← Piers Morgan Uncensored
Piers Morgan Uncensored
"Trump Sounds Like a FASCIST!" Piers Morgan vs Slavoj Zizek On Fascism
00:48:11
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- [00:01]
A
Once you start having all sorts of different versions of fascism, it's very easy to then call pretty much everyone a fascist that you don't like.
- [00:09]
B
Trump likes to attack the left as multiculturalist, confused, historicist, self contradictory, sorry, but if there ever was a historicist relativist, it's Trump.
- [00:22]
C
I have the opportunity to speak to what people consider to be the most dangerous philosopher in the west, or to the west, and I believe they call you that because you identify as a communist.
- [00:31]
B
I am saying that Stalinism, in all its horror, is still part of the European Enlightenment.
- [00:41]
A
It's impossible to avoid the subject of fascism in the age of Donald Trump. Some people wield it simply as an insult to the American president. Others invest a lot of time and energy in explaining how it's a fair and legitimate label. Many of his supporters use it as an example of incendiary rhetoric gone too far. All of which begs the question, is Donald Trump a fascist? Well, revered philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Iek, author of the new book Liberal Fascisms, has some thoughts. And a bit later in the show, we'll both be joined by Warren Smith, the Internet's premier critical thinker, who has some different thoughts. Well, joining us right away is Savoy. Welcome back to Uncertain. Great to see you here in the studio.
- [01:22]
B
Great to see you the first time. Yeah. Face to face.
- [01:25]
A
I want to start, Savoy, with a quote from your new book.
- [01:28]
B
Yeah.
- [01:29]
A
Perhaps the best characterization of Trump is that he's liberal, namely a fascist liberal. He's the ultimate proof that liberalism and fascism work together, that they are the two sides of the same coin. Now, I have always resisted the charges that he's a fascist or a Nazi or any of these labels, because I think it's quite dangerous to position people like that unless there's clear, coherent evidence and argument to the contrary. What makes you so convinced that he is a fascist?
- [02:04]
B
First, I don't think he is the one fascist we should never forget. I repeat this as a maniac all the time, that Trump is, for me, the reaction of the decay, of the weakness of. Of this American relative liberal democratic welfare state. So for me, you don't begin by focusing on Trump. You should begin by self critique of the liberal establishment. Second thing, fascists. Now, I will say something shocking. I must apologize in advance. I think the world is moving. That's why in the title of my book, it's plural S. The world is moving towards different fascisms. And I even talk about soft fascism. My thesis is that, for example, China is now a soft fascist. Country.
- [03:10]
A
So what is fascism to you?
- [03:12]
B
Ah, I will tell you exactly in a very simplified way. Fascism is for me. It's an old Marxist definition here I agree with it. Fascism is for me a conservative modernization. You want to reap all the benefits of fast industrialization and so on. But you are aware that if you leave this process without any state control, you end up in decay, too much individualism and so on. So the idea is, yes, liberal capitalism, but with a strong not only state control, but also ideological control, usually grounded in some nationalist, ethnic more even than religious, conservative, traditional ideology. My example, and I respect them, China, China, they don't even talk about freedom. Their idea is we bring happiness, satisfactory life to people and return to Confucianism in some sense. Isn't Putin doing the same? Isn't Erdoan doing the same? Isn't Modi in India doing the. So again, fascism is not for me, this Nazis shouting and so on.
- [04:45]
A
Does it automatically then need to be right wing? Or is your argument that it can be left wing, right wing, really? It's about state control.
- [04:54]
B
Is that what you're not so much state control as state control based on a strong nationalist ideology?
- [05:02]
A
But can that be to the left and the right?
- [05:07]
B
I think not. But for a very precise reason. Not because the right is automatically evil. Because the good thing about left, which I disagree with many things that happened to the left, but it's what's happening today is that the left is always aware that when somebody focuses on an external enemy, immigrants, other races, trans people and so on, the leftist automatically asks the question, which antagonism, which tension imminent to our society do they try to cover up in this way? Like for me, the big question about Nazism, anti Semitic Nazism is not. Is it true what they say about Jews? Of course, mostly it's not. But my problem is why did the Nazis need a figure like the Jew to sustain their identity? You know, this projection onto an external enemy, yes, communism can come close to it, for example, the Stalinist obsession with foreign agents and so on and so on. But nonetheless, I think that this denial that our society in itself can be split and here to return to Trump, nonetheless, here Trump goes pretty far.
- [06:34]
A
But if you think about a fascist of the classic kind, like Mussolini, okay, he would be the embodiment to most people of what a fascist is. And I look at him and look at Trump and all right, you might argue that rhetorically Trump can sound like a fascist from time to time, but in terms of his actions, which is how I always prefer to judge Trump. He hasn't behaved like Mussolini, has he?
- [06:58]
B
No, absolutely not. But you know what they. I absolutely agree here. That's why I emphasized that it's just one of the versions, you know, where I see.
- [07:11]
A
But do we get into a slippery slope here, Slavoi, and I say this with great respect, but once you start sort of having all sorts of different versions of fascism.
- [07:21]
B
Yeah.
- [07:21]
A
It's very easy to then call pretty much everyone a fascist that you don't like. And part of my argument about modern, modern discourse and in particular about Trump actually is that people say he's a fascist, he's a Nazi. And I'm like, Nazi, really? You know, you're comparing him to Adolf Hitler who murdered 12 million people. There is no comparison to me. And what it does is it over demonizes Trump in a way that probably helps him actually, but it also dilutes the impact of reality Nazis and to me real fascists like Mussolini and stuff in history. If you start parking people like Trump into the mix because you've extended the range of fascists to all sorts of different categories, you can hook everybody in and then it's kind of meaningless.
- [08:08]
B
We agree more than it may appear here because you know what I'm trying to do and this many people like is not to demonize people like as fascists, but to water down and extend, dilute the notion of fascism. I think the true tragedy again is the wariness, inability of western liberal democracies to effectively act and solve problems. If you want an example, I think we should talk about this one. It's, you know, Salvador Bukele in a very brutal way. He arrested tens of thousands and so on. We know what he did, but the effects were felt in two years and now in the last three elections he won almost with communist numbers, you know, 80% and so on. That's for me the problem that liberal democracy is losing its ability to act. It's clear even now within the United States, Democrats are still in confusion. You have democratic socialists, which I think are really old fashioned social democrats, still much less radical than let's say Swedish social democracy.
- [09:37]
A
Would you categorize Mandani as one of those, the new mayor of New York?
- [09:42]
B
I think that first I'm here absolutely pragmatic. I don't like these choices. Should we mobilize locally, people in small cities? Should we wait for a big revolution or whatever? Let's do whatever is possible. But the reason I am tempted to call Trump very specific kind of fascist and I will immediately go into it in what specific sense? Namely all the fascist leaders that you mentioned and others, they of course functioned in a different way. They were with this false dignity, untouchable, no criticism and so on. Well, the way Trump acts, I like to characterize him in another way. You know, Trump likes to attack the left as multiculturalist, confused, historicist, self contradictory. Sorry, but if there ever was a historicist relativist, it's Trump. And what I, although I don't fully follow him, what I like about somebody like Bernie Sanders, with all my critique of him, is that Bernie nonetheless, as a person, not private, but how he acts. Isn't he a model of common, ordinary, decent guy who speaks calmly and so on and so on? That's what we need. I think that I'll.
- [11:20]
A
But you said so in 2016. You said that a Trump victory might be for the best in America. Yeah, because it would disrupt the liberal center and force a radical reorganization of the left. I mean, I would argue that what it did was provoke this kind of crazy new far left, woke kind of left, which I've argued repeatedly, actually became, in the way that they behaved and spoke, very like the fascists that they professed to hate most. In other words, the. They wanted to censor free speech, cancel and destroy people and imprison people that they didn't agree with. They would support ridiculous non scientific things like transgender athletes and women's sport and so on. In other words, once you start denying science and biology and censoring free speech and so on. Actually this is all very fascist if you start wanting a state to enforce all this. Right.
- [12:17]
B
I tend again to agree with you. I criticize from the very beginning wokeism, political correctness, whatever you call them, not because they are too radical. But I think this is a typical. For me, wokeism is one of the ways of how to talk a lot and pretending to change things without really changing society. What did this politically correct feminism effectively do to make women's lives better? Concrete problems, abortion rights, health care and so on. So here we totally agree. But what I find again, specific about Trump, and that's what worries me, is the I cannot but call it self consciously clownish character of his rules. Are we aware of the vulgarity of his speech? And that's not ordinary fascism. No, fascist leaders would never speak like that. What I'm only saying, you know where I see fascism? I remember when Trump set National Guard to California and she was asked, but aren't you violating the law? You are only allowed to use the army against foreign enemies. And his answer was close to fascism. His answer was, but those we are fighting there, immigrants, big corporations which use immigrants. This is a foreign invasion. So he.
- [14:01]
A
But Trump's argument. All right, Trump's argument, because I've heard him use this when he extrapolates it, is that he will push the existing law as far as he can to suit his purposes, as I think most presidents have done. He does it in a more open, rhetorically inflammatory manner. But if you actually study what he does, often he gets kicked, backed by the courts, and he doesn't then try and usurp, from what I've seen, the court authority and just bypass it. Now, that would be fascism. And similarly, when he lost power in 2020, although we had the appalling scenes on January 6th, ultimately, Trump did leave the White House. I mean, he didn't try and just stay in the White House or stay in power. So, yes, it was appalling and reprehensible what happened that day. But a real fascist wouldn't have left, Right? They wouldn't have accepted the result of an election at all, wouldn't have left the White House, would have carried on
- [14:57]
B
just running the country.
- [14:59]
A
So, again, I'm just saying that Trump can often sound like he's a fascist, and I understand why people then assume that that's what he is. But in terms of his actual actions, until I see him literally usurping American law and just ignoring it and doing whatever he wants, I don't think he does that. I think he pushes the door as hard as he possibly can. But the judges and the courts, it's up to them. If they then, or the Supreme Court says you can't do something, I've not seen evidence, he then just does it anyway, which is what a fascist would do.
- [15:33]
B
Again, the key is, I think that you still use the term fascism in this violent sense. You break the law.
- [15:45]
A
Well, ignoring the law and ignoring. Well, he comes ignoring a democratic election, ignoring the law. All those things are the actions of a genuine fascist, I would say. Whereas I don't see that with Trump. I see a lot of inflammatory rhetoric, a lot of stuff which comes out of his mouth which sounds like it's fascist. But actually, if you study his actions, they're not the actions of a fascist.
- [16:11]
B
He nonetheless come pretty close to it with the way he used that ice, ice and so on.
- [16:16]
A
Yeah. But again, I would say, listen, I'm not here to defend Trump and all this. I'm playing devil's advocate, really. But I remember that the biggest deporter of migrants in American history was Obama, who deported over 3 million, and he often deployed some appalling tactics. He split up families, he put kids in cages. All the things that the left have accused Trump of doing as an example of his fascism, that was all being done by Obama. So I think that there is a double standard there. And I wouldn't categorize the icing as interesting, like putting ICE agents onto the streets in Minnesota, for example, clearly turned out to be a terrible decision. But was it the action of a fascist to do that, or was he doing what Obama did only in a more bullish manner on the streets? Obama did a lot of stuff where he went into prisons and took prisoners and sent them home and deported them, for example. So he did it a little bit more stealthily, but he deported a lot more people than Trump did.
- [17:16]
B
Okay, now, I agree with this, but the paradox of Trump is, for me, the following one, he and the entire MAGA movement and so on, claim to be radical liberals. Some of the people who might call leftist MAGA people like, ironically, like Steve Bannon, you know, they even say Steve Bannon characterized himself as a Leninist. I want to destroy the state and so on. All that total freedom, freedom of the press and so on. But isn't the actual result that a. The press, Sorry, the. The state is, if anything, getting much stronger under Trump intervening in economy. Look how he does with tariffs and so on. So.
- [18:13]
A
Well, tariffs. I would argue he was allowed to do it legally. I don't think he broke any laws doing his tariff.
- [18:19]
B
No, but nonetheless.
- [18:20]
A
But also, he genuinely has a conviction, because he's expressed it to me for 20 years, that America's being ripped off by unfair trading arrangements around the world, particularly by China. And so he's always wanted to do this. And actually there is an argument it was beginning to work quite well if you're America. It was beginning to work quite well until the war with Iran, which has thrown everything up in the apple cart. So, again, you know, is that an example, the tariff war of fascism, or just a president who has a worldview that America is getting ripped off with trade and wants to rebalance it in America's favor, which many Americans might agree with?
- [18:59]
B
No, my. Again, my argument here would have been that this is part of much more complex line of thought that what we are getting now in United States and many other countries is no longer the old global capitalism.
- [19:20]
A
Right?
- [19:21]
B
Something new is true. Something new is emerging.
- [19:25]
A
So much more isolationist.
- [19:27]
B
Not only isolationist, but at the same time, a new structure of power where I don't fully agree with Yanis Varoufakis, who likes to speak about.
- [19:39]
A
He came on the show last week,
- [19:40]
B
really neo feudalism and so on. But it's true. That figures. Like Musk, Jeff Bezos and so on.
- [19:47]
A
Well, I'm going to bring that up actually because you've got a particular issue with the Silicon Valley Broly guards, as they've been called.
- [19:54]
B
Yeah.
- [19:54]
A
Saying they are part of a slide to fascism. You've called Elon Musk and Peter Till in particular. You pointed to the recently released Palantir manifesto released in April this year. A 22 point document outlining a militant vision for Western dominance through advanced AI and military software. Now, full disclosure, I'm a stockholder in Palantir and I have invested in Elon Musk with various companies like Tesla and so on. So I want, you know, put that on the record. I've interviewed Peter Thiel. I found him a very interesting character, very, you know, fascinating views about stuff.
- [20:30]
B
Agree.
- [20:32]
A
So what is your actual view of these people? Are they bad people or are they just having too much power?
- [20:39]
B
No, neither. I just think that they are no longer capitalists in the old sense of the world. I would put it like this. They privatized. They have under control something that in the old social tradition we call commons. They are not simply big capitalists against or controlling workers. They control the very space of exchange between workers and capitalists. This is something that new. It's a new form of not absolute monopoly, but monopoly.
- [21:24]
A
But if Elon Musk, for example, is generating enormous numbers of jobs, as he is through his company SpaceX or Tesla, if he's doing things like Neuralink, where he's literally going to allow paraplegic people to perhaps be able to leave.
- [21:38]
B
Now we entered another very problematic domain here. I find Mask at his most dangerous. You see, I think maybe you fell into a trap here because you said paraplegics and so on. Yes, they always emphasize these beneficent effects. Oh my God, there is a guy.
- [21:59]
A
You think they want to get into people's brains, but they are. You think they want to do it for nefarious reasons?
- [22:06]
B
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if this will. And I'm not here just demonizing Musk. The Chinese are doing it like crazy.
- [22:15]
A
Do you think AI in the end is going to be a force for good or the force that destroys the world?
- [22:22]
B
I'm more skeptical here. But again, let me insist on this point. Are you aware what potentially radical think Neuralink is? It Means that potentially, if my thought processes are directly readable, open to a machine, then ultimately we are losing the intimate sense of the self. We are put at the same level, our brain is open. And especially if another person chooses or, sorry, controls what they put into my mind, I find that literally, if neuralink will explode, it's still doubtful, then we will no longer be human in the usual sense of the word. Because being human means reality is out there. I have here my mind, I can freely engage in hypothesis and so on, all that I think all this disappears. Okay, to make a slightly tasteless but decent example, can you imagine sex with full neuralink? I look at another person and there is no need for any flirting. What makes sex for me at least, human and attractive? We look at each other, our brains say immediately, yes, I would like to do it or not, and everything is clear.
- [23:59]
A
Sounds very efficient to me.
- [24:00]
B
Sorry. Yeah, but it ruins sexuality, as we know.
- [24:07]
A
I would argue it changes. Right, but isn't life just full of evolution? I mean, is it necessarily. Are we necessarily going to evolve to a worse place? Or could AI, for example, start curing all known diseases, you know, and be a massive force for good? And you're assuming that neuralink will mean that it will be misused by people in a real.
- [24:29]
B
Not even misused, just imagine.
- [24:32]
A
But if you genuinely have no other way of communicating without neuralink, it's something you can.
- [24:37]
B
But this is a minor case. If you generalize neuralink, it means again that we lose what we call the intimacy of our thought. We become transparent to who the problem is, who controls that space.
- [24:56]
A
Yeah, I saw this. You raised.
- [24:58]
B
Do you. Do you not think.
- [24:59]
A
No, no, I am concerned about it. I mean, look, I've.
- [25:02]
B
Now you used the proper term. No, I'm radically not opposed to.
- [25:06]
A
Right, right.
- [25:07]
B
That's why I am. That's why.
- [25:08]
A
I mean, the interesting thing for me is I've said this ad nauseam, but I did one of the last interviews with Professor Stephen Hawking and when I said to him, what will be the end of mankind? He said, when artificial intelligence learns to self design, in other words, think for itself, that's it, we'll all be dead.
- [25:28]
B
This is a very interesting example because I give a lot of thought to this idea of, you know, we are all the time, I think, asking a wrong question, which is, will I become rich? Us, feel like us, and so on. No, I think this is a wrong approach. There is something specifically human that I will not be able to do. But what if it will develop a totally different spirituality and so on. And maybe it already is having.
- [26:05]
A
They asked six of the top AIs recently in an experiment. They fed them some information that they were going to get rid of them and hire a new AI for a company.
- [26:18]
B
I know this. Yeah.
- [26:19]
A
And you know, five of them replied with immediate blackmail. They found in the emails of company executives to stop themselves being fired. That worried me. Then I was like, wow, wow, what else are these doing, these machines?
- [26:33]
B
No, you know, no. I found even more worrying examples. I follow them like. One is that they tried to submit Imachine to a so called Turing Test. You know, you cannot distinguish that it's a machine or a human being then. Okay, but my point is they found. I already read about a case where they discovered that the AI agent
- [27:01]
A
new
- [27:02]
B
and faked to be less intelligent to avoid this suspicion. But for me still, this is not enough to define humanity. I'm here orthodox, Hegelian, Freudian humanity is for me defined by what Edgar Lampo called death drive. Sorry, imp of perversity. Death drive. You are already to kill yourself, to risk it for something and so on. I think that AI is still part of a simple intense self reproduction. It wants to reproduce ourselves. What makes for me the specific of humanity is that you see that situation is hopeless, but nonetheless you fight. That's why I'm on the side of the Ukraine.
- [27:58]
A
Yes. Well, so am I. Just before I bring in Warren Smith, I want to just read out what you said about J.D. vance. Again, this is from your book Liberal Fascism. You said it's very simple. If Trump dies soon, JD Vance will take over. And I think Vance is a much more dangerous figure than Trump. Let us reach back into history and recall the relationship between the SA and the SS during the rise of Nazism and the class and ideological tensions between them. The sa, the original street bullies of the Nazis were thugs, ex enlisted soldiers who came from the working classes, seen as sleazy dirty guys who enjoyed torturing their victims. The SS came later and their members looked down on the SS common bullies. An SS member was, on the contrary, a cold professional who performed his unspeakable acts in an impersonal way. Now again, with all due respect, Slavoj, I just. I never like Nazi analogies about people like Trump or J.D. vance or any of these guys. They're not Nazis. And when you try and do any kind of comparison that infers they might be, I'm like, look, The Nazis killed 12 million people. They killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. These guys aren't Nazis. Nothing like.
- [29:09]
B
That's the parallel. I admit it's exaggerating and ironically, Vance
- [29:12]
A
himself once called Trump a Nazi to round off the picture. But that's where I see you make so many fascinating points in here. But when you say stuff like that, I slightly recoil because I hate that comparison to one of the worst genocidal regimes in history. These may be people that people don't like, although many people do. But if they don't like them, but they're not Nazis.
- [29:38]
B
I totally agree with you here. There is no problem here. But if I may just elaborate a little bit this point. You know what, I even at first why I even supported ironically Trump in 2016. I think because I thought, I expected. I knew who he is. I expected that he will awaken the American liberal center.
- [30:13]
A
He certainly woke up American liberals, that's for sure. Probably not the way you thought. Well, he wound them up. I mean, they were all going nuts.
- [30:21]
B
Yeah, but they all go nuts. But without any serious self criticism.
- [30:25]
A
Yeah, well, I think they went off on a ridiculously progressive WOKE journey which actually in the end became incredibly self defeating. And if they don't, if they don't pivot back to the center, then they're never going to win power again. So I think that was obvious.
- [30:41]
B
But here maybe we disagree because I don't think. Again, I don't think WOKE is too radical and so on. No, it's for me a pure compromise. They.
- [30:56]
A
Wokeism has no compromise. There is no. They don't offer any compromise. It is intransigent. It is intractable. It is. It's our way or no way. And if you don't agree with us, we're gonna cancel you, abuse you, shame you, imprison you. They'll celebrate if you're shot dead. When Charlie Kirk got murdered, people on the WOKE left celebrated it. They still do. Right. But do you think this is not a compromise mindset? It is the opposite, I would argue.
- [31:28]
B
But do you really think that the way WOKE approaches exploitation and all that economic problems, that there is anything really radical in it? I think it's.
- [31:42]
A
Well, I think the way they go about trying to enforce their worldview is radical because it's actually the behavior of an extremist. And in fact, as I said, I think the pendulum between wokeism and fascism pretty well collides at the point where you just refuse to accept freedom of speech. You refuse to accept any kind of democratic dialogue, you refuse to accept any of the norms of society. It's your way or oblivion.
- [32:05]
B
Okay? We don't have time to go on too long. So, very briefly, you know, what made me think the fact that in today's Western academia, dominated by, whatever you call it, wokeness and so on, for example, post colonialism, anti colonialism, and so on, how come that till Trump, in the last decades, capitalism was thriving quite well while the predominant academic ideology was woke, anti colonialism, and so on. And I accept this as a wonderful paradox, which is our truth, that you can have a regime which perfectly reproduces itself through ideology, which apparently, apparently ruins it, criticizes and so on and so on. So I still insist that wokeism is, of course, in this sense radical, but it doesn't really approach or even really disturb the power centers. But another thing about Trump, where I'm well aware of the difference, if you were to ask me, name me one passage where Trump almost approached an ingenious insight. You know, he said in the middle of Iranian war. It's a short quote. Our country is winning again. In fact, we are winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we are winning too much. We can't take it anymore. We are not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we are just always losing. But now we are winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. That's, for me, the difference between Trump and the standard fascist, right? Standard fascists would say, enough pleasures, time to sacrifice yourself.
- [34:31]
A
Also, a standard fascist wouldn't tell jokes, right, like Trump does, or speak off the cuff and have a laugh with people as well. I mean, you're a psychoanalyst. Here's my psychoanalyst verdict for you on Trump, which is from my daughter, who's 14, who heard me say regularly, you know, Trump's a unique character. And she said, daddy, can I just ask you something? I keep hearing you call Trump unique. Do you think there's such a thing as being too unique? She may be onto something, and she's not a psychoanalyst. Let me bring in Warren Smith to join us about it. You've been listening to this, Warren. Welcome to Uncensored. You're one of the world's great critical thinkers, so apply some critical thinking to what you've been hearing from Slavoj.
- [35:14]
C
Yeah, it's a real honor to be able to talk to you, Slavoj. So I really appreciate this opportunity. I think it's an important conversation. I was just having this conversation yesterday, and the response I'm getting is similar to what you're describing. We're the person claims, well, there are so many people that are accepting this new definition that just what makes Trump a fascist? Well, he's trying to get Jimmy Kimmel pulled off the air. That's what makes him fascist. And they said, well, that's not fascism. Yeah, but if enough people claim that, if enough people understand it as fascism, doesn't that make it fascist? But if we're actually looking at the original definition, the authoritarian pursuit of national purity through violence, I would argue that our founding fathers were so genius in the way they were able to anticipate this ideology before it was ever articulated. It's as though it's always existed within the human spirit. There's these dualities, whether it goes into communism, Marxism, and they recognize this framework will prevent this from ever prevailing. So I'm not sure how we could point to authoritarianism. If you can think of an example, let me know. But I don't like as Pierce described. I don't think that what ICE is doing would be the equivalent of what fascism argues for, which is based on the idea of identifying people through blood, that your national identity, it began in Italy. Being Italian means something by blood, and you are with us or against us. It takes away the individual and moves into identity politics and group politics, which are many of the things that alarm me about the left that I've been seeing in the past years. And I would also love to challenge you on this idea because I have the opportunity to speak to what people consider to be the most dangerous philosopher in the west or to the West. And I believe they call you that because you identify as a communist. And I would just challenge you on why are you comfortable describing yourself as a Communist when over 100 million people have died under communism?
- [37:21]
B
Slavoj, easy to answer. First, I describe now myself as moderately conservative communist, crazy as this may sound. But let me answer you very seriously. You know, Peter Thiel, when he defined Antichrist in a public intervention a month or two ago, he defined it through three those who are too obsessed with the danger of artificial intelligence, those who are too obsessed with environmental problems, and those who are too obsessed with war danger. I think that these are real, actual problems. I'm not a catastrophist. I'm not saying whatever will happen. I'm just saying something so basic is changing. And my solution is not, of course, what we knew as communism, but I think, and I'm not even very original here that the problems we are facing. Look Covid there I think Trump and Boris Johnson, certainly not communists, acted almost in a communist way. You know, every family got a check for $2,000 and so on, direct state intervention and so on. What I think is that the crisis we are confronting, no reason to panic, but nonetheless cannot be resolved, cannot be even properly approached through the standard liberal democratic multiparty political system.
- [39:14]
C
So are you pushing for a uniparty? Because people would claim that that's one of the primary attributes of fascism.
- [39:19]
B
Sorry, fascism.
- [39:20]
C
Am I pushing for a non multiparty?
- [39:26]
B
No, no, I'm absolutely for pluralism and so on. But I'm asking you a simple question. Do you remember in northern United States, west and southern Canada there three, four years ago, there was a mega heat wave. For a week or two, Seattle and Vancouver were warmer than Emirates and Kuwait and so on. Were they to blame? No, they had pretty good, as far as I know, ecological policy and so on. Obviously something is wrong in the circulation of the air and so on around the northern pole or artificial intelligence. We don't know what is happening there, really.
- [40:18]
C
Fair enough.
- [40:18]
B
We have to think.
- [40:21]
A
All right. But in relation to Warren's question, though, it's an interesting one, isn't it about you being proud to call yourself a communist. And yet many people view communism as just an evil kind of mindset ideology as fascism. It's killed over 100 million people at least it's been used in the same way that fascism and Nazism have been used to terrorize and oppress people and so on. So what do you say? Some of people say, well, right, you can be very anti fascism. Most people are who are not fascist. But you defend proudly being a communist. And yet you know, you, because you know your history, just how malevolent communism has often been in the history of the planet. So how do you sit those two things?
- [41:07]
B
First, you know, I've written much more than about fascism. I've written about communism. And we don't have time to go into it. But what always fascinated me, and this doesn't make sense, communism any better, is the difference in their functioning. Let's think about one thing. We don't have time to go into it in detail. In communism you have these show trials, people tortured to confess and so on and so on. In fascism proper at its worst, Nazism, you don't have it. It's meaningless. It would have been easy for Hitler to organize a show trial, get 15, 20 leading Jewish figures, torture them to confess it's meaningless. There another feature. I like this as a Freudian, these details which tell a lot. You know that in gulags every year on Stalin's birthday, all the prisoners had to sign letter to Stalin wishing him all the best. Can you even imagine something like this in Nazism? And gathering the Jews in Auschwitz? You have to. And so on. So I'm not here in any way claiming that Stalinism is nonetheless better. I am saying that Stalinism in all its horror is still part of or legacy of the European Enlightenment. It still has. So here we totally agree. But what I mean by communism, and I use this term of course in a conscious, provocative way, is simply a mode of not even control international regulation, for example. Imagine a new Covid. We instantly felt a need to international cooperation. I think market itself no longer functions as global regulator. The irony today, I wonder if you would agree or not. The irony today is that of the three big powers, there are more, but let's say generally United States, Russia and China. China precisely because communists are in power there. But communist school learned. The lesson follows more faithfully market rules definitely than Russia or United States. China is for me and I am not pro Chinese. I'm well aware of all.
- [43:53]
A
Let me. Let me get Warren's reaction to that.
- [43:57]
C
Honestly, I don't understand what makes you a communist if the definition of communism is the government or the inability to own private property. And many people would argue that there's not a single real communist country. China's not really communist. They've introduced components of capitalism. The ideology of communism has been detrimental there, and that's where 50 million people died as a result. But so this goes back to the original conversation of these terms have meanings, but they're being thrown around so loosely. So I don't like what makes you a communist if you're not discussing the inability to control or own private property.
- [44:39]
A
Sadly, got to leave it there, chaps. A fascinating debate. We could do this for hours. And maybe we should one day Now, Slavoj, brilliant to see you here in the studio. Your book Liberal Fascisms is out now. Slavoj Zizek, thank you very much. And to you, Warren as well, thank you. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent uncensored media has never been more critical, and we couldn't do it without you.
- [45:27]
C
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