https://slavoj.substack.com/p/a-leftist-plea-for-new-imperialist
He’s earnestly advocating for imperialism.
I’m just going to post the last paragraphs and bold of the most eyebrow raising sentences.
So how are we to act in this depressive situation? We should above all avoid the false “public use of reason” which advises neutrality and the search for peace through negotiations. The most disgusting thing to do at this moment is to repeat with triumph the old motif “we were telling you for years that Ukraine cannot win…” – obviously true, but whatever the final outcome will be, Ukraine achieved an unexpected miracle in resisting Russia for such a long time. Another stupidity is the idea that the Ukrainian war is just a moment of the conflict between Russia and NATO, with thousands of Ukrainians sacrificed to the NATO interests to weaken Russia. Are Ukrainians really so stupid to play this role while they could have enjoyed peace? What peace? Russian occupation which would annihilate them as a nation… This is why the alternative “peace through negotiations or war” is a false one: Ukraine will be in a position to negotiate only if it will remain strong enough to present a real obstacle to Russian invasion.
In such a predicament, the only serious option is to finally accept that we are entering a global emergency state: we are at war and only a full Western commitment can give Ukraine a chance. The same holds for Gaza - here again only the US military intervention can save things. Not long ago a picture circulated from inside Gaza showing smoke billowing from the explosion of a US-supplied bomb, and discernible in the background was the outline of eight black parachutes dropping US aid in precisely the same neighborhood.[2] This photo renders perfectly the opportunism of the US politics: supplying the arms to bomb Gaza and then helping the people whose lives were ruined by these same bombs – this is what humanitarian help means today.
The US has been humiliated again and again. As crazy as this may sound, the fact that the US are no longer able to act as a global superpower also has its bad aspects - history repeats itself, just recall the US army’s withdrawal from north Syria to protect the Kurds, as well as the premature withdrawal from Afghanistan. **As I already suggested in a recent text of mine, ideally the US (with some allies) should simply invade Gaza from the sea, establish its own power zone there where millions of civilian refugees will be safe, providing for their elementary welfare and in this way constrain Israeli power - it is a safe bet that Israel would not risk an open conflict with the US. In crazy times, crazy acts are needed. **Before you dismiss this idea as madness, think realistically what would happen! It would be a great relief for millions of starved and bombed civilians. Similarly, one should take the risk to raise the Ukrainian war to a higher level, setting clear red lines that Russia should not overrun. One should, of course, proceed very carefully not to provoke a global war – but, again, the only way to prevent a new global war is to take calculated risks now.
Will something like this happen? The one thing one can rely on is that the US regularly miss the opportunity to use (whatever remains of) its global imperialist power for a good cause.
did you guys just hit your head every other time zizek said something insanely reactionary and imperialist for the last 20 years or do you limit your engagement with his work to “lol another funny raccoon man reference!”
Zizek had one interesting observation about how fascists are ironic now, but his career started with being an anti-communist in Yugoslavia and it completely tracks that he’s a pro-NATO “leftist” now.
Zizek has a bunch of interesting and even genuinely insightful observations about the world, at large, but every time he says anything about a specific issue he gets it wrong and has done it forever. Man’s just really good at looking at vibes of systems
I dont think this is true either, he thinks people need to be like, more ascetic and neurotic, because Freudianism, which is incorrect and wrong
YES, YES!
he has bizarre ideas about what people are like and their motivations for being like that
name three interesting and genuinely insightful observations zizek has about the world NOW
good luck scrambling to find one that isn’t “capitalism is bad because it’s like stalinism”
I have the feeling this is going to end up with whatever I say being called trite bullshit but here goes:
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We’re all already eating from the trashcan of ideology at all times / I want a a third pill (counting these as one since it’s basically the same concept)
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Happiness is conformist, it’s better to be interesting
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The one about the how capitalists used to be horrible capitalists and then, sort of distinct from that, philantrophists (think the Rockefeller split between funding a museum and also running fucking company towns), whereas the latter part has been subsumed into the product yourself with greenwashing, where you pay for the product and for a bit more you can also pay indulgence for buying the product the company destroys the planet for
uh no by casting a ward you have protected these deep and profound ideas from criticism my friend! i am powerless! flies away in front of the moon
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lots of better writers about how ideologically incoherent fascists are also the site didn’t send me this notification. why is lemmy so trash
A bunch of my notifications get lost in the shuffle too, especially if I have a popular comment with a bunch of replies. I can only guess that programming a notification system is harder than it sounds since every social media site has this problem.
every social media site has this problem
Not to be ridiculous over a minor point, but this is totally wrong.
Mastodon forks implemented an “anti-hellthread” protocol where, when a number of mentions in a thread exceeds your chosen value, the post is rejected lol, they wouldn’t do that if they had problems losing replies.
there’s a longstanding bug that causes comment notifications to be marked as read if the comment receives a reply (it was likely intended to only trigger when you’re the one replying)
He was always shit for me, don’t know why so many communists liked him? Was it his edgy takes on pop culture? Pic of him with a Stalin portrait behind him? He was already a big lib when Yugoslavia ended, but did you all miss his take when Fidel died? He went on RT and said Fidel should be forgotten because the Cuban Revolution accomplished nothing. An Ivory tower academic calling one of the greatest Revolutionaries a failure. Glad this Ukraine War has exposed his true form.
“We all eat from the trash can” just makes for a good quote.
I think the real reason is that many communists slowly grew into their positions and during that same time period there weren’t that many public figures on the left so there’s kind of a grab bag of public figures for each person.
I don’t think that a Bernie bro from 2016 would necessarily have a principled stance on the bombing of Yugoslavia even if they had become a communist since then, but would have still watched funny schniff man say fascism is horny on film.
didn’t he own a different guy we don’t like? the last four out of five times i’ve heard he said something it was to dunk on him though.
He debated Jordan Peterson and made him look like a clown but half of that was Peterson making an ass out of himself googling shit mid debate. The Finkelstein/Destiny debate had that same thing happen but it’s funnier and better because Finkelstein is really knowledgeable about the subject, is a complete debate monster, and he kept getting Mr. Divorcelli’s name wrong until it turned into a meme.
Norman Finkelstein And Kendrick Lamar: A Parallel Analysis Of Debate In The 21st Century
Who fell off harder, Zizek or Chomsky?
Parenti stays winning, of course.
Zizek. I think Chomsky at least comes from a place of sincerity. Zizek doesn’t give me that vibe.
I think Parenti has dementia, unfortunately.
And yet he stays on top compared to these chumps
Still, very unfortunate for Parenti’s health to decline as it has
The candle lit on both ends burns twice as bright but half as long
Meanwhile
was still cogent at 100. Parenti’s body of work has just held up much better than either of the others.Downside to only one of the two being beaten in the head
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I wish he had an accessible PO box. I’d like to contact him just to say a few short words about what an inspiration he’s been - I’d have to restrain myself not to sound like a total jerkoff though. I god damn love that man. His lectures are so warm to watch.
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“The most evil thing you could possibly do right now is point out that we were wrong and you were right and that we’re a bunch of know nothing warmongering dipshits. In fact, doing so is reactionary.”
“Shnifff the uh, the worst thing to do now ish for the tankiesh to point out that I have shit myshelf. Yesh, thish ish true, I have been walking around with, shniff, with pantsh full of shit for weeksh, and yesh, they have been begging me to wear clean pantsh and even offering me clean pantsh thish whole time, but it ish important, shniff, that we do not ashk how we got here, shniff, or place blame on anyone but the people begging me not to walk around covered in shit all the time.”
zizek be like: fellow leftists i discovered one weird trick how by aligning with imperial machine i can bring positive change.
Neocons:
?Comrades
Let me stop you right there
Zizek was always a lib, anyone who was paying attention would not have been fooled by that leftist character that he seems so fond of playing
People say he had good insights or something but he always had extremely weird and sus takes about trans people. The “best” argument I saw on the subject defending him was that “no actually, he doesn’t think trans people are bad, just that they’re not INHERENTLY revolutionary” which is like no bitch actually trans people ARE inherently revolutionary. The only reason someone could pretend otherwise is due to a complete failure to comprehend intersectionalism.
And are we going to talk about the weird shit about how he went on a weird tirade about buying sex toys to put into each other so he could feel like the “deed was done” and “talk intellectually” with a date? He could have just said he was pro-ace and against allonormativity instead of going into weird Freudian tirades ffs
The most revolutionary people I know are trans lol
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No, it’s a failure to comprehend intersectionalism because believing that trans people aren’t at least somewhat revolutionary, requires a belief that subversions of both traditional and oppositional sexism don’t matter
haven’t actually read what zizek said abt it yet, but i have a hard time seeing how a basic phenomenon such as trans people can be “inherently revolutionary”, any more than any other human characteristic.
I can see “inherently revolutionary in a cisnormative capitalist context” but I’ve never given him the benefit of the doubt before and I’m not gonna start now, maybe he meant something stupid
I meant inherently revolutionary in a cisnormative binary context yes
Zizek never found the plot to begin with, i honestly think any of you who ever had an unironically positive view of him simply misunderstood the joke of whatever gave you that impression. it would be like posting some dumb racist shit trump said and going “has trump lost the plot?” like yeah, of course he’s a reactionary, it’s nothing new.
i have no idea how people subscribed to an idealogue that unironically thinks neurosis is good
too much of the defenses I’ve seen of him have basically boiled down to schrodinger’s asshole
He’s always been like this lol.
Zizek is funny and a little insightful when he is talking about movies
He’s not the only pop philosopher who really just wants to review movies
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Considering this and the content of this article:
Zizek, Nancy Pelosi
Are Ukrainians really so stupid to play this role while they could have enjoyed peace?
I’m just baffled by this argument. Like… yeah people have always fallen into traps like that, it’s basically all History
It’s not even stupidity, it’s just the logical extension of nationalism.
If you think in terms of Volk and Nation, you’re going to hate your country’s enemies and put all ills of the world on them - to the point where you might be persuaded to pick up a gun and start slaughtering fellow proletarians.
Especially irritating, because there was a lot of resistance to Euromaidan coup, Donbass uprising literally began in that way, and the West actively helped Nazis to crush their enemies.
I saw that, nice little way to erase the coup and all the times the west shot down peace talks. I really hate this new form of agency concern trolling.
“What about (people who have very little agency in the face of what we’re doing to them), don’t they have agency? Or do you think they’re stupid??”
And then of course when they actually act on that little agency like the Houthis or the Donbas republics, those same people become Douglas McArthur.
A person who advocates for the use of racial slurs on the ground of free speech using “”marxist”” reasoning turn out to be a bigot and an eurocentrist
I keep telling you, this is what happens when witches curse raccoons into being human beings
Their little raccoon brains can’t handle it
he should’ve retired years ago. like his work on lacan and ideology was very insightful especially with the connection to hegel, but now he could miss the point if it was right in front of him.
no zizek, nobody is arguing that ukrainians chose between being nato cannon fodder or being free. that’s not the argument, you’re just an old man yelling at clouds.
Unironically Ukraine did choose between being nato cannon fodder and their freedom.
The Ukrainian government chose between making their citizens cannon fodder and having peace, while the citizens were conscripted into the war at gunpoint.
I think there’s also the domestic politics situation of Zelensky keeping his office and not wanting to give ammunition to the far right. Basically, an early peace deal would’ve given the fascist elements in Ukrainian politics the angle of “Zelensky bends the knee to the Russian horde, vote for us and we won’t sacrifice Ukrainian agency.”
Zelensky bends the knee to the Russian horde, vote for us and we won’t sacrifice Ukrainian agency.
Having a Jewish, West-friendly president do this would be a stab-in-the-back myth to fuel the Ukrainian far right for decades. There are ways to stop them from milking it, but I have the feeling the post-maidan order wouldn’t be able to pull it off.
I don’t like that framing because it basically means the war was inevitable. If that’s the case Russia would be completely justified in leveling Ukraine to the ground and winning in a week like everyone predicted.
That war wasn’t inevitable, it actually took A LOT of consecutive and purposeful bad choices by Maidan government and their US handlers.
I know, that’s why I said I don’t like this framing.
I know! Back in 2020 or so I had a Lacan phase that I can thank Zizek for. But … but I soon found out he just sucks at everything else :(
like his work on lacan and ideology was very insightful especially with the connection to hegel, but now he could miss the point if it was right in front of him.
I don’t think it was, I think we were seeing the early seeds of his incorrect takes in that stuff. It’s mostly just weird idealistic woo with vaguely science-coded language. Like an older version of LessWrong cultists
i have to disagree, i don’t think it’s fair to dismiss his work as idealistic woo. i haven’t read that much by him, mostly sublime object, but there’s a coherent materialist line of thinking throughout it (especially in relation to the real) for someone who spends most of his time discussing lacan and hegel, i’m surprised by how clear it still is. back then he also had his silly moments of course, i’m not denying he has always been a bit of a contrarian lib.
as for the vaguely science-coded language, are you referring to the mathemes? or did he do that thing philosophers sometimes do where they just take gödel and heisenberg to make vague claims about the incompleteness of reality?
Where Zizek shines is how he bridges the individual (Lacanian) psychology to mass-Ideology, via Identity and Desire. He maps how they work together to frame and drive the so-called false consciousness (in the tradition of Gramsci and Adorno), and is hands-down the best philosophical treatment of the phenomenon.
Where Zizek falls over is when he tries to affect politics using therapy techniques via Op-Eds. That’s not how his own theory of Ideology works. I think the brainworms come from psychology’s side, where often a patient’s stated motive hides the (unconscious) real motive. This style of political analysis “works” because politicians are bald-faced liars. But lying is not the same as hidden/unconscious narratives in psychoanalysis. Politicans don’t read Zizek Op-Eds. You cannot do-the-thing-but-ironically - a strategy that works in therapy - because you aren’t rewiring a politician’s unconscious internal narrative and identity. There isn’t an internal narrative conflict to reconcile.
In my personal opinion Zizek would intellectually fare much better as a critic of the Elite than the therapist of the masses, but that doesn’t get you Op-Eds.
yeah agree, he’s also just plain bad with facts and will often just blurt some theory out at a strawman or something. i don’t think it’s just his old age, i remember a passage in soi where he dedicated quite a few pages to kgb activity in the 30s, which is quite impressive for an agency founded in the 50s. some of these mistakes are pretty benign, but they add up to him being seriously misinformed, especially when he rushes an op-ed out.
vague claims about the incompleteness of reality?
If I remember right (and I could be totally talking out of my ass here because I didn’t read the book, only some reviews from after it came out), his book Less Than Nothing was supposed to be his magnum opus ultimate last word on Hegel, and in it he says that reality itself isn’t “complete” and is full of contradictions and gaps at a fundamental level (quantum physics, indeterminate probabilities, etc).
I’m not arguing anything about Zizek here one way or another, I’ve just had that bit of trivia stuck in my head for years
i might also be talking out of my ass since i haven’t read less than nothing either, but that is one of his recurring themes (afaik for the ljubljana school of psychoanalysis in general). to oversimplify it, reality in psychoanalysis is the meaning we ascribe to the world, but this meaning is never complete, there is the real which resists signification. material reality is the failure to adhere to this notional determination. of course, psychoanalysis being psychoanalysis, sex is determined as this constitutive lack, something which definitely is, but as to what it is? (which is why sex requires fantasy)
