Slavoj Žižek: “Russia Is an Obsolete, Laughable Knock-off of Western Statehood”

Slavoj Žižek has become a rock star philosopher nowadays. Born into a family of Slovenian Communists, Žižek quickly understood that philosophy was his thing. Early in his career, he explored French structuralism and classic German philosophy. He also defended his dissertation on psychoanalysis in the 1980s.

In his current columns and talks, Slavoj Žižek criticizes not only capitalism but also contemporary left-wingers. The philosopher likes to reference popular culture in his discussions with opponents and provoke people with harsh language and jokes. In end-June, Žižek slammed European leaders for their pacifistic treatment of Russia, declaring his full support for Ukraine.

In his interview for Bird in Flight, the philosopher spoke about why Putin’s ideology is nothing but vulgarity, what fake news and religion have in common, and how Russia wants to leverage climate change in its war to remake the world order.

Volodymyr Vorotniov, a Kyiv-based artist and Žižek’s fan, had talked to the philosopher on Bird in Flight’s behalf and provided illustrations dedicated to his favourite thinker for our story.

Bird in Flight’s editorial office expresses sincere gratitude to the Kyiv School of Economics for its assistance in organizing the interview.

Boris Groys once said that neither Ukraine nor Russia had any experience of sovereignty before the collapse of the Soviet Union and now appropriate the past narratives because of that, remaining post-Soviet entities. Is there a continuity of some kind to talk about, considering such disruptions and shocks of the 20th century as the world wars, Holodomor, Holocaust, Stalinism, and others?

I don’t know the entire context, but there is some truth to that statement. That said, it doesn’t mean that these countries have no traditions at all.

I see traditions as man-made constructs. With every new historical experience, the past that we appeal to changes. It is dangerous to devalue specific nations, denying them a tradition of full-fledged national statehood. Still, it’s precisely what Russia does to Ukraine now.

I don’t know how Ukrainians reacted to Groys’s statement. Still, I believe it curiously overturns Russia’s usual discourse regarding its claim to a tradition of statehood. The Ukrainians may ask: why would we recognize Russia as having any statehood tradition? They may argue that Kyiv as a Slavic entity is older than the Moscow state. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but “Rus” is not even a Slavic term — it was brought there by Vikings.

No less elegant criticism of Russia was to identify it as a poor, laughable knock-off of the Western national state, especially on the back of this monster Dugin’s ramblings about some “Russian” truth as opposed to the “European” one.

In some sense, it attests to how fake the Russian national project is, no matter how much they insist on their authenticity in returning to a Eurasian “greatness” of some description.

Dugin consciously resorts to the vulgarized language of Post-Modernism (like, there is no absolute truth, every nation has its own perspective, and such). My attack line would be something like: you present your views as returning to some “Eurasian” roots, branding Ukrainians as traitors for chosing the West. However, you have nothing to do with the East — you are an obsolete, laughable knock-off of Western statehood.

What about the historical experience, then?

We sure have to take into account the historical experience. However, we need to remember one thing: the politics appealing to the past are rooted in self-constructed myths and take into consideration only a part of the complicated history, remaining silent about the rest of it.

The politics appealing to the past are rooted in self-constructed myths and highlight only a part of the complicated history, remaining silent about the rest.

We all remember Putin saying that Lenin invented Ukraine. That’s untrue. From 1917 to 1921, the Ukrainians made multiple attempts to take their independence. The Bolsheviks had to reckon with it for this reason alone.

When I hear someone say, “Hey, Russian invasion is bad and all that, but what about the Azov Regiment? There are entire Nazi battalions on the loose in Ukraine”, I want to give them the most obvious answer: what about the Wagner PMC and generally everything neo-fascist that has entrenched itself infinitely deep in Russia itself?

It seems as if the Russians are using the lack of knowledge about Ukraine in the West, like Stalin’s purges and Holodomor. Is that true?

Many people don’t know what horrors Stalinism brought to Ukraine, or about Holodomor, collectivization, and purges. Even purges happened on a much larger scale in Ukraine. I myself, for example, was shocked to read one thing. Ukraine’s Central Committee had 34 party members in 1934, but do you know how many of them were alive in just two years? Three! Imagine that!

Besides Russia’s blatant speculation, what other motives may it have for this absurd invasion?

It’s abundantly clear that “protecting Russian minorities” and all that jazz has nothing to do with it.

The thing is that besides Ukraine, there is a geopolitical dimension to this war, with Russia striving to restore its imperial influence. Brexit, Catalonia — wherever cracks appear, Russia keeps them open. No matter the reason for the divide, Russia tries to exploit it to the detriment of the EU.

Targeting Ukraine, Russia hopes that Europe will eventually become tired of the war and its morale will shatter. What bothers me is for how long you, the Ukrainians, would be able to keep your fighting spirit? And I myself, as a European citizen, wouldn’t reckon upon the USA’s help.

Why?

Biden is not that popular with Americans, and some right-wing Republican coming to power next wouldn’t bode well for us.

Do you know what the America far rights’ favourite conspiracy theory is? They believe that the migration of Arabs to Europe was masterminded by Soros. For them, it’s one huge Zionist-Islamist plan to destroy the EU. So, imagine someone like Trump trying to save it. Their actions may result in the redistribution of power on the continent.

There is one more thing, which rarely gets mentioned for some reason. To me, what happens now looks like Russia’s multi-pronged geopolitical plan to exploit the effects of climate change.

War in Ukraine is Russia’s multi-pronged plan to exploit the effects of climate change.

Russia knows climate change will render agriculture impossible in the South but will make Siberia cultivatable. Sea routes will change because of global warming. As a result, the Arctic Ocean could be used to get food out of Siberia instead of taking a detour around the world. Therefore, having occupied Ukraine, Russia would be able to potentially blackmail the world with its food.

Propaganda is built on fake news. Sometimes it’s hard to believe such cheap tricks can have any effect nowadays. But why the hell do they make such an effective tool?

The most effective lies are those that are partly true. Nazi propaganda wasn’t about antisemitism alone, but the theme helped Hitler dictate his views.

In the context of Ukraine, we need to cast aside this naivety and stop justifying the existence of the few nationalists of collaborationists in the country. It doesn’t matter how numerous they are. It’s more important to understand why Russia would maintain the image of Ukraine as a country rife with Nazism. The answer is simple. Russia has nothing to do with Communism anymore, so it can’t appeal to the October Revolution as its foundational myth. So, what is left for it to do? To appeal to World War II and, indeed, Dostoyevsky, whom I wholeheartedly despise, by the way (laughs — Author’s Note). Dostoyevsky is the root of Russian culture’s all horrors.

Dostoyevsky is the root of Russian culture’s all horrors.

The idea that Russia always sacrifices itself to save the West can be traced back to him. “We saved the West from Napoleon”, they say. And I say it would be better if Napoleon won. That way, we would have had something akin to the EU as early as the 19th century.

Back to fake news, why does it work?

It’s not fake news that is the problem.

During the Cold War, the Easter Bloc’s entire propaganda and partly the Western one was nothing more than fake news, albeit more consistent. Everyone in the USSR and Eastern Europe knew it was fake through and through, and that knowledge imparted some stability.

Nowadays, many slam fake news not for being devoid of truth but for lacking a set point of reference. Any stable society needs the Great Other, without which it’s impossible for any part of the society to have a sound system of values.

Fifty years ago, I had a discussion with one priest, during which I asked him: “Do you really believe that the Son of God walked the Palestine land two thousand years ago?” He replied that it didn’t matter. What was the meaning of this, you’d ask. The answer is simple: it doesn’t matter if it is true. What’s important is the stability that a consistent ideology provides.

In this sense, I’m terrified to see the catastrophe unfolding in the United States. A number of official statements were made during the recent major Republican rally. One of them was that Biden wasn’t a legitimate president, meaning the old game where Republicans and Democrats just accepted election results regardless of politics was over.

Some of the Left demonize you, calling you a “leftist radical”. I think I even saw a poster reading “Žižek is a fascist” at the anti-Trump protests in New York. Looks like the left-wingers lack unified goals and vision. Why?

I’d like to start with the reasons some left-wingers have for demonizing me. Many people get a wrong impression from my views on identity politics and political correctness, both of which I believe to be the attempts at replacing legal and economic struggle with the cultural one. I’m all for feminism, but the #metoo brand of feminism is fake because this movement overlooks real problems.

I’m all for feminism, but the #metoo brand of feminism is fake because this movement overlooks real problems.

Now. I made a provoking statement once, inviting everyone to vote for Donald Trump (at the same time, I wrote that he was a despicable creature). My intention was simple. Trump is a reaction to the failure of mainstream liberal democracy, and we need to admit it to get rid of him.

Another reason for all the hate coming my way is my attitude toward refugees, who rushed to Europe a few years ago. At the time, most left-wingers believed that borders should be opened, and I opposed all that fake humanism. Open borders wouldn’t have solved the problem. On the contrary, it would have brought the Right populists to power and caused a populist riot.

My support of Ukraine took its toll, too. I have recently discovered that I was accused of becoming a NATO supporter and can’t be considered a Left anymore. As a result, Die Welt is the only newspaper ready to publish my columns now and then. I would also like to mention Julian Assange and ask you not to hold your breath about the Western liberal democracy. It has its own concealed censorship and such.

Now about the left-wingers. I can see hardly any lefties with an even slightly actionable programme. What we see now is the continuing self-destruction of the left-wing. However, I’m on their side because we risk losing ourselves without reinventing the Left.

People in Ukraine often react negatively to leftist ideology because of all the Soviet heritage. How do you define a left position in the context of Ukraine, and why would we need this kind of perspective?

Take Putin and his pack, who are in no way left-wing, but rather authoritarian conservative capitalists with fascist tendencies. It’s sad when someone pretending to be left is trying to “understand” Russia because what Putin does is a prime example of Russian fascism. His ideology is built on the fascist views of Ivan Ilyin and all those Dugins. There is nothing to be read between the lines here.

But why those considering themselves left-wing would strive to understand Russia? Some would say it’s because of the Soviet Union. Like, it wasn’t all that bad in the Soviet times — there was education, healthcare, and such. But the USSR was all a game. They [the left-wingers] are not radical enough in their opposition against “Communism” of this kind. Only we, who share the Communist dream, can feel all the horror of Stalinism.

Now, the left-wingers don’t understand all the horrible perversion of Stalinism, this almost ontological Evil, and the conservatives naively reduce it to simple authoritarianism. The genuine Communists should avoid playing the game of “Stalin is bad, and Lenin is good; Lenin is bad, and Marx is good”. The emergence of Stalinism in the USSR means that country was flawed from the very start. The conclusion is thus as follows: the left-wing should become more anti-communist than the Right. (Laughs. — Author’s Note).

The leftists should become more anti-communist than the right-wingers.

The reinvented left-wingers don’t need to limit themselves to the issues of multiculturalism, anti-sexism, and anti-racism. We need to raise awareness — especially nowadays — about exploitation and the economic and political struggle.

Look what happens in the world now: the pandemic (and it’s not the last one, mind you), the war, the climate change. It’s evident that even if we approach resolving these issues correctly, we need to tighten market control, albeit not through the government’s iron grip. We need some other mobilizing actions. We need to set specific restrictions, and, most importantly, invent new forms of international cooperation. Climate change will drive millions of people from their homes. International cooperation is the only way to avoid a total war in such a situation. And it’s everything I mean, talking about “Communism” now.

In your past interviews, you mentioned the new militant heroism that Europe lacks and said it’s our only chance nowadays.

I liked what Jürgen Habermas had to say in this regard recently. He didn’t just tell us to “win”. He said, “we can’t afford to let Ukraine lose”.

The time when Europe believed in resolving all the issues through negotiations is over, and we are back to the fighting attitude. Sadly, we need heroes again — in the most straightforward, military sense of the word. Those willing to risk their lives. The problem with all those left-wing pacifists, however, is that, in fact, they don’t want to lose their comfortable existence.

Cover photo: a screenshot from the documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, 2012. Source: Zeitgeist Films / Courtesy Everett Collection.