By Kevin Stoda
In a recent Democracy Now interview, I came across a fairly salient explanation of what is wrong with Kansas, America, and any progressive movements world-wide. In an interview with Amy Goodman, the Slovakian philosopher Slavoj Zizek noted that condemning the far-right and criticizing so-called country bumkins and xenophobic fringe groups is not the way to go. Zizek stated that so-called neutral-legal frameworks are enough to promote tolerance. Instead of an abstract liberal model of tolerance (I live my life--you live your life--we ignore each other), we need to have some common ideals and beliefs. Sadly, until now progressives have capitulated this domain to the right-wing extremists and anti-immigrant parties. Zizek emphasizes this point further, "[I]t's absolutely crucial [to note] how this anti-immigrant explosion is linked to the withdrawal of leftist politics, especially in the matters of economy and so on. It is as if the left, being obsessed by the idea that we shouldn't appear as reactionary in the economic sense, that is to say that "No, no, no, we are not the old trade union representatives of the working class, we are for postmodern digital capitalism' and so on, [that] they don't want to touch the working class or so-called lower ordinary people. CRUCIAL FOCUS ON BELIEFS & REAL INTEREST IN THE MASSES "And here right-wingers enter" Zizek explains. "Do you know, the horrible paradox is that, apart from some small leftist fringe parties, the only serious political force in Europe today which still is ready to appeal to the ordinary working people are the right-wing anti-immigrants? So you see, we, the leftists, we have no right, absolutely no right, to take this arrogant view of offended tolerant people who are horrored--no, we should ask the question, how we enabled what is going on."As a result of this exit of the left and progressives in defining beliefs and ideals in the economic arena against the status-quo in Europe and the USA over the last decades, Zikek points out, "The extreme right [has] imposed their topic [thesis] onto everyone. . . . I think there is a failure in this standard, liberal, multicultural vision, which means every ethnic group, whatever, to itself, all we need is a neutral legal framework guaranteeing the coexistence of groups. Sorry if I shock someone, but I think we do need what Germans call Leitkultur, leading culture. Just it shouldn't be nationally defined. We should fight for that. Yes, I agree with right-wingers. We need a set of values accepted by all. But what will these values be, my god? We neglected this a little bit. You know that it's not just this abstract liberal model: you have your world, I have my world, we just need a neutral legal network--how we will politely ignore each other." Zizek's analysis thoughtfully explains why the TEAPARTY and right-extremists movement have been functioning well in the USA since the 1970s.
BEHIND EVERY FASCISM IS A FAILED REVOLUTION
Zizek then explains how he came to his theory less than a year ago: "I was sitting in a hotel room, jumping between two channels on TV. One was Fox News--you must know the enemy to fight it. The other one was PBS. On Fox News, it was a live transmission of a tea party in Texas where a singer, kind of a fake folk singer, was singing anti-Washington, anti-state-expenditure song. On PBS, there was a documentary on the great leftist icon Pete Seeger. I was shocked at how the words, although the political meanings of it, were almost the same. Both were singing about we small, ordinary people are exploited; big bad guys, bankers in Washington, and so on, Wall Street, and so on. This is the tragedy. This is the tragedy at its purest. You must know better than me. I don't know whether--as far as I can judge the situation, it was after Carter, with Reagan, when this grassroots movement and so on were more taken over by the right, like, no, the time of left, leftist, radical mass mobilization has passed now. When somebody tells you, "Oh, tea party, oh, out of a local grassroot protest,' your first assessation [sic]is, are right-wingers again doing it, or what? This is a very sad moment. . . .I think, part of a global process of what I call the disappearance of the--what philosophers like Kant called the public use of reason."
Zizek summarizes his main point of view on the needs for Europe and American leftist and progressives to really reach out to the breadth of the masses once again--and to listen to what really worries them. "We should ask more fundamental questions. . . . To cut a long story short, . . . one big left-of-center party, one big right-of-center party--they are the only two parties which address the entire population--and then [we have] small fringe parties. Now, more and more in Europe [as in the USA], another polarity is emerging: a big liberal capitalist party, which can even be in social matters like abortion, women's rights, relatively progressive--pure, let's call it, [the] capitalist party--and the only serious opposition is the immigrant--anti-immigrant nationalists. It's something horrible that has happened. The anti-immigrants are establishing themselves as the only authentic--of course, they are not authentic politically, but in the sense of really experienced as authentic--voice of protest. If you want to protest, the only way to do it effectively in Europe is this. [Politically Correctly, etc.] So, I think it's a matter of life and death for a slightly more radical left to emerge.
Zizek concludes, "You know what? Walter Benjamin, the great Frankfurt School fellow [inaudible], he said something which we should always bear in mind today. He said, "Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution.' It goes, more than ever, for us. Like, take--let's take your own country, Kansas, which is now the bedrock of Christian fundamentalism. As Thomas Frank demonstrated in his book, my god, 'til twenty, thirty years ago, Kansas was the breeding ground of all radical socialist, and so on, mass movements. The same in Europe. This should worry us, not this arrogant--which always has a negative class connotation. When people attack common people's racism, it's always like we upper-middle-class liberals dismissing ordinary people. We should start asking ourselves what we did wrong."
KANSAS EXAMPLE: AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN TRAGEDY
Naturally, Zizek is wrong about the timeline. Kansas shifted away from progressive prior to the mid-1930s. Although Zizek fails to get the historical timeline straight on Kansas (my home state), he does understand how Kansas--and most of the USA--came to turn from progressivism to conservative and rightwing extremism over the decades of the 20th Century. Moreover, Zizek rightly states that a similar trend has occurred in Europe in recent years.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
