Slavoj Žižek on Refugees, Conservatism, and Cultural Incompatibility | Big Think

Slavoj Žižek on Refugees, Conservatism, and Cultural Incompatibility

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How did we get to this refugee crisis? Newton’s Third Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s something we may not consciously clock as we hear news and see devastating photographs of migrants crossing dangerous waters in crowded boats, fleeing for their lives. Why is this happening? If you rewind the history of these countries, tracing political event to event, you’ll find the firestarter – and more often than not, it's a long arm that has reached past its own border to interfere in another country.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK:

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and Event: A Philosophical Journey Through a Concept.

\r\nŽižek received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He has been called the "Elvis of philosophy" and an "academic rock star." His work calls for a return to the Cartesian subject and the German Ideology, in particular the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Slavoj Žižek's work draws on the works of Jacques Lacan, moving his theory towards modern political and philosophical issues, finding the potential for liberatory politics within his work. But in all his turns to these thinkers and strands of thought, he hopes to call forth new potentials in thinking and self-reflexivity. He also calls for a return to the spirit of the revolutionary potential of Lenin and Karl Marx.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Slavoj Žižek:  We who try to be decent people are bombarded by some kind of moral political pressure from two sides: First there is the worst one, of course, this anti-immigrant populous side like why should we even allow refugees in; it's their fault; third world travel and so on, there are enough poor people here; they come from another civilization; it means conflict and so on and so on. So there is all the time this pressure of we are defending our way of life; refugees are disturbing it. And it's interesting how in some radical right wing circles we really have already new conspiracy theories, which always fascinate me in their madness.

\r\nA couple of weeks ago the main Slovenia, I'm a coming from Slovenia, right wing weekly journal something like, Slovene Time Magazine, published a comment by a guy, which was a ferocious attack on George Soros, the humanitarian billionaire, claiming that he's the most disgusting despicable and dangerous person today in the world because he's a Jew who is organizing Muslim invasion into Europe. The guy uses totally open brutal terms like Negroid Islamist hoards are invading Europe. Claiming that the Jewish plan is to destroy Christian Europe and they're using Muslims to do it. Why do I like, I mean don't misunderstand me I'm horrified at it, But why do I "like" this fantasy? Because it goes to the end and it brings together two different levels of conspiracy theory. One is Muslim invasion of Europe and the other is anti-Semitism.

\r\nUsually we think that there is some kind of a conflict in the Middle East between Palestinians or Muslims and Jews. This theory claims this is an appeared conflict to dilute us. In reality even the Muslim terrorists, all of them, Isis, it's a Zionist creation to ruin Europe. In the good old fashion or Stalinist way you know how fascists spoke about plutocratic Bolshevik plot, you bring the opposites together; they're doing this. So, not to get lost this is one blackmail. But then now things get much more problematic for some liberal leftist. Then there is the other blackmail, the humanitarian blackmail like poor suffering immigrants coming to Europe desperate; is Europe still Europe? Is it using its heart? How can we see all those people suffering and so on and so on? I basically, of course, agreed with this second position. I none the less think there is something terribly wrong in this automatic retranslation of, I don't want to call it a crisis but whatever you call it what's happening with refugees into a pure humanitarian problem, which is ou...

For the full transcript, check out