WikiLeaks' Julian Assange & Philosopher Slavoj Zizek In Conversation With Amy Goodman 4 of 9
Lecture · Democracy Now! ·
published 2011-07-05 · 0:12:04 · 1,652 words
with Julian Assange
the date above is when the video was uploaded, no recording date was found
ideologypoliticsviolence
Žižek redefines terrorism by contrasting disruptive acts with the systemic, normalized violence required for the status quo to function, citing Brecht and Norman Bates. He illustrates the deceptive nature of 'good news' from authorities through a Jewish-American joke about a doctor's prank, arguing that the true 'good news' is that the current order has effectively 'died' or failed, despite appearances.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 3
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The classification of disruptive acts (like Gandhi's or protesters') as terrorism based on their form (interrupting the normal), regardless of their moral content or goals.
as “systemic violence”
The violence that must be present for things to function the way they are, which is accepted as 'normal' and thus invisible, unlike disruptive acts.
The ideological state of affairs maintained by systemic violence, which is perceived as non-violent because it is continuous and backgrounded.
Stories he reaches for 1
Žižek references Norman Bates' claim that he wouldn't hurt a fly to illustrate how 'good guys' (like Gandhi or Lenin) are framed as non-violent, despite being 'formal terrorists' who interrupt the system.
“you wouldn't hurt even a fly, no, you know.”
Works invoked 2
Psycho film
Referenced for the character Norman Bates' claim about not hurting a fly, used to illustrate the 'good guy' facade of certain terrorists.
Threepenny Opera opera
Cited for the line 'What is robbing a bank compared to founding a new bank?' which Žižek calls 'wonderful' and uses to illustrate systemic violence.
People invoked 6
Mahatma Gandhi positive
Used as an example of someone who 'interrupted the normal functioning' of the British state, thus being a 'formal terrorist' despite being a 'good guy'.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Mentioned by Stalinists as a 'good guy' who wouldn't hurt a fly; Žižek uses this to argue that even Lenin was a 'formal terrorist'.
Stalinism negative
Criticized for their moralist game of claiming Lenin was a 'good guy' who 'likes small children' and 'plays with cats,' which Žižek rejects as a distraction from the formal reality of terrorism.
Norman Bates positive
Referenced for his claim 'you wouldn't hurt even a fly' to illustrate the facade of non-violence held by 'good' terrorists.
Bertolt Brecht positive
Cited for the line 'What is robbing a bank compared to founding a new bank?' which Žižek uses to define systemic violence.
A friend who received Žižek in New York and advised him to avoid 'dirty words' (like the s-word) to stay on air.
Transcript 4 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Okay. Let's go on. No, no, no, I have a more serious point to make. About, but what does this mean? Of course you are in the, which sense was Gandhi a terrorist? He effectively tried to stop, interrupt the normal functioning of the British state in India. And of course you are trying to interrupt the normal, which is very oppressive, functioning of the information circulation and so on. But the way we should answer to this point, I claim, is simply by another, I repeat myself here, I know, endless paraphrase of that wonderful line from Brecht's Beggar's Opera. What is robbing a bank compared to founding a new bank? What is your, under quotation marks, terrorism compared to the terrorism which we simply accept, which has to go on day by day so that things remain the way they are? That's where ideology holds us. When we talk about violence, terrorism, we always think about acts which interrupt the normal run of things. But what about violence which has to be here in order for things to function the way they are? So I think if, I'm very skeptical about it, we should use, in my provocative spirit I'm tempted to, the term terrorism. It's strictly a reaction to a much stronger terrorism which is here. So again, instead of engaging in this moralist game, oh no, he's a good guy, like Stalinists said about Lenin, you like small children, you play with cats, you wouldn't, as Norman Bates says in Psycho, you wouldn't hurt even a fly, no, you know. No, you are in this formal sense a terrorist. But if you are a terrorist, my god, what are then they who accuse you of terrorism? So to finish with another nasty joke. You know what they try to give us, the good news, like all the news you are giving us are this obscure, falsifications, good news. But you know what are these good news that they, those in power, are promising us? Let me give you another wonderful Jewish-American joke that was told to me by a friend recently. A guy has his wife at an operation and then talks after the operation with the doctor. And the doctor tells him, listen, first the good news, your wife will survive, she will even live longer than you. And then what's the bad news? The doctor says, the bad news is, you know, there are some problems, like as the result of the operation she will no longer be able to control her anal muscles, so excrements will be dripping all the time. Then there will be some strange fluid all the time escaping from her vagina, no sex. Then she will not be able to blah-blah-blah. And of course the guy gets more and more into a panic, no? My god. And then you know what the doctor does then? He taps the guy on the shoulder and say, no, no, don't worry, this was just a joke, everything is okay, she died during the operation. That's the good news they are giving us at the end, you know. I surprised you. No dirty words, you noticed it? No dirty words. Because Amy is always telling me, when she was kind enough to receive me in New York, Slavoj, not even the s-word, s-h-i-t, no dirty words, so I followed it. For that we can be taken off the air. But
Okay. Let's go on. No, no, no, I have a more serious point to make. About, but what does this mean? Of course you are in the, which sense was Gandhi a terrorist? He effectively tried to stop, interrupt the normal functioning of the British state in India. And of course you are trying to interrupt the normal, which is very oppressive, functioning of the information circulation and so on. But the way we should answer to this point, I claim, is simply by another, I repeat myself here, I know, endless paraphrase of that wonderful line from Brecht's Beggar's Opera. What is robbing a bank compared to founding a new bank? What is your, under quotation marks, terrorism compared to the terrorism which we simply accept, which has to go on day by day so that things remain the way they are? That's where ideology holds us. When we talk about violence, terrorism, we always think about acts which interrupt the normal run of things. But what about violence which has to be here in order for things to function the way they are? So I think if, I'm very skeptical about it, we should use, in my provocative spirit I'm tempted to, the term terrorism. It's strictly a reaction to a much stronger terrorism which is here. So again, instead of engaging in this moralist game, oh no, he's a good guy, like Stalinists said about Lenin, you like small children, you play with cats, you wouldn't, as Norman Bates says in Psycho, you wouldn't hurt even a fly, no, you know. No, you are in this formal sense a terrorist. But if you are a terrorist, my god, what are then they who accuse you of terrorism? So to finish with another nasty joke. You know what they try to give us, the good news, like all the news you are giving us are this obscure, falsifications, good news. But you know what are these good news that they, those in power, are promising us? Let me give you another wonderful Jewish-American joke that was told to me by a friend recently. A guy has his wife at an operation and then talks after the operation with the doctor. And the doctor tells him, listen, first the good news, your wife will survive, she will even live longer than you. And then what's the bad news? The doctor says, the bad news is, you know, there are some problems, like as the result of the operation she will no longer be able to control her anal muscles, so excrements will be dripping all the time. Then there will be some strange fluid all the time escaping from her vagina, no sex. Then she will not be able to blah-blah-blah. And of course the guy gets more and more into a panic, no? My god. And then you know what the doctor does then? He taps the guy on the shoulder and say, no, no, don't worry, this was just a joke, everything is okay, she died during the operation. That's the good news they are giving us at the end, you know. I surprised you. No dirty words, you noticed it? No dirty words. Because Amy is always telling me, when she was kind enough to receive me in New York, Slavoj, not even the s-word, s-h-i-t, no dirty words, so I followed it. For that we can be taken off the air. But
unknown
I wanted to ask you Julian about Bradley Manning. Mike Huckabee, who also was a presidential candidate, the governor of Arkansas, said that the person who leaked the information to Julian Assange should be tried for treason and executed. He said whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason and I
I wanted to ask you Julian about Bradley Manning. Mike Huckabee, who also was a presidential candidate, the governor of Arkansas, said that the person who leaked the information to Julian Assange should be tried for treason and executed. He said whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason and I
unknown
think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty. Bradley Manning is a young US soldier who is in Iraq, has been held for more than a year, much of that time in solitary confinement in Quantico in Virginia. It was exposed that his treatment was tantamount to torture. P.J. Crowley, the White House, the State Department spokesperson, spoke to a group of bloggers at MIT and said his treatment is stupid. For that he was forced out of the State Department. Bradley Manning was then moved to Fort Leavenworth because of the outcry. But he remains in prison, he remains not tried. What are your comments on him? Well,
think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty. Bradley Manning is a young US soldier who is in Iraq, has been held for more than a year, much of that time in solitary confinement in Quantico in Virginia. It was exposed that his treatment was tantamount to torture. P.J. Crowley, the White House, the State Department spokesperson, spoke to a group of bloggers at MIT and said his treatment is stupid. For that he was forced out of the State Department. Bradley Manning was then moved to Fort Leavenworth because of the outcry. But he remains in prison, he remains not tried. What are your comments on him? Well,
Julian Assange
first of all, Amy, it's, thanks for answering this question, asking this question, but it is difficult for me to speak in detail about that case. And, but I can speak about why it is difficult for me to speak about it. So Bradley Manning is an alleged source of WikiLeaks who was detained in Baghdad and then, although there was very little, no mainstream press publicity at the time, shipped off to Kuwait where he was, if you like, detained in extrajudicial circumstance in Kuwait, in a similar manner to which detainees are held in Guantanamo Bay. Eventually through some legal, creative legal methods he was brought back to the United States and he has been in prison now for over a year. He was being kept in Quantico for eight months under extremely adverse conditions. The Quantico is not meant for long-term prisoners. Other prisoners, the maximum duration over the past year has been three months. And people that have been visiting Bradley Manning say, and we have other sources who say, that they were applying those conditions to him because they wanted him to confess that he was involved in a conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States with me. That pressure on Manning appears to have backfired. So by all reports, this is a young man of high moral character. And when people of high moral character are pressured in a way that is illegitimate, they become stronger and not weaker. And that seems to have been the case with Bradley Manning and he has told US authorities, as far as we know, nothing about his involvement. Now, there has concurrently been a secret grand jury taking place six kilometers from the center of Washington. That grand jury involves to people selected from that area. Now why was it in Alexandria, Virginia, six kilometers from the center of Washington, that that grand jury was placed and those people drawn? Well, it has the highest density of government employees anywhere in the United States. The US government was free to select the place and they selected this place in order to bias the jury from the very beginning. This is in fact wrong to call a jury, this is a type of medieval Star Chamber. There are these to individuals from the population that are sworn to secrecy, they cannot consult with anyone else. There is no judge, there is no defense counsel, and there are four prosecutors. So that is why people that are familiar with grand jury inquiries in the United States say that a grand jury would not only indict a ham sandwich, it would indict the ham and the sandwich. And that's a real threat to us. A grand jury which was removed from UK jurisprudence because of abuses, combines the executive and the judiciary. So this old common law notion of the separation of these branches of power is removed in the grand jury. US government argues that these captive to individuals are the branch of the judiciary, of the judiciary, yet they perform a judicial function. Where of course actually they're just captive patsies for the Department of Justice in the United States and the FBI. So they have been going out and they have coercive powers, they can force people to testify, and they have been pulling in all sorts of people that are connected to WikiLeaks and people that are not. They have recently, a number of individuals that have been pulled to the grand jury understand what is going on and they have refused to testify and have pleaded the First Amendment, Third Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination to, well I'm not sure the purpose, I don't have direct communication, but from the outside it appears to nullify that political witch-hunt in the United States against us. Now in response, the grand jury has been instructed to send out immunity certificates. So these are certificates that go to subpoenaed individuals that say that if you come to the grand jury to testify, your testimony cannot be used against you, and therefore you have no right to plead the Fifth. What this means in practice is coerced compulsory interrogation in secret with no defense counsel. There's not even lawyers for the subpoenaed witnesses are permitted into the grand jury. It is just the prosecutors and these people from six kilometers away from center of Washington. That's something that should be opposed. There's another grand jury that has sprung up in the United States and is investigating anti-war activists, engaged in the same sort of witch-hunt. So these are a really, a classical device that was looked at very critically in the UK four hundred years ago, and the result in the UK is this concept that if justice is to be done, it must be done publicly. And that has been a concept that was waylaid. It's interesting why or how it has been waylaid. So that on the surface this device of, well you want the police to have an investigation, executive says it wants to conduct an investigation into some group of people, well, we get people from the community, to people from the community and they monitor the investigation, they make sure it's not overstepping and so on. But actually this has been turned on its head and used as a way to completely subvert the judicial system in the United States.
first of all, Amy, it's, thanks for answering this question, asking this question, but it is difficult for me to speak in detail about that case. And, but I can speak about why it is difficult for me to speak about it. So Bradley Manning is an alleged source of WikiLeaks who was detained in Baghdad and then, although there was very little, no mainstream press publicity at the time, shipped off to Kuwait where he was, if you like, detained in extrajudicial circumstance in Kuwait, in a similar manner to which detainees are held in Guantanamo Bay. Eventually through some legal, creative legal methods he was brought back to the United States and he has been in prison now for over a year. He was being kept in Quantico for eight months under extremely adverse conditions. The Quantico is not meant for long-term prisoners. Other prisoners, the maximum duration over the past year has been three months. And people that have been visiting Bradley Manning say, and we have other sources who say, that they were applying those conditions to him because they wanted him to confess that he was involved in a conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States with me. That pressure on Manning appears to have backfired. So by all reports, this is a young man of high moral character. And when people of high moral character are pressured in a way that is illegitimate, they become stronger and not weaker. And that seems to have been the case with Bradley Manning and he has told US authorities, as far as we know, nothing about his involvement. Now, there has concurrently been a secret grand jury taking place six kilometers from the center of Washington. That grand jury involves to people selected from that area. Now why was it in Alexandria, Virginia, six kilometers from the center of Washington, that that grand jury was placed and those people drawn? Well, it has the highest density of government employees anywhere in the United States. The US government was free to select the place and they selected this place in order to bias the jury from the very beginning. This is in fact wrong to call a jury, this is a type of medieval Star Chamber. There are these to individuals from the population that are sworn to secrecy, they cannot consult with anyone else. There is no judge, there is no defense counsel, and there are four prosecutors. So that is why people that are familiar with grand jury inquiries in the United States say that a grand jury would not only indict a ham sandwich, it would indict the ham and the sandwich. And that's a real threat to us. A grand jury which was removed from UK jurisprudence because of abuses, combines the executive and the judiciary. So this old common law notion of the separation of these branches of power is removed in the grand jury. US government argues that these captive to individuals are the branch of the judiciary, of the judiciary, yet they perform a judicial function. Where of course actually they're just captive patsies for the Department of Justice in the United States and the FBI. So they have been going out and they have coercive powers, they can force people to testify, and they have been pulling in all sorts of people that are connected to WikiLeaks and people that are not. They have recently, a number of individuals that have been pulled to the grand jury understand what is going on and they have refused to testify and have pleaded the First Amendment, Third Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination to, well I'm not sure the purpose, I don't have direct communication, but from the outside it appears to nullify that political witch-hunt in the United States against us. Now in response, the grand jury has been instructed to send out immunity certificates. So these are certificates that go to subpoenaed individuals that say that if you come to the grand jury to testify, your testimony cannot be used against you, and therefore you have no right to plead the Fifth. What this means in practice is coerced compulsory interrogation in secret with no defense counsel. There's not even lawyers for the subpoenaed witnesses are permitted into the grand jury. It is just the prosecutors and these people from six kilometers away from center of Washington. That's something that should be opposed. There's another grand jury that has sprung up in the United States and is investigating anti-war activists, engaged in the same sort of witch-hunt. So these are a really, a classical device that was looked at very critically in the UK four hundred years ago, and the result in the UK is this concept that if justice is to be done, it must be done publicly. And that has been a concept that was waylaid. It's interesting why or how it has been waylaid. So that on the surface this device of, well you want the police to have an investigation, executive says it wants to conduct an investigation into some group of people, well, we get people from the community, to people from the community and they monitor the investigation, they make sure it's not overstepping and so on. But actually this has been turned on its head and used as a way to completely subvert the judicial system in the United States.