Decoding the Gurus - Slavoj Žižek: When is a shark not a shark?

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

Join Matt and Chris as they plunge into the heady mental universe of Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher known for his eclectic and provocative ideas. The duo parses Žižek's 'unconventional' takes on ideology, consumerism, and revolutionary theory, peppered with his playful movie criticism of films like Jaws and a Clockwork Orange and even a few that he hasn't even watched.We delve into snuffle-laced discussions of transgressive acts, revolutionary politics, moderate conservative communism, consumerist psychology, and musings on whether Jaws is really about a shark. Throughout all Žižek's dramatic flair is shining through, but is he actually as provocative and hated as he likes to suggest? Matt and Chris have some thoughts...Expect to reconsider everything you thought you knew, listen to some edgy book blurbs, and finally collapse in a puddle with the deconstruction of your ideology.LinksNovara Media: Our World Is Coming To An End | Aaron Bastani Meets Slavoj Žižek | DownstreamThe Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) - Slavoj ŽižekJacobin: Žižek’s Left-Wing Case for Christian AtheismPhilosophize This- Episode #196 - The Improbable Slavoj Zizek - Pt. 1 (Also, there are three other Žižek episodes in this series!)Article on the speech Žižek gave at the Frankfurt Book FairJoin us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about i'm professor matt brown with me the associate professor chris cavanaugh i'm a psychologist he's an anthropologist i'm beaming at you from Queensland, Australia. He is coming at you from Tokyo, Japan. How exotic are we, Chris? Aren't we exciting? In the podcast world, we're incredibly exotic. That's it.

We're the most diverse white males that you'll come across. My hair's white. My hair's white his hair is blackish my blackish skin is bronzed his is pallid um heaps of diversity going on i'm a i'm a healthy color at the minute as it happens so don't besmirch me to the non-visual viewers, Matt. That's it. Actually, we should also mention that we are uploading some things on YouTube. There's a YouTube channel where Andy, the editor, is sticking up various clips and whatnot and interviews and so on. Should you be interested in what we look like, you could go have a gander and make the same comment everyone does that oh i

didn't think they looked like that or matt looks like what i imagine chris looked like and vice versa i don't really get it i don't i don't understand what people are expecting but um yes so you can you can see our faces should you wish to. But if you do watch it, be sure to smash that like button and hit subscribe. That's what they say. We're YouTubers now, Chris. You've got to accept it. Lean into it. That's right.

Smash the like and subscribe buttons. Yeah, do that. But, yeah, that's that, Matt. We're back here. We're in the decoding seats. But yeah, that's up, Matt. We're back here. We're in the decoding seats.

It means that there's a guru on the chopping block or in our sights. Who's this week? Who are we looking at? Who is it? Who is it? Well, you've set me up nicely for an introduction, but I don't have anything in front of me. I do know that it's philosopher, writer, all-around busybody,

Slavoj Zizek, philosopher, mainly. Contemporary Slovenian philosopher. Cultural critic, known for his eclectic and provocative approach to philosophy, some would say. I see you have your notes in front of you. His works run a wide range of topics, including political theory, psychoanalysis, film criticism, and ideology not hassan pico's merchandise brand a broader concept yeah the actual concept yeah yeah yeah that's right and what an interesting

champion is have you enjoyed immersing yourself in zz law over the last couple of weeks chris i have kind of yeah yes and no i've had a a journey as i often do of going through moments of strongly disliking zizek or finding him annoying and then changing my opinion and thinking actually he's really good and i like him and and then where I am now is I'm slightly annoyed but I also like elements of him so that's probably good right that's a healthy thing to have I think I have a mixed opinion on him but even just to say up front he's absolutely not one of the more terrible ranged gurus is that spoiling things to say that but i think i feel it's obvious it's spoiling things a little bit but um you know what we think of him personally is a little bit beside the point um so i think it's okay to bring it up up front i also i also

find him whackable and um but you know we'll we'll listen to what he's got to say. We've read a lot of what he's written. And, you know, we'll take the content for what it is, as we always do. So tell us about the material we will be discussing today. Okay, I will. But just before that, Matt, there's something that you need to listen to because this is part of... Streamers. America deserved 9-11, dude.

Fuck it, I'm saying it. Academics. Can they make a comment about canceling culture? Streamers. off. depth perception that's what i mean by imaginal faithfulness enlightening stuff we'll provide some interesting lessons for us today decoding the gurus streamers and academic season this is going to be really interesting but um that supercut sounded sounds way too professional for our podcast chris um good job editor andy you know there's one thing i'll say about that that editor andy who made that who That sounds way too professional for our podcast, Chris. Good job, Editor Andy. You know, there's one thing I'll say about that, that Editor Andy who made that, who, you know, has various skills, he assures me that the clips in there are all from, you know,

legitimate academics and streamers. And I think I can identify most of them. And one of them he mentions is Peter Turchin. think i can identify most of them and one of them he mentions is is peter turchin um but to me it sounds a bit like andy putting on a fake russian accent so i'm not entirely sure it's legitimate clips i i he he keeps saying it's not true and that he can supply the evidence but you know it's it's like him doing a bad accent so all i can say is if that was true that would be incredibly unethical andy incredibly unethical that's yeah so uh well there there we go be smirching down these good reputation but it is part of streamers and academic seasons we have

one more streamer to arrive at after that and i think that's the end of the season dr k comes up after this so this is zizek who is a academic of sorts and he has a wide range of output that we could look at today we're not looking at his papers though we have read various things that he's written popular articles listen to some philosophy podcast detailing his point of view and whatnot. But we are mainly focusing on an interview that he did recently with Novara Media, a kind of left wing or leftist online outlet in the UK. And the title was Our World is Coming to an End. It's an interview with Aaron Bastani. That's the main content that we're going to be looking at. But I did take a couple of

clips from a movie that he was in and helped to produce or write or whatever. It's called The Pervert's Guide to Ideology from 2012, where he's commenting about his philosophy and views on things, but with reference to popular media. So maybe to ease people in before we get into the new content, I'll play a couple of clips because they're actually a little bit broader in scope than the stuff that he's talking about in the interview with Bastani. So here's him from the start of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology talking about ideology. I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. all the time, the name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The

tragedy of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it into our dreams at that point we are within ideology yeah so ideology is all around us a force but it connects us it binds us you could say or or it makes us separate in some cases. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good introductory clip because it illustrates his style. And you remember Chris a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that he reminded me in a weird way of Nietzsche. Nietzsche?

Nietzsche. Nietzsche. Not Nietzsche. Nietzsche. Yeah, yeah. Nietzsche, Nietzsche, not Nietzsche. Yeah, yeah. It's a similar kind of lyrical, very colorful,

allegorical style of philosophy. And I was gratified to see in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy that they also said that he was oddly reminiscent of Nietzsche. So I feel validated. Yeah, I will also mention that he has some speech impediments or distinctive ways of speaking. you so i feel validated yeah i will also mention that he has some speech impediments or or distinctive ways of speaking um also that you will hear throughout the clips it's in part what he's famous for because he's very animated when he's being interviewed ruffling his nose and these kind of things i actually don't know if it's any condition or anything or just like personal habits but in in any case in that pervert's guide to

ideology it's him interspersed in movies that he's adding commentary to so that's why i was talking about eating out of a trash can he was he was commenting on a clip where there was somebody like from they live this movie where people put on glasses and are able to perceive, you know, the secret messages that are being transmitted through culture. And so this is him again riffing a bit more on his view of ideology following some clips played from that movie. We think that ideology is something blurring, confusing our straight view. confusing our straight view. Ideology should be glasses which distort our view. And the critique of ideology should be the opposite, like you take off the glasses so that you can finally see the way things really are. This precisely, and here the pessimism of the film of They Live is well justified, this precisely is the ultimate illusion. Ideology is not simply imposed on ourselves.

Ideology is our spontaneous relationship to our social world, how we perceive its meaning, and so on and so on. We, in a way, enjoy our ideology. All right. To step out of ideology, it hurts. It's a painful experience. You must force yourself to do it. Yeah.

So, Chris, how would you put that in your own words, just to better down for people? How does Zizek think of ideology and how it affects us all? Well, so I think two things are key there. One is that in some respect, anybody that thinks that they are devoid of having an ideology is perhaps in the worst position of like being completely unaware that they're possessed by ideology by the nature of living in their society and whatnot and secondly that it isn't all about kind of top-down state-led funneling of information into it is also a bottom up process whereby people select their own ideologies and may not even always have it as like a negative thing, right?

They may derive pleasure from them and whatnot. So his argument is that we should become aware of our ideologies and aware that we are taking part in them as well as them being imposed upon us. And that there is nobody, maybe at least initially, unless you are a philosopher or somebody that's interrogated your views a lot, that lacks ideology. And it may even be the case that there are certain ideologies which are invisible, right, that are more mainstream. So you think that Marxists and fascists or whatever have ideologies, but actually just being a mainstream liberal or, you know, somebody who isn't politically involved is also an ideology. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a fair summary. And, you know,

one thing I think that's refreshing about Zizek which is like he's coming from you know the high humanities I suppose you know his his background is in theoretical Freudianism and he often talks about Lacan and like he Hegel and stuff so it's very much that sort of that kind of philosophy that's that's linked in with critical theory and all of that stuff but one thing he does which i think a lot of people coming from that stream of thought don't do is that he throws it about pretty even-handedly right like you often see with that kind of writing is it's they'll they'll analyze and dissect the you know the various layers of meaning and the various ways in which silly normies or right-wing people are fooling themselves. But they don't tend to generally turn the mirror on themselves,

whereas Zizek seems to be a bit more even-handed. Yes, a bit more even-handed, though I think it is normal for philosophers to argue that different varieties of their own philosophy were guilty of failing to understand things you know like properly critically so like in that respect i don't think he's that different but he he certainly is in the sense that he's more willing i think the most to chuck bombs around both sides of the political spectrum and into his own camp because he self identifies as a communist and we'll see what specific type of communist as we go on but one thing that's very clear and it will come up more in later material is he really enjoys being provocative and like viewing himself as a bit of an iconoclast.

You know, this is something that a lot of the gurus that we've covered do. But I think it's also just something that people who can get attention tend to do. You know, like they're willing to say provocative things and so on. And he is willing to do that as well. things and so on and and he is willing to do that as well but he he does have i i think intellectual depth at times that justified other times we'll we'll see but um i've got a i've got another clip i don't think this is one of his better ones but you have to take into account in all of these like he's interacting with the you know the set from a film it's quite funny to see him juxtaposed from like these classic settings and in this one he's wandering around in a desert and is discussing

coke the paradox of coke is that you are thirsty you drink it but as everyone knows the more you drink it, the more thirsty you get. A desire is never simply the desire for a certain thing. It's always also a desire for desire itself, a desire to continue to desire. So this is just this point he has about consumption and consumerism, This is just this point he has about consumption and consumerism and that there's pleasure, but there's also a pain in pleasure. And that's part of the positive things. Like another example he gives in another case is decaffeinated coffee. People initially enjoy the flavor and the kind of caffeine in coffee, and then they enjoy denying themselves the caffeine

because they they still want to consume but it's kind of become taken away and and in the same way coke coke is full of sugar and consuming it can make you feel thirsty again although i i like i don't quite agree with that i don't yeah i i did I did chat with ChatGPT and it said it is true, but like when I'm thirsty and I drink Coke, I'm not like, oh, I need another Coke. So, yeah. No, no. I don't drink a huge amount of sugary beverages,

but when I do, I generally feel satisfied by it i don't feel like it's like i'm like i've now got to have a glass of water because i'm even more thirsty than before i drank the coke that just doesn't happen to me so that's not quite right but i mean more generally he's speaking about how like when they sell products like coca-cola they're often surrounding it with the imagery of stuff of you know loving life and and you know jumping around and and and what they are selling in a way is the lifestyle and and people kind of you know yeah i mean i i see some truth in in his point that that they are sort of selling the desire to want things because often most of us are miserable bastards that don't feel like going to the party and so on.

We kind of want to. But there are simpler explanations always than the ones that he puts on, which is simply an advertising, you know, the unconditioned reward stimulus is paired with the product you're trying to sell. You put the pretty lady next to the car, things like that. I mean, it is straightforward marketing that does have simpler explanations.

Adam Curtis, this British documentary maker, has done a bunch of films which are kind of interspersing archival footage with a reader explaining about the connections between marketing and the focus on self and satisfaction and reminds me a bit of that a lot a lot of the analysis that zz is is offering about that and there is truth to it but i think like with adam curtis it can be it can be overstated at times but and an example of it being overstated is whenever he's talking about starbucks so i've got two clips about this.

He's discussing Starbucks and the fact that he consumes Starbucks regularly. And he is talking about this. But are we aware that when we buy a cappuccino from Starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology? Which ideology? You know, when you enter a Starbucks store, it's usually always displaced in some posters, their message, which is, yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than others,

but, and then comes the story, we give 1% of all our income to some Guatemala children to keep them healthy, for the water supply for some Sahara farmers or to save the forests to enable organic growing on coffee, whatever, whatever. Now, I admire the ingenuity of this solution. In the old days of pure, simple consumerism, you bought a product and then you felt bad. My God, I'm just a consumerist while people are starving in Africa. So the idea was you had to do something to counteract your pure destructive consumerism. For example, I don't know, you contribute to be a consumerist and be a consumerist but you do also your duty towards environment the poor starving people in africa and so on and so on it's i think the ultimate form of consumerism

yeah yeah so yeah so this is a good example of how this kind of like finding signs and symbols and layers of meaning in this lacanian philosophy this is how it goes and um it's always annoying to quibble with the details but i mean starbucks is at least in australia is not the most expensive coffee you could buy you can now most coffees are kind of more expensive and they don't do that on the other hand starbucks definitely does and you know people have seen heaps of products that it's called green washing right fair trade you know single source all kinds of things some percentages donated to whatever and you know that is obviously a feature of the marketing another good example is anyone in australia who's bought or sold a house or rented a house would know about European appliances, right?

European appliances. It goes in all of the advertisements. And many people will seek out European appliances just so that when they come to sell their house, they can say European appliances, right? Because it's one of those things that people take as a marker of middle class quality what it means matt why well that's right you're european are you yeah and how does that make you feel more ethically uh oh no no it's it's it's a different kind of ideology i guess that's that's attached to the product, right? European appliances often suck, like Smeg, right?

That's a European appliance. It's not a very good quality thing, really. Zanussi, Brand, Bosch. Yeah, that's right. There are audio devices. No, no, no. I mean Bosch, the manufacturer of washing machines and whatnot. Oh, yeah. Germans. Germans, no. I mean Bosch, the manufacturer of washing machines and whatnot. Oh, yeah.

Germans. Germans. Yeah. Yeah. So what you're buying is, like Zizek says, it's partly vapor. It's partly an idea as well as the actual physical thing you're buying. So there's truth in that. But, you know, he does read a lot into it. I don't think most people feel particularly guilty about being such a consumerist and buying a cup of coffee i mean i don't yeah so there's truth to the whole corporate whitewashing

corporate responsibility brand management or like woke capitalism right people have referred to that as well and that companies do seek to highlight that they're making philanthropic donations or that they're reinvesting in communities or that kind of thing. But like the Starbucks in Japan, yeah, sure, that's somewhere in the Starbucks place. But like, I've never noticed it myself. I never have read it in any great detail. And I've never felt particularly conflicted, nor do I get the impression that any of the other people in the Starbucks are usually feeling particularly conflicted about it.

So like you say, it does feel like, yes, there is something to that whole thing as allowing a justification to people. But he kind of centers it as this is the main thing. And this is why the expensive price is considered justified. And I'm like, yeah, that isn't right. Like the Starbucks is justifying its price by and large by saying it's

better. And you know, the setting and stuff is nice or whatever, but like you say, if you take hipster coffee somewhere, you can pay a lot more so it's it's all relative but it's just that it's it's kind of an overstatement but there's a kernel of truth which is completely valid so it depends on how you interpret it to be but he states it in

very strong terms yeah like it speaks to a style where one notices something like he's clearly gone to a starbucks and he's noticed a sign i can almost imagine him with his little notebook and going this is good material and you know that and that's that's good stuff and he can spin off an entertaining narrative around that and like you said it's not to say there isn't some truth in that but you can actually quibble with the facts the evidence supporting it. The logic, yeah. There's a consistent issue with this kind of content. To me, initially, when I was thinking about

how to respond to it, difficult, because in some respect, if people are spinning up speculative theories and clearly marketing them as that, or clearly indicating that's what they are, you know, that's fine. That's just somebody saying, here's my, you know, speculative take on those kinds of things. And Zizek does often do that. So that's a distinction from like the gurus who present what they're doing as a kind of

non-disputable interpretation. Zizek will often highlight that, oh, maybe I'm talking bullshit, right? Or something like that. But the thing I wanted to say is that there's this kind of disparate jumping around between topics to illustrate things. Here's something in a movie that I saw. Here's a Starbucks sign that I saw. And it's anecdotal and it doesn't tend to follow any effort to falsify your claim. Like a scientific approach would be, I noticed this. I think this is true. Now, can I find circumstances where this applies, but I don't see the other thing? Like what if you find a really expensive coffee chain that isn't front and centering its ethical contributions? Does that contradict your theory? And the answer almost always is that people never address the contradictory examples. And Zizek is exactly

like this. Like he might sometimes talk about inconsistencies or whatever, but in general, his approach and this philosophical reasoning approach, it often relies on illustrative examples, but the counter examples are not really explored very much. Maybe they are in writing, but not in this materials. But in any case, here's an example to do with music being used in different settings. And what strikes the eye here is the universal adaptability of this well-known melody.

It can be used by political movements which are totally opposed to each other. In Nazi Germany, it was widely used to celebrate great public events. V nazičnem Zemlji je bilo vseeno uspešno, da se počnejo velike, velike, publicne častke. V Sovjeti je bilo vzročeno, da je Beethoven izvršil, in je bilo pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno pregledno preglo pregledno preglo. Včim, ko je bilo, da je bilo, da je, da je, da je, da je, da je, da je, da je, of the Great Cultural Revolution, when almost all Western music was prohibited, the Main Symphony was accepted.

It was allowed to play it as a piece of progressive bourgeois music. At the extreme right, in South Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe, it proclaimed independence to be able to postpone the abolishment of apartheid. Okay, so there the music is used in all these different contexts, right? And this is important because, just to end that point. So it's truly that we can imagine a kind of a perverse scene of universal fraternity where Osama bin Laden is embracing President Bush. Saddam is embracing Fidel Castro. White racist is embracing Mao Zedong. And all together they sing out to Joy. It works. And this is how

every ideology has to work. It's never just meaning. It always has to also work as an empty container, open to all possible meanings. It's, you know, that gut feeling that we feel when we experience something pathetic and we say, oh my God, I'm so moved. There is something so deep, but you never know what this depth is. It's a void. So to recap, he's problematized Beethoven's Ode to Joy, pointing out correctly that it has this universal appeal it's been used as the anthem the european union the the communists liked it you know white supremacists south africa thought it was great too basically a really popular song and this points to the fact that it is like a like a placeholder like a container that can be infused with ideology, and he sees

great symbolism in this. I mean, isn't it also plausible that it's a very catchy and uplifting piece of classical music, and it's a big crowd pleaser, basically. It's a perfect fit for all these kinds of ceremonies. And I'm not quite sure I see the great significance that he sees, that it has been popular in many different places and different times, regardless of the social context. Well, you can see the kind of irony, isn't the right word, but the subversive image of it being used in all this incongruent contexts, right? But like you said, if you asked me, like, could you use the same

song to support like lots of different ideologies? I'd be like, yeah, you know, especially if it doesn't have that many lyrics. But even if it does, right, like, you know, it depends on how generic they are. So, yeah, he, like the sense makers and, dare I say, philosophers in general, makes some interpretive leaps. And actually where he goes to next with this is he points out that it was also used in the clockwork orange. So where this piece is sometimes presented to signify unifying people together for whatever ideology. In clockwork orange, the protagonist likes it, but he is a retrograde, right? Like a violent guy. So just listen to him talking about this point. Whenever an ideological text says

all humanity unite in brotherhood, joy and so on, you should always ask, okay, okay, okay, but are this all really all or is someone excluded? I think Alex, the delinquent from Clockwork Orange, identifies with this place of exclusion. And the great genius of Beethoven is that he literally staged this exclusion. All of a sudden, the whole tone changes into a kind of a carnivalesque rhythm.

It's no longer this sublime beauty like there matt that interpretation because that's a fictional character interpreting his enjoyment of the you know the ode to joy and when you speed it up and play it in discorded things that it becomes you know carnival and yes like yeah of course. Right. That's the whole point. The other, this, that actually stood out to me too, Chris, because like a lot of music from that period and later would use that changing style as, as a device, as a purely

musical device. So for instance, in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1, there are times in it which are kind of uplifting and serious and solemn, and then it transposes. It's actually a funeral march. It makes it into like a jaunty little jig, like it's a bunch of little woodland animals like teddy bears marching along, right? So it's a slightly humorous counterpoint

to the thing that's done before, right? It's done quite a bit in classical music as a purely musical device um so yes you can read all kinds of things into it saying okay this is pointing to the unifying people and excluding others but you don't have to look that far to explain it just like in understanding the very broad appeal of beethoven's ode to joy it can just be a like a rousing crowd pleaser right and so it gets used a lot i mean what about trump's music that he plays at his his rallies yeah well but i feel he would interpret it in the same way you know like him using some

80s or you know song of rebellion or bad to the bone or whatever and then saying it's it's subverting the intentions of the you know the rebellious nature of the and it is but like yeah we know that right like people use music for different purposes and i think the last clip from this movie section is his commentary on jaws and he's's talking about what sharks can symbolize. I enjoyed this. Yeah, so here's some things that the shark in jaw might symbolize. Shark starts to attack people on the beach. What does this attack mean?

What does the shark stand for? What does the shark stand for? There were different, even mutually exclusive answers to this question. On the one hand, some critics claim that obviously the shark stands for the foreign threat to ordinary Americans. The shark is a metaphor for either natural disaster, storms, or immigrants threatening United States citizens and so on. On the other hand, it's interesting to know that Fidel Castro, who loves the film, once said that for him it was obvious that Jaws is kind of a leftist, Marxist film, and that The Shark is a metaphor for brutal, big capital exploiting ordinary Americans. So which is the right answer? I claim none of them and at the same time all of them ordinary americans as ordinary people in all countries have a multitude of fears good fun

good fun film analysis actually listening to it again like at first i i just thought it was funny that the shark is communism maybe maybe it's capitalism maybe it's foreigners it's and then the end it was it's all of these things yeah okay so the easiest ones is the shark is sometimes just a shark right and i mean having said that definitely spielberg took advantage of the less is more approach to like a thriller horror type movie partly due to the technical challenges in creating a realistic animatronic shark but you know it's quite effective as a device to to have the shark as kind of a shadowy all-powerful kind of force just below the water you could say it's our subconscious if you want and have some fun there but really i mean you know people do this people analyze these cultural artifacts godzilla the aliens vampires zombies and you can read in you could read into them all kinds of stuff that you

like but you know there is sometimes a simpler explanation. Yeah, or none, Matt. All working at once. But, yeah, this is actually a famous thing because there's Mark Kermode, the film critic, has famously discussed Jaws not really being about a shark, being about, like, man's struggle or whatever, and his co-host being, or maybe it's about a scary shark. There is that first question of, when the shark attacks what is the meaning of this you're like maybe a big shark

and you're speaking as someone who who lives in mortal terror of creatures of but at the same time it is also true that humans spin up interpretive layers and film directors and whatnot also have their own influences of which they're aware of and not aware of and whatnot. art criticism as well. So it's not that, but I feel like if you're very acutely aware of all of this interpretive layers and you're critiquing the way that people consume ideology without thinking, I feel like the next step is also to be like, and maybe this is all

bullshit. It is purely about Ishak. That is actually the thing. All the stuff that we've dreamt up that's much more complex is actually, you know, that has less explanatory power. But just to highlight, that's not where he goes. He then talks about, well, let me see. You might not have anticipated this leap. So here's where he goes the function of the shark is to unite all these fears so that we

can in a way trade all these fears for one fear alone smile you son of a in this way our experience of reality gets much simpler. Why am I mentioning this? Because isn't it that, for example, the most extreme case of ideology, maybe in the history of humanity, the Nazi, fascist, anti-Semitism, work precisely in the same way?

So he wants to say, like, they created, you know, an evil enemy-threatening society in the Jews, and Steven Spielberg, by creating, you know, the evil shark, gave a manifestation of, like... Yeah. Yeah, and that's a bit of... That feels like something of an interpretive leap, but that's the thing, you know, like, I don't begrudge anybody making something of an interpretive leap but but that's the thing

you know like i don't i don't begrudge anybody making that kind of interpretive leap as you know like a you know a thought experiment or that kind of thing i just think again that like if you were going to claim that is actually a really important parallel you'd want to consider counter examples and like the dis parallels between jaws and the nazis well chris there's that line from um monty python and the holy grail where he says that you know strange ladies lying around in ponds there's no basis for a political systemic government right and i kind of feel the same way like this kind of speculative uh analysis of film is not a strong basis for like a social science essentially or a deep understanding of how society works it's it's not a strong foundation on which to build

because i agree with you you can by all means you know anything goes really when it comes to film interpretation you know have fun with it i'm all for that but it is it is a bit weak i mean like you just have to pause and ask yourself some questions like okay if you accept that the shark represents all of these complex things then is it true that every because there are heaps of movies that involve a scary beast of some kind what about critters like you know the little aliens that what do gremlins mean chris what do gremlins mean i'm sure many people have written many things but like you know yes that's that that is the issue and also i think that it's worth considering i'm not saying that everybody's on this level playing field but if you're reacting very poorly to Jordan Peterson, reading deep meanings

into Frozen, there's a certain issue with, well, how do you judge that speculative connection that he makes as invalid? And this one that you like, which is, you know, centering capitalism and consumerism as more because they're equally making these kind of leaps and yes you could say you know some cultural critics or film critics are making more better thought out points but i'm just saying it is hard to appeal to a standard beyond your personal preference for whatever their interpretation is because you know jordan talking about masculinity as represented in Frozen versus Pinocchio or whatever what's your standard to say he's wrong I mean it tends to need to rely on some very abstract ideas around collective unconscious and I and stuff I can understand why they like theoretical Freudianism

right because when people interview Steven Spielberg and ask him about the shark. Is this about capitalism? Yeah. He doesn't wax lyrical about this stuff. He generally talks about wanting to make a scary shark, all right? And when you talk to audiences who went and saw it and you ask them, how was the movie, they'll generally just give you a pretty positive. Most of them. Most of them.

Depends how much of philosophy they've consumed. Yeah, that's true.... Most of them. Most of them. Depends how much philosophy they've consumed. Yeah, that's true. But most of them, most of them. So what you're proposing is that there's something going on with the movie that neither the creator nor the vast majority of the audience are aware. And it's happening at a sort of a deeper, unconscious level. And it's a more fundamental truth. But in Zizek's case, he's also saying, like Zizek is a very playful character.

So he will say that. And then the next breath, he will say, but that can all be rubbish, right? Like, you know, that can just... So this is kind of what's interesting about him is that he doesn't take himself seriously in lots of ways but he also is often presenting a serious analysis of of things in a way that you know demands to be taken seriously so that's what makes him a playful character in a way yes i mean and he is enjoyable like i find him likable but

you know and this is not the only kind of thing he does he's challenging to cover comprehensively we're not going to try we're just taking taking this content because in different modes you know he can write this really dense jargon filled philosophy it's all very complicated and it takes a long while to get to the bottom of what he's saying but it is all intended extremely seriously at other times he's making this sort of more pop content like this documentary where he's being more playful and relaxed and a bit more easygoing and like he said he'll often he'll just undercut what he said and said i'm just i'm just speculating here what do i know i'm just an idiot and you know so you're kind of left being vaguely entertained, but you're not quite sure.

Yeah. But there's a little bit about the, like, crazy wisdom because he is so intelligent that he's not really restricted by the normal social conventions. And he likes to play that up. So let's turn to the interview he did with Aaron Bastani for Novara, right? And these are all, the first couple of clips are from the start of the interview, the very beginning, where it wasn't clear if they're recording or not, right? And there's a little bit follow-up about

ideology that he mentioned at the start. So I'll just play that to bridge us over. just over we effectively are in an era of cynicism as a form of ideology it not only doesn't matter if you take your official ideology seriously or not that's the beautiful paradox that i learned from my communist past i mean living in communist yuglavia, it was a beautiful paradox. You know, we said an official ideology, self-management, socialism, and so on and so on. But if you took the official ideology too seriously, you were in danger of being treated as a dissident. And you were perceived as a danger to those in power. So an ideology functioned in such a way that you were expected not to take it seriously. It wasn't only that it didn't matter if you take it seriously, you had to not take it seriously. It's a beautiful example. And this is how it is today with Trump and so on, all of them. And this is, again,

the most dangerous moment when ideology appears as just neutral common sense, you know, like, forget big ideologies, go to actual problems and so on. Oh, ideology begins here. What do we perceive as an actual problem? Ideology is already in the definition of problems. That's why for me, the first task in critique of ideology is not to claim, okay, we have problems, we must approach them in this or that way, but is this really a problem? Sorry, Matt, that's my fault. That's a clip from another thing where he's outlining his ideology thing more seriously, but I

thought it was good because he talks about the juxtaposition of demanding to take ideology seriously but at the same time you shouldn't take it seriously and like the postmodern moment as well also ideology is so like he is recognizing some paradoxes at play yeah i'd like to know what he would think of hassan piker but uh but i but i'm sure his experience in you know under the iron

curtain behind the iron curtain would have been giving him good insights in the hypocrisy and stuff that went on where especially towards the end of the cold war the impression i get is that the vast majority of people kind of no longer really believed believed in the system but you know the system was still there and it was still important and you needed to pay lip service so i think that there were there were parts of of his material chris that i thought of you and i thought you'd really appreciate this because a lot of it has got to do with that kind of ritual observance hazing rituals and stuff and he he relates it to politics in kind of an interesting way yeah he does and i i think

like the point that he makes here is is valid, you know, like in North Korea, people need to demonstrate that they really are emotionally connected to the leader, but it's enforced. So, like, you know, how much of it is a presentation versus an indoctrination? And it is always in, you know, like an uneasy balance. And the postmodern disenchantment is in a similar kind of unstable moment so like there's there's definitely stuff to it that's the thing one of the things i sort of most identified with is him emphasizing the sort of performative nature of a lot of political stuff and that was you know and that's what you're talking about where what you're purportedly doing is displaying your strong commitment your

strong faith waving the little red book to the ideology but really what you're doing is is performing to show your allegiance to to a system um and so the actual true believers people who take it too seriously are kind of a little bit dangerous because you don't know what they're going to do and they might be disloyal right right? Yeah. Well, actually, I have a clip from the very end of the Novara interview where he's criticizing political correctness or woke leftism. So maybe just before we get to the other stuff, I'll play that since you raised that point. I was once in Missoula, Montana, giving a talk, and there were many so-called Native Americans. And they already hated the term because it's the political correct term.

They told me, ooh, this is so patronizing. What is the opposite of nature, culture? So they told me, we are natural Americans and you are cultural Americans or what. And they gave me a wonder, they said we much prefer to be called Indians. Why? Because then this name is at least a monument to white man's stupidity. When they came there, they thought they were in India. Native Americans and Inuits, Eskimos, I admire them.

They have such a wonderful nose for this pseudo-anti- racist patronizing attitudes towards so-called primitives. So, to conclude, use it or not,

my favorite thing that I said to some feminists years ago, and they applaud that. I said, ladies, let's say you have a boyfriend who says, listen, there is a difference. I'm man more than you. Your duty is to wash my socks, to do the house. I said, if you have such a boyfriend, keep him. You may re-educate him. But if you have a boyfriend who says, I'm a Western imperialist, I see nature only as an object of exploitation,

you as a woman has a more dialogic, organic attitude towards nature, run away like crazy. That guy will be the ruin for you. You know, this fake Western admiration for some wisdom of third world countries and so on, it's a fake. It's very cynical, but in an appealing way, I think. He positions himself as a Marxist, and he certainly comes out of that theoretical space. But it's interesting how a lot of the conclusions that he reaches, sometimes dropping a lot of jargon and theory along the way, is kind of like a pragmatic, you know, moderate kind approach that that does make fun of a lot of left-wing and sacred cows um so yeah you know he is part of that thing i mean jordan peterson would

hate to hear this right but there is a sort of an ideological split between the kind of you know more material left-wing marxist materialists and the people that are more focused on identity and things like that so that kind of work for why would jordan peterson hate that he likes that well he famously conflated the two and said you know work work marxism christ oh post-modern neo-marxists right yes uh i i see the Okay, well, just to continue that theme, Matt, since we're here, he also famously, Zizek, has been critical of cancel culture, right? And he did talk about this in the Novara interview and some of the distinctions between him and other parts of the left, right?

Of the leftist or communist side of the left. So first, this is among cancel culture. So, but back to your point, fame. Listen, don't you think that I am, I can even give you a list of how I'm very suicidal, systematically ruining my general acceptance or fame. It began with my critique of cancel culture and political correctness. That was a big deal. Sorry?

That was a big deal. Yeah, but do you know how many people now dismiss me as a secret right-winger and so on? Although I always emphasize I'm absolutely for all the goals of LGBTQ and now I don't know how many letters you have. LGBTQ, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's longer now, the latest. But, and cancel culture and so on. I see, but what worries me is that the way this is practiced, it's deeply counterproductive. Because I think what, I don't know, don't ask me how to I think what I don't know.

Don't ask me how to do it. I don't know. But isn't it crucial for the left, instead of getting caught in this self-divisive censoring, you know, oh, you use that word. What if it's still secretly racist and so on? that word what if it's still secretly racist and so on so that's that's him kind of highlighting critiques which would be very familiar for heterodox inclined people right criticisms of the left identity politics and yeah self purity policing and all those kind of things so yeah but he's not alone in that i've heard similar kinds of critiques from materialist marxist types um as as well um yeah yeah but i think

brian burgess is another example of somebody that advances those kind of criticisms but the one of the points there as well as that was part of his response to being asked if he wanted to become famous so he was kind of saying you know if i wanted to become famous. So he was kind of saying, you know, if I wanted to become famous, I wouldn't do this. Though, as we know, that is actually a path to fame, though not perhaps so readily on the left. But that question, the way that he responded to it initially, because he went off on a big tangent. And then this was him coming back to answer. the big tangent and then this was him like coming back to answer but i i thought that part where he tries to answer the question illustrates you know how his mind works in a way did you always want to be famous because you have this wonderful life for most people um where you travel the world you talk

about interesting things highly educated man you can have an opinion on films, people love it. You can have an opinion on politics, people love it. Let me make a step further here. Please. Yeah, but I go dialectically to the end here. I even have an opinion on films that I haven't seen, you know, like what I wrote about Barbie and Oppenheimer. It's now a public secret that when I wrote that, I haven't seen the films, you know. I'm a hero Hegelian, you know, that famous Hegel's stance, if reality doesn't fit what I proclaim to be the notion of truth, so much worse for reality. And I stand by this. After writing my piece, I was convinced to see just Oppenheimer. And I should have been even tougher for the film. So two things that struck me there.

One was like his kind of, ah, you know, let me get to the end point of the question if I saw fame. And then he admits he wrote his reviews of Barbie and Oppenheimer without watching them, which is like a kind of trolly thing to do. But then also he made this comment that where reality does not fit with his interpretation, like so bad for reality. it's comedic but it's i think also actually true that in this approach to things this is a little bit high philosophers that their interpretive frameworks are if they don't match exactly the reality reality has the limitation that's got the problem yeah yeah they can take the platonic deals a little bit too far yeah yeah i mean it's that's the thing it's often hard to know how seriously to take zz because it's entertaining it's fun to listen to but you know um well and that sentiment would contradict all the stuff that he said about ideology being less

important than you know it's a it's a deception that that transforms the world but if you take this at face value it would him be saying that his interpretive ideology is more important than whatever reality is but it's said with a wink and a a joke right and uh so like you say how serious the ticket and yet just before chris who was saying the most dangerous kind of ideology that we're experiencing these days is the kind of ironic tongue-in-cheek ideology. So, yeah, I don't know. What does a shark mean? What does a shark mean? But just before we get off this point.

him, the kind of class-focused Marxist versus some of the more contemporary Marxist approach, which are accused of, you know, being focused a bit more on identity politics or whatever the case might be. But he indicates a distinction between him and other leftists here, which I thought was interesting. I will say something with which I hope we will all agree because it's a very center liberal common sense. The basic condition of normal life is this safety of social order. And I'm saying this as a leftist. I was never fascinated by this big bullshit, you know, Tahrir Square or Syriza, one million people on the market, on the main place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am.

That's my old joke. Probably you know it. I am the the morning after leftist. How will ordinary people feel the change when the enthusiasm is over? How will their life, ordinary daily life, how will they be affected? That's why I got many hatred from French leftists. You remember, some two, three months ago,

there were those big demonstrations. And I said, but I am more for law and order there because I read analysis. You know, those demonstrations were basically destroying things, cars, stores, mostly, almost exclusively in the poor suburbs. And I think that's one of the resources of Trump. We should listen to this curse of the ordinary people who like security and so on. So he's not the sort of romantic style of revolutionary Marxist. His views may well be radical in some ways. But yeah, he's a morning after type person.

And he likes pragmatism he um rather than flashy fashionable things we see cynical of and i think he would see them as yeah self-aggrandizing things that are just pandering to your own sort of personal and emotional needs rather than being a practical way to go yeah and he he followed this up by talking about the movie v for vendetta have you seen that movie matt i have to my regret yeah okay i i kind of liked it but he he he agrees with you right like he sees limitations but i thought this was like a kind of playful way to illustrate his issues my standard line here is maybe you know it you saw the movie V for Vendetta in my Stalinist universe that movie would be burned

publicly why because it ends you know the end scene the people occupy the parliament win my standard joke is I would sell my mother into slavery

to see V for Vendetta part two. But what will then they do the next day, the leftist in power? How will they change the power structure? What will they do? Nationalize things or what? That's what the left should focus on. Enough of this enthusiastic freedom and so on and so on. I am shocking as it may sound law and order leftist. Our promise should be not this enthusiastic freedom and so on.

Our promise should be we will change in a way that you will feel the change the daily life and cases where this succeeds when they achieve this the left are very rare so he he wants to sell his mother in the slavery to see the sequel to be very better but that you know that's the the kind of nice hyperbole that he's infamous for right um actually reminiscent a little bit of destiny yeah yeah that's right using extremely florid attention-getting language potentially inappropriate yeah potentially very inappropriate but ultimately if you strip that stuff away the point that's being made is a relatively boring one, that people actually do prefer to be safe and that you do need to be pragmatic and think about, okay, what are you actually going to, you know, this system that we all despise, let's talk about what we're going to replace it with and have a practical plan.

I mean, none of those should be particularly controversial opinions. So I do feel he spices things up a fair bit. And, you know, why not? Maybe slightly more controversial in the leftist spaces, because he's essentially criticizing the focus on revolutionary politics, right? He's like the day-to-day boring stuff of governing is actually what we should be paying attention to. And actually, there's a funny bit,

Matt, I think you know this history a bit better. But so there is an emphasis in leftist spaces in Novara media on the importance of, you know, rebellion, revolution, this kind of thing. So Aaron Bastani pushes back a bit and is like, you know, but what about these historical instances where there was revolution? So you're saying like, you know, but what about these historical instances where there was revolution? So you're saying like, you don't, what do you think about this? And he tries a couple of times to get an answer for him. So listen to the attempts. So was the Russian and French revolutions a mistake then?

Because obviously those weren't law and order leftists. Those were massive ruptures, particularly the French revolution, against an entire mode of being. Here, it may surprise you. First, I don't have, let's begin with Russian Revolution. I'm very critical of Lenin, but nonetheless, as a Hegelian, I don't buy this Trotskyite story. Nonetheless, as a Hegelian, I don't buy this Trotskyite story. You know that if only Lenin were to survive for three, four years,

he would have made a pact with Trotsky throughout Stalin and then. Then what? Big socialist democracy. No, maybe a little bit better. But nonetheless, and I'm ready to go even further back here, it's clear that I don't care if he wanted he Lenin this or not, but Leninism obviously did open up the space for Stalinism. You cannot say it was just a bad surprise. And you can find this clearly in the ambiguities of Lenin's desperate book, State and Revolution. As for the French Revolution, I'm a little bit, it's my first puberty love, I don't want to renounce it for jacobins let's make things clear for me the

great one of the greatest ethical figures or two of them rather in world history are and he's gonna say roger pierre yeah well what's what's the question for me i mean i think it's definitely true that both the french and the r Russian revolutions were followed by even more authoritarian regimes than, more effectively authoritarian regimes than the ones they replaced. There was obviously a period following the revolution where there was a lot of breakdown in everything, anarchy, which nobody liked. Yeah. But is he, so is, from that answer, are you clear if he's saying they were bad or not like the question was you are saying that the revolutions are you know we should focus on what happens after whatnot but like so what about these two famous examples and he talked a lot

about them but i think that's a hard question though isn isn't it, Chris? I mean, it's very, it's very, what's the word, problematic to look back in hindsight and say, was this a good thing or a bad thing? Because you, it's very hard to know what was the alternative thing that would have happened. I mean, there was a revolution in Haiti, which was, everyone would agree is totally justified to get rid of a great evil thing of that slave state but Haiti subsequently has not done well on the other hand there was the American Civil War which I'm enjoying learning about at the moment well yeah the previous Civil War yeah yeah well I enjoyed both of them listening to the history of them both of them terrible events right and yet in yet in hindsight we look back on

the american civil war as being a kind of a necessary it was devastating but people look back on it as a necessary and ultimately a good thing that's what aaron pastani is asking right like if you condemn revolutions like during them of course terrible and you know causing breakdown of society and stuff but like aren't they necessary at times when you know societies have gotten like this and so he there if i interpreted what he said correctly was like kind of he would condemn lenin because lenin also would have led to a repressive regime even if he had survived i yeah i read what he was saying as like you can't you can't just point the finger at stalin and say that stalin hijacked a regime that was heading

towards a nice democratic socialist um egalitarian and and free kind of country and that was ultimately liberating people because it probably wasn't headed in that direction yeah but so that first answer would seem to be sort of negative and then the french revolution one he moves into this kind of responsibility sorry i didn't make that clear yeah yeah so were those mistakes should those not have happened clearly, there's a place for huge disruptive politics in history. There is, but I think that I'm here simply a pessimist. That the way Hegel saw it correctly, no, you have to go through this terrorist moment, which fails, and then the true struggle begins. Will anything good survive from this?

Hegel saw this very clearly. Well, he condemned the French terror, but he made it very clear that nonetheless a more liberal democratic order was possible only through that excessive moment. Or to give you another example that I like, I read a book, I forget which one, which deals with this problem and says, even if not actual violence, in moments of radical emancipation, you at least need a threat of more radical deadly measures. For example, this guy looks at, in the 60s, Martin Luther King for full black emancipation, the struggles. And he said, why did Martin Luther, more or less, the struggle goes on, succeed?

Because behind him there was a threat of much more violent, radical blacks. Look at Mandela. The apartheid regime made a deal with him because they were afraid. There were much more radical blacks waiting this answer kind of like then i mean it's not inconsistent necessarily but he he is now switching to endorse the necessity but wasn't he before saying v for vendetta that revolutionary moment is you

know it's just bullshit but now he's saying the threat of violence and populist you know uprisings are a very necessary part of any you know revitalization or change so like it feels well i feel like he's he's behind going with the question but i'm very sympathetic to him here chris because i i feel like it feel like it's an impossible question. You know, these great upheavals and revolutions often, you know, there is a seesawing effect, you know, and France ultimately, like it seesawed from over multiple revolutions and republics

and then another Bonaparte coming back and then another king coming back. But it's sort of the oscillations evened out, and it kind of reconciled itself to somewhere, you know, where it is now, which is not too bad. So I don't know much about the French Revolution, the history of it, right? But I know you listen to a lot about it.

But Robespierre possibly filtered through, you know, O'Fallon and all references my image is that he is famous and like a complex historical figure like love I mean the there's a magazine called the Jacobins right named after the movement that he was involved with and whatnot but also that he was a a tyrannical figure that killed a whole bunch of other people that he considered impure. So like he's famously a villainous character was the way that I understood as well. But in the way that Zizek talks about him, he kind of presents him as a like a good guy. And he said, yes, yes, he did some, you he was a bit like oh heavy-handed with the purges

but fundamentally if you read his stuff before he died he was still like an optimist yeah no look i'm not i'm not qualified to give the definitive answer about rob espia i am aware that it is it's complicated right like he said there's no good guys or bad guys right yeah like like they were to some degree idealists and they were putting a lot of people to death on the other hand they were actually beset by traitors and and enemies on all sides and then later on a lot of the people that were being put to death were the actual nasty people who were abusing their power putting other people to death earlier on and you could interpret it as this horrible circular firing squad but also there was a kind of high-minded retribution there too and i don't know enough about the details of

to pass judgment on his character but they're just they're complicated characters like they were in some ways horrible and in some ways idealists and yeah that's that's just the nature of history i was just curious because it's clear in his commentary that he's regarding this as a provocative thing that he's saying and it lined up as being provocative with what i vaguely have consumed about Robespierre through the culture but I I don't know enough to know if that's because of the culture war presentation of him I think it's generally yeah he is generally like if you read a basic history book he doesn't come off well um I'm aware that there are more detailed and nuanced kind of alternative readings um yeah I don't know what the truth is chris well just to make your point maybe a bit stronger matt and and in favor of zz the last time that he's asked the

same question because aaron bostani is kind of responding saying okay but let me just be clear what you know what you're saying and the third time i think he gets an answer which points to the nuance that you've been emphasizing. We were saying about, you said on the one hand you're a law and order communist. Yeah. But then on the other hand, you're saying that like, well implicit within that for me is that you basically would discard any possibility of change through revolution. But now you're saying that actually there is change.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just think we should judge it from case to case. For example, let's go to the burning, literally burning Gaza question today, Hamas. I was booed out, attacked all around Germany, really, cover story, for just saying that I unconditionally reject what Hamas did. And this was not an empty phrase because my Israeli friends who are left there close to Palestinians told me they knew people in that kibbutz and raving. They were the best of Israelis in the sense of how to relate with Arabs. And it's clear that Hamas' attack on them was destined not so much to win over Israel,

but for decades in future to block any chance of peace. It was a war to make sure that there will not be a peace. So there I am absolutely unambiguously against Hamas. What I'm just saying, adding, and for this I was vilified, is not relativizing this attack of Hamas, but inquire into that you cannot even understand it without. Oh yeah, and Matt, just to say, I looked into this because there he's kind of emphasizing

that he condemned Hamas and then that this wasn't received well in Germany. And I was kind of like, what? And then I looked it up and he gave a opening speech at this book fair in Germany in Frankfurt. And it was a week or so or two weeks after the attack on October 7th. And in his speech, he completely condemned Hamas like he just did

there. But he also pointed out the need to consider the historical background and listen to Palestinians and that the Israeli government settlement policy was also partly responsible. Like all this, right? So the interesting thing for me is, in some sense, I think, and this comes through in a whole bunch of the context, lots more examples to play. He likes annoying the audience that he's talking to.

Like when he's at a book fair with liberals in Germany, he will condemn Hamas, like he did there without reserve, but he will point out the historical issues and the settlement program. And that is considered, you know, like both sides in that venue. In this venue, he is very clear to give a very strong condemnation of Hamas and to not justify the violence as like an act of revolutionary violence that he supports so like I and this comes through in a whole lot of content that he really likes saying and I annoy

these people by making this point I don't want to I don't want to stereotype but it's our peoples but I I've I've met eastern Europeans and I've noticed this about them they do enjoy this anyway he fits he fits with friends of mine in that sense and you know that is an enjoyable aspect of his character and i think that's generally a good thing right not to be wanting to make people feel comfortable and to have everyone nodding along but to actually give not not to misrepresent what he thinks but to give a version of what he thinks that is going to be troubling and and cause the people that he's talking to to i don't know i i guess he's hoping to to react and reflect or you know open their minds a bit more i think it actually is part of his philosophy right that he he will do these transgressive acts to challenge people to recognize their ideologies, like how it's functioning, right? And he might overdo it at times. I'm not talking about like these specific examples. I've got many more where it's here that like he regards himself as very provocative and, you know, like he's constantly mentioning.

It's a little bit like, you know, if you want to be mean, you could say it's a bit like Jordan Peterson and Weinstein constantly talking about how, you know, they're being silenced and cancelled. But he's more playful with it. But he does throughout this, and it's actually been in some of the other clips, he'll constantly say, I'm not allowed to talk to these people. These people were very annoyed when I said this. uh i have many examples that we can move to no it is it is a role that he he likes like a cloak that he likes to draw around himself yeah which is a bit like

our other gurus which is you know i keep saying the unacceptable things i've disappointed everyone you know i'm you know and it is and it's there's some truth in it i think but yeah but it is but it is also uh a shtick and um you know it's that's okay maybe but i think where he is a little bit different than some of the gurus who do the same pose is like he does go to venues and say things against the dominant ideology of that venue whereas like uh brett weinstein or whatever will go to a heterodox setting and they'll just say or an anti-vax setting and they'll say everything that everybody else there agrees so like whereas he kind of intentionally creates friction in whichever environment he's in and but in a playful way and i've got really good

illustration of this just before you do chris um there was something a playful way and i've got really good illustration of this just before you do chris um there was something i don't think you've got clips of it but there was a topic that's a favorite of his that i i wanted to ask you about and one of the things he talks about is is this idea of transgressive acts and ceremonies within an ideology. And again, just trying to paraphrase very briefly Zizek's ideas here. The idea is that a dominant ideology is always going to have these aspects to it, which are totally transgressive and inconsistent with its general purported beliefs and intents. Like an example would be, you know, the West is all about, you know, open markets and promoting freedom and democracy around the world,

very much against war and unprovoked aggression, but it will quite happily, you know, do drone strikes here, there and everywhere and doesn't condemn its allies in various parts of the world for unwarranted violence. And so he makes a lot of this, and, you know, he talks about like hazing rituals as a right of admission to various things. And it did, I mean, I don't know how much truth, like empirical truth there is to his ideas,

but it did make me think that perhaps the value in someone like Zizek is at least he sort of makes you think. And I guess one of the things that made me think was just about it just got me thinking about these transgressive rituals and just i was trying to think of concrete examples is there any like to to make it see if there's some truth to it to me and it made me think of the um the communion in in the catholic church where which was always seemed odd to me, right, because you have this situation where the parishioners all kneel down and the priest sticks a little piece of bread, a wafer, in each of their mouths, which they then are told is transmitted

into the body of Christ, which they then go on to eat, right? So just on the face of it, right, it's transgressive in multiple ways right you shouldn't be eating people and and you know adults sticking food into other people's mouths it's not really done you might feed a baby like that but it's not something that you do to a person and like do you think like would you like you're a scientific sort of scholar of these kinds of things do you see some truth in that? That these transgressive rituals are kind of necessary and important to the broader ideology? I don't know. Yeah, there is a thing called liminal rituals, which Victor Turner was talking about.

And it's a little bit different, that concept, but it's talking about how there's various rituals where status is inverted. The lower status individuals are able to mock the higher status individuals and all this, and this serving as like a kind of release of pent up social frustration or, you know, you need these transgressive acts in order to solidify social harmony, especially when they're in like quite hierarchical settings and this kind of thing. So that is certainly, I think, well attested to, at least in a certain category of rituals. But that's a bit different than this concept, because this is talking about in the case of like the Catholic Eucharist, I feel that you could view that as a transgressive ritual but it's one that's been

neutered almost entirely because like now there's an i mean there was and is a theology around that which justifies it but it's also not really taken in any way as a transgressive act now right like it's it's been ritualized to the point of there's nobody at a mass like kind of going, oh, you know, oh, I'm eating the blood of Christ, right? Yeah, like it doesn't have that frisson, right? No, I take your point. But it has, however, that point has not escaped the notice

of like Protestant the theologians right i can imagine yeah because one of the issues is like the transubstantiation doctrine in the like debates between the different sects of christianity like whether transubstantiation actually occurs or whether it's do this and in memory of me right like it's just a ritual reenactment of a ceremony that Jesus did at the last of the Last Supper, right? Yeah, it can be a bit like reading meaning into the shark, I think is what you're saying. Yeah, like you made me think about those transgressive things

and as like a relieving of tension and Frisian, like a good example would be like the stereotypical jester in the court of a king right henry henry king you know what i mean he's the one person he's allowed to be disrespectful he's allowed to whatever and everyone has a good laugh and if might go too far sometimes and get his head cut off but i guess yeah it's a broad brush though is it or it's the reach to then say that's the same thing as the like like he'd probably point to like the illegal activities of intelligence agencies or covert military operations in a democratic society is kind of is necessary to the ideology because it goes against the ideology but it's necessary

and it just seems like a very different thing i guess you've met me well there's also like there's an anthropology article quite famous one by morvin and ingo that was talking about military service and the nation state as operating through blood sacrifice like it's legitimacy being achieved by the fact that soldiers are willing to die for the defense of the nation. And this not being presented as like a ritual sacrifice, but it has very many of the elements that have, right? And I think in that respect, you know, it's all in the way that you frame things because there is a way in which being capable of having members of your society willing to die to protect the laws and the rulers of your society can be framed as a blood sacrifice right and there are

ways that nation states do things which are transgressive of their values but at the same time are potentially reinforcing their power to like you know project their values but at the same time are potentially reinforcing their power to like you know project their values yeah and that's my thing if i imagine jordan peterson saying these things and talking about it as being a blood sacrifice and stuff i would be like no um like a simpler explanation for the existence of covert military operations and mi5 and stuff like that is that it's like a practical necessity hypocritical though it might be to the purported principles but you can i think you can get more out of seeing there are various things that like nation states and secular institutions do which are pure pageantry or completely hypocritical of their stated values and like the pure pageantry thing would be an

inauguration ceremony why do you have to have that and why do you have to have these rituals performed why do you have oaths have to be sworn in a specific way right like obama didn't say one line right and he needed to say it right the next day and did people think if he didn't say that exactly right that the power had not transferred? Like, obviously not. But the ritual was important. So there's that aspect. And then there's the fact that, you know, various countries, the U.S., chief amongst them, go around promoting democracy and the rule of law, but famously have taken various geopolitical moves where they've supported despotic regimes when it suited

their national interests. And it's absolutely true. And there are analyses, I think, that you can do of that from philosophical points of view or more interpretive things, which are compelling. But like you said, I think a lot of it comes down to, okay, but are there less flowery interpretations that also fit the evidence? And oftentimes the answer is yes. So I guess I don't know enough about his transgressive acting to see it, but there certainly are transgressive acts in terms of inconsistencies, right? in all societies and ideologies so sure that's fair i like that answer that's good okay well uh we'll move to an example of zizek breaking taboos sorry i will tell you one in the united states i was signing books and a guy told me please, I like your

obscene, dirty jokes, please write a dedication to my book as dirty as you can imagine I looked at him and said listen, you are talking to a madman who takes things literally you will really get it

and he said, yes please, yes then he was a fan because I wrote, imagine I'm screwing your mother up her ass in a dirty toilet up to her knees in the in urine. And then he was mad and I told him I warned you you're talking to a mad man. Yeah, he's mad. He's crazy. He's great. He's good. Yeah, I kind of like this. and this was in part because they were asking at the start of the interview he's asking about you know how to free him things but before

it he's talking about like him being extreme and how he's messed up his kids and then goes into talking you know about what kind of interview they want them to do and that's what led to him telling this anecdote but so listen to this the way i almost screwed up ruined my two sons there of course it's another story you cannot even imagine being such a liberal as i was in the education you know like i remember this story once i returned home 20 years ago my son was doing homework towards the evening you know what was my reaction how dare you do this you are doing homework what about the horror movie on the tv it will watch itself by itself sorry losing time any other orders to what style are you used here like i interrupting lively conversation more

tell some tell stories if you want i didn't know don't say this to a madman and then he told that story right yeah yeah so yeah you get a sense of zz style i think he hams up those stories a little bit and why not? But, you know. Telling those kids not to do their homework. I've said similar things to my kids, like tongue in cheek, because they're pretty studious kids and that. Yeah, I mean, I've done what he does, which is, you know, just ham up stories a little bit for entertainment value. Yeah, yeah.

And I think he does like coming across as a bit mad a bit unpredictable right and uh and he did make this interesting point at the start of the interview which was counter to my impression of him but he said this you know that i'm such a horror i'm a nightmare true stalinist never in my life did I dance, sing in public, smoke a cigarette, got drunk and taste any, even the softest drugs. You never got drunk? No. Really?

You know why? I'm really a Stalinist, not superficial. You know what's my idea? Please. The world is a dangerous place. If you get drunk, you want to embrace people, you get kind, and then you don't recognize the attack, you cannot

defend itself. No, we must stay sober, paranoiac to see where the attack is coming. That's my, really, that's my spontaneous stance, you know, like. The paranoid style of Zizek. The paranoid style, absolutely, absolutely. The problem is that I don't live up to my own standards

yeah that's like I can't actually tell that as well maybe it's just my image because my image is a little bit of him as a drunk you know like madman right like the kind of guy that would be very bohemian like in his 20s or 30s or even now but he says there like maybe he doesn't need alcohol or drugs but then i can't tell if he's actually being serious because you know when he finishes the problem is i don't live up to my own expectations like so does that mean he does drink i don't know if this is a well-known fact about him or not i don't know if it is a well-known fact about him or not i don't know if it's a well-known fact either but i find it very plausible that he's a tito type he's an eccentric um anything's possible and uh i think he's got a lot going on in his head and um yeah i

know people like that i think uh you know i think he hams up like like again you know he says i'm a stalinist i'm a true stalinist i'm paranoid like life's so dangerous you gotta watch out so i think he's but then he undercuts that by saying he doesn't live up to his own yeah rule of paranoia and i'd look i think the main thing is being an eccentric lovable yeah yeah he does he makes funny jokes but he also makes some bad jokes. And well, see what you think about this. This is a joke he made about Cuba. It's on the edge of like that joke versus a subversive joke. When I was in Cuba, I encountered a guy.

Probably he was a spy following me, although I was privately there. And I felt his heroism, how he showed me all the poverty he's shown me but his point was you see in spite of all this economic ruin poverty we are still faithful to our cause no and then I said oh that's why your leader is called Fidel Castro, fidelity to castration. Like even if we are castrating ourselves, we are faithful to it, no? It's horrible. I really didn't like this in Cuba. This very perverted pride in, look, our misery and poverty is a proof of our greatness. You know, that's one type of left that I believe.

of our greatness you know that's one type of a left that i do so the fidel castro fidelity the castrician that was the yeah in case you missed that matt you didn't you didn't crack a huge smile oh it was all right it was okay look yeah you get a sense of his style that's his style it's not annoying it's it's no no well it's what it's playful but i don't know if you describe it as post-modern or whatever but like his his playful approach to things shines through in this clip and i find this endearing you're describing you're describing christianity you do you think was that really oh i think I think Christianity is such a mess. Okay, let's not lose time. Let's not lose time. Just take it away.

I mean, I'm not going to lose some of that stuff you've already talked about. Right. You can, whatever. What's up? You know what's the most evil thing? I cannot resist it. You know what you should do? Go on.

You should use these clips, but manipulate them, you should use these clips but manipulate them so that you use this as my answer to a totally different question to make me appear an idiot you know what

I give you what I call when I do a video interview pornography I call it a pornography consent that they can use clips which means with this, how we discord? sorry? yeah yeah yeah that you take a couple of shots of me you put it on

a hardcore and I'm half dead screwing a lady I give you consent for all of this you know just if you this sells well you should give me a small percentage we'll give you consent for all of this you know just if you said this sells well you should give me a small percentage we'll give you a royalty yeah Slavoj Zizek welcome to downstream I'm proud to be here that was all before the interview and he couldn't stop talking like he he wanted to talk about Christianity he didn't care if they were recording or not I think uh I think you could

give him any word and he'd have thoughts and would want to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. And just, you know, the thought of being taken out of context and whatnot. To some extent, it is, you know, like easy to say. I think actually intellectuals might take issue if you completely took them out of context.

But I like his attitude. i don't think he'd mind that much i think i think for him that's all part of the the game yeah i think his style is is um is one that just uh i don't know well you know we've heard him a couple of time mentioning like the different people that dislike him that like we heard him say you know oh they didn't like the speech that i gave him blah blah blah and uh i've got a couple of clips of different groups being uh you know pointed out that they've got issues with them everybody knows this but one has to emphasize we live in dangerous times and precisely in such times thinking is needed people are totally wrong who think now times are quiet. No, then you are too lazy to think. In the situations of urgency, which is today's situation at different levels, I think this is what makes many traditional Marxist hate me. I think the time is to turn around Marxist Theoresis 11. It's not philosophers have only interpreted

the world we have to change it. It's maybe in the 20th century we tried to change the world too fast without really understanding it. The time is to interpret, understand the world. So that's why I am glad to be here. Even if I will not maybe convince many people, I hope I will make them reflect. He talked about a lot of other things there, but that last point as well about, you know,

even if he doesn't convince people, he hopes he makes them reflect that, that kind of aligns with a lot of his philosophical positions, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think there was another, another ancient philosopher.

There was a guy like, I don't know, he lives in a barrel or something. He was in a barrel. Oh yeah. The barrel guy. The barrel guy in Athens. That guy. Yeah. He was a bit like i don't know he lived in a barrel or something he was in a barrel and oh yeah the barrel guy the barrel guy in athens that guy yeah he was a bit like that wasn't he um you know it's kind of trying to jolt people into out of complacency and to actually exercise their brains and reconsider things um uh zz seems to be all about that he's not you know yes he has some philosophical ideas that he that he returns

to but i think mainly he wants to jolt people and get them to engage and um yeah get them to think which is you know that's that seems like a good thing as you said uh yes so the the marxists don't like him because he thinks um you know marxis need to think more as well well and that last point that he was getting on leads into this position he has of presenting himself as a a moderate conservative communist right so we covered this a little bit earlier when he was you know discussing the rule of revolution but here's him like sticking out that position a bit more clearly something that was originally a good idea almost with a kind of a necessity as a rule turns wrong you have french revolution freedom bloop terror you get october revolution You get October Revolution in spite of all problematic things that Lenin did at the beginning.

No, it was not just, as some people think, a Bolshevik coup d'etat. It was a very popular movement. Ten years on, you get Comrade Stalin, nightmare embodied. You know, don't we need a lot this today? This not simply pessimist spirit, but what I, without shame, call moderate conservative spirit. By this, I mean, I'm still a communist, but you can use this. I repeat it all the time, moderately conservative communist. Yes, communist, which means for me, obviously, we're in deep crisis. Radical measures will be needed. But at the same time, this is what I admire with intelligent, moderate conservatives. Think well how things can turn wrong. Yes.

So annoying conservatives, annoying Marxists. Killing two birds with the one stone, really, with that level. And he's a moderate conservative Marxist. Which isn't a contradiction. But I mean, I think where he lands is

a moderate progressive. I think that's where that averages out to. But he would mean i think that's where that kind of averages out to but he would hate to think that because that's not interesting right much more interesting to be a conservative communist right yeah and there i can play clips that speak to you know which conclusions he reaches but before we get to those two to to give him his credit, Matt, as somebody with like a potentially edgy or provocative view of the world, sort of, you could say nihilist. Here's him talking about the perception of the future and how things are going to go. Let's be frank here. I have no illusions about democracy.

The way we know it, it's maybe coming to an end, but I always emphasize in this book, in other books, that democracy are not just the written rules. Democracy are also, there is no democracy without unwritten, silent rules that you have to obey and so on. And this is simply breaking down in the United States. You have now a guy who openly formulates disrespect for constitution, for parliamentary democratic system and so on, and who is the Speaker of the House. You have Donald Trump openly advocating public disorder and so on and so on. So I think all this talk about the end of the American empire, it's predominantly a matter of what happens in America itself. And what really worries me is that in different forums, it's happening all around the world.

I think he's on point there. Would you agree with him, Chris? I think that he's right that democracy isn't just like a set of rules and procedures. It is like a culture. And that culture can atrophy just through like boredom or disinterest or cynicism or donald trump a number of reasons and uh and i think he's also right and probably the main worry that most people have about the united states today is not so much some foreign threat it's kind of overpowered when it comes to geopolitical things but it's it's sort of the internal state that is concerning um so i think most people would agree with him they're nothing too controversial really well i was i i think i remember that clip as him more predicting the fall of the world in

the future but there i think that might come up in uh like in the near future a lot of people these days chris but there is there is some i think you know like you say you could label it progressive or you could label it communist, I suppose. I don't know exactly. He has a lot of criticisms of the state, but it's nuanced because there are defenses of internationalism and whatnot. But anyway, here's him talking a little bit about how modern states are responsible for a lot of bad things. Look at Turkey. All the horrors that they did, the Armenian genocide and so on,

it was not done by old conservative Turks. It was done by young Turks who wanted to change Turkey into a modern sovereign nation state. Look at China. I read wonderful analysis by Chinese half dissidents, guys who want to be a Marxist, but are with one leg already in prison, to put it like this, who says that the problem today with China,

although they like to emphasize we are more than nation state, we are a civilization. No, de facto, they are now obsessed with becoming a large nation state. That's why they want to China-ify, or how to put it? Signify. Signify, yes, sorry. Signify Uyghurs, Muslims there, or Tibetans, and so on. It's not Modi doing the same.

Erase the Muslims. There, I'm absolutely pro-Muslim in India. I was even advised not to travel to India now. It's dangerous for me. So I think that today, precisely, when, isn't it clear that all the problems that we have can only be solved in some kind of global approach? You cannot solve ecological threats by this state is doing this in another sovereign state. No, we will be compelled to develop mechanisms which will have a status of not just a matter

of choice, but which will be able measures to overwrite, how do you call it, cancel over the interest of the individual sovereign states. I don't see another solution. Sorry. I think he's right on the money there, Chris. Like, actually, what he's saying there about the somewhat pernicious nature of nationalism is it absolutely reflects everything i've read recently over the last five years in modern history like when the big empires or and or colonial domination

um you know ranging from turkey to iraq to all of the european empires when they crumble as you know the european ones did say in the 19th century. And you had a lot of groups, national groups, gaining a sense of national identity and then aiming for self-determination. And generally looking back at, say, a country like Greece, right, which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, the national crusade for independence is generally considered to be a good thing.

But what he's pointing at is it's a double-edged sword right all of those national identities often have a i don't know what's what's the word for it uh an ethnic or religious or an identitarian aspect nationalism so you know you saw it in india with the petition you saw it in iraq when the sort of the rule of the Ba'athists came to an end. So, you know, it really is a double-edged sword. Like it's good to overthrow empires and self-determination, et cetera. That's nice, but it often leads to bad things. So yeah, I'm with him. I think we do need international solutions because a bunch of nation states badgering up against each other it's it's um you know multilateralism chris i know he's taking an internationalist perspective in a way but it's not one based on global workers unity so that's that's a sort of interesting it should be concerning to him it should be concerning to zizek that his political views are so comfortable for a normie like me to endorse.

That should be concerning. He also made a claim. I realize I'm just sensitive to this because of where I'm biased, right? But listen to this thing he made about Fukushima. It relates to this point, so it's not completely random to play it here. about Fukushima. It relates to this point, so it's not completely random to play it here.

My good friend, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a great French theorist of catastrophe, was in Fukushima, or rather Tokyo, as a special delegate from the European Union,

three days after the catastrophe. And he told me, for one day, Japanese authorities were in a panic. It looked that they had to evacuate the whole Tokyo area, 30 million people.

Where to put them? In a rational world order? The answer is clear. There are now with global warming, vast land which can, where hundreds of millions of people literally can settle in Siberia. In old times, there were such crises. You solve them with the war. Today, we cannot.

It means self-destruction because of nuclear arms and so on. We have to get ready for emergency state. I'm not saying be in a panic. I'm just saying get ready ready so the thing that's strange there for me matt is i i don't dispute that his friend the french theorist of catastrophe was you know in japan after the disaster but the notion that tokyo was going to be evacuated like one tokyo is uh about 150 miles to over 200 kilometers from fukushima right so like if that happened for that scenario to occur it would have had to be a cascade of nuclear reactors going and there was one like disaster planning you know absolute worst case

scenario where they talked about that happening but it wasn't it wasn't like properly considered and even if it was he kind of presents it like well we'd have to you know take them to some area or whatever but like why wouldn't they just go somewhere else in japan temporarily like you know japan has quite a lot of low density inhabited areas you know they're typically marked in this or what that but just like yeah it's just like we i don't i don't entirely understand the logic of the argument there like we would have to have an internationalist response to the nuclear power plant cascade if there was a cascade meltdown across one country yeah anyway i just i just find that like kind of weird jumps in reasoning it's perhaps not a good example but um yeah i guess i guess he's saying there can be, you know, more generally, he's saying...

Like global warming is a better example. Yeah, yeah. Just, I mean, remind me of this segment because I forget what he was arguing for here. But was he saying simply that we're going to be facing problems that are going to need multinational solution? Like a country might be drying up, for instance, and have no water. Countries might no longer be self-sufficient in terms of dealing with their own problems. I mean, you know, like little islands in the South Pacific getting flooded by global warming.

That's a good example. Yeah, that is kind of what he's saying. It links to like a broader section where he's talking about his predictions for the future and whether he's pessimistic or optimistic. for the future and whether he's pessimistic or optimistic right and he he wants to argue that yeah and i guess this is in line actually with a lot of just progressive points of view that what's on the rise everywhere is it's fascism right that's that's that's what's happening and uh so well i'll just play a clip of him outlining this perspective. I think Chinese communism, there is even a direct link again with the fascist tradition. And I think this is the main threat, which has different forums. Putin, India, Modi, one forum, Western European forum, American forum, even in Latin America and so on.

And now to go to the end, I'm desperate because what is happening? Two days ago when I had a debate at that Royal Institute, I was sitting on the same chair, maybe. No, it was that Faraday was sitting. A guy asked me a nice cynical question, but it deeply affected me. It was the right question. He said, but you are just saying to young people, there is no hope. We are fucked up. But he said, but look, you are old, you will soon die, it doesn't matter to you. But look, and he showed all the young people in their 20s, you can't say them to this, taking hope from them. Then I think I found a good counterpoint, reply. It was this one. How do you mean this reproach? Do you mean it in a moral sense?

In the sense of even if you are right in your analysis, you should lie as if there is hope not to disappoint young people? Or do you mean there is hope?

And we didn't have time. We concluded with... Well, so I've set it up, Matt. I need to provide the punchline. So he was asked and he was kind of talking about his pessimistic view and they said, no, what about... Come on, give us some hope. And then he says...

The only one that I can offer is what Max Horkheimer, one of the fathers of Frankfurt School, said very nicely that in these desperate times, the position of leftists should be pessimism in theory, optimism in practice. Pessimism, yes, our world is coming to an end and I am afraid to provide an opposition like, sorry, a clear alternative. Like some of my friends, that's where I lost the thread before, are not only David Graeber, many others are neo-anarchists. No, I don't buy this. Because I think that the world is crying today for demanding global mechanisms.

And it's too utopian to think, you know, from local initiatives, they will come together and so on. So I just grab any opportunity that I can. There is a movement here, a movement there. I have links in Philippines. I have links in Turkey. I supported Syriza here, there. So are we all burned or what? I forgot.

Yeah, so you heard that the world is coming to an end, but he said pessimism in theory, which is pretty accurate of like leftist or Marxist theory in a way, you know, utopian, but essentially everything is fucked until we get there. And then, but optimism in practice. So he remains optimistic and like, you know, work reaches out for things that he can support and campaigns and that kind of thing.

So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's fine. I guess I don't find these discussions about are we doomed or is there hope? I mean, I just find those questions a bit stupid. And you have to act as though good things are possible. And so what's the point of having a pessimistic theory if you're going to be optimistic in practice, I suppose?

Isn't it? Like, what is the theory doing? Meet you more edgy, Matt. Meet you more edgy. But like, you know, as we were talking about, what that boils down to is support initiatives that you think are helping people and doing genuinely good thing in the world.

Political movements that you value. Even if you think the world's going to end in you know like five years and he talks about the need for like you know international cooperation to deal with like a disaster that a country can't handle i've got a clip that speaks to this i can highlight it for you my advice or what to do is, let's say, if I were to be in government in a relatively prosperous Western country, what would be my advice or if I'm in government, my practice? A modest one. First comes my moderately conservative side, you know. Yes, fight for freedom, but with a nonetheless leftist twist, which means this is the lesson of socialism that I still keep. Not this Stalinist bullshit, formal freedom versus actual freedom. No,

freedom is a form, sorry. Freedom is formal freedom or it doesn't exist. But what socialism did taught us is that freedom to be actual needs certain material conditions. For example, universal health care. I don't buy this right liberal argumentation, it enslaves you. No, life is much more free if you are aware that if I get seriously ill, cancer, blah, blah, some social state mechanism

will take care of that so so there's a this is something i encounter quite a lot with online leftists in this case he's not uh you know he's a conservative communist or whatever moderate communist so maybe that's on board but like so the recommendation is welfare states right like yeah yeah yeah which i'm totally on board to reply which we have in many parts of the world and we don't think of ourselves as marxists um yeah no yeah like like underneath the edgy posturing is very reasonable and a moderate thing that I fully would support. So yeah, there's an interesting dichotomy there. I mean, we're not judging the politics.

It's not our job. It's just pointing out that where he kind of lands is somewhere that virtually every moderate progressive is on board with. You can say not judging the politics, but I will just say like i'm pretty pretty fond of welfare states but i i don't think it's only something that applies and yeah like communist things so like i am judging the edgy pose there oh yeah but you're judging

but what you're judging is not is is the pose versus the reality right just you know yeah yeah but i'm still i'm still saying and in my judgment welfare states that have health care if not entirely covered at least you know partly supplemented by the state are good things well yeah that's my stance that's my opinion too it's just our opinions don't really matter for these purposes we're just pointing out that um he's he's voicing very moderate, very reasonable things. We agree with that. The vast majority of Australians would be on board,

not just us, my compatriots too. I was just pointing out some causal optimism there because he was talking about the problem with nation states, that they can't be self-sufficient and we need international solutions. And he's right, in my opinion. Global warming is the biggest one and most obvious. But, you know, I was looking at the number of refugees that are currently living in other countries from Syria and Ukraine,

and it's about 5 million from Syria and about 6.5 from Ukraine. Now, obviously, the world could do a much, much better job generally when it comes to refugees, but that's a lot of people. And, you know, like to some degree, there is international support for countries having national problems, essentially, or the people in those countries. Yes, a lot many people would say not enough but nonetheless yes not enough and he does also on that point

matt speak specifically about ukraine and sensibly sensibly about ukraine so uh here's a clip of that my god i don't 100 agree with Varoufakis. He criticizes him a few times in the book, huh? Yeah. But no, I have now some problems with it because he was, for my taste, too much into this slightly anti-Ukrainian. Right. No, no. I think I resist calls for peace there.

It's horrible for some leftists. That's where I lose my fame. Because, you know, let's be concrete. Isn't it that today to say Ukraine needs peace means it's strictly equivalent to saying Russia should be allowed to keep what it occupied? But I suppose the question is then what if Ukraine can't win? If you think that Ukraine can't win, which is a reasonable position, one can agree or disagree, but if they can't

win, then clearly it's going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement. But the first thing to do, I hope you'll agree, is to recognize, that's my answer to guys who ask this question, that but are we aware that Ukraine at least didn't lose?

No, it hasn't. Only because of our help to have this position now kind of a World War I stalemate. It's precisely because we were helping Ukraine. So at least retroactively, all those who are for peace should acknowledge that we are in this position to say at least Ukraine have a chance to survive only because we were helping Ukraine. You can hear him get quite passionate about this. Yeah, he should talk to Robert Wright. Yeah, and he's being interviewed by someone who is more conventionally left-wing than he is.

No, not left-wing, leftist, leftist. That's the clear, more conventionally leftist. I've got to get my labels correct. I am not down with them all. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I like him. I like his opinions because they basically conform with my own. Let's be honest. let's be honest even in that case though matt here the thing is that he's he's perfectly willing to you know go against the green right and be like no we supported ukraine that was what gave them

you know even the ability to sue for peace but so like let's not let's not be around the like he does not shy away from hammering this point. So there's a little bit more on that. You mentioned Russia-Ukraine. What's the correct position for a leftist on Russia-Ukraine then? Because I read an amazing piece in Time magazine recently. The average person on the front line for Ukraine now is 43 years old. There's clearly a military stalemate.

So what's the correct position? It's extremely difficult, I think. But you know where I am a pessimist. I think that Ukraine needs our support, at least to maintain this stalemate. I think it's too risky to say, OK, it's a stalemate. Let's stop supporting Ukraine. That's a permanent war. So it should be like Syria. OK, but now I will. OK, but there's no easy options.

I'm just saying that's what you're proposing. But what would be what is the alternative if you simply stop supporting Ukraine? I'm not suggesting that. Yeah, I know. So if you're saying rather than a negotiated settlement which i agree like it wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on fine and it goes on a bit right but just it is interesting because zizek is very clear on that that like yeah if you're saying stop supporting you know the permanent war or whatever you what

you actually mean is force ukraine to surrender to russia or at least surrender some of its territory to russia and uh yeah i like that because one thing that is true and i think it is because he's an european i might be you know putting too much on that but i i don't think so is that his stance is very much well the ukrainians decide when to stop fighting and what to do. And our choice is just support them or don't. That's it. We don't get to tell them when to stop fighting.

And yeah, I agree. I think it could well be that his European background informs his clarity there. Certainly all of the foreign affairs type interviews that i've listened to with um people from that area near russia whether it's finland or or one of the baltic republics or poland or wherever um they they have a very similar vibe they don't sort of they don't sound very much like robert wright they sound more like slow as you take yeah yeah and just like go a little bit further on this he is critical of the leftists who are like reactive anti-imperialists you know knee-jerk anti-imperialists so he he has a little bit of a complaint about them what i'm saying is that in this case, concretely, I don't think violence helps.

It can bring a catastrophe to all sides, to Jews also. My fear is this one, that because of what Israel now is doing in Gaza, this will give a new push, everybody knows this, I'm not saying anything original, to anti-Semitism all around the world. Let's be frank, till now anti-Semitism was more or less limited, not quite, but let's say to European and Middle East world. Now we live in what with horror I call unholy alliances. For example, example I repeat all the time, Uganda. You know this, they now established

a law with absolute majority, only one member of parliament abstained, to criminalizing homosexuality in a crazy way. If you are caught in a homosexual act, you can be put to death and so on. But you know how they justified it, that this is a struggle is aiming at, is to create a kind of a very perverted anti-Western coalition where, again, to be against feminism will be part of anti-colonial struggle. To advocate the prohibition of homosexuality will be against the will be to fight against imperialism and the same with anti-semitism this and this makes me so scared so he was talking about the you know israel gaza conflict and he he does quite strongly condemn the attacks of mass but he's also

talking about you know israel's reaction and being critical about it. Like I said, it was something that got him in trouble in a speech that he gave in Frankfurt, even before, you know, the conflict in Gaza had ignited in the way that it has now. But here he is saying that, you know, taking an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist polls can be very useful for regimes and we shouldn't be so naive to just be assuming anybody that presents us like being against the west is actually doing a good thing i guess that political take is consistent with his philosophy which is that ideology generally can serve as a bit of a like an like an empty space that you can fill yeah with any number of pernicious things and there is a nice not a nice and ugly symmetry there between say putin's russia appealing

to western reactionaries by saying that it's what it's really about is christian family values and you know you get similar arguments from people that say support i'm just picking a random example here the iranian regime's treatment of women who don't conform to the pretty strict laws there as being if you're criticizing that then you're a you know imperialist foisting your things on the people so it's just to say that yeah that ideological rhetoric is very amorphous no change what do i mean by you can sculpt it like clay pliable pliable yeah that'll do that'll do um okay so so yeah i think you know he's he generally makes he like you know these are just his political opinions you know opinions about this that and the other but none of them

sound ridiculous to our ears anyway no and there is a little bit of a mix. There's parts where he sounds like a centrist liberal person. There's parts where he sounds like a more revolutionary leftist communist type. And he does talk about the UK having no left-wing party. Here in the UK, I simplify it up to the utmost. But you probably noticed that you no longer have a leftwing party. Here in the UK, I simplify it up to the utmost. But you probably notice that you no longer have a leftist party. You have a moderate, moderate conservative

party. It's called Labour Party, no? Yeah, they're the sense right party now, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you have extreme freakish right-wingers, you know. And the problem is that these extremely freakish right-ers are maybe they believe in continued. Who knows what will happen with Farage and so on and so on.

You have in France similar tendency in Germany, alternative for Germany growing and so on and so on. So I think it's the tendency today, it's towards, I'm still afraid to use the term, but towards a kind of, I don't have a concept, but kind of a new form of fascism, fascist capitalism. Not fascism necessarily in that Nazi sense, but in the sense of strong nation state. You know, like the general leftists take that labor is just like a center-right party. Now, there's an extreme right Tory party.

He says that. And just to put a cap on his analysis about where things are heading and some of the commentary he made about nation states, here's him talking a little bit about China and, you know, Aaron Bastani is raising the point about nation states and the ideology sometimes being necessary as a counter hegemonic force like if

you want independence movements and that kind of thing so the idea that you're resisting a greater power well how did you do that often you mobilize through the idea of nation shared language mega problem that's what i would call in this cheap tv shows way a one million dollar winning question you know and i think there are options i don't agree with the predominant answer today which is and i after the soviet style communism was discredited even in china now to tease you a little bit more, I got now, no wonder I'm half prohibited in China now, because I read some books, did is to change China, to put it in brutal simplistic terms, from communism to fascism. Fascism means, in contrast to communism where you nationalize economy, you allow a certain degree of free market economy, but you have a strong nation state, one party, non-democratic state to control it and so on and so on.

And I think that a new forum, I don't like to call it the old fascism, because it's not as simple as that. But something which nonetheless adopts this idea of basic fascism, which is what? Conservative modernization. We need capitalist dynamics, which is the only one that works, but we need to control it. And to control it, you turn to your own national tradition. traditional tradition with the small caveat that like i kind of agree with the rest of history folks that you know technically being pedantic fascism refers to a very specific kind of things that pretty much were localized in the 90s it's a bit expanded on the leftist side of the political spectrum that's true but i'm but i'm quite happy to to work with an alternative expanded definition

and the one that he describes there which is you combine a kind of capitalist economy with strong state control and the one-party system is justified by you know an appeal to that blood and soil ethno-nationalism that's not a bad broader definition of something that is kind of a bit ugly well i think the interesting point to note again is this is certainly not tanky territory right this is not apologetics for china this is calling china like essentially that it's imported fascism into like a communist structure you know which this would not be a very nice comparison but i'm thinking about you know james lindsey be a very nice comparison, but I'm thinking about, you know, James Lindsay talking about Turducken or whatever,

where he was saying like, it's communism with a fascism inside it. And he said it much less elegantly and is a moron, right? But I'm just pointing out that there are other people that have made this comparison. Well, yeah, but like you said, it's not, it's not, it's pretty obvious, isn't it um at least i think so um yeah yeah but not in the tanky side of the not in the tanky well you know hashtag hashtag not all marxists chris hashtag down with all tankies

so yeah yeah um well lastly matt last clip i'll play him going back to philosophical mode. And this is Aaron Bersani pushing him a bit more about, aren't you being too critical about revolutions? And what are you actually asking for? And I like his response here. So when you hear the catchphrase, which is from 68, of course, demand the impossible. You say, no, do not demand the impossible. Demand the very possible. Again, as a philosopher, I like to complicate things. I would say like this. What do we mean by impossible?

My first reaction to this point is to focus on what counts as possible and what counts as impossible. It's not as clear as it may appear. Listen, today we are perceiving as possible this singularity, artificial intelligence, we will lose our individual mind, blah, blah. That's possible but till the epidemic to raise taxes for 2% oh it would ruin our economy it's impossible if there is one good lesson

from the epidemic is that there were a lot of measures like billions distributed to ordinary people almost in a communist way Trump had to act as a communist you remember every family got a check for so you know first let's be very specific what we consider as possible or as impossible in

a certain situation he did that much better than jordan peterson it depends what you mean by impossible but he actually did you know know, like a proper philosopher. Yeah, he did a proper nuanced kind of reversal. And yeah, okay. So to summarize, to reprise, I think he's against the kind of romantic, you know, achieve the impossible, that kind of utopianism, because it's not pragmatic. Like in real terms, you should be trying to accomplish things that are possible just logically speaking but he correctly says it's a very uh common rhetorical technique for people

that don't want change to say such and such is not possible such and such is not possible and they try to constrain the realm of the possible uh so he nuances it and uh yeah i don't think anyone would disagree with him there as well yeah so. Does it well. Yeah. So in broad pictures for me, Zizek is somebody that likes adopting edgy, contrarian, bombastic, unpredictable pose. And he has a bunch of different hats that he can put on. Cultural critic, Zizek. Moderate, conservative communist, Zizek. Hawkenheimer, Hawkenheimer-esque continental philosopher, Zizek moderate conservative communist Zizek Hockenheimer Hockenheimer-esque continental

philosopher yeah law and order communist or just playful provocateur and I think he is all of those things he also does make these leaps he has the problems which lots of philosophers have where they're very good at thought experiments and you know like we just heard giving good illustrative examples and making you think through things but also they don't really approach things in a scientific or an evidence-based way they don't they don't know no so they don't yeah disconfirming examples especially in this cultural you know interpretive stuff is not there but even he wouldn't claim otherwise, I don't think. So I appreciate him for what he is. I like just the incongruous nature of him, you know,

snuffling around the stage beside Jordan Peterson in a suit. And he's clearly a very smart guy. Like there's clear depth to him. And, you know, you can agree or disagree with his positions but i i think that's the point that like he's perfectly fine with that and he likes you know posing questions of he to me is kind of what philosophers are supposed to be in a way and yeah i don't take much issue even though you know it depends which version of his politics you you land on but like he would certainly not say he's just a moderate liberal person but like i i don't find him very objectionable and like lots of the things he advocates for so maybe that makes me a a moderate

conservative communist there you go we're marxist too so yeah, that would be better rather than making him out to be a boring milquetoast moderate. But let's all be sexy. Yeah, Zizek and sexy. Well, yeah, those two words don't go together. But, yeah, like we said at the beginning, we went on a bit of a journey with Zizek from finding him annoying and frustrating and things, you know, just mainly those.

Waffly. Those waffly leaks that the cultural criticism and analyzing movies in that way i'm not a huge fan of it i don't mind people doing it recreationally but i don't think you can build a philosophy out of those sorts of observations on the other hand when i did some reading about his philosophy and you know i it all it all seemed kind of fine and relatively interesting a lot of the, like we got to at the end here, he's just a guy with opinions. You know, he's doing social commentary.

He's doing political commentary. He's answering questions about what do you think is going to happen next and what do you think about this issue. And, you know, the answers he gives are quite good ones. So, you know, I wouldn't be concerned if your younger brother was a fan of Zizek. Was into Zizek. He's cool. He's all right.

Yeah, well, but I think he does come close to fitting the secular guru mold in a whole bunch of different ways. There are a few red flags. Sorry to interrupt, Chris, but I'm sure you'll think of more. But one of the ones was, of course, this making out that everyone hates him, that he's an iconoclast, that he's just, you know. And, like, I just haven't encountered much ZZ hate out there. Like, there's a lot of Destiny hate out there.

I mean, well, he's someone who can claim that he's roundly hated by many people. But ZZ, have you seen it? Are there ZZ haters? I mean, he does get controversy from time to time for statements he made uh like i seen a clip of him saying the n-word a bit like destiny yeah but i but i think it is true to say he's loved by a wide array of people and i mean jacob and just did a big in-depth article on this new book and was like you know you shouldn't not take zzx seriously right and it's a book which is calling for an atheist christianity or a secular christianity

or whatever so like yeah i i think he is more popular than he likes to let on but um yeah that's fine he likes being an iconoclast and that is a part of the secular guru pose you know presenting ideas which are not that revolutionary as being you know dramatic and hugely significant but you know these are relatively minor sins and i think he does have interesting ideas interesting to take something novel perspectives and so you know he's a he's an intellectual and he's a cultural critic and he's a philosopher and he he is all of those things yeah yeah that's right and i like you said he likes to throw bombs and i think he's he's trying to jolt people into he wants to jolt people out of their ideology whatever it is and and to get them to consider it critically and um yeah

even when like i don't really buy his ideas for instance as we talked about i don't really buy the sort of big picture version of the importance of transgressive acts or whatever like it didn't sort of connect for me but in just thinking about that idea just made me think about just weird things that go on like the eucharist and and stuff and yeah i can think of the one thing which like really puts him out of the worst of the secular guru category is like that he is not posing as someone who pokes fun at himself and doesn't take himself seriously he he does do that he he legitimately is like self-deprecating and and acknowledges how contradictory he can be and whatnot. And that unwillingness to treat himself as like, you know,

a very important intellectual, that is the opposite of the secular guru pose. Yeah, it's the opposite of that sort of narcissistic, precious, thin-skinned thing that we see amongst almost all the toxic gurus. He is so self-deprecatory and in a genuine way and and um does not take himself so seriously and that gets a big thumbs up from us and like i said chris like we try to be liberal towards people with a variety of different ideas espousing different things and if they are what they say they are and um and and zizek definitely is so as far as we can tell so that's good yeah it's just that he's a bit contradictory like in what he is but he would acknowledge that and that's fine yeah

well we'll we'll leave zz there and uh let him dance off into the distance um but before we finish today matt there's just one review i have to read and i've been saving it up and then i have to give shout outs to some long overdue patrons but i'll i'll make it all quick but this review it's just brilliant it's one out of five and the title is the worst type of bad faith actors by the pablo from australia matt you're negative worst type of bad faith actors yeah and we'll see that indeed he is from australia this will be hard for people to follow but just try and stick with it a waste of time for listeners bracket unless you derive enjoyment from hearing the aussie bloke get triggered and like witnessing someone trying

to suppress his contempt for people goes back it mission failed mate we can hear it loud and clear do you guys ever pinch yourselves and think how the did that person agree to give us any time wind the clock back 10 years before pods at all and you'd still be at university i'm working at cole's vermin shopping center lamenting how hard it is to make it in a real career as previous posters have requested please don't waste the time of actual legitimate intellectuals on your foodie show anyway boys good luck getting that resume dusted off and remember to ask mom if she has your old boss from kmart endeavor hills phone number for a reference ask my mom read that love for your old boss from kmart endeavor hills phone number for a

reference so to get a reference from your old boss from kmart endeavor hills yeah now i when i read this matt i was like is this some disgruntled ex-colleague of matt's like what is all this weird australian lingo about ex-bosses at kmart endeavor hills and colemont's vermin shopping center can you give me the decoder key is this your a colleague that you wronged in a previous life okay well i'm gonna state here definitively that i've never worked at kmart endeavor hills or the other thing he mentioned in fact none of those details are correct so the only thing what are they well kmart is like a big box store it's a it's like you'd be a self shack or something like yeah that's right that's right so so he's naming names he's naming places um so i think what's happened is he's done a google search and he's found a matthew brown

somewhere in australia who has worked at these places or gone to these things and uh he thinks he's doxed me and he's dropping in like kind of you know i know who you are science well that that that's interesting because there was one thing that I didn't entirely get either was he referred to us as getting legitimate intellectuals on our footy show, right? Which implies, yeah, footy. Football. Yeah, that's what I took it as. But I was like, what's that mean? Like we kick the ball back and forth.

But I didn't really get it. But there is a referee in the premier league called chris calvin so like it could be based on what you're saying he also he thinks he thinks you're chris cavanaugh the the referee like otherwise i don't understand that reference like what's our footy show? Like, it's, you know. So he thinks Chris Carpenter, the referee, is moonlighting as a Decoding the Guru's co-host, and that I've got a background at Kmart.

This is the laziest doxa that has ever existed. You know, the amazing thing is it's really not that hard to find out information about us if you want it, right? Because like there's even these episodes where we laid it all out for you, like our previous careers. But yeah, so like I've worked and I worked at the Marks and Spencers. I worked at a shop electric. I worked at the call center. I've worked in many fairly crappy places, but yeah, just you, Matt.

Ten years ago, you weren't stacking shelves in Vermont Hills. No. I had a very short and unsuccessful career as a pizza delivery driver and as a landscaper, both of which I was temperamentally and mentally and physically unsuited to. I got lost delivering the pizzas and they'd get cold and people would be upset. And landscaping is like really hard.

Yeah, I don't even really get it. The contempt for people who were interviewing. Probably what this is, freaking Sam Harris found. Mental. Mentalist. Harris found. He was very upset that we asked him questions. I'm going to take

exception to another point he made at the beginning which is saying that we haven't done a good job in attempting to hide our contempt. I haven't done a good job at hiding my contempt for people. Oh yeah, my contempt is much more than you hear. And I'm not attempting to hide

it. I hope my contempt for certain people is coming through loud and clear. I haven't made any attempt. So that's low quality criticism, mate. And that was directed at you. Yeah, because like at me, you know, I am restraining my contempt. That's true.

And I'm still self-evident. So yeah, that's the case case but what can we do matt you can't keep everyone i just find this kind of bizarre because it it struck me as you know a personal attack on you but it turns out it is just a generic attack or maybe you know i think it's also implying that you'll have to go back to working now, but yeah, whatever. I'm not going back. I've never been. Yeah. What would your boss say if he heard? But okay, Matt.

And then the very last thing, you know, shout outs. I'm working on my way through them. I'm getting back. But I asked people on the Patreon who I'd missed, you know, to give me their names, so I'll shout them out. So I'm going to shout out a whole bunch through them. I'm getting back. But I asked people on the Patreon who I'd missed to give me their names, so I'll shout them out. So I'm going to shout out a whole bunch of them. And I don't know which level they're at, because they

obviously didn't put that in where they were saying their names. But look, we care about them all equally. It doesn't matter. I'm going to give them all the Galaxy Brain ding at the end of it. So here we go. Thank you to Colin Fardy, Andreas Håkonens, Edison Yee, it so here we go thank you to colin fardy andreas hawknings hawknings edison yee james

nile fawnan sean carmody patrick briars anelda gam valessi connor carrie anna jay Mutated Oh dear Sam Mountjoy Hustletron9000 Hugh Denton Jacob3BP Sam McAloid Sarisaxydalom

Pitiful Noob Sigrun Underdal Borlaug IDW Dinner Club Shomagurider Minotaurus Rex Jacob Lincoln Warlog, IDW Dinner Club, Shamajirider, Minotaurus Rex, Jacob Lincoln, Dr. Wallabong, and Zed.

And I'll stop there for this time. Oh, and Julie Greshner, who I missed. So, yeah, sent nice photos. Thank you, Julie, for the support. So, there we go. And they all get the galaxy brain thing, Matt. They've made it.

Regardless of your level, you're all galaxy brains to us. We tried to warn people. Yeah. Like what was coming, how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and in everything. Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense. I have no tribe. I'm in exile.

Think again, sunshine. Yeah. Moink. be tribal just doesn't make any sense i have no tribe i'm in exile think again sunshine yeah moink i'm gonna add in moink i'll add in a special little moink here for people but just right here my favorite bit though is that we saw coming. It was going to be in everything and everywhere. All at once. Yeah, that 20-20 me talking to 20-20 me. Yeah, that was, I actually have to go back. New listeners, go back to that content. Michael O'Fallon. Champagne DTG.

Yes, that's right. Well, that was good. That was good shouting out chris once again you practiced equal opportunity mispronunciation all people and cultures suffered equally um which is a credit to you really i also know that that edgy username is a dusty fan i'll say that with confidence yeah that's you guys this is why people this is why people don't like you it's that kind of language you gotta take your edginess down come on nine come on my mother listens to this podcast you just have to tone it down i might even bleep it i might

bleep your username so take that okay now i am well anyway we'll be back next we're back with dr k that'll be fun that'll go down really well we're gonna have a small love on reddit very good yeah that's it well uh yes look forward to that and see you all soon enough toodle pip bye god bless you all yep Yep. Thank you.