‘Universities shouldn’t be safe spaces’: Rory Sutherland and Slavoj Žižek on cancel culture, futurism and Hollywood Marxism

Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and cultural theorist. Rory Sutherland is The Spectator’s Wiki Man. We arranged for them to have a chat. They spoke for more than four hours about identity politics, Elon Musk, Hollywood, free speech and more.

Introductions & ‘luxury beliefs’

Rory Sutherland: I’m recording this on a Meta Portal moving camera, which no one seems to have bought, because I assume nobody wants Mark Zuckerberg spying on them in their living room. I don’t mind though: no one wants to spy on an overweight 57-year-old advertising executive.

Slavoj Žižek: I know what you mean. Perhaps we should do this interview naked from the waist down! By the way, Rory, I like that your bookshelves are completely empty. You are not walking around going: ‘I am a big intellectual.’

‘The European tradition is the only one which contains streaks of its own self-criticism’

RS: There’s a more boring reason for that which is that I’ve just had my bookshelves painted. And my daughter insists on keeping some of them empty.

SZ: Perhaps in these woke times those are the only books of yours that have survived the purge!

RS: Do you know about Rob Henderson’s idea of ‘luxury beliefs’ – how some aspects of denigrating your own culture are a way of signalling your status?

SZ: Yes, the guy who renounces his identity, who is totally woke, thinks he has authority to criticise others. One of my epiphanies was when I was in Montana years ago with some Native Americans. They hated the term ‘Native Americans’. They much preferred to be called Indians. ‘If we are Native Americans,’ they said, ‘what are you? Cultural Americans?’ They preferred to be called Indians because it’s a sign of white people’s stupidity. They told me they almost enjoy a good old white racist. They hate how patronising the white attitude has become.