Fwd: More on Haider from Zizek

[Debordagoria <phantasmagorias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- LLPSN@xxxxxxx wrote:
> From: LLPSN@xxxxxxx
> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:32:06 EST
> Subject: More on Haider from Zizek
> To: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK
> <psn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-to: LLPSN@xxxxxxx
>
> In spirit of promoting discussion, this may add to
> the discussions, or
> perhaps, confuse the issues.  But we must accept the
> reality that the extreme
> right does offer more appeal to more folks than does
> the left-this is our
> problem, Lauren Langman
>
> [Here, courtesy of the author, is the English
> original of an article
> that appeared in German in today's Suddeutsche
> Zeitung. The Nation
> rejected a version of this.]
>
> WHY DO WE ALL LOVE TO HATE HAIDER?
>
> Slavoj Zizek
>
>
> The prospect of Joerg Haider's Freidemokraten
> participation in the Austrian
> government aroused horror in the entire spectrum of
> the "legitimate
> democratic" political block in the Western world:
> from the Social
> Democratic Left to the Christian conservatives, from
> Chirac to Clinton -
> not to mention, of course, Israel -, they all
> expressed "worries" and
> announced at least symbolic measures of Austria's
> diplomatic quarantine,
> untill this disease disappears or is proven not
> really dangerous.
>
> Some commentators perceive this horror as the proof
> of how the basic
> post-World-War-II anti-Fascist democratic consensus
> in Europe still holds -
> are, however, things really so unequivocal? The
> first thing to do here is
> to recall the well-concealed, but nonetheless
> unmistakable, sigh of relief
> in the predominant democratic political field, when,
> a decade ago, the
> Rightist populist parties became a serious presence
> in Europe. The message
> of this relief was: finally the enemy whom we can
> all together properly
> hate, whom we can sacrifice - excommunicate - in
> order to demonstrate our
> democratic consensus! This relief is to be read
> against the background of
> what is usually referred to as the emerging
> "post-political consensus."
>
> The two-party system, the predominant form of
> politics in our
> post-political era, is the appearance of a choice
> where there is basically
> none. Both poles converge on their economic policy -
> recall recent
> elevations, by Clinton and Blair, of the "tight
> fiscal policy" as the key
> tenet of the modern Left: the tight fiscal policy
> sustains economic growth,
> and growth allows us to play a more active social
> policy in our fight for
> better social security, education and health... The
> difference of the two
> parties is thus ultimately reduced to the opposed
> cultural attitudes:
> multiculturalist, sexual etc. "openness" versus
> traditional "family
> values." And, significantly, it is the Rightist
> option that addresses and
> attempts to mobilize whatever remains of the
> mainstream working class in
> our Western societies, while the multiculturalist
> tolerance is becoming the
> motto of new privileged "symbolic classes"
> (journalists,academics,
> managers...). This political choice - Social
> Democrat or Christian Democrat
> in Germany, Democrat or Republican... - cannot but
> remind us of our
> predicament when we want artificial sweetener in an
> American cafeteria: the
> all-present alternative of Nutra-Sweet Equal and
> High&Low, of blue and red
> small bags, where almost each person has his/her
> preferences (avoid the red
> ones, they contain cancerous substances, or
> vice-versa), where this
> ridiculous sticking to one's choice merely
> accentuates the utter
> meaninglessness of the alternative.
>
> And does the same not go for late TV talk shows,
> where the "freedom to
> choose" is the choice between Jay Leno and David
> Letterman? Or for the soda
> drinks: Coke or Pepsi? It is a well-known fact that
> the "Close the door"
> button in most elevators is a totally disfunctional
> placebo, placed there
> just to give the individuals the impression that
> they are somehow
> participating, contributing to the speed of the
> elevator journey - when we
> push this button, the door closes in exactly the
> same time as when we just
> pressed the floor button without "speeding up" the
> process by pressing also
> the "Close the door" button. This extreme case of
> fake participation is an
> appropriate metaphor of the participation of
> individuals in our
> "postmodern" political process.
>
> And this brings us back to Haider: significantly,
> the only political force
> with the serious weight which DOES still evoke an
> antagonistic response of
> Us against Them is the new populist Right - Haider
> in Austria, le Pen in
> France, Republicans in Germany, Buchanan in the US.
> However, it is
> precisely for this reason that it plays a key
> structural role in the
> legitimacy of the new liberal-democratic hegemony.
> They are the negative
> common denominator of the entire center-left liberal
> spectrum: they are the
> excluded ones who, through this very exclusion
> (their inacceptability as
> the party of the government) provide the negative
> legitimacy of the liberal
> hegemony, the proof of their "democratic" attitude.
> In this way, their
> existence displaces the TRUE focus of the political
> struggle (which is, of
> course, the stifling of any Leftist radical
> alternative) to the
> "solidarity" of the entire "democratic" bloc against
> the racist neo-Nazi
> etc. danger.
>
> Therein resides the ultimate proof of the
> liberal-democratic hegemony of
> today's ideologico-political scene, the hegemony
> which was accomplished
> with the emergence of the "Third Way" social
> democracy.  The "Third Way" is
> precisely social democracy under the hegemony of
> liberal-democratic capitalism. i.e. deprived of its
> minimal subversive
> sting, excluding the last reference to
> anti-capitalism and class struggle.
>
> It is absolutely crucial that the new Rightist
> populists are the only
> "serious" political force today which addresses the
> people with the
> anti-capitalist rhetorics, although coated in
> nationalist/racist/religious
> clothing (multinational corporations who "betray"
> the common decent working
> people of our nation). At the congress of the Front
> National a couple of
> years ago, le Pen brought to stage an Algerian, an
> African and a Jew,
> embraced them all and told the gathered public:
> "They are no less French
> than I am - it is the representatives of the big
> multinational capital,
> ignoring their duty to France, who are the true
> danger to our identity!"
> Hypocritical as such statements are, they
> nonetheless signal how the
> populist Right is moving to occupy the terrain left
> vacant by the Left.
>
> Here, the liberal-democratic Neue Mitte plays a
> double game: it puts
> forward Righist populists as our common true enemy,
> while it effectively
> manipulates this Rightist scare in order to
> hegemonize the "democratic"
> field, i.e. to define the terrain and win over,
> discipline, its true
> adversary, the radical Left. And in the events like
> Haider's party's
> participation in the government (which, let us not
> forget, has a precedent
> in the Fini's neo-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale's
> participation in the
> Berlusconi government a couple of years ago in
> Italy!), die neue Mitte gets
> its own message back in its inverted - true - form.
> The participation in
> the government of the far Right is the price the
> Left is paying for its
> renunciation of any radical political project, for
> accepting market
> capitalism as "the only game in town".
>
>
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