Join Matt and Chris as they plunge into the heady mental universe of Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher known for his eclectic and provocative ideas. The duo parses Žižek's 'unconventional' takes on ideology, consumerism, and revolutionary theory, peppered with his playful movie criticism of films like Jaws and a Clockwork Orange and even a few that he hasn't even watched.We delve into snuffle-laced discussions of transgressive acts, revolutionary politics, moderate conservative communism, consumerist psychology, and musings on whether Jaws is really about a shark. Throughout all Žižek's dramatic flair is shining through, but is he actually as provocative and hated as he likes to suggest? Matt and Chris have some thoughts...Expect to reconsider everything you thought you knew, listen to some edgy book blurbs, and finally collapse in a puddle with the deconstruction of your ideology.LinksNovara Media: Our World Is Coming To An End | Aaron Bastani Meets Slavoj Žižek | DownstreamThe Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) - Slavoj ŽižekJacobin: Žižek’s Left-Wing Case for Christian AtheismPhilosophize This- Episode #196 - The Improbable Slavoj Zizek - Pt. 1 (Also, there are three other Žižek episodes in this series!)Article on the speech Žižek gave at the Frankfurt Book FairJoin us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Professor Matt Brown, with me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh.
I'm a psychologist, he's an anthropologist.
I'm beaming at you from Queensland, Australia.
He is coming at you from Tokyo, Japan.
How exotic are we, Chris?
Aren't we exciting?
Incredibly exotic.
That's it.
We're the most diverse white meals that you'll come across.
My hair's white.
His hair is blackish.
My skin is bronzed.
His is pallid.
There's heaps of diversity going on.
I'm a healthy culper at the minute as it happens.
Don't besmirch me to the non-visual viewers, Matt.
That's it.
Actually, we should also mention that we are uploading some things on YouTube.
There's a YouTube channel where Andy, the editor, is sticking up various clips and whatnot and interviews and so on.
So should you be interested in what we look like, you could go have a gander and make the same comment everyone does that, oh, I didn't think they looked like that.
Or Matt, Looks like what I imagine Chris looked like and vice versa.
I don't really get it.
I don't understand what people are expecting.
But yes, so you can see our faces should you wish to.
But if you do watch it, be sure to smash that like button and hit subscribe.
That's what they say.
That's what they say.
Where YouTube is now, Chris.
You've got to accept it.
Lean into it.
That's right.
Smash the like and subscribe buttons.
Yeah, do that.
But yeah, that's that, Matt.
We're back here.
We're in the decoding seats.
It means that there's a guru on the chopping block or in our sites.
Who's this week?
Who are we looking at?
Who is it?
Who is it?
Well, you've set me up nicely for an introduction, but I don't have anything in front of me.
I do know that it's philosopher, writer.
All-round busybody.
Slavoj Zizek.
A philosopher, mainly.
A contemporary Slovenian philosopher.
Cultural critic.
Known for his eclectic and provocative approach to philosophy, some would say.
I see you have your notes in front of you.
His works runs a wide range of topics, including political theory, psychoanalysis, film criticism, and ideology.
Not Hasan Piker's...
Merchandise brand.
A broader concept.
Yeah, the actual concept.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
And what an interesting champ he is.
Have you enjoyed immersing yourself in Zizek lore over the last couple of weeks, Chris?
I have, kind of.
Yeah, yes and no.
I've had a journey, as I often do, of going through moments of strongly disliking Zizek or finding him annoying.
And then...
Changing my opinion and thinking actually he's really good and I like him.
And then where I am now is I'm slightly annoyed, but I also like elements of him.
So that's probably good, right?
That's a healthy thing to have.
I think I have a mixed opinion on him.
But even just to say upfront, he's absolutely not one of the...
More terrible ranged gurus.
Is that spoiling things to say that?
But I feel it's obvious.
It's spoiling things a little bit, but what we think of him personally is a little bit beside the point.
So I think it's okay to bring it up up front.
I also find him whackable.
But we'll listen to what he's got to say.
We've read a lot of what he's written.
And we'll take the content for what it is, as we always do.
Tell us about the material we will be discussing today.
Okay, I will.
But just before that, Matt, there's something that you need to listen to because this is part of...
Streamers. America deserves 9-11, dude.
Fuck it.
I'm saying it.
Academics. Can they make a comment about canceling culture?
Streamers. Yeah, please explain this to me so I can tell you how fucking stupid you're.
And when I'm talking about that anagogic in and out of the imaginal augmentation of our ontological depth perception, that's what I mean by imaginal faithfulness.
You'll provide some interesting lessons for us today.
Decoding the gurus, streamers, and academic season.
This is going to be really interesting.
That supercut sounds way too professional for our podcast, Chris.
Good job, Editor Andy.
You know, there's one thing I'll say about that, that Editor Andy, who made that, who has various skills, he assures me that the clips in their...
Are all from, you know, legitimate academics and streamers.
And I think I can identify most of them.
And one of them he mentions is Peter Turchin.
But to me, it sounds a bit like Andy putting on a fake Russian accent.
So I'm not entirely sure it's legitimate clips.
He keeps saying it's not true and that he can supply the evidence.
But, you know, it's like him doing a bad accent.
Was true.
That would be incredibly unethical, Andy.
Incredibly unethical.
That's my only comment.
So, well, there we go.
Besmirchie, Andy's good reputation.
But it is part of streamers and academic seasons.
We have one more streamer to arrive at after that, and I think that's the end of the season.
Dr. K comes up after this.
So this is Zizek, who is an academic of sorts, and he has a wide range of output.
Today, we're not looking at his papers, though we have read various things that he's written, popular articles, listened to some philosophy podcasts detailing his point of view and whatnot.
But we are mainly focusing on an interview that he did recently with Novara Media, a kind of left-wing or leftist online outlet in the UK.
And the title was Our World is Coming to an End.
It's an interview with Aaron Bastani.
That's the main content that we're going to be looking at.
But I did take a couple of clips from a movie that he was in and helped to produce or write or whatever.
It's called The Pervert's Guide to Ideology from 2012, where he's commenting about his...
Philosophy and views on things, but with reference to popular media.
So maybe to ease people in before we get into the new content, I'll play a couple of clips because they're actually a little bit broader in scope than the stuff that he's talking about in the interview with Bastani.
So here's him from the start of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, talking about ideology.
I already am eating from the trash can all the time.
The name of this trash can is ideology.
The material force of ideology makes me not see what I'm effectively eating.
It's not only our reality which enslaves us.
The tragedy of our predicament when we are within ideology is that When we think that we escape it into our dreams, at that point, we are within ideology.
Yeah.
So, ideology is all around us, a force, Matt.
It connects us, it binds us, you could say.
Or it makes us separate in some cases.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that's a good introductory clip because it illustrates his style.
And you remember, Chris, a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that he reminded me in a weird way of Nichiki.
Nichi?
Nichi, not Nichiki.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a similar kind of...
Lyrical, very colourful, allegorical style of philosophy.
And I was gratified to see in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy that they also said that he was oddly reminiscent of Nietzsche.
So I feel validated.
Yeah, I will also mention that he has some speech impediments or distinctive ways of speaking.
Also, that you will hear throughout the clips, it's in part what he's famous for because he's very animated when he's being interviewed.
Ruffling his nose and these kind of things.
I actually don't know if it's any condition or anything or just like personal habits.
But in any case, in that pervert's guide to ideology, it's him.
Interspersed in movies that he's adding commentary to.
So that's why he was talking about eating out of a trash can.
He was commenting on a clip where there was somebody from They Live, this movie where people put on glasses and are able to perceive the secret messages that are being transmitted through culture.
So this is him again riffing a bit more on his view of ideology following some clips played from that movie.
We think that ideology is something blurring, confusing our straight view.
Ideology should be glasses which distort our view.
And the critique of ideology should be the opposite, like you take off the glasses so that you can finally see the way things really are.
This, precisely, and here, the pessimism of the film of the leaf is well justified.
This, precisely, is the ultimate illusion.
Ideology is not simply imposed on ourselves.
Ideology is our spontaneous relationship to our social world, how we perceive its meaning, and so on, and so on.
We, in a way, enjoy our ideology.
All right.
To step out of ideology, it hurts.
It's a painful experience.
You must force yourself to do it.
Yeah, so Chris, how would you put that in your own words, just to better down for people?
How does Zizek think of ideology and how it affects us all?
Well, so I think two things are key there.
One is that, in some respect, anybody that...
Thinks that they are devoid of having an ideology is perhaps in the worst position of being completely unaware that they are possessed by ideology, by the nature of living in their society and whatnot.
And secondly, that it isn't all about kind of top-down, state-led funneling of information into you.
It is also a bottom-up process whereby people select their own.
Ideologies and may not even always have it as like a negative thing, right?
They may derive pleasure from them and whatnot.
So his argument is that we should become aware of our ideologies and aware that we are taking part in them as well as them being imposed upon us and that there is nobody, maybe at least initially,
unless you are a philosopher or somebody that's interrogated.
Your views a lot.
That lacks ideology.
And it may even be the case that there are certain ideologies which are invisible, right, that are more mainstream.
So you think that Marxists and fascists or whatever have ideologies, but actually just being a mainstream liberal or, you know, somebody who isn't politically involved is also an ideology.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a fair summary.
And, you know, one thing I think that's refreshing about Zizek, which is, like, he's coming from, you know, the high...
Humanities, I suppose.
You know, his background is in theoretical Freudianism and he often talks about Lacan and like Hegel and stuff.
So it's very much that sort of, that kind of philosophy that's linked in with critical theory and all of that stuff.
But one thing he does, which I think a lot of people coming from that stream of thought don't do, is that he throws it about pretty even-handedly.
You often see with that kind of writing, they'll analyze and dissect the various layers of meaning and the various ways in which silly normies or right-wing people are fooling themselves, but they don't tend to generally turn the mirror on themselves,
whereas Zizek seems to be a bit more even-handed.
Yes, a bit more even-handed, though I think it is normal for philosophers to argue that.
Like, different varieties of their own philosophy were guilty of failing to understand things, you know, like, properly, critically.
So, like, in that respect, I don't think he's that different.
But he certainly is in the sense that he's more willing...
I think the most chuck bombs around both sides of the political spectrum and into his own camp because he self identifies as a communist and we'll see what specific type of communist as we go on but one thing that's very clear and it will come up more in later material is he really enjoys being provocative and like viewing himself as a bit of an iconoclast you know this is something that a lot of The gurus that we've covered
do.
But I think it's also just something that people who can get attention tend to do, you know, like they're willing to say provocative things and so on.
And he is willing to do that as well.
But he does have, I think, intellectual depth at times that justified other times.
We'll see.
But I've got another clip.
I don't think this is one of his better ones, but you have to take the account in all of these.
He's interacting with the set from a film.
It's quite funny to see him juxtaposed from these classic settings.
And in this one, he's wandering around in a desert and is discussing Coke.
The paradox of Coke is that you are thirsty, you drink it, but...
As everyone knows, the more you drink it, the more thirsty you get.
A desire is never simply the desire for a certain thing.
It's always also a desire for desire itself.
A desire to continue to desire.
So this is just this.
The point he has about consumption and consumerism, that there's pleasure, but there's also pain in pleasure, and that's part of the positive things.
Like another example he gives in another case is decaffeinated coffee that people initially enjoy.
The flavor and the kind of caffeine in coffee.
And then they enjoy denying themselves the caffeine because they still want to consume, but it's kind of become taken away.
And in the same way, Coke is full of sugar and consuming it can make you feel thirsty again, although...
I don't quite agree with that.
Yeah, I did chat with ChatGPT and it said it is true, but like...
When I'm thirsty and I drink Coke, I'm not like, oh, I need a little Coke.
So, yeah.
No, I don't drink a huge amount of sugary beverages, but when I do, I generally feel satisfied by it.
I don't feel like I've now got to have a glass of water because I'm even more thirsty than before I drink the Coke.
That just doesn't happen to me.
That's not quite right.
But, I mean, more generally, he's speaking about how, like, when they sell products, like Coca-Cola, they're often surrounding it with the imagery of stuff of, you know, loving life and, you know, jumping around.
And what they are selling, in a way, is the lifestyle.
And people kind of, you know, yeah, I mean, I see some truth in his point that they are sort of selling the desire to want things, because often most of us are.
Miserable bastards that don't feel like going to the party and so on.
We kind of want to.
But there are simpler explanations always than the ones that he puts on, which is simply in advertising, you know, the unconditioned reward stimulus is paired with the product you're trying to sell.
You put the pretty lady next to the car, things like that.
I mean, it is straightforward marketing that does have simpler explanations.
Adam Curtis, this British documentary maker, has done a bunch of films which are kind of interspersing archival footage with a reader.
Explaining about, you know, the connections between marketing and the, like, focus on self and satisfaction reminds me a bit of that, a lot of the analysis that Zizek is offering about that.
And there is truth to it, but I think, like with Adam Curtis, it can be overstated at times.
But an example of it being overstated is whenever he's talking about Starbucks.
I've got two clips about this.
he's discussing Starbucks and the fact that he consumes Starbucks regularly and he is talking about this.
But are we aware that when we buy a cappuccino from Starbucks, we also buy quite a lot of ideology?
Which ideology?
You know, when you enter a Starbucks store, it's usually always displaced in some posters, their message, which is, yes, our cappuccino is more expensive than others,
But, and then comes the story, we give 1% of all our income to some Guatemala children to keep them healthy for the water supply for some Sahara farmers, or to save the forests,
to enable organic growing coffee, whatever, whatever.
Now, I admire the ingenuosity of this solution in the old days of pure, simple consumerism.
You bought a product and then you felt back.
My god, I'm just a consumerist while people are starving in Africa.
So the idea was you had to do something to counteract your pure destructive consumerism.
For example, I don't know, you contribute to charity and so on.
What Starbucks enables you is to be a consumerist and...
Be a consumerist without any bad conscience, because the price for the countermeasure for fighting consumerism is already included into the price of a commodity.
Like, you pay a little bit more, and you are not just a consumerist, but you do also your duty towards environment, the poor, starving people in Africa, and so on and so on.
It's, I think, the ultimate form of consumerism.
Is it?
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, so this is a good example of how this kind of, like, finding signs and symbols and layers of meaning in this Lacanian philosophy, this is how it goes.
And it's always annoying to quibble with the details.
But, I mean, Starbucks is, at least in Australia, is not the most expensive coffee you could buy.
No.
Most coffees are kind of more expensive and they don't do that.
On the other hand, Starbucks definitely does.
And, you know, people have seen heaps of products.
It's called greenwashing, right?
Fair trade.
Fair trade, you know, single source, all kinds of things.
Some percentage is donated to whatever.
And, you know, that is obviously a feature of the marketing.
Another good example is anyone in Australia who's bought or sold a house or rented a house would know about European appliances, right?
European appliances.
It goes in all of the advertisements.
And many people will seek out European appliances just so that when they come to sell their house, they can say European appliances, right?
Because it's one of those things that people take as a marker of middle class quality.
I know what it means, Matt.
Well, that's right.
You're European, aren't you?
Yeah.
And how does that make you feel more ethically pure?
No, it's a different kind of ideology, I guess, that's attached to the product, right?
European appliances often suck.
Like SMEG, right?
That's a European appliance.
It's not a very good quality thing, really.
Zanussi, Brand, Bosch.
Yeah, that's right.
There are audio devices.
No, no, no.
I mean Bosch, the manufacturer of washing machines and whatnot.
Oh, yeah.
Germans.
Germans.
Yeah.
Yeah, so what you're buying is, like Zizek says, it's probably vapor.
It's probably an idea as well as the actual physical thing you're buying.
So there's truth in that.
But, you know, he does read a lot into it.
I don't think most people feel particularly guilty about being such a consumerist and buying a cup of coffee.
I mean, I don't.
Yeah, so there's truth to the whole corporate whitewashing, corporate...
Responsibility, brand management, or like woke capitalism, right?
People have referred to that as well.
And that companies do seek to highlight that they're making philanthropic donations or that they're reinvesting in communities or that kind of thing.
But like the Starbucks in Japan, yeah, sure, that's somewhere in the Starbucks place.
But like, I've never noticed it.
Myself, I never have read it in any great detail, and I've never felt particularly conflicted, nor do I get the impression that any of the other people in the Starbucks are usually feeling particularly conflicted about it.
So like you say, it does feel like, yes, there is something to that whole thing as allowing a justification to people, but he kind of centers it as, this is the main thing, and this is why the expensive price is considered justified.
And I'm like...
Yeah, that isn't right.
Like, Starbucks is justifying its price by and large by saying it's better and, you know, the setting and stuff is nice or whatever.
But like you say, if you take hipster coffee somewhere, you can pay a lot more.
So it's all relative.
But it's just that it's kind of an overstatement.
But there's a kernel of truth, which is completely valid.
So it depends on how you interpret it to be.
But he states it in very strong terms.
Yeah, like it speaks to a style where one notices something.
Like he's clearly gone to a Starbucks and he's noticed a sign.
I can almost imagine him with his little notebook and going, this is good material.
And, you know, that's good stuff.
And he can spin off an entertaining narrative around that.
And like you said, it's not to say there isn't some truth in that, but you can actually quibble with the facts, the evidence supporting it.
The logic, yeah.
There's a consistent issue with this kind of content to me that initially when I was thinking about how to respond to it difficult because in some respect if people are spinning up speculative theories and clearly marketing them as that or clearly indicating that's what they are you know that's fine that's that's just somebody saying here's my you know speculative take on those kind of things and ZZek does often Do that?
So that's a distinction from the gurus who present what they're doing as a kind of non-disputable interpretation.
Zizek will often highlight that, oh, maybe I'm talking bullshit, right?
Or something like that.
But the thing I wanted to say is that there's this kind of disparate jumping around between topics to illustrate things.
Here's something in a movie that I saw.
Here's a Starbucks sign that I saw.
It's anecdotal and it doesn't tend to follow any effort to falsify your claim.
Like a scientific approach would be, I noticed this.
I think this is true.
Now, can I find circumstances where this applies, but I don't see the other thing?
Like what if you find a really expensive coffee chain that isn't?
Front and centering, it's ethical contributions.
Does that contradict your theory?
And the answer almost always is that people never address the contradictory examples.
And Zizek is exactly like this.
He might sometimes talk about inconsistencies or whatever, but in general, his approach and this philosophical reasoning approach, it often relies on illustrative examples, but the counter examples are not really explored.
Very much.
Maybe they are in writing, but not in this material.
But in any case, here's an example to do with music being used in different settings.
And what strikes the eye here is the universal adaptability of this well-known melody.
Oh.
It can be used by political movements which are totally opposed to each other.
In Nazi Germany, it was widely used to celebrate great public events.
In Soviet Union, Beethoven was lionized and the Oath to Joy was performed almost as a kind of a communist song.
In China, during the time of the Great Cultural Revolution, when almost all Western music was prohibited, The Main Symphony was accepted.
It was allowed to play it as a piece of progressive bourgeois music.
It was allowed to play it as a piece of progressive bourgeoisie.
At the extreme right in South Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe, it proclaimed independence to be able to postpone the abolishment of Apartheid.
Okay, so there my...
The music is used in all this different contexts, right?
And this is important because, just to end that point.
So it's truly that we can imagine a kind of a perverse scene of universal fraternity where Osama Bin Laden is embracing President Bush, Saddam is embracing Fidel Castro, white racists embracing Mao Zedong,
and all together they sing Ode to Joy.
It works.
And this is how every ideology has to work.
It's never just meaning.
It always has to also work as an empty container, open to all possible meanings.
It's, you know, that gut feeling that we feel when we experience something pathetic and we say, oh my God, I'm so moved, there is something so deep.
But you never know what this depth is.
So, to recap, he's problematised Beethoven's Ode to Joy, pointing out correctly that it has this universal appeal.
It's been used as the anthem, the European Union, the Communists liked it, you know, white supremacists of South Africa thought it was great too.
Basically, a really popular song, and this...
It points to the fact that it is like a placeholder, like a container that can be infused with ideology and he sees great symbolism in this.
I mean, isn't it also plausible that it's a very catchy and uplifting piece of classical music and it's a big crowd pleaser, basically.
It's a perfect fit for...
All these kinds of ceremonies.
And I'm not quite sure I see the great significance that he sees, that it has been popular in many different places and different times, regardless of the social context.
Well, you can see the kind of, the irony isn't the right word, but the subversive image of it being used in all this incongruent contexts, right?
But like you said, If you asked me, like, could you use the same song to support, like, lots of different ideologies, I'd be like, yeah, you know, especially if it doesn't have that many lyrics.
But even if it does, right, like, you know, it depends on how generic they are.
So, yeah, he, like the sense makers, and dare I say philosophers in general, makes some...
Interpretive leaps.
And actually, where he goes to next with this is he points out that it was also used in Clockwork Orange.
So where this piece is sometimes presented to signify unifying people together for whatever ideology, in Clockwork Orange, the protagonist...
Likes it, but he is a retrograde, right?
Like a violent guy.
So just listen to him talking about this point.
Whenever an ideological text says all humanity unite in brotherhood, joy and so on, you should always ask, okay, okay, okay, but are this all really all or is someone excluded?
I think Alex, the delinquent from Clockwork Orange, identifies with this place of exclusion.
And the great genius of Beethoven is that he literally staged this exclusion.
All of a sudden, the whole tone changes into a kind of a carnivalesque rhythm.
It's no longer this sublime beauty.
Like, there, Matt, that interpretation.
Because that's a fictional...
Interpreting his enjoyment of the, you know, the Ode to Joy.
And when you speed it up and play it in discord and things that it becomes, you know, carnival.
And yes, like, yeah, of course, right?
That's the whole point.
That actually stood out to me too, Chris, because like a lot of music from that period and later would use that changing style as a device, as a purely musical device.
So, for instance, in Gustav Mahler's...
Symphony No.
1. There are times in it which are kind of uplifting and serious and solemn.
And then it transposes.
It's actually a funeral march.
It makes it into a jaunty little jig, like it's a bunch of little woodland animals, like teddy bears, marching along.
So it's a slightly humorous counterpoint to the thing it's done before.
It's done quite a bit in classical music as a purely musical device.
So, yes, you can read.
All kinds of things into it, saying, okay, this is pointing to the unifying people and excluding others, but you don't have to look that far to explain it.
Just like in understanding the very broad appeal of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, it can just be like a rousing crowd pleaser, right?
And so it gets used a lot.
I mean, what about Trump's music that he plays at his rallies?
Well, I feel he would interpret it in the same way, you know, like him using some 80s or, you know, Song of Rebellion or Bad to the Bone or whatever, and then saying it's subverting the intentions of the, you know, the rebellious nature of it.
And it is, but like, yeah, we know that.
People use music for different purposes.
And I think the last clip from this movie section...
Is his commentary on Jaws.
And he's talking about what sharks can symbolize.
I enjoyed this.
Yeah, so here's some things that the shark in Jaws might symbolize.
Shark starts to attack people on the beach.
What does this attack mean?
What does the shark stand for?
There were different, even mutually exclusive, answers to this question.
Did you see that?
On the one hand, some critics claim that, obviously, the shark stands for the foreign threat to ordinary Americans.
The shark is a metaphor for either natural disasters, storms...
Or immigrants threatening United States citizens and so on.
On the other hand, it's interesting to know that Fidel Castro, who loves the film, once said that for him it was obvious that Jaws is kind of a leftist Marxist film and that The Shark is a metaphor for brutal,
big capital exploiting ordinary Americans.
So, which is the right answer?
I claim none of them, and at the same time, all of them.
Ordinary Americans, as ordinary people in all countries, have a multitude of fears.
Good fun.
Good fun.
Film analysis.
Actually, listening to it again, like at first I just thought it was funny that the shark is communism, maybe it's capitalism, maybe it's foreigners, and then at the end it was all of these things.
Yeah.
Okay, so the easiest one is the shark is sometimes just a shark, right?
And, I mean, having said that, definitely Spielberg took advantage of the less is more approach.
To like a thriller, horror type movie, partly due to the technical challenges in creating a realistic animatronic shark.
But, you know, it's quite effective as a device to have the shark as kind of a shadowy, all-powerful kind of force just below the water.
You could say it's our subconscious if you want and have some fun there.
But really, I mean...
You know, people do this.
People analyze these cultural artifacts, Godzilla, the aliens, vampires, zombies, and you can read into them all kinds of stuff that you like.
But, you know, there is sometimes a simpler explanation.
Yeah, or none, all working at once.
But yeah, this is actually a famous thing because there's...
Mark Kermode, the film critic, has famously discussed Jaws not really being about a shark, being about, like, man struggle or whatever, and his co-host being, or maybe it's about a scary shark.
There is that first question of, like, when the shark attacks, what?
Is the meaning of this?
You're like, maybe a big shark?
Is that scary?
And you're speaking as someone who lives in mortal terror of creatures of underworld?
Yeah, they are freaking scary.
But at the same time, it is also true that humans spin up interpretive layers and film directors and whatnot also have their own influences of which they're aware of and not aware of and whatnot.
So there's, you know, film...
Criticism is a whole industry and art criticism as well.
So it's not that, but I feel like if you're very acutely aware...
Of all of this interpretive layers and you're critiquing the way that people consume ideology without thinking.
Like, I feel like the next step is also to be like, and maybe this is all bullshit.
It is purely about Ishak.
And that is actually the thing.
And all the stuff that we've dreamt up that's much more complex is actually, you know, that has less explanatory power.
But just to highlight, that's not where he goes.
He then talks about...
Well, let me see.
You might not have anticipated the sleep.
So here's where he goes.
The function of the shark is to unite all these fears so that we can, in a way, trade all these fears for one fear alone.
Smile, you son of a...
In this way, Our experience of reality gets much simpler.
Why am I mentioning this?
Because isn't it that, for example, the most extreme case of ideology, maybe, in the history of humanity, the Nazi fascist antisemitism worked precisely in the same way.
So he wants to say, like, they created, you know, an evil...
Enemy, threatening society in the Jews.
And Steven Spielberg, by creating the evil shark, gave a manifestation of...
Yeah.
And that's a bit of it.
That feels like something of an interpretive leap.
But that's the thing.
I don't begrudge anybody making that kind of interpretive leap as a thought experiment or that kind of thing.
I just think...
Again, that, like, if you were going to claim that is actually a really important parallel, you'd want to consider counterexamples on, like, the dis-parallels between Jaws and the Nazis.
Well, Chris, there's that line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where he says that, you know, strange ladies lying around in ponds is no basis for political and systemic government, right?
And I kind of feel the same way, like, this kind of speculative analysis of film.
It's not a strong basis for, like, a social science, essentially, or a deep understanding of how society works.
It's not a strong foundation on which to build.
Because I agree with you.
You can, by all means, you know, anything goes, really, when it comes to film interpretation.
You know, have fun with it.
I'm all for that.
But it is a bit weak.
I mean, like, you just have to pause and ask yourself some questions.
All of these complex things.
Is it true that every...
Because there are heaps of movies that involve a scary beast of some kind.
What about critters?
Like, you know, the little aliens that...
What do gremlins mean, Chris?
What do gremlins mean?
I'm sure many people have written many things, but like, you know, yes, that is the issue.
And also, I think that it's worth considering.
I'm not saying that everybody's on this level playing field, but if you're...
Reacting very poorly to Jordan Peterson, reading deep meanings into Frozen.
There's a certain issue with, well, how do you judge that speculative connection that he makes as invalid and this one that you like, which is, you know, centering capitalism and consumerism as more, because they're equally...
Making these kind of leaps and yes you could say you know some cultural critics or film critics are making more better thought out points but I'm just saying it is hard to appeal to a standard beyond your personal preference for whatever their interpretation is because you know Jordan talking about masculinity as represented in Frozen versus Pinocchio or whatever.
What's your standard to say he's wrong?
I mean it tends to Need to rely on some very abstract ideas around collective unconscious and stuff.
I can understand why they like theoretical Freudianism, right?
Because when people interview Steven Spielberg and ask him about the shark...
He says about capitalism.
Yeah.
He doesn't wax lyrical about this stuff.
He generally talks about wanting to make a scary shark, all right?
And when you talk to audiences who went and saw it and you ask them, how was the movie?
They'll generally just give you a pretty...
Most of them.
Depends how much of philosophy they've consumed.
Yeah, that's true.
But most of them.
So what you're proposing is that there's something going on with the movie that neither the creator nor the vast majority of the audience are aware.
And it's happening at a sort of a deeper, unconscious level.
And it's a more fundamental truth.
But in Zizek's case, he's also saying, like, Zizek is a very playful character.
So he will say that.
And then the next breath, he will say, but that can all be rubbish, right?
Like, you know, that can just...
So this is kind of what's interesting about him is that he doesn't take himself seriously in lots of ways, but he also...
He is often presenting a serious analysis of things in a way that demands to be taken seriously.
So that's what makes him a playful character in a way.
Yes, and he is enjoyable.
I find him likeable.
And this is not the only kind of thing he does.
He's challenging to cover comprehensively.
We're not going to try.
We're just taking this content.
In different modes, you know, he can write this really dense, jargon-filled philosophy.
It's all very complicated and it takes a long while to get to the bottom of what he's saying, but it is all intended extremely seriously.
At other times, he's making this sort of more pop content, like this documentary, where he's being more playful and relaxed and a bit more easygoing.
And like you said, he'll often, he'll just undercut.
What he said and said, I'm just speculating here.
What do I know?
I'm just an idiot.
And, you know, you're kind of left being vaguely entertained, but you're not quite sure.
Yeah.
But there's a little bit about the, like, crazy wisdom because he is so intelligent that he's not really restricted by the normal social conventions.
And he likes to play that up.
So let's turn to the interview he did with...
Aaron Bastani for Novara, right?
And these are all...
The first couple of clips are from the start of the interview, the very beginning, where it wasn't clear if they're recording or not, right?
And there's a little bit of follow-up about ideology that he mentioned at the start, so I'll just play that to bridge us over.
We effectively are in an era of cynicism as a form of ideology.
It not only doesn't matter if you take your...
Official ideology seriously or not?
That's the beautiful paradox that I learned from my communist past, I mean, living in communist Yugoslavia.
It was a beautiful paradox.
You know, we said an official ideology, self-management, socialism, and so on, and so on.
But if you took the official ideology too seriously, you were in danger of being treated as a dissident.
You were perceived as a danger to those in power.
So an ideology functioned in such a way that you were expected not to take it seriously.
It wasn't only that it didn't matter if you take it seriously.
You had to not take it seriously.
It's a beautiful example.
And this is how it is today.
Trump and so on, all of them.
And this is, again, the most dangerous moment when ideology appears as just neutral common sense.
You know, like, forget big ideologies go to actual problems and so on.
Oh, ideology begins here.
What do we perceive as an actual problem?
Ideology is already in the definition of problems.
That's why, for me, The first task in critique of ideology is not to claim, okay, we have problems, we must approach them in this or that way, but is this really a problem?
Sorry, Matt, that's my fault.
That's a clip from another thing where he's outlining his ideology thing more seriously, but I thought it was good because he talks about the juxtaposition of...
Demanding to take ideology seriously, but at the same time, you shouldn't take it seriously.
And the postmodern moment as well, also ideology is...
So he is recognizing some paradoxes at play.
Yeah, I'd like to know what he would think of Hasan Piker.
But I'm sure his experience under the Iron Curtain, behind the Iron Curtain, would have been giving him good insights into the hypocrisy and stuff.
That went on, especially towards the end of the Cold War.
The impression I get is that the vast majority of people kind of no longer really believed in the system.
You know, the system was still there and it was still important and you needed to pay lip service.
So I think that there were parts of his material, Chris, that I thought of you and I thought you'd really appreciate this because a lot of it has got to do with that kind of ritual observance, hazing rituals and stuff, and he relates it to politics in kind of an interesting way.
Yeah, he does.
And I think like the point that he makes here is valid about, you know, like in North Korea, people need to demonstrate that they really are emotionally connected to the leader, but it's enforced.
So like, you know, how much of it is a presentation versus an indoctrination?
And it is always in, you know, like an uneasy balance.
And the postmodern disenchantment is in a similar kind of unstable.
So, like, there's definitely stuff to it.
That's the thing.
One of the things I sort of most identified with is him emphasizing the sort of performative nature of a lot of political stuff.
And that was, you know, and that's what you're talking about, where what you're purportedly doing is displaying your strong commitment, your strong faith, waving the little red book to the ideology.
But really, what you're doing is performing to show your allegiance to a system.
And so the actual true believers, people who take it too seriously, are kind of a little bit dangerous because you don't know what they're going to do and they might be disloyal, right?
Yeah.
Well, actually, I have a clip from the very end of the Novara interview where he's criticizing political correctness or woke leftism.
So maybe just before we get to the other stuff, I'll play that since you reused that point.
I was once in Missoula, Montana.
Giving a talk, and there were many so-called Native Americans, and they already hated the term, because it's the political correct term.
They told me, ooh, this is so patronizing.
What is the opposite of nature, culture?
So they told me, we are natural Americans, and you are cultural Americans, or what?
And they gave me a wonder, they said, we much prefer to be called Indians.
Why?
Because then this name is at least a monument to white man's stupidity.
When they came there, they thought they were in India.
Native Americans and Inuit Eskimos, I admire them.
They had such a wonderful nose for this pseudo-anti-racist patronizing...
Attitudes towards so-called primitives.
So, to conclude, use it or not, my favorite thing that I said to some feminists years ago, and they applauded, I said, let's say you have a boyfriend who says, listen, there is a difference.
I'm a man more than you.
Your duty is to wash my socks to do the house.
I said, if you have...
Such a boyfriend.
Keep him, you may re-educate him.
But if you have a boyfriend who says, I'm a Western imperialist, I see nature only as an object of exploitation, you as a woman has a more dialogic, organic attitude towards nature,
run away like crazy!
That guy will be the ruin for you.
You know, this fake Western admiration for some wisdom of third world countries and so on,
He's very cynical, but in an appealing way, I think.
He positions himself as a Marxist, and he certainly comes out of that theoretical space.
But it's interesting how a lot of the conclusions that he reaches, sometimes dropping a lot of jargon and theory along the way, Is kind of like a pragmatic, you know, moderate kind of approach that does make fun of a lot of left-wing and sacred cows.
So, you know, he is part of that thing.
I mean, Jordan Peterson would hate to hear this, right?
But there is a sort of an ideological split between the kind of, you know, more material left-wing Marxist materialists and the people that are more focused on identity and things like that.
So, that kind of...
Why would Jordan Peterson hate that?
He likes that.
Well, he famously conflated the two and said, you know, woke Marxism, Chris.
Oh, postmodern neo-Marxists.
Right.
Yes.
I see the point.
Okay.
Well, just to continue that theme, Matt, since we're here, he also famously, Zizek, has been critical of cancel culture, right?
And he did talk about this in the Novara.
Interview and some of the distinctions between him and other parts of the left, right?
Of the leftist or communist side of the left.
So first, this is him on cancel culture.
So, Abba, back to your point, Fein.
Listen, don't you think that I am...
I can even give you a list of how I'm very suicidal.
Systematically...
Ruining my general acceptance or fame.
It began with my critique of cancel culture and political correctness.
That was a big deal.
Sorry?
That was a big deal.
Yeah, but do you know how many people now dismiss me as a secret right-winger and so on?
Although I always emphasize I'm absolutely for all the goals of LGBTQ and now I don't know how many letters you have.
LGBTQ, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's longer now, the latest.
And cancel culture and so on, I see.
But what worries me is that the way this is...
It's deeply counterproductive.
Because I think what...
I don't know.
Don't ask me how to do it.
I don't know.
But isn't it crucial for the left, instead of getting caught in this self-divisive censoring, you know, oh, you use that word, what if it's still secretly racist and so on?
So that's him kind of highlighting critiques which would be very familiar for heterodox, inclined people, right?
Criticisms of the left, identity politics, and self-purity policing and all those kind of things.
So, yeah.
But he's not alone in that.
I've heard similar kinds of critiques from...
Yeah, yeah.
I think Brian Burgess is another example of somebody that advances those kind of criticisms.
But one of the points there, Matt, as well, is that was part of his response to being asked if he wanted to become famous.
So he was kind of saying, you know, if I wanted to become famous, I wouldn't do this.
Though, as we know, that is actually a path to fame, though not perhaps so readily on the left.
But that question...
The way that he responded to it initially, because he went off on a big tangent, and then this was him coming back to answer, but I thought that part where he tries to answer the question illustrates how his mind works in a way.
Did you always want to be famous because you have this wonderful life for most people?
Where you travel the world.
You talk about interesting things.
Highly educated man.
You can have an opinion on films.
People love it.
You can have an opinion on politics.
People love it.
Let me make a step further here.
Please.
Yeah, but I go dialectically to the end here.
I even have an opinion on films that I haven't seen, you know.
Like what I wrote about Barbie and Oppenheimer.
It's now a public secret that when I wrote that, I haven't seen the films, you know.
I'm here a Hegelian.
You know that famous Hegel stands, if reality doesn't fit what I proclaim to be the notion of truth, so much worse for reality.
And I stand by this.
After writing my piece, I was convinced to see just Oppenheimer.
And I should have been even tougher for the film.
So two things that struck me there.
One was like his kind of, ah, you know, let me get to the end point of the question if I saw fame.
And then he admits he wrote his reviews of Barbie and Oppenheimer without watching them, which is like a kind of trolly thing to do.
But then also he made this comment that where reality does not...
Fit with his interpretation, like, so bad for reality.
Like, and it's comedic, but it's, I think, also actually true that in this approach to things, this is a little bit how philosophers are for it, that their interpretive frameworks are, if they don't match exactly to reality,
reality has the limitation.
That's got the problem.
Yeah, yeah.
Taking the platonic deals a little bit too far.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
It's often hard to know how seriously to take Zizek because it's entertaining.
It's fun to listen to, but, you know.
Well, that sentiment would contradict all the stuff that he said about ideology being less important than, you know, it's a deception that transforms the world.
But if you take this at face value, it would him be saying that his interpretive ideology is more important than...
Whatever reality is.
But it's said with a wink and a joke, right?
And so, like you say, how serious the ticket.
And yet, just before Chris, he was saying the most dangerous kind of ideology that we're experiencing these days is the kind of ironic, tongue-in-cheek ideology.
So, yeah, I don't know.
What does a shark mean?
What does a shark mean?
But just before we get...
Off this point.
So you mentioned about the distinction between him, the kind of class-focused Marxist versus some of the more contemporary Marxist approach, which are accused of being focused a bit more on identity, politics, or whatever the case might be.
But he indicates a distinction.
Between him and other leftists here, which I thought was interesting.
I will say something with which I hope we will all agree because it's a very central liberal common sense.
The basic condition of normal life is this: safety of social order.
And I'm saying this as a leftist.
I was never fascinated by this big bullshit, you know.
Ooh, Tahrir Square or Syriza, one million people on the market, on the main place.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I am, that's my old joke, probably you know it.
I am the morning after leftist.
How will ordinary people feel the change when the enthusiasm is over?
How will their life, ordinary daily life, how will they be affected?
That's why I got many hatred from French leftists.
You remember, some two, three months ago, there were those big demonstrations, and I said, But I am more for law and order there, because I read analysis.
You know, those demonstrations were basically destroying things, cars, stores, mostly, almost exclusively in the poor suburbs.
And I think that's one of the resources of Trump.
We should listen to this, cares of the ordinary people who like security and so on.
Yeah, so he's not the sort of romantic style of revolutionary Marxist.
His views may well be radical in some ways, but yeah, he's a morning-after type person and he likes pragmatism.
Rather than flashy, fashionable things we see cynical of, and I think he would see them as self-aggrandizing things that are just pandering to your own personal and emotional needs rather than being a practical way to go.
Yeah, and he followed this up by talking about the movie V for Vendetta.
Have you seen that movie, Matt?
I have to my regret, yeah.
Okay.
I kind of like that, but he agrees with you, right?
Like, he sees limitations.
But I thought this was like a kind of playful way to illustrate his issues.
My standard line here is, maybe you know it, you saw the movie V for Vendetta.
Yeah.
In my Stalinist universe, that movie would be burned publicly.
Why?
Because it ends...
No, the end scene.
The people...
Occupy the parliament win.
My standard joke is I would sell my mother into slavery to see V for Vendetta part two.
But what will then they do?
The next day the left is in power.
How will they change the power structure?
What will they do?
Nationalize things or what?
That's what the left should focus on.
Enough of this enthusiastic freedom and so on and so on.
I am shocking as it may sound law and order leftist.
Our promise should be not this enthusiastic freedom and so on.
Our promise should be we will change In a way that you will feel the change, the daily life.
And cases where this succeeds, where they achieve this, the left, are very rare.
So he wants to sell his muller into slavery to see the sequel.
But that, you know, that's the kind of nice hyperbole that he's infamous for, right?
Actually reminiscent a little bit of Destiny.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Using extremely florid, attention-getting language.
Potentially inappropriate.
Yeah, potentially very inappropriate.
But ultimately, if you strip that stuff away, the point that's being made is a relatively boring one that people actually do prefer to be safe.
And that you do need to be pragmatic and think about, okay, what are you actually going to, you know, this system that we all despise, let's talk about what we're going to replace it with and have a practical plan.
I mean, none of those should be a particularly controversial opinion.
So I do feel he spices things up a fair bit and, you know, why not?
Maybe slightly more controversial in the left despises because he's essentially criticizing that.
Focus on revolutionary politics, right?
He's like the day-to-day boring stuff of governing is actually what we should be paying attention to.
And actually, there's a funny bit, Matt.
I think you know this history a bit better.
But so there is an emphasis in leftist spaces in Novara Media on the importance of, you know, rebellion, revolution, this kind of thing.
Aaron Bassani pushes back a bit and is like, you know, but what about these historical instances where there was revolution?
So you're saying like, you don't, what do you think about this?
And he tries a couple of times to get an answer for him.
So listen to the attempts.
So was the Russian and French revolutions a mistake then?
Because obviously those weren't law and order leftists.
Those were massive.
Especially the French Revolution against an entire mode of being.
Here, it may surprise you.
First, I don't have...
Let's begin with Russian Revolution.
I'm very critical of Lenin.
But nonetheless, as a Hegelian, I don't buy this Trotsky story.
You know that if only Lenin were to...
Survive for three, four years.
He would have made a pact with Trotsky throughout Stalin and then.
Then what?
A big socialist democracy.
No, maybe a little bit better, but nonetheless, and I'm ready to go even further back here.
It's clear that I don't care if he wanted he Lenin this or not, but Leninism Obviously did open up the space for Stalinism.
You cannot say it was just a bad surprise.
And you can find this clearly in the ambiguities of Lenin's desperate book, State and Revolution.
As for the French Revolution, I'm a little bit...
It's my first puberty love.
I don't want to renounce it for Jacobins.
Let's make things clear.
For me, one of the greatest ethical figures, or two of them rather, in world history are...
And he's going to say Rob Pierre.
Yeah.
Well, what's the question for me?
I mean, I think it's definitely true that both the French and the Russian revolutions were followed by even more authoritarian...
More effectively authoritarian regimes than the ones they replaced.
There was obviously a period following the revolution where there was a lot of breakdown in everything.
Anarchy, which nobody liked.
From that answer, are you clear if he's saying they were bad or not?
The question was, you were saying that the revolutions are, you know, we should focus on what happens after whatnot.
So what about...
These two famous examples.
And he talked a lot about them.
I think that's a hard question, though, isn't it, Chris?
I mean, it's very problematic to look back in hindsight and say, was this a good thing or a bad thing?
Because it's very hard to know what was the alternative thing that would have happened.
I mean, there was a revolution in Haiti, which everyone would agree is totally justified to get rid of a great evil thing of that slave state.
But Haiti subsequently has not done well.
On the other hand, there was the American Civil War, which I'm enjoying learning about at the moment.
The previous Civil War.
I enjoyed both of them listening to the history of them.
Both of them terrible events, right?
And yet in hindsight, we look back on the American Civil War as being a kind of a necessary...
It was devastating, but people look back on it as a necessary and ultimately a good thing.
That's what Aaron Bastani's asking, right?
Like, if you condemn revolutions, like, during them, of course, terrible and, you know, causing breakdown of society and stuff, but, like, aren't they necessary at times when, you know, societies have gotten like this?
And so he there, if I interpreted what he said correctly, was, like, kind of, he would condemn Lenin.
Because Lenin also would have led to a repressive regime even if he hadn't survived.
Yeah, I read what he was saying as, like, you can't just point the finger at Stalin and say that Stalin hijacked a regime that was heading towards a nice democratic, socialist, egalitarian and free kind of country that was ultimately liberating people because it probably wasn't headed in that direction.
So that first answer would seem to be sort of negative.
And then the French Revolution one, he moves into this kind of responsibility.
Sorry, I didn't make that clear.
So were those mistakes?
Should those not have happened?
Clearly there's a place for huge disruptive politics in history.
There is, but I think that...
I'm here simply a pessimist.
The way Hegel saw it correctly.
No, you have to go through this terrorist moment, which fails, and then the true struggle begins.
Will anything good survive from this?
Hegel saw this very clearly.
Well, he condemned the French terror, but he made it very clear that nonetheless a more liberal democratic order Was possible only through that excessive moment.
Or to give you another example that I like, I read a book, I forget which one, Old Sinai, which deals with this problem and says, even if not actual violence,
at moments of radical emancipation, you at least need A threat of more radical, deadly measure.
For example, this guy looks at, in the 60s, Martin Luther King for black, full black emancipation, the struggles.
And he said, why did Martin Luther, more or less, the struggle goes on, succeed?
Because behind him there was a threat of much more violent, radical blacks.
Look at Mandela.
The apartheid regime made a deal with him because they were afraid.
There were much more radical blacks waiting.
This answer kind of like then, I mean, it's not inconsistent necessarily, but he is now switching to endorse the necessity.
But wasn't he before saying V for Vendetta?
That revolutionary moment is, you know, it's just bullshit.
But now he's saying the threat of violence and populist, you know, uprisings are a very necessary part of any, you know, revitalization or change.
So like it feels...
Well, I feel like he's behind dealing with the question, but I'm very sympathetic to him here, Chris, because I feel like it's an impossible question, you know.
These great upheavals and revolutions often, you know, there is a seesawing effect, you know, and France ultimately, like it seesawed from over multiple revolutions and republics and then another Bonaparte coming back and then another king coming back.
But it's sort of the oscillations evened out and it kind of reconciled itself to somewhere, you know, where it is now, which is not too bad.
So I don't know much about the French Revolution, the history of it, right?
But I know you listen to a lot about it.
But Robespierre possibly filtered through, you know, O 'Fallon and all references.
My image is that he is famous and like a complex historical figure.
I mean, there's a magazine called The Jacobins, right?
Named after the movement that he was involved with and whatnot.
Also that he was a tyrannical figure that killed a whole bunch of other people that he considered impure.
So like he's famously a villainous character was the way that I understood as well.
But in the way that Zizek talks about him, he kind of presents him as a...
Like, a good guy.
And he said, yes, yes, he did some...
You know, he was a bit, like, heavy-handed with the purges, but fundamentally, if you read his stuff before he died, he was still, like, an optimist or whatever.
Yeah.
No, look, I'm not qualified to give the definitive answer about Rob Esbier.
I am aware that it is...
It's complicated, right?
Like he said...
There's no good guys or bad guys, right?
Yeah.
Like, they were, to some degree, idealists, and...
They were putting a lot of people to death.
On the other hand, they were actually beset by traitors and enemies on all sides.
And then later on, a lot of the people that were being put to death were the actual nasty people who were abusing their power, putting other people to death earlier on.
And you could interpret it as this horrible circular firing squad, but also there was a kind of high-minded retribution there too, and I don't know enough.
about the details of the past judgment on his character, but they're just, they were complicated characters.
Like they were in some ways horrible and in some ways idealists.
Yeah, that's just the nature of history.
I was just curious because it's clear in his...
Commentary that he's regarding this as a provocative thing that he's saying.
And it lined up as being provocative with what I vaguely have consumed about Robespierre through the culture.
But I don't know enough to know if that's because of the culture war presentation of him.
I think it's generally...
Yeah, he is generally...
Like, if you read a basic history book, he doesn't come off well.
I'm aware that there are more...
Detailed and nuanced kind of alternative readings.
Yeah.
I don't know what the truth is, Chris.
Well, just to make your point maybe a bit stronger, Matt, and in favor of Zizek, the last time that he's asked the same question, because Aaron Bastani is kind of responding, saying, OK, but let me just be clear what you're saying.
And the third time, I think he gets an answer which points to the...
Nuance that you've been emphasising.
We were saying about, you said on the one hand you're a law and order communist.
Yeah.
But then on the other hand, you're saying that like, what implicit within that for me is that you basically would discard any possibility of change through revolution.
But now you're saying that actually there is change, a different kind of change.
No, no, no, no, no.
I just think we should judge it from case to case.
I was pulled out, attacked all around Germany, really, cover story, for just saying that I unconditionally reject what Hamas did.
And this was not an empty phrase, because my Israeli friends who are left there, close to Palestinians, Told me they knew people in that kibbutz and raving party.
They were the best of Israelis in the sense of how to relate with Arabs.
And it's clear that Hamas' attack on them was destined not so much to win over Israel, but for decades in future to block any chance of peace.
It was a war to make sure that there will not be a peace.
So there I am absolutely unambiguously against Hamas.
What I'm just saying, adding, and for this I was vilified, is not relativizing this attack of Hamas, but inquire into that you cannot even understand it without.
Oh yeah, and Matt, just to say, I looked into this because...
There he's kind of emphasizing that he condemned Hamas and then that this wasn't received well in Germany.
And I was kind of like, what?
And then I looked it up and he gave a opening speech at this book fair in Germany in Frankfurt.
And it was a week or so or two weeks after the attack on October 7th.
And in his speech, he completely condemned Hamas like he just did there.
But he also...
Pointed out the need to consider the historical background and listen to Palestinians and that the Israeli government settlement policy was also partly responsible.
Like, all this, right?
So the interesting thing for me is, in some sense, I think, and this comes through in a whole bunch of the context, lots more examples to play.
He likes annoying the audience that he's talking to.
Like, when he's at a book fair with liberals in Germany, he will...
Condemn Hamas like he did there without reserve, but he will point out the historical issues and the settlement program and that is considered, you know, like both sizing things in that venue.
In this venue, he is very clear to give a very strong condemnation.
Of Hamas and to not justify the violence as like an act of revolutionary violence that he supports.
And this comes through in a whole lot of content that he really likes saying, and I annoyed these people by making this point.
I don't want to stereotype at entire peoples, but I've met Eastern Europeans and I've noticed this about them.
They do enjoy this.
Anyway, he fits with friends of mine in that sense.
That is an enjoyable aspect of his character, and I think that's generally a good thing, right?
Not to be wanting to make people feel comfortable and to have everyone nodding along, but to actually give, not to misrepresent what he thinks, but to give a version of what he thinks that is going to be troubling and cause the people that he's talking to to,
I don't know.
I guess he's hoping to react and reflect or, you know, open their lines a bit more.
I think it actually is part of his philosophy, right, that he will do these transgressive acts to challenge people to recognize their ideology, like how it's functioning, right?
And he might overdo it at times.
I'm not talking about, like, these specific examples.
I've got many more where it's clear that, like...
He regards himself as very provocative and, you know, like, he's constantly mentioning.
It's a little bit like, you know, if you want to be mean, you could say it's a bit like Jordan Peterson and Weinstein constantly talking about how, you know, they're being silenced and cancelled.
But he's more playful with it, but he does throughout this.
And it's actually been in some of the other clips.
He'll constantly say, I'm not allowed to talk to these people.
These people were very annoyed when I said this.
I have many examples that we can move to.
It is a role that he likes, like a cloak that he likes to draw around himself.
Yeah, which is a bit like our other gurus, which is, you know, I keep saying the unacceptable things.
I've disappointed everyone, you know.
And it is, and there's some truth in it, I think, but it is also a shtick.
You know, it's okay, maybe.
But I think where he is a little bit different than some of the gurus who do the same pose is, like, he does go to venues and say things against the dominant ideology of that venue, whereas, like, Brett Weinstein or whatever will go to a heterodox setting and they'll just say,
or an anti-vax setting, and they'll say everything that everybody else there agrees.
So, like, whereas he kind of intentionally...
Creates friction in whichever environment he's in, but in a playful way.
And I've got a really good illustration of this.
Just before you do, Chris, there was something, I don't think you've got clips of it, but there was a topic that's a favourite of his that I wanted to ask you about.
And one of the things he talks about is this idea of transgressive acts and ceremonies within an ideology.
And again, just trying to...
I'm paraphrasing very briefly Zizek's ideas here.
The idea is that a dominant ideology is always going to have these aspects to it which are totally transgressive and inconsistent with its general purported Beliefs and intents.
An example would be the West is all about open markets and promoting freedom and democracy around the world, very much against war and unprovoked aggression, but will quite happily do drone strikes here, there and everywhere and doesn't condemn its allies in various parts of the world for unwarranted.
And so he makes a lot of this, and he talks about hazing rituals as a right of admission to various things.
And I don't know how much empirical truth there is to his ideas, but it did make me think that perhaps the value in someone like Zizek is at least he sort of makes you think.
And I guess one of the things that made me think was just about, it just got me thinking about these transgressive rituals, and I was trying to think of concrete examples.
Is there any, like, To make it, see if there's some truth to it to me.
And it made me think of the communion in the Catholic Church, which always seemed odd to me, right?
Because you have this situation where the parishioners all kneel down, and the priest sticks a little piece of bread, a wafer, in each of their mouths, which they then are told is transmitted into the body of Christ, which they then go on to eat,
right?
Just on the face of it, right, it's transgressive in multiple ways, right?
You shouldn't be eating people.
And, you know, adults sticking food into other people's mouths, it's not really done.
You might feed a baby like that, but it's not something that you do to a person.
And, like, do you think, like, would you, like, you're a scientific sort of scholar of these kinds of things.
Do you see some truth in that?
That these transgressive rituals are kind of necessary and important to the broader...
Ideology.
I don't know.
Yeah, there is a thing called liminal rituals, which Victor Turner was talking about.
And it's a little bit different, that concept, but it's talking about how there's various rituals where status is inverted.
The lower status individuals are able to mock the higher status individuals and all this.
And this serving as like a kind of...
Release of pent-up social frustration.
You need these transgressive acts in order to solidify social harmony, especially when they're in quite hierarchical settings and this kind of thing.
So that is certainly, I think, well attested to, at least in a certain category of rituals.
But that's a bit different than this concept because this is talking about, in the case of the Catholic Eucharist, I feel that...
You could view that as a transgressive ritual, but it's one that's been neutered almost entirely, because now there was and is a theology around that which justifies it, but it's also not really taken in any way as a transgressive act now.
It's been ritualized to the point of there's nobody at...
A mass, like kind of going, oh, you know, oh, I'm eating the blood of Christ.
Yeah, like it doesn't have that frisson, right?
No, I take your point.
But it has, however, that point has not escaped the notice of like Protestant theologians, right?
I can imagine.
Yeah, because one of the issues is like...
The transubstantiation doctrine in the debates between the different sects of Christianity, whether transubstantiation actually occurs or whether it's do this in memory of me.
It's just a ritual reenactment of a ceremony that Jesus did at the last...
Yeah, it can be a bit like reading meaning into the shark, I think, is what you're saying.
You made me think about those transgressive things as a relieving of tension.
A good example would be the stereotypical jester in the court of a king, right?
Henry VIII King.
You know what I mean?
He's the one person who's allowed to be disrespectful, he's allowed to whatever, and everyone has a good laugh.
He might go too far sometimes and get his head cut off.
But I guess it's a broad brush, though, is it?
Or it's a reach to then say that's the same thing as the, like, he'd probably point to, like, the illegal activities of intelligence agencies or covert military operations in a democratic society is kind of necessary to the ideology because it goes against the ideology,
but it's necessary.
And it just seems like a very different...
Well, there's also like, there's an anthropology article, quite famous one by Marvin and Ingle, that was talking about military service and the nation state as operating through blood sacrifice,
like its legitimacy being achieved by the fact that soldiers are willing to die for the defense of the nation.
And this not being presented as like a ritual.
But it has very many of the elements that have, right?
And I think in that respect, you know, it's all in the way that you frame things because there is a way in which being capable of having members of your society willing to die to protect the laws and the rulers of your society can be framed as a blood sacrifice,
right?
And there are ways that nation states do things which are Transgressive of their values, but at the same time are potentially reinforcing their power to project their values.
And that's my thing.
If I imagine Jordan Peterson saying these things and talking about it as being a blood sacrifice and stuff, I'd be like, no.
A simpler explanation for the existence of covert military operations and MI5 and stuff like that is that it's like a practical necessity, hypocritical though it might be.
To the purported principles.
But you can, I think you can get more out of seeing there are various things that like nation states and secular institutions do which are pure pageantry or completely hypocritical of their stated values and like the pure pageantry thing would be an inauguration ceremony.
Why do you have to have that?
And why do you have to have these rituals performed?
Why do you have oaths have to be sworn in a specific way, right?
Like Obama didn't say one line, right?
And he needed to say it right the next day.
And did people think if he didn't say that exactly right, that the power had not transferred, right?
Like, obviously not, but the ritual was important.
So there's that aspect.
And then there's the fact that, you know, various countries, the US chief amongst them, go around promoting.
Democracy and the rule of law, but famously have taken various geopolitical moves where they've supported despotic regimes when it suited their national interests.
And it's absolutely true.
And there are analyses, I think, that you can do of that from philosophical points of view or more interpretive things, which are compelling.
But like you said, I think a lot of it comes down to, OK, but are there less flowery?
Interpretations that also fit the evidence?
And oftentimes the answer is yes.
So I guess I don't know enough about his transgressive acting to see it, but there certainly are transgressive acts in terms of inconsistencies, right?
In all societies and ideologies.
So sure.
That's fair.
I like that answer.
That's good.
Okay.
Well, we'll move to an example of...
Zizek, breaking taboos.
Sorry, I will tell you one in the United States.
I was signing books and a guy told me, please, I like your obscene, dirty jokes.
Please write a dedication to my book as dirty as you can imagine.
I looked at him and said, listen, you are talking to a madman who takes things literally.
You will really get it.
And he said, "Yes, please, yes."
Then he was a fan because I wrote, "Imagine I'm screwing your mother up her ass in a dirty toilet up to her niece in urine."
And then he was mad.
And I warned you, you're talking to a man.
He's mad.
He's crazy.
He's great.
He's good.
Yeah, I kind of like this.
And this was in part because...
They were asking at the start of the interview, he's asking about, you know, how to frame things.
But before it, he's talking about, like, him being extreme and how he's messed up his kids and then goes into talking, you know, about what kind of interview they want them to do.
And that's what led to him telling this anecdote.
But so listen to this.
The way I almost screwed up ruined my two sons.
There, of course, it's another story.
You cannot even imagine being such a liberal as I was in the education.
You know, like I remember this story, once I returned home 20 years ago, my son was doing homework towards the evening.
You know what was my reaction?
How dare you do this?
You are doing homework?
What about the horror movie on the TV?
It will watch itself by itself.
Sorry.
Losing time.
Any other orders?
To what style are you used here?
Like, interrupting, lively conversation, more...
Tell stories if you want.
No, don't say this to a madman.
And then he told that story.
Yeah.
Yeah, you get a sense of Zizek's style.
I think he hams up those stories a little bit, and why not?
But, you know.
Telling his kids not to do their homework.
I've said similar things to my kids, like tongue-in-cheek, because they're pretty studious kids in that.
Yeah, I mean, I've done what he does, which is, you know, just ham up stories a little bit for entertainment value.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think he does like...
Coming across as a bit mad, a bit unpredictable, right?
And he did make this interesting point at the start of the interview, which was counter to my impression of him, Matt.
He said this.
You know that I'm such a horror?
I'm a nightmare through Stalinist.
Never in my life did I dance, sing in public, smoke a cigarette, got drunk, and taste any, even the softest drugs.
You never got drunk?
No.
Really?
You know why?
I'm really a Stalinist, not superficial.
You know what's my idea?
Please.
The world is a dangerous place.
If you get drunk, you want to embrace people, you get kind, and then you don't recognize the attack, you cannot defend itself.
No, we must stay sober, paranoiac, to see where the attack is coming.
That's my, really, that's my spontaneous stance, you know, like...
The paranoid style of Zizek.
Absolutely, absolutely.
The problem is that I don't live up to my own standards.
I can't actually tell that as well.
Maybe it's just my image, because my image is a little bit of him as a drunk madman.
The kind of guy that would be very bohemian in his 20s or 30s or even now, but he says there maybe he doesn't need alcohol or drugs.
But then I can't...
Tell if he's actually being serious because, you know, when he finishes it, the problem is I don't live up to my own expectations.
I'm like, so does that mean he does strike?
I don't know if this is a well-known fact about him or not.
I don't know if it's a well-known fact either, but I find it very plausible that he's a Tito Tala type.
He's an eccentric.
Anything's possible.
And I think he's got a lot going on in his head.
And, yeah, I know people like that.
I think, you know, I think he hams up.
Like again, he says, I'm a Stalinist, I'm a true Stalinist, I'm paranoid, life's so dangerous, you've got to watch out.
So I think he's, but then he undercuts that by saying he doesn't live up to his own rule of paranoia.
And look, I think the main thing is being an eccentric, lovable.
Yeah, yeah, he does.
He makes funny jokes, but he also makes some bad jokes.
See what you think about this.
This is a joke he made about Cuba.
It's on the edge of a bad joke versus a subversive joke.
When I was in Cuba...
I encountered a guy, probably he was a spy, following me, although I was privately there, and I felt his heroism.
He showed me all the poverty he showed me, but his point was, you see.
In spite of all this economic ruin, poverty, we are still faithful to our cause, no?
And then I said, oh, that's why your leader is called Fidel Castro, fidelity to castration.
Like, even if we are castrating ourselves, we are faithful to it, no?
It's horrible.
I really didn't like this in Cuba.
This very perverted pride in, look, our misery and poverty.
It's a proof of our greatness.
You know, that's one type of a left that I believe.
So Fidel Castro, Fidel the Castrician, that was the...
Yeah, the dad joke.
In case you missed that, Matt.
You didn't crack a huge smile.
No, it was all right.
It was okay.
Look, yeah, you get a sense of his style.
That's his style.
It's not annoying.
It's entertaining.
No, no.
Well, it's playful, but I don't know if you...
Describe it as postmodern or whatever, but his playful approach to things shines through in this clip, and I find this endearing.
You're describing Christianity?
Do you think?
What's that?
Really?
Oh, I think Christianity is such a mess.
Okay, let's not lose time.
Let's not lose time.
We're rolling.
Just take it away.
I mean, I'm not going to lose some of that stuff you've already talked about.
Well, you can, whatever.
You know what the most evil thing, the last one, I cannot resist it.
You know what you should do?
Go on.
You should use these clips, but manipulate them so that you use these as...
My answer to a totally different question.
Oh, we do that all the time anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
To make me appear an idiot, no?
You give us consent.
Sorry?
You give us consent to do that.
You know what?
I give you what I call, when I do a video interview, pornography.
I call it a pornography consent, that they can use clips, which means with this, how we discord this?
Deepfax.
Sorry?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that you take a couple of shots of me, you put it on a hardcore and I'm half-dead screwing a lady.
I give you consent for all of this, you know.
Just if you say this sells well, you should give me a small percentage.
We'll give you royalty.
Slavoj Zizek, welcome to Downstream.
I'm proud to be here.
That was all before the interview.
He couldn't stop talking.
He wanted to talk about Christianity.
He didn't care if they were recording or not.
I think he could give him any word and he'd have thoughts and would want to talk about it.
Yeah, yeah.
And just, you know, the thought of being taken out of context and whatnot.
To some extent, it is easy to say.
I think actually intellectuals might take issue if you completely clip them out of context.
But I like his attitude.
I don't think he'd mind that much.
I think for him, it's all part of the game.
Yeah, I think his style is one that just, I don't know.
Well, you know, we've heard him a couple of times mention Everybody knows this,
but one has to emphasize, we live in dangerous times and precisely in such times, thinking is needed.
People are totally wrong who think now times are quiet.
No, then you are too lazy to think.
In the situations of urgency, which is today's situation at different levels, I think, this is what makes many traditional Marxists hate me, I think the time is to turn around Marxist theories.
11. It's not philosophers have only interpreted the world, we have to change it.
It's maybe in the 20th century.
We tried to change the world too fast without really understanding it.
The time is to interpret, understand the world.
So that's why I am glad to be here, even if I will not, maybe.
Convince many people.
I hope I will make them reflect.
He talked about a lot of other things there, but that last point as well about, you know, even if he doesn't convince people, he hopes he makes them reflect.
That kind of aligns with a lot of his philosophical...
Positions, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I think there was another ancient philosopher.
There was a guy like, I don't know, he lived in a barrel or something.
He was in a barrel in Athens.
Oh, yeah, the barrel guy.
The barrel guy in Athens, that guy.
He was a bit like that, wasn't he?
You know, he's kind of trying to jolt people out of complacency and to actually exercise their brains and reconsider things.
Zizek seems to be all about that.
He's not...
You know, yes, he has some philosophical ideas that he returns to, but I think mainly he wants to jolt people and get them to engage and, yeah, get them to think, which is, you know, that seems like a good thing.
As you said, yes, so the Marxists don't like him because he thinks, you know, Marxists need to think more as well.
Well, that last point that he was getting on leads into this position he has of...
Presenting himself as a moderate conservative communist, right?
So we covered this a little bit earlier when he was, you know, discussing the rule of revolution.
But here's him, like, sticking out that position a bit more clearly.
Something that was originally a good idea, almost with a kind of a necessity as a rule, turns wrong.
You have French Revolution, freedom, bloop.
Terror.
You get October Revolution, in spite of all problematic things that Lenin did.
At the beginning, no, it was not just, as some people think, a Bolshevik coup d 'etat.
It was a very popular movement.
Ten years on, you get Comrade Stalin, nightmare embodied.
You know, don't we need a lot this?
Today, this not simply pessimist spirit, but what I, without shame, call moderate conservative spirit.
By this, I mean, I'm still a communist, but you can use this.
I repeat it all the time.
Moderately conservative communist.
Yes, communist, which means for me...
Obviously, we're in deep crisis, radical measures will be needed.
But at the same time, this is what I admire with intelligent, moderate conservatives.
Think well how things can turn wrong.
Yes.
So annoying conservatives, annoying Marxists.
They're killing two birds with the one stone, really, with that label.
And he's a moderate conservative.
Marxist, which isn't a contradiction.
I think Ray Lanz is a moderate progressive.
I think that's where that averages out to.
But he would hate to think that, because that's not interesting.
Much more interesting to be a conservative communist, right?
Yeah, and I can play clips that speak to which conclusions he reaches.
Before we get to those, to give him his credit, Matt, as somebody with, like, a potentially edgy or provocative view of the world, sort of, you could say, nihilist.
He hears him talking about the perception of the future and how things are going to go.
Let's be frank here.
I have no illusions about democracy.
The way we know it, it's maybe coming to an end, but I always emphasize in this book, in other books, that...
Democracy are not just the written rules.
There is no democracy without unwritten, silent rules that you have to obey and so on.
And this is simply breaking down in the United States.
You have now a guy who openly formulates disrespect for constitution, for parliamentary democratic system and so on, and who is the Speaker of the House.
You have Donald Trump openly advocating public disorder and
I think all this talk about the end of the American empire is predominantly A matter of what happens in America itself.
And what really worries me is that in different forms, it's happening all around the world.
I think he's on point there.
Would you agree with him, Chris?
I think that he's right that democracy isn't just like a set of rules and procedures.
It is like a culture.
And that culture can atrophy just through, like, boredom or disinterest or cynicism or Donald Trump for a number of reasons.
And I think he's also right, and probably the main worry that most people have about the United States today is not so much some foreign threat.
It's kind of overpowered when it comes to geopolitical things, but it's sort of the internal state that is concerning.
So I think most people would agree with him there.
Nothing too controversial, really.
Well, I think I remember that clip as him more predicting the fall of the world in the future, but I think that might come up in the near future.
A lot of people are doing that these days, Chris.
But there is some, I think, you know, like you say, you could label it progressive or you could label it communist, I suppose.
I don't know exactly because he has a lot of criticisms of the state, but it's nuanced because there are defenses of internationalism and whatnot.
But anyway, here's him talking a little bit about how modern states are responsible for a lot of bad things.
Look at Turkey.
All the horrors that they did, the Armenian genocide and so on.
It was not done by old conservative Turks.
It was done by young Turks who wanted to change Turkey into a modern sovereign nation state.
Look at China.
I read wonderful analysis by Chinese half-dissidents, guys who want to be a Marxist but are with one leg already in prison, to put it like this, who says that the problem today with China, although they like to emphasize we are more than nation-state,
we are a civilization, no, de facto they are now obsessed with becoming a large nation-state.
That's why they want to Sinify.
Sinify, yes, sorry.
Sinify Uighurs, Muslims there, or Tibetans, and so on.
Is not Modi doing the same?
Erase the Muslims.
There I'm absolutely pro-Muslim in India.
I was even advised, like, not to travel to India now.
It's dangerous for me.
I think that today, precisely, isn't it clear that all the problems that we have can only be solved in some kind of global approach?
You cannot solve ecological threats by this state is doing this in another sovereign state.
No.
We will be compelled to develop mechanisms which will have a status of Not just a matter of choice, but which will be able measures to overwrite,
how do you call it, cancel over the interests of the individual sovereign states.
I don't see another solution.
Sorry.
I think he's right on the money there, Chris.
Actually, what he's saying there about the somewhat pernicious nature of nationalism, it absolutely reflects everything I've read recently over the last five years in modern history.
When the big empires and or colonial domination, ranging from Turkey to Iraq to all of the European empires, when they crumble, as the European ones did say in the 19th century, And you had a lot of groups,
national groups, gaining a sense of national identity and then aiming for self-determination.
And generally, looking back at, say, a country like Greece, right, which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, the national crusade for independence is generally considered to be a good thing.
But what he's pointing out is it's a double-edged sword, right?
All of those national identities often have a...
I don't know, what's the word for it?
An ethnic or religious or an identitarian aspect to it.
Ethno-nationalist.
Ethno-nationalism.
So, you know, you saw it in India with the petition.
You saw it in Iraq when the sort of the rule of the Ba 'athists came to an end.
So, you know, it really is a double-edged sword.
Like, it's good to overthrow empires and self-determination, etc.
That's nice.
But it often leads to bad things.
So, yeah, I'm with him.
I think we do need international solutions because a bunch of nation states badgering up against each other, it's multilateralism, Chris.
I know he's taking an internationalist perspective in a way, but it's not based on global workers' unity.
So that's a sort of interesting...
No, it should be concerning to him.
It should be concerning to Zizek that his political views are so comfortable for a normie like me to endorse.
That should be concerning.
He also made a claim, I realize I'm just sensitive to this because of where I'm biased, right?
But listen to this thing he made about Fukushima.
It relates to this point.
My good friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a great French theorist of catastrophe, was in...
Fukushima, or rather Tokyo, as a special delegate from the European Union, three days after the catastrophe.
And he told me for one day, Japanese authorities were in a panic.
It looked that they will have to evacuate the whole Tokyo area, 30 million people.
Where to put them?
In a rational world order?
The answer is clear.
There are now, with global warming, waste, vast land...
Where hundreds of millions of people literally can settle in Siberia.
In old times there were such crises.
You solve them with the war.
Today we cannot.
It means self-destruction because of nuclear arms and so on.
We have to get ready for emergency state.
I'm not saying be in a panic.
I'm just saying get ready.
The thing that's strange there for me, Matt, is I don't dispute that his friend, the French theorist of catastrophe, was in Japan after the disaster.
But the notion that Tokyo was going to be evacuated, like, one, Tokyo is up about 150 miles, over 200 kilometers from Fukushima,
right?
So, like, if that happened, for that...
It would have had to be a cascade of nuclear reactors going.
And there was one, like, disaster planning, you know, absolute worst-case scenario where they talked about that happening.
But it wasn't, like, properly considered.
And even if it was, he kind of presents it like, well, we'd have to, you know, take them to Siberia or whatever.
But, like, why wouldn't they just go?
Somewhere else in Japan, temporarily.
Like, you know, Japan has quite a lot of low-density inhabited areas.
You know, they're typically marked in this or whatnot.
But just like, you know, it's just like, I don't entirely understand the logic of the argument there.
Like, we would have to have an internationalist response to the nuclear...
Power plant?
Cascade?
If there was a cascade meltdown across one country?
Yeah, anyway, I just find that kind of weird jumps in reasoning.
It's perhaps not a good example, but I guess he's saying there can be, you know, more generally, he's saying...
Like global warming is a better example.
Yeah, just remind me of this segment because I forget what he was arguing for here.
But was he saying simply that we're going to be facing problems that are going to need multinational solution?
Like a country might be drying up, for instance, and have no water.
Countries might no longer be self-sufficient in terms of dealing with their own problems.
Yeah, that is kind of what he's saying.
It links to a broader section where he's talking about his predictions for the future and whether he's pessimistic or optimistic.
And he wants to argue that Yeah, and I guess this is in line, actually, with a lot of just progressive points of view, that what's on the rise everywhere is fascism.
That's what's happening.
So, well, I'll just play a clip of him outlining this perspective.
I think Chinese communism, there is even a direct link, again, with the fascist tradition.
And I think...
This is the main threat which has different forums.
Putin, India, Modi, one forum.
Western European forum, American forum, even in Latin America and so on.
And now to go to the end, I'm desperate because what is happening?
Two days ago when I...
I had a debate at that Royal Institute.
I was sitting on the same chair, maybe.
No, it was that Faraday was sitting here.
A guy asked me a nice cynical question, but it deeply affected me.
It was the right question.
He said, but you are just saying to young people, there is no hope.
We are fucked up.
But he said, but look, you are old, you will soon die.
It doesn't matter to you.
But look, and he showed all the young people in their 20s, you can't say them to this, taking hope from them.
Then I think I found a good counterpoint reply.
It was this one.
How do you mean this reproach?
Do you mean it in a moral sense, in the sense of, even if you are right in your analysis, You should lie as if there is hope, not to disappoint young people.
Or do you mean there is hope?
And we didn't have time.
We concluded with...
Well, so, I've set it up, Matt.
I need to provide the punchline.
So he was asked, and he was kind of talking about his pessimistic view, and he said, now what about, come on, give us some hope, and then...
The only one that I can offer is what Max Horkheimer, one of the fathers of Frankfurt School, said very nicely, that in these desperate times, the position of leftists should be pessimism in theory, optimism in practice.
Pessimism, yes, our world is coming to an end and I am afraid to Provide an opposition, like, sorry, a clear alternative.
Like some of my friends, that's where I lost the thread before, are not only David Graeber, many others are neo-anarchists.
No, I don't buy this.
Because I think that the world is crying today for demanding global...
Mechanisms.
And it's too utopian to think, you know, from local initiatives, they will come together and so on.
So I just grab any opportunity that I can.
There is a movement here, a movement there.
I have links in Philippines.
I have links in Turkey.
I supported series here, there.
Boned or what?
I forgot.
Yeah, so you heard that the world is coming to an end, but he said pessimism in theory, which is pretty accurate of like leftist and Marxist theory in a way, you know, utopian, but essentially everything is fucked until we get there.
And then, but optimism in practice.
So he remains optimistic and like, you know, work.
Reaches out for things that he can support and campaigns and that kind of thing.
So, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's fine.
I guess I don't find these discussions about are we doomed or is there hope?
I mean, I just find those questions a bit stupid and you have to act as though...
Good things are possible.
So what's the point of having a pessimistic theory if you're going to be optimistic in practice, I suppose?
What is the theory doing?
Makes you more edgy, Matt.
Makes you more edgy.
But as we were talking about, what that boils down to is support initiatives that you think are helping people and doing genuinely good things.
In the world, political movements that you value, even if you think the world's going to end in five years.
And he talks about the need for international cooperation to deal with a disaster that a country can't handle.
I've got a clip that speaks to this.
I can highlight it for you.
My advice or what to do is, let's say, if I were to be in government in a relatively prosperous Western country.
What would be my advice, or if I'm in government, my practice?
A modest one.
First comes my moderately conservative side, you know.
Yes, fight for freedom, but with a nonetheless leftist twist, which means this is the lesson of Socialism that I still keep.
Not this Stalinist bullshit, formal freedom versus actual freedom.
No, freedom is a form, sorry.
Freedom is formal freedom or it doesn't exist.
But what socialism did taught us is that freedom to be actual needs certain material conditions.
For example, universal healthcare.
I don't buy this right liberal argumentation, it enslaves you.
No, life is much more free if you are aware that if I get seriously ill, cancer, blah, blah, some social state mechanism will take care of that.
So, this is something I encounter.
Quite a lot with online leftists.
In this case, he's not, you know, he's a conservative communist or whatever, moderate communist, so maybe that's on board.
So the recommendation is welfare states, right?
Yeah, which I'm totally on board to reply.
Which we have in many parts of the world, and we don't think of ourselves as Marxists.
Yeah, like underneath the edgy posturing is very reasonable and a moderate thing that I fully would support.
So yeah, there's an interesting dichotomy there.
I mean, we're not judging the politics.
It's not our job.
It's just pointing out that where he kind of lands is somewhere that virtually every...
Moderate Progressive is on board with.
You can say, not judging the politics, Matt, I will just say, I'm pretty full of welfare states, but I don't think it's only something that applies in communist things.
I am judging the edgy pose there.
But what you're judging is the pose versus the reality, right?
Yeah, but I'm still saying, in my judgment, Well, for states that have health care, if not entirely covered, at least, you know, partly supplemented by the state, are good things.
Well, yeah, that's my stance.
That's my opinion, too.
It's just our opinions don't really matter for these purposes.
We're just pointing out that he's voicing...
Very moderate, very reasonable things.
If we agree with that, it's fairly moderate.
The vast majority of Australians would be on board.
Not just us, my compatriots too.
Yeah.
I mean, I was just pointing out some causal optimism there because he was talking about, you know, the problem with nation states, that they can't be self-sufficient and we need international solutions.
And he's right, in my opinion.
Global warming is the biggest one and most obvious.
But, you know, I was looking at the number of refugees that...
I'm currently living in other countries from Syria and Ukraine.
And it's about 5 million from Syria and about 6.5 from Ukraine.
Now, obviously, the world could do a much, much better job generally when it comes to refugees.
But that's a lot of people.
And, you know, like to some degree, there is international support for...
Countries having national problems, essentially, or the people in those countries.
Yes, a lot.
Many people would say enough, but nonetheless, yes.
And he does also, on that point, Matt, speak specifically about Ukraine and sensibly.
Sensibly about Ukraine.
So here's a clip of that.
My God.
I don't 100% agree with Varoufakis.
You quit says him a few times in the book, huh?
Yeah, but no, I have now some problems with it because he was, for my taste, too much into this slightly anti-Ukrainian.
Right.
No, no, I think I resist calls for peace there.
It's horrible for some leftists.
That's where I lose my fame.
Because, you know, let's be concrete.
Isn't it that today to say Ukraine needs peace means it's strict?
Exactly equivalent to saying Russia should be allowed to keep what it occupied.
But I suppose the question is then, what if Ukraine can't win?
If you think that Ukraine can't win, which is a reasonable position, one can agree or disagree, but if they can't win, then clearly it's going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement.
But the first thing to do, I hope you agree, is to recognize, that's my answer to guys who ask this question, that, but are we...
Aware that Ukraine at least didn't lose only because of our help to have this position now kind of a World War I stalemate.
It's precisely because we were helping Ukraine.
So at least retroactively, all those who are for peace should acknowledge that we are in this position to say at least Ukraine have a...
Chance to survive only because we were helping Ukraine.
You can hear him get quite passionate about this.
Yeah, he should talk to Robert Wright.
Yeah, and he's being interviewed by someone who is more conventionally left-wing than he is.
No, not left-wing.
Leftist.
More conventionally leftist.
I've got to get my labels correct.
I'm not down with them all.
So yeah, I mean, you know, I like him.
I like his opinions because they...
Basically, conform with my own.
Let's be honest.
Even in that case, though, Matt, here, the thing is that he's perfectly willing to, you know, go against the Korean, right?
And be like, no, we supported your Korean.
That was what gave them, you know, even the ability to sue for peace.
So, like, let's not bid around the bullshit.
Like, he does not shy away from hammering.
You mentioned Russia-Ukraine.
What's the correct position for a leftist on Russia-Ukraine then?
Because I read an amazing piece in Time magazine recently.
The average person on the front line for Ukraine now is 43 years old.
There's clearly a military stalemate.
So what's the correct position?
It's extremely difficult, I think.
But you know where I am a pessimist?
I think that Ukraine needs our support.
At least to maintain this stalemate.
I think it's too risky to say, OK, it's a stalemate, let's stop supporting Ukraine.
That's a permanent war.
So it should be like Syria.
OK, but now I will...
OK, but...
There's no easy options, I'm just saying.
That's what you're proposing.
Yeah, but what is the alternative?
If you simply stop supporting Ukraine.
I'm not suggesting that.
I don't know.
But you're saying, rather than a negotiated settlement, which I agree, like it wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on.
Fine.
And it goes on a bit, right?
But just, it is interesting because Zizek is very clear on that, that like, yeah, if you're saying stop supporting, you know, the permanent war or whatever, what you actually mean is force your Korean.
To surrender to Russia, or at least surrender some of its territory to Russia.
And yeah, I like that.
Because one thing that is true, and I think it is because he's an European, I might be putting too much on that, but I don't think so, is that his stance is very much, well, the Ukrainians decide.
When to stop fighting and what to do.
And our choice is just support them or don't.
That's it.
We don't get to tell them when to stop fighting.
Yeah, I agree.
I think it could well be that his European background informs his clarity there.
Certainly all of the foreign affairs type interviews that I've listened to with...
People from that area near Russia, whether it's Finland or one of the Baltic Republics or Poland or wherever, they have a very similar vibe.
They don't sort of, they don't sound very much like Robert Wright.
They sound more like Slavoj Zizek.
Yeah, yeah.
And just to go a little bit further on this, he is critical of the leftists who are reactive.
Anti-imperialists, you know, knee-jerk anti-imperialists.
So he has a little bit of a complaint about them.
What I'm saying is that in this case, concretely, I don't think violence helps.
It can bring a catastrophe to all sides, to Jews also.
My fear is this one, that because of what Israel now is doing in Gaza, This will give a new push, everybody knows this, I'm not saying anything original, to anti-Semitism all around the world.
Let's be frank, till now anti-Semitism was more or less limited, not quite, but let's say to European and Middle East world.
Now we live in what with horror I call unholy alliances.
For example, example I repeat all the time, Uganda, you know this, they now established a law with absolute majority, only one member of parliament abstained, to criminalizing homosexuality in a crazy way if you are caught in a homosexual act.
You can be put to death and so on.
But you know how they justified it?
That this is a struggle against ideology of colonialism, homosexuality.
So what I am afraid is that, and this is what Putin is aiming at, is to create a kind of a very perverted anti-Western coalition where, again, to be against feminism will be part of anti-colonial struggle.
To advocate the prohibition of homosexuality will be to fight against imperialism.
And the same with anti-Semitism.
And this makes me so scared.
So, he was talking about the Israel-Gaza conflict, and he does quite...
Strongly condemn the attacks of Hamas, but he's also talking about, you know, Israel's reaction and being critical about it.
Like I said, it was something that got him in trouble in a speech that he gave in Frankfurt, even before, you know, the conflict in Gaza had ignited in the way that it has now.
But here, he is saying that, you know, taking an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist pose can be very useful for regimes, and we shouldn't be so naive to just be assuming anybody that...
Present as like being against the West is actually doing a good thing.
I guess that political take is consistent with his philosophy, which is that ideology generally can serve as a bit of a, like an empty space that you can fill with any number of pernicious things.
And there is a nice, well not a nice, an ugly symmetry there between, say, Putin's Russia.
Appealing to Western reactionaries by saying that what it's really about is Christian family values.
And, you know, you get similar arguments from people that say support, I'm just picking a random example here, the Iranian regime's treatment.
Of women who don't conform to the pretty strict laws there as being, if you're criticizing that, then you're, you know, imperialist foisting your things on the people.
So it's just to say that, yeah, that ideological rhetoric is very amorphous.
No, change.
What do I mean by you can sculpt it like clay?
Playable.
Yeah, that'll do.
That'll do.
So, yeah, I think, you know, he generally makes, like, you know, these are just his political opinions, you know, opinions about this, that and the other, but none of them sound ridiculous to our ears anyway.
No, and there is a little bit of a mix.
There's parts where he sounds like a centrist, liberal person.
There's parts where he sounds like a more revolutionary, leftist, communist type.
And he does talk about the UK having no left-wing party.
Here in the UK, I simplify it up to the utmost.
But you probably noticed that you no longer have a leftist party.
You have a moderate.
Moderate Conservative Party, it's called Labour Party, no?
Yeah, they're the centre-right party now, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you have extreme freakish right-wingers, you know?
And the problem is that...
These extremely freakish right-wingers are, maybe they will even continue.
Who knows what will happen with Farage and so on and so on.
You have in France similar tendency, in Germany, alternative for Germany growing and so on and so on.
So I think it's the tendency today, it's towards, I'm still afraid to use the term, but towards a kind of a, I don't have a concept,
but a kind of a new form of fascism, fascist capitalism.
Not fascism necessarily in that Nazi sense, but in the sense of strong nation.
You know, like the general leftist take that Labour is just like a centre-right party now and there's an extreme-right Tory party.
He says that.
And just to put a cap on his analysis about where things are heading and some of the commentary he made about nation-states, here's him talking a little bit about...
China and, you know, Aaron Bassani is raising the point about nation states and the ideology sometimes being necessary as a counter-hegemonic force, like if you want independence movements and that kind of thing.
So the idea that you're resisting a greater power, well, how did you do that?
Often you mobilise through...
The idea of nation, shared language.
That's a mega problem.
That's what I would call in this cheap TV shows way a one million dollar winning question, you know.
And I think there are options.
I don't agree with the predominant answer today, which is after the Soviet-style communism was discredited.
Even in China, now to tease you a little bit more, I got now, no wonder I'm half prohibited in China now because I read some books, they are more right-wing, but they make a point that the secret of what is happening now in China is that What Deng Xiaoping really did is to change China,
to put it in brutal simplistic terms, from communism to fascism.
Fascism means, in contrast to communism, where you nationalize economy, you allow a certain degree of free market economy, but you have a strong nation state, one party, non-democratic state, to control it,
and so on and so on.
I don't like to call it the old fascism, because it's not as simple as that, but something which nonetheless adopts this idea of basic fascism, which is what?
Conservative modernization.
We need capitalist dynamics, which is the only one that works, but we need to control it, and to control it you turn to your own national tradition.
With the small caveat that, like, I kind of agree with the rest of history folks that, you know, technically, being pedantic, fascism refers to a very specific kind of thing that pretty much were localized in the 1930s.
It's a bit expanded on the leftist side of the political spectrum.
That's true.
But I'm quite happy to work with an alternative expanded definition.
And the one that he describes there, which is you combine...
Kind of capitalist economy with strong state control and the one-party system is justified by, you know, an appeal to that blood and soil ethno-nationalism.
That's not a bad broader definition of something that is kind of a bit ugly.
Well, I think the interesting point to note, again, is this is certainly not tanky territory, right?
This is not apologetics for China.
This is...
Calling China, like, essentially that it's imported fascism into a communist structure, you know, which this would not be a very nice comparison, but I'm thinking about, you know, James Lindsay talking about Turducken or whatever,
where he was saying, like, it's communism with a fascism inside it, and he said it much less elegantly and is a moron, but I'm just pointing out that there are other people that have...
Well, yeah, but like you said, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?
At least, I think so.
Yeah, yeah, but not in the tanky side of the spectrum.
Not in the tanky world.
Hashtag not all Marxists, Chris.
Hashtag down with all tankies.
So, yeah.
Well, lastly, Matt, last clip, I'll play him going back to philosophical mode.
And this is Aaron Bassani pushing him a bit more about, aren't you being too critical about revolutions?
And what are you actually asking for?
And I like his response here.
So when you hear the catchphrase, which is from 68, of course, demand the impossible.
You say, no, do not demand the impossible.
Demand the very possible.
I would, again, as a philosopher, I like to complicate things.
I would say like this: what do we mean by impossible?
My first reaction to this point is to focus on what counts as possible and what counts as impossible.
It's not as clear as it may appear.
Listen, today we are Perceiving as possible this singularity, artificial intelligence, we will lose our individual mind, blah, blah, that's possible.
But till the epidemic, to raise taxes for 2%, oh, it would ruin our economy, it's impossible.
If there is one good lesson from the epidemic is that there were a lot of measures, like billions distributed to ordinary people, almost In a communist way, Trump had to act as a communist.
You remember, every family got a check for Trump.
So, you know, first, let's be very specific what we consider as possible or as impossible in a certain situation.
He did that much better than Jordan Peterson.
It depends what you mean by impossible, but he actually did, you know, like a proper philosopher.
Yeah, he did a proper nuanced kind of reversal.
And yeah, okay, so to summarize, to reprise, I think he's against the kind of romantic, you know, achieve the impossible, that kind of utopianism, because it's not pragmatic.
Like in real terms, you should be trying to accomplish things that are possible, just logically speaking.
But, he correctly says, it's a very common rhetorical technique for people that don't want change to say, such and such is not possible, such and such is not possible, and they try to constrain the realm of the possible.
So, he nuances it.
And, yeah, I don't think anyone would disagree with him there.
I like that.
Does it well?
Yeah.
So, in broad pictures for me, Zizek is somebody that likes...
Yeah, law and order, communist, or just playful provocateur.
And I think he is all of those things.
He also does make these leaps.
He has the problems which lots of philosophers have where they're very good at thought experiments and, you know, like we just heard, giving good illustrative examples and making you think through things.
But also, they don't really approach things in a sense.
Or in an evidence-based way.
They don't look for disconfirming.
Disconfirming examples, especially in his cultural interpretive stuff is not there.
But he wouldn't claim otherwise, I don't think.
So I appreciate him for what he is.
I like just the incongruous nature of him snuffling around a stage beside Jordan Peterson in a suit.
And he's clearly a very smart guy.
There's clear...
Depth to him.
And, you know, you can agree or disagree with his positions.
But I think that's the point that, like, he's perfectly fine with that.
And he likes, you know, posing questions of he, to me, is kind of what philosophers are supposed to be, in a way.
And, yeah, I don't take much issue, even though, you know, it depends which version of his politics you land on.
But, like, he would certainly not say he's just a moderate liberal.
But I don't find him very objectionable and lots of the things he advocates for, so maybe that makes me!
A moderate conservative communist.
There you go.
We're Marxists too.
So, yeah, that would be better rather than making him out to be a boring, milquetoast moderate.
But let's all be sexy.
Yeah, Zizek and sexy.
Well, yeah, those two words don't go together.
But, yeah, like we said at the beginning, we went on a bit of a journey with Zizek from finding him annoying and frustrating and things, you know, just mainly those wafflings.
The cultural criticism and analyzing movies in that way, I'm not a huge fan of it.
I don't mind people doing it recreationally, but I don't think you can build a philosophy out of those sorts of observations.
On the other hand, when I did some reading about his philosophy, it all seemed kind of fine and relatively interesting.
A lot of the time, like we got to at the end here, he's just a guy with opinions.
He's doing social commentary, he's doing political commentary, he's answering questions about what he thinks is going to happen next.
And what do you think about this issue?
And, you know, the answers he gives are quite good ones.
So, you know, I wouldn't be concerned if your younger brother was a fan of Zizek.
He's cool.
He's all right.
Yeah, well, but I think he does come close to fitting the secular guru mold in a whole bunch of...
There are a few red flags.
Sorry to interrupt, Chris, but I'm sure you'll think of more.
But one of the ones was, of course, this making out that everyone hates him, that he's an iconoclast, that he's different.
Yeah, yeah.
And I just haven't encountered much Zizek hate out there.
There's a lot of Destiny hate out there.
I mean, he's someone who can claim that he's roundly hated by many people.
But Zizek, have you seen it?
Are there Zizek haters?
I mean, he does get controversy from time to time for statements he made.
Like I seen a clip of him saying the N-word.
A bit like Destiny.
Oh. In a way, not like that.
Yeah, but I think it is true to say he's loved by a wide array of people.
And I mean, Jacobin just did a big in-depth article in this new book and was like, you know, you shouldn't not take Zizek seriously, right?
And it's a book which is calling for an atheist Christianity or a secular...
Christianity or whatever.
So like, yeah, I think he is more popular than he likes to let on.
But yeah, that's fine.
He likes being an iconoclast.
And that is a part of the secular guru pose, you know, presenting ideas which are not that revolutionary as being, you know, dramatic and hugely significant.
But, you know, these are relatively minor sins.
And I think he does have...
Interesting ideas, interesting to take something, novel perspectives.
And so, you know, he's an intellectual and he's a cultural critic and he's a philosopher and he is all of those things.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And like you said, he likes to throw bombs.
And I think he's trying to jolt people into, he wants to jolt people out of their ideology, whatever it is, and to get them to consider it critically.
And even when, like, I don't really buy his ideas.
For instance, as we talked about, I don't really buy the sort of big picture version of the importance of transgressive acts or whatever.
Like, it didn't sort of connect for me.
Just thinking about that idea just made me think about just weird things that go on, like the Eucharist and stuff.
I can think of the one thing which really puts him out of the worst of the secular category is that he is not posing as someone Who pokes fun at himself and doesn't take himself seriously.
He does do that.
He legitimately is self-deprecating and acknowledges how contradictory he can be and whatnot.
And that unwillingness to treat himself as a very important intellectual, that is the opposite of the secular guru pose.
It's the opposite of that narcissistic, precious, thin-skinned thing that we see amongst almost...
All the toxic gurus.
He is so self-deprecatory and in a genuine way and does not take himself so seriously.
And that gets a big thumbs up from us.
And like I said, Chris, we try to be liberal towards people with a variety of different ideas, espousing different things, and if they are what they say they are.
And Zizek definitely is, as far as we can tell.
So that's good.
Yeah, it's just that he's a bit contradictory in what he is, but he will acknowledge that, and that's fine.
Well, we'll leave CZC there and let him dance off into the distance.
But before we finish today, Matt, there's just one review I have to read, and I've been saving it up.
And then I have to give shout-outs to some long-overdue patrons, but I'll make it all quick.
But this review is just brilliant.
It's one out of five, and the title is The Worst Type of Bad Faith Actors by DiPablo from Australia.
Matt, you're negative.
Worst Type of Bad Faith Actors.
Yeah, and we'll see that indeed he is from Australia.
This will be hard for people to follow, but just try and stick with it.
A waste of time for listeners.
Bracket.
Unless you derive enjoyment from hearing the Aussie bloke get triggered and like witnessing someone trying to suppress his contempt for people.
Close bracket.
Mission failed, mate.
We can hear it loud and clear.
Do you guys ever pinch yourselves and think, how did that person agree to give us any time?
Wind the clock back 10 years before pods at all, and you'd still be at university and working at Kohl's Vermin Shopping Centre, lamenting how hard it is to make it in a real career, as previous posters have requested.
Please don't waste the time of actual legitimate intellectuals on your foodie show.
Anyway, boys, good luck getting that resume dusted off, and remember to ask mum if she has your old boss from Kmart Endeavour Hills For a reference.
Ask my mom.
Read that last part.
For your old boss from Kmart Endeavor Hills phone number for reference.
So to get a reference from your old boss from Kmart Endeavor Hills.
Yeah.
Now, when I read this, Matt, I was like, is this some disgruntled ex-colleague of Matt's?
Like, what is all this weird Australian lingo about?
Ex-bosses at Kmart Endeavor Hills and Colmont's Vermin Shopping Center.
Can you give me the decoder key?
Is this your colleague that you wronged in a previous life?
Okay, well, I'm going to state here definitively that I've never worked at Kmart Endeavor Hills or the other thing he mentioned.
In fact, none of those details are correct.
So the only thing...
What are they?
Well, Kmart is like a big box store.
Oh, like you'd be a self-check or something.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
So he's naming names, he's naming places.
So I think what's happened is he's done a Google search and he's found a Matthew Brown somewhere in Australia who has worked at these places or gone to these things.
And he thinks he's doxed me.
And he's dropping in like kind of, you know, I know who you are, science.
Well, that's interesting because there was one thing that I didn't entirely get Ehler was he referred to us as getting legitimate intellectuals on our foodie show, right?
Foodie?
Yeah, football.
Yeah, that's what I took it as.
But I was like, what's that mean?
Like we kick the ball back and forth?
But I didn't really get it.
But there is that.
There is a referee in the Premier League called Chris Cavanaugh.
So, like, it could be based on what you're saying.
He also...
He thinks that you're Chris Cavanaugh, the referee.
Well, I don't know.
Otherwise, I don't understand that reference.
Like, what's our foodie show?
Like, it's, you know...
So, he thinks Chris Cavanaugh, the referee, is moonlighting as a Decoding the Guru's co-host and that I've got a background that came out.
This is the laziest doxxer.
That has ever existed.
You know, the amazing thing is it's really not that hard to find out information if you wanted, right?
Because, like, there's even these episodes where we laid it all out for you, like our previous careers.
But, yeah, so, like, I've worked in...
I worked at the Marks and Spencers.
I worked at the Shop Electric.
I worked at the Kohl Center.
I've worked in many fairly crappy places, but yeah, just you, Matt, 10 years ago, you weren't stuck in shelves in Vermont hills.
I had a very short and unsuccessful career as a pizza delivery driver and as a landscaper, both of which I was temperamentally and mentally and physically unsuited to.
I got lost delivering the pizzas and then they'd get cold and people would be upset and landscaping is like...
Really hard.
Yeah, I don't even really get it.
The contempt for people we're interviewing.
Probably what this is.
Freaking Sam Harris fan.
Mental.
He's very upset that we asked him questions.
I'm going to take exception to another point he made at the beginning, which is saying that we haven't done a good job.
In attempting to hide our contempt.
Well, I haven't done a good job at hiding my contempt for people.
My contempt is much more than you hear.
And I'm not attempting to hide it.
I hope my contempt for certain people is coming through loud and clear.
I haven't made any attempt.
So that's low-quality criticism.
Mate.
And that was directed at you.
Yeah, because like at me, you know, I am restraining my contempt.
And I'm yet still self-evident.
So, yeah, that's the case.
But what can we do, Matt?
You can't keep everyone.
I just find this kind of bizarre because it struck me as, you know, a personal attack on you.
But it turns out...
It is just a generic attack.
I think it's also implying that you'll have to go back to working there, but yeah, whatever.
I'm not going back.
What would your boss say if he heard?
Okay, Matt.
And then the very last thing, you know...
Shoutouts.
I'm working on my way through them.
I'm getting back.
But I asked people on the Patreon who I'd missed, you know, to give me their names, so I'll shout them out.
So I'm going to shout out a whole bunch of them.
And I don't know which level they're at because, you know, they obviously didn't put that in where they were saying their names.
But look, we care about them all equally, so...
It doesn't matter.
I'm going to give them all the Galaxy Brain ding at the end of it.
So here we go.
Thank you to Colin Fardy, Andreas Haukenins, Oh dear.
Sam Mountjoy, Hustletron9000, Hugh Denton, Jacob3BP, Sam McEloid, Sari SarksyDallam, Pitiful Noob, Sigrun Underdal Borlaug, IDW
Dinner Club, Shomagerider, Minotaurus Rex, Jacob Lincoln, Dr. Wallabong,
And I'll stop there for this time.
And Julie Greshna, who I missed.
So yeah, sent nice photos.
Thank you, Julie, for the support.
So there we go.
And they all get...
The galaxy brain thing, Matt.
They've made it.
Regardless of your level, you're all galaxy brains to us.
We tried to warn people.
Yeah.
Like what was coming, how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and in everything.
Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense.
I have no tribe.
I'm in exile.
Think again, sunshine.
Yeah.
Moink!
I'm going to add in a special little moink here for people, Matt.
Just right here.
My favorite bit, though, is that we saw it coming.
It was going to be in everything and everywhere.
All at once.
Yeah, that 2040 me.
Talking to 2020 me.
Yeah, that was...
I actually have to go back and...
New listeners, go back to that content.
Michael O 'Fallon.
Champagne DTG.
Yes, that's right.
Well, that was good shouting out, Chris.
Once again, you practiced equal opportunity mispronunciation.
All people and cultures suffered equally, which is a credit to you, really.
I also know that that edgy username is a testy fan.
I'll say that with confidence.
Oh, dear.
Yeah, that's...
You guys, this is why people...
This is why people don't like you.
It's that kind of language.
You've got to take your edginess down.
Come on, Lime.
Come on.
My mother listens to this podcast.
You just have to tone it down.
I might even bleep it.
I might bleep your username, so take that, okay?
Well, anyway, we'll be back.
Next, we're back with Dr. K. That'll be fun.
That'll go down really well.
We're going to have a small love on Reddit.
Very good.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, yes, look forward to that, and see you all soon enough.
