Is Arab Spring likely to evolve into a new idea, distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement? "Potentially, yes" was the answer of philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Zizek at the Charlie Rose Show on October 26, 2011. Zizek, who is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of radical left and said to be working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacania psychoanalysis, believes that the pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East and North Africa are "potentially" defining some new "-ism". According to him, philosophers cannot provide ready-made solutions to the issues that the world confronts today but they can enable people to ask the right questions.
Zizek, who is considered as "the most dangerous philosopher in the West" in the present times, offers his perspective through a refreshing discourse with a view to creating a larger space for thinking. As pointed out by one of the commentators, Zizek however "usually talks about the subjects that are complex and need quite a bit of explaining to fully understand them".
For example, he draws an interesting comparison between communism and fascism during the 20th century. According to him, communists were good guys, who promised good things but they failed to keep their promises. As far as fascists were concerned, they were the bad guys. They said they planned to do bad things and they executed their bad plans! Here Zizek points out that although the world has seen "communist dissidents", but in fascism, especially in Nazism, there were no "Nazi dissidents" figures.
Interestingly, he acknowledges that capitalism is the most successful economic model and communism in the 20th century was a fiasco, although he strongly fascinates "Stalinism". He says: "I'm not blindly anti-Capitalism. Let's be serious about it; it's the most productive social order in the history of humanity. Now let me be very clear. Some radical leftists will lynch me for saying this. Can you imagine in the entire history of humanity an era in which so many people lived such relatively free and safe life in relative welfare? Let's say in Western Europe in the last 50 to 60 years. As they put it in the church, `let's recognise to the devil what belongs to the devil'."
He seems to be greatly impressed by Lee Kuan Yew's economic model of "totalitarian Capitalism with Asian values" for Singapore which, according to him, was readily and gleefully adopted by Deng Xiaoping in China. Two weeks ago, Zizek was at 'Occupy Wall Street' where he talked with demonstrators, who claim to have drawn inspiration from the Arab Spring. Reading from a written speech that he delivered there, he, inter alia, declared: "We are not Communists if Communism means a system which collapsed in 1990s. Remember that today those Communists are the most efficient, ruthless Capitalists. In China today, we have Capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American Capitalism, but doesn't need democracy. Which means when you criticise Capitalism, don't allow yourself to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between democracy and Capitalism is over. The change is possible [link for transcript of his speech http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/slavoj-zizek-at-occupy-wall-street-transcript]."
In an answer to a question by Charlie Rose, Zizek explains how the Arab Spring "may" evolve into a new idea: "[A]ren't we all the time in ideology? Of course, you can say [the Arab Spring is evolving into] no `-ism', but if you look closely at what people were demanding then you can clearly see what they took from Arab traditions, from Western traditions..."
Answering a question about what prevents the popular uprisings in the Arab world from ultimately evolving into a new political belief or principle, Zizek terms the West the greatest hurdle. According to him, the West's "all the compromising stance" is quite clear in Egypt.
He fears "an obscene pact" to take place between the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Such a deal will allow the MB ideological hegemony in the country in exchange for continuation of corrupt privileges for the army. "The army is one hundred percent the old Mubarak army," he argues, adding that "they [the army generals] made probably a correct decision then." According to him, they studied the whole situation to see which way the wind was blowing and decided to avoid any conflict with the protesters by not coming to the aid of Mubarak to save him at the crucial time.
"Arabs are quite right in being sensitive to this [West's double standards]. How can you preach democracy to Arabs and fully stand behind Saudi Arabia? I'm sorry to tell you, but...when we speak about freedoms, the role of women, sexual freedom, Iran is paradise compared with Saudi Arabia. Remember, in Bahrain there was a genuine [popular] revolt." Terming the US and European policy as "ruthless opportunism", he says Saudi Arabia acted as a counter-revolutionary and helped crush down the anti-government uprising in the island state.
"[But] it does not have to be a philosophy that has no exception to it. Does it?" Although Zizek agrees to the host's point of view, he argues: "No, but, nonetheless, it's typical that when the West did intervene what precisely was the wrong place; Libya, [although] no sympathy whatsoever even when we were witnessing these scenes of Qadhafi being basically lynched by the mob; no sympathy whatsoever for him."
In contrast to Tunisia, Egypt and Syria where the world saw clear democratic peoples' movements with programmes, Libya presented a different picture-in fact a blurred picture-where the revolt was not secular. Unfortunately, however, the West still chose to intervene in a country where the anti-Qadhafi uprising was not secular, according to him.
to be continued
(The writer is News Editor of this newspaper)