My understanding of Zizek's critique of modern liberalism: setting up a framework for mere tolerance of the neighbor - defined as one with characteristics you find repugnant but are forced to endure by circumstance - as required by the modern liberalist framework [which endeavors to exclude violence and extremism as a solution], creates the situation of continuing to deny them basic rights (pushing them away, maintaining their stature of other). He is arguing that the Subject itself develops a toxicity, from which everyday people (i.e., you) have a right to resist in whatever fashion you can.
On the one hand, you have a feigned openness - here he compares saying "how are you," suddenly asking someone to declare their sexual orientation, and topless beaches. This is an openness that does not ask someone to reveal themselves in a personal way so as to move towards an understanding, but in fact represents a pushing away of the other. You aren't interested in getting to know them, but to mask your fear of them, you cover it with this openness which walks around the fringes of their being, and you then withdraw, satisfied that you've given them the opportunity to show their humanness and thus done your part in recognizing it.
Similarly, there is empathizing with their situation whilst retaining one's right to not be harassed. Here they retain their characteristic repugnant otherness. Urging of "tolerance", when coupled with the right not to be bothered, may be even worse because you feel like you're doing something, when the situation doesn't significantly change or it gets worse. Thus you are even less likely to lift a finger because you can say, I already did something (I recycle, I donate money to charity, I support this anti-war group). This leads to a minimal effort of recognition that can a) lead to tiny improvements, usually temporary, with no systemic change, or b) absent a real resistance, leave a vacuum for rightists to deny even basic human treatment. Then even if the vacuum doesn't emerge, allowing rightist violence groups to arise (as they are doing in Serbia and even traditionally moderate places like France, and to a lesser degree manifested in American Tea Parties), then still your priceless right not to be harassed leads to an acquiescence in the face of statist violence. So you don't mind if Mexicans come here, but you aren't going to tolerate their selling weed or mooching of welfare money, so you would prefer if the military was deployed on the border, and small town police drive around rounding them up for deportation. In other words, the danger is drawing this line that is not to be crossed: not threats to your personal livelihood or safety, but being annoyed with them (a reasonable racism). And the recourse is not dialogue or some sort of social intervention, but asking the state to intervene militarily. That is partly why liberalist tolerance (political correctness) isn't rejected by the state: it provides an opportunity to deploy the military and therefore strengthen control. It just must not go too far, as it almost did w/ the civil rights movement. Here is where propaganda systems step in to decaffeinate the movement. But at the same time, you're seeing a creeping police state, a creeping authoritarianism.
Next, there is a "psychologizing" of the other, an excessive but still shallow humanization of the other, wherein their despicable actions are excused on the basis that, they are a human just like me. One must be careful here, as this one can easily be manipulated to strip people of their humanness. Today a 17 year old kid was sentenced to, I dunno 20-40 years in jail because he encouraged a 12 year old to go rob an old woman as a gang initiation, and the woman, as a result of falling and suffering a heart attack, died 5 weeks later. Where should our "understanding" of his life and situation (and age) stop? Certainly we should hold him accountable, but is discarding of his "biography" to prevent empathy a good thing? The question is, when should we let our psychological empathizing lead us to overlook? On a similar note, the film Downfall was criticized on the basis that it "humanized" Hitler - actually Hitler was not a monster, or a demon, he was a human being. And we should be especially aware of humanity lurking behind the brutal. I was wondering yesterday where all these obscene creatures who comment on Yahoo articles are: they're in your backyard. And they're the same people who were waving flags at Nuremberg.
But when do we overlook, and when do we condemn? The danger in humanizing too quickly, we are apt to overlook their intentions, their programme, and see them as a person like us, just trying to get on. So must the question begin with an examination of the intentions of the other?
Where I'm stuck is, my recovery from alcohol abuse has made me acutely aware of the failings of the human organism lurking right around the corner. And I'm not sure where to draw the line between psychological empathizing and condemnation on an ethical basis.So we don't want a framework that creates this feigned openness or conditional acceptance which makes way for acquiescence to violence or authoritarianism. We don't want a tepid psychological identification that makes us too afraid to critique and revolt against others because they are just people like us, and again also helps the maniacs in power explain away their sick behavior by saying they're people like us. Of course we don't want a capitalist contractarianism in which ethical obligations are reduced to commodified agreements.
WHERE ARE WE GOING? Does the ethics lie in communism, psychedelic ethics, or taoism? Your challenge should be to elucidate these ethics and perhaps synthesize them.
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