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According to a well-known anecdote, [[anthropology|anthropologists]] studying "[[primitive]]s" who supposedly held certain [[superstition|superstitious]] [[belief]]s (that they descend from a fish or from a bird, for example) asked [[them ]] directly whether they "really" believed such things. They answered: "Of course not — we're not stupid! But I was told that some of our ancestors actually did believe that." In short, they transferred their [[belief]] onto [[another]].

We do the same [[thing ]] with our [[children ]] by going through the [[ritual ]] of Santa Claus. Since our children (are supposed to) believe in him and we do not [[want ]] to disappoint them, they pretend to believe so as not to disappoint us by puncturing our belief in their naivety (and to get the presents, of course). Isn't this also the usual excuse of the [[mythical ]] crooked politician who turns honest? "I cannot disappoint the ordinary [[people ]] who believe in me." Furthermore, this [[need ]] to find another who "really believes" is also what propels us to stigmatize the [[Other]] as a ([[religion|religious]] or [[ethicity|ethnic]]) "[[fundamentalism|fundamentalist]]." In an uncanny way, some beliefs always seem to function "at a [[distance]]." In order for the [[belief]] to function, there <i>has to be</i> some ultimate [[guarantee|guarantor]] of it, and yet this [[guarantor ]] is always deferred, [[displaced]], never [[present ]] <i>in persona</i>. The point, of course, is that this other subject who directly believes does not need to actually [[exist ]] for the belief to be operative: It is enough precisely to <i>presuppose</i> his [[existence]], i.e. to <i>believe</i> in it, either in the guise of the [[primitive]] [[Other]] or in the guise of the impersonal "one" ("one believes...").</p>

The events in New Orleans after [[Katrina|Hurricane Katrina]] struck the city provide a new addition to this series of "[[subject supposed to know|subjects supposed to...]]"— <i>[[subject supposed to loot and rape|the subject supposed to loot and rape]]</i>. We all [[remember ]] the reports on the [[disintegration]] of [[public]] [[order]], the explosion of black violence, rape and looting. However, later inquiries demonstrated that, in the large majority of cases, these alleged orgies of violence <i>did not occur</i>: Non-verified rumors were simply reported as facts by the [[media]]. For example, on September 3, the Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department told the <i>New York [[Times]]</i> [[about ]] [[conditions ]] at the Convention Center: "The tourists are [[walking ]] around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they're [[being ]] preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets." In an interview just weeks later, he conceded that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue: "We have no [[official ]] reports to document any [[murder]]. Not one official report of rape or [[sexual ]] assault."

The reality of poor blacks, abandoned and [[left ]] without means to survive, was thus transformed into the specter of blacks exploding violently, of tourists robbed and killed on streets that had slid into [[anarchy]], of the Superdome ruled by gangs that were raping [[women ]] and children. These reports were not merely [[words]], they were words that had precise <i>[[material ]] effects</i>: They generated fears that caused some police officers to quit and led the authorities to [[change ]] troop deployments, delay medical evacuations and ground helicopters. Acadian Ambulance Company, for example, locked down its cars after [[word ]] came that armed robbers had looted all of the water from a firehouse in Covington—a report that proved totally untrue.

Of course, the [[sense ]] of menace had been ignited by genuine [[disorder]] and [[violence]]: Looting, ranging from base thievery to foraging for the necessities of [[life]], <i>did</i> occur after the storm passed over New Orleans. However, the (limited) reality of crimes in no way exonerates "reports" on the [[total ]] breakdown of law and order — not because these reports were "exaggerated," but for a much more radical [[reason]]. [[Jacques Lacan]] claimed that, even if the [[patient]]'s wife is really sleeping around with other men, the patient's [[jealousy]] is still to be treated as a [[pathology|pathological condition]]. In a homologous way, even if rich [[Jew]]s in early 1930s [[Germany]] "really" <i>had</i> exploited [[German ]] [[workers]], seduced their daughters and dominated the popular press, the [[Nazi]]s' [[anti-Semitism]] would still have been an emphatically "untrue," pathological [[ideology|ideological]] condition. Why? Because the causes of all [[social antagonism]]s were projected onto the "Jew" — an [[object]] of [[perversion|perverted]] [[love]]-[[hate|hatred]], a [[spectral]] [[figure ]] of mixed [[fascination ]] and disgust.

And exactly the same goes for the looting in New Orleans: Even if <i>all</i> the reports on violence and rapes had proven to be factually [[true]], the stories circulating about them would still be "[[pathology|pathological]]" and [[racism|racist]], since what motivated these stories were not facts, but racist prejudices, the [[satisfaction]] felt by those who would be able to say: "You see, Blacks really are like that, violent barbarians under the thin layer of [[civilization]]!" In other words, we would be dealing with what could be called <i>[[lying in the guise of truth]]</i>: Even if what I am saying is factually true, the motives that make me say it are [[false]].

Of course, we never openly admit these motives. But from [[time ]] to time, they nonetheless pop up in our public [[space ]] in a censored [[form]], in the guise of [[denegation]]: Once evoked as an option, they are then immediately discarded. [[Recall ]] the [[recent ]] comments by [[William Bennett]], the compulsive gambler and [[author ]] of <i>[[The Book of Virtues]]</i>, on his call-in program "Morning in America": "But I do [[know ]] that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole [[purpose]], you could abort every black [[baby ]] in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down." The White House spokesman immediately reacted: "The president believes the comments were not appropriate." Two days later, Bennett qualified his [[statement]]: "I was putting a hypothetical proposition ... and then said about it, it was morally reprehensible to recommend abortion of an entire group of people. But this is what happens when you argue that ends can justify the means." This is <i>exactly</i> what [[Freud]] meant when he wrote that the [[Unconscious]] [[knows ]] no [[negation]]: The official ([[Christianity|Christian]], [[democracy|democratic]]...) [[discourse]] is accompanied and sustained by a [[whole ]] nest of [[obscene]], brutal [[racism|racist]] and [[sexism|sexist]] [[fantasy|fantasies]], which can only be admitted in a [[censorship|censored]] form.

But we are not dealing here only with [[good ]] old [[racism]]. Something more is at stake, a fundamental feature of the emerging "[[global]]" [[society]]. On [[September 11, 2001]], the Twin Towers were hit. Twelve years earlier, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. November 9 announced the "happy '90s," the [[Francis Fukuyama]] dream of the "[[end of history]]": the [[belief]] that [[liberal democracy]] had, in [[principle]], won, that the [[search ]] is over, that the advent of a global, liberal [[world ]] [[community]] lurks just around the corner, that the obstacles to this ultra-Hollywood happy ending are merely [[empiricism|empirical]] and [[contingency|contingent]] (local pockets of [[resistance ]] where the leaders did not yet grasp that their time is over). In contrast, [[9/11]] is the main [[symbol]] of the end of the [[Clinton]]ite happy '90s, of the forthcoming era in which new walls are emerging everywhere, between [[Israel]] and the [[Palestine|West Bank]], around the [[European Union]], on the [[United States|U.S.]]-[[Mexico]] border. The rise of the [[populism|populist]] [[New Right]] is just the most prominent example of the urge to raise new walls.

A couple of years ago, an ominous decision of the [[European Union]] passed almost unnoticed: a plan to establish an all-European border [[police]] force to secure the [[isolation ]] of the Union territory, so as to prevent the influx of the [[immigration|immigrants]]. <i>This</i> is the [[truth]] of [[globalization]]: the [[construction ]] of <i>new</i> walls safeguarding the prosperous [[Europe]] from a flood of immigrants. One is tempted to resuscitate here the old [[Marxism|Marxist]] "[[humanism|humanist]]" opposition of "[[relations between things]]" and "[[relations between persons]]": In the much celebrated free [[circulation ]] opened up by the [[global capitalism]], it is "things" ([[commodity|commodities]]) which freely circulate, while the circulation of "persons" is more and more controlled. We are thus not dealing with "globalization as an unfinished [[project]]," but with a true "[[dialectics of globalization]]." The segregation of the people is the [[reality]] of [[economy|economic]] [[globalization]]. This new [[racism]] of the developed world is in a way much more brutal than the previous one: Its implicit legitimization is neither [[naturalism|naturalist]] (the "[[natural]]" superiority of the developed West) nor [[culturalism|culturalist]] (we in the [[West]] also want to preserve our [[culture|cultural]] [[identity]]). Rather, it's an unabashed [[economic ]] [[egotism]] — the fundamental [[divide ]] is the one between those included into the sphere of (relative) economic prosperity and those excluded from it.

In the beginning of October 2005, the [[Spain|Spanish]] [[police]], who have dealt with the problem of desperate [[Africa]]n migrants trying to penetrate the small Spanish territory across Gibraltar with lethal force, displayed their plans to build a wall between the Spanish and Moroccan border. The [[images ]] presented — a [[complex ]] [[structure ]] with all the latest electronic equipment — bore an [[uncanny]] resemblance to those of the [[Berlin Wall]], only with the opposite motive, designed to prevent people from coming in, not getting out. The cruel irony is that it is the [[government ]] of [[Zapatero]], arguably the most [[anti-racism|anti-racist]] and [[tolerance|tolerant]] in [[Europe]], that is [[forced ]] to adopt these measures of [[segregation]] — a clear [[sign ]] of the limits of the [[multiculturalism|multiculturalist]] "[[tolerance|tolerant]]" approach which preaches open borders and acceptance of [[Other]]s. It is thus becoming clear that the solution is not "tear down the walls and let them all in," the easy, empty [[demand]] often put forth by soft-hearted [[liberal]] "[[radical]]s." Rather, the [[real ]] solution is to tear down the <i>true</i> wall, not the police one, but the [[social]]-economic one: To change society so that people will no longer desperately try to escape their own world.

This brings us back to rumours and "reports" about "[[subject supposed to loot and rape|subjects supposed to loot and rape]]:" New Orleans is one of those cities within the [[United States]] most heavily marked by the [[internal ]] wall that separates the affluent from ghettoized blacks. And it is about those on the other side of the wall that we fantasize: More and more, they live in another world, in a blank zone that offers itself as a [[screen ]] for the [[projection ]] of our [[fear]]s, [[anxiety|anxieties]] and [[secrecy|secret]] [[desire]]s. <i>The "[[subject supposed to loot and rape]]" is on the other side of the Wall</i> — this is the [[subject]] about whom [[Bennett]] can afford to make his [[slips of the tongue]] and [[confession|confess]] in a [[censorship|censored]] mode his murderous [[dream]]s. More than anything else, the rumors and fake reports from the aftermath of [[Katrina]] bear [[witness]] to the deep [[class]] [[antagonism|division]] of American society.

* [[The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape]]. ''[[In These Times]]''. October 20, 2005. <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2361/>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan]].com''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizneworleans.htm>.