https://twitter.com/VaushV/status/1502591584067481604

Catching up on Zizek articles

radlib who can't read Marx but loves the guy who criticizes art and culture...folks this is why we need to get the Game Theory youtuber to read Das Kapital

and saw earlier this month he wrote those who blame Russia's invasion of Ukraine on NATO and the West are "not really leftists" and compared them to Hitler apologists lmao

Zizek: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/europe-unequal-treatment-of-refugees-exposed-by-ukraine-by-slavoj-zizek-2022-03

And now some who call themselves leftists (I wouldn’t) are blaming the West for the fact that US President Joe Biden was right about Putin’s intentions. The argument is well-known: NATO was slowly encircling Russia, fomenting color revolutions in its near-abroad, and ignoring the reasonable fears of a country that had been attacked from the West in the last century.

There is, of course, an element of truth here. But saying only this is equivalent to justifying Hitler by blaming the unjust Treaty of Versailles. Worse, it concedes that big powers have the right to spheres of influence, to which all others must submit for the sake of global stability. Putin’s assumption that international relations is a contest of great powers is reflected in his repeated claim that he had no choice but to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

Is that true? Is the problem really Ukrainian fascism? The question is better directed at Putin’s Russia. Putin’s intellectual lodestar is...

Lol fuck off no one cares about philosophy, idealist. Russia is clearly not the party doing finance imperialism to privatize farmland and keep people jobless and poor. That's the entire purpose of the IMF/World Bank (radlibs talk about geopolitics like NATO because idealists are only concerned with superstructure, not the material base)

Zizek attempts to be speaking dialectically but he's just a lazy careerist contrarian, this is why we need a commitment to historical materialism, you end up being on the level of Vaush.

coincidentally he wrote for this neoliberal website with a nerdy FIght Club name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Syndicate

Project Syndicate, which Ezra Klein described as "the world's smartest op-ed page,"

the least amount of soul

received grants from the Open Society Foundations, The Politiken Foundation in Denmark, Die Zeit, ZEIT-Stiftung, and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Zizek drew attention away from finance imperialists on a website funded by the exact people who want to turn Ukraine in a nation who doesn't own their own farmland? PMC synthetic leftist hackfraud lol

  • catposter [comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    this is actually a good point, but not for what he's trying to make

    stop licking Putin's boots, please. the contrarian, non-materialistic praise of him and his choices ignores the complete meaninglessness of this conflict. just because liberals are too stupid to understand nuance doesn't mean we should forget about revolutionary defeatism as a concept and defend Putin, even ironically. yes, there is historical context, but the interests of one massive oligarch who helped with the collapse of the USSR are not better interests than those of the other oligarchs who helped with the collapse of the USSR. i do not understand how bringing up his historical reasoning for attacking Ukraine is even relevant. I guarantee there will be exactly the same number of nazis staffed as there were beforehand, even if they just become masked.

    Putin is not our friend.

    • riley
      ·
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • catposter [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        do you think any of us have any actual power here? we're just elevating an oligarch in our eyes for no reason except contrarianism. we have no power over whether or not capitalists throw us into meaningless conflict. America has next to no class consciousness.

        • skyhighfly [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I don't fucking care if America's enemies are perfect. None of them (except like fucking North Korea) are perfect.

          Some of them are better than others. Some of them I only tenuously support.

          As long as they oppose America, I support them nevertheless. As long as they oppose the conditions that smother socialism, I support them nevertheless.

          All I care about is that America is defeated, because socialism cannot happen under global American hegemony.

          • catposter [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            "support" Putin in the sense that going against America's interests is great and good. But there is absolutely no reason to treat this like some of us do with China, with uncritical support of him. That is my issue. The capitalist government in Russia has shown no inclination it will not backstab and destroy socialists movements just like America does if given the chance. treating him as anything except a opportunist who is currently doing something that conveniently hinders someone even worse would be disingenous

            let them fight

            • skyhighfly [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              What I am saying is that I'd rather Russia win than America win.

                • CrimsonSage [any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  I trust the Russian oligarchy less to be honest. Anyone who is under the delusion that anyone would be better off under some sort of Russian hegemony needs to get their head on straight. These are the people who overthrew the USSR and benefited from the worst peacetime collapse in human history. As far as I am concerned they are all Fascists unless someone can prove it otherwise to me.

        • riley
          ·
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator

          • catposter [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            some of the more contrarian and uncritical comments reach into meaningless praise

    • skyhighfly [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      "I, as an American, want Russia to lose because of revolutionary defeatism."

      The point of revolutionary defeatism is that your own country loses.

        • skyhighfly [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          ???

          What?

          Do you understand what the word 'defeatism' means?

          • catposter [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            nvm, i was wrong, i was actually confused because the colloquial term is used as a synonym for "nihilism", not actual desire for loss even though that's the dictionary definition

            either way i don't really think thinking Putin is better than America is really revolutionary defeatism, especially when like 80% of the people doing so aren't even Ukrainain

            • skyhighfly [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Revolutionary defeatism is when you want your own country to lose. That is what defeatism means, to want defeat.

              To achieve defeat, you must implicitly or explicitly support your country's enemies, like Russia.

    • catposter [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      like we're entering "critical support to hitler for killing hitler" territory here