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

    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.