That's dignity, you idiot.

(Žižek Goads and Prods; Peščanik.net)

In an interview for Italian television in 1980, Louis Althusser mentions football as an example of communism, a small communist area that already exists in our reality (his other examples are religious communities, trade unions, and some cells of the Communist Party):

"Look at how football is played, what happens? It's not about market relations, it's not about political domination, it's not about ideological intimidation. There are people from different teams who are opposed to each other, they respect the rules, that is, they respect each other. Communism is respect for the human race."

Althusser knows very well that this is not the social reality of the big football clubs and competitions: they are deeply immersed in market relations (billions are in circulation here), political domination (it is enough to recall Trump's manipulation of FIFA) and ideological intimidation (the use of football to affirm national unity - due to my complete ignorance of football, I was often declared an unpatriotic traitor). However, he is not at all naive: he simply notices the emancipatory essence contained in the very form of football - the market, politics and ideology are parasitic on this essence.

In my opinion, Mamdani's demand that Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested if he visits New York should be read in a similar way. Mamdani is fully aware that our judicial system, both national and international, is deeply corrupt and biased; however, he is also aware that the demand for justice should not be dismissed because of these facts and that, when (as an exception, so to speak) a legal body does indeed do its job properly, it deserves unconditional support.

Mamdani begins with a simple and clear description of the facts that our mainstream media often avoids:

“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people. He is responsible for the murder of more than 73.000 people; for the mutilation of tens of thousands of children, while those who survive undergo amputations without anesthesia; for attacks on neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborn babies even the chance to live; for the countless people he has starved by preventing food and humanitarian aid from reaching them; for the shooting of hundreds of aid workers and journalists. And just last month, the United Nations confirmed that Israeli armed forces are still deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children – more than eight months after the so-called ceasefire. The list goes on and on, while we, as Americans, pay for their bombs. There is a reason the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest.”

What follows is a simple and direct logical consequence of these facts:

“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this order. However, the federal government does, and I urge it to join the ICC and enforce this order. I also want to be absolutely clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York, nor is any other war criminal who remains at large. While we cannot stop genocide alone, we can decide whether our silence will become another weapon on its side. And we can consider every tool at our disposal to defend the humanity and dignity of all people. That is my obligation to you.”

The first reaction of the average cynical reader is, of course, that Mamdani is playing a naive game: he is making an empty gesture, knowing full well that nothing would happen to Netanyahu even if he were to walk for an hour along Fifth Avenue (except that he would be harassed by individual protesters, while the police would protect him). His goal was simply to attract attention and once again present himself as an opponent of Israeli policy. However, while it is true that in a formal sense Mamdani made an empty gesture, I think that in the specific situation this gesture was very important. The International Criminal Court (ICC), the only universal criminal court, issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu by an overwhelming majority, and the warrant also includes key figures in Hamas (whom Israel has already killed in the meantime). While Israel and the United States are pursuing a policy of killing or arresting the leaders of countries in conflict with them, measures that are not based on any legal framework, they are simultaneously ignoring internationally recognized legal decisions that should be binding on them.

If we do not insist on talking about it publicly, such a situation will gradually be – and already is – normalized. The tacit reasoning will prevail: “Let’s be realistic, accept things as they are instead of wasting time on impossible demands.” What should worry us here is not Israel, but its military executor, the United States. Like Russia, the United States is led by a major war criminal; on top of that, the United States is allowing itself to be used by another country to wage its own war:

“Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has described a renewed US war on Iran as the ideal outcome for Israel, provided the Israelis do not have to fight it themselves. ‘Israel has no interest in joining that campaign – the current situation is the best possible for us,’ Smotrich said.”

If the ICC were truly autonomous and consistent, it should add Trump to its arrest list. But what should worry us even more is the hypocritical role of most European states, which, while supporting the ICC’s decision in principle, do everything they can to avoid being forced to implement it. It is like agreeing that a known criminal should be arrested, but at the same time collaborating with that criminal to prevent the arrest. Such a role clearly deprives European states of even a modicum of dignity – and the theme of dignity is crucial here. In his statement, Mamdani speaks of defending “humanity and dignity”. Humanitarian organizations within the existing order can at best offer humanitarian aid that, as a rule, deprives the people who receive it of dignity. It is enough to recall the humiliation to which the people of Gaza were subjected while receiving humanitarian aid – as if the donors of that aid had imposed a forced choice on them: you can receive some aid, but only on condition that you are prepared to lose your dignity.

It is not often enough noted that dignity is a key demand of today's protests around the world. On July 23, 2026, an unusual letter appeared in the United Kingdom: "A group of 120 millionaires in the United Kingdom have asked the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, to increase taxes on the ultra-rich, saying they are prepared to pay more so the country can reinvest in its people. In a letter titled 'Proud to Pay,' published on Thursday, the millionaires, who include sports commentator Gary Lineker and actress Julia Davis, told Burnham: 'As millionaires, we have a clear message for you, our new Prime Minister: tax us. We are proud to pay and we are not going anywhere.'"

I think this initiative should be interpreted beyond a simple moralistic or utilitarian framework: it is not simply the result of utilitarian calculation (if people are not taken care of, they will rebel and cause chaos) or moral self-awareness (the rich have a duty to ensure the well-being of the majority). Rather, we should recognize in this demand a sign of awareness that people do not live by bread alone, but that they also deserve to be treated with respect. Let us recall the slogan that Bill Clinton used in his election campaign: “It's the economy, stupid.” Today, it would be better to say: “It's dignity, stupid.”

And, on a completely different level, the same is true of the large protests that erupted in India in July 2026, with the protesters themselves ironically calling their actions “cockroach protests” (as a defiant reaction to the fact that the education minister called them cockroaches).

These protests have brought together Hindus and Muslims, women and men, and are conducted in a nonviolent Gandhian manner, but with a non-Gandhian spirit of irony and comedy. For example, when protesters encounter a police barricade with water cannons, they call on the police to spray them with water, and then dance in the shower. Their great achievement lies in breaking the spell of Modi’s Hindu nationalism: they have destroyed his ideological hegemony. People now laugh at him openly; they no longer fear Modi or his state power, even when the police beat them up. The cockroach protests have given new meaning to patriotism: hundreds of public figures are declaring that for the first time in more than a decade they are proud to be Indian.

These protests should therefore be supported unconditionally and enthusiastically, but with full awareness of their limitations. What will happen if they win and the Modi regime collapses? In the best case scenario, a new party (or coalition) will come to power, probably the old secular Congress Party, but major problems will remain that cannot be solved in this way. However, it should be emphasized that the cockroach protests are also driven by a demand to be treated with respect by the state authorities. The humor of the protests should not fool us: they are not a comedy, but a very serious movement to restore the dignity of ordinary people.

Although they are completely different in form, the cockroach protests and Mamdani’s statement are part of the same global movement. Their target is a system that, unlike Althusser’s football team, does not respect its own rules. Here, we should avoid the pseudo-leftist trap of invoking the need for a “symptomatic reading” of a corrupt and biased legal system, with the triumphant claim that corruption and bias are not accidental deviations but dark sides of the system itself. While this is true in principle (at least to a certain extent), it is precisely for this reason that the emancipatory feeling is even stronger when we force the state to ignore its own bias and act in accordance with its principles. Let us recall the origin of the concept of human rights: when they were first formulated, they were biased and tacitly privileged white, wealthy men. However, instead of dismissing the concept of human rights as an ideological mystification, would it not have been much more fruitful to gradually remove this bias and extend them to women, the poor, people of other races…? Each of these steps, even when not fully implemented, gave women, slaves, and others full human dignity. The same goes for Mamdani’s statement: it gives the victims of war criminals like Netanyahu full human dignity, and thus makes it much harder to ignore their suffering. As Ernst Bloch once said: “People do not live by bread alone – especially when they do not have any.”

(Translated by Luna Đorđević)