Why Do We Enjoy Feeling Ashamed
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2022-11-01 · 1:51:08 · 12,910 words
ideologypsychoanalysisgeopolitics-warfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnesssexuality-genderhegel-dialecticscinema-art-culturereligion-theologyrevolution-violencehistory
Žižek opens with Hitchcock's Torn Curtain and the real-life defection of the actor Wolfgang Kieling as a dialectical illustration of Cold War paradoxes, then develops a theory of shame drawing on Austrian philosopher Robert Fer, distinguishing modern shame as an excess of 'too much' rather than failure, illustrated by the Stalinist obsession with appearances and a recent incident at a Chinese Communist Party congress. He proceeds to debate the Russia-Ukraine war, defending Western arms support against pacifist arguments, attacking Putin's neo-conservative religious ideology and its convergence with the American alt-right, and criticizing both woke cancel culture and trans-identity discourse for bypassing psychoanalytic complexity. The talk ends with Q&A covering carnival and social order, the ethics of nuclear confrontation, and solidarity with Third World anti-imperialism.
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The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek (following Fer) redefines modern shame not as failure or insufficiency but as the experience of oneself as an obscene 'too much,' an element out of place in the symbolic order.
as “the innocent observer / agency of pure appearance”
The virtual witness, analogous to the big Other, whose function is to maintain appearances; shame erupts not when everyone knows a secret but when the public pretense that 'we don't know' collapses.
Implicitly present in Žižek's reading of Stalinist appearances: the gap between what everyone privately knows and what is officially acknowledged functions as a socially real abstraction.
Žižek invokes the big Other as the agent of appearances, illustrated by the social rule of ignoring embarrassing incidents in polite company and by Stalinist theatrical politics.
Žižek links shame to surplus enjoyment, noting that the shameful act is one that the subject secretly enjoys, and that shame itself can become a further source of enjoyment.
Žižek (quoting Fer) identifies a leftist tendency to replace critical debate with the imposition of shame, closing debate rather than winning it.
as “the Freudian divided subject”
Žižek invokes Freud's split subject to argue that sexual identity is neither biological determinism nor conscious feeling-declaration but is mediated by unconscious symbolic structures.
Žižek repeats his Canadian friend Duane Roussel's formulation that woke politics is 'racism in the time of the many without the one,' targeting those suspected of not abandoning old forms of identity rather than targeting foreigners.
as “desatanization of Ukraine”
Žižek cites the official Russian ideological shift from 'denazification' to 'desatanization' as evidence that Putin's war has become a religious-fundamentalist crusade more extreme than Iran.
Žižek argues that Russian Eurasianist ideology (rooted in Ivan Ilyin) is a form of fascism seeking a 'true' fascism balanced between Western individualism and Asian collective submersion.
Žižek diagnoses the contemporary culture war as a displacement of class struggle, in which liberal elites perform protection of minorities to conceal their economic privilege, enabling populist right to pose as defenders of the working class.
as “neo-feudalism”
Žižek proposes neo-feudalism as the likely outcome if the left fails to invent a new social order beyond liberal democratic capitalism, a form of power prefigured by Trumpism and populist conservatism.
as “true freedom experienced as necessity”
Žižek argues that genuine freedom, as in sexual identity or love, is experienced not as free choice but as inescapable necessity, precisely because the subject stakes its survival on it.
as “the plus in LGBTQ+”
Žižek proposes a radical reading of the '+' not as an empirical remainder of unlisted identities but as the subject itself, which always escapes every fixed identification.
Žižek follows Lacan in treating hysteria, the question 'why am I what you say I am?', as the basic form of ideological critique in practice, resisting symbolic identification.
as “modern subjectivity as feminine”
Žižek argues that the Cartesian cogito, the pure subject of modernity, is structurally feminine because it embodies the hysterical refusal to be fixed by any symbolic identity.
Žižek invokes the philosophical concept of the rigid designator via the example of Diet Coke with cherry flavouring, a purely chemical taste that has no resemblance to real cherries yet is recognized as 'cherry.'
as “the dark underside of carnival”
In response to the Q&A, Žižek argues that carnival is not simply emancipatory but has a dark underside visible in Stalinist purges, Kristallnacht, and KKK rituals.
Stories he reaches for 2
Žižek says he would 'sell his mother into slavery' to see V for Vendetta Part 2, showing what happens after the triumph, how is the new power structured?, because populist carnival victories never address the problem of establishing a new normal.
“at the end, triumph, people break the political they won. okay, but what happened then? how is the new power structured? that's the big problem today.”
Boris Groys found Bakhtin's private archives and discovered that the universal message of his private notes was that the great carnival he never dared mention publicly was the Stalinist purges, today a king-member of the Politburo, tomorrow an English spy.
“for him, the big carnival that he didn't dare to mention were the stalinist purges.”
Works invoked 9
V for Vendetta film
Žižek says he would 'sell his mother into slavery' to see a sequel showing what happens after the political triumph, used to illustrate the 'morning after' problem of revolutionary politics.
Communist Manifesto essay
The line 'all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned' is cited to argue that liberal multiculturalism is the true consequence of capitalism, not its opponent.
Hero film
Mentioned in passing as one of Zhang Yimou's popular films, while noting he staged the Beijing Olympics.
The Iliad other
Homer's epic is cited via Sloterdijk as the origin of Western culture in rage (Achilles), paralleling Žižek's diagnosis of contemporary political rage.
Torn Curtain film
Žižek calls it a 'rather bad film' but uses the Gromek murder scene and the Kieling defection story as a dialectical illustration of Cold War paradoxes.
Peter Sloterdijk's ironic paraphrase of Heidegger is cited for its identification of Achilles' rage in the Iliad as the foundation of Western culture, and as an analog to today's dangerous political rage.
Bakhtin's classic study of carnival is invoked and then complicated by Groys' archival discovery about Bakhtin's private dark view of carnival.
Žižek draws extensively on this book to develop his theory of shame as excess, the innocent observer, and shame vs. argumentation.
Huck Finn's shame at helping Jim escape is used to illustrate that moral truth can be on the side of the act rather than the inner feeling.
People invoked 39
Alexei Petrovich Pavlov negative
Russian Security Council official who called for 'desatanization' of Ukraine; used as evidence of the religious-fundamentalist character of Russian ideology.
Todd Akin negative
Republican senator whose 'legitimate rape' confusion is analyzed as revealing the hidden truth of conservative Christian values, that in some cases rape is considered legitimate.
Wolfgang Kieling positive
Actor whose real defection to East Germany after playing an East German villain is treated as a supreme dialectical irony and cited admiringly.
Helen Joyce positive
Author who supports trans rights but rejects gender identity ideology; defended by Žižek against Cambridge students who sought to cancel her talk.
Ivan Ilyin negative
Russian fascist philosopher, now quasi-official in Russia (body reburied with state honors), who argued for a distinctly Russian fascism as a balance between Western individualism and Asian collectivism.
Kazimir Malevich positive
Mentioned as co-teaching with Chagall at a Ukrainian visual arts college in the 1920s golden era of Ukrainian culture.
Rebecca Comay positive
Cited as one of the good books on Hegel written by women, used to support Žižek's claim to being a feminist.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Defended against Putin, who blames Lenin for Ukraine's separate national existence; Žižek credits Lenin and early Soviet power for a golden era of Ukrainian national and cultural flourishing in the 1920s.
Hu Jintao positive
His removal from the Party Congress stage is used as an illustration of staged disruption of appearances as a display of raw power.
Žižek admits to listening to Bannon's podcasts and finding the first 20 minutes largely agreeable (critique of corporate power) before things take a 'strange turn.'
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited for the concept of the big Other as agent of appearances, for the gap between want and desire, and for the claim that hysteria is the basic form of ideological critique.
Mikhail Bakhtin positive
Author of the classic work on carnival; Žižek defends him against those who read him as simply celebrating carnival, arguing Bakhtin (per Groys' archival discovery) was aware of carnival's dark side.
Francis Fukuyama negative
His ideal of liberal democratic capitalism is cited as being in full crisis.
Robert Ferdinand Wagner positive
Austrian philosopher whose work on shame (Revelations on Shame) Žižek draws on extensively to develop his theory of shame as excess and the innocent observer.
Ramzan Kadyrov negative
Example of obscene excess and public shamelessness: his teenage sons presented Ukrainian POWs as personal gifts, displayed publicly.
Judith Butler positive
Žižek agrees with Butler's early Hegelian work and her point about surplus enjoyment vs. pleasure; otherwise disagrees with her at other points.
Analyzed as a figure of shamelessness, but a limited one; liberal shame attributed to Trump is itself a source of pleasure; his supporters are sending signals aligned with Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev negative
Quoted as stating NATO would be too scared of nuclear apocalypse to react to Russian tactical nuclear weapons; Žižek uses this to show why allowing Russia to 'save face' is untenable.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Bolivian vice president under Morales; cited as an example of leftist government doing a 'true miracle' for ordinary people.
JD Vance negative
Trump-backed candidate cited for calling Ukraine a corrupt nation run by oligarchs and opposing US aid while supporting America-first priorities.
Nikita Khrushchev positive
The secret speech at the 20th Congress is used as an example of how rendering something public (not learning it anew) creates traumatic shame.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy positive
Mentioned approvingly; Žižek criticizes the West for offering Zelensky a plane to escape in the first days of the war, implying they wanted Ukraine to fall quickly.
Yanis Varoufakis negative
Cost Žižek a friendship when Varoufakis celebrated the Taliban victory as a defeat of American imperialism while conceding women would suffer; Žižek sees this as the worst form of leftist sacrifice.
Evo Morales positive
Žižek cites the Morales-Linera government in Bolivia as a supreme example of a leftist government that raised living standards and survived a coup.
Kirill I of Moscow negative
Russian Orthodox Church head who called Putin 'a fighter against the antichrist'; cited as evidence of the religious crusade character of the war.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Called 'my friend, although a right-winger'; his book Being and Race (a Heidegger parody) is cited for the idea that Western history begins with Achilles' rage in the Iliad.
Mentioned as the director who staged the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony that was pre-recorded to ensure perfect appearance.
Called 'my friend' ironically; Žižek accepts Peterson's diagnosis that Russian conservatism and US alt-right are two aspects of the same movement, but rejects his pro-Russian tilt and conservative conclusions.
Boris Groys positive
German-Russian art theorist and Žižek's friend who discovered Bakhtin's private archives revealing his identification of Stalinist purges as carnival.
Mark Twain positive
Huck Finn's shame at helping slave Jim escape is used to illustrate the unreliability of shame as a moral guide.
Alfred Hitchcock positive
Žižek opens with Hitchcock's Torn Curtain; calls it a 'rather bad film' but praises the murder of Gromek scene as 'by far the best scene.'
Vladimir Putin negative
Extensively criticized: a conservative who openly aims to destroy European unity, supports European far-right, frames the war as desatanization, and quotes a necrophilic rape song at a press conference.
Duane Rousselle positive
Canadian friend who coined the formulation 'woke as racism in the time of the many without the one,' which Žižek endorses.
Joseph Stalin negative
Analyzed as the paradigm of combining raw terror with obsessive maintenance of appearances; the purges are interpreted through the lens of carnival's dark side.
Joseph Brodsky positive
Russian émigré poet cited for the observation that poetry was held in higher regard in Stalinism than at any other time in history.
Noam Chomsky negative
Cited as one who predicted Ukraine could not win militarily and who therefore implicitly demanded Ukrainian surrender on behalf of global peace.
René Descartes positive
The Cartesian cogito is reinterpreted by Žižek as structurally feminine because it embodies the hysterical refusal to accept a symbolic identity; women readers immediately grasped this in the 17th century.
Sigmund Freud positive
Invoked for the broken kettle joke, for the divided subject, and as the missing element in trans/gender debates that reduces sexuality to biology or feeling.
Marc Chagall positive
Mentioned as co-teaching with Malevich at a Ukrainian visual arts college in the 1920s, an example of the cultural flourishing under Lenin's nationalities policy.
What it argues
shame as excess and the agency of pure appearancesStalinist and authoritarian obsession with maintaining façadesRussia-Ukraine war and the ethics of Western arms supportconvergence of Russian neo-conservatism and American alt-rightwoke cancel culture as a retreat from real social changepsychoanalytic complexity of gender and sexual identity beyond biology and free choicecarnival and its dark underside in mass violence and political purges
Dialectical moves 14
“The production of a movie about a fake defection led to an actual defection — the irony is supreme, not just interesting.”
The fictional simulation of a political act reverses into its real opposite, illustrating how Cold War representations escape their ideological frame.
“Shame is not triggered by not enough, but by too much; it comes from below, not from above.”
The common-sense opposition between shame (external/failure) and guilt (internal) is inverted: modern shame is an inner sense of obscene excess, not inadequacy.
“Shame doesn't arise when all know about a painful matter; shame bursts out only when the 'as if we don't know' breaks down.”
The social reality of shame depends not on the secret being known but on the performance of not-knowing; its collapse, not knowledge itself, triggers shame.
“I can feel shame for others who should be ashamed of themselves — and this shame attributed to others is itself a source of pleasure.”
Shame, seemingly the opposite of enjoyment, secretly generates surplus enjoyment; the liberal who is ashamed of Trump enjoys that shame.
“The mask of appearance did not fall down — it was intentionally taken down. The very disturbance of perfect appearance was staged.”
What appears as a crack in authoritarian performance is itself a performance; power now asserts itself by manufacturing its own transgression.
“Trump acts without shame, but his shamelessness is not unlimited — he would never shamelessly claim to be bisexual or gay.”
The appearance of total shamelessness conceals a residual, ideologically structured shame, revealing the limits of the performative transgression.
“Far from being a sign of strength, the conservative panic about LGBT education betrays that they don't believe their own claim that sexuality is natural.”
The conservative defense of natural binary sexuality implicitly concedes the constructivist thesis it opposes.
“All occupiers are sincerely for peace — peace means: I want peace in the occupied territory, leave me alone.”
The demand for peace, far from being a neutral or universal value, is the occupier's ideological weapon; 'peace' in occupied territory is the continuation of occupation.
“Today's populist conservatives are more revolutionary than the politically correct liberals who are not afraid to call for police oppression when needed.”
The apparent radicals (left-liberals) are structurally conservative in defending the existing order, while the apparent conservatives perform revolution.
“The culture war raging in the developed west is a false war — a war between two versions of the same global capitalist system.”
What presents as a fundamental conflict between liberal multiculturalism and neo-fascist conservatism is an internal antagonism within capitalism, not an alternative to it.
“True freedom is usually experienced as necessity — when you are truly in love, you cannot simply choose another object; love is your fate, and precisely as such it is free.”
The apparent opposition of freedom (choice) and necessity is reversed: authentic freedom manifests as inescapability, not as consumer preference.
“As subjects, we are basically the '+' itself — escaping every identification.”
The remainder in LGBTQ+ is not an empirical list-overflow but the constitutive excess of subjectivity as such; the subject is always more than any identity assigned to it.
“It is not that carnival liberates: carnivals were simply a libidinal supplement that supported the existing order.”
The apparent transgression of carnival reinforces the norm rather than subverting it; the exception confirms the rule.
“Poetry was held at no higher place than in Stalinism — people got shot for a wrong line.”
The regime that most violently represses art paradoxically treats it with the greatest seriousness, revealing how threatening symbolic intervention can be to power.
Claims 24
asserts
A truly dialectical approach to the Cold War must accommodate paradoxes like Kieling's real defection inspired by making a film about fake defection, rather than simple oppositions of democracy and totalitarianism.Cold War ideology
asserts
Modern shame is triggered not by insufficiency but by an obscene excess — the subject experiences itself as too much, out of place in the symbolic order.shame
asserts
Shame is not simply external; one can feel shame alone, and one can feel shame on behalf of others who should be ashamed but are not.shame
asserts
Stalinist politics exemplifies the structure of the big Other: raw brutal terror combined with obsessive protection of appearances from the innocent observer.Stalinism and ideology
asserts
The staging of Hu Jintao's removal at the Chinese Party Congress signals that the new Chinese leadership can no longer cling to undisturbed appearances and must disturb them to assert power.Chinese politics and appearances
asserts
Shame is linked to surplus enjoyment: the shameful act is one the subject secretly enjoys, and the shame itself becomes an additional source of enjoyment.surplus enjoyment and shame
asserts
Trump acts without shame, and liberal leftists feel shame for him — this transferred shame is itself a source of pleasure for Trump's supporters.Trump and shame
rejects
The woke left replaces argumentative debate with the imposition of shame, closing mouths rather than winning arguments, which is a betrayal of enlightenment politics.woke cancel culture
reframes
The opposition in gender debates between biology and freely declared feeling is not exhaustive; Freudian psychoanalysis points to a third register — unconscious symbolic structures — that neither side acknowledges.sex/gender identity debate
asserts
Conservatives who panic about LGBT education for children implicitly betray their own belief that sexuality is natural: if it can be changed by education, it is already a social construct.conservative anti-LGBT ideology
asserts
Russia's use of rape as a military strategy represents the true horror of the war, the opposite of the Ukrainian mass-orgy-as-protest which is a life-affirming act.Russia-Ukraine war and sexuality
asserts
Putin's ideology has shifted from denazification to desatanization, making Russia more fundamentalist than Iran and positioning the war as a religious crusade.Russian ideology
rejects
Leftists who oppose arms for Ukraine fall into the same three-part logical contradiction as Freud's kettle joke — abstract pacifism, selective blame, and egoism — while ignoring that Western help enabled Ukrainian resistance.left-pacifist opposition to Ukraine arms
asserts
Occupiers are always for peace in the territory they occupy; demanding peace now means allowing Russia to continue ethnic cleansing in Ukrainian territory.peace negotiations with Russia
rejects
Putin openly declared himself a conservative opponent of European unity and supports far-right movements across Europe; leftists who frame the war as NATO imperialism ignore this.anti-NATO left framing of Ukraine war
asserts
Russian neo-conservative ideology and the American alt-right are two aspects of the same global movement, whose potential fusion would be a geopolitical catastrophe.global right-wing convergence
reframes
The contemporary culture war between liberal multiculturalism and neo-fascist conservatism is a false war between two versions of global capitalism, displacing real class struggle.culture wars and capitalism
asserts
Today's populist conservatives are in a paradoxical sense more revolutionary than politically correct liberals, who readily call for police repression when it serves their interests.left vs. right today
asserts
Liberal democratic capitalism is in full crisis, and the only alternative to a new social order is some form of neo-feudalism.capitalism and the future
asserts
True freedom in sexuality, as in love, is experienced as necessity — the trans person who stakes their survival on transition is exercising true freedom, not a superficial consumer choice.freedom and sexual identity
asserts
The subject as such is the '+' in LGBTQ+ — the remainder that escapes every fixed identification — so modern subjectivity is structurally more aligned with non-binary positions.subjectivity and sexual identity
asserts
Bakhtin himself was aware of the dark side of carnival — his private notes identified the Stalinist purges as the true carnival of his era.carnival and Bakhtin
reframes
The real challenge of political emancipation is not mass mobilization but structuring a new order after the carnival ends — what comes the morning after.political transformation
asserts
Words in political ideology are never merely words; Putin's religious-fundamentalist rhetoric should be taken as seriously as Hitler's early declarations which were dismissed as just rhetoric.ideology and political rhetoric
Quotes 20
“the production of a movie about a fake defection to the east, to communist east germany, led to an actual defection to east germany. a truly dialectical approach to the cold war, i think, has to give space also to such peculiarities.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical reversal / Cold War paradox
“shame is not triggered by not enough, but by too much. it comes from below, not from above.”Slavoj Žižek · modern shame as excess
“shame doesn't arise when all know about a painful matter. shame bursts out only when as if we don't know breaks down.”Slavoj Žižek · shame and the big Other / appearances
“what characterizes stalinism is precisely this conjunction of raw brutal terror and the need to protect appearances even if we all know something is not true.”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinism as terror plus appearance-obsession
“the very disturbance of perfect appearance was staged.”Slavoj Žižek · staged transgression as power display
“at no time in human history, poetry was held at such high place than in stalinism. people got shot for a wrong line in a poem.”Slavoj Žižek · paradox of totalitarian censorship elevating art
“the truth is here on the side of his act. not his inner feeling.”Slavoj Žižek · act over inner shame / Huck Finn
“instead of a rebellious enlightening left ready to debate every question with its enemy since it feels assured about its better arguments now, fascism pseudo-left appears with fierce argumentative confrontation and wants to close the mouth.”Slavoj Žižek · woke left as anti-debate / shame over argument
“all occupiers are sincerely always for peace. peace means. i want peace in the occupied territory leave me alone.”Slavoj Žižek · peace as occupier's ideology
“wars are never simply pragmatic. you always, put it, get caught into your own words.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology and war — words become real
“the culture war raging in the developed west now, in the states, in europe, is a false war, a war between two versions of the same global capitalist system.”Slavoj Žižek · culture war as displaced class struggle within capitalism
“today's populist conservatives are more revolutionary than the politically correct liberals who are not afraid to call for social order and even police oppression when they feel this is needed.”Slavoj Žižek · paradox: populist right as more 'revolutionary' than liberal left
“true freedom is experience usually even as necessity. like imagine lgbt plus boy... in some sense he has no choice. but again this is true freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom experienced as necessity
“as subject, we are basically this plus itself. escaping every identification.”Slavoj Žižek · subjectivity as the plus in LGBTQ+
“there is always a minimal gap between what you want and what you really desire. it's quite often that what you declare that you want, it's part of a struggle against what unconsciously you desire.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian gap between want and desire
“russian attack on ukraine and the alt-right revolt in the us are two aspects of the same global movement.”Slavoj Žižek · Russian neo-conservatism and US alt-right as one movement
“never elevate your cause into a big cause for which then you demand subordinated groups to sacrifice their interests.”Slavoj Žižek · anti-sacrifice principle in progressive politics
“the really difficult thing is not to organize one million people shouting their no but to make a change felt when things return to normal to establish a new normal.”Slavoj Žižek · the morning-after problem of political transformation
“we should accept peterson's basic premise. russian attack on ukraine and the alt-right revolt in the us are two aspects of the same global movement. but does this mean that we should support the opposite side? here things get complicated.”Slavoj Žižek · endorsing Peterson's diagnosis while rejecting his conclusion
“i prefer to be a pessimist in order to awaken us.”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism as political strategy
Transcript 56 turns
Slavoj Žižek
it will be a relatively long talk with some video clips, so i hope not too boring. let me begin. i want to begin with a well-known scene from alfred hitchcock's rather bad film tom torn curtain from 1966. the only outstanding scene in the film is that of the murder of gromek. stasi stadtsicherheit is german secret police officer who suspects that armstrong, played by paul newman, the movie's hero, did not sincerely defect to the east. so gromek follows armstrong to a lone farm where armstrong went to make preparations to return to the west. gromek realizes that armstrong is a double agent and as he is calling the police, a torturous struggle begins that ends with gromk being brutally slain by armstrong. uh. by by far best scene in the movie which as hitchcock put it. uh. shows how difficult it is to kill a man. gromek's head is pushed into a gas oven where he slowly suffocates, desperately waving his hands. can we have the first? it's four minutes long but you will see what i will. the deuce draw from that lean. why did i show you this clip? my point has nothing to do with the content, but i want to draw your attention to a shocking fact that i discovered only recently. gromek, the bad guy, is played by wolfgang killing, who was at that time a well-known west german movie and tv star. he acted also in some other hollywood productions and here comes the surprise. during the post-production of this movie in hollywood in late or august of 1965 the so-called watts race riots took place, which were brutally suppressed by the police. there were around 50 people dead. and you know what happened in real life? killing the actor. became disgusted with american society and as a result, after the film was released, he defected to east germany. in real life calling the united states quote the most dangerous enemy of humanity in the world today, guilty of crimes against the blacks and the people of vietnam, end of quote. the irony of his case is sublime, sorry, supreme. the production of a movie about a fake defection to the east, to communist east germany, led to an actual defection to east germany. a truly dialectical approach to the cold war, i think, has to give space also to such peculiarities which disturb the simple opposition of democracy and totalitarianism. today's killings not to kill but wolfgang killings are precisely people like assange or snowden who although he didn't want to. found years ago, you remember, the only safe place to stay in russia. he is well aware that the reasons have nothing to do with russia's love of freedom, but these are paradoxes that we witness today. such such an approach is needed again especially today when our disorientation is generalized, events we should be ashamed of occur everywhere. but should we be ashamed? how? das same funktion. today. in his... revelations on shame. the austrian philosopher robert fer. convincingly refutes. common notion the two common notions about shame, shame as opposed to guilt. the idea that shame comes from outside in contrast to guilt, which is your inner feeling and death. shame comes from my failure, from being not good enough. guilt comes in different grades. it involves rational argumentation, counter-argumentation and the possibility of pardon. while shame overwhelms us all of a sudden. we just wish to disappear. no rational way out is offered to us. faller demonstrates how the role of shame changed in today's culture. shame is no longer the shame of failure or weakness, but the shame of an obscene too much, too muchness, which can be success itself. i am not ashamed of my lack or insufficiency. i myself appear to myself as an obscene excess, an element out of place. i just want to disappear. sink into ground because i'm too fat, because i emit flatulences in public, whatever you want. so the subject perceives itself as an obscene excess, as an element that lacks its own place in the symbolic order which defines the coordinates of our reality. shame is not triggered by not enough, but by too much. it comes from below, not from above. this is also why. the weird agency of what fer called innocent observer. east and adrian. of pure appearance. and the duty. of our ego is to maintain the appearances. to prevent that the innocent observer will notice them. what do i mean by this? fer deploys the functioning of this innocent observer perfectly. a quote. shame doesn't arise when all know about a painful matter. shame bursts out only when as if we don't know breaks down. when the attempt to maintain a public secret fails, shame arises in everybody who is present. this means that shame is not simply external. i can feel ashamed also when i am alone. what we call manners or tact. means that we learn to pretend that. the big otherer didn't notice. the disturbing element this role of the innocent observer, the guardian of appearances, also accounts for the strange fact that i can feel shame for others who should be ashamed of themselves. when the innocent observer registers the excess. we all, who. uh. we all feel equally ashamed since it became obvious that we all knew the reality and just discreetly ignored it. again, let me further clarify this. let's say that somebody in a closed social circle, like behind a large table, does something socially inappropriate, like emit a loud flatulence. the proper thing to do is not to smile at him kindly with the message, okay, you did it, no problem. the proper thing is to ignore it totally, to go on as if nothing happened. now, what do i mean by this agency of pure appearance? you were, i was often in a situation, let's say again, there are four or five people and you know something dirty, traumatic about one of the persons there. you know and you know that everybody else knows and they all know that everybody knows. but nonetheless, the moment you mention publicly, this fact, everybody is ashamed. this is the best case, i think, or example of what lacon means by. the big other, the agent of appearances. now let's go to politics. stalinism is perhaps the clearest political case of such an innocent observer. we all know how absolutely crucial appearances were in stalinism. the stalinist regime reacted with total panic whenever there was a threat that appearances will be disturbed. let me just recall why, i wonder if you knew this, why it never rained during the firstst of may paradeades in moscow in stalinist times. the authorities feared that the rain, disturbing the parade, would be perceived as an indication that the communist party is not all-powerful. so they sprayed the sky above moscow with gases which prevent the formation of cloudout. what characterizes stalinism is precisely this conjunction of raw brutal terror and the need to protect appearances even if we all know something is not true. the big other of appearances should not notice it. that's why the50 from 1956, the 20th congress of communist party, when kushchev. rendered publicly some of the stalinist crimes was such a trauma you know that there were doctors in the background and carefully controlling it there were six to seven direct heart attacks. but why? nobody learned anything new. the shock was that this was rendered public. so where are we with this? today. uh let me take a recent example maybe you know this clip from china. the process of choosing seven members of the standing committee of the politburo, the real seat of power in today's china, is totally obscure. it happens behind closed doors. dogs but at the last congress now a couple of weeks ago uh an unexpected crack appeared in this monolithic edifice, the former before she. chinese president hu jinao gping's predecessor as the party leader was unceremoniously dragged off stage shortly after foreign media came in. he looks disoriented and. two assistants help him stand, he speaks briefly with she. whom he had been sitting next to in the front row. don't be afraid, this is one minute, even less. why i found this almost an historical event? although the official comment just mentioned afterwards the bad health and momentary weakness of who? who is dragged out, whose resistance and defiance were clearly visible. for a moment the smooth appearance was disturbed. why did this happen? there is, and discreetly friends from china told me this, it wasn't that who was. resisted, she total power and wanted to protest. no, it was all staged. so i like this point that the very disturbance of perfect appearance was staged. uh the first indication is that this incident occurred. one minute after cameras for. from international tv where were turned on so that the whole world. saw it. so the mask of appearance did not fall down, it was intentionally taken down. he himself states this incident. to render visible his brutal power however this reading indicates that the new chinese leadership can no longer cling to. do... undisturbed. appearances. it. he to disturb. them to assert its full again, i think this is a very pessimist side because you know chinese were really obsessed by undisturbed appearance. to give you another example, you know the big introductory at the beginning parade which took place a couple of years ago, six seven, when there were the summer olympics in beijing. they were staged by j ki mo maybe you know him, the popular chinese movie director who did hero and other movies. but you know what's the shock? the chinese... were the party. they were so afraid that something will go wrong and disturbed the appearance that while the real parade went on what the world saw on tv was a pre-recording of earlier staging of the same parade so that they could be absolutely sure that nothing will go. wrongk. so let me go on uh. so they wanted to. they experienced if the perfect appearance is disturbed, it's shame. it's total shame. it shouldn't happen. and again, as i already said, this is what i found nonetheless fascinating, especially with regard to what goes on today in classical communism. again, as i already said, it's extremely brutal. but at the same time it's incredibly. afraid of the slightest disturbance. and i had, when i was much younger, in late sevents, i was the editor, one of the co-editors of a journal and we published some poem. we thought nothing special, but then some lines, it was possible to read them as a veiled critique of the communist party. and there was a special meeting of the central committee. there was a panic in the party. no wonder, i think it was brodsky, the russian immigrant poet, who said, and in some sense it's not just a cynical joke, it's true that. at no time in human history, poetry was held at such high place than in stalinism. people got shot for a wrong line in a poem and so on. the irony of my case was that if there were to be no panic from the party, nothing would have happened nobody would have noted that stupid poem. so now i come to the point that you mentioned. the excess which causes shame. is profoundly linked to some kind of surplus enjoyment i feel fame. when doing something that i secretly enjoy like the same tasteless example, emitting flatulence. plus, and this reflexive turn is crucial, i enjoy this shame itself in some of his acts, but not all of them. trump, donald trump acts without shame. the liberal leftists feel shame for him. and this shame attributed to other is. in itself a source of pleasure. i enjoy others feeling shame for what i am doing however trump's shamelessness is not unlimited. say he would never shamelessly claim he is bisexual or gay in his eyes. those whom he dismisses as non-patriotic should be ashamed of themselves. but in contrast to the liberal left, trump would not feel himself ashamed on behalf of what the left is doing. and what about today's woke left? i think fer is right to point out that we often have shame instead of argumentation, a quote. instead of a rebellious enlightening left ready to debate every question with its enemy since it feels assured about its better arguments now, fascism pseudo-left appears with fierce argumentative confrontation and wants to close the mouth, especially to its own people. so i think the lesson of this is that shame is simply not reliable. you mentioned to me this afternoon in mark twain's tom sawyer, you remember that wonderful moment when tom that's a good thing he helps i think the black. sorry. afinn does this,, i was always on hackfinn's side, he's better. he helps the black jim, the slave, escape, but he feels ashamed of it. it's an obvious case of how. so the truth is here on the side of his act. not his inner feeling. so we should move from. sh2. critical examination of the entire situation including shame itself yes the first step should be. it's horrible when you see no shame when something shameless is. happening but then we should go on so let me give you an example of this which again, there is nothing obscene, violent, but it shocked me. now a week ago on october twenty23rd, a video clip was released which reportedly shows the ras chechen republic leader ramzan kadyrov being given three ukrainian prisoners of war by his teenage some. his teenage son, his three sons, 16, 14 years old, went, that's the official meet, as volunteers to ukraine and they came back with three prisoners and they give them as a present to his father. short clip, very short clip. that a 16 years old kid gives his father three prisoners as a gift as if prisoners of war are private property and even minors can own them. plus, what i found most shocking is the fact that this is publicly this is recorded and publicly displayed. i mean. the question is, how can something like this happen, this utter obscenity? but what about the western vogue left? now comes trigger warning. you will probably not agree. with what i will say towards the end of october of this year, gonville and caius college in cambridge, cambridge, not here, massachusetts, england, was hosting a talk by helen joyce, known for her view that men and women are being redefined by trans activists. with loss and policies. it. reshaped to privilege self-identified gender identity over biological sex. joyce unambiguously supports trans rights. what she rejects is gender identity ideology. the idea that people should count as men or women according to how they feel and what they declare instead of their biology now, students at this college have launched protests with the college's lgbt plus representatives demanding that joyce's appearance be cancelled because they are unanimously disgusted by the platforming of such views. tutors were even opening a safe space welfare tea room for students during the talk blaming understandable hurt end. anger for many students, staff and fellows. caused by this invitation. the college's master joined them saying that while freedom of speech is a fundamental principle on some issues which affect our which affect our community, we cannot stay neutral. now, first my theoretical position here. i disagree with both poles in this conflict because i think the opposition between biology and. what i feel and declaring what i feel is not exhaustive. where? and here is my criticism of some of this. free choice of gender ideology. where is freud here? where is the freudian subject of the unconscious, which is neither biological nor a matter of feeling? we become sexual subjects when our biological features get mediated by complex symbolic structures, structures which work at a different level than our feelings, no matter how sincere feelings may deceive. but nonetheless, i think that debating the role of biology. or social symbolic structures in the formation of our sexuality is a legitimate topic. how fragile the opponents of joyce's appearance. must be if they experience. such a debate is something so threatening that they even need a safe space to protect them. is it not that their refusal of debate betrays a fear that such a debate may render palpable the weakness of their position. plus! are they aware that the logic of my identity is what i feel, if i feel a man, a woman, a trans and i declare what i feel can also be used in a directly racist and sexist way. a full-blooded heterosexist would also need a safe space to avoid lgbt plus persons by whom. he is unanimously disgusted. i'm not. agree with him i just claim again that this idea of my identity is what i feel immediately experience and declare. it proceeds as if there was no fraudud, no divided subject, no psychoanalysis and so on and so on. duane roussel, my canadian friend, characterizes vogue as racism in the time of the many without the one. this may appear problematic but i think it hits the mark in an almost exact opposite. to the traditional racism which fights against a foreign intruder. posing a threat. to the unity of the one, say, immigrants and jews to our nation, vote reacts to those who are suspected not to truly abandon old forms of the one, patriots, proponents of patriarchal values and so on. with all its declared opposition to the new forms of barbarism the vote left fully participates in it promoting and practicing a fled discourse without irony although it advocates pluralism and promotes differenceenz its subjective position of enunciation, the place from which it speaks is extremely authoritarian allowing no debate and imposing exclusions which are often based on arbitrary premises in all this mess we should always bear in mind that the vogue stance and cancel culture are de facto limited to the narrow world of academia and up to point some intellectual professions like journalists. while society at large moves in the opposite direction. cancel culture with its implicit paranoia is a desperate. but also inefficient attempt to compensate for the actual troubles and tragedies of the lgbt plus individuals, the violence and exclusion to which they are permanently submitted. i'm well aware of this. but i think that precisely cancel culture is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a pseudo-safe space whose discursive fanaticism leaves intact and even strengthens the resistance of the majority to it. so you got my point. i'm not attacking wokeogue and cancel culture as being too fanatical and so on. i claim precisely precisely that behind this mask of fanaticism, stringency, it's a compromise. it doesn't really. change social reality. now on the opposite side. the hidden tension of the. uh conservifs, who? reject the idea that sexual identity is a discouraged social construct becomes palpable where in the panic with which they reject the project of the lgbt plus education, which should present to a child all options of sexual identity. they. conservatives, patriarchal, binary and so on. they fear that if children are to be educated in this way they might be influence betray their natural sex and choose some unnatural form. this is why recently russia prohibited all gay and lgbt propaganda. in short, i don't know if it happens also in your country, it happens in my country, all around europe now, how again, conservatives are horrified by this idea if you teach. young children about lgbt construction of sexual identity that this may. affect them and they will effectively become gay, trans and so on. but the paradox is clear here. they don't believe their own idea that sex is natural. if they were to believe it, they wouldn't be so. afraid again, if one's sexual orientation is so easily changed by education, does this not imply that sexual identity is it social. construct. so how to break out of this cycle? we got and now comes the most problematic part we got an unexpected hint from ukraine where something happened. recently which may appear a step further in our moral decay but i don't think so i think it's the opposite. on october13teenth it was revealed that more than. 15,000 ukrainians have planned to organize a mass orgy in case putin launches a nuclear attack. on ukraine this is not a joke. i checked it up with my ukrainian friends. 15,000 individuals have registered for this. event which is being called orgy at hekovica. the mass event will be taking place, okay, now it will not, probably there will be no nuclear bomb, will be taking place in a pre-decided. placed on a hill in cheovica, part of kiev. people, it was well organized, people participating have been asked to decorate their hands with stripes denoting their sexual preference. if you want anal sex, you... you have three stripes on your hand if you are interested in oral sex, you have forced rights and so on. the reaction of participants is those who. the registers it noteworthy one woman. told a reporter, it's the opposite of despair. even in the worst case scenario, people will look for something good. this is the mega-optimism of ukrainians. and similar groups popped up. for example, an orgy on on there is basivka street in odessa and so on. now one should take notion of collective orgies as a life-affirming project in the time of extreme despair. no need here for a deeper pseudo-fudian analysis of the disintegration of civilized social links in a traumatic time. the truly non-civilized procedure is what russia is doing, giving its soldiers viagra to rape ukrainian women. uh. un envoy pramila patatten. reported that rapes and sexual assaults attributed to moscow's forces were part of russia's military strategy. that's the true horror for me. how comes that russia is doing this? we have to go a little bit deeper. simply, the rule is everything is permitted. in the struggle called by putin and his ideologists satanists. the term regularly used in the russian media has to be taken seriously. alexei pavlov, assistant secretary of the security council of the russian federation is now calling for the desatization of ukraine. saying that there were hundreds of sects in the countries of sects. where citizens have abandoned orthodox values. quote, i believe that with the continuation of our special military operation, it becomes more and more urgent to carry out the desization of ukraine. the new regime turned ukraine from a sovereign state to a totalitarian yeah. hypersec. putin echoes the same. stands quote from putin. this is a complete denial of humanity, the overthrow of faith and traditional values. indeed, the suppression of freedom itself has taken on the features of a religion outright satanism end quote no wonder that patriarch kiril, the head of the russian orthodox church, called putin a fighter against the antichrist and kiev exorcist. some people ask how russia, still a normal state, can ally itself with fundamentalist iran. but we can see now that if anything, russia is more fundamentalist than iran. now, i raise my stakes and go a step further. what is, i think, even more morbid than russia's brutality and this open ideology of fighting satanism. you know that now the goal, again, this is now official discourse in russia. it's no longer denazify ukraine, but des-satanize. eat up. what is even more morbid for me are some leftist pics working for peace. who claim that now is the time to send a big european delegation to russia to inquire and negotiate about the terms of peace. my comment. i hope you all know the well known joke evoked by freud on the borrowed cattle. first let's say i borrow a kettle from you i returned it to you broken and then you said, what it's broken? and my defense is, first, i never borrowed a kettle from you. second, i returned it to you unbroken. third, the kettle was already broken when i got it. from you. do those who oppose help ukraine with arms not fall prey to a similar paradox? their arguments clearly fall into three categories. first abstract superere ego. reasoning. giving arms never stops the war. it's like pouring oil on fire. so it's always immoral and murderous. that's the abstract position. then you have a more concrete listing of particular arguments. okay, russia committed a horrible crime by invading another state, but ukraine is also not innocent, so we cannot put the blame only on one side and so on and so on. and third, more and more popular in europe and in united states, direct egotism. why getting involved in a war far away which will only hurt our interests and living standards. that. and let me make another argument against pacifism. yes of course my god i am scared like shit of nuclear war but at the same time don't forget that all occupiers are sincerely always for peace. peace means. i want peace in the occupied territory leave me alone germany, when they occupied france in 1940, of course they wanted peace there. israel on the west bank the west bank is a special case i oppose terrorist attacks from gaza or south lebanon but on the west bank of course israel wants peace because peace means doing our job. gradual ethnic cleansing of it. the piks who are against nato and sending arms to ukraine. ignore the key fact that it was western help that allowed ukraine to resist without it ukraine would be. long occupied uh this help led to today's tellmate which may be now created. conditions for a possible compromise. so in germany, i admire the stance of the green party, which not only advocates support for ukraine, but also proposes the use of the ongoing oil and gas crisis as a unique opportunity to make our industries greener. you see, i like this stance. for for most of us, the problem is just. okay, it's traumatic. we should help them, but not too much. how will it disturb our way of life? we are used to live in a comfortable way. is it not a much better position to say, but why don't we use this situation to make our industries greener for an ecological turn and so on and so on? did you notice another inconsistency in those who want direct peace, which basically means put pressure on ukraine to give one third of their land to russia? they first insisted that ukraine simply cannot win a war against russia. chomsky, varoufakis, they were all saying this. let's be real. ukraine cannot win. but now, when at least for a moment, it's not yet over, ukraine is winning. the war, they repeat that it shouldn't be allowed. to win or even to gain too much because this may provoke putin's ire and he may press. the button. now... what is the truth behind it? recall how in the first days of the war, western powers offered zelensky, ukrainian president you remember, just two, three days into it, they offered him a special plane to take him out of kiev implying that the situation is already lost so let's get over it fast this hysterical precipitous offer made palpable the true desire of the west a desire which was spoiled by the unexpected ukrainian resistance. uh that for me... the truth. i wonder if you would agree with it. and i have many friends there dead. we in the west, all my political friends in slovenia, in france. i could feel the secret pleasure when, you know, in the first day there were already russian commandos dropped onto kyiev. they thought, okay, okay, it will be soon over, then we will protest, but it will be over. the true bet through price. ukrainians really, they tell you this privately, not publicly, ukrainians screwed up everything by their resistance. couldn't they just swallow it and sacrifice themselves for our western welfare and so on? so... now our obsession is let's make peace, but peace in such a way that russia should be allowed to save faith. what does this mean? dmitry medvedev, a former russian president who now serves as deputy chairman of russia's security council, recently said that, listen carefully, that the usled nato military alliance would be too scared of a nuclear apocalypse to directly enter the conflict in response to russia using tactical nuclear weapons. long quote believe that nato will not directly intervene in the conflict even in this situation. after all, the security of washington, london, brussels is much more important for the north atlantic alliance than the fate of a dying ukraine that no one needs. the supply of modern weapons is just a business for western countries. overseas and european demagogues are not going to perish in a nuclear apocalypse therefore they will swallow the use of any weapon in the current conflict. you see that's why for me this idea let's save. let's allow putin to save his face doesn't work. because what medvedev says here is exact what amounts to. to preventing the west to save its face. medvedev in advance interprets every compromise as the west will lose its face, they are afraid, they don't want to perish in a nuclear war and so on and so on. also! as for the background of the war, and i'm talking now as a leninist communistunist, my g. here you get, please listen carefully and then we will slowly come to the end. putin. putin. it's incredible. people forgot this what putin said on 21st of february, two days before the attack. i found these lines shocking. i don't get it how some leftists claim nato imperialism and so on. putin... openly declares himself a conservative with a goal to destroy european unity. he is systematically supporting all extreme right wing in europe, leini in france, salvini in italy and so on and so on. and... the big bad guy for him is lenin and it's true, look at the history. the twentiess, okay, there was a civil war, blah blah, but. in 22 or when the civil war was over. uh. it was a golden era for ukraine under tsarist russia, ukrainian language was not recognized and so on and so on. in the 20s. ukraine was admitted as a full nation with all the cultural apparatus. it was an extraordinary time, especially in ukraine. like do you know that for some time they were, it's incredible story, just the visual art. at some college in ukraine, college of visual arts, at the same time malevich and chagal were teaching. they couldn't stand each other and so on. it was a golden era. then with stalin the line changed, which is why today in russia lenin is out, stalin is half. is half in and also this idea of, this is the most dangerous line of argumentation, i don't know if you have it here, this idea of euro-asianism. my god, do people know history? the origin, this is a fascist idea. do you know that already in the early 20s, among russian immigration, anti-communist immigration, came this idea that... for example, the main person here is ivan ilyin. who is now quasi-official philosopher. his body was transported from france, brought to russia, buried with all state honors and so on and so on. his idea was that fascism was good. he supported to the end mussolini, hitler in the west and hitler, but that their fascism was too much under the influence of western mechanical society too industrial and that the only true fascism would have been the russian fascism as the right balance. between western individualism and asian this global immersion of the individual into a crowd and so on and so on. now. okay, here i am. now i come. to my... a conclusion. uh. what interests me, and this is the real danger that i see. is that. this putin's line of criticizing the west as decadent, orgy and so on, gay rights, lgbt plus is more and more in consonance with american new right my i use this term with full irony. friend jordan peterson. from the debate. i was shocked, i didn't know he will do this. you know that he. adopted now pro-r. position. uh. but i think... in some sense he is right not in the sense that i agree with him but i think that american new religious conservatismativism and what putin is doing are. gradually. getting... getting coordinated. the republican party lawmakers who oppose support for ukraine are getting stronger and stronger. they do not want to send money abroad when it can be used in the us to fortify the southern border and so on and so on. for example, trump backed. candidate pd eventsance criticized ukraine as a corrupt nation run by oligarchs and while he formally condemned russia's invasion, he also called it insulting and strategically stupid to devote billions of resources to ukraine while ignoring the problems in our own. countries so russian attack on ukraine and the alt-right revolt in the us are two aspects of the same global movement. if the western christian revolt and the russian anti-european stance will unite into one, this will be a global socio-political catastrophe of of uh immeasurable. amplitude. for the us and russia russian neoconserv. uh europe is caught in the vortex of self-destructive degeneration. lgbt plus gay marriages, no clear distinction of sexes. so one cannot but note the obvious im inconsistency of the neoconservatives from the russian ones to american alt-right while they pretend to deplore the multicultural hedonism. and present themselves as the embodiment of traditional christian values their words and acts display extraordinary vulgarity sexism and racism. let me just conclude with one case. you remember it occurred back in two2012. in an effort to explain his stance on abortion, representative todd akin, the republican senate nominee from missouri provoked ire across the political spectrum by saying that in instances of what he called legitimate rape women's bodies somehow block an unwanted pregnancy. responding to this fury. a how do you pronounce the name? okay. aiken claimed that he has misspoken. he really wanted to say that there are legitimate cases of rape where penetration is really in force, but that if the victim shows signs of consent, say getting wet and excited, this then is no longer a legitimate case of rape. i think this confusion reveals the truth what ain really wanted to say is precisely what his misspoken formulation says in some cases rape is legitimate. since the victim showed signs of participation, which means it really wasn't a rape. leaving behind the obvious falsity and vulgarities of ain's reasoning, i want to draw the parallel with the russian attack on ukraine since the matter of rape was also evoked from the russian side. at the press conference on february seventh putin noted that the ukrainian government does not like the minsk agreement and then added like it or not it's your duty my beauty the saying has well-known sexual connotations. putin quartet. was quoting from sleeping beauty in a coffin. a song by a soviet era punk group red mold where you have the lines, sleeping beauty in a coffin, i crept up and fucked her, like it or dislike it, sleep my beauty. so there is a clear reference to rape here. there are cases when the rape of a country is legitimate, that is to say, justified. my point is that such male chauvinist obscenities are the not even so hidden truth of the proponents of traditional christian. values. so again, to really conclude, we should accept peterson's basic premise. russian attack on ukraine and the alt-right revolt in the us are two aspects of the same global movement. but does this mean that in contrast to him to peterson, we should support the opposite side. here things get complicated. it is true that if the western christian revolt and the russian anti-european stance will unite into one, this will be a global catastrophe. however, we are still dealing with an antagonism internal to global capitalism. what peterson attacks is the ultimate consequence of global capitalism itself. we all know the most famous line from marxist communist manifesto. the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal patriarchal idyllic relations. all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at least compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life. quote i think that what is still ignored? this is still ignored by those leftist cultural theorists who focus their critique on patriarchal ideology and practice. is it not time to start to wonder about the fact that the critique of patriarchy was elevated into the main target at the very historical moment, ours, when patriarchy definitely lost its hegemonic role? what becomes of patriarchal family values when a child can sue his parents for neglect and abuse? when family and parenthood are the reduced to temporarily dissolvable. contract between independent individuals. so the culture war raging in the developed west now, in the states, in europe, is, i think, a false war, a war between two versions of the same global capitalist system. it unrestrained, pure version, which is. this insistence on infinite dynamics, plasticity, lgbt, reinvent your identity all the time, and its neo-fascist conservative version, which tries to unite capitalist dynamism with more traditional values. the paradox is here double. the western political correctness is a displacement of the good old class struggle. liberal elite pretends to protect the threatened racial and sexual minorities. in order to obfuscate the basic fact of their privileged economic and power position. and this lie allows the alt-right populists to present themselves as a defense of the real working class against the big corporations and the deep state elites. the paradox is thus that today's populist conservatives are more revolutionary. then the politically correct liberals who are not afraid to call for social order and even police oppression when they feel this is needed. like we often hear the complaint, where were the police and national guard on january 6th, 2020? one the implication to be drawn is not just that left and right are today outdated notions but that both poles of today's cold war can only be properly grasped as a displaced class struggle neither of them really stands for those exploited. and again, this is our tragic predicament today. you remember i was, of course, my eyes were glued to the screen on january 6th of the previous year. you remember the crowd invading the capitalitol but what shocked me so much is how many of my leftist friends in the united states and in europe were crying. looking at. they said, what is going on? we, the people should be doing this. it's beautiful to watch it, but the wrong guys are doing it. that's our predicament today. i think what i again, listen, i... even sometimes listen to steve bannon's podcasts or whatever. and did you notice how... he's doing almost the same thing as putin he begins. like, if he has a one-hour podcast talk, with the first 20 minutes i almost fully agree. he describes how the big corporation state employs ordinary blah blah blah, all that. then of course, things take a strange turn. it's the same i heard from my friends in moscow who are like with one leg in prison already but with the other leg still running around that putin is doing the same. he doesn't have only douin and this religious orthodox maniacs putin also mobilized a group of young marxists who are providing him a more leftist third world line they're telling they provided him with this line, russia is really defending the world from western imperialist colonization, we are on the side of all those exploited in the third world and so on and so on. i hope you are aware of the situation, how incredibly successful this russian propaganda is not in the west but in latin america in many parts of asia africa and so on and so on. so i think that maybe d. de cru... dilemma. today like... our situation today is the one of crisis of a system itself. what conservatives got right is that oop. this fukuyama ideal of liberal democratic capitalism is... in full crisis in the sense of you know what is for me the most ominous case in england in france in united states you have now protests which are no longer like in some parts of eastern europe protests for true democracy no they articulate a doubt in our version of liberal democracy. itself. and the tragedy is that there is no way to. to give to articulate in organized political way this rage and with this i want to conclude. we are back at the beginning of european history. my friend, although a right wingeringer, he is not stupid, peter slijk wrote a wonderful book, being and race. sein undoren, of course, an ironic paraphrase of heidegger's being in time, where he said, what's at the beginning, at least in our mythic view of the western culture, it's homer iliad. and what is the first line of iliad? a call to the dead, goddess, whatever, to. allow him to do a poem on the rage of achilles which brought blah blah blah. today we have even a much more dangerous rage this dissatisfaction and. what's really tragic is that the left is losing it i think that. i agree here with the guy whom i criticized briefly varouakis. i think that capitalism is changing already into something different and either we will invent, i don't like to use the word communism, it's too crazy, but a really new social order to deal with the ongoing problems or... a new form of fascism of sorry of neo-feudalism, let's call it, will take over. so you know what again, what i would be really my nightmare is, and trump is already sending signals and so on, even bolsonaro is more friendly towards putin and so on. this pact between european and luck wherever new. popul. conservatives end. russia and so on. that's the danger. and i don't think we are. taking seriously this danger because we too much still believe in liberal democracy. i appreciate liberal democracy it's a wonderful thing but today it's a crisis because the only way to confront all the problems we have today is to make a step. beyond. and that's the reason of my pessimism. you know why to conclude, i don't, you know, in good old marxist old liberal times, we still could rely on historical fate necessity like this marxist faith of history is moving towards progress and so on. no, now we have to act against history. historical tendency is towards a catastrophe. what will happen i don't know, but i prefer to be a pessimist in order to awaken us. sorry if i was too long. thanks very much. so, stop, please. we don't have time for this. i said some things which may be very problematic for you. first about i'm not bluffing, you know, i'm not reading a pro russia western propaganda. for very conformist reasons, this will, i hope, amuse you, which shows the depth of my depravity. when i was in a high school in mid-60s, in slovenia. we had english was obligatory first second language and then we had the choice of another. it was either french or german or russian. i've chosen russian. for disgusting reasons. my idea was it's a cold war, one side will win. i want to be sure to speak the language of the winner. but now it comes good because you know, i am not just reading about it. i listen all the time to russian media. and it's even more horrible than what this report. and the second thing with this i really conclude, some pragmatic friends of mine are telling me, but don't take all this stuff about a russian mission holy war, don't take it seriously. these are just words. what they really want is just a small part of ukraine. now, words, if we have something to learn is that words are not... never only works take the case i'm not comparing nonetheless putin with hitler but take the case of germany do you know that when hitler took power in thirty33. this was the predominant attitude unfortunately among the jews there. he just needs this rhetoric to take power. once he will establish make a deal with him. no. work! meta. so i don't believe in this putin is just saying this or his ideology in reality. no, wars are never simply pragmatic. you always, put it, get caught. into your own. work. so please counter-attack. i would like to hear your counter-opinion. or i hope i made my position clear about lgbt plus and so on, all that. i totally i totally support them. in my country, i also here and there fight for them, with them and so on. i'm just saying that. the ideology which not always, but sometimes accompanies lgbt plus this simple reliance of the choice of our sex is our free decision and then this game of plasticity, you know, in the sense of, oh, that's the true freedom. today i'm gay, tomorrow i'm hetero, next day i'm bisexual, whatever. this is... so this is so discriminatory and humiliating for. lgbt people themselves you know how. tra, for example, i know an example, there was a movie made on it in belgium where a boy wanted to become a lady and it was so traumatic for him although he she had support from parents everybody was good and so on and of course, in some sense it's a choice. it's not biologically determined. but it's not a simple conscious choice in the sense of, oh, that's how i feel now and so on and so on. you know that if you are a trans, if you do the operation. you know how painful are these operations. this is traumatic. this means... you feel the earth. to do it, which means of course it's your choice, but not a simple choice in the sense, oh my god, look, i like boys, i like girls, i like trans people, let's play all of them. you are ready to stake your survival on it. so that's what i'm pleading here for. it's not biology, but it's also not this superficial how i feel, i declare and so on and so on. do you know that yes, lgbt plus people are free. but they are maybe the most free people among us and they pay the price for it. you know that here i accept this... par paradox of true freedom. is not this superficial freedom of choice, like let's go to a patisserie, should we cheesecake or chocolate cake or strawberry cake? true freedom is... experience usually even as necessity. like imagine lgbt plus boy. at least biologically looks no, he experiences deep his identity as either third one or woman or whatever, something third and in some sense he has no choice. but again this is true freedom. it's like love. i always like this example. love is has to be free. i cannot order you to fall in love. but isn't it that? love it's freedom. experience is the utter necessity. like... when you are truly in love, you cannot say, oh! this person whom i love, it's too difficult, confused, let me choose another object. no, you cannot go out. love is your fate and precisely as such it is free. so as somebody trained in psychoanalysis, theoretically only, you know, no, i would never do practice. some students years ago wanted me to be their psychoanalyst. and you know what was my reaction? i told them, if you want me to be your analyst, then you are really crazy and you need one. but what i'm saying is that... you know, freudian psychoanalysis give the thick background of all the traumatic dimension of the topic done by lgbt. plus. but again, i don't like this idea, which sometimes you can feel it, that basically sexuality is free in this superficial sense. you flirt with this, with that option, and then the evil patriarchy comes and tells you no, binary, this, that, and so on and so on. no, freud was right. we are extraordinary complex, divided. and and the great lesson of jacques lacomb is that. there is always a minimal gap between what you want and what you really desire. it's quite often that what you declare that you want, it's part of a struggle against what unconsciously you desire. and i think out of my respect for lgbt plus and so on people to conclude, yes. maybe then i will really stop if you are stupid enough to believe, but i will. no. you know what attracts me and i was so proud when lgbt plus many people, okay, now it's more complex, it's lgbtq, whatever and so on. you know what's my basic idea and disagreement with some strands? how do you, maybe if you read some of my books, you must know this line, how do you define the plus in lgbtq? either in an empirical way, which is maybe there are other identities that the list is never complete, so plus stands for let's see. if you say, i'm neither l nor g blah blah, the space is open for you, but i propose a much more radical reading. as subject, we are basically this plus itself. escaping every. identification. that's why. i'm sorry, i didn't go more into philosophy. that's why modern subjectivity is more feminine. and that's the great thing about psychoanalysis. what do i mean by this? you know hysteria for freud. and lacamp points this out, it's the basic form of critique of ideology. in practice. why? because as laacombe points out in a wonderful way the basic mechanism of ideology is ideological symbolic identification. the existing order you gives you a space of what you are. you are a man, a professor or whatever. but the original hysterical question is why am i what you are saying that i am? the doubt into your symbolic identity provided by society. this is why in contrast to those who think that the cartesian cogito, this pure modern subject is masculine. no, it's feminine. and we don't have time to go into this, but this is a wonderful topic. you know that that's why already in his age, early 17th century, when descartes was extremely popular among women who immediately got this. cogito, aha, it's not men, there is a space for us. and women, not just queen christina of that stupid movie with greta garbo of sweden, but it was extraordinary what movement among women was triggered. all this is so important today if we live also psychologically in an era of paradoxes, my god. it's permissiveness which is turning around into strict regulation with all the politically correct rules and so on and so on. it with all this focus on, again, permissiveness and pleasure, what we get is more than ever impotence, frigidity and so on and so on. sex is a big mess. we have to accept this. in itself it's a big mess. and here, although at other points i disagree with her, here i agree with judith butler, where she pointed out how the basic, this would be the minimum of what you mentioned, this surplus enjoyment as opposed to pleasure. you know that. sexuality always gets entangled in these paradoxes. your desire is repressed, but then it turns around into the repression of, into desire for repression itself. the very mode you try to repress your desire turns into an additional source of enjoyment and so on and so on. and i think here, precisely in today mass of sexual identities, psychoanalysis is needed more than ever. now it's really time for me to stop. it is my favorite it's diet coke with. cherry taste because this cherry this is a nice example of this rigid designator it's you recognize it's totally chemical i don't see any link between. how real clarries taste and that's why i like it.
it will be a relatively long talk with some video clips, so i hope not too boring. let me begin. i want to begin with a well-known scene from alfred hitchcock's rather bad film tom torn curtain from 1966. the only outstanding scene in the film is that of the murder of gromek. stasi stadtsicherheit is german secret police officer who suspects that armstrong, played by paul newman, the movie's hero, did not sincerely defect to the east. so gromek follows armstrong to a lone farm where armstrong went to make preparations to return to the west. gromek realizes that armstrong is a double agent and as he is calling the police, a torturous struggle begins that ends with gromk being brutally slain by armstrong. uh. by by far best scene in the movie which as hitchcock put it. uh. shows how difficult it is to kill a man. gromek's head is pushed into a gas oven where he slowly suffocates, desperately waving his hands. can we have the first? it's four minutes long but you will see what i will. the deuce draw from that lean. why did i show you this clip? my point has nothing to do with the content, but i want to draw your attention to a shocking fact that i discovered only recently. gromek, the bad guy, is played by wolfgang killing, who was at that time a well-known west german movie and tv star. he acted also in some other hollywood productions and here comes the surprise. during the post-production of this movie in hollywood in late or august of 1965 the so-called watts race riots took place, which were brutally suppressed by the police. there were around 50 people dead. and you know what happened in real life? killing the actor. became disgusted with american society and as a result, after the film was released, he defected to east germany. in real life calling the united states quote the most dangerous enemy of humanity in the world today, guilty of crimes against the blacks and the people of vietnam, end of quote. the irony of his case is sublime, sorry, supreme. the production of a movie about a fake defection to the east, to communist east germany, led to an actual defection to east germany. a truly dialectical approach to the cold war, i think, has to give space also to such peculiarities which disturb the simple opposition of democracy and totalitarianism. today's killings not to kill but wolfgang killings are precisely people like assange or snowden who although he didn't want to. found years ago, you remember, the only safe place to stay in russia. he is well aware that the reasons have nothing to do with russia's love of freedom, but these are paradoxes that we witness today. such such an approach is needed again especially today when our disorientation is generalized, events we should be ashamed of occur everywhere. but should we be ashamed? how? das same funktion. today. in his... revelations on shame. the austrian philosopher robert fer. convincingly refutes. common notion the two common notions about shame, shame as opposed to guilt. the idea that shame comes from outside in contrast to guilt, which is your inner feeling and death. shame comes from my failure, from being not good enough. guilt comes in different grades. it involves rational argumentation, counter-argumentation and the possibility of pardon. while shame overwhelms us all of a sudden. we just wish to disappear. no rational way out is offered to us. faller demonstrates how the role of shame changed in today's culture. shame is no longer the shame of failure or weakness, but the shame of an obscene too much, too muchness, which can be success itself. i am not ashamed of my lack or insufficiency. i myself appear to myself as an obscene excess, an element out of place. i just want to disappear. sink into ground because i'm too fat, because i emit flatulences in public, whatever you want. so the subject perceives itself as an obscene excess, as an element that lacks its own place in the symbolic order which defines the coordinates of our reality. shame is not triggered by not enough, but by too much. it comes from below, not from above. this is also why. the weird agency of what fer called innocent observer. east and adrian. of pure appearance. and the duty. of our ego is to maintain the appearances. to prevent that the innocent observer will notice them. what do i mean by this? fer deploys the functioning of this innocent observer perfectly. a quote. shame doesn't arise when all know about a painful matter. shame bursts out only when as if we don't know breaks down. when the attempt to maintain a public secret fails, shame arises in everybody who is present. this means that shame is not simply external. i can feel ashamed also when i am alone. what we call manners or tact. means that we learn to pretend that. the big otherer didn't notice. the disturbing element this role of the innocent observer, the guardian of appearances, also accounts for the strange fact that i can feel shame for others who should be ashamed of themselves. when the innocent observer registers the excess. we all, who. uh. we all feel equally ashamed since it became obvious that we all knew the reality and just discreetly ignored it. again, let me further clarify this. let's say that somebody in a closed social circle, like behind a large table, does something socially inappropriate, like emit a loud flatulence. the proper thing to do is not to smile at him kindly with the message, okay, you did it, no problem. the proper thing is to ignore it totally, to go on as if nothing happened. now, what do i mean by this agency of pure appearance? you were, i was often in a situation, let's say again, there are four or five people and you know something dirty, traumatic about one of the persons there. you know and you know that everybody else knows and they all know that everybody knows. but nonetheless, the moment you mention publicly, this fact, everybody is ashamed. this is the best case, i think, or example of what lacon means by. the big other, the agent of appearances. now let's go to politics. stalinism is perhaps the clearest political case of such an innocent observer. we all know how absolutely crucial appearances were in stalinism. the stalinist regime reacted with total panic whenever there was a threat that appearances will be disturbed. let me just recall why, i wonder if you knew this, why it never rained during the firstst of may paradeades in moscow in stalinist times. the authorities feared that the rain, disturbing the parade, would be perceived as an indication that the communist party is not all-powerful. so they sprayed the sky above moscow with gases which prevent the formation of cloudout. what characterizes stalinism is precisely this conjunction of raw brutal terror and the need to protect appearances even if we all know something is not true. the big other of appearances should not notice it. that's why the50 from 1956, the 20th congress of communist party, when kushchev. rendered publicly some of the stalinist crimes was such a trauma you know that there were doctors in the background and carefully controlling it there were six to seven direct heart attacks. but why? nobody learned anything new. the shock was that this was rendered public. so where are we with this? today. uh let me take a recent example maybe you know this clip from china. the process of choosing seven members of the standing committee of the politburo, the real seat of power in today's china, is totally obscure. it happens behind closed doors. dogs but at the last congress now a couple of weeks ago uh an unexpected crack appeared in this monolithic edifice, the former before she. chinese president hu jinao gping's predecessor as the party leader was unceremoniously dragged off stage shortly after foreign media came in. he looks disoriented and. two assistants help him stand, he speaks briefly with she. whom he had been sitting next to in the front row. don't be afraid, this is one minute, even less. why i found this almost an historical event? although the official comment just mentioned afterwards the bad health and momentary weakness of who? who is dragged out, whose resistance and defiance were clearly visible. for a moment the smooth appearance was disturbed. why did this happen? there is, and discreetly friends from china told me this, it wasn't that who was. resisted, she total power and wanted to protest. no, it was all staged. so i like this point that the very disturbance of perfect appearance was staged. uh the first indication is that this incident occurred. one minute after cameras for. from international tv where were turned on so that the whole world. saw it. so the mask of appearance did not fall down, it was intentionally taken down. he himself states this incident. to render visible his brutal power however this reading indicates that the new chinese leadership can no longer cling to. do... undisturbed. appearances. it. he to disturb. them to assert its full again, i think this is a very pessimist side because you know chinese were really obsessed by undisturbed appearance. to give you another example, you know the big introductory at the beginning parade which took place a couple of years ago, six seven, when there were the summer olympics in beijing. they were staged by j ki mo maybe you know him, the popular chinese movie director who did hero and other movies. but you know what's the shock? the chinese... were the party. they were so afraid that something will go wrong and disturbed the appearance that while the real parade went on what the world saw on tv was a pre-recording of earlier staging of the same parade so that they could be absolutely sure that nothing will go. wrongk. so let me go on uh. so they wanted to. they experienced if the perfect appearance is disturbed, it's shame. it's total shame. it shouldn't happen. and again, as i already said, this is what i found nonetheless fascinating, especially with regard to what goes on today in classical communism. again, as i already said, it's extremely brutal. but at the same time it's incredibly. afraid of the slightest disturbance. and i had, when i was much younger, in late sevents, i was the editor, one of the co-editors of a journal and we published some poem. we thought nothing special, but then some lines, it was possible to read them as a veiled critique of the communist party. and there was a special meeting of the central committee. there was a panic in the party. no wonder, i think it was brodsky, the russian immigrant poet, who said, and in some sense it's not just a cynical joke, it's true that. at no time in human history, poetry was held at such high place than in stalinism. people got shot for a wrong line in a poem and so on. the irony of my case was that if there were to be no panic from the party, nothing would have happened nobody would have noted that stupid poem. so now i come to the point that you mentioned. the excess which causes shame. is profoundly linked to some kind of surplus enjoyment i feel fame. when doing something that i secretly enjoy like the same tasteless example, emitting flatulence. plus, and this reflexive turn is crucial, i enjoy this shame itself in some of his acts, but not all of them. trump, donald trump acts without shame. the liberal leftists feel shame for him. and this shame attributed to other is. in itself a source of pleasure. i enjoy others feeling shame for what i am doing however trump's shamelessness is not unlimited. say he would never shamelessly claim he is bisexual or gay in his eyes. those whom he dismisses as non-patriotic should be ashamed of themselves. but in contrast to the liberal left, trump would not feel himself ashamed on behalf of what the left is doing. and what about today's woke left? i think fer is right to point out that we often have shame instead of argumentation, a quote. instead of a rebellious enlightening left ready to debate every question with its enemy since it feels assured about its better arguments now, fascism pseudo-left appears with fierce argumentative confrontation and wants to close the mouth, especially to its own people. so i think the lesson of this is that shame is simply not reliable. you mentioned to me this afternoon in mark twain's tom sawyer, you remember that wonderful moment when tom that's a good thing he helps i think the black. sorry. afinn does this,, i was always on hackfinn's side, he's better. he helps the black jim, the slave, escape, but he feels ashamed of it. it's an obvious case of how. so the truth is here on the side of his act. not his inner feeling. so we should move from. sh2. critical examination of the entire situation including shame itself yes the first step should be. it's horrible when you see no shame when something shameless is. happening but then we should go on so let me give you an example of this which again, there is nothing obscene, violent, but it shocked me. now a week ago on october twenty23rd, a video clip was released which reportedly shows the ras chechen republic leader ramzan kadyrov being given three ukrainian prisoners of war by his teenage some. his teenage son, his three sons, 16, 14 years old, went, that's the official meet, as volunteers to ukraine and they came back with three prisoners and they give them as a present to his father. short clip, very short clip. that a 16 years old kid gives his father three prisoners as a gift as if prisoners of war are private property and even minors can own them. plus, what i found most shocking is the fact that this is publicly this is recorded and publicly displayed. i mean. the question is, how can something like this happen, this utter obscenity? but what about the western vogue left? now comes trigger warning. you will probably not agree. with what i will say towards the end of october of this year, gonville and caius college in cambridge, cambridge, not here, massachusetts, england, was hosting a talk by helen joyce, known for her view that men and women are being redefined by trans activists. with loss and policies. it. reshaped to privilege self-identified gender identity over biological sex. joyce unambiguously supports trans rights. what she rejects is gender identity ideology. the idea that people should count as men or women according to how they feel and what they declare instead of their biology now, students at this college have launched protests with the college's lgbt plus representatives demanding that joyce's appearance be cancelled because they are unanimously disgusted by the platforming of such views. tutors were even opening a safe space welfare tea room for students during the talk blaming understandable hurt end. anger for many students, staff and fellows. caused by this invitation. the college's master joined them saying that while freedom of speech is a fundamental principle on some issues which affect our which affect our community, we cannot stay neutral. now, first my theoretical position here. i disagree with both poles in this conflict because i think the opposition between biology and. what i feel and declaring what i feel is not exhaustive. where? and here is my criticism of some of this. free choice of gender ideology. where is freud here? where is the freudian subject of the unconscious, which is neither biological nor a matter of feeling? we become sexual subjects when our biological features get mediated by complex symbolic structures, structures which work at a different level than our feelings, no matter how sincere feelings may deceive. but nonetheless, i think that debating the role of biology. or social symbolic structures in the formation of our sexuality is a legitimate topic. how fragile the opponents of joyce's appearance. must be if they experience. such a debate is something so threatening that they even need a safe space to protect them. is it not that their refusal of debate betrays a fear that such a debate may render palpable the weakness of their position. plus! are they aware that the logic of my identity is what i feel, if i feel a man, a woman, a trans and i declare what i feel can also be used in a directly racist and sexist way. a full-blooded heterosexist would also need a safe space to avoid lgbt plus persons by whom. he is unanimously disgusted. i'm not. agree with him i just claim again that this idea of my identity is what i feel immediately experience and declare. it proceeds as if there was no fraudud, no divided subject, no psychoanalysis and so on and so on. duane roussel, my canadian friend, characterizes vogue as racism in the time of the many without the one. this may appear problematic but i think it hits the mark in an almost exact opposite. to the traditional racism which fights against a foreign intruder. posing a threat. to the unity of the one, say, immigrants and jews to our nation, vote reacts to those who are suspected not to truly abandon old forms of the one, patriots, proponents of patriarchal values and so on. with all its declared opposition to the new forms of barbarism the vote left fully participates in it promoting and practicing a fled discourse without irony although it advocates pluralism and promotes differenceenz its subjective position of enunciation, the place from which it speaks is extremely authoritarian allowing no debate and imposing exclusions which are often based on arbitrary premises in all this mess we should always bear in mind that the vogue stance and cancel culture are de facto limited to the narrow world of academia and up to point some intellectual professions like journalists. while society at large moves in the opposite direction. cancel culture with its implicit paranoia is a desperate. but also inefficient attempt to compensate for the actual troubles and tragedies of the lgbt plus individuals, the violence and exclusion to which they are permanently submitted. i'm well aware of this. but i think that precisely cancel culture is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a pseudo-safe space whose discursive fanaticism leaves intact and even strengthens the resistance of the majority to it. so you got my point. i'm not attacking wokeogue and cancel culture as being too fanatical and so on. i claim precisely precisely that behind this mask of fanaticism, stringency, it's a compromise. it doesn't really. change social reality. now on the opposite side. the hidden tension of the. uh conservifs, who? reject the idea that sexual identity is a discouraged social construct becomes palpable where in the panic with which they reject the project of the lgbt plus education, which should present to a child all options of sexual identity. they. conservatives, patriarchal, binary and so on. they fear that if children are to be educated in this way they might be influence betray their natural sex and choose some unnatural form. this is why recently russia prohibited all gay and lgbt propaganda. in short, i don't know if it happens also in your country, it happens in my country, all around europe now, how again, conservatives are horrified by this idea if you teach. young children about lgbt construction of sexual identity that this may. affect them and they will effectively become gay, trans and so on. but the paradox is clear here. they don't believe their own idea that sex is natural. if they were to believe it, they wouldn't be so. afraid again, if one's sexual orientation is so easily changed by education, does this not imply that sexual identity is it social. construct. so how to break out of this cycle? we got and now comes the most problematic part we got an unexpected hint from ukraine where something happened. recently which may appear a step further in our moral decay but i don't think so i think it's the opposite. on october13teenth it was revealed that more than. 15,000 ukrainians have planned to organize a mass orgy in case putin launches a nuclear attack. on ukraine this is not a joke. i checked it up with my ukrainian friends. 15,000 individuals have registered for this. event which is being called orgy at hekovica. the mass event will be taking place, okay, now it will not, probably there will be no nuclear bomb, will be taking place in a pre-decided. placed on a hill in cheovica, part of kiev. people, it was well organized, people participating have been asked to decorate their hands with stripes denoting their sexual preference. if you want anal sex, you... you have three stripes on your hand if you are interested in oral sex, you have forced rights and so on. the reaction of participants is those who. the registers it noteworthy one woman. told a reporter, it's the opposite of despair. even in the worst case scenario, people will look for something good. this is the mega-optimism of ukrainians. and similar groups popped up. for example, an orgy on on there is basivka street in odessa and so on. now one should take notion of collective orgies as a life-affirming project in the time of extreme despair. no need here for a deeper pseudo-fudian analysis of the disintegration of civilized social links in a traumatic time. the truly non-civilized procedure is what russia is doing, giving its soldiers viagra to rape ukrainian women. uh. un envoy pramila patatten. reported that rapes and sexual assaults attributed to moscow's forces were part of russia's military strategy. that's the true horror for me. how comes that russia is doing this? we have to go a little bit deeper. simply, the rule is everything is permitted. in the struggle called by putin and his ideologists satanists. the term regularly used in the russian media has to be taken seriously. alexei pavlov, assistant secretary of the security council of the russian federation is now calling for the desatization of ukraine. saying that there were hundreds of sects in the countries of sects. where citizens have abandoned orthodox values. quote, i believe that with the continuation of our special military operation, it becomes more and more urgent to carry out the desization of ukraine. the new regime turned ukraine from a sovereign state to a totalitarian yeah. hypersec. putin echoes the same. stands quote from putin. this is a complete denial of humanity, the overthrow of faith and traditional values. indeed, the suppression of freedom itself has taken on the features of a religion outright satanism end quote no wonder that patriarch kiril, the head of the russian orthodox church, called putin a fighter against the antichrist and kiev exorcist. some people ask how russia, still a normal state, can ally itself with fundamentalist iran. but we can see now that if anything, russia is more fundamentalist than iran. now, i raise my stakes and go a step further. what is, i think, even more morbid than russia's brutality and this open ideology of fighting satanism. you know that now the goal, again, this is now official discourse in russia. it's no longer denazify ukraine, but des-satanize. eat up. what is even more morbid for me are some leftist pics working for peace. who claim that now is the time to send a big european delegation to russia to inquire and negotiate about the terms of peace. my comment. i hope you all know the well known joke evoked by freud on the borrowed cattle. first let's say i borrow a kettle from you i returned it to you broken and then you said, what it's broken? and my defense is, first, i never borrowed a kettle from you. second, i returned it to you unbroken. third, the kettle was already broken when i got it. from you. do those who oppose help ukraine with arms not fall prey to a similar paradox? their arguments clearly fall into three categories. first abstract superere ego. reasoning. giving arms never stops the war. it's like pouring oil on fire. so it's always immoral and murderous. that's the abstract position. then you have a more concrete listing of particular arguments. okay, russia committed a horrible crime by invading another state, but ukraine is also not innocent, so we cannot put the blame only on one side and so on and so on. and third, more and more popular in europe and in united states, direct egotism. why getting involved in a war far away which will only hurt our interests and living standards. that. and let me make another argument against pacifism. yes of course my god i am scared like shit of nuclear war but at the same time don't forget that all occupiers are sincerely always for peace. peace means. i want peace in the occupied territory leave me alone germany, when they occupied france in 1940, of course they wanted peace there. israel on the west bank the west bank is a special case i oppose terrorist attacks from gaza or south lebanon but on the west bank of course israel wants peace because peace means doing our job. gradual ethnic cleansing of it. the piks who are against nato and sending arms to ukraine. ignore the key fact that it was western help that allowed ukraine to resist without it ukraine would be. long occupied uh this help led to today's tellmate which may be now created. conditions for a possible compromise. so in germany, i admire the stance of the green party, which not only advocates support for ukraine, but also proposes the use of the ongoing oil and gas crisis as a unique opportunity to make our industries greener. you see, i like this stance. for for most of us, the problem is just. okay, it's traumatic. we should help them, but not too much. how will it disturb our way of life? we are used to live in a comfortable way. is it not a much better position to say, but why don't we use this situation to make our industries greener for an ecological turn and so on and so on? did you notice another inconsistency in those who want direct peace, which basically means put pressure on ukraine to give one third of their land to russia? they first insisted that ukraine simply cannot win a war against russia. chomsky, varoufakis, they were all saying this. let's be real. ukraine cannot win. but now, when at least for a moment, it's not yet over, ukraine is winning. the war, they repeat that it shouldn't be allowed. to win or even to gain too much because this may provoke putin's ire and he may press. the button. now... what is the truth behind it? recall how in the first days of the war, western powers offered zelensky, ukrainian president you remember, just two, three days into it, they offered him a special plane to take him out of kiev implying that the situation is already lost so let's get over it fast this hysterical precipitous offer made palpable the true desire of the west a desire which was spoiled by the unexpected ukrainian resistance. uh that for me... the truth. i wonder if you would agree with it. and i have many friends there dead. we in the west, all my political friends in slovenia, in france. i could feel the secret pleasure when, you know, in the first day there were already russian commandos dropped onto kyiev. they thought, okay, okay, it will be soon over, then we will protest, but it will be over. the true bet through price. ukrainians really, they tell you this privately, not publicly, ukrainians screwed up everything by their resistance. couldn't they just swallow it and sacrifice themselves for our western welfare and so on? so... now our obsession is let's make peace, but peace in such a way that russia should be allowed to save faith. what does this mean? dmitry medvedev, a former russian president who now serves as deputy chairman of russia's security council, recently said that, listen carefully, that the usled nato military alliance would be too scared of a nuclear apocalypse to directly enter the conflict in response to russia using tactical nuclear weapons. long quote believe that nato will not directly intervene in the conflict even in this situation. after all, the security of washington, london, brussels is much more important for the north atlantic alliance than the fate of a dying ukraine that no one needs. the supply of modern weapons is just a business for western countries. overseas and european demagogues are not going to perish in a nuclear apocalypse therefore they will swallow the use of any weapon in the current conflict. you see that's why for me this idea let's save. let's allow putin to save his face doesn't work. because what medvedev says here is exact what amounts to. to preventing the west to save its face. medvedev in advance interprets every compromise as the west will lose its face, they are afraid, they don't want to perish in a nuclear war and so on and so on. also! as for the background of the war, and i'm talking now as a leninist communistunist, my g. here you get, please listen carefully and then we will slowly come to the end. putin. putin. it's incredible. people forgot this what putin said on 21st of february, two days before the attack. i found these lines shocking. i don't get it how some leftists claim nato imperialism and so on. putin... openly declares himself a conservative with a goal to destroy european unity. he is systematically supporting all extreme right wing in europe, leini in france, salvini in italy and so on and so on. and... the big bad guy for him is lenin and it's true, look at the history. the twentiess, okay, there was a civil war, blah blah, but. in 22 or when the civil war was over. uh. it was a golden era for ukraine under tsarist russia, ukrainian language was not recognized and so on and so on. in the 20s. ukraine was admitted as a full nation with all the cultural apparatus. it was an extraordinary time, especially in ukraine. like do you know that for some time they were, it's incredible story, just the visual art. at some college in ukraine, college of visual arts, at the same time malevich and chagal were teaching. they couldn't stand each other and so on. it was a golden era. then with stalin the line changed, which is why today in russia lenin is out, stalin is half. is half in and also this idea of, this is the most dangerous line of argumentation, i don't know if you have it here, this idea of euro-asianism. my god, do people know history? the origin, this is a fascist idea. do you know that already in the early 20s, among russian immigration, anti-communist immigration, came this idea that... for example, the main person here is ivan ilyin. who is now quasi-official philosopher. his body was transported from france, brought to russia, buried with all state honors and so on and so on. his idea was that fascism was good. he supported to the end mussolini, hitler in the west and hitler, but that their fascism was too much under the influence of western mechanical society too industrial and that the only true fascism would have been the russian fascism as the right balance. between western individualism and asian this global immersion of the individual into a crowd and so on and so on. now. okay, here i am. now i come. to my... a conclusion. uh. what interests me, and this is the real danger that i see. is that. this putin's line of criticizing the west as decadent, orgy and so on, gay rights, lgbt plus is more and more in consonance with american new right my i use this term with full irony. friend jordan peterson. from the debate. i was shocked, i didn't know he will do this. you know that he. adopted now pro-r. position. uh. but i think... in some sense he is right not in the sense that i agree with him but i think that american new religious conservatismativism and what putin is doing are. gradually. getting... getting coordinated. the republican party lawmakers who oppose support for ukraine are getting stronger and stronger. they do not want to send money abroad when it can be used in the us to fortify the southern border and so on and so on. for example, trump backed. candidate pd eventsance criticized ukraine as a corrupt nation run by oligarchs and while he formally condemned russia's invasion, he also called it insulting and strategically stupid to devote billions of resources to ukraine while ignoring the problems in our own. countries so russian attack on ukraine and the alt-right revolt in the us are two aspects of the same global movement. if the western christian revolt and the russian anti-european stance will unite into one, this will be a global socio-political catastrophe of of uh immeasurable. amplitude. for the us and russia russian neoconserv. uh europe is caught in the vortex of self-destructive degeneration. lgbt plus gay marriages, no clear distinction of sexes. so one cannot but note the obvious im inconsistency of the neoconservatives from the russian ones to american alt-right while they pretend to deplore the multicultural hedonism. and present themselves as the embodiment of traditional christian values their words and acts display extraordinary vulgarity sexism and racism. let me just conclude with one case. you remember it occurred back in two2012. in an effort to explain his stance on abortion, representative todd akin, the republican senate nominee from missouri provoked ire across the political spectrum by saying that in instances of what he called legitimate rape women's bodies somehow block an unwanted pregnancy. responding to this fury. a how do you pronounce the name? okay. aiken claimed that he has misspoken. he really wanted to say that there are legitimate cases of rape where penetration is really in force, but that if the victim shows signs of consent, say getting wet and excited, this then is no longer a legitimate case of rape. i think this confusion reveals the truth what ain really wanted to say is precisely what his misspoken formulation says in some cases rape is legitimate. since the victim showed signs of participation, which means it really wasn't a rape. leaving behind the obvious falsity and vulgarities of ain's reasoning, i want to draw the parallel with the russian attack on ukraine since the matter of rape was also evoked from the russian side. at the press conference on february seventh putin noted that the ukrainian government does not like the minsk agreement and then added like it or not it's your duty my beauty the saying has well-known sexual connotations. putin quartet. was quoting from sleeping beauty in a coffin. a song by a soviet era punk group red mold where you have the lines, sleeping beauty in a coffin, i crept up and fucked her, like it or dislike it, sleep my beauty. so there is a clear reference to rape here. there are cases when the rape of a country is legitimate, that is to say, justified. my point is that such male chauvinist obscenities are the not even so hidden truth of the proponents of traditional christian. values. so again, to really conclude, we should accept peterson's basic premise. russian attack on ukraine and the alt-right revolt in the us are two aspects of the same global movement. but does this mean that in contrast to him to peterson, we should support the opposite side. here things get complicated. it is true that if the western christian revolt and the russian anti-european stance will unite into one, this will be a global catastrophe. however, we are still dealing with an antagonism internal to global capitalism. what peterson attacks is the ultimate consequence of global capitalism itself. we all know the most famous line from marxist communist manifesto. the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal patriarchal idyllic relations. all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at least compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life. quote i think that what is still ignored? this is still ignored by those leftist cultural theorists who focus their critique on patriarchal ideology and practice. is it not time to start to wonder about the fact that the critique of patriarchy was elevated into the main target at the very historical moment, ours, when patriarchy definitely lost its hegemonic role? what becomes of patriarchal family values when a child can sue his parents for neglect and abuse? when family and parenthood are the reduced to temporarily dissolvable. contract between independent individuals. so the culture war raging in the developed west now, in the states, in europe, is, i think, a false war, a war between two versions of the same global capitalist system. it unrestrained, pure version, which is. this insistence on infinite dynamics, plasticity, lgbt, reinvent your identity all the time, and its neo-fascist conservative version, which tries to unite capitalist dynamism with more traditional values. the paradox is here double. the western political correctness is a displacement of the good old class struggle. liberal elite pretends to protect the threatened racial and sexual minorities. in order to obfuscate the basic fact of their privileged economic and power position. and this lie allows the alt-right populists to present themselves as a defense of the real working class against the big corporations and the deep state elites. the paradox is thus that today's populist conservatives are more revolutionary. then the politically correct liberals who are not afraid to call for social order and even police oppression when they feel this is needed. like we often hear the complaint, where were the police and national guard on january 6th, 2020? one the implication to be drawn is not just that left and right are today outdated notions but that both poles of today's cold war can only be properly grasped as a displaced class struggle neither of them really stands for those exploited. and again, this is our tragic predicament today. you remember i was, of course, my eyes were glued to the screen on january 6th of the previous year. you remember the crowd invading the capitalitol but what shocked me so much is how many of my leftist friends in the united states and in europe were crying. looking at. they said, what is going on? we, the people should be doing this. it's beautiful to watch it, but the wrong guys are doing it. that's our predicament today. i think what i again, listen, i... even sometimes listen to steve bannon's podcasts or whatever. and did you notice how... he's doing almost the same thing as putin he begins. like, if he has a one-hour podcast talk, with the first 20 minutes i almost fully agree. he describes how the big corporation state employs ordinary blah blah blah, all that. then of course, things take a strange turn. it's the same i heard from my friends in moscow who are like with one leg in prison already but with the other leg still running around that putin is doing the same. he doesn't have only douin and this religious orthodox maniacs putin also mobilized a group of young marxists who are providing him a more leftist third world line they're telling they provided him with this line, russia is really defending the world from western imperialist colonization, we are on the side of all those exploited in the third world and so on and so on. i hope you are aware of the situation, how incredibly successful this russian propaganda is not in the west but in latin america in many parts of asia africa and so on and so on. so i think that maybe d. de cru... dilemma. today like... our situation today is the one of crisis of a system itself. what conservatives got right is that oop. this fukuyama ideal of liberal democratic capitalism is... in full crisis in the sense of you know what is for me the most ominous case in england in france in united states you have now protests which are no longer like in some parts of eastern europe protests for true democracy no they articulate a doubt in our version of liberal democracy. itself. and the tragedy is that there is no way to. to give to articulate in organized political way this rage and with this i want to conclude. we are back at the beginning of european history. my friend, although a right wingeringer, he is not stupid, peter slijk wrote a wonderful book, being and race. sein undoren, of course, an ironic paraphrase of heidegger's being in time, where he said, what's at the beginning, at least in our mythic view of the western culture, it's homer iliad. and what is the first line of iliad? a call to the dead, goddess, whatever, to. allow him to do a poem on the rage of achilles which brought blah blah blah. today we have even a much more dangerous rage this dissatisfaction and. what's really tragic is that the left is losing it i think that. i agree here with the guy whom i criticized briefly varouakis. i think that capitalism is changing already into something different and either we will invent, i don't like to use the word communism, it's too crazy, but a really new social order to deal with the ongoing problems or... a new form of fascism of sorry of neo-feudalism, let's call it, will take over. so you know what again, what i would be really my nightmare is, and trump is already sending signals and so on, even bolsonaro is more friendly towards putin and so on. this pact between european and luck wherever new. popul. conservatives end. russia and so on. that's the danger. and i don't think we are. taking seriously this danger because we too much still believe in liberal democracy. i appreciate liberal democracy it's a wonderful thing but today it's a crisis because the only way to confront all the problems we have today is to make a step. beyond. and that's the reason of my pessimism. you know why to conclude, i don't, you know, in good old marxist old liberal times, we still could rely on historical fate necessity like this marxist faith of history is moving towards progress and so on. no, now we have to act against history. historical tendency is towards a catastrophe. what will happen i don't know, but i prefer to be a pessimist in order to awaken us. sorry if i was too long. thanks very much. so, stop, please. we don't have time for this. i said some things which may be very problematic for you. first about i'm not bluffing, you know, i'm not reading a pro russia western propaganda. for very conformist reasons, this will, i hope, amuse you, which shows the depth of my depravity. when i was in a high school in mid-60s, in slovenia. we had english was obligatory first second language and then we had the choice of another. it was either french or german or russian. i've chosen russian. for disgusting reasons. my idea was it's a cold war, one side will win. i want to be sure to speak the language of the winner. but now it comes good because you know, i am not just reading about it. i listen all the time to russian media. and it's even more horrible than what this report. and the second thing with this i really conclude, some pragmatic friends of mine are telling me, but don't take all this stuff about a russian mission holy war, don't take it seriously. these are just words. what they really want is just a small part of ukraine. now, words, if we have something to learn is that words are not... never only works take the case i'm not comparing nonetheless putin with hitler but take the case of germany do you know that when hitler took power in thirty33. this was the predominant attitude unfortunately among the jews there. he just needs this rhetoric to take power. once he will establish make a deal with him. no. work! meta. so i don't believe in this putin is just saying this or his ideology in reality. no, wars are never simply pragmatic. you always, put it, get caught. into your own. work. so please counter-attack. i would like to hear your counter-opinion. or i hope i made my position clear about lgbt plus and so on, all that. i totally i totally support them. in my country, i also here and there fight for them, with them and so on. i'm just saying that. the ideology which not always, but sometimes accompanies lgbt plus this simple reliance of the choice of our sex is our free decision and then this game of plasticity, you know, in the sense of, oh, that's the true freedom. today i'm gay, tomorrow i'm hetero, next day i'm bisexual, whatever. this is... so this is so discriminatory and humiliating for. lgbt people themselves you know how. tra, for example, i know an example, there was a movie made on it in belgium where a boy wanted to become a lady and it was so traumatic for him although he she had support from parents everybody was good and so on and of course, in some sense it's a choice. it's not biologically determined. but it's not a simple conscious choice in the sense of, oh, that's how i feel now and so on and so on. you know that if you are a trans, if you do the operation. you know how painful are these operations. this is traumatic. this means... you feel the earth. to do it, which means of course it's your choice, but not a simple choice in the sense, oh my god, look, i like boys, i like girls, i like trans people, let's play all of them. you are ready to stake your survival on it. so that's what i'm pleading here for. it's not biology, but it's also not this superficial how i feel, i declare and so on and so on. do you know that yes, lgbt plus people are free. but they are maybe the most free people among us and they pay the price for it. you know that here i accept this... par paradox of true freedom. is not this superficial freedom of choice, like let's go to a patisserie, should we cheesecake or chocolate cake or strawberry cake? true freedom is... experience usually even as necessity. like imagine lgbt plus boy. at least biologically looks no, he experiences deep his identity as either third one or woman or whatever, something third and in some sense he has no choice. but again this is true freedom. it's like love. i always like this example. love is has to be free. i cannot order you to fall in love. but isn't it that? love it's freedom. experience is the utter necessity. like... when you are truly in love, you cannot say, oh! this person whom i love, it's too difficult, confused, let me choose another object. no, you cannot go out. love is your fate and precisely as such it is free. so as somebody trained in psychoanalysis, theoretically only, you know, no, i would never do practice. some students years ago wanted me to be their psychoanalyst. and you know what was my reaction? i told them, if you want me to be your analyst, then you are really crazy and you need one. but what i'm saying is that... you know, freudian psychoanalysis give the thick background of all the traumatic dimension of the topic done by lgbt. plus. but again, i don't like this idea, which sometimes you can feel it, that basically sexuality is free in this superficial sense. you flirt with this, with that option, and then the evil patriarchy comes and tells you no, binary, this, that, and so on and so on. no, freud was right. we are extraordinary complex, divided. and and the great lesson of jacques lacomb is that. there is always a minimal gap between what you want and what you really desire. it's quite often that what you declare that you want, it's part of a struggle against what unconsciously you desire. and i think out of my respect for lgbt plus and so on people to conclude, yes. maybe then i will really stop if you are stupid enough to believe, but i will. no. you know what attracts me and i was so proud when lgbt plus many people, okay, now it's more complex, it's lgbtq, whatever and so on. you know what's my basic idea and disagreement with some strands? how do you, maybe if you read some of my books, you must know this line, how do you define the plus in lgbtq? either in an empirical way, which is maybe there are other identities that the list is never complete, so plus stands for let's see. if you say, i'm neither l nor g blah blah, the space is open for you, but i propose a much more radical reading. as subject, we are basically this plus itself. escaping every. identification. that's why. i'm sorry, i didn't go more into philosophy. that's why modern subjectivity is more feminine. and that's the great thing about psychoanalysis. what do i mean by this? you know hysteria for freud. and lacamp points this out, it's the basic form of critique of ideology. in practice. why? because as laacombe points out in a wonderful way the basic mechanism of ideology is ideological symbolic identification. the existing order you gives you a space of what you are. you are a man, a professor or whatever. but the original hysterical question is why am i what you are saying that i am? the doubt into your symbolic identity provided by society. this is why in contrast to those who think that the cartesian cogito, this pure modern subject is masculine. no, it's feminine. and we don't have time to go into this, but this is a wonderful topic. you know that that's why already in his age, early 17th century, when descartes was extremely popular among women who immediately got this. cogito, aha, it's not men, there is a space for us. and women, not just queen christina of that stupid movie with greta garbo of sweden, but it was extraordinary what movement among women was triggered. all this is so important today if we live also psychologically in an era of paradoxes, my god. it's permissiveness which is turning around into strict regulation with all the politically correct rules and so on and so on. it with all this focus on, again, permissiveness and pleasure, what we get is more than ever impotence, frigidity and so on and so on. sex is a big mess. we have to accept this. in itself it's a big mess. and here, although at other points i disagree with her, here i agree with judith butler, where she pointed out how the basic, this would be the minimum of what you mentioned, this surplus enjoyment as opposed to pleasure. you know that. sexuality always gets entangled in these paradoxes. your desire is repressed, but then it turns around into the repression of, into desire for repression itself. the very mode you try to repress your desire turns into an additional source of enjoyment and so on and so on. and i think here, precisely in today mass of sexual identities, psychoanalysis is needed more than ever. now it's really time for me to stop. it is my favorite it's diet coke with. cherry taste because this cherry this is a nice example of this rigid designator it's you recognize it's totally chemical i don't see any link between. how real clarries taste and that's why i like it.
Moderator
okay, thank you, slap. we've got... we have
okay, thank you, slap. we've got... we have
Slavoj Žižek
come time still for.
come time still for.
Moderator
we, we've got time. i mean, we have to be done by nine because we're both guesting on steve bannon's podcast. that's a joke. uh... uh yeah, we have we have we have you know, 20 25 minutes for for question and answer. there are uh, there microphones up front or, why don't we use this center one? so, um, if you have a question, uh, why don't we line up at the microphone and
we, we've got time. i mean, we have to be done by nine because we're both guesting on steve bannon's podcast. that's a joke. uh... uh yeah, we have we have we have you know, 20 25 minutes for for question and answer. there are uh, there microphones up front or, why don't we use this center one? so, um, if you have a question, uh, why don't we line up at the microphone and
Slavoj Žižek
but didn't you tell me there are more microphones or
but didn't you tell me there are more microphones or
Moderator
over there too but let's in the interest of getting it
over there too but let's in the interest of getting it
Slavoj Žižek
okay.
okay.
Moderator
yeah, yeah. wait, so...
yeah, yeah. wait, so...
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Moderator
okay. okay. is the mic working?
okay. okay. is the mic working?
Audience Member 1
testing, testing, one, two, three. can you hear me?
testing, testing, one, two, three. can you hear me?
Moderator
so, so i guess...
so, so i guess...
Slavoj Žižek
i noticed, although i'm often proclaimed anti-feminist, but it makes me very sad. i don't see, is there any woman in the line? no, you know i'm saying this seriously because, for example, i'm very good friend with many black people and we have this type of wonderful relationship where i don't dare to give you examples. all the time we exchange dirty racist innuendos, jokes and so on. and we love each other for that, you know. and so once i was with two a friend of mine, i was tired, i was just polite and he was in a panic. he told me, are you mad at me or what? where are your dirty jokes? so what i'm saying is that nonetheless you know, a proof that i am a feminist, it's a purely theoretical one. i am a hegelian and in the last 20, 30 years, practically all good books on hegel are written by women. rebecca kumy, even judith butler's something about desire, her first book, very good one, is on hegel. yeah, yeah, yeah. so i'm sorry, i'm again getting lost. please. that could work.
i noticed, although i'm often proclaimed anti-feminist, but it makes me very sad. i don't see, is there any woman in the line? no, you know i'm saying this seriously because, for example, i'm very good friend with many black people and we have this type of wonderful relationship where i don't dare to give you examples. all the time we exchange dirty racist innuendos, jokes and so on. and we love each other for that, you know. and so once i was with two a friend of mine, i was tired, i was just polite and he was in a panic. he told me, are you mad at me or what? where are your dirty jokes? so what i'm saying is that nonetheless you know, a proof that i am a feminist, it's a purely theoretical one. i am a hegelian and in the last 20, 30 years, practically all good books on hegel are written by women. rebecca kumy, even judith butler's something about desire, her first book, very good one, is on hegel. yeah, yeah, yeah. so i'm sorry, i'm again getting lost. please. that could work.
Audience Member 1
one, two, three. yeah, but do you
one, two, three. yeah, but do you
Slavoj Žižek
be staying one, two, three. do you hear him okay.
be staying one, two, three. do you hear him okay.
Audience Member 1
okay. so, so... i guess my question would be, so for a little context, in say medieval society, you sort of had, you would have, you would have, the concept of the carnival was a very common sort of thing.
okay. so, so... i guess my question would be, so for a little context, in say medieval society, you sort of had, you would have, you would have, the concept of the carnival was a very common sort of thing.
Slavoj Žižek
carneval.
carneval.
Audience Member 1
yes, and then you had sort of similar things in similar societies like in ancient rome, i think i've heard. the anecdote of how they'd have a festival or something where they'd make the slave the emperor, the king for a day, and at the end of the day they'd kill him. so you sort of had this sort of publicization and sort of social acceptance of this sort of bizarre irrational into this sort of form of public release. do do you think that a sort of modern sort of sense of trying sort of like 15th, 16th, 17th century trying to cut, trying to lift the average person outside of that carnival. do you think that the sort of 20th and 21st century has sort of sort of seen the sort of carnival and sort of this very sort of strict regime that you might see spoken about with someone like foucault do do you think that the 20th and 21st centuries are sort of that the carnival and the sort of order that we tried to create without it are sort of converged and merged. do you think that the sort of sort of shame that is sort of is being seen on the public level is at those at the very consequences of those merging?
yes, and then you had sort of similar things in similar societies like in ancient rome, i think i've heard. the anecdote of how they'd have a festival or something where they'd make the slave the emperor, the king for a day, and at the end of the day they'd kill him. so you sort of had this sort of publicization and sort of social acceptance of this sort of bizarre irrational into this sort of form of public release. do do you think that a sort of modern sort of sense of trying sort of like 15th, 16th, 17th century trying to cut, trying to lift the average person outside of that carnival. do you think that the sort of 20th and 21st century has sort of sort of seen the sort of carnival and sort of this very sort of strict regime that you might see spoken about with someone like foucault do do you think that the 20th and 21st centuries are sort of that the carnival and the sort of order that we tried to create without it are sort of converged and merged. do you think that the sort of sort of shame that is sort of is being seen on the public level is at those at the very consequences of those merging?
Slavoj Žižek
it's a very precise question. i'm still in some sense, sorry if i disappoint you here, attached to modernity. i still think maybe not early modernity, but french revolution is a mega event for me and so on. so my point would be that. already what happened in the 20th century was a kind of dark underside of carnival. do you know probably, did you read the book? it's a classic on carnival, among others, by michael bachtin on françois rabelais. he elaborated this notion of carnival, but my friend, the german our theorist boris groiz recently got hold of archives of bakhtin. he survived the purges because he moved to kazan, a smaller city and the big moscow bureaucracy forgot about him. and what's so fascinating is that, you know, what's the unanimous... message from his private notes. that for him, the big carnival that he didn't dare to mention were the stalinist purges. because it was, you know, today you are a king, member of politburo, tomorrow you are an english spy, a british spy. was and even there is also a carnival aspect. some friends of mine, black people, are exploring it. kuk klux klan in it, sorry for this horrible term, i mean it ironically, golden era in 1920s. you know, it was the end of the week carnival for the white people. let's have some fun, let's lynch some black guys, let's rape some black women and so on and so on. so i think that i always found it problematic to oppose this rigid order of a society and this. a moment of freedom where the king is a servant, the servant is the king, all that stuff. i think that in most of the time, carnivals were simply a kind of a lib supplement in an intermediate way, even supporting. the existing order which you should not forget this. don't idealize medieval times. there are many things we don't know. i mean, we do know but how brutal oppression was there. i mean. you know, sometimes we idealize them as a kind of a small organic community. were extremely brutal times. so what i am of course there are attempts to see even in mass sport events and so on, new forms of carnival but but for... for me, again, the least i would say is that there is also a very dark side to carnival. for example, in nazi literature. when, no, it's too crazy to say that's too horrible, that auschwitz was a carnival. but the way kristallnacht, you know in when 38. when r were beaten, some of them lyn and so on had the clear structure of a carnival. it even up to a point, as is typical for carnival, ran out of control. and that's the very sad thing. it wasn't that it was planned by goebbels or whom. it was, but even they were surprised by how it exploded. so again, i'm just saying don't also don't idealize the carnival. the carnival is for me quite often that another element, it's not the same as carnival, i know, but one of the nicest memories from communism that i have is... i didn't like it. and how it's not currentaren world, but the role played there by political jokes. jokes against those in power. i always had a suspicion, although some people were arrested for telling them, that those in power were fully aware that it has this carlesque notion of, you know, if you don't allow people to let their steam off, how do you call it, through telling jokes, then you will have real protests. so it's not true, but there is a rumor. it's not true, but it's the right insight that secret police departments, police in. eastern europe communist times, had secret department fabricating jokes not jokes against the western decadence, but. jokes against their own politics the idea was allow give these people a way to express their anger to you know, and so on and so on. and again, with stalinism, it's absolutely... clear. dysfunction, this carnalesque dimension. especially when the purges got serious. the true stalinist purges were 34, 36 and. it's pure carnival in what sense? do you know that, for example, in those two years, 70% of the central committee members were liquidated, more than half of the headquarters of the army top generals were liquidated. the situation was the worst. it's very interesting to know this in ukraine, where that's what i call a purge. in 1934, ukrainian central committee had 200 members. central committee of the party you know how many of them were alive three years later. no, two years later. three. that's what i call a perk. so, again, i didn't answer all the depth of your question, i know. i'm just saying that bakin himself is misread when he is presented as the guy who... somehow just celebrated carnival. no he was well aware of the dark aspects of carnival of this other side otherwise i am an idiot but not a complete idiot which means that i am well aware of the finesse of your question the other aspects but now.
it's a very precise question. i'm still in some sense, sorry if i disappoint you here, attached to modernity. i still think maybe not early modernity, but french revolution is a mega event for me and so on. so my point would be that. already what happened in the 20th century was a kind of dark underside of carnival. do you know probably, did you read the book? it's a classic on carnival, among others, by michael bachtin on françois rabelais. he elaborated this notion of carnival, but my friend, the german our theorist boris groiz recently got hold of archives of bakhtin. he survived the purges because he moved to kazan, a smaller city and the big moscow bureaucracy forgot about him. and what's so fascinating is that, you know, what's the unanimous... message from his private notes. that for him, the big carnival that he didn't dare to mention were the stalinist purges. because it was, you know, today you are a king, member of politburo, tomorrow you are an english spy, a british spy. was and even there is also a carnival aspect. some friends of mine, black people, are exploring it. kuk klux klan in it, sorry for this horrible term, i mean it ironically, golden era in 1920s. you know, it was the end of the week carnival for the white people. let's have some fun, let's lynch some black guys, let's rape some black women and so on and so on. so i think that i always found it problematic to oppose this rigid order of a society and this. a moment of freedom where the king is a servant, the servant is the king, all that stuff. i think that in most of the time, carnivals were simply a kind of a lib supplement in an intermediate way, even supporting. the existing order which you should not forget this. don't idealize medieval times. there are many things we don't know. i mean, we do know but how brutal oppression was there. i mean. you know, sometimes we idealize them as a kind of a small organic community. were extremely brutal times. so what i am of course there are attempts to see even in mass sport events and so on, new forms of carnival but but for... for me, again, the least i would say is that there is also a very dark side to carnival. for example, in nazi literature. when, no, it's too crazy to say that's too horrible, that auschwitz was a carnival. but the way kristallnacht, you know in when 38. when r were beaten, some of them lyn and so on had the clear structure of a carnival. it even up to a point, as is typical for carnival, ran out of control. and that's the very sad thing. it wasn't that it was planned by goebbels or whom. it was, but even they were surprised by how it exploded. so again, i'm just saying don't also don't idealize the carnival. the carnival is for me quite often that another element, it's not the same as carnival, i know, but one of the nicest memories from communism that i have is... i didn't like it. and how it's not currentaren world, but the role played there by political jokes. jokes against those in power. i always had a suspicion, although some people were arrested for telling them, that those in power were fully aware that it has this carlesque notion of, you know, if you don't allow people to let their steam off, how do you call it, through telling jokes, then you will have real protests. so it's not true, but there is a rumor. it's not true, but it's the right insight that secret police departments, police in. eastern europe communist times, had secret department fabricating jokes not jokes against the western decadence, but. jokes against their own politics the idea was allow give these people a way to express their anger to you know, and so on and so on. and again, with stalinism, it's absolutely... clear. dysfunction, this carnalesque dimension. especially when the purges got serious. the true stalinist purges were 34, 36 and. it's pure carnival in what sense? do you know that, for example, in those two years, 70% of the central committee members were liquidated, more than half of the headquarters of the army top generals were liquidated. the situation was the worst. it's very interesting to know this in ukraine, where that's what i call a purge. in 1934, ukrainian central committee had 200 members. central committee of the party you know how many of them were alive three years later. no, two years later. three. that's what i call a perk. so, again, i didn't answer all the depth of your question, i know. i'm just saying that bakin himself is misread when he is presented as the guy who... somehow just celebrated carnival. no he was well aware of the dark aspects of carnival of this other side otherwise i am an idiot but not a complete idiot which means that i am well aware of the finesse of your question the other aspects but now.
Moderator
yeah, let's see.
yeah, let's see.
Slavoj Žižek
i just limit myself to this general point, don't overestimate some kind of a you know, nonancipatory power of carnival. and this is why i'm also not so fascinated, you know, we had not so much here, but in europe, you know, this big populist movement like a couple of years ago in istanbul. one million people protesting against erdogan or in egypt and so on. i always have a deep mistrust against these big million people there. what interests me is how to say after you get drunk the morning after no how this energy unleashed is then. translated into a new order usually carnivals don't produce a new order, they are just a momentary explosion and then. things return. to the old. order. and that's what i don't like. i think that the really difficult thing is not to organize one million people shouting their no but. to... to make a change felt when things return to normal to establish a new normal that's why. years ago, you remember the movie how is that? my god. the movie about v for vendetta. sorry? v for vendetta? yeah. my big point, i repeat it many times in my books is i would kill my mother. sold her into slavery. to see bad taste, i'm sorry, vendetta part2. did you see the movie? at the end, triumph, people break the political they won. okay, but what happened then? how is the new power structured? that's the big problem today.
i just limit myself to this general point, don't overestimate some kind of a you know, nonancipatory power of carnival. and this is why i'm also not so fascinated, you know, we had not so much here, but in europe, you know, this big populist movement like a couple of years ago in istanbul. one million people protesting against erdogan or in egypt and so on. i always have a deep mistrust against these big million people there. what interests me is how to say after you get drunk the morning after no how this energy unleashed is then. translated into a new order usually carnivals don't produce a new order, they are just a momentary explosion and then. things return. to the old. order. and that's what i don't like. i think that the really difficult thing is not to organize one million people shouting their no but. to... to make a change felt when things return to normal to establish a new normal that's why. years ago, you remember the movie how is that? my god. the movie about v for vendetta. sorry? v for vendetta? yeah. my big point, i repeat it many times in my books is i would kill my mother. sold her into slavery. to see bad taste, i'm sorry, vendetta part2. did you see the movie? at the end, triumph, people break the political they won. okay, but what happened then? how is the new power structured? that's the big problem today.
Moderator
okay, let's see if we can get.
okay, let's see if we can get.
Slavoj Žižek
much faster. i understand. sorry. thank you sir.. i mean, i will have to give you a quicker answer, sorry.
much faster. i understand. sorry. thank you sir.. i mean, i will have to give you a quicker answer, sorry.
Audience Member 2
please. howdy, i i've got more of sort of a foreign policy question. and so for me, when you were talking about... about russia and ukraine, it didn't feel to me as though you really adequately addressed the, you, the consequences of a more confrontational policy against russia, which, you know, as you know, you said words are not just words, should always be taken seriously, especially in putin's case. and he has, and his his government has brought up nuclear war, mutually assured destruction on many occasions now. and i was just wondering. how in your mind is it, is it considered moral or could it be considered moral to advocate for a confrontational stance against russia? when the possible consequences of such a stance are so...
please. howdy, i i've got more of sort of a foreign policy question. and so for me, when you were talking about... about russia and ukraine, it didn't feel to me as though you really adequately addressed the, you, the consequences of a more confrontational policy against russia, which, you know, as you know, you said words are not just words, should always be taken seriously, especially in putin's case. and he has, and his his government has brought up nuclear war, mutually assured destruction on many occasions now. and i was just wondering. how in your mind is it, is it considered moral or could it be considered moral to advocate for a confrontational stance against russia? when the possible consequences of such a stance are so...
Slavoj Žižek
please please just repeat the last words.
please please just repeat the last words.
Audience Member 2
how could it be considered moral to adopt a confrontational stance against russia when the possible consequences of adopting that stance are so high, know, i.e. mutually assured destruction?
how could it be considered moral to adopt a confrontational stance against russia when the possible consequences of adopting that stance are so high, know, i.e. mutually assured destruction?
Slavoj Žižek
but i totally agree with this. why do you think that? isn't it that the way i see it? that. russia started the topic of using tactical nuclear weapons and all that stuff and so on and so on. and i think at first, i don't believe that putin is a madman and so on, who just waits to press the button. i think he's precisely playing on this fear. my god, what if i go crazy and so on and so on. so you know what's my problem? many of my friends buy this line whenever nato does something it must be bat or whatever. but my problem here is, okay, i'll tell you this. we can talk for hours because i'm also very critical of ukrainians. first, the mistakes and it's two weak word mistakes they made. point two. this is the darkest part how even now the west is already everything is set in motion to prepare whatever you call it i hate these words neoliberal colonization from the west of ukraine. do you know that according to some sources one third of west ukrainian land is already owned by big american agricultural companies and so on. they are putting terrible pressure now already on ukraine this open totally to free market blah blah that so i'm well aware on this. you know what's the danger i see here? some of my leftist friends who say, okay, if you attack, if we give arms to ukraine, it means we support our military industry, blah blah. i asked them a very simple question. so what should be our message to ukrainians sometime the. what my friends are saying telling me sounds like okay the attack is horrible but on behalf of global peace and so on ukrainians should suffer a little bit make a compromise and so on and so on. you know who went here to the end and it cost me his friendship more or less yanis varfakis. i was shocked when taliban won in afghanistan he. posted a tweet or whatever. but his point was it's a great defeat of american imperialism. it's a great victory. then he says, okay, women will suffer we should help them but nonetheless. so his message is that we should say to afghani women mean yes, it's horrible, but sorry, there is a higher interest of... defeating american imperialism, blah blah blah, just suffer. this is for me the most horrible thing to do. for example, when people also, some of my leftist friends, condemned sorry not norway, finland and sweden, their desire to join nato. i, again, my point is, and i know i have high political connections there, they were scared like shit. so what should you tell them? sorry guys. you are in danger but you know we don't want to support our military industrial complex or whatsoever. so i think that this should be an abc of progressive politics. never elevate your cause into a big cause for which then you demand subordinated groups to sacrifice their interests. no, no, again, i'm very critical here of ukrainians. but uh... ugh. okay, i ask you and sincerely, it's not rhetorics, yes what should the west have done, western europe when russia attacked ukraine?
but i totally agree with this. why do you think that? isn't it that the way i see it? that. russia started the topic of using tactical nuclear weapons and all that stuff and so on and so on. and i think at first, i don't believe that putin is a madman and so on, who just waits to press the button. i think he's precisely playing on this fear. my god, what if i go crazy and so on and so on. so you know what's my problem? many of my friends buy this line whenever nato does something it must be bat or whatever. but my problem here is, okay, i'll tell you this. we can talk for hours because i'm also very critical of ukrainians. first, the mistakes and it's two weak word mistakes they made. point two. this is the darkest part how even now the west is already everything is set in motion to prepare whatever you call it i hate these words neoliberal colonization from the west of ukraine. do you know that according to some sources one third of west ukrainian land is already owned by big american agricultural companies and so on. they are putting terrible pressure now already on ukraine this open totally to free market blah blah that so i'm well aware on this. you know what's the danger i see here? some of my leftist friends who say, okay, if you attack, if we give arms to ukraine, it means we support our military industry, blah blah. i asked them a very simple question. so what should be our message to ukrainians sometime the. what my friends are saying telling me sounds like okay the attack is horrible but on behalf of global peace and so on ukrainians should suffer a little bit make a compromise and so on and so on. you know who went here to the end and it cost me his friendship more or less yanis varfakis. i was shocked when taliban won in afghanistan he. posted a tweet or whatever. but his point was it's a great defeat of american imperialism. it's a great victory. then he says, okay, women will suffer we should help them but nonetheless. so his message is that we should say to afghani women mean yes, it's horrible, but sorry, there is a higher interest of... defeating american imperialism, blah blah blah, just suffer. this is for me the most horrible thing to do. for example, when people also, some of my leftist friends, condemned sorry not norway, finland and sweden, their desire to join nato. i, again, my point is, and i know i have high political connections there, they were scared like shit. so what should you tell them? sorry guys. you are in danger but you know we don't want to support our military industrial complex or whatsoever. so i think that this should be an abc of progressive politics. never elevate your cause into a big cause for which then you demand subordinated groups to sacrifice their interests. no, no, again, i'm very critical here of ukrainians. but uh... ugh. okay, i ask you and sincerely, it's not rhetorics, yes what should the west have done, western europe when russia attacked ukraine?
Audience Member 2
that's a big question, but i just, i don't see how.
that's a big question, but i just, i don't see how.
Slavoj Žižek
i think.
i think.
Audience Member 2
how the suffering of ukrainians can be can be put uh you know, how we can say that it's better to have the whole world suffer than to just have ukraine suffer. i agree it's horrible for that to happen. but when you're talking about world war here.
how the suffering of ukrainians can be can be put uh you know, how we can say that it's better to have the whole world suffer than to just have ukraine suffer. i agree it's horrible for that to happen. but when you're talking about world war here.
Slavoj Žižek
already in what you said, some implications the factual implications that i find problematic. uh. why do you think? it would have stopped in.
already in what you said, some implications the factual implications that i find problematic. uh. why do you think? it would have stopped in.
Audience Member 2
ukraine. right, and well, i just like to say also i'm not talking about what you said with afghanistan, where it's, you know, this conceptual american empire that we're fighting. you know, this is talking about something that could happen to everybody. right? uh i i think that uh then you know the possibility of nuclear confrontation should be avoided at all costs and if that means not necessarily giving russia part of ukraine, but that means adopting a more peaceable stance ready to negotiate, i think that that's what has to be done.
ukraine. right, and well, i just like to say also i'm not talking about what you said with afghanistan, where it's, you know, this conceptual american empire that we're fighting. you know, this is talking about something that could happen to everybody. right? uh i i think that uh then you know the possibility of nuclear confrontation should be avoided at all costs and if that means not necessarily giving russia part of ukraine, but that means adopting a more peaceable stance ready to negotiate, i think that that's what has to be done.
Slavoj Žižek
ooh. why? okay, i see your point. of course, we are all afraid of not only of nuclear war but even larger european war and so on and so on. but the problem for me in ukraine is... is. nonetheless that i see in what putin is doing it's not just ukraine. he began in where? not chechnya, then it was gria, georgia and so on. it goes around. he openly says the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the disintegration of the soviet union. and he is openly saying defining a russian sphere and... i... uh... i i think that first we should clarify what russia is where i disagree with some of my leftist friends is that they are so obsessed by nato and so on that automatically you have to be if you are opposed to big western imperialism you. somehow have to be at least partially on the good but my point is a very brutal one. i'm not comparing putin with hitler, but what would you then say germany 1939? let's give isn't this the same logic? let's give to hitler czechoslovakia just to keep peace in europe and then it
ooh. why? okay, i see your point. of course, we are all afraid of not only of nuclear war but even larger european war and so on and so on. but the problem for me in ukraine is... is. nonetheless that i see in what putin is doing it's not just ukraine. he began in where? not chechnya, then it was gria, georgia and so on. it goes around. he openly says the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the disintegration of the soviet union. and he is openly saying defining a russian sphere and... i... uh... i i think that first we should clarify what russia is where i disagree with some of my leftist friends is that they are so obsessed by nato and so on that automatically you have to be if you are opposed to big western imperialism you. somehow have to be at least partially on the good but my point is a very brutal one. i'm not comparing putin with hitler, but what would you then say germany 1939? let's give isn't this the same logic? let's give to hitler czechoslovakia just to keep peace in europe and then it
Audience Member 2
no, because i meanler didn't have the capacity to level new york with the push of a button.
no, because i meanler didn't have the capacity to level new york with the push of a button.
Slavoj Žižek
what yeah, yeah, okay, i agree, but... but uh... again, my problem is so... what's your idea? it's just that let's make compromises, compromises. i think this doesn't work. it works in the short term maybe, but then it goes on, it goes on, it goes on. i'm absolutely fanatically to avoid with peace, but okay, let's be concrete. now, even putin is giving hints now maybe that it's more or less a stalemate a kind of ukaine ukrainians recaptured some parts of it. yes, there are now maybe conditions for some negotiated peace but are you aware that these conditions were created by western help? without western help, ukraine would have collapsed in a week or two. so i think at least let's admit this i don't see in the west some mega in spite of rhetoric, occasional some mega rhetoric. you know, even i think, do you remember immediately when russia announced the attack? you know what was first biden's, and i'm no sympathizer of biden's reaction. it was incredible. when he was asked what will be the countermeasures, biden said, it depends how radical russian interventions will be. if they want just part of the southeast, it's one thing. if they want all of it. so it's incredible how biden schaut immediately. an openness to compromise and so on and so on i just don't accept this obsession with russia has to. has to save its face and so on and so on but okay one thing okay. let's not lose time but to give you an example where i think ukraine should be brutally criticized you know how ukraine reacted to the fact do you remember that this year's nobel peace prize was given to some ukrainian charity organization and some belorians and some russianians who are half arrested they're really fighting for peace in russia. ukraine protested, claiming that although they protest the war in russia, but they didn't really achieve anything. it's a shame to give peace nobel prize to citizens of a state which is now attacking ukraine. this is sheer madness, i think. ukrainians here spoke the same language as putin and his ideologists. they spoke as if it's a conflict and here i also disagree with ukraine, you know, they like to speak about. we are defending europe. it's like europe against russia they speak almost the same language as din putin ideology here. no, we should insist on it. this is a struggle inherent to europe itself. we have our own fascists and so on neoofascists internal to russia itself and so on and so on. if we lose this universal approach and going to this water, you know ukraine is defending europe and so on, we are lost. okay
what yeah, yeah, okay, i agree, but... but uh... again, my problem is so... what's your idea? it's just that let's make compromises, compromises. i think this doesn't work. it works in the short term maybe, but then it goes on, it goes on, it goes on. i'm absolutely fanatically to avoid with peace, but okay, let's be concrete. now, even putin is giving hints now maybe that it's more or less a stalemate a kind of ukaine ukrainians recaptured some parts of it. yes, there are now maybe conditions for some negotiated peace but are you aware that these conditions were created by western help? without western help, ukraine would have collapsed in a week or two. so i think at least let's admit this i don't see in the west some mega in spite of rhetoric, occasional some mega rhetoric. you know, even i think, do you remember immediately when russia announced the attack? you know what was first biden's, and i'm no sympathizer of biden's reaction. it was incredible. when he was asked what will be the countermeasures, biden said, it depends how radical russian interventions will be. if they want just part of the southeast, it's one thing. if they want all of it. so it's incredible how biden schaut immediately. an openness to compromise and so on and so on i just don't accept this obsession with russia has to. has to save its face and so on and so on but okay one thing okay. let's not lose time but to give you an example where i think ukraine should be brutally criticized you know how ukraine reacted to the fact do you remember that this year's nobel peace prize was given to some ukrainian charity organization and some belorians and some russianians who are half arrested they're really fighting for peace in russia. ukraine protested, claiming that although they protest the war in russia, but they didn't really achieve anything. it's a shame to give peace nobel prize to citizens of a state which is now attacking ukraine. this is sheer madness, i think. ukrainians here spoke the same language as putin and his ideologists. they spoke as if it's a conflict and here i also disagree with ukraine, you know, they like to speak about. we are defending europe. it's like europe against russia they speak almost the same language as din putin ideology here. no, we should insist on it. this is a struggle inherent to europe itself. we have our own fascists and so on neoofascists internal to russia itself and so on and so on. if we lose this universal approach and going to this water, you know ukraine is defending europe and so on, we are lost. okay
Moderator
let's end on universal.
let's end on universal.
Slavoj Žižek
thank you.
thank you.
Moderator
okay,'s.
okay,'s.
Slavoj Žižek
yes'm.
yes'm.
Moderator
i know i know more people have questions. i'm sorry, we only have this, we're done at 9. it's already 901, so we're gonna're gonna to have to.
i know i know more people have questions. i'm sorry, we only have this, we're done at 9. it's already 901, so we're gonna're gonna to have to.
Slavoj Žižek
okay,, i will try to be short. you know what my bad taste joke here? il try.
okay,, i will try to be short. you know what my bad taste joke here? il try.
Moderator
to give you
to give you
Slavoj Žižek
we need to...
we need to...
Moderator
i need that button.
i need that button.
Slavoj Žižek
so what i'm tempted to do, it's a bad joke, to give you this pseudo-deep zen buddhist answers, you know, clap with one hand or whatever. okay, please i will try to be fast. let me start off.
so what i'm tempted to do, it's a bad joke, to give you this pseudo-deep zen buddhist answers, you know, clap with one hand or whatever. okay, please i will try to be fast. let me start off.
Audience Member 3
by saying.
by saying.
Moderator
oh, sorry. y.
oh, sorry. y.
Audience Member 3
let me start off by saying it's a great honor for me to meet someone of your renown on the left.
let me start off by saying it's a great honor for me to meet someone of your renown on the left.
Moderator
we.
we.
Audience Member 3
listen, listen.
listen, listen.
Moderator
wait,'re... let're gonna have to end it. and then why don't you come up and we'll talk to him.
wait,'re... let're gonna have to end it. and then why don't you come up and we'll talk to him.
Audience Member 3
a brief question, please. okay, real quick quick. how do we both show solidarity with people in the third world and the imperial periphery and sort of kind of concentrate our efforts on fighting the surge in fascism at home.
a brief question, please. okay, real quick quick. how do we both show solidarity with people in the third world and the imperial periphery and sort of kind of concentrate our efforts on fighting the surge in fascism at home.
Slavoj Žižek
sorry, i didn't get it. did you get it? you say it once more then.
sorry, i didn't get it. did you get it? you say it once more then.
Audience Member 3
yeah, how do we as western leftists both show solidarity with people in the third world and know fight imperialism and also combat the growing tide of fascism at home? is there a contradiction between the two or is there not? and if not, which one should we concentrate our efforts on?
yeah, how do we as western leftists both show solidarity with people in the third world and know fight imperialism and also combat the growing tide of fascism at home? is there a contradiction between the two or is there not? and if not, which one should we concentrate our efforts on?
Slavoj Žižek
you know, this is a big problem, but look, it was the same situation at a different level, totally. you know that. germany and japan were playing already this game when japan occupied in when nine forty whatever most of the far east there they constituted some kind of anti-imperialist league. when... germans bribed some peaceniks in united states here and some leftists in england claiming we should not fight imperialist wars and so on. this is the tragical situation. but nonetheless even if american intervention in world war ii a was the intervention of an imperialist superpower which point two gave an incredible boost to your not only military industry, but to your economy. look at the history of the united states. the great recession crisis was not over in 394-0. it's only during the world war ii years that american economy really really exploded. but my answer to you would be this one. yes, all that talk about... anti-imperialism but who are till now these great anti-imperialist friends of russia it is iran sorry it's tremendously important what is happening there it's an incredible thing how. women are on the top of an authentic revolution. something broke in iran. it's an incredibly important event and russia is on that side. then north korea is sending volunteers some other similar countries taliban of course, afghanistan and so on. on the other hand i'm not such a pessimist. if you ask me how to fight imperialism, there are many states even now, where i'm not a total pessimist, where leftists are in power and are doing a relatively good job. for example, my supreme example, i don't know if you agree is always, because i have friends there, linera morales, vice president bolivia. in ten years of morales' power, they did a true miracle. the standard of living of ordinary people is much higher. that's why you remember there was a coup d'etat. and then in so-called free elections, although controlled by the army, morales forces came back to power. it's extraordinary what is happening now in. latin america. leftism there it's not just those who screwed it up, like nicaragua, venezuela and cuba, with all respect for cuba, but they screwed it up basically, no? no, it's new countries like, okay, chile, it's problematic. they lost the referendum for constitution, but it's colombia, it's bolivia, okay. we'll see what i'm... saying is that i totally agree with you that the real test for the west is not to miss this moment to take to take, how should i put it,, getting rid of its own imperialist legacy really effectively. if not, the west will become, maybe survive as an island. so i totally agree with you. i even written text on it.
you know, this is a big problem, but look, it was the same situation at a different level, totally. you know that. germany and japan were playing already this game when japan occupied in when nine forty whatever most of the far east there they constituted some kind of anti-imperialist league. when... germans bribed some peaceniks in united states here and some leftists in england claiming we should not fight imperialist wars and so on. this is the tragical situation. but nonetheless even if american intervention in world war ii a was the intervention of an imperialist superpower which point two gave an incredible boost to your not only military industry, but to your economy. look at the history of the united states. the great recession crisis was not over in 394-0. it's only during the world war ii years that american economy really really exploded. but my answer to you would be this one. yes, all that talk about... anti-imperialism but who are till now these great anti-imperialist friends of russia it is iran sorry it's tremendously important what is happening there it's an incredible thing how. women are on the top of an authentic revolution. something broke in iran. it's an incredibly important event and russia is on that side. then north korea is sending volunteers some other similar countries taliban of course, afghanistan and so on. on the other hand i'm not such a pessimist. if you ask me how to fight imperialism, there are many states even now, where i'm not a total pessimist, where leftists are in power and are doing a relatively good job. for example, my supreme example, i don't know if you agree is always, because i have friends there, linera morales, vice president bolivia. in ten years of morales' power, they did a true miracle. the standard of living of ordinary people is much higher. that's why you remember there was a coup d'etat. and then in so-called free elections, although controlled by the army, morales forces came back to power. it's extraordinary what is happening now in. latin america. leftism there it's not just those who screwed it up, like nicaragua, venezuela and cuba, with all respect for cuba, but they screwed it up basically, no? no, it's new countries like, okay, chile, it's problematic. they lost the referendum for constitution, but it's colombia, it's bolivia, okay. we'll see what i'm... saying is that i totally agree with you that the real test for the west is not to miss this moment to take to take, how should i put it,, getting rid of its own imperialist legacy really effectively. if not, the west will become, maybe survive as an island. so i totally agree with you. i even written text on it.
Moderator
that let's end there. we're way over. we have to. thank you, slavo. thank you, everybody.
that let's end there. we're way over. we have to. thank you, slavo. thank you, everybody.