Zizek on refugees… Oh dear

Jesus fuck, what a knob.

It was very tl;dr. I got about 5-6 paragraphs in before I saw how fucking long the piece was. I assume it just got worse and worse. Those paragraphs I read just read as the line "I am not a racist, but...".

Pretty terrible. What do we expect from Zizek other than long articles calling for authoritarianism?

woah, that is some high grade quality zizek-age in that article; also, wtf frederic jameson? he's writing a book recommending forced conscription?

I usually quite like Zizek and even when I think he's wrong he's at least interesting; I haven't read this thoroughly but it seems unusually uninteresting and wrong.

as soon as he started it from the perspective of advising the European bourgeoisie how to save its system from the chaotic times ahead he was always going to end up on a nationalist-verging on racist footing.

He should tell more jokes and anecdotes from the Yugoslavia.

wojtek

He should tell more jokes and anecdotes from the Yugoslavia.

He is the joke and anecdote from Yugoslavia

The philosopher Slavoj Zizek is in extended conversation with Philip Dodd, discussing his new book Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours, in which he argues that Europeans are caught between (on the one hand) guilt at the suffering of migrants or (on the other) a determination to defend their way of life against a perceived threat. He suggests that alternatives are available - but that they require Europeans to make fundamental changes to their world view.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775025
Much better than his channel 4 appearance.

He blatantly associates Stalinism with Communism and proposes a rationalized capitalism. When he refers to radical leftists he means Trotskysts/Maoists/mainstream CPs and (radical) liberals. Internationalists and the "revolutionary camp" are not even considered and neither is the proletariat as the revolutionary subject. It's no wonder that his articles amount to no more than advice to the ruling class.

Edit: he even refers to the 1956 uprising in Hungary as "anti-communist"! Death or exile, Zizek? Death by exile.

Yeah, but he's also a laugh a minute. I'll give him a fist full of get out of jail free cards for that.

Noah Fence

Yeah, but he's also a laugh a minute. I'll give him a fist full of get out of jail free cards for that.

Inadvertently, usually. Laughter otherwise would generally imply approval of some sort. Generally, though, a political speaker is not judged by their ability as a comedian unless you're indifferent to politics or economic systems, etc.

If they got out of jail, they would go backwards and land on everyone else's stuff.

Zeronowhere

Noah Fence

Yeah, but he's also a laugh a minute. I'll give him a fist full of get out of jail free cards for that.

Inadvertently, usually. Laughter otherwise would generally imply approval of some sort. Generally, though, a political speaker is not judged by their ability as a comedian unless you're indifferent to politics or economic systems, etc.

If they got out of jail, they would go backwards and land on everyone else's stuff.

You're right of course and I should be heartily condemned but then again, flippancy is a highly commendable attribute - so I'll give myself a fistful of get out of jail free cards for that.

Why do you need all of these cards? Are you running some sort of BDSM ring?

Would it count as an anarchist community?

Edit: A rough illustration of a previous image, in the spirit of the recent direction of this board where if the revolution is not immediately televised, people must at least attempt to flowchart it, or graph it out on a Cartesian plane.

I don't need cards at all, just a bridge to live under.

Cool. But if, as Nietzsche says, 'God is dead,' who's going to cross the bridge?

Zeronowhere

Cool. But if, as Nietzsche says, 'God is dead,' who's going to cross the bridge?

People who...

Hate veganism

Like 'credible' music artists

Stubbornly stick to the idea that morals have no place in politics

Think rape play and porn culture are conducive with anarchism

Get their knickers in a knot about a gobby Essex twat having a bit of fun on the Internet

Are dull, boring, pompous farts

Are incapable of questioning their own position, much less admit that they may have got things wrong(aaaaaaaggggghhh, the horror, the humiliation!)

Fancy their chances...

If this bridge is to become a metaphor for so many things, it won't be long until it's The Life of Pi.

Professor Adam Kotsko, who has written extensively on the subject of interpreting Žižek’s philosophical and political theories, argues that Žižek’s rhetorical strategy is generally to antagonize left-wing and liberal readers, in order to “provoke those readers into showing that they refuse to ask concrete questions about how to exercise power, preferring instead to demonstrate their purity through denunciation of others.”

For instance, when Leftists and liberals argue that Syrian refugees are fleeing to Europe to escape the consequences of Western imperialism (rather than Bashar al-Assad), they are making less of a factual statement than an (instrumentally) political one. In truth, there is little evidence to support their claims: 52% of Syrian refugees polled said they would not return to Syria if Assad remained in power, while a whopping 75% said the war they are escaping from is the result of Assad (not ISIS or Western-funded rebels’) actions.

http://muftah.orgwik/how-zizek-critics-get-it-right-and-wrong-on-syria/#.V0XRc76upUL

Adam Kotsko also

[Žižek] needs to stop writing these opinion columns, and his friends need to stop writing apologetics and start writing him e-mails begging him to just stop, before he completely destroys his reputation and legacy.

https://itself.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/would-not-the-most-radical-political-intervention-for-zizek-be-precisely-to-stop/