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Assange Hosts Žižek and David Horowitz

‘The World Tomorrow’ today

by
Marc Tracy
April 24, 2012
Julian Assange and Slavoj Žižek.(Russia Today)
Julian Assange and Slavoj Žižek.(Russia Today)

How long are we going to do recaps of Julian Assange’s new talk show on the Kremlin-sponsored network Russia Today? Why, as long as the WikiLeaks impresario chooses to focus on Israel and Jews! Actually, this week’s episode, the second, isn’t quite as fixated as last week‘s, whose guest was Hebollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. But still it’s interesting that Assange chose “intellectual superstar” Slavoj Žižek, the iconoclastic Slovenian philosopher (whom Tablet Magazine’s Adam Kirsch accused of anti-Semitism in The New Republic), and David Horowitz, a Tablet Magazine contributor whom Assange describes, not inaccurately but a little narrowly, as “a fiery right-wing Zionist.”

They begin, of course, with Israel. “You support the Palestinians,” Horowitz says. “I don’t see anything to distinguish the Palestinians who want to kill the Jews from the Nazis.”

“Listen,” Žižek responds. “Did you ever visit the West Bank? … I’m there with my Jewish friends. I find tasteless this idea, ‘What Nazis were doing to the Jews, Jews are now doing to Palestinians.’ I agree. This is tasteless. But, sorry, Palestinians are there screwed up.”

“Yes,” Horowitz responds, “they’re screwed by Hamas, the PLO, Saudi Arabia, Egypt.”

“Here I disagree,” Žižek ripostes. “Israeli policy opened up the space for Hamas influence there.”

“Oh,” Horowitz exclaims, “we’re going to blame the Jews for Hamas. Great.”

Later, Stalin’s poetry comes up. See the whole thing below. And tune in next Tuesday!

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.