What if you can deceive all the people all the time?

01:07:26 — What if you can deceive all the people all the time?

Žižek inverts Lincoln’s maxim as a deliberate provocation. The standard left response to oligarchy is a call to collective awakening; his bet is that this is already a consoling myth. Historically, he argues, authentic mass awakenings are rare events that most often end badly. Taking this seriously means giving up the image of a people whose clear-eyed judgment simply needs to be unblocked — and asking what politics looks like once that image is withdrawn.