Against the Double Blackmail

The celebrated philosopher returns with a provoking analysis of Europe's crisis. Exposing its real nature, he asks—what is to be done?

Today, hundreds of thousands of people, desperate to escape war, violence, and poverty, are crossing the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe. Our response, argues Slavoj Žižek, offers two versions of ideological blackmail—either we open our doors as widely as possible, or we try to pull up the drawbridge. Both solutions are bad, states Žižek.

He shows how the refugee crisis also presents an opportunity, a unique chance for Europe to redefine itself—but, if we are to do so, we must acknowledge that large migrations are our future. Only then can we commit to a carefully prepared process of change, one founded not on a community that sees the excluded as a threat, but one that takes as its basis the shared substance of our social being.

Maybe such global solidarity is a utopia. But, warns Žižek, if we don't engage in it, then we are really lost. And we will deserve to be.