AGAINST THE DOUBLE BLACKMAIL
/ part 3
Slavoj Zizek
The painfulfact is that Serb aggressive nationalism enjoys the support of the large
majority of the population - no, Serbs are not passive victims of
nationalist manipulation, they are not Americans in disguise, just waiting
to be delivered from the bad nationalist spell.
More precisely, the misperception of the West is double: this notion of
the bad leadership manipulating the good people is accompanied by the
apparently contradictory notion according to which, Balkan people are
living in the past, fighting again old battles, perceiving recent situation
through old myths... One is tempted to say that these two notions should be
precisely TURNED AROUND: not only are people not "good," since they let
themselves be manipulated with obscene pleasure; there are also no "old
myths" which we need to study if we are really to understand the situation,
just the PRESENT outburst of racist nationalism which, according to its
needs, opportunistically resuscitates old myths...
So, on the one hand, we have the obscenities of the Serb state
propaganda:they regularily refer to Clinton not as "the American president," but as
"the American Fuehrer"; two of the transparents on their state-organized
anti-Nato demonstrations were "Clinton, come here and be our Monica!" (i.e.
suck our...), and "Monica, did you suck out also his brain?". The
atmosphere in Belgrade is, at least for the time being, carnavalesque in a
faked way - when they are not in shelters, people dance to rock or ethnic
music on the streets, under the motto "With poetry and music against
bombs!", playing the role of the defying heroes (since they know that NATO
does not really bomb civilian targets and that, consequently, they are
safe!). This is where the NATO planners got it wrong, caught in their
schemes of strategic reasoning, unable to forecast that the Serb reaction
to bombardment will be a recourse to a collective Bakhtinian
carnivalization of the social life... This pseudo-authentic spectacle,
although it may fascinate some confused Leftists, is effectively the other,
public, face of ethnic cleansing: in Belgrade people are defiantly dancing
on the streets while, three hundred kilometers to the South, a genocide of
African proportions is taking place... And the Western counterpoint to this
obscenity is the more and more openly racist tone of its reporting: when
the three American soldiers were taken prisoners, CNN dedicated the first
10 minutes of the News to their predicament (although everyone knew that
NOTHING will happen to them!), and only then reported on the tens of
thousands of refugees, burned villages and Pristina turning into a ghost
town. Where is the so-much-praised Serb "democratic opposition" to protest
THIS horror taking place in their own backyard, not only the - till now, at
least, bombardments with relatively very low casualties?
In the recent struggle of the so-called "democratic opposition" in
Serbiaagainst the Milosevic's regime, the truly touchy topic is the stance
towards Kosovo: as to this topic, the large majority of the "democratic
opposition" unconditionally endorses Milosevic's anti-Albanian nationalist
agenda, even accusing him of making compromises with the West and
"betraying" Serb national interests in Kosovo. In the course of the student
demonstrations against the Milosevic's Socialist Party falsification of the
election results in the Winter of 1996, the Western media who closely
followed the events and praised the revived democratic spirit in Serbia,
rarely mentioned the fact that one of the regular slogans of the
demonstrators against the special police forces was "Instead of kicking us,
go to Kosovo and kick out the Albanians!". In today's Serbia, the absolute
sine qua non of an authentic political act would thus be to unconditionally
reject the ideological topos of the "Albanian threat to Serbia."
One thing is for sure: the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia will
change theglobal geopolitic coordinates. The unwritten pact of peaceful coexistence
(the respect of each state's full sovereignty, i.e. non-interference in
internal affairs, even in the case of the grave violation of human rights)
is over. However, the very first act of the new global police force
usurping the right to punish sovereign states for their wrongdoings already
signals its end, its own undermining, since it immediately became clear
that this universality of human rights as its legitimization is false, i.e.
that the attacks on selective targets protect particular interests. The
NATO bombardments of Yugoslavia also signal the end of any serious role of
UN and Security Council: it is NATO under US guidance that effectively
pulls the strings. Furthermore, the silent pact with Russia that held till
now is broken: in the terms of this pact, Russia was publicly treated as a
superpower, allowed to maintain the appearance of being one, on condition
that it did not effectively act as one. Now Russia's humiliation is open,
any pretense of dignity is unmasked: Russia can only openly resist or
openly comply with Western pressure. The further logical result of this new
situation will be, of course, the renewed rise of anti-Western resistance
from Eastern Europe to the Third World, with the sad consequence that
criminal figures like Milosevic will be elevated into the model fighters
against the New World Order.
So the lesson is that the alternative between the New World Order
and theneoracist nationalists opposing it is a false one: these are the two sides
of the same coin - the New World Order itself breeds monstrosities that it
fights. Which is why the protests against bombing from the reformed
Communist parties all around Europe, inclusive of PDS, are totally
misdirected: these false protesters against the NATO bombardment of Serbia
are like the caricaturized pseudo-Leftists who oppose the trial against a
drug dealer, claiming that his crime is the result of social pathology of
the capitalist system. The way to fight the capitalist New World Order is
not by supporting local proto-Fascist resistances to it, but to focus on
the only serious question today: how to build TRANSNATIONAL political
movements and institutions strong enough to seriously constraint the
unlimited rule of the capital, and to render visible and politically
relevant the fact that the local fundamentalist resistances against the New
World Order, from Milosevic to le Pen and the extreme Right in Europe, are
part of it?
--- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
/ part 3
Slavoj Zizek
The painfulfact is that Serb aggressive nationalism enjoys the support of the large
majority of the population - no, Serbs are not passive victims of
nationalist manipulation, they are not Americans in disguise, just waiting
to be delivered from the bad nationalist spell.
More precisely, the misperception of the West is double: this notion of
the bad leadership manipulating the good people is accompanied by the
apparently contradictory notion according to which, Balkan people are
living in the past, fighting again old battles, perceiving recent situation
through old myths... One is tempted to say that these two notions should be
precisely TURNED AROUND: not only are people not "good," since they let
themselves be manipulated with obscene pleasure; there are also no "old
myths" which we need to study if we are really to understand the situation,
just the PRESENT outburst of racist nationalism which, according to its
needs, opportunistically resuscitates old myths...
So, on the one hand, we have the obscenities of the Serb state
propaganda:they regularily refer to Clinton not as "the American president," but as
"the American Fuehrer"; two of the transparents on their state-organized
anti-Nato demonstrations were "Clinton, come here and be our Monica!" (i.e.
suck our...), and "Monica, did you suck out also his brain?". The
atmosphere in Belgrade is, at least for the time being, carnavalesque in a
faked way - when they are not in shelters, people dance to rock or ethnic
music on the streets, under the motto "With poetry and music against
bombs!", playing the role of the defying heroes (since they know that NATO
does not really bomb civilian targets and that, consequently, they are
safe!). This is where the NATO planners got it wrong, caught in their
schemes of strategic reasoning, unable to forecast that the Serb reaction
to bombardment will be a recourse to a collective Bakhtinian
carnivalization of the social life... This pseudo-authentic spectacle,
although it may fascinate some confused Leftists, is effectively the other,
public, face of ethnic cleansing: in Belgrade people are defiantly dancing
on the streets while, three hundred kilometers to the South, a genocide of
African proportions is taking place... And the Western counterpoint to this
obscenity is the more and more openly racist tone of its reporting: when
the three American soldiers were taken prisoners, CNN dedicated the first
10 minutes of the News to their predicament (although everyone knew that
NOTHING will happen to them!), and only then reported on the tens of
thousands of refugees, burned villages and Pristina turning into a ghost
town. Where is the so-much-praised Serb "democratic opposition" to protest
THIS horror taking place in their own backyard, not only the - till now, at
least, bombardments with relatively very low casualties?
In the recent struggle of the so-called "democratic opposition" in
Serbiaagainst the Milosevic's regime, the truly touchy topic is the stance
towards Kosovo: as to this topic, the large majority of the "democratic
opposition" unconditionally endorses Milosevic's anti-Albanian nationalist
agenda, even accusing him of making compromises with the West and
"betraying" Serb national interests in Kosovo. In the course of the student
demonstrations against the Milosevic's Socialist Party falsification of the
election results in the Winter of 1996, the Western media who closely
followed the events and praised the revived democratic spirit in Serbia,
rarely mentioned the fact that one of the regular slogans of the
demonstrators against the special police forces was "Instead of kicking us,
go to Kosovo and kick out the Albanians!". In today's Serbia, the absolute
sine qua non of an authentic political act would thus be to unconditionally
reject the ideological topos of the "Albanian threat to Serbia."
One thing is for sure: the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia will
change theglobal geopolitic coordinates. The unwritten pact of peaceful coexistence
(the respect of each state's full sovereignty, i.e. non-interference in
internal affairs, even in the case of the grave violation of human rights)
is over. However, the very first act of the new global police force
usurping the right to punish sovereign states for their wrongdoings already
signals its end, its own undermining, since it immediately became clear
that this universality of human rights as its legitimization is false, i.e.
that the attacks on selective targets protect particular interests. The
NATO bombardments of Yugoslavia also signal the end of any serious role of
UN and Security Council: it is NATO under US guidance that effectively
pulls the strings. Furthermore, the silent pact with Russia that held till
now is broken: in the terms of this pact, Russia was publicly treated as a
superpower, allowed to maintain the appearance of being one, on condition
that it did not effectively act as one. Now Russia's humiliation is open,
any pretense of dignity is unmasked: Russia can only openly resist or
openly comply with Western pressure. The further logical result of this new
situation will be, of course, the renewed rise of anti-Western resistance
from Eastern Europe to the Third World, with the sad consequence that
criminal figures like Milosevic will be elevated into the model fighters
against the New World Order.
So the lesson is that the alternative between the New World Order
and theneoracist nationalists opposing it is a false one: these are the two sides
of the same coin - the New World Order itself breeds monstrosities that it
fights. Which is why the protests against bombing from the reformed
Communist parties all around Europe, inclusive of PDS, are totally
misdirected: these false protesters against the NATO bombardment of Serbia
are like the caricaturized pseudo-Leftists who oppose the trial against a
drug dealer, claiming that his crime is the result of social pathology of
the capitalist system. The way to fight the capitalist New World Order is
not by supporting local proto-Fascist resistances to it, but to focus on
the only serious question today: how to build TRANSNATIONAL political
movements and institutions strong enough to seriously constraint the
unlimited rule of the capital, and to render visible and politically
relevant the fact that the local fundamentalist resistances against the New
World Order, from Milosevic to le Pen and the extreme Right in Europe, are
part of it?
--- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---