When Slavoj Žižek said to The Spectator that Coronavirus gives a new chance to Communism, he uttered a virus that I have to challenge.

Of course, I don’t mean the old-style Communism. By Communism, I mean simply what the World Health Organization is saying. We should mobilize, coordinate, and so on . . . like, my God, this is a dangerous situation. They’re saying this country lacks masks, respirators, and so on. We should treat this as a war. Some kind of European coordination . . . maybe even wartime mobilization. It can be done, and it can even boost productivity.

It’s always a challenge to confront the statements of an outspoken and intelligent person like Slavoj. He was and to a certain degree still is a father of Slovenian post-Lacanian-popular-down-to-earth philosophy to which I owe a lot. But with this link of WHO with Communism, he produced something that only he could:

1. I have repeated for quite some time that WHO is a representative of a new type of Communism, but only a few have taken this seriously.
2. Yet Slavoj claims that such a new type of Communism is something positive. A statement that is dangerous, for it rejects individual freedoms and supports totalitarian governance.

The Virus of Communism

I do not intend to repeat my argument for a strong state in cases of crisis and non-existent state and strong individuals within civil society in times of average crisis, for I elaborated it in my previous post, Corona Freedom and the State. One does not need a communist organization and society to fight crises. After N.N. Taleb wrote Antifragile and Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, even Slavoj Žižek should have changed his communist apology. The last statement was cynical for a purpose: I wouldn’t say I like seeing such a great mind » stumbling on a threshold« like Dante in Book 1, chapter 1 of Divine Comedy before entering the gates of hell.

How come a mind like Slavoj cannot see the dead end of his fascination with Communism?

The straightforward answer to this question is that the virus of Communism heavily infects his mind. According to my latest work on memetics, I should upgrade the analysis, saying that his personal memetic field is shaped in such a way that all entering memes get a more or less communist vector. 

Memes as viruses

It is the right time to open Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine again. It is here that Dawkins’s concept of memes from the last chapter of The Selfish Gene evolved into a first comprehensive elaboration. Daniel Dennet might be more profound in further developing memetics, but Susan’s book is still the alpha in the field. (For a record, she is still using a concept of a meme-complex, a bundle of memes, that I have replaced with a memetic field, which better explains what happens with memes as quante when they are observed by a memetic field, aka when they enter the memetic field.)

Until the coronavirus spread worldwide, many took her reorientation of the negative tone Richard Dawkins attached to the memes as viruses of the mind, as an apt analogy only. As much as memes are not simple strains of DNK like Coronavirus is, for instance, it is also true that memes behave exactly like viruses. Memes attach themselves to brains, as do viruses attach to cells. After they attach, they »force« the cell/the brain to behave as they want.

Yet the resemblance does not stop here, and here starts my point: all viruses/memes can be damaging but also beneficial. There are also helpful viruses (strains of DNK or DNA) necessary for the biosphere to live, as explained in this science paper among many. On the other side of the co-evolution of genes (the world of viruses) and memes (the world of minds), we find that without memes, there would be no mind, no thoughts, no human reflections, no poetry, and no computer viruses. (For a record: not that memes could infect computers, but without memes of which computers are artifacts, there would be no computers and thus no computer viruses.)

Minds are memes

Memes, in their vastly complex interconnections, are our minds, and the human mind is nothing but the memetic interconnectivity of memetic fields.

Memes occupy our minds, and we are then used to spread them around. We are »Meme machines« (ab)used by memes for the sake of their replications, just as viruses use human bodies for their replication. Memes are the only difference between humans and animals. Knowing this, one should not be surprised that our DNA is 99% alike to the DNA of an ape. The difference does not come from genes but from memes. Memes cannot infect apes. That is why we say humans are unique animals, resulting from a co-evolution of genes and memes. (My latest research on memetics proves that memes infect gorillas, yet their infection is vastly smaller than that of humans.)

Memes as tools of viruses

Returning to Žižek, we must address memes that cause people to die. If we only take the massive Soviet famine of 1932-33 that killed more than 10 million people, we can directly blame the communist memetic virus causing 1/3 of those caused by HIV. One hundred million of all deaths so far attributed to Communism is two times more than deaths caused by Spanish Flu 1918-19. Memes are overpowering genes.

I do not want to underestimate Coronavirus threats, not only because I am personally endangered, but because it caused visible damage and suffering worldwide. However, we should also keep an eye on the co-evolution of memes spreading around the coronavirus. Who says that coronavirus acts only as a physical virus? As a highly vital entity, it also spreads with the help of memes. The reactions of almost all collective organizations somehow prove that they were affected by coronavirus memetic extension. All of them spread memes that coronavirus is nothing to be afraid of. Such memes paved the way for coronavirus and its ability to trick human cells into opening doors.

And again, why would we not blame the virus of Communism for opening the door to all kinds of viruses and bacteria that caused various diseases? Why would we not blame the United Nations’ spread of the decarbonization memetic virus for tricking our reception of natural dangers like coronavirus?

Far-fetched statements? Am I not condemning Slavoj for »crimes« he had not intended to commit?

Memes do not imprison us

As much as we are Meme Machines, we are not necessarily imprisoned by memes. Fortunately, we can confront one memetic field with another.

Unfortunately, Slavoj does not use his mental powers, his vast set of memes directly contradicting communist memes, to eradicate their powers. In this respect, he is, unfortunately, fully infected.