Irrational Beliefs (was Re: SZ

[John K. Taber]

>Sam Pawlett wrote:
>
>>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>  >
>>
>>  > Actually I was using "Zizekian" as a shorthand for taking
collective
>>  > fantasy seriously as a political category. That applies to the day
>>  > care scandals and to the body-part thieving stories that Maureen
>>  > mentioned - I don't think the kinds of political analyses our more
>>  > hardheaded members subscribe to are up to the task.
>>
>>What task and why not? What is it exactly that needs explaining and
what
>>is Zizek analyzing and what he does he think needs explaining?
>
>People believe, often passionately, things that seem "irrational."
>Why is that? Why do people believe that immigrants are "stealing"
>"our" jobs, or that finance is a conspiracy of Jews? (I picked these
>two examples because they're persistent and powerful and because
>Zizek has good analyses of both.) You can call these "prejudices,"
>which they are in a sense, but where do they come from and why do
>they persist? I think questions like that are very important for
>understanding politics, but some people don't. For those who don't,
>it's enough to label the phenomenon "mass hysteria," or to blame the
>ruling class for stuffing bad ideas into the heads of the masses.
>Even if you accept the head-stuffing argument, you have to wonder why
>some ideas stick in those massy heads and others don't.

Indeed! In my experience the prejudices serve the holder's purpose.
People want to keep the advantages of capitalism (or are scared to
oppose it), so its evils are the work of the Jews. It's a way of
having your cake and eating it too. I think that in Pound's Cantos
if you replaced his denunciations of usury and Jews with denunciations
of capitalism, there would be no quarrel with his work.

Similarly, our resentment of "immigrants stealing our jobs." I live
in the heart of this phenomenon. My congressman, Dick Armey, has
helped pass some of the most vicious anti-immigrant laws in the
last two decades. Yet, these laws don't affect the number of
immigrants, either poor Latin Americans, or Indian computer
programmers. In fact the numbers are increasing. But what these
laws do is deny the immigrants any rights, which makes them
helpless, and exploitable. If an immigrant Urdu or Tamil loses
his job, he can be jailed for some time before he is deported.

So my cubicle mates are threatened with replacement by poorer
paid Indians. They know it's not the Indian's fault, they know it
is their leaders's, but they are too helpless, too frightened, too
lacking in courage to oppose the leaders. So, they transfer their
anger to the helpless, and exculpate the leaders.

It does no good, but it makes them feel better for the moment. It
also helps Armey, et al, pass even more vicious laws making immigrant
programmers even more exploitable.

John K. Taber