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“FEW THINKERS ILLUSTRATE THE CONTRADICTIONS OF “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.” —Mao Zedong CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM BETTER THAN SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK.” H —THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS E SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK A V  E N As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, I N other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, D HEAVEN IN DISORDER desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding I S motif of our time is relentless chaos. O R Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, D Mao Zedong famously proclaimed “There is great disorder under E heaven; the situation is excellent.” The contemporary relevance of Mao’s R observation depends on whether today’s catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Ž I Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself. Ž E Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals, Heaven In Disorder K looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and—above all—an urgent, “wartime” communism. ISBN 9781682192832 90000 > OR Books www.orbooks.com Illustration of Slavoj Žižek by Tom Elswijk 9 781682 192832 Cover design by Antara Ghosh “FEW THINKERS ILLUSTRATE THE CONTRADICTIONS OF “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.” —Mao Zedong CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM BETTER THAN SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK.” H —THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS E SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK A V  E N As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, I N other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, D HEAVEN IN DISORDER desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding I S motif of our time is relentless chaos. O R Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, D Mao Zedong famously proclaimed “There is great disorder under E heaven; the situation is excellent.” The contemporary relevance of Mao’s R observation depends on whether today’s catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Ž I Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself. Ž E Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals, Heaven In Disorder K looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and—above all—an urgent, “wartime” communism. ISBN 9781682192832 90000 > OR Books www.orbooks.com Illustration of Slavoj Žižek by Tom Elswijk 9 781682 192832 Cover design by Antara Ghosh HEAVEN IN DISORDER HEAVEN IN DISORDER ˇ ˇ SLAVOJ ZIZEK OR Books New York • London All rights information: [email protected] Visit our website at www.orbooks.com First printing 2021 Published by OR Books, New York and London © 2021 Slavoj Zˇizˇek All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Lapiz Digital Services. Printed by Bookmobile, USA, and CPI, UK. paperback ISBN 978-1-68219-283-2 • ebook ISBN 978-1-68219-280-1 CONTENTS Introduction: Is the Situation Still Excellent? 1 1. Was the Drone Attack on Saudi Arabia Really a Game Changer? 5 2. Who Makes Kurdistan Wild? 8 3. Troubles in Our Paradise 11 4. The Dangers of Sharing a Cup of Coffee With Assange 15 5. Anatomy of a Coup: Democracy, the Bible, and Lithium 18 6. Chile: Toward a New Signifier 21 7. Left Labour’s Loss: A Post-Mortem 38 8. Yes, Anti-Semitism Is Alive and Well—But Where? 41 9. A Perfectly Rational Act . . . In a Mad World 45 10. Winners and Losers of the Iranian Crisis 48 11. Has America Really Lost Its Moral Leadership?: How the United States Is Becoming a Four-Party System 51 12. A Plea for a Moderately Conservative Left 57 13. The Amazon Is Burning—So What? 61 14. Radical Change, Not Sympathy 66 15. Trump Versus Rammstein 72 16. A Day of Shame Indeed! 79 17. Limits of Democracy 84 18. The Courage of Covid Hopelessness 91 19. Trump’s Barber Paradox 97 20. How to Kill Trump in His Notion 100 21. Democracy Reborn? Not With Joe Biden! 104 22. The State of Things: The Choice 108 23. The “Great Reset”? Yes, Please—But a Real One! 116 24. Christ in the Time of a Pandemic 128 25. First as Farce, Then as Tragedy? 132 26. What Is Trump’s Greatest Treason? 140 27. Here’s To You, Julian Assange! 146 28. Biden on Putin’s (Lack of) Soul 148 29. Class Struggle Against Classism 151 30. “We Have to Live Till We Die”: What Can Rammstein Tell Us About Life in the Pandemic? 166 31. A European Manifesto 172 32. Which Game Has Stopped Working? 176 33. Light at the End of the Tunnel? 181 34. Three Ethical Stances 186 35. Paris Commune at 150 198 36. Why I Am Still a Communist 212 INTRODUCTION: IS THE SITUATION STILL EXCELLENT? One of Mao Zedong’s best-known sayings is: “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.” It is easy to understand what Mao meant here: when the existing social order is disintegrating, the ensuing chaos offers revolutionary forces a great chance to act deci- sively and take political power. Today, there certainly is great disorder under heaven, with the Covid-19 pandemic, global warming, signs of a new Cold War, and the eruption of popular protests and social antagonisms worldwide naming but a few of the crises that beset us. But does this chaos still make the situation excellent, or is the danger of self-de- struction too high? The difference between the situation that Mao had in mind and our own situation can be best rendered by a tiny termino- logical distinction. Mao speaks about disorder under heaven, wherein “heaven,” or the big Other in whatever form—the inexorable logic of historical processes, the laws of social development—still exists and discreetly regulates social chaos. Today, we should talk about heaven itself as being in disorder. What do I mean by this? In Divided Heaven (1963), Christa Wolf’s classic GDR novel about the subjective impact of divided Germany, Manfred (who has chosen the West) says to his love, Rita, when they meet for the last time: “But even if our land is divided, we still share the same heaven.” Rita (who has chosen to remain in the East) bitterly replies: “No, they first divided the heaven.” Apologetic (of the East) as the novel is, it offers the right insight into how our “earthly” divisions and fights are ultimately always HEAVEN IN DISORDER grounded in a “divided heaven”; that is, in a much more radical and exclusive division of the very (symbolic) universe in which we dwell. The bearer and instrument of this “division of heaven” is language as the medium that sustains the way we experience reality—language, not primitive egotistic interests, is the first and greatest divider. It is because of language that we (can) “live in different worlds” to our neighbors, even when they live on the same street. Today, the situation is not one in which heaven is divided into two spheres, as was the case in the Cold War period when two global world- views confronted each other. The divisions of heaven today appear increasingly drawn within each particular country. In the United States, for instance, there is an ideological and political civil war between the alt-Right and the liberal-democratic establishment, while in the United Kingdom there are similarly deep divisions, as were recently expressed in the opposition between Brexiteers and anti-Brexiteers . . . Spaces for common ground are ever diminishing, mirroring the ongoing enclo- sure of physical public space, and this is happening at a time when multiple intersecting crises mean that global solidarity and international cooperation are more needed than ever. In recent months, the often alarming ways in which the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic is intertwined with ongoing social, political, ecological, and economic crises are increasingly apparent. The pandemic must be treated together with global warming, erupting class antagonisms, patriarchy and misogyny, and the many other ongoing crises that resonate with it, and with each other, in a complex interplay. This interplay is uncontrollable and full of dangers, and we cannot count on any guarantee in heaven to make the solution clearly imaginable. Such a risky situation makes our moment an eminently political one: the situation is decidedly not excellent, and that’s why one has to act. 2