(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Slavoj Žižek: Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors. Allen Lane, 2016
The international philosopher-viewer Slavoj Zizek usually has a little to say about everything, something we have seen in over 50 published books, and although he repeats himself to the absurd – both jokes and Hegel anecdotes are recklessly recycled – he always has some valuable considerations in their texts.
In his latest book on the refugee crisis, he revolves around some cognitive distortions on both the left and right sides, which he believes are the root of the problem. If we spot these, it might be possible to do something sensible, he says.
Private and public. The public conversation is in radical embarrassment: What previously could only be expressed as politically incorrect humor in the private has now become official policy, says Zizek. The point is not that you have been racist in the private, and now just say "as is", but that the wrong funny things that could have expired in the private as innocent outlets, now has become comme il faut from official team.
The danger of this should be quite obvious, since discriminatory attitudes help to normalize a way of thinking that belongs to the joke's subversive world – and not how to really treat and think about other people. Just think of how Sylvi Listhaug rejects other debaters and research that contradicts her (the Government's) policy with a stiff smile, while describing non-Western immigrants as direct or indirect threats. Or, even worse, that the official, stated policy should be designed to work scare immigrants from coming to Norway, and, implicitly, that behaving empathically and with charity will be naive and stupid. Seeing Listhaug comment on this with a cross in the throat is grotesque.
What happens to the public conversation when the refugee is a person who basically should spooked so he or she should not come to Norway? This is worth thinking about – and at least no joke.
"Fundamentalism is rooted in a desire for the West in the very hatred of the West." Slavoj Zizek
Islam as a medium. Zizek also points out how fundamentalist Islam in ISIS bottling is not really a religious one practice, but rather a use of religion as a medium to promote one's own interests. Contrary to many people's beliefs, the majority of ISIS soldiers are not very well educated in Islam. Some of them, it turns out, can not even read. The movement has some interest in radicalizing moderate Muslims living in the West and elsewhere, but the main reason for the excessive violence is related to envy, Zizek believes – where the feeling of being pushed out of the Western model is.
Instead of creating a real alternative to Western democracy and free trade, one attacks the enemy to humiliate him. The helplessness after the attacks on women in German cities on New Year's Eve 2015, for example, is therefore first and foremost a carnival reversal of how everyday life is experienced in the enemy's camp, the philosopher claims. "Fundamentalism is rooted in a desire for the West in the very hatred of the West," he writes. Instead of locating how one's own happiness can be realized, one only destroys what one perceives as an obstacle to one's own life development – so that it becomes more important to attack the enemy than to take care of oneself.
The liberal fallacy. But there are contradictions within Europe as well, where both liberal and seemingly friendly forces contribute to the misery as much as right-wing radical anti-immigrants of various kinds, according to Zizek.
The Pegida and the Front National are often regarded as sharply separated from liberal multiculturalists, but these forces contribute together to the problem – only with opposite signs. While on the one hand we have groups that see immigrants as intruders and a threat to "European values" such as human rights and equality, we find on the other hand a respect for the immigrant who goes too far in the opposite direction, Zizek claims. The tolerance for "other ways of living" is as repressive as the right-wing radical attitude, because it naively covers up real problems among Muslim immigrants. The reality is that it actually is er many challenges with some refugees' attitudes and ways of life, including a backward-looking family policy with forced marriage, zero tolerance for homosexuals and a home where the woman is subordinated to a dominant pater familias. This can, and should, never be tolerated in the name of integration, Zizek believes. The empathic tolerance that will not see this is fundamentally hypocritical.
If we just turn our backs, and can not address, for example, the lack of equality as a problem, we will also help to radicalize the situation and increase support in the right-wing radical ranks, he believes.
Liberal naivety. The empathetic and understanding liberal who wants to open the boundaries makes himself morally superior Beautiful Soul who "understands" the stranger, without wanting to face reality.
Zizek points out many cognitive fallacies in the empathic and humane attitude towards refugees. Several are interesting, but most worth noting is the perspective that examines the broader context of guilt that plagues Europe in the face of the refugee crisis. It is quite rightly colonialist expansion that has led to many of the problems we face today, but there is no solution to be found in the masochistic self-torture European liberals wear when they see immigration as a punishment for past wrongdoing.
This point, which Zizek has received from Pascal Bruckners The tyranny of penance (in Norwegian at Arneberg Forlag, 2008), is worth pondering, because it is used to inflict guilt on the European where he or she should rather feel solidarity and willingness to fight for universal rights and hospitality. In addition to the reason for this way of thinking, there is a condescending attitude towards the refugee that actually prolongs colonialism, which is often expressed in the fact that this must helped to a more democratic mindset.
A new beginning. Zizek gets really hot sometimes and talks about every crisis as a "blessing in disguise", because we get an opportunity to think through everything from scratch. The probability that we actually do this, on the other hand, is not as great, at least not in as comprehensive a sense as the Slovenian philosopher would like. It probably comes as no surprise to those who know him from before that it is communism which exists at the end of this thinking, but it is nevertheless a new twist he offers here, especially in his insistence on how important it is to protect what has traditionally been public property – such as language, nature and copyright – from the privatization troll.
When it comes to more practical solutions to the refugee crisis itself, Zizek suggests that we gather around a global liberation project across different "life forms". The starting point should be equality and acceptance for minorities and gays, he says, and insists that these "European" values are not only worth fighting for, but must be defended at all costs. Doing something halfway here does not hold. I agree with him on that. Of course, he is also right that the EU should coordinate its operations and set up asylum reception centers in the surrounding areas, and actively combat human trafficking. But these are not very controversial views.
The main reason for the excessive violence is related to envy, Zizek believes
Cosmopolitan. In other words, the idea here is good, since such a liberation project is undoubtedly what we need. Nevertheless, this is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights already and is within the UN mandate, although this has proved to be a backward organization that is prevented from acting effectively enough due to (among other things) the veto power of permanent members.
This cosmopolitan way of thinking is neither particularly original nor new, and can be found already in thinkers like Immanuel Kant in The eternal peace (1785), where Kant believes, among other things, that a global association of states has a duty to show hospitality to others in need, regardless of whether they are different from oneself. Later thinkers such as Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt and Danish Peter Kemp have moved in the same direction.
As such, Zizek does not come up with so many new, practical pieces of advice solutions. But when it comes to material for self-examination and reflection – not least how both the right and the left are involved in creating the problems we are in – the book is an interesting read.
