The Hollywood Himmlers of "24"

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Tuesday January 10, 2006 07:23 by R. Isible

Slavoj Žižek analyses the US propganda machine's attempt to make torture acceptable in the series "24", which takes up the Alan Dershowitz "ticking terrorist bomb" scenario and decides that torturing will work. It's interesting that Hollywood is still seen as "liberal" and "anti-patriotic" when it performs such a vital role in spreading propaganda to the citizens of the US.

Žižek discusses the method in which Himmler's subordinates were able to carry out their vile work and suggests that the same process is at work in US culture.

Full text at the link below. Žižek is best known for his Lacanian analyses of ideology. Another good essay is:

_Between Two Deaths: The Culture of Torture_
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001084.php

He was also an early critic of EU expansion under the terms of the Nice Treaty when it was very unpopular in "liberal" circles to criticise it.