BAI LAN: A REFUSAL TO LIVE LIKE A TURTLE ON ITS BACK

At the end of July 2026, I met Alex Soros in Ljubljana (he now runs the Soros Foundation). Since George Soros, his father, is vilified by Slovene right-wing media as Evil incarnate—financing every attempt, terrorism included, to ruin the spiritual foundations of Western civilization—the reaction of Slovene rightists to our meeting did not surprise me: their leitmotif was, “The Slovene puppet got orders from the Antichrist master.” It was also no surprise that some Slovene pseudo-radical leftists repeated a quite similar critique: meeting Soros confirmed that I am a puppet paid by billionaires. Incidentally, I have never received any money or any other form of help from charities financed by billionaires.

What I found much more interesting and amusing was a ruthless, rather paranoid critique of my meeting with Soros by Ryan Mauro who, on 30 July 2026, wrote a text entitled “The Dark Philosopher Linking Alexander Soros and Zohran Mamdani.”1 Here are some key passages from this text:

“What do New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Alexander Soros—George Soros’s son and heir—have in common? A shared ideological inspiration: Slavoj Žižek, the self-proclaimed ‘left-fascist’ who seeks the West’s bloody destruction. This should chill every American.

Žižek has been described as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West.’ His agenda is summed up in his publisher’s description of his 2008 book, In Defense of Lost Causes: ‘Žižek argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ The ‘lost causes’ he wants to revive and succeed are those of the Bolsheviks, Mao Tse-tung and Robespierre. The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 and fascism were ‘right steps in the wrong direction.’ His book’s condemnation of Hitler reads: ‘Crazy, tasteless even, as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough … Nazism was not radical enough; it did not dare to disturb the basic structure of the modern capitalist social space.’

Although he says he is a supporter of Ukraine, he defends his relationship with the Russian government through RT, a state-controlled propaganda outlet that oversees an ‘empire of covert projects’ influencing public opinion in the West. Žižek also authored a collection of Lenin’s writings. The description advertising it says: ‘Žižek is convinced that, whatever the discussion—the forthcoming crisis of capitalism, the possibility of a redemptive violence, the falsity of liberal tolerance—Lenin’s time has come again.’

Žižek’s objective is not to win a battle of ideas, but to win a war of bloodshed and destruction so that his ideas cannot be resisted. His vision is, as he put it, one of ‘divine violence.’ He writes: ‘The most obvious candidate for “divine violence” is the violent explosion of resentment which finds expression in a spectrum that ranges from mob lynchings to revolutionary terror.’ In another book, Žižek wrote: ‘Better the worst Stalinist terror than the most liberal capitalist democracy.’ This is the man with whom Soros proudly posted a photo of himself meeting; a man who keeps a portrait of Stalin hanging in his apartment. Soros happily informed Žižek that NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a ‘fan’ of his.

‘Slavoj Žižek is one of the greatest living philosophers, disrupters and cultural critics—one of a kind in many ways. Having wrestled with his works and provocations since I was a young student, I am grateful to our mutual friend … for introducing us and giving us the chance to exchange and debate our views,’ Soros wrote.

The enormity of the threat posed by a Žižek-inspired Soros Network is impossible to overstate. According to the Media Research Center, a progressive fundraising organization said Soros’ Open Society Foundations ‘may be the single most influential nonprofit organization in the world.’ The chief strategist for Morgan Stanley said he has ‘more influence in the world than anyone who has ever held high elective or appointive office.’ And a New York Times reporter quoted the president of the Carnegie Endowment as saying Soros is ‘the only man in the United States who has his own foreign policy and can implement it.’ In September, my investigation into the Soros Network discovered that over $80 million has flowed from Soros to pro-terrorism groups in the US and around the world, including some involved in domestic terrorism right here on US soil. That is the record of George Soros, the father. The son does not want to change direction. He wants to go further, and he will—unless we stop him.”

How are we to read this crazy attack on me, which, I must confess, I quite liked? I do not want to waste time pointing out all the manipulations and misreadings in Mauro’s text. Alex Soros himself explained to me why I liked it by telling me a Jewish joke from just before Hitler took power.

Two Jews meet and discuss what newspapers they read. The first says: “I read a pro-Jewish liberal daily, which informs me of the dangers facing Jews today in Germany: we are beaten, thrown out of places, boycotted …” The other replies: “I much prefer to read Streicher’s Der Stürmer.” “Why? Are you crazy? It is full of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda …” “Yes, but I like to hear some good news. The pro-Jewish daily brings only bad news about us—how we are persecuted, beaten, harassed—but Der Stürmer repeats again and again that we Jews really control the world, manipulate others and exploit them!”

The parallel is clear: the majority of my critics present me as a pseudo-leftist, a slave of big capital, claiming that Soros came to Ljubljana to give me orders, while Mauro presents me as a secret master visited by Soros so that I could give him and Mamdani orders on how to act.

Why waste time on such anecdotes? Because, although their claim is false, they contain a grain of truth. The Nazis brutally harassed and killed Jews, but, in order to do this, they needed the fantasy that they were really dominated and controlled by Jews—in the same way that I am presented as the one who gives orders to Soros and Mamdani. It is a perfect case of an illusion that is constitutive of the brutal reality itself. Without the Nazis perceiving Jews as their arch-enemy, who wanted to dominate and ultimately destroy them, there would have been no Holocaust.

My point is that we should read, in a similar way, the phenomenon of bai lan spreading in China, but also in South Korea and Japan. It should not simply be rejected as something to worry about: we should change the frame and perceive its positive aspect as well.