DN!: SLAVOJ ZIZEK interview

Very interesting points he brings up but in regards to what he says on the ecological issue I think he’s right when he says “I don’t know”.  But on the following excerpt I think he’s right 100%.

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http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/12/world_renowned_philosopher_slavoj_zizek_on

AMY GOODMAN: —you look at the protest, you look at the invasion, you look at the occupation, you look at war, and you say it’s all of a piece, one reinforces the other. Can you talk about that?

SLAVOJ ZIZEK: No, it’s not so much that I was against the protests. I myself participated in protests. I just do not share the enthusiasm of some of even big European intellectuals, like Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, who saw in that widespread movement of protest almost a birth of the new civil society movement in Europe. What bothered me is the way the protest was in a way parasitic upon—upon—OK, the other guys, those in power who wanted the war, how they legitimized each other.

For me, that protest was part of what I see as the main failure. But it’s not a subjective failure. It’s in the situation of modern left, which all too often for me adopts this rather comfortable moralizing position of we condemn, we criticize, but like we can’t do anything more, so this safe moralizing position, which is why, as I like to emphasize, I was in Great Britain, in United Kingdom in that point. And what did strike me is how, after the big protests, both sides appeared satisfied in a strange way. The organizers of demonstrators made their point: you see the majority is behind us, people oppose war, we made our point. But silently, they knew they didn’t stop the war, nothing. Blair government, the other side, was also satisfied. You see what an open society is: even when a country goes to war, we can—and again, the best answer, I think, was provided unintentionally by George Bush when he visited at that time UK. I remember, when asked by journalists, “How do you comment on big protests against you?” he said, “I totally support them, because, you see, that’s why we are going to Iraq, so that things like this, massive protest against the government, so that things like this could happen only—will happen also in Iraq.” So, of course, this was either a bad joke or hypocrisy or whatever you want. But there is a truth in it. Everyone, in a way, all the sides, felt satisfied. And this is what often worries me, this—how should I put it?—secret, symbiotic relationship. Those in power like a certain type of moralistic protest, which does nothing.

And again, I think that even—of course, everybody likes them Zapatistas in Mexico—that even Zapatistas fell a little bit into that trap. At the beginning, they were a little bit of a serious threat. Then when their—this famous anonymous leader, Subcomandante Marcos, then he made the choice of playing this, how should I call it, moral authority, you know, and at that point making comments on what is wrong in Mexican society. From that point on, everybody loves him now, you know? Everybody—oh, yes, he’s our moral consciousness, and so on and so on.

But again, I’m not simply reproaching the left for it, because, how to put it, of course now then there is the cruel question: but what can the left do? What can you effectively do? So I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing this. I’m just saying—what I’m saying is basically one simple thing. I repeat it in all my talks, and so on. It’s fashionable to make fun of Fukuyama, End of History, but even the majority of today’s left is effectively, if I may make an adverb, Fukuyamaists. Basically, isn’t it that most of us leftists silently believe capitalism is here to stay, parliamentary democracy is what we [inaudible], so the problem is simply how to make it work better? Our ultimate horizon is, again, in the same way as we were talking about socialism with a human face, global capitalist democracy with a human face. And for me, the key question is, is this enough?