Slavoj Žižek — On Liberal Fascism
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek examines the paradox of liberal fascism, populism's global spread, and whether despair still contains the seeds of political hope.
Why we picked this
Whatever one thinks of Žižek's conclusions, no contemporary philosopher forces the left to account for its own contradictions as relentlessly as he does — this evening on 'liberal fascism' arrives at exactly the moment the concept demands examination.
Slavoj Žižek — described as “erudite and comic, ironic and profound” and sometimes called the most dangerous philosopher in the West — arrives at Town Hall Seattle to examine what he calls liberal fascism: the paradox in which liberalism’s own structures and assumptions enable authoritarian outcomes. Drawing on his book Liberal Fascisms, the Slovenian philosopher addresses the populist wave that has reshaped politics from the United States to Europe to the Global South, asking whether despair offers any genuine hope and whether escape from what he calls “libertarian fascism” is conceptually possible.
The talk ranges across Trump’s America, the European far right, the Middle East, the failures of postmodernism, and the resurgence of antisemitism as a political tool — not as a tour of current events but as a diagnostic exercise in political theory. Žižek’s method is deliberately disorienting: he insists that the categories most liberals use to understand fascism are themselves part of the problem, and that rigorous analysis requires discomfort with one’s own ideological position.
This is not a reassuring evening. It is a demanding one. For audiences willing to have their political frameworks challenged rather than confirmed, Žižek at his best performs exactly the kind of conceptual work that political philosophy exists to do. A book signing follows. Doors open at 6:00 PM.