ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that dissident intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe proved to be more prudent in their political judgements about important issues of their time than a number of their West European counterparts. The Arendtian understanding of politics as the opposite of violence, then Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Humanism and Terror and Slavoj Zizek's eulogies of Lenin and Robespierre, by definition, betrayed politics. Merleau-Ponty's argument in favour of revolutionary violence does not go far enough for Zizek. It is linked too closely to the outcome of the revolutionary process. Recipients of both Zizek's philosophy and Laibach's music might be confused about the 'real political meaning' of these works, the message behind the ironic gestures, but their confusion is simply the first step towards overcoming their blind acceptance of the ruling ideology. Zizek's theoretical sophistication charge this relentless advocate of human rights with 'religious fundamentalism'.
