Slavoj Žižek: preference

Transcript context

…You’ll be telling me Magnus Carlsen is a Communist next. You know what I like about Greta Thunberg? First, you remember, some media in Europe tried to blame her parents. “They are manipulating her.” My answer was, “I hope they do. I hope.” Why shouldn’t we, the Left, also manipulate? But what I like is precisely . . . I didn’t like her at the beginning, you remember, when she played that innocent girl who is telling us that the emperor is naked. But did you notice how, in the last year, she has this almost a little bit of diabolic, aggressive smile. I like the mean Greta Thunberg. I don’t like the good, innocent girl. I also refer to her as this . . . For me, she is deeply feminine, but not the usual notion of femininity promoted by the media today — holistic dialogue. No, no, no, she’s quite dogmatic, insistent. That’s what we need today, and I don’t need anything more. Okay, we can debate the name, but I think that what she’s doing is definitely Communist today for me. Greta Thunberg, Assange, and so on. Incidentally, do you know the story? I must repeat it to you. I hope all of you don’t know it. When I visited him two weeks ago in prison, it’s wonderful. I couldn’t believe it. I’m sorry if some of you know it. I was sitting close to him like this, in open space at the table. A friend brought me a cup of coffee, plastic cover. I took the cover off and drank some coffee and put coffee back on the table. In two seconds, literally, a guard was there, very gentle, soft, no terror. Just said, “Please, sir, put the plastic cover back on the coffee.” I asked afterwards — I didn’t want to cause problems there — “Why?” They told me, “You were sitting opposite Assange, an evil man.” It was for my own good, they told me. They wanted to block the possibility that evil man like Assange will grab the boiling coffee and throw it into my face, and so on. No, but I think, okay, these are my heroes today. You like alternate scenarios, right?…

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