The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is among the few living thinkers who has a profound knowledge of Hegel and Marx, which mixed with a passion for psychoanalysis and cinema allows him to show his dialectical materialism of history, intercepting the spirit of the times with phenomena pop as evident as in the past it could have been Napoleon on horseback. He was recently struck by The Three Body Problem, a Chinese best-seller from which the American Netflix based a TV series that is raising great debates. He doesn’t mention it in the new book Ukraine, Palestine and other troubles (Ponte alle Grazie), but it could very well be there, because it shows how the manipulation of reality has roots in recent contemporary history and a radiant dystopian future, where science fiction is history brought forward by other means.
The book begins with Putin who, a few weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, quoted against Kiev the verse of a punk group that ridiculed the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty: “Whether you like it or not, it’s your duty, my darling”, alluding, in fact, to a necrophilic rape. In the last chapter there is the conflict in Palestine, where Zizek claims – as he did in his speech at the Frankfurt Fair – the right to be able to condemn Hamas’ attacks and be able to contextualize them, which does not mean justifying. It does so with this reasoning: Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is «a crime impossible to justify in terms of self-defense, it must be judged as an act in itself, exactly in the way in which it is necessary to judge the Nazi Holocaust and the attack of Hamas of 7 October”.
Dialectical provocations with which Zizek wants to fight, or unmask, the perversions of the contemporary world. What is perverse for him? First of all, cinema, the perverse art par excellence, because «it doesn’t offer you what you want, it tells you how to desire». In the same way, he reminds us in connection from Ljubljana via Zoom, ideology doesn’t tell you what to think, but how to think. To the long list of ideological perversions of the current Russian regime, Zizek adds the reaction to the recent ISIS terrorist attack in Moscow: first Putin tried to blame the very Christian Ukraine, then he offered the Russians images of tortured and mutilated terrorists, one a spectacle of violence that responds to terror with horror and passes off revenge as re-education. Just like in the main scene of the novel and the TV series The Three Body Problem, when a physics professor – guilty of spreading scientific theories considered imperialist – is beaten to death by the students of Mao’s cultural revolution.
What struck you about The Three Body Problem?
«It tells our global scenario well. The protagonist of Liu Cixin’s novel is a scientist who is involved in a virtual reality game, “Three Bodies”, where players find themselves on an alien planet Trisolaris, whose three suns, three celestial bodies, rise and set at unpredictable intervals : sometimes too far away and freezing, sometimes too close and incendiary, and sometimes not visible for long periods. The players face the problem of the three suns, they try to shelter themselves by for example dehydrating themselves to withstand the worst seasons and being rehydrated when conditions improve, but life is a constant struggle against unpredictable elements and even if the players try to imagine the strange cycles of heat and cold are condemned to destruction.”
An extreme climate situation, which not even climate apocalyptics fear.
«We see the growth of devastating hurricanes, droughts and floods, which seem to confirm recent research that speaks of a climate in a situation of mathematical chaos, without balance or a repeatable model, like the seasons, which would be a mental catastrophe even before a physical one. We still frame the future with a regular and repeatable climate model, although worsening due to overheating, but linear. I don’t make predictions, I’m interested in the present, if we move from climate instability to political and social instability, yes, we live in a tri-solar system, we have a “multi-crisis problem”: ecological crisis, economic imbalances, social disintegration, wars, migrations chaos and the threat of AI, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a development we don’t control. Then we have immigration, where my position is problematic, because you can’t just open the borders, which then bring the right-wingers to power… These are our problems of an unstable tri-solar system.”
We look doomed.
«I am a pessimist because the pessimist has moments of happiness, when he is proven wrong, the optimist is always unhappy. You have to think the worst to do the best. The question is whether these crises interact and how: chaotically or intertwined? In a positive or negative way? If there is a mega ecological crisis in Europe, people will ask themselves whether we can afford war. Or the fear of immigration and new wars can trigger the opposite reaction, because in the face of those who threaten our lives and freedom, ecology can wait…”.
What are the factors in this case?
«These are all or almost all crises triggered by capitalism. I am a moderately conservative communist, I am aware of social injustice, ecological alarm, Putin’s aggressiveness, but in the developed West we know the present and imminent crises and we do not act accordingly nor think from a perspective of preparation for the contrast of emergencies. On the one hand we should create a European army to defend ourselves, on the other we must change our way of life, our society, which is experiencing coexistence crises, internal antagonisms within each civilization, just like in the tri-solar system. The solution is, a new organization of our societies, the revolution cannot only be technological, Europe must defend itself and defend its universal values.”
The dream of a more just society has long been the dream of the left.
«Yes, but on the left today they are either in love with the old democratic welfare state or they think in radical terms that capitalism is over and so… should it be nationalized? Thus a right that finds enemies and scapegoats will always win. Immigrants, lazy people? You solve them with police and discipline. A racist, nationalist vision, of course, masked by the fact that right-wing governments pretend to be moderate compared to the more extreme fringes, but these are let’s say natural perversions of the right, the left has them culturally. Political correctness places the flag of freedom in the hands of the right and shows that the left has no imagination. They are obsessed with cancel culture, political correctness is an escape into moralism.”
Another theme of the politically correct left is post-colonialism.
«Let’s clarify. It is right to recognize one’s responsibilities in certain historical processes, but not to apologize with a sense of guilt that translates into self-censorship in the present. And then what do the Brics, from Brazil to India, say about the Russian invasion? Isn’t Putin’s imperialism? And Russia in the past was certainly no less colonial than other powers… The true perversion of the left is the dogma according to which anyone who is in conflict with NATO, even if it is a dictatorship, has his good reasons.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been relativised, by some left and right wings, with the eastward advance of NATO, i.e. the American empire.
«But it is ridiculous to say that Russia invaded Ukraine in response to the NATO threat. Because it is the countries that border Russia that want to join NATO because they fear an invasion. In the Russian media the Russian “defense” is presented as the defense of Christianity against the liberal, neo-Nazi, anti-Christian West, with gay soldiers… the kingdom of Satan. There is total irrationality, like when at the end of 2023 Putin blamed Poland for the outbreak of the Second World War. History says that Germany and the Soviet Union attacked Poland, for Putin it was Poland that provoked the attack!
Speaking of NATO and morality in Italy we think of Enrico Berlinguer. Leading the largest communist party in the West, he recognized that Italy was safer under NATO defense.
«He was an intelligent politician, who knew how to give the right weight to things. I think he would be clear about how it feels in Eastern Europe today, which escapes many. Some Lithuanian, left-wing friends from Vilnius told me that if you walk down the street life seems normal, but if you dig you discover that there is incredible anxiety, the real estate market is at a standstill, what’s the point of building houses if you then buy them yourself? do they destroy? And the birth rate has collapsed. People say: what if Russia attacks us? Who wants to have children? The same thing with his friends from Kosovo… But by the way, what’s the name of that director who picked him up? That of Life is Beautiful…”
Roberto Benigni.
« Benign, yes. I remember seeing him pick up Berlinguer, right? He must have been embarrassing. I mean, it may be a cliché about Sardinians, but Berlinguer wasn’t a guy who kissed around, who loved physical contact. That moment must have been horrible for him.”
Speaking of Holocaust films, what do you think of the Focus Zone?
«The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can identify with this film, because they live in a camp, behind a wall on the other side of which there are those who live well. Jonathan Glazer, the director, is a heroic figure. When the war began, the Hamas attack, he is not religious, but very attached to Jewish spirituality, he said to himself “ok, we have to defend ourselves”. But then, observing what was happening in Gaza, he began to oppose Netanyahu’s government, which is crazy, and is insulting Jewish tradition.”
Peace seems further away than ever.
«But it is a necessity, everyone knows it, even the Americans, the Israelis, but not everyone is able to be rational. Do you know who my heroes are now in Israel? Those who perhaps come from the Shin Bet and the Mossad who say that the Palestinians must be given some hope of a safe territory, of a state, of a future that is not one of death or despair. You can put up a wall to feel safe, but above all you have to give a home, desire to raise children, you have to give something to lose. Otherwise you will never be safe. Isn’t he crazy? The most sensible reasoning comes from those who have worked in security systems. He wants to say that the situation is catastrophic.”
