the tweet:

https://twitter.com/GabrielRockhill/status/1699957902335746434#m

zizek's paywalled article:

https://archive.li/hY5oJ

The quote in question:

However, it is clear that the “anti-colonial” uprisings in Central Africa are even worse than French neocolonialism. The future they bring is that of failed states like Zimbabwe and Myanmar: authoritarian military rule; economic regression into new lows of poverty that profit only the new and corrupt elite; ideological fundamentalism combined with a pushback against “colonial” influences like gay rights.

Regarding Zimbabwe: This is a funny example for Zizek to use since Zimbabwe is largely impoverished because of western neocolonial IMF loans:

Show

Regarding the narrative that LGBT rights are colonial. Obviously that is bullshit and it's interesting that both Russia and NATO liberals are pushing it, but for opposite reasons. Liberals in NATO countries are pushing it because it wants to be seen as the global vanguard of LGBT rights, when they are not, and never have been. Russia is pushing it because it wants to be seen as the vanguard of (for lack of a better term) "social conservatism" and "tradition" protecting the global south from "western decadence" or whatever other reactionary nonsense.

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    When Islamist forces staged a series of military coups in Central Africa – Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso – with the open support of Russians from the Wagner Group

    Really banging that neocon dinner bell for all you're worth.

    Any genuine emancipatory engagement of the people is a rare event which quickly disintegrates, and not just when it comes to Western democracy. Recall how, during the period of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong sent thousands of intellectuals to the agricultural communes to learn from ordinary farmers, whom he elevated into “subjects supposed to know”. One can argue that it was good for intellectuals to become acquainted with real life in the countryside – but they did not gain any deeper wisdom about society more broadly.

    It's truly crazy to say this in light of the fact that the current and one of the most successful leaders of the Chinese state was one of those intellectuals out working on the farm 50 years ago.

    Bombarded by conflicting reports on global warming, reading that even many scientists hold competing views, how can an ordinary, poor person decide to act? Should they fight for measures that will in the short term push them deeper into poverty? When immigrants arrive, how can we blame this same person for seeing in them a threat to their established way of life? Can we blame them if, in this person’s limited worldview, the idea that they are somehow complicit in the neocolonial exploitation of Third World countries makes no sense? This list goes on and on: can we blame our person for feeling confused and perplexed by the debates about “he/she/they” that abound in the media? And are most of us, intellectual elites included, not caught in similar loops, unable to arrive at what the philosopher Fredric Jameson has called a proper “cognitive mapping” of our situation?

    Jesus Christ, I'm hearing a right wing fog horn of tropes in here. Zizek needs to get off the JBP debate stage and touch some fucking grass.

    What possible competing theory of climate change is going to sublimate my $600 A/C bill when its been nearly three months since I've seen the weather dip under 100⁰? How is that not pushing me into poverty?

    How are heat exhausted migrants along the border more threatening than the army of goons hiding behind hundreds of miles of sniper towers and razor wire waiting to seize them?

    Why does anyone give a shit about pronouns? Ever?

    Get out of the God damned ideological trash can Zizek.