The Guardian Live Event
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2016-04-19 · 1:16:37 · 11,226 words
with Paul Holdengräber
democracycapitalismliberalism-political-correctnessfascism-populismgeopolitics-warideologyrace-antisemitismrevolution-violencecommunism-socialismreligion-theology
Žižek delivers a talk (likely at Birkbeck, London, circa early 2016) centered on the democratic deficit in Europe, the refugee crisis, and the limits of liberal-left politics. He interrogates whether anti-immigrant populism is truly fascism, argues that global capitalism structurally cannot be matched by global democracy, and defends a politics of targeted 'small steps' that are nonetheless traumatic to the system. In the Q&A he ranges across Brexit, Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Erdoğan, ISIS, Western human rights rhetoric, and the ethics of integration and multiculturalism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek uses the term critically, arguing it is too simple a diagnosis: EU bureaucrats may lack democratic legitimation yet protect democratic institutions, while democratically elected governments may undermine them.
as “politically correct populist racist”
Žižek's characterization of Pim Fortuyn, the paradoxical figure who combined gay rights, feminist politics, and anti-immigrant racism, revealing the intersection of liberal political correctness and right-wing populism.
Kant's concept of a world-citizenship law and trans-state governance, invoked by Žižek as the necessary but structurally impossible counterpart to global capitalism.
Implicitly at play when Žižek argues global capitalism can only function if sustained by nation-state frames, abstract global markets require concrete ethnic-nationalist political forms.
as “principal contradiction”
Borrowed from Mao and deployed to name the structural impossibility of a global political order corresponding to global capitalist economy.
Archaic ethnic, religious, and nationalist identities that return with a vengeance in the political sphere precisely because global capitalism cannot generate a corresponding global political subject.
The tendency for social-movement bases, once their party holds state power, to immediately begin lobbying for sectional interests rather than maintaining emancipatory pressure.
The difficult period following an electoral breakthrough or revolutionary moment when the actual work of reorganizing the state apparatus must happen, the true test of emancipatory politics.
Not compromise reformism but the selection of specific, apparently modest demands that are nonetheless traumatic for the existing system and can trigger systemic disintegration.
The psychoanalytic structure of 'je sais bien, mais quand même' (I know very well, but nonetheless), used here to describe how societies consciously approach war while denying it can really happen.
Implicitly invoked in the Lacanian formula of communication as the structure where EU/refugee crisis returns the West its own message in inverted form.
as “X without its substance”
Implied when Žižek speaks of European values capable of self-overcoming, universalism emptied of its original European content can be appropriated by the oppressed.
Europe's historical function: to introduce universalist values and then step aside so others (formerly colonized peoples) can take them up and surpass Europe itself.
as “socialist nationalism”
A rebranding of national socialism adopted by some left-Brexiteers, Žižek is deeply skeptical, calling it a catastrophic decision despite its better ring.
Žižek's portmanteau for Putin and Erdoğan as two Platonic copies of the same political type: neoliberal capitalism combined with ethnic-religious authoritarianism.
The patronizing liberal move of explaining all third-world violence as the effect of colonialism, which paradoxically denies non-Western agents the capacity to be genuinely bad or genuinely active.
A multicultural platitude Žižek ridicules as obscene, it implies that all enmity dissolves with enough empathy, which he counters with the Hitler example.
The false liberal presupposition that suffering produces moral virtue in the poor or refugee, Žižek calls it a Frank Capra fantasy and rejects it as another form of condescension.
Stories he reaches for 7
Žižek invokes the film V for Vendetta, where the crowd triumphantly storms Parliament, to ask: what happens in part two? The ecstatic revolutionary moment is irrelevant; the real question is how to organize government the morning after.
“I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery to see part two. What happens then? How do they organize government there?”
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek's friend and theorist of catastrophes, reported that after Fukushima the Japanese government secretly panicked at the prospect of evacuating all 30 million inhabitants of the Tokyo area, illustrating the scale of trans-state action that contemporary crises demand.
“the Japanese government was in total panic because it looked as if the pollution will be so strong that they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, thirty million people.”
Malcolm X's genius was to refuse the 'return to African roots' narrative and instead see the traumatic erasure of tradition (signified by X) as a unique chance of freedom, a dialectical reversal of catastrophe into opportunity.
“what was a tragedy for the blacks, X, means you are deprived of your tradition and so on, is also a unique chance of freedom.”
Žižek argues the Haitian slave rebellion was more important than the French Revolution because for the first time slaves demanded a modern state using European universalist language, not a return to African roots but an appropriation and extension of Enlightenment claims.
“It was a rebellion which said, no, we also want a modern state just like the French and so on.”
Žižek jokes that he loves dialogues, specifically late Plato's dialogues where one person talks the whole time and the other merely says 'by Zeus, so it is, Socrates' every ten minutes, as a self-deprecating preview of the Q&A format.
“I love dialogues but late Plato's dialogues — one guy talks all the time, the other guy says every ten minutes by Zeus, so it is, Socrates.”
Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was gay, pro-women's rights, had good relations with many immigrants, yet opposed fundamentalist immigration, illustrating the paradox of an intersection between right-wing populism and left-liberal political correctness.
“What Pim Fortuyn embodied was the intersection between rightist populism and left-liberal political correctness.”
In the mid-90s an American feminist group wanting to show solidarity with Bosnian raped women sent a letter asking whether the women believed in an eternal female essence or a performatively constructed gender identity, Žižek calls it an example of obscenity.
“do you think that woman has an eternal non-historical essence, or do you admit that woman's identity is performatively constructed and so on.”
Works invoked 5
V for Vendetta film
Used to stage the 'morning after' problem: the film ends with the ecstatic crowd storming Parliament, but what happens in part two?
Roots tv
The return-to-roots narrative Malcolm X wisely left to Hollywood, contrasted negatively with Malcolm X's more radical universalist stance.
Beloved book
Called 'the biggest story I know about the birth of black woman's subjectivity', a mega-work illustrating how Europe's legacy can be taken up and surpassed.
Malcolm X (film) film
Referenced via Denzel Washington's portrayal, used to illustrate Malcolm X's dialectical inversion of the X (loss of roots) into freedom.
One of Žižek's favorite Buñuel scenes: families sit on toilet seats and 'shit' publicly while eating is shameful and private, used to frame Trump's political vulgarity as an inversion of polite codes.
People invoked 36
Cecilia Malmström negative
EU Trade Commissioner who said 'I do not take my mandate from the European people', a symbol of Brussels technocracy without democratic legitimation.
Costis Lapavitsas negative
Taken seriously as a person but his Grexit proposal (Greece exits Euro, prints own money) is rejected as not producing genuine independence from international capital.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi negative
Cited as the proponent of African roots who was on the apartheid payroll, the negative foil to Mandela's universalism.
Ruth Klüger positive
Jewish Auschwitz survivor whose memoir observation that the camp was 'not a factory of goodness' is cited as a key argument against the ennobling-poverty myth.
Mary Wollstonecraft positive
Cited as the first to turn Enlightenment human-rights language against its exclusions, demanding rights for women.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem negative
Cited as the symbol of EU's brutal neoliberal pressure on Greece, the stupidly smiling face of anonymous bureaucratic power.
Narendra Modi negative
Cited as the model politician of the future: total global capitalist combined with ethnic Hindu nationalist, the template for neoliberal + authoritarian nationalism.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
French theorist of catastrophes and friend; reported the Japanese government's secret panic about evacuating Tokyo after Fukushima.
Abdullah Öcalan positive
Imprisoned Kurdish PKK leader who reads Foucault and feminist literature in prison, cited as emblematic of the miraculous modernity of the Kurdish movement.
Ted Cruz negative
Žižek says if he were Surgeon General he would inspect whether Cruz is human or alien, his proposals are the real nightmare, worse than Trump.
Vulgar and racist, but actually a centrist liberal; his outrages function to mask that his actual policy proposals are moderate. Less dangerous than Ted Cruz.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Vice President of Bolivia, close friend; told Žižek privately that even in Bolivia the praised social-movement strategy devolves into clientelism when the party holds state power.
Cited humorously as a 'great actor' who called Obama not just a socialist but possibly something more horrible (communist), illustrating American ideological fear of universal healthcare.
Nancy Fraser positive
American feminist scholar with whom Žižek generally disagrees; however her book on the co-optation of liberal feminism by imperialist politics is cited approvingly.
Jeremy Corbyn positive
Would vote for him; but skeptical about what he can actually achieve, sees his function as primarily pedagogic, educating a new generation of the left.
Alain Badiou positive
My friend Alain Badiou; draws a parallel between today's geopolitical situation and the period before World War One.
Dutch rightist populist killed before elections; cited as a paradoxical symptomatic figure embodying the intersection of right-wing populism and left-liberal political correctness.
Nigel Farage negative
Met him on BBC; describes him as a clown but not a truly dangerous leader, unlike Le Pen or Pegida.
EU First Vice-President who criticized Poland's constitutional changes; Žižek uses him to complicate the simple democratic-deficit narrative.
Bernie Sanders positive
Strongly supported; praised precisely for avoiding upper-middle-class elitist leftism and maintaining dialogue with ordinary workers and farmers.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan negative
Earlier positive reference was to Ottoman/multi-ethnic Turkey, not Erdoğan; now described as following the worst Kemalist nationalist politics against the Kurds, and as a Putogan figure.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Described as a real good friend; Žižek partially disagrees with his belief in transparency and his account of Brussels negotiations, and largely agrees on the lesson of Greek defeat requiring pan-European strategy.
Bolivian government cited as the usual example of left maintaining links with social movements, but García Linera's private critique complicates this.
Malcolm X positive
Žižek's hero; praised for refusing the return-to-roots narrative and turning the traumatic X (erasure of tradition) into a chance of freedom, 'more European than we Europeans.'
Cited as an example of a leader who enacted massive policy (refugee admission) without democratic consultation, used to probe the limits of direct democratic legitimation.
Cornel West positive
Cited as a friend with whom Žižek can share dirty jokes, emblematic of a mode of anti-patronizing inter-racial friendship.
Paul Holdengräber positive
Interlocutor / moderator who pushes back on Žižek's positions on Western values, Brexit, and Corbyn; appears to share knowledge about the Haitian Revolution and Black Madonna.
Toni Morrison positive
Encountered personally (the 'stupid old fat bitch' anecdote); Beloved cited as one of the greatest stories of the birth of Black women's subjectivity.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Leftist liberal who bemoans the decline of the EU and idealizes its past; Žižek argues the democratic EU Habermas mourns never really existed.
Vladimir Putin negative
Half of the Putogan portmanteau; paired with Erdoğan as possible future master of the neoliberal + ethnic authoritarian political model.
Winston Churchill positive
Old anti-communist who nonetheless recognized Hitler as a greater danger than the Soviet Union, cited approvingly as an example of listening to the enemy's story to understand the real threat.
Nelson Mandela positive
Sincerely admired (despite all compromises) for ANC's commitment to universalism rather than a return to African roots.
Noam Chomsky positive
Cited for the concept of 'manufacturing consent' to describe how both American parties have monopolized the political field.
Cited ironically for holding that women are too easily swayed by sensual impressions, used to illustrate Enlightenment's original exclusion of women from full rational humanity.
Immanuel Kant positive
Cited approvingly for having already seen 200 years ago the need for a transnational legal order, quoted directly on a law of world citizenship.
Tony Blair negative
Third Way argument, drop the big answer and settle for modest social democracy, is rejected as insufficient given the scale of contemporary crises.
What it argues
democratic deficit and the impossibility of global democracythe limits of emancipatory politics within formal democratic procedurespolitics of small traumatic steps vs. mega-demandsrefugee crisis and the failure of multicultural integration discourseEuropean values as capable of self-overcomingneoliberal capitalism requiring nation-state ethnic identity as its political supplementthe morning-after problem: what happens after the revolution or electoral breakthrough
Dialectical moves 10
“The democratic EU, the loss of which liberals bemoan, never really existed — the democratic deficit is not a betrayal of an ideal EU but its constitutive condition.”
The nostalgic left-liberal lament for lost EU democracy mourns something that was never there; the deficit is structural, not accidental.
“The true threat to Europe today is not poor Muslim refugees but the defenders of Europe themselves.”
The very forces claiming to protect European civilization (far-right populists) are the ones that would destroy it.
“Far from being a route to independence from global capital, left nationalism (Grexit, printing national money) would deliver you more fully into its hands.”
The nationalist left's proposed escape from global capitalism is actually a deeper entrapment in it.
“European values can only be saved from the West by those the West oppressed — the function of Europe is to be a vanishing mediator.”
The universalist legacy of Europe can only be realized by passing it on to others who take it up against its own originators.
“What appeared as tragedy for Black Americans — the X, being deprived of roots — is also a unique chance of freedom.”
The traumatic erasure of tradition is simultaneously a liberation from the burden of tradition: the negative contains the positive.
“An ideology can be entirely ideological and serve power, yet can also be turned against its own original meaning — human rights is exactly this.”
Ideological concepts are not simply masks for power; their universalist excess can be appropriated by the oppressed to subvert the very order that produced them.
“The more you try to integrate refugees through multicultural empathy, the more you may provoke the right-wing backlash that harms them most.”
Excessive multicultural openness, by triggering populist reaction, produces the opposite of the protection it intends.
“Trump's outrages and stupidities are not excess but function precisely to cover up that he is really a pretty ordinary centrist politician.”
The spectacle of vulgarity masks ideological normality: the transgression is the disguise.
“Defenders of Europe, if they come to power, will finish Europe — far from saving European civilization, they are its negation.”
The nationalist-populist defense of Europe is the very thing that destroys what it claims to protect.
“Excusing refugee and immigrant violence as the effect of colonialism is the inverted white man's burden — it denies agency to the very people it claims to defend.”
Liberal anti-racism that reduces the Other to passive victimhood is a form of racism in its own right.
Claims 23
reframes
The democratic deficit of the EU is too simple a diagnosis: EU bureaucrats who lack democratic legitimation may still be defending democratic institutions against democratically elected proto-fascist governments.EU democratic deficit
asserts
A democratic EU that functions as a genuine emancipatory alternative never really existed; recent EU policy is simply a desperate attempt to make Europe fit for new global capitalism.the European Union
asserts
Emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal democratic procedures, because majorities often want the wrong thing.democracy and emancipatory politics
asserts
It is structurally impossible — not merely practically difficult — to imagine a global political order that would correspond to global capitalist economy.global capitalism and global democracy
asserts
Global capitalism can only function if sustained by nation-state frames, which is why the repressed ethnic and nationalist identities return violently in the political sphere.capitalism and nationalism
rejects
The left's solution of maintaining living links with social movements and civil society is an ersatz: the real task is transforming the functioning of the state apparatus itself.left strategy and social movements
asserts
The true political task today requires 'politics of small steps' — not compromise, but targeted demands that appear modest yet are traumatic to the existing system.left political strategy
rejects
What is called new fascism in right-wing populism is often not really fascism and the lazy use of the term avoids serious analysis of what is actually happening.the fascism label applied to right-wing populism
asserts
The true threat to Europe is not Muslim refugees but the defenders of Europe — far-right populists in power would finish Europe.threats to European civilization
asserts
Western military intervention in Iraq directly produced ISIS, and major powers likely do not genuinely want to destroy ISIS because it serves strategic purposes.ISIS and Western foreign policy
asserts
So-called European or Western values contain within them the seed of their own self-overcoming; oppressed peoples can appropriate them and turn them against their original meaning.European / Western values
reframes
Human rights discourse began by excluding nearly everyone — women, blacks, criminals, children — yet that very universalist framework enabled its extension through struggles like the Haitian Revolution.human rights and imperialism
rejects
The Grexit strategy and the broader left-nationalist program of stepping out of the Euro and printing national currency would not produce genuine independence from international capital.Grexit / left nationalism
asserts
The lesson of the Greek defeat is that one nation-state cannot successfully resist global capital alone; the only chance is a pan-European left strategy.Syriza / Greek crisis / left strategy
reframes
True anti-racism is not multicultural communication and mutual empathy but a kind of polite mutual distance — the freedom to not understand each other, with friendship arising spontaneously.multiculturalism and integration
rejects
The liberal assumption that poverty or suffering ennobles the poor is a patronizing fantasy; poverty usually makes people bitter and mean, and we must love refugees in their actual condition.liberal attitudes toward refugees and the poor
reframes
Integration discourse misses that many perpetrators of terror attacks in France and Belgium were fully integrated second-generation immigrants whose acts were a revolt against their parents' integration.integration and radicalization
asserts
China is de facto acting as an agent of new economic neocolonialism in Africa, often more brutally than old Anglo-Saxon imperialists.China and neocolonialism in Africa
asserts
Mainstream liberal feminism in America was co-opted by liberal imperialism, as shown by feminist support for the Iraq invasion.liberal feminism and imperialism
asserts
Sanders's key achievement is demonstrating that the left can maintain contact with ordinary lower-middle-class workers without adopting upper-middle-class elitist political correctness.Bernie Sanders and left strategy
asserts
Trump is essentially a centrist liberal whose racist and sexist outrages function ideologically to mask that his actual policy proposals are close to mainstream Democrat positions.Donald Trump
asserts
The refugee crisis requires not more multicultural openness but a centralized, large-scale military-logistical organization of reception and distribution across Europe.refugee crisis policy
asserts
The left should take money where available and use it correctly rather than indulging in middle-class guilt about payment for intellectual work.intellectual labor and money
Quotes 20
“I am not afraid to draw the conclusion that emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal democratic procedures. People quite often do not know what they want, or do not want what they know, or simply want the wrong thing.”Slavoj Žižek · emancipatory politics beyond formal democracy
“The structural impossibility of finding a global political order which would correspond to global capitalist economy.”Slavoj Žižek · principal contradiction of the new world order
“In politics, the repressed of the global economy returns with a vengeance. Archaic fixations, particular substantial ethnic religious identities and so on.”Slavoj Žižek · repressed of global economy returning as nationalism
“The big thing is not to do the ecstatic revolution. The change must be felt at the everyday level of daily life when things return to normal.”Slavoj Žižek · the morning after / limits of revolutionary ecstasy
“I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery to see part two. What happens then? How do they organize government there?”Slavoj Žižek · V for Vendetta / the morning after problem
“Don't begin with great, large, mega demands. Pick out specific small demands which may appear modest and totally acceptable, but they are nonetheless very traumatic for the existing system.”Slavoj Žižek · politics of small traumatic steps
“We don't yet have a big answer, which is how to effectively reorganize economy in an efficient way.”Slavoj Žižek · the left's theoretical impasse
“Je sais bien, mais quand même — I know very well but. Like I know we are approaching a war, but wait a minute, it cannot really happen.”Slavoj Žižek · fetishist disavowal applied to approaching war
“Without American occupation of Iraq, there would have been no ISIS.”Slavoj Žižek · Western intervention producing ISIS
“The true threat to Europe today are not poor Muslim refugees or whatever, it's the defenders of Europe.”Slavoj Žižek · defenders of Europe as the real threat
“What was a tragedy for the blacks, X, means you are deprived of your tradition and so on, is also a unique chance of freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · Malcolm X / dialectic of deprivation and freedom
“The function of Europe is to be vanishing mediator. We invented some great things centuries ago, now we have to pass the torch to another one.”Slavoj Žižek · Europe as vanishing mediator
“An enemy is just someone whose story we were not ready to listen to. Uh uh, are they crazy? So it's good to know that Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to listen.”Slavoj Žižek · multicultural empathy platitude refuted via Hitler
“Auschwitz was not a factory of goodness. Those who survived were mostly monsters. That's the true horror of it.”Slavoj Žižek · suffering does not ennoble; Auschwitz as counter-example
“I would like to live in a big condominium. When I was young I liked the term, I thought you get free condoms. But — there is a black guy, you are my neighbor, an African is there, a Chinese is there, and we politely ignore each other. In a very friendly way.”Slavoj Žižek · true anti-racism as polite distance, not enforced empathy
“you white people are so patronizing that you don't even allow us to be really bad.”Slavoj Žižek · inverted white man's burden / liberal racism
“Let's be a Leninist, take money, but use it correctly.”Slavoj Žižek · pragmatic Leninism applied to intellectual labor and fees
“Why I appreciate him? Because I'm sick and tired of this upper-middle-class white political correctness where they don't really have any contact with black people, with poor people.”Slavoj Žižek · Sanders and the rejection of elitist left political correctness
“Aren't they really the two Platonic copies version of one same big politician — I coined the name Putogan.”Slavoj Žižek · Putogan: Putin + Erdoğan as the political future
“If you are rich and I am poor, we are not the same, my God, no?”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of 'we are all the same underneath' liberal ideology
Transcript 62 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I really have to be short, so I selected just one topic which is not central to the book we are publicizing today because many people complain about so-called democratic deficit in Europe and so on. I want to problematize it. So let me quickly go through it. Sometimes faces become symbols, not of the strong individuality of their bearers, but of the anonymous forces behind them. Remember a couple of months ago, was not the stupidly smiling face of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup, the symbol of EU's brutal pressure on Greece? Recently, the international trade deal, TTIP, acquired a new symbol, the cold face of EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, who, when asked by a journalist how she could continue her promotion of TTIP in the face of massive public opposition, responded without shame, I do not take my mandate from the European people. Now a third anonymous face has emerged, Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President of the EU Commission, who, on December 23rd, scolded the Polish government for adopting a new law which poses a threat to democratic constitutional order, since it subordinates Institutional Court to the authority of government. Furthermore, Timmermans condemned the new media law which was rushed through Polish Parliament a couple of weeks later. The law will enable the Parliament to immediately sack all executives of the country's public television and radio companies. Now the ruling party justifies this law as necessary to stifle unfair criticism of its actions, while the opposition decries it as a severe limitation of the freedom of the press. In an immediate sharp reply, the Polish government warned Brussels, quote, to exercise more restraint in instructing and cautioning the parliament and the government of a sovereign and democratic state in the future, end of quote. From the standard liberal view, it is of course inappropriate to put these three names into the same series. Dijsselbloem and Malmström personify the pressure of the Brussels bureaucrats, without democratic legitimation, on states and their democratically elected governments, while Timmermans intervened to protect basic democratic institutions, independence of courts, free press, from a government that overstepped its legitimate powers. However, although it may appear obscene to compare the brutal neoliberal pressure on Greece with the justified criticism of Poland, did the Polish government's reaction not hit the mark in a way? Timmermans, a European administrator without any clear democratic legitimation, exerted pressure on a clearly democratically elected popular government of a sovereign state. Now comes the problematic part. Do we not encounter a similar dilemma in today's Germany? I was recently answering questions for the readers of Süddeutsche Zeitung about the refugee crisis and the question which attracted by far most attention concerned precisely democracy, but with a right-wing populist twist. Namely, a reader asked me, when Angela Merkel made her famous public appeal, Wir schaffen das, come, we will make it, inviting hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, where was her democratic legitimation? What gave her the right to bring such a radical change into German life without democratic consultation? Because every opinion poll will show you that, at least in the last couple of months, large majority of Germans are against allowing refugees to enter Germany. To avoid a misunderstanding, my point here of course is not to support anti-immigrant populists, but to clearly point out the limits of simple direct democratic legitimation. The same goes for those who advocate radical opening of the borders. Are they aware that, since our democracies are nation-state democracies, their demand equals suspension of democracy? A gigantic change should be allowed to affect a country without democratic consultation of its population. And does the same not hold for the calls for transparency of EU decisions? Since in many countries the majority of the public was against the Greek debt reduction, here I in a very friendly way slightly disagree with my really good friend Varoufakis, who believes in this transparency and so on. But wait a minute. Rendering EU negotiations public would make representatives of many European countries advocate even tougher measures against Greece. That's the paradox. I learned that the Slovenian Finance Minister, who was definitely a bad guy, he told a friend of mine that if the negotiations there were to be public, not to lose votes in Slovenia, he would have to be much tougher against Greece. So we encounter here the old problem. What happens to democracy when the majority is inclined to vote for racist and sexist laws? I am not afraid to draw the conclusion that emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal democratic procedures. People quite often do not know what they want, or do not want what they know, or simply want the wrong thing. There is no simple shortcut here. And we can well imagine a democratized Europe with much more engaged citizens than today, but it's a Europe, you know, you keep here Pegida in Germany and so on and so on. Leftist critics of Europe thus find themselves in a strange predicament. While they deplore the democratic deficit of the EU and propose plans to make more transparent the decision-making in Brussels, they support the non-democratic Brussels administrators when they exert pressure on democratically legitimated new, we may even call them proto-fascist, tendencies. The context of this impasse is the big bad wolf of the European liberal left, the threat of new fascism embodied in anti-immigrant rightist populism. This scarecrow is perceived as the principal enemy against which we should all unite, from whatever remains of the radical left to the mainstream liberal democrats. Europe is portrayed as a continent regressing towards a new fascism which feeds on the paranoiac hatred and fear of the external ethnic religious enemy, mostly Muslims. Now while this new fascism is directly predominant in some post-communist East European countries, Hungary, Poland and so on, it's almost winning also in my own country, it is also getting stronger and stronger as we all know in many other countries. But my first doubt, is this fascism really fascism? The term fascism is all too often used as an excuse to avoid detailed analysis of what effectively goes on. For me, the symptomatic point of this topic is a figure to which I am of course opposed but he is kind of a symptom of what was wrong. Maybe you remember him, the Dutch rightist populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was killed in early May two weeks before elections on which he was expected to gain at least percent of the votes. He was a paradoxical symptomatic figure, a rightist populist whose personal features and even most of his opinions were almost perfectly politically correct. He was gay, he had good personal relations with many immigrants, he had an innate sense of irony and so on. In short, he was a good tolerant liberal with regard to everything except his basic political stance. He opposed fundamentalist immigrants because of their hatred precisely towards homosexuality, women's rights and so on. So it's a beautiful paradox. What Pim Fortuyn embodied was the intersection between rightist populism and left-liberal political correctness. He was a unique case of politically correct pro-women rights, gay rights, populist racist. Furthermore, many leftist liberals like Jürgen Habermas, who bemoan the ongoing decline of European Union, seem to idealize its past. The democratic EU, the loss of which they bemoan, I claim never really existed. Recent EU policy is just a desperate attempt to make Europe fit for new global capitalism. The usual left-liberal critique of the EU is basically okay just with a democratic deficit, betrays the same naivety as the critics of ex-communist countries. I remember many of them said, communism is okay, communist state just neglected democracy a little bit. I mean, it's ridiculous. The whole point is that that neglect of democracy was necessary, was part of the system. And I think it's as I am approaching the end, I see your superego voice, yes, yes, very fast. So obviously, the only way to counteract the democratic deficit of global capitalism would have been through some kind of transnational entity. It was already Immanuel, not this one but Kant, Immanuel Kant, who more than years ago saw the need for a transnational state, transnational legal order grounded in the rise of global society. A quote from Kant: Since the narrower or wider community of the people of the earth has developed so that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion, end of quote. But this brings us to what is I think, let's call it in Maoist way, the principal contradiction of the new world order. The structural impossibility of finding a global political order which would correspond to global capitalist economy. I think it's not possible even conceptually to imagine that in the same way that we have global capitalism, global market, that we will get some, I don't know, globally five billion voters elected government. If you look at it closely, you can see that today's global capitalism can only function if it's sustained by nation-state frames. And this is even more and more a tendency. For me, a politician of the future today is for example Modi, the Prime Minister of India. Total global capitalist, but at the same time ethnically more or less, he tries to tone down his racism today, ethnically Hindu nationalist. So in politics, the repressed of the global economy returns with a vengeance. Archaic fixations, particular substantial ethnic religious identities and so on and so on. That's my point to those who claim that global capitalism should be counteracted by global democracy. It can't be done. Then you have to step over capitalism. Now what to do? Just literally a concluding thought. The mantra of the leftist is yes, moderate left, we should play the parliamentary game, but if we win, we should fight against the danger of becoming alienated standard bureaucratic government. We should maintain the living link with social base, civil society and so on and so on. But I'm totally opposed to this solution. Why? Because I think that you know for example what happened in Greece. Now the standard leftist reaction is, the reason Syriza betrayed its program is because it lost contacts with its base. All the social movements, feminists, ecologists, human rights, whatever. It just became a party like another. I agree but I absolutely don't believe that the solution is more of a link with social movements and so on. I think this is just an ersatz. The true problem is how to change, if it's possible, if not, we are lost, the functioning of the state apparatus itself. Because and now I'm not bluffing. What I'm telling you now was told to me in private and I'm telling you now in private just by my good friend García Álvaro Linera, the Vice President of Bolivia, which is usually quoted as the land where the government, the Morales government, sustains itself through keeping the links alive with social movements and so on. But as Linera told me, there is also an extremely painful and strong bad result of this. The moment you state hold powers, this so much celebrated social base movements begin to play clientelist game. He told me it's very nice, we have that tribe has representatives, that group of miners have representatives, they immediately start to play the clientelist game. So my point is this one. The big task of the left and of all of us, in view of a society in which we live, society which faces problems which I think cannot be solved in this local democracy way. And incidentally I'm personally against local democracy. Can you imagine living in this social movements local democracy every afternoon because you are active? You have to go to some stupid meetings, kindergarten, where do we get water and so on. No, I want in a good sense alienated, in the sense of invisible and so on. Local autocracies? Sorry? Local autocracies? No, even more, state autocracy, they just do efficiently the job and I want to have my fucking peace, to read, to write my books and so on and so on. You know what's the problem? The problem is this one. Now I'm really, now I'm really at the end. The title of this my short intervention could have been, did you see the movie with Natalie Portman and so on, V for Vendetta? The title could have been V for Vendetta part two. Namely, you know what happens, a triumph at the end of the film. It takes place even here in UK I think, no? The crowd breaks the barrier, takes over the Parliament, everyone is ecstatic, the end. I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery to see part two. What happens then? How do they organize government there? I'm sick and tired of these emphatic moments, you know. My God, Tahrir Square, Syntagma Square in Greece, hundreds of thousands of people, we are all one with them, we cry and so on and so on. I don't care about that. I care about, as they say in United States anti-post-alcoholic, the morning after. Okay, people have to feel the, the big thing is not to do the ecstatic revolution. The big, the change must be felt at the everyday level of daily life when things return to normal. But in But sorry, yes I finish. So please, yeah. In the democracies that we have, the so-called democracies that we have, there have been in some ways a certain kind of morning after, hasn't there? There's been the morning after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. The morning after Syriza was elected to Greece and then the morning after they voted no. The morning after Podemos did well. There has been this capacity of sometimes a new left and sometimes actually quite old left, if you look at Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, to actually clear electoral space that was somehow not available before. I agree with this, yes, please go on, sorry. And then there was the morning after. How did they, what's your assessment of how, in this relatively recent period, in Iowa, percent of Democrats in Iowa defined themselves as socialist. Just a couple of years before socialist was an epithet in America. So how does one explain this capacity to clear electoral space and what is your assessment of how they've done the morning after? Okay, let's go step by step. First, what I meant the morning after was in a slightly stronger sense. Yes, there was also a morning after when Syriza against all expectations turned into a strong political party, won elections and so on and so on. But where my pessimism begins and I'm not saying, my God, I'm a total supporter of Bernie Sanders. I even made some statements that they are using and so on but my I'm sure he was delighted. Sorry? I'm sure he was delighted to get statements from a Leninist. Yeah no, quite seriously. You know why I appreciate him? Because I'm sick and tired of this upper-middle-class white political correctness where you know they don't really have any contact with black people, with poor people. Often their political correctness even has a clear class edge. You know, when an American liberal talks about how in some circles women have no rights, they are mistreated, quite often they mean Latino-American and black families and so on. So what I'm saying is that the reason I'm for Bernie Sanders is a much more precise one. He was, that's I think the ultimate ground of his success. Look what he is doing in Vermont. And since I love kitschy nature, you know all those yellow leaves in Vermont in the fall, I'm often there, I know it. He was very careful to avoid this upper-middle-class elitist leftist politics. The key of his success is he doesn't dismiss ordinary farmers, all those who usually are part of the even populist racist moral majority. He kept a dialogue with them. So he is a living proof that the left should abandon this arrogance of, oh, ordinary lower-middle-class workers, they are just half proto-fascist and so on and so on. We can maintain contact with them. Second thing, that's my example which I used even for that DM meeting with Varoufakis.
I really have to be short, so I selected just one topic which is not central to the book we are publicizing today because many people complain about so-called democratic deficit in Europe and so on. I want to problematize it. So let me quickly go through it. Sometimes faces become symbols, not of the strong individuality of their bearers, but of the anonymous forces behind them. Remember a couple of months ago, was not the stupidly smiling face of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup, the symbol of EU's brutal pressure on Greece? Recently, the international trade deal, TTIP, acquired a new symbol, the cold face of EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, who, when asked by a journalist how she could continue her promotion of TTIP in the face of massive public opposition, responded without shame, I do not take my mandate from the European people. Now a third anonymous face has emerged, Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President of the EU Commission, who, on December 23rd, scolded the Polish government for adopting a new law which poses a threat to democratic constitutional order, since it subordinates Institutional Court to the authority of government. Furthermore, Timmermans condemned the new media law which was rushed through Polish Parliament a couple of weeks later. The law will enable the Parliament to immediately sack all executives of the country's public television and radio companies. Now the ruling party justifies this law as necessary to stifle unfair criticism of its actions, while the opposition decries it as a severe limitation of the freedom of the press. In an immediate sharp reply, the Polish government warned Brussels, quote, to exercise more restraint in instructing and cautioning the parliament and the government of a sovereign and democratic state in the future, end of quote. From the standard liberal view, it is of course inappropriate to put these three names into the same series. Dijsselbloem and Malmström personify the pressure of the Brussels bureaucrats, without democratic legitimation, on states and their democratically elected governments, while Timmermans intervened to protect basic democratic institutions, independence of courts, free press, from a government that overstepped its legitimate powers. However, although it may appear obscene to compare the brutal neoliberal pressure on Greece with the justified criticism of Poland, did the Polish government's reaction not hit the mark in a way? Timmermans, a European administrator without any clear democratic legitimation, exerted pressure on a clearly democratically elected popular government of a sovereign state. Now comes the problematic part. Do we not encounter a similar dilemma in today's Germany? I was recently answering questions for the readers of Süddeutsche Zeitung about the refugee crisis and the question which attracted by far most attention concerned precisely democracy, but with a right-wing populist twist. Namely, a reader asked me, when Angela Merkel made her famous public appeal, Wir schaffen das, come, we will make it, inviting hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, where was her democratic legitimation? What gave her the right to bring such a radical change into German life without democratic consultation? Because every opinion poll will show you that, at least in the last couple of months, large majority of Germans are against allowing refugees to enter Germany. To avoid a misunderstanding, my point here of course is not to support anti-immigrant populists, but to clearly point out the limits of simple direct democratic legitimation. The same goes for those who advocate radical opening of the borders. Are they aware that, since our democracies are nation-state democracies, their demand equals suspension of democracy? A gigantic change should be allowed to affect a country without democratic consultation of its population. And does the same not hold for the calls for transparency of EU decisions? Since in many countries the majority of the public was against the Greek debt reduction, here I in a very friendly way slightly disagree with my really good friend Varoufakis, who believes in this transparency and so on. But wait a minute. Rendering EU negotiations public would make representatives of many European countries advocate even tougher measures against Greece. That's the paradox. I learned that the Slovenian Finance Minister, who was definitely a bad guy, he told a friend of mine that if the negotiations there were to be public, not to lose votes in Slovenia, he would have to be much tougher against Greece. So we encounter here the old problem. What happens to democracy when the majority is inclined to vote for racist and sexist laws? I am not afraid to draw the conclusion that emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal democratic procedures. People quite often do not know what they want, or do not want what they know, or simply want the wrong thing. There is no simple shortcut here. And we can well imagine a democratized Europe with much more engaged citizens than today, but it's a Europe, you know, you keep here Pegida in Germany and so on and so on. Leftist critics of Europe thus find themselves in a strange predicament. While they deplore the democratic deficit of the EU and propose plans to make more transparent the decision-making in Brussels, they support the non-democratic Brussels administrators when they exert pressure on democratically legitimated new, we may even call them proto-fascist, tendencies. The context of this impasse is the big bad wolf of the European liberal left, the threat of new fascism embodied in anti-immigrant rightist populism. This scarecrow is perceived as the principal enemy against which we should all unite, from whatever remains of the radical left to the mainstream liberal democrats. Europe is portrayed as a continent regressing towards a new fascism which feeds on the paranoiac hatred and fear of the external ethnic religious enemy, mostly Muslims. Now while this new fascism is directly predominant in some post-communist East European countries, Hungary, Poland and so on, it's almost winning also in my own country, it is also getting stronger and stronger as we all know in many other countries. But my first doubt, is this fascism really fascism? The term fascism is all too often used as an excuse to avoid detailed analysis of what effectively goes on. For me, the symptomatic point of this topic is a figure to which I am of course opposed but he is kind of a symptom of what was wrong. Maybe you remember him, the Dutch rightist populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was killed in early May two weeks before elections on which he was expected to gain at least percent of the votes. He was a paradoxical symptomatic figure, a rightist populist whose personal features and even most of his opinions were almost perfectly politically correct. He was gay, he had good personal relations with many immigrants, he had an innate sense of irony and so on. In short, he was a good tolerant liberal with regard to everything except his basic political stance. He opposed fundamentalist immigrants because of their hatred precisely towards homosexuality, women's rights and so on. So it's a beautiful paradox. What Pim Fortuyn embodied was the intersection between rightist populism and left-liberal political correctness. He was a unique case of politically correct pro-women rights, gay rights, populist racist. Furthermore, many leftist liberals like Jürgen Habermas, who bemoan the ongoing decline of European Union, seem to idealize its past. The democratic EU, the loss of which they bemoan, I claim never really existed. Recent EU policy is just a desperate attempt to make Europe fit for new global capitalism. The usual left-liberal critique of the EU is basically okay just with a democratic deficit, betrays the same naivety as the critics of ex-communist countries. I remember many of them said, communism is okay, communist state just neglected democracy a little bit. I mean, it's ridiculous. The whole point is that that neglect of democracy was necessary, was part of the system. And I think it's as I am approaching the end, I see your superego voice, yes, yes, very fast. So obviously, the only way to counteract the democratic deficit of global capitalism would have been through some kind of transnational entity. It was already Immanuel, not this one but Kant, Immanuel Kant, who more than years ago saw the need for a transnational state, transnational legal order grounded in the rise of global society. A quote from Kant: Since the narrower or wider community of the people of the earth has developed so that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion, end of quote. But this brings us to what is I think, let's call it in Maoist way, the principal contradiction of the new world order. The structural impossibility of finding a global political order which would correspond to global capitalist economy. I think it's not possible even conceptually to imagine that in the same way that we have global capitalism, global market, that we will get some, I don't know, globally five billion voters elected government. If you look at it closely, you can see that today's global capitalism can only function if it's sustained by nation-state frames. And this is even more and more a tendency. For me, a politician of the future today is for example Modi, the Prime Minister of India. Total global capitalist, but at the same time ethnically more or less, he tries to tone down his racism today, ethnically Hindu nationalist. So in politics, the repressed of the global economy returns with a vengeance. Archaic fixations, particular substantial ethnic religious identities and so on and so on. That's my point to those who claim that global capitalism should be counteracted by global democracy. It can't be done. Then you have to step over capitalism. Now what to do? Just literally a concluding thought. The mantra of the leftist is yes, moderate left, we should play the parliamentary game, but if we win, we should fight against the danger of becoming alienated standard bureaucratic government. We should maintain the living link with social base, civil society and so on and so on. But I'm totally opposed to this solution. Why? Because I think that you know for example what happened in Greece. Now the standard leftist reaction is, the reason Syriza betrayed its program is because it lost contacts with its base. All the social movements, feminists, ecologists, human rights, whatever. It just became a party like another. I agree but I absolutely don't believe that the solution is more of a link with social movements and so on. I think this is just an ersatz. The true problem is how to change, if it's possible, if not, we are lost, the functioning of the state apparatus itself. Because and now I'm not bluffing. What I'm telling you now was told to me in private and I'm telling you now in private just by my good friend García Álvaro Linera, the Vice President of Bolivia, which is usually quoted as the land where the government, the Morales government, sustains itself through keeping the links alive with social movements and so on. But as Linera told me, there is also an extremely painful and strong bad result of this. The moment you state hold powers, this so much celebrated social base movements begin to play clientelist game. He told me it's very nice, we have that tribe has representatives, that group of miners have representatives, they immediately start to play the clientelist game. So my point is this one. The big task of the left and of all of us, in view of a society in which we live, society which faces problems which I think cannot be solved in this local democracy way. And incidentally I'm personally against local democracy. Can you imagine living in this social movements local democracy every afternoon because you are active? You have to go to some stupid meetings, kindergarten, where do we get water and so on. No, I want in a good sense alienated, in the sense of invisible and so on. Local autocracies? Sorry? Local autocracies? No, even more, state autocracy, they just do efficiently the job and I want to have my fucking peace, to read, to write my books and so on and so on. You know what's the problem? The problem is this one. Now I'm really, now I'm really at the end. The title of this my short intervention could have been, did you see the movie with Natalie Portman and so on, V for Vendetta? The title could have been V for Vendetta part two. Namely, you know what happens, a triumph at the end of the film. It takes place even here in UK I think, no? The crowd breaks the barrier, takes over the Parliament, everyone is ecstatic, the end. I'm ready to sell my mother into slavery to see part two. What happens then? How do they organize government there? I'm sick and tired of these emphatic moments, you know. My God, Tahrir Square, Syntagma Square in Greece, hundreds of thousands of people, we are all one with them, we cry and so on and so on. I don't care about that. I care about, as they say in United States anti-post-alcoholic, the morning after. Okay, people have to feel the, the big thing is not to do the ecstatic revolution. The big, the change must be felt at the everyday level of daily life when things return to normal. But in But sorry, yes I finish. So please, yeah. In the democracies that we have, the so-called democracies that we have, there have been in some ways a certain kind of morning after, hasn't there? There's been the morning after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. The morning after Syriza was elected to Greece and then the morning after they voted no. The morning after Podemos did well. There has been this capacity of sometimes a new left and sometimes actually quite old left, if you look at Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, to actually clear electoral space that was somehow not available before. I agree with this, yes, please go on, sorry. And then there was the morning after. How did they, what's your assessment of how, in this relatively recent period, in Iowa, percent of Democrats in Iowa defined themselves as socialist. Just a couple of years before socialist was an epithet in America. So how does one explain this capacity to clear electoral space and what is your assessment of how they've done the morning after? Okay, let's go step by step. First, what I meant the morning after was in a slightly stronger sense. Yes, there was also a morning after when Syriza against all expectations turned into a strong political party, won elections and so on and so on. But where my pessimism begins and I'm not saying, my God, I'm a total supporter of Bernie Sanders. I even made some statements that they are using and so on but my I'm sure he was delighted. Sorry? I'm sure he was delighted to get statements from a Leninist. Yeah no, quite seriously. You know why I appreciate him? Because I'm sick and tired of this upper-middle-class white political correctness where you know they don't really have any contact with black people, with poor people. Often their political correctness even has a clear class edge. You know, when an American liberal talks about how in some circles women have no rights, they are mistreated, quite often they mean Latino-American and black families and so on. So what I'm saying is that the reason I'm for Bernie Sanders is a much more precise one. He was, that's I think the ultimate ground of his success. Look what he is doing in Vermont. And since I love kitschy nature, you know all those yellow leaves in Vermont in the fall, I'm often there, I know it. He was very careful to avoid this upper-middle-class elitist leftist politics. The key of his success is he doesn't dismiss ordinary farmers, all those who usually are part of the even populist racist moral majority. He kept a dialogue with them. So he is a living proof that the left should abandon this arrogance of, oh, ordinary lower-middle-class workers, they are just half proto-fascist and so on and so on. We can maintain contact with them. Second thing, that's my example which I used even for that DM meeting with Varoufakis.
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Today to directly aim at a big
Today to directly aim at a big
Slavoj Žižek
revolution is a utopia. It's a very comfortable position. In Greece you have this old KKE or whatever, Communist Party, which gets seven-eight percent of votes. I almost admire them. It's the only one that I know that of considerable strength, Communist Party, where for them the point of reference is simply Stalin. They reprint Stalin's work, they are totally orthodox, for them the traitor is not Gorbachev but Khrushchev, who dared but they have this radical politics. We have to wait for true working-class revolution. Yes, and they wait and they are a threat to no one. Out of strange politics they even voted for New Democracy against PASOK and so on. So the thing we have to learn is politics of small steps, but I will be now very precise. Not small steps in this compromising sense, you know, oh, just no, here is the metaphor and then I will stop if you're stupid enough to believe me I will stop quickly. You know this wonderful scene from old science fiction films, I remember it from my youth, where you enter a certain room, there are many of these early naive machines with many buttons, and then you press the wrong button and what happens is that the whole reality disintegrates. You know walls start to break down or whatever, like you press the wrong button. This means what? Don't begin with great, large, mega demands. Pick out specific small demands which may appear modest and totally acceptable, but they are nonetheless very traumatic for the existing system. This is how our
revolution is a utopia. It's a very comfortable position. In Greece you have this old KKE or whatever, Communist Party, which gets seven-eight percent of votes. I almost admire them. It's the only one that I know that of considerable strength, Communist Party, where for them the point of reference is simply Stalin. They reprint Stalin's work, they are totally orthodox, for them the traitor is not Gorbachev but Khrushchev, who dared but they have this radical politics. We have to wait for true working-class revolution. Yes, and they wait and they are a threat to no one. Out of strange politics they even voted for New Democracy against PASOK and so on. So the thing we have to learn is politics of small steps, but I will be now very precise. Not small steps in this compromising sense, you know, oh, just no, here is the metaphor and then I will stop if you're stupid enough to believe me I will stop quickly. You know this wonderful scene from old science fiction films, I remember it from my youth, where you enter a certain room, there are many of these early naive machines with many buttons, and then you press the wrong button and what happens is that the whole reality disintegrates. You know walls start to break down or whatever, like you press the wrong button. This means what? Don't begin with great, large, mega demands. Pick out specific small demands which may appear modest and totally acceptable, but they are nonetheless very traumatic for the existing system. This is how our
unknown
democracies work. We are given many choices on
democracies work. We are given many choices on
Slavoj Žižek
condition
condition
unknown
that certain choices are never used. For example, that's why in spite of all the horrors and mistakes he did, I still have a little bit of a soft heart for Obama. Listen, with universal healthcare, he obviously touched a very traumatic point in the United States. My God, he was denounced as the, my favorite great actor Chuck Norris, you know what he said, he said Obama is not just a socialist now we see, he is even maybe something more horrible. He meant communist and so on. You see, this is what we need. A demand which, on the face of it, you cannot reject it, like Canada has universal healthcare, but you insist on it and you trigger a further process and so on. But it seems
that certain choices are never used. For example, that's why in spite of all the horrors and mistakes he did, I still have a little bit of a soft heart for Obama. Listen, with universal healthcare, he obviously touched a very traumatic point in the United States. My God, he was denounced as the, my favorite great actor Chuck Norris, you know what he said, he said Obama is not just a socialist now we see, he is even maybe something more horrible. He meant communist and so on. You see, this is what we need. A demand which, on the face of it, you cannot reject it, like Canada has universal healthcare, but you insist on it and you trigger a further process and so on. But it seems
Slavoj Žižek
that increasingly the people making those small
that increasingly the people making those small
unknown
demands are finding a bigger and bigger audience for them. Yeah, yeah. And why do you think that is? Because it is a miracle this Sanders, it's incredibly important, I'm aware, to call yourself a socialist. But still, I think that unfortunately, and I understand ordinary people, you know, the experience wherever they had it with radical socialist measures or communist even, the results were so sad, such a
demands are finding a bigger and bigger audience for them. Yeah, yeah. And why do you think that is? Because it is a miracle this Sanders, it's incredibly important, I'm aware, to call yourself a socialist. But still, I think that unfortunately, and I understand ordinary people, you know, the experience wherever they had it with radical socialist measures or communist even, the results were so sad, such a
Slavoj Žižek
failure. For example, I'm now in a constant depression but I saw it coming unfortunately, I was writing about it so I'm not just now turning the coat, for example the catastrophe of Venezuela. Of course, United States did wage an economic war against it, but it's not only that and so on and so on. I think that that's our tragic situation. We don't yet have a big answer, which is how to effectively reorganize economy in an efficient way. Now the third-way Tony
failure. For example, I'm now in a constant depression but I saw it coming unfortunately, I was writing about it so I'm not just now turning the coat, for example the catastrophe of Venezuela. Of course, United States did wage an economic war against it, but it's not only that and so on and so on. I think that that's our tragic situation. We don't yet have a big answer, which is how to effectively reorganize economy in an efficient way. Now the third-way Tony
unknown
Blair
Blair
Slavoj Žižek
argument would have been, okay, we don't know it, so drop it, so let's just be modest third-way social democrat, maybe a little bit more of healthcare here and so on. No, the sad thing is that even if we do not know how to do it, we will have to find a way or we are facing a catastrophe. I simply modestly believe that the big issues that we are confronting today, from ecology to economic problems, banks, intellectual property, to new forms of racism, even up to a thing like biogenetics, market cannot solve these problems. We will need to discover, I don't know how, not only stronger state but large trans-state activity, action. So here is another of my critical points against all those poets of local democracy. No, we need to rediscover mega-large actions. Just let me tell you a nice story that was told to me, very short one don't be afraid, by by my by my good friend, French theorist of catastrophes, Jean-Pierre Dupuy. He's part of some European commission for natural catastrophes, so he was in Fukushima days after. And he told me that for one day, it didn't break into the public but he knows it, the Japanese government was in total panic because it looked as if the pollution will be so strong that they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, thirty million people. How to do this? Where? The natural solution would have been to go to Putin and ask him to give part of Eastern Siberia. You know what I mean, that's our tragedy. It's clear for different reasons. In China there are migrations, it's not just refugees in Europe. Almost half of Zimbabwe is now in South Africa and so on and so on. This is one thing that is happening today, which needs trans-state regulation. The other thing is that although I'm anti-imperialist and so on, but with all my fascination with the Chinese model and so on, China is de facto acting as an agent of new economic neocolonialism. I mean, this is the secret story what China is doing in all those African countries, Zambia and so on. They're acting even more brutally than any decent old Anglo-Saxon imperialist. Do you know that a couple of times it happened in Zambia that workers in a Chinese-owned some mines or factories rebelled and lynched the Chinese managers and so on and so on. So I think we are in an extremely dangerous situation. My friend Alain Badiou even draws a parallel between today's situation and the situation before World War One. It is as if although we deny that there will be a new world war, but we are getting ready for it all the time. You know it's exactly the same before World War One where nobody, you know that's this nice mechanism that can be described by psychoanalysis, so-called fetishist disavowal, *je sais bien, mais quand même*, I know very well but. No, like I know we are approaching a war, but wait a minute, it cannot really happen and so on. Some people draw also draw parallels between now and World War Two, the or pre-World War Two. So fascism is rising, there's been an economic collapse, conflict between major major powers or potential economic conflict, America and China. Do you think we're more like pre-World War One? I think this is one part of the usual leftist laziness. When you see something bad and you are too lazy to really analyze it, it's so comfortable to say, pff, fascism, neo-fascism and so on. It's something much more complex. For me the most depressing news and it's in the book, my new book, that I read recently is an interview I don't know where with a guy who tried to defend Boko Haram. And he said something so sad. He said, listen, for us in Northern Nigeria and so on, the most visible face of Western way of life, imperialism and so on, is the gradual disintegration of old traditional family life. So Boko Haram, you know what this means, no education for women and so on and so on, it's our way to fight cultural imperialism and so on. What can you answer him? Of course, I'm totally opposed to it. But there is a grain of truth. Nancy Fraser, American psychoanalyst, critical with whom I generally absolutely don't agree, published now a wonderful book explaining and describing in detail how American mainstream liberal feminism was totally co-opted by liberal politics. You know how many feminists supported invasion of
argument would have been, okay, we don't know it, so drop it, so let's just be modest third-way social democrat, maybe a little bit more of healthcare here and so on. No, the sad thing is that even if we do not know how to do it, we will have to find a way or we are facing a catastrophe. I simply modestly believe that the big issues that we are confronting today, from ecology to economic problems, banks, intellectual property, to new forms of racism, even up to a thing like biogenetics, market cannot solve these problems. We will need to discover, I don't know how, not only stronger state but large trans-state activity, action. So here is another of my critical points against all those poets of local democracy. No, we need to rediscover mega-large actions. Just let me tell you a nice story that was told to me, very short one don't be afraid, by by my by my good friend, French theorist of catastrophes, Jean-Pierre Dupuy. He's part of some European commission for natural catastrophes, so he was in Fukushima days after. And he told me that for one day, it didn't break into the public but he knows it, the Japanese government was in total panic because it looked as if the pollution will be so strong that they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, thirty million people. How to do this? Where? The natural solution would have been to go to Putin and ask him to give part of Eastern Siberia. You know what I mean, that's our tragedy. It's clear for different reasons. In China there are migrations, it's not just refugees in Europe. Almost half of Zimbabwe is now in South Africa and so on and so on. This is one thing that is happening today, which needs trans-state regulation. The other thing is that although I'm anti-imperialist and so on, but with all my fascination with the Chinese model and so on, China is de facto acting as an agent of new economic neocolonialism. I mean, this is the secret story what China is doing in all those African countries, Zambia and so on. They're acting even more brutally than any decent old Anglo-Saxon imperialist. Do you know that a couple of times it happened in Zambia that workers in a Chinese-owned some mines or factories rebelled and lynched the Chinese managers and so on and so on. So I think we are in an extremely dangerous situation. My friend Alain Badiou even draws a parallel between today's situation and the situation before World War One. It is as if although we deny that there will be a new world war, but we are getting ready for it all the time. You know it's exactly the same before World War One where nobody, you know that's this nice mechanism that can be described by psychoanalysis, so-called fetishist disavowal, *je sais bien, mais quand même*, I know very well but. No, like I know we are approaching a war, but wait a minute, it cannot really happen and so on. Some people draw also draw parallels between now and World War Two, the or pre-World War Two. So fascism is rising, there's been an economic collapse, conflict between major major powers or potential economic conflict, America and China. Do you think we're more like pre-World War One? I think this is one part of the usual leftist laziness. When you see something bad and you are too lazy to really analyze it, it's so comfortable to say, pff, fascism, neo-fascism and so on. It's something much more complex. For me the most depressing news and it's in the book, my new book, that I read recently is an interview I don't know where with a guy who tried to defend Boko Haram. And he said something so sad. He said, listen, for us in Northern Nigeria and so on, the most visible face of Western way of life, imperialism and so on, is the gradual disintegration of old traditional family life. So Boko Haram, you know what this means, no education for women and so on and so on, it's our way to fight cultural imperialism and so on. What can you answer him? Of course, I'm totally opposed to it. But there is a grain of truth. Nancy Fraser, American psychoanalyst, critical with whom I generally absolutely don't agree, published now a wonderful book explaining and describing in detail how American mainstream liberal feminism was totally co-opted by liberal politics. You know how many feminists supported invasion of
unknown
Iraq claiming that it will nonetheless bring freedom, more freedom to women and so on and so on, which incidentally is complete madness. On the
Iraq claiming that it will nonetheless bring freedom, more freedom to women and so on and so on, which incidentally is complete madness. On the
Slavoj Žižek
contrary, whatever you say about Saddam, he was a secular dictator who supported education of women and so on and so on. But what I want to say is that on the one hand, we have this Western concern for human rights and so on, I totally share it, and I'm not saying that out of some sympathy with the third world we can say, oh, let them do their clitoridectomy, women and so on. But nonetheless, we cannot simply export our standards on them. Let me finish then you with a crazy story that happened in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, in Bosnia. In mid-90s, when the war was in its finishing stages, some American feminist group wanted to show solidarity with Bosnians, wanted to contact an organization of Bosnian raped women and they wrote a letter to them. That letter I think should be printed everywhere as an example of obscenity. They simply questioned them how they fit their own program. Like the first question was to these poor Bosnian raped traumatized girls, do you think that woman has an eternal non-historical essence, or do you admit that woman's identity is performatively constructed and so on. You know, like there is something so terrifying. On the other hand, I totally reject this opposite idea of you know, let's forget about women's rights and so on, we have now another big struggle. Who says that? Sorry? Let's forget about women's rights. Ah, now I will answer you precisely. Hang on, hang on. Nobody says it explicitly, but they are all de facto. Just a second, just a second. You talk about Western values and human rights and and Ah, now comes, now you are drawing out your knife, no? Yeah, okay. And there's a lot of it in there and when you say that, part of me thinks Western values: rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the torture report, the carpet bombing of large areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, what happened in Libya that the rest of the world may look at what the West purports to be their values as human rights and say well, either you don't believe that or you don't understand us as being human and therefore deserving of those rights. And so are these really Western values, human rights? Is that really a Western value? And if it is, why can't the West seem to actually honor that value? Okay, I will put it in this way. The great thing about Western values is that at least you have to admit this, from the very beginning the Western values, at least the democratic emancipatory ones, let okay let me first clarify misunderstanding. As I say in this book, first, the main culprit of this flow of refugees is the West. We are getting our own this perfect Lacanian definition of communication where the speaker gets from the addressee his own message in its inverted true form back. That's what is happening here. I totally agree with you here. It's economic neocolonialism. Look what the West is doing in, for me always the ultimate nightmare, Republic of Congo. It's portrayed as the Heart of Darkness. This Heart of Darkness is totally integrated into Western economy. All those warlords made deals and so on. And other horrors, like the most tragic thing you should follow this is how in many Africa many African countries, even the starving ones, you must know this, how not so much Western Europe or America, but for example South Korea, Arab countries, Japan, are buying the best fertile land massively to grow export industrial plants and so on. So this is economic neocolonialism. And then there is this direct war interventions which are a nightmare. I mean, let's be clear. I'm not saying we are to blame for everything, but without American occupation of Iraq, there would have been no ISIS. And I'm more and more mystified by ISIS. I doubt if although it's portrayed as the big enemy, but do people, by people I mean big powers and so on, do they really want to destroy it? I'm more and more convinced not. Why not? Why not? Because it plays a certain precise role. With Russia and Assad it's clear. What's the game? It's in the interest both of ISIS and Russia to get rid of all those intermediate whatever remained in Syria of democratic opposition
contrary, whatever you say about Saddam, he was a secular dictator who supported education of women and so on and so on. But what I want to say is that on the one hand, we have this Western concern for human rights and so on, I totally share it, and I'm not saying that out of some sympathy with the third world we can say, oh, let them do their clitoridectomy, women and so on. But nonetheless, we cannot simply export our standards on them. Let me finish then you with a crazy story that happened in my own country, ex-Yugoslavia, in Bosnia. In mid-90s, when the war was in its finishing stages, some American feminist group wanted to show solidarity with Bosnians, wanted to contact an organization of Bosnian raped women and they wrote a letter to them. That letter I think should be printed everywhere as an example of obscenity. They simply questioned them how they fit their own program. Like the first question was to these poor Bosnian raped traumatized girls, do you think that woman has an eternal non-historical essence, or do you admit that woman's identity is performatively constructed and so on. You know, like there is something so terrifying. On the other hand, I totally reject this opposite idea of you know, let's forget about women's rights and so on, we have now another big struggle. Who says that? Sorry? Let's forget about women's rights. Ah, now I will answer you precisely. Hang on, hang on. Nobody says it explicitly, but they are all de facto. Just a second, just a second. You talk about Western values and human rights and and Ah, now comes, now you are drawing out your knife, no? Yeah, okay. And there's a lot of it in there and when you say that, part of me thinks Western values: rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the torture report, the carpet bombing of large areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, what happened in Libya that the rest of the world may look at what the West purports to be their values as human rights and say well, either you don't believe that or you don't understand us as being human and therefore deserving of those rights. And so are these really Western values, human rights? Is that really a Western value? And if it is, why can't the West seem to actually honor that value? Okay, I will put it in this way. The great thing about Western values is that at least you have to admit this, from the very beginning the Western values, at least the democratic emancipatory ones, let okay let me first clarify misunderstanding. As I say in this book, first, the main culprit of this flow of refugees is the West. We are getting our own this perfect Lacanian definition of communication where the speaker gets from the addressee his own message in its inverted true form back. That's what is happening here. I totally agree with you here. It's economic neocolonialism. Look what the West is doing in, for me always the ultimate nightmare, Republic of Congo. It's portrayed as the Heart of Darkness. This Heart of Darkness is totally integrated into Western economy. All those warlords made deals and so on. And other horrors, like the most tragic thing you should follow this is how in many Africa many African countries, even the starving ones, you must know this, how not so much Western Europe or America, but for example South Korea, Arab countries, Japan, are buying the best fertile land massively to grow export industrial plants and so on. So this is economic neocolonialism. And then there is this direct war interventions which are a nightmare. I mean, let's be clear. I'm not saying we are to blame for everything, but without American occupation of Iraq, there would have been no ISIS. And I'm more and more mystified by ISIS. I doubt if although it's portrayed as the big enemy, but do people, by people I mean big powers and so on, do they really want to destroy it? I'm more and more convinced not. Why not? Why not? Because it plays a certain precise role. With Russia and Assad it's clear. What's the game? It's in the interest both of ISIS and Russia to get rid of all those intermediate whatever remained in Syria of democratic opposition
unknown
and so on, so that you have a pure choice: ISIS or Assad. Assad knows, if it comes to this, we will have to support him. On the other hand, ISIS, very important. Much more violent than towards us Europeans is ISIS namely towards Shias. And the big scarecrow for Israel, for Saudi Arabia, is Iran. So I think they are
and so on, so that you have a pure choice: ISIS or Assad. Assad knows, if it comes to this, we will have to support him. On the other hand, ISIS, very important. Much more violent than towards us Europeans is ISIS namely towards Shias. And the big scarecrow for Israel, for Saudi Arabia, is Iran. So I think they are
Slavoj Žižek
consciously keeping ISIS alive to keep off the so-called Shia-Iranian threat. Are we aware, you can correct me if you know better, but my impression is that what's happening now is an extremely important strategic rearrangement in the Middle East. A new axis is emerging. Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and it looks also Egypt. Now we discovered that for already almost ten years, Saudi Arabia and Israeli militants and secret services are coordinating their activities all the time how to screw Iran and so on and so on. I mean, in all this mess, I think that ISIS provides or the fight against that kind of terror, provides a perfect background. I think they are just a screen on behalf of which other superpowers or lower powers are fighting each other. Because if everyone would really want to finish with ISIS, let's be serious. With one division it's over in one week. Obviously, they don't want to do it. It's clear that Saudi Arabia is playing a game there, it's clear that Turkey is playing the game there and so on and so on. So how do we understand Western values in the context of the West having created this situation? Okay, I will tell you. Because I know I'm not a total idiot. Maybe an idiot but not a total. I know where I provoke people, how should I put it, no? Listen, take human rights. I totally agree. At the beginning, they were you had all this wonderful as we say when you have a big principle look at the small print footnotes, you know. Human rights for everyone, but you find already in Enlightenment classics: human rights are for all human rational beings, but then they just add tautologically: insofar as they are really free human beings. And then you go on. Sorry, I don't mean you personally, it's a bad joke but you blacks, you are not rational enough, you are too you are too too mythic, superstitious. Women are confused, we know from Descartes, women can be quickly impressed by sensual impressions, you cannot trust them. Children, no. Criminals, no, and so on and so on. So at the end almost everyone is excluded, no? But nonetheless, I don't agree with those crazy pseudo-radical Marxists who claim so human rights are just a mask for imperialism. No, look how they function. Immediately Mary Wollstonecraft, women said why not us also? Then, for me the event which is more important than French Revolution: Haitian Revolution. This is for me an absolute miracle. For the first time you had a slave rebellion which was not this back to our African roots or whatever. It was a miracle. It was a rebellion which said, no, we also want a modern state just like the French and so on and so on. Then basically communism, it's also the extension. So you see, some notion can be ideological. But you can also then use it in a critical way and turn it against its own original meaning. For example, if some of you are here for Latin America, do you know that wonderful story about
consciously keeping ISIS alive to keep off the so-called Shia-Iranian threat. Are we aware, you can correct me if you know better, but my impression is that what's happening now is an extremely important strategic rearrangement in the Middle East. A new axis is emerging. Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and it looks also Egypt. Now we discovered that for already almost ten years, Saudi Arabia and Israeli militants and secret services are coordinating their activities all the time how to screw Iran and so on and so on. I mean, in all this mess, I think that ISIS provides or the fight against that kind of terror, provides a perfect background. I think they are just a screen on behalf of which other superpowers or lower powers are fighting each other. Because if everyone would really want to finish with ISIS, let's be serious. With one division it's over in one week. Obviously, they don't want to do it. It's clear that Saudi Arabia is playing a game there, it's clear that Turkey is playing the game there and so on and so on. So how do we understand Western values in the context of the West having created this situation? Okay, I will tell you. Because I know I'm not a total idiot. Maybe an idiot but not a total. I know where I provoke people, how should I put it, no? Listen, take human rights. I totally agree. At the beginning, they were you had all this wonderful as we say when you have a big principle look at the small print footnotes, you know. Human rights for everyone, but you find already in Enlightenment classics: human rights are for all human rational beings, but then they just add tautologically: insofar as they are really free human beings. And then you go on. Sorry, I don't mean you personally, it's a bad joke but you blacks, you are not rational enough, you are too you are too too mythic, superstitious. Women are confused, we know from Descartes, women can be quickly impressed by sensual impressions, you cannot trust them. Children, no. Criminals, no, and so on and so on. So at the end almost everyone is excluded, no? But nonetheless, I don't agree with those crazy pseudo-radical Marxists who claim so human rights are just a mask for imperialism. No, look how they function. Immediately Mary Wollstonecraft, women said why not us also? Then, for me the event which is more important than French Revolution: Haitian Revolution. This is for me an absolute miracle. For the first time you had a slave rebellion which was not this back to our African roots or whatever. It was a miracle. It was a rebellion which said, no, we also want a modern state just like the French and so on and so on. Then basically communism, it's also the extension. So you see, some notion can be ideological. But you can also then use it in a critical way and turn it against its own original meaning. For example, if some of you are here for Latin America, do you know that wonderful story about
Paul Holdengräber
Black Madonna
Black Madonna
Slavoj Žižek
of Guadalupe or what, which in or whenever a miracle happened, a
of Guadalupe or what, which in or whenever a miracle happened, a
Paul Holdengräber
black-faced Madonna appeared to
black-faced Madonna appeared to
Slavoj Žižek
some indigenous people there.
some indigenous people there.
Paul Holdengräber
And it's absolutely clear what happened at that point. Till that moment, Catholicism was simply a tool of colonizers. This was the first attempt of the oppressed people to reappropriate it. They also got their voice there. So this is all I'm saying. That so-called European values are of course mostly full of bullshit. But I claim that they had inscribed into them this ability to self-overcoming. Like, what we should do is not that whole world should become European, but that oppressed people should act like in Haitian Revolution they did, like That's why I, for example, sincerely with all the compromises
And it's absolutely clear what happened at that point. Till that moment, Catholicism was simply a tool of colonizers. This was the first attempt of the oppressed people to reappropriate it. They also got their voice there. So this is all I'm saying. That so-called European values are of course mostly full of bullshit. But I claim that they had inscribed into them this ability to self-overcoming. Like, what we should do is not that whole world should become European, but that oppressed people should act like in Haitian Revolution they did, like That's why I, for example, sincerely with all the compromises
Slavoj Žižek
he had to make, sincerely admire Mandela. ANC was never tempted by this bullshit, you know, we want to return to some original African wisdom roots or whatever. No, he was for universalism and you maybe know better than me who was for African roots: Buthelezi, the king who was on the payroll, of course, of apartheid and so on, you know. So for me, when I refer to European values, there are two things I'm talking about. Very brief I will try to be. The first thing is that I totally accept this logic, direct application of so-called European values to third-world countries is a form of cultural colonialism. But I also think, as it is especially the case with what China is doing today, that there is a certain way to be wrongly multiculturalist which de facto means you justify injustices in your own country, oh, it's part of our tradition and so on and so on, you shouldn't judge us in that way. In other words, the legacy of Europe that I like is universalism. But it's an anti-universalism. It doesn't mean you apply universalism, it means everyone can take that place. That's why, as you probably know, everybody knows it, that's why my hero is Malcolm X. He was more European than we Europeans. Why? You know what was the miracle of Malcolm X? If to speak in the terms that you will understand, Denzel Washington in the film, no? X stands for they were torn out of their roots of their native land. But his genius was to reject this topic, you know, we must return to our roots and so on. He wisely left this to Hollywood, you know that series Alex Haley, *Roots*. Hollywood can do this. His ingenious insight was that what was a tragedy for the blacks, X, means you are deprived of your tradition and so on, is also a unique chance of freedom. You know, and this is the proper political dialectic, to see a chance of new freedom in what is of course a very traumatic catastrophe. Which is why for example, and I met the lady and she is a wonderful lady, Toni Morrison. You know how I know she is a wonderful lady? Because I was waiting with her and I asked my friend, where is that stupid old fat bitch? And a voice said behind me, I'm here, Professor. And we immediately embraced and became No, but seriously now, *Beloved*, it's the same. It's the biggest story that I know about the birth of black woman's subjectivity. It's a these are mega works. This is what I claim how Europe can self-overcome itself. The function of Europe is to be vanishing mediator. We invented some great things centuries ago, now we have to, how do you call that stupid metaphor, pass the torch to to another one. So there's a sense in which you're saying European values, or Western values as you call them, almost have to be saved from the West as well. Not almost but yes, absolutely. As I say in the book, in spite of all the cultural problems and so on, my God, the true threat to Europe today are not poor Muslim refugees or whatever, it's the defenders of Europe. I mean, I'm appealing to your best old-fashioned liberal European, even racist instincts. Can you imagine Europe where Nigel Farage is ruling here? Well, I wouldn't be afraid of that. Let me tell you a joke. I met him once on BBC and I can vouch for you, he is not a danger, he is a clown, he is not a true leader, no. But but in France, Le Pen, in Germany, Pegida in power. If these defenders of Europe get into power, Europe is finished. But you know that
he had to make, sincerely admire Mandela. ANC was never tempted by this bullshit, you know, we want to return to some original African wisdom roots or whatever. No, he was for universalism and you maybe know better than me who was for African roots: Buthelezi, the king who was on the payroll, of course, of apartheid and so on, you know. So for me, when I refer to European values, there are two things I'm talking about. Very brief I will try to be. The first thing is that I totally accept this logic, direct application of so-called European values to third-world countries is a form of cultural colonialism. But I also think, as it is especially the case with what China is doing today, that there is a certain way to be wrongly multiculturalist which de facto means you justify injustices in your own country, oh, it's part of our tradition and so on and so on, you shouldn't judge us in that way. In other words, the legacy of Europe that I like is universalism. But it's an anti-universalism. It doesn't mean you apply universalism, it means everyone can take that place. That's why, as you probably know, everybody knows it, that's why my hero is Malcolm X. He was more European than we Europeans. Why? You know what was the miracle of Malcolm X? If to speak in the terms that you will understand, Denzel Washington in the film, no? X stands for they were torn out of their roots of their native land. But his genius was to reject this topic, you know, we must return to our roots and so on. He wisely left this to Hollywood, you know that series Alex Haley, *Roots*. Hollywood can do this. His ingenious insight was that what was a tragedy for the blacks, X, means you are deprived of your tradition and so on, is also a unique chance of freedom. You know, and this is the proper political dialectic, to see a chance of new freedom in what is of course a very traumatic catastrophe. Which is why for example, and I met the lady and she is a wonderful lady, Toni Morrison. You know how I know she is a wonderful lady? Because I was waiting with her and I asked my friend, where is that stupid old fat bitch? And a voice said behind me, I'm here, Professor. And we immediately embraced and became No, but seriously now, *Beloved*, it's the same. It's the biggest story that I know about the birth of black woman's subjectivity. It's a these are mega works. This is what I claim how Europe can self-overcome itself. The function of Europe is to be vanishing mediator. We invented some great things centuries ago, now we have to, how do you call that stupid metaphor, pass the torch to to another one. So there's a sense in which you're saying European values, or Western values as you call them, almost have to be saved from the West as well. Not almost but yes, absolutely. As I say in the book, in spite of all the cultural problems and so on, my God, the true threat to Europe today are not poor Muslim refugees or whatever, it's the defenders of Europe. I mean, I'm appealing to your best old-fashioned liberal European, even racist instincts. Can you imagine Europe where Nigel Farage is ruling here? Well, I wouldn't be afraid of that. Let me tell you a joke. I met him once on BBC and I can vouch for you, he is not a danger, he is a clown, he is not a true leader, no. But but in France, Le Pen, in Germany, Pegida in power. If these defenders of Europe get into power, Europe is finished. But you know that
unknown
they said Donald
they said Donald
Slavoj Žižek
Trump was a clown. Was? Was a clown and he may still be a clown but he's a much more dangerous clown than Nigel Farage. No no, here wait a minute. I'm here psychoanalytically trained philosopher who knows how to distinguish clowns and clowns, you know. Nigel Farage is not that kind of a clown. But with Trump, ah, let me shock you now. Now come the shocks. You like him? No no no, I'm not crazy. And the reason I have a certain understanding for Trump is not because his wife is Slovene, that's why he is so popular in Slovenia, oo, we will have a First Lady in White House. No, it's another thing. Trump is doing of course, he's an extremely vulgar guy with a lot of bullshit in what he is saying. You know the best characterization of Trump was from one American commentator who said imagine a high-class party and then one of the people pulls his trousers down and simply kneels there and defecates in public, no? My reaction to this was that it's not only I've never been to a party like that. Sorry? I've never been to a party like that. Yeah, because you are not part of the American ruling elite, you know. No, but I'm saying that it's not just Trump. Do you know Luis Buñuel's film, *Le Fantôme de la liberté*, *Phantom of Freedom*? One of my favorite scenes where they turn around the natural order, so that shitting becomes public, eating eating shitting. You know families visit another family and there is a big table with toilet seats. And they talk and shit and then a baby asks, Mommy, where is that place you know to eat? And Mommy said, you don't talk about this in public, go there discreetly and this is now American politics more or less. And if we remain at this level, look, read Trump closely and you will see that if you, which is difficult to do, I know, abstract his total racist sexist stupidities, and look from here and there where he makes a concrete proposal, they are usually not so bad. He is much he said he will not totally dismantle universal healthcare, which is a taboo for all others. He said, very importantly, you know the Jewish lobby is now against him because he said we must find the right balance there in he was for raising minimum wage and so on. So I think the Trump is a paradox who he is really a centrist liberal. Maybe even in his economic policy closer to Democrats and he desperately tries to mask this. So the function of all these dirty jokes, stupidities, is to cover up that he is really a pretty ordinary central politician. Now comes my point. In contrast to Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz, listen to his proposals, they are nightmare. If I were to be some Surgeon General, I would inspect Ted Cruz like is he human, is he an alien and so on. No, I really mean it. That's the tragedy of American politics. There is hope, but there is danger. What Chomsky called manufacturing consent, how both parties monopolize the field proposed, it's falling apart. There is a rebellion in both parties. And as usually, it's new hope but it also can be danger. You know but back to what you asked me at the beginning. You know what's my problem? Not yet. What if Trump, no not Trump, what if if Trump's by some miracle elected President, I don't fear, he is a conformist, he will but what if Sanders by some absolute magic which cannot happen is elected President? What I fear, no, he is not a stupid leftist who will socialize, he will do some very modest things. But I think even this will be too much for the capital and they will organize a crisis against him. This is for me where I disagreed also in a very friendly way with Varoufakis. You know, when he explains in his he is almost nobody can be as nervous as me, full of tics, but he comes close to me sometimes, explains how, do you know how horrible it was in Brussels, how they ignored me, humiliated me. And I told him but what did you expect, that Brussels is some kind of Habermasian community of rational argumentation? I told him I expected them to be even worse. If I were to be a typical Western European capital manager, imperial whatever, I would try to push Greece out and then organize a total fiasco there, hunger and so on and so on. I even expected Europe to be more brutal, no? Uh, this is moving to the point which before we came out Slavoj said was where we pretend to be democratic, which means we're opening up to questions. There are people there should be people with mics all around. We're going to take three questions at a time. I'd ask you to make it brief so we can get as many questions in as possible and to try and avoid making statements. There should make your voice rise at the end, imagine there's a question mark. And to repeat an old joke just to make you sure, I love dialogues but late Plato's dialogues, do you know them? One guy talks all the time, the other guy says every ten minutes by Zeus, so it is, Socrates. So let's have this type of a dialogue now. Okay, so let's pretend to be democratic. Put your hands up. Yeah, hello. I wonder how do you comment on people having to pay tickets to come and listen to you? Okay, so that's the first question. Okay, no problem. There's
Trump was a clown. Was? Was a clown and he may still be a clown but he's a much more dangerous clown than Nigel Farage. No no, here wait a minute. I'm here psychoanalytically trained philosopher who knows how to distinguish clowns and clowns, you know. Nigel Farage is not that kind of a clown. But with Trump, ah, let me shock you now. Now come the shocks. You like him? No no no, I'm not crazy. And the reason I have a certain understanding for Trump is not because his wife is Slovene, that's why he is so popular in Slovenia, oo, we will have a First Lady in White House. No, it's another thing. Trump is doing of course, he's an extremely vulgar guy with a lot of bullshit in what he is saying. You know the best characterization of Trump was from one American commentator who said imagine a high-class party and then one of the people pulls his trousers down and simply kneels there and defecates in public, no? My reaction to this was that it's not only I've never been to a party like that. Sorry? I've never been to a party like that. Yeah, because you are not part of the American ruling elite, you know. No, but I'm saying that it's not just Trump. Do you know Luis Buñuel's film, *Le Fantôme de la liberté*, *Phantom of Freedom*? One of my favorite scenes where they turn around the natural order, so that shitting becomes public, eating eating shitting. You know families visit another family and there is a big table with toilet seats. And they talk and shit and then a baby asks, Mommy, where is that place you know to eat? And Mommy said, you don't talk about this in public, go there discreetly and this is now American politics more or less. And if we remain at this level, look, read Trump closely and you will see that if you, which is difficult to do, I know, abstract his total racist sexist stupidities, and look from here and there where he makes a concrete proposal, they are usually not so bad. He is much he said he will not totally dismantle universal healthcare, which is a taboo for all others. He said, very importantly, you know the Jewish lobby is now against him because he said we must find the right balance there in he was for raising minimum wage and so on. So I think the Trump is a paradox who he is really a centrist liberal. Maybe even in his economic policy closer to Democrats and he desperately tries to mask this. So the function of all these dirty jokes, stupidities, is to cover up that he is really a pretty ordinary central politician. Now comes my point. In contrast to Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz, listen to his proposals, they are nightmare. If I were to be some Surgeon General, I would inspect Ted Cruz like is he human, is he an alien and so on. No, I really mean it. That's the tragedy of American politics. There is hope, but there is danger. What Chomsky called manufacturing consent, how both parties monopolize the field proposed, it's falling apart. There is a rebellion in both parties. And as usually, it's new hope but it also can be danger. You know but back to what you asked me at the beginning. You know what's my problem? Not yet. What if Trump, no not Trump, what if if Trump's by some miracle elected President, I don't fear, he is a conformist, he will but what if Sanders by some absolute magic which cannot happen is elected President? What I fear, no, he is not a stupid leftist who will socialize, he will do some very modest things. But I think even this will be too much for the capital and they will organize a crisis against him. This is for me where I disagreed also in a very friendly way with Varoufakis. You know, when he explains in his he is almost nobody can be as nervous as me, full of tics, but he comes close to me sometimes, explains how, do you know how horrible it was in Brussels, how they ignored me, humiliated me. And I told him but what did you expect, that Brussels is some kind of Habermasian community of rational argumentation? I told him I expected them to be even worse. If I were to be a typical Western European capital manager, imperial whatever, I would try to push Greece out and then organize a total fiasco there, hunger and so on and so on. I even expected Europe to be more brutal, no? Uh, this is moving to the point which before we came out Slavoj said was where we pretend to be democratic, which means we're opening up to questions. There are people there should be people with mics all around. We're going to take three questions at a time. I'd ask you to make it brief so we can get as many questions in as possible and to try and avoid making statements. There should make your voice rise at the end, imagine there's a question mark. And to repeat an old joke just to make you sure, I love dialogues but late Plato's dialogues, do you know them? One guy talks all the time, the other guy says every ten minutes by Zeus, so it is, Socrates. So let's have this type of a dialogue now. Okay, so let's pretend to be democratic. Put your hands up. Yeah, hello. I wonder how do you comment on people having to pay tickets to come and listen to you? Okay, so that's the first question. Okay, no problem. There's
unknown
one up there, yes here. Hi there. I was hoping you could comment a little bit about the EU referendum in the UK. Okay, a comment about the EU referendum. And one over here. Yeah,
one up there, yes here. Hi there. I was hoping you could comment a little bit about the EU referendum in the UK. Okay, a comment about the EU referendum. And one over here. Yeah,
Slavoj Žižek
you were a supporter back then of Erdoğan, the Turkish President, so I wonder what's your view now? Are you crazy? I'm prohibited, I'm afraid to enter Turkey. Today, but before we were having some supportive, some kind of supportive, or maybe it was a mistake. But the question is, yeah, what do you think about Merkel's recent decision of pursuing the German humorist, which is contradictory in terms maybe but Okay, so you go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. First, tickets and so on. Well, I can give you only a very naive answer and I hope all people here can vouch for the truth of it. I
you were a supporter back then of Erdoğan, the Turkish President, so I wonder what's your view now? Are you crazy? I'm prohibited, I'm afraid to enter Turkey. Today, but before we were having some supportive, some kind of supportive, or maybe it was a mistake. But the question is, yeah, what do you think about Merkel's recent decision of pursuing the German humorist, which is contradictory in terms maybe but Okay, so you go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. First, tickets and so on. Well, I can give you only a very naive answer and I hope all people here can vouch for the truth of it. I
unknown
don't get even a penny out of it. I'm here for free. So if you think you are exploited, I'm also exploited. Because,
don't get even a penny out of it. I'm here for free. So if you think you are exploited, I'm also exploited. Because,
Slavoj Žižek
you know, I even
you know, I even
unknown
pay, I even paid my own ticket, plane
pay, I even paid my own ticket, plane
Slavoj Žižek
ticket, the hotel was paid by Birkbeck and so on, so there is absolutely and also tomorrow when I speak at Libyan School for Economics, no? I also get get no money for that. But on the other hand, you know, let's say they were to offer me a lot of money, I must be frank I would gladly accept it. Why? Because first, you know, this is typical, I claim, middle-class guilt. Did you have any real contact with poor people? Their attitude is, can you get money, grab it, perfectly. It's only the middle-class people who feel guilty and you know it's obscene. But what I want to say is this, but you know how many, I don't have anything. I don't own an apartment where I live, my wife owns it, I don't have a car, you see how I am dressed and so on. Just to give you an idea, when I had some money I wanted to go with
ticket, the hotel was paid by Birkbeck and so on, so there is absolutely and also tomorrow when I speak at Libyan School for Economics, no? I also get get no money for that. But on the other hand, you know, let's say they were to offer me a lot of money, I must be frank I would gladly accept it. Why? Because first, you know, this is typical, I claim, middle-class guilt. Did you have any real contact with poor people? Their attitude is, can you get money, grab it, perfectly. It's only the middle-class people who feel guilty and you know it's obscene. But what I want to say is this, but you know how many, I don't have anything. I don't own an apartment where I live, my wife owns it, I don't have a car, you see how I am dressed and so on. Just to give you an idea, when I had some money I wanted to go with
unknown
my son to Ritz or Savoy for a breakfast. You know what they told me, I asked them is the breakfast
my son to Ritz or Savoy for a breakfast. You know what they told me, I asked them is the breakfast
Slavoj Žižek
room open, they looked at me and told me it's open but not for you, sir, you know.
room open, they looked at me and told me it's open but not for you, sir, you know.
unknown
So
So
Slavoj Žižek
what I'm saying is that you know to how many places I go, political or where I really care, political debates, communist debates or philosophical, I finance them from those who do pay me. And I think it would be totally hypocritical to play this game of, no, it's dirty money. No, let be a Leninist, take money, but use it correctly. Because if I get well paid, I don't think that any greater number of Somali children will die because of that. It's just that probably some other idiot artist or whoever will get more money. We should take money and use it correctly, don't do this moralism. Okay, on with what was Brexit. Brexit, I don't know enough about the situation here. The reason, but it's very abstract one, again, if you know situation better here, I'm ready to change my mind. But there is now a new tendency among some of the European leftists, which is something like, European Union is just an arm of international monetary capital, financial capital, and on the other hand, we have this right-wing nationalist revolt against it which looks efficient, right-wing anti-immigrants are popular. So why should we leave this to the right wing? Why should we not try to try to include into our field nationalist reference and turn into something that some of my friends even, they didn't use the word national socialism but to save their shame skin, it was socialist nationalism, which sounds better, no. And then you get something towards which even if it was meant seriously I'm deeply skeptical. Namely, you know, for example, this Lapavitsas, I take him seriously, he is a great guy, but nonetheless his idea of Grexit, Greeks steps out of Euro, prints its own money and so on and so on. I think that in this way you don't really gain any independence from international capital in the way he calls, like Venezuela can do, why, because could have done, now it cannot, because they have oil and so on. For Greece it would have been a catastrophe. In other sense, I don't buy this story of let's the left should mobilize ordinary people with nationalist rhetoric, because it's the only one which works against global capital. I think this is a catastrophic decision. Here, with many friendly disagreements, I follow Varoufakis. The lesson of the Greek defeat is that one nation-state cannot do it. The only chance for Europe and it's quite possible that Europe will miss this chance because now, after this gradual little bit decline of the left in Greece, in Spain and so on, there are basically at this moment two strong Europes. Anti-immigrant racist Europe and this anonymous Brussels Europe. They are both horror. If this remains the only choice, Europe is over. What about the Podemos, Syriza, Jeremy Corbyn, Portuguese left? I don't know enough about Jeremy Corbyn and this is not a nasty rhetorical question.
what I'm saying is that you know to how many places I go, political or where I really care, political debates, communist debates or philosophical, I finance them from those who do pay me. And I think it would be totally hypocritical to play this game of, no, it's dirty money. No, let be a Leninist, take money, but use it correctly. Because if I get well paid, I don't think that any greater number of Somali children will die because of that. It's just that probably some other idiot artist or whoever will get more money. We should take money and use it correctly, don't do this moralism. Okay, on with what was Brexit. Brexit, I don't know enough about the situation here. The reason, but it's very abstract one, again, if you know situation better here, I'm ready to change my mind. But there is now a new tendency among some of the European leftists, which is something like, European Union is just an arm of international monetary capital, financial capital, and on the other hand, we have this right-wing nationalist revolt against it which looks efficient, right-wing anti-immigrants are popular. So why should we leave this to the right wing? Why should we not try to try to include into our field nationalist reference and turn into something that some of my friends even, they didn't use the word national socialism but to save their shame skin, it was socialist nationalism, which sounds better, no. And then you get something towards which even if it was meant seriously I'm deeply skeptical. Namely, you know, for example, this Lapavitsas, I take him seriously, he is a great guy, but nonetheless his idea of Grexit, Greeks steps out of Euro, prints its own money and so on and so on. I think that in this way you don't really gain any independence from international capital in the way he calls, like Venezuela can do, why, because could have done, now it cannot, because they have oil and so on. For Greece it would have been a catastrophe. In other sense, I don't buy this story of let's the left should mobilize ordinary people with nationalist rhetoric, because it's the only one which works against global capital. I think this is a catastrophic decision. Here, with many friendly disagreements, I follow Varoufakis. The lesson of the Greek defeat is that one nation-state cannot do it. The only chance for Europe and it's quite possible that Europe will miss this chance because now, after this gradual little bit decline of the left in Greece, in Spain and so on, there are basically at this moment two strong Europes. Anti-immigrant racist Europe and this anonymous Brussels Europe. They are both horror. If this remains the only choice, Europe is over. What about the Podemos, Syriza, Jeremy Corbyn, Portuguese left? I don't know enough about Jeremy Corbyn and this is not a nasty rhetorical question.
Paul Holdengräber
No, I just No no no, what I will say now. Okay, okay. I am asking you, probably you know more, is there anything in Corbyn which is more than return to good old welfare state Labour Party? And if it is, what exactly there is? I think there's a lot more to his base than that. I mean what's interesting I think about Corbyn and Sanders is that unlike
No, I just No no no, what I will say now. Okay, okay. I am asking you, probably you know more, is there anything in Corbyn which is more than return to good old welfare state Labour Party? And if it is, what exactly there is? I think there's a lot more to his base than that. I mean what's interesting I think about Corbyn and Sanders is that unlike
Slavoj Žižek
Syriza, Podemos and so on, they don't actually represent a new politics. They they are saying the same things that they've been saying for a long time, but their base is completely different. That the base that Corbyn would have had or someone like Corbyn in the 80s would have been a traditional trade
Syriza, Podemos and so on, they don't actually represent a new politics. They they are saying the same things that they've been saying for a long time, but their base is completely different. That the base that Corbyn would have had or someone like Corbyn in the 80s would have been a traditional trade
Paul Holdengräber
union base and so on, whereas now there's a lot of young people, there's a
union base and so on, whereas now there's a lot of young people, there's a
unknown
lot of non-white people, it's a it has a different energy
lot of non-white people, it's a it has a different energy
Paul Holdengräber
behind him. So regardless of whether he is the same person, he doesn't have the same
behind him. So regardless of whether he is the same person, he doesn't have the same
unknown
authority No,
authority No,
Paul Holdengräber
but I didn't mean it personally. Okay, I will rephrase my question. So he doesn't have
but I didn't mean it personally. Okay, I will rephrase my question. So he doesn't have
Slavoj Žižek
the same mass. Yeah, all these young nice guys around Corbyn. Are you one of them? No, I'm not. I mean I'm I'm not around him. I would have voted for him if I'd been in the Okay, my position is exactly the same.
the same mass. Yeah, all these young nice guys around Corbyn. Are you one of them? No, I'm not. I mean I'm I'm not around him. I would have voted for him if I'd been in the Okay, my position is exactly the same.
unknown
Probably, not probably, for sure at the elections I would have voted for him. But I'm sorry to tell you with this a little bit of skepticism, like, what can he actually achieve and so on and so on. I think that unfortunately, the function
Probably, not probably, for sure at the elections I would have voted for him. But I'm sorry to tell you with this a little bit of skepticism, like, what can he actually achieve and so on and so on. I think that unfortunately, the function
Slavoj Žižek
of this type of left is still more it's
of this type of left is still more it's
unknown
horrible to say
horrible to say
Slavoj Žižek
this, pedagogic. In the sense that in the long term, like the result of Sanders will also probably be pedagogic, in the sense of educate people in the long term and so on and so on. And I think it was a wise decision
this, pedagogic. In the sense that in the long term, like the result of Sanders will also probably be pedagogic, in the sense of educate people in the long term and so on and so on. And I think it was a wise decision
unknown
that
that
Slavoj Žižek
Corbyn and the majority of Labour Party decided against Brexit. Right. The third one, Erdoğan. Listen, what you probably think is something of which I'm still proud some five-six years ago, I remember this, I wrote a text celebrating old Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and the old Turkey, Sultan Turkey, as a model for the future. With a lot of irony, but what I meant is that these were, almost for today's relations, a model of relatively functioning multiculturalism. Do you know one of the most beautiful stories that I know? There was in France a small Christian sect. They were thrown out from France by Catholics in 1840s, then they were thrown out of Bavaria and in 1860s they were looking all around Europe, like we are Christians, could you give us just a little bit of a land. You know where they got the land? In Bosnia, which was at that point part of Turkey. Part of Ottoman Empire. So what I'm saying is this, when we associate Turkey with all the horrible crimes, the oppression of Kurds, Armenia and so on, never forget, and here I'm critical of Europe, my God, that this
Corbyn and the majority of Labour Party decided against Brexit. Right. The third one, Erdoğan. Listen, what you probably think is something of which I'm still proud some five-six years ago, I remember this, I wrote a text celebrating old Austrian-Hungarian monarchy and the old Turkey, Sultan Turkey, as a model for the future. With a lot of irony, but what I meant is that these were, almost for today's relations, a model of relatively functioning multiculturalism. Do you know one of the most beautiful stories that I know? There was in France a small Christian sect. They were thrown out from France by Catholics in 1840s, then they were thrown out of Bavaria and in 1860s they were looking all around Europe, like we are Christians, could you give us just a little bit of a land. You know where they got the land? In Bosnia, which was at that point part of Turkey. Part of Ottoman Empire. So what I'm saying is this, when we associate Turkey with all the horrible crimes, the oppression of Kurds, Armenia and so on, never forget, and here I'm critical of Europe, my God, that this
unknown
was
was
Slavoj Žižek
not ancient Turkey. This was the Young Turks who wanted to change Turkey into a modern nation-state. This was the only positive way that I referred to Turkey. Not Turkey as a big Turkey which is screwing the Kurds, but a Turkey which has no problem in admitting its multi-ethnic character or whatever, it worked. And up to a certain point, although much less, it was the same there is now a kind of nostalgia which I think is not totally reactionary in Europe for the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because it was kind of a miracle of a multi-ethnic community. I don't idealize it. But this is the only way in which I was positive towards Turkey, and the reason was a personal one. In ex-Yugoslavia, Serbs were obsessed by, you know, we fought the Turks and so on. So my whole entire education in elementary and high school were Turks are the bad guys. So it's a natural reaction to look maybe they are not so bad. But then Erdoğan, although he legitimizes himself as a renovation of Turkish Empire, no, it's just a brutal nation-state. My God, he follows the worst Kemalist politics against the Kurds. Kurds are the true miracle. They are not some primitive pre-modern rebellion. You know that I read when I was in Turkey some statistics, Kurds are the most atheist ethnic group in Turkey. They are proud of it. I visited in Istanbul a Turkish restaurant where I remember a guy was there who made some prayer motion and they threw it out. Like no, sorry, we are secular, you don't do this here and so on and so on. Kurds are a strange nation, so for me, this is the worst thing that one can say about Erdoğan, but the bad news is that maybe he is also like Modi one of the possible futures. It looks so what works today: neoliberal capitalist economy combined with ethnic fundamentalism with authoritarian twist. That's why I proposed and it was published in Turkish media, you know they officially now are enemies, Putin and Erdoğan. And my proposal was aren't they really the two Platonic copies version of one same big politician, I coined the name Putogan, like Putin and Erdoğan. and say Putogan is our future master, no? And it's again, it's very because I know the situation, I even have connections with them, that PKK or whatever, the Kurdish party. No, they now announced armed struggle more or less. And it's a wonderful story their leader Öcalan who is now in prison. You know what he's doing in prison? He is reading Foucault, feminist literature and so on and so on. I mean, Kurds are the miraculous element in Turkey now. And this is why Erdoğan had to get so harsh. The key point of Turkish politics my
not ancient Turkey. This was the Young Turks who wanted to change Turkey into a modern nation-state. This was the only positive way that I referred to Turkey. Not Turkey as a big Turkey which is screwing the Kurds, but a Turkey which has no problem in admitting its multi-ethnic character or whatever, it worked. And up to a certain point, although much less, it was the same there is now a kind of nostalgia which I think is not totally reactionary in Europe for the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because it was kind of a miracle of a multi-ethnic community. I don't idealize it. But this is the only way in which I was positive towards Turkey, and the reason was a personal one. In ex-Yugoslavia, Serbs were obsessed by, you know, we fought the Turks and so on. So my whole entire education in elementary and high school were Turks are the bad guys. So it's a natural reaction to look maybe they are not so bad. But then Erdoğan, although he legitimizes himself as a renovation of Turkish Empire, no, it's just a brutal nation-state. My God, he follows the worst Kemalist politics against the Kurds. Kurds are the true miracle. They are not some primitive pre-modern rebellion. You know that I read when I was in Turkey some statistics, Kurds are the most atheist ethnic group in Turkey. They are proud of it. I visited in Istanbul a Turkish restaurant where I remember a guy was there who made some prayer motion and they threw it out. Like no, sorry, we are secular, you don't do this here and so on and so on. Kurds are a strange nation, so for me, this is the worst thing that one can say about Erdoğan, but the bad news is that maybe he is also like Modi one of the possible futures. It looks so what works today: neoliberal capitalist economy combined with ethnic fundamentalism with authoritarian twist. That's why I proposed and it was published in Turkish media, you know they officially now are enemies, Putin and Erdoğan. And my proposal was aren't they really the two Platonic copies version of one same big politician, I coined the name Putogan, like Putin and Erdoğan. and say Putogan is our future master, no? And it's again, it's very because I know the situation, I even have connections with them, that PKK or whatever, the Kurdish party. No, they now announced armed struggle more or less. And it's a wonderful story their leader Öcalan who is now in prison. You know what he's doing in prison? He is reading Foucault, feminist literature and so on and so on. I mean, Kurds are the miraculous element in Turkey now. And this is why Erdoğan had to get so harsh. The key point of Turkish politics my
unknown
friends claim
friends claim
Slavoj Žižek
to me, maybe I'm simplifying, is that three groups
to me, maybe I'm simplifying, is that three groups
unknown
emerged
emerged
Slavoj Žižek
now. Kurdish party, which now they have a legal wing, which you know to prevent them to enter Parliament Turkey has I think the highest threshold of you have to gain ten percent. They did enter. Turks
now. Kurdish party, which now they have a legal wing, which you know to prevent them to enter Parliament Turkey has I think the highest threshold of you have to gain ten percent. They did enter. Turks
unknown
then you have social democrats which are weak but exist, and then very interesting there is a split in Kemalism between more nationalist old general and a new more leftist Kemalists who are ready to do pact with Kurds. There was a possibility for these three to gain majority. That's why Erdoğan was in a panic and he started bombing the Kurds and so on and so on. So we've got time I think for three more questions. I noticed your reactionary tendency that all the question were from the right. Yes, exactly. I noticed this, you know. Know thy enemy. Yeah yeah. Um so the young man over there. Yeah. Quick question on what's going on in America and some of the populist movements
then you have social democrats which are weak but exist, and then very interesting there is a split in Kemalism between more nationalist old general and a new more leftist Kemalists who are ready to do pact with Kurds. There was a possibility for these three to gain majority. That's why Erdoğan was in a panic and he started bombing the Kurds and so on and so on. So we've got time I think for three more questions. I noticed your reactionary tendency that all the question were from the right. Yes, exactly. I noticed this, you know. Know thy enemy. Yeah yeah. Um so the young man over there. Yeah. Quick question on what's going on in America and some of the populist movements
Slavoj Žižek
in Europe as well. Do you think that you could explain, I guess briefly, the reason why you think so many people are voting for Bernie Sanders, Trump, Corbyn and some of some of the other populist movements? Okay. Um yep. Hi there. You talk about you often mention a broken system. My question was if you had any comments on the current fiat system money that's supporting a fraudulent debt system around the world and what implications it has transnationally on how we organize ourselves both politically and economically. And one more. You said that you want us to work on very specific changes to democracy. Uh, what specific changes are your priorities and what are you doing specifically to make those changes happen? I will begin with the last question. To surprise you, I'm almost tempted to take the Fifth Amendment, you know. I prefer not to answer this question because it may incriminate me. Because now this may be shocking for you but I'm not even talking about more democracy. I'm talking about a stronger, more efficient government. Which should be in some sense responsible and so on. Because the big task today is to have a globally or at least transnationally efficient government. Look at the ongoing refugee crisis. It's catastrophe for Europe. A little bit more centralized Europe with, I know it's horrible what I'm saying now, with stronger military, I'm for militarization. I know this is a shock. People say are you crazy, you want soldiers? Well, frankly from my experience, I trust soldiers much more than than policemen, and I trust policemen still much more than ordinary people's militias. You know one of the most depressing things happening now in post-communist East European countries is that right-wingers are organizing in Hungary, in Slovakia, in others, popular militias. They are cruising the around the forests and detecting immigrants and and so on and so on. So my vision of refugee, not long-term solution, long-term is change the system and so on, it's more radical. But people always ask me you talk about anti-capitalism, screw it, we have a problem here what to do. I claim: central military organization. None of this humiliating chaos hundreds of thousand traveling through Balkan and then the effects are catastrophic, hatred and so on. I would be for brutally militarily establishing, not occupy any country I'm not crazy, military posts on Syrian coasts or I don't know, Turkey if Turkey agree probably, on Lesbos, Northern Libya and so on. Large mega operation, processing refugees there, then direct air bridges or at least ferries and around Europe and so on and so on in a large organized way. Anything else, the catastrophe which is going on now will be getting stronger and stronger and the result will be the only one who truly profited till now were precisely the anti-immigrant populists. Not even the refugees. What I'm listen, I'm not such a bad guy as I may appear through my I'm not saying I'm a good guy, but I'm not such a bad guy. I want this may sound cynical for you considering how some people call me now but I want more refugees in Europe. But I want to have it done in such a way that it will not provoke the right-wing backlash. Which is why a much more problematic topic, I think it's catastrophic to keep silent, ashamed, when we have problems like yours a year and a half ago, Rotherham and so on. There is something so deeply racist in this. It appears like no, we are guilty for everything. But I think this is I had a South African friend, black, who made the most beautiful statement that I can imagine. When he was listening, this was years ago, to some white guy reporting Tutsi-Hutu Rwandan conflict and the official narrative was this is all an aftereffect of colonialism, no? And this guy exploded. He said this is so racist. You white people are so patronizing that you don't even allow us to be really bad. If if we are bad, you know it's the inverted version of white man's burden. Now whenever there is something chaotic in third world, oh, it must be the effect of colonialism or whatever. And this is what I find so humiliating towards Muslims. Whenever there is some they say we didn't integrate them enough, we are guilty and so on. That we should openly talk about it, first first because there is a struggle going on, I know, I participated in it when I was in Ramallah, in the Muslim community itself. Our media don't report on it. Do you know that now in Palestine there is a strong struggle going on for women's rights, to appear in public, against fundamentalists and so on. But what I want to say is this that when people say, oh, but you know, they come from a war, they even if they rape, they are not responsible, they are victims. My God, you know what we are
in Europe as well. Do you think that you could explain, I guess briefly, the reason why you think so many people are voting for Bernie Sanders, Trump, Corbyn and some of some of the other populist movements? Okay. Um yep. Hi there. You talk about you often mention a broken system. My question was if you had any comments on the current fiat system money that's supporting a fraudulent debt system around the world and what implications it has transnationally on how we organize ourselves both politically and economically. And one more. You said that you want us to work on very specific changes to democracy. Uh, what specific changes are your priorities and what are you doing specifically to make those changes happen? I will begin with the last question. To surprise you, I'm almost tempted to take the Fifth Amendment, you know. I prefer not to answer this question because it may incriminate me. Because now this may be shocking for you but I'm not even talking about more democracy. I'm talking about a stronger, more efficient government. Which should be in some sense responsible and so on. Because the big task today is to have a globally or at least transnationally efficient government. Look at the ongoing refugee crisis. It's catastrophe for Europe. A little bit more centralized Europe with, I know it's horrible what I'm saying now, with stronger military, I'm for militarization. I know this is a shock. People say are you crazy, you want soldiers? Well, frankly from my experience, I trust soldiers much more than than policemen, and I trust policemen still much more than ordinary people's militias. You know one of the most depressing things happening now in post-communist East European countries is that right-wingers are organizing in Hungary, in Slovakia, in others, popular militias. They are cruising the around the forests and detecting immigrants and and so on and so on. So my vision of refugee, not long-term solution, long-term is change the system and so on, it's more radical. But people always ask me you talk about anti-capitalism, screw it, we have a problem here what to do. I claim: central military organization. None of this humiliating chaos hundreds of thousand traveling through Balkan and then the effects are catastrophic, hatred and so on. I would be for brutally militarily establishing, not occupy any country I'm not crazy, military posts on Syrian coasts or I don't know, Turkey if Turkey agree probably, on Lesbos, Northern Libya and so on. Large mega operation, processing refugees there, then direct air bridges or at least ferries and around Europe and so on and so on in a large organized way. Anything else, the catastrophe which is going on now will be getting stronger and stronger and the result will be the only one who truly profited till now were precisely the anti-immigrant populists. Not even the refugees. What I'm listen, I'm not such a bad guy as I may appear through my I'm not saying I'm a good guy, but I'm not such a bad guy. I want this may sound cynical for you considering how some people call me now but I want more refugees in Europe. But I want to have it done in such a way that it will not provoke the right-wing backlash. Which is why a much more problematic topic, I think it's catastrophic to keep silent, ashamed, when we have problems like yours a year and a half ago, Rotherham and so on. There is something so deeply racist in this. It appears like no, we are guilty for everything. But I think this is I had a South African friend, black, who made the most beautiful statement that I can imagine. When he was listening, this was years ago, to some white guy reporting Tutsi-Hutu Rwandan conflict and the official narrative was this is all an aftereffect of colonialism, no? And this guy exploded. He said this is so racist. You white people are so patronizing that you don't even allow us to be really bad. If if we are bad, you know it's the inverted version of white man's burden. Now whenever there is something chaotic in third world, oh, it must be the effect of colonialism or whatever. And this is what I find so humiliating towards Muslims. Whenever there is some they say we didn't integrate them enough, we are guilty and so on. That we should openly talk about it, first first because there is a struggle going on, I know, I participated in it when I was in Ramallah, in the Muslim community itself. Our media don't report on it. Do you know that now in Palestine there is a strong struggle going on for women's rights, to appear in public, against fundamentalists and so on. But what I want to say is this that when people say, oh, but you know, they come from a war, they even if they rape, they are not responsible, they are victims. My God, you know what we are
unknown
saying? We are reducing them to pure passive victims. Although it's inverted, but it's still racism. As if we white people are the only ones who can be bad, who can be active. I think that what Palestinians or not Palestinians they Arabs
saying? We are reducing them to pure passive victims. Although it's inverted, but it's still racism. As if we white people are the only ones who can be bad, who can be active. I think that what Palestinians or not Palestinians they Arabs
unknown
generally are doing, it is a type of agency. Of course, you cannot understand it without effects of European colonialism, but the conflict Shia-Sunni and so on and all that. So they are active
generally are doing, it is a type of agency. Of course, you cannot understand it without effects of European colonialism, but the conflict Shia-Sunni and so on and all that. So they are active
unknown
and we
and we
unknown
should treat them as such, not this patronizing don't
should treat them as such, not this patronizing don't
Slavoj Žižek
mention it, it's we Second point, more important. I am sick and tired about this topic of integration, not enough integration. Now I will provoke you. Maybe there is too much integration. Why should there be integration? What do I mean by this? Listen, the true question to ask is what kind of integration. I mean by this the following. Did you notice a wonderful detail or series of details about these who were now accused of terror acts in France and Belgium and so on? They don't come, they are not refugees. All of them are from families which were, their parents, fully integrated. And paradoxically their acts are a revolt against their parents' integration. So I'm not saying they should not integrate or there is an eternal Re- I'm just saying that the problem is more complex, the solution is not simply oh, let's educate them in in our manners and so on. What I especially hate here is this idea of we need more openness, understanding, we should listen to them. Of course, when it this happens it's wonderful, I'm not crazy. But you know what's my position here? Again, it's a crazy one. You know that saying, I mention it also in the book, which is for me one of the high I'm for death penalty against people who say this. It's some deep multicultural thought which goes on: An enemy is just someone whose story we were not ready to listen to. Uh uh, are they crazy? So it's good to know that Hitler was our enemy, you know, because we were not ready to listen. No, we have to accept that there are ideologies which are really bad. The problem with Hitler is not that we were not listening to their side of the story. Maybe we should even listen as among other, although of course I'm not a conservative, Winston Churchill was listening already in the early 30s to their story. That's why he got it immediately, an old anti-communist as he was, that Hitler is much greater danger than Soviet Union and so on. So my idea is this one. Why this pressure to understand when, to use my old joke, I don't even understand myself, how can I understand you? For me, true anti-racism is not, we are together and we bore each other with all those folkloric stories that I cannot stand. No, I would like to live in a big, in America they call it condominium. When I was young I liked the term, I thought you get free condoms or whatever, no. Okay, but you know, like there is a black guy, you are my neighbor here. An African is there, an an an a Chinese is there, an Arab is there, a Jew is there, and we politely ignore each other. But in a very friendly way. And then, wait a minute, from time to time we strike a friendship and it's wonderful. But without this superego pressure, I have to understand you and so on. I don't think that Africans understand themselves, because I know that my own nation doesn't un- No, there is something false, especially combined with another extremely important ideological moment. I also quote it in the book. The silent presupposition of some of these guys who are for total openness and so on is that there is something ennobling in poverty. When you suffer a lot, it makes you understand No, I think did these people ever meet really poor desperate people? And this is not a criticism of them. This is a very sad statement. They are totally bitter, usually you know, the horror of poverty is that of course with exceptions, it doesn't ennoble you. The effect is horrible. Can I just conclude with that quote that I have in the book, it's wonderful. Ruth Klüger, an old Jewish lady survived Auschwitz as a child. And in her memoirs, she reports on a wonderful experience, okay, it's a sad experience but I literally cried when I read it. She said that in a debate in Austria she met some old another old Jew who also had the numbers tattooed from Auschwitz and who exploded against stupid Arabs, they should all be killed, thrown out of the West Bank. And then she also asked herself, my God, but he saw all the suffering of Auschwitz, how can he do this? And then the lady, Ruth Klüger, says something wonderful. She said, but that's the horror of Auschwitz. It was not a factory of goodness. Those who survived were mostly monsters. That's the true horror of it. So don't patronize the refugees as if you know this is not a Frank Capra movie who, you know, the poorer you are, the more noble you are. It's a horrible world and if you want to be Christian, a truly Christian attitude is to love them in their evil, in their meanness, because that's their despair. You know, I hate this idea if we just open ourselves up to them they will be infinitely grateful. No, we ruin them, why should they be grateful? Of course there are thieves among them and so on. Help them accepting that. This is the true anti-racism, not this communication. This communication, we are all good. This is what rich people like, you know. Let's say I'm poor, you are rich. Wouldn't you like to communicate with me and then you will be able triumphantly to say, you see, even if I am rich and he is poor, nonetheless we share the same dreams, we are the same. No, if you are rich and I am poor, we are not the same, my God, no? Sorry, there was another, I did Turkey. No, we're not going to have time for those. It's ah On that note, all that's left for me to do is ah thank the wild man of theory. I just one reproach, I was really glad to meet you because I'm not saying this in patronizing way. Oh dear. The only people with whom I really can share dirty jokes are mostly black people. You know. Like I cannot I dare not even tell to you how I'm talking to Cornel West and my American friends, you know. On that note. No
mention it, it's we Second point, more important. I am sick and tired about this topic of integration, not enough integration. Now I will provoke you. Maybe there is too much integration. Why should there be integration? What do I mean by this? Listen, the true question to ask is what kind of integration. I mean by this the following. Did you notice a wonderful detail or series of details about these who were now accused of terror acts in France and Belgium and so on? They don't come, they are not refugees. All of them are from families which were, their parents, fully integrated. And paradoxically their acts are a revolt against their parents' integration. So I'm not saying they should not integrate or there is an eternal Re- I'm just saying that the problem is more complex, the solution is not simply oh, let's educate them in in our manners and so on. What I especially hate here is this idea of we need more openness, understanding, we should listen to them. Of course, when it this happens it's wonderful, I'm not crazy. But you know what's my position here? Again, it's a crazy one. You know that saying, I mention it also in the book, which is for me one of the high I'm for death penalty against people who say this. It's some deep multicultural thought which goes on: An enemy is just someone whose story we were not ready to listen to. Uh uh, are they crazy? So it's good to know that Hitler was our enemy, you know, because we were not ready to listen. No, we have to accept that there are ideologies which are really bad. The problem with Hitler is not that we were not listening to their side of the story. Maybe we should even listen as among other, although of course I'm not a conservative, Winston Churchill was listening already in the early 30s to their story. That's why he got it immediately, an old anti-communist as he was, that Hitler is much greater danger than Soviet Union and so on. So my idea is this one. Why this pressure to understand when, to use my old joke, I don't even understand myself, how can I understand you? For me, true anti-racism is not, we are together and we bore each other with all those folkloric stories that I cannot stand. No, I would like to live in a big, in America they call it condominium. When I was young I liked the term, I thought you get free condoms or whatever, no. Okay, but you know, like there is a black guy, you are my neighbor here. An African is there, an an an a Chinese is there, an Arab is there, a Jew is there, and we politely ignore each other. But in a very friendly way. And then, wait a minute, from time to time we strike a friendship and it's wonderful. But without this superego pressure, I have to understand you and so on. I don't think that Africans understand themselves, because I know that my own nation doesn't un- No, there is something false, especially combined with another extremely important ideological moment. I also quote it in the book. The silent presupposition of some of these guys who are for total openness and so on is that there is something ennobling in poverty. When you suffer a lot, it makes you understand No, I think did these people ever meet really poor desperate people? And this is not a criticism of them. This is a very sad statement. They are totally bitter, usually you know, the horror of poverty is that of course with exceptions, it doesn't ennoble you. The effect is horrible. Can I just conclude with that quote that I have in the book, it's wonderful. Ruth Klüger, an old Jewish lady survived Auschwitz as a child. And in her memoirs, she reports on a wonderful experience, okay, it's a sad experience but I literally cried when I read it. She said that in a debate in Austria she met some old another old Jew who also had the numbers tattooed from Auschwitz and who exploded against stupid Arabs, they should all be killed, thrown out of the West Bank. And then she also asked herself, my God, but he saw all the suffering of Auschwitz, how can he do this? And then the lady, Ruth Klüger, says something wonderful. She said, but that's the horror of Auschwitz. It was not a factory of goodness. Those who survived were mostly monsters. That's the true horror of it. So don't patronize the refugees as if you know this is not a Frank Capra movie who, you know, the poorer you are, the more noble you are. It's a horrible world and if you want to be Christian, a truly Christian attitude is to love them in their evil, in their meanness, because that's their despair. You know, I hate this idea if we just open ourselves up to them they will be infinitely grateful. No, we ruin them, why should they be grateful? Of course there are thieves among them and so on. Help them accepting that. This is the true anti-racism, not this communication. This communication, we are all good. This is what rich people like, you know. Let's say I'm poor, you are rich. Wouldn't you like to communicate with me and then you will be able triumphantly to say, you see, even if I am rich and he is poor, nonetheless we share the same dreams, we are the same. No, if you are rich and I am poor, we are not the same, my God, no? Sorry, there was another, I did Turkey. No, we're not going to have time for those. It's ah On that note, all that's left for me to do is ah thank the wild man of theory. I just one reproach, I was really glad to meet you because I'm not saying this in patronizing way. Oh dear. The only people with whom I really can share dirty jokes are mostly black people. You know. Like I cannot I dare not even tell to you how I'm talking to Cornel West and my American friends, you know. On that note. No
unknown
yeah.
yeah.
Slavoj Žižek
Goodbye. Thank you. Okay, definitely.
Goodbye. Thank you. Okay, definitely.