Why Radical Politics Needs Philosophy? A Masterclass With Slavoj Zizek. Day 1
Lecture · John Hillman ·
2023-11-21 · 2:21:23 · 16,988 words
with Cathy Newman
cinema-art-culturegeopolitics-warideologypsychoanalysishistoryreligion-theologycapitalismliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracyrace-antisemitismphilosophy-generallanguagesubjectivityfascism-populismhegel-dialecticscommunism-socialism
Žižek begins with a humorous anecdote about gambling in Macau and critiques Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon for its pseudo-Freudian premise that Napoleon conquered Europe to compensate for sexual impotence. He pivots to a geopolitical analysis of the Israel-Gaza conflict, arguing that both sides manipulate casualty statistics and that Israeli data is more reliable than Arab claims, while also criticizing Wellington’s role in suppressing post-war uprisings. He then recounts his controversial podcast comments on the film Oppenheimer, linking the Bhagavad Gita’s ethics of detached action to Heinrich Himmler’s justification of Nazi atrocities, and concludes with a critique of Gandhi’s caste politics. Žižek analyzes the Israel-Hamas conflict through historical irony, arguing that Nazi policies inadvertently aided Zionist state-building and that Israel may have tacitly fostered Hamas to split Palestinian politics. He extends this logic to a speculative conspiracy theory where Israeli hardliners and Hamas collude to manipulate global opinion. He then critiques Western liberal democracy, using examples from Africa, the UK, and the US to argue that ordinary populations often prefer authoritarian stability over chaotic democracy, challenging the notion of a privileged revolutionary subject. Žižek analyzes the historical context of the Nazi rise to power and the current Israel-Gaza conflict, arguing that understanding historical trauma (Versailles, Holocaust, Nakba) explains the specific intensity of contemporary reactions without relativizing the crimes. He critiques German hypocrisy regarding Israel, Western liberal sympathy for Palestinian suffering, and the ideological nature of language, concluding with a dialectical view on anti-Semitism and the role of Jews in European history. In a wide-ranging Q&A, Žižek responds to questions about Black philosophy and Afro-pessimism, arguing that thinkers in that tradition articulate a zero-level of subjectivity more radical than European philosophical accounts, and that non-Europeans are better placed to salvage the emancipatory legacy of modernity. He argues multiculturalism functions as a tool of imperialism, colonial powers kept colonized peoples locked in 'authentic' cultures, and proposes a universalism grounded in solidarity among the oppressed across cultures. The discussion traverses anti-Semitism's displacement logic, German guilt, the colonial dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and contemporary populism, contrasting Trump's cynical postmodernism with Bernie Sanders's reclamation of ordinary moral decency.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 41
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “pseudo-Freudian premise”
Žižek uses this to describe the film Napoleon’s claim that Napoleon’s military conquest was a sexual compensation for his inability to seduce Josephine.
Used to describe the coalition that opposed Napoleon, whom Žižek ironically frames as the successor to the Revolution and a hope for peace.
Žižek’s ironic label for the Luddites and Chartists, whom he argues were the true progressive uprisings crushed by Wellington, rather than Napoleon.
as “act at a distance”
Žižek identifies this as the core ethical mechanism of the Bhagavad Gita (and Zen) that allowed totalitarians like Himmler to commit atrocities without feeling personally guilty.
Žižek’s formulation that the decline of Buddhism (which opposed caste) and the rise of Hinduism was a major historical error for India.
as “Zionism without Zionism”
The ironic outcome where Nazi efforts to expel Jews from Europe inadvertently facilitated the creation of a Jewish state, as Jews were allowed to take property only if they spent it on arms for Palestine.
The psychoanalytic/logical structure where saying 'A' secretly means 'not A'; Žižek applies this to the claim that liberals secretly support Hamas by focusing on details rather than condemning it outright.
A description of Paul Kagame, used to illustrate the argument that oppressive but stable authoritarianism can be preferable to chaotic multi-party democracy in post-colonial contexts.
as “immigrant proletarians”
Alain Badiou's term for illegal immigrants as a revolutionary subject; Žižek critiques this, arguing they retain 'ideological chains' (religion) despite lacking material ones.
Žižek's ironic hope that the democratic protests in Israel serve as a counter-force to the hardliners, potentially aligning with Hamas's goal of isolating Israel internationally.
Žižek rejects the common wisdom that understanding a historical phenomenon (like Hitler) implies forgiving it, insisting on Kantian responsibility.
as “enemy is someone whose story you were not ready to hear”
A pacifist platitude Žižek hates, which he uses to illustrate the failure of liberal empathy to grasp the structural reality of enemies.
as “pay for your ex-crime by supporting your ex-enemy”
Žižek's formulation of German foreign policy: justifying support for Israel as a payment for the Holocaust, which he argues fuels anti-Semitism.
The binary trap of Western liberalism: the Third World Other is good only as a suffering victim, but becomes a terrorist when they organize politically.
Žižek's dismissal of BRICS as a mere agreement for non-Western powers to 'do your own crimes in peace' while tolerating each other, lacking any normative value.
as “Hamas-Attacke hat keinen Kontext”
A German newspaper headline Žižek mocks; he argues the shock of the attack can only be explained through its specific historical context (Holocaust/Nakba).
as “big other is not there”
as “cosmopolitanism”
as “normativity involved in language”
as “think in language against language”
Hegel's term meaning sublation: simultaneously overcoming, preserving, and destroying, exemplified by productive German wordplay with double meanings.
as “nothing embodied”
Žižek's phrase for the pure negativity Afro-pessimists inhabit, linked to a Cartesian pure thought stripped of all particular content.
as “zero level of subjectivity”
The condition of 'nothing embodied' that Afro-pessimists articulate, which Žižek treats as more radical than European philosophical accounts of subjectivity.
as “Cartesianism”
Pure thought stripped of all particular content; Žižek invokes it as what the Afro-pessimist tradition is closest to in its radicalism, making Afro-pessimism a contemporary heir of Cartesian subjectivity.
The emergence of a specific type of feminine subjectivity via radical loss; Žižek names Toni Morrison's Beloved as its deepest literary lesson.
as “multiculturalism as tool of imperialism”
Žižek's thesis that colonial and apartheid powers promoted cultural difference to keep colonized peoples subordinated in 'authentic' identities rather than assimilating them.
as “universalism of the oppressed”
Žižek's formula: 'all cultures are shit,' so the only genuine universalism is collaboration between the oppressed of one culture and the oppressed of another, cutting across cultural particularity.
as “emancipatory legacy of modern Europe”
The universalist-emancipatory strand of European modernity that Žižek argues only oppressed outsiders (Africans, others) can now authentically save, since Europeans are 'too corrupt.'
The progressive dimension of digital postmodernity: it allows formerly excluded Third World countries to bypass earlier European stages of development and connect directly to the present.
as “social panopticon”
Term (first used by a questioner, engaged by Žižek) for the atmosphere of social surveillance and guilt in Germany around antisemitism debates that silences legitimate political speech.
The pattern by which each group (Slovenians→Croats→Serbs→Balkans) displaces racist othering downward onto a 'lower' group, with Jews filling the terminal slot.
Racists secretly do not believe their own racist myth (e.g. Nazis didn't look Aryan) and displace it onto another group; racism is undermined by exposing that the racist doesn't actually believe it.
as “cynical postmodern populism”
Žižek's characterization of Trump as the quintessential postmodern politician: self-parodying, obscene, and cynical, contrasted with Sanders's earnest moral decency.
as “silent moral majority”
The 'naively neutral moral ground of decency' that Žižek argues the left must reclaim from the right, rather than ceding it to right-wing populists.
Stories he reaches for 7
Reinhard Heydrich proposed sending Jews to Palestine (Uganda/Madagascar ideas) and argued that Zionists helped build a Jewish state by taking their property to buy arms in Germany, which ironically armed the future state.
“if you signed that you go to Palestine then you were allowed to use your property but to spend it in Germany on arms”
Žižek picked up an apartheid propaganda booklet from outside the South African embassy in London, which argued that introducing democracy would destroy the rich cultural diversity of different peoples, a pure multiculturalist argument in service of apartheid.
“I took a booklet of course for apartheid and you know what was their argument pure multiculturalism”
Žižek's mother, after a Jewish friend left, noted that she had counted money 'strangely intensely', revealing covert antisemitism beneath apparent friendship.
“you know she is a nice this Jewish lady my best friend but did you notice in what strangely intense way she was counting the money”
Žižek mentions his friend Hanif Kureishi is in a vegetative state to explain his urgency and emotional state before starting the Q&A.
“my friend although we are not on the same wavelength Hanif Kureishi... he is totally cannot move from neck down”
Žižek cites Heidegger's most extreme claim: that antisemitism (killing Jews) was actually what the Jews themselves wanted, and the Germans were merely manipulated by them to do it, Žižek calls it 'breathtaking.'
“anti-Semitism which means killing the Jews is the Jews themselves who wanted it and we were just we Germans were just manipulated by them to do it”
Founding father Moshe Dayan admitted the conflict was tragic and that Israel took Palestinian land, which Žižek finds more refreshing and honest than current rhetoric.
“Moshe Dayan... said don't blame them we should see the situation we took their land”
In Egypt and Algeria, middle-class protesters demanded democracy, but when Muslim fundamentalists won elections, they begrudgingly accepted military takeovers (like Sisi) to stop them.
“the very middle class educated circles... begrudgingly accepted new military takeover to get rid of the fundamentalists”
Works invoked 17
Bhagavad Gita book
Žižek argues that while spiritually noble, its ethics of 'acting at a distance' were tragically misused by totalitarians like Himmler.
Mein Kampf book
Žižek reads it to understand the humiliation of Versailles and the economic crisis, not to forgive Hitler.
Oppenheimer film
Used as a case study to discuss the intersection of sex, religion, and ethics, and the Indian protest against its depiction.
Beloved book
Toni Morrison's novel; Žižek calls it 'the underlined three times lesson on feminine subjectivity' showing how through radical loss a specific feminine subjectivity emerges.
Christian Atheism book
Žižek's own forthcoming book (at time of talk); will be 'hated by Christians and by atheists'; goes deeply into Afro-pessimism as a philosophical rather than merely pessimistic tradition.
Gender Trouble book
Cited by German critics as the basis for a claim that Butler's work aims to destroy Israel, which Žižek uses to illustrate German hypocrisy.
The Ghost Writer film
A movie by Polanski based on Robert Harris's book; Žižek uses its plot (Blair as a CIA puppet) as a metaphor for the Israel-Hamas collusion theory.
Fanon's work; called 'incredible' for seeing through the false opposition between authentic African origins and white emancipatory thought. ASR transcribes as 'mask white masks', corrected.
Philosophical Salon journal
A publication that ran a text 'Deconstructing the State of Israel', which Žižek cites as an example of intellectual dishonesty in Germany.
Black Notebooks book
Heidegger's notebooks, cited for his horrifying justification of the Holocaust as Jewish self-destruction.
Cheka other
The original KGB, cited for its high percentage of Jewish members in its early years.
Code Napoleon book
Mentioned as a positive legacy of the French occupation of Moscow, being 'much more egalitarian' than previous laws.
Wave of Hollywood films critical of American ideology, made by German emigrants; cited as example of outsider distance enabling ideological critique.
Napoleon film
Žižek criticizes the film for its 'disgustingly primitive' pseudo-Freudian premise and compares the director to Goebbels.
Nollywood other
West African (especially Nigerian/Ghanaian) cheap digital cinema; Žižek expresses genuine enthusiasm, using it as an example of postmodern technology enabling developmental bypass.
Ontological Terror book
Calvin Warren's book; quoted by the questioner ('we are still on the path to developing a phenomenology of black spirit'); Žižek receives the reference positively.
Fanon's other major work; Žižek values Fanon overall but says Black Skin, White Masks matters more to him than this book. ASR transcribes as 'damnent of the earth', corrected.
People invoked 66
Bezalel Smotrich negative
Israeli hardliner; part of the imagined conspiracy with Hamas in the 'Ghostwriter' scenario.
Calvin Warren positive
Questioner quotes Warren's Ontological Terror; Žižek receives the passage positively in context of Afro-pessimism discussion.
Named by questioner alongside Moten and Warren as a Black radical tradition figure; Žižek makes no specific comment.
Frantz Fanon positive
Described as 'absolute' for Žižek; especially Black Skin, White Masks (ASR: 'mask white masks') for seeing through the false opposition between 'authentic African origins' and white emancipatory thought.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi negative
Criticized for championing a separate black ethnic identity, which aligned perfectly with and was supported by the apartheid regime.
Mahatma Gandhi negative
Žižek criticizes Gandhi for a 'typically fascist move' of supporting the caste system and aligning with whites in South Africa.
Robert Habeck negative
German Green Party finance minister, cited for his private racist remark to Feldman ('Das sind doch keine reinen Deutschen').
Mentioned only as Sahra Wagenknecht's partner (ASR 'mistress' likely means 'companion/partner').
Paul Kagame positive
Rwandan leader; described as a 'soft dictator' who brought peace and economic growth, used to argue that authoritarian stability can be preferable to chaotic democracy.
Itamar Ben-Gvir negative
Israeli hardliner; part of the imagined conspiracy with Hamas.
Mentioned in context of the Iraq-Iran war; Žižek notes the West secretly supported his attack on Iran and then excluded Iran from the prosecution at his trial.
Žižek argues Wellington was the 'bad guy' who crushed the Luddite and Chartist uprisings.
Osama bin Laden positive
Mentioned as an example of a terrorist who was previously a CIA agent supporting the fight against Russians in Afghanistan.
Robert Oppenheimer positive
Referenced as the subject of a controversy regarding the Bhagavad Gita; Žižek uses it to discuss ethics and religion.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Cited for his Politburo, which was more than half Jewish, to argue against the claim that early Soviet communism was anti-Semitic.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Invoked twice: first in defense of foreign philosophical words as 'the most precious part,' then at the close: 'Adorno would have loved this' (the bad-taste joke atmosphere of the Q&A).
David Grossman positive
Israeli writer; the swimming lesson anecdote cited as 'Judaism at its purest', the Kafka spirit of taking threats literally and responding practically.
Actor playing the ghostwriter in 'The Ghostwriter.'
Jacques Lacan positive
Referenced as the source of the concept 'there is no sexual relationship,' which the film Napoleon misappropriates.
Referenced in the context of the film’s pseudo-Freudian plot about Napoleon’s sexual inadequacy.
Moshe Dayan positive
Founding father of Israel; Žižek finds his admission that Israel took land 'refreshing' and 'honest' compared to current rhetoric.
Fritz Lang positive
Cited as example of German émigré filmmaker whose outsider distance from America enabled critical depictions of American ideology.
Suella Braverman negative
UK Home Secretary; Žižek mocks her Rwanda asylum policy as 'feminism in politics' and notes the Nazis considered similar locations (Uganda/Madagascar).
Edward Said positive
Agrees with Said's challenge to the obsession with 'whose land is it' as the wrong framing for the Palestine-Israel conflict.
King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud positive
Cited for telling Truman that Europe should not atone for the Holocaust with Arab land; Žižek uses this to show European hypocrisy in founding Israel.
Žižek disagrees with Butler's stance on Hamas but defends her status as an intellectual against German critics who dismiss her work as a covert attack on Israel.
Mentioned in the context of the film Oppenheimer.
Donald Trump negative
Žižek says Trump has become 'stupid,' 'forgetful,' and lost his 'funny lively' aspect, resembling Biden.
Deborah Feldman positive
A German-Jewish citizen and author, cited for her investigation into the term 'reiner Deutscher' and her dialogue with Palestinians.
Egyptian leader; the 'obscenity' of the Arab Spring was that protesters accepted his military takeover to stop the Muslim Brotherhood.
Alain Badiou negative
Ex-friend; Žižek critiques Badiou's theory that 'illegal immigrants' are the new revolutionary subject, arguing they still have ideological chains.
Robert Harris positive
Author of the book 'The Ghostwriter' on which the movie is based.
A friend who is in a vegetative state after a stroke; Žižek mentions him with sadness.
Leon Trotsky positive
Head of the early Soviet leadership, cited as an example of Jewish influence in the Cheka and Politburo.
Egyptian leader overthrown during the Arab Spring.
Žižek was with him at Duke University; context for the Egyptian friend anecdote. ASR transcribes as 'Fred Jameson', inferred as Fredric Jameson (Duke affiliation and left-intellectual context match).
Friedrich Engels positive
Žižek calls Engels a 'real genius' for predicting WWI casualties and the subsequent WWII revenge war in his writings.
Adolf Hitler negative
Žižek insists on Kantian responsibility for Hitler's acts, rejecting the idea that understanding his rise relativizes or forgives his crimes.
Bernie Sanders positive
Not Žižek's personal type (Sanders refused dirty jokes); but Žižek endorses his political formula of targeting impoverished white Trump-leaning voters rather than the liberal middle ground.
Julian Assange positive
Žižek expresses sadness and solidarity with Assange, describing his imprisonment as 'horror' and 'paranoia-inducing.'
Joseph Goebbels negative
Used as a comparison for Ridley Scott’s 'primitive' premise.
Heinrich Himmler negative
Used as a foil to illustrate how the Bhagavad Gita’s ethics were misappropriated by Nazis to justify atrocities.
Benjamin Netanyahu positive
Present at the Eli Academy scene; Žižek uses this to illustrate the 'democratic awareness' of Jews protesting hardliners.
Named by questioner as part of the Black radical tradition; Žižek admits he doesn't know much about this work.
Martin Heidegger negative
Cited for his Black Notebooks, where he justifies the Holocaust as the 'self-destruction' of Jews for embodying rootless cosmopolitanism.
Eva Illouz negative
Attacked Žižek in the Guardian/Suddeutsche Zeitung; Žižek plans to reply in Haaretz.
Roman Polanski positive
Director of 'The Ghostwriter,' which Žižek 'quite like[s]' and uses for his analysis.
Napoleon positive
Žižek defends Napoleon as a successor to the Revolution who hoped for peace, contrasting him with Wellington.
Javier Milei negative
Called Žižek's 'new ideal figure' meaning a figure of 'pure horror'; embodies 'direct madness' and the world's political collapse. ASR transcribes name phonetically; inferred as Javier Milei (Argentine president, matches context).
Ridley Scott negative
Žižek mocks Scott’s film Napoleon, calling its premise 'disgustingly primitive' and comparing the director to Goebbels.
Shirō Ishii positive
Japanese doctor who conducted horrific biological experiments; cited by Žižek as an example of 'pure horror' that received US amnesty.
Mao Zedong positive
Cited as a Marxist who shifted the revolutionary subject from workers to peasant farmers.
Reinhard Heydrich positive
Father of the Holocaust; Žižek quotes him to show that Nazi policies ironically facilitated Zionist state-building by allowing Jews to buy arms.
Mentioned in the context of the Gaza war scandal regarding burned corpses.
Toni Morrison positive
Met at Princeton; calls her 'wonderful' and explicitly not 'a politically correct bitch'; Beloved is 'the underlined three times lesson on feminine subjectivity.'
Otto von Habsburg negative
Cited for his claim that Slovenians are just Austrians speaking another language; Žižek contextualizes Austria as 'more Nazi than Germany itself.'
Jürgen Habermas negative
Habermasian notion of communicative rationality briefly invoked as an implicit contrast/foil to Žižek's view on language and normativity.
A punker Palestinian friend of Žižek living in Lod, used to illustrate personal connections across the conflict.
Described with 'I like her in a horrible way'; Žižek cautiously supports her critique of open-borders liberalism while worrying she is fishing for far-right votes; identifies her as Oskar Lafontaine's partner.
Vladimir Putin negative
Cited for inverting the Rurik/Scandinavian origin of 'Russia' into a nationalist myth justifying territorial claims (e.g. to Sweden).
Nelson Mandela positive
Praised (with qualifications: 'I had problems with him') for never playing the card of 'more authentic black experience', contrasted favorably with Buthelezi.
Joseph Stalin negative
Cited for changing the Soviet stance to 'cosmopolitanism' (a code for anti-Semitism) in the late 1920s.
Mentioned in context of Crusader history: when Saladin re-occupied Jerusalem, Jews (expelled by Crusaders) were allowed to return, unlike under Crusader rule.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the concept of Verneinung (negation), which Žižek uses to illustrate how language structures ideological content.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for Aufhebung and his use of productive wordplay encoding double meanings; referred to at the opening as Žižek's explanatory framework for dialectical language.
Tony Blair positive
Used in the movie 'The Ghostwriter' as a CIA puppet; Žižek uses this as a metaphor for the alleged Israel-Hamas collusion.
Transcript 106 turns
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To
To
Slavoj Žižek
discover the enemy you have to know him the enemy so okay but you know where I was this summer you will not believe me I was with my son on educational trip to know the enemy in Macau and I wasn't ripped off I I won dollars I don't know how by some miracle or what but I won money there actually so maybe I'm in the wrong profession I should move there okay okay okay I haven't yet seen it starts tomorrow I think no it opens sorry Ridley Scott Napoleon no I'm tempted to write another review before seeing the movie announcing why it's not worth seeing and so on because a couple of friends who saw it on some previews for critics told me that the basic idea is so disgustingly primitive is it already starting no it's not oh yeah the talk before the talk dialectic you know then if I talk long enough we can skip the talk no it's that the basic premise is a kind of a pseudo-Freudian one or even a version of Lacan there is no sexual relationship that Napoleon was never sure did he really seduce conquer his wife Josephine so as a supplement he conquered half of Europe in order to obfuscate this fact that he cannot even my God I become like Goebbels burn the movie when I hear that you know it's just breathtaking sorry lemon but still I like a little bit Napoleon because I read now from a Russian historian a good report that when Napoleon he was behind his time he thought I captured Moscow is the end no of Russia but okay many people left but a couple of hundred of thousand remained in Moscow for those two three months after Russian after French occupation and nonetheless you know something good remained the French introduced there Code Napoleon the law which was much more egalitarian at least compared with the old you know and nonetheless okay I'm no big fan of Napoleon if for no other thing because of what he did in Haiti don't forget that totally opposite to Jacobins no but nonetheless the problem was not that he really wanted to conquer Europe the problem was that he was nonetheless a successor to revolution and simply European big powers others didn't want to accept it he was more okay honest hoping for hoping for peace and especially as I was boring them the ladies already before don't trust Wellington who is now celebrated as listen after Napoleonic wars you know there were how do you pronounce them those who were smashing machines Luddites Luddites and Chartists and these were true uprisings and Wellington was the bad guy who militarily squashed this killing at least hundreds you know because at that point counting was almost as unreliable as today in the Gaza war because no but there are some beautiful paradoxes there the first is that you know it's not that the how are they called the Gaza side is elevating the numbers no Israel claims it's more than that we killed so Israel gives higher numbers but you know why because they claim that Hamas covers up doesn't say about how many of their soldiers are killed so paradoxically Hamas numbers are lower on the other hand it's so sad and this shows I'm sorry apology I'm the usual European racist no usually I thought nonetheless Israel more European that you can trust their data more no they are as I told to an Arab friend and he laughed that Israel IDF informations are they are lying more than Arabs sorry for the obscenity because you remember those burned corpses in the Kibbutz first they claimed decapitated children then IDF officially withdrew this but Biden wasn't informed you follow the scandal and he said I saw the pictures then second point you remember they did show some burned bodies claimed this is what Hamas did now a couple of days ago a representative of IDF admitted that these are really Hamas bodies burned by Israeli army I mean whom can you trust no whatever whatever I say okay you are the boss yeah
discover the enemy you have to know him the enemy so okay but you know where I was this summer you will not believe me I was with my son on educational trip to know the enemy in Macau and I wasn't ripped off I I won dollars I don't know how by some miracle or what but I won money there actually so maybe I'm in the wrong profession I should move there okay okay okay I haven't yet seen it starts tomorrow I think no it opens sorry Ridley Scott Napoleon no I'm tempted to write another review before seeing the movie announcing why it's not worth seeing and so on because a couple of friends who saw it on some previews for critics told me that the basic idea is so disgustingly primitive is it already starting no it's not oh yeah the talk before the talk dialectic you know then if I talk long enough we can skip the talk no it's that the basic premise is a kind of a pseudo-Freudian one or even a version of Lacan there is no sexual relationship that Napoleon was never sure did he really seduce conquer his wife Josephine so as a supplement he conquered half of Europe in order to obfuscate this fact that he cannot even my God I become like Goebbels burn the movie when I hear that you know it's just breathtaking sorry lemon but still I like a little bit Napoleon because I read now from a Russian historian a good report that when Napoleon he was behind his time he thought I captured Moscow is the end no of Russia but okay many people left but a couple of hundred of thousand remained in Moscow for those two three months after Russian after French occupation and nonetheless you know something good remained the French introduced there Code Napoleon the law which was much more egalitarian at least compared with the old you know and nonetheless okay I'm no big fan of Napoleon if for no other thing because of what he did in Haiti don't forget that totally opposite to Jacobins no but nonetheless the problem was not that he really wanted to conquer Europe the problem was that he was nonetheless a successor to revolution and simply European big powers others didn't want to accept it he was more okay honest hoping for hoping for peace and especially as I was boring them the ladies already before don't trust Wellington who is now celebrated as listen after Napoleonic wars you know there were how do you pronounce them those who were smashing machines Luddites Luddites and Chartists and these were true uprisings and Wellington was the bad guy who militarily squashed this killing at least hundreds you know because at that point counting was almost as unreliable as today in the Gaza war because no but there are some beautiful paradoxes there the first is that you know it's not that the how are they called the Gaza side is elevating the numbers no Israel claims it's more than that we killed so Israel gives higher numbers but you know why because they claim that Hamas covers up doesn't say about how many of their soldiers are killed so paradoxically Hamas numbers are lower on the other hand it's so sad and this shows I'm sorry apology I'm the usual European racist no usually I thought nonetheless Israel more European that you can trust their data more no they are as I told to an Arab friend and he laughed that Israel IDF informations are they are lying more than Arabs sorry for the obscenity because you remember those burned corpses in the Kibbutz first they claimed decapitated children then IDF officially withdrew this but Biden wasn't informed you follow the scandal and he said I saw the pictures then second point you remember they did show some burned bodies claimed this is what Hamas did now a couple of days ago a representative of IDF admitted that these are really Hamas bodies burned by Israeli army I mean whom can you trust no whatever whatever I say okay you are the boss yeah
Cathy Newman
I'm just quickly writing my intro are we is everybody in we're still checking a couple of people in and we've still got three minutes
I'm just quickly writing my intro are we is everybody in we're still checking a couple of people in and we've still got three minutes
Slavoj Žižek
in fact okay okay okay okay then I will tell you quickly another story to fill in the time how I like to get into trouble two things first I'm a little bit sad to be here today but I am getting paranoiac because I wanted to use these two days to visit Assange who is now half forgotten but the horror goes on he is still hours per day totally alone one hour walking around with the guard if you visit him it's still through the glass only and they made it so difficult to visit him now you have to announce it two-three weeks ago and then not on a day they give you a day and the time and I'm not megalomaniac I'm not saying that I am under control but probably his wife of Assange with whom I was in contact is under control so imagine what date day I was given now today at PM I think this is a little bit too much for because then I tried desperately to ask her to contact the prison they said no no no and then she said but there are no other visitors you know it's not that there is a full line or whatever another thing where I descend two minutes then we begin did you among the troubles I got into I love this one maybe you followed it I said something of which I'm proud sorry if there are some Hindus here but I'm dirty in all directions you know in a reaction when I was asked about Oppenheimer the movie at one point you maybe heard this trouble because there were friends from India told me hundreds of emails they told me one of them literally for next couple of months if you plan to don't visit India because I said something of which I'm proud I think I was correct you remember when Oppenheimer was shown first Indians protested that while he Oppenheimer is fucking Florence Pugh she asks him or the other way round to read from Bhagavad Gita and Indians said how can you do this dirty sex and our most noble book and I in two three podcasts I said what I think that I agree with Indians this combination is horrible but the other way round there is a beautiful sex and they spoil it by one of the most obscene dirty books imaginable and then I said you know all totalitarians I know about Heinrich Himmler I know about in Brazil military rule police they loved Bhagavad Gita you know this idea don't identify with your act act at a distance this is what the great ethical thinker and I'm not joking he was really bothered by these problems Heinrich Himmler said we Nazis in our duty we have to do horrible things kill Jewish children blah blah how to do it without ourselves becoming dirty his answer was Bhagavad Gita Zen Buddhism Zen Buddhism is also but Himmler made the choice no Buddhism was maybe because you know I'm not so much against Buddhism nonetheless I think and many of my Indian friends agree that the greatest spiritual tragedy of India was when around zero hour our count no after years Buddhism lost and Hinduism made a comeback at least you can say about Buddhism that it was against castes which our great hero not mine Gandhi never he just he did again to annoy you he did a typically fascist move he said each caste is a child of God it's on its own proper level but you should remain at your post also in in South Africa he fought white racism but friends from India send me fragments not on behalf of total equality he objected the basic division white-black he just said us Indians you should count us as whites so don't sorry now let me let me jump in here and bring some feminines in yeah yeah yeah exactly and try in fact but I'm do I'm doing a non-introduction anyway so that probably fits so welcome everybody so good to see so many of you to this Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities event our regular
in fact okay okay okay okay then I will tell you quickly another story to fill in the time how I like to get into trouble two things first I'm a little bit sad to be here today but I am getting paranoiac because I wanted to use these two days to visit Assange who is now half forgotten but the horror goes on he is still hours per day totally alone one hour walking around with the guard if you visit him it's still through the glass only and they made it so difficult to visit him now you have to announce it two-three weeks ago and then not on a day they give you a day and the time and I'm not megalomaniac I'm not saying that I am under control but probably his wife of Assange with whom I was in contact is under control so imagine what date day I was given now today at PM I think this is a little bit too much for because then I tried desperately to ask her to contact the prison they said no no no and then she said but there are no other visitors you know it's not that there is a full line or whatever another thing where I descend two minutes then we begin did you among the troubles I got into I love this one maybe you followed it I said something of which I'm proud sorry if there are some Hindus here but I'm dirty in all directions you know in a reaction when I was asked about Oppenheimer the movie at one point you maybe heard this trouble because there were friends from India told me hundreds of emails they told me one of them literally for next couple of months if you plan to don't visit India because I said something of which I'm proud I think I was correct you remember when Oppenheimer was shown first Indians protested that while he Oppenheimer is fucking Florence Pugh she asks him or the other way round to read from Bhagavad Gita and Indians said how can you do this dirty sex and our most noble book and I in two three podcasts I said what I think that I agree with Indians this combination is horrible but the other way round there is a beautiful sex and they spoil it by one of the most obscene dirty books imaginable and then I said you know all totalitarians I know about Heinrich Himmler I know about in Brazil military rule police they loved Bhagavad Gita you know this idea don't identify with your act act at a distance this is what the great ethical thinker and I'm not joking he was really bothered by these problems Heinrich Himmler said we Nazis in our duty we have to do horrible things kill Jewish children blah blah how to do it without ourselves becoming dirty his answer was Bhagavad Gita Zen Buddhism Zen Buddhism is also but Himmler made the choice no Buddhism was maybe because you know I'm not so much against Buddhism nonetheless I think and many of my Indian friends agree that the greatest spiritual tragedy of India was when around zero hour our count no after years Buddhism lost and Hinduism made a comeback at least you can say about Buddhism that it was against castes which our great hero not mine Gandhi never he just he did again to annoy you he did a typically fascist move he said each caste is a child of God it's on its own proper level but you should remain at your post also in in South Africa he fought white racism but friends from India send me fragments not on behalf of total equality he objected the basic division white-black he just said us Indians you should count us as whites so don't sorry now let me let me jump in here and bring some feminines in yeah yeah yeah exactly and try in fact but I'm do I'm doing a non-introduction anyway so that probably fits so welcome everybody so good to see so many of you to this Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities event our regular
Cathy Newman
masterclasses with Slavoj Žižek and I'm not going to do a long introduction not least because it often
masterclasses with Slavoj Žižek and I'm not going to do a long introduction not least because it often
Slavoj Žižek
leads to excursus that take him away from the script and so on and also mainly because you all know who he is and online
leads to excursus that take him away from the script and so on and also mainly because you all know who he is and online
Cathy Newman
you know I look in on X or whatever you get kind of about a tweet a minute sort of pertaining to Slavoj and his work and so you can get that really refracted impression of him through social networks his latest book though came out last month Freedom: A Disease Without Cure and I also noticed I mean you're extremely busy right now I see like Novara podcast and Philosophical Salon and I wondered maybe this is evidence of of history sort of moving through the negative because much of that came off the back of a life so I'm negative I'm a bad guy no but maybe when I lose with my shit I my shit will fertilize some progress maybe yeah no but that's what I thought was like it came off the back of a sort of wounding experience in Germany yeah at the Frankfurt Book Fair which I'm sure will come up and that sort of propelled a yeah new set of thoughts so Slavoj Žižek is the international director of Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and has a long association with us going back I think to at least the idea of communism conference which was in maybe at that point I think I was already you were already involved somehow involved here yeah even
you know I look in on X or whatever you get kind of about a tweet a minute sort of pertaining to Slavoj and his work and so you can get that really refracted impression of him through social networks his latest book though came out last month Freedom: A Disease Without Cure and I also noticed I mean you're extremely busy right now I see like Novara podcast and Philosophical Salon and I wondered maybe this is evidence of of history sort of moving through the negative because much of that came off the back of a life so I'm negative I'm a bad guy no but maybe when I lose with my shit I my shit will fertilize some progress maybe yeah no but that's what I thought was like it came off the back of a sort of wounding experience in Germany yeah at the Frankfurt Book Fair which I'm sure will come up and that sort of propelled a yeah new set of thoughts so Slavoj Žižek is the international director of Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and has a long association with us going back I think to at least the idea of communism conference which was in maybe at that point I think I was already you were already involved somehow involved here yeah even
Slavoj Žižek
longer so
longer so
Cathy Newman
today's session the two sessions today and tomorrow titled why radical politics needs philosophy and the nominal name for today's class is interpretation as a political act and just a word about format Slavoj will speak I don't know maybe an hour maybe a little more he's got quite a pile there but also lots of scratching out after he's completed his talk then open it up to questions and answers we'll have a roving mic and I hope people get to contribute but I shall just hand it over to you thanks
today's session the two sessions today and tomorrow titled why radical politics needs philosophy and the nominal name for today's class is interpretation as a political act and just a word about format Slavoj will speak I don't know maybe an hour maybe a little more he's got quite a pile there but also lots of scratching out after he's completed his talk then open it up to questions and answers we'll have a roving mic and I hope people get to contribute but I shall just hand it over to you thanks
Slavoj Žižek
please I will try to give already today some Q and A time because tomorrow I have immediately after at another very traumatic visit my friend although we are not on the same wavelength Hanif Kureishi you know and he learned now the very bad news no he is totally cannot move from neck down and it's till the end of his life no in vegetative state it's sad okay let's begin let's go on the first thing that does strike me in today's polemics about Israel-Hamas-Gaza war is an anti-Semitic context in many of those who praise Israel in a letter defending Israel from my critical remarks a Slovenian Catholic author concludes that the main problem of Israel quote I just translated it from Slovene is neither Hamas nor the King of the North as the Bible calls the next great aggressor on Israel Russia, Iran, Turkey it is it's Israel's own persistence in sin its own fall from God since Israel is today maybe the most atheist country in the world so I found it quite breathtaking good luck with such defenders no again that that you kindly mentioned that Frankfurt Book Fair speech you know I was just shocked there because they claimed I by mentioning just Palestinians I went as far as possible in moderation if you want to read it it's available on the web all the names are I quote are Jewish names and even some suspicious Jewish names for example I positively quote you know whom Moshe Dayan who when in also on a smaller sky the same thing as today a group from Gaza invaded southern Israel and kidnapped killed a guy he said don't blame them we should see the situation we took their land and so on and so on my God the founding fathers of Israel it's so refreshing I'm not kidding to read them today how much more honest they were none of this it says in the Bible blah blah blah no they admitted it's a tragic conflict in no way they assumed that they are right so and then I spoke with a Jewish friend in Frankfurt and he told me and this is my answer to those who claim why are you so soft towards Israel and so on well first I must tell you something I don't know if you know I do sincerely condemn the Hamas attack not you know why because I didn't know people who were killed there but I know people who know them they were absolutely the most progressive Israeli Jews they were all the time in contact with Gaza bringing them doctors medicine and so on and so on so the lesson was clear but again the crazy yes the Jewish friend told me that that's what that's what annoys Zionist hardliners you know if I just say long live Hamas yeah yeah another idiot but because I focused on precise details and so on you know okay let's not lose time and let's go on because I was also interrupted there in Germany when I quoted Reinhard Heydrich the father of Holocaust and I quoted him when he mentions something that is today unmentionable that already Heydrich was totally in favor of the basic Zionist idea of Jews re-occupying Palestine because at that point when he wrote what I will read you now in the Nazis didn't yet decide on Holocaust they played with just the idea was just get the Jews out of Europe one idea was they didn't copy it from you maybe your Suella my favorite feminine this is feminism in politics she she got this idea of Rwanda well the Nazis didn't have Rwanda but Uganda no that was the idea then it was Madagascar and then here is what again Heydrich the father of Holocaust wrote in we must separate the Jews into two categories the Zionists and the partisans of assimilation the Zionists profess a strict racial concept and through emigration to Palestine they help to build their own Jewish state our good wishes and our official goodwill goes with goes with them now you will say this is just a statement formal no in the late 30s oh my God I like to discover dirty details in the late 30s when Jews were pushed out of Germany you know if you proclaimed that you want to go to Palestine money because for ordinary Jews who wanted to go to the west you you have to leave your property in Germany but if you signed that you go to Palestine then you were allowed to use your property but to spend it in Germany on arms and on agricultural machines so that's the irony many of the arms that that Jews used to become independent were because of this were the Nazi arms so I will return later don't be afraid to my unconditional rejection of every form of anti-Semitism because you know now the situation is crazy check it up a month ago in Die Zeit the great center German weekly I published an interview no published it was only on their website whose title it was they of course took out a phrase of me to make it more Hamas soll vernichtet sein Hamas had to be annihilated and the reaction was no I'm just saying this in reality I secretly support Hamas so you know like if you say A you mean A if you say the opposite it's the hidden way to say A so why am I mentioning this now comes the dark part I will show you and I cannot emphasize how I'm now in such a desperate move that I'm ready to criticize everybody like you know some liberals who left liberals who have a sympathy for even Hamas they claim it's nonetheless a guerrilla movement and so on well the first thing to note is that it's more or less so my friends are telling me and I don't don't don't take seriously marginal media although in these times I don't know why one should take seriously the big media you know how Hamas grew no it was part of the Jewish strategy Hamas was till a very marginal group but then Israel decided that the only way to prevent or the way to prevent two state solution was to split the Palestinians and they made the same mistake as Americans in Afghanistan Americans also I mean name me one of today's terrorists from that era who wasn't at some point CIA agent you know Osama bin Laden was when he fought against the Russians he was supporting so what I'm saying is that they even funded with money Hamas the idea was just let's keep the Palestinians split so again second thing I really please I'm trying to provoke you I don't have a firm position I just think today it's the time to say everything not lies of course but everything we know for example you know we somehow think if Gaza somehow returns to normality that it will be some kind of a democratic republic and so on who knows you know I'm getting tired of this liberal idea we should distinguish between Hamas and the mass of ordinary Palestinians it's not as simple as that Hamas probably still has a certain heroic status and so on and to go to the end I will go more into this tomorrow generally now I will shock you I hope I think that there are definitely conditions not only in the western countries where democracy as we know it doesn't work to put it very simply and I will give you an example are you sorry you the black guy where are you from sorry for this Nazi questioning where are you from Ghana no no no you have nothing to do with Rwanda no I'm sorry then I'm sorry because I have a couple of friends there who told me in a very embittered way that this I forgot his name Kagame or what Kagame I don't know how you accentuate it this is a soft dictator soft but nonetheless dictator but it worked he brought peace in a slightly oppressive way between Hutus Tutsis and the situation is stable economy is growing and he told me if you were to introduce there directly a western type multi-party democracy it would for sure mean again parties based on ethnic divisions and you are there and so now that you will not accuse me of of playing the western racist card like yeah yeah that's for Africa no I seriously think I debated this with my friend from the United States if this madman in United States you know now we live in a very strange political era you in the UK did you notice that you have now two big parties one center right conservative party called Labour Party and then one smaller on the fringes called which you don't even know why it's called called Conservative Party you know and your only hope looks it is that the moderate conservatives will take over in United States the way things are going now with this exploding advocacy of illegitimate violence like Trump is raising his voice all the time in the sense of if I don't win it's sure proof election blah blah blah we will go to the streets and so on a friend of mine told me you know I have many strange connections I know people who know people who know people who at the end are in for example a friend of friend of friend of a friend who has links to White House told me something that we all know but it's good to learn that it's true what why did Biden adopt this strong pro-Israeli stance for two reasons first he his bad advisors probably told him to win you need Jewish money I nothing against Jews but against his vulgar advisors because it was even a bad advice now Biden is losing black votes and so on but second thing which is the saddest Biden it's really tragic where are the United States even Trump you remember six years ago or when four Trump was at least moderately funny lively now Trump is slowly getting like Biden like stupid forget things repeats himself and so on even the aspect to love in Trump is disappearing I think that and this would be I think the worst revenge on United States that maybe and I learn from other friends or friends of friends a father of one of my friends is has a high position in US army that US army is seriously preparing to guarantee peace intervene in social life if Trump wins they count on disorder you know so I correct my previous stance yes army is needed to guarantee public peace in third world countries like the United States you know no this is not a joke unfortunately you know this is not a joke and I don't have any inhibitions here look at there is a you know what I don't believe this what Marx traditional Marxists in their eternal search for some true emancipatory subject are looking for for some specific group social group position which gives you a privileged access to access to emancipatory politics like what Marx called proletarian position but you know Mao still kept to this just for him it was not workers it was peasant farmers which is why in cultural revolution they were sending students to as if being a poor farmer has some special privilege I don't think it has today and so my ex-friend Alain Badiou think that illegal immigrants are this revolutionary subject because as he once told me they have nothing to lose but their chains they are in this position he calls them immigrant proletarians or homeless proletarians well again sorry if I offend some of you but I don't think this is the case they came without material chains they have nothing but they have definitely ideological chains their religion and so on to which maybe they stick even more when you don't have any material social status so yeah you know which is for me the sad case you remember when did it happen now it's already years ago the Arab Spring as before for a brief moment under the pressure of popular protests Algeria allowed so-called free elections you know what happened Muslim fundamentalists took over and then that's the cruel irony the very middle class educated circles which put pressure on the military to allow free elections then begrudgingly accepted new military takeover to get rid of the fundamentalists friends correct me some of you are here friends from Egypt told me the same you remember ooh ooh millions on the street let's get rid of Mubarak free elections then not the agents of on that which square is there Tahrir or whatever not they they were mostly young almost probably middle class educated people then the silent Islamic majority took over Muslim brotherhood and it was even worse so this was for me the saddest moment when when the these original protesters themselves begrudgingly approved a new military takeover and now they got what they deserved sorry an obscenity because of different meanings in our language now they have a leader appropriately called Sisi no I think yeah so you know you see one should be here totally without taboos my God the situation is so shitty I remember do you remember was it here or in the other room at the last summer school where do we had here the final debate the other room yes you remember sitting somewhere there where two ANC ladies African National Congress I almost cried you remember if some of you were here I asked one of them I asked I read this bullshit about you know South Africa failed state tell me tell me what should I answer those liberals who are deeply for democracy for blacks just they are not really mature for it and so on that's the standard racist and she told me something maybe you remember which made me so sad she told me that more and more what is growing in South Africa among the poor black majority is nostalgia for apartheid she she you remember she said that and it was understandable why because under apartheid the standard of living was of the black majority the same as now if not a tiny little bit higher plus there was because it was a police police state social order now you have an extreme amount of violence and so on South Africa is the capital of rapes they even have I have friends in Egypt you know I have my own private KGB to get information no it's horrible they even I mentioned here this often it depresses me they even invented their own version of rape they have a term for it well while raping a woman you either strangle her or cut her with the knife they have a specific term for this so what I'm saying am I saying blacks are not right for democracy no I'm just saying first don't underestimate the fear and distrust of ordinary people I hate leftists who live for a big event and simply ignore the fears of ordinary people second thing the Zimbabwe explanation is too simple it leads to catastrophe which is blame the white people because they still control but nonetheless there is an element of truth in it you have to change the class structure because the moment the dilemma is the existing power which is extremely corrupted or the previous white colonizers which care only for their own small safe island they are they are lost so again if you excuse me I will now go and I will explain why don't accuse me of anti-Semitism what interests me is how something like this is possible at all I will show you please have the patience to see it something really really depressing this is how Heydrich would have spoken today you know what is it's like where is how does one Eli Eli how does one pronounce it Eli yeah okay it's without A at the end Eli Academy it's a elite in suburbs of Jerusalem elite military academy and don't tell me that they are marginal you will see in the scene sitting Netanyahu Smotrich was there and sorry we will now it's time for me to erase myself from the picture but it's worth seeing yeah yeah yeah let's take everything out now if possible and maybe I move this here because this is worth seeing I check that people checked it with my friends in Israel this is authentic please put it loud or now you know what's my problem here of course this is a minority view but you know I ask myself as the commentator claims there is nonetheless this minority view not something that today to some extent not totally determines the actual politics of the state of Israel which is why to make it clear I think that now I will say something get ready for real obscenity I don't know if it already appeared this is why sorry just looking for it yes this is why I think that the greatest thing that was happening in Israel till a couple of months ago the big protests against this guys taking over and that's why far from being anti-Semitic I have great hope in still what remains of the democratic awareness of the Jews that they these hardliners these guys fit so perfectly the goals of Hamas Eva Illouz attacked me in a text was it published here in Guardian I know it was in Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and in Haaretz and we live in so that you will not say that I'm in any sense anti-Semitic let me tell you something my reply to her should appear tomorrow one of these days in Haaretz in Israel you can publish it in Germany no here also not that's why I publish in all those marginal Philosophical Salon and so on I'm now out of the public media so now I will do something really obscene but it's the truth I claim I it's along the lines it's also in my last text if you read it you remember the movie which I quite like directed by Polanski based on Robert Harris The Ghost where Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter who is hired to write the autobiography as a ghostwriter of a former prime minister modeled on Tony Blair and you know what is the final discovery for which he is killed at the end that Tony Blair was from the beginning set up as by CIA and CIA was intelligent enough he said we need formally a leftist guy but who will perfectly follow American politics and as some in some review they said of course this wasn't true though if it were true it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the recent history of Great Britain so following this same line let's imagine trigger warning real obscenity this not sexual let's imagine a phone conversation between some mega hardliners like Smotrich or Ben-Gvir in Israeli government and Hamas let's imagine in those famous maybe they will discover them tunnels in Gaza a phone rings and said here I am some hardline Israeli politician hi do you remember how we discreetly supported you against PLO now you owe us a favor why don't you attack and slaughter some Jews close to Gaza they are in any case Arab friends peaceniks we don't need them because we have here two problems civil protest against us and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank they are going to slowly the world will be shocked at your brutality and we will be able to play a victim again getting national unity and escalate ethnic cleansing in the West Bank Hamas answers okay but we need a counter favor in revenge for our slaughter promise that you will bomb civilians in Gaza killing thousands especially children this will give us a boost to this will give us a boost to anti-Semitism all around the world which is our true goal the Israeli side answers yes that's good we would like to have a little bit more of anti-Semitism so that then we can play the role of a victim again which legitimates us to do what we want and then I don't know in my crazy imagination which of you repeats the last line a little bit changed from Casablanca well I hope this is a beginning of a beautiful not friendship but hatred you know of course
please I will try to give already today some Q and A time because tomorrow I have immediately after at another very traumatic visit my friend although we are not on the same wavelength Hanif Kureishi you know and he learned now the very bad news no he is totally cannot move from neck down and it's till the end of his life no in vegetative state it's sad okay let's begin let's go on the first thing that does strike me in today's polemics about Israel-Hamas-Gaza war is an anti-Semitic context in many of those who praise Israel in a letter defending Israel from my critical remarks a Slovenian Catholic author concludes that the main problem of Israel quote I just translated it from Slovene is neither Hamas nor the King of the North as the Bible calls the next great aggressor on Israel Russia, Iran, Turkey it is it's Israel's own persistence in sin its own fall from God since Israel is today maybe the most atheist country in the world so I found it quite breathtaking good luck with such defenders no again that that you kindly mentioned that Frankfurt Book Fair speech you know I was just shocked there because they claimed I by mentioning just Palestinians I went as far as possible in moderation if you want to read it it's available on the web all the names are I quote are Jewish names and even some suspicious Jewish names for example I positively quote you know whom Moshe Dayan who when in also on a smaller sky the same thing as today a group from Gaza invaded southern Israel and kidnapped killed a guy he said don't blame them we should see the situation we took their land and so on and so on my God the founding fathers of Israel it's so refreshing I'm not kidding to read them today how much more honest they were none of this it says in the Bible blah blah blah no they admitted it's a tragic conflict in no way they assumed that they are right so and then I spoke with a Jewish friend in Frankfurt and he told me and this is my answer to those who claim why are you so soft towards Israel and so on well first I must tell you something I don't know if you know I do sincerely condemn the Hamas attack not you know why because I didn't know people who were killed there but I know people who know them they were absolutely the most progressive Israeli Jews they were all the time in contact with Gaza bringing them doctors medicine and so on and so on so the lesson was clear but again the crazy yes the Jewish friend told me that that's what that's what annoys Zionist hardliners you know if I just say long live Hamas yeah yeah another idiot but because I focused on precise details and so on you know okay let's not lose time and let's go on because I was also interrupted there in Germany when I quoted Reinhard Heydrich the father of Holocaust and I quoted him when he mentions something that is today unmentionable that already Heydrich was totally in favor of the basic Zionist idea of Jews re-occupying Palestine because at that point when he wrote what I will read you now in the Nazis didn't yet decide on Holocaust they played with just the idea was just get the Jews out of Europe one idea was they didn't copy it from you maybe your Suella my favorite feminine this is feminism in politics she she got this idea of Rwanda well the Nazis didn't have Rwanda but Uganda no that was the idea then it was Madagascar and then here is what again Heydrich the father of Holocaust wrote in we must separate the Jews into two categories the Zionists and the partisans of assimilation the Zionists profess a strict racial concept and through emigration to Palestine they help to build their own Jewish state our good wishes and our official goodwill goes with goes with them now you will say this is just a statement formal no in the late 30s oh my God I like to discover dirty details in the late 30s when Jews were pushed out of Germany you know if you proclaimed that you want to go to Palestine money because for ordinary Jews who wanted to go to the west you you have to leave your property in Germany but if you signed that you go to Palestine then you were allowed to use your property but to spend it in Germany on arms and on agricultural machines so that's the irony many of the arms that that Jews used to become independent were because of this were the Nazi arms so I will return later don't be afraid to my unconditional rejection of every form of anti-Semitism because you know now the situation is crazy check it up a month ago in Die Zeit the great center German weekly I published an interview no published it was only on their website whose title it was they of course took out a phrase of me to make it more Hamas soll vernichtet sein Hamas had to be annihilated and the reaction was no I'm just saying this in reality I secretly support Hamas so you know like if you say A you mean A if you say the opposite it's the hidden way to say A so why am I mentioning this now comes the dark part I will show you and I cannot emphasize how I'm now in such a desperate move that I'm ready to criticize everybody like you know some liberals who left liberals who have a sympathy for even Hamas they claim it's nonetheless a guerrilla movement and so on well the first thing to note is that it's more or less so my friends are telling me and I don't don't don't take seriously marginal media although in these times I don't know why one should take seriously the big media you know how Hamas grew no it was part of the Jewish strategy Hamas was till a very marginal group but then Israel decided that the only way to prevent or the way to prevent two state solution was to split the Palestinians and they made the same mistake as Americans in Afghanistan Americans also I mean name me one of today's terrorists from that era who wasn't at some point CIA agent you know Osama bin Laden was when he fought against the Russians he was supporting so what I'm saying is that they even funded with money Hamas the idea was just let's keep the Palestinians split so again second thing I really please I'm trying to provoke you I don't have a firm position I just think today it's the time to say everything not lies of course but everything we know for example you know we somehow think if Gaza somehow returns to normality that it will be some kind of a democratic republic and so on who knows you know I'm getting tired of this liberal idea we should distinguish between Hamas and the mass of ordinary Palestinians it's not as simple as that Hamas probably still has a certain heroic status and so on and to go to the end I will go more into this tomorrow generally now I will shock you I hope I think that there are definitely conditions not only in the western countries where democracy as we know it doesn't work to put it very simply and I will give you an example are you sorry you the black guy where are you from sorry for this Nazi questioning where are you from Ghana no no no you have nothing to do with Rwanda no I'm sorry then I'm sorry because I have a couple of friends there who told me in a very embittered way that this I forgot his name Kagame or what Kagame I don't know how you accentuate it this is a soft dictator soft but nonetheless dictator but it worked he brought peace in a slightly oppressive way between Hutus Tutsis and the situation is stable economy is growing and he told me if you were to introduce there directly a western type multi-party democracy it would for sure mean again parties based on ethnic divisions and you are there and so now that you will not accuse me of of playing the western racist card like yeah yeah that's for Africa no I seriously think I debated this with my friend from the United States if this madman in United States you know now we live in a very strange political era you in the UK did you notice that you have now two big parties one center right conservative party called Labour Party and then one smaller on the fringes called which you don't even know why it's called called Conservative Party you know and your only hope looks it is that the moderate conservatives will take over in United States the way things are going now with this exploding advocacy of illegitimate violence like Trump is raising his voice all the time in the sense of if I don't win it's sure proof election blah blah blah we will go to the streets and so on a friend of mine told me you know I have many strange connections I know people who know people who know people who at the end are in for example a friend of friend of friend of a friend who has links to White House told me something that we all know but it's good to learn that it's true what why did Biden adopt this strong pro-Israeli stance for two reasons first he his bad advisors probably told him to win you need Jewish money I nothing against Jews but against his vulgar advisors because it was even a bad advice now Biden is losing black votes and so on but second thing which is the saddest Biden it's really tragic where are the United States even Trump you remember six years ago or when four Trump was at least moderately funny lively now Trump is slowly getting like Biden like stupid forget things repeats himself and so on even the aspect to love in Trump is disappearing I think that and this would be I think the worst revenge on United States that maybe and I learn from other friends or friends of friends a father of one of my friends is has a high position in US army that US army is seriously preparing to guarantee peace intervene in social life if Trump wins they count on disorder you know so I correct my previous stance yes army is needed to guarantee public peace in third world countries like the United States you know no this is not a joke unfortunately you know this is not a joke and I don't have any inhibitions here look at there is a you know what I don't believe this what Marx traditional Marxists in their eternal search for some true emancipatory subject are looking for for some specific group social group position which gives you a privileged access to access to emancipatory politics like what Marx called proletarian position but you know Mao still kept to this just for him it was not workers it was peasant farmers which is why in cultural revolution they were sending students to as if being a poor farmer has some special privilege I don't think it has today and so my ex-friend Alain Badiou think that illegal immigrants are this revolutionary subject because as he once told me they have nothing to lose but their chains they are in this position he calls them immigrant proletarians or homeless proletarians well again sorry if I offend some of you but I don't think this is the case they came without material chains they have nothing but they have definitely ideological chains their religion and so on to which maybe they stick even more when you don't have any material social status so yeah you know which is for me the sad case you remember when did it happen now it's already years ago the Arab Spring as before for a brief moment under the pressure of popular protests Algeria allowed so-called free elections you know what happened Muslim fundamentalists took over and then that's the cruel irony the very middle class educated circles which put pressure on the military to allow free elections then begrudgingly accepted new military takeover to get rid of the fundamentalists friends correct me some of you are here friends from Egypt told me the same you remember ooh ooh millions on the street let's get rid of Mubarak free elections then not the agents of on that which square is there Tahrir or whatever not they they were mostly young almost probably middle class educated people then the silent Islamic majority took over Muslim brotherhood and it was even worse so this was for me the saddest moment when when the these original protesters themselves begrudgingly approved a new military takeover and now they got what they deserved sorry an obscenity because of different meanings in our language now they have a leader appropriately called Sisi no I think yeah so you know you see one should be here totally without taboos my God the situation is so shitty I remember do you remember was it here or in the other room at the last summer school where do we had here the final debate the other room yes you remember sitting somewhere there where two ANC ladies African National Congress I almost cried you remember if some of you were here I asked one of them I asked I read this bullshit about you know South Africa failed state tell me tell me what should I answer those liberals who are deeply for democracy for blacks just they are not really mature for it and so on that's the standard racist and she told me something maybe you remember which made me so sad she told me that more and more what is growing in South Africa among the poor black majority is nostalgia for apartheid she she you remember she said that and it was understandable why because under apartheid the standard of living was of the black majority the same as now if not a tiny little bit higher plus there was because it was a police police state social order now you have an extreme amount of violence and so on South Africa is the capital of rapes they even have I have friends in Egypt you know I have my own private KGB to get information no it's horrible they even I mentioned here this often it depresses me they even invented their own version of rape they have a term for it well while raping a woman you either strangle her or cut her with the knife they have a specific term for this so what I'm saying am I saying blacks are not right for democracy no I'm just saying first don't underestimate the fear and distrust of ordinary people I hate leftists who live for a big event and simply ignore the fears of ordinary people second thing the Zimbabwe explanation is too simple it leads to catastrophe which is blame the white people because they still control but nonetheless there is an element of truth in it you have to change the class structure because the moment the dilemma is the existing power which is extremely corrupted or the previous white colonizers which care only for their own small safe island they are they are lost so again if you excuse me I will now go and I will explain why don't accuse me of anti-Semitism what interests me is how something like this is possible at all I will show you please have the patience to see it something really really depressing this is how Heydrich would have spoken today you know what is it's like where is how does one Eli Eli how does one pronounce it Eli yeah okay it's without A at the end Eli Academy it's a elite in suburbs of Jerusalem elite military academy and don't tell me that they are marginal you will see in the scene sitting Netanyahu Smotrich was there and sorry we will now it's time for me to erase myself from the picture but it's worth seeing yeah yeah yeah let's take everything out now if possible and maybe I move this here because this is worth seeing I check that people checked it with my friends in Israel this is authentic please put it loud or now you know what's my problem here of course this is a minority view but you know I ask myself as the commentator claims there is nonetheless this minority view not something that today to some extent not totally determines the actual politics of the state of Israel which is why to make it clear I think that now I will say something get ready for real obscenity I don't know if it already appeared this is why sorry just looking for it yes this is why I think that the greatest thing that was happening in Israel till a couple of months ago the big protests against this guys taking over and that's why far from being anti-Semitic I have great hope in still what remains of the democratic awareness of the Jews that they these hardliners these guys fit so perfectly the goals of Hamas Eva Illouz attacked me in a text was it published here in Guardian I know it was in Suddeutsche Zeitung in Germany and in Haaretz and we live in so that you will not say that I'm in any sense anti-Semitic let me tell you something my reply to her should appear tomorrow one of these days in Haaretz in Israel you can publish it in Germany no here also not that's why I publish in all those marginal Philosophical Salon and so on I'm now out of the public media so now I will do something really obscene but it's the truth I claim I it's along the lines it's also in my last text if you read it you remember the movie which I quite like directed by Polanski based on Robert Harris The Ghost where Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter who is hired to write the autobiography as a ghostwriter of a former prime minister modeled on Tony Blair and you know what is the final discovery for which he is killed at the end that Tony Blair was from the beginning set up as by CIA and CIA was intelligent enough he said we need formally a leftist guy but who will perfectly follow American politics and as some in some review they said of course this wasn't true though if it were true it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the recent history of Great Britain so following this same line let's imagine trigger warning real obscenity this not sexual let's imagine a phone conversation between some mega hardliners like Smotrich or Ben-Gvir in Israeli government and Hamas let's imagine in those famous maybe they will discover them tunnels in Gaza a phone rings and said here I am some hardline Israeli politician hi do you remember how we discreetly supported you against PLO now you owe us a favor why don't you attack and slaughter some Jews close to Gaza they are in any case Arab friends peaceniks we don't need them because we have here two problems civil protest against us and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank they are going to slowly the world will be shocked at your brutality and we will be able to play a victim again getting national unity and escalate ethnic cleansing in the West Bank Hamas answers okay but we need a counter favor in revenge for our slaughter promise that you will bomb civilians in Gaza killing thousands especially children this will give us a boost to this will give us a boost to anti-Semitism all around the world which is our true goal the Israeli side answers yes that's good we would like to have a little bit more of anti-Semitism so that then we can play the role of a victim again which legitimates us to do what we want and then I don't know in my crazy imagination which of you repeats the last line a little bit changed from Casablanca well I hope this is a beginning of a beautiful not friendship but hatred you know of course
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to avoid every misunderstanding of course did this did not happen I'm not obscene I genuinely believe that Israelis were shocked by what happened you know who is my hero here that's why I don't buy that line of even how Roger Waters read a public letter that Gideon Levy whom I admire
to avoid every misunderstanding of course did this did not happen I'm not obscene I genuinely believe that Israelis were shocked by what happened you know who is my hero here that's why I don't buy that line of even how Roger Waters read a public letter that Gideon Levy whom I admire
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in Israel wrote to Roger Waters who basically says we don't know for sure what happened in the first Hamas attack and Gideon Levy told him I knew the people there this is a wonderful detail Gideon Levy said you
in Israel wrote to Roger Waters who basically says we don't know for sure what happened in the first Hamas attack and Gideon Levy told him I knew the people there this is a wonderful detail Gideon Levy said you
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know they were progressive young people you know what
know they were progressive young people you know what
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I found in one of their closets your own Pink Floyd recordings you know look for them in Gaza and so on you know so what I want to say is that
I found in one of their closets your own Pink Floyd recordings you know look for them in Gaza and so on you know so what I want to say is that
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that's the tragedy it's
that's the tragedy it's
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crazy imagination but this is the logic when Eva Illouz attacks me that I claim that Israel and Palestine and Gaza are the
crazy imagination but this is the logic when Eva Illouz attacks me that I claim that Israel and Palestine and Gaza are the
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same playing tango dancing no they are not and also I'm not saying that even the hardline Zionists and Hamas are the same I'm just saying that they are playing together a certain game where the goal is the goal is to quote John Lennon although in my
same playing tango dancing no they are not and also I'm not saying that even the hardline Zionists and Hamas are the same I'm just saying that they are playing together a certain game where the goal is the goal is to quote John Lennon although in my
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universe Imagine is one of the nastiest stupid songs the most obscene song Imagine no religion no borders and so on but you know give peace a chance that was the goal of the Hamas attack to kill the very hope of peace and that's what I think also hardliners there want so let's go on what is happening today is something extremely sad I think it is and we should
universe Imagine is one of the nastiest stupid songs the most obscene song Imagine no religion no borders and so on but you know give peace a chance that was the goal of the Hamas attack to kill the very hope of peace and that's what I think also hardliners there want so let's go on what is happening today is something extremely sad I think it is and we should
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always be
always be
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extremely suspicious about it when it is extreme rightists who are as a rule anti-Semitic like Marine Le Pen in France or AfD in Germany now they totally support Israel this is what
extremely suspicious about it when it is extreme rightists who are as a rule anti-Semitic like Marine Le Pen in France or AfD in Germany now they totally support Israel this is what
Slavoj Žižek
makes me suspicious and it was even a scandal I think in Israel some liberals finally got it remember this name beh I am against death penalty after people like that will be killed to be obscene did I
makes me suspicious and it was even a scandal I think in Israel some liberals finally got it remember this name beh I am against death penalty after people like that will be killed to be obscene did I
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pronounce
pronounce
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the name correctly I'm not sure John Hagee I think H-A-G-E-E
the name correctly I'm not sure John Hagee I think H-A-G-E-E
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an American radical conservative Baptist Christian who supports Israel but then if you read the context I did of how
an American radical conservative Baptist Christian who supports Israel but then if you read the context I did of how
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he supports Israel it is part of divine plane first Holocaust
he supports Israel it is part of divine plane first Holocaust
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the same as that guy said to get Jews there then in Armageddon Jews will be killed and so on and so on it's a nightmarish vision and finally some sound voices in Israel said are we crazy we are
the same as that guy said to get Jews there then in Armageddon Jews will be killed and so on and so on it's a nightmarish vision and finally some sound voices in Israel said are we crazy we are
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now inviting to commemorate whatever the the slaughter there we are inviting people like this okay I don't want
now inviting to commemorate whatever the the slaughter there we are inviting people like this okay I don't want
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to lose time look at my last text in in Philosophical
to lose time look at my last text in in Philosophical
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Salon I don't want to lose time by claiming how this hardline orientation was from the very beginning a deplorable part of the Zionist movement the proof I
Salon I don't want to lose time by claiming how this hardline orientation was from the very beginning a deplorable part of the Zionist movement the proof I
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took this from a recent article by Seyla Benhabib the Habermasian lady that in on December 2nd progressive Jews among them Albert Einstein Hannah Arendt and so on published a letter in New York Times where they write among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the freedom party a political party closely akin in its organization methods political philosophy and social appeal to the fascist parties and so on and so on and so on so not to lose time let's who is here my true object of hatred not even the Zionists
took this from a recent article by Seyla Benhabib the Habermasian lady that in on December 2nd progressive Jews among them Albert Einstein Hannah Arendt and so on published a letter in New York Times where they write among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the freedom party a political party closely akin in its organization methods political philosophy and social appeal to the fascist parties and so on and so on and so on so not to lose time let's who is here my true object of hatred not even the Zionists
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my God you know that's why I was so attacked in Frankfurt yes we should use context I was attacked for there twice interrupted by a very strange person my God Germans are really doing everything to give a boost to anti-Semitism if you ask me because the way they they make people guilty attack them for just mentioning Palestine it's as if they are provoking it I was attacked for just mentioning the context and to make it clear that I don't support Hamas I mentioned the example of Nazis I said to mention dozens hundreds maybe of books are written
my God you know that's why I was so attacked in Frankfurt yes we should use context I was attacked for there twice interrupted by a very strange person my God Germans are really doing everything to give a boost to anti-Semitism if you ask me because the way they they make people guilty attack them for just mentioning Palestine it's as if they are provoking it I was attacked for just mentioning the context and to make it clear that I don't support Hamas I mentioned the example of Nazis I said to mention dozens hundreds maybe of books are written
Slavoj Žižek
about how Hitler took power this doesn't relativize it in any way no I'm a Kantian here you are always responsible for your act you should never say oh I was the victim of circumstances no nobody is totally a victim of circumstances but of course to understand Hitler which doesn't mean relativize I hate that common wisdom to understand means to forgive you know it's almost as stupid as that even more famous saying which I well really hate wisdom pacifist wisdom enemy is someone whose story you were not ready to hear sorry Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to hear his story I read Mein Kampf and everything he was more of an enemy but what I'm saying is to understand how Nazis came to power you have to know the humiliation of Versailles the the tragedy of economic crisis in the 20s and so on and so on you know who is here I'm repeating myself I think I already mentioned this here you know who is for me the real friend here the real genius here although in theory he was not Friedrich Engels the other of Marx he wrote this was a stroke of a genius in years before he said a new big European war is slowly preparing getting ready and he then does say writes something which I reacted almost you know in Tom and Jerry cartoons when the cat the rru and your eyes jump out and he says Engels he writes it will probably involve around million deaths you know what's the official number today of those dead in the First World War million then he said it will be east and west Russia and France and Great Britain against Germany and Austria and he said probably Germany will lose and maybe there will be a revolution in Russia not that and then comes a true stroke of a genius where Engels says if Germany will lose a decade or two later there will be another war of revenge so don't say that Marxists are necessarily stupid idealists you know sometimes not often I admit but sometimes they they no so okay so you know what's my because now the situation is crazy in Germany as I already told you first there was after my speech an attack on me in Israel but then not just in relatively progressive newspapers like Haaretz there was a much more objective text okay manipulating me a little bit comparing me to Judith Butler and I was all of a sudden a good guy Judith Butler a bad guy now I must tell you something that I find deeply unfair here I often and also in her stance towards Hamas I disagree with Judith but you know even Eva Illouz falls into a trap here she refers to her as an intellectual under quotation marks sorry with all my disagreements with Judith she is an intellectual and there to bring things to madness in Germany you will find the reference in this look at Philosophical Salon there was recently a text published again I had that reaction of Tom and Jerry where the title tells it all Deconstructing the State of Israel the text looks at her early Judith's works like Gender Trouble and claims that when she talks about writes about deconstructing fixed gender identities from the beginning already the true goal was to deconstruct that is to say destroy Israel I mean that's where we are so you know what is happening here I think it's horrible the Germans are doing something extremely hypocritical here they of course and they're quite justified about it they still are haunted by the guilt of Holocaust and what they're really doing as a guy told me you know the Germans are hypocrites they say one thing publicly but privately they're a little bit more open I I then spoke with one of those Germans who attacked me and asked him but are you aware what is going on now and he said yes but we did something so horrible to the Jewish people that as a payment for it we have to support Israel now even where it is wrong I find this horrible so you try to pay for your ex-crime by supporting your ex-enemy where he also is doing I admit it a smaller crime but nonetheless a crime are they aware that in this way they are directly contributing to anti-Semitism that's what really worries me that both sides will will come out of this war in such a terrible state and since I know more Jews than Palestinians although I have some very good friends like that punker Palestinian Tamer Nafar I'm in contact with him now who lives in Lod the Israeli-Palestinian suburb of Tel Aviv that you know as Eva Illouz says in her text and I agree with her that what ordinary people see are not or are affected by are not big theoretical explanation they worry about concrete no they worry they are affected by concrete images data and so on and so on but are people aware because both sides exploit this to the end like the state of Israel with all those burned bodies and so on and of course from Gaza like what affected even me is I learned and I have friends even there in Gaza with contact who are absolutely not anti-Semitic some of these international city UN forces whatever and they told me that it was true this news that children who are still there not small small but like years they carve into their arm their name deeply with the knife so that if they're found dead it will be possible to identify them you know the name so such things affect people now are you aware what this constant bombardment in the last weeks of the images of bombing Gaza and so on and so on all my sympathy of course with Palestinians but I worry also about anti-Semitism are you aware that this is I cannot even imagine as I wrote what this will do for anti-Semitism did you read that news which terrified me in Dagestan one of those shitty half Muslim parts of Russian Federation when a plane landed from Israel local mob attacked the plane to and the passengers had to run around hide themselves and so on and so on so I think that this strategy of how especially I was affected because I'm sorry for the first time in my life maybe I'm totally anti-nationalist I feel affected as a Slovene sorry we were occupied by Germany in World War II at least percent of the population was killed and so on and the same Germans who at that point occupied us and shot us will now shout at me again of all the people they will teach me what is anti-Semitism and so on so read was it published here in Guardian a very good text by I'm not sure I will pronounce it correctly Deborah Feldman she is a German Jew German citizen but at the same time I think she has double citizenship Israeli citizenship and open to a dialogue with Palestinians she says that at after some round table big with a German high politician I'm not sure I think it was Habeck the Green Party finance minister asking him what should she do she told me I'm sorry I'm Jewish but at the same time I have good relations with Palestinians blah blah blah you know what was the answer private of this minister I should give it to you in German "Das sind doch keine reinen Deutschen" those it means people like her "Das sind doch keine reinen Deutschen" like you as being Jewish you are not pure German so it's not my problem you know what's so horrible she then investigated it the term "reiner Deutscher" is strictly a Nazi term if in today's Germany you want to say you are not fully a you you would say "keine richtige" or "echte" German of course never you use the term because it has deservedly in Germany this racist association you never use the term you never draw a distinction "rein Deutsch" purely German and not purely and not purely German another problem I have and I again can I can I be clearer how totally I reject Hamas but no it's not but in the sense of they're not so bad it's just but in the sense that those liberals who now it's fashionable to sympathize with poor Palestinians oh my God they are victims children died and so on and so on so it's again typical Western hypocrisy the third world other is good in so far as he she it they suffer they are good as victims oh if they try to organize themselves and do something they are terrorists you know it's victim or terrorist now I agree that the way for it is not Hamas if Hamas and Israeli hardliners will win and it's quite possible there will be not even maybe world war I'm more of a pessimist you know because those bad guys when they win they always find a way to apparently attack each other but really this is called BRICS that's what I that's why I am against BRICS BRICS is no this idea of outside the western world these new independent growing economies this means you do your own crimes in peace I do my own crimes in peace let's tolerate each other no and they do something horrible here they denounce these western notions which I I'm sorry I still I know they are hypocritical but as such they still have a value for example human rights feminism and so on and so on yes I totally agree their hypocrisy we violate the rules and so on for example one of the members of PLO more moderate parliament says and I think this is a valid argument that when Russians bombed electricity network in Ukraine it was immediately denounced as a war crime and the idea was you never should cut off electricity for civilians when Israel did it in Gaza cut off it was a different standard but still hypocritical as it is it is necessary as a standard because if you just say human rights are western imperialist tool then what remains is nothing it's just naked force so second thing why it struck me when I was attacked for mentioning context oh it's incredible one big article against me in German I mean I was for one week a star there you know the big daily zeitungen newspapers attacking me one had a big title I loved it Hamas-Attacke hat keinen Kontext has no contexts as if the mentioning of context is already I claim no not only it has context but the shock of the Hamas context can only be explained precisely through its context it's totally understandable why were Jews so shocked because the attack brought the memories of of Holocaust and so on again killing Jews just because they are Jews and why are the Palestinians so shocked again because it's repeated Nakba the catastrophe even people don't know this this is such a brutal irony the term Nakba is prohibited since it's like to use publicly in Israel except one of their ministers recently used it in an ironic way they can do it oh we will do if necessary a second Nakba in in Gaza and so on so let me give you know this is the only way to explain even and I even see the point yes it was shocking the the Hamas attack in south Israel why much worse things happened in the 20th century and they didn't have such a global echo for example if you ask me which are the candidates for the pure horror remember this name check it up is breathtaking Shiro Ishii I-S-H-I-I a Japanese doctor specialist of diseases and how to cure them these chemical diseases who was I think compared to him Mengele was a small country doctor this Ishii Shiro Ishii ran in Manchuria during World War II a mega military medical complex employing doctors with tens of thousand of Chinese exposed to breathtaking experiments like every day they pulled they took out of you half a a pint more or less half a liter of blood and how long you will survive they almost froze you to death then they put close to you a naked woman beautiful and like will you die or will you be revitalized not to mention like taking out your it's much more nightmarish things and the victims were in tens of thousand like they were spreading plague and other they were simply throwing bacteria on Chinese cities and then were then to check it up now you will ask okay what happened to this guy I like the world in which I live this means other horror Americans in were so interested in his work that he got total amnesty on condition that he delivers the results of his studies so everybody knew what he was doing but he had he died in I think he had the happy old age in some small Japanese village and so on when Illouz Eva Illouz attacks me for like why do I go immediately into theory where is this immediate shock and fear sympathy with the the with the victims where this is also relative not relative in the sense it's not absolute evil but our reaction is conditioned by context for example apart from Holocaust concentration camps one of the really horrible things and I was told this by years ago by a grandfather of a friend of mine from Germany who was remember this date July in Hamburg the northern city the allies in an operation named Operation Gomorrah dropped so many bombs on Hamburg that they created the largest firestorm known tens of thousand of people died percent of the city's houses were destroyed and it was so horrible because they used some chemicals which went on burning the only way to stop it to stop burning the fire was to go under the water but then you came up to grasp the air it began burning again so people were just on the edge of the river asking SS was there doing some good job in a cynical way they patrolled the rivers and then somebody just asked please shoot me they were killing them because it was what I'm saying is that people knew about this but in a way that I even understand nonetheless these were though the people of Hamburg I was told you know why were so furious that's the evil side of the British and Americans even because they carefully selected the workers suburbs to be destroyed because they thought the most important thing is to ruin to destroy the morale of the working force but there was a cynical idea beneath when we will occupy Hamburg let's keep the nice part of villas for us if we will need them destroy the workers dwellings and no so what I'm saying is that not that I don't agree with I'm not crazy with horror Gaza attacks I mean I mean Kibbutz in Israel near Gaza deserves a full compassion but again you can explain precisely this compassion only through historical memory it's not immediate feeling the Jews were so horrified because again it brought back the memories of of Holocaust and to the other side the memories of Nakba and so on and so on now as to there is another sad lesson noted by sorry I do this not to get rid of you okay around one hour I'm against linear notion of time dialectically and so on you know what's crucial here we in the west when there are terror attacks it's usually we have our rhythm of life it goes on and then boom I was even here when was this some years ago do you remember that attack when Livingstone was still the mayor even close to here July yeah yeah yeah I was even here and I had to pay egotist July yeah I had a special memory because the same evening I had a flight so I had to pay triple the taxi to take me because all London was but what I'm saying is that that's the typical trauma for us September this a shock and then we mourn but life returns to normal but what is so tragic and I see an echo of this if you compare southern Israel Hamas attack and Gaza what about all those third world people but let's even forget about but we shouldn't Gaza for example the true nightmare when the nightmare is not an exception but becomes a way of life for example it really affected me some regions of maybe one of the nightmarish states today the Democratic Republic of Congo there is there are parts of the country where most of the men were killed in civil war so you have women with children and the women to survive have to go to walk to some store whatever and the path is controlled by some bandits so it's part of the daily life like there are ten women today you go then you because they know you will be seriously raped but this is simply can you imagine life like this it's not an exception oh my God I was raped it's no let's gather together let's see who will be raped today no that's the horror you know and we see a little bit of this again unfortunately there for Israelis it was maybe two days or whatever a shock for Gaza it's you know and then all this humanitarian bullshit you know oh we sympathize there with children and so on and so on I think and I'm not an utopian here that Israel I'm not saying it shouldn't attack Hamas it could have been done in a much more humanitarian different way here if this is not a moderate position you know taking more care of for example the most cynical point you remember a couple of days a week after the war Israelis gave first hours for all from northern part to move south which was theoretically that they draw that line which was theoretically theoretically impossible then now I come to the last part and then I will conclude and okay tomorrow we go into philosophy into this to avoid any misunderstanding this horror of anti-Semitism and how to explain what goes on today I want to show you this is again sorry the last clip it's something very ordinary you find dozens like this but you know this is the daily life on the West Bank a group of Palestinian farmers harassed by a a settler who just shouts at them humiliates them throws around their seeds grain and so on and they can't do anything why because there are I don't know you will see policemen or army Israeli behind who of course does nothing and this must be a horrible sense where the big other is not there but not in this great emancipatory Lacanian way but simply you have no legal force to rely on now imagine this to be your daily life let's go again quickly through this disgusting procedure okay let's do the second one sorry the second one it's nothing so horrible but it's depressing remember this is the way of life there daily life the day drags on what is this sabotage are you a Zionist agent no my God in a terrorist state I would be a good minister of the interior okay sabotage okay so what's my point here now people now I will make a conclusion which will offend I hope both sides people are talking today about anti-left sorry about leftist anti-Semitism no identifying imperialism with Israel and so on and so on yes we should be critical towards Israel but at the same time totally against anti-Semitism why I think precise thesis that anti-Semitism there cannot be anti-Semitic left if there is it's an iron proof it's a proof that the left that there is something wrong with this left let's take my supreme example Soviet Union they claim communism was only was always anti-Semitic sorry are they crazy look at Lenin's Politburo the guys who really forget about democracy ran the things more than half of them were Jews with Trotsky on the top look now it's a nice data for you to provoke you I read a book about the early era of Cheka Cheka was the original KGB you know what was the national percentage of different ethnic groups in in Cheka over percent Jews a little bit less than percent Lithuania Latvia Estonia Baltic countries and in all outnumber around percent of Russians that's why all the first generation white counter-revolution they were almost ferociously anti-Semitic always depicting Trotsky as devil and so on and with Stalin it all changed you know it's precisely when already in the late 20s the revolution I I'm not saying it didn't go wrong open but this big Stalinist change where everything changed at the level of superstructure but not only there like homosexuality was prohibited in the 20s it wasn't a problem motherhood was rediscovered divorce was made much more difficult in late 20s they if you got more than three four children you got this medal you know hero of mother well some bullshit medal and so on and exactly at that point of course with a code word it wasn't called anti-Semitism it was called cosmopolitanism cosmopolitan like a deviation so against this background tomorrow I will go into precisely this stuff about all the paradoxes of more philosophy on anti-Semitism and how this affects today's Judaism don't be afraid my point will not be as people claim who accuse me of being anti-Semitic my point will not be that Jews are today's Nazis but in a strange way you remember many in some Jewish friends gave me this idea of how the whole Jewish emancipatory legacy and I say this openly there would have been in Europe no enlightenment without Jews precisely as stateless Jews remember Heydrich who said assimilationist Jews bad Zionist Jews good and it's along these lines that Heidegger in the most horrible way imaginable in his black notebooks published some ten years ago justifies Holocaust my God I loved this yes when I say I loved this it means it's unimaginable horror because he interprets Holocaust as a self-destruction of the Jews Jews got what they deserved why because Jews embody this general without roots in a blood and soil general sense of exploiting nature manipulating others and simply in Holocaust they got their own message back they got what they really wanted it's a nightmare but enough of this tomorrow I'm sorry it was not enough philosophy be sure that you will get it tomorrow so now I pretend I will pretend that we live in a democracy and please the bit you hate the questions I hate the questions although as I already once said here I think wouldn't it be nice to have this type of debate that one of you stands up and improvise on something and then my task is to invent the question to which his question was an answer you know or my temptation as I already used this joke here is to give you this kind of pseudo-Buddhist answer you know you ask me a complex question my answer is something like clap with one hand or think about nothing or some bullshit like that please right thank you let's no no no okay all right no don't even bother applauding because tomorrow I will try to indicate where maybe there is a solution but I really think we live in a shitty time I don't see you know at the other three weeks ago at that How To Academy a young guy asked me a very good question cynical brutal but I like this maybe you find it on on YouTube he asked me your view was dark but it's easy for you I loved this to say because you are an old guy in any case you will drop dead soon but he said but look at the people they are mostly in their 20s what should be the message to them aren't you obliged to give them some hope and then I think but I was cut short what I was able to say was a good point I simply asked the guy is your approach epistemological or ontological by this I mean sorry it's not so complex do you mean my diagnosis is correct just not to make people too desperate invent some happy ending you know but so you agree with my diagnosis you are just saying I should be more considerate or are you saying there really is a hope the situation is not so dark in that case please tell me where do you see the hope and of course I claimed that the the moderator not you the guy there was his agent because I said that's your question mine that's a good point to conclude you know sorry please right before Slavoj asks himself another question let's indicate clearly yeah let's take you oh we've got a roving mic so just so everyone else can hear do do speak into the mic first of all that guy was a really an asshole you didn't deserve that that day sorry are you was the guy who asked me that oh no no no no no I thought because I I it's not I'm not a racist joke I have a bad a bad eyes eyes now and maybe you were the same guy I don't know it wasn't me but he was an asshole um I was gonna ask you about language right in what sense be precise yes in this last video it seems like they can understand each other the Israeli and the Palestinian I don't know do you know what language were they speaking probably Hebrew yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because I understand that Palestinians speak Hebrew I don't think that many Jews speak whatever the Palestinians speak it's like the it's kind of like the opposite of a Habermasian like we can communicate because of language and we can come to reason together this is like he can bully the Palestinian guy because he can understand him right if they were not understandable to one another then he couldn't get the bullying because it wouldn't make sense to the other guy right very nice point yes you know but you know what's my answer to you here sorry did you again I'm interrupting you I'm really evil please finish the question yes no I mean it was just what is the role of language yeah I am here a Hegelian we think in language irreducibly but there is of course Hegel was aware of it an ideology inscribed into every language the way you relate to sexes to environment to everything and by ideology I don't mean here some dark mega plot I mean simply at the everyday level for example I enjoyed the conversation forty years ago with a Japanese guy who told me how difficult it is and correct me if there are some Japanese here if I got something wrong you know Freud's notion of Verneinung you this wasn't my mother which means for sure it was my mother all that stuff and he said that in Japanese this is difficult to act because they have according to different styles does a lower class guy address a higher and so on you have some almost twenty ways to say no so you know it complicates things and even I love them not because I'm a western racist but to see problems like in in India the untouchables the lower caste whom I met we immediately fell in love but not because of this they loved English because they not because they were pro-imperialist but they said in English you is you and it's more egalitarian while in their own languages in India the hierarchy is much more written into the texture you address people at different levels in different ways so what I'm saying is that that's the problem of language that it I'm not saying language is a homogeneous ideological entity no language is self-contradictory because returning to Habermas yes I'm against Habermas because unfortunately he also now fell into this trap Habermas and two of his younger pupils published something which a little bit in a paranoia I think was also meant as an attack against me basically they say yeah yeah yeah Israel might be doing something wrong in Gaza but nonetheless the ultra trauma was this Holocaust absolute solidarity with Israel and but here where I would agree with Habermas is that there is a certain what Habermasians would have called normativity involved in language so I'm not saying directly that language is an instrument of oppression but it's self-antagonistic it has a certain equality of communication like when I address you I presuppose we share the same space but at the same time this formal equality is blurred by ideological biases and so on and so on which is why as Hegel put it wonderfully we think in language but a true dialectician learns to think in language against language that's why Hegel surprisingly hated this idea of pure neutral
about how Hitler took power this doesn't relativize it in any way no I'm a Kantian here you are always responsible for your act you should never say oh I was the victim of circumstances no nobody is totally a victim of circumstances but of course to understand Hitler which doesn't mean relativize I hate that common wisdom to understand means to forgive you know it's almost as stupid as that even more famous saying which I well really hate wisdom pacifist wisdom enemy is someone whose story you were not ready to hear sorry Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to hear his story I read Mein Kampf and everything he was more of an enemy but what I'm saying is to understand how Nazis came to power you have to know the humiliation of Versailles the the tragedy of economic crisis in the 20s and so on and so on you know who is here I'm repeating myself I think I already mentioned this here you know who is for me the real friend here the real genius here although in theory he was not Friedrich Engels the other of Marx he wrote this was a stroke of a genius in years before he said a new big European war is slowly preparing getting ready and he then does say writes something which I reacted almost you know in Tom and Jerry cartoons when the cat the rru and your eyes jump out and he says Engels he writes it will probably involve around million deaths you know what's the official number today of those dead in the First World War million then he said it will be east and west Russia and France and Great Britain against Germany and Austria and he said probably Germany will lose and maybe there will be a revolution in Russia not that and then comes a true stroke of a genius where Engels says if Germany will lose a decade or two later there will be another war of revenge so don't say that Marxists are necessarily stupid idealists you know sometimes not often I admit but sometimes they they no so okay so you know what's my because now the situation is crazy in Germany as I already told you first there was after my speech an attack on me in Israel but then not just in relatively progressive newspapers like Haaretz there was a much more objective text okay manipulating me a little bit comparing me to Judith Butler and I was all of a sudden a good guy Judith Butler a bad guy now I must tell you something that I find deeply unfair here I often and also in her stance towards Hamas I disagree with Judith but you know even Eva Illouz falls into a trap here she refers to her as an intellectual under quotation marks sorry with all my disagreements with Judith she is an intellectual and there to bring things to madness in Germany you will find the reference in this look at Philosophical Salon there was recently a text published again I had that reaction of Tom and Jerry where the title tells it all Deconstructing the State of Israel the text looks at her early Judith's works like Gender Trouble and claims that when she talks about writes about deconstructing fixed gender identities from the beginning already the true goal was to deconstruct that is to say destroy Israel I mean that's where we are so you know what is happening here I think it's horrible the Germans are doing something extremely hypocritical here they of course and they're quite justified about it they still are haunted by the guilt of Holocaust and what they're really doing as a guy told me you know the Germans are hypocrites they say one thing publicly but privately they're a little bit more open I I then spoke with one of those Germans who attacked me and asked him but are you aware what is going on now and he said yes but we did something so horrible to the Jewish people that as a payment for it we have to support Israel now even where it is wrong I find this horrible so you try to pay for your ex-crime by supporting your ex-enemy where he also is doing I admit it a smaller crime but nonetheless a crime are they aware that in this way they are directly contributing to anti-Semitism that's what really worries me that both sides will will come out of this war in such a terrible state and since I know more Jews than Palestinians although I have some very good friends like that punker Palestinian Tamer Nafar I'm in contact with him now who lives in Lod the Israeli-Palestinian suburb of Tel Aviv that you know as Eva Illouz says in her text and I agree with her that what ordinary people see are not or are affected by are not big theoretical explanation they worry about concrete no they worry they are affected by concrete images data and so on and so on but are people aware because both sides exploit this to the end like the state of Israel with all those burned bodies and so on and of course from Gaza like what affected even me is I learned and I have friends even there in Gaza with contact who are absolutely not anti-Semitic some of these international city UN forces whatever and they told me that it was true this news that children who are still there not small small but like years they carve into their arm their name deeply with the knife so that if they're found dead it will be possible to identify them you know the name so such things affect people now are you aware what this constant bombardment in the last weeks of the images of bombing Gaza and so on and so on all my sympathy of course with Palestinians but I worry also about anti-Semitism are you aware that this is I cannot even imagine as I wrote what this will do for anti-Semitism did you read that news which terrified me in Dagestan one of those shitty half Muslim parts of Russian Federation when a plane landed from Israel local mob attacked the plane to and the passengers had to run around hide themselves and so on and so on so I think that this strategy of how especially I was affected because I'm sorry for the first time in my life maybe I'm totally anti-nationalist I feel affected as a Slovene sorry we were occupied by Germany in World War II at least percent of the population was killed and so on and the same Germans who at that point occupied us and shot us will now shout at me again of all the people they will teach me what is anti-Semitism and so on so read was it published here in Guardian a very good text by I'm not sure I will pronounce it correctly Deborah Feldman she is a German Jew German citizen but at the same time I think she has double citizenship Israeli citizenship and open to a dialogue with Palestinians she says that at after some round table big with a German high politician I'm not sure I think it was Habeck the Green Party finance minister asking him what should she do she told me I'm sorry I'm Jewish but at the same time I have good relations with Palestinians blah blah blah you know what was the answer private of this minister I should give it to you in German "Das sind doch keine reinen Deutschen" those it means people like her "Das sind doch keine reinen Deutschen" like you as being Jewish you are not pure German so it's not my problem you know what's so horrible she then investigated it the term "reiner Deutscher" is strictly a Nazi term if in today's Germany you want to say you are not fully a you you would say "keine richtige" or "echte" German of course never you use the term because it has deservedly in Germany this racist association you never use the term you never draw a distinction "rein Deutsch" purely German and not purely and not purely German another problem I have and I again can I can I be clearer how totally I reject Hamas but no it's not but in the sense of they're not so bad it's just but in the sense that those liberals who now it's fashionable to sympathize with poor Palestinians oh my God they are victims children died and so on and so on so it's again typical Western hypocrisy the third world other is good in so far as he she it they suffer they are good as victims oh if they try to organize themselves and do something they are terrorists you know it's victim or terrorist now I agree that the way for it is not Hamas if Hamas and Israeli hardliners will win and it's quite possible there will be not even maybe world war I'm more of a pessimist you know because those bad guys when they win they always find a way to apparently attack each other but really this is called BRICS that's what I that's why I am against BRICS BRICS is no this idea of outside the western world these new independent growing economies this means you do your own crimes in peace I do my own crimes in peace let's tolerate each other no and they do something horrible here they denounce these western notions which I I'm sorry I still I know they are hypocritical but as such they still have a value for example human rights feminism and so on and so on yes I totally agree their hypocrisy we violate the rules and so on for example one of the members of PLO more moderate parliament says and I think this is a valid argument that when Russians bombed electricity network in Ukraine it was immediately denounced as a war crime and the idea was you never should cut off electricity for civilians when Israel did it in Gaza cut off it was a different standard but still hypocritical as it is it is necessary as a standard because if you just say human rights are western imperialist tool then what remains is nothing it's just naked force so second thing why it struck me when I was attacked for mentioning context oh it's incredible one big article against me in German I mean I was for one week a star there you know the big daily zeitungen newspapers attacking me one had a big title I loved it Hamas-Attacke hat keinen Kontext has no contexts as if the mentioning of context is already I claim no not only it has context but the shock of the Hamas context can only be explained precisely through its context it's totally understandable why were Jews so shocked because the attack brought the memories of of Holocaust and so on again killing Jews just because they are Jews and why are the Palestinians so shocked again because it's repeated Nakba the catastrophe even people don't know this this is such a brutal irony the term Nakba is prohibited since it's like to use publicly in Israel except one of their ministers recently used it in an ironic way they can do it oh we will do if necessary a second Nakba in in Gaza and so on so let me give you know this is the only way to explain even and I even see the point yes it was shocking the the Hamas attack in south Israel why much worse things happened in the 20th century and they didn't have such a global echo for example if you ask me which are the candidates for the pure horror remember this name check it up is breathtaking Shiro Ishii I-S-H-I-I a Japanese doctor specialist of diseases and how to cure them these chemical diseases who was I think compared to him Mengele was a small country doctor this Ishii Shiro Ishii ran in Manchuria during World War II a mega military medical complex employing doctors with tens of thousand of Chinese exposed to breathtaking experiments like every day they pulled they took out of you half a a pint more or less half a liter of blood and how long you will survive they almost froze you to death then they put close to you a naked woman beautiful and like will you die or will you be revitalized not to mention like taking out your it's much more nightmarish things and the victims were in tens of thousand like they were spreading plague and other they were simply throwing bacteria on Chinese cities and then were then to check it up now you will ask okay what happened to this guy I like the world in which I live this means other horror Americans in were so interested in his work that he got total amnesty on condition that he delivers the results of his studies so everybody knew what he was doing but he had he died in I think he had the happy old age in some small Japanese village and so on when Illouz Eva Illouz attacks me for like why do I go immediately into theory where is this immediate shock and fear sympathy with the the with the victims where this is also relative not relative in the sense it's not absolute evil but our reaction is conditioned by context for example apart from Holocaust concentration camps one of the really horrible things and I was told this by years ago by a grandfather of a friend of mine from Germany who was remember this date July in Hamburg the northern city the allies in an operation named Operation Gomorrah dropped so many bombs on Hamburg that they created the largest firestorm known tens of thousand of people died percent of the city's houses were destroyed and it was so horrible because they used some chemicals which went on burning the only way to stop it to stop burning the fire was to go under the water but then you came up to grasp the air it began burning again so people were just on the edge of the river asking SS was there doing some good job in a cynical way they patrolled the rivers and then somebody just asked please shoot me they were killing them because it was what I'm saying is that people knew about this but in a way that I even understand nonetheless these were though the people of Hamburg I was told you know why were so furious that's the evil side of the British and Americans even because they carefully selected the workers suburbs to be destroyed because they thought the most important thing is to ruin to destroy the morale of the working force but there was a cynical idea beneath when we will occupy Hamburg let's keep the nice part of villas for us if we will need them destroy the workers dwellings and no so what I'm saying is that not that I don't agree with I'm not crazy with horror Gaza attacks I mean I mean Kibbutz in Israel near Gaza deserves a full compassion but again you can explain precisely this compassion only through historical memory it's not immediate feeling the Jews were so horrified because again it brought back the memories of of Holocaust and to the other side the memories of Nakba and so on and so on now as to there is another sad lesson noted by sorry I do this not to get rid of you okay around one hour I'm against linear notion of time dialectically and so on you know what's crucial here we in the west when there are terror attacks it's usually we have our rhythm of life it goes on and then boom I was even here when was this some years ago do you remember that attack when Livingstone was still the mayor even close to here July yeah yeah yeah I was even here and I had to pay egotist July yeah I had a special memory because the same evening I had a flight so I had to pay triple the taxi to take me because all London was but what I'm saying is that that's the typical trauma for us September this a shock and then we mourn but life returns to normal but what is so tragic and I see an echo of this if you compare southern Israel Hamas attack and Gaza what about all those third world people but let's even forget about but we shouldn't Gaza for example the true nightmare when the nightmare is not an exception but becomes a way of life for example it really affected me some regions of maybe one of the nightmarish states today the Democratic Republic of Congo there is there are parts of the country where most of the men were killed in civil war so you have women with children and the women to survive have to go to walk to some store whatever and the path is controlled by some bandits so it's part of the daily life like there are ten women today you go then you because they know you will be seriously raped but this is simply can you imagine life like this it's not an exception oh my God I was raped it's no let's gather together let's see who will be raped today no that's the horror you know and we see a little bit of this again unfortunately there for Israelis it was maybe two days or whatever a shock for Gaza it's you know and then all this humanitarian bullshit you know oh we sympathize there with children and so on and so on I think and I'm not an utopian here that Israel I'm not saying it shouldn't attack Hamas it could have been done in a much more humanitarian different way here if this is not a moderate position you know taking more care of for example the most cynical point you remember a couple of days a week after the war Israelis gave first hours for all from northern part to move south which was theoretically that they draw that line which was theoretically theoretically impossible then now I come to the last part and then I will conclude and okay tomorrow we go into philosophy into this to avoid any misunderstanding this horror of anti-Semitism and how to explain what goes on today I want to show you this is again sorry the last clip it's something very ordinary you find dozens like this but you know this is the daily life on the West Bank a group of Palestinian farmers harassed by a a settler who just shouts at them humiliates them throws around their seeds grain and so on and they can't do anything why because there are I don't know you will see policemen or army Israeli behind who of course does nothing and this must be a horrible sense where the big other is not there but not in this great emancipatory Lacanian way but simply you have no legal force to rely on now imagine this to be your daily life let's go again quickly through this disgusting procedure okay let's do the second one sorry the second one it's nothing so horrible but it's depressing remember this is the way of life there daily life the day drags on what is this sabotage are you a Zionist agent no my God in a terrorist state I would be a good minister of the interior okay sabotage okay so what's my point here now people now I will make a conclusion which will offend I hope both sides people are talking today about anti-left sorry about leftist anti-Semitism no identifying imperialism with Israel and so on and so on yes we should be critical towards Israel but at the same time totally against anti-Semitism why I think precise thesis that anti-Semitism there cannot be anti-Semitic left if there is it's an iron proof it's a proof that the left that there is something wrong with this left let's take my supreme example Soviet Union they claim communism was only was always anti-Semitic sorry are they crazy look at Lenin's Politburo the guys who really forget about democracy ran the things more than half of them were Jews with Trotsky on the top look now it's a nice data for you to provoke you I read a book about the early era of Cheka Cheka was the original KGB you know what was the national percentage of different ethnic groups in in Cheka over percent Jews a little bit less than percent Lithuania Latvia Estonia Baltic countries and in all outnumber around percent of Russians that's why all the first generation white counter-revolution they were almost ferociously anti-Semitic always depicting Trotsky as devil and so on and with Stalin it all changed you know it's precisely when already in the late 20s the revolution I I'm not saying it didn't go wrong open but this big Stalinist change where everything changed at the level of superstructure but not only there like homosexuality was prohibited in the 20s it wasn't a problem motherhood was rediscovered divorce was made much more difficult in late 20s they if you got more than three four children you got this medal you know hero of mother well some bullshit medal and so on and exactly at that point of course with a code word it wasn't called anti-Semitism it was called cosmopolitanism cosmopolitan like a deviation so against this background tomorrow I will go into precisely this stuff about all the paradoxes of more philosophy on anti-Semitism and how this affects today's Judaism don't be afraid my point will not be as people claim who accuse me of being anti-Semitic my point will not be that Jews are today's Nazis but in a strange way you remember many in some Jewish friends gave me this idea of how the whole Jewish emancipatory legacy and I say this openly there would have been in Europe no enlightenment without Jews precisely as stateless Jews remember Heydrich who said assimilationist Jews bad Zionist Jews good and it's along these lines that Heidegger in the most horrible way imaginable in his black notebooks published some ten years ago justifies Holocaust my God I loved this yes when I say I loved this it means it's unimaginable horror because he interprets Holocaust as a self-destruction of the Jews Jews got what they deserved why because Jews embody this general without roots in a blood and soil general sense of exploiting nature manipulating others and simply in Holocaust they got their own message back they got what they really wanted it's a nightmare but enough of this tomorrow I'm sorry it was not enough philosophy be sure that you will get it tomorrow so now I pretend I will pretend that we live in a democracy and please the bit you hate the questions I hate the questions although as I already once said here I think wouldn't it be nice to have this type of debate that one of you stands up and improvise on something and then my task is to invent the question to which his question was an answer you know or my temptation as I already used this joke here is to give you this kind of pseudo-Buddhist answer you know you ask me a complex question my answer is something like clap with one hand or think about nothing or some bullshit like that please right thank you let's no no no okay all right no don't even bother applauding because tomorrow I will try to indicate where maybe there is a solution but I really think we live in a shitty time I don't see you know at the other three weeks ago at that How To Academy a young guy asked me a very good question cynical brutal but I like this maybe you find it on on YouTube he asked me your view was dark but it's easy for you I loved this to say because you are an old guy in any case you will drop dead soon but he said but look at the people they are mostly in their 20s what should be the message to them aren't you obliged to give them some hope and then I think but I was cut short what I was able to say was a good point I simply asked the guy is your approach epistemological or ontological by this I mean sorry it's not so complex do you mean my diagnosis is correct just not to make people too desperate invent some happy ending you know but so you agree with my diagnosis you are just saying I should be more considerate or are you saying there really is a hope the situation is not so dark in that case please tell me where do you see the hope and of course I claimed that the the moderator not you the guy there was his agent because I said that's your question mine that's a good point to conclude you know sorry please right before Slavoj asks himself another question let's indicate clearly yeah let's take you oh we've got a roving mic so just so everyone else can hear do do speak into the mic first of all that guy was a really an asshole you didn't deserve that that day sorry are you was the guy who asked me that oh no no no no no I thought because I I it's not I'm not a racist joke I have a bad a bad eyes eyes now and maybe you were the same guy I don't know it wasn't me but he was an asshole um I was gonna ask you about language right in what sense be precise yes in this last video it seems like they can understand each other the Israeli and the Palestinian I don't know do you know what language were they speaking probably Hebrew yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because I understand that Palestinians speak Hebrew I don't think that many Jews speak whatever the Palestinians speak it's like the it's kind of like the opposite of a Habermasian like we can communicate because of language and we can come to reason together this is like he can bully the Palestinian guy because he can understand him right if they were not understandable to one another then he couldn't get the bullying because it wouldn't make sense to the other guy right very nice point yes you know but you know what's my answer to you here sorry did you again I'm interrupting you I'm really evil please finish the question yes no I mean it was just what is the role of language yeah I am here a Hegelian we think in language irreducibly but there is of course Hegel was aware of it an ideology inscribed into every language the way you relate to sexes to environment to everything and by ideology I don't mean here some dark mega plot I mean simply at the everyday level for example I enjoyed the conversation forty years ago with a Japanese guy who told me how difficult it is and correct me if there are some Japanese here if I got something wrong you know Freud's notion of Verneinung you this wasn't my mother which means for sure it was my mother all that stuff and he said that in Japanese this is difficult to act because they have according to different styles does a lower class guy address a higher and so on you have some almost twenty ways to say no so you know it complicates things and even I love them not because I'm a western racist but to see problems like in in India the untouchables the lower caste whom I met we immediately fell in love but not because of this they loved English because they not because they were pro-imperialist but they said in English you is you and it's more egalitarian while in their own languages in India the hierarchy is much more written into the texture you address people at different levels in different ways so what I'm saying is that that's the problem of language that it I'm not saying language is a homogeneous ideological entity no language is self-contradictory because returning to Habermas yes I'm against Habermas because unfortunately he also now fell into this trap Habermas and two of his younger pupils published something which a little bit in a paranoia I think was also meant as an attack against me basically they say yeah yeah yeah Israel might be doing something wrong in Gaza but nonetheless the ultra trauma was this Holocaust absolute solidarity with Israel and but here where I would agree with Habermas is that there is a certain what Habermasians would have called normativity involved in language so I'm not saying directly that language is an instrument of oppression but it's self-antagonistic it has a certain equality of communication like when I address you I presuppose we share the same space but at the same time this formal equality is blurred by ideological biases and so on and so on which is why as Hegel put it wonderfully we think in language but a true dialectician learns to think in language against language that's why Hegel surprisingly hated this idea of pure neutral
unknown
formal language that's
formal language that's
Slavoj Žižek
why Hegel relied so much on wordplay you know these double meanings like Aufhebung you know in German it means sublation in the sense of overcoming it means faithful to it and it means destroying so this is Hegel's idea
why Hegel relied so much on wordplay you know these double meanings like Aufhebung you know in German it means sublation in the sense of overcoming it means faithful to it and it means destroying so this is Hegel's idea
unknown
of a speculative sentence you read a sentence it's meaningless you don't get it you
of a speculative sentence you read a sentence it's meaningless you don't get it you
Slavoj Žižek
have to read it again to get the double meaning and so on but where I agree if I got
have to read it again to get the double meaning and so on but where I agree if I got
unknown
your
your
Slavoj Žižek
point I hope you'll agree is that I never
point I hope you'll agree is that I never
unknown
believe in this this is too fascist for me idea that languages are irreducible
believe in this this is too fascist for me idea that languages are irreducible
Slavoj Žižek
obstacles like let's say you are from South America I'm from China how do we know that with
obstacles like let's say you are from South America I'm from China how do we know that with
unknown
money state power we mean the same thing no
money state power we mean the same thing no
Slavoj Žižek
I think that but not in the
I think that but not in the
unknown
Habermasian sense of some
Habermasian sense of some
Slavoj Žižek
normativity that it is
normativity that it is
unknown
already there but with hard work I will do a very pathetic simple statement with hard
already there but with hard work I will do a very pathetic simple statement with hard
Slavoj Žižek
work we can always
work we can always
unknown
communicate that I think that this easy escape into oh how do I know that you mean the same thing there is something false in it you know why because it presupposes that languages are in themselves autonomous entities
communicate that I think that this easy escape into oh how do I know that you mean the same thing there is something false in it you know why because it presupposes that languages are in themselves autonomous entities
Slavoj Žižek
they are not they are self-contradictory they include
they are not they are self-contradictory they include
unknown
references to other languages and so on and so on
references to other languages and so on and so on
Slavoj Žižek
which is why what I like most is when and that's Adorno you are an
which is why what I like most is when and that's Adorno you are an
unknown
Adornian you were years ago had this nice point
Adornian you were years ago had this nice point
Slavoj Žižek
in defense of these foreign words you know
in defense of these foreign words you know
unknown
against
against
Slavoj Žižek
how they are the most precious part
how they are the most precious part
unknown
of the and he gives a nice example of how a foreign word that we use part of our language Italian origin whatever what you lose if you simply translate it into English or German
of the and he gives a nice example of how a foreign word that we use part of our language Italian origin whatever what you lose if you simply translate it into English or German
Slavoj Žižek
our hope is precisely
our hope is precisely
unknown
the inconsistency the inner tensions of language so I agree with I think that I don't agree with this simplistic
the inconsistency the inner tensions of language so I agree with I think that I don't agree with this simplistic
Slavoj Žižek
Habermasian notion you know why
Habermasian notion you know why
unknown
because oh my god I'm a total idiot which means I really even read intelligent cognitivists who
because oh my god I'm a total idiot which means I really even read intelligent cognitivists who
Slavoj Žižek
are now doing some very interesting stuff about language and they
are now doing some very interesting stuff about language and they
unknown
are the best anti-Habermasians I think because they have I think conclusively proven in a very slightly primitive way origins of language and so on that language was basically made to lie to either sexually seduce or trick the other into submission so that so that so that what Habermas reads as normativity language has this norm that you don't like be truthful
are the best anti-Habermasians I think because they have I think conclusively proven in a very slightly primitive way origins of language and so on that language was basically made to lie to either sexually seduce or trick the other into submission so that so that so that what Habermas reads as normativity language has this norm that you don't like be truthful
Slavoj Žižek
no it's an appearance it's a language is made to fake to be truthful the basic dimension of language is lying which
no it's an appearance it's a language is made to fake to be truthful the basic dimension of language is lying which
unknown
is why again you have to think in language against language on the other and now just to
is why again you have to think in language against language on the other and now just to
Slavoj Žižek
conclude I will
conclude I will
unknown
not get lost although I already was what I would say answer you is if you would agree that so not only because of this
not get lost although I already was what I would say answer you is if you would agree that so not only because of this
Slavoj Žižek
inconsistency
inconsistency
unknown
of languages not
of languages not
Slavoj Žižek
only is it that we can understand each other but often coming from outside you can maybe notice inconsistencies in my culture better than I do myself who is in my culture sometimes and my eternal example I probably even used it here is Hollywood precisely the big wave in the 30s 40s of those movies which were pretty critical of American ideology they were mostly done by German emigrants and so on and so on precisely their distance from American way of life enabled them to see antagonisms there for example some Fritz Lang movies and so on so I hope great thank you okay we'll take you thank you to be honest I have too many questions written down here but Žižek I'm gonna like do some propaganda and all for whom for you oh yeah for me I'm gonna combine them into one you know but there are like multiple questions in mind okay um first I want to say that we're neighbors European you know I come from Austria we border the thing so we know each other really yeah how do we know each other no no no what I mean is you know I remember when Slovenia became independent Otto von Habsburg the last descendant says in typical Austrian way we Slovenians are just Austrians who speak another language that we are proud I hope you meant this yes sorry but you know what is Austria more Nazi than Germany itself you know yeah yeah I mean it I don't okay Austria by the way sorry sorry I will stop interrupting you please finish the question so clearly I'm a Pan-Africanist anyway um which takes me to my questions um because I know back in the day you engaged with Fanon in some capacity in your work I just want to ask you how much you've engaged with black philosophy in general with people like in the black radical tradition such as Fred Moten Calvin Warren or Frank Wilderson um since they are currently continuing the question of nothing which kind of is related to your your work in terms of uh you know going into the paradox of being and what not ontologically speaking so I wonder how much you've come across their work okay very honestly I am sick and tired of lying I must know I must admit sorry that I don't know a lot about it but what I can say only is that to go particular to particular names in my new book on Christian Atheism which will appear in a couple of months which will be hated by Christians and by atheists I go very deeply into because I don't think it's simply pessimistic there is a very deep philosophical insight okay that's not Africa that's more black Americans I hate the term Afro-Americans like you know like Afro-Americans what does it mean why are then we not called European Americans you know but you know Afro-pessimists there is I think they are not simply just pessimists there is such a deep insight in them in the sense that precisely there you have nothing embodied this zero level of subjectivity which is more radical than all the European bullshit on subjectivity I think that today to save the emancipatory content of Cartesianism in this sense of pure thought African pessimists are close to it and I always thought again although I am spontaneously a racist in the sense of let's insult everybody but I think who wrote Toni Morrison Beloved my God she is a nice lady I met her once at Princeton she is not some kind of a politically correct bitch I immediately went into dirty talk with her she is a wonderful and I think that her Beloved is the underline three times lesson on feminine subjectivity on how through this radical loss a specific type of feminine subjectivity emerges and so on so you see my point not to mention Fanon Fanon is absolute for me not so much a damnent of the earth but already his what is mask white masks blah blah blah it's incredible you know what he sees clearly there that we shouldn't fall into this opposition of either some mysterious African origins which are more authentic or white emancipatory thought how fake this opposition is and you know where I experience this I'm old enough you're probably not I remember apartheid times how Mandela I had problems with him but at least the great thing was he never played the card of some more authentic black experience you know who played this card Buthelezi who was fully supported by apartheid regime Buthelezi's message was we blacks want our own specific identity and of course the white says yes that's what apartheid means and so on let's stick to it again maybe you know this story I remember in the 70s 80s I got here in London I know where is it on Trafalgar Square or there South African embassy yeah yeah yeah they were distributing there some propaganda for free I took a booklet of course for apartheid and you know what was their argument pure multiculturalism of course that if we just introduce democracy in South Africa it means what will happen with all those who are those lower Hottentot Bushman or whatever that all this wealth of
only is it that we can understand each other but often coming from outside you can maybe notice inconsistencies in my culture better than I do myself who is in my culture sometimes and my eternal example I probably even used it here is Hollywood precisely the big wave in the 30s 40s of those movies which were pretty critical of American ideology they were mostly done by German emigrants and so on and so on precisely their distance from American way of life enabled them to see antagonisms there for example some Fritz Lang movies and so on so I hope great thank you okay we'll take you thank you to be honest I have too many questions written down here but Žižek I'm gonna like do some propaganda and all for whom for you oh yeah for me I'm gonna combine them into one you know but there are like multiple questions in mind okay um first I want to say that we're neighbors European you know I come from Austria we border the thing so we know each other really yeah how do we know each other no no no what I mean is you know I remember when Slovenia became independent Otto von Habsburg the last descendant says in typical Austrian way we Slovenians are just Austrians who speak another language that we are proud I hope you meant this yes sorry but you know what is Austria more Nazi than Germany itself you know yeah yeah I mean it I don't okay Austria by the way sorry sorry I will stop interrupting you please finish the question so clearly I'm a Pan-Africanist anyway um which takes me to my questions um because I know back in the day you engaged with Fanon in some capacity in your work I just want to ask you how much you've engaged with black philosophy in general with people like in the black radical tradition such as Fred Moten Calvin Warren or Frank Wilderson um since they are currently continuing the question of nothing which kind of is related to your your work in terms of uh you know going into the paradox of being and what not ontologically speaking so I wonder how much you've come across their work okay very honestly I am sick and tired of lying I must know I must admit sorry that I don't know a lot about it but what I can say only is that to go particular to particular names in my new book on Christian Atheism which will appear in a couple of months which will be hated by Christians and by atheists I go very deeply into because I don't think it's simply pessimistic there is a very deep philosophical insight okay that's not Africa that's more black Americans I hate the term Afro-Americans like you know like Afro-Americans what does it mean why are then we not called European Americans you know but you know Afro-pessimists there is I think they are not simply just pessimists there is such a deep insight in them in the sense that precisely there you have nothing embodied this zero level of subjectivity which is more radical than all the European bullshit on subjectivity I think that today to save the emancipatory content of Cartesianism in this sense of pure thought African pessimists are close to it and I always thought again although I am spontaneously a racist in the sense of let's insult everybody but I think who wrote Toni Morrison Beloved my God she is a nice lady I met her once at Princeton she is not some kind of a politically correct bitch I immediately went into dirty talk with her she is a wonderful and I think that her Beloved is the underline three times lesson on feminine subjectivity on how through this radical loss a specific type of feminine subjectivity emerges and so on so you see my point not to mention Fanon Fanon is absolute for me not so much a damnent of the earth but already his what is mask white masks blah blah blah it's incredible you know what he sees clearly there that we shouldn't fall into this opposition of either some mysterious African origins which are more authentic or white emancipatory thought how fake this opposition is and you know where I experience this I'm old enough you're probably not I remember apartheid times how Mandela I had problems with him but at least the great thing was he never played the card of some more authentic black experience you know who played this card Buthelezi who was fully supported by apartheid regime Buthelezi's message was we blacks want our own specific identity and of course the white says yes that's what apartheid means and so on let's stick to it again maybe you know this story I remember in the 70s 80s I got here in London I know where is it on Trafalgar Square or there South African embassy yeah yeah yeah they were distributing there some propaganda for free I took a booklet of course for apartheid and you know what was their argument pure multiculturalism of course that if we just introduce democracy in South Africa it means what will happen with all those who are those lower Hottentot Bushman or whatever that all this wealth of
Cathy Newman
black cultures
black cultures
Slavoj Žižek
different will disappear and so on and so on so I always like to emphasize this there is a multiculturalism which is the best tool of imperialism it's not true that colonial imperialism wants the black to become like us no no no they want the blacks to be even more what they are this is why as I learned from friends in India in just before the British colonization of India India was already traditional ideology was disappearing gradually nobody took it seriously in the 19th century the British colonizers in a whole campaign organized reprinting old Hindu classics because they got it no no no Hindu guys should stay there in their own culture they wanted to keep them there which is why one of the most disgusting British colonial topics was even the poorest English sorry Indian farmer has more deep spiritual wisdom than we Europeans with oh my god I mean it's pure nightmare what Fanon saw clearly also socially with his contacts with Sartre and so on that there is no opposition here if you drop these clichés you can clearly see how if you just are faith remain faithful to emancipatory legacy European and how how easy it is to collaborate to mutual benefit not just pragmatic
different will disappear and so on and so on so I always like to emphasize this there is a multiculturalism which is the best tool of imperialism it's not true that colonial imperialism wants the black to become like us no no no they want the blacks to be even more what they are this is why as I learned from friends in India in just before the British colonization of India India was already traditional ideology was disappearing gradually nobody took it seriously in the 19th century the British colonizers in a whole campaign organized reprinting old Hindu classics because they got it no no no Hindu guys should stay there in their own culture they wanted to keep them there which is why one of the most disgusting British colonial topics was even the poorest English sorry Indian farmer has more deep spiritual wisdom than we Europeans with oh my god I mean it's pure nightmare what Fanon saw clearly also socially with his contacts with Sartre and so on that there is no opposition here if you drop these clichés you can clearly see how if you just are faith remain faithful to emancipatory legacy European and how how easy it is to collaborate to mutual benefit not just pragmatic
Cathy Newman
collaboration but engage in the same project
collaboration but engage in the same project
Slavoj Žižek
with oppressed blacks and oppressed whites that's why my formula of universalism is not what
with oppressed blacks and oppressed whites that's why my formula of universalism is not what
Cathy Newman
I ironically call the UNESCO universalism all these book how different this culture is how beautiful that
I ironically call the UNESCO universalism all these book how different this culture is how beautiful that
unknown
culture
culture
Slavoj Žižek
is no all cultures are shit so the only universalism is the oppressed of this culture let's collaborate with the oppressed of another culture that's the only
is no all cultures are shit so the only universalism is the oppressed of this culture let's collaborate with the oppressed of another culture that's the only
unknown
universalism not this celebrating
universalism not this celebrating
Slavoj Žižek
what spiritual depth here there and so on and so on I know I didn't answer your question but you see how I proceed I but you see my point I like to look at this concrete references Toni Morrison or
what spiritual depth here there and so on and so on I know I didn't answer your question but you see how I proceed I but you see my point I like to look at this concrete references Toni Morrison or
unknown
Afro-pessimists or Fanon this is for me something I'm almost tempted to say absolute I think that my problem is again I admit
Afro-pessimists or Fanon this is for me something I'm almost tempted to say absolute I think that my problem is again I admit
Slavoj Žižek
in this sense under quotation marks I'm Eurocentrist how to save the emancipatory legacy of modern Europe I claim only you Africans and others can do it we are too corrupt we cannot do it if we try to do it we end up like those German control you know how they are even called in Germany it's a nightmare the guy who shouted at me anti-Semitic commissar each state in Germany has now a guy who is responsible to detect anti-Semitism it's like their own version of Gestapo in another form yes yes it's terrifying because I saw already how they you know for example now they debate from the river to the sea Palestine should be free now this is proclaimed more or less it will be officially prohibited anti-Semitic but sorry from my Jewish friends I know this was originally meant not throw the Jews into the sea this originally was meant a one-state argument let's all Jews and Arabs live there in one state in originally this is not although again you know what's Jewish greatness for me I know the writer who now is so-so but he did criticize the state of Israel now also David Grossman I spoke with him maybe you know the story some years ago when he told me that when he was young this is Judaism at its purest in good sense he heard Arab propaganda you will be thrown into the sea we will and you know what was his reaction my God I don't know how to swim in the sea and then he took a went to a training for swimming and so on that's Kafka this is Kafka this is the spirit you know this is the spirit so I'm just waiting I would like so much to know about Africa for example the miracle of this cheaply made digital movies in Ghana and around isn't there a whole cinema show because you know we Nollywood Nollywood yes I don't like Bollywood Nollywood Nollywood yeah yeah yeah you so here because you know what's a good thing nonetheless about European postmodernity it's that it's very easy for third world countries to bypass ordinary line of progress and catch for example you have those people for us Europeans primitive Ghana although Ghana is a beautiful country but all that and then my God all of a sudden through iPhones and so on you can jump all this boring technological development you can immediately connect to where we are today that's what I find a progressive element in this postmodern technology that those who were excluded you know don't have to go through the old stupid stages of us European you can directly jump sorry I talk too much please two things though um I want to read a quote to you from Calvin Warren he wrote in uh ontological terror which is uh prominent to your to your work which is that quote we are still on the path to developing a phenomenology of black spirit so you know and wish to continue that work and you know you inspire it it's awesome great thanks yes thanks very much was the Fanta good yeah was the Fanta good the Fanta is always the same isn't it it's it's the same but but it's good because again because of its big context which I described I enjoyed it okay um but listen I know you are leftists but there were also right-wingers here too yeah okay all right okay but there was a lady there we will not forget her that's funny you would call me that I was about to mention something about Germany bit are you German i lived in Germany for thirteen years uh okay okay sorry yeah you move away from me anyway um you said like first like the one version to do these questions is I say something and then you say something and we have this autistic monologue dialogue um it's not what I wanted to say is the phenomena you said about Germany I have some opinions on that please I think that Germany is so extreme in supporting Israel because of multiple reasons one Israel legitimizes the existence of a German state if the Israel as this how they market themselves as this Jewish state didn't get like the kind of reparation from what the Jewish people experienced in Germany then the German state would have no justification whatsoever to exist and on the other side Israel needs some kind of predatory narrative predatory history to exist and depict itself as a Jewish state when it isn't when it isn't a purely Jewish state but that's the rhetoric to justify what they are doing right now and I feel like talking about this in Germany creates this um i like to call it like a social panopticon there is this there is this general alienation from the guilt I mean there have been studies done by the Arolsen Archives the biggest archive about World War II whatever there have been made studies and they found that over percent of Germans think their own ancestors personal grandparents were either neutral or freedom fighters how does that work I don't I can't do the math no I know sorry to interrupt you I will immediately give I find this totally understandable because in Slovenia there were very little dissidents but after almost everybody was a dissident ten years ago so it's the same please go on sorry and what you said like outside they say something extreme inside they say something else there is this social panopticon like are you the Nazi are you the neo-Nazi because we can see statistically arise but no one speaks out openly except for the left and that's the funny part um Sahra Wagenknecht like this big speaker of the Linke she went out and said oh
in this sense under quotation marks I'm Eurocentrist how to save the emancipatory legacy of modern Europe I claim only you Africans and others can do it we are too corrupt we cannot do it if we try to do it we end up like those German control you know how they are even called in Germany it's a nightmare the guy who shouted at me anti-Semitic commissar each state in Germany has now a guy who is responsible to detect anti-Semitism it's like their own version of Gestapo in another form yes yes it's terrifying because I saw already how they you know for example now they debate from the river to the sea Palestine should be free now this is proclaimed more or less it will be officially prohibited anti-Semitic but sorry from my Jewish friends I know this was originally meant not throw the Jews into the sea this originally was meant a one-state argument let's all Jews and Arabs live there in one state in originally this is not although again you know what's Jewish greatness for me I know the writer who now is so-so but he did criticize the state of Israel now also David Grossman I spoke with him maybe you know the story some years ago when he told me that when he was young this is Judaism at its purest in good sense he heard Arab propaganda you will be thrown into the sea we will and you know what was his reaction my God I don't know how to swim in the sea and then he took a went to a training for swimming and so on that's Kafka this is Kafka this is the spirit you know this is the spirit so I'm just waiting I would like so much to know about Africa for example the miracle of this cheaply made digital movies in Ghana and around isn't there a whole cinema show because you know we Nollywood Nollywood yes I don't like Bollywood Nollywood Nollywood yeah yeah yeah you so here because you know what's a good thing nonetheless about European postmodernity it's that it's very easy for third world countries to bypass ordinary line of progress and catch for example you have those people for us Europeans primitive Ghana although Ghana is a beautiful country but all that and then my God all of a sudden through iPhones and so on you can jump all this boring technological development you can immediately connect to where we are today that's what I find a progressive element in this postmodern technology that those who were excluded you know don't have to go through the old stupid stages of us European you can directly jump sorry I talk too much please two things though um I want to read a quote to you from Calvin Warren he wrote in uh ontological terror which is uh prominent to your to your work which is that quote we are still on the path to developing a phenomenology of black spirit so you know and wish to continue that work and you know you inspire it it's awesome great thanks yes thanks very much was the Fanta good yeah was the Fanta good the Fanta is always the same isn't it it's it's the same but but it's good because again because of its big context which I described I enjoyed it okay um but listen I know you are leftists but there were also right-wingers here too yeah okay all right okay but there was a lady there we will not forget her that's funny you would call me that I was about to mention something about Germany bit are you German i lived in Germany for thirteen years uh okay okay sorry yeah you move away from me anyway um you said like first like the one version to do these questions is I say something and then you say something and we have this autistic monologue dialogue um it's not what I wanted to say is the phenomena you said about Germany I have some opinions on that please I think that Germany is so extreme in supporting Israel because of multiple reasons one Israel legitimizes the existence of a German state if the Israel as this how they market themselves as this Jewish state didn't get like the kind of reparation from what the Jewish people experienced in Germany then the German state would have no justification whatsoever to exist and on the other side Israel needs some kind of predatory narrative predatory history to exist and depict itself as a Jewish state when it isn't when it isn't a purely Jewish state but that's the rhetoric to justify what they are doing right now and I feel like talking about this in Germany creates this um i like to call it like a social panopticon there is this there is this general alienation from the guilt I mean there have been studies done by the Arolsen Archives the biggest archive about World War II whatever there have been made studies and they found that over percent of Germans think their own ancestors personal grandparents were either neutral or freedom fighters how does that work I don't I can't do the math no I know sorry to interrupt you I will immediately give I find this totally understandable because in Slovenia there were very little dissidents but after almost everybody was a dissident ten years ago so it's the same please go on sorry and what you said like outside they say something extreme inside they say something else there is this social panopticon like are you the Nazi are you the neo-Nazi because we can see statistically arise but no one speaks out openly except for the left and that's the funny part um Sahra Wagenknecht like this big speaker of the Linke she went out and said oh
unknown
the anti-Semitism problem in Germany stems from imported imported anti-Semitism from Arabs
the anti-Semitism problem in Germany stems from imported imported anti-Semitism from Arabs
Slavoj Žižek
she said this I like her in a horrible way even more now no because you know what happened to her Sahra Wagenknecht the mistress of Oskar Lafontaine no to give a concrete social analysis who was you know that's her moment of truth you remember a couple of months ago
she said this I like her in a horrible way even more now no because you know what happened to her Sahra Wagenknecht the mistress of Oskar Lafontaine no to give a concrete social analysis who was you know that's her moment of truth you remember a couple of months ago
unknown
she gave a speech
she gave a speech
Slavoj Žižek
I think in Dresden or Leipzig
I think in Dresden or Leipzig
unknown
preaching this anti-immigrant blah blah and in a first row of the public there was a big name of Alternative für Deutschland right wing who shouted at her kommen Sie zu uns come to us you are one of us and this is an incredible problem but you see it so well what you said this game that is played now yes that's the logical conclusion it's not it's that like I made a well-known joke on how where is the Balkan you know for us in
preaching this anti-immigrant blah blah and in a first row of the public there was a big name of Alternative für Deutschland right wing who shouted at her kommen Sie zu uns come to us you are one of us and this is an incredible problem but you see it so well what you said this game that is played now yes that's the logical conclusion it's not it's that like I made a well-known joke on how where is the Balkan you know for us in
Slavoj Žižek
Slovenia it's Croatia for Croatia it's Serbia Orthodox for Serbia it's Balkan is always down there maybe anti-Semitism will become the same with anti-Semitism no it's not us you know we were a little bit and that's the most consequent here is Heidegger about this tomorrow where he says anti-Semitism which means killing the Jews is the Jews themselves who wanted it and we were just we Germans were just manipulated by them to do it it's quite it's quite breathtaking you know but what really yes it's always anti-Semitism and you know what fascinates me it's not just anti-Semitism I'm now use you all I hope forgot it all an old joke but it's not a joke it's very sad my own mother the most sacred you know I discovered her anti-Semitism maybe you know the story years ago she had an old Jewish lady my mother was also already old as a friend and they I don't know who was returning to whom some money and then this Jewish lady left and my mother told me you know she is a nice this Jewish lady my best friend but did you notice in what strangely intense way she was counting the money you know I got her she may appear normal as one of us but you know ah and my I wrote of this probably most of you don't know it years ago when I said it's the same as in these good old science fiction movies about invasion of aliens they look like us just in some of the movies they have too much skin between these two they have a strange glint in their eyes whatever just you have to know the detail and you see they are radically other which is why for Germans it was such a problem to identify which is why the Nazis were so obsessed with how to identify the Jews you know all the but the Nazis had the same problem with Aryans you know Hitler was well aware that Germans are not really a I mean name me one big Nazi politician who looked like an Aryan should look blonde high maybe half Ribbentrop maybe but not really look was Hitler a beautiful Aryan be serious was Goering fat guy be serious was sorry for politically incorrect crippled guy and so on that's why they loved Norwegians it was clear the myth was that Norwegians are more Aryan than we are and that's where one should begin by undermining racism not by saying you live in illusions that you are not privileged race but to show how secretly you don't even believe in your own racism you transpose it onto another you know so sorry but uh yes i i I agree with you and it worries me very much because the wager of Sahra Wagenknecht is of course to get the vote from the far right you know anti-immigrant but I didn't know I will look for it what you told me this anti-Semitism from where it's a good theory maybe because do you know Alain Badiou when we were still friends told me this that it's only in the 20s that anti-Semitism really exploded in Germany if you were to ask somebody around or if you want to tell him listen there will be a big anti-Semitic fascist state in Europe which will it be the answer would have been France not only because of Dreyfus France was much stronger in its anti-Semitism at that period you know so again maybe the German should claim it's really the French who are guilty no and so on it's always nice to see racists to play to play these games but do you agree or not I am afraid of people like Wagenknecht because up to a point very limited I agree with her critique of the standard let's just open our borders immigrants no it's not so simple if Europe goes on like this this is what I'm afraid you will get what we have now in Italy in Sweden all these new right-wingers no and at the end we live in a wonderful time I have a new ideal figure today this means pure horror you know I mentioned it well before the talk you know that how do you pronounce it Milei or what the new Argentinian president you know my God I'm sorry to say the world is moving towards let's call it direct madness in the sense that it's falling apart and you know what's my solution here you will not agree it's no longer the time to play this game of you know right-wing government is for establishment decency we should be alternative obscenity sorry new right-wing populists took this over very successfully the point that I always repeat look two contrasts of the American politics Trump and Bernie Sanders if there ever was a postmodern politician in this usual sense of making fun of himself obscenities and so on Trump is a pure cynical postmodernist while if there ever was a politician who stands for and I'm consciously using this term silent moral majority ordinary decency and so on it's Bernie Sanders we give too much to the right if we allow them to occupy this let's call it naively neutral moral ground of decency no they are they are the decadent nihilists today not not we so my idea is totally crazy here but it's not crazy because Bernie is doing it Bernie I spoke not with him but because he is not my type I learned with a guy who make an interview with him a friend of mine I will not tell his name he told me he had a meeting here in the London pub a couple of months ago with Bernie Sanders and he thought this friend of mine that my approach as he put it Žižekian will work and began with some dirty jokes no not for Bernie Bernie said sorry don't have time for this ask the real questions so he's not my touch but nonetheless what I want to say is that he provided the formula where years ago he said to Democrats stop with this worry of middle who will get the middle ground politicians you know we shouldn't move too much to the left we will no Trump knew this the more he went to the extreme the more votes he had so Bernie said our target should be those impoverished white people who otherwise would have voted for Trump they they not this famous middle ground liberals who oscillate or whatever no and this is the big problem today I'm sorry I talk too much there was this lady yes thank you um have we got the mic just the mic come thank you uh just for context I'm going to say that this is relevant to the question is that um so I was
Slovenia it's Croatia for Croatia it's Serbia Orthodox for Serbia it's Balkan is always down there maybe anti-Semitism will become the same with anti-Semitism no it's not us you know we were a little bit and that's the most consequent here is Heidegger about this tomorrow where he says anti-Semitism which means killing the Jews is the Jews themselves who wanted it and we were just we Germans were just manipulated by them to do it it's quite it's quite breathtaking you know but what really yes it's always anti-Semitism and you know what fascinates me it's not just anti-Semitism I'm now use you all I hope forgot it all an old joke but it's not a joke it's very sad my own mother the most sacred you know I discovered her anti-Semitism maybe you know the story years ago she had an old Jewish lady my mother was also already old as a friend and they I don't know who was returning to whom some money and then this Jewish lady left and my mother told me you know she is a nice this Jewish lady my best friend but did you notice in what strangely intense way she was counting the money you know I got her she may appear normal as one of us but you know ah and my I wrote of this probably most of you don't know it years ago when I said it's the same as in these good old science fiction movies about invasion of aliens they look like us just in some of the movies they have too much skin between these two they have a strange glint in their eyes whatever just you have to know the detail and you see they are radically other which is why for Germans it was such a problem to identify which is why the Nazis were so obsessed with how to identify the Jews you know all the but the Nazis had the same problem with Aryans you know Hitler was well aware that Germans are not really a I mean name me one big Nazi politician who looked like an Aryan should look blonde high maybe half Ribbentrop maybe but not really look was Hitler a beautiful Aryan be serious was Goering fat guy be serious was sorry for politically incorrect crippled guy and so on that's why they loved Norwegians it was clear the myth was that Norwegians are more Aryan than we are and that's where one should begin by undermining racism not by saying you live in illusions that you are not privileged race but to show how secretly you don't even believe in your own racism you transpose it onto another you know so sorry but uh yes i i I agree with you and it worries me very much because the wager of Sahra Wagenknecht is of course to get the vote from the far right you know anti-immigrant but I didn't know I will look for it what you told me this anti-Semitism from where it's a good theory maybe because do you know Alain Badiou when we were still friends told me this that it's only in the 20s that anti-Semitism really exploded in Germany if you were to ask somebody around or if you want to tell him listen there will be a big anti-Semitic fascist state in Europe which will it be the answer would have been France not only because of Dreyfus France was much stronger in its anti-Semitism at that period you know so again maybe the German should claim it's really the French who are guilty no and so on it's always nice to see racists to play to play these games but do you agree or not I am afraid of people like Wagenknecht because up to a point very limited I agree with her critique of the standard let's just open our borders immigrants no it's not so simple if Europe goes on like this this is what I'm afraid you will get what we have now in Italy in Sweden all these new right-wingers no and at the end we live in a wonderful time I have a new ideal figure today this means pure horror you know I mentioned it well before the talk you know that how do you pronounce it Milei or what the new Argentinian president you know my God I'm sorry to say the world is moving towards let's call it direct madness in the sense that it's falling apart and you know what's my solution here you will not agree it's no longer the time to play this game of you know right-wing government is for establishment decency we should be alternative obscenity sorry new right-wing populists took this over very successfully the point that I always repeat look two contrasts of the American politics Trump and Bernie Sanders if there ever was a postmodern politician in this usual sense of making fun of himself obscenities and so on Trump is a pure cynical postmodernist while if there ever was a politician who stands for and I'm consciously using this term silent moral majority ordinary decency and so on it's Bernie Sanders we give too much to the right if we allow them to occupy this let's call it naively neutral moral ground of decency no they are they are the decadent nihilists today not not we so my idea is totally crazy here but it's not crazy because Bernie is doing it Bernie I spoke not with him but because he is not my type I learned with a guy who make an interview with him a friend of mine I will not tell his name he told me he had a meeting here in the London pub a couple of months ago with Bernie Sanders and he thought this friend of mine that my approach as he put it Žižekian will work and began with some dirty jokes no not for Bernie Bernie said sorry don't have time for this ask the real questions so he's not my touch but nonetheless what I want to say is that he provided the formula where years ago he said to Democrats stop with this worry of middle who will get the middle ground politicians you know we shouldn't move too much to the left we will no Trump knew this the more he went to the extreme the more votes he had so Bernie said our target should be those impoverished white people who otherwise would have voted for Trump they they not this famous middle ground liberals who oscillate or whatever no and this is the big problem today I'm sorry I talk too much there was this lady yes thank you um have we got the mic just the mic come thank you uh just for context I'm going to say that this is relevant to the question is that um so I was
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raised here and in the Arab world and um in the Arab world let's say the middle class educated which is a horrible term we are not
raised here and in the Arab world and um in the Arab world let's say the middle class educated which is a horrible term we are not
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raised um with
raised um with
Slavoj Žižek
anti-Semitic views this is a misconception in the West so I feel yeah I tend to agree yeah yeah anti-Semitism and I think your concern is a western one even though of course
anti-Semitic views this is a misconception in the West so I feel yeah I tend to agree yeah yeah anti-Semitism and I think your concern is a western one even though of course
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any level
any level
Slavoj Žižek
of people that you put under
of people that you put under
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the poverty line are going to have religious extremism so of course you're going to see it yeah yeah I'm sorry if I gave this impression I agree yeah so I also noticed sorry to interrupt you just a question along your line but isn't nonetheless this partially true in Iraq itself in the sense that the Iraqi invasion US invasion was to diminish so they said to diminish the influence of Iran and to bring freedom to women and Christians the result is that now Iran is stronger than ever in Iraq women are more lower position because whatever you say about Saddam no love for him he was relatively secular yes yeah yeah this and and half of the Christians left no that's what usually United States do like invasion of Libya again there will be a democratic Libya no now now I'm praying what if somebody like Gaddafi were to return sorry to interrupt you please go on no we feel the same way because I mean I grew up on a Christian street in Baghdad although my family's Muslim it was a taboo to even discuss religion especially not
the poverty line are going to have religious extremism so of course you're going to see it yeah yeah I'm sorry if I gave this impression I agree yeah so I also noticed sorry to interrupt you just a question along your line but isn't nonetheless this partially true in Iraq itself in the sense that the Iraqi invasion US invasion was to diminish so they said to diminish the influence of Iran and to bring freedom to women and Christians the result is that now Iran is stronger than ever in Iraq women are more lower position because whatever you say about Saddam no love for him he was relatively secular yes yeah yeah this and and half of the Christians left no that's what usually United States do like invasion of Libya again there will be a democratic Libya no now now I'm praying what if somebody like Gaddafi were to return sorry to interrupt you please go on no we feel the same way because I mean I grew up on a Christian street in Baghdad although my family's Muslim it was a taboo to even discuss religion especially not
Slavoj Žižek
Jewish we don't call them Jews or so when you hear the Gazans who are suffering let's say they're saying Jewish they mean the Israelis so
Jewish we don't call them Jews or so when you hear the Gazans who are suffering let's say they're saying Jewish they mean the Israelis so
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my
my
Slavoj Žižek
question
question
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is I find that in the West it's easy to criticize the British Empire let's say as
is I find that in the West it's easy to criticize the British Empire let's say as
Slavoj Žižek
maybe like a primitive old age institution and we will support any nation that their ambition is to escape or to exit the British Empire but as Arabs we see Israel I'm sorry if this offends anyone it's just how we're raised we see Israel as a colonial state and especially after this conflict the most recent one I find that I'm not allowed to speak as an Arab and to say do we have the right to our own land especially because a lot of Israelis in power say that actually in the Bible let's say and I know you said this is a new narrative in the Bible we actually have claim to parts of Egypt and Iraq so for the Arab world it's not a Jewish issue it's more an issue of colonial yeah back to the British and the French Sykes-Picot it's it's and we feel that this conversation is not allowed to happen because of you know the veil of anti-Semitism no the veil but the the problem of anti-Semitism in the West so I just wanted your no no I'm sorry we don't have more times to go into this but I deeply agree if I got it correctly with your with your tendency you know what's the original problem and that's I mean it seriously the tragedy of the Jews in Europe we burned them Holocaust and so on and then the very support for Israel was part of European racism okay there is even truth about I read in some documentary that it's not my favorite person King Faisal already in when the state of Israel was set there said to Truman was at that point president you did something horrible to Jews but why do you want to atone for it with land which is up to some point our you know there was European hypocrisy in it on the other hand you know I think but it's out of the question now nonetheless I agree here with Edward Said who said why this obsession with whose land is it my answer to the Jews is you know whenever they say Torah or whatever some bullshit old testament it says clearly it's our land what I say is uh they immediately regret that they said this is yeah I read the bible you know what it says there you know the story Moses dies Joshua and God tells him go down kill all of them Nazarene or whoever kill all of them women children goats sheep whatever you know and then the most obscene thing that is happening now it's terrible is that there are some bible specialists who try to prove based on some very suspicious data like that they discovered some graves where children were burned alive and so on that God was right who were the people in the valley that Joshua and the Jews were ordered by God kill them all Amalek yeah the idea is now what if they really were decadent that they deserved it I find this so horrible like the use and typically when I mention this to the Jews my friends many of them say oh it's anti-Semitism and I always challenge them okay it's anti-Semitism give me a better explanation and then they just I get vague answers that so it was done in that era yes but then don't refer to this as your land so it was done I know till 20th century even things were done like that I mean we Slavs we're a primitive tribe there in today's Ukraine Russia years ago and because of some now it's theory ecological changes drove there we pushed to the west and this is the story Russians don't want to hear do you know where the term Russian comes from from Scandinavian invaders they even the name is not Russian their first kings were Rurik dynasty which are again were again Scandinavians although Putin now turned this around you know and and claimed that's why we have the right to Sweden because and so on but what I want to say is that you see I totally my point is that like I have almost a Goebbels reaction when somebody mentions some secret old texts to justify today's position I'm just a realist here yes of course it was your I mean sorry I'm personalizing it Arab land more than Jews were there and also we shouldn't forget that and the Arab Jews as well sorry there's Arab Jews absolutely not only this but that we should also not forget that the origin of the decay of Jews in that land is we Europe it's it's ancient Rome after the rebellion of you know when they threw them out and I know very well the story which is you know it's wonderful to read Western official not some ISIS propaganda history of Crusades where Saladin how do you pronounce it correctly Salah ad-Din I will not go into that you know that first when crusaders in second crusade or when I forgot when occupied Jerusalem they Arabs or whatever they were not Jews were allowed to stay as servants not Jews Jews were thrown out so that when Saladin re-occupied
maybe like a primitive old age institution and we will support any nation that their ambition is to escape or to exit the British Empire but as Arabs we see Israel I'm sorry if this offends anyone it's just how we're raised we see Israel as a colonial state and especially after this conflict the most recent one I find that I'm not allowed to speak as an Arab and to say do we have the right to our own land especially because a lot of Israelis in power say that actually in the Bible let's say and I know you said this is a new narrative in the Bible we actually have claim to parts of Egypt and Iraq so for the Arab world it's not a Jewish issue it's more an issue of colonial yeah back to the British and the French Sykes-Picot it's it's and we feel that this conversation is not allowed to happen because of you know the veil of anti-Semitism no the veil but the the problem of anti-Semitism in the West so I just wanted your no no I'm sorry we don't have more times to go into this but I deeply agree if I got it correctly with your with your tendency you know what's the original problem and that's I mean it seriously the tragedy of the Jews in Europe we burned them Holocaust and so on and then the very support for Israel was part of European racism okay there is even truth about I read in some documentary that it's not my favorite person King Faisal already in when the state of Israel was set there said to Truman was at that point president you did something horrible to Jews but why do you want to atone for it with land which is up to some point our you know there was European hypocrisy in it on the other hand you know I think but it's out of the question now nonetheless I agree here with Edward Said who said why this obsession with whose land is it my answer to the Jews is you know whenever they say Torah or whatever some bullshit old testament it says clearly it's our land what I say is uh they immediately regret that they said this is yeah I read the bible you know what it says there you know the story Moses dies Joshua and God tells him go down kill all of them Nazarene or whoever kill all of them women children goats sheep whatever you know and then the most obscene thing that is happening now it's terrible is that there are some bible specialists who try to prove based on some very suspicious data like that they discovered some graves where children were burned alive and so on that God was right who were the people in the valley that Joshua and the Jews were ordered by God kill them all Amalek yeah the idea is now what if they really were decadent that they deserved it I find this so horrible like the use and typically when I mention this to the Jews my friends many of them say oh it's anti-Semitism and I always challenge them okay it's anti-Semitism give me a better explanation and then they just I get vague answers that so it was done in that era yes but then don't refer to this as your land so it was done I know till 20th century even things were done like that I mean we Slavs we're a primitive tribe there in today's Ukraine Russia years ago and because of some now it's theory ecological changes drove there we pushed to the west and this is the story Russians don't want to hear do you know where the term Russian comes from from Scandinavian invaders they even the name is not Russian their first kings were Rurik dynasty which are again were again Scandinavians although Putin now turned this around you know and and claimed that's why we have the right to Sweden because and so on but what I want to say is that you see I totally my point is that like I have almost a Goebbels reaction when somebody mentions some secret old texts to justify today's position I'm just a realist here yes of course it was your I mean sorry I'm personalizing it Arab land more than Jews were there and also we shouldn't forget that and the Arab Jews as well sorry there's Arab Jews absolutely not only this but that we should also not forget that the origin of the decay of Jews in that land is we Europe it's it's ancient Rome after the rebellion of you know when they threw them out and I know very well the story which is you know it's wonderful to read Western official not some ISIS propaganda history of Crusades where Saladin how do you pronounce it correctly Salah ad-Din I will not go into that you know that first when crusaders in second crusade or when I forgot when occupied Jerusalem they Arabs or whatever they were not Jews were allowed to stay as servants not Jews Jews were thrown out so that when Saladin re-occupied
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem
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one of his first edicts was to the Jews it's safe to you now to return to Jerusalem not only this there are sources which say that there were two groups of Jewish soldiers in Saladin army bringing it back so
one of his first edicts was to the Jews it's safe to you now to return to Jerusalem not only this there are sources which say that there were two groups of Jewish soldiers in Saladin army bringing it back so
Slavoj Žižek
you know history
you know history
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is so different just don't give me this bullshit of it was forever nothing was forever the the situation
is so different just don't give me this bullshit of it was forever nothing was forever the the situation
Slavoj Žižek
was so was so different but you know what worries me here to conclude then I will have to stop before I collapse tomorrow we can go on that what I find so tragic is that countries outside Europe are now assuming the worst part of European legacy which is a strong ethnic nation state isn't this China what it is doing now that's why now there is more pressure on Tibet Uyghurs and so on they really want to become a strong nation state and this is a catastrophe because the ancient Chinese empire destroyed by the British in the Opium War and so on was much more multicultural it didn't have this totalizing intention it's
was so was so different but you know what worries me here to conclude then I will have to stop before I collapse tomorrow we can go on that what I find so tragic is that countries outside Europe are now assuming the worst part of European legacy which is a strong ethnic nation state isn't this China what it is doing now that's why now there is more pressure on Tibet Uyghurs and so on they really want to become a strong nation state and this is a catastrophe because the ancient Chinese empire destroyed by the British in the Opium War and so on was much more multicultural it didn't have this totalizing intention it's
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the same
the same
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with Modi in India he is now he even wants to correct to change the name into Bharat or what no like the idea is again purely Hindu it's the same with Erdogan in Turkey ethnic state so isn't this tragic precisely the part of European legacy which today when we are in a global crisis when only global cooperation can save us which is the worst part of European legacy is given a new lease on life in this third world in these third world countries you know and I wonder so sad we don't have enough time so you know my perverse taste that I always like to defend the bad
with Modi in India he is now he even wants to correct to change the name into Bharat or what no like the idea is again purely Hindu it's the same with Erdogan in Turkey ethnic state so isn't this tragic precisely the part of European legacy which today when we are in a global crisis when only global cooperation can save us which is the worst part of European legacy is given a new lease on life in this third world in these third world countries you know and I wonder so sad we don't have enough time so you know my perverse taste that I always like to defend the bad
Slavoj Žižek
guys
guys
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you know so would you agree or not okay you are too young for this of course but that I know Saddam was a horror but what what I found it strange here the West
you know so would you agree or not okay you are too young for this of course but that I know Saddam was a horror but what what I found it strange here the West
Slavoj Žižek
was cheating is that the West secretly supported him in his attack on Iran playing a subtle game they condemned Saddam when he used poisonous gases to against Kurds but not when he uses them against Iranians this was a pure pure attack to use the confusion of Khomeini revolution and to grab land there this is why it's very interesting I followed the trial against Saddam Iran said sorry we also have can you make us part of the prosecution million of people around died they said no no no this is just Iraq and so on so the war in the big trial against Saddam his worst crime in numbers was was was excluded no and I know what you said I don't know about Iraq but I know about Egypt how I know people from there if there is a country where at least till now who knows what shit there will be now there was no anti-Semitism practically no it's Egypt frankly it's Egypt they are wonderful people and I will tell you how I know it I was with Fred Jameson in Duke University and there was a small group we had a seminar and there was a guy from Egypt and in my utterly despicable bad joke once said oh my god I lost my wallet did anybody see it I couldn't resist it I pointed at that guy I said aren't you Egypt small thieves check him and so on we became the best friends with that guy and this became a running gag joke but you know why I admired this situation because it was absolutely clear to everybody although it was the worst racist cliché that it didn't work like that you know like I remember a week later the same class somebody says I missed my umbrella did anybody see it we all looked at that Egyptian guy you did take it this is how you win over racism by simply making it not functional you know sorry I talk too much can we maybe before I collapse so thank you for that great speech and tomorrow we see you again no yeah hopefully see lots of you tomorrow so thank you and thanks Slavoj no I am grateful to you to have the patience to sustain my bad taste jokes but don't you agree there is no taste outside bad taste I think Adorno would have loved this okay so maybe next stop was it would produce
was cheating is that the West secretly supported him in his attack on Iran playing a subtle game they condemned Saddam when he used poisonous gases to against Kurds but not when he uses them against Iranians this was a pure pure attack to use the confusion of Khomeini revolution and to grab land there this is why it's very interesting I followed the trial against Saddam Iran said sorry we also have can you make us part of the prosecution million of people around died they said no no no this is just Iraq and so on so the war in the big trial against Saddam his worst crime in numbers was was was excluded no and I know what you said I don't know about Iraq but I know about Egypt how I know people from there if there is a country where at least till now who knows what shit there will be now there was no anti-Semitism practically no it's Egypt frankly it's Egypt they are wonderful people and I will tell you how I know it I was with Fred Jameson in Duke University and there was a small group we had a seminar and there was a guy from Egypt and in my utterly despicable bad joke once said oh my god I lost my wallet did anybody see it I couldn't resist it I pointed at that guy I said aren't you Egypt small thieves check him and so on we became the best friends with that guy and this became a running gag joke but you know why I admired this situation because it was absolutely clear to everybody although it was the worst racist cliché that it didn't work like that you know like I remember a week later the same class somebody says I missed my umbrella did anybody see it we all looked at that Egyptian guy you did take it this is how you win over racism by simply making it not functional you know sorry I talk too much can we maybe before I collapse so thank you for that great speech and tomorrow we see you again no yeah hopefully see lots of you tomorrow so thank you and thanks Slavoj no I am grateful to you to have the patience to sustain my bad taste jokes but don't you agree there is no taste outside bad taste I think Adorno would have loved this okay so maybe next stop was it would produce