Bayarea415 was a big fan of him, and so am I. Žižek is an incredibly original thinker, easily top 100 of this century. Their documentaries Pervert’s Guide on Cinema/Ideology and Dreamworlds series are some of my favourite videos, and today I watched Žižek’s competition debate with Jordan Peterson, where the latter looked like a curious, heartbroken old man.
Zizek is trash imo, he appeals to faux-college-champaigne-socialists who value media criticism more than materialist analyses of capitalism and imperialism in the modern day.
He also is socially reactionary, worked to overthrow Yugoslavia, and goes against AES every chance he gets.
Its kind of a testament to the stupidity of most of the western left that they think this guy is some paragon of socialist thought, and not some quirky reactionary who makes a coherent statement 10% of the time.
Slavoj Zizek
- “Immigration has to be restricted to prevent the rise of Fascism.”
- Helped work to overthrow Yugoslavia.
- He’s anti-USSR, anti bolivarian revolution, supported the coups in Ukraine and Libya
- Thinks socialism died a long time ago in Cuba, that everyone lives there because of a misguided devotion to Castro, and thinks the bolivarian revolution will soon fail.
- Defines Marxism: “Marx wanted a return to traditional values.”
- Comes out in favor of NATO against Russia, in the 2022 Ukraine conflict.
- Argues for a stronger NATO to fight against Russia and for Ukraine.
- More here
Uh oh. This looks like a mini masterlist similar to dessalines’ on Chomsky, time to read. Thanks for this.
Do you by any chance have a link to dessalines’ take on chmomksy?
Copying dessalines’ masterlist
Noam Chomsky
- Is Chomsky right about Marxist-Leninists being evil?
- Roderic Day - On Chomsky
- Awful chomsky takes.
- Gowans - The US has produced very few anti-imperialists: Chomsky isn’t among them.
- “My response to the end of Soviet tyranny was similar to my reaction to the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini. In all cases, it is a victory for the human spirit. It should have been particularly welcome to socialists, since a great enemy of socialism had at last collapsed”
- https://archive.li/YVNk3
- https://libcom.org/history/john-deutch-chomskys-friend-pentagon-cia
- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/why-chomsky-felt-guilty-most-of-time-war-research-and-linguistics-at-mit/
- https://libcom.org/history/chomsky-pol-pots-genocidal-regime-cambodia
- https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-d453a3261d8b
- Endorsed Biden in the 2020 election, even after Tara Reide’s rape allegations. 2
Thank you!
finally realized why i do not like zizek, he aims to be elitist and incomprehensible, like he’s the only one in the world that can understand everything. he says words like “communism,” but what he’s really doing is post modernism. it’s like walking into an ideological death trap. post modernism is something the usa national security state has heavily funded for over a century
I recommend you check his debate with Peterson, where he rips apart Peterson for many minutes on post modernism and neo Marxism right wing crap. Relevant material for your doubts.
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I am also taken aback by his views on Russia’s operation. He is likely trying to play safe in Europe, with his doctorates and various positions. His documentaries were also insanely good.
Very disappointed. Muad also gave me a masterlist to read. Why do figures have to be like this?
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I will just savour his older documentaries and the Peterson debate. Might as well not exist for me since 2022.
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I still consider myself a baby leftist and by no means even half as educated as most of you here. I am very unconfident about identifying myself as anything beyond a socialist who can say the correct thing. This is how I transitioned: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/376206/comment/282571
But what I have always had is a very strong feeling to optimise things and do things for the greater good, learn a lot and never care about what the populist opinion is, being a rebel.
It aint even like people were wondering what Zizek was thinking about the conflict. Like who asked him?
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He had JP in the palm of his hand, out manuvered him completely. Then he let him off the hook and showed mercy to his colleague.
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Yeah he cornered JP by asking him who the scary marxists are, where are they? JP simply couldn’t answer. But Zizek didnt really press hard enough on this. JP has no clue what he is talking about and cant even name a single marxist when asked, much less these heinous neo-post-mega-cultural-marxists that are destroying the fabric of western civilization or whatever. I feel like Zizek took mercy on him when JP was at his most vulnerable moment.
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JP was in a coma soon after. Zizek may have spared his life LMAO
The problem is that these debates are purely theatrical. Nothing comes out of these except for a moment of spectacle. A prinicpled person sharing a stage with peterson would have clocked him in the jaw.
And honestly, Petersen’s takes on Marxism are so superficial that deconstructing them doesn’t take much education or intelligence. The guy has a following purely based on how charismatic he is, and his skill at guilting people. Zizek, of course, is un-guiltable. His “victory” against Petersen was due solely to that, not to any superior understanding of Marxism.
will try to check it out soon, thank you for the recommendation
watched one of the clips, and realizing i gotta watch the whole thing. listening to jordan petersons opening argument is not something i ever want to hear again
Watch it to know the weirdo and Zizek’s arguments. It is a fun watch. 2 hours 45 minutes.
glad i watched that, did answer a few questions i had about zizek. in long form, like this debate, what he is saying comes out more clear
I mean, what do we expect from someone who’s entire career is invested in Lacan?
Not knocking the meat of the philosophical ideas. They’re pretty interesting and compelling. But they’re also incoherent as fuck.
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That very much tracks, since he thinks that Marxism is about a “return to traditional family values”
As far as I know Zizek is CIAnarchist. This was garbage.
Wow. Maybe he should not be given a free pass, but his works and commentary on pretty much everything before Russia’s operation seemed to be insanely good.
A different take on this. I think it is the same thing that Chomsky (I do not like him much now) and other intellectuals have had to do, since USA and Europe intellectual figures do not have much choice but to survive through this time, when everyone can be labelled Russian/Chinese agent within a flicker moment. Zizek has a prominent voice in Europe.
I mean if his goal was to just survive he could just shut up instead of advocating for neoliberalism.
Project Syndicate’s public service mission has received support from the Open Society Foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MasterCard Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, the European Journalism Centre, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, GAM, the Google Digital News Initiative, McKinsey Global Institute, the Nature Conservancy, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
My guess was not far off. Žižek seems to have opted for safe haven in these weird times, compromising on his integrity. I expected him to be one of the last people to do this, but he seems to worry about his intellectual reach in West.
Judging by the like/comment ratio I’m sure people are trashing him plenty. Me personally? I used to love him a lot back when I was in a hazy, nascent Marxist/Trot/Marxist-Leninist sphere in my life. I like some of his cultural takes on what I would call Wokeism, some were a little cringey but some were right in line with a phenomenon I feel is underanalyzed. However, after solidifying my position as an ML I became to resent his views on China, “authoritarians,” his doomerism, his more weird takes…it essentially became a removed in the armor of his brilliance I couldn’t unsee and suddenly he became less and less of a brilliant thinker and more of a ignorant guy who was trying too hard to be unique and getting lost in the sauce of academic pretentions instead of focusing on the attainable goal of socialism and what useful things one could be doing in the now to pursue it.
I however don’t disrespect someone for liking him, believe me I get it I have been glued to his lectures before, and I’m sure if I gave them another try there would still be nice things I could say about his intellectual contributions to society. But solely on his contempt and misunderstanding of China alone I can’t fully trust his worldviews, analysis or prescriptions anymore.
I think Zizek’s theory is a good 50/50. There’s a lot to disagree with. He’s abandoned every materialist principle of Marxism, reduced riots to trained apes acting out their consumerist lusts, denied valuable history. His theories on ideology and cinema are good.
It’s really funny how his theory on postmodern ideology is spot-on and yet he is unable to see his own. But I suppose that’s why he calls it a trashcan. 🚮
He does some fine Marxist analysis of popular culture, ask him to provide meaningful insights into real life scenarios and he has sniff no idea, and so on, and so on.
Somehow the guy who wrote this is considered smart.
I mean, intelligence depends on the field, your math teacher is going to know a lot about math, but don’t ask them about politics. He understands Lacan so in my opinion that is where the most interesting takes are.
and so on, and so on.
You got me.
Zizek became Liberal with the years, bur I didn’t read enough about him to form an opinion
