Slavoj Žižek. The great challenge of The Left. 2016
Lecture · European Graduate School Video Lectures ·
2016-07-11 · 0:49:30 · 6,813 words
ideologycommunism-socialismdemocracycapitalismecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspacegeopolitics-warrace-antisemitismpsychoanalysisreligion-theologyliberalism-political-correctnessethicsfascism-populismeveryday-lifesubjectivityhistoryphilosophy-general
Žižek critiques anarchist and localist visions of democracy, arguing instead for a well-functioning but invisible bureaucratic state, and extends this to a need for transnational institutions. He diagnoses ecological recycling rhetoric and Starbucks-style 'ethical consumerism' as ideology at its purest, translating structural problems into personal responsibility. The bulk of the talk addresses the refugee crisis: he insists the real threat to Europe is nationalist-populist defenders rather than refugees, but simultaneously demands frank public debate about genuine cultural conflicts around gender, sexuality, and arranged marriages, rejecting liberal multicultural avoidance. He concludes with a defense of 'praising hypocrisy' and respectful distance over universal love, drawing on Lacan and a re-reading of Levinas to argue that authentic ethics means keeping the neighbor at a proper distance rather than pretending to understand or love everyone.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 16
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “bureaucracy (Weber)”
Invoked in its 'noble Max Weber sense' as a neutral, well-functioning administrative machine; Žižek argues Stalinism failed precisely because it over-politicized the state and never built such a machine, requiring instead perpetual purges and emergency rule.
as “nicely alienated state”
Žižek's positive reformulation of alienation: the ideal state is 'nicely alienated', invisible, out of your control, but delivering water, healthcare, and energy without requiring constant civic participation or tedious local meetings.
as “personal responsibility as ideology”
The ideological operation of translating collective/structural problems (ecological crisis, economic restructuring) into questions of individual conscience and consumer behavior, the 'genius of ideology in action.'
The operation that translates structural/collective problems into personal moral responsibility (recycle, donate), making subjects feel dutiful while leaving systemic causes untouched; Žižek calls Starbucks and ecological discourse its purest contemporary forms.
Žižek's signature phrase for the most concentrated ideological operation; in this talk applied to Starbucks's 'ethical consumerism' (consumerist duty and social duty fused into one purchase) and to ecological personal-responsibility discourse.
Žižek's phrase for the real political question: not the ecstatic moment of solidarity (Tahrir, Syntagma, Gaza squares) but what happens when the energy dissipates and ordinary people need to concretely feel the difference.
as “left-wing Fukuyama-ists”
Žižek's coinage for leftists who accept Fukuyama's 'end of history' diagnosis (liberal democratic capitalism as ultimate form) and merely add a leftist spin, exemplified ironically by Justin Trudeau.
as “commons”
Marx's term for shared inherited resources that should be neither privatized nor state-controlled; Žižek identifies four types, intellectual/cultural, external nature, internal nature (biogenetics), and humanity itself, as the key stakes of contemporary left politics.
Žižek's taxonomy of shared inheritance that capitalism cannot manage: (1) intellectual/cultural commons, (2) external nature, (3) internal nature (biogenetics/brain-computer interfaces), (4) humanity itself (migration, borders, the globe/cupola divide).
as “globe as cupola”
Adapted from Sloterdijk: 'globe' not as all-encompassing world but as a dome covering those inside (roughly 20% of humanity) while leaving others out, the structural basis of the refugee crisis as those outside trying to penetrate inside.
Lacan's concept: jealousy is pathological not because its object is false but because the jealous subject needs it to sustain self-identity; Žižek deploys it to argue that anti-immigrant fear is pathological even when individual claims about immigrants happen to be true.
as “the fundamental lie (of inner experience)”
The self-narratives people construct about their own actions are fundamentally lies, composed to justify and render them blind to the horrors they commit in reality; truth is 'out there,' not inside, as illustrated by Nazi self-justificatory ethics.
Drawing on Lacan and Levinas: the neighbor is not a fellow man but the other in the abyss of its irreducible otherness; Jewish commandments ('don't steal') function to keep the neighbor at a proper distance rather than forcing false intimacy.
as “ontological catastrophe (of love)”
Žižek's formulation of romantic love as a total ontological imbalance, a particular perishable being becomes 'more than everything else,' making love irreconcilable with universal 'love everyone' demands.
as “fetishism”
To fetishize the other as the 'terrified other', the liberal error of turning the immigrant or refugee into an idealized or feared object rather than engaging frankly with actual cultural conflicts.
The superego pressure to 'understand' the cultural other, which Žižek rejects as a moralizing imperative that covers over real conflicts rather than engaging them.
Stories he reaches for 10
Starbucks includes a charitable donation (two cents per cup to Guatemala children) in the price, so the customer can be a consumerist and fulfill social duty simultaneously, ideology at its purest, dissolving the tension between consumption and social conscience into a single purchase.
“pay twenty cents more for cappuccino and you did also at the same time as being a consumerist you did your duty towards society”
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, on a European committee, was in Fukushima two days after the disaster; the Japanese government briefly faced having to evacuate all 30 million people of the Tokyo area, with the only rational solution being to ask Russia for part of Eastern Siberia, but no transnational mechanism existed to do it.
“they thought that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area thirty million people ... the rational solution would have been of course to ask Russia to give part of Eastern Siberia”
Lacan's example: a jealous husband whose suspicions are entirely confirmed (wife really is cheating) is still pathologically jealous, because pathological jealousy is not about truth but about needing jealousy to sustain one's self-identity.
“even if all his suspicions are true his wife is sleeping around like crazy his jealousy is still pathological because what makes it pathological his jealousy is not that it's not true”
A Roma girl in Slovenia escaped her family when her father tried to arrange her marriage at age twelve; feminists protected her, but Roma community leaders argued that arranged marriages are a central constituent of their communal identity, without them, in two generations only food and bands remain, the community is over.
“this arranged marriages is a very central constituent of our communal identity you take this from us in two generations all that will remain of us is Gypsy food bands playing but as a community we are over”
As East Germany was collapsing, Stasi chief Erich Mielke appeared in the East German parliament and declared 'But I love you all', Žižek presents this as the perfectly appropriate statement from the head of a secret police: universal love as the logic of liquidating all who disturb it.
“Aber ich liebe euch alle ... that's appropriate statement for the chief of secret police he loves you all that's why he liquidates all those who disturb this love”
A woman's book on 'Nazi ethics' (provocative title, author forgotten) examines what self-justificatory stories Nazis told to make tolerable the atrocities they committed, illustrating that inner experience is a constructed lie designed to cover external reality, not a window to truth.
“the woman a lady is interested in this simple fact Nazis were doing horrible things what stories were they telling to themselves to justify or to make it tolerable for them to do what they were doing”
Demands to recycle and sort Coke cans translate a structural problem (how to restructure the economy) into personal moral responsibility, making subjects feel they've done their duty toward Mother Earth while leaving systemic causes untouched.
“did you recycle that paper did you throw all the newspapers aside this is to make us feel good ... they translate a social problem ... into personal responsibility this is ideology at its purest”
The 'stupidest wisdom' is multiculturalism's claim that 'the enemy is someone to whom we were not ready to listen.' If true, Hitler was our enemy only because we didn't understand him. Žižek contrasts this with Churchill, who listened carefully and immediately knew Hitler was more dangerous than Stalin.
“the wisdom often proclaimed by multiculturalists the enemy is someone whom to whom we were not ready to listen to ... so Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to understand him ... no fuck you”
During the Iran-Iraq war Khomeini told a Western journalist the Iranian Revolution hadn't killed one human being; when pressed about the executed victims he replied 'they are simply dogs, they are not human at all', illustrating that every claim of universal love secretly excludes someone from the human.
“Iranian Revolution is the most human one we didn't kill not even one human being ... Oh they are simply dogs they are not human at all”
Trotsky's argument against hyper-localism: would you really want to spend every afternoon in tedious community meetings about water distribution and children's education? The argument for preferring an efficient invisible state that simply delivers.
“would you really like to live in such a shitty local democracy situation every afternoon you have to go to some stupid meeting how we organize the education of children how we distribute water”
Works invoked 7
Elysium film
Mentioned alongside The Hunger Games as a Hollywood blockbuster that correctly intuited the emerging new apartheid society structured around the globe/cupola inside/outside divide, 'Hollywood knows it.'
The Hunger Games film
Mentioned alongside Elysium as a Hollywood film that correctly intuited the new apartheid society of those inside and outside the global cupola.
The X-Files tv
Žižek identifies as 'an old X-Files follower' and uses the show's motto 'The Truth Is Out There' to argue that truth is external and material, not located inside in subjective experience.
Quran other
Žižek cites the Quran (attributing to Muhammad) as evidence that Islam, like Judaism, prioritizes external rule-following over inner belief, supporting his argument for external manners over inner sincerity.
Peter Sloterdijk's book advancing the globe/cupola distinction; Žižek refers to it as 'his new book on capitalism global capitalism.' Identified as likely 'In the World Interior of Capital' (German 2005, English 2013) on basis of content match; Žižek uses its central metaphor to frame the refugee crisis.
On Nazi Ethics book
A book by an unremembered woman author, title described as 'on purpose provocative,' examining the self-justificatory narratives Nazis constructed; Žižek calls it 'wonderful' and uses it to support his claim that inner experience is the fundamental lie.
Paul Mason's 2015 book; Žižek refers to it as 'The End of Capitalism' (ASR/misremembering), describes it as 'too naive' but with a basically correct message about intellectual property as capitalism's greatest threat. Title corrected on basis of publication record.
People invoked 20
Paul Mason positive
Described as 'too naive' but with a basically correct message; Žižek invokes Mason's argument that intellectual property is the greatest contemporary threat to capitalism. Žižek refers to the book as 'The End of Capitalism' but the actual title is 'PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future' (2015), ASR/misremembering.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as 'catastrophic theorist' and 'so intelligent'; Žižek recommends him to the audience and uses his firsthand Fukushima account to argue for transnational governance institutions.
Marine Le Pen negative
Mentioned alongside Farage as exemplar of nationalist anti-immigrant politics whose rise would mean 'the real end of Europe.'
Emmanuel Levinas negative
Žižek jokes he'll be sent to Gulag when Levinas followers take power; critiques the popular reception of Levinas for 'secretly Christianizing Judaism' through the ethics of the vulnerable face; does credit Levinas's reading of Jewish commandments as keeping the neighbor at proper distance as 'wonderful.'
Jacques Lacan positive
Called 'my psychoanalytic teacher'; Žižek draws on Lacan's concept of pathological jealousy to illuminate anti-immigrant fear, and on Lacan's account of the neighbor as the other in the abyss of its otherness.
Mentioned as a recent example of someone who still used one finger to operate his communication device, contrasting with the new brain-computer interfaces requiring no physical movement whatsoever.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Invoked via the coinage 'left-wing Fukuyama-ists', those who accept his 'end of history' thesis (liberal democratic capitalism as final form) and merely seek to give it a leftist spin.
Judith Butler negative
Mentioned as having been 'so mad' at Žižek for his non-politically-correct use of 'woman' as a category; deployed briefly as a foil for a joke about the limits of gender-inclusive language.
Justin Trudeau negative
Used ironically as the image of the 'left-wing Fukuyama-ist', the leftist who accepts liberal democratic capitalism and merely adds a leftist spin.
Alain Badiou negative
Called 'my good friend' but criticized for going 'too much into' the position that the ultimate goal should be immediate local democracy rather than representative state structures.
Nigel Farage negative
UKIP boss; Žižek met him and dismisses him as 'an ex-talk show host, a cheap demagogue' who is not the new Führer right-wingers might hope for; used as example of nationalist defenders who represent the real threat to Europe.
Leon Trotsky positive
Žižek invokes Trotsky's argument against local democracy, the tedious-meetings objection, as 'very intelligent' and 'brutal,' using it to support the case for a functioning bureaucratic state.
Julian Assange positive
Called 'another of my friends' (with self-aware boasting); Žižek credits Assange's argument that Google is a private version of the NSA to illustrate the control dimensions of cyberspace.
Ruhollah Khomeini negative
Used as example of universal love that covertly dehumanizes: claimed the Iranian Revolution didn't kill 'one human being,' then clarified the victims were 'simply dogs', illustrating that every proclamation of universal love secretly excludes someone from humanity.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as 'a conservative thinker but we are friends I kind of like him he's an intelligent conservative'; Žižek adopts his globe/cupola distinction from Sloterdijk's book on global capitalism to frame the structural basis of the refugee crisis.
Erich Mielke negative
Head of the Stasi; his panicked declaration 'Aber ich liebe euch alle' (But I love you all) in the disintegrating East German parliament is used as the perfect illustration of universal love's totalitarian logic.
Jürgen Habermas positive
Žižek calls himself 'a Habermasian' in his advocacy for an absolutely open, frank public debate about the refugee crisis and cultural conflicts, rather than covering them up for fear of serving the right.
Winston Churchill positive
Praised as a 'great conservative' whose wisdom was to listen carefully to Hitler from the start and immediately recognize he was more dangerous than Stalin, used to contrast with the multicultural 'listen to understand' fallacy.
Karl Marx positive
Invoked through his concept of 'commons', what should be shared inheritance neither left to the market nor state power, as the key framework for why Žižek remains 'nominally a communist.'
Max Weber positive
Invoked for the 'noble Max Weber sense' of bureaucracy as a neutral, non-corrupted administrative machine, used positively against Stalinist over-politicization of the state.
Transcript 1 turns
Slavoj Žižek
The great challenge of the Left is how to reconstruct state apparatus not in this shitty populist way they will all the time be in contact with social movements and so on but as an invisible well-functioning machine relatively as far as possible non-corrupted and so on because you know usually people designate Stalinism as bureaucratic socialism I think it's exactly if we use the term bureaucracy in its noble Max Weber sense the problem of Stalinism was precisely that it politicized the state so much that it never was ready and able to construct a neutral well-functioning bureaucracy it always needed in order to thrive purges an emergency state and so on and so on and I even got caught into this argument once with anarchist groups friends they claim we hate states we want small communities where in a self-transparent way we organize our lives we run our lives I told them on two counts I'm opposed to you even on three counts first but are you aware that I told them I love things when they really function like that but are you aware that in order for this to function you need a good efficient state to to organize the complex background like okay you organize distribution of electricity fuck you where does electricity come from it has to be rendered available education healthcare and so on and so on so again the second point I even doubt to provoke you a little bit about this local democracy this non even my good friend Alain Badiou I think goes too much into this that our ultimate goal should be not representative state but living local democracy where people are immediately present self-organizing and so on and so on now I will give you a very brutal argument but it was made once by Trotsky in a very intelligent way namely to be brutal would you really like to live in such a shitty local democracy situation every afternoon you have to go to some stupid meeting how we organize the education of children how we distribute water how we do this that no sorry I want to live in a nicely alienated state by nicely alienated I mean it's invisible there out of your control but it delivers it functions water is here I don't want to debate every afternoon where water comes from and how I want water to be here I want healthcare to be here I want energy to be here I want ecological I don't believe I always think that all this bullshit about to provoke you a little bit more this is superstitious logic it's pure ideology you know this ecological bullshit like did you recycle that paper did you throw all the newspapers aside this is to make us feel good and to this is a genius of ideology in action they translate a social problem how we will restructure how to restructure our economy and so on into personal responsibility this is ideology at its purest when you criticize a big company and then an idiot comes and tells you yeah it's easy to criticize but what did you do did you put all Coke cans aside did you do this that and if you do it it's what it's simply the main function is to make you feel good you see you see I did my duty towards Mother Earth I carefully put all the cans of Coke here all that I put there and so on that's the main function of it it's ideology at its purest it's the same I claim even with unfortunately this is I even I think presented this line but you were not here two-three times ago here in this very room how it's the same with charity or with eco with all of them look if there is an entity which is ideology at its purest today I'm sorry if some of you know this line this is my favorite example but now they are no longer playing this game this card so strongly as they did years ago Starbucks I'm not a terrorist but if I were to be a terrorist I would say bomb Starbucks you know why no it's not coffee is bad or whatever I don't care about that but I don't know how it is now but I remember five-ten years ago whenever you enter a Starbucks restaurant you have big posters we are ecologically conscious two cents of every cup of tea goes to some stupid Guatemala children Somalia orphans to save this to save that this is the most ingenious eco ideology ideological move that I can imagine what's this operation usually we are divided between being consumerists and then oh but we should take care that we are not just consumerists we should also take care of Mother Earth of society Starbucks is offering you a wonderful solution which is we will include into the price of your consumerism commodity also your social duty so pay twenty cents more for cappuccino and you did also at the same time as being a consumerist you did your duty towards society and so on and so on so again I claim that again this is the big problem today we don't need local democracy of course when it functions it's nice but isn't it that all the big challenges that we have today are challenges which need even more than state power we will have to organize ourselves even at a transnational level look Jean-Pierre Dupuy the catastrophic theorist you should get him here incidentally he is so intelligent he told me that as a member of some fucking European committee he was in Fukushima two days after the earthquake tsunami all that and he told me that for one day a little bit less Japanese government was in a total panic because they thought that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area thirty million people if this were to happen can you imagine where will they put them the rational solution would have been of course to ask Russia to give part of Eastern Siberia I'm if I'm brutally rational that would have been the only solution but how can you do it no mechanisms to do it or what you see we have to confront these problems and I'm sick and tired of this local no we need larger global organisms I mean this is what I'm now repeating myself what I already said in my class this is the big task of the Left today not every idiot can do this ecstatic things oh we all cried solidarity one million people on Gaza Square on Tahrir Square on Syntagma Square we were all with them crying together fuck you I don't care what I care is the morning after when the ecstatic energy is over and things return to normal how will ordinary people feel the difference this is the only thing that interests me so now if the picture is so bleak if we don't know what to do you are quite right to ask so fuck it why don't we call it a day and claim okay radical change doesn't work let's become reasonable pragmatics within the mechanisms that we have basically we should be just I use this term with great irony left-wing Fukuyama-ists you know we accept Fukuyama general diagnosis liberal democratic capitalism is the ultimate form and we just have to like give it a little bit more of a leftist spin like if I may be a little bit evil like Justin Trudeau now should be in Canada should be our image you know the problem is we may diverge here but the problem is that I don't think this works for a simple reason and that's the only serious question today we are confronting a series of problems can liberal democratic capitalism deal with them in the long term I don't think it can and that's why I remain nominally don't be afraid not in any Stalinist sense a communist because I think that the problems we are dealing today are problems of what Marx called commons what should be our common shared inheritance what shouldn't be left neither to the market nor to the state power and there are a series of these commons for example the commons of culture in the broadest sense the immaterial capital cognitive capital means of communication and so on it's clear that incredibly important things are happening here that's where WikiLeaks enter on the one hand we know that cyberspace is an incredible opportunity for people's direct self-organization and so on on the other hand cyberspace offers unbelievable new forms of control and so on for example Assange okay another of my friends if I boast Assange convinced me that Google is a private version of NSA you know how they Google even he told me no even he didn't I read about this if some of you use Kindle to read books are you aware what happens there not only do they know Amazon which book you bought but the Kindle machine sends all the data how much of the book which pages did you read how much time did you take it did you read the whole book they get a complete profile on you and the same goes for medicine you know so what I'm saying is that on the one hand we get here unheard of abilities of control on the other hand I believe quite naively what some thinkers like the latest one is Paul Mason now bestseller The End of Capitalism what they are too naive but their basic message is right that so-called that this so-called intellectual property is the greatest threat to capitalism today it simply cannot it's more and more difficult to contain it into the form of private property look at how we are all I am at least totally corrupted my two almost most visited websites are Kickass and Pirate Bay of course you know we download it who even I mean I don't know how it is here maybe in Switzerland here you are still a little bit retarded but in all of Manhattan you no longer get not even one DVD store serious now it's all disappearing this copying of data like what copyright I know for example almost all my friends know it there is among others some in Russia some website where they follow precisely our work philosophy humanities and so on and you get literally everything a week or two the latest after appearance you can download it for free and so on and so on so something is also it's also so many other things of shared knowledge and so on and so on which again this is I think maybe one of the key struggles today the common intellectual commons then we have of course the commons of external nature pollution exploitation of nature and so on why commons because of course nature is our shared commons and we have to take care of it in this way then we have the commons of internal nature our genetic inheritance the topic of biogenetics it's better maybe for you not to know what is already going on there I'm not a paranoiac but it's quite incredible this you know that the vision and not a distant vision it's still very primitive but it is already happening is the direct link between computer and our brain so you no longer need even you know Stephen Hawking till recently he used one finger that he was ready to move a little bit to press the button no now you can directly communicate with a computer like they I saw it in London my god the model it's still very primitive but it already works of a wheelchair for crippled people sorry politically correct is to say for movement challenged people or how whatever and that you don't need anything your brain is not even wired it's just scanned with some you have a special helmet you think forward the chair moves forward you think left your wheelchair moves left and so on and so on so okay this is wonderful divine almost we are like gods you think it happens yeah but if it goes out it goes in that's they can also control you and it's incredible to what extent all this is already developed for example you know when they make these plans scientific they always try to sell them to you by claiming we will help invalids crippled people and so on but then it always goes for example the latest trend in some top advanced companies in psychiatry is you already have scanning machines which measure precisely the state of your mind are you in depression not and so on and so on but to such an incredible extent already that it's not just a general good feeling but they can specify is it rage is it depression tiredness so they can get a complete image and they now even propose which is nice in a way to then directly connect this to some capsule with medicines so that when you feel bad a certain serum medicine is put into your blood when you feel you know you don't even have to think about it the machine does everything now I am not anti-technological it's wonderful but again how will this develop who will control this and of course the last big problem that I see the commons of humanity itself did you notice how the other side of global market is new walls are arising all around and if you don't believe me look at Hollywood big blockbusters they know it you know all those movies like Elysium Hunger Games they had the right suspicion that if we don't change things we are gradually approaching a kind of a new apartheid society where basically there will be and there already are those who are in and those who are out even a conservative thinker but we are friends I kind of like him he's an intelligent conservative Peter Sloterdijk in his new book on capitalism global capitalism he had an ingenious idea to claim that the term globe should not be just used in the sense of global all-encompassing but also globe in the sense of a cupola a globe so that there are those who are covered by it and there are those who are out like twenty percent of people of world humanity we are in others are out and this I think I prefer even not and I think that problems that we have now problems of sorry I don't want oh my god I hate myself time is running so much because I'm already at the beginning you know I covered what I thought no and I think it's clearly that the problem of refugees is to be located at this level it's simply those outside the globe trying to penetrate inside the globe and here I wanted to go okay let me briefly if I may be a little bit longer if I go a little bit longer let me go into this here I think precisely apropos the refugee problem now what I will be telling you is extremely problematic because just if you have time to do such stupid things just go on the web and put my name and racism fascism and you will see all the characterizations of me as a racist fascist and so on of course I'm totally for more refugees in Europe I'm not what people claim I just want to focus on certain problems which are real what problems okay we have this Sloterdijk situation cupola outside inside and so on on the one hand I always emphasize this I will use a metaphor which I already used in my class I'm sorry you know Jacques Lacan has a wonderful saying somewhere my psychoanalytic teacher if there is a jealous husband who is obsessed that his wife is cheating on him and even if all his suspicions are true his wife is sleeping around like crazy his jealousy is still pathological because what makes it pathological his jealousy is not that it's not true but the function of jealousy pathological jealousy means you you need jealousy to sustain your self-identity okay we can go on into how anti-Semitism works in the in a similar way and I think it's something similar going on with this right-wing anti-populist anti-immigrant face today our answer should not be the idealization here problems with me and some liberal leftists begin my point is that we should not we should not claim that no refugees are good people incidentally when people try to prove this what they do is they always quote those upper-class Syrian refugees no but they are educated and so on and so on I know but I know more I know that that's why Syrian refugees I know examples from Germany from England even from Slovenia where they just passed through they know this and in a wonderful subtle way they use this as a class distinction right they like to contact us you old Europeans and claim you see we are not the same as those as those primitive fundamentalists we are like you already you know okay but what I'm saying is that our defense should not be no refugees are ideal blah blah blah no we should say even if some things of what you claim about refugees there are fundamentalists among them with different attitude towards women if it's true it has nothing to do with your fear of refugees your fear of refugees is pathological its source is a different one it's uncertainty of Europe itself losing its welfare and so on all that so I claim that here I'm absolutely beyond doubt that the true threat to Europe are not refugees even if ten million Islamists enter Europe the true threat to Europe are defenders of Europe today those nationalist anti-immigrant defenders if they come to power Farage in England ah Farage you know UKIP boss another boasting I met him I know him and if you are a secret right-winger looking for a new dictator I must disappoint you he is not the guy he is an ex-talk show host a cheap demagogue if you are looking for new Fuehrer sorry you will not get it in Farage you know but if people like Farage in England Marine Le Pen in France and so on if they take over that will be the end of Europe the real end of Europe but what I want to say this is that on the one hand we have to be here ruthless there is a logic there is this basic model of refugees are a threat to us this is the same as what Lacan says about jealousy the true question is why this fear of ours which cannot be grounded simply in facts but it tells a lot about the crisis of our European identity today so that's the first point the second point I find it catastrophic to now comes the more problematic point to deal of course there are problems with refugees my god what do you expect hundreds of thousands even millions people from different cultures come and there would be no problems but it's absolutely crucial to deal this with these problems openly in a frank debate if we don't do this the price will be paid by refugees themselves and violence against them will be exploding and so on and so on because again of course there is a problem with refugees and I think so I think what would I have done okay you ask me I think in an one should not be afraid of this an absolutely open debate there they are here they have their own I know now just don't tell me please but I am essentializing them there is not one refugee group they are different okay okay you can always say this this is bullshit also remember when you will criticize Nazism I will then also say but you are essentializing Nazism they are not all the same there are Bavarian Nazis there are Prussian Nazis what I'm saying is of course they are different but with some of them coming from a different culture of course there are problems and I think the only way to do it is simply here I'm a Habermasian an absolutely open debate like was this done in Germany or not what I would have done after those Cologne you remember New Year's Cologne train station those harassing women disorder what I would have done is invite on TV ordinary German people representatives of immigrants representatives of Muslim society and of Muslims and openly engaged in a debate that's the end then establish clear rules do not be afraid of it like what something along these lines there is an a difference between our culture our culture kind of a general vague agreement is that and this is even I admit it openly a Eurocentric feature which is that in our societies we put a much larger accent on individual freedom and independence we put less accent on collective solidarity fidelity to your community and so on and so on so what to do here I will give you an example I saw a report on German TV on ZDF Zweites Deutsches the second chain which as you I hope know is more social democratic leftist one so it was not listening to any of my neo-Nazi friends which I don't have and so on the report was that over two thousand girls per year in Germany escape from German from sorry from Muslim families because they feel oppressed by for example a girl gets a German boyfriend parents don't agree and so on so the way Germany does is in a discreet way they already have over twenty asylum homes and it's really like in criminal cases protecting witnesses you know they give them another identity and so on and so on but then in a justified way the Muslim communities protest that this is not tolerance that they they the German state are destroying their way of life they claim the authority of family over young girls is an essential part of our way of life so fuck it there is no easy multicultural way here you have to decide I'm sorry if some of you know this story it happened in my country years ago it's the same problem Roma Gypsy to be a racist Roma girl escaped from her family in Slovenia when her father wanted to marry her when she was twelve years old with an doesn't matter she escaped to police complained and then of course all feminists the same feminists who otherwise are for multicultural terms anti-Eurocentrism and so on protected her but then some big figures in the Roma community said but do you know that this arranged marriages is a very central constituent of our communal identity you take this from us in two generations all that will remain of us is Gypsy food bands playing but as a community we are over so I think the first thing is to fully recognize the problem there is a problem here so what I would have done I wonder if you agree would be simply to set some basic rules for example immigrants would have to accept of course the rules the same rules should held even more for us Europeans I take this automatically that for example in the case of a conflict between individual and the rights of his her community it's our part of our way of life to protect the individual we have to decide here do we and we have simply to decide on these rules then there is another problem it's not a marginal one I know of examples in Southern Sweden in Denmark in Netherlands and in Berlin in Germany where some radicalized Muslims not all a minority but nonetheless a considerable minority cannot tolerate public display of homosexuality and attack gay parades and so on we so you see what's my solution here the strategy of Left-liberals leftists till now in Europe was if we talk openly about this it serves the enemy let's keep it covered I claim it's a catastrophe we have to risk an open debate the other thing we have to abandon is this eternal Europe enjoys this this feeling guilty whatever happens we are guilty it's a consequence of colonialism or whatever of course we are terribly guilty there would have been no refugees without economic neocolonialism of Europe without stupid military interventions there and so on and so on without occupation of Iraq no ISIS without the most stupid intervention in Libya no ISIS there no chaos in Libya but at the same time you know don't patronize Muslims and all others they are not just passive victims they are agents with a certain vision different visions you know if you just play this game victims victims my god in this way you can justify Hitler you can say which is in a way true Hitler was a reaction to the unjust Peace of Versailles where in an unfair way and this is not I'm not a Nazi if I say this Communist Party in Germany was all the time saying this through the twenties and so on that the way in Versailles Peace Germany was treated was unjust okay but does this mean that we don't fight Hitler does this mean that we say sorry we are responsible for it and so on and so on that's one line of thought precisely you know it's easy to talk about friendship among civilizations but civilizations are something so fundamental it means a way of life civilization is not theoretical premises civilization is how women and men treat each other rules of politeness rules of respect and so on it's terribly difficult to change this and we have to address this all these issues openly that would be my first the second thing that I don't agree with typical liberal multiculturalism is this idea of communication you know we have to understand them we have to open our heart to them the moment we understand them we will see that they are not so horrible of course I agree with this at some level but I would say okay I'll put it like this repeating an old joke if ever if I were to choose one statement which is I am ready to argue the most stupid wisdom that I ever heard it would have been the wisdom often proclaimed by multiculturalists the enemy is someone whom to whom we were not ready to listen to you know like instead of trying to understand you I just fetishize you as the terrified other now whenever I hear this my first reaction is oh that's good to know so Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to understand him and so on no fuck you there are real enemies and the more and for example the wisdom of Winston Churchill was that he was listening to Hitler from the very beginning and he knew it immediately that Hitler is even more dangerous than Soviet Union than Stalin and as a great conservative he saw it sorry I hate communism but at this point we have to unite with Russia against Hitler and so on so that's my problem here again I agree with my right-wing friends Peter Sloterdijk but in totally open authentically multicultural way why this super-ego pressure I must understand you fuck you I don't understand myself do you think that you understand yourself I mean cultures are totally confused usually inconsistent caught into their own myths the first prejudice that I want to reject here problematize is the idea that people maybe doing horrible things but if you listen to their side of the story you will learn to see it differently maybe but my claim is that the truth again an old X-Files follower the truth is out there not in your insight whenever I recently read a wonderful book I forgot the author on Nazi ethics the title is on purpose provocative the woman a lady is interested in this simple fact Nazis were doing horrible things what stories were they telling to themselves to justify or to make it tolerable for them to do what they were doing so I don't believe in inner experience you take the worst ethnic cleansers if you listen to them you will always discover that they have a wonderful side to them inner story that they tell about it's not a problem this I had some friends in Serbia Bosnian Serbs they have wonderful poetry national poetry to and all others in ex-Yugoslavia but so what I'm saying is that for me your innermost self-experience is for me here I'm a psychoanalyst the fundamental lie we construct narratives ourselves basically to cover up to justify to render us blind for the horrors that we are doing in reality so for me it's not that the truth of what you are doing is inside you what you meant by it I don't care what you meant by it what you meant by it your inner story is the lie you compose to cover what you are doing this is for me the greatest legacy of three big religions of the book Judaism Christianity Islam Levinas with whom in contrast to you I'm not ready to sell my mother into slavery for him but he had one nice point where he says that this Jewish iconoclasm is not to be read you know don't paint God blah blah is not to be read in a Gnostic way it doesn't mean God is so much beyond there that it's beyond representation no his point is God is not there in the innermost of your experience God is in how we treat each other here that's why you shouldn't build images images of him and so on and in Islam you have the same when in Quran sorry to mention it you must some of you must know this better than me how doesn't Muhammad even say somewhere if you believe it or not I don't mess with that that's your inner decision what interests me is that you respect certain rules and so on and so on that's the basic point of these three big books let's leave to sorry if this will sound racist I don't mean it let's leave to Orientals all that bullshit about you know your inner experience it's a nice thing but it doesn't prevent catastrophes when I was the last time here maybe you remember two-three years ago I gave a talk on Buddhism and I had a nice Zen Buddhism debate with some but I still insist on my basic insight yes Buddhist meditation is a wonderful radical thing what I was claiming is only that it has no clear ethical implications no wonder that the worst crimes Japanese in China and so on were fully not only tolerated but justified by Zen Buddhism and so on so there is authentic inner experience is no guarantee for you not doing horrors outside so what I want to conclude with is maybe some kind of a praising hypocrisy and external manners you know how I would like to live in a what in New York they call condominiums these big apartment blocks no and I like the term because when I first heard the term years ago I thought oh do you get free condoms there or what okay my Balkan perversion sorry but and my idea is this one your neighbor is a Palestinian another neighbor is a Jew a black guy there a Latino American there a Chinese there and we don't spend all the time debating and trying to understand each other we politely ignore each other and then of course it's wonderful when it happens this is true miracle all of a sudden you establish a contact but it should be left to be a miracle we will never understand everyone I'm always suspicious for this universal formula even if they are Christian love everyone and so on this everyone usually always implies everyone except here although I have a certain half-admiration for him I remember Khomeini in he said when the war was still on in spite of all death penalties he met a Western journalist and he claimed Iranian Revolution is the most human one we didn't kill not even one human being then the journalist was a little bit shocked you know like but you did kill those those those you know what was Khomeini's answer oh they are simply dogs they are not human at all you know like whenever you speak about universal love just ask who is excluded as as not even human so what I'm saying is that precisely in today's global universe where different cultures are in a way that they were not prepared for thrown today sorry thrown together before this bullshit of we should love each other know each other no sorry love for me is very exclusive thing love is not I love you all you know who said I love you all historical moment I would like to show you this too late now you remember when East Germany was falling apart Erich Mielke the hard guy the minister of boss of Stasi was already attacked things were disintegrating in the East German parliament and shocked he came up this is historical look at it you find it everywhere in YouTube he said in despair Aber ich liebe euch alle Aber ich liebe but I love you all that's appropriate statement for the chief of secret police he loves you all that's why he liquidates all those who disturb this love and so on no I mean the true authentic statement is no I don't love you all I'm indifferent towards almost all of you all of you but I still respect you you know it's easy to be nice to you if I love you and it's the same with immigrants I hate this racist secretly attitude thought but they are nice kind people so what are you telling me that if they are not nice and kind that we can screw them throw them out you know here I am part of Western legacy love your neighbor as yourself but as all good again Levinas I have problems with him I warn you and when people embodied in me will take power you will have to write in prison in Gulag long confessions how was I seduced by Levinas but he did say another nice thing he said that the way it's a wonderful thought he was well aware Levinas of what Lacan is already saying that neighbor in Jewish tradition and then Christianity is not a fellow man it's not oh he is like me no you encounter a neighbor when what's typical encounter of a neighbor let's say I know you we become friends we are just fellow men we know each other but then all of a sudden years afterwards I do something something good usually it's more something bad I don't know I kick a child I I I laugh sadistic then you say my god but did I know this guy at all how can he do at that moment I become a neighbor Lacan also developed that neighbor is the other in the abyss of its otherness where you never know what it is and as Levinas interprets then in a wonderful way I simplify but that's one of his lines the Jewish commandments don't steal don't that precisely as a way to keep the neighbor at a proper distance it's a wonderful reading I claim so again I think this is the only ethics for today you know again the worst thing we can do for refugees is to idealize them in this way no many of them are desperate people you know the true love of the neighbor is that you help him even if you don't love him I wonder if you would agree but for me love is something very exclusive love is an an libidinal and almost cosmic catastrophe I'm not in love I wander around I take a drink with friends maybe here and there a one-night stand I was never doing it but let's pretend it and so on and then I fall in love can you imagine what a catastrophe this is all my life is totally thrown out of balance that stupid woman or man or or once people annoyed me but when you say woman you are you know binary heterosexual then I went on and Judith Butler was so mad at me because I I I said okay I will do it in a politically correct manner then another being woman man transgender woman a dog why not a dog we should not be speciesists you know and so on okay you are you know what love means it's total ontological imbalance I meet you you a particular stupid perishable being you are for me more than everything else everything love is an ontological catastrophe that's why it's nice to be in love but also catastrophic so isn't it that's why I never trusted this flat admiration oh I love you all no fuck you I don't love you all I love you maybe here and there and that's the only true love and the art that's why ah a provocation to you then I will finish you know the most intelligent critique of Levinas that I've heard and I must admit I'm not talking here about Levinas but more about his popular perception is that the reason he is so popular is that he secretly Christianizes Judaism in what sense that all this notion of you know human face the defenseless vulnerable face of the other addressing you as the ultimate ethical starting point whatever I have a Jewish friend in Israel who says no that we Jews know something more that Levinas ignores that the zero ethical gesture is not I see your face oh I feel an ethical injunction coming from it that the authentic Jewish gesture is okay I'm fascinated by you your face but then here comes this Jewish collective spirit the first ethical thing to do is to look around and ask but what do I not see when I see your face you know to make this step back towards others who remain in shadow so that your stupid face not yours although maybe I don't exclude it is open there I so you see this you see how tricky I am and sophisticated this would be maybe I'm wrong you can correct me so you noticed it I read I emphasized I'm not talking here about Levinas in himself I'm talking about the popular perception of Levinas and I think this is a very nice gesture about this popular image of Levinas that again you are fascinated by someone the zero level ethical gesture is look around what you ignore what you don't see in order to see that here refugees enter and all that I mean okay I did it I covered almost one third of what I wanted to say but the same holds for you I will keep my word also this tomorrow afternoon after the last talk everything that I was not able to sell here but prepared whom should I send you to you or to my slave sorry I mean this in a democratic way you know but do to the slave what TA slave slave slave S L A V E my idea is I'm generally against slavery but don't you think that in academia we should make a small exception and we can be polite and call them research assistants whatever we need slaves we just I told you I will treat you nicely I will beat you in such a way that there will be no traces and so on I will be a very good master you know okay sorry I finished thank you very much
The great challenge of the Left is how to reconstruct state apparatus not in this shitty populist way they will all the time be in contact with social movements and so on but as an invisible well-functioning machine relatively as far as possible non-corrupted and so on because you know usually people designate Stalinism as bureaucratic socialism I think it's exactly if we use the term bureaucracy in its noble Max Weber sense the problem of Stalinism was precisely that it politicized the state so much that it never was ready and able to construct a neutral well-functioning bureaucracy it always needed in order to thrive purges an emergency state and so on and so on and I even got caught into this argument once with anarchist groups friends they claim we hate states we want small communities where in a self-transparent way we organize our lives we run our lives I told them on two counts I'm opposed to you even on three counts first but are you aware that I told them I love things when they really function like that but are you aware that in order for this to function you need a good efficient state to to organize the complex background like okay you organize distribution of electricity fuck you where does electricity come from it has to be rendered available education healthcare and so on and so on so again the second point I even doubt to provoke you a little bit about this local democracy this non even my good friend Alain Badiou I think goes too much into this that our ultimate goal should be not representative state but living local democracy where people are immediately present self-organizing and so on and so on now I will give you a very brutal argument but it was made once by Trotsky in a very intelligent way namely to be brutal would you really like to live in such a shitty local democracy situation every afternoon you have to go to some stupid meeting how we organize the education of children how we distribute water how we do this that no sorry I want to live in a nicely alienated state by nicely alienated I mean it's invisible there out of your control but it delivers it functions water is here I don't want to debate every afternoon where water comes from and how I want water to be here I want healthcare to be here I want energy to be here I want ecological I don't believe I always think that all this bullshit about to provoke you a little bit more this is superstitious logic it's pure ideology you know this ecological bullshit like did you recycle that paper did you throw all the newspapers aside this is to make us feel good and to this is a genius of ideology in action they translate a social problem how we will restructure how to restructure our economy and so on into personal responsibility this is ideology at its purest when you criticize a big company and then an idiot comes and tells you yeah it's easy to criticize but what did you do did you put all Coke cans aside did you do this that and if you do it it's what it's simply the main function is to make you feel good you see you see I did my duty towards Mother Earth I carefully put all the cans of Coke here all that I put there and so on that's the main function of it it's ideology at its purest it's the same I claim even with unfortunately this is I even I think presented this line but you were not here two-three times ago here in this very room how it's the same with charity or with eco with all of them look if there is an entity which is ideology at its purest today I'm sorry if some of you know this line this is my favorite example but now they are no longer playing this game this card so strongly as they did years ago Starbucks I'm not a terrorist but if I were to be a terrorist I would say bomb Starbucks you know why no it's not coffee is bad or whatever I don't care about that but I don't know how it is now but I remember five-ten years ago whenever you enter a Starbucks restaurant you have big posters we are ecologically conscious two cents of every cup of tea goes to some stupid Guatemala children Somalia orphans to save this to save that this is the most ingenious eco ideology ideological move that I can imagine what's this operation usually we are divided between being consumerists and then oh but we should take care that we are not just consumerists we should also take care of Mother Earth of society Starbucks is offering you a wonderful solution which is we will include into the price of your consumerism commodity also your social duty so pay twenty cents more for cappuccino and you did also at the same time as being a consumerist you did your duty towards society and so on and so on so again I claim that again this is the big problem today we don't need local democracy of course when it functions it's nice but isn't it that all the big challenges that we have today are challenges which need even more than state power we will have to organize ourselves even at a transnational level look Jean-Pierre Dupuy the catastrophic theorist you should get him here incidentally he is so intelligent he told me that as a member of some fucking European committee he was in Fukushima two days after the earthquake tsunami all that and he told me that for one day a little bit less Japanese government was in a total panic because they thought that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area thirty million people if this were to happen can you imagine where will they put them the rational solution would have been of course to ask Russia to give part of Eastern Siberia I'm if I'm brutally rational that would have been the only solution but how can you do it no mechanisms to do it or what you see we have to confront these problems and I'm sick and tired of this local no we need larger global organisms I mean this is what I'm now repeating myself what I already said in my class this is the big task of the Left today not every idiot can do this ecstatic things oh we all cried solidarity one million people on Gaza Square on Tahrir Square on Syntagma Square we were all with them crying together fuck you I don't care what I care is the morning after when the ecstatic energy is over and things return to normal how will ordinary people feel the difference this is the only thing that interests me so now if the picture is so bleak if we don't know what to do you are quite right to ask so fuck it why don't we call it a day and claim okay radical change doesn't work let's become reasonable pragmatics within the mechanisms that we have basically we should be just I use this term with great irony left-wing Fukuyama-ists you know we accept Fukuyama general diagnosis liberal democratic capitalism is the ultimate form and we just have to like give it a little bit more of a leftist spin like if I may be a little bit evil like Justin Trudeau now should be in Canada should be our image you know the problem is we may diverge here but the problem is that I don't think this works for a simple reason and that's the only serious question today we are confronting a series of problems can liberal democratic capitalism deal with them in the long term I don't think it can and that's why I remain nominally don't be afraid not in any Stalinist sense a communist because I think that the problems we are dealing today are problems of what Marx called commons what should be our common shared inheritance what shouldn't be left neither to the market nor to the state power and there are a series of these commons for example the commons of culture in the broadest sense the immaterial capital cognitive capital means of communication and so on it's clear that incredibly important things are happening here that's where WikiLeaks enter on the one hand we know that cyberspace is an incredible opportunity for people's direct self-organization and so on on the other hand cyberspace offers unbelievable new forms of control and so on for example Assange okay another of my friends if I boast Assange convinced me that Google is a private version of NSA you know how they Google even he told me no even he didn't I read about this if some of you use Kindle to read books are you aware what happens there not only do they know Amazon which book you bought but the Kindle machine sends all the data how much of the book which pages did you read how much time did you take it did you read the whole book they get a complete profile on you and the same goes for medicine you know so what I'm saying is that on the one hand we get here unheard of abilities of control on the other hand I believe quite naively what some thinkers like the latest one is Paul Mason now bestseller The End of Capitalism what they are too naive but their basic message is right that so-called that this so-called intellectual property is the greatest threat to capitalism today it simply cannot it's more and more difficult to contain it into the form of private property look at how we are all I am at least totally corrupted my two almost most visited websites are Kickass and Pirate Bay of course you know we download it who even I mean I don't know how it is here maybe in Switzerland here you are still a little bit retarded but in all of Manhattan you no longer get not even one DVD store serious now it's all disappearing this copying of data like what copyright I know for example almost all my friends know it there is among others some in Russia some website where they follow precisely our work philosophy humanities and so on and you get literally everything a week or two the latest after appearance you can download it for free and so on and so on so something is also it's also so many other things of shared knowledge and so on and so on which again this is I think maybe one of the key struggles today the common intellectual commons then we have of course the commons of external nature pollution exploitation of nature and so on why commons because of course nature is our shared commons and we have to take care of it in this way then we have the commons of internal nature our genetic inheritance the topic of biogenetics it's better maybe for you not to know what is already going on there I'm not a paranoiac but it's quite incredible this you know that the vision and not a distant vision it's still very primitive but it is already happening is the direct link between computer and our brain so you no longer need even you know Stephen Hawking till recently he used one finger that he was ready to move a little bit to press the button no now you can directly communicate with a computer like they I saw it in London my god the model it's still very primitive but it already works of a wheelchair for crippled people sorry politically correct is to say for movement challenged people or how whatever and that you don't need anything your brain is not even wired it's just scanned with some you have a special helmet you think forward the chair moves forward you think left your wheelchair moves left and so on and so on so okay this is wonderful divine almost we are like gods you think it happens yeah but if it goes out it goes in that's they can also control you and it's incredible to what extent all this is already developed for example you know when they make these plans scientific they always try to sell them to you by claiming we will help invalids crippled people and so on but then it always goes for example the latest trend in some top advanced companies in psychiatry is you already have scanning machines which measure precisely the state of your mind are you in depression not and so on and so on but to such an incredible extent already that it's not just a general good feeling but they can specify is it rage is it depression tiredness so they can get a complete image and they now even propose which is nice in a way to then directly connect this to some capsule with medicines so that when you feel bad a certain serum medicine is put into your blood when you feel you know you don't even have to think about it the machine does everything now I am not anti-technological it's wonderful but again how will this develop who will control this and of course the last big problem that I see the commons of humanity itself did you notice how the other side of global market is new walls are arising all around and if you don't believe me look at Hollywood big blockbusters they know it you know all those movies like Elysium Hunger Games they had the right suspicion that if we don't change things we are gradually approaching a kind of a new apartheid society where basically there will be and there already are those who are in and those who are out even a conservative thinker but we are friends I kind of like him he's an intelligent conservative Peter Sloterdijk in his new book on capitalism global capitalism he had an ingenious idea to claim that the term globe should not be just used in the sense of global all-encompassing but also globe in the sense of a cupola a globe so that there are those who are covered by it and there are those who are out like twenty percent of people of world humanity we are in others are out and this I think I prefer even not and I think that problems that we have now problems of sorry I don't want oh my god I hate myself time is running so much because I'm already at the beginning you know I covered what I thought no and I think it's clearly that the problem of refugees is to be located at this level it's simply those outside the globe trying to penetrate inside the globe and here I wanted to go okay let me briefly if I may be a little bit longer if I go a little bit longer let me go into this here I think precisely apropos the refugee problem now what I will be telling you is extremely problematic because just if you have time to do such stupid things just go on the web and put my name and racism fascism and you will see all the characterizations of me as a racist fascist and so on of course I'm totally for more refugees in Europe I'm not what people claim I just want to focus on certain problems which are real what problems okay we have this Sloterdijk situation cupola outside inside and so on on the one hand I always emphasize this I will use a metaphor which I already used in my class I'm sorry you know Jacques Lacan has a wonderful saying somewhere my psychoanalytic teacher if there is a jealous husband who is obsessed that his wife is cheating on him and even if all his suspicions are true his wife is sleeping around like crazy his jealousy is still pathological because what makes it pathological his jealousy is not that it's not true but the function of jealousy pathological jealousy means you you need jealousy to sustain your self-identity okay we can go on into how anti-Semitism works in the in a similar way and I think it's something similar going on with this right-wing anti-populist anti-immigrant face today our answer should not be the idealization here problems with me and some liberal leftists begin my point is that we should not we should not claim that no refugees are good people incidentally when people try to prove this what they do is they always quote those upper-class Syrian refugees no but they are educated and so on and so on I know but I know more I know that that's why Syrian refugees I know examples from Germany from England even from Slovenia where they just passed through they know this and in a wonderful subtle way they use this as a class distinction right they like to contact us you old Europeans and claim you see we are not the same as those as those primitive fundamentalists we are like you already you know okay but what I'm saying is that our defense should not be no refugees are ideal blah blah blah no we should say even if some things of what you claim about refugees there are fundamentalists among them with different attitude towards women if it's true it has nothing to do with your fear of refugees your fear of refugees is pathological its source is a different one it's uncertainty of Europe itself losing its welfare and so on all that so I claim that here I'm absolutely beyond doubt that the true threat to Europe are not refugees even if ten million Islamists enter Europe the true threat to Europe are defenders of Europe today those nationalist anti-immigrant defenders if they come to power Farage in England ah Farage you know UKIP boss another boasting I met him I know him and if you are a secret right-winger looking for a new dictator I must disappoint you he is not the guy he is an ex-talk show host a cheap demagogue if you are looking for new Fuehrer sorry you will not get it in Farage you know but if people like Farage in England Marine Le Pen in France and so on if they take over that will be the end of Europe the real end of Europe but what I want to say this is that on the one hand we have to be here ruthless there is a logic there is this basic model of refugees are a threat to us this is the same as what Lacan says about jealousy the true question is why this fear of ours which cannot be grounded simply in facts but it tells a lot about the crisis of our European identity today so that's the first point the second point I find it catastrophic to now comes the more problematic point to deal of course there are problems with refugees my god what do you expect hundreds of thousands even millions people from different cultures come and there would be no problems but it's absolutely crucial to deal this with these problems openly in a frank debate if we don't do this the price will be paid by refugees themselves and violence against them will be exploding and so on and so on because again of course there is a problem with refugees and I think so I think what would I have done okay you ask me I think in an one should not be afraid of this an absolutely open debate there they are here they have their own I know now just don't tell me please but I am essentializing them there is not one refugee group they are different okay okay you can always say this this is bullshit also remember when you will criticize Nazism I will then also say but you are essentializing Nazism they are not all the same there are Bavarian Nazis there are Prussian Nazis what I'm saying is of course they are different but with some of them coming from a different culture of course there are problems and I think the only way to do it is simply here I'm a Habermasian an absolutely open debate like was this done in Germany or not what I would have done after those Cologne you remember New Year's Cologne train station those harassing women disorder what I would have done is invite on TV ordinary German people representatives of immigrants representatives of Muslim society and of Muslims and openly engaged in a debate that's the end then establish clear rules do not be afraid of it like what something along these lines there is an a difference between our culture our culture kind of a general vague agreement is that and this is even I admit it openly a Eurocentric feature which is that in our societies we put a much larger accent on individual freedom and independence we put less accent on collective solidarity fidelity to your community and so on and so on so what to do here I will give you an example I saw a report on German TV on ZDF Zweites Deutsches the second chain which as you I hope know is more social democratic leftist one so it was not listening to any of my neo-Nazi friends which I don't have and so on the report was that over two thousand girls per year in Germany escape from German from sorry from Muslim families because they feel oppressed by for example a girl gets a German boyfriend parents don't agree and so on so the way Germany does is in a discreet way they already have over twenty asylum homes and it's really like in criminal cases protecting witnesses you know they give them another identity and so on and so on but then in a justified way the Muslim communities protest that this is not tolerance that they they the German state are destroying their way of life they claim the authority of family over young girls is an essential part of our way of life so fuck it there is no easy multicultural way here you have to decide I'm sorry if some of you know this story it happened in my country years ago it's the same problem Roma Gypsy to be a racist Roma girl escaped from her family in Slovenia when her father wanted to marry her when she was twelve years old with an doesn't matter she escaped to police complained and then of course all feminists the same feminists who otherwise are for multicultural terms anti-Eurocentrism and so on protected her but then some big figures in the Roma community said but do you know that this arranged marriages is a very central constituent of our communal identity you take this from us in two generations all that will remain of us is Gypsy food bands playing but as a community we are over so I think the first thing is to fully recognize the problem there is a problem here so what I would have done I wonder if you agree would be simply to set some basic rules for example immigrants would have to accept of course the rules the same rules should held even more for us Europeans I take this automatically that for example in the case of a conflict between individual and the rights of his her community it's our part of our way of life to protect the individual we have to decide here do we and we have simply to decide on these rules then there is another problem it's not a marginal one I know of examples in Southern Sweden in Denmark in Netherlands and in Berlin in Germany where some radicalized Muslims not all a minority but nonetheless a considerable minority cannot tolerate public display of homosexuality and attack gay parades and so on we so you see what's my solution here the strategy of Left-liberals leftists till now in Europe was if we talk openly about this it serves the enemy let's keep it covered I claim it's a catastrophe we have to risk an open debate the other thing we have to abandon is this eternal Europe enjoys this this feeling guilty whatever happens we are guilty it's a consequence of colonialism or whatever of course we are terribly guilty there would have been no refugees without economic neocolonialism of Europe without stupid military interventions there and so on and so on without occupation of Iraq no ISIS without the most stupid intervention in Libya no ISIS there no chaos in Libya but at the same time you know don't patronize Muslims and all others they are not just passive victims they are agents with a certain vision different visions you know if you just play this game victims victims my god in this way you can justify Hitler you can say which is in a way true Hitler was a reaction to the unjust Peace of Versailles where in an unfair way and this is not I'm not a Nazi if I say this Communist Party in Germany was all the time saying this through the twenties and so on that the way in Versailles Peace Germany was treated was unjust okay but does this mean that we don't fight Hitler does this mean that we say sorry we are responsible for it and so on and so on that's one line of thought precisely you know it's easy to talk about friendship among civilizations but civilizations are something so fundamental it means a way of life civilization is not theoretical premises civilization is how women and men treat each other rules of politeness rules of respect and so on it's terribly difficult to change this and we have to address this all these issues openly that would be my first the second thing that I don't agree with typical liberal multiculturalism is this idea of communication you know we have to understand them we have to open our heart to them the moment we understand them we will see that they are not so horrible of course I agree with this at some level but I would say okay I'll put it like this repeating an old joke if ever if I were to choose one statement which is I am ready to argue the most stupid wisdom that I ever heard it would have been the wisdom often proclaimed by multiculturalists the enemy is someone whom to whom we were not ready to listen to you know like instead of trying to understand you I just fetishize you as the terrified other now whenever I hear this my first reaction is oh that's good to know so Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to understand him and so on no fuck you there are real enemies and the more and for example the wisdom of Winston Churchill was that he was listening to Hitler from the very beginning and he knew it immediately that Hitler is even more dangerous than Soviet Union than Stalin and as a great conservative he saw it sorry I hate communism but at this point we have to unite with Russia against Hitler and so on so that's my problem here again I agree with my right-wing friends Peter Sloterdijk but in totally open authentically multicultural way why this super-ego pressure I must understand you fuck you I don't understand myself do you think that you understand yourself I mean cultures are totally confused usually inconsistent caught into their own myths the first prejudice that I want to reject here problematize is the idea that people maybe doing horrible things but if you listen to their side of the story you will learn to see it differently maybe but my claim is that the truth again an old X-Files follower the truth is out there not in your insight whenever I recently read a wonderful book I forgot the author on Nazi ethics the title is on purpose provocative the woman a lady is interested in this simple fact Nazis were doing horrible things what stories were they telling to themselves to justify or to make it tolerable for them to do what they were doing so I don't believe in inner experience you take the worst ethnic cleansers if you listen to them you will always discover that they have a wonderful side to them inner story that they tell about it's not a problem this I had some friends in Serbia Bosnian Serbs they have wonderful poetry national poetry to and all others in ex-Yugoslavia but so what I'm saying is that for me your innermost self-experience is for me here I'm a psychoanalyst the fundamental lie we construct narratives ourselves basically to cover up to justify to render us blind for the horrors that we are doing in reality so for me it's not that the truth of what you are doing is inside you what you meant by it I don't care what you meant by it what you meant by it your inner story is the lie you compose to cover what you are doing this is for me the greatest legacy of three big religions of the book Judaism Christianity Islam Levinas with whom in contrast to you I'm not ready to sell my mother into slavery for him but he had one nice point where he says that this Jewish iconoclasm is not to be read you know don't paint God blah blah is not to be read in a Gnostic way it doesn't mean God is so much beyond there that it's beyond representation no his point is God is not there in the innermost of your experience God is in how we treat each other here that's why you shouldn't build images images of him and so on and in Islam you have the same when in Quran sorry to mention it you must some of you must know this better than me how doesn't Muhammad even say somewhere if you believe it or not I don't mess with that that's your inner decision what interests me is that you respect certain rules and so on and so on that's the basic point of these three big books let's leave to sorry if this will sound racist I don't mean it let's leave to Orientals all that bullshit about you know your inner experience it's a nice thing but it doesn't prevent catastrophes when I was the last time here maybe you remember two-three years ago I gave a talk on Buddhism and I had a nice Zen Buddhism debate with some but I still insist on my basic insight yes Buddhist meditation is a wonderful radical thing what I was claiming is only that it has no clear ethical implications no wonder that the worst crimes Japanese in China and so on were fully not only tolerated but justified by Zen Buddhism and so on so there is authentic inner experience is no guarantee for you not doing horrors outside so what I want to conclude with is maybe some kind of a praising hypocrisy and external manners you know how I would like to live in a what in New York they call condominiums these big apartment blocks no and I like the term because when I first heard the term years ago I thought oh do you get free condoms there or what okay my Balkan perversion sorry but and my idea is this one your neighbor is a Palestinian another neighbor is a Jew a black guy there a Latino American there a Chinese there and we don't spend all the time debating and trying to understand each other we politely ignore each other and then of course it's wonderful when it happens this is true miracle all of a sudden you establish a contact but it should be left to be a miracle we will never understand everyone I'm always suspicious for this universal formula even if they are Christian love everyone and so on this everyone usually always implies everyone except here although I have a certain half-admiration for him I remember Khomeini in he said when the war was still on in spite of all death penalties he met a Western journalist and he claimed Iranian Revolution is the most human one we didn't kill not even one human being then the journalist was a little bit shocked you know like but you did kill those those those you know what was Khomeini's answer oh they are simply dogs they are not human at all you know like whenever you speak about universal love just ask who is excluded as as not even human so what I'm saying is that precisely in today's global universe where different cultures are in a way that they were not prepared for thrown today sorry thrown together before this bullshit of we should love each other know each other no sorry love for me is very exclusive thing love is not I love you all you know who said I love you all historical moment I would like to show you this too late now you remember when East Germany was falling apart Erich Mielke the hard guy the minister of boss of Stasi was already attacked things were disintegrating in the East German parliament and shocked he came up this is historical look at it you find it everywhere in YouTube he said in despair Aber ich liebe euch alle Aber ich liebe but I love you all that's appropriate statement for the chief of secret police he loves you all that's why he liquidates all those who disturb this love and so on no I mean the true authentic statement is no I don't love you all I'm indifferent towards almost all of you all of you but I still respect you you know it's easy to be nice to you if I love you and it's the same with immigrants I hate this racist secretly attitude thought but they are nice kind people so what are you telling me that if they are not nice and kind that we can screw them throw them out you know here I am part of Western legacy love your neighbor as yourself but as all good again Levinas I have problems with him I warn you and when people embodied in me will take power you will have to write in prison in Gulag long confessions how was I seduced by Levinas but he did say another nice thing he said that the way it's a wonderful thought he was well aware Levinas of what Lacan is already saying that neighbor in Jewish tradition and then Christianity is not a fellow man it's not oh he is like me no you encounter a neighbor when what's typical encounter of a neighbor let's say I know you we become friends we are just fellow men we know each other but then all of a sudden years afterwards I do something something good usually it's more something bad I don't know I kick a child I I I laugh sadistic then you say my god but did I know this guy at all how can he do at that moment I become a neighbor Lacan also developed that neighbor is the other in the abyss of its otherness where you never know what it is and as Levinas interprets then in a wonderful way I simplify but that's one of his lines the Jewish commandments don't steal don't that precisely as a way to keep the neighbor at a proper distance it's a wonderful reading I claim so again I think this is the only ethics for today you know again the worst thing we can do for refugees is to idealize them in this way no many of them are desperate people you know the true love of the neighbor is that you help him even if you don't love him I wonder if you would agree but for me love is something very exclusive love is an an libidinal and almost cosmic catastrophe I'm not in love I wander around I take a drink with friends maybe here and there a one-night stand I was never doing it but let's pretend it and so on and then I fall in love can you imagine what a catastrophe this is all my life is totally thrown out of balance that stupid woman or man or or once people annoyed me but when you say woman you are you know binary heterosexual then I went on and Judith Butler was so mad at me because I I I said okay I will do it in a politically correct manner then another being woman man transgender woman a dog why not a dog we should not be speciesists you know and so on okay you are you know what love means it's total ontological imbalance I meet you you a particular stupid perishable being you are for me more than everything else everything love is an ontological catastrophe that's why it's nice to be in love but also catastrophic so isn't it that's why I never trusted this flat admiration oh I love you all no fuck you I don't love you all I love you maybe here and there and that's the only true love and the art that's why ah a provocation to you then I will finish you know the most intelligent critique of Levinas that I've heard and I must admit I'm not talking here about Levinas but more about his popular perception is that the reason he is so popular is that he secretly Christianizes Judaism in what sense that all this notion of you know human face the defenseless vulnerable face of the other addressing you as the ultimate ethical starting point whatever I have a Jewish friend in Israel who says no that we Jews know something more that Levinas ignores that the zero ethical gesture is not I see your face oh I feel an ethical injunction coming from it that the authentic Jewish gesture is okay I'm fascinated by you your face but then here comes this Jewish collective spirit the first ethical thing to do is to look around and ask but what do I not see when I see your face you know to make this step back towards others who remain in shadow so that your stupid face not yours although maybe I don't exclude it is open there I so you see this you see how tricky I am and sophisticated this would be maybe I'm wrong you can correct me so you noticed it I read I emphasized I'm not talking here about Levinas in himself I'm talking about the popular perception of Levinas and I think this is a very nice gesture about this popular image of Levinas that again you are fascinated by someone the zero level ethical gesture is look around what you ignore what you don't see in order to see that here refugees enter and all that I mean okay I did it I covered almost one third of what I wanted to say but the same holds for you I will keep my word also this tomorrow afternoon after the last talk everything that I was not able to sell here but prepared whom should I send you to you or to my slave sorry I mean this in a democratic way you know but do to the slave what TA slave slave slave S L A V E my idea is I'm generally against slavery but don't you think that in academia we should make a small exception and we can be polite and call them research assistants whatever we need slaves we just I told you I will treat you nicely I will beat you in such a way that there will be no traces and so on I will be a very good master you know okay sorry I finished thank you very much