One of the most prominent intellectuals in the contemporary world was named to the list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012. He shares this distinction with the likes of Dick Cheney, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Mossad director Meir Dagan. The theorist’s best idea—according to this well-known publication that is a virtual arm of the U.S. State Department—is that “the big revolution the left is waiting for will never come.”

I’ve only read a quarter of this so far. I knew Zizek was a crank at times but wasn’t aware of all his chauvinist views lol. Not to mention the antisemitic views of the USSR being worse than Germany

  • JustAnotherCourier [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Fun fact, the only other use of that term I could find was from /r/stupidpol, so you can imagine how I feel about that.

    I'm still pretty bitter about the assumption by counter punch that I'll have an iPhone to open their article, and perhaps this an editing error and I should be more generous, but I think too it reveals a severe misunderstanding of who Zizek's audience is and who Marxism needs to reach out to. Zizek says shocking and entertaining things, because it's what gets eyes on him. To the fourth citation, about Hitler not being violent enough it simply points to a book no one is going to buy and ignores the rest of the passage according to Zizek himself (I'm not buying his book, and too lazy to pirate pdf);

    “Nazism was not radical enough, it did not dare to disturb the basic structure of the modern capitalist social space (which is why it had to invent and focus on destroying an external enemy, Jews). This is why one should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions—but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.”

    Is this not true? Is Fascism not a coward's answer to socialism? "I want change, but not if it costs me so I will make others pay." Is it academic to pick up one part of a shocking sentence and then ignore the rest of it, or was Rockhill simply unaware of the context he was quoting?

    I am no academic, and these sorts of texts remind me why. I'm trying to read this, forgive me my frustrations.

      • JustAnotherCourier [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        No, because Orwell's dead corpse has infinitely more influence than Zizek will ever muster. People thinking they are very smart for having seen the TNT adaptation of Animal Farm and accusing everything they don't like of being "like 1984" is a real problem that impacts our society.

        Zizek actually influencing anything (from my perspective as an American) outside of making Jordan Peterson look stupid on a YouTube debate is not a real thing I've ever seen.

        Now bear in mind I am talking about public appearance Zizek and not academic Zizek, who could be far more dangerous than I know. Which is why I tried following the links, only to find them obscured and dishonest.

          • JustAnotherCourier [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I did see that, and then I scrolled back for context where Zizek is "the face of communism" being steamrolled live on the BBC by some dipshit quoting Zizek's own statement "Better the worst Stalinist terror than the most Liberal capitalist democracy..." before Zizek shifts position to achieve his actual goal of critiquing the absolute lack of solutions to existential problems provided by capitalism. In 2008, knowing that there was a coming climate catastrophe, I too would duck that question and move onto the actual material conditions facing us. If forced to in order to be honest and possibly convince someone that they need to rethink things, yes, I will gladly admit the Soviet Union failed. Almost every (love you AES) leftist, socialist, and communist project ate shit; often because they were murdered. We must learn from that.

            At the end of the day the USSR was lost, and as a consequence capitalism is wrecking the planet with disease and pollution; that's a historical fact I cannot lie about. Yes this statement absolutely fails to do justice to the soviet people, their sacrifice, and incredible gains, and heroism but that's not was Zizek is talking about here nor is it something he would be allowed to communicate before being yanked-off stage with a giant hook.

            For context, in 2008, here is the same thing we're discussing right now from a liberal perspective :

            The curious thing about the Zizek phenomenon is that the louder he applauds violence and terror–especially the terror of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, whose “lost causes” Zizek takes up in another new book, In Defense of Lost Causes–the more indulgently he is received by the academic left, which has elevated him into a celebrity and the center of a cult. A glance at the blurbs on his books provides a vivid illustration of the power of repressive tolerance. In Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, Zizek claims, “Better the worst Stalinist terror than the most liberal capitalist democracy”

            ...

            “crazy, tasteless even, as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not ‘essential’ enough”; but this book, its publisher informs us, is “a witty, adrenalinfueled manifesto for universal values.”

            It's the same goddamn quotes, still with no context. Zizek has many problems this site could choose to avoid him for.

            Edit: Forgot my link, sorry.

            Edit 2: Tried to clarify, and tried to clean up what may have been an unintentional "shitty" tone. All love and respect, hope I came across okay.

              • JustAnotherCourier [none/use name]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Here's the thing, and I'm going to be more generous than I think you would be in this assessment;

                Slavoj is an old man who donned the title of Communist at a point in time when it was even more unacceptable than it is now, and went in front of an extremely hostile media that frequently compared his work to the likes of terrorist sympathy (way more relevant in the aftermath of 911) for merely suggesting the USSR may have possibly done one good thing ever.

                We're nearly a decade and a half away from that interview, and you can tell he is struggling at the time (via his second language) to steer the ship away from a disaster you, he, and I all agree is happening on the BBC with a host who absolutely would not engage him until he either answered for every death in the black book or dodged the question somehow. It's clear from the video Zizek doesn't give a shit about this question.

                Expecting him to deprogram the UK in the span of an incredibly hostile interview at the height of post 9/11 mania is quite a bit. Could he have kept his mouth shut? Yeah, and then he wouldn't be on the show talking about those problems we, again, all three agree on.

                Sincerely by his works and where and who he has shown up for I believe in his intentions. He was one of the few to show up for Chelsea Manning after her coming out. Reading his birthday letter for her still wrecks me with the love and admiration he gave her. He showed up for Occupy and was one of the few people to try and give it socialist direction. This guy has been at the right fights longer than I have.

                And I am not suggesting that this makes him worthy of academia or (more importantly to me) the father of our revolution.

                What I am suggesting is that, even if he is deeply flawed, Zizek was a man very much alone trying very hard to pull people away from decades of anti-communist programming just long enough to catch a glimpse at the impending doom before then.

                If I'm wrong it doesn't matter, because Zizek is 74, had a stroke, and there is no great "Zizek" tendency within the left. If I am right however, I think Zizek might feel very accomplished having survived long enough to once again have comrades to argue with and tell him he sucks.

                That said, that article is an absolute piece of shit hatchet job.

                Also I posted more about Zizek if you want some real ammo against him.

                  • JustAnotherCourier [none/use name]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    I'm not arguing with you there, although I suspect Zizek was a victim of Parenti's definition of anti-communism more than a willing participant in it.

                    Distinction with a difference? I'm not educated enough to tell you, I stumbled in here on accident without noticing what comm I was on.

                    I really don't have more to give you here, because I'm really just talking about a old man I think tried to do the right thing rather than a philosopher and his body of work.

                    That said, and I cannot remember where I first encountered it, it was Zizek himself who deprogrammed my own hatred of the USSR. I have no idea how I came across this passage or when, but I personally would not be a Stalin Loving Communist without it;

                    "In the Stalinist ideological imaginary, universal reason is objectivised in the guise of the inexorable laws of historical progress, and we are all its servants, the leader included. A Nazi leader, having delivered a speech, stood and silently accepted the applause, but under Stalinism, when the obligatory applause exploded at the end of the leader’s speech, he stood up and joined in. In Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, Hitler responds to the Nazi salute by raising his hand and saying: ‘Heil myself!’ This is pure humour because it could never have happened in reality, while Stalin effectively did ‘hail himself’ when he joined others in the applause. Consider the fact that, on Stalin’s birthday, prisoners would send him congratulatory telegrams from the darkest gulags: it isn’t possible to imagine a Jew in Auschwitz sending Hitler such a telegram. It is a tasteless distinction, but it supports the contention that under Stalin, the ruling ideology presupposed a space in which the leader and his subjects could meet as servants of Historical Reason. Under Stalin, all people were, theoretically, equal."

                    I haven't read the article it's from, and I'm actually debating if I want to at this point in my life. But yeah, Slavoj opened the door to my hot and heavy Stalinism.