I thought we all loved our trash raccoon. Didn’t he own Peterson?
I think Zizek is a good example of why leftists tend to be (and should be) suspicious of "hero" figures in general.
Sure he had some good ideas and helped people discover their unexamined ideologies that influenced their lives, but as the meme about Darth Plagueis put it, he could save others from unexamined ideology, but not himself. :unlimited-power:
Paul Mason, recently was revealed to have been effectively working with British intelligence
:what-the-hell: I knew he was shitty, but I didn't know this.
he was never good. his ideological baggage goes back 30 years. it's not merely his recent hot takes. he worked actively to privatize yugoslavia in the 90s and ran for president in a neoliberal party.
Next I'm going to find out he was instrumental in the hostile takeover of ZA/UM. :kitsuragi-depress:
this counterpunch article on him is so good because it demonstrates in excruciating detail how a self-labeled "communist" ended up getting repeatedly platformed by prominent neoliberals in the west. I first found out about Zizek in 2010 through a "Royal Society of the Arts" animated video. They were always willing to platform him because his policies were always pro-EU and pro-NATO and his "communism" was always anti-USSR.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/
Did you even read the recent threads on the articles he wrote? You'll get your answer there.
Slavoj Zizek: 'Denazification Should Begin At Home, In Russia'
Now I will try to be as open as possible understanding the Russian view. Yes, there are some neofascist tendencies in Europe here and there. I know the situation in Ukraine very well and [neo-Nazism], it's marginal and so on. But I will draw a distinction here between fascism and Nazism. Fascism is horrible. But remember, regimes like [Italian dictator Benito] Mussolini till 1938, [Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira] Salazar, and [Spanish dictator Francisco] Franco. They were not this explosive, expensive fascism. They just tried to maintain order in their own land, while Nazism was something different. Hitler needed that war, constant tension and so on. So, I agree with the goal of denazification, but I think it should begin at home, in Russia. In Russia, they are dangerously approaching a new version of Nazism.
For example -- and I know what I'm saying here because I think his danger is vastly underestimated but he's overestimated as a writer – [Fyodor] Dostoyevsky. Dostoevsky was, as far as I know, the first who formulated this idea of Russia as the eternal victim of Europe. Russia saved Europe from Napoleon first and so on.
Well, if we may engage in some crazy retroactive speculation, I think that if Napoleon were to win, with a miracle, and control Europe, maybe it would have been a much better Europe, incidentally…. OK, [it would be] absolutism, but more enlightened absolutism, based, nonetheless, on the values of the French Revolution, freedoms and so on.
Zizek: Yeah. But exceptionalism…in the sense that we are the exception that can provide the right balance between individualism and collectivism. This is an old fascist idea. Almost every power tries to present itself as somewhere in the middle. [According to] the idea of fascism, "we have communist totalitarianism, no private property, no freedom, and then we have Western liberalism [with] too much individualism. [But] we are in the middle, [we] fascists, [we] are the only real balanced power." I take these things very seriously….
You remember when the Taliban won in Afghanistan (as the United States completed its troop withdrawal in 2021), the Taliban and China immediately made a pact, which brutally made sense: "We leave you alone to do whatever you want, terrorizing women, and so on. You leave us alone to do what we want with our own Muslims, Uyghurs, and so on."
This is the new world vision, and they even call it the new decentralization, multiculturalism, which means you can cut women's clitorises, be against LGBT, whatever you want. You do it there. We do it here, whatever we want. This is the new vision of sovereign neofascist states and the whole world is at least on one level moving in this direction….
So, I am not ready…to blame Russian people as such, to brand them totalitarian, fascist and so on. They are somewhere in between, as most people are, but their tradition, the Orthodox Church, is, I claim, dangerous.
So here, her idea is basically: Let Ukraine perish so that we don't have to pay higher prices for electricity or whatever. And this is pure egotism. Beneath there is still deep distrust of -- more than the United States – NATO. The dogma of the left is, whoever you are, no matter how brutal the dictatorship, if NATO is against you, there must be ultimately something not totally bad in you. NATO is the automatic opponent. And I find all this reasoning so stupid….
This is exactly the abstract pacifism that German propaganda was playing on in Europe just before World War II -- they [called] it…anti-imperialism. French, English, American imperialism tries to dominate Europe, we will provide Europe [with] autonomy, we will save Europe and so on and so on. And the paradox is that Chomsky, who proclaims himself politically an anarchist, ended up not supporting Russia. The popular term today is "understanding Russia."
That's the paradox that they are not ready to accept, that the Western intervention [has] opened up the chance for peace.Without Western intervention helping Ukraine, [the country] would probably be occupied and then you can probably go on, to Moldova, the Baltic states, pressure on Finland and so on and so on.
No further commentary is necessary. This guy is a moron, its amazing anyone ever bothered with the shit he wrote. He should be in front of a wall and an ak-47 already. This shit is indistinguishable from the US state department propaganda or even the average liberal/reddit take.
Go check the bingo:
-Uyghur propaganda.
-Denying/downplaying Nazism in Ukraine.
-Some galaxy brain take on the world would be better if Napoleon won.
-Russia wanted to invade the rest of Europe, complete lack of understanding at best or delusional belief on western propaganda at worse. Fuck history I guess.
-Denies multiculturalism on the basis that Bad People Exists And They Might Do Bad Things.
-Russians? Oh they may not all be bad but their culture? Dangerous I say!.
As I said throw this monster into a pit with the other European nazis and forget he ever existed.
I make jokes about raccoon daddy but he is legitimately transphobic and talks about woke ideology with the same talking points as chuds.
IIRC the statement was something like "Hitler was bad bc he was evil but Stalin was bad bc he tried to do something good but fucked it up". So less "100 million victims of cummumism" and more "you failed to live up to my expectations".
That said, i've never read whatever it was.
I am genuinely disappointed. I thought only the most brain-broken of libs/chuds believed this. Or the evil but smart people who wanna spread communism = fascism and prevent class consciousness.
It’s…honestly unbelievable that any serious Marxist would propagate such false equivalency. Even if your trot!!!
There is a very good reason that Jordan Peterson accepted a 'debate' with him, even while zonked through the gourd on benzos. Zizek is ultimately, like Jordan Peterson, a culture critic. Not an academic. Not an activist. Not a revolutionary. Basically the dumb smart guys equivalent of a YouTube movie reviewer. As such, they both understand that in the world of criticism, content is king. That doesn't mean quality of content or quality of engagement, that means the most eyeballs on your content at all time, in whatever form possible, with the major goal to get them to buy your book(s) and tickets to your debates, because that is where you really make your money. Like the only reason Peterson fell off as much as he did was because he went into a coma for nearly a year and people moved on to guys like Andrew Tate.
I have a soft spot for Zizek as a pipeline for leftists, the trashcan of ideology is a fantastic metaphor for modern media consumption, but I am also very glad I didn't seriously engage with any of his works until after I seriously read through most of Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche, Camus, Popper, Hegel, Kant, McLuhan, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Baudrialluad, Butler, Foucault, Shelley, etc and other assorted histories of socialism and socialist states. Otherwise he would have been overwhelmingly smart to me and I likely would have just taken him at his word.
The reason for this is that Zizek is an incredibly well read, far more than me, but due to his own life experiences, deeply unserious person, even by continental philosopher standards. His method of surviving the collapse of the USSR as a public intellectual has basically been to be a 'Marxist' who tells liberals that they were right about everything, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, by deflecting with incredibly obscure and empirically unprovable theories. Occasionally, he will have a correct point, such as 'people get off on being outraged as much if not more as they get off on being happy' as a way to make fun of first world activists, but then ignores the fact that material stability is empirically dropping everywhere but China and China is one of the few places in the world that is experiencing a rise in general happiness. Sure, maybe people prefer to be outraged, but clearly people become happier regardless with material stability and losing that makes it easier to 'indulge' in outrage.
I guess he chose personal profit over communism. Sad to think people would do it, especially after they’ve learnt so much.
Also:
I seriously read through most of Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche, Camus, Popper, Hegel, Kant, McLuhan, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Baudrialluad, Butler, Foucault, Shelley, etc
Holy motherfucking shit.
No, he recognized what his material interests were and has unabashedly followed them. This is a point he himself reiterates over and over again throughout his works. Make hay while the sun shines. He is ironically and absurdly as, if not more, pragmatic than Stalin, because at least Stalin still tried to work and think within the framework of the Soviet councils. Zizek is wholely libertarian in that regard.
With Zizek though, it is difficult to say if he himself believes his own ideology (hence why I consider him unserious) given how many times he has contradicted himself. I will not praise him for it, but I continue to have a soft spot for him regardless of this Nazi turn because he is literal embodiment, an avatar of proof, of the ideological genuflection you have to do to be considered a Marxist AND still be published within mainstream government circles. He is literally Parenti's "Inventing Reality", as a Slovenian raccoon man who probably did way too much cocaine after the fall of the Soviet Union. Fucking hilarious regardless if it's intentional or not.
However, in order to really get this joke you also have to read a stupid amount of old books, so idk if it's worth it. But also, it's not really that impressive imo, I'm pretty old by online western leftist standards.
Edit: I honestly should be nicer here. I'm just a very tired person most of the time. While technically correct, thinking like a Marxist means that"abandoning communism" is not really something you can do. Communism is a theoretical state of production that subsumes and overtakes capitalism, you can't abandon it, it just happens eventually.
If you are a Marxist-Leninist you can either try to accelerate the process or do damage control (depending on the overarching situation) on the fallout of the inevitable crisises that occur within capitalism, but material interests still dominate ideology, and the entire Western part of the world is designed to insulate itself from the fallout of those issues. That being said, the treats are starting to get abit more expensive and the majority of U.S. has zero idea of what it's like to live like the rest of the world. Potentially a very explosive, likely reactionary, situation. Idk though, I just know my area is generally financially fine, so if the cities go off like they usually do during a cost of living crisis, alot of people are gonna be willing to shoot their poorer fellow citizens and that is a recipe for disaster for long term civil stability.
deeply unserious person, even by continental philosopher standards.
cries THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!
Sure but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also eat from the trash can of ideology. He’s only famous because he is allowed to be the leftist in the corner along Chomsky. Plus he’s an academic culture critic not a revolutionary.
Leftism shouldn't be reactionary, just because Jordan Peterson sucks doesn't mean everyone who dunks on him is good
How’s he reactionary? I’m serious. I don’t know shit about him other than the memes but this is like suddenly hearing Chomsky or Parenti are reactionary anti-commies.
I'm not calling Zizek reactionary, I'm saying that if we like him for dunking on Peterson in a vacuum without looking at the bigger picture we're being kinda reactionary
Like :funny-clown-hammer: has debated and dunked on fascists before but we still hate him for being a neoliberal pedo
Similarly supporting the Democrats just because they oppose the Republicans is barely any less reactionary than chuds supporting Republicans for trolling the libs
The entire political spectrum in :amerikkka: is reactionary because no one actually stands for anything other than trolling their enemies and it's easy to fall into that kind of thought
Then again I don't really know what the fuck I'm talking about, someone else can probably say this better than I
That doesn't sound like reaction in the reactionary sense, it sounds like just partisanship or contrarianism.
It was an honest question, I'm not trying to start anything here.
Calm down, this isn't :reddit-logo:
To be conservative is to want to conserve society in its current form. If you live in the US, this describes the moderate wing of the Republican party and the right wing of the Democratic party, but mostly the latter.
The term reactionary refers to a position to the right of mere conservation of the status quo. If implies your political vision is a negative reaction to the advances the left has achieved, hoping to roll them back to reestablish a more exploitative society.
This does not describe Chomsky. His criticism of AES is not from a position of wanting more exploitation, but less. You might describe this position as ultraleft, or just orthodox anarchist.
It is fair game to criticize this perspective, but it is not fair game to call it reactionary. (You could make an argument that ultraleft positions strengthen reactionary positions etc etc, but it's still a stretch to call the people that espouse them reactionary)
Also Avatar 2 was better the second time
I've been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt a lot more than other people on this site, but he recently did an interview with cia rag radio free europe which was just indefensible
One product Zizek enjoys is corn
Or as the Native Americans called it, Maize
I'll always love zizek for asking me if he could connect to the Schiff "shitty wifi" on my uni campus before a lecture.
TBH I think he's best when he's being a media critic or philosopher of culture. He's hardly the best for praxis (and never has been due to his debt to things like structuralism).
He's not above criticism - no one is. He has bad takes - especially when it comes to politics.
he's always been trash. he's always been pro NATO, he actively worked for the privatization of yugoslavia in the 90s. A lot of people just didn't know that because "haha funny sniff man" is all they knew about him.
read this: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/capitalisms-court-jester-slavoj-zizek/
Indeed, he openly advocated for “planned privatizations” and flatly asserted, like a good capitalist ideologue: “more capitalism in our case would mean more social security.” This was, once again, in perfect line with Reagan’s NSDD 133, which explicitly called for “Yugoslavia’s long-term internal liberalization” and the promotion of a “market-oriented Yugoslav economic structure.”
