Search

Voices
Views from elsewhere
RSS (http://www.newstatesman.com/taxonomy/term/feed/7806)

SlavojiekontheCharlieHebdomassacre:Arethe
worstreallyfullofpassionateintensity?
How fragile the belief of an Islamist must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a weekly satirical
newspaper, says the Slovenian philosopher.
BY SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Tweet

1,076

PUBLISHED 10 JANUARY, 2015 - 21:31

Like

6.8k

47

Now, when we are all in a state of shock after the killing spree in the
Charlie Hebdo offices, it is the right moment to gather the courage to
think. We should, of course, unambiguously condemn the killings as
an attack on the very substance our freedoms, and condemn them
without any hidden caveats (in the style of "Charlie Hebdo was
nonetheless provoking and humiliating the Muslims too much"). But
such pathos of universal solidarity is not enough we should think
further.
Such thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with the cheap
relativisation of the crime (the mantra of "who are we in the West,
perpetrators of terrible massacres in the Third World, to condemn
such acts"). It has even less to do with the pathological fear of many
Western liberal Leftists to be guilty of Islamophobia. For these false
Leftists, any critique of Islam is denounced as an expression of
Western Islamophobia; Salman Rushdie was denounced for
French police at the Jewish supermarket in Paris where several people were taken hostage.

unnecessarily provoking Muslims and thus (partially, at least) responsible for the fatwa condemning him to death, etc. The result of such stance is
what one can expect in such cases: the more the Western liberal Leftists probe into 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 Other demands of you, the guiltier you are. It is as if the more you tolerate Islam, the stronger its pressure on you
will be . . .
This is why I also find insufficient calls for moderation along the lines of Simon Jenkins's claim (in The Guardian on January 7) that our task is
not to overreact, not to over-publicise the aftermath. It is to treat each event as a passing accident of horror the attack on Charlie Hebdo was
not a mere passing accident of horror. it followed a precise religious and political agenda and was as such clearly part of a much larger pattern.
Of course we should not overreact, if by this is meant succumbing to blind Islamophobia but we should ruthlessly analyse this pattern.
What is much more needed than the demonisation of the terrorists into heroic suicidal fanatics is a debunking of this demonic myth. Long ago
Friedrich Nietzsche perceived how Western civilisation was moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion
or commitment. Unable to dream, tired of life, he takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security, an expression of tolerance with one another:
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. They have their little pleasures
for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. We have discovered happiness, - say the Last Men, and they
blink.
It effectively may appear that the split between the permissive First World and the fundamentalist reaction to it runs more and more along the
lines of the opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural wealth, and dedicating one's life to some transcendent
Cause. Is this antagonism not the one between what Nietzsche called "passive" and "active" nihilism? We in the West are the Nietzschean Last
Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the struggle up to their selfdestruction. William Butler Yeats Second Coming seems perfectly to render our present predicament: The best lack all conviction, while the
worst are full of passionate intensity. This is an excellent description of the current split between anemic liberals and impassioned
fundamentalists. The best are no longer able fully to engage, while the worst engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism.
However, do the terrorist fundamentalists really fit this description? What they obviously lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic

fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the US: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the nonbelievers way of life. If todays so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by
non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that
the hedonists search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered,
intrigued, fascinated, by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation.
It is here that Yeats diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: the passionate intensity of the terrorists bears witness to a lack of true
conviction. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a weekly satirical newspaper? The
fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their culturalreligious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to
us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending politically correct assurances that we feel
no superiority towards them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to
preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our
standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true racist conviction
of their own superiority.
The recent vicissitudes of Muslim fundamentalism confirm Walter Benjamin's old insight that every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed
revolution: the rise of Fascism is the Lefts failure, but simultaneously a proof that there was a revolutionary potential, dissatisfaction, which the
Left was not able to mobilize. And does the same not hold for todays so-called Islamo-Fascism? Is the rise of radical Islamism not exactly
correlative to the disappearance of the secular Left in Muslim countries? When, back in the Spring of 2009, Taliban took over the Swat valley in
Pakistan, New York Times reported that they engineered "a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords
and their landless tenants". If, however, by taking advantage of the farmers plight, The Taliban are raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan,
which remains largely feudal, what prevents liberal democrats in Pakistan as well as the US to similarly take advantage of this plight and try to
help the landless farmers? The sad implication of this fact is that the feudal forces in Pakistan are the natural ally of the liberal democracy
So what about the core values of liberalism: freedom, equality, etc.? The paradox is that liberalism itself is not strong enough to save them against
the fundamentalist onslaught. Fundamentalism is a reaction a false, mystifying, reaction, of course - against a real flaw of liberalism, and this is
why it is again and again generated by liberalism. Left to itself, liberalism will slowly undermine itself the only thing that can save its core
values is a renewed Left. In order for this key legacy to survive, liberalism needs the brotherly help of the radical Left. THIS is the only way to
defeat fundamentalism, to sweep the ground under its feet.
To think in response to the Paris killings means to drop the smug self-satisfaction of a permissive liberal and to accept that the conflict between
liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict a vicious cycle of two poles generating and presupposing each other.
What Max Horkheimer had said about Fascism and capitalism already back in 1930s - those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism
should also keep quiet about Fascism - should also be applied to todays fundamentalism: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal
democracy should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism.

Tweet

1,076

Like

6.8k

47

More from the New Statesman

New Statesman team:

Online writers:

Columnists:

Critics:

Services:

Jason Cowley

Sarah Ditum

Michael Brooks

Leo Robson

Subscribe

Helen Lewis

Musa Okwonga

Suzanne Moore

Craig Raine

RSS feeds

Tom Gatti

Glosswitch

Hunter Davies

Rachel Cooke

Archive

George Eaton

Ian Leslie

Tracey Thorn

Ryan Gilbey

This week's magazine

John Gray

Myriam FrancoisCerrah

Ed Smith

Antonia Quirke

PDF edition

Kate Mossman

Eleanor Margolis

Nina Caplan

Jane Shilling

Advertising

Peter Wilby

Juliet Jacques

Nicholas Lezard

Erica Wagner

Special supplements

Jemima Khan

David Banks

Kevin Maguire

Stuart Maconie

Sponsored advertorial

Laurie Penny

Samira Shackle

Felicity Cloake

Olivia Laing

Stockists

Xan Rice

Elizabeth Minkel

Mark Lawson

Frances Wilson

Facebook

Caroline Crampton

Frances Ryan

Mehdi Hasan

Sarah Churchwell

(http://www.facebook.com/NewStates

Sophie McBain

Margaret Corvid

Will Self

Andrew Billen

Twitter

Philip Maughan

Rhiannon and Holly

Felix Martin

Adam Kirsch

Tumblr

Ian Steadman

Richard Morris

John Burnside

Tom Watson

(http://www.newstatesman.tumblr.co

Michael Prodger

Media Mole

John Bew

Steven Poole

Google+

Anoosh Chakelian

Phil Hartup

Stephen Brasher

Andrew Harrison

Pinterest

(http://pinterest.com/newstatesman/

iPad app

(http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/new
statesman/id400878915?
mt=8&ls=1 )
Podcast

(http://www.newstatesman.com/podc

New Statesman 1913 - 2015

History | About us | Subscribe |
Advertising | RSS feeds |
Privacy policy |
Terms and conditions |
Contact us |