Slavoj Zizek on Jordan Peterson Russia and Family Values

So I am incredibly interested in your thoughts on Jordan Peterson. If you have two minutes, I'd just be curious to hear your thoughts there. No, you know what surprised me? Now he is no longer even only answering questions in podcasts, he now really engaged himself and it's simply recording his appeals, makes short lectures to general public. And what shocked me is that in the latest one, he develops an idea which is for me a little bit crazy, but it's interesting because it somehow gives the truth of what is going on today. His idea, of course, first he condemns invasion of Russia, but then he said, first he claims that Western Europe and if not United States, at least Trudeau, Canada, are already under Marxist-communist domination, because for him postmodern historicism is just a new figure of communism. Okay, so then he says, and then he goes into these totally naive reflections, claiming that in Russia they built many churches now, and when they claim that they are attacking Western degeneration, they are basically right. So, bringing this together, his claim is that Putin is defending Russia from Western degeneration, which is a subtle way for a communist takeover. So, Putin is really protecting us, the world, from communist renaissance. I agree with him, but of course from the opposite point, you know. Yes, he is, he is the ultimate anti-communist today. That's why, you know what surprised me with Jordan Peterson? This conclusion was not necessary from his standpoint. You can see how he was struggling, because based on his previous view, he could also have concluded that we were too sleepy, caught in our consumerist hedonism in the West, but that Russian invasion should awaken us more military stance, to be ready to fight, to sacrifice ourselves, and so on, and so on. And so this was his choice, and he made, I think, a terrible choice. But I link this choice of him by a new tendency. My KGB agents, which means friends in American academia, are sending me texts which demonstrate how it's not just leftists like Chomsky, how a kind of understanding of defense of Russia is more and more present in the Republican Party. So what I really worry is, maybe not Trump personally, but Trump is Republicans, taking, if not getting the new president, at least taking control of Congress, and so on, and then enforcing a kind of, let's call it, obscene neoconservative big coalition, because Putin never made it a secret that in Western Europe he likes neoconservatives. He was supporting all of them. Le Pen in France, Salvini in Italy, blah blah. You know, I really see the danger of this link. It horrifies me. American Republicans, Trump Republicans, not the so-called honest ones who see Trump as the horror that he is, linked with European populists, linked with Putin. They all, and that's where I'm sad for Brexit, because they all have only one interest, they say it openly, to break up the European unity. As a communist, I claim, we have enough of vulgarities from neoconservatives. Isn't it time for the left to adopt things like family values, politeness, and so on? Wouldn't you agree? Our answer to family values should not be, no, but what about gay rights? Of course. But our answer should be, listen, this neoliberal economy, didn't it do more to destroy families than all gay propaganda together? They, neoliberal guys, they are the true destroyers of families. This is incidentally what Bernie Sanders is saying. Okay, I don't want to get lost again.