1.

The deception enacted by Laibach in its performances - including those situated within gallery contexts - reveals more about the audience’s latent desires than about the group’s own intentions or convictions. For deception to succeed, the audience must first wish to be deceived. The unease this recognition provokes often manifests as anger, sometimes violently directed toward Laibach itself.

To properly address the question of desire - that is, the desire for belonging and community within collective, national, and ideological frameworks - one must understand desire not simply as a pursuit of pleasure, but as a pursuit of fantasy. It is fantasy that structures desire, providing meaning and coherence within the social body.

 

 

2.

The longing to belong to the collective implies a deeper wish for inclusion within the ideological structure of a governing system. Within the mass, the individual is able to dissolve, experiencing euphoria through the illusion of shared power. Laibach deliberately manipulates this dual affect of fascination and repulsion, drawing the spectator in while simultaneously unsettling them. By rigorously repeating ideological codes and carrying them to their logical extremes, Laibach both mirrors and exposes the operations of power.

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3.

Rather than embodying a measured patriotism or conventional loyalty, Laibach takes these values with absolute seriousness, to the point of over-identification with the state - becoming its hyperbolic reflection, a totalitarian organism par excellence.

Laibach’s invocation of force, violence, and the aestheticization of power may thus be read as a strategy of reflection: by arousing emotions of fear and aggression that lack a tangible enemy, the group compels the audience to confront the inner mechanisms of ideology itself. This stands in sharp contrast to nationalist rhetoric, which invariably posits a scapegoat - an external enemy blamed for obstructing the nation’s unity, wholeness, and success.

 

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4. ACHTUNG!  RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.  DAS SPIEL IST AUS! GOD IS GOD. THINK NEGATIVE. ALLE GEGEN ALLE! LIFE IS LIFE. WE ARE TIME. TANZ MIT LAIBACH.