The REAL Point of Trump’s Tariffs | Aaron Bastani Meets Slavoj Žižek
Interview · Novara Media ·
2025-04-13 · 2:07:22 · 15,719 words
ideologycapitalismpsychoanalysiscommunism-socialismfascism-populismeveryday-lifesubjectivitycinema-art-culturegeopolitics-wareconomicsecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspacereligion-theology
Žižek critiques the label 'fascist' for Trump, proposing 'liberal fascism' as a more precise term for the paradox of deregulation strengthening state power. He uses a birthday joke to transition into a psychoanalytic argument that enforced subjectivization in modern precarious work (like Uber) is more oppressive than traditional objectification, concluding with a reflection on the Bolsheviks and Lenin. Žižek analyzes the shifting nature of class identity in late capitalism, contrasting the nostalgia for stable proletarian life with the precarious 'middle-class' status of modern gig workers. He uses autobiographical anecdotes about his own workaholism and bureaucratic avoidance to illustrate the psychological burden of precarity and the 'perverted Protestant ethics' of the intellectual. The excerpt concludes with a curated list of his favorite 20th-century authors, Beckett, Kafka, and Platonov, reinterpreting them through a lens of optimism, obscenity, and nihilism, while dismissing Joyce, Solzhenitsyn, and Schiller. Žižek argues for a conservative appreciation of classical European music and critiques modern anti-Eurocentrism, positing that Europe's 'emancipatory core' is what its enemies hate. He analyzes the current geopolitical landscape, suggesting that Trump’s apparent chaos and obscenity mask a rational, albeit contradictory, economic strategy aimed at re-industrializing the US while maintaining dollar hegemony. He contrasts Trump’s 'human' vulgarity with the 'alien-like' robotic nature of figures like J.D. Vance and Elon Musk, concluding that a 'leftist Trump', a dictatorial figure who breaks ideological paralysis, is needed to counter the 'Bai Lan' (let it rot) nihilism of the young. Žižek argues that Trump represents 'liberal fascism' rather than classical fascism, characterized by a chaotic techno-feudalism where oligarchs control the commons without feudal hierarchy. He critiques the 'BDS' strategy and highlights a paradoxical alliance between European antisemites and Israeli Zionists, before proposing 'principled opportunism' as a leftist response. He concludes that the only viable solution to global crises like ecology is a decentralized, transnational communism, using the EU's relationship with local identities as a model. Žižek distinguishes between authentic fundamentalism (Amish, Tibetans) and pseudo-fundamentalism (US right-wingers) based on the presence of envy, arguing that Trumpian populism paradoxically enables the destruction of common sense through technologies like AI and Neuralink. He explores the limits of artificial intelligence, identifying daily rituals and swearing as uniquely human acts of subjectivity, and debates the psychological viability of a post-scarcity 'luxury communism' with an interlocutor, concluding with a metaphorical reading of religion as a necessary structural illusion.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 38
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek's critique of the tendency to label Trump simply as 'fascist' without analyzing the specific, new structural dynamics of his authoritarianism.
Žižek's term for the paradox where neoliberal deregulation ('get rid of the state') results in a de facto stronger, more intrusive state apparatus.
as “object vs subject in desire”
The idea that in sexual desire, being an object is preferable to being a subject; the 'object' has no burden of enjoyment, whereas the 'subject' is forced to perform it.
as “enforced subjectivization”
The condition where the subject is forced to perform emotional engagement, creativity, or sympathy for a cause they do not care about, which Žižek argues is more oppressive than mechanical objectification.
as “precarious middle class”
The paradoxical status of gig workers (e.g., Uber drivers) who are poor but ideologically framed as free, flexible, and beyond traditional alienation, despite lacking job security.
The mechanism by which the platform presents itself as a neutral mediator rather than a capitalist employer, thereby ideologically masking exploitation and preventing class solidarity.
Žižek's characterization of the modern worker (e.g., Uber driver) who owns their means of production but competes against peers, effectively becoming a 'petty bourgeois' subject who cannot organize collectively.
An atheist's pathological feeling of guilt and need to justify existence through endless work, mimicking the Calvinist drive for salvation without the religious framework.
as “Communist Indian Summer”
The final period of hardline Communism in Yugoslavia, which Žižek credits with forcing his emigration and subsequent international success by blocking local employment.
as “bureaucracy as obscene entity”
A reading of Kafka where bureaucracy is not just oppressive but sexually explicit, dirty, and self-sabotaging, revealed through the pornographic nature of court records.
A form of critique that remains trapped within the system it opposes (e.g., Solzhenitsyn's dissidence being structurally dependent on the Stalinism it condemns), as opposed to a pure external negation.
The Hegelian principle that the theoretical concept or anticipation of a work often provides a more satisfying experience than the actual consumption of the work itself.
The universal, liberating potential of European culture and politics that Trump, Putin, and others secretly hate and seek to destroy.
A mechanism observed in Slovenian socialism where the ruling ideology functioned precisely because citizens did not believe it, allowing the system to persist through ironic distance.
as “cheap caricature realization of '68”
Žižek’s assessment of Elon Musk as the actualization of the 1968 counterculture’s failure: sexual freedom and job-hopping reduced to a vulgar, capitalist caricature.
The idea that Trump’s tariffs and unpredictability are not random errors but a calculated tactic to create leverage for renegotiating global economic relations.
A self-description of his institutional role: enforcing bureaucratic compliance and generating 'quantified bullshit' to secure funding while avoiding actual administrative presence.
A Chinese youth movement meaning 'let it rot,' representing a withdrawal from political engagement due to perceived societal corruption and complexity.
Žižek’s provocative proposal for a political figure who acts with dictatorial authority to break ideological deadlock and mobilize the masses, distinct from Trump’s current persona but utilizing his style.
A modern economic condition where platforms like Amazon control the 'commons' (e.g., book sales) without the hierarchical social order of classical feudalism, creating a chaotic oligarchy.
as “privatization of the commons”
Marx's concept reinterpreted by Žižek: not distributing common land to private owners, but keeping the commons (like digital platforms) under the control of a few oligarchs who blackmail both sides.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which Žižek critiques for its simplistic 'boycott Israel not the Jews' slogan, arguing it ignores the complex reality of European antisemitism.
as “lack of cognitive mapping”
Fred Jameson's term used by Žižek to describe the current political paralysis: knowing the global situation but being unable to mobilize people due to a lack of vision.
Žižek's proposed leftist strategy: retaining core principles (emancipation) while radically changing detailed analyses and tactics to fit new circumstances, rather than sticking to obsolete dogmas.
as “decent moral majority”
A positive re-evaluation of Bernie Sanders, characterized by common-sense decency and ordinary interaction, contrasted with Trump's obscene postmodern relativism.
as “common sense decency”
A quality Žižek attributes to Bernie Sanders, representing a non-fake, ordinary moral stance that contrasts with the 'obscene' style of the new right.
as “pseudo-fundamentalism”
A category for right-wing populists who are secretly obsessed with and envious of the lifestyles they claim to hate, unlike authentic fundamentalists who simply want to be left alone.
An ironic label for figures like Steve Bannon who use populist rhetoric to advance neoliberal or technocratic agendas, such as raising taxes on the rich to fund elite projects.
as “network states”
A concept associated with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel involving the creation of new societies from zero using algorithms and benevolent dictators.
The ideological goal of transhumanist projects, which Žižek argues is more extreme than Stalinism because it seeks to biologically and digitally remake human subjectivity.
as “Neuralink”
A technology enabling direct brain-machine interfaces, which Žižek views as a horror because it collapses the gap between thought and reality, threatening human freedom.
Stupid, meaningless habits (like avoiding cracks in tiles) that introduce minimal order and meaning; Žižek argues AI cannot perform these spontaneously as an expression of subjectivity.
as “swearing”
The zero form of language (following Lacan); a reflexive act that acknowledges the gap in language and the subject's lack of full identification with social roles.
as “subjectivity is always negative”
The idea that subjectivity arises from not being fully identified with one's place in society or language; it is the gap or lack, not a positive essence.
The transhumanist dream of unified self-awareness, which Žižek rejects as 'bullshit' and compares to a Soviet joke about dying before communism arrives.
An ideological construct (like God) that does not need to exist in reality but is structurally necessary for the functioning of language and society.
A metaphor for God or the big Other: an entity that doesn't exist but must be posited to complete the system and make the division work.
A post-scarcity society where material needs are met; Žižek questions whether humans can survive the trauma of freedom from necessity without new forms of oppression or mental illness.
Stories he reaches for 12
Bernie Sanders sat alone in the crowd at Biden's inauguration wearing woolen gloves, stealing the show and signaling a deep dissatisfaction with the 'false' Biden spectacle.
“Biden's inauguration. Who stole the show? Bernie Sanders sitting there alone with his gloves woolen gloves”
Lenin, living in a small room with his wife and a middle-class subletter, famously remarked that this was one of the few times he met a 'real working class,' highlighting the gap between self-perception and material reality.
“Lenin wrote 'This is now one of the few times that I met a real working class.' This guy was for him, but the guy wasn't definitely, he was pure middle class.”
Žižek tells a vulgar story of a woman told by her lover that she would be perfect if she lost two pounds. He advises her not to, arguing that the obstacle (the extra pounds) creates the effect of beauty; removing it makes her ordinary.
“Just don't lose two pounds. Because the effect of perfection comes precisely from the fact that you are not perfectly perfect.”
Žižek defends the German band Rammstein against neo-Nazi accusations, noting their hit song 'Links' (Left) and claiming they are radical leftists, using this to assert his own conservative stance on modern music.
“They are radical left. One of their big hits is Links which means left, left, left.”
Žižek contrasts authentic fundamentalists (Amish, Tibetans) who have no envy and just want to be left alone, with pseudo-fundamentalists (US right-wingers) who are secretly obsessed with and envious of those they hate.
“They don't have any envy. They don't hate... Their idea is we found our way of life. You have yours nice, we can be friends.”
Contrasting Croatia’s Medjugorje, where the party ignored miracles to avoid tourism loss, with Slovenia, where the party exploited a local miracle for tourism until a priest ruined it, showing the absurdity of state ideology.
“In the most orthodox party Communist Party weekly journal, he was attacked for non-patriotic behavior.”
Žižek critiques Neuralink's humanitarian example of a crippled man moving a chair with his mind, arguing that if the machine can read your mind, it controls you, destroying the gap between thought and reality that constitutes freedom.
“What goes out goes in. This means that the machine can read your mind up to a point and who controls the machine then?”
Žižek notes that in late 60s/70s Slovenia, when people had free weeks, they got into fights, suggesting that humans need obstacles and occupation, not just luxury.
“In local places there were many fights. After two days of enjoying it people got in conflict and so on.”
An Arab story about a dying merchant leaving camels to three sons. A wise man adds his own camel (the 12th) to make the division possible, then takes it back. Žižek uses this as a metaphor for God: a necessary structural illusion that doesn't exist but completes the whole.
“God is the 12th camel... It doesn't exist but you add him and you get a completes the whole.”
Žižek recounts being brutally attacked in German media after giving a cautious speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair days after October 7, highlighting the suppression of dissent in Western Europe compared to the 'reasonableness' of Israeli secret services.
“I was brutally attacked in all the media. But you know what made me... really depressive.”
Citing Fred Jameson, Žižek reads Kafka's bureaucracy not as a desperate void but as an 'obscene entity' filled with pornography and sexualized power dynamics, finding optimism in Kafka's animal stories (like Josephine the Mouse) as early socialist allegories.
“Bureaucracy is directly sexualized as an obscene dirty self-sabotaging system... Josephine the Mouse was the last thing he wrote.”
Žižek cites a scene from The Wire where detectives communicate purely through 'Fuck it' and 'Oh fuck,' arguing this is pure communication that implies a minimum of subjectivity and the gap in language, which AI cannot replicate spontaneously.
“That's communication at its purest... I wonder if they can do it in this specifically human way which implies a minimum of subjectivity.”
Works invoked 25
Don Giovanni opera
Bought on pirate DVDs in China; cited as evidence of the universal appeal of European classical music.
The Castle book
Cited for scenes revealing the 'obscenity' of the Castle (sexual encounters, falling huts).
The Trial book
Used to illustrate the 'obscene' nature of bureaucracy, specifically the pornographic court records.
The Unnamable book
Chosen as Žižek's greatest novel of the 20th century; represents the 'object itself' speaking.
The Wire tv
Žižek thought the series was overestimated and too naively leftist, but cites a specific scene of swearing as pure communication.
Kolyma Tales book
Shalamov's work, praised for its minimalist style and pure depiction of Gulag horrors.
Neuralink other
A technology group/project that Žižek declined to work with, viewing it as a horror that threatens human freedom.
Chevengur book
Platonov's novel, praised for its early insight into the nihilist dimension of Bolshevism.
Another work by Platonov, part of his 'most precious' legacy.
New Statesman journal
The publication where John Gray accused Žižek of laying the foundation for a new Holocaust, a claim Žižek finds absurd.
Never Let Me Go book
Ishiguro's novel, praised as the 'best ambiguous dystopia' for its enigmatic acceptance of fate.
Žižek's own book, which he admits he didn't really succeed with, but which led to invitations from tech elites.
Cited by Fred Jameson as an optimistic, early socialist allegory about the role of the artist.
Waiting for Godot play
Described as 'overrated' by some, but used by Žižek to illustrate Beckett's optimism.
BDS other
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which Žiženg critiques for its simplistic approach to antisemitism and Israel.
The Bell (Glocke) book
Schiller's poem, described as a 'most terrible poem' and 'best short poem on the genesis of fascism' for its anti-feminist, nationalist message.
Deep Utopia book
Nick Bostrom's book dealing systematically with the problem of post-scarcity society.
Deutschland erwache other
Cited as the Nazi motto 'Germany awaken,' used to distinguish between fascist awakening and a necessary 'traumatic' leftist awakening.
Claudel's play, cited as a model for Brecht's totalitarian 'Lehrstücke'.
Cited as one of the greatest novels, illustrating how elites in post-scarcity conditions spend their time on intrigue and drama.
The title of Žižek’s new text, reflecting his view that Trump’s survival is preferable to Vance’s.
Marquise of O book
Kleist's story, praised for its cold, realistic beginning involving a pregnancy advertisement.
Nozze di Figaro opera
Bought on pirate DVDs in China; cited as evidence of the universal appeal of European classical music.
Keynes's essay from the mid-30s, cited for the idea that we must perform new kinds of human subjectivity.
Superintelligence book
Nick Bostrom's book, which Žižek has read.
People invoked 59
Franz Kafka positive
Called 'absolute literature'; reinterpreted as an author of obscenity and optimism (via animal stories) rather than just despair.
Giolitti positive
Italian liberal precursor to fascism, who said 'Mussolini great guy,' used to argue that fascism has liberal precursors.
Cited as the head of the KGB line, whose camp Gorbachev belonged to, linking secret police to the impulse for reform.
Carlo Rovelli positive
A physicist and leftist friend who agrees that survival requires a global confederation, asking if it will happen before or after nuclear war.
Kamala Harris negative
Cited as an example of a 'well-trained' politician who gives predictable, safe answers, contrasting with Trump’s spontaneity.
Mentioned as the leader whose father was an open Holocaust denier, part of the 'strange pact' with Israeli Zionists.
Johann Sebastian Bach positive
Included in the canon of European classical music from Bach to Schoenberg, which Žižek defends as having universal appeal.
William Somerset Maugham positive
Described as one of his 'sins' when young; his short story about the bell-ringer is used to illustrate how Communist oppression saved Žižek.
Mentioned in the context of the Bolsheviks; Žižek notes a 'typical detail which depresses me so much' regarding Lenin's time in Switzerland, though the excerpt cuts off before the detail is revealed.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Cited for his late 30s analysis of Hitler, noting that Hitler was not a paternal figure, a point Žižek extends to modern figures.
Arnold Schoenberg positive
Included in the canon of European classical music from Bach to Schoenberg, which Žižek defends as having universal appeal.
Steve Bannon positive
Žižek uses Bannon as an example of a 'Left Trumpian' whose firing reveals the hypocrisy of Trump's administration serving elite interests.
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced as a destination for emigration ('Paris, Lacanians') and for the concept of the 'object itself' speaking in Beckett.
Varlam Shalamov positive
Praised for 'Kolyma Tales' as the 'pure version' of Gulag literature, written in a minimalist Hemingway style.
Friedrich Schiller negative
Identified as the 'first fascist' due to his poem 'The Bell' which glorifies the crushing of women's public participation.
Donald Trump positive
Viewed not as a madman but as having a 'consistent strategy'; his 'human' vulgarity is preferred over robotic technocrats; proposed as a model for a 'leftist Trump'.
Used as an example of the emergence of Italian fascism from Italian liberalism.
Rammstein positive
Defends them as radical leftists, citing their song 'Links', to support his claim of being a conservative in modern music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart positive
Cited as part of the 'universal appeal' of European classical music, which Žižek claims to have bought on pirate DVDs in China.
Kazuo Ishiguro positive
Praised for 'Never Let Me Go' as the best ambiguous dystopia for its lack of revolutionary resistance.
Heinrich von Kleist positive
Described as a 'hero up to a point'; his 'Marquise of O' is praised for its cold, realistic beginning.
JD Vance negative
Described as 'alien-like,' a 'robot creature made by Peter Thiel,' and more frightening than Trump due to his lack of humanity.
Paul Claudel positive
Cited as a French Catholic right-wing writer whose play 'Le Otage' modeled Brecht's totalitarian learning plays.
Mentioned as belonging to the Yuri Andropov/KGB camp, illustrating how secret police often drove reforms in socialism.
Oscar Wilde positive
Cited for the saying that one shouldn't read a book before reviewing it to avoid partial judgment.
Andrei Platonov positive
Described as 'almost my ideal figure' and 'most precious' for seeing the nihilist dimension of Bolshevism from within without later dissident hypocrisy.
Elon Musk negative
Cited alongside Trump as promoting the message to 'get rid of the state,' which Žižek argues results in a stronger de facto state.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn negative
Called a 'boring moralizer' whose dissidence was 'immanent negation' too influenced by Soviet reality/Stalinism.
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited as being fully aware that communism will not be just abundance, but will involve economic base and superstructure (psychoanalysis) to control madness.
Adolf Hitler negative
Used as a historical example (via Adorno) to argue he was not a paternal figure, contrasting with modern 'paternal' critiques of fascism.
Bernie Sanders positive
Admired by Žižek for his 'common sense decency' and 'decent moral majority' stance, contrasted with Trump's obscene style.
Samuel Beckett positive
Identified as one of the three 'mega geniuses' of the 20th century; Žižek reads him as an optimist, not an absurd/nihilist author.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Acknowledged as a 'very heavy totalitarian' but cited for his 'Lehrstücke' (learning plays) which influenced Paul Claudel.
Jordan Bardella negative
Le Pen's second-in-command, attended the Jerusalem conference, representing the 'old style European antisemites' making a pact with Zionists.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Cited for his economic explanation of Trump’s tariffs and the end of the neoliberal Bretton Woods order.
Benjamin Netanyahu negative
Cited for firing the head of Mossad/Shin Bet not for failing to predict Sept 7, but because they advocated for Palestinian political subjectivity.
A big name in quantum mechanics with whom Žižek is in contact.
Anders Behring Breivik negative
Norwegian mass murderer quoted by Žižek to illustrate the paradoxical support for Israel among European far-right extremists.
Ernesto Laclau positive
Cited as a link that helped Žižem move from Paris to England/US.
Nick Bostrom positive
Author of 'Superintelligence' and 'Deep Utopia'; Žižek reads him to systematically address the problem of post-scarcity trauma.
Ami Ayalon positive
Ex-boss of Shin Bet, cited as saying things in Israel that would get one blacklisted in Germany, representing 'reasonable' voices.
A good friend with whom Žižek discussed the '12th camel' theory of God.
John N. Gray positive
Philosopher who argued feudalism is better than current society; Žižek is 'mad' at him for accusing him of laying foundations for a new Holocaust, but agrees with his analysis of the crisis of liberal democracy.
Cited for discovering her Brooklyn voters supported Trump and asking them why, leading to the insight about Trump's 'authentic' vulgarity.
Nazi official quoted by Žižek to show the historical complexity of Nazi views on Zionism (supporting emigration to Palestine).
Joe Biden negative
His inauguration is seen as a 'spectacle' that was 'deeply false' and failed to confront the problem, with Sanders stealing the show.
James Joyce negative
Explicitly hated; criticized for 'incredible self-indulgence narcissism' in Finnegans Wake, contrasting him with Beckett.
Peter Thiel negative
Cited as the creator/trainer of J.D. Vance, implying Vance is a robotic construct rather than a human.
Referenced in the context of a Soviet-era joke about living in communism.
Vladimir Putin negative
Cited as one of those who hate Europe's 'emancipatory core'; part of the group (with Trump) attacking Europe.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt positive
Cited as a historical precedent for a 'de facto monarch' who ignored Congress, used to justify a 'leftist Trump' style of governance.
Hugo Chávez negative
Cited as a failed attempt at a leftist dictator; Žižek states he distrusted Chavez from the beginning.
Wilhelm Reich negative
Cited as someone who wrongly accused Nazism of being an offspring of male chauvinist oppression, a view Žižek rejects regarding Hitler.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the concept of 'privatization of the commons,' which Žižek reinterprets for the digital age.
Cited regarding the quote 'You can cheat some people all the time...'; Žižek notes the quote is misattributed.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited alongside Hegan as knowing that we live in language but are never fully at home in it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited as knowing that we live in language but are never fully at home in it, creating the gap for swearing.
Milan Kundera positive
Described as 'too pretentious wise' but credited with a wonderful essay on Kafka that identifies him as a comic, not tragic, author.
John Maynard Keynes positive
Cited from his essay on the possibilities for our grandchildren, suggesting we must perform new kinds of human subjectivity.
Transcript 37 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I have a problem with calling Trump a fascist because don't you agree this is leftist laziness? Something new is emerging. We all agree it's bad. What is this? The really bad thing that we know is fascism, so Trump has to be a fascist. It's not as simple as that. Fascism is a precise term. There are obviously elements of fascism. United States are moving towards a tough ideological and other dictatorship. I like to use the term liberal fascism. What's Trump and Elon Musk's message all the time? It's precisely let's get rid of the state, freedom of local, and they end up making state de facto stronger than ever.
I have a problem with calling Trump a fascist because don't you agree this is leftist laziness? Something new is emerging. We all agree it's bad. What is this? The really bad thing that we know is fascism, so Trump has to be a fascist. It's not as simple as that. Fascism is a precise term. There are obviously elements of fascism. United States are moving towards a tough ideological and other dictatorship. I like to use the term liberal fascism. What's Trump and Elon Musk's message all the time? It's precisely let's get rid of the state, freedom of local, and they end up making state de facto stronger than ever.
unknown
We live in a moment of change, confusion, and some say collapse. The post-Cold War era is probably coming to an end. It's been a good run, it's been about years. Somebody on the left who made their name during precisely that period is today's guest. They have held the flame high when it comes to being a communist in much of the media when it wasn't particularly fashionable. They themselves come from Central Europe, they have firsthand knowledge and experience of living under actually existing socialism. So I think they're probably going to have really good instincts, ideas, observations about the world we're now moving into, one of multipolarity, the demise of the West, rising automation, rising inequality, political turbulence. I can think of actually few people who are better than today's guest to talk about where we are in the world in It's going to be a fabulous conversation. Slavoj Žižek, welcome to Downstream.
We live in a moment of change, confusion, and some say collapse. The post-Cold War era is probably coming to an end. It's been a good run, it's been about years. Somebody on the left who made their name during precisely that period is today's guest. They have held the flame high when it comes to being a communist in much of the media when it wasn't particularly fashionable. They themselves come from Central Europe, they have firsthand knowledge and experience of living under actually existing socialism. So I think they're probably going to have really good instincts, ideas, observations about the world we're now moving into, one of multipolarity, the demise of the West, rising automation, rising inequality, political turbulence. I can think of actually few people who are better than today's guest to talk about where we are in the world in It's going to be a fabulous conversation. Slavoj Žižek, welcome to Downstream.
Slavoj Žižek
Thanks very much, although I prefer upstream. It sounds reactionary already the place. Okay, let's go on. Yeah. Happy birthday by the way. Thanks, but why are you doing this? Because a week ago I was And to repeat my old joke, do you know that, you know the vulgar expression, I will not spell it out, Milf? Yeah. Yeah. Now I found this in a TV series that in America there is an expression Gilf, which means grandfather I would like to F. So my point is that till you are if you are stupid enough, you can still dream that maybe for some women I'm a Gilf. After you no longer exist as this. So could you give me one good reason why I should celebrate this?
Thanks very much, although I prefer upstream. It sounds reactionary already the place. Okay, let's go on. Yeah. Happy birthday by the way. Thanks, but why are you doing this? Because a week ago I was And to repeat my old joke, do you know that, you know the vulgar expression, I will not spell it out, Milf? Yeah. Yeah. Now I found this in a TV series that in America there is an expression Gilf, which means grandfather I would like to F. So my point is that till you are if you are stupid enough, you can still dream that maybe for some women I'm a Gilf. After you no longer exist as this. So could you give me one good reason why I should celebrate this?
unknown
So you don't think after you think at you're no longer an object of desire for
So you don't think after you think at you're no longer an object of desire for
Slavoj Žižek
women or even men? Yeah, well, and now we came to another point. I think there is a big misunderstanding here which can be clarified even through Marx. You know the standard feminist line is women shouldn't be objectivized. I don't get it. Isn't the whole point of sexual desire that you are objectified? We should learn from Marx here. Slaves or servants, they are not objectified. They are precisely in Marx's sense pure subject. You just work, I don't even notice you as a subject. So something is deeply wrong here. I know what they mean by objectivization. You reduce her to a just an object, you sexually abuse, manipulate. But at the same time, being object is the whole point of sexual attraction. And I would give you a proof, I am really, maybe you know my line, proud of this analysis. You know in hardcore pornography, I made a crucial mistake, I checked it up and you know even now, one year after, I'm getting all the time emails, you know, guaranteed in three weeks, five inches longer or that stuff, you know. But my point is that I checked it up how pornography works, hardcore. What is the standard rule? It's that even if it is fictional, it tells a story. You know this basic rule of cinema that the actor shouldn't look directly into the camera. It can only if it's a supposed to be point-of-view shot. Okay. This holds for hardcore heterosexual traditional. The man is truly just an instrument. You usually don't even see his face. Usually they hire some tattooed cheap sailor or whatever. The man just does it. The woman has to look all the time into the camera and express her, all these sounds, express her satisfaction. So this is a very interesting feature, which I think it's even worse than objectivization. You get the most horrible thing, a fake enforced subjectivization. Because this tells us a lot. I read a complex analysis where they claim when you are a male chauvinist pig, you look a hardcore sexual act, you don't identify with the guy who is doing it. He is nobody, an instrument. You reduce yourself to your gaze observing women's, woman's enjoyment. You want to be sure that she enjoys and that's her duty. So this is a nice example of how being an object is by far not the worst thing. The much worse thing is enforced subjectivization. And this brings me even to, sorry for my jumps, to today's capitalism where, you know, in the good old times of more alienated capitalism, the idea is the worker is objectified. You work in like Ford car assembling factory, you just repeat the same mechanical gesture, blah blah blah. Now with precarious work and all those more creative small companies, you have something much worse. You are expected to get creative, engaged, and so on, but for a cause which is totally foreign to you. You don't care about it. So I find this much more oppressive. I once tried to ask you what forms of exploitation, alienation, whatever we have today. And I would almost prefer to be how do you call it, a chain worker, a big factory, you just repeat some mechanical gestures. Why? Because it may be boring, but it leaves your mind free. You know, it's just this. Then next step is caring like healthcare, old people. Because if you are a human person, not just a pig, you are well aware that you have to enact fake some kind of sympathy, which is already more engaging. It engages you more. And the worst is so-called creative work posts, where you say every morning we meet, we have a brainstorm for half an hour. These forms are much worse because they, you know, they even do not allow you a proper distance. You had to fake at least your engagement itself. That's why, as I improvised everywhere where I appeared here, that's why I think precarious work and also things like, I wonder if you would agree, like things like Uber, no, are the ultimate form of new, you cannot even call it in old Marxist sense exploitation. Because you know how Uber justifies itself? They say, sorry, we are not capitalists, we are just pure mediators. You, if you are a driver, you own your means of production usually, and we just bring you together with potential customers. This is ingenious operation because on the one hand, you are treated as if you, the ideology is there is no longer proper working class because we are all small capitalists. Even a poor guy who is Uber driver, he owns his car, he sells it, it you behave like a small capitalist. The second, even more ingenious thing is that your competition are other Uber drivers, not the company Uber. So it's ingenious already at a formal level. It precludes any form of solidarity. No, other Uber drivers you compete with them. Isn't this, this is I think maybe one of the ideological triumphs in the sense of, in the sense of a phrase that I often use, how they, they, the anonymous system, I don't buy this paranoia that there is some secret circle which meets once a year somewhere between Wall Street and Washington DC and decides, but this is how I think they they they prevent any any social mobilization. Because again, instead of uniting with other Uber drivers, you feel them as a competition. It's very difficult to get any. Hasn't that always been the case with the petty bourgeois? They've always been, I mean and you would say that they're small capitalists, these Uber drivers, it's a new kind of petty bourgeoisification because they're operating underneath Uber. But the petty bourgeois have always been a class which is supremely difficult to organize or to politically understand. Yeah, but, would you agree or not, that's one side of the story. I really hope you're enjoying this conversation. I love talking to people like Slavoj about the most important issues facing the world right now. Let's be honest, the mainstream media doesn't really do that. If they do, it's for a five-minute chunk on the BBC World Service. Here at Novara Media we do it every single day of the week, more or less. We do it every week here on Downstream. Let's be clear. If you like our work and if you support our mission of creating a new media for different politics, you know what to do. Go to novaramedia.com/support. The link is in the description below. Help us build a people-powered media. Nobody is going to do it for us. Help clean up the quality of conversation in Britain and elsewhere. Like I say, the link is in the description below. Now, you know in my old age I'm still a leftist communist. I can exactly explain why. But I would say that at the same time, isn't there a sad lesson? My God, this will sound horrible. That without people who, at least in the immediate reductionist
women or even men? Yeah, well, and now we came to another point. I think there is a big misunderstanding here which can be clarified even through Marx. You know the standard feminist line is women shouldn't be objectivized. I don't get it. Isn't the whole point of sexual desire that you are objectified? We should learn from Marx here. Slaves or servants, they are not objectified. They are precisely in Marx's sense pure subject. You just work, I don't even notice you as a subject. So something is deeply wrong here. I know what they mean by objectivization. You reduce her to a just an object, you sexually abuse, manipulate. But at the same time, being object is the whole point of sexual attraction. And I would give you a proof, I am really, maybe you know my line, proud of this analysis. You know in hardcore pornography, I made a crucial mistake, I checked it up and you know even now, one year after, I'm getting all the time emails, you know, guaranteed in three weeks, five inches longer or that stuff, you know. But my point is that I checked it up how pornography works, hardcore. What is the standard rule? It's that even if it is fictional, it tells a story. You know this basic rule of cinema that the actor shouldn't look directly into the camera. It can only if it's a supposed to be point-of-view shot. Okay. This holds for hardcore heterosexual traditional. The man is truly just an instrument. You usually don't even see his face. Usually they hire some tattooed cheap sailor or whatever. The man just does it. The woman has to look all the time into the camera and express her, all these sounds, express her satisfaction. So this is a very interesting feature, which I think it's even worse than objectivization. You get the most horrible thing, a fake enforced subjectivization. Because this tells us a lot. I read a complex analysis where they claim when you are a male chauvinist pig, you look a hardcore sexual act, you don't identify with the guy who is doing it. He is nobody, an instrument. You reduce yourself to your gaze observing women's, woman's enjoyment. You want to be sure that she enjoys and that's her duty. So this is a nice example of how being an object is by far not the worst thing. The much worse thing is enforced subjectivization. And this brings me even to, sorry for my jumps, to today's capitalism where, you know, in the good old times of more alienated capitalism, the idea is the worker is objectified. You work in like Ford car assembling factory, you just repeat the same mechanical gesture, blah blah blah. Now with precarious work and all those more creative small companies, you have something much worse. You are expected to get creative, engaged, and so on, but for a cause which is totally foreign to you. You don't care about it. So I find this much more oppressive. I once tried to ask you what forms of exploitation, alienation, whatever we have today. And I would almost prefer to be how do you call it, a chain worker, a big factory, you just repeat some mechanical gestures. Why? Because it may be boring, but it leaves your mind free. You know, it's just this. Then next step is caring like healthcare, old people. Because if you are a human person, not just a pig, you are well aware that you have to enact fake some kind of sympathy, which is already more engaging. It engages you more. And the worst is so-called creative work posts, where you say every morning we meet, we have a brainstorm for half an hour. These forms are much worse because they, you know, they even do not allow you a proper distance. You had to fake at least your engagement itself. That's why, as I improvised everywhere where I appeared here, that's why I think precarious work and also things like, I wonder if you would agree, like things like Uber, no, are the ultimate form of new, you cannot even call it in old Marxist sense exploitation. Because you know how Uber justifies itself? They say, sorry, we are not capitalists, we are just pure mediators. You, if you are a driver, you own your means of production usually, and we just bring you together with potential customers. This is ingenious operation because on the one hand, you are treated as if you, the ideology is there is no longer proper working class because we are all small capitalists. Even a poor guy who is Uber driver, he owns his car, he sells it, it you behave like a small capitalist. The second, even more ingenious thing is that your competition are other Uber drivers, not the company Uber. So it's ingenious already at a formal level. It precludes any form of solidarity. No, other Uber drivers you compete with them. Isn't this, this is I think maybe one of the ideological triumphs in the sense of, in the sense of a phrase that I often use, how they, they, the anonymous system, I don't buy this paranoia that there is some secret circle which meets once a year somewhere between Wall Street and Washington DC and decides, but this is how I think they they they prevent any any social mobilization. Because again, instead of uniting with other Uber drivers, you feel them as a competition. It's very difficult to get any. Hasn't that always been the case with the petty bourgeois? They've always been, I mean and you would say that they're small capitalists, these Uber drivers, it's a new kind of petty bourgeoisification because they're operating underneath Uber. But the petty bourgeois have always been a class which is supremely difficult to organize or to politically understand. Yeah, but, would you agree or not, that's one side of the story. I really hope you're enjoying this conversation. I love talking to people like Slavoj about the most important issues facing the world right now. Let's be honest, the mainstream media doesn't really do that. If they do, it's for a five-minute chunk on the BBC World Service. Here at Novara Media we do it every single day of the week, more or less. We do it every week here on Downstream. Let's be clear. If you like our work and if you support our mission of creating a new media for different politics, you know what to do. Go to novaramedia.com/support. The link is in the description below. Help us build a people-powered media. Nobody is going to do it for us. Help clean up the quality of conversation in Britain and elsewhere. Like I say, the link is in the description below. Now, you know in my old age I'm still a leftist communist. I can exactly explain why. But I would say that at the same time, isn't there a sad lesson? My God, this will sound horrible. That without people who, at least in the immediate reductionist
unknown
vulgar sense are petty bourgeois. I don't believe that the real poor non-educated working class, whatever you call them, can self-organize themselves. Without mobilizing middle class, you cannot do not even in big sense revolution. You cannot do a real even resistant
vulgar sense are petty bourgeois. I don't believe that the real poor non-educated working class, whatever you call them, can self-organize themselves. Without mobilizing middle class, you cannot do not even in big sense revolution. You cannot do a real even resistant
Slavoj Žižek
movement. Look at the one case, Bolsheviks. You know there is a typical detail which depresses me so much in Lenin. You know when he was in Switzerland, and it's a wonderful theory, you can cut all
movement. Look at the one case, Bolsheviks. You know there is a typical detail which depresses me so much in Lenin. You know when he was in Switzerland, and it's a wonderful theory, you can cut all
unknown
this out if I talk too much. You know that Dada, what's the name of the cafeteria in that on the other side of the river in Zurich, in that popular department? There is the Dada cafe where Dada was born. Okay. What people don't know it's like yards from there, you go a little bit further and turn up the mountain left, there is the place where Lenin lived. And although it's not true, but it's a wonderfully fake best explanation that I have of where the name Dadaism came. You know that
this out if I talk too much. You know that Dada, what's the name of the cafeteria in that on the other side of the river in Zurich, in that popular department? There is the Dada cafe where Dada was born. Okay. What people don't know it's like yards from there, you go a little bit further and turn up the mountain left, there is the place where Lenin lived. And although it's not true, but it's a wonderfully fake best explanation that I have of where the name Dadaism came. You know that
unknown
precisely when Dada was doing first spectacles, not yet called Dada, Lenin lived around the corner. So the idea is that Lenin was once sitting in a cafeteria there and enjoyed the spectacle so much that he shouted in Russian "da, da," which means yes, yes. It's a dream. It's a dream. But admit it, it's a nice dream. But what I wanted to say is that precisely when he was in Zurich, he
precisely when Dada was doing first spectacles, not yet called Dada, Lenin lived around the corner. So the idea is that Lenin was once sitting in a cafeteria there and enjoyed the spectacle so much that he shouted in Russian "da, da," which means yes, yes. It's a dream. It's a dream. But admit it, it's a nice dream. But what I wanted to say is that precisely when he was in Zurich, he
Slavoj Žižek
lived in a small room with Nadezhda Krupskaya, his wife, with a guy who was definitely a middle class having some cheap hotel restaurant but basically just subletting rooms. And Lenin wrote "This is now one of the few times that I met a real working class." This guy was for him, but the guy wasn't definitely, he was pure middle class. You know. So that's why it's not that I feel any nostalgia for middle class. But people talk a lot about middle class is disappearing. Yes, but at the same time, as you said, with Uber and so on, with precarious workers and so on, a new, let's call it, well they are not workers, in some sense they are middle class even if they are poor and the class distinction runs even among them. Even in a, as our beloved President Trump would have put it, in a shithole of a country like Slovenia, you have successful artists, organizers who do very well as precarious workers. But then you have people who are all the time literally on the edge of starvation. But again, the ruling ideology presents to you precarious work, it's wonderful ideology, wonderful means with me disgusting, the most dangerous, precarious work as a form of already moving beyond alienation. Like you are not alienated in a permanent job, you jump from one to the other job, you are free to choose and so on and so on. This, no wonder that today, this is the gap from traditional Marxism. You know that at least in Germany and a little bit Trump is playing with this now, there is among the workers, whatever remains of them, or I don't use the term in any patronizing way, real working class, there is almost a nostalgia to be a good old-fashioned exploited proletarian in the relatively successful welfare state capitalism. It means yeah, you are exploited, they take, capitalist take surplus value, but you have a minimal standard, the job is more or less guaranteed, retirement, healthcare are often covered. So there is, you don't have to worry at this level. And another thing, I know this because not that I need to do this, but I'm an absolute workaholic. You know what's the basic characteristic of my daily life? And I think that here, although I'm in no way poor, I'm not bluffing there, I understand precarious workers. You know what always attracted me with this nine-to-five or eight-to-four, whatever? That it's a wonderful moment at four or five p.m. that you can say okay, I will forget about my job till tomorrow morning. You can disconnect. If you are a precarious worker, you cannot do this. I'm not a precarious worker, but it's more with me some perverted Protestant ethics where if I don't do a certain amount of work, and by work I mean reading, writing, I have really as an atheist a pathological feeling of guilt, I didn't justify my existence in the eyes of the God who doesn't exist. But this as you know probably means nothing today. Many of my ex-Israeli friends are like this contradiction, you know. I don't believe in God but I do believe that God gave us the West Bank. But what I wanted to say is that you know you never, it often happens to me that some stupid obligations, I was tired blah blah blah, I have to do some houseworks in the morning, my wife sleeps longer so I go to the store, clean some things blah, I have things to do. Then my wife awakens, breakfast with her, then I clean the dishes, then I get tired, I'm old. So that all of a sudden there is six, seven p.m. and I didn't do anything. While my wife at that point said says okay now I want to enjoy and she is mad at me because I said I'm sorry I did nothing to feel that I have a certain right to exist. I need two three hours at least of work. That's the horror. You see how this gets combined. In some sense I'm extremely happy in the again elementary meaning of not being alienated. I'm totally identified with my work and so on. But that's because I have no free time. Okay, I have from time to time but you see what I mean. There is never this happy feeling of ordinary proletarians, you know. Yes, I'm exploited but sorry guys, at p.m. I'm free, I can forget about it. So you're never going to retire then is that what you're saying? It's already reality. I am now a week ago or two as I said I was And up to I should have been retired already because I work now as an as an as a researcher, senior researcher, at Institute at part of Department of Philosophy. It's the happiest marriage that I can imagine because I am never there. Never is not a metaphor for once a month once a year. I think just to do some bureaucratic thing five, six years ago I had to go there. But I they need me because we are all now part of this quantified bullshit, you know. A research project is measured by how many publications abroad and so on. So I give them this and the deal is that I don't do anything at the department, which also they like because I'm a Stalinist with a human face, which means I would intervene strongly. So according to the old law, you were obliged to retire at But they don't want me. They asked the ministry to allow me to stay because I keep my research project alive. This is in Slovenia? Yeah, yeah. But you know what I like. Now you will ask me with your naive stupid British empiricism so what is your big I large I run regulate the largest research project in philosophy in Slovenia. You will ask me but what's this project about? I don't know. Because I have a young assistant, very good friend, great philosopher who does everything, writes the project, writes reports, I give him the money out of my research project so that a wonderful thing that somebody like Derrida with all this fake repetition would have liked, once by mistake I signed some report and it was rejected because the signature looked suspicious because they were so used to. But but it's madness. It exists precisely through this hatred, you know. They don't like me there, I don't like them, but I give them what they need to get more money. So I'm extremely lucky and such an irony I love this it's an old story but it's forgotten today. You know one can precisely identify to whom I owe my moderately called international success or whatever. To the Communist Indian Summer. To the When I was doing my third degree doctoral finishing my studies in early 70s it was the moment of the last how should I call it hardline Communist Indian Summer. And I couldn't get a job. Then for four five years I was unemployed. Then I got a job at a research institute. And even this job of mine is just the research institute was then integrated to philosophy department. Why was this wonderful? Because I was just expected to produce texts. They didn't care. They even preferred that I'm not there. Because of this freedom I can have now another half job but where the salary is higher than my Slovene job here in London at Birkbeck. And what I'm saying is that you know there is a wonderful short story I forgot by Somerset Maugham. His short stories were one of my sins when I was very young. I began reading English by Somerset Maugham short stories. It's an ordinary guy, how you call this in a church, the guy who doesn't do the prayers, the secondary guy who just rings the bell or whatever this, there is a title for it, this nobody, second guy. Then there is a new law that everybody employed by a church had to write, had to know to read and write. They discovered that he doesn't know how to read and write. So he is fired. He goes home, nervous, wants to buy a cigarette, saw that on that big street there is no traffic with cigarettes. So he said why don't I open one and okay to cut a long story short in five years he is pretty wealthy. So he goes to a bank, they ask him to sign some things, he said I don't know how to write. And they told him, ah but you know if you were to known to write you would probably even be a billionaire much more. And he says no, I know exactly if I were to know how to write what would I have been. That poor lowest paid guy in the church. It's simply something similar for me. Without that communist oppression I will be some stupid local professor in Slovenia. It would have been a nightmare. So literally communist oppression saved me. Because it pushed me to move abroad. First Paris, Lacanians, then through Ernesto Laclau and other links England, United States and so on. It's all a direct result of of communist oppression if you call it. You mentioned Somerset Maugham, who's your what's your favorite novel, who's your favorite novelist of all time Slavoj? This is such a shitty difficult question. As for 20th century the answer may surprise you. It's three mega geniuses. First of course let's move from the West to the East. First Beckett, Samuel Beckett. But be careful. Beckett not Joyce. I hate Joyce. Sorry if you are Irish. But Beckett is also Irish. I think Joyce began well with his Dubliners, then Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man so-so still going goes, Ulysses the bluff is here, with Finnegans Wake I became a Goebbels, not a right-wing Goebbels like a nice book to be burned. Incredible self-indulgence narcissism. You know when he said I wrote Finnegans Wake to give years of work to I say no thanks you know. But Beckett is another thing. Beckett is for me the true like somebody asked me what would be your greatest novel of the 20th century. My immediate choice was the third one of his big trilogy, L'Innommable, Unnamable. It's really you don't even know who speaks, it's basically literally in Lacanian terms the object itself who somehow speaks. It's not another person. So it's Beckett. Then sorry I don't have any choice here. Ah I think that reading of Beckett as a tragic nonsense author absurd and so on it's totally wrong. If there ever was an optimist author is Beckett. The way I read his overrated, I don't like it too much, Waiting for Godot. Where is this idea that it's a desperate play? No, they are happy in enjoying. Godot will be coming but it's not here so we have all the time to amuse ourselves and so on. It's optimism. The same with Kafka, my second name. Kafka well my God he comes as close as I can imagine to absolute literature. But Kafka you know intelligent Marxists always know this when they ask after World War Two Brecht the hardliner who is a truly Marxist novelist his instant answer was Kafka. And with Kafka I did some readings, I followed here my good friend Fred Jameson. First it's totally wrong to read his mega novels Castle, The Trial as desperate portrait of bureaucracy. No, the bureaucracy, that's what many people miss, is an extremely obscene entity in Kafka. You remember in The Trial when Joseph K after interrogation being interrogated by the court goes during the day to the same room and looks at the books that the judges were reading. It's all hardcore pornography it's indicated. and you have all this the so for Kafka an ingenious insight. Bureaucracy is directly sexualized as an obscene dirty self-sabotaging system. So it's absolutely Kafka. Now you will say this is nonetheless a desperate view. Where is the optimist side? Ah, my advice to all readers focus on his, there are much less but they are wonderful, animal stories. Like you know Josephine the Singing Mice. Fred Jameson suggested to me if you look closely the community of mice is poor group in some kind of very poor miserable but nonetheless socialist communist society. So it's a short novel isn't this ingenious about the role of an artist in the first stages of very poor socialism where things do not yet function. His stories about dog and so on. So there you find the progressive unexpected aspect of Kafka and very intelligent read many intelligent readers notice this. You know that Josephine the Mouse was the last thing he wrote. And he I'm terribly sorry no go on just I will tell him just I will tell him the interview [unintelligible] Halo okay okay okay sorry I will leave it happen here. So it's that people complained above and below his apartment that he was laughing so loudly while writing it. You know I don't like Milan Kundera too pretentious wise but he made he wrote years ago one wonderful essay on Kafka where he said you misread Kafka totally in the West at this tragic author absent God bureaucracy. For us he says Kafka is a comic author that how they called Metamorphosis where you awaken as some bug he said read this as a comical children's story you go to sleep you awaken as a bug oh isn't it funny and so on. That's the key to Kafka. It's totally wrong to fall into this absent God. If anything in Kafka God comes too close. You know which is a wonderful crucial scene in his Castle where Joseph K all the time you have this hints at the obscenity of the Castle. No that is not Joseph K that is just K the how do you call it when you measure the land he is employed to measure in that okay he enters a schoolroom and ask the teacher there a lady he has an affair with like how can he get to the Castle and she said please not in front of the children and so on. You know immediately Castle is identified as an obscenity. Then once he tries to phone to the Castle and the only contact he gets is two old men talking absolute obscenities. Then a beautiful detail. He takes a walk up towards the Castle and the more he comes close to it the more he sees that what appeared from far away the beautiful big palace is really just a bundle of huts all falling apart and so on. Kafka is the true genius. Then maybe my personal favorite, I really ask people to read it, it's lesser known but now even by my Russian friends he is rediscovered. It is did you hear Andrei Platonov? Chevengur, Foundation Pit. I think he is a unique figure. He was very active Bolshevik. He even later went to the countryside to help spread civilization there among some in southern Soviet Union some tribes but he that's the paradox not in the usual Solzhenitsyn dissident way. He saw from the beginning the dangerous nihilist dimension self-destructive dimension but still participating in it. He is almost my ideal figure. You know it's miracle that he survived because in the late 20s one of his manuscript ended on Stalin's table and it's kept just Stalin wrote "Total pig, don't publish this," like something very. But he is for me the most precious one because without engaging in this cheap later humanist dissidence he saw the nihilist dimension in already early Bolshevism. Because I think the one I don't like for example and I was so nicely surprised when I saw that all my Russian friends we are now in trouble most of them emigrated agree with me. If you want to learn about Gulag just don't touch Solzhenitsyn. He is a boring moralizer and so on. You know Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales. It's written in the style of early Hemingway. Very short sentences without big too many predicates descriptions. In just in this minimalist style he describes the daily horrors of in Kolyma the greatest Gulag and that's the real thing. And all my Russian friends agree with me. They say no won they say that Solzhenitsyn was paradoxically too much influenced by Soviet reality. You know his version of dissidence has at the background Stalinism. It's it's immanent negation. While if you look again for the pure like single malt whiskey, pure version of it it's Varlam Shalamov. No? So then I have this would be the three great 20th century. No? Then I have here and there not so much novels like forget about Goethe, Schiller. Schiller is the first fascist if you ask me. I developed this in one of my books. He wrote Schiller is usually identified with freedom. He wrote The Bell (Glocke) or what, a poem which was kind of a national treasure under Nazism. It's a most terrible poem that I read. You have a country where everybody is at his her their place. Men going around adventures, women stay at home. Then that's his reading, then something horrible happened. Women wanted more, wanted more in public life and this is how he interprets the French Revolution. It's the horror of women getting active. Then through crushing revolution women are put back at their side and all the people unite in building a big bell for new cathedral and so on. It's the best short poem, it's not even so short on the genesis of fascism. So it's not those. My favorite there is Helmut von Kleist, Marquise of O and so on. If I were to you know when you ask which is the best beginning of a novel or story. Usually the usual candidate is is what's that my God, what's the Dickens about the French Revolution? A Tale of Two Cities. Yeah, yeah. You know that it was the time of blah blah. No, my preferred beginning just look at it is Marquise of O of Kleist. He said that in a German newspaper a lady publishes an ad claiming I found myself pregnant but I don't remember with whom, could please the father report himself to this place. And it's done in this totally cold realistic way. It's not oh shock and so on. Not to mention his apparently totalitarian very militaristic place. He is my hero up to a point Brecht, although let's not mask it, Brecht was a very heavy totalitarian. You know then it may my tastes are here very strange. You know Paul Claudel, the French Catholic, right wing. But he wrote a play called Le Otage (Hostage) as a feminine. A play around the time of French Revolution which is was even directly a model for the harshest Brecht. For the Brecht of this learning place, Lehrstücke, the most totalitarian. So I claim that every intelligent progressive author had to learn from Catholic conservatives, you know. Then of contemporary novels, it may be a shock for you. I don't like him especially. But I saw also a movie, I openly admit the source is the movie. Did you see the movie that Ishiguro I mentioned it yesterday, Never Let Me Go? Yeah. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It's the best ambiguous dystopia that I've ever read. Because you know it's a group of people in a special institution and they discovered that they are genetic clones raised so that when they are mature enough their organs will be used one after the other and then when they come to the age they die. But it the what I really like, it's ingenious, it's that it's not there was a stupid movie with was it Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, I forgot the title, it's the same story but done in this usually pseudo-leftist revolutionary way, you know like they discover it and they resist, escape. No, here it is, they knew and they are even free to go out but it's very enigmatically written because it doesn't have you don't get a good reason of why in a total resignation they accept this fate. It's maybe the most depressing novel that I've read. Then but I must say that lately I I more and more limit myself from time to time to a good spy novel. I'm getting old, my eyes are getting weak so I simply want you know what I do, this I will be ashamed to admit it. When I find really good novel, oh my God this will kill, I go to Wikipedia because I don't trust myself. I want to be sure in advance that I know what it is about, the story, and then I read just selected parts. But when I have to write about a book, people think that it's some postmodern joke that I'm kidding, I am not. When I write about a novel, I try not to read it. Because you know Oscar Wilde, this is one of his best sayings, that when you are asked to review a book, don't read the book because this may make your judgment partial, you know. I do then if I am as it were convinced by my own own review what I wrote that it may be good, I go and read the novel. And I'm often disappointed. This is my worst Hegelian side, you know. Theory about something is more than that something. Don't take too much of that something because it may hurt your theoretical, destroy your theoretical insight. No, no, no, wait a minute, I'm not a complete idiot. It's very if you read the novel after good theory, then if it's a really good novel, it's wonderful how you can be pleasantly surprised, I was wrong. But this I was wrong is much better when you notice the difference than directly going to going to to read the novel, no? But on the other hand I'm a boring guy in the sense that my God it's no longer the world today for people like me like rock music. Yes, but I am the guy of the late 60s, early 70s. I think that in those years, everything that happened really happened. And we are now just echoing it. I find here and there something interesting like you know the German band Rammstein. They are people are so stupid when they mistake them as neo-Nazis. Are they crazy? I was in contact with them. They are radical left. One of their big hits is Links which means left, left, left. So that's that's I'm here a conservative in modern music. I don't believe it all this postmodern stuff. I'm so old-fashioned. I think I believe in big classical music and as a total self-conscious Eurocentrist I think that classical music, European, by this I mean from Bach till Schoenberg, this is it. This is let's admit it the only music which really has a universal appeal. You know where I discovered it? When I was in China years ago, this was the golden time of all pirate DVDs, gigantic stores. It's incredible how large were the shelves they got with European classical music. And it was so cheap. Once I bought versions of Nozze di Figaro, another versions of Don Giovanni of Mozart. Let's face it. I don't know how to and then they people can say no, this is Eurocentric, some crazy guy there tried to convince me what about ancient Chinese opera. I bought one, after five minutes it got too boring and so on. And they admit it. I in my old age I claim I'm sick and tired of this eternal anti-Eurocentrism. Everybody is today against Europe. Latin America, you're the colonialist. Trump ultra hated. You know Trump is again and again saying that the true enemy of the United States is neither China nor Russia, but Europe. Putin, of course, everybody. I think that precisely today when Europe is obviously losing its a time to raise the question but what do all these guys Trump, Putin, hate in Europe? I think it's precisely its sorry for this old-fashioned expression emancipatory core which is worth fighting for. Now I'm the first to admit that Europe screwed it up in a in a breathtaking way. You know like I hope we'll agree here. Okay, Ukraine. But sorry, Gaza is a nightmare. How, I mean I know in Germany I was almost blacklisted. How were you almost blacklisted? Ah, I gave, you can check it up, I gave year and a half ago, not the last September but the previous one, it was in all the German media I was a negative star there for a couple of weeks. Because the the guest honorable guest of the year was my country and they asked me to participate in the opening big ritual to give a speech. Was this Frankfurt Book Fair? Yeah, yeah. And okay it was days after October 7th. I gave a speech. I tried to be so cautious you know I quoted only Jewish authors and so on but was a little bit critical. Twice I was interrupted by a high political functionary who started to shout about me. I was brutally attacked in all the media. But you know what made me and this is where we are today, really depressive. You know, that's my old maybe Stalinist aspect. You know who are maybe the most reasonable people today in Israel? Mossad and Shin Bet. No wonder, did you read the last news how Netanyahu fired again? He did it before. The last boss of I think Mossad or Shin Bet. He says because they didn't warn us about September 7th. No, no, no it wasn't that. It was because they wrote a memo claiming this is not the way what we are doing we should the only way to resolve the situation is to allow some kind of political subjectivity to Palestinians, even more than two-state solution like we must recognize them as people who also belong here and so on. That was the true reason. Before, now I'm trying even to establish a personal contact with them, there is Ami Ayalon, another ex-boss of Shin Bet who is saying something that even today if you say it in Germany you will be blacklisted. And that's my despair. Where are we coming in Western Europe when secret police is saying something that you free intellectual publically are not allowed to say. But I find this easy to explain. In many countries, I'm not saying Israel is already authoritarian country but it's in the thrall caught in this wild Zionist ideology. I remember this from the last decade of socialism. Never forget that Gorbachev belonged to the Yuri Andropov camp, to the KGB line. You know in socialism yes, secret police did horrible thing but at the same time they knew the truth. They wrote reports to those in power about real state of things, people feel dissatisfied here, there is a danger there and so on and so on. So usually the impulse for reforms comes not from some intellectual liberals but from secret police you know. And I cannot but enjoy it was the same in my country I know. In mid-80s in Slovenia it's easy to know because we are a small shithole of a country. So for us general secretary of the party was not a guy who you see once a year in a limousine. No, he was a guy who you could meet him on the street without a bodyguard you know and I knew how it was when they were debating should we go full multi-party democracy or not. Secret police was for, party intellectuals were against. Why? Because intellectuals were afraid for their fate. They were afraid that if there is more intellectual freedom they will simply disappear from the scene. They will no longer be taken seriously. And this is also what happened. While secret police was simply very realistic. They saw the writing on the wall you know. But my socialist experience in the simple sense of living in the time of socialism was very amusing but tragically amusing for me because you know there were big differences between different republics in ex-Yugoslavia. So the catch is that Slovenia was the most market-oriented. For us the disintegration of Yugoslavia was not an economic catastrophe because already before of our trade was with Western Europe. We were practically already there. But what shocked me at some point is this pure almost delightful opportunism. For example this is for me a unique moment. You know in Medjugorje, Croatia, no Bosnia, they discovered a statue of Virgin Mary which was doing what they're expected to do, moving the head, tears and so on. And the party was too hardline. They didn't want to use it to organize big tourism. So Italians did it, Yugoslavia lost a couple of billions of dollars because it was mega. Then something happened in Slovenia. At a very nice location, halfway between Ljubljana and the airport at some crossing a small statue of Virgin Mary also started to do thing you would expect to happen like some tears moving blah blah blah. And party was delighted. They announced it, we will build a hotel, they had plans. And then a tragedy happens. The local priest said, sorry, priest, Catholic, sorry this is superstition, this is not a true miracle. So something typically just in Slovenia unique happened. In the most orthodox party Communist Party weekly journal, he was attacked for non-patriotic behavior. Like "wait a minute, we need this as a miracle to develop tourism, what are you bullshitting there?" and so on you know. This is what fascinated me. All my points about ideology, not being taken seriously, irony came from my experience there. Because Slovenia being a small shithole of a country I knew how ideology functioned. Like in the inner party circle, if you took the ruling ideology, self-management socialism, too seriously it was bad for your career. I knew two friends because if you took it seriously it was for them the first step towards dissidence. Then you will of course see this is not a reality and so on and so on. So isn't it nice that it was not just that you didn't have to take the ruling ideology seriously, you were not obliged, it was more radical, you had not to take it seriously. Through distance this ideology reproduced itself you know. And this is what fascinated me, how state ideology reproduced itself precisely by way of not taking itself seriously. Do you think it's the same with market capitalism in the West today? Yeah, I think that it's a big enigma but I think there are elements of this with somebody like Donald Trump. It's not so much that he is simply cynical. But I think that simply lying or not taking yourself seriously, self-irony, vulgarities, it's part of his public image. It's something totally new and I draw many conclusions from this. The first one is that feminist but not just them would have to fundamentally rethink their strategy as repeating my old points as already Adorno wrote in late 30s apropos Hitler. Hitler is not a paternal figure. He his polemics was against Wilhelm Reich who accused Nazism of being an offspring of male chauvinist oppression. No, Hitler is not a paternal figure. Also today, whatever Elon Musk is, sorry, he is not a paternal figure. As I improvised yesterday at some round table, I love this idea. Elon Musk is for me a pure actualization of something that went wrong with but nonetheless proceeded from '68. He is this cheap caricature realization of '68. Sexual freedom, you are not fixed to one job, you do this and that and so on. So that's the problem, that's the problem today. These powers I am would you agree with this now? I go to the end. I said also yesterday. You know that the new text that I'm finishing now, probably its title will be Let's pray that Trump will survive next couple of years. Because if you ask me as a psychological person, I'm more afraid of Vance than of Trump. Trump is still human. Human in a dirty sense, vulgarities, bad jokes. But this makes him one of us while now it's a joke, caricature, but isn't something almost alien-like strange in J.D. Vance? I doubt if he is really human. The cold way he is a robot creature made by Peter Thiel and trained what to say and so on you know. Also people accuse me of being pro-Trumpian. I'm not crazy but I would say Yanis Varoufakis, with whom I often disagree but often agree. He told me gave a very good explanation and now I saw some liberal and other economists to point this out. Everybody is saying now it's ridiculous, artificial these new tariffs and so on. I think that they may fail but they are part of a quite well-planned strategy. The effect of chaos now is a first step but as every good economist, left or right, will explain to you, what Trump wants and not just Trump is something apparently contradictory. We had after World War II two big periods, Bretton Woods, then with Nixon I think, no longer gold standard out of Bretton Woods. And Varoufakis is here right. The idea of neoliberalism was don't worry about debt. Open yourself to mega imports from China, from Western Europe, because of the universal status of dollar and because of this trust America protects us all. The more you import, you don't lose money. Large majority of this money stays in the United States on Wall Street as investment and so on. This formula is now with success of China and so on coming to an end. So Trump, don't take him as a ridiculous figure, his plan is this one. First, he wants something that may appear contradictory. He wants to re-industrialize United States and the strategy to do this is import tariffs and modest not too strong devaluation of dollar. He doesn't want dollar to be too strong because this will make imports to but at the same time he made this clear. At the same time he wants dollar to remain the universal currency. He even once exploded, he said if I just hear that any country wants to step out of dollarization, it's worse than anything it will be immediately excluded and so on and so on. So it's apparently contradictory. You want your currency with lower value to help industrial and so on. But I think the it's not just chaos, this chaos was intended as a chaos. He even said people didn't listen people now say is he crazy this is chaos. He wanted chaos. He had pretty good advisors behind him. He wanted chaos which now opens up space for negotiations. This chaos, tariffs is just a pretext then to deal with different countries tariffs which again should be then fixed at precisely this level that dollar would lose some value industry will move back to United States but dollar will still remain the universal currency. The least I can say is that I'm too stupid to say will it succeed or not but it is a consistent strategy. He is not just a madman. No I agree with that and there's also the point about if stocks look less attractive people go into US Treasuries, the cost of US debt falls, they can refinance US debt, your debt repayments are lower. There is a rationality. That's where he if I may use a totally agree with you a vulgar Slovene saying, that's where Trump not grabs the pussy or whatever in the Trumpian way holds by the balls and can squeeze them China. China would already long ago make de-dollarization they were trying with some virtual. But you know what's the problem of China? In the neoliberal era they were doing exactly what was expected. They were investing so much of their profit into United States. According to some estimates around of what of all to put it naively American wealth, all material wealth, is owned by China and another by by Saudi Arabia. And you know it's problematic for these countries to simply de-dollarize themselves because through their wealth they are rooted they are linked to the United States. So I think what surprised me more is how obvious the political biases are nonetheless in these tariffs. I don't take seriously that complaint that even some stupid Arctic island where only penguins live are also now tariffs raised. I even think this is a good joke, I don't. What bothered me? Did you notice one big name missing? Russia. People usually say because it's not important as a partner. No,
lived in a small room with Nadezhda Krupskaya, his wife, with a guy who was definitely a middle class having some cheap hotel restaurant but basically just subletting rooms. And Lenin wrote "This is now one of the few times that I met a real working class." This guy was for him, but the guy wasn't definitely, he was pure middle class. You know. So that's why it's not that I feel any nostalgia for middle class. But people talk a lot about middle class is disappearing. Yes, but at the same time, as you said, with Uber and so on, with precarious workers and so on, a new, let's call it, well they are not workers, in some sense they are middle class even if they are poor and the class distinction runs even among them. Even in a, as our beloved President Trump would have put it, in a shithole of a country like Slovenia, you have successful artists, organizers who do very well as precarious workers. But then you have people who are all the time literally on the edge of starvation. But again, the ruling ideology presents to you precarious work, it's wonderful ideology, wonderful means with me disgusting, the most dangerous, precarious work as a form of already moving beyond alienation. Like you are not alienated in a permanent job, you jump from one to the other job, you are free to choose and so on and so on. This, no wonder that today, this is the gap from traditional Marxism. You know that at least in Germany and a little bit Trump is playing with this now, there is among the workers, whatever remains of them, or I don't use the term in any patronizing way, real working class, there is almost a nostalgia to be a good old-fashioned exploited proletarian in the relatively successful welfare state capitalism. It means yeah, you are exploited, they take, capitalist take surplus value, but you have a minimal standard, the job is more or less guaranteed, retirement, healthcare are often covered. So there is, you don't have to worry at this level. And another thing, I know this because not that I need to do this, but I'm an absolute workaholic. You know what's the basic characteristic of my daily life? And I think that here, although I'm in no way poor, I'm not bluffing there, I understand precarious workers. You know what always attracted me with this nine-to-five or eight-to-four, whatever? That it's a wonderful moment at four or five p.m. that you can say okay, I will forget about my job till tomorrow morning. You can disconnect. If you are a precarious worker, you cannot do this. I'm not a precarious worker, but it's more with me some perverted Protestant ethics where if I don't do a certain amount of work, and by work I mean reading, writing, I have really as an atheist a pathological feeling of guilt, I didn't justify my existence in the eyes of the God who doesn't exist. But this as you know probably means nothing today. Many of my ex-Israeli friends are like this contradiction, you know. I don't believe in God but I do believe that God gave us the West Bank. But what I wanted to say is that you know you never, it often happens to me that some stupid obligations, I was tired blah blah blah, I have to do some houseworks in the morning, my wife sleeps longer so I go to the store, clean some things blah, I have things to do. Then my wife awakens, breakfast with her, then I clean the dishes, then I get tired, I'm old. So that all of a sudden there is six, seven p.m. and I didn't do anything. While my wife at that point said says okay now I want to enjoy and she is mad at me because I said I'm sorry I did nothing to feel that I have a certain right to exist. I need two three hours at least of work. That's the horror. You see how this gets combined. In some sense I'm extremely happy in the again elementary meaning of not being alienated. I'm totally identified with my work and so on. But that's because I have no free time. Okay, I have from time to time but you see what I mean. There is never this happy feeling of ordinary proletarians, you know. Yes, I'm exploited but sorry guys, at p.m. I'm free, I can forget about it. So you're never going to retire then is that what you're saying? It's already reality. I am now a week ago or two as I said I was And up to I should have been retired already because I work now as an as an as a researcher, senior researcher, at Institute at part of Department of Philosophy. It's the happiest marriage that I can imagine because I am never there. Never is not a metaphor for once a month once a year. I think just to do some bureaucratic thing five, six years ago I had to go there. But I they need me because we are all now part of this quantified bullshit, you know. A research project is measured by how many publications abroad and so on. So I give them this and the deal is that I don't do anything at the department, which also they like because I'm a Stalinist with a human face, which means I would intervene strongly. So according to the old law, you were obliged to retire at But they don't want me. They asked the ministry to allow me to stay because I keep my research project alive. This is in Slovenia? Yeah, yeah. But you know what I like. Now you will ask me with your naive stupid British empiricism so what is your big I large I run regulate the largest research project in philosophy in Slovenia. You will ask me but what's this project about? I don't know. Because I have a young assistant, very good friend, great philosopher who does everything, writes the project, writes reports, I give him the money out of my research project so that a wonderful thing that somebody like Derrida with all this fake repetition would have liked, once by mistake I signed some report and it was rejected because the signature looked suspicious because they were so used to. But but it's madness. It exists precisely through this hatred, you know. They don't like me there, I don't like them, but I give them what they need to get more money. So I'm extremely lucky and such an irony I love this it's an old story but it's forgotten today. You know one can precisely identify to whom I owe my moderately called international success or whatever. To the Communist Indian Summer. To the When I was doing my third degree doctoral finishing my studies in early 70s it was the moment of the last how should I call it hardline Communist Indian Summer. And I couldn't get a job. Then for four five years I was unemployed. Then I got a job at a research institute. And even this job of mine is just the research institute was then integrated to philosophy department. Why was this wonderful? Because I was just expected to produce texts. They didn't care. They even preferred that I'm not there. Because of this freedom I can have now another half job but where the salary is higher than my Slovene job here in London at Birkbeck. And what I'm saying is that you know there is a wonderful short story I forgot by Somerset Maugham. His short stories were one of my sins when I was very young. I began reading English by Somerset Maugham short stories. It's an ordinary guy, how you call this in a church, the guy who doesn't do the prayers, the secondary guy who just rings the bell or whatever this, there is a title for it, this nobody, second guy. Then there is a new law that everybody employed by a church had to write, had to know to read and write. They discovered that he doesn't know how to read and write. So he is fired. He goes home, nervous, wants to buy a cigarette, saw that on that big street there is no traffic with cigarettes. So he said why don't I open one and okay to cut a long story short in five years he is pretty wealthy. So he goes to a bank, they ask him to sign some things, he said I don't know how to write. And they told him, ah but you know if you were to known to write you would probably even be a billionaire much more. And he says no, I know exactly if I were to know how to write what would I have been. That poor lowest paid guy in the church. It's simply something similar for me. Without that communist oppression I will be some stupid local professor in Slovenia. It would have been a nightmare. So literally communist oppression saved me. Because it pushed me to move abroad. First Paris, Lacanians, then through Ernesto Laclau and other links England, United States and so on. It's all a direct result of of communist oppression if you call it. You mentioned Somerset Maugham, who's your what's your favorite novel, who's your favorite novelist of all time Slavoj? This is such a shitty difficult question. As for 20th century the answer may surprise you. It's three mega geniuses. First of course let's move from the West to the East. First Beckett, Samuel Beckett. But be careful. Beckett not Joyce. I hate Joyce. Sorry if you are Irish. But Beckett is also Irish. I think Joyce began well with his Dubliners, then Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man so-so still going goes, Ulysses the bluff is here, with Finnegans Wake I became a Goebbels, not a right-wing Goebbels like a nice book to be burned. Incredible self-indulgence narcissism. You know when he said I wrote Finnegans Wake to give years of work to I say no thanks you know. But Beckett is another thing. Beckett is for me the true like somebody asked me what would be your greatest novel of the 20th century. My immediate choice was the third one of his big trilogy, L'Innommable, Unnamable. It's really you don't even know who speaks, it's basically literally in Lacanian terms the object itself who somehow speaks. It's not another person. So it's Beckett. Then sorry I don't have any choice here. Ah I think that reading of Beckett as a tragic nonsense author absurd and so on it's totally wrong. If there ever was an optimist author is Beckett. The way I read his overrated, I don't like it too much, Waiting for Godot. Where is this idea that it's a desperate play? No, they are happy in enjoying. Godot will be coming but it's not here so we have all the time to amuse ourselves and so on. It's optimism. The same with Kafka, my second name. Kafka well my God he comes as close as I can imagine to absolute literature. But Kafka you know intelligent Marxists always know this when they ask after World War Two Brecht the hardliner who is a truly Marxist novelist his instant answer was Kafka. And with Kafka I did some readings, I followed here my good friend Fred Jameson. First it's totally wrong to read his mega novels Castle, The Trial as desperate portrait of bureaucracy. No, the bureaucracy, that's what many people miss, is an extremely obscene entity in Kafka. You remember in The Trial when Joseph K after interrogation being interrogated by the court goes during the day to the same room and looks at the books that the judges were reading. It's all hardcore pornography it's indicated. and you have all this the so for Kafka an ingenious insight. Bureaucracy is directly sexualized as an obscene dirty self-sabotaging system. So it's absolutely Kafka. Now you will say this is nonetheless a desperate view. Where is the optimist side? Ah, my advice to all readers focus on his, there are much less but they are wonderful, animal stories. Like you know Josephine the Singing Mice. Fred Jameson suggested to me if you look closely the community of mice is poor group in some kind of very poor miserable but nonetheless socialist communist society. So it's a short novel isn't this ingenious about the role of an artist in the first stages of very poor socialism where things do not yet function. His stories about dog and so on. So there you find the progressive unexpected aspect of Kafka and very intelligent read many intelligent readers notice this. You know that Josephine the Mouse was the last thing he wrote. And he I'm terribly sorry no go on just I will tell him just I will tell him the interview [unintelligible] Halo okay okay okay sorry I will leave it happen here. So it's that people complained above and below his apartment that he was laughing so loudly while writing it. You know I don't like Milan Kundera too pretentious wise but he made he wrote years ago one wonderful essay on Kafka where he said you misread Kafka totally in the West at this tragic author absent God bureaucracy. For us he says Kafka is a comic author that how they called Metamorphosis where you awaken as some bug he said read this as a comical children's story you go to sleep you awaken as a bug oh isn't it funny and so on. That's the key to Kafka. It's totally wrong to fall into this absent God. If anything in Kafka God comes too close. You know which is a wonderful crucial scene in his Castle where Joseph K all the time you have this hints at the obscenity of the Castle. No that is not Joseph K that is just K the how do you call it when you measure the land he is employed to measure in that okay he enters a schoolroom and ask the teacher there a lady he has an affair with like how can he get to the Castle and she said please not in front of the children and so on. You know immediately Castle is identified as an obscenity. Then once he tries to phone to the Castle and the only contact he gets is two old men talking absolute obscenities. Then a beautiful detail. He takes a walk up towards the Castle and the more he comes close to it the more he sees that what appeared from far away the beautiful big palace is really just a bundle of huts all falling apart and so on. Kafka is the true genius. Then maybe my personal favorite, I really ask people to read it, it's lesser known but now even by my Russian friends he is rediscovered. It is did you hear Andrei Platonov? Chevengur, Foundation Pit. I think he is a unique figure. He was very active Bolshevik. He even later went to the countryside to help spread civilization there among some in southern Soviet Union some tribes but he that's the paradox not in the usual Solzhenitsyn dissident way. He saw from the beginning the dangerous nihilist dimension self-destructive dimension but still participating in it. He is almost my ideal figure. You know it's miracle that he survived because in the late 20s one of his manuscript ended on Stalin's table and it's kept just Stalin wrote "Total pig, don't publish this," like something very. But he is for me the most precious one because without engaging in this cheap later humanist dissidence he saw the nihilist dimension in already early Bolshevism. Because I think the one I don't like for example and I was so nicely surprised when I saw that all my Russian friends we are now in trouble most of them emigrated agree with me. If you want to learn about Gulag just don't touch Solzhenitsyn. He is a boring moralizer and so on. You know Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales. It's written in the style of early Hemingway. Very short sentences without big too many predicates descriptions. In just in this minimalist style he describes the daily horrors of in Kolyma the greatest Gulag and that's the real thing. And all my Russian friends agree with me. They say no won they say that Solzhenitsyn was paradoxically too much influenced by Soviet reality. You know his version of dissidence has at the background Stalinism. It's it's immanent negation. While if you look again for the pure like single malt whiskey, pure version of it it's Varlam Shalamov. No? So then I have this would be the three great 20th century. No? Then I have here and there not so much novels like forget about Goethe, Schiller. Schiller is the first fascist if you ask me. I developed this in one of my books. He wrote Schiller is usually identified with freedom. He wrote The Bell (Glocke) or what, a poem which was kind of a national treasure under Nazism. It's a most terrible poem that I read. You have a country where everybody is at his her their place. Men going around adventures, women stay at home. Then that's his reading, then something horrible happened. Women wanted more, wanted more in public life and this is how he interprets the French Revolution. It's the horror of women getting active. Then through crushing revolution women are put back at their side and all the people unite in building a big bell for new cathedral and so on. It's the best short poem, it's not even so short on the genesis of fascism. So it's not those. My favorite there is Helmut von Kleist, Marquise of O and so on. If I were to you know when you ask which is the best beginning of a novel or story. Usually the usual candidate is is what's that my God, what's the Dickens about the French Revolution? A Tale of Two Cities. Yeah, yeah. You know that it was the time of blah blah. No, my preferred beginning just look at it is Marquise of O of Kleist. He said that in a German newspaper a lady publishes an ad claiming I found myself pregnant but I don't remember with whom, could please the father report himself to this place. And it's done in this totally cold realistic way. It's not oh shock and so on. Not to mention his apparently totalitarian very militaristic place. He is my hero up to a point Brecht, although let's not mask it, Brecht was a very heavy totalitarian. You know then it may my tastes are here very strange. You know Paul Claudel, the French Catholic, right wing. But he wrote a play called Le Otage (Hostage) as a feminine. A play around the time of French Revolution which is was even directly a model for the harshest Brecht. For the Brecht of this learning place, Lehrstücke, the most totalitarian. So I claim that every intelligent progressive author had to learn from Catholic conservatives, you know. Then of contemporary novels, it may be a shock for you. I don't like him especially. But I saw also a movie, I openly admit the source is the movie. Did you see the movie that Ishiguro I mentioned it yesterday, Never Let Me Go? Yeah. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It's the best ambiguous dystopia that I've ever read. Because you know it's a group of people in a special institution and they discovered that they are genetic clones raised so that when they are mature enough their organs will be used one after the other and then when they come to the age they die. But it the what I really like, it's ingenious, it's that it's not there was a stupid movie with was it Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, I forgot the title, it's the same story but done in this usually pseudo-leftist revolutionary way, you know like they discover it and they resist, escape. No, here it is, they knew and they are even free to go out but it's very enigmatically written because it doesn't have you don't get a good reason of why in a total resignation they accept this fate. It's maybe the most depressing novel that I've read. Then but I must say that lately I I more and more limit myself from time to time to a good spy novel. I'm getting old, my eyes are getting weak so I simply want you know what I do, this I will be ashamed to admit it. When I find really good novel, oh my God this will kill, I go to Wikipedia because I don't trust myself. I want to be sure in advance that I know what it is about, the story, and then I read just selected parts. But when I have to write about a book, people think that it's some postmodern joke that I'm kidding, I am not. When I write about a novel, I try not to read it. Because you know Oscar Wilde, this is one of his best sayings, that when you are asked to review a book, don't read the book because this may make your judgment partial, you know. I do then if I am as it were convinced by my own own review what I wrote that it may be good, I go and read the novel. And I'm often disappointed. This is my worst Hegelian side, you know. Theory about something is more than that something. Don't take too much of that something because it may hurt your theoretical, destroy your theoretical insight. No, no, no, wait a minute, I'm not a complete idiot. It's very if you read the novel after good theory, then if it's a really good novel, it's wonderful how you can be pleasantly surprised, I was wrong. But this I was wrong is much better when you notice the difference than directly going to going to to read the novel, no? But on the other hand I'm a boring guy in the sense that my God it's no longer the world today for people like me like rock music. Yes, but I am the guy of the late 60s, early 70s. I think that in those years, everything that happened really happened. And we are now just echoing it. I find here and there something interesting like you know the German band Rammstein. They are people are so stupid when they mistake them as neo-Nazis. Are they crazy? I was in contact with them. They are radical left. One of their big hits is Links which means left, left, left. So that's that's I'm here a conservative in modern music. I don't believe it all this postmodern stuff. I'm so old-fashioned. I think I believe in big classical music and as a total self-conscious Eurocentrist I think that classical music, European, by this I mean from Bach till Schoenberg, this is it. This is let's admit it the only music which really has a universal appeal. You know where I discovered it? When I was in China years ago, this was the golden time of all pirate DVDs, gigantic stores. It's incredible how large were the shelves they got with European classical music. And it was so cheap. Once I bought versions of Nozze di Figaro, another versions of Don Giovanni of Mozart. Let's face it. I don't know how to and then they people can say no, this is Eurocentric, some crazy guy there tried to convince me what about ancient Chinese opera. I bought one, after five minutes it got too boring and so on. And they admit it. I in my old age I claim I'm sick and tired of this eternal anti-Eurocentrism. Everybody is today against Europe. Latin America, you're the colonialist. Trump ultra hated. You know Trump is again and again saying that the true enemy of the United States is neither China nor Russia, but Europe. Putin, of course, everybody. I think that precisely today when Europe is obviously losing its a time to raise the question but what do all these guys Trump, Putin, hate in Europe? I think it's precisely its sorry for this old-fashioned expression emancipatory core which is worth fighting for. Now I'm the first to admit that Europe screwed it up in a in a breathtaking way. You know like I hope we'll agree here. Okay, Ukraine. But sorry, Gaza is a nightmare. How, I mean I know in Germany I was almost blacklisted. How were you almost blacklisted? Ah, I gave, you can check it up, I gave year and a half ago, not the last September but the previous one, it was in all the German media I was a negative star there for a couple of weeks. Because the the guest honorable guest of the year was my country and they asked me to participate in the opening big ritual to give a speech. Was this Frankfurt Book Fair? Yeah, yeah. And okay it was days after October 7th. I gave a speech. I tried to be so cautious you know I quoted only Jewish authors and so on but was a little bit critical. Twice I was interrupted by a high political functionary who started to shout about me. I was brutally attacked in all the media. But you know what made me and this is where we are today, really depressive. You know, that's my old maybe Stalinist aspect. You know who are maybe the most reasonable people today in Israel? Mossad and Shin Bet. No wonder, did you read the last news how Netanyahu fired again? He did it before. The last boss of I think Mossad or Shin Bet. He says because they didn't warn us about September 7th. No, no, no it wasn't that. It was because they wrote a memo claiming this is not the way what we are doing we should the only way to resolve the situation is to allow some kind of political subjectivity to Palestinians, even more than two-state solution like we must recognize them as people who also belong here and so on. That was the true reason. Before, now I'm trying even to establish a personal contact with them, there is Ami Ayalon, another ex-boss of Shin Bet who is saying something that even today if you say it in Germany you will be blacklisted. And that's my despair. Where are we coming in Western Europe when secret police is saying something that you free intellectual publically are not allowed to say. But I find this easy to explain. In many countries, I'm not saying Israel is already authoritarian country but it's in the thrall caught in this wild Zionist ideology. I remember this from the last decade of socialism. Never forget that Gorbachev belonged to the Yuri Andropov camp, to the KGB line. You know in socialism yes, secret police did horrible thing but at the same time they knew the truth. They wrote reports to those in power about real state of things, people feel dissatisfied here, there is a danger there and so on and so on. So usually the impulse for reforms comes not from some intellectual liberals but from secret police you know. And I cannot but enjoy it was the same in my country I know. In mid-80s in Slovenia it's easy to know because we are a small shithole of a country. So for us general secretary of the party was not a guy who you see once a year in a limousine. No, he was a guy who you could meet him on the street without a bodyguard you know and I knew how it was when they were debating should we go full multi-party democracy or not. Secret police was for, party intellectuals were against. Why? Because intellectuals were afraid for their fate. They were afraid that if there is more intellectual freedom they will simply disappear from the scene. They will no longer be taken seriously. And this is also what happened. While secret police was simply very realistic. They saw the writing on the wall you know. But my socialist experience in the simple sense of living in the time of socialism was very amusing but tragically amusing for me because you know there were big differences between different republics in ex-Yugoslavia. So the catch is that Slovenia was the most market-oriented. For us the disintegration of Yugoslavia was not an economic catastrophe because already before of our trade was with Western Europe. We were practically already there. But what shocked me at some point is this pure almost delightful opportunism. For example this is for me a unique moment. You know in Medjugorje, Croatia, no Bosnia, they discovered a statue of Virgin Mary which was doing what they're expected to do, moving the head, tears and so on. And the party was too hardline. They didn't want to use it to organize big tourism. So Italians did it, Yugoslavia lost a couple of billions of dollars because it was mega. Then something happened in Slovenia. At a very nice location, halfway between Ljubljana and the airport at some crossing a small statue of Virgin Mary also started to do thing you would expect to happen like some tears moving blah blah blah. And party was delighted. They announced it, we will build a hotel, they had plans. And then a tragedy happens. The local priest said, sorry, priest, Catholic, sorry this is superstition, this is not a true miracle. So something typically just in Slovenia unique happened. In the most orthodox party Communist Party weekly journal, he was attacked for non-patriotic behavior. Like "wait a minute, we need this as a miracle to develop tourism, what are you bullshitting there?" and so on you know. This is what fascinated me. All my points about ideology, not being taken seriously, irony came from my experience there. Because Slovenia being a small shithole of a country I knew how ideology functioned. Like in the inner party circle, if you took the ruling ideology, self-management socialism, too seriously it was bad for your career. I knew two friends because if you took it seriously it was for them the first step towards dissidence. Then you will of course see this is not a reality and so on and so on. So isn't it nice that it was not just that you didn't have to take the ruling ideology seriously, you were not obliged, it was more radical, you had not to take it seriously. Through distance this ideology reproduced itself you know. And this is what fascinated me, how state ideology reproduced itself precisely by way of not taking itself seriously. Do you think it's the same with market capitalism in the West today? Yeah, I think that it's a big enigma but I think there are elements of this with somebody like Donald Trump. It's not so much that he is simply cynical. But I think that simply lying or not taking yourself seriously, self-irony, vulgarities, it's part of his public image. It's something totally new and I draw many conclusions from this. The first one is that feminist but not just them would have to fundamentally rethink their strategy as repeating my old points as already Adorno wrote in late 30s apropos Hitler. Hitler is not a paternal figure. He his polemics was against Wilhelm Reich who accused Nazism of being an offspring of male chauvinist oppression. No, Hitler is not a paternal figure. Also today, whatever Elon Musk is, sorry, he is not a paternal figure. As I improvised yesterday at some round table, I love this idea. Elon Musk is for me a pure actualization of something that went wrong with but nonetheless proceeded from '68. He is this cheap caricature realization of '68. Sexual freedom, you are not fixed to one job, you do this and that and so on. So that's the problem, that's the problem today. These powers I am would you agree with this now? I go to the end. I said also yesterday. You know that the new text that I'm finishing now, probably its title will be Let's pray that Trump will survive next couple of years. Because if you ask me as a psychological person, I'm more afraid of Vance than of Trump. Trump is still human. Human in a dirty sense, vulgarities, bad jokes. But this makes him one of us while now it's a joke, caricature, but isn't something almost alien-like strange in J.D. Vance? I doubt if he is really human. The cold way he is a robot creature made by Peter Thiel and trained what to say and so on you know. Also people accuse me of being pro-Trumpian. I'm not crazy but I would say Yanis Varoufakis, with whom I often disagree but often agree. He told me gave a very good explanation and now I saw some liberal and other economists to point this out. Everybody is saying now it's ridiculous, artificial these new tariffs and so on. I think that they may fail but they are part of a quite well-planned strategy. The effect of chaos now is a first step but as every good economist, left or right, will explain to you, what Trump wants and not just Trump is something apparently contradictory. We had after World War II two big periods, Bretton Woods, then with Nixon I think, no longer gold standard out of Bretton Woods. And Varoufakis is here right. The idea of neoliberalism was don't worry about debt. Open yourself to mega imports from China, from Western Europe, because of the universal status of dollar and because of this trust America protects us all. The more you import, you don't lose money. Large majority of this money stays in the United States on Wall Street as investment and so on. This formula is now with success of China and so on coming to an end. So Trump, don't take him as a ridiculous figure, his plan is this one. First, he wants something that may appear contradictory. He wants to re-industrialize United States and the strategy to do this is import tariffs and modest not too strong devaluation of dollar. He doesn't want dollar to be too strong because this will make imports to but at the same time he made this clear. At the same time he wants dollar to remain the universal currency. He even once exploded, he said if I just hear that any country wants to step out of dollarization, it's worse than anything it will be immediately excluded and so on and so on. So it's apparently contradictory. You want your currency with lower value to help industrial and so on. But I think the it's not just chaos, this chaos was intended as a chaos. He even said people didn't listen people now say is he crazy this is chaos. He wanted chaos. He had pretty good advisors behind him. He wanted chaos which now opens up space for negotiations. This chaos, tariffs is just a pretext then to deal with different countries tariffs which again should be then fixed at precisely this level that dollar would lose some value industry will move back to United States but dollar will still remain the universal currency. The least I can say is that I'm too stupid to say will it succeed or not but it is a consistent strategy. He is not just a madman. No I agree with that and there's also the point about if stocks look less attractive people go into US Treasuries, the cost of US debt falls, they can refinance US debt, your debt repayments are lower. There is a rationality. That's where he if I may use a totally agree with you a vulgar Slovene saying, that's where Trump not grabs the pussy or whatever in the Trumpian way holds by the balls and can squeeze them China. China would already long ago make de-dollarization they were trying with some virtual. But you know what's the problem of China? In the neoliberal era they were doing exactly what was expected. They were investing so much of their profit into United States. According to some estimates around of what of all to put it naively American wealth, all material wealth, is owned by China and another by by Saudi Arabia. And you know it's problematic for these countries to simply de-dollarize themselves because through their wealth they are rooted they are linked to the United States. So I think what surprised me more is how obvious the political biases are nonetheless in these tariffs. I don't take seriously that complaint that even some stupid Arctic island where only penguins live are also now tariffs raised. I even think this is a good joke, I don't. What bothered me? Did you notice one big name missing? Russia. People usually say because it's not important as a partner. No,
unknown
first it's not so minimal. Second point obviously he wants more
first it's not so minimal. Second point obviously he wants more
Slavoj Žižek
exchange economic exchange with Russia. So that's the paradox. Ukraine got Russia didn't get any new tariffs. I know there already are tariffs. So my point would have been it's very sad one. I'm not saying Trump is a genius. I'm just saying he is not just a confused guy economically. It may not work but don't dismiss him as a confused idiot, you know all those who say oh he will ruin it, maybe not. And especially I like to repeat this point, it's crucial his how his very obscenity when he is caught lying and so on works. Did you read a week or two after elections AOC? She noticed something, you know this story I hope I do it's wonderful that many of people who voted for her locally she kept her Brooklyn district as a congresswoman on federal in federal elections they voted for Trump. So she was intrigued why. She wrote them, don't ask me how she got their names, it's better not to know. She wrote them like how could you do this. And it's very interesting the answer she got. That while Democrats were obviously well trained totally predictable you remember those ridiculous answer at the end I remember Kamala Harris no she was asked what to do in the Middle East and you know she was so careful not to offend any side either Israel or Palestine so she said something like people are dying there we must stop it we must bring peace. Ahaha nothing you know. While the reaction of those voters who voted for her said that you AOC and Trump at least appear to authentically spontaneously say what they mean. And for them that's the madness that I like. The very fact that Trump is often caught either lying or in inconsistencies works as an argument for Trump. They will say you see he is not well trained, he is human like us, he and so on and so on. So I think if you combine these two levels, that is to say on the one hand the economic policy then now ah I have another surprise for you. You know the usual complaint against Trump is he is I wonder if you would agree with me here, that's a hardline that's what I call I'm Stalinist with a human face not socialist. You know people complain Trump runs it as a dictator he simply more or less ignores Congress whatever with decrees. I think in today's ideological confusion that's maybe in itself not a bad thing. Wasn't there a period, you must have heard this argument. Wasn't there a period of Franklin Delano Roosevelt where sorry he was de facto doing the same. You never read about any debates with Congress. He was silently accepted as a de facto monarch. And it worked triumphantly. I read some statistic you know that in if you take if you discount everything produced for the army which was a gigantic budget and you take consumerist products they were higher than ever. Consumerist, not army products. So I think that now comes my very pessimistic view. In today's time of ideology, depoliticization of the young, I almost care more for this, I don't know how it is here but do you know that in China, crucial point, they have now a vast movement called Bai Lan, I think. It means literally let it rot. Millions of the younger generation the idea is the society is too corrupt, too complex. Get a modest job, ignore everything. Just try to enjoy at a small level everyday life. And it's interesting what the party's answer to this is. Not study Mao but return to Chinese tradition, Confucianism and so on. So what I'm saying that in this constellation it's horrible what I will say. You know Lincoln's which was not Lincoln's of course we know he took it from another, everybody took what is attributed to him from another. You can cheat some people all the time, all people some the time, not all the people all the time. Blegh maybe you can cheat all the people all the time you know so there are rare traumatic moments when in a good sense, not in a fascist sense, because you should never forget that Deutschland erwache, Germany awaken, this was the Nazi motto. No? But where people authentically awaken but you need to be kicked up your S. And crisis doesn't help. The old leftist ideal was when a nation is in a crisis it's our chance. Did you notice that in the last half a century or even earlier, no crisis brought extreme right to power while left took over precisely when there was relative relative prosperity. So I think that there is no way to guarantee it. But I think you can crucify me for this. We need a leftist Trump. By Trump I don't mean the obscene clown and so on. But somebody who will behave in a little bit more dictatorial way. Okay, there were attempts but he screwed it up. I was from the beginning critical. Now you will say of course Hugo Chavez. No, he was wrong. From the very beginning I distrusted Chavez. You know
exchange economic exchange with Russia. So that's the paradox. Ukraine got Russia didn't get any new tariffs. I know there already are tariffs. So my point would have been it's very sad one. I'm not saying Trump is a genius. I'm just saying he is not just a confused guy economically. It may not work but don't dismiss him as a confused idiot, you know all those who say oh he will ruin it, maybe not. And especially I like to repeat this point, it's crucial his how his very obscenity when he is caught lying and so on works. Did you read a week or two after elections AOC? She noticed something, you know this story I hope I do it's wonderful that many of people who voted for her locally she kept her Brooklyn district as a congresswoman on federal in federal elections they voted for Trump. So she was intrigued why. She wrote them, don't ask me how she got their names, it's better not to know. She wrote them like how could you do this. And it's very interesting the answer she got. That while Democrats were obviously well trained totally predictable you remember those ridiculous answer at the end I remember Kamala Harris no she was asked what to do in the Middle East and you know she was so careful not to offend any side either Israel or Palestine so she said something like people are dying there we must stop it we must bring peace. Ahaha nothing you know. While the reaction of those voters who voted for her said that you AOC and Trump at least appear to authentically spontaneously say what they mean. And for them that's the madness that I like. The very fact that Trump is often caught either lying or in inconsistencies works as an argument for Trump. They will say you see he is not well trained, he is human like us, he and so on and so on. So I think if you combine these two levels, that is to say on the one hand the economic policy then now ah I have another surprise for you. You know the usual complaint against Trump is he is I wonder if you would agree with me here, that's a hardline that's what I call I'm Stalinist with a human face not socialist. You know people complain Trump runs it as a dictator he simply more or less ignores Congress whatever with decrees. I think in today's ideological confusion that's maybe in itself not a bad thing. Wasn't there a period, you must have heard this argument. Wasn't there a period of Franklin Delano Roosevelt where sorry he was de facto doing the same. You never read about any debates with Congress. He was silently accepted as a de facto monarch. And it worked triumphantly. I read some statistic you know that in if you take if you discount everything produced for the army which was a gigantic budget and you take consumerist products they were higher than ever. Consumerist, not army products. So I think that now comes my very pessimistic view. In today's time of ideology, depoliticization of the young, I almost care more for this, I don't know how it is here but do you know that in China, crucial point, they have now a vast movement called Bai Lan, I think. It means literally let it rot. Millions of the younger generation the idea is the society is too corrupt, too complex. Get a modest job, ignore everything. Just try to enjoy at a small level everyday life. And it's interesting what the party's answer to this is. Not study Mao but return to Chinese tradition, Confucianism and so on. So what I'm saying that in this constellation it's horrible what I will say. You know Lincoln's which was not Lincoln's of course we know he took it from another, everybody took what is attributed to him from another. You can cheat some people all the time, all people some the time, not all the people all the time. Blegh maybe you can cheat all the people all the time you know so there are rare traumatic moments when in a good sense, not in a fascist sense, because you should never forget that Deutschland erwache, Germany awaken, this was the Nazi motto. No? But where people authentically awaken but you need to be kicked up your S. And crisis doesn't help. The old leftist ideal was when a nation is in a crisis it's our chance. Did you notice that in the last half a century or even earlier, no crisis brought extreme right to power while left took over precisely when there was relative relative prosperity. So I think that there is no way to guarantee it. But I think you can crucify me for this. We need a leftist Trump. By Trump I don't mean the obscene clown and so on. But somebody who will behave in a little bit more dictatorial way. Okay, there were attempts but he screwed it up. I was from the beginning critical. Now you will say of course Hugo Chavez. No, he was wrong. From the very beginning I distrusted Chavez. You know
unknown
who were closer to it? Do you follow the situation there? Now they screwed it up it's over but under Evo Morales, Bolivia. It's one of the few from what I know genuine economic miracles. Under his first years of rule, standard
who were closer to it? Do you follow the situation there? Now they screwed it up it's over but under Evo Morales, Bolivia. It's one of the few from what I know genuine economic miracles. Under his first years of rule, standard
Slavoj Žižek
of so-called ordinary people went up but big capital remains there through coercion through not being too harsh and so on. So I think that you know I think we should drop Where is your position here? Would you agree if I say even my friends like Varoufakis who knew it's not enough to indulge in this leftist laziness I call it. You know how that's why I have a problem with calling Trump a fascist because don't you agree this is leftist laziness. Something new is emerging. We all agree it's bad. Then instead of thinking you reason like this: "what is this? the really bad thing that we know is fascism, so Trump has to be a fascist." It's not as simple as that. Fascism is a precise term. There are obviously elements of fascism. United States are moving towards a tough ideological and other dictatorship but it's still that's why I just for the time being, just to signal the paradox, I like to use the term liberal fascism. You know in the sense that you should never forget that Trump is a living proof how liberalism brought to extreme turns into authoritarian system. Because what's Trump and Elon Musk's message all the time? It's precisely let's get rid of the state, freedom of local and they end up making state de facto stronger than ever. Sorry you wanted to say something. Well no but then that's an argument for them being fascist because if you look at the emergence of Italian fascism for instance, you know the precursor to that is Italian liberalism. People like Giolitti were saying "Yeah Mussolini great guy" and I don't think Trump is a fascist. I think he's an authoritarian nationalist. I think JD Vance might be something different. I don't know the guy but when he's in power yeah. I would say I agree with you, we don't yet know, but do you agree there is a potentially terrifying dimension in in Vance? Although if Trump went for a third term, that that change in constitutional norms, would that be something we aren't these and Trump is specialist in this, sorry to interrupt you, aren't these unwritten rules, is it written or it's just a custom. Well FDR did it right. FDR did it four times. And the big in the last elections, already the big motto of Republicans was "Washington couldn't, no Washington didn't, Lincoln couldn't, FDR shouldn't," you know. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, Trump here maybe he has a chance. So let's go on sorry it was part of your argument go on. No no so I I agree that he's not necessarily a fascist. No but it may be even worse in the long term, I agree with this, because it will be but what fascinates me and here I also have problems with with Varoufakis's idea neo-feudalism. Yeah I see elements. Techno-feudalism. Techno, yeah. You know I see his point, it's obvious and I even theorized it years ago. The problem is that with guys like Elon Musk, Bezos and so on they they repeat what Marx called privatization of the commons but not in the old sense where you have common land etc and you distribute it to private owners. It's rather that commons remain commons. For example, the commons of buying the books. of it even more in my branch of books is controlled by Amazon which then can blackmail both sides. Amazon is doing this serially. If they don't like an author they cheat, you know. You search for the book, they have hundreds of books, they claim out of stock or whatever. So yes, but you know what's different? Feudalism is for me too much identified with this hierarchic order where everybody is at his her their place. You know, a serf is a serf you are there, an artisan is an artisan organized in guilds. It's a very well hierarchically ordered system where you are aware of your place. I don't find this in Trumpian economy. Well John Gray, who I spoke to about precisely this, said the exact same thing. He said he would he thinks it's a qualitatively better society to live in feudalism than in what we're moving into because you had the commons at least. I would say this although you know I try to ignore him because a couple of years ago he wrote, I was really mad at him, an attack on me literally claiming that I am laying foundation for a new Holocaust you know. Really? Where was this? Oh if you want I can send you the link my God. In the New Statesman or do you remember or where? Somewhere there yeah I'm not sure if it's New Statesman somewhere there. In Israel or where? No here in your beautiful a Holocaust here? No no no that I am with my critique of Israel some remark that I am laying the ground for a new Holocaust. Which is absurd because at the same time that I'm attacked from hardline Zionists, whatever we call them, I'm here always cautious because I know many things about the origins of Zionism. You know that in the beginning it wasn't just this fascist Zionist through the Arabs out. It was a very interesting vision of how we could incorporate ourselves around Palestinians living harmoniously with them. It was this vision of Kibbutz agricultural Zionism so even here I'm I'm very careful. That's also was my I mean I wrote many many pro Palestinian things I'm doing it all the time. But at the same time you know I had debates I obeyed the rules of BDS but at the same time I say sometimes it's not enough to say yeah boycott Israel not the Jews. Because in many parts of Europe antisemitism is de facto still alive and it's even worse. The old antisemites are now making a pact with Zionists. Did you notice this is for me a universal historical event, two weeks ago. There was a big conference in Jerusalem organized by Netanyahu's right-wingers even many Jewish members of parliament some of them boycotted it. Big conference on how to fight antisemitism today and you know who were there? How is he called Jordan Bardella or what quite an appropriate name, Bardello and so on, the second man after Marine Le Pen. My God, Marine Le Pen, her father was openly a Holocaust denier. So we have this strange pact between old style European antisemites and Israel Zionists now. And you must have read it. I'm really proud of this. They were so mad at me some Israelis when I brought out these documents. For example, do you know my quote? I can send it to you. In the guy himself who, Reinhard Heydrich, that one, wrote a text where he says there are two types of Jews, assimilationists and those who want to return to Palestine. And say "we don't want the first ones but we fully support the second ones. If Jews move there we are they are creative people we can have a wonderful collaboration with them." It's the same I often quote him maybe you know my quote, Breivik, that Norwegian madman. He also said "here Jews are a danger, in Israel we should fully support them" and so on. This there is something so weird going on here how the cards get get get mixed. So again that was my problem with John Gray but more and more I discover that that maybe we are often moving in the same direction because he also takes seriously the crisis of liberal democracy now no? He doesn't bullshit here no? He is out of this mega mistake of Biden administration as I develop often they thought that Trump was simply a mistake. Something happened ah let's correct it you know. No, there was a deeper necessity in Trump. That's why, do you agree with this, my ideal is the greatest symbol in United States recently is, you remember of course you do, Biden's inauguration. Who stole the show? Bernie Sanders sitting there alone with his gloves woolen gloves or whatever. I this gave me some hope that this isn't this fascination with Sanders a kind of awareness that the Biden spectacle there was something deeply false in it. That they didn't really confront the problem, you know. So again in this sense and I don't have an easy answer, don't now you know people always tell me and they are right "okay tell us precisely what to do." I'm not bluffing I'm too old and tired to bluff. I just discount back to Varoufakis so my first point is yes in precise sense that you said it's better feudalism, you know. This aspect is totally missing in Trumpian approach where okay a couple of oligarchs control society but society in itself is in a total total chaotic state. So it doesn't work this neo-feudalism is problematic, fascism who knows is problematic and so on. I think we are really in a period of what my good friend Fred Jameson called lack of cognitive mapping. It's more than just a you know the usual complaint of the left is we know the global situation what is going on but we cannot mobilize people. And then for false reasons many stupid leftists discovered psychoanalysis. The reasoning is well according to the Marxist dogma working class should arise they don't so it must be ideological manipulation of unconscious motive bring psychoanalysis. No no I'm totally against this use of pseudo-use of psychoanalysis. There really is a lack of vision. And I I I don't have a I I don't have a my idea is here what I called in one of my texts principled opportunism or pragmatism. I don't mean by this do anything. I mean when the circumstances are changing we must retain our principles, emancipation and so on. But the situation has changed so radically that precisely to remain faithful to our principle position we have to change many detailed analysis. For example what I mentioned before, feminism no? Sorry patriarchal order is no longer the big threat. Women are still subordinate and so on I take it all but but but again it's a new form of authority which is openly obscene and so on. The story that you must know I always repeat it. That's why you remember 6th of January when was it years ago or whatever no when Trump lost. My friends were crying there you know no? Because they cried when they saw crowd of people occupying Congress. They said "but this is what we should be doing, people gather occupy." Now the Trumpians even took from us the revolution you know. Yes they did is my point. Yes they did. So many what I would advise the left to drop is this fascination with provocative subversive acts. There is enough of this obscenity on the right. And I always you must know this line of me like to contrast at this level Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump appears neocon American values. Fuck it in the way he functions isn't he the ultimate postmodern relativist obscene person? His the style how he works undermines his message. While what I sincerely admire, I'm not without criticism of Bernie Sanders, but I really admire in him is that as a person isn't he some kind of a decent moral majority, decent or I like this out of any cheap radical statements you know this common sense decency and I met friends once I almost met him because I have friends in Burlington Vermont. He really functions like this it's not a fake. Now that he is older you meet him sometime simply walking around Burlington chatting with ordinary people and so on. So I wouldn't be afraid as a leftist to stop with this obsession of subversiveness and so on. No our answer should be "being subversive, chaotic, undermining thing, leave this to the new right. We should speak for a new decent order." I I think that we should say we are the true moral majority if you say like this you
of so-called ordinary people went up but big capital remains there through coercion through not being too harsh and so on. So I think that you know I think we should drop Where is your position here? Would you agree if I say even my friends like Varoufakis who knew it's not enough to indulge in this leftist laziness I call it. You know how that's why I have a problem with calling Trump a fascist because don't you agree this is leftist laziness. Something new is emerging. We all agree it's bad. Then instead of thinking you reason like this: "what is this? the really bad thing that we know is fascism, so Trump has to be a fascist." It's not as simple as that. Fascism is a precise term. There are obviously elements of fascism. United States are moving towards a tough ideological and other dictatorship but it's still that's why I just for the time being, just to signal the paradox, I like to use the term liberal fascism. You know in the sense that you should never forget that Trump is a living proof how liberalism brought to extreme turns into authoritarian system. Because what's Trump and Elon Musk's message all the time? It's precisely let's get rid of the state, freedom of local and they end up making state de facto stronger than ever. Sorry you wanted to say something. Well no but then that's an argument for them being fascist because if you look at the emergence of Italian fascism for instance, you know the precursor to that is Italian liberalism. People like Giolitti were saying "Yeah Mussolini great guy" and I don't think Trump is a fascist. I think he's an authoritarian nationalist. I think JD Vance might be something different. I don't know the guy but when he's in power yeah. I would say I agree with you, we don't yet know, but do you agree there is a potentially terrifying dimension in in Vance? Although if Trump went for a third term, that that change in constitutional norms, would that be something we aren't these and Trump is specialist in this, sorry to interrupt you, aren't these unwritten rules, is it written or it's just a custom. Well FDR did it right. FDR did it four times. And the big in the last elections, already the big motto of Republicans was "Washington couldn't, no Washington didn't, Lincoln couldn't, FDR shouldn't," you know. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, Trump here maybe he has a chance. So let's go on sorry it was part of your argument go on. No no so I I agree that he's not necessarily a fascist. No but it may be even worse in the long term, I agree with this, because it will be but what fascinates me and here I also have problems with with Varoufakis's idea neo-feudalism. Yeah I see elements. Techno-feudalism. Techno, yeah. You know I see his point, it's obvious and I even theorized it years ago. The problem is that with guys like Elon Musk, Bezos and so on they they repeat what Marx called privatization of the commons but not in the old sense where you have common land etc and you distribute it to private owners. It's rather that commons remain commons. For example, the commons of buying the books. of it even more in my branch of books is controlled by Amazon which then can blackmail both sides. Amazon is doing this serially. If they don't like an author they cheat, you know. You search for the book, they have hundreds of books, they claim out of stock or whatever. So yes, but you know what's different? Feudalism is for me too much identified with this hierarchic order where everybody is at his her their place. You know, a serf is a serf you are there, an artisan is an artisan organized in guilds. It's a very well hierarchically ordered system where you are aware of your place. I don't find this in Trumpian economy. Well John Gray, who I spoke to about precisely this, said the exact same thing. He said he would he thinks it's a qualitatively better society to live in feudalism than in what we're moving into because you had the commons at least. I would say this although you know I try to ignore him because a couple of years ago he wrote, I was really mad at him, an attack on me literally claiming that I am laying foundation for a new Holocaust you know. Really? Where was this? Oh if you want I can send you the link my God. In the New Statesman or do you remember or where? Somewhere there yeah I'm not sure if it's New Statesman somewhere there. In Israel or where? No here in your beautiful a Holocaust here? No no no that I am with my critique of Israel some remark that I am laying the ground for a new Holocaust. Which is absurd because at the same time that I'm attacked from hardline Zionists, whatever we call them, I'm here always cautious because I know many things about the origins of Zionism. You know that in the beginning it wasn't just this fascist Zionist through the Arabs out. It was a very interesting vision of how we could incorporate ourselves around Palestinians living harmoniously with them. It was this vision of Kibbutz agricultural Zionism so even here I'm I'm very careful. That's also was my I mean I wrote many many pro Palestinian things I'm doing it all the time. But at the same time you know I had debates I obeyed the rules of BDS but at the same time I say sometimes it's not enough to say yeah boycott Israel not the Jews. Because in many parts of Europe antisemitism is de facto still alive and it's even worse. The old antisemites are now making a pact with Zionists. Did you notice this is for me a universal historical event, two weeks ago. There was a big conference in Jerusalem organized by Netanyahu's right-wingers even many Jewish members of parliament some of them boycotted it. Big conference on how to fight antisemitism today and you know who were there? How is he called Jordan Bardella or what quite an appropriate name, Bardello and so on, the second man after Marine Le Pen. My God, Marine Le Pen, her father was openly a Holocaust denier. So we have this strange pact between old style European antisemites and Israel Zionists now. And you must have read it. I'm really proud of this. They were so mad at me some Israelis when I brought out these documents. For example, do you know my quote? I can send it to you. In the guy himself who, Reinhard Heydrich, that one, wrote a text where he says there are two types of Jews, assimilationists and those who want to return to Palestine. And say "we don't want the first ones but we fully support the second ones. If Jews move there we are they are creative people we can have a wonderful collaboration with them." It's the same I often quote him maybe you know my quote, Breivik, that Norwegian madman. He also said "here Jews are a danger, in Israel we should fully support them" and so on. This there is something so weird going on here how the cards get get get mixed. So again that was my problem with John Gray but more and more I discover that that maybe we are often moving in the same direction because he also takes seriously the crisis of liberal democracy now no? He doesn't bullshit here no? He is out of this mega mistake of Biden administration as I develop often they thought that Trump was simply a mistake. Something happened ah let's correct it you know. No, there was a deeper necessity in Trump. That's why, do you agree with this, my ideal is the greatest symbol in United States recently is, you remember of course you do, Biden's inauguration. Who stole the show? Bernie Sanders sitting there alone with his gloves woolen gloves or whatever. I this gave me some hope that this isn't this fascination with Sanders a kind of awareness that the Biden spectacle there was something deeply false in it. That they didn't really confront the problem, you know. So again in this sense and I don't have an easy answer, don't now you know people always tell me and they are right "okay tell us precisely what to do." I'm not bluffing I'm too old and tired to bluff. I just discount back to Varoufakis so my first point is yes in precise sense that you said it's better feudalism, you know. This aspect is totally missing in Trumpian approach where okay a couple of oligarchs control society but society in itself is in a total total chaotic state. So it doesn't work this neo-feudalism is problematic, fascism who knows is problematic and so on. I think we are really in a period of what my good friend Fred Jameson called lack of cognitive mapping. It's more than just a you know the usual complaint of the left is we know the global situation what is going on but we cannot mobilize people. And then for false reasons many stupid leftists discovered psychoanalysis. The reasoning is well according to the Marxist dogma working class should arise they don't so it must be ideological manipulation of unconscious motive bring psychoanalysis. No no I'm totally against this use of pseudo-use of psychoanalysis. There really is a lack of vision. And I I I don't have a I I don't have a my idea is here what I called in one of my texts principled opportunism or pragmatism. I don't mean by this do anything. I mean when the circumstances are changing we must retain our principles, emancipation and so on. But the situation has changed so radically that precisely to remain faithful to our principle position we have to change many detailed analysis. For example what I mentioned before, feminism no? Sorry patriarchal order is no longer the big threat. Women are still subordinate and so on I take it all but but but again it's a new form of authority which is openly obscene and so on. The story that you must know I always repeat it. That's why you remember 6th of January when was it years ago or whatever no when Trump lost. My friends were crying there you know no? Because they cried when they saw crowd of people occupying Congress. They said "but this is what we should be doing, people gather occupy." Now the Trumpians even took from us the revolution you know. Yes they did is my point. Yes they did. So many what I would advise the left to drop is this fascination with provocative subversive acts. There is enough of this obscenity on the right. And I always you must know this line of me like to contrast at this level Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump appears neocon American values. Fuck it in the way he functions isn't he the ultimate postmodern relativist obscene person? His the style how he works undermines his message. While what I sincerely admire, I'm not without criticism of Bernie Sanders, but I really admire in him is that as a person isn't he some kind of a decent moral majority, decent or I like this out of any cheap radical statements you know this common sense decency and I met friends once I almost met him because I have friends in Burlington Vermont. He really functions like this it's not a fake. Now that he is older you meet him sometime simply walking around Burlington chatting with ordinary people and so on. So I wouldn't be afraid as a leftist to stop with this obsession of subversiveness and so on. No our answer should be "being subversive, chaotic, undermining thing, leave this to the new right. We should speak for a new decent order." I I think that we should say we are the true moral majority if you say like this you
unknown
know. But at the same time don't misunderstand me. Then you will say but in what sense are you still calling yourself a communist? Well I have a very simple reason it will be too simple maybe for you but please counter-attack me, I mean it sincerely not rhetorically just. Look we are facing a series of crisis today no? There
know. But at the same time don't misunderstand me. Then you will say but in what sense are you still calling yourself a communist? Well I have a very simple reason it will be too simple maybe for you but please counter-attack me, I mean it sincerely not rhetorically just. Look we are facing a series of crisis today no? There
Slavoj Žižek
is of course ecology there is artificial intelligence how will we deal with it. There is the militarization this social
is of course ecology there is artificial intelligence how will we deal with it. There is the militarization this social
unknown
disorders. It's for me absolutely clear that not in the old sense Central Committee
disorders. It's for me absolutely clear that not in the old sense Central Committee
Slavoj Žižek
and so on but the only solution is communism in the very elementary sense of larger transnational trans-state cooperation. Look just as ecological crisis there has to be global cooperation. Look at what is happening around the northern pole. Do you remember a couple of years ago three four summers ago when temperatures in Vancouver Seattle that part where the temperatures of Emirates degrees Celsius. Now you cannot say they should take care of it. No it's clear they were relatively well doing with their ecological measures but the whole air circulation around the northern pole is perturbed. That's why they also get now in northern Siberia temperatures up to degrees and so on. So it's not a local problem. It must be approached globally. That's all for me that is communism. We will have to find the solution. Now you will say so it's a world government. No no no no no. In today's conditions don't you think first it's not possible but also if you imagine it in today's conditions a world government would have implied breathtaking corruption and so on. But my idea is something else. Look at the effect of European Union when it appeared that it's getting stronger. The stronger European Union as a unity got it didn't squash oppress local identities. I think this is what fascinated me Basques, Basque Country, Catalonia, even here Wales and so on. The idea is that this reliance of Europe as up to a point a super state meant that local communities ethnic or whatever no longer had to totally rely on their own nation state you know. That paradoxically European unity give gives them more space. So I don't see a contradiction
and so on but the only solution is communism in the very elementary sense of larger transnational trans-state cooperation. Look just as ecological crisis there has to be global cooperation. Look at what is happening around the northern pole. Do you remember a couple of years ago three four summers ago when temperatures in Vancouver Seattle that part where the temperatures of Emirates degrees Celsius. Now you cannot say they should take care of it. No it's clear they were relatively well doing with their ecological measures but the whole air circulation around the northern pole is perturbed. That's why they also get now in northern Siberia temperatures up to degrees and so on. So it's not a local problem. It must be approached globally. That's all for me that is communism. We will have to find the solution. Now you will say so it's a world government. No no no no no. In today's conditions don't you think first it's not possible but also if you imagine it in today's conditions a world government would have implied breathtaking corruption and so on. But my idea is something else. Look at the effect of European Union when it appeared that it's getting stronger. The stronger European Union as a unity got it didn't squash oppress local identities. I think this is what fascinated me Basques, Basque Country, Catalonia, even here Wales and so on. The idea is that this reliance of Europe as up to a point a super state meant that local communities ethnic or whatever no longer had to totally rely on their own nation state you know. That paradoxically European unity give gives them more space. So I don't see a contradiction
unknown
between stronger Europe and less local unities. The although we need an efficient state more than ever. But a state will have to learn to reach beyond itself, international
between stronger Europe and less local unities. The although we need an efficient state more than ever. But a state will have to learn to reach beyond itself, international
Slavoj Žižek
cooperation, and this will then open up the space I have nothing against local communities and so on. I'm even all for you know when you say today local ways of life our way of life should be maintained. And if you say this in a wrong circle you're accused of being a fascist racist. I say no. The problem for me with when white people say we want our way of life is that usually between the lines they imply a universal dimension which is because we are the best and so on. That's why I have no illusion you know who is my model here it may appear ridiculous to you. I don't even like them, I met them. Tibetans and Amish. You know what's so beautiful about Amish? My source is not only that movie by Harrison Ford or no my sources I then read some books even met some of them. They don't have any envy. They don't hate they call them the Englishmen, other whites. Their idea is we found our way of life. You have yours nice, we can be friends. And you know how wonderfully they collaborate. For example they are not most of them they have subgroups they are not allowed to have how do you call this phones. So it's part of the deal. You need an emergency you run to a neighbor who phones the emergency. What is important is that our pseudo-fundamentalists I'm ready to go so far as to distinguish between authentic fundamentalists and pseudo. Pseudo-fundamentalists have envy. A typical right-winger in the US they're secretly obsessed by can you imagine what gay people or LGBTs are doing although every antisemitism works like this every hatred of Arabs what they're doing among themselves. No and it's the same with Tibetans. It shocked me. They don't have any expansionist logic or any hatred towards others. Their idea is "we found our way of life. You can have yours. There is no envy" and so on. So the problem for me again is that when people refer to a specific way of life, it's not that this notion as such is racist. I you can be fully identified with a specific way of life. Of course I'm not an idiot there are problems like to what extent should a larger community tolerate I don't know how you treat women and so on and so on. I'm for certain minimal standards. But we should be aware of this distinction again between between let's call it naively authentic fundamentalism which is simply I found my way of life, you stick with yours we can be good friends, none of this destructive envy. For example for Tibetans it's unimaginable to say Han Chinese or who they are our ur-enemy we have to fight them and so on. But to conclude if you want back to Trump you know where I see I did say this you know I see an antagonism in Trumpian populism which may but not necessarily destroy it they may survive and even use it to strengthen them. On the one hand Trump line is this populism and I like ironically although I'm ashamed to use the term to refer to people like Steve Bannon as the Left Trumpians. You know why why Steve Bannon was fired during the first Trump rule from the White House? Because you know what he demanded publicly? That the taxes for the rich be raised from now it's maximum to So but then you have guys like Elon Musk and so on and they have a whole theoretical background. It's something totally different. Through their secret dream, and that's behind I think Trump's Gaza project is to slowly recreate new societies from the zero point. They call this network states. You empty a certain space or you buy it from a state and through algorithms benevolent dictator experts you recreate society from the zero point. So and they even use the term recreate a new man. You know what this means? We are worst Stalinists than Stalin himself. I mean this idea of recreate a new man. So this is the problem for me with Trumpianism but at the same time unfortunately its strength. Do you remember his inaugural speech? Oh my God. The first one or the second one? The second one. Now a couple of you remember he opens up with and then repeated a couple of times two horrible terms "common sense" and "sanity." Yeah but first you cannot return to old common sense, it's obvious, because all the problems that we have today, artificial intelligence, ecology, and others, they do defy our common sense. Our common sense tells us nature is the natural background, we can screw things up but nature is a big circle it will survive. No nature is no longer the safe background on which you can rely. It's the same with artificial intelligence. For years I'm attentive to that horror and this is the you know I got two invitations, I didn't accept them, which quite shocked me. After my book, which I didn't really succeed, Hegel in a Wired World, I got an invitation not from Elon Musk himself but from his group who are doing this Neuralink how how and then you know who personally contacted me? I didn't want to my God what connections I have, Peter Thiel. The father of I mean robot father of of Vance you know. And so I think that's the paradox of Trump. All this babble about return to common sense, but what they are effectively doing is enabling an explosive process of destroying the last vestiges of what we are usually perceiving as common sense. And you we cannot prevent it, I think that's the true revolution today. Trumpians are escaping from it. Doesn't the very prospect of artificial intelligence even if you don't go to the end, this for me pure horror, Neuralink you know the idea of a direct link between not just your brain, your thoughts, and digital machine so that digital machine can read your thoughts? Okay as usual people cheat here those who they always give an example humanitarian example. Look a guy is crippled, isn't it nice that he just thinks about something like move that chair and it happens. Yeah, but what goes out goes in. This means that the machine can read your mind up to a point and who controls the machine then, we know where this leads. So I'm not necessarily a pessimist here, I'm not saying we will turn into robots. I'm just saying that something that we identified till now as a basic feature of being human, which is reality is out there my thought is in here, this is the basis of our freedom. Freedom means I'm asked to do something and without acting directly in reality I can play different options in my mind. This is in danger of disappearing. So I I'm not necessarily again a pessimist here. It will happen. I just think we should really think about it in an open-up way. For example this may amuse you or readers. I recently thought about is it there something that artificial intelligence at least in its today's form cannot do. My point is not this conservative one. I'm much more open here. I think that first who knows artificial intelligence doesn't have a self-awareness in our sense. What if it will develop some kind of a spirituality of its own which simply doesn't fit our our our hierarchy? You know it will be something totally different. But on the other hand I tried to think naively about what artificial intelligence at least in its today's form cannot do. And we came, debating with them, to a very naive but nice option. One, daily rituals. Of course you can make it do but you program it but that's different. But you know this this always fascinated me how all of us practically but I think all of us have some stupid daily rituals like you walk on a floor where there are tiles in square and you shouldn't step on the same one two times or what. This is something very interesting because I'm against some stupid psychoanalytic interpretation here. It's just that you are confused and these rituals don't have any meaning. They just have the effect of meaning. It appears that you introduce some minimal order. I think that artificial intelligence cannot do it of its own. You can program it to do it but that's different. Another thing, more interesting. I follow Jacques Lacan who says that the zero form of language is swearing, curses, "fuck off" and so on. He says that this is and he gives a very nice reading of it. His idea is that swearing is not just frustration like you try to do something you spill it it goes wrong you say "fuck it my God." No, swearing is always a reflexive act of language itself. You are mad that you confront a problem for which you don't even have a proper way to formulate it within the language. Swearing is for me a sign of what Hegel knew, Freud knew and so on that we live in language absolutely. But at the same time we are never fully at home in language. There is always a gap. Our whole humanity depends on the fact that you cannot say what you want what you say can always mean socially something that you didn't intend and so on. And this gap opens up the space for swearing. Which is why my favorite scene in Did you see, I think it was overestimated I didn't like it so much too naively leftist, The Wire, the TV series. You saw it. Do you remember in episode four or where there is a wonderful scene where the two detectives enter a crime scene and they made something noticed here, there, and the whole dialogue, two-three minute scene is "Fuck it," "Oh fuck," "Fuck fuck" and so on. That's communication at its purest. Now again you can plan, you can program artificial intelligence like this but I wonder if they can do it in this specifically human way which implies a minimum of subjectivity. And subjectivity is always negative. Negative not in a complicated in the sense of you don't feel easy in what you are. You are at an you you have a certain place in society in language but you don't you are not fully identified with it. Here I see problems but again I'm very open, who knows. I don't believe in that bullshit of singularity, you know, all our self-awarenesses will be united in one big one. I would say no thanks. You know what's my reaction to it? There is an wonderful old and it's not even wonderful, primitive, old joke from Brezhnev era. Soviet Union. There is a big poster there "Good news: in years we will live in fully developed communism," no? And a guy starts to jump then and sing and people ask him "why are you doing this?" He said "Ah, it's wonderful, I have I have cancer, I will not be alive in years," no? So when I read about singularity is approaching, I tend to have a reaction of this guy. But singularity is I think a typical human dream about what would have been a beyond. It's false, but I'm totally open to the idea of something being beyond. And this is a real problem where, now, sorry, now I have a point maybe not against you but you are the guy who has that communism of luxury. Uh-huh, fully automated luxury communism. Yeah. Okay. I'm just You know that a guy who is not exactly a leftist is obsessed with similar problems. Did you read Nick Bostrom's Deep Utopia? Superintelligence, but not Deep Utopia, no. Sorry? I read his first. In Deep Utopia he deals precisely systematically with this problem. And I hope you where I don't agree with him. But my problem is, you know, we are the way we were formed by history. And if all of a sudden you live in a society of luxury in this simple sense that you don't have to worry about material needs and so on, what if this will be really traumatic for people? Can they survive this? I'm always a pessimist in the sense that I think that, you know, the big lesson of psychoanalysis is for me that something that appears to be an obstacle is really a condition of what it is an obstacle to. You know, that's my eternal example for example, I'm sorry for male chauvinism, of feminine beauty. You know which example I usually quote, trigger warning, very vulgar one, it really happened to me. A lady was flirting with me years ago, now nobody flirts with me anymore. She told me, "You know my last lover told me when he saw me naked that if I just were to lose two pounds my body would be perfect." What I told her is, "Just don't lose two pounds. Because the effect of perfection comes precisely from the fact that you are not perfectly perfect. If you take the obstacle you would be ordinary. Perfection is emerges as" So that's what I am afraid and you know I'm very empirical here. No deep Marxist thinking. But what I'm saying is that for example it happened already under socialism in Slovenia, in the last years or a little bit before, late 60s early 70s were the golden era. People lived in a relatively comfortable way at least in Slovenia. And media started to notice that if by some combination you know it happens that holidays get so well placed in the middle of the week and so on but basically you are free for an entire week. In local places there were many fights. After two days of enjoying it people got in conflict and so on. So I'm more here a maybe I'm wrong but my psychoanalytic not training I'm not for I mean like some students told me "can I become your patient?" You know what's my answer? If you can even imagine me as your patient you must be really mad, you need. Can you even imagine me listening patiently to a guy? There fuck off. No, but what I'm saying is that you know people maybe need to be occupied by something they are afraid of too much free time. Can I reply to that quickly? Yes, reply no, please answer in a very aggressive way as possible. So I agree with you. Um, you've got the Laclos, *Les Liaisons dangereuses*, which is about the French, you know, elite. I know my God, it's one of ah, I should add that one to one of the greatest novels yeah. So they and they have all this free time they live in incredible luxury they effective live in post-scarcity conditions. What do they spend all their time doing? Intrigue, heartbreak, drama. And I suspect in a post-scarcity society there would be a massive increase in mental ill health, depression, anxiety. Ah so you're not an idiot. That's all I wanted to hear. Yeah. Or I would say you're not a complete idiot. No, not that I am. Not yet. There are only two types of people I claim. Complete idiots and people who are not complete idiots. There are no third way. So we would have to, you know, Keynes put it pretty well in his essay on the possibilities to our grandchildren. I know, I know it's the classic essay from mid-30s already, yeah. We would have to we would have to basically perform new kinds of human subjectivity for those conditions. Yeah. But how you have any guarantee for me it wouldn't be a problem because I'm an absolute workaholic. Being free of necessity it means I work day and night. I think it would be as different to our society as our society is to hunter-gatherer society. So we've already gone through a transition that big before haven't we, right? I agree at some point with you. Do we agree that Marx was here wrong? Our society emerged Marx it's not class society it's before Neolithic is the yeah all good historians Neolithic is the we have only two great breaks. Neolithic and then let's face it capitalism, which destroys traditional hierarchic societies and so on. I agree entirely. Yeah. So again but nonetheless what's your it's just we don't know what will happen it's deep shit or do you have a hidden more positive formula? I think you know it it it would be like somebody years ago when few you know million babies are born every two weeks on planet Earth. years ago there were million people, right? That's how much has changed in years. So I think trying to explain to a hunter-gatherer "this is what economic surplus looks like, mathematics, cities," they they would say "what the hell are you talking about?" Anatomically the same as you and I. And I think a post-scarcity society would be incomprehensible to us. I still think it's something to strive for because the problems in that society and they would exist would be better problems than dying of waterborne disease as a child of homelessness of freezing to death. I think those are better problems um but I think we'll always have problems. The point is what's the quality of the problems. I think they're superior problems to have. Yeah but I'm too scared even to guess specify what the problems are. You know whom you should read here in a wonderful text. It's not one about army, the role of military communism it's Fred Jameson, no? is fully aware of this. He said "who got this stupid idea that communism will be just abundance?" He says envy depression will be the main problem. And he then writes something wonderful. He says in communism there will be economic base and superstructure. The base will be automated communism, superstructure will be some collective forms of psychoanalysis to control madness to control envy depression and so on. If you are saying this we are comrade communists here you know we should focus on and this you know in some society I already see it as reactions to this. For example in China, it's not just a reactionary phenomenon. I read a wonderful text, very simple, about another mass movement, it's not too much a mass movement. and we shouldn't simply dismiss it as anti-feminist. It's that many women there are even in China thousands of women who are high on high executive positions and many of them because with the new middle class what is relatively well-paid is that if you are not a dirty ordinary woman but appear nice educated that you simply do the cleaning you know. Come to a once a week you go to an apartment you clean. and they discover that if you do this in a well-planned way you drop your high executive job you just go every day to clean an apartment for two three hours life is much more calm, happy and so on. And I think it's too easy to say oh anti-feminist dream. No it's authentic experience. You get rid of this pressure and so on. But there are so many unknowns that I even don't dare to guess what these problems will be you know. As you said it's depression and so on all that you know. What I want to avoid, here we are on the same side, it's I don't want to draw from this the conservative conclusion which is that oh so we need a little bit of oppression and so on. No, no, that's too simple like let's return You have even some pseudo-Lacanians who say today we are confronting the catastrophic consequences of patriarchal of the lack of patriarchal authority so let's restore the symbolic authority of the name of the father. You cannot. Then you get Trump, then you get an obscene authority and so on. So I'm just don't know how to put it. I feel so insecure there what will be this problem but I agree with you if we don't screw it up before with some war. You know that's why I'm now doing quantum mechanics not yet seriously but I'm in very good contact. They are wonderful people with Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin, the big names. They're fascinated that a philosopher crazy like me is interested in their work. And Rovelli I had a brief exchange with him. You know he's a leftist right? He is. Formal well. No no no no. You know what he wrote? I told him "listen we are in deep shit blah blah blah. Don't we need communism in just in the sense of larger unity?" And he said "I agree. Our survival can only be global confederation." And then he said "The only question is will it happen before or after the nuclear war?" He is very reasonable also in this dark sense. He doesn't have too many illusions about too many illusions about about new people's democracy, this idea that I think doesn't work today, this you know democracy
cooperation, and this will then open up the space I have nothing against local communities and so on. I'm even all for you know when you say today local ways of life our way of life should be maintained. And if you say this in a wrong circle you're accused of being a fascist racist. I say no. The problem for me with when white people say we want our way of life is that usually between the lines they imply a universal dimension which is because we are the best and so on. That's why I have no illusion you know who is my model here it may appear ridiculous to you. I don't even like them, I met them. Tibetans and Amish. You know what's so beautiful about Amish? My source is not only that movie by Harrison Ford or no my sources I then read some books even met some of them. They don't have any envy. They don't hate they call them the Englishmen, other whites. Their idea is we found our way of life. You have yours nice, we can be friends. And you know how wonderfully they collaborate. For example they are not most of them they have subgroups they are not allowed to have how do you call this phones. So it's part of the deal. You need an emergency you run to a neighbor who phones the emergency. What is important is that our pseudo-fundamentalists I'm ready to go so far as to distinguish between authentic fundamentalists and pseudo. Pseudo-fundamentalists have envy. A typical right-winger in the US they're secretly obsessed by can you imagine what gay people or LGBTs are doing although every antisemitism works like this every hatred of Arabs what they're doing among themselves. No and it's the same with Tibetans. It shocked me. They don't have any expansionist logic or any hatred towards others. Their idea is "we found our way of life. You can have yours. There is no envy" and so on. So the problem for me again is that when people refer to a specific way of life, it's not that this notion as such is racist. I you can be fully identified with a specific way of life. Of course I'm not an idiot there are problems like to what extent should a larger community tolerate I don't know how you treat women and so on and so on. I'm for certain minimal standards. But we should be aware of this distinction again between between let's call it naively authentic fundamentalism which is simply I found my way of life, you stick with yours we can be good friends, none of this destructive envy. For example for Tibetans it's unimaginable to say Han Chinese or who they are our ur-enemy we have to fight them and so on. But to conclude if you want back to Trump you know where I see I did say this you know I see an antagonism in Trumpian populism which may but not necessarily destroy it they may survive and even use it to strengthen them. On the one hand Trump line is this populism and I like ironically although I'm ashamed to use the term to refer to people like Steve Bannon as the Left Trumpians. You know why why Steve Bannon was fired during the first Trump rule from the White House? Because you know what he demanded publicly? That the taxes for the rich be raised from now it's maximum to So but then you have guys like Elon Musk and so on and they have a whole theoretical background. It's something totally different. Through their secret dream, and that's behind I think Trump's Gaza project is to slowly recreate new societies from the zero point. They call this network states. You empty a certain space or you buy it from a state and through algorithms benevolent dictator experts you recreate society from the zero point. So and they even use the term recreate a new man. You know what this means? We are worst Stalinists than Stalin himself. I mean this idea of recreate a new man. So this is the problem for me with Trumpianism but at the same time unfortunately its strength. Do you remember his inaugural speech? Oh my God. The first one or the second one? The second one. Now a couple of you remember he opens up with and then repeated a couple of times two horrible terms "common sense" and "sanity." Yeah but first you cannot return to old common sense, it's obvious, because all the problems that we have today, artificial intelligence, ecology, and others, they do defy our common sense. Our common sense tells us nature is the natural background, we can screw things up but nature is a big circle it will survive. No nature is no longer the safe background on which you can rely. It's the same with artificial intelligence. For years I'm attentive to that horror and this is the you know I got two invitations, I didn't accept them, which quite shocked me. After my book, which I didn't really succeed, Hegel in a Wired World, I got an invitation not from Elon Musk himself but from his group who are doing this Neuralink how how and then you know who personally contacted me? I didn't want to my God what connections I have, Peter Thiel. The father of I mean robot father of of Vance you know. And so I think that's the paradox of Trump. All this babble about return to common sense, but what they are effectively doing is enabling an explosive process of destroying the last vestiges of what we are usually perceiving as common sense. And you we cannot prevent it, I think that's the true revolution today. Trumpians are escaping from it. Doesn't the very prospect of artificial intelligence even if you don't go to the end, this for me pure horror, Neuralink you know the idea of a direct link between not just your brain, your thoughts, and digital machine so that digital machine can read your thoughts? Okay as usual people cheat here those who they always give an example humanitarian example. Look a guy is crippled, isn't it nice that he just thinks about something like move that chair and it happens. Yeah, but what goes out goes in. This means that the machine can read your mind up to a point and who controls the machine then, we know where this leads. So I'm not necessarily a pessimist here, I'm not saying we will turn into robots. I'm just saying that something that we identified till now as a basic feature of being human, which is reality is out there my thought is in here, this is the basis of our freedom. Freedom means I'm asked to do something and without acting directly in reality I can play different options in my mind. This is in danger of disappearing. So I I'm not necessarily again a pessimist here. It will happen. I just think we should really think about it in an open-up way. For example this may amuse you or readers. I recently thought about is it there something that artificial intelligence at least in its today's form cannot do. My point is not this conservative one. I'm much more open here. I think that first who knows artificial intelligence doesn't have a self-awareness in our sense. What if it will develop some kind of a spirituality of its own which simply doesn't fit our our our hierarchy? You know it will be something totally different. But on the other hand I tried to think naively about what artificial intelligence at least in its today's form cannot do. And we came, debating with them, to a very naive but nice option. One, daily rituals. Of course you can make it do but you program it but that's different. But you know this this always fascinated me how all of us practically but I think all of us have some stupid daily rituals like you walk on a floor where there are tiles in square and you shouldn't step on the same one two times or what. This is something very interesting because I'm against some stupid psychoanalytic interpretation here. It's just that you are confused and these rituals don't have any meaning. They just have the effect of meaning. It appears that you introduce some minimal order. I think that artificial intelligence cannot do it of its own. You can program it to do it but that's different. Another thing, more interesting. I follow Jacques Lacan who says that the zero form of language is swearing, curses, "fuck off" and so on. He says that this is and he gives a very nice reading of it. His idea is that swearing is not just frustration like you try to do something you spill it it goes wrong you say "fuck it my God." No, swearing is always a reflexive act of language itself. You are mad that you confront a problem for which you don't even have a proper way to formulate it within the language. Swearing is for me a sign of what Hegel knew, Freud knew and so on that we live in language absolutely. But at the same time we are never fully at home in language. There is always a gap. Our whole humanity depends on the fact that you cannot say what you want what you say can always mean socially something that you didn't intend and so on. And this gap opens up the space for swearing. Which is why my favorite scene in Did you see, I think it was overestimated I didn't like it so much too naively leftist, The Wire, the TV series. You saw it. Do you remember in episode four or where there is a wonderful scene where the two detectives enter a crime scene and they made something noticed here, there, and the whole dialogue, two-three minute scene is "Fuck it," "Oh fuck," "Fuck fuck" and so on. That's communication at its purest. Now again you can plan, you can program artificial intelligence like this but I wonder if they can do it in this specifically human way which implies a minimum of subjectivity. And subjectivity is always negative. Negative not in a complicated in the sense of you don't feel easy in what you are. You are at an you you have a certain place in society in language but you don't you are not fully identified with it. Here I see problems but again I'm very open, who knows. I don't believe in that bullshit of singularity, you know, all our self-awarenesses will be united in one big one. I would say no thanks. You know what's my reaction to it? There is an wonderful old and it's not even wonderful, primitive, old joke from Brezhnev era. Soviet Union. There is a big poster there "Good news: in years we will live in fully developed communism," no? And a guy starts to jump then and sing and people ask him "why are you doing this?" He said "Ah, it's wonderful, I have I have cancer, I will not be alive in years," no? So when I read about singularity is approaching, I tend to have a reaction of this guy. But singularity is I think a typical human dream about what would have been a beyond. It's false, but I'm totally open to the idea of something being beyond. And this is a real problem where, now, sorry, now I have a point maybe not against you but you are the guy who has that communism of luxury. Uh-huh, fully automated luxury communism. Yeah. Okay. I'm just You know that a guy who is not exactly a leftist is obsessed with similar problems. Did you read Nick Bostrom's Deep Utopia? Superintelligence, but not Deep Utopia, no. Sorry? I read his first. In Deep Utopia he deals precisely systematically with this problem. And I hope you where I don't agree with him. But my problem is, you know, we are the way we were formed by history. And if all of a sudden you live in a society of luxury in this simple sense that you don't have to worry about material needs and so on, what if this will be really traumatic for people? Can they survive this? I'm always a pessimist in the sense that I think that, you know, the big lesson of psychoanalysis is for me that something that appears to be an obstacle is really a condition of what it is an obstacle to. You know, that's my eternal example for example, I'm sorry for male chauvinism, of feminine beauty. You know which example I usually quote, trigger warning, very vulgar one, it really happened to me. A lady was flirting with me years ago, now nobody flirts with me anymore. She told me, "You know my last lover told me when he saw me naked that if I just were to lose two pounds my body would be perfect." What I told her is, "Just don't lose two pounds. Because the effect of perfection comes precisely from the fact that you are not perfectly perfect. If you take the obstacle you would be ordinary. Perfection is emerges as" So that's what I am afraid and you know I'm very empirical here. No deep Marxist thinking. But what I'm saying is that for example it happened already under socialism in Slovenia, in the last years or a little bit before, late 60s early 70s were the golden era. People lived in a relatively comfortable way at least in Slovenia. And media started to notice that if by some combination you know it happens that holidays get so well placed in the middle of the week and so on but basically you are free for an entire week. In local places there were many fights. After two days of enjoying it people got in conflict and so on. So I'm more here a maybe I'm wrong but my psychoanalytic not training I'm not for I mean like some students told me "can I become your patient?" You know what's my answer? If you can even imagine me as your patient you must be really mad, you need. Can you even imagine me listening patiently to a guy? There fuck off. No, but what I'm saying is that you know people maybe need to be occupied by something they are afraid of too much free time. Can I reply to that quickly? Yes, reply no, please answer in a very aggressive way as possible. So I agree with you. Um, you've got the Laclos, *Les Liaisons dangereuses*, which is about the French, you know, elite. I know my God, it's one of ah, I should add that one to one of the greatest novels yeah. So they and they have all this free time they live in incredible luxury they effective live in post-scarcity conditions. What do they spend all their time doing? Intrigue, heartbreak, drama. And I suspect in a post-scarcity society there would be a massive increase in mental ill health, depression, anxiety. Ah so you're not an idiot. That's all I wanted to hear. Yeah. Or I would say you're not a complete idiot. No, not that I am. Not yet. There are only two types of people I claim. Complete idiots and people who are not complete idiots. There are no third way. So we would have to, you know, Keynes put it pretty well in his essay on the possibilities to our grandchildren. I know, I know it's the classic essay from mid-30s already, yeah. We would have to we would have to basically perform new kinds of human subjectivity for those conditions. Yeah. But how you have any guarantee for me it wouldn't be a problem because I'm an absolute workaholic. Being free of necessity it means I work day and night. I think it would be as different to our society as our society is to hunter-gatherer society. So we've already gone through a transition that big before haven't we, right? I agree at some point with you. Do we agree that Marx was here wrong? Our society emerged Marx it's not class society it's before Neolithic is the yeah all good historians Neolithic is the we have only two great breaks. Neolithic and then let's face it capitalism, which destroys traditional hierarchic societies and so on. I agree entirely. Yeah. So again but nonetheless what's your it's just we don't know what will happen it's deep shit or do you have a hidden more positive formula? I think you know it it it would be like somebody years ago when few you know million babies are born every two weeks on planet Earth. years ago there were million people, right? That's how much has changed in years. So I think trying to explain to a hunter-gatherer "this is what economic surplus looks like, mathematics, cities," they they would say "what the hell are you talking about?" Anatomically the same as you and I. And I think a post-scarcity society would be incomprehensible to us. I still think it's something to strive for because the problems in that society and they would exist would be better problems than dying of waterborne disease as a child of homelessness of freezing to death. I think those are better problems um but I think we'll always have problems. The point is what's the quality of the problems. I think they're superior problems to have. Yeah but I'm too scared even to guess specify what the problems are. You know whom you should read here in a wonderful text. It's not one about army, the role of military communism it's Fred Jameson, no? is fully aware of this. He said "who got this stupid idea that communism will be just abundance?" He says envy depression will be the main problem. And he then writes something wonderful. He says in communism there will be economic base and superstructure. The base will be automated communism, superstructure will be some collective forms of psychoanalysis to control madness to control envy depression and so on. If you are saying this we are comrade communists here you know we should focus on and this you know in some society I already see it as reactions to this. For example in China, it's not just a reactionary phenomenon. I read a wonderful text, very simple, about another mass movement, it's not too much a mass movement. and we shouldn't simply dismiss it as anti-feminist. It's that many women there are even in China thousands of women who are high on high executive positions and many of them because with the new middle class what is relatively well-paid is that if you are not a dirty ordinary woman but appear nice educated that you simply do the cleaning you know. Come to a once a week you go to an apartment you clean. and they discover that if you do this in a well-planned way you drop your high executive job you just go every day to clean an apartment for two three hours life is much more calm, happy and so on. And I think it's too easy to say oh anti-feminist dream. No it's authentic experience. You get rid of this pressure and so on. But there are so many unknowns that I even don't dare to guess what these problems will be you know. As you said it's depression and so on all that you know. What I want to avoid, here we are on the same side, it's I don't want to draw from this the conservative conclusion which is that oh so we need a little bit of oppression and so on. No, no, that's too simple like let's return You have even some pseudo-Lacanians who say today we are confronting the catastrophic consequences of patriarchal of the lack of patriarchal authority so let's restore the symbolic authority of the name of the father. You cannot. Then you get Trump, then you get an obscene authority and so on. So I'm just don't know how to put it. I feel so insecure there what will be this problem but I agree with you if we don't screw it up before with some war. You know that's why I'm now doing quantum mechanics not yet seriously but I'm in very good contact. They are wonderful people with Carlo Rovelli, Lee Smolin, the big names. They're fascinated that a philosopher crazy like me is interested in their work. And Rovelli I had a brief exchange with him. You know he's a leftist right? He is. Formal well. No no no no. You know what he wrote? I told him "listen we are in deep shit blah blah blah. Don't we need communism in just in the sense of larger unity?" And he said "I agree. Our survival can only be global confederation." And then he said "The only question is will it happen before or after the nuclear war?" He is very reasonable also in this dark sense. He doesn't have too many illusions about too many illusions about about new people's democracy, this idea that I think doesn't work today, this you know democracy
unknown
from below, like you know local communities and so on. He
from below, like you know local communities and so on. He
Slavoj Žižek
is not in that but
is not in that but
unknown
yes he is he still is that. But you know did you read my story? You don't read you have are right. You know what fascinates me more and more how even we know something is an illusion how it's in some sense a necessary illusion. Do you know my story?
yes he is he still is that. But you know did you read my story? You don't read you have are right. You know what fascinates me more and more how even we know something is an illusion how it's in some sense a necessary illusion. Do you know my story?
Slavoj Žižek
I don't want to repeat it about I'm quite proud of to applying that. My good friend maybe the best theorists
I don't want to repeat it about I'm quite proud of to applying that. My good friend maybe the best theorists
unknown
of catastrophes Pierre Bayard or who, a French
of catastrophes Pierre Bayard or who, a French
Slavoj Žižek
guy, used
guy, used
unknown
the metaphor of, do you know this? It's
the metaphor of, do you know this? It's
Slavoj Žižek
an old Arab story but probably it wasn't invented by Arabs. How do you
an old Arab story but probably it wasn't invented by Arabs. How do you
unknown
solve the problem of camels? You know the story? No, it's a wonderful one. Very short don't be
solve the problem of camels? You know the story? No, it's a wonderful one. Very short don't be
Slavoj Žižek
afraid. A rich merchant, rich not even very rich for a merchant, is dying and he has three sons and he his inheritance is camels. And
afraid. A rich merchant, rich not even very rich for a merchant, is dying and he has three sons and he his inheritance is camels. And
unknown
he tells his sons, "this
he tells his sons, "this
Slavoj Žižek
is all yours but on condition that you divide them in a precise way.
is all yours but on condition that you divide them in a precise way.
unknown
The older one gets half of the camels, the middle son gets one fourth of the camels, the younger son gets two camels, one sixth." Now there is a problem no? Because can't be divided
The older one gets half of the camels, the middle son gets one fourth of the camels, the younger son gets two camels, one sixth." Now there is a problem no? Because can't be divided
Slavoj Žižek
by half or by any of these
by half or by any of these
unknown
numbers.
numbers.
unknown
So they call a judge who has a solution. He said "I will add a camel of my own and then we go to work. You get half of the camels, half of is six. You get one fourth, it's three. Six and three it's nine. And you get two, one sixth, it's And then they ask him "what happens with the 12th camel?" He
So they call a judge who has a solution. He said "I will add a camel of my own and then we go to work. You get half of the camels, half of is six. You get one fourth, it's three. Six and three it's nine. And you get two, one sixth, it's And then they ask him "what happens with the 12th camel?" He
Slavoj Žižek
said "it doesn't even have to exist. I take it back." You know that's for me a good metaphor maybe for religion. It's I I was attacked but not by Rowan Williams I'm friendly with him. When I explained to him that's for me the best theory of God. God is the 12th camel you know like it doesn't exist but you add him and you get a completes the whole. Yeah completes the whole you know. So this is what fascinates me more and more. This idea of not illusions in this old-fashioned Marxist way you know "oh ideological illusion" but structural much more necessary illusion. So I'm an atheist because I think put it in stupid terms God is illusion but maybe it's a little bit more necessary illusion structurally you know. You cannot really work in language operate without the 12th camel has to be there. It doesn't have to exist but it has to be there. Slavoj, been a pleasure again. It pleasure was mine and you know what really because I suspected I read some of your stuff but now you clarified it. I suspected you that with your idea of luxury communism, I almost wasn't sure should I put you on my list when the people take over off you go to Gulag you know. But now you convinced me you know. No no no no you are well aware it's not simply because even some idiots you have leftist guys, Heideggerians even, who think with this luxury communism we will all become Heideggerians, think about the fate of being, like a new space of metaphysics. Hahaha. I was afraid that you have these temptations you know. No you don't finish in Gulag. But it really was a pleasure. Real pleasure. But again the tragedy today is that for quite a lot of people it could be luxury and for it's more complex so this was for me it may sound surprising to you the most satisfying part that you are not a comrade, comrade, I would call it like this. Maybe in some future you will have to go to Gulag but till that moment we can be friends.
said "it doesn't even have to exist. I take it back." You know that's for me a good metaphor maybe for religion. It's I I was attacked but not by Rowan Williams I'm friendly with him. When I explained to him that's for me the best theory of God. God is the 12th camel you know like it doesn't exist but you add him and you get a completes the whole. Yeah completes the whole you know. So this is what fascinates me more and more. This idea of not illusions in this old-fashioned Marxist way you know "oh ideological illusion" but structural much more necessary illusion. So I'm an atheist because I think put it in stupid terms God is illusion but maybe it's a little bit more necessary illusion structurally you know. You cannot really work in language operate without the 12th camel has to be there. It doesn't have to exist but it has to be there. Slavoj, been a pleasure again. It pleasure was mine and you know what really because I suspected I read some of your stuff but now you clarified it. I suspected you that with your idea of luxury communism, I almost wasn't sure should I put you on my list when the people take over off you go to Gulag you know. But now you convinced me you know. No no no no you are well aware it's not simply because even some idiots you have leftist guys, Heideggerians even, who think with this luxury communism we will all become Heideggerians, think about the fate of being, like a new space of metaphysics. Hahaha. I was afraid that you have these temptations you know. No you don't finish in Gulag. But it really was a pleasure. Real pleasure. But again the tragedy today is that for quite a lot of people it could be luxury and for it's more complex so this was for me it may sound surprising to you the most satisfying part that you are not a comrade, comrade, I would call it like this. Maybe in some future you will have to go to Gulag but till that moment we can be friends.