Zizek on liberals and the US election. posted by Richard Seymour

The Liberal Waterloo :

The first reaction of progressives to Bush’s second victory was that of despair, even fear: The last four years were not just a bad dream. The nightmarish coalition of big business and fundamentalist populism will roll on, as Bush pursues his agenda with new gusto, nominating conservative judges to the Supreme Court, invading the next country after Iraq, and pushing liberalism in the United States one step closer to extinction. However, this emotional reaction is precisely what we should resist—it only bears witness to the extent liberals have succeeded in imposing their worldview upon us. If we keep a cool head and calmly analyze the results, the 2004 election appears in a totally different light...

If the paraplegic, herbivorous liberalism of the US left had not already proven its inadequacy for analysis and strategy in 2000, it must be glaringly apparent now. We leftists have, I think, to shake off the conservative habits of thought hammered into us by the long years of defeat and disappointment of the 1980s. There are ample opportunities for leftist critique, for organising and agitation, if only we could avail ourselves of them. The antiwar movement was the biggest threat to the Bush presidency, and remains the biggest threat to the Prime Minister in Britain. Yet in the US it chose more or less to emasculate itself, collaborating with an ideological imperialist and even joining attempts to shut down Nader's radical left campaign.

The difference is that tonight the British news is talking about the demands by relatives of the soldiers who died in Baghdad that the troops should be brought home. Next Wednesday, the Stop the War Coalition will hold a demonstration outside Downing Street to protest the planned bombing of Fallujah. A campaign is well under way to bring the troops home, with the vigorous input of Maxine and Rose Gentle. The most fundamental right a state reserves for itself is its monopoly on violence and its capacity to wage war on declared enemies. This is precisely what is being challenged by the antiwar movement. Iraq is no longer just about Iraq either. Everything from Palestine to privatisation is seen through the prism of what we are doing to that country, and what we could be doing for our own. Opportunities abound, there is a surfeit of public rage and desire for change.

Now is the time to act, not lapse into despair.