In times of war, the fundamental questions of survival, morality, and identity not only dominate the discourse but also expose the fissures in global political ideologies. Amid the clamor of media narratives and entrenched partisan frameworks, a few voices manage to rise above the fray, offering incisive critiques and grappling with the uncomfortable truths that others often evade.
Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher known for his eclectic blend of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and cultural critique, continues to challenge conventional thinking on global politics, war, and the intricate dilemmas of leftist ideology.
In an interview with the Kyiv Independent, Zizek addressed the role of humor in wartime, the roots of the long-standing romanticization of Russia in the West, and the failure of the left in the face of Ukraine’s fight for survival.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Kyiv Independent: The persistent threat of a Russian nuclear strike over the past three years has sharpened Ukrainians' dark humor, which often thrives in wartime. Why do you think it still shocks outside observers that people can (and need to) laugh in the face of death?
Slavoj Zizek: I’m suspicious of those who respond to the suffering of others with tears and dramatic public displays of sympathy. In my experience, the people who behave this way are usually not the ones who have truly suffered. It’s an emotional performance, detached from the reality of what it means to endure pain.
I often refer to a story about an Australian aborigine visited by Western observers with benevolent intentions. The aborigine says to them: “If you’ve come here to sympathize with our suffering and express compassion, go home. But if you’ve come here to fight alongside us, then stay.” I think this captures that total hypocrisy perfectly, the same kind we see on a larger scale toward the people of Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere today.
When suffering is unbearable, you can’t indulge too deeply in mourning because you’re still in the midst of it. You either withdraw entirely, becoming some sort of weirdo, or you cope through humor. Even in Auschwitz, Jews made jokes about their predicament — it was their way of managing the horror. Only later, in the 1950s, did they begin to gain some emotional distance from it all and the serious mourning and reflection on those tragedies began.
"When suffering is unbearable, you can’t indulge too deeply in mourning because you’re still in the midst of it."
The same thing happened during the Yugoslav Wars, particularly after the massacre in Srebrenica. In the face of such trauma, people developed jokes to cope. Humor was the only way to survive emotionally. I don’t see anything disrespectful about it.
Have you read Primo Levi’s classic Holocaust memoir, “If This Is a Man?” He describes moments that, despite the horror, are almost comical. For example, during the monthly selection where prisoners had to run past an SS officer who would quickly decide if they were still healthy enough to work or should be sent to the gas chambers, prisoners would prepare themselves for that fleeting moment of judgment. They’d pinch their lips, cheeks, or stomachs to appear redder and healthier. These are absurdly tragic yet darkly comic scenes.
There are moments that go beyond horror, even beyond heroism. In the concentration camps — or the Stalinist gulags, for that matter — the situation was so desperate that there was no room for the traditional image of heroism. You couldn’t play the role of the brave martyr, standing defiantly and saying, “Go ahead, shoot me, I’ll never betray my principles.” The conditions were simply too extreme for that.
Nobody should be ashamed of finding humor or other ways to cope with war. It’s not a betrayal of the situation — it can actually give you the strength to fight better.
The Kyiv Independent: Yes — a sort of clarity emerges when you fully understand the reality that you face.
Slavoj Zizek: Did you see the documentary “Real” by Oleh Sentsov? It’s one of the best works of cinema I’ve ever seen. Sentsov discovered while on leave (from the military) that his helmet-mounted camera had captured footage from a battle, and he used that footage to create the film.
What I love about “Real” is how it avoids two common traps when portraying war. On the one hand, it steers clear of false pacifism — the simplistic notion that war is just meaningless violence and killing. On the other hand, it also avoids romanticizing heroism. It doesn’t indulge in the idea that war is noble.
The title is not a reference to "real" horror but rather the code name for a position (to which Sentsov is trying to organize an evacuation of his unit during the attack) — there are code names of football clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, and so on.
Sentsov’s film captures the absolute absurdity of war. It highlights something crucial: true heroism isn’t about escaping into the fantasy of war as something glamorous or honorable. It’s about confronting the senseless, meaningless violence of war while still recognizing the necessity to fight.
What’s even more remarkable is that after completing the film, if I understand correctly, Sentsov himself returned to the front lines. That, to me, is real heroism.
The Kyiv Independent: Despite the horrors of Russia’s war against Ukraine, we see that a fascination with all things Russian continues in Western culture. It seems the world still hasn’t moved past Voltaire’s depictions of the Russian Empire struggling to emerge from barbarity and embrace the Enlightenment. They are enticed by it. What do you think accounts for this long-standing romanticization?
Slavoj Zizek: There has always been this question of whether Russia can truly be democratic. However, we shouldn’t oversimplify it. Many figures considered Russian heroes — from Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great — saw themselves as authoritarian Western modernizers. Even Stalin is part of this tradition.
When Stalin was young, someone asked him how he would define a Bolshevik. His response was: "A combination of Russian messianic dedication and American pragmatism." This reveals an interesting dynamic — Bolsheviks were always secretly enamored with the energy and dynamism of the American model. Their challenge was figuring out how to merge that with their ideological vision.
That’s why I wouldn’t dismiss Putin as a relic of some old Russian tradition. No, Putin represents the worst of a longstanding trend in Russian history, one that dates back to figures like Ivan the Terrible and Peter I — authoritarian modernizers who sought to bring Russia into modernity but on their own terms, using brutal, centralized control. This authoritarian modernization has a strong historical precedent, even extending into Far Eastern traditions.
For example, in the early 20th century, Pan-Asianism emerged in countries like China and Japan. They faced a similar dilemma: how to catch up with the West in terms of technology and economics without losing their cultural identity to Western liberalism. Their solution? Fascism.
Look not just at Alexander Dugin but at the whole crowd of ideologists orbiting Putin. Their core idea — it’s pure horror — is this notion of Eurasia, this mystical Euro-Asian identity. It’s such a stupid, vulgar, fascist kind of reasoning. On the one hand, you get this primitive Orientalism: embracing the idea that the East is passive, backward, stupid. On the other hand, you have this caricature of Western liberalism, a kind of decadent self-destruction through excessive individualism. Of course, they position Russia as the magical “right balance” — the supposed perfect synthesis of an individual in a harmonious, free society.
The Kyiv Independent: Some on the Left have questioned your support for Ukraine. Why do you think they struggle to see this war as a quintessential example of a smaller nation resisting a larger, colonial power?
Slavoj Zizek: It’s incredible to me how many pseudo-leftists are drawn to this strange fascination with Russia. Even though they admit that Putin is horrible, they still cling to the idea that Russia, somehow being less affected by Western consumerism, somehow preserves more “authentic” human relationships. For example, an idiot once told me that while the West is all about promiscuity and sexual freedoms, in Russia, “true love” is still possible.
This romanticized notion of Russia is often combined with another leftist dogma: that NATO is the ultimate evil. According to this view, anyone in conflict with NATO must have something good or virtuous about them. By this logic, Ukraine is disqualified from support because it’s seen as merely fighting a “proxy war” on behalf of NATO.
It worries me that they treat Ukrainians as some kind of idiots — they falsify the choice that Ukrainians face. This oversimplification completely ignores reality. For Ukrainians, the choice isn’t between peace and war — it’s between resisting or disappearing as a nation. The Russians have made that abundantly clear.
When people say, "We should stop supporting Ukraine and push for negotiations with Russia," I respond, "Maybe — but that decision should ultimately be up to the Ukrainians." However, are they aware that Ukraine's current strength to negotiate, if it exists, is entirely due to its resistance? Without Western support, Ukraine would never have reached a position where negotiations are even possible. This is absolutely clear.
The Kyiv Independent: We have seen efforts, particularly from the right, including part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s circle, to discredit Zelensky — falsely portraying him as corrupt, overly reliant on foreign aid, and mocking his media savvy rather than recognizing it as a strength. This is in addition to the left pushing the idea that Ukraine is engaged in a “proxy war.” What do these shifts in global public opinion reveal about the dynamics of political power, media manipulation, and how they shape public perception in the face of a war of total annihilation?
Slavoj Zizek: The problem is that neither side listens to counterarguments. For example, here in Slovenia, when I pointed out that treating Ukraine’s defense as a proxy war for NATO essentially insults Ukrainians, people don’t seem to grasp it. Ukrainians are being portrayed as if they could choose peace but instead decide to engage in a war that displaces a quarter of their population, just for the sake of a proxy war. But in reality, it’s a matter of their survival. They don’t listen to that. They claim peace is the most important value, but here’s the irony: in my country, the left-wing who claim this are also supporting the memory of partisans from Yugoslavia, particularly in Slovenia, who fought against German occupation. The partisans were doing something very similar, and arguably more extreme, than what Ukrainians are doing now. They resisted Germany, often executing hostages and engaging in violent acts. Meanwhile, the ideology of the right-wingers who collaborated with the Germans was that resistance couldn’t be afforded because it would threaten the Slovenian nation. So here’s the paradox: the same people who defend resistance now — when Slovenia was much more vulnerable than Ukraine, without NATO support — are now advocating for peace, ignoring the complexities of the situation.
They claim Ukraine is crazy, accusing it of trying to push the West into using nuclear weapons. But the real debate in the West is that no one is talking about the first use of nuclear arms — it’s Russia that’s constantly making these threats. Every six months, Putin and his allies, especially the madman (Russian Security Council Deputy Chair) Dmitry Medvedev, keep escalating the rhetoric. Medvedev is just a tool for Putin — he says the more extreme things while Putin knows how to manipulate the situation. What’s crazy is that when Russia threatens the first use of nuclear weapons, it’s just accepted as a fact. But when Ukraine just wants to defend itself (by striking targets in Russian territory), it’s labeled as a madman trying to provoke Russia. I find that humiliating.
I once made this comparison: it’s like a woman, Ukraine in this case, being brutally raped. In despair, she tries to do something — what would you do if you were in that situation? I can only imagine as a man, maybe you would scratch, try to hit his eyes, or do whatever you could to survive. And then the West’s response would be to say to this woman, "It’s too painful, don’t provoke him."
This fundamental disorientation is horrifying to me. I think it will contribute to the end of the left as we know it. Some form of the left will survive, but right now, in places like Germany and the U.K., the real opposition is between moderately conservative centrists — like the U.K.’s Labour Party, which is now largely moderate — and the extreme conservatives. It’s the same with the Democrats: they’re the moderately conservative ones against Trump.
Isn’t it a sad world when the only choices are between moderate conservatives pretending to be liberals, and extreme figures like Trump feeding off ordinary people's rage? I’m a pessimist, I must admit it.
Kate Tsurkan
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading this interview. In an era of rising global authoritarianism, the role of public intellectuals seems more important than ever to situate what is happening in its proper cultural and historical context. If you enjoyed reading this sort of thing, please consider supporting The Kyiv Independent.
