Slavoj Zizek — LGBT Liberalism & the New Right Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

the culture War raging in the developed West now in the states in Europe is I think a false War a war between two versions of the same Global capitalist system it unrestrained pure version which is this insistence on infinite dyamics plasticity LGBT reinvent your identity all the time and it's Neo fascist conservative version which tries to unite capitalist dynamism with more Traditional Values the Paradox is here double the Western political correctness is a displacement of the good old class struggle the liberal Elite pretends to protect the threatened racial and sexual minorities uh in order to obfuscate the basic fact of their privileged economic and power position and this lie allows the altright populists to present themselves as a defense of the real working class against the big corporations and the Deep State Elites the Paradox is thus that today's populist conservatives are more revolutionary than the politically correct liberals who are not afraid to call for social order and even police oppression when they feel this is needed like we often hear the complaint where were the police and naal National Guard on January 6 2021 the implication to be drawn is not just that left and right are today outdated Notions but that both polls of today's Cold War can only be properly grasped as a displaced class struggle neither of them really stands for those exploited and again this is our tragic predicament today you remember I was of course my eyes were glued to the screen of on uh January 6th uh of the previous year you remember the crowd invading capital capital but what shocked me so much is how many of my leftist friends in the United States and in Europe were crying looking at they said what is going on we the people should be doing this it's beautiful to watch it but the wrong guys are doing it that's the that's our that's our predicament today I think what again I listen I even sometimes listen to to uh to Steve Bon's podcasts or whatever and did you notice is how he's doing almost the same thing as Putin he begins like if he has a 1H Hour podcast talk with the first 20 minutes I almost fully agree he describes how the big Corporation state employees ordinary blah blah blah all that then of course things take a strange turn it's the same I heard from my friends in Moscow who are like with one leg in prison already but with the other leg still running around that Putin is doing the same he doesn't have only Dugan in this religious Orthodox Maniac Putin also mobilized a group of young marxists who are providing him a more leftist third world line they're telling they provided him with this line Russia is really defending the world from Western imperialist colonization we are on the side of all those exploited in the third world and so on and so on and uh I hope you are aware of this situation how incredibly successful this Russian propaganda is not in the west but in Latin America in many parts of uh uh uh of uh Asia uh uh Africa and so on and so on so I think that uh maybe this is the crucial dilemma today like uh our situation today is the one of uh uh crisis of a system itself what conservatives got right is that this fukuyama ideal of liberal Democratic capitalism is in full crisis in the sense of you know what is for me the most ominous case in England in France in United States uh you have now protests which are no longer like in some parts of Eastern Europe protests for True democracy no they they articulate a doubt in our version of liberal democracy itself and the tragedy is that there is no way to to give to articulate in organized political way this rat and with this I want to conclude uh we are back at the beginning of European history uh my friend although right-winger he not stupid Peter Slaughter Dy wrote a wonderful book being and r z un Toran uh of course an ironic paraphrase of haider's being in time where he said what's at the beginning at least in our Mythic view of the western culture it's Homer ilad and what is the first line of ilad a call to the that goddess whatever to allow him to do a poem on the Rage of Achilles which brought blah blah blah today we have even a much more dangerous rage this dissatisfaction and what's really tragic is that the left is losing it I think that I agree here with the guy whom I criticize briefly vakis I think that capitalism is changing already into something different and either we will invent I don't like to use the word communism is too crazy but a really new social order to deal with the ongoing problems or a new form of fascism of sorry of Neo falis let's call it will take over so you know what again what I would be really my nightmare is and Trump is already sending signals and so on even bolsonaro is more friendly for towards towards Putin and so on this pack between European and like wherever new populist conservatives and Russia and so on that's that's the danger and I don't think we are taking seriously this danger because we too much much still believe in Liberal democracy I appreciate liberal democracy it's a wonderful thing but today it's a crisis because the only way to confront all the problems we have today is to make a step uh Beyond and that's the reason of my pessimism you know why to conclude I don't you know in good old Marxist old liberal times we still could rely on historical fate necessity like this Marxist fate of history is moving towards progress and so on no now we have to act against history historical tendency is towards a catastrophe what will happen I don't know but I prefer to be a pessimist to in order to awaken us sorry if I was too long thanks very much

Channel: I WOULD PREFER NOT TO

Views: 40,266

Keywords: Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, LGBT, Liberalism, Alt-right, New-right, Conservatism, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism

Id: dJjKSGG8Nfo

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 10 2023