The Pervert's Guide to Ideology Page #8

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- Right, sir.

- Oh, how was India? Enjoy it?

- Jolly good.

- Bridges!

I'll labor night and day...

Just think about Lindsay

Anderson's classic 'If... '.

The public life

is democratic -

we have professors who

interact with their pupils,

nice atmosphere,

teaching, friendship,

spirit of cooperation -

but then we all know

what happens

beneath the surface.

Older pupils torturing, sexually

abusing the younger.

This same mixture of obscenity

and sadistic violence.

And again what is

crucial here is

we should not simply

put all the blame

or all the enjoyment

on the older pupils.

The victims even are

part of this infernal

cycle of obscenity.

It's as if in order to really be

a member of a community

you have to render

you hands dirty.

And I think even the

Abu Ghraib scandal -

of American soldiers

torturing or

especially humiliating

Iraqi prisoners -

is to be read in this way.

It's not simply, we the

arrogant Americans

are humiliating others.

What Iraqi soldiers

experienced there

was the staging of

the obscene underside

of the American

military culture.

In Full Metal Jacket it's

the character of Joker -

played by

Matthew Modine -

who is close to what we

would call a normal soldier.

A M.A.S.H. type of soldier.

He has proper

ironic distance.

He proves, at

the end, militarily,

the most efficient soldier.

Returning back to me.

Why then will I soon

shoot myself?

Something went wrong

there. But what?

Lock and load!

I did not just run amok.

Order.

This is my rifle.

There are many like it,

but this one is mine.

But I got too

directly identified

with these obscene rituals.

I lost the distance.

I took them seriously.

What in the name

of Jesus H. Christ

are you animals doing

in my head?

If you get too close to it,

if you over

identify with it,

if you really immediately

become the voice

of this super ego,

it's self destructive.

You kill people around you -

you end up

killing yourself.

Oh, shh, shh, shh.

So you think Batman's made

Gotham a better place? Hm?

Look at me.

Look at me!

You see, this is how crazy

Batman's made Gotham.

You want order in Gotham -

Batman must take off his

mask and turn himself in.

Oh, and every day he

doesn't, people will die.

Starting tonight.

I'm a man of my word.

So who is Joker?

- If we're gonna play games...

Which is the lie he is opposing?

...I'm gonna need

a cup of coffee.

Ah, the 'good cop,

bad cop' routine?

Not exactly.

The truly disturbing thing

about The Dark Knight

is that it elevates lie into

a general social principal -

into the principal

of organisation

of our social political life.

As if our societies

can remain stable,

can function, only

if based on a lie.

As if telling the truth,

and this telling the truth

embodies in Joker

means distraction.

Disintegration of

the social order.

Never start with the head.

The victim gets all fuzzy.

He can't feel the next...

Toward the end it is

as if lie functions

as a hot potato passing from

one person's hand to

another person's hand.

First there is Harvey Dent.

So be it. Take the Batman

into custody...

The public prosecutor

who lies.

- I am the Batman.

Claiming that he is the real

person behind Batman's mask.

That he is Batman.

Then we have Gordon -

honest policeman,

Batman's friend, who

fakes, stages his

own death.

Five dead.

Two of them cops.

You can't sweep that off.

At the end, Batman himself

takes upon himself...

- But the Joker cannot win.

... the crimes, murders committed

by Harvey Dent, the public

prosecutor turned criminal...

Gotham needs

its true hero.

...in order to maintain

the trust of the public

into the legal system.

The idea is if the ordinary

public were to learn

how corrupt was or

is the very core of our

legal system then everything

would have collapsed -

so we need a lie

to maintain order.

A hero.

Not the hero we deserved,

but the hero we needed.

Nothing less than

a knight, shining.

There's nothing new in this.

This is an old

conservative wisdom

asserted long ago by

philosophers from Plato

especially, and then

Immanuel Kant,

Edmond Burke and

so on and so on.

This idea that the truth

is too strong.

That a politician should

be a cynicist who,

although he

knows what is true,

tells to ordinary people what

Plato called 'a noble fable' -

a lie.

Um, the United States

knows that Iraq

has weapons of

mass destruction.

The U.K. knows

that they have

weapons of mass destruction.

Any country on

the face of the earth

with an active

intelligence program

knows that Iraq has weapons

of mass destruction.

Which could be activated

within forty five minutes

including against his

own Shia population.

The choice is his and

if he does not disarm,

the United States of America

will lead a coalition

and disarm him

in the name of peace.

Let's be frank.

We can have a state -

public system of power -

as legitimate as you want

submitted to critical press,

democratic elections and

so on and so on,

apparently just

serves us.

But nonetheless, if you

look closely into

how even the most democratic

state power functions

in order for it to display

true authority,

and power needs authority,

there has to be, as it were,

between the lines all the

time this message of:

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are

legalised through elections

"but basically we can do with

you whatever we want. "

Because that's what

needs to happen.

Because sometimes,

truth isn't good enough.

Sometimes people

deserve more.

Sometimes people

deserve

to have their

faith rewarded.

One of the

great platitudes -

which are popular today

when we are confronted

with acts of violence -

is to refer to Fyodor

Dostoyevsky's

famous statement from

'The Brothers Karamazov':

"If there is no God then

everything is permitted. "

Well, the first problem with

this statement is that

Dostoyevsky, of course,

never made it.

The first one who used

this phrase as

allegedly made by

Dostoyevsky was

Jean-Paul Sartre in '43,

but the main

point is that this

statement is simply wrong.

Even a brief look at our

predicament today

clearly tells us this.

It is precisely:

if there is God, that

everything is permitted

to those who not

only believe in God

but who perceive

themselves as instruments,

direct instruments

of the divine will.

If you posit or perceive

or legitimise yourself

as a direct instrument

of the divine will,

then of course all narrow

petty moral considerations

disappear.

How can you even think

in such narrow terms

when you are a direct

instrument of God?

This is how so-called religious

fundamentalists work,

but not only them.

Every form of so called

totalitarianism

works like that even

if it is presented

or if it presents

itself as atheist.

Let's take Stalinism.

Officially Stalinism was based

on atheist Marxist theory,

but if we look closely at

the subjective experience

of a Stalinist

political agent,

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