Slavoj Žižek: How Political Correctness Actually Elected Donald Trump | Best '16 | Big Think

I know that even in the United States when you have someone like Donald Trump, I know that there is a lot of elitist liberal reaction. Like here we see the limit of democracy, but in the wrong sense, in the sense that you see stupid ordinary people are seduced and so on and so on.

Well, although Noam Chomsky doesn't like me very much, I admire him sincerely and I must admit that I like his term. I think it's not just a journalistic term; it's a concept, which he took over from American tradition, even mainstream right-wing liberal, of manufacturing consent. You know, democracy is not only formal rules of elections; democracy is an entire thick network of how political consensus is built— a lot of unwritten rules.

And now I think the United States are at a very important moment, at the moment when this machine to build consensus has broken down. Now, these are moments which can be catastrophic. In such moments, direct fascism can take over, but this can be also moments when the left, or whatever would be the new left, provides a new answer.

So my first reaction to those elitist liberals who claim you see the stupid rednecks, white trash or whatever are voting for Trump, yes, but it's your responsibility. One moment of truth in all those enraged people who vote for Trump is that they nonetheless see clearly that this traditional machine of manufacturing consent no longer works.

To put it in this slightly bombastic and exaggerated Marxist term, the ruling ideology mobilizes certain machinery to keep people in check, to control the excesses and so on. That machinery no longer works.

And here I'm not just a pessimist; in contrast to liberals for whom Trump is the ultimate devil, it's a nightmare and so on, I claim it's much more complex. Of course, Trump is almost but not quite a proto-fascist phenomenon, but it's because they, the liberal centrist mainstream, because they failed. And that's why, not that I like in any way Trump; Trump is scum, trash and so on, but my "but" is this one: first, Trump nonetheless, if you are a leftist, you should admire him sincerely.

He did something wonderfully. He almost single-handedly destroyed the Republican Party. What I mean, you have two main vaguely orientations: the Christian fundamentalists in the party—hardliners—and this Republican liberal enlightened big business elite. Both of them are more or less horrified of Trump.

And Trump is vulgar, but in his very vulgarity, you can see a common human baseness, opportunism. Now I will say something horrible, but for me, people like Ted Cruz or you remember eight years ago Rick Santorum, there's something much worse. Trump is a dirty, disgusting human being. Do you really think that Rick Santorum is a human being? I think that they are aliens. There's something so monstrous about them.

That's my first point. My second point is that I never trusted this absolute obsession with Trump. Oh, now we should be all together just to stop Trump; for this, we sacrificed Bernie Sanders. This is how Hillary got us. Hillary is not just LBGT rights—a little bit more progressive; Hillary is today the vote of the establishment, even of the Cold War establishment.

Do you know that most of the big names from the area of George Bush, Paul, and so on? They moved to Hillary now. Hillary is not only the voice of the liberal establishment; she's also the voice of, let's call it, the Cold War establishment.

Now in the last days, there was some propaganda against Trump saying, "Oh, but can we trust this guy? He will bring us into a new world war." No, I'm much more afraid that Hillary will do this. So again, in no way am I for Trump. He personifies what I was talking about: this disintegration of public values, of public manners; this obscene situation where you can talk about whatever you want.

Again, things which years ago were unthinkable as part of a public debate are now normalized—open racism and so on. And here I think political correctness doesn't work. Because political correctness is a desperate attempt when public mores—all these unwritten rules which tell you what is this and what is not—break down; political correctness tries directly to legislate.

This expression is to be used, that expression is to be used, and so on and so on. What makes me afraid of this procedure is the following: do you remember how two years ago or even three or four when all this debate about torture began—waterboarding and so on? The U.S. Army did something very nice; they no longer talked about torture but about—I think the term was—enhanced interrogation technique.

And this is for me the establishment version of political correctness. You put a nice name on it. I can well imagine that ten years from now—and it's not a joke I claim—rape will be called, "Well, why not enhanced seduction technique?" Like this basic politically correct idea that you use words which will not hurt others, I totally subscribe to this when we are dealing with all these marginal sexual identities, which can traumatize you and so on, but I absolutely don't think that this is any kind of universal right not to be called in a way which hurts you.

Let's take a big criminal corporation boss who maybe also wants to see himself as a humanitarian. No, he should be publicly called with words which will hurt him, and that's the whole point—that he should be hurt and so on and so on. So again, I don't like this narcissistic idea of the ultimate horizon—do you feel hurt? Are you wounded or not? And so on and so on.

I mean, this is a very ambiguous topic. Of course, you can in this way defend gay rights, the exclusion of LGBT people and so on, but then what would prevent white Aryans or whatever—white power people—to say, "Sorry guys, but we are hurt if you attack us like that," and so on. No, in politics we have authentic enemies. Everyone should not be respected in politics and so on. Politics is a real struggle of life and death.