Slavoj Žižek - What does it mean to be a revolutionary today? Marxism 2009

We need people like this. People who... you know, bring forth the enemy, go through and see where they stand, where we stand. In the good old days -now comes the dirty old conclusion, I warn you- in the good old days of freely existing Socialism, a joke was popular among dissidents -a joke used to illustrate the futility of their protests. In the fifteenth century old Russia, occupied by mongols, that's the joke, a farmer and his wife walked along a dusty countryroad. A mongol warrior on a horse stopped at their side and tells the farmer that he will now rape his wife. 'But since there is a lot of dust in the ground you should hold my testicles while I'm raping your wife so that they will not get dusty, dirty'. After the mongol finishes his job and drives away, the farmer starts to laugh and jump with joy. The surprised wife asks him, 'How can you be jumping with joy when I was just brutally raped?'. The farmer answers 'But I got him! His balls are full of dust!'. This sad joke tells off the predicament of dissidents. They thought they were dealing serious blows to the party nomenclatura but all they were doing was well, getting a little bit of dust on the nomenclatura's testicles. Is today's critical left all too often not in a similar position? We think we are doing something terribly subversive but we are just.... Our task is to discover how to make a step further. Our theses today should be critical leftists have hither to dirt with dust the balls of those in power. The point is to cut them off.

Minute 21.45