, but we don't know it all. even what presents as knowledge is biased and so on. so my attitude is very weird here. and with this, believe me or not, you are my bad conscience now. i will, sorry, i mean talking so much, i really mean what i will say now. namely... i think, and i follow here my good friend, the greatest maybe theorist of catastrophes, who is split between, i think, seattle and paris, jean-pierre dupuy. his idea is death. if we don't do anything, we are bound for a catastrophe. and we shouldn't simply play realistic pragmatic games and say. okay, maybe it's not yet lost, maybe we can do something. no. we should accept catastrophe is our fate, but we should nonetheless act madly against it. with the hope that our knowledge of catastrophe is not strong enough. this is, i think, a much more subversive position. not to say we are not doomed, but to admit it. we are doomed. it's in our destiny, destiny in the sense of if our society moves the way it does, it's in our destiny to end in a collective suicide of humanity. but it's in our force to change destiny itself. destiny doesn't. rain doesn't control us. totally. so again, my idea is this kind of a more dialectical negative fatalism. it's the opposite maybe of traditional marxism where you say in the future there will be communism. okay, there may be some problems and so on, but if we don't screw it up, no. i would rather say in the future there will be... new forms of barbarism, maybe soft fascism, this kind of a brics universe, maybe new more global barbarism and even if we don't see a clear way out, we are not. helpless we should mobilize. i'm sorry if i was too long. i'm very grateful for your attention. thank you very much. stop, stop. now i usually say this when i get the applause. you are talking with an old stalin. so he'll say you, if you applaud, people like me will get in power. you will have to applaud. so keep the energy for that time when.
Ashwin Laksumunage
obliged to applaud. thank you everyone so much for your attention. we're now going to have a volunteer walking around for a quick q&a portion for about 20 minutes. so if you have a question, please stick your hand up.
obliged to applaud. thank you everyone so much for your attention. we're now going to have a volunteer walking around for a quick q&a portion for about 20 minutes. so if you have a question, please stick your hand up.
Slavoj Žižek
please control me because i tend to... give too long answers, you know. so i give you the right to. cut me short.
please control me because i tend to... give too long answers, you know. so i give you the right to. cut me short.
Questioner
what differentiates the contradictions of tryism from... what differentiates the contradictions of trumpianism from the contradictions of neoliberalism, specifically in this suppression of socialist? uprisings and bailing out banks, for example, in 08.
what differentiates the contradictions of tryism from... what differentiates the contradictions of trumpianism from the contradictions of neoliberalism, specifically in this suppression of socialist? uprisings and bailing out banks, for example, in 08.
Slavoj Žižek
my point was precisely first i don't want to bluff more than it's.
my point was precisely first i don't want to bluff more than it's.
Questioner
yes.
yes.
Slavoj Žižek
more than necessary, which means that i admit it i'm still searching for a correct. definition. like again, as i hinted at, verfakis is onto something. but they have one big problem in feudalism, the way we know it. the whole point is that. you don't experience yourself as free. you have a feudal master and so on. today's unfreedom is... much more dangerous because as i use my old formula, i repeat it too much. the most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom that you experience as freedom. you know, what can be more free than just surfing on the web, do this, that, and so on? but there you are already controlled, manipulated. so what i would say is that what differentiates... trumpism from traditional. liberalism is the way it. but i would say, okay, i will go a little bit into theory, i cannot avoid it. i developed this together with Varoufakis, he did. i reapplied it. thisthe key for me for what goes on today is the privatization of commons, not in the marxian sense where in the early 16th, 17th century there were big commons, forests and so on, they were gradually privatized. but when they were privatized, they simply were not any longer commons. now you have take somebody like bill gates, musk and so on, they mask with his digital control and so on. they privatized commons which still remain commons. so they in some sense exploit not only us, but also small capitalists who have to compete on the market. they in some sense control, regulate the market. itself. look at amazon. amazon or uber and so on. these are typical new companies. they claim we are nothing, we just mediate between offer and demand, but they control control they control the entire space. so this would be one aspect, at least. the other aspect is again. i think that. with trump. you get liberalism at its extreme which sorry if i sound speculatively hegelian liberalism at its extreme which already self-c cancels itself like for example at the level of the press, but the same things are going on in. production capital and so on. they all the time talk about, you know, diminishing the state, firing half of so on and so on. oh but don't we get that under trump? under the pretext of diminishing or minimalizing the power of the state, the state gets stronger than ever. in this sense, that's the paradox. we get a radical liberalism, so radical that the public space of freedom itself is disappearing. and that would have been maybe one of my definitions, the under quotation mark. a think which was good about traditional liberalism. and even people with whom i don't agree like jürgen kas and so on knew it is the great discovery or invention of modernity is the public space. which is... not state, the public space in its distinction from state. the great philosopher here for me is immanuel kant. who in a wonderful way distinguishes between private and public use of reason. but you know what is forant private state of private use of reason, not be privately, it's when use of reason is subordinated to some. social or state needs for example for kant faculty of law. theological faculty and others their private use of reason because they serve a certain. specific goal, strengthen religion, strengthen law, rule of law and so on. while for kant public use of reason is, up to a point since this is not part of some curriculum we here have now, public use of reason, because we are in a space which is not constrained by any. a priori imposed from outside. or like we are not here to stabilize the state, to ruin the state. everything is open. we are, that's how i would define public use of reasons. we are here and here thinking begins. we are here. not to screw things up but to. question the very presuppositions of what state or market or whoever imposes on us. like an example, i was involved in a debate in france. i don't know how many years ago where a psychologist employed by the state comes and says, we have disorder in paris suburbs. please, we await you, scientists, psychoanalysts, to give us instructions. how do you control a wild crowd? how do prevent rage from exploding? and all of us exploded instantly. sorry, we first want to question, is your formulation of the problem correct, one? you know. thinking begins not by offering solutions. but by asking, yes, we are in deep shit, of course. we but. often, that's the abc of criticopediology. the way we perceive a problem is often part of the problem. and the first step in solution is to is to change. question the very this and for this the space was open, that's what i admit, openly admit, in traditional liberalism. it was self-questioning all the time. and in this sense, oh, i'm here to annoy you, in this sense, i remain, i like to say this just when i people, in this sense, i remain eurocentric. because in spite of all the bullshit and so on, there is something, i would say, unique about european enlightenment legacy. in spite of, and i did my homework, all the hypies, secret racism hidden beneath a universal forum. european enlightenment is. is motivated by permanent self-questioning. look at the topic of human rights. i know, i'm not an idiot, that human rights were at the beginning, not openly but de facto, the rights of adult white men with a property, not poor. so there were many who were excluded. but then it began to move. you know, mary wollstonecraft and so on, then women said, sorry guys, why not us also? then, for me, the event, which i always read it as the repetition in the sense that i referred to repetition at the beginning of the french revolution, haiti revolution. blacks! der... that was the greatness of the haiti revolution. it's not regain our traditional way of life. no. it was open challenge to french revolution. we could be more egalitarian. enlightened people than you are you the french. so... again in traditional liberalism with all its secret oppressive contents the space for this was open and i claim this space is today. closing you decide, you decide. who is? but i noticed something, i must annoy you as a friend, that you. sorry for did you privilege the right side, no? of the hall, i mean here, no? sorry, cannot resist. so give some chance to the left here. no, no, please, go on, go on, do it, let's not lose time. i didn't mean it like this directly, sorry..
more than necessary, which means that i admit it i'm still searching for a correct. definition. like again, as i hinted at, verfakis is onto something. but they have one big problem in feudalism, the way we know it. the whole point is that. you don't experience yourself as free. you have a feudal master and so on. today's unfreedom is... much more dangerous because as i use my old formula, i repeat it too much. the most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom that you experience as freedom. you know, what can be more free than just surfing on the web, do this, that, and so on? but there you are already controlled, manipulated. so what i would say is that what differentiates... trumpism from traditional. liberalism is the way it. but i would say, okay, i will go a little bit into theory, i cannot avoid it. i developed this together with Varoufakis, he did. i reapplied it. thisthe key for me for what goes on today is the privatization of commons, not in the marxian sense where in the early 16th, 17th century there were big commons, forests and so on, they were gradually privatized. but when they were privatized, they simply were not any longer commons. now you have take somebody like bill gates, musk and so on, they mask with his digital control and so on. they privatized commons which still remain commons. so they in some sense exploit not only us, but also small capitalists who have to compete on the market. they in some sense control, regulate the market. itself. look at amazon. amazon or uber and so on. these are typical new companies. they claim we are nothing, we just mediate between offer and demand, but they control control they control the entire space. so this would be one aspect, at least. the other aspect is again. i think that. with trump. you get liberalism at its extreme which sorry if i sound speculatively hegelian liberalism at its extreme which already self-c cancels itself like for example at the level of the press, but the same things are going on in. production capital and so on. they all the time talk about, you know, diminishing the state, firing half of so on and so on. oh but don't we get that under trump? under the pretext of diminishing or minimalizing the power of the state, the state gets stronger than ever. in this sense, that's the paradox. we get a radical liberalism, so radical that the public space of freedom itself is disappearing. and that would have been maybe one of my definitions, the under quotation mark. a think which was good about traditional liberalism. and even people with whom i don't agree like jürgen kas and so on knew it is the great discovery or invention of modernity is the public space. which is... not state, the public space in its distinction from state. the great philosopher here for me is immanuel kant. who in a wonderful way distinguishes between private and public use of reason. but you know what is forant private state of private use of reason, not be privately, it's when use of reason is subordinated to some. social or state needs for example for kant faculty of law. theological faculty and others their private use of reason because they serve a certain. specific goal, strengthen religion, strengthen law, rule of law and so on. while for kant public use of reason is, up to a point since this is not part of some curriculum we here have now, public use of reason, because we are in a space which is not constrained by any. a priori imposed from outside. or like we are not here to stabilize the state, to ruin the state. everything is open. we are, that's how i would define public use of reasons. we are here and here thinking begins. we are here. not to screw things up but to. question the very presuppositions of what state or market or whoever imposes on us. like an example, i was involved in a debate in france. i don't know how many years ago where a psychologist employed by the state comes and says, we have disorder in paris suburbs. please, we await you, scientists, psychoanalysts, to give us instructions. how do you control a wild crowd? how do prevent rage from exploding? and all of us exploded instantly. sorry, we first want to question, is your formulation of the problem correct, one? you know. thinking begins not by offering solutions. but by asking, yes, we are in deep shit, of course. we but. often, that's the abc of criticopediology. the way we perceive a problem is often part of the problem. and the first step in solution is to is to change. question the very this and for this the space was open, that's what i admit, openly admit, in traditional liberalism. it was self-questioning all the time. and in this sense, oh, i'm here to annoy you, in this sense, i remain, i like to say this just when i people, in this sense, i remain eurocentric. because in spite of all the bullshit and so on, there is something, i would say, unique about european enlightenment legacy. in spite of, and i did my homework, all the hypies, secret racism hidden beneath a universal forum. european enlightenment is. is motivated by permanent self-questioning. look at the topic of human rights. i know, i'm not an idiot, that human rights were at the beginning, not openly but de facto, the rights of adult white men with a property, not poor. so there were many who were excluded. but then it began to move. you know, mary wollstonecraft and so on, then women said, sorry guys, why not us also? then, for me, the event, which i always read it as the repetition in the sense that i referred to repetition at the beginning of the french revolution, haiti revolution. blacks! der... that was the greatness of the haiti revolution. it's not regain our traditional way of life. no. it was open challenge to french revolution. we could be more egalitarian. enlightened people than you are you the french. so... again in traditional liberalism with all its secret oppressive contents the space for this was open and i claim this space is today. closing you decide, you decide. who is? but i noticed something, i must annoy you as a friend, that you. sorry for did you privilege the right side, no? of the hall, i mean here, no? sorry, cannot resist. so give some chance to the left here. no, no, please, go on, go on, do it, let's not lose time. i didn't mean it like this directly, sorry..
Questioner
so i'm very interested in the idea that you developed in enjoy your nation as yourself, that postmodernism was the subjectivity of late capitalism. and what you're saying now is that postmodernism has given birth to liberal fascism. that's what you're calling it. so what happened? what was the moment? where did it start to shift? what was the process through which this incredibly subjective, amorphous, socially constructed universe gave rise to... the kind of insanity that you're talking about. why was that a particular breeding ground?
so i'm very interested in the idea that you developed in enjoy your nation as yourself, that postmodernism was the subjectivity of late capitalism. and what you're saying now is that postmodernism has given birth to liberal fascism. that's what you're calling it. so what happened? what was the moment? where did it start to shift? what was the process through which this incredibly subjective, amorphous, socially constructed universe gave rise to... the kind of insanity that you're talking about. why was that a particular breeding ground?
Slavoj Žižek
at first, i will not bluff more than necessary, which means i will now not pretend, you know, the disgusting arrogant way would be to ask you, i have an answer in my book, read it. no, i don't have it. what i nonetheless say what i would nonetheless say is that. as Fredric Jameson developed, although i don't always follow him in detail, here he was right with this idea too. to ground post-modernism in a certain stage of capitalism. and fred develops it in a very nice way, claiming that this is a very formal definition that if we have modernism as long as tradition is in some sense alive and modernism defines itself with this tension. tradition is still an oppressive force we should go furthermore. but with post-modernism, this historical tension disappears. that is to say, different forms of tradition are simply incorporated at different modes of life today. and in this sense they are much more brutally cancelled because they. what was authentically a tradition becomes now a freely chosen, allegedly, way of life, you know. today i play that i am a buddhist, tomorrow i discover this. so post-modernism is for me not so much a specific tradition, but a way. different traditions coexist in a non-historical. present now this is why, and fred was delighted, we were good friends with him. how can i not be good friend with fred jameson, who was a wonderful person, you know? when we make often zoom calls, we talk, did you see any good movies? no. and we were normal people. the point was not, did you see the latest romanian or south korean art movie? no, is the last james bond, any good? and so on. he was a totally normal guy,? he... fred pointed out that today, we. trump. ideologically it's no longer. that what we are getting today is some kind of a self-cancellation of post-modernism itself. history is returning. i'm not saying progressive left. and history is, okay, i'll put it like this in a mega way. fukuyama, who is a very honest guy, and don't despise him. you know why? because he proposed the formula of the end of history. but you know what he did at the last elections? he proposed to vote for bernie sanders. he saw more clearly than many others that the end of history, his thesis is over. no? so... again, posternism is the end of history in a quite literal way. there is no longer the tense between past and present. past is simply incorporated into an eternal present. that's why post-modernists love these local cultures, you know, like black culture, inuits in canada and so on. no problem, you are all part of. but today, i think this formula no longer. work end a new universalism is. need that. a return to a more traditional modernism. not to the same that it was. if we will not do it, trampians will occupy this place. so always read tr populism if it is fascist. i always, i repeat it too much, you know, that walter benjamin's great formula. fascism is always a sign of a failed revolution. something was wrong in capitalist reproduction and never dismiss fascism just as a mistake always beware that. fascism, i will say something horrible, i like to annoy you. fascism is communism insofar as it can be imagined within the existing capitalist order. and i mean this seriously. i already used this in my talks last days here in the united states. listen, i recently read a book which made me enthusiastic. a book about how banks functioned in nazi germany. my god, i was delighted. a top nazi banker said, in usual capitalism, banks just search for profit and so on. but in national socialism, banks should not be allowed just to do what they want. the way they invest and so on should be regulated through states so that they fit people's needs and so on. even many leftists don't dare to say this today. so my first reaction to fascism, what people say new fascism is, be careful. here i agree with ernesto laclau. who hated me at the end, but they still appreciate him. who emphasized that fascism is not. an ideology with fixed elements is that many elements of fascism. where... taken from other traditions, fascism is just a specific articulation of these elements in a specific way based on racial exclusion and so on and so on. so let me give you a superficial but plastic example. if you are an ordinary liberal, what for you? the most visible horror of fascism, at least nazism, you know, thousands. marching on the street with this in military order. ho ho you you know where nazis took this? from social democrats. literally. the social democrats in germany developed these public parades around hundred and don't be... don't leave. too many things to fascists which are not necessarily theirs. and i would even go as far, now i'm really provoke you, as to say, you know, when you say today to a liberal, people should be allowed their specific way of life. you already see how behind your back they say, oh, neo-nazi, fascist or whatever. why? the problem with white demand. white. males for their way of life it's not that it's a specific way of life it's that there is an explicit universal racist dimension in it. either it's implicitly perceived as higher than others or whatever. so i wouldn't have any, i would say to white people, you want your stupid way of life, have it, but don't implicitly universalize it. this was, i think, the great message of the guy, you work it, who really, i appreciate, he was not a primitive he was malcolm x. already in fanon we find this, but then in malcolm x you know what this x means which's a work of a genius. x means we blacks were deprived of our african roots, but i remain x, which means i don't dream of let's go back to africa, rediscover no his great insight was that for blacks being deprived of their african traditional roots, gives them a unique chance of being more truly universal than white people themselves to beat whites in their own terrain. so again, i don't fear, let people enjoy their way of life, blah, blah, blah. that's what i'm critical, i hope you will agree with. the usual. white multiculturalism you know it has one prohibition the more you are marginal the more you are allowed to retain your specific way of life, like for example, native americans, inuits, whatever. okay. yes. with white indians, true indians, not native americans, chinese, okay, okay. and then you slowly get up at the end, anglo-saxon, no, if you want your way of life here, you're a neo-fascist. but i would say no. so it's fashionable among these multiculturalists to... to prohibit your own particular identification i think there is a secret racism in it because all this universal liberal white multiculturalists, by apparently humiliating themselves, like no, we don't have our way of life, they secretly assert themselves as universalists. they are truly universal. and i have, i'm sorry if you know the story, an experience, really an intellectual multiple orgasm lifetime in missoula, montana years ago. i was at a debate. there were some white liberal and there were some native americans. and they, one of them referred to himself as indian.
at first, i will not bluff more than necessary, which means i will now not pretend, you know, the disgusting arrogant way would be to ask you, i have an answer in my book, read it. no, i don't have it. what i nonetheless say what i would nonetheless say is that. as Fredric Jameson developed, although i don't always follow him in detail, here he was right with this idea too. to ground post-modernism in a certain stage of capitalism. and fred develops it in a very nice way, claiming that this is a very formal definition that if we have modernism as long as tradition is in some sense alive and modernism defines itself with this tension. tradition is still an oppressive force we should go furthermore. but with post-modernism, this historical tension disappears. that is to say, different forms of tradition are simply incorporated at different modes of life today. and in this sense they are much more brutally cancelled because they. what was authentically a tradition becomes now a freely chosen, allegedly, way of life, you know. today i play that i am a buddhist, tomorrow i discover this. so post-modernism is for me not so much a specific tradition, but a way. different traditions coexist in a non-historical. present now this is why, and fred was delighted, we were good friends with him. how can i not be good friend with fred jameson, who was a wonderful person, you know? when we make often zoom calls, we talk, did you see any good movies? no. and we were normal people. the point was not, did you see the latest romanian or south korean art movie? no, is the last james bond, any good? and so on. he was a totally normal guy,? he... fred pointed out that today, we. trump. ideologically it's no longer. that what we are getting today is some kind of a self-cancellation of post-modernism itself. history is returning. i'm not saying progressive left. and history is, okay, i'll put it like this in a mega way. fukuyama, who is a very honest guy, and don't despise him. you know why? because he proposed the formula of the end of history. but you know what he did at the last elections? he proposed to vote for bernie sanders. he saw more clearly than many others that the end of history, his thesis is over. no? so... again, posternism is the end of history in a quite literal way. there is no longer the tense between past and present. past is simply incorporated into an eternal present. that's why post-modernists love these local cultures, you know, like black culture, inuits in canada and so on. no problem, you are all part of. but today, i think this formula no longer. work end a new universalism is. need that. a return to a more traditional modernism. not to the same that it was. if we will not do it, trampians will occupy this place. so always read tr populism if it is fascist. i always, i repeat it too much, you know, that walter benjamin's great formula. fascism is always a sign of a failed revolution. something was wrong in capitalist reproduction and never dismiss fascism just as a mistake always beware that. fascism, i will say something horrible, i like to annoy you. fascism is communism insofar as it can be imagined within the existing capitalist order. and i mean this seriously. i already used this in my talks last days here in the united states. listen, i recently read a book which made me enthusiastic. a book about how banks functioned in nazi germany. my god, i was delighted. a top nazi banker said, in usual capitalism, banks just search for profit and so on. but in national socialism, banks should not be allowed just to do what they want. the way they invest and so on should be regulated through states so that they fit people's needs and so on. even many leftists don't dare to say this today. so my first reaction to fascism, what people say new fascism is, be careful. here i agree with ernesto laclau. who hated me at the end, but they still appreciate him. who emphasized that fascism is not. an ideology with fixed elements is that many elements of fascism. where... taken from other traditions, fascism is just a specific articulation of these elements in a specific way based on racial exclusion and so on and so on. so let me give you a superficial but plastic example. if you are an ordinary liberal, what for you? the most visible horror of fascism, at least nazism, you know, thousands. marching on the street with this in military order. ho ho you you know where nazis took this? from social democrats. literally. the social democrats in germany developed these public parades around hundred and don't be... don't leave. too many things to fascists which are not necessarily theirs. and i would even go as far, now i'm really provoke you, as to say, you know, when you say today to a liberal, people should be allowed their specific way of life. you already see how behind your back they say, oh, neo-nazi, fascist or whatever. why? the problem with white demand. white. males for their way of life it's not that it's a specific way of life it's that there is an explicit universal racist dimension in it. either it's implicitly perceived as higher than others or whatever. so i wouldn't have any, i would say to white people, you want your stupid way of life, have it, but don't implicitly universalize it. this was, i think, the great message of the guy, you work it, who really, i appreciate, he was not a primitive he was malcolm x. already in fanon we find this, but then in malcolm x you know what this x means which's a work of a genius. x means we blacks were deprived of our african roots, but i remain x, which means i don't dream of let's go back to africa, rediscover no his great insight was that for blacks being deprived of their african traditional roots, gives them a unique chance of being more truly universal than white people themselves to beat whites in their own terrain. so again, i don't fear, let people enjoy their way of life, blah, blah, blah. that's what i'm critical, i hope you will agree with. the usual. white multiculturalism you know it has one prohibition the more you are marginal the more you are allowed to retain your specific way of life, like for example, native americans, inuits, whatever. okay. yes. with white indians, true indians, not native americans, chinese, okay, okay. and then you slowly get up at the end, anglo-saxon, no, if you want your way of life here, you're a neo-fascist. but i would say no. so it's fashionable among these multiculturalists to... to prohibit your own particular identification i think there is a secret racism in it because all this universal liberal white multiculturalists, by apparently humiliating themselves, like no, we don't have our way of life, they secretly assert themselves as universalists. they are truly universal. and i have, i'm sorry if you know the story, an experience, really an intellectual multiple orgasm lifetime in missoula, montana years ago. i was at a debate. there were some white liberal and there were some native americans. and they, one of them referred to himself as indian.
Ashwin Laksumunage
and immediately the white guy protested.
and immediately the white guy protested.
Slavoj Žižek
no, you're using a racial designation. you should call yourself native american. and this guy was a genius. we became friends. the so-called native american said, no, i don't want to be called native american because obviously it involves another racism. native american means nature. so what are you? cultural americans or what? and he said, beautiful. formula. i much prefer to be called indian because at least my name is a monument to white men's stupidity who coming here thought they are in india, you know. don't underestimate this is why i always get in problems because i'm spontaneously in my jokes all the time racist. but the measure of friendship for me is how all my black friends here accept this and reply with the similar racist jokes. the only one who worry are the white liberals who tell me, how do you know you will not offend? damn him. and i said to them, how patronizing is this? as if black or... nativeatives are, you know, poor innocent people. no, they are not idiots, my god. they have an incredible sensitivity of when an apparent white anti-racist is really patronizing them. that's why, again, my way with my black friends is, i'm afraid i would be arrested to say what are my usual exchanges with them. but the message is not a racist one. the message is we truly appreciate each other, we are such friends that we are allowed to say all the dirty things and it will not hurt us. so i claim there are exceptions. if i see a dignified old lady, i will not say certain things. but can you imagine an authentic openness towards the other without an exchange of obscenities? my answer is no. it's only through an exchange of obscenities that you... but i cannot, by call, establish an authentic contact. and again, i'm aware that it's not a simple game. like i meet an old, dignified lady. i will not tell her, old belle, do you want me to fuck you up your ass? no, i know, you know, i know. but on the other hand, i got wonderful surprises at this labor. there was a dignified old lady by mistake, i was tired. i said something like this to her and we became friends. we embraced each other. she replied in a much more dirty way to me. and my reaction was, you know, like in cartoons, tom and jerry, when a cat is surprised, their eyes pop out. my reaction was that one, you know. so, you know what's important here? racism, i hope we will agree here, is very much alive and anti-feminism. but... it's not so much the explicit statement, it's the daily practices. where ideology reproduces itself. for example, to provoke you again, i oppose those generally terms trans-ex but at one point i. sympathize not with them but with one point. they were annoyed by. transgender people like men who want to officially become a woman, but i will be now very evil, don't even have the decency to go through the operation too. but you know, you put some lipstick on dresses a woman, aha, i want to be treated as a woman. but they pointed out that sorry, in our society. being a woman, it's not just this, how you dress lipstick. it's a whole network of very material practices, work at home, having period. that's why, as a feminist, much more important for me is what even half fascist like peron did. you know, evita peron, i have great problems with her. but he did something wonderful. in 51 or when in argentina, 51. she. it was the first time. in the world. she introduced every month for a woman who is in her period two or three days. you see, that's for me anti-femitism, concrete, daily. problem. what does it help you, sorry, i'm not focusing on you, but what does it help you if i follow all the correct rules, if i still at the material level ignore all your these practical troubles of? every day.
no, you're using a racial designation. you should call yourself native american. and this guy was a genius. we became friends. the so-called native american said, no, i don't want to be called native american because obviously it involves another racism. native american means nature. so what are you? cultural americans or what? and he said, beautiful. formula. i much prefer to be called indian because at least my name is a monument to white men's stupidity who coming here thought they are in india, you know. don't underestimate this is why i always get in problems because i'm spontaneously in my jokes all the time racist. but the measure of friendship for me is how all my black friends here accept this and reply with the similar racist jokes. the only one who worry are the white liberals who tell me, how do you know you will not offend? damn him. and i said to them, how patronizing is this? as if black or... nativeatives are, you know, poor innocent people. no, they are not idiots, my god. they have an incredible sensitivity of when an apparent white anti-racist is really patronizing them. that's why, again, my way with my black friends is, i'm afraid i would be arrested to say what are my usual exchanges with them. but the message is not a racist one. the message is we truly appreciate each other, we are such friends that we are allowed to say all the dirty things and it will not hurt us. so i claim there are exceptions. if i see a dignified old lady, i will not say certain things. but can you imagine an authentic openness towards the other without an exchange of obscenities? my answer is no. it's only through an exchange of obscenities that you... but i cannot, by call, establish an authentic contact. and again, i'm aware that it's not a simple game. like i meet an old, dignified lady. i will not tell her, old belle, do you want me to fuck you up your ass? no, i know, you know, i know. but on the other hand, i got wonderful surprises at this labor. there was a dignified old lady by mistake, i was tired. i said something like this to her and we became friends. we embraced each other. she replied in a much more dirty way to me. and my reaction was, you know, like in cartoons, tom and jerry, when a cat is surprised, their eyes pop out. my reaction was that one, you know. so, you know what's important here? racism, i hope we will agree here, is very much alive and anti-feminism. but... it's not so much the explicit statement, it's the daily practices. where ideology reproduces itself. for example, to provoke you again, i oppose those generally terms trans-ex but at one point i. sympathize not with them but with one point. they were annoyed by. transgender people like men who want to officially become a woman, but i will be now very evil, don't even have the decency to go through the operation too. but you know, you put some lipstick on dresses a woman, aha, i want to be treated as a woman. but they pointed out that sorry, in our society. being a woman, it's not just this, how you dress lipstick. it's a whole network of very material practices, work at home, having period. that's why, as a feminist, much more important for me is what even half fascist like peron did. you know, evita peron, i have great problems with her. but he did something wonderful. in 51 or when in argentina, 51. she. it was the first time. in the world. she introduced every month for a woman who is in her period two or three days. you see, that's for me anti-femitism, concrete, daily. problem. what does it help you, sorry, i'm not focusing on you, but what does it help you if i follow all the correct rules, if i still at the material level ignore all your these practical troubles of? every day.
Ashwin Laksumunage
i'm afraid we have to cut it short there. thank you everyone so much for your attention. we do have a book signing now, so if you have any further questions, please feel free to ask dr. jak at the signing. the book signing will happen right behind this curtain here. thank you so much for your attention this evening. and if we could have one last round of applause, thank you so much. thank.
i'm afraid we have to cut it short there. thank you everyone so much for your attention. we do have a book signing now, so if you have any further questions, please feel free to ask dr. jak at the signing. the book signing will happen right behind this curtain here. thank you so much for your attention this evening. and if we could have one last round of applause, thank you so much. thank.
Slavoj Žižek
my answer's too long. but to every disease there is a cure. maybe i can come again at some point here. we will get more time. thank you very much.
my answer's too long. but to every disease there is a cure. maybe i can come again at some point here. we will get more time. thank you very much.