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- The left’s silence, Žižek believes, originates in a mistaken belief. “I never liked this humanitarian approach that if you really talk with them you discover we are all the same people,” he explains. “No, we are not—we have fundamental differences, and true solidarity is in spite of all these differences.”
- Another problem with the left, the philosopher writes in his book, is a dangerous tendency to mythologize refugees as especially noble because of their suffering: “I don’t like this romantic false idea that suffering purifies you, that it makes you a noble person. It does not!” On the contrary, he says, “it makes you do anything to survive.”
This doesn’t mean Europe should be less committed to taking care of desperate people seeking shelter, he says—but Europeans should be more realistic about the kind of effort it takes to do so. “It’s easy to be humanitarian if your principle is that the others whom we are helping are good warm guys, friendly,” he says. “What if they are not? My point is that even in that case we should be helping them.”