Red Ink

Slavoj Žižek spoke at Wall Street today.  Occupy Wall Street carries a video and full transcript here.  In this excerpt, the crowd repeats his lines like poetry back to the speaker and out to other listeners:

They tell you we are dreamers

The true dreamers are those who think

Things can go on indefinitely the way that they are

We are not dreamers

We are awakening

From a dream that is turning into a nightmare

We are not destroying anything

We are only witnessing how the system in destroying itself

We all know the classic scenes from cartoons

The cart reaches a precipice

But it goes on walking

Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath

Only when it looks down and notices it

It falls down

This is what we are doing here

We are telling the guys on wall street

“hey! Look down!”

(Cheers, hollers of enthusiasm)

In april 2011

The Chinese government prohibited

On t.v., on films, and in novels

All stories that contained alternate reality or time travel

This is a good sign for China!

It means that people still dream about alternatives!

So you have to prohibit these dreams

Here we don’t think about prohibition

Because the ruling system has even repressed our capacity to dream!

Look at the movies that we see all the time

It’s easy to imagine the end of the world

An asteroid destroying all life as we know

But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism

So what are we doing here?

Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times

A guy was sent from east Germany to work in Siberia

He knew his mail would be read by censors

So he told his friends

Let’s establish a code

If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true

If it is written in red ink, it is false

After a month, his friends get a letter

Everything is in blue

Everything is wonderful here

Stores are full of good food

Movie theaters show good films from the west

Apartments are large and luxurious

The only thing you cannot buy

Is red ink!

(laughter)

This is how

We have all the freedoms we want

But what we are missing is red ink!

The language to articulate our non-freedom

The way we are taught to talk about freedom

War and terror and so one

Falsifies freedom

And that is what you are doing here

You are giving us all red ink!

(cheers)

There is a danger

Don’t fall in love with yourselves

We have a nice time here

But remember

Carnivals come cheap

What matters is the day after

When we will have to return to normal life

Will there be any changes then?

I don’t want you to remember these days

You know like oh we were young it was beautiful

Remember that our basic message is

We are allowed to think about alternatives!

The taboo is broken!

We do not live in the best possible world!

Courtesy of The New York Observer

Slavoj Žižek speaks to Occupy Wall Street

You can hear this same speaker - audience response calming the crowd at the web viral police brutality incident  recently updated with extended video coverage at commondreams.  In the extended minutes,  while the policeman is beating people, and the crowd screams and reacts, someone proclaims, "We are a peaceful demonstration!"  Suddenly, it seems, everyone stops and starts reciting his lines back (i.e. "We are a peaceful demonstration!") - and any sense of impending violence immediately de-escalates at that point (thanks to the protesters).  The police themselves are filmed simply standing on the outside of the group, enclosing them, while this horrific incident takes place.

There's a wonderful photograph of an enormous peaceful crowd overflowing at Foley Square at that same link.

Courtesy of Common Dreams

William Rivers Pitt at truthout adds another line to Mahatma Gandhi's famous quote.

A transcript of Naomi Klein on Wall Street Friday October 7th.