“This was madness”: Slavoj Žižek vs David Horowitz with Julian Assange

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1000-this-was-madness-slavoj-zizek-vs-david-horowitz-with-julian-assange

By Huw Lemmey / 27 April 2012

It was bound to end in disaster: two ideologues, one a communist and the other a neo-conservative, “do battle” over a skype link from a house in England where Assange is held under house arrest.

“You are a supporter of the closest thing we have to Nazism, which was a utopian idea, in the Middle-East! You support the Palestinians!” rails Horowitz in his opening statement. “I don't see anything to distinguish the Palestinians, who want to kill the Jews, from the Nazis.” It becomes clear almost immediately that, perhaps, this debate will generate more heat than light. But Žižek is in no mood to get burned, at one point needing to be physically restrained by Assange. Both sides accuse the other of being Nazis, and further accusations flung at public figures. Horowitz doesn't hold his tongue:

“Europe is a cultural theme park. It is insignificant. That's what the welfare state did — it took Europe out of the picture ... The Swedes have no morals”

His choicest morsels of opprobrium are reserved for Obama, however: “You've got a leftist in the White House, a guy who was brought up and trained by communists, whose whole political career was in the communist left”. This point is the most contested by Žižek: “In what meaningful sense is [Obama] a communist?”

Horowitz: "The United States is crippled in part because the Commander-in-Chief is a leftist!"

Žižek: "Here I respectfully disagree... if the United States still have a certain attraction and so on to the world, it is because of people like Obama!"

The circus continues, but perhaps the sanest moment lies in Žižek's last words, as the credits roll: “This was madness”.

Deep Shit 20-30 Years from Now

Slavoj Žižek: Leftist, paradox, WTF?

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/apr/20/slavoj-zizek/?weekend

Q. What did you think of speaking at the Yale Political Union tonight, using their format, which is not the kind of lecture you’re usually used to?

A. No, no, let’s not idealize this form. Of course it’s all posturing and like one-, two-sentence phrases. It’s like I said, I meant this seriously at the end. I don’t look at this event as a way to really convince someone. It’s just to clarify the differences, to disturb people a little bit. You know, maybe one of them will start to think, maybe some of us became a little more aware of what the inquisitions or impositions are. At this level it works. Otherwise it’s, of course, a spectacle.

Q. But do you think we’ll become fully aware at any point? Will we ever have all the answers? There were many contradictions in everyone’s arguments tonight.

A. Yeah, yeah, but you have to accept them. I don’t think we are in a stage generally to have clear answers. Fuck it, I don’t know what the answers are.

Q. But without the answers, should we act to make change? Or do we have to just keep thinking and worrying?

A. Uh, we have to start thinking, I think, and this may sound very anti-Marxist, but I think thinking even may be more important than acting today, because you know, I don’t believe in this, you know, “People are inventive, you start to act.” No you don’t, we really don’t know what to do. It’s really tragic; I wasn’t bluffing what I was telling there. For example, when I was in Greece, you asked them, “What do you want?” They are totally perplexed. I simply ask. The guy here [at the debate], at least gave me a clear answer: Scandinavian social democracy. The tragedies that I endure almost every month — I mean it’s falling apart all around.

Q. But could we consider thinking to be a form of acting? So for instance, the Occupy movement, what they’re doing right now doesn’t seem to be like much, but they’re doing a lot of thinking.

A. This is why instead of all the fashionable criticism of President Obama, by the leftists, I mean, you know, some leftists wrote as if they expected Obama to bring socialism here or something. No, he still did a great thing with the whole universal health care debate. We should engage in acts like this. You know why?

For two reasons.

First, it is something which is clearly visible. He didn’t propose some crazy radical measure. Universal health care, more or less, works in Canada and many European countries, so you cannot say he’s planning some Leninist utopia. It can be done within the capitalist system.

Point two, which explains the reactions. It obviously did touch some very neural core, some nervous part of American common ideology — depriving customers of the freedom of choice. This is an excellent topic for engagement. Again, you do something which really confronts us with the limitations of most elementary everyday ideology, but again at the same time, it is visible. You are not bullshitting. He didn’t propose — I don’t know, “communism,” — you know what I mean.

So I would say that we should start thinking, but at the same time —

And this is what my example of Scandinavia or even in Latin America [from the debate] — I agree with those who say Lula in Brazil was much more interesting than Chavez because nonetheless, the existing capitalism is not one big monolithic system, and we just have to sit down and wait and it falls apart. It is a space where a number of things can be done here or there. You know, because if you look at all big social changes, they don’t usually happen so that someone decides that we will now do the big thing. You start to do something small, a small conflict, and all of a sudden it triggers — so we just have to do this and that, and maybe at some point, something will happen and so on.

And on the other hand, I hate this elitist leftist who hates ordinary people. You know, when they told me, “You know, people are so ideologically manipulated.” Well, I tell them, “What do you mean by this?” Like, if I were to be an ordinary American citizen, do you think for whom I should vote? Do you think I would have voted for that communist party of United States, the sort of crazy ex-Maoist kind? Of course the people don’t vote [for the left] because they feel that the left really doesn’t have a serious program. I mean you can see this tragically today in Europe. In Spain, in Greece, and so on and so on.

Q. So is part of the problem with the left having no new ideas and they need to start thinking more?

A. No, but you know what, because then people can tell me, “Okay, why do you even expect people from the left to do it?” No, all I’m saying is — and here is where my pessimism comes from — if we do nothing, we will be in deep shit — ecologically, socially. So it may well be possible that nothing will happen, that somehow the system will survive. But then I won’t like to live in a society that pretty much 20, 30 years from now — because remember, I’m not talking about 200 years from now, I’m talking about 20, 30 years.

You can see it in Europe, for example, it was so tragic, you remember, it was a republic here in Greece, but when the crisis began — two, three months, ago, the previous prime minister proposed a national referendum, and whole Europe was horrified. The message was clear, we need now a technocratic government, don’t mess with democracy and so on and so on. And I really think, and right here I am not a leftist paranoid. Okay, I’m not saying that some secret capitalist power center decides the end of democracy. No, it’s the spontaneous logic of the system which leads more and more to what some people in Europe call a post-political society, where economy is left to the experts and we’re allowed to debate these topics like gay rights and abortion, which are important, but it’s not where money, where things are decided, so now almost the only passionate politics is cultural politics. Other things are left to, and I think really that the tragedy today–I will say something horrible — is that you know this Marxist dream, there’s this secret elite capitalist ruling, it would be good if there were such elite, I think —

Q. It would make it easy.

A. Yeah! There are signs that the ruling class is really losing its ability to rule properly. I mean, there are really signs of confusion. And so on and so on. It’s very tragic. And it’s also clear in Europe. They’re just reacting to the crisis, no, maybe they know.

For example, China is now in total panic, as you maybe know. They are just getting ready for some — because they got something, the Chinese communists, that you know, when people say the wonderful things about them, how they lifted 160 million people out of hunger, they don’t get it. Revolutions do not emerge when things are really bad. Revolutions emerge when things start to get better and then people want more and are disappointed, which is why — the Communists in China know this — and again, they are just getting ready for some mega mega disturbances. They’re strengthening incredibly the army, the internal security, special police units, and so on and so on. So I really think that like there are difficult times ahead. Who knows what will happen?

Q. Okay, so given that you are very pessimistic about the future, how do —

A. Not very!

Q. Okay, just a little bit, but —

A. Let me give you a paradoxical answer. For the same reasons, I am optimistic and pessimistic. It is the same when — you know, Mao had this wonderful saying, “Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.”

There is a general crisis. Not economic, but in various areas — no one really knows. These are dangerous times, but at the same time, opportunities. It’s again paradoxical — I am an optimist, for the very same reasons I am a pessimist. Or my dogma is that things cannot go on the way — OK they can five, 10 years, and so on.

But we see what’s happening in Europe. Maybe it’ll explode, it’s horrible. And on the one hand, this Greek bankruptcy, on the other hand, the incredible explosion of violent anti-immigrant and other racism, and homophobia, it’s really really horrible. And which is why I was not just licking the ass of the Americans [during the debate, he mentioned America still has a chance]. I really meant it that, we lost every right to be our country — the way Europe is regressing. You know what I mean by regression?

For me, I am always for dogmatism. For example, the measure of emancipation for me is that certain things — you simply cannot speak, talk like that. And I like this! Today in developed, liberal countries, you cannot argue, “Women really like to be raped.” If you do this, you are simply perceived as an idiot or whatever, and this is good! This should be dogmatic here. I would worry very much to live in a country where all the time I would have to argue that women shouldn’t be raped, you know? And at this level, you will have a regression in Europe. There are racist and other statements which 20 years, ago, even 10, were simply unthinkable to hear them in public. The dirty private secrets — now you can talk like that in public, which worries me very much.

I mean that’s so many dilemmas here. We really need to start thinking here. We really live in dangerous times. Great hopes, but deep shit, which is why sometimes I’m a pessimist. You see the Von Trier movie, “Melancholia”? After I saw it, I said, “Maybe, I would agree with the heroine, maybe this is a good thing.” It’s beautiful, it’s a little sentimental, but I always love the end of the world. Maybe we are a shit humanity.

Q. Thank you for coming and disturbing Yale a little bit, do you have any parting thoughts?

A. Do whatever you want, manipulate me, change the order. Did you see this movie, it’s kind of a nice leftist documentary, “The Thin Blue Line,” about some fake case of mistrial or misjudgment, where the district attorney says, “It takes an average prosecutor to have a guilty guy convicted, but only a really good prosecutor can have an innocent guy convicted.” So you know, the average journalist can reproduce what I said. It takes a really good journalist, without falsifying me, just by mixing words, to make me say the opposite of what I said. I expect nothing less than this.

Banks cooperate to track Occupy protesters

Max Abelson

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/26/BUTK1O9L88.DTL

Friday, April 27, 2012

The world's biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said.

Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy's May Day planning committee.

Events are scheduled in more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week.

"Our goal is to kick off the spring offensive and go directly to where the financial elite play and plan," she said.

After evictions and arrests from Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations.

He works with international financial firms to "identify, map and track" protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he said. The companies gather data "carefully and methodically" to prevent business disruptions.

Banks are preparing for Occupy demonstrations at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Chicago summit on May 20 and 21 by sharing information from video surveillance, robots and officers in buildings, giving "a real-time, 360-degree" view, said McNary, who works on the project.

Banks cooperating on surveillance are like elk fending off wolves in Yellowstone National Park, he said. While other animals try in vain to sprint away alone, elk survive attacks by forming a ring together, he said.

Planning for Tuesday in New York began in January in a fourth-floor work space at 16 Beaver St., about two blocks from Wall Street, according to Holmes. The date serves as an international labor day, commemorating a deadly 1886 clash between police and workers in Chicago's Haymarket Square.

The midtown demonstrations will take place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by a march from Bryant Park to Union Square and a 4 p.m. rally there, according to an online schedule.

Protesters, including labor unions and community groups, have a permit to march from Union Square to lower Manhattan, according to police. Goldman Sachs' headquarters is among financial-district picketing options, Holmes said.

Banks are bracing. Deutsche Bank AG is closing the public atrium of its U.S. headquarters at 60 Wall St., which protesters have used for meetings, Holmes said. Duncan King, a bank spokesman, declined to comment.

New York police can handle picketers, said Paul Browne, a spokesman. "We're experienced at accommodating lawful protests and responding appropriately to anyone who engages in unlawful activity," he said. "We're prepared to do both next month."

Banks have a history of coordinating security with city authorities. At a 2009 U.S. Senate hearing, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly described a partnership with financial-district firms that gives his department "access to hundreds of private security cameras."

Footage is monitored in a downtown Manhattan center, he said. A 2005 letter Kelly wrote to Edward Forst, then chief administrative officer at Goldman Sachs, shows it was among firms getting space in the facility.

Max Abelson is a Bloomberg writer. mabelson@bloomberg.net

If there is a God, then anything is permitted

Slavoj Žižek ABC Religion and Ethics 17 Apr 2012 http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/04/17/3478816.htm World-renowned philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues that, in fact, nothing is more oppressive and regulated today than being a simple atheistic hedonist. Although the statement "If there is no God, everything is permitted" is widely attributed to Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (Sartre was the first to do so in his Being and Nothingness), he simply never said it. The closest one gets to this infamous aphorism are a hand-full of apoproximations, like Dmitri's claim from his debate with Rakitin (as he reports it to Alyosha): "'But what will become of men then?' I asked him, 'without God and immortal life? All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?'" But the very fact that this misattribution has persisted for decades demonstrates that, even if factually incorrect, it nonetheless hits a nerve in our ideological edifice. No wonder conservatives like to evoke it whenever there are scandals among the atheist-hedonist elite: from millions killed in gulags to animal sex and gay marriages, this is where we end up if we deny transcendental authority as an absolute limit to all human endeavours. Without such transcendental limits - so the story goes - there is nothing ultimately to prevent us from ruthlessly exploiting our neighbours, using them as tools for profit and pleasure, or enslaving, humiliating and killing them in their millions. All that stands between us and this moral vacuum, in the absence of a transcendental limit, are those self-imposed limitations and arbitrary "pacts among wolves" made in the interest of one's survival and temporary well-being, but which can be violated at any moment. But are things really like that? It is well-known that Jacques Lacan claimed that the psychoanalytic practice inverts Dostoyevsky's dictum: "If there is no God, then everything is prohibited." This reversal, of course, runs contrary to moral common sense. So, for example, in an otherwise sympathetic review of a book on Lacan, a Slovene Leftist daily newspaper rendered Lacan's version as: "Even if there is no God, not everything is permitted!" - a benevolent vulgarity, changing Lacan's provocative reversal into a modest assurance that even we, godless atheists, respect some ethical limits. However, even if Lacan's inversion appears to be an empty paradox, a quick look at our moral landscape confirms that it is a much more appropriate description of the atheist liberal/hedonist behaviour: they dedicate their life to the pursuit of pleasures, but since there is no external authority which would guarantee them personal space for this pursuit, they get entangled in a thick network of self-imposed "Politically Correct" regulations, as if they are answerable to a superego far more severe than that of the traditional morality. They thus become obsessed with the concern that, in pursuing their pleasures, they may violate the space of others, and so regulate their behaviour by adopting detailed prescriptions about how to avoid "harassing" others, along with the no less complex regime of the care-of-the-self (physical fitness, health food, spiritual relaxation, and so on). Today, nothing is more oppressive and regulated than being a simple hedonist. But there is a second observation, strictly correlative to the first, here to be made: it is for those who refer to "god" in a brutally direct way, perceiving themselves as instruments of his will, that everything is permitted. These are, of course, the so-called fundamentalists who practice a perverted version of what Kierkegaard called the religious suspension of the ethical. So why are we witnessing the rise of religiously (or ethnically) justified violence today? Precisely because we live in an era which perceives itself as post-ideological. Since great public causes can no longer be mobilized as the basis of mass violence - in other words, since the hegemonic ideology enjoins us to enjoy life and to realize our truest selves - it is almost impossible for the majority of people to overcome their revulsion at the prospect of killing another human being. Most people today are spontaneously moral: the idea of torturing or killing another human being is deeply traumatic for them. So, in order to make them do it, a larger "sacred" Cause is needed, something that makes petty individual concerns about killing seem trivial. Religion or ethnic belonging fit this role perfectly. There are, of course, cases of pathological atheists who are able to commit mass murder just for pleasure, just for the sake of it, but they are rare exceptions. The majority needs to be anaesthetized against their elementary sensitivity to another's suffering. For this, a sacred Cause is needed: without this Cause, we would have to feel all the burden of what we did, with no Absolute on whom to put the ultimate responsibility. Religious ideologists usually claim that, true or not, religion makes some otherwise bad people to do some good things. From today's experience, however, one should rather stick to Steven Weinberg's claim: while, without religion, good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things. No less important, the same also seems to hold for the display of so-called "human weaknesses." Isolated extreme forms of sexuality among godless hedonists are immediately elevated into representative symbols of the depravity of the godless, while any questioning of, say, the link between the more pronounced phenomenon of clerical paedophilia and the Church as institution is rejected as anti-religious slander. The well-documented story of how the Catholic Church has protected paedophiles in its own ranks is another good example of how if god does exist, then everything is permitted. What makes this protective attitude towards paedophiles so disgusting is that it is not practiced by permissive hedonists, but by the very institution which poses as the moral guardian of society. But what about the Stalinist Communist mass killings? What about the extra-legal liquidations of the nameless millions? It is easy to see how these crimes were always justified by their own ersatz-god, a "god that failed" as Ignazio Silone, one of the great disappointed ex-Communists, called it: they had their own god, which is why everything was permitted to them. In other words, the same logic as that of religious violence applies here. Stalinist Communists do not perceive themselves as hedonist individualists abandoned to their freedom. Rather, they perceive themselves as instruments of historical progress, of a necessity which pushes humanity towards the "higher" stage of Communism - and it is this reference to their own Absolute (and to their privileged relationship to it) which permits them to do whatever they want. This is why, as soon as cracks appear in this ideological protective shield, the weight of what they did became unbearable to many individual Communists, since they have to confront their acts as their own, without any alibi in a higher Logic of History. This is why, after Khrushchev's 1956 speech denouncing Stalin's crimes, many cadres committed suicide: they did not learn anything new during that speech, all the facts were more or less known to them - they were simply deprived of the historical legitimization of their crimes in the Communist historical Absolute. Stalinism - and, to a greater extent, Fascism - adds another perverse twist to this logic: in order to justify their ruthless exercise of power and violence, they not only had to elevate their own role into that of an instrument of the Absolute, they also had to demonize their opponents, to portray them as corruption and decadence personified. For the Nazis, every phenomenon of depravity was immediately elevated into a symbol of Jewish degeneration, the continuity between financial speculation, anti-militarism, cultural modernism, sexual freedom and so on was immediately asserted, since they were all perceived as emanating from the same Jewish essence, the same half-invisible agency which secretly controlled society. Such a demonization had a precise strategic function: it justified the Nazis to do whatever they wanted, since against such an enemy, everything is permitted, because we live in a permanent state of emergency. And, last but not least, one should note here the ultimate irony: although many of those who deplore the disintegration of transcendental limits present themselves as Christians, the longing for a new external/transcendent limit, for a divine agent positing such a limit, is profoundly non-Christian. The Christian God is not a transcendent God of limitations, but the God of immanent love: God, after all, is love; he is present when there is love between his followers. No wonder, then, that Lacan's reversal - "If there is a God, then everything is permitted!" - is openly asserted by some Christians, as a consequence of the Christian notion of the overcoming of the prohibitive Law in love: if you dwell in divine love, then you do not need prohibitions; you can do whatever you want, since, if you really dwell in divine love, you would never want to do something evil. This formula of the "fundamentalist" religious suspension of the ethical was already proposed by Augustine who wrote, "Love God and do as you please" (or, in another version, "Love, and do whatever you want." - from the Christian perspective, the two ultimately amount to the same, since God is love). The catch, of course, is that, if you really love God, you will want what he wants - what pleases him will please you, and what displeases him will make you miserable. So it is not that you can just "do whatever you want" - your love for God, if authentic, guarantees that, in what you want to do, you will follow the highest ethical standards. It is a rather like the proverbial joke, "My fiancee is never late for an appointment, because when she is late, she is no longer my fiancee." If you love God, you can do whatever you want, because when you do something evil, this is in itself a proof that you do not really love God. However, the ambiguity persists, since there is no guarantee, external to your belief, of what God really wants you to do - in the absence of any ethical standards external to your belief in and love for God, the danger is always lurking that you will use your love of God as the legitimization of the most horrible deeds. Furthermore, when Dostoyevsky proposes a line of thought, along the lines of "If there is no God, then everything is permitted," he is in no way simply warning against limitless freedom - that is, evoking God as the agency of a transcendent prohibition which limits human freedom: in a society run by the Inquisition, everything is definitely not permitted, since God is here operative as a higher power constraining our freedom, not as the source of freedom. The whole point of the parable of the Great Inquisitor is precisely that such a society obliterates the very message of Christ: if Christ were to return to this society, he would have been burned as a deadly threat to public order and happiness, since he brought to the people the gift (which turns out to be a heavy burden) of freedom and responsibility. The implicit claim that "If there is no God, then everything is permitted" is thus much more ambiguous - it is well worth to take a closer look at this part of The Brothers Karamazov, and in particular the long conversation in Book Five between Ivan and Alyosha. Ivan tells Alyosha an imagined story about the Grand Inquisitor. Christ comes back to earth in Seville at the time of the Inquisition; after he performs a number of miracles, the people recognize him and adore him, but he is arrested by inquisition and sentenced to be burnt to death the next day. The Grand Inquisitor visits him in his cell to tell him that the Church no longer needs him: his return would interfere with the mission of the Church, which is to bring people happiness. Christ has misjudged human nature: the vast majority of humanity cannot handle the freedom which he has given them - in other words, in giving humans freedom to choose, Jesus has excluded the majority of humanity from redemption and doomed it to suffer. In order to bring people happiness, the Inquisitor and the Church thus follow "the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction" - namely, the devil - who alone can provide the tools to end all human suffering and unite under the banner of the Church. The multitude should be guided by the few who are strong enough to take on the burden of freedom - only in this way will all mankind live and die happily in ignorance. These few who are strong enough to assume the burden of freedom are the true self-martyrs, dedicating their lives to keep choice from humanity. This is why Christ was wrong to reject the devil's temptation to turn stones into bread: men will always follow those who will feed their bellies. Christ rejected this temptation by saying "Man cannot live on bread alone," ignoring the wisdom which tells us: "Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!" Instead of answering the Inquisitor, Christ, who has been silent throughout, kisses him on his lips; shocked, the Inquisitor releases Christ but tells him never to return ... Alyosha responds to the tale by repeating Christ's gesture: he also gives Ivan a soft kiss on the lips. The point of the story is not simply to attack the Church and advocate the return to full freedom given to us by Christ. Dostoyevsky himself could not come up with a straight answer. One should bear in mind that the parable of the Grand Inquisitor is part of a larger argumentative context which begins with Ivan's evocation of God's cruelty and indifference towards human suffering, referring to the lines from the book of Job (9.22-24): "He destroys the guiltless and the wicked. If the scourge kills suddenly, He mocks the despair of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He covers the faces of its judges. If it is not He, then who is it?" Alyosha's counter-argument is that all that Ivan has shown is why the question of suffering cannot be answered with only God the Father. But we are not Jews or Muslims, we have God the Son, Alyosha adds, and so Ivan's argument actually strengthens Christian, as opposed to merely theist, belief: Christ "can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave his innocent blood for all and everything." It is as a reply to this evocation of Christ - the passage from Father to Son - that Ivan presents his parable of the Great Inquisitor, and, although there is no direct reply to it, one can claim that the implicit solution is the Holy Spirit: "a radically egalitarian responsibility of each for all and for each." One can also argue that the life of the Elder Zosima, which follows almost immediately the chapter on the Grand Inquisitor, is an attempt to answer Ivan's questions. Zosima, who is on his deathbed, tells how he found his faith in his rebellious youth, in the middle of a duel, and decided to become a monk. Zosima teaches that people must forgive others by acknowledging their own sins and guilt before others: no sin is isolated, so everyone is responsible for their neighbour's sins. Is this not Dostoyevsky's version of "If there is no God, then everything is prohibited"? If the gift of Christ is to make us radically free, then this freedom also brings the heavy burden of total responsibility. Slavoj Zizek is the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, and one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His latest book is Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism.