In the first half of 2015, Europe was pre­oc­cu­pied by rad­i­cal eman­ci­pa­to­ry move­ments (Syriza and Podemos), while in the sec­ond half the atten­tion shift­ed to the ​“human­i­tar­i­an” top­ic of the refugees. Class strug­gle was lit­er­al­ly repressed and replaced by the lib­er­al-cul­tur­al top­ic of tol­er­ance and sol­i­dar­i­ty. With the Paris ter­ror killings on Fri­day, Novem­ber 13, even this top­ic (which still refers to large socio-eco­nom­ic issues) is now eclipsed by the sim­ple oppo­si­tion of all demo­c­ra­t­ic forces caught in a mer­ci­less war with forces of terror.

There should be no “deeper understanding” of the ISIS terrorists (in the sense of “their deplorable acts are nonetheless reactions to European brutal interventions”); they should be characterized as what they are: the Islamo-Fascist counterpart of the European anti-immigrant racists.

It is easy to imag­ine what will fol­low: para­noiac search for ISIS agents among the refugees. (Media already glee­ful­ly report­ed that two of the ter­ror­ists entered Europe through Greece as refugees.) The great­est vic­tims of the Paris ter­ror attacks will be refugees them­selves, and the true win­ners, behind the plat­i­tudes in the style of je suis Paris, will be sim­ply the par­ti­sans of total war on both sides. This is how we should real­ly con­demn the Paris killings: not just to engage in shows of anti-ter­ror­ist sol­i­dar­i­ty but to insist on the sim­ple cui bono (for whose ben­e­fit?) question.

There should be no ​“deep­er under­stand­ing” of the ISIS ter­ror­ists (in the sense of ​“their deplorable acts are nonethe­less reac­tions to Euro­pean bru­tal inter­ven­tions”); they should be char­ac­ter­ized as what they are: the Islamo-Fas­cist coun­ter­part of the Euro­pean anti-immi­grant racists — the two are the two sides of the same coin. Let’s bring class strug­gle back — and the only way to do it is to insist on glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty of the exploited.

The dead­lock that glob­al cap­i­tal­ism finds itself in is more and more pal­pa­ble. How to break out of it? Fredric Jame­son recent­ly pro­posed glob­al mil­i­ta­riza­tion of soci­ety as a mode of eman­ci­pa­tion: Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed grass­roots move­ments are seem­ing­ly doomed to fail­ure, so per­haps it’s best to break glob­al capitalism’s vicious cycle through ​“mil­i­ta­riza­tion,” which means sus­pend­ing the pow­er of self-reg­u­lat­ing economies. Per­haps the ongo­ing refugee cri­sis in Europe pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to test this option.

It is at least clear that what is need­ed to stop the chaos is large-scale coor­di­na­tion and orga­ni­za­tion, which includes but is not lim­it­ed to: recep­tion cen­ters near to the cri­sis (Turkey, Lebanon, the Libyan coast), trans­porta­tion of those grant­ed entrance to Euro­pean way sta­tions, and their redis­tri­b­u­tion to poten­tial set­tle­ments. The mil­i­tary is the only agent that can do such a big task in an orga­nized way. To claim that such a role for the mil­i­tary smells of a state of emer­gency is redun­dant. When you have tens of thou­sands of peo­ple pass­ing through dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas with­out orga­ni­za­tion you have an emer­gency state — and it is in a state of emer­gency that parts of Europe are right now. There­fore, it is mad­ness to think that such a process can be left to unwind freely. If noth­ing else, refugees need pro­vi­sions and med­ical care.

Tak­ing con­trol of the refugee cri­sis will mean break­ing left­ist taboos.

For instance, the right to ​“free move­ment” should be lim­it­ed, if for no oth­er rea­son than the fact that it doesn’t exist among the refugees, whose free­dom of move­ment is already depen­dent on their class. Thus, the cri­te­ria of accep­tance and set­tle­ment have to be for­mu­lat­ed in a clear and explic­it way — whom and how many to accept, where to relo­cate them, etc. The art here is to find the mid­dle road between fol­low­ing the desires of the refugees (tak­ing into account their wish to move to coun­tries where they already have rel­a­tives, etc.) and the capac­i­ties of dif­fer­ent countries.

Anoth­er taboo we must address con­cerns norms and rules. It is a fact that most of the refugees come from a cul­ture that is incom­pat­i­ble with West­ern Euro­pean notions of human rights. Tol­er­ance as a solu­tion (mutu­al respect of each other’s sen­si­tiv­i­ties) obvi­ous­ly doesn’t work: fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lims find it impos­si­ble to bear our blas­phe­mous images and reck­less humor, which we con­sid­er a part of our free­doms. West­ern lib­er­als, like­wise, find it impos­si­ble to bear many prac­tices of Mus­lim culture.

In short, things explode when mem­bers of a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty con­sid­er the very way of life of anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty as blas­phe­mous or inju­ri­ous, whether or not it con­sti­tutes a direct attack on their reli­gion. This is the case when Mus­lim extrem­ists attack gays and les­bians in the Nether­lands and Ger­many, and it is the case when tra­di­tion­al French cit­i­zens view a woman cov­ered by a bur­ka as an attack on their French iden­ti­ty, which is exact­ly why they find it impos­si­ble to remain silent when they encounter a cov­ered woman in their midst.

To curb this propen­si­ty, one has to do two things. First, for­mu­late a min­i­mum set of norms oblig­a­tory for every­one that includes reli­gious free­dom, pro­tec­tion of indi­vid­ual free­dom against group pres­sure, the rights of women, etc. — with­out fear that such norms will appear ​“Euro­cen­tric.” Sec­ond, with­in these lim­its, uncon­di­tion­al­ly insist on the tol­er­ance of dif­fer­ent ways of life. And if norms and com­mu­ni­ca­tion don’t work, then the force of law should be applied in all its forms.

Anoth­er taboo that must be over­come involves the equa­tion of any ref­er­ence to the Euro­pean eman­ci­pa­to­ry lega­cy to cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism and racism. In spite of the (par­tial) respon­si­bil­i­ty of Europe for the sit­u­a­tion from which refugees are flee­ing, the time has come to drop left­ist mantras cri­tiquing Eurocentrism.

The lessons of the post‑9/​11 world are that the Fran­cis Fukuya­ma dream of glob­al lib­er­al democ­ra­cy is at an end and that, at the lev­el of the world econ­o­my, cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism has tri­umphed world­wide. In fact, the Third World nations that embrace this world order are those now grow­ing at a spec­tac­u­lar rate. The mask of cul­tur­al diver­si­ty is sus­tained by the actu­al uni­ver­sal­ism of glob­al cap­i­tal; even bet­ter if glob­al capitalism’s polit­i­cal sup­ple­ment relies on so-called ​“Asian val­ues.”

Glob­al cap­i­tal­ism has no prob­lem in accom­mo­dat­ing itself to a plu­ral­i­ty of local reli­gions, cul­tures and tra­di­tions. So the irony of anti-Euro­cen­trism is that, on behalf of anti-colo­nial­ism, one crit­i­cizes the West at the very his­tor­i­cal moment when glob­al cap­i­tal­ism no longer needs West­ern cul­tur­al val­ues in order to smooth­ly func­tion. In short, one tends to reject West­ern cul­tur­al val­ues at the very time when, crit­i­cal­ly rein­ter­pret­ed, many of those val­ues (egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, fun­da­men­tal rights, free­dom of the press, the wel­fare-state, etc.) can serve as a weapon against cap­i­tal­ist glob­al­iza­tion. Did we already for­get that the entire idea of Com­mu­nist eman­ci­pa­tion as envis­aged by Marx is a thor­ough­ly ​“Euro­cen­tric” one?

The next taboo worth leav­ing behind is that any cri­tique of the Islam­ic right is an exam­ple of ​“Islam­o­pho­bia.” Enough of this patho­log­i­cal fear of many West­ern lib­er­al left­ists who wor­ry about being deemed guilty of Islam­o­pho­bia. For exam­ple, Salman Rushdie was denounced for unnec­es­sar­i­ly pro­vok­ing Mus­lims and thus (par­tial­ly, at least) respon­si­ble for the fat­wa con­demn­ing him to death. The result of such a stance is what one can expect in such cas­es: The more West­ern lib­er­al left­ists wal­low in their guilt, the more they are accused by Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ists of being hyp­ocrites who try to con­ceal their hatred of Islam.

This con­stel­la­tion per­fect­ly repro­duces the para­dox of the super­ego: The more you obey what the pseu­do-moral agency that the sadis­tic and prim­i­tive super­ego demands of you, the more guilty you are of moral masochism and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the aggres­sor. Thus, it is as if the more you tol­er­ate Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism, the stronger its pres­sure on you will be.

And one can be sure that the same holds for the influx of immi­grants: The more West­ern Europe will be open to them, the more it will be made to feel guilty that it did not accept even more of them. There will nev­er be enough of them. And with those who are here, the more tol­er­ance one dis­plays towards their way of life, the more one will be made guilty for not prac­tic­ing enough tolerance.

The polit­i­cal econ­o­my of the refugees: Glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and mil­i­tary intervention

As a long-term strat­e­gy, we should focus on what one can­not but call the ​“polit­i­cal econ­o­my of refugees,” which means focus­ing on the ulti­mate caus­es under­ly­ing the dynam­ics of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism and mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions. The ongo­ing dis­or­der should be treat­ed as the true face of the New World Order. Con­sid­er the food cri­sis now plagu­ing the ​“devel­op­ing” world. None oth­er than Bill Clin­ton made it clear in his com­ments, at a 2008 UN gath­er­ing mark­ing World Food Day, that the food cri­sis in many Third World coun­tries can­not be put on the usu­al sus­pects like cor­rup­tion, inef­fi­cien­cy and state inter­ven­tion­ism — the cri­sis is direct­ly depen­dent on the glob­al­iza­tion of agri­cul­ture. The gist of Clinton’s speech was that today’s glob­al food cri­sis shows how ​“we all blew it, includ­ing me when I was pres­i­dent,” by treat­ing food crops as com­modi­ties instead of as a vital right of the world’s poor.

Clin­ton was very clear in putting blame not on indi­vid­ual states or gov­ern­ments but on U.S. and EU long-term glob­al poli­cies car­ried out for decades by the World Bank, the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and oth­er inter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic insti­tu­tions. Such poli­cies pres­sured African and Asian coun­tries into drop­ping gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for fer­til­iz­er, improved seed and oth­er farm inputs. This allowed the best land to be used for export crops, which effec­tive­ly com­pro­mised the coun­tries’ self-suf­fi­cien­cy. The inte­gra­tion of local agri­cul­ture into glob­al econ­o­my was the result of such ​“struc­tur­al adjust­ments,” and the effect was dev­as­tat­ing: Farm­ers were thrown out of their land and pushed into slums fit­ted for sweat-shop labor, while coun­tries had to rely more and more on import­ed food. In this way, they are kept in post­colo­nial depen­dence and became more and more vul­ner­a­ble to mar­ket fluc­tu­a­tions. For instance, grain prices sky­rock­et­ed last year in coun­tries like Haiti and Ethiopia, both of which export crops for bio­fu­el and con­se­quent­ly starve their populations.

In order to approach these prob­lems prop­er­ly, one will have to invent new forms of large-scale col­lec­tive action; nei­ther the stan­dard state inter­ven­tion nor the much-praised local self-orga­ni­za­tion can do the job. If the prob­lem will not be solved, one should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er that we are approach­ing a new era of apartheid in which seclud­ed, resource-abun­dant parts of the world will be sep­a­rat­ed from the starved-and-per­ma­nent­ly-at-war parts. What should peo­ple in Haiti and oth­er places with food short­ages do? Do they not have the full right to vio­lent­ly rebel? Or, to become refugees? Despite all the cri­tiques of eco­nom­ic neo-colo­nial­ism, we are still not ful­ly aware of the dev­as­tat­ing effects of the glob­al mar­ket on many local economies.

As for the open (and not-so-open) mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions, the results have been told often enough: failed states. No refugees with­out ISIS and no ISIS with­out the U.S. occu­pa­tion of Iraq, etc. In a gloomy prophe­cy made before his death, Col. Muam­mar Gaddafi said: ​“Now lis­ten you, peo­ple of NATO. You’re bomb­ing a wall, which stood in the way of African migra­tion to Europe and in the way of al Qae­da ter­ror­ists. This wall was Libya. You’re break­ing it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thou­sands of migrants from Africa.” Was he not stat­ing the obvious?

The Russ­ian sto­ry, which basi­cal­ly elab­o­rates Gaddafi, has its ele­ment of truth, in spite of the obvi­ous taste of pas­ta puti­nesca. Boris Dol­gov of the Moscow-based Strate­gic Cul­ture Foun­da­tion told TASS:

That the refugee cri­sis is an out­come of US-Euro­pean poli­cies is clear to the naked eye. … The destruc­tion of Iraq, the destruc­tion of Libya and attempts to top­ple Bashar Assad in Syr­ia with the hands of Islam­ic rad­i­cals — that’s what EU and US poli­cies are all about, and the hun­dreds of thou­sands of refugees are a result of that policy.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Iri­na Zvyagel­skaya, of the ori­en­tal stud­ies depart­ment at the Moscow State Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions, told TASS:

The civ­il war in Syr­ia and ten­sions in Iraq and Libya keep fuel­ing the flow of migrants, but that is not the only cause. I agree with those who see the cur­rent events as a trend towards anoth­er mass reset­tle­ment of peo­ples, which leave the weak­er coun­tries with inef­fec­tive economies. There are sys­temic prob­lems that cause peo­ple to aban­don their homes and take to the road. And the lib­er­al Euro­pean leg­is­la­tion allows many of them to not only stay in Europe, but also to live there on social ben­e­fits with­out seek­ing employment.

And Yevge­ny Grishkovets, the Russ­ian author, play­wright and stage direc­tor, writ­ing in in his blog agrees:

These peo­ple are exhaust­ed, angry and humil­i­at­ed. They have no idea of Euro­pean val­ues, lifestyles and tra­di­tions, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism or tol­er­ance. They will nev­er agree to abide by Euro­pean laws. … They will nev­er feel grate­ful to the peo­ple whose coun­tries they have man­aged to get into with such prob­lems, because the very same states first turned their own home coun­tries into a blood­bath. … Angela Merkel vows mod­ern Ger­man soci­ety and Europe are pre­pared for prob­lems. … That’s a lie and nonsense!

How­ev­er, while there is some gen­er­al truth in all this, one should not jump from this gen­er­al­i­ty to the empir­i­cal fact of refugees flow­ing into Europe and sim­ply accept full respon­si­bil­i­ty. The respon­si­bil­i­ty is shared. First, Turkey is play­ing a well-planned polit­i­cal game (offi­cial­ly fight­ing ISIS but effec­tive­ly bomb­ing the Kurds who are real­ly fight­ing ISIS). Then we have the class divi­sion in the Arab world itself (the ultra-rich Sau­di Ara­bia, Kuwait, Qatar and Emi­rates accept­ing almost no refugees). And what about Iraq with its tens of bil­lions of oil reserves? How, out of all this mess, does there emerge a flow of refugees?

What we do know is that a com­plex econ­o­my of refugee trans­porta­tion is mak­ing mil­lions upon mil­lions of dol­lars prof­it. Who is financ­ing it? Stream­lin­ing it? Where are the Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vices? Are they explor­ing this dark nether­world? The fact that refugees are in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion in no way excludes the fact that their flow into Europe is part of a well-planned project.

Sure, Nor­way exists

Let me address my so-called left­ist crit­ics who find my break­ing of the above-men­tioned taboos in arti­cles pub­lished in the Lon­don Review of Books and In These Times prob­lem­at­ic. Nick Riemer, writ­ing in Jacobin, con­demns the ​“reac­tionary non­sense” I am ​“pro­mot­ing”:

It should be obvi­ous to Zizek that the West can’t inter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly in a way that avoids the ​“neo­colo­nial traps of the recent past.” Refugees, for their part, aren’t way­far­ers on some­one else’s soil, present only under suf­fer­ance and, as such, the objects of ​“hos­pi­tal­i­ty.” Regard­less of the cus­toms they bring with them, they should enjoy the same rights as the mem­bers of the diverse com­mu­ni­ties that make up Europe — a plu­ral­ism entire­ly ignored in Zizek’s aston­ish­ing ref­er­ence to a unique ​“West­ern Euro­pean way of life.”

The claim that under­lies this view is much stronger than Alain Badiou’s qui est ici est d’i­ci (those who are here are from here) — it is more some­thing like qui veut venir ici est d’i­ci (those who want to come here are from here). But even if we accept it, it is Riemer who entire­ly ignores the point of my remark: of course ​“they should enjoy the same rights as the mem­bers of the diverse com­mu­ni­ties that make up Europe,” but which exact­ly are these ​“same rights” refugees should enjoy? While Europe is now fight­ing for full gay and wom­an’s rights (the right to abor­tion, the rights of same-sex mar­ried cou­ples, etc.), should these rights also be extend­ed to gays and women among the refugees even if they are in con­flicts with ​“the cus­toms they bring with them” (as they often obvi­ous­ly are)? And this aspect should in no way be dis­missed as mar­gin­al: from Boko Haram to Robert Mugabe to Vladimir Putin, the anti-colo­nial­ist cri­tique of the West more and more appears as the rejec­tion of the West­ern ​“sex­u­al” con­fu­sion, and as the demand for return­ing to the tra­di­tion­al sex­u­al hierarchy. I am, of course, well aware how the imme­di­ate export of West­ern fem­i­nism and indi­vid­ual human rights can serve as a tool of ide­o­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic neo­colo­nial­ism (we all remem­ber how some Amer­i­can fem­i­nists sup­port­ed the U.S. inter­ven­tion in Iraq as a way to lib­er­ate women there, while the result is exact­ly the oppo­site). But I absolute­ly reject to draw from this the con­clu­sion that the West­ern Left should make here a ​“strate­gic com­pro­mise,” and silent­ly tol­er­ate ​“cus­toms” of humil­i­at­ing women and gays on behalf of the ​“greater” anti-impe­ri­al­ist struggle.

Along with Jür­gen Haber­mas and Peter Singer, Reimer then accus­es me of endors­ing ​“an elit­ist vision of pol­i­tics — the enlight­ened polit­i­cal class ver­sus a racist and igno­rant pop­u­la­tion.” When I read this, I again could not believe my eyes! As if I hadn’t writ­ten pages and pages on crit­i­ciz­ing pre­cise­ly Euro­pean lib­er­al polit­i­cal elite! As for ​“racist and igno­rant pop­u­la­tion,” we stum­ble here upon anoth­er Left­ist taboo: Yes, unfor­tu­nate­ly, large parts of the work­ing class in Euroope is racist and anti-immi­grant, a fact which should in no way be dis­missed as as the result of the manip­u­la­tion of an essen­tial­ly ​“pro­gres­sive” work­ing class.

Riemer’s final cri­tique is: ​“Zizek’s fan­ta­sy that refugees pose a threat to the ​‘West­ern’ ​‘way of life’ that may be reme­died by bet­ter kinds of mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic ​‘inter­ven­tion’ abroad is the clear­est illus­tra­tion of how the cat­e­gories in which analy­sis is con­duct­ed can open the door to reac­tion.” As for the dan­ger of mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions, I am well aware of it, and I also con­sid­er a jus­ti­fied inter­ven­tion almost impos­si­ble. But when I speak of the neces­si­ty of rad­i­cal eco­nom­ic change, I of course do not aim at some kind of ​“eco­nom­ic inter­ven­tion” in par­al­lel with mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, but of a thor­ough rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism that should begin in the devel­oped West itself. Every authen­tic left­ist knows that this is the only true solu­tion — with­out it, the devel­oped West will con­tin­ue to dev­as­tate Third World coun­tries, and with fan­fare mer­ci­ful­ly take care of their poor.

Along sim­i­lar lines, Sam Kriss’ cri­tique is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing in that he also accus­es me of not being a true Lacanian:

It’s even pos­si­ble to argue that the migrants are more Euro­pean than Europe itself. Zizek mocks the utopi­an desire for a Nor­way that doesn’t exist, and insists that migrants should stay where they’re sent. (It doesn’t seem to occur to him that those try­ing to reach a cer­tain coun­try might have fam­i­ly mem­bers already there, or be able to speak the lan­guage, that it’s dri­ven pre­cise­ly by a desire to inte­grate. But also — isn’t this pre­cise­ly the oper­a­tion of the objet petit a [the unatain­able object of desire] ? What kind of Lacan­ian tells some­one that they should effec­tive­ly aban­don their desire for some­thing just because it’s not attain­able? Or are migrants not wor­thy of the lux­u­ry of an uncon­scious mind?) In Calais, migrants try­ing to reach the Unit­ed King­dom protest­ed against their con­di­tions with plac­ards demand­ing ​“free­dom of move­ment for all.” Unlike racial or gen­der equal­i­ty, the free move­ment of peo­ples across nation­al bor­ders is a sup­pos­ed­ly uni­ver­sal Euro­pean val­ue that has actu­al­ly been imple­ment­ed — but, of course, only for Euro­peans. These pro­test­ers put the lie to any claim on the part of Europe to be uphold­ing uni­ver­sal val­ues. Zizek can only artic­u­late the Euro­pean ​“way of life” in terms of vague and tran­scen­dent gen­er­al­i­ties, but here it is in liv­ing flesh. If the chal­lenge of migra­tion is one of Euro­pean uni­ver­sal­ism against back­wards and repres­sive par­tic­u­lar­ism, then the par­tic­u­lar­ism is entire­ly on the part of Europe. … ​“The Non-Exis­tence of Nor­way” isn’t a the­o­ret­i­cal analy­sis, it’s a gen­tle word of heart­felt advice in the ear of the Euro­pean bureau­crat­ic class, one that’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in Lacan. For all his insis­tence on ​“rad­i­cal eco­nom­ic change,” this epis­to­lary struc­ture ensures that such a change is, for the time being, entire­ly off the table. Hence the insis­tence that there is not, and can nev­er be, a Nor­way. The cap­i­tal­ists do not intend to make one, and Zizek does not intend to address those that could. To which the Marx­ist response must be that if there is no Nor­way, then we’ll have to build it ourselves.

“Migrants are more Euro­pean than Europe itself” is an old left­ist the­sis that I too have often used, but one has to be spe­cif­ic about what it means. In my critic’s read­ing, it means migrants actu­al­ize the prin­ci­ple — ​“free­dom of move­ment for all” — more seri­ous­ly than Europe. But, again, one has to be pre­cise here. There is ​“free­dom of move­ment” in the sense of free­dom to trav­el, and the more rad­i­cal ​“free­dom of move­ment” in the sense of the free­dom to set­tle in what­ev­er coun­try I want. But the axiom that sus­tains the refugees in Calais is not just the free­dom to trav­el, but some­thing more like, ​“Every­one has the right to set­tle in any oth­er part of the world, and the coun­try they move into has to pro­vide for them.” The EU guar­an­tees (sort of, more or less) this right for its mem­bers and to demand the glob­al­iza­tion of this right equals the demand to expand the EU to the entire world.

The actu­al­iza­tion of this free­dom pre­sup­pos­es noth­ing less than a rad­i­cal socio-eco­nom­ic rev­o­lu­tion. Why? New forms of apartheid are emerg­ing. In our glob­al world, com­modi­ties cir­cu­late freely but not peo­ple. Dis­course around porous walls and the threat of inun­dat­ing for­eign­ers are an inher­ent index of what is false about cap­i­tal­ist glob­al­iza­tion. It is as if the refugees want to extend the free, glob­al cir­cu­la­tion of com­modi­ties to peo­ple as well, but this is present­ly impos­si­ble due to the lim­i­ta­tions imposed by glob­al capitalism.

From the Marx­ist stand­point, ​“free­dom of move­ment” relates to the need of cap­i­tal for a ​“free” labor force — mil­lions torn out of their com­mu­nal life to be employed in sweat­shops. The uni­verse of cap­i­tal relates to indi­vid­ual free­dom of move­ment in an inher­ent­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry way: Cap­i­tal­ism needs ​“free” indi­vid­u­als as cheap labor forces, but it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly needs to con­trol their move­ment since it can­not afford the same free­doms and rights for all people.

Is demand­ing rad­i­cal free­dom of move­ment, pre­cise­ly because it does not exist with­in the exist­ing order, a good start­ing point for the strug­gle? My crit­ic admits the impos­si­bil­i­ty of the refugee’s demand, yet he affirms it on account of its very impos­si­bil­i­ty — all the while accus­ing me of a non-Lacan­ian, vul­gar prag­ma­tism. The part about objet a as impos­si­ble, etc., is sim­ply ridicu­lous, the­o­ret­i­cal non­sense. The ​“Nor­way” I refer to is not objet a but a fan­ta­sy. Refugees who want to reach Nor­way present an exem­plary case of ide­o­log­i­cal fan­ta­sy — a fan­ta­sy-for­ma­tion that obfus­cates the inher­ent antag­o­nisms. Many of the refugees want to have a cake and eat it: They basi­cal­ly expect the best of the West­ern wel­fare-state while retain­ing their spe­cif­ic way of life, though in some of its key fea­tures their way of life is incom­pat­i­ble with the ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tions of the West­ern welfare-state.

Ger­many likes to empha­size the need to inte­grate the refugees cul­tur­al­ly and social­ly. How­ev­er — and here is anoth­er taboo to be bro­ken — how many of the refugees real­ly want to be inte­grat­ed? What if the obsta­cle to inte­gra­tion is not sim­ply West­ern racism? (Inci­den­tal­ly, fideli­ty to one’s objet a in no way guar­an­tees authen­tic­i­ty of desire — even a brief perusal of Mein Kampf makes it clear that Jews were Hitler’s objet a, and he cer­tain­ly remained faith­ful to the project of their anni­hi­la­tion.) This is what is wrong with the claim ​“if there is no Nor­way, then we’ll have to build it our­selves” — yes, but it will not be the fan­tas­mic ​“Nor­way” refugees are dream­ing about.

Rit­u­al­ized vio­lence and fundamentalism

Along these lines, in his attack on me, Sebas­t­ian Schuller rais­es the ques­tion: ​“Is Zizek now going over to PEGI­DA [Patri­ot­ic Euro­peans Against the Islamiza­tion of the Occident]?”

Schuller’s blog post even attrib­ut­es a state­ment to me that, of course, I nev­er made: ​“I no longer know any class­es, only Euro­peans.” What we must do is move beyond the cliché of refugees as pro­le­tar­i­ans with ​“noth­ing to lose but their chains” invad­ing bour­geois Europe: There are class divi­sions in Europe as well as in the Mid­dle East, and the key ques­tion is how these dif­fer­ent class dynam­ics interact.

This brings us to the reproach that, while I call for a cri­tique of the dark under­side of the Islam­ic right, I remain silent about the dark under­side of the Euro­pean world: ​“And what about Cross­es in the school? What about the church tax? What about the diverse Chris­t­ian sects with absurd moral ideas? What about the Chris­tians who announce that gays will be bar­be­cued in hell?” This is a weird reproach — the par­al­lel between Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ism is a top­ic over-ana­lyzed in our media (as well as in my books).

Be that as it may, let’s recall what hap­pened in Rother­ham, Eng­land: At least 1,400 chil­dren were sub­ject­ed to bru­tal sex­u­al exploita­tion between 1997 and 2013; chil­dren as young as 11 were raped by mul­ti­ple per­pe­tra­tors, abduct­ed, traf­ficked to oth­er cities, beat­en and intim­i­dat­ed; ​“doused in petrol and threat­ened with being set alight, threat­ened with guns, made to wit­ness bru­tal­ly vio­lent rapes and threat­ened they would be next if they told any­one, as the offi­cial report put it.” There had been three pre­vi­ous inquiries into these goings on that led to noth­ing. One inquiry team not­ed a fear among coun­cil staff that they’d be labelled ​“racist” if they pur­sued the mat­ter. Why? The per­pe­tra­tors were almost exclu­sive­ly mem­bers of Pak­istani gangs and their vic­tims — referred by the per­pe­tra­tors as ​“white trash” — were white schoolgirls.

Reac­tions were pre­dictable. Most­ly through gen­er­al­iza­tion, many on the Left resort­ed to all pos­si­ble strate­gies in order to blur facts. Exhibit­ing polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness at its worst, in two Guardian arti­cles the per­pe­tra­tors were vague­ly des­ig­nat­ed as ​“Asians.” Claims were made. This wasn’t about eth­nic­i­ty and reli­gion but rather about dom­i­na­tion of man over women. Who are we with our church pedophil­ia and Jim­my Sav­ille to adopt a high moral ground against a vic­tim­ized minor­i­ty? Can one imag­ine a more effec­tive way to open up the field to UKIP and oth­er anti-immi­grant pop­ulists who exploit the wor­ries of ordi­nary people?

What is not acknowl­edge is that such anti-racism is in effect a form of covert racism since it con­de­scend­ing­ly treats Pak­ista­nis as moral­ly infe­ri­or beings who should not be held to nor­mal human standards.

In order to break out of this dead­lock, one should begin with the very par­al­lel between the Rother­ham events and pedophil­ia with­in the Catholic Church. In both cas­es, we are deal­ing with orga­nized — rit­u­al­ized even — col­lec­tive activ­i­ty. In the case of Rother­ham, anoth­er par­al­lel may be even more per­ti­nent. One of the ter­ri­fy­ing effects of the non-con­tem­po­rane­ity of dif­fer­ent lev­els of social life is the rise of sys­tem­at­ic vio­lence against women. Vio­lence that is spe­cif­ic to a cer­tain social con­text is not ran­dom vio­lence but sys­tem­at­ic — it fol­lows a pat­tern and trans­mits a clear mes­sage. While we were right to be ter­ri­fied at the gang rapes in India, as Arund­hati Roy point­ed out, the cause of the unan­i­mous moral reac­tion was that the rapists were poor and from low­er stra­ta. Nonethe­less, the world-wide echo of vio­lence against women is sus­pi­cious, so, per­haps, it would be worth­while to widen our per­cep­tion and include oth­er sim­i­lar phenomena.

The ser­i­al killings of women in Ciu­dad Juarez at the bor­der are not just pri­vate patholo­gies, but a rit­u­al­ized activ­i­ty, part of the sub­cul­ture of local gangs and direct­ed at sin­gle young women work­ing in new assem­bling fac­to­ries. These mur­ders are clear cas­es of macho reac­tion to the new class of inde­pen­dent work­ing women: The social dis­lo­ca­tion due to fast indus­tri­al­iza­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion pro­vokes a bru­tal reac­tion in males who expe­ri­ence this devel­op­ment as a threat. And the cru­cial fea­ture in all these cas­es is that the crim­i­nal­ly vio­lent act is not a spon­ta­neous out­burst of raw bru­tal ener­gy which breaks the chains of civ­i­lized cus­toms, but some­thing learned, exter­nal­ly imposed, rit­u­al­ized and part of the col­lec­tive sym­bol­ic sub­stance of a com­mu­ni­ty. What is repressed for the ​“inno­cent” pub­lic gaze is not the cru­el bru­tal­i­ty of the act, but pre­cise­ly its ​“cul­tur­al,” rit­u­al­is­tic char­ac­ter as sym­bol­ic custom.

The same per­vert­ed social-rit­u­al log­ic is at work when Catholic Church rep­re­sen­ta­tives insist that these inter­con­ti­nen­tal cas­es of pedophil­ia, deplorable as they are, are the Church’s inter­nal, prob­lem, and then dis­play great reluc­tance to col­lab­o­rate with police in their inves­ti­ga­tion. Church reps are, in a way, right. The pedophil­ia of Catholic priests is not some­thing that mere­ly con­cerns the per­sons who acci­den­tal­ly (read: pri­vate­ly) hap­pened to choose the pro­fes­sion of a priest. It is a phe­nom­e­non that con­cerns the Catholic Church as an insti­tu­tion, and is inscribed into its very func­tion­ing as a socio-sym­bol­ic insti­tu­tion. It does not con­cern the ​“pri­vate” uncon­scious of indi­vid­u­als, but the ​“uncon­scious” of the insti­tu­tion itself. It is not some­thing that hap­pens because the insti­tu­tion has to accom­mo­date itself to the patho­log­i­cal real­i­ties of libid­i­nal life in order to sur­vive, but some­thing that the insti­tu­tion itself needs in order to repro­duce itself. One can well imag­ine a ​“straight” (not pedophil­i­ac) priest who, after years of ser­vice, gets involved in pedophil­ia because the very log­ic of the insti­tu­tion seduces him into it. Such an insti­tu­tion­al uncon­scious des­ig­nates the dis­avowed under­side that, pre­cise­ly as dis­avowed, sus­tains the pub­lic insti­tu­tion. (In the U.S. mil­i­tary, this under­side con­sists of the obscene sex­u­al­ized haz­ing rit­u­als that help sus­tain the group sol­i­dar­i­ty.) In oth­er words, it is not sim­ply that, for con­formist rea­sons, the Church tries to hush up the embar­rass­ing pedophilic scan­dals: In defend­ing itself, the Church defends its inner­most obscene secret. Iden­ti­fy­ing one­self with this secret side is key for the very iden­ti­ty of a Chris­t­ian priest: If a priest seri­ous­ly (not just rhetor­i­cal­ly) denounces these scan­dals he there­by excludes him­self from the eccle­si­as­tic com­mu­ni­ty. He is no longer ​“one of us.” Sim­i­lar­ly, when a US south­ern­er in the 1920s denounced the KKK to the police he exclud­ed him­self from his com­mu­ni­ty by betray­ing its fun­da­men­tal solidarity.

We should approach the Rother­ham events in exact­ly the same way since we are deal­ing with the ​“polit­i­cal uncon­scious” of Pak­istani Mus­lim youth. The kind of vio­lence at work is not chaot­ic vio­lence but rit­u­al­ized vio­lence with pre­cise ide­o­log­i­cal con­tours. A youth group, which expe­ri­ences itself as mar­gin­al­ized and sub­or­di­nat­ed, took revenge at low-class girls of the pre­dom­i­nant group. It is ful­ly legit­i­mate to raise the ques­tion of whether there are fea­tures in their reli­gion and cul­ture which open up the space for bru­tal­i­ty against women with­out blam­ing Islam as such (which is in itself no more misog­y­nis­tic than Chris­tian­i­ty). In many Islam­ic coun­tries and com­mu­ni­ties one can observe con­so­nance between vio­lence against women, the sub­or­di­na­tion of women and their exclu­sion from pub­lic life.

Among many fun­da­men­tal­ist groups and move­ments strict impo­si­tion of hier­ar­chi­cal sex­u­al dif­fer­ence is at the very top of their agen­da. But we should sim­ply apply the same cri­te­ria on both (Chris­t­ian and Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist) sides, with­out fear of admit­ting that our lib­er­al-sec­u­lar cri­tique of fun­da­men­tal­ism is also stained by falsity.

Cri­tique of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism in Europe and the Unit­ed States is an old top­ic with end­less vari­a­tion. The very per­va­sive­ness of the self-sat­is­fac­to­ry way that the lib­er­al intel­li­gentsia make fun of fun­da­men­tal­ists cov­ers up the true prob­lem, which is its hid­den class dimen­sion. The coun­ter­part of this ​“mak­ing-fun-of” is the pathet­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty with the refugees and the no less false and pathet­ic self-humil­i­a­tion of our self-admo­ni­tion. The real task is to build bridges between ​“our” and ​“their” work­ing class­es. With­out this uni­ty (which includes the cri­tique and self-cri­tique of both sides) class strug­gle prop­er regress­es into a clash of civ­i­liza­tions. That’s why yet anoth­er taboo should be left behind.

The wor­ries and cares of so-called ordi­nary peo­ple affect­ed by the refugees are oft dis­missed as an expres­sion of racist prej­u­dices if not out­right neo-Fas­cism. Should we real­ly allow PEGI­DA & com­pa­ny to be the only way open to them?

Inter­est­ing­ly, the same motif under­lies the ​“rad­i­cal” left­ist cri­tique of Bernie Sanders: What both­ers his crit­ics is pre­cise­ly his close con­tact with small farm­ers and oth­er work­ing peo­ple in Ver­mont, who usu­al­ly give their elec­toral sup­port to Repub­li­can con­ser­v­a­tives. Sanders is ready to lis­ten to their wor­ries and cares, not dis­miss them as racist white trash.

Where does the threat come from?

Lis­ten­ing to ordi­nary people’s wor­ries, of course, in no way implies that one should accept the basic premise of their stance — the idea that threats to their way of life comes from out­side, from for­eign­ers, from ​“the oth­er.” The task is rather to teach them to rec­og­nize their own respon­si­bil­i­ty for their future. To explain this point, let’s take an exam­ple from anoth­er part of the world.

Udi Aloni’s new film Junc­tion 48 (upcom­ing in 2016) deals with the dif­fi­cult predica­ment of young ​“Israeli Pales­tini­ans” (Pales­tini­ans descend­ed from the fam­i­lies that remained in Israel after 1949), whose every­day life involves a con­tin­u­ous strug­gle at two fronts — against Israeli state oppres­sion as well as fun­da­men­tal­ist pres­sures from with­in their own com­mu­ni­ty. The main role is played by Tamer Nafar, a well-known Israeli-Pales­tin­ian rap­per, who, in his music, mocks the tra­di­tion of the ​“hon­or killing” of Pales­tin­ian girls by their Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies. A strange thing hap­pened to Nafar dur­ing a recent vis­it to the Unit­ed States. At UCLA after Nafar per­formed his song protest­ing ​“hon­or killings,” some anti-Zion­ist stu­dents reproached him for pro­mot­ing the Zion­ist view of Pales­tini­ans as bar­bar­ic prim­i­tives. They added that, if there are any hon­or killings, Israel is respon­si­ble for them since the Israeli occu­pa­tion keeps Pales­tini­ans in prim­i­tive, debil­i­tat­ing con­di­tions. Here is Nafar’s dig­ni­fied reply: ​“When you crit­i­cize me you crit­i­cize my own com­mu­ni­ty in Eng­lish to impress your rad­i­cal pro­fes­sors. I sing in Ara­bic to pro­tect the women in my own hood.”

An impor­tant aspect of Nafar’s posi­tion is that he is not just pro­tect­ing Pales­tin­ian girls from fam­i­ly ter­ror he is allow­ing them to fight for them­selves — to take the risk. At the end of Aloni’s film, after the girl decides to per­form at a con­cert against her family’s wish­es, and the film ends in a dark pre­mo­ni­tion of hon­or killing.

In Spike Lee’s film on Mal­colm X there is a won­der­ful detail: After Mal­colm X gives a talk at a col­lege, a white stu­dent girl approach­es him and asks him what she can do to help the black strug­gle. He answers: ​“Noth­ing.” The point of this answer is not that whites should just do noth­ing. Instead, they should first accept that black lib­er­a­tion should be the work of the blacks them­selves, not some­thing bestowed on them as a gift by the good white lib­er­als. Only on the basis of this accep­tance can they do some­thing to help blacks. There­in resides Nafar’s point: Pales­tini­ans do not need the patron­iz­ing help of West­ern lib­er­als, and they need even less the silence about ​“hon­or killing” as part of the West­ern Left’s ​“respect” for Pales­tin­ian way of life. The impo­si­tion of West­ern val­ues as uni­ver­sal human rights and the respect for dif­fer­ent cul­tures, inde­pen­dent of the hor­rors some­times apart of these cul­tures, are two sides of the same ide­o­log­i­cal mystification.

In order to real­ly under­mine home­land xeno­pho­bia against for­eign threats, one should reject its very pre­sup­po­si­tion, name­ly that every eth­nic group has its own prop­er ​“Nativia.” On Sept. 7, 2015, Sarah Palin gave an inter­view to Fox News with Fox and Friends host Steve Doocey:

“I love immi­grants. But like Don­ald Trump, I just think we have too darn many in this coun­try. Mex­i­can-Amer­i­cans, Asian-Amer­i­cans, Native-Amer­i­cans — they’re chang­ing up the cul­tur­al mix in the Unit­ed States away from what it used to be in the days of our Found­ing Fathers. I think we should go to some of these groups and just ask polite­ly: ​“Would you mind going home? Would you mind giv­ing us our coun­try back?” “Sarah you know I love you,“ Doocey inter­ject­ed, ​“And I think that’s a great idea with regards to Mex­i­cans. But where are the Native Amer­i­cans sup­posed to go? They don’t real­ly have a place to go back to do they?” Sarah replied: ​“Well I think they should go back to Nativia or wher­ev­er they came from. The lib­er­al media treats Native Amer­i­cans like they’re gods. As if they just have some sort of auto­mat­ic right to be in this coun­try. But I say if they can’t learn to get off those hors­es and start speak­ing Amer­i­can, then they should be sent home too.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we imme­di­ate­ly learned that this sto­ry — too good to be true — was a hoax bril­liant­ly per­formed by Dai­ly Cur­rant. How­ev­er, as they say, ​“Even if it’s not true, it is well con­ceived.” In its ridicu­lous nature, it brought out the hid­den fan­ta­sy that sus­tains the anti-immi­grant vision: In today’s chaot­ic glob­al world there is a ​“Nativia“ to which peo­ple who both­er us prop­er­ly belong. This vision was real­ized in apartheid South Africa in the form of Ban­tus­tans — ter­ri­to­ries set aside for black inhab­i­tants. South African whites cre­at­ed the Ban­tus­tans with the idea of mak­ing them inde­pen­dent, there­by ensur­ing that black South Africans would loose their cit­i­zen­ship rights in the remain­ing white-con­trolled areas of South Africa. Although Ban­tus­tans were defined as the ​“orig­i­nal homes“ of the black peo­ples of South Africa, dif­fer­ent black groups were allo­cat­ed to their home­lands in a bru­tal­ly arbi­trary way. Ban­tus­tans amount­ed to 13 per­cent of the country’s land care­ful­ly select­ed not to con­tain any impor­tant min­er­al reserves — the resource-rich remain­der of the coun­try would then be in the hands of the white pop­u­la­tion. The Black Home­lands Cit­i­zen­ship Act of 1970 for­mal­ly des­ig­nat­ed all black South Africans as cit­i­zens of the home­lands, even if they lived in ​“white South Africa,” and can­celled their South African cit­i­zen­ship. From the stand­point of apartheid, this solu­tion was ide­al: Whites pos­sessed most of the land while blacks were pro­claimed for­eign­ers in their own coun­try and treat­ed as guest work­ers who could, at any point, be deport­ed back to their ​“home­land.” What can­not but strike the eye is the arti­fi­cial nature of this entire process. Black groups were sud­den­ly told that an unat­trac­tive and infer­tile piece of land was their ​“true home.” And today, even if a Pales­tin­ian state were to emerge on the West Bank, would it not be pre­cise­ly such a Ban­tus­tan, whose for­mal ​”inde­pen­dence” would serve the pur­pose of lib­er­at­ing the Israeli gov­ern­ment from any respon­si­bil­i­ty for the wel­fare of the peo­ple liv­ing there.

But we should also add to this insight that the mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ist or anti-colonialist’s defense of dif­fer­ent ​“ways of life” is also false. Such defens­es cov­er up the antag­o­nisms with­in each of these par­tic­u­lar ways of life by jus­ti­fy­ing acts of bru­tal­i­ty, sex­ism and racism as expres­sions of a par­tic­u­lar way of life that we have no right to mea­sure with for­eign, i.e. West­ern val­ues. Zim­bab­we Pres­i­dent Robert Mugabe’s talk at the UN gen­er­al assem­bly is a typ­i­cal anti-colo­nial­ist defense used as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for bru­tal homo­pho­bia:

Respect­ing and uphold­ing human rights is the oblig­a­tion of all states, and is enshrined in the Unit­ed Nations char­ter. Nowhere does the char­ter arro­gate the right to some to sit in judg­ment over oth­ers, in car­ry­ing out this uni­ver­sal oblig­a­tion. In that regard, we reject the politi­ciza­tion of this impor­tant issue and the appli­ca­tion of dou­ble stan­dards to vic­tim­ize those who dare think and act inde­pen­dent­ly of the self-anoint­ed pre­fects of our time. We equal­ly reject attempts to pre­scribe ​“new rights” that are con­trary to our val­ues, norms, tra­di­tions, and beliefs. We are not gays! Coop­er­a­tion and respect for each oth­er will advance the cause of human rights world­wide. Con­fronta­tion, vil­i­fi­ca­tion, and dou­ble-stan­dards will not.

What can Mugabe’s emphat­ic claim ​“We are not gays!” mean with regard to the fact that, for cer­tain, there are many gays also in Zim­bab­we? It means, of course, that gays are reduced to an oppressed minor­i­ty whose acts are often direct­ly crim­i­nal­ized. But one can under­stand the under­ly­ing log­ic: The gay move­ment is per­ceived as the cul­tur­al impact of glob­al­iza­tion and yet anoth­er way glob­al­iza­tion under­mines tra­di­tion­al social and cul­tur­al forms such that the strug­gle against gays appears as an aspect of the anti-colo­nial struggle.

Does the same not hold for, say, Boko Haram? For cer­tain Mus­lims the lib­er­a­tion of women appears as the most vis­i­ble fea­ture of the destruc­tive cul­tur­al impact of cap­i­tal­ist mod­ern­iza­tion. There­fore, Boko Haram, which can be rough­ly and descrip­tive­ly trans­lat­ed as ​“West­ern edu­ca­tion [of women specif­i­cal­ly] is for­bid­den,” can per­ceive itself as a way of fight­ing the destruc­tive impact of mod­ern­iza­tion when it impos­es hier­ar­chic reg­u­la­tion between the two sexes.

The enig­ma is thus: Why do Mus­lim extrem­ists, who were undoubt­ed­ly exposed to exploita­tion, dom­i­na­tion, and oth­er destruc­tive and humil­i­at­ing aspects of colo­nial­ism, tar­get what is (for us, at least) the best part of the West­ern lega­cy — our egal­i­tar­i­an­ism and per­son­al free­doms? The obvi­ous answer could be that their tar­get is well-cho­sen: What makes the lib­er­al West so unbear­able is that they not only prac­tice exploita­tion and vio­lent dom­i­na­tion, but that, to add insult to injury, they present this bru­tal real­i­ty in the guise of its oppo­site — of free­dom, equal­i­ty and democracy.

Mugabe’s regres­sive defense of par­tic­u­lar ways of life finds its mir­ror-image in what Vik­tor Orban, the rightwing Prime Min­is­ter of Hun­gary, is doing. On Sept. 3, 2015, he jus­ti­fied clos­ing off the bor­der with Ser­bia as an act of defend­ing Chris­t­ian Europe against invad­ing Mus­lims. This was the same Orban who, back in July 2012, said that in Cen­tral Europe a new eco­nom­ic sys­tem must be built: ​“And let us hope that God will help us and we will not have to invent a new type of polit­i­cal sys­tem instead of democ­ra­cy that would need to be intro­duced for the sake of eco­nom­ic sur­vival. … Coop­er­a­tion is a ques­tion of force, not of inten­tion. Per­haps there are coun­tries where things don’t work that way, for exam­ple in the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries, but such a half-Asi­at­ic rag-tag peo­ple as we are can unite only if there is force.”

The irony of these lines was not lost on some old Hun­gar­i­an dis­si­dents: When the Sovi­et army moved into Budapest to crush the 1956 anti-Com­mu­nist upris­ing the mes­sage repeat­ed­ly sent by the belea­guered Hun­gar­i­an lead­ers to the West was: ​“We are defend­ing Europe here.” (Against the Asi­at­ic Com­mu­nists, of course.) Now, after Com­mu­nism col­lapsed, the Chris­t­ian-con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment paints as its main ene­my West­ern mul­ti-cul­tur­al con­sumerist lib­er­al democ­ra­cy for which today’s West­ern Europe stands, and calls for a new more organ­ic com­mu­ni­tar­i­an order to replace the ​“tur­bu­lent” lib­er­al democ­ra­cy of the last two decades. Orban already expressed his sym­pa­thies towards cas­es of ​“cap­i­tal­ism with Asian val­ues” like Putin’s Rus­sia, so if the Euro­pean pres­sure on Orban con­tin­ues we can eas­i­ly imag­ine him send­ing the mes­sage to the East: ​“We are defend­ing Asia here!“ (And, to add an iron­ic twist, are, from the West Euro­pean racist per­spec­tive, today’s Hun­gar­i­ans not descen­dants of the ear­ly medieval Huns — Atti­la is even today a pop­u­lar Hun­gar­i­an name.)

Is there a con­tra­dic­tion between these two Orbans: Orban the friend of Putin who resents the lib­er­al-demo­c­ra­t­ic West and Orban the defend­er of Chris­t­ian Europe? There is not. The two faces of Orban pro­vide the proof (if need­ed) that the prin­ci­pal threat to Europe is not Mus­lim immi­gra­tion but its anti-immi­grant, pop­ulist defenders.

So what if Europe should accept the para­dox that its demo­c­ra­t­ic open­ness is based on exclu­sion. In oth­er words, there is ​“no free­dom for the ene­mies of free­dom,” as Robe­spierre put it long ago? In prin­ci­ple, this is, of course, true, but it is here that one has to be very spe­cif­ic. In a way, Norway’s mass mur­der­er Andres Breivik was right in his choice of tar­get: He didn’t attack the for­eign­ers but those with­in his own com­mu­ni­ty who were too tol­er­ant towards intrud­ing for­eign­ers. The prob­lem is not for­eign­ers — it is our own (Euro­pean) identity.

Although the ongo­ing cri­sis of the Euro­pean Union appears as a cri­sis of econ­o­my and finances, it is in its fun­da­men­tal dimen­sion an ide­o­log­i­cal-polit­i­cal cri­sis. The fail­ure of ref­er­en­dums con­cern­ing the EU con­sti­tu­tion a cou­ple of years ago gave a clear sig­nal that vot­ers per­ceived the Euro­pean Union as a ​“tech­no­crat­ic” eco­nom­ic union, lack­ing any vision which could mobi­lize peo­ple. Till the recent wave of protests from Greece to Spain, the only ide­ol­o­gy able to mobi­lize peo­ple has been the anti-immi­grant defense of Europe.

There is an idea cir­cu­lat­ing in the under­ground of the dis­ap­point­ed rad­i­cal Left that is a soft­er reit­er­a­tion of the predilec­tion for ter­ror­ism in the after­math of the 1968 move­ment: the crazy idea that only a rad­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe (prefer­ably an eco­log­i­cal one) can awak­en mass­es and thus give a new impe­tus to rad­i­cal eman­ci­pa­tion. The lat­est ver­sion of this idea relates to the refugees: only an influx of a real­ly large num­ber of refugees (and their dis­ap­point­ment since, obvi­ous­ly, Europe will not be able to sat­is­fy their expec­ta­tions) can revi­tal­ize the Euro­pean rad­i­cal Left.

I find this line of thought obscene: notwith­stand­ing the fact that such a devel­op­ment would for sure give an immense boost to anti-immi­grant bru­tal­i­ty, the tru­ly crazy aspect of this idea is the project to fill in the gap of the miss­ing rad­i­cal pro­le­tar­i­ans by import­ing them from abroad, so that we will get the rev­o­lu­tion by means of an import­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary agent.

This, of course, in no way entails that we should con­tent our­selves with lib­er­al reformism. Many left­ist lib­er­als (like Haber­mas) who bemoan the ongo­ing decline of the EU seem to ide­al­ize its past: The ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic” EU the loss of which they bemoan nev­er exist­ed. Recent EU poli­cies, such as those impos­ing aus­ter­i­ty on Greece, are just a des­per­ate attempt to make Europe fit for new glob­al cap­i­tal­ism. The usu­al Left-lib­er­al cri­tique of the EU — it’s basi­cal­ly OK, except for a ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic deficit”— betrays the same naivety as the crit­ics of ex-Com­mu­nist coun­tries who basi­cal­ly sup­port­ed them, except for the com­plaint about the lack of democ­ra­cy: In both cas­es, the ​“demo­c­ra­t­ic deficit” is and was a nec­es­sary part of the glob­al structure.

But here, I am even more of a skep­ti­cal pes­simist. When I was recent­ly answer­ing ques­tions from the read­ers of Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest dai­ly, about the refugee cri­sis, the ques­tion that attract­ed by far the most atten­tion con­cerned pre­cise­ly democ­ra­cy, but with a right­ist-pop­ulist twist: When Angela Merkel made her famous pub­lic appeal invit­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands into Ger­many, which was her demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­imiza­tion? What gave her the right to bring such a rad­i­cal change to Ger­man life with­out demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sul­ta­tion? My point here, of course, is not to sup­port anti-immi­grant pop­ulists, but to clear­ly point out the lim­its of demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­imiza­tion. The same goes for those who advo­cate rad­i­cal open­ing of the bor­ders: Are they aware that, since our democ­ra­cies are nation-state democ­ra­cies, their demand equals sus­pen­sion of — in effect impos­ing a gigan­tic change in a country’s sta­tus quo with­out demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sul­ta­tion of its pop­u­la­tion? (Their answer would have been, of course, that refugees should also be giv­en the right to vote — but this is clear­ly not enough, since this is a mea­sure that can only hap­pen after refugees are already inte­grat­ed into the polit­i­cal sys­tem of a coun­try.) A sim­i­lar prob­lem aris­es with the calls for trans­paren­cy of the EU deci­sions: what I fear is that, since in many coun­tries the major­i­ty of the pub­lic was against the Greek debt reduc­tion, ren­der­ing EU nego­ti­a­tions pub­lic would make rep­re­sen­ta­tives of these coun­tries advo­cate even tougher mea­sures against Greece.

We encounter here the old prob­lem: What hap­pens to democ­ra­cy when the major­i­ty is inclined to vote for racist and sex­ist laws? I am not afraid to con­clude: Eman­ci­pa­to­ry pol­i­tics should not be bound a pri­ori by for­mal-demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­ce­dures of legit­imiza­tion. No, peo­ple quite often do NOT know what they want, or do not want what they know, or they sim­ply want the wrong thing. There is no sim­ple short­cut here.

We def­i­nite­ly live in inter­est­ing times.