Authoritarians are exploiting this crisis, writes Slavoj Zizek. If China succeeds in Hong Kong, the violent takeover of Taiwan could be the next step – then a full scale Pacific war

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The pandemic is liable to worsen, ecological disasters loom and technological surveillance will terminate democracy. Salvation will come only by reorganizing human society. A conversation with the radical – and anxious – philosopher Slavoj Zizek.

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Be they against the Covid-19 lockdown or police brutality, the protests gripping the US stem from a ‘money or life’ choice, where people are forced to choose money. The poor are victims, helping to cover up the crime against them.

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Choosing Reality and Survival Over Panic and Barbarism

The cover of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s slim new volume Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World spells it out: “PANIC!” stands prominently and, stuck in the middle, is “DEM” — the demos, or the people. After all, unknown viruses aside, what is a pandemic beyond the panic of the people? In this small, 146-page book recently published by OR Books (all royalties will go to Médecins Sans Frontières), the self-proclaimed Marxist, Hegelian, and Lacanian provocateur argues that we should ignore three fallacious logics fostered by the panic/pandemic: the desire to succumb to the mysterious threat, the imbuing of the event with superstitious significance, and the machinations of panic itself. Rejecting these three temptations, Žižek posits a sober, unidealized assessment of the paths forward.

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The basic functions of New York state could soon be “reimagined” under the alliance of Governor Andrew Cuomo and Big Tech personified. Is this the testing ground for a dystopian “no-touch” future?

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What is truly valuable about Žižek’s writing lies in the glimmer of a shift in sensibility, a shift between two different conceptions of political discourse. One involves the articulation of policies, which range from securing the conditions of biological survival to more ambitious projects to improve the quality of our lives. But Žižek also goes beyond this instrumentalism (which need not be conflated with mere technocracy) and asks the more open-ended question of what it means to live well.

Thinkers on the left have been traditionally and justifiably suspicious of such “ethical” concerns, framing them as bourgeois or “liberal” (uttered with the familiar repulsive ring, like a spit). It is therefore another provocation that Žižek defines his kind of communist as a “liberal with a diploma” (reversing Hungarian leader Viktor Orban’s propaganda that liberals are “communists with a diploma”). We earn such a diploma once we have “seriously studied why our liberal values are under threat” and become aware that “only a radical change can save them.”

“Radical” is an overused word. Žižek, however, genuinely challenges deep-seated dogmas of the Western left.

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We should stop thinking that after a peak in the Covid-19 epidemic things will gradually return to normal. The crisis will drag on. But this doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless.

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Maybe the moment has come to take a step back from our exclusive focus on the pandemic, to allow ourselves to consider what coronavirus and its devastating effects reveal about us as a society.

The first thing that strikes the eye is that, contrary to the cheap motto ‘we’re all in the same boat’, class divisions have exploded. At the very bottom of our hierarchy, there are those – refugees, people caught in war zones – whose life is so destitute that, for them, the pandemic is not the main problem. While these folk are still mostly ignored by our media, we’re bombarded by sentimental celebrations of nurses on the frontline of our struggle against the virus. But nurses are just the most visible part of a whole class of ‘care-takers’ that is exploited – albeit not in the way the old working class portrayed in Marxist imagery was exploited. Instead, as David Harvey puts it, they form a “new working class”.

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“Touch me not,” according to John 20:17, is what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection.How do I, an avowed Christian atheist, understand these words? First, I take them together with Christ’s answer to his disciple’s question as to how we will know that he is returned, resurrected. Christ says he will be there whenever there is love between his believers. He will be there not as a person to touch, but as the bond of love and solidarity between people—so, “do not touch me, touch and deal with other people in the spirit of love.”Today, however, in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, we are all bombarded precisely by calls not to touch others but to isolate ourselves, to maintain a proper corporeal distance. What does this mean for the injunction “touch me not?” Hands cannot reach the other person; it is only from within that we can approach one another—and the window onto “within” is our eyes. These days, when you meet someone close to you (or even a stranger) and maintain a proper distance, a deep look into the other’s eyes can disclose more than an intimate touch.

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Slavoj Zizek: Biggest threat Covid-19 epidemic poses is not our regression to survivalist violence, but BARBARISM with human face

The impossible has happened and the world we knew has stopped turning around. But what world order will emerge after the coronavirus pandemic is over – socialism for the rich, disaster capitalism or something completely new?

These days I sometimes catch myself wishing to get the virus – in this way, at least the debilitating uncertainty would be over. A clear sign of how my anxiety is growing is how I relate to sleep. Until around a week ago I was eagerly awaiting the evening: finally, I can escape into sleep and forget about the fears of my daily life. Now it’s almost the opposite: I am afraid to fall asleep since nightmares haunt me in my dreams and make me awaken in panic – nightmares about the reality that awaits me.

What reality? Alenka Zupancic formulated it perfectly, and let me resume her line of thought. These days we often hear that radical social changes are needed if we really want to cope with the consequences of the ongoing epidemic (I myself am among those spreading this mantra). But radical changes are already taking place.

The coronavirus epidemic confronts us with something we considered impossible. We couldn’t imagine something like this to really happen in our daily lives – the world we knew has stopped spinning around, whole countries are in lockdown, many of us are confined to one’s apartment (but what about those who cannot afford even this minimal safety precaution?) facing an uncertain future in which even if most of us survive an economic mega-crisis lies ahead…

What this means is that our reaction should also be to do the impossible – what appears impossible within the coordinates of the existing world order.

The impossible has happened, our world has stopped, and now we have to do the impossible to avoid the worst. But what is that ‘impossible’?

I don’t think the biggest threat is a regression to open barbarism, to brutal survivalist violence with public disorders, panic lynching, etc. (although, with the possible collapse of health and some other public services, this is also quite possible.) More than open barbarism I fear barbarism with a human face – ruthless survivalist measures enforced with regret and even sympathy, but legitimized by expert opinions.

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