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The credentials of those who, even prior to its release, virulently


criticize Mel Gibson's new film on the last 12 hours of Christ's life,
seem impeccable: are they not fully justified in their worry that the
film, made by a fanatic Catholic traditionalist with occasional anti -
Semitic outbursts, may ignite anti -Semitic sentiments? More general,
is c  not a kind of manifesto of our own (Western, Christian)
fundamentalists and anti -secularists ? Is then not the duty of every
Western secularist to reject it? Is such an unambiguous attack not
a   if we want to make it clear that we are not covert
racists attacking only the fundamentalism of 
 (Muslim) cultures?

The Pope's ambiguous reaction to the film is well known: immediately


after seeing it, deeply moved, he muttered "It is as it was!" ² and
this statement was quickly withdrawn by the official Vatican speakers.
A glimpse into the Pope's spontaneous reaction was thus quickly
replaced by the "official" neutral stance, corrected in order not to
hurt anyone. This shift is the best exemplification of what is wrong
with liberal tolerance, with the Politically Correct fear that
anyone's specific religious sensibility may be hurt: even i f it says
in the Bible that the Jewish mob demanded the death of Christ, one
should not stage this scene directly, but play it down and
contextualize it to make it clear that Jews are collectively not to be
blamed for the Crucifixion... The problem of such a stance is that, in
this way, the aggressive religious passion is merely repressed: it
remains there, smoldering beneath the surface and, finding no release,
gets stronger and stronger.

In November 2002, George Bush came under attack by the right wing
members of his own party for what was perceived as too soft a stance
on Islam: he was reproached for repeating the mantra that terrorism
has nothing to do with Islam, this great and tolerant religion. As a
column in
      put it, the true enemy of the United
States is not terrorism, but militant Islam. Consequently, one should
gather the courage and proclaim the politically incorrect (but,
nonetheless, obvious) fact that there is a deep strain of violence and
intolerance in Islam ² that, to put it bluntly, something in Islam
resists the acceptance of the liberal -capitalist world order. It is
here that a truly radical analysis should break with the standard
liberal attitude: no, one should NOT defend Bush here - his attitude
is ultimately no better than that of Cohen, Buchanan, Pat Robertson
and other anti -Islamists ² both sides of this coin are equally wrong.
It is against this background that one should approach Oriana
Fallaci's
  
c  , this passionate defense of the West
against the Muslim threat, this open assertion of the superiority of
the West, this denigration of Islam not even as a different culture,
but as barbarism (entailing that we are not even dealing with a clash
of civilizations, but with a clash of our civilizati on and Muslim
barbarism). The book is    the obverse of Politically
Correct tolerance: its lively passion is the truth of lifeless PC
tolerance.

Within this horizon, the only "passionate" response to the


fundamentalist passion is aggressive sec ularism of the kind displayed
recently by the French state where the government prohibited wearing
all too conspicuous religious symbols and dresses in schools (not only
the scarves of Muslim women, but also the Jewish caps and too large
Christian crosses) . It is not difficult to predict what the final
result of this measure will be: excluded from the public space, the
Muslims will be directly pushed to constitute themselves as non -
integrated fundamentalist communities. This is what Lacan means when
he emphasized the link between the rule of post -
revolutionary     and the logic of segregation.

And, perhaps, the prohibition to embrace a belief with a full passion


explains why, today, "culture" is emerging as the central life -world
category. Religion i s permitted ² not as a substantial way of life,
but as a particular "culture" or, rather, life -style phenomenon: what
legitimizes it is not its immanent truth -claim but the way it allows
us to express our innermost feelings and attitudes. We no longer
"really believe," we just follow (some of the) religious rituals and
mores as part of the respect for the "life -style" of the community to
which we belong (recall the proverbial non -believing Jew who obeys
kosher rules "out of respect for tradition"). "I do no t really believe
in it, it is just part of my culture" effectively seems to be the
predominant mode of the disavowed/displaced belief characteristic of
our times: what is a "cultural life -style" if not the fact that,
although we do not believe in Santa Cla us, there is a Christmas tree
in every house and even in public places every December? Perhaps,
then, "culture" is the name for all those things we practice without
really believing in them, without "taking them seriously." Is this not
also the reason why science is not part of this notion of culture ² it
is all too real? And is this also not why we dismiss fundamentalist
believers as "barbarians," as anti -cultural, as a threat to culture ²
they dare to   their beliefs? Today, we ultimately
perceive as a threat to culture those who immediately live their
culture, those who lack a distance towards it. Recall the outrage
when, three years ago, the Taliban forces in Afghanistan dynamited the
ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan: although none of us, enlightened
Westerners, believed in the divinity of Buddha, we were so outraged
because the Taliban Muslims did not show the appropriate respect for
the "cultural heritage" of their own country and the entire humanity.
Instead of believing through the othe r like all people of culture,
they really believed in their own religion and thus had no great
sensitivity for the cultural value of the monuments of other religions
² for them, the Buddha statues were just fake idols, not "cultural
treasures." (And, incid entally, is this outrage not the same as that
of today's enlightened anti -Semite who, although he does not believe
in Christ's divinity, nonetheless blames Jews for killing our Lord
Jesus? Or as the typical secular Jew who, although ne does not believe
in Jehova and Moses as his prophet, nonetheless thinks that Jews have
a divine right to the land of Israel?)

Jacques Lacan's definition of love is "giving something one doesn't


have" - what one often forgets is to add the other half which
completes the sent ence: "... to someone who     ." This is
confirmed by our most elementary experience when somebody unexpectedly
declared passionate love to us ² is not the first reaction, preceding
the possible positive reply, that something obscene, intrusive, is
being forced upon us? This is why, ultimately, passion as such is
"politically incorrect": although everything seems permitted,
prohibitions are merely displaced. Recall the deadlock of sexuality or
art today: is there anything more dull, opportunistic , and sterile
than to succumb to the superego injunction of incessantly inventing
new artistic transgressions and provocations (the performance artist
masturbating on stage or masochistically cutting himself, the sculptor
displaying decaying animal corpses or human excrements), or to the
parallel injunction to engage in more and more "daring" forms of
sexuality... In some "radical" circles in the US, there came recently
a proposal to "rethink" the rights of necrophiliacs (those who desire
to have sex with d ead bodies) ² why should they be deprived of it? So
the idea was formulated that, in the same way people sign permission
for their organs to be used for medical purposes in the case of their
sudden death, one should also allow them to sign the permission f or
their bodies to be given to necrophiliacs to play with them... Is this
proposal not the perfect exemplification of how the PC stance realizes
Kierkegaard's old insight into how the only good neighbor is a dead
neighbor? A dead neighbor ² a corpse ² is the ideal sexual partner of
a "tolerant" subject trying to avoid any harassment: by definition, a
corpse cannot be harassed...

On today's market, we find a whole series of products deprived of


their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream withou t fat,
beer without alcohol... And the list goes on: what about virtual sex
as sex without sex, the Colin Powell doctrine of warfare with no
casualties (on our side, of course) as warfare without warfare, the
contemporary redefinition of politics as the ar t of expert
administration as politics without politics, up to today's tolerant
liberal multiculturalism as an experience of Other deprived of its
Otherness (the idealized Other who dances fascinating dances and has
an ecologically sound holistic approach to reality, while features
like wife beating remain out of sight...)? Along the same lines, what
the Politically Correct tolerance is giving us is a decaffeinated
belief: a belief which does not hurt anyone and does not fully commit
even ourselves.

Everything is permitted to today's hedonistic Last Man - you can enjoy


everything, BUT deprived of its substance which makes it dangerous.
This is why Lacan was right to turn around Dostoyevski's well -known
motto: "If God doesn't exist, everything is prohibited! " God is dead,
we live in a permissive universe, you should strive for pleasures and
happiness ² but, in order to have a life full of happiness and
pleasures, you should avoid dangerous excesses, be fit, live a healthy
life, not harass others... so everyth ing is prohibited if it is not
deprived of its substance, and you end up leading a totally regulated
life. And the opposite also holds: if there is God, then  

   ² to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, as
the instruments of His will. Clearly, a direct link to God justifies
our violation of any "merely human" constraints and considerations (as
in Stalinism, where the reference to the big Other of historical
Necessity justifies absolute ruthlessness).

Today's hedonism combi nes pleasure with constraint ² it is no longer


the old notion of the "right measure" between pleasure and constraint,
but a kind of pseudo -Hegelian immediate coincidence of the opposites:
action and reaction should coincide, the very thing which causes
damage should already be the medicine. It is no longer "Drink coffee,
but with moderation!"; it is rather "Drink all the coffee you want,
because it is already decaffeinated..." The ultimate example of this
stance is 
    , available in the US, w ith the
paradoxical injunction "Do you have constipation? Eat more of this
chocolate!" - i.e., of the very thing which causes constipation. And
is not a negative proof of the hegemony of this stance the fact that
true unconstrained consumption (in all its main forms: drugs, free
sex, smoking...) is emerging as the main danger? The fight against
these dangers is one of the main investments of today's "biopolitics."
Solutions are here desperately sought which would reproduce the
paradox of the chocolate laxat ive. The main contender is "safe sex" ²
a term which makes one appreciative of the truth of the old saying "Is
having sex with a condom not like taking a shower with a raincoat on?"
The ultimate goal would be here, along the lines of decaf coffee, to
invent "opium without opium": no wonder marijuana is so popular among
liberals who want to legalize it ² it already IS a kind of "opium
without opium".

The structure of the "chocolate laxative," of a product containing the


agent of its own containment, can be discerned throughout today's
ideological landscape. There are two topics which determine today's
liberal tolerant attitude towards Others: the respect of Otherness,
openness towards it, AND the obsessive fear of harassment ² in short,
the Other is OK insof ar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as
the Other is not really Other... This is what is more and more
emerging as the central "human right" in late -capitalist society:


  
 , i.e., to be kept at a safe distance from the
others. A similar structure is clearly present in how we relate to
capitalist profiteering: it is OK IF it is counteracted with
charitable activities ² first you amass billions, then you return
(part of) them to the needy... And the same goes for war, for the
emerging logic of humanitarian or pacifist militarism: war is OK
insofar as it really serves to bring about peace, democracy, or to
create conditions for distributing humanitarian help. And does the
same not hold more and more even for democracy and human rights: it is
OK if human rights are "rethought" to include torture and a permanent
emergency state, if democracy is cleansed of its populist
"excesses"...

In our era of over -sensitivity for "harassment" by the Other, every


ethical pressure is experienced as a false front of the violence of
power. This stance gives rise to the effort to "rewrite" religious
injunctions, making them adequate to our specific condition. Is some
command too severe? Let us reformulate it in accordance with our
sensitivities! "Th ou shalt not commit adultery!" -   
     
   
 ! """ Exemplary is here Donald Spoto's
# , a
New Age tainted "liberal" reading of Christianity, where we can read
apropos of divorce: "Jesus clearly denounced divorce and remarriage.
/.../ But Jesus did not go further and say that marriages cannot be
broken /.../ nowhere else in his teaching is there any situation when
he renders a person forever chained to the consequences o f sin. His
entire treatment of people was to liberate, not to legislate. /.../ It
is self-evident that in fact some marriages simply do break down, that
commitments are abandoned, that promises are violated and love
betrayed." Sympathetic and "liberal" as these lines are, they involve
the fatal confusion between emotional ups and downs and an
unconditional symbolic commitment which is supposed to hold precisely
when it is no longer supported by direct emotions. What Spoto is
effectively saying is: "Thou sha lt not divorce - except when your
marriage 'in fact' breaks down, when it is experienced as an
unbearable emotional burden that frustrates your full life" - in
short, except when the prohibition to divorce would have regained its
full meaning (since who wo uld divorce when his/her marriage still
blossoms?)!

Does this mean that, against the false tolerance of the liberal
multiculturalism, we should return to religious fundamentalism? The
very ridicule of Gibson's film makes clear the impossibility of such a
solution. Gibson first wanted to shoot the film in Latin and Aramaic
and to show it without subtitles; under the pressure of distributors,
he later decided to allow English (or other) subtitles. However, this
compromise on his part is not just a concession to the commercial
pressure; sticking to the original plan would rather directly display
the self-refuting nature of Gibson's project. That is to say, let us
imagine the film without subtitles shown in a large American suburban
mall: the intended fidelity to the original would turn it into its
opposite, into an incomprehensible exotic spectacle.

But there is a third position, beyond religious fundamentalism and


liberal tolerance. Let us return to the "politically correct"
distinction between Islamic fundam entalism and Islam: Bush and Blair
(and even Sharon) never forget to praise Islam as a great religion of
love and tolerance which has nothing to do with the disgusting
terrorist acts... In the same way that this distinction between "good"
Islam and "bad" I slamic terrorism is a fake, one should also render
problematic the typical "radical -liberal" distinction between Jews and
the State of Israel or Zionism, i.e., the effort to open up the space
in which Jews and Jewish citizens of Israel will be able to crit icize
the State of Israel's politics and Zionist ideology not only without
being accused of anti -Semitism, but, even more, formulating their
critique as based on their very passionate attachment to Jewishness,
on what they see as worth saving in the Jewish legacy. Is, however,
this enough? Marx said about the     that he sees in every
object two aspects, bad and good, and tries to keep the good and fight
the bad. One should avoid the same mistake in dealing with Judaism:
the "good" Levinasian Ju daism of justice, respect for and
responsibility towards the other, etc., against the "bad" tradition of
Jehova, his fits of vengeance and genocidal violence against the
neighboring people. One should gather the courage to transpose the
gap, the tension, i nto the very core of Judaism: it is no longer the
question of defending the pure Jewish tradition of justice and love
for the neighbor against the Zionist aggressive assertion of the
Nation-State. Along the same lines, instead of celebrating the
greatness of true Islam against its misuse by fundamentalist
terrorists, or of bemoaning the fact that, of all great religions,
Islam is the one most resistent to modernization, one should rather
conceive this resistance as an open chance: it does not necessarily
lead to "Islamo -Fascism," it can also be articulated into a Socialist
project. Precisely because Islam harbors the "worst" potentials of the
Fascist answer to our present predicament, it can also turn out to be
the site for the "best".

Instead of trying to redeem the pure ethical core of a religion


against it political instrumentalizations, one should thus ruthlessly
criticize this very core ² in ALL religions. Today, when religions
themselves (from the New Age spirituality to the cheap spiritualist
hedonism of Dalai Lama) are more than ready to serve the postmodern
pleasure-seeking, it is paradoxically only a consequent materialism
which is able to sustain a truly ascetic militant ethical stance. Y

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