There is a lot to say about Žižek’s clunkily titled Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors: Against the Double Blackmail, so I will break the review up into several parts. This is a very good sign because, at least, there is something to say about the book, meaning that it offers more than the usual string of platitudes on the subject. The platitudes are still there, of course. They are like an incantation everybody has to repeat before approaching the matter but there are useful insights, as well. Bauman’s book on refugees, for instance, contains nothing but completely correct, reasonable, painfully obvious things that it makes no sense to discuss since they are so obvious.
I will start with the worst that the book has to offer. And if you aren’t scared away by this part, then go ahead and read the following parts of the review. Like everybody else, Žižek is terrified of his subject. Every insight he offers is followed by some pedestrian PC mantra that is supposed to remind everybody that Žižek is a hardcore Leftist. This strategy didn’t work. Even the very modest departure from Liberal Orthodoxy that Žižek timidly undertook in this book merited him veritable howls of anger and pain from the good girls and boys of the Liberal camp (here is just one example but there are dozens. Notice the truly pathetic exhortation of “don’t read it!” It is as if simply seeing Žižek’s words will pollute the Liberal innocence too much.)
Žižek clearly knew that he was going to be torn into shreds for saying things like
Are those who advocate a radical opening of the borders aware that, since our democracies are nation-state democracies, their demand equals a suspension of democracy—a gigantic and fundamental transformation should be allowed to affect a country without the democratic consultation of its population?
and
The next taboo that we must discard is the all too fast equation of the European emancipatory legacy to cultural imperialism and racism: many on the Left tend to dismiss any mention of ‘European values’ as the ideological form of Eurocentric colonialism. . . The time has come to drop the Leftist mantra according to which our main task is the critique of Eurocentrism.
and especially
Another taboo to be jettisoned is the notion that the protection of one’s specific way of life is in itself a protoFascist or racist category.
Oh, goodness! Fast, give me some pearls to clutch! To compensate for these scandalous statements that make him a pariah among his political community, Žižek comes out with insane – and seriously offensive – statements like
The greatest victims of the Paris terror attacks will be refugees themselves.
I’m completely against blaming refugees for Paris attacks but you’ve got to be totally off your rocker if you truly believe that there can be greater victims than the ones who are dead as a result of the attacks.
If you manage to stay patient throughout a regular sprinkling of this kind of hyper-compensatory madness, though, you will be rewarded with valuable insights. And that’s more than can be said about any other book I have seen on the subject.
Clarissa's Blog 
Both your post and the linked one made me eager to read the book. Loved the first quote of Zizek in your post. How do Zizek’s critics react to it? In my mind, democracy and protection of human rights are so closely linked that the moment you suspend the former, the latter will be destroyed too and very fast. Even if the suspention is done under the pretence of protecting those rights. People will be lied to in order to make the transition to the new not-democratic order quieter, and then the proverbial gloves will come off.
\ Another taboo to be jettisoned is the notion that the protection of one’s specific way of life is in itself a protoFascist or racist category.
In Israel, the opposite attitude is the taboo, even among the Left. Of course, I am influenced by my culture, but still can’t believe the people equating the two are anything but a tiny minority in any country, which is viewed by 99% of population as crazy. Even reading the term “anarcho-communists”in the linked post felt funny in a ridiculous fashion.
\ The greatest victims of the Paris terror attacks will be refugees themselves.
He means the greatest victims in a new, post-attack reality.
And I do not believe refugees will be hurt by it. EU leaders seem to do their best at ignoring this attack and continuing in the former policies. Any move to the Right of the EU population would be pretty much the same without this big attack, in my opinion. It’s not like there is a lack of smaller attacks and other integration problems.
\ … sheer laziness. Žižek can’t even be bothered to connect up the bits of his own argument … He argues that the good thing about religious fundamentalisms is that at least religious fundamentalists won’t ever form political alliances with each other across religious lines – right after a discussion of the role of religious fundamentalism in contemporary Israeli politics.
Ironically, this made me so want to read the book. 🙂
May be mention what he says about Israel too in the future posts, please?
I do not know of any religious fundamentalists forming “political alliances with each other across religious lines” in Israeli politics. If he refers to Israeli relations with Arab countries, then it may not be the best example since:
a) Israel, at least, isn’t ruled by religious fundamentalists yet
b) those alliances are notoriously shaky
At first, I thought he referred to Israeli internal politics and wondered where he saw those alliances.
\ Zizek’s Left … treats the refugee crisis is primarily a humanitarian rather than a political issue.
Wait, the real Left doesn’t do that? Only Right seems to treat the crisis as a political issue. For instance, where are Leftists talking about the industry of smuggling people into Europe?
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You’d hate what he says on Israel in the book. I hate it, too, because with his training in Lacanian psychoanalysis, he could say something useful. And instead he shares trivial stories about a photo an Israeli soldier showed to a Palestinian woman.
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I already find some relief in showing photos being among the top horrors Zizek noticed. 🙂
Now am curious what was in this horrible photo. (Imagined the answer being “bodies of dead Palestinians,” but hope it’s not so.)
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No, it’s a story about the Israeli soldier hearing the name of the Palestinian woman’s daughter and showing her the photo of his sister who had the same name. Everybody is very much alive in the story. But the idea is that the soldier was acting as if they were just regular human beings and trying to erase his role as a soldier. In the meanwhile, he was searching the woman’s house for suspects. The story is weak because there is no suggestion that the search was unjustified, violent, or anything of the kind. So I can’t really condemn the soldier here.
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\ But the idea is that the soldier was acting as if they were just regular human beings and trying to erase his role as a soldier.
You know, in my head, the directive “do not ever (pretend to) forget your role as X (=oppressor?)” is translated into “see the other side as Y (=enemy) and as Y only at all times.” I doubt this is the result those Leftists wish to get.
Reminded me of some Israeli Arabs and Palestinian European supporters talking how the name “Israeli Arabs” is insulting and that they should be called “Palestinians” instead.
Well, if they are not Israeli at all and feel purely Palestinian, surely they should be happy to join the future Palestinian state via land and population swaps? Yet, the opposite is true. Some people want to be Israeli (citizens) when it’s time to receive welfare and in general enjoy the first world standard of living, but do not dare to use this insulting adjective to describe them!
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Zizek is against an independent Palestinian state, by the way. He says it will be a Bantustan where Palestinians will live in dire poverty. He also says it will give Israelis an opportunity to relinquish all responsibility for Palestinians’ welfare.
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\ it will be a Bantustan where Palestinians will live in dire poverty.
Obviously.
\ it will give Israelis an opportunity to relinquish all responsibility for Palestinians’ welfare
This is one of the few remaining selling points of the two states solution to Israeli public. 🙂
I do not see why Israelis should be responsible for Palestinians’ welfare in perpetuity, according to Zizek. The rest of the Arab world is mostly a Bantustan too, so one cannot blame Jews for Palestinians’ future failed state. At least, not fully blame us for it. Why doesn’t Zizek expect Palestinians to learn with time how to build a normal life for themselves?
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Do you know why Russians are so angry? If you are poor or your life isn’t completely perfect, you are supposed to blame colonialism. And they are the only poor bastards on the planet who haven’t found a convenient colonial power to blame.
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So the answer is: because colonialism.
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Your criticism of Zizek saying nothing interesting about my country made me think of “Alone Among Jews / Catch the Jew!” by Tuvia Tenenbom. I found quite a few interesting comments regarding us and the Palestinians there. Wonder what you would make of it.
Sample chapter/s in Russian:
http://botinok.co.il/node/98310
AND HERE
http://ejwiki-pubs.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%B8%D0%B7_%D0%BA%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%B8_%22%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B9%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B9_%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%8F!%22
He has also written a few things about Israeli Right wing members, not only about Palestinians and extreme Left wing Jews.
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Does he mention that the current inflows have been going on for about five years now (maybe longer) across the mediterranean (and the Spanish enclaves in North Africa) and on the Turkish-Greek land border? It hit world headline status with Greece and then Germany but it’s not a new thing at all to anyone who’s been paying attention.
Almost everything I see written on the issue makes me think I’ve been taking crazy pills, they completely ignore the realities of who is showing up, what they want and the fact that Europe cannot provide it. “Refugees” to Europe (even the legitimate minority) are essentially Trump voters – expecting governments to do things that no government can….
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He says it’s just the beginning. A lot lot lot more is to come. And something needs to be done to at least limit the Great Resettlement. But his recipe on how to do that is very contradictory. I’ll talk about that in the second part.
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One comment to the linked post says “I had heard Verso has dumped [Zizek] and won’t be publishing any new books of his.”
Is it true or merely an unsubstantiated rumor?
One would think his communism would get him dumped, not a few muzzled remarks on the EU Rush (like The California Gold Rush in some ways).
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No, it’s the other way round. If you are not Marxist, good luck getting published. Or if you are not Marxist enough, which is my problem. There’s nobody but Marxists in the intellectual publishing. And it’s not an exaggeration.
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