Slavoj Zizek
is a cultural philosopher. He’s a senior researcher at the
Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and
Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University.
28 Oct, 2019 09:52 / Updated 1 day ago
Anti-establishment protests are popping up all over the
world, in countries with different political systems, and various levels of
wealth. We may be entering an era of widespread civil unrest.
A couple of weeks ago, Chinese media started promoting the
claim that “demonstrations in Europe and South America are the direct
result of Western tolerance of Hong Kong unrest.” In a commentary
published in Beijing News, former Chinese diplomat Wang Zhen wrote"the disastrous impact of a 'chaotic Hong Kong'
has begun to influence the Western world," i.e., that demonstrators
in Chile and Spain were taking their cues from Hong Kong.
An editorial in
Global Times accused Hong Kong demonstrators of "exporting revolution
to the world".
"The West is paying the price for supporting riots in
Hong Kong, which has quickly kindled violence in other parts of the world and
foreboded the political risks that the West can't manage," it
warned.
"There are many problems in the West and all kinds of
undercurrents of dissatisfaction. Many of them will eventually manifest in the
way the Hong Kong protests did," the Global Times’ editor Hu Xijin
said in a video commentary. "Catalonia is probably just the
beginning," was the ominous conclusion.
Although the idea that demonstrations in Barcelona and
Chile have taken cues from Hong Kong is far-fetched, it is all too easy to
claim that these outbursts - Hong Kong, Catalonia, Chile, Ecuador, Lebanon, not
to mention the Yellow Vests - cannot be reduced to a common denominator. In
each of the cases, the protest against a particular law or measure (higher
prices for gasoline in France, an extradition-to-China law in Hong Kong, an
increase in public transport fares in Chile, long prison terms for
pro-independence Catalan politicians in Barcelona, etc.) ignited a general
discontent which was obviously already there, lurking and waiting for a
contingent trigger to explode. Thus, even when the particular law or measure,
which triggered the discontent, was repealed, protests persisted.
New Realities
Two weird facts cannot but strike the eye here.
First, “Communist” China discreetly plays on the solidarity of those
in power all over the world against a rebellious populace by warning Western
leaders not to underestimate the dissatisfaction in their own countries. It
assumes, beneath all ideological and geo-political tensions, they all share the
same basic interest in holding onto power.
Secondly, the “trouble in paradise” aspect:
protests are not only taking place in poor, and desolate, countries but in
nations of (relative, at least) prosperity. States which were, until now,
presented as success stories. At least financially.
Although these protests betray the growing inequalities
which belie official success stories, they cannot be reduced to economic
issues. The dissatisfaction they express indicates the growing (normative)
expectations of how our societies should function, expectations which also
concern factors not directly related to the economy, such as collective or
individual freedoms, dignity, even meaningful life. Something that was, until
recently, accepted as normal (a certain degree of poverty, full state
sovereignty, etc.) is now perceived as a wrong to be combatted.
This is why, when evaluating these protests, we should
consider also the new explosion of ecological movements and the feminist
struggle. Meaning the real one, which involves thousands of ordinary women, not
its sanitized American "MeToo" version.
Mexican Movement
Let’s just focus on one case. In Mexico, massive feminist
mobilization involves “the conversation about life, dignified life and
rage."
Allow me to quote Alejandra Santillana Ortiz, a member of Ruda Colectiva Feminista, “What does
life mean for us? What are we referring to when we speak of putting life at the
center? For us, life is not a declarative abstract," she believes. "It
necessarily involves talking about dignity and everything that makes it
possible to enable dignity.”
So, we are not debating here abstract philosophical
speculations on the meaning of life, but reflections rooted in concrete
experiences which prove how the most ordinary daily life - things like taking a
subway – are impregnated by dangers of brutal violence and humiliation.
“How can a person have peace of mind knowing that on the
metro in Mexico City, an integral part of the commute in the city, thousands of
women have been kidnapped in a matter of months and that this all took place in
public and in broad daylight? And if you aren’t kidnapped, you must consider
the very high probability that you will be assaulted, or that you will
encounter violent aggression of some kind," Santillana Ortiz
observes. "This is the reason why there are there separate women-only
cars on trains, but even then there are men who get on these cars.”
Mexico may be an extreme case here, but it is just an
extrapolation of tendencies found everywhere. We live in societies in which
brutal male violence boils just beneath the surface, and one thing is clear:
Political Correctness is not the way to beat it.
What also makes Mexico an obvious example is a secret
solidarity between this persisting male brutality and the state apparatuses
that we expect to protect us from it. “There is a kind of formation of a
violent society without punishment in which the state is part of that violence.
A great many of the crimes that have been committed in recent years in Mexico
have the state and its functionaries or the police directly involved," Santillana
Ortiz continues. "Or, through judges or those in the justice system,
the state guarantees generalized impunity in this country.”
The terrifying vision of “generalized impunity” is
the truth of the new wave of populism, and only vast popular mobilization is
strong enough to confront this obscene complicity of state and civil society.
This is why the ongoing protests express a growing
dissatisfaction that cannot be channeled into established modes of political
representation.
However, we should avoid, at any cost, celebrating these
protests for their distance towards established politics. Here, a
difficult “Leninist” task lies ahead: how to organize the growing
dissatisfaction in all its forms, including the ecological and feminist
elements, into a large-scale coordinated movement? If we fail in this, what
awaits us is a society with a permanent state of exception and civil unrest.
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