On Žižek’s Ukraine position

In the following interview, Žižek seems to have recovered somewhat from the baleful hole wherein he found himself in 2022. I still think he’s incapable of reasoning clearly about Ukraine, but at least he seems to have realized that he needs to formulate his arguments better—because they’re not as obvious and logical as he seems to think they are. A year ago, he was just yelling incoherently.

Our World Is Coming To An End | Aaron Bastani Meets Slavoj Žižek | Downstream by Novara Media (YouTube)

At 00:02:35. he explains why he’s never gotten drunk,

“You know why? Because I’m really a Stalinist, not just superficial. You know what’s my idea? 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 and cannot defend yourself. No, we must stay sober—paranoia—to see where the attack is coming from.”

The next hour of the interview is pretty good, with a lot of points I’ve heard him make in other recent interviews—like Slavoj Žižek on Israel Palestine (YouTube) or Slavoj Žižek on Israel and Palestine (17.10.2023, Frankfurter Buchmesse (YouTube))—I find him intelligent and entertaining and almost always worth listening to.

A muddled take

I wanted to focus, though, on the conversation at around 01:03:00, where he talks about Ukraine. Ever since he began writing on about Ukraine/Russia, I have been having a really hard time reconciling his opinion on that war with pretty much any other opinion he’s expressed since I started following him a couple of decades ago. I’ve written about this before—most recently and at length in Has Slavoj Žižek been taken hostage? (22.06.2022) and On Žižek and Russia (04.12.2022)—and have some more thoughts below.

He begins by pointing out that we wouldn’t be at the point of talking about a stalemate if NATO hadn’t provided Ukraine with weapons.

This is a point he’s made before, as noted above, but I feel he still doesn’t support it very well because he doesn’t explain why he’s ignoring a vast swath of history and background.[1] He can’t help but view the Russians as an evil with which one cannot negotiate. He’s damaged goods in that sense. He talks of Russia as the Israelis talk of Palestinians, as Americans talk of anyone non-American.

Anyway, after several repetitions on Žižek’s part and re-readings on mine, I’m starting to understand where he’s coming from—he sounded unhinged at first—but I still feel he’s deeply screwed up the analysis on this one, and is just doubling down, hoping he’ll be borne out somehow.

What I think he should be saying is that, given that we’ve already ignored Russia’s concerns over the decades, given that we drove NATO right up to its borders, given that we organized a coup in Ukraine, given that we propped up a corrupt president in Ukraine and supported the worst elements of their society, given that we lied to Russia about adhering in any way to the Minsk accords, given that we did everything we possibly could to provoke Russia into committing a war crime, then, yes, we should actually put our money where our mouth is and now help defend the country that we fucked up/helped fuck up so badly that it’s ended up where it is now.

Ignoring the historical context

It would be nice for him to at least once admit that none of this had to happen. I don’t think I’ve once heard him say that Ukraine would have been far better off if the U.S. had never approached it. I don’t think I’ve once heard him admit that Ukraine would have gotten a much better deal at the start of this war.

He still says things like,

“Are we aware that Ukraine at least didn’t lose only because of our help? To have this position now—kind of a WWI stalemate—it’s precisely because we were helping Ukraine. So, at least retroactively, all those who are pro-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.”

Not once does he acknowledge how many people died for his being able to say something like that. And it’s not even true. Ukraine is in a much-worse bargaining position than it was two years ago. He’s ignoring so much history there. He just yells at pacifists, demanding that they admit that pacifism is a sham and that—perhaps only sometimes, but his argument isn’t clear here—war is the only way of dealing with some people.

Channeling Dick Cheney

So, yes, I think he still sounds like a raving lunatic on this topic. I can’t see any daylight between his position and that of any war-hawk American, other than an improved eloquence. He sounds like a neocon. Dick Cheney could have made the statement above, FFS. 🤦‍♂️

What he’s actually saying is, given how badly we’ve fucked up Ukraine using them as the tip of NATO’s spear, this is the best they can hope for. Not once does he consider that Ukraine might have been much better off had it never been used as NATO’s spear in the first place.

I’ve never heard him mention NATO’s role in this. I can’t imagine he’s ignorant of it. He just doesn’t seem to think it’s relevant. Or he doesn’t care because he’s so busy doubling down on his original bad take from a year-and-a-half ago that was based on his knee-jerk Russophobia. He’s never once talked about how bad it’s been for any country, especially Ukraine, to be friends with NATO, as a proxy of the United States.

Is there any hope for Ukraine?

Aaron continues the discussion later, at 01:11:00,

“Aaron: you mentioned Russia/Ukraine. What’s the correct position for a leftist on Russia/Ukraine? I read an amazing piece in Time Magazine, the average person on the front line for Ukraine now is 43 years old. There’s clearly a military stalemate.
Žižek: It’s extremely difficult, I think. […] I think that Ukraine needs our support at least to maintain this stalemate. I think it’s too risky to say okay it’s a stalemate, let’s stop supporting Ukraine.
Aaron: But that’s a permanent war. So it should be like Syria?
Žižek: Yeah, but what is the alternative? If you simply stopped supporting Ukraine…
Aaron: Oh, I’m not suggesting that. But you’re saying, rather than a negotiated settlement—which, I agree, wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on—fine. But what you’re proposing is a sort-of permanent, low-level war between Russia and Ukraine forever [sic]. Which is maybe the best you can hope for, I don’t know.
Žižek: That’s what I am tempted to suggest. It’s a very sad position.”

Ukraine's borders in 2023

Change in territory each month

After this part, Žižek goes into how crazy it is that Ukraine is outlawing leftists because they suspect them of being pro-Russia, which he calls madness. It’s not, though, not really. Actions like that are just bog-standard consolidations of power: outlawing critical voices by accusing them of something the public will be happy to crucify them for.

It’s just stupid, power-mongering propaganda, no different than when the Nazis used it by calling people Jew-lovers, no different than when U.S. presidential candidates call each other “soft on China” or “soft on Russia”.

It’s an old story, and I’m surprised that Žižek doesn’t see it for what it is. I would expect that he, of all people, would have provided some historical examples from Bolshevik or Stalinist Russia.

It’s great to see that they agree that any accord between Ukraine and Russia wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on—but they think Russia is the one that wouldn’t hold to it, because they’re so steeped in propaganda about how duplicitous Russia is. But it’s actually the U.S. and its proxy NATO that can’t seem to honor signed agreements that they later find inconvenient.

The best Žižek can hope for, for Ukraine, is a forever war that keeps eating up its male citizens until there are none left. A lack of fantasy, on his part, I think. Also, a shocking lack of empathy.

Ukraine as “Ship of Theseus”

Žižek simply can’t acknowledge the obvious: that’s it’s only a temporary stalemate. Ukraine is running out of people. What’s the next step? To continue to defend Ukraine long after there is no Ukraine? To replace soldiers with NATO soldiers from the U.S. and Europe in a sort of “Ship of Theseus” army?

He, of all people, should appreciate the irony that his position is currently, “we will have to destroy Ukraine in order to save it.” The country effectively doesn’t exist now, but might be able to get back to somewhere reasonable, after several decades. They were doing poorly before the war, relative to neighbors.

Now what? He says to just. Keep. Going. He sounds like a neocon. He’s formulating it as “continue increasing support Ukraine up until boots on the ground for NATO” vs. “dropping Ukraine like a hot rock”. What about “use our power for a negotiated settlement rather than supporting the pointless slaughter of the rest of the Ukrainian population?” People should really push back on him more—although Aaron did try, I’ll give him that.

What could the end of the war look like?

Of course, Ukraine will lose land in this negotiated settlement. That’s reality. You can’t make it go away by pursuing a fantasy outcome in which Russia suddenly loses because of a deus ex machina, like in a fucking movie (or “fil-im”, as Žižek would say it).

What’s the end game? Nuke Russia to convince them to back off? What the fuck is the strategy here, Žižek? You’re being ludicrously obstinate on this point because you don’t want to accept what’s right before your eyes. Some of us saw it almost two years ago, when this whole shitshow started. We predicted exactly this situation, at best. At worst, Russia would have taken more of Ukraine. There is no good solution, and certainly not one where Zelensky is a hero, saving the day at the end of the movie.

The longer this goes on, the shittier Ukraine’s position. You’re just watching your guy get slaughtered in the ring. Throw in the towel. You can’t win in the way you think you can. Cut your losses. This attitude of his is madness—and maddening. He seems incapable of being realistic.

Immigration in Europe

They end by talking about immigration and how we need to stop it, but from the viewpoint of: We should be helping create environments on the planet from which people don’t want to flee, rather than creating environments from the which they do.

Žižek cites a more right-wing colleague from Germany who told Žižek that he thinks we shouldn’t be spending money on ferries or accommodations in Germany, that we should spend that money in Tunisia, or wherever, to make their country worth living in.

Of course, that this comes from a right-wing person is probably wildly hypocritical, as they probably also support God knows how many policies that lead directly to the enshitification of exactly the countries from which these people are moving, but that doesn’t mean what he’s saying there isn’t correct.

In this case, they are correct. If we can’t stop ourselves from stealing the wealth of other countries, we should at least spend the money we do allocate on alleviating their suffering people by trying to fix some of the problems we causing by raping their countries.

The West profits immensely from most of the countries that produce the most immigrants, either through arms sales to the dictators that they prop up there, by pillaging their natural resources, or from agricultural catastrophes engendered by the rapacious marketing policies of supranational global conglomerates whose profits flow directly to the west and its elites. Or all three.

Aaron tells a story his father told him,

My father’s Iranian, […] I remember saying to him, ‘Oh, look at these Afghans, they’re going to Iceland.‘

And he said, ‘listen to me, son. No Afghan wants to go to Iceland. You’re born in this naturally fertile country, amazing history, beautiful weather—less so the last 40 or 50 years—but historically, it was a very fertile, peaceful place. And you end up in a place—not to besmirch Iceland—you go to a place where you don’t see the sun for three months.

No Afghan grows up as a child and says, you know what? I don’t wanna see the sun for three months and I wanna live in -10ºC for six months.‘

That’s a really powerful point and I think that a lot of European liberals, progressives, don’t understand that. There’s this kind of strange—it’s not racism—it’s a European superiority where they say ‘well of course they want to come here. We’re better!’

Many of them [immigrants] are coming because of war, sanctions, occupation, capitalist underdevelopment … but that seems completely absent from that conversation.

It’s like the people who talk about the “volunteer homeless”. Currently homeless people are choosing to be homeless only because being in a shelter is worse. They see being homeless as the best of the terribly shitty options that they have available right now. They don’t “choose homelessness” because they’re fulfilling some sort of childhood dream.

At 01:33:00, Žižek concurs, saying,

“I would totally agree with your father I. don’t know how, but the problem should be solved there in those lands—okay we shouldn’t now invade Iran. but we should at least reflect on how we also screwed it up with our politics.”

We screwed it up with our piracy. We continue to do so. Empire has no principle preventing its raping and pillaging. Pure and simple. Sauber und glatt.