Slavoj Zizek on #Stalinism and the Ideology of Domination #Zizek #SlavojZizek #Communism #Philosophy

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Let's say we are in Moscow, 1935. Let's say to be modest, you are a central committee, I am Stalin. Somebody has to be. I give a big speech, you know, you applaud, I applaud, and so on. Then we have a debate. One of you attacks me.

[00:00:16]Next day probably the big debate will be who has seen that guy alive the last.

[00:00:21]But now that's not all. Let's say then that another of you stands up and starts to shout at this first guy who attacked me. Are you crazy? We don't do this here. We don't attack comrade Stalin. I claim the second guy would disappear even faster. You see the point. It wasn't only prohibited to criticize Stalin. It was even more prohibited to publicly announce this prohibition. It's not only that Stalin was a master, but if you say this, you were, well, you disappear or whatever. So this paradox I find so fascinating. And here we learn so much about how ideology works. How, okay, we have relations of domination, but precisely the word domination is a domination in which you, if you are the dominated one, you have to act as if there is no domination.