# POLITICS /// Violence by Slavoj Zizek

I just finished the book Violence written by Slavoj Zizek in 2008. This book attempts to differentiate the explicit violence (war, riots, terror etc.) that shocks the regular reasonable capitalist liberal (I am paraphrasing) from the systemic violence developed by Capitalism on a continuous basis.
In this matter he dedicates two chapters to the notion of tolerance that he analyzes as being essentially suspect.

Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? The immediate answer lies in the liberal multiculturalist’s basic ideological operation: the “culturalisation of politics.” Political differences -differences conditioned by political inequality or economic exploitation- are naturalised and neutralized into “cultural” differences, that is, into different “ways of life” which are something given, something that cannot be overcome. They can only be “tolerated”.

Zizek Slavoj. Violence. New York: Big Ideas small books, 2008