Key Clarifications

• Fetishistic disavowal: The formula is not simply “I know, but I still do it,” but rather “I know very well, but nonetheless…” The fetish object (Santa, money, nation, etc.) functions as a material support that allows the subject to disavow their knowledge while continuing to act as if. It’s not just hypocrisy—it’s structural.
• Belief in the Other: Žižek insists that belief is never fully “mine.” It is always externalized—into rituals, institutions, or presumed in others. This is why ideology persists even when no one “privately” believes: the belief is embodied in practices and social forms.
• Enjoyment (jouissance): What sustains ideology is not ignorance but libidinal investment. People enjoy the rituals, the repetition, the “as if.” This is why exposure of corruption or contradiction rarely destabilizes ideology—it can even reinforce it, because the enjoyment is in the performance, not the truth.
• Reality vs. the Real: You’ve nicely distinguished them. Reality is symbolically mediated; the Real is what resists symbolization. Ideology is precisely the screen that organizes our relation to the Real, preventing us from being overwhelmed by its traumatic kernel.

⚡ Political Implication

The radical point is that ideology is not a veil hiding reality—it is the very texture of reality as lived. Thus, critique cannot simply “unmask” ideology. What matters is intervening in the fantasy structure that organizes enjoyment. Revolution, for Žižek, is not about revealing truth but about reconfiguring the libidinal economy that sustains the “as if.”

✍️ Possible Condensed Aphorism

Ideology does not survive because we are deceived, but because we enjoy acting as if others are deceived. The lie is not in our heads but in our rituals.