Good evening and welcome to this special edition
of Q&A, live from the Sydney Opera House and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I'm Tony
Jones and answering your questions tonight: legendary BBC foreign correspondent, Kate
Adie; firebrand Marxist philosopher, Slavoj Zizek; the author of The Men Who Stare At
Goats and The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson; Egyptian born democracy activist, Mona Eltahawy;
and the foreign editor of The Australian Greg Sheridan. Please welcome our panel. All right.
Well, Q&A is live from 9.35 pm Eastern Time. It's simulcast on ABC News 24 and News Radio
and you can join the Twitter conversation using the hash tag that's just appearing on
your screen. Well, our panel tonight includes some quite dangerous thinkers, so let's go
straight into peril with our first question from Stewart Lung. This question is related
to sexuality. More and more people are openly embracing other forms of sexuality that are
previously considered taboo, for example, polyamory. What is the panel's opinion of
openly embracing these other forms of sexuality as an avenue of releasing previously suppressed
sexual energy, hence improving the overall wellbeing of our society. Stewart, can I just
keep you on your feet just for a moment. Sure. Because at least some of our audience are
going to wonder what polyamory is. Could you just explain that for us? Well, the way I
understand, polyamory is where you - you love more than one person, with honesty and
integrity. Okay. All right. Let's start with Kate Adie. This time of night I have to consider
this? We live, I hope, in more liberal societies, where we don't actually impose rules which
were thought up by old men a long time ago. I think what you have to do is not think about,
gosh, how many different ways you can have different relationships and conduct them.
You have to think about what sort of person you are and what you mean to someone and what
someone means to you and never betray. Don't ever go out to do something which will hurt
so much. Just be a loving person and if that takes you into different relationships and
you behave decently, I don't think we have too much to worry about. Slavoj Zizek? I'm
unfortunately - I would like to agree with you but my evil nature pushes me in the opposite
direction. You don't love me? Sorry? You don't love me. Er - er- er... Oh. I take - I take
the Fifth Amendment. I refuse to answer because the answer may incriminate me and so on. Also
you are pledged to Lady Gaga, or so they say. This is a mystery. I am an old conservative
who thinks everything that happened in pop music happened between '65 and '75. That's
another story. But, listen, you know we are entering a strange era where hedonism, do
you know this, is more and more the ruling ideology. Today, society doesn't pressure
you onto sacrifice yourself to your country, but be authentic, be what you truly are and
so on and so and my psychoanalytic friends are telling me that people today more and
more feel guilty, not if they give way to their perverse desires but if you don't enjoy.
We live in strange times where, if you are not able to enjoy sexuality or whatever you
feel guilty. So I think and that is the paradox today. We live in permissive times. The result
is not everybody is happy screwing around - words - dirty words are permitted, you
told me - the result is on the opposite. There is more frigidity and impotence than ever
and so on and so on. Isn't it true you advocate outsourcing sex so other people have sex on
your behalf? Oh, this was - no, I'm quite romantic, here. That there is, unfortunately
a bad taste joke. - What I am advocating quite seriously... - I thought it sounded like a
great idea. ...stop. Is love, naive Love. I claim I have nothing against sex without
love but I think the structure like we usually say what is masturbation? You do it to yourself
just with a partner you are dreaming about. But what if... A sort of mental outsourcing?
Yeah, but most of our real sex, I think, is masturbation with a real partner. You have
real partner there but you just use the real partner to realise your dream. So is all sex
like that? No, it's love, which is why today I claim this is very old-fashioned romantic
idea, what is transgression is not sex. You can do it with animals, with dogs, cats, no
problem. Falling in love is a problem. Which is why, as I mentioned yesterday, more and
more you have this dating and marriage agencies advertising their services in this way: ìWe
will enable you to be in love without falling in love. Without the fall. Everything will
be safe and so on.î Okay. Slavoj, I'm going to throw to Jon because you picked up the
outsourcing point. Do you have your own view? Well, just because... I mean, the question
was should non conventional forms of sexuality be embraced as a means of releasing previously
suppressed sexual energy? God. I don't know. Can I just say that I'm glad to be in the
centre of the panel because my ideological position is one of uncertainty. Centre left
you are. Social democratics who pretend they are on the left but... I was a business disappointed
that polyamory was something so nice. I thought it was going to be something like slamming
your penis in a filing cabinet. I'm in favour of that but ... That doesn't sound like as
much fun as you make it. Well, you know, I'm with both Kate and Slavoj on the idea that
naive love sounds like quite a good idea. And even a dangerous idea today. Do you think?
Let's throw the dangerous idea to Mona. What do you think? Okay. Well, I think as long
as you have consenting adults who are choosing to live this way, but - and this is a huge
but this is something both open to men and women, I'm all for it, because you'll find,
and it is not just Islam, but religions like Mormonism, and others that do allow multiple
marriages, the multiplicity is always given to the men and there is this bizarre idea
that men's sex drive is somehow higher than women's and that's just total crap because
women have just as much of a sex drive as men do and in many cases women's sex drive
outpaces men's sex drive. But the way so many people are socialised is that no, no,
no, the men have to enjoy as many women as possible because they have this insatiable
sex drive, whereas women, you know, you are taught to be good, you're taught to be virginal,
you're taught to be chaste. So in the case of societies where you're socialised like
that, I think sex is a political act. Getting out there and getting over the sexual guilt
that is put, especially on women in conservative societies, is a political act. So as long
as what you're saying is open to all genders and men and women, if we are now just talking
about men and women, are able to enjoy that kind of lifestyle equally, I'm all for it.
But, unfortunately, a great deal of hypocrisy goes into this and women are told, accept
that, you know, the three or four of you will share the one guy because he's just so insatiable
and that's just bullshit. It's not true. It's something that just - it just massages
men's egos and it's crap. Let me just quickly jump in there. Would polygamy be okay, in
your view, if women were able to take multiple husbands? Yeah, if women could but the thing
is they can't and so I - I want to ban polygamy as long as women can't. Are you gonna -
are you gonna be my third husband? Are you to be my third husband, Zizek? He was tapping
me on the shoulder, not you. Both of you? I just wanted to make - and please, don't
stop me, I need a domina, a woman. No, quite seriously, don't be too much in love with
- I think it's called polyandry, the other way round. For women, yeah. You know, they
have it in traditional Tibet and I can tell you the explanation is quite a vulgar Marxist
one. You have a farmer who has four, five sons. The problem is how to prevent the farm
being split. You marry to all of them to one women and it's strictly hierarchic. No. No.
It's not you who says in the evening, ìTonight it's your turn.î He's not talking about
that. But he's not talking about that. He's talking now about getting over these taboos.
I understand and actually and that lifestyle is dying out now as societies like Tibet and
India become more modernised and people don't live like that anymore. Yeah. But he's talking
about getting over taboos. And for me the biggest taboo is to cut this crap that pretends
that men have higher sex drives than women. They don't. Okay, let's... But... I want
to hear from the other end of the panel first, Greg Sheridan has been dying to get in on
this. Hello, Greg. Why do you want to hear from the other... Tony, this is - this is...
Look, sitting on the far left of the panel, as I am, this is a question which Irish Catholic
boys often contemplate as they grow up and become News Limited journalists where, of
course, we are labelled now by Bob Brown as the love media and everybody knows that we
have a loving relationship, a polyamorous relationship, with our millions and millions
of readers. But, look, I would just make one... I hate to think about what you are doing when
you are writing your columns. I'm communing on a higher plane, Tony. In fact, the ABC
asked if they could commission a series 'At Home With The Foreign Editor' and I said,
no. I said there had to be limits. But look, I'd like to make one serious point. One of
the madnesses of our society is it can never do anything in balance or in proportion. We
are a society determined to take every stupid idea to its most extreme possible conclusion.
So we are all of us reacting against the Victorian rules that, as kids, we read about in English
novels and we spend our whole lives rebelling against these rules which haven't existed
for 100 years and then we recognise no end point, no point of restraint, no point of
common sense and no point of balance. I would agree with Slavoj. I'm an old-fashioned romantic
and I think if you just fall in love and stay in love, that's the best thing. Okay, I'm
going to cut it off on that point of agreement because we can't spend all night talking about
sex. We've got other subjects. You're watching Q&A, where you ask the questions. - Our next
question tonight comes from... - Are there other subjects? You'll get your chance. Joseph
Ackland. Can psychopaths integrate into society or is society already full of psychopaths
occupying the roles of our leading high flyers and power brokers? - Oh, okay. - Yeah, Jon,
this is your specialty subject. Yeah, well, that - I mean, I should start with a statistic.
The statistic is, according to Hare, the inventor of the checklist, 1 in 100 regular, walking
around people is a psychopath. So there is - how many - there's 300 people in this
room, so there's three psychopaths in this room. Are they all on the panel? Well, I'm
rather hoping that they're not the ones sitting behind us because, you know, they'll have
the advantage. So one in 100 regular people is a psychopath but 4% of CEOs are psychopaths.
You're four times more likely to have a psychopath at the top than you are to have one as your
subordinate because capitalism rewards psychopathy and this is the problem, is that the more
ruthlessly - I spent time with a man who used to live here called Chainsaw Al Dunlap, who
used to work with Kerry Packer, and he allowed me to do - he was a ruthless asset stripper
and he allowed me to do the psychopathy checklist on him, so I went through it. I said, okay,
grandiose sense of self worth, which would have been hard for him to deny, because he
was standing underneath a giant oil painting of himself at the time. He said, ìYou've
got to believe in you,î and kind of went through the checklist and identified many
of the items on the psychopath checklist as business positives that are rewarded in our
capitalist system. So that's the problem. The problem isn't so much the kind of maverick,
ruthless psychopaths in charge, it is the system that rewards them and cheers them on
and the more psychopathically people like Al Dunlap behave, the more the share prices
shot up and you only have to look at the American health care system, for instance, to see that,
you know, it's a system that echoes, the psychopath checklist. It's a real problem.
Okay, we've got a question ... Psychopathy is the reason - it's the ... We've got
a question that's come in via our Facebook page. It's from Rob Crasti and it's for
ìHow can we recognise a psychopath in politics? Before we vote for a politician, what signs,
behavioural and verbal, should worry us they may be a psychopath?î Okay. Well, it's a
20 point checklist. You've got grandiosity. You've got glibness, superficial charm. I
mean, so far we're with all politicians, right. You've got lack of remorse and lack
of empathy. Again, most politicians. Are you putting your hand up as a - somebody who's
like fessing up to this? No. No. He wants to make a comment. - Okay, so... - And you
can. Go ahead. In fairness, Jon, I read the Hare psychopathy checklist before coming here
tonight and I did want to ask you, in your considered opinion, is our Prime Minister
a psychopath? You know, I'm not going to start. I think it's... Oh, come on. I think
it is unlikable to diagnose people without having met them. We can tee it up. So, I mean,
that's the truthful answer. I think if you... - Let's go for the extremes. - Okay. What
about Hitler and Stalin, psychopaths? Well, I think, you know, if you've got like -
if you've got a kind of grotesque costume, a kind of uniform that's kind of garish,
plus a penchant for genocide, that's a big clue. So if you get them onto the subject
of empathy, what they hate is weakness. They hate weakness and so if you can get them to
talk about how empathy really is a weakness, that's a big clue. However, I don't want people
to get drunk with power. I don't want people to read either my book or the Hare checklist
and become, like I did, a power crazed psychopath spotter, because that can turn you a little
bit psychopathic. So be slightly wary of that. Let's hear from the rest of our panel. Kate,
was going to jump in there. What does it profit us to actually label people as psychopaths,
to actually analyse and say they are psychopaths, partly because to me you seem to be describing
the kind of ruthless bastards who get to the top in every kind of walk of life? And if
you're going to label them and say these are psychopaths, what are you going to propose
to do about it? Do they live in a pen somewhere, saying "Don't let them out"? Don't give them
something to run? It's called Parliament House. No, you don't do that and, in fact,
they are trying to do that in America. They are trying to - people who are coming up for
parole are being scored on the psychopath checklist and if... What about people sitting
for President? I mean, you know ... And, yeah, and Kate, so I totally agree with you. Labelling
is clearly, in our society, a tyrannical and problematic thing. Yeah. However, psychopathy
exists. It's a difficult situation there. And you say it can't be cured. And the evidence
is that it can't be cured unless you get them very, very young and it's a very real thing.
Okay, once you've got them, what do you do with them? You know what... Let's hear from
Slavoj. He might have an answer. - No, I have an answer to that. - Oh, okay. Go ahead. I
actually think there are much more - would you agree or not - a so called serious question
- when we talk about people like Hitler and so on, listen, I read a book on the history
of SS, SS German, and especially a chapter on Reinhard Heydrich. He organised Wannsee
Conference, Holocaust and so on. What strikes me so much is that, you know what, this guy,
if there ever was an evil guy, it's him. You know what he was doing in the evenings?
He gathered with his SS friends and they... Playing Mozart? Even better, Beethoven's
string quartets and I think that's the really tragic, depressing thing. You cannot say,
oh, they must have gotten it wrong or whatever. No, the tragic lesson of history is, and I
can go on through like read a book which is the Bible for me, Brian Victoria, a Zen monk,
it's called Zen at War. It demonstrates how the large majority of Zen Buddhist in Japan
not only totally supported Japanese military expansionism but provided the proper Zen Buddhist
justification for it. To amuse you very shortly, you know ... where we are young hippies, the
glorious propagator in the hippy west of Buddhism, he not only fully supported Japanese invasion
of China but he faced this problem: I have to kill you in war. He said, if I remain caught
in the illusion of my ordinary reality, I perceive myself as an agent killing you. I
may hate you, who knows, but it's difficult for me. Then, he says, if you go through a
Buddhist enlightenment, you see that you have no self. You became a passive observer of
your acts and I no longer perceive me stabbing a knife into your eye as my act but just,
as he puts it, my knife is dancing around and in the cosmic dance of phenomena, your
eye seems to stumble upon it. Was he a psychopath or not? This is now a more tragic phenomenom.
That score is... You know... I am just putting my pen on this side. Yeah.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No. No. Let's hear from Jon. - No. No. Just one more, then I will stop. - One more. Okay.
The main definition of psychopath for me is also a person who is too identified with what
he is like, for example Jacques Lacan, my favourite dogmatic reference. He said something
very nice. He said a madman is not only a beggar who thinks he is a king. A madman is
also a king who thinks that he is a king and I think this is why, I think, the The King's
Speech - I wonder if you will agree, it's an extremely reactionary film. - It tells
the story of the... - No, no, we know. - He's a good, normal guy. - It's a very long story.
No. No. No. Colin Firth plays a guy who sttuters as a sign of morality. He knows it's stupid
to be a king and your Australian guy teaches him to become stupid enough to believe that
he is really a king. - Okay. - Okay. - All right. All right. Jon. - Okay. And we'll
hear from the other side of the panel. Okay, I can answer the two questions very briefly.
Yes, say that this person's eye got in the way of my knife is an indication of psychopathy
because they do tend to blame the victim. And the answer to Kate's question is, you
know, I completely sympathise with the notion that mental health labelling is a very, very
difficult and, you know, in worst case tyrannical thing. However, psychopathy exists. It's
a real condition and I think, you know, one shouldn't shy away from really understanding
the crazy ways we behave when our brains go wrong. And what to do with them? The answer
is, of course you don't lock them up. You don't end up like some villain in an Orwell
novel. What you do is you just - you just be aware. You just be wary. You just don't
let them fuck with you. Let's hear from Greg Sheridan. You've dealt with an awful lot
of Australian politicians. Have you ever noticed any that exhibit psychopathic tendencies?
Tony, I have interviewed and written about a lot of psychopaths in my time, but let me
give you the two ends of the spectrum. Normally when you interview a politician, you start
with flattery and no matter how outrageous the flattery, it's never enough. You say,
Kevin, Tony, whoever, ìYou're the greatest orator since Cicero,î and the response is
ìWhy do you think he was so great?" you know. But I interviewed once Manmohan Singh, the
PM of India, and I started with my flattery, "You've changed the course of the river of
Indian human life with your economic reforms." His response was, "If you're going to talk
rubbish like that, leave now. If you want to talk about economic policy you can stay".
Now, the other end of the spectrum, I spent an evening once with Saif Gaddafi, - Muammar
Gaddafi's most famous son. - The doctor from LSE. Yeah, LSE and great artist and, you know,
hole-in-one seven times, swam, you know, 100 miles in eight minutes and so on. And during
the course of the interview, I said, ìWhat's it like being Colonel Gaddafi's son?î He
said to me, well, you know, "Our dad doesn't realise that we're just normal Libyan kids.
We like to ski in Switzerland, shop in Paris, just like every other normal Libyan" and I
thought "There's a guy who doesn't have much empathy". So I'm glad Manmohan Singh is Prime
Minister and Saif Gaddafi is not. No, let's hear from Mona, because, look, there have
been an awful lot of psychopaths in the dictatorships of the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, the Assad
father and son, Gaddafi's just been named. Yes. I did not meet Saddam Hussein. I attended
news conferences with senior and junior Assad but I want to share my Gaddafi story, which
I travelled around the world with and it has more to do with sex than psychopathy, but
why not, we'll combine both questions and it ties in exactly with this, the father,
not so much the sons, but the guards and not the female guards of Gaddafi, and I call it
nipplegate. Because I was attending a news conference in Libya in 1996 when it was actually
a colleague - a former colleague worked - she actually still works for the BBC. We saw Gaddafi
standing on the podium, standing by myself, so me and my friend from the BBC went to ask
him some questions and he said, "Yes. Yes. You can ask us." And he's standing on the
podium at a news conference, impromptu news conference and then all of a sudden the psychopaths
from the Ministry of Information, now, these are the minders who follow you around we were
talking about China earlier these are the minders who follow you around in Libya - well,
tried to push me out and someone tried to grab my tape recorder, so I bit his hand and
this is all being filmed in the news conference. And then one of the male bodyguards, and again
this is an indication of just how when a psychopath is at the top it trickles down. I mean, the
economy in Libya didn't trickle down but the madness certainly did and so the guard is
standing there with his AK47 and he's trying to push me out and I push him back. He pushes
me. I push him back and then he twisted my nipple in the middle of the news conference.
Just like that. Titty twister, I think it is called. And I'm sitting there going, "What
the fuck? Oh, my God!" And so I turned to Muammar Gaddafi who, in Egypt, we call Brother
Colonel, because he took over from the King. He got rid of the King in a coup. He was a
captain. He promoted himself to colonel, not to general, so his ego wasn't that crazy
but just to colonel and in Egypt we call him Brother Colonel. So I'm like "Look, what
he is doing to me" and Gaddafi and I make eye contactfor about five seconds. And I thought,
you know, "He's going to jump in with his Arab pride and chivalry and say how dare you
violate the honour of my Arab sister" and he just looks at me and then just continues
like nothing is happening. And I thought, these people are fucking lunatics. And so
I push the guy and I kick him and it goes on and on and then the news conference finishes.
My press badge has disappeared, so I thought, okay, this madness was because they want to
get rid of my press badge. Then this Algerian journalist comes up to me and he's like,
ìMona, are you okay? Are you okay?î I go, ìDo you see what he did to me?î He goes
"They were saying just shoot her. Just shoot her". So I share this story because, again,
when the mad - when the psychopathy is up there and it's not checked, it goes not just
into the sons but it goes into everybody. - It poisons the water. - Exactly. Well, hang
on. Hang on. It's not so much psychopathy. Having interviewed Gaddafi a number of times,
I decided, like a number of my colleagues... Did he twist your nipple as well, Kate? He
didn't. I worked out he wasn't really bright enough to actually belong to your pantheon
of psychopaths. What actually keeps a lot of people who are in power there, what trickles
down is not a psychopathic attitude, it's fear. There is, in all people who attain a
certain amount of power over others, it then a creek. It then spreads and everybody gets
more and more scared. All the little minions around him just quaked. I once saw a number
of ministers in front of him. He came into the room. One of them was so scared that he
shook so much he fell over in sheer fear. It's not that they become psychopaths it's
that a lot of very powerful people maintain their style, their power, because they actually
threaten other people. They don't change their character, they just make them scared. I am
going to interrupt there because let's move on to the moment where that fear seems to
have evaporated in the Middle East. We've got a few questions. This is Q&A. It's live
and interactive. Our next question comes from Farid Farid. This is to Professor Zizek. You've
been compared most recently in an Al Jazeera op ed, maybe unfavourably, to Muammar Gaddafi
for being out of touch and sticking to an old ideological world view when faced with
the rapid changes undergone in the Arab uprisings. What is your view now of what's happening
in the Middle East and do you think what is commonly called as the Arab spring has turned
into an Arab winter of discontent? First, I would like to know the precise nature of
that - in what sense was I compared with Gaddafi? My only link with Gaddafi is my friend's enemies
from Libyan School of Economics, once called London School of Economics, were attacking
me as being totalitarian but, my God, I mean they were getting all the money from Gaddafi
and so on. I think it was sort of an analogy by Al Jazeera saying you were as out of touch
as Gaddafi... Out of touch with what? My public reaction to Arab Spring was a text published
by the Guardian on Tahrir Square miracle and so on, where I absolutely emphasised what
I think is crucial. The Western, okay, hypocrisy, everybody knows this, but what type of hypocrisy?
This was my metaphor. The official desire of the West all the time was, oh, my God,
the only way to mobilise Arab people is through religion, anti-Semitism, fanaticism and so
on, if only there were to be some secular, purely democratic uprising. Now that we got
it, we are afraid. Like what's going on? New dangers and so on, and I compared this in
my tasteless nature, since we talk about sex, with did you see Francois Truffaut's film
Day For Night? Well, it's a sad story. A young boy wants to sleep with a street girl.
Finally they are alone and he tells her "Okay, now we are alone by a lake. Let's do it quickly,î
and so on. ìOh, I am dreaming for years to screw you" and the girl simply says "Okay,
why not?î and starts to unbutton her trousers and he is in a total panic. Like, how, do
you mean just like that or whatever? Aren't we a little bit like that, towards Egypt,
I mean? You know why? Because they did what we demanded from them and the result is shock.
So the tragedy is another one. My hope is with Tahrir Square. My hope is with Musabi.
I was deeply involved supporting Musabi in Iran. Why? Because Musabi precisely was the
way I see it and I know very well the situation there. He is definitely not the Ahmadinejad
corruption but he is also not a so called pro-Western liberal. He's something authentically
third way, which is why we, in the West, get such difficulties to place where does he belong,
Musabi. For some people it's the same as Ahmadinejad - it doesn't matter. For so again,
all my admiration goes to Tahrir Square and my whole point was precisely "Don't assimilate
it into a simple pro-Western uprising". Okay, let's hear from Mona. Well, Zizek, you know
why - you know why the West - so called West - is having such a hard time with this, because
for such a long time they only saw the people from the Middle East and North Africa, where
I come from, as either psychopaths or dictators or lunatic fundamentalists and the rest of
us who were in the middle and we kept saying, look, hello, there's a whole bunch of us
here that are neither... Why do you say the west is having a hard time with this when...
- I'll tell you why. - ...another way of looking at it would be that many in the West
are sighing with relief that democracy is finally coming to these countries. Let me
tell you... I'm not necessarily talking about the leaders that back the dictators but people.
Yes. Let me tell you what happens when I give these talks in various American campuses.
I get questions like, ìWhat in the Egyptian fabric prepares you for freedom?î like we're
some kind of fucking barbarians who don't know how to live our own lives and the reason
that we have been unable to live our own lives in our countries is because these very people
who elected these very governments stood in our way and they knew it and I want to talk
about the leaders though, because the United States right now, just four or five days ago,
they called our Supreme Council of Mubaraks, which are the 19 military men who currently
run Egypt, all Mubarak's friends, Hillary Clinton called them a force of stability and
continuity, just what she used to call Mubarak. The United States is about to sell Bahrain
$53 million of weapons, to do what - Kill its own people. And the United States say
we're doing this because Bahrain is a force of continuity and stability. And American
people do not - I mean not just American people but the whole point of my lecture here yesterday,
for anyone who attended - for those who didn't attend it was called ìHypocrisy rhymes with
Democracyî - right here in Australia too, you guys are having a hard time because you
guys also are scared of the Muslim men with beards because you guys do not see the nuances
of where I come from. It's not just in America. Let me throw that to Greg Sheridan to see
if he agrees with you? Well, you know, I don't want to be a party pooper here and spoil the
good fun but we actually have to take each of these countries separately and the situations
are very complicated and they're very contested. We don't know how to feel about the Arab Spring
yet, because e don't know how it is going to work out. One thing that we don't discuss
very often is that the Egyptian economy... - We do support democracy though, don't we?
- Of course. - I mean, that's - so we know about that. - Of course. Of course, yeah.
- We know that much, don't we? - Yeah, of course. But the mere fact that somebody votes
you doesn't make you a good guy. A lot of people voted for Adolf Hitler. Doesn't make
him a good guy and one thing - we don't discuss in Egypt, for example... - So, well, let me
just ask you very briefly, would you rather see Mubarak still there because of the stability
he represents? No. No. No. Of course not. No. No. No. No. Certainly not. No, and I - and
there's a lot to be encouraged about about the Arab spring and wonderful people, liberals,
friends of mine are involved in it and working their guts out. But two points I want to make
to you, Tony. One is that the Egyptian economy is absolutely on the rack and eventually every
political system, whether it's democracy or something else, has to deliver something
to its people. One of the things it has to deliver is bread. The second point I'd make
is that the situation in Egypt and in all those North African countries is fiercely
contested and some of the people I'm privileged to know, who are great people who are involved
in the contest, and some of the people in the contest have very evil ideologies. - The
people who... - Who? Who has the evil ideology? Well, I think the Muslim Brotherhood, according
to my friend Tarek Heggy, is unreformed. It's moderation is fake. It's temporary and tactical
and it's internally split. I understand there are a lot of nuances. You can't do it all
in a short TV program but there are a lot of diehard serious Islamists there filled
with extremist ideology. But let's talk about the Muslim Brotherhood getting into Parliament,
which they will, because they will be voted in because they are Egyptian and they represent
a good number of Egyptians. They don't represent me. I am not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
I would vote for someone else. But let's talk about the Muslim Brotherhood getting...
Well, according to them you're not never allowed to be President because you are a
woman. Hold on. Hold on. And that's wrong and if they don't change that platform and
that platform - that point in their platform is coming under a great deal of attack by
young members of the Muslim Brotherhood. But let's talk about the Muslim Brotherhood entering
parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood will then have to deliver to the people who voted for
them. The Muslim Brotherhood and whoever else is in the Egyptian Parliament will have to
fix roads, will have to fix subway lines, will have to fix the curriculum, i.e. they
will have to be politicians. What concerns me, as an Egyptian who is secular and liberal
and not going to vote for the Muslim Brotherhood, is that we have a constitution that guarantees
I can vote them in and vote them out, so you can't just sit there and say the Muslim Brotherhood
is evil. No, the Muslim Brotherhood will be evil if they don't deliver on what the constituents
want them to deliver. So I urge you not to just let this evil ideology... I hope that
democracy works that way. I hope that democracy works that way. I'm going to interrupt this
dialogue over here just to bring in this side. I do think - I do think that we have a contemporary
habit of expecting democracyto spring instantly. If you look at Iraq and Afghanistan, it's
going to take a long time, particularly in Afghanistan and I think we expect it. We expect
next week somebody to get parliamentary elections. We expect people to sort out political parties
a la western states. It's not going to happen like that. We took 800 years in Britain to
get from a king running everything, with the religious people right next to him laying
down the law, to a form of parliamentary democracy. It took us 800 years. Hang on, we've got
a couple of people in the audience with their hands up... Can I... Actually you will but
I want to hear from our audience as well. So a quick comment from both of these two
people with their hands up, starting with you. Yes, Mr Sheridan, communism in its purist
form is about spreading the wealth around and whoever people are, they may be able to
concede there have been some bad Labour Prime Ministers in this country but whenever...
Okay, I'm sorry you are - I'm going to interrupt - I'm going to interrupt you because you're
actually off topic. No, sorry, you're off topic. Let's go to this person. Do you think
democracy could work better if there was a separation between religion and state? Yeah,
okay, Slavoj. Yeah, first, if I may just return to the previous question. It's a very important
point. Where I nonetheless disagree and I think I will say something terribly politically
correct now - it has maybe slight racist overtones - is this idea of, "Oh, but Arabs need hundreds
of years!" Sorry, Afghanistan, as I said yesterday, 40 years ago was a very tolerant multicultural
country. Afghanistan is not an old traditional country, which now we slowly have to bring
to civilisation. When I was young I was in Afghanistan as a child. I saw in Herat, the
other city... Afghanistan, as you know, 40 years ago shared a relatively enlightened
pro-Western monarch, had a strong local communist party and so on. The way Afghanistan was caught
into world politics made it fundamentalist. It is not they're a primitive country that
we have to civilise. We screwed it up. I want to say something else to what you were saying,
Greg, and it touches on what you're saying, religion and politics. You know, you talk
about the Muslim Brotherhood, let's took about the Christian Brotherhood of the United
States because I always tell my American friends we might have the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
but there is a Christian Brotherhood in the United States and the Christian Brotherhood
in the United States, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has actually had an impact on foreign
policy because George Bush apparently heard God tell him to invade Iraq and in the name
of this... Where did George Bush ever say that? That's ridiculous. You want me to get
that for you from the news conference? - Yeah, you show me the quote. - I will. I will. I
will email it to you. - That is complete rubbish. - I will send it to you by Twitter. - No,
it's actually true. - George W Bush never said that. - He did. He did. - You made it
up. - No, I did not make it up. - There's something in your coffee. - No, actually,
no. I wish. - Hang on. Hang on. Jon wants to get in here. - Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me
finish. Let me finish. - On his behalf, I'm going to say, please let Jon come in. No,
can I just say that, just to support what Mona said, George Bush not only said that,
but he had his... Thank you. He had a presidential prayer team who would meet every week and
pray for... Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. And the Christian Brotherhood of the United
States... - You can mock George W Bush for saying prayers ... - I'm not. But - no, no.
This isn't mocking. ...but that's not same as saying... It's not about prayers he said
- didn't he say, ìGod told me to liberate Iraq"? - ...that God told him to invade Iraq?
- Yeah, this is... - He did. He did. And not just that... - And this is the... No, he didn't.
No. No. No. That's completely crazy. That's... And beyond that, the Christian Coalition in
the United States has consistently had an impact on US foreign policy vis-‡-vis Israel,
on US foreign policy generally. You have a Christian Coalition in the United States that
has power, even though I live in a country that supposedly has separation between religion
and state. So don't preach to the Middle East and North Africa about separating religion
and state when you have a Christian fundamentalist president who says, ìI'm invading a country
because God told me to give them freedom.î - Okay. Okay. - No, that's complete rubbish.
That's complete rubbish. Complete rubbish. - Hold on. Hold on. - Sorry, but in... He
never said that. He never said that and nowhere in any of his justifications for the actions
of Iraq or any of John Howard's justifications is there anything like that. I can't speak
for John Howard. I don't know how fundamentalist he is... - That's just complete baloney.
- ...but I'll get you Bush. - Okay, I'm going to change tack. - Just absolute rubbish.
- No. No. No. Sorry. Sorry. - No, I'm sorry, I'm in charge here. - No. No. But... - I'm
sorry. Let's move along. Our next question comes from Eleanor Doyle Markovic. This question
is again for Slavoj. You're a supporter of -
I apologise, Tony. You're a supporter of
Julian Assange. I too support his push for open transparent government; however, I don't
believe the anonymity and safety of dissidents should be sacrificed to the cause. Do you
agree or are redacted documents, like sex with a condom, just not as good? Sorry? Okay,
let me... Okay. Again... It is a long story, yes, but let me be very... Just go to the
summary. Yeah. Yeah. But just, okay, I will start with, you know what's the problem with
me? No. No. No. No. We're... No, when you said God and so on, sorry, but the standard
argument with all my mega sympathy for Israel, but it worries me how the western civilisation
can pretend to be secular and so on and then the answer I get from American politicians,
it can be put in a more refined way, like it is cultural. My God, one of the guys who
will maybe be president - Perry... - Slavoj, no, I'm going to interrupt you. - ...said
- said Israel, God gave them the country. Sorry, in the state of Israel it's Palestinian...
We're not talking about God now. We're talking about Julian Assange. Okay. Okay. - Some people...
- I will go back to Assange. Some people may think they are the same thing. What to say
about that condom stuff and so on. Listen, I know the story in detail because I have
friends in Sweden. I think this is a ridiculous excess of political correctness which will
backfire onto women because it is a fake politics. No. No. No. No. No. She asked me about condoms?
No, that was - no. No. No. It was an - sorry. Iëm sorry but that was an analogy. She was
simply saying that the lack of protection for the dissidents who actually were named
in the cables, exposed by WikiLeaks... Protection. The theme is protection. ...meant that they
didn't have the sort of protection you might have with a condom if you were having sex.
It's an analogy. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let me go quickly then. You know what's for
me the - why do I support Assange? First, I think that, on the contrary, what he did
with documents was extremely restrained, double checking and so on. Where did this crazy idea
come that he's just throwing them out? But something else is important. Well, it came
right from the very beginning actually when the first tranche of Afghan military documents
were released and people who were informants were named. So people who had been talking
to the American and Australian military were named in the documents. Their names were not
redacted. Then, okay, let's not go into detail. We can go there but... Well, they're important
these details. Well, no, no, no, no, no, because I would contest this in detail. I know in
detail the story. What fascinated me in Afghanistan or Northern Iraq, it's crucial, is that shot,
shot from a camera from a helicopter, where you can clearly see, I don't know who are,
maybe Taliban, I don't care, but some soldiers clearly explicitly wanting to surrender to
the Americans. The helicopter pilot phones back what do? Basically he get the message,
ìShoot them. We take no prisoners" and so on. - So, okay, but another point... - Sorry,
that was in Iraq, so they weren't Taliban. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But let me get to my point
finally. The point about Assange is not what we learn. Did we really learn anything new
globally? No, it just what we expected. It's, you know, life is hypocritical in the sense
that there are things that are going on but we allow those in power to pretend to act
as if they don't go on. That's why it is important. It is not what we learned. It's that those
in power cannot pretend to act as if this is not going on. - Yeah. Slavoj, No, just
- just... - And I think this far outweighs all the problems. Yeah, we've got to find
an end to a sentence at some point. Just We will go to Jon. Slavoj, in saying let's not
go detail, what you did with a wave of your hand was dismiss somebody who puts ideology
over human life and human safety. It was despicable what Assange did to send out these documents
and he was asked, wasn't he, at one point "Well, what about the safety of the people
that you named?" and he said, "Well, if they work for - I mean, I believe this is true.
He said, "well, if they work for the government, then they're fair game". I mean that's - to
put ideology over life is a terrible thing and, you know, is this not what we are all
doing here? Are we not just kind of reaching, you know, because of this kind of fetishisation
of extreme ideological positions on television and in politics and so on? You know it's,
you know, the more respected somebody is, it relates to how ideological, how extreme
their position is and, you know, this is a problem in our world, uncertainty and doubt.
I disagree with description I think the cathegory of life that you are using here is pure ideology.
- I don't have time to explain it but... - No, fair enough. I want to hear from Kate. Well,
as a journalist, I think I begin to wonder and looking at all that Assange did is, first
of all, what governments do and that very few of us actively think about how much governments
keep secret and what they do in their name and what they do to protect people who do
things which they do not want public and whether that desire not to have it public is right
or wrong. We are all, in democracies, lazy about this. Vast numbers of countries have
all kinds of laws which say "Whatever the government does can be kept secret for years
and years and years" and we go "Mmmm". And we don't think ëWhy?' And I think we're
lazy about deciding what should be secret, what your government should keep from you,
as an ordinary citizen, and what it should do to protect, if we agree, those people who
might be vulnerable, whom the government thinks should stay out of the public eye. We're
lazy about it. We just say "Oh, yeah, the government doesn't tell us". Well, if in a
democracy, we should be inquiring. We should know where those decisions are made. We have...
I'm going to go across to Mona and you can perhaps give us an assessment of whether WikiLeaks
played a significant role in the Arab Spring? Right. I'm so glad you asked me this. You
mean the WikiLeaks Revolution? Not. Nothing - nothing pisses people off in the Middle
East more than hearing these revolutions and uprisings were WikiLeaks revolutions, for
many reasons. Primarily, in a country like Tunisia and even in Egypt, none of the major
media outlets especially those state controlled, were allowed to publish cablegate, so we were
reading about these things outside of the region. So the scenario didn't go Muhammad
Bouazizi picked up the newspaper in Sidi Bouzid, thought "Oh, my God, my regime is so corrupt,
I'm going to go out there and overthrow them." It didn't work like that. And, second of all,
the people in the region, just like you were saying, Zizek, they all knew of the stuff.
They all knew - they were dying for the international community to say something. They pleaded - all
these activists used to plead with the various Western governments that propped up the dictators
to stop propping them up because they were so corrupt. So they knew all of this. Mona,
can I just interrupt there, because Assange makes the argument because of cablegate, because
of all this material being out there, that the Western governments were not able to intervene
to prop up those dictatorships during the Arab Spring? That's his argument. Oh, they
continued to. My God, did you see - did you see how long it took for the US Administration,
for example, to actually get on the right side and say the right thing? They fumbled
around for days and to this day they continue to say the Supreme Military Council of Mubaraks,
as I call them, is a force of stability and continuity. If anything, cablegate and what
WikiLeaks has been revealing is the need - there should be a revolution in DC. There should
be a revolution here. The revolution belongs outside because basically what's happening
is the supposedly democratically elected governments are hypocrites and if you didn't know before,
now you know. What are you going to do about it? That's the revolution. Yeah, let's hear
from... We've all got lazy about it. That is what it is. I actually think... In are
so many democracies now, we take having a vote for granted. - I actually think the less...
- Okay. All right. We just don't get off our butts and do anything. I'm just going
to hear from Greg down the end. I think the political lesson out of WikiLeaks is something
quite different and you'll be astonished to hear, Mona, that I may disagree with you
on this point. I'm shocked. I know you are. I know you are but, you know, that's we aim
to - we aim to please, we in the love media, but I think the big lesson out of WikiLeaks
is that democracies tell the truth and dictatorships tell lies. What? What? How? How? What was
fascinating out of WikiLeaks - well, if you'll let me, I'll explain. What was fascinating
out of WikiLeaks was Mahmoud Abbas begging Israel to take action against the Hamas, the
Saudis begging the Americans to take action against the Iranians and in the broader sense,
everything the American and the Australian governments was telling us was broadly true.
You remember, Tony, on this program, John Pilger said I should be scared about the WikiLeaks
mother-load because it would have all this terrible stuff. I finally found myself in
a cable the other day. I was so thrilled but I can't get into the paper because it was
quoting a published column that I wrote. Okay. All right. Okay. And we - we journalists have
nothing to fear from WikiLeaks. Tony, Tony, Tony. Yeah, okay, very briefly, because we've
got another question at least, we need to come to, and we've got very little time to
do that. I cannot believe that you spew such nonsense as democracies tell the truth. How,
based on what WikiLeaks showed, are you able to actually say that with a straight face?
What WikiLeaks showed us is that these governments knew what was happening but they were so hypocritical
and they did nothing and said nothing and continued to sell weapons... No, that's not
true. ...and continued to have business deals with these bastards. What are you talking
about? Almost - almost everything - almost everything that we've found in WikiLeaks
as Slavoj said, we already knew. Almost everything we found we already knew. The New York Times
and Wall Street Journal, everybody else. Okay. All right. That's what Mr Zizek said. So
very briefly, Jon, you want to get in. Yeah, well, I mean, talking about cables that come
out, the students in the Arab Spring who went into the security buildings and took out the
papers that hadn't been shredded, it was full of British companies offering, in secret deals,
to tell equipment to Mubarak. Buying equipment through email and so on. So to say... But
British companies aren't the British government and I wouldn't defend the Brits. - I'm an
Irishman for God's sake. - Okay. All right. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Sorry. We've
got another question. You won't be disappointed. This is Q&A live from the Festival of Very
Dangerous Ideas. Our next question comes from Oliver Damian. My question is to the panel.
If the selfish and blind pursuit of genes to propagate is what drove single cells to
evolve into complex life forms, which includes us, can we say that the blind pursuit of profit
is what drives civilisation forward and we should not stop it just because we don't like
what we see now given that the future cannot be fully imagined by someone on a lower level
of evolution. Slavoj? It may be too philosophical question but just a brief point. You know
we don't have time for theory now, I know, but, you know, people usually claim capitalism
is egotist just profit seeking. No, I claim that what all good Marxist anthologists know
Capitalism is implicitly, in a perverted way, religiously ethical. It's capital must circulate,
even if we all drop dead and so on, like it's - you have a metaphysical entity which has
priority over our most immediate utilitarian concerns. So, for me, what we need against
capitalist greed is not some Christian morality but good, old fashioned utilitarian egotism.
Are you calling for the return of Marxism, aren't you? I mean... That's another complicated
question but nonetheless to answer idiot stuff. - Not so complicated. - You know I will give
you a prediction... - No. No. - Very short. Very short, really. - Yep, okay. What - to
the gentleman's question before, what will happen? What will happen probably, 90%, not
100, is in Egypt a pact between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood. It's already happening,
Zizek. It's already happening. Yeah. The deal will be you, Muslim Brotherhood, get
more or less ideological hegemony. We keep our corruption. And I guarantee you this pact
will be blessed by the United States - as force of continuity. - The question was...
It pays 40% of the Egyptian Army budget. It continues to bless it. To all of you, yeah,
it's good to be able to continue the previous question but we've had another question.
You said it was philosophical and it is. It's actually about the nature of capitalism and
whether it's actually the best way forward. Let's hear from Kate. - I only claim it's
just the structure of religion. - Let's hear from Kate Adie. One of the things politicians
so frequently talk about is that there must be more growth. More jobs means better incomes
for people, means a house, means having a nicer life in a material sense and there is
quite a lot of thought nowadays perhaps, coming from some quarters, about, well, is growth
the thing we mean? When we go over the green fields, we eat all the field, we suck the
goodness from the land so it is hard to do anything. We do ever more in the way of smart
travel and at greater speed and I think there is a good argument but not a popular one and
when - it's one of the things which we are all embracing: wouldn't it be wonderful if
we just grew our own vegetables and we didn't get into the car and use all of this petrol
and we didn't need new clothes every so often. It's a wonderful idea, except for me. But
the idea of growth, per se, I think does need to be questioned, not at the cost of not letting
people who are hungry stay hungry and there's the difficult thing in this world. But I do
think we need to think about how we could live life and be happier and warm, comfortable
and full of food without endlessly building more, destroying the environment - and living
at a greater speed. - Let's go to Jon. I agree with you only on one point. I don't think
people want to be happy... Slavoj, your name is not Jon. This is Jon. Yeah, no, Kate is
absolutely right. Capitalism isn't the problem, growth is the problem. When you have companies
I know you're going to hate this but when you have companies that take psychopathy as
a business model, like the American health insurance industry, where they'll try everything
they can to deny claims - I told the story a couple of weeks ago of a little girl who
died of leukaemia because her health insurance company found a loophole and denied her the
claim, that's the problem. Now, you know, is capitalism to blame for that? No, what
the problem in that is this kind of lust for - for growth. And there's a classic one in
the pharmacology companies and the pharmaceutical companies in the medicalisation of the human
conditions. You need a pill. You do this, you do that - and you get a pill. It costs
money. - Well, you know that the manual of mental disorders used to be a pamphlet 65
pages. It's now 886 pages. Now, it's got... But my problem is I don't think evolution
explains all of life so it shouldn't explain all... And you realise that the Pharmaceutical
Institute of American is actually creating disorders, such as... Tony... Can I just ask
you, Slavoj, I will take the risk and ask you a question. Your own risk. Your own risk,
yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, do you really see a return to communism, Marxism, as the answer?
- No. - Because... - No. No. As I said yesterday... Don't be afraid, join us. Come back. You've
had your anti-Communist fun. It's time to get serious again. - Okay, I can tell you
more jokes. - You said that. But what I'm simply saying is that we are obviously approaching
today some serious problems, ecology and so on. I don't think, in the long term, these
problems can be solved within the liberal capitalist democratic frame. I am the first
to admit, my gosh I'm sorry to inform you, but I was a kind of a dissident. I was five
years unemployed. I was not allowed to teach. So all I'm saying is that the problems are
still here which are the problems of commons - the problems of communism. As I said yesterday,
communism is obviously not an answer, the 20th century Communism. But sorry to tell
you, the problems are here. And they will not run away. Tony. Tony. I'd like to answer
your question actually, by answering it along with two other questions. So it's going to
be your question, WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring, quote, unquote, because... - As long as it's
quick. - I will try to talk very fast. If you follow the hash tag ìOccupy movementî
that is spreading across the United States, it started in New York on Wall Street as a
reaction against corporate greed and also some people were saying too much money invested
in politics. How was it inspired? It was inspired by seeing people across the Middle East and
North Africa rising up against their various regimes and chanting things like "Bread, freedom
and social justice". They're not calling for communism but they're calling for a system
in which everybody - everybody feels a part of and they're not. In the US we have more
than 40 million people uninsured. I spent five years of my life recently, because I
began as a freelancer, uninsured, in a country where you break a leg, go to hospital and
you're bankrupt. So it's spreading across the US because people recognise this. And
I went to the Wall Street thing and it was encapsulated for me, the first day of the
protest, where you had kids on the street saying "Where' my bail out?" and you had
these rich men in suits and women in fancy clothes sipping champagne at Ciprianis and
taunting the people on the street and you're thinking this is wrong. This is where it's
wrong. Okay. All right. John. Briefly we'll have to wrap up. Can I just say that a psychologist
called Philip Tetlock recently completed a 20 year study where he studied people like
us, sort of pundits on television, people who had kind of strong opinions and he asked
them 28,000 predictions over a 20 year period. Anyone it turned out that a flick of a coin
would have been more accurate, so I just think we should bear that in mind when we... Okay,
that's quite a good - okay, we don't have time to flip the coin. Sadly, that's all
we have time for. Please thank the Sydney Opera House and our wonderful panel of dangerous
thinkers: Kate Adie, Slavoj Zizek, Jon Ronson, Mona Eltahawy and Greg Sheridan. Okay. On
October 17, we'll be presenting Q&A in Darwin, so if you can be there on that night, go to
our website and register to join the audience. Next week on Q&A we head back to politics
with the Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten; the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, Julie
Bishop; celebrated novelist and essayist Richard Flanagan; the lawyer who led the discrimination
action against Andrew Bolt, Ron Merkel QC; and News Limited journalist and author Caroline
Overington. Until then, goodnight.
