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A review by ryansloan
Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours by Slavoj Žižek
2.0
This book is essentially a Marxist/class-oriented look at refugee crises and the developed world's complicity in them. At the core of his thesis is the (well-founded) idea that Western Imperialism and economic globalization have led to these failed states. He describes some nations which were once independent and self-sufficient that became reliant on narrow exports, leading them to become dependent on a fickle global network and plunging many more into poverty (or worse).
Žižek describes what he calls "The Double Blackmail": either we let everybody in or we build up the walls and keep everybody out. He suggests that both sides are the wrong ones, and that the real (and just) solution is to create a world in which there are no refugee crises. He argues that, due to climate change and other factors, we are destined for a world in which mass migration is common, and we need to reorient our struggles around what we share: global solidarity of those exploited and lacking in freedoms. He states that the true dangers to European way of life are not Muslim refugees, but nationalistic populists; and states that both the populists and refugees should be educated to see their struggles as part of the same class struggle.
I didn't dislike this book, but it reads less like a philosophy text and more like a conversation with a tipsy philosopher in a bar. A lot of interesting insights and views, but it provides neither a very coherent argument (he suggests that liberals should stop pretending like we can get along with "neighbors" who are different and that we don't like, and yet his important solution is solidarity through class struggle), and it's a case-study in gratuitous name-dropping (which is one reason it's very short.) I also didn't feel that, as a Marxist critique, it had much to say that was particularly novel.
Žižek describes what he calls "The Double Blackmail": either we let everybody in or we build up the walls and keep everybody out. He suggests that both sides are the wrong ones, and that the real (and just) solution is to create a world in which there are no refugee crises. He argues that, due to climate change and other factors, we are destined for a world in which mass migration is common, and we need to reorient our struggles around what we share: global solidarity of those exploited and lacking in freedoms. He states that the true dangers to European way of life are not Muslim refugees, but nationalistic populists; and states that both the populists and refugees should be educated to see their struggles as part of the same class struggle.
I didn't dislike this book, but it reads less like a philosophy text and more like a conversation with a tipsy philosopher in a bar. A lot of interesting insights and views, but it provides neither a very coherent argument (he suggests that liberals should stop pretending like we can get along with "neighbors" who are different and that we don't like, and yet his important solution is solidarity through class struggle), and it's a case-study in gratuitous name-dropping (which is one reason it's very short.) I also didn't feel that, as a Marxist critique, it had much to say that was particularly novel.