Yes. She weirdly soft-pedals racism (and outright white nationalism) on the right throughout the book (she refers to Peter Brimelow, who runs VDare, which has been cited in multiple mass shooters manifestos, as just a "dissident conservative"). She accepts incel claims about the so-called sexual economy at face value, and presented a (possibly satirical) Tumblr list of gender identities as somehow definitive. Her treatment of the entire Gamergate shitshow is factually wrong to begin with, and gets worse from there. There's an interesting nugget in there about the right as a counterculture, but most of it is her grinding an axe about identity politics.
Donald Trump is the emblematic figure of this new type of obscene
populist Master, and the usual argument against him – that his populism
(worry for the well-being of the poor ordinary people) is fake, that his
actual politics protects the interests of the rich – is all too
inadequate.
[…]
His shameless obscenities serve as signs of solidarity with so-called
ordinary people (‘you see, I am the same as you, we are all red under
our skin’), and this solidarity also signals the point at which Trump’s
obscenity reaches its limit.
[…]
In order to undermine Trump, one should begin by displacing the site
of his obscenity and treat as obscene his ‘serious’ statements.
[…]
The first task of a critic is to demonstrate how fake this purity
is.
Instead of calling out Trump’s “just like you guys” populist appeal
as fake, which is inadequate, we must call out Trump’s “just like you
guys” populist appeal as fake.
i could maybe read it as saying that attacking his populist image at all is counter-productive and strengthens his base, so left-liberals should focus on what he's actually saying rather than how he's saying it. but then that makes the leading paragraph a little oddly-worded and tangential imo; it seems clearer and more relevant to me to read it as a contradiction as you have.so idk lol
he could definitely stand to write a lil clearer imo
You're being kinda selective/misleading here with what you're quoting aren't you?
Within the full context Zizek's not contradicting himself at all ... in that last passage zizek's talking about the supposed moral purity of trump's critics, not the supposed purity of trump, but you've cut that part out:
"The standard relationship between my intimacy and the big Other of public dignity is thus turned around: obscenities are no longer limited to private exchanges, they explode in the public domain itself, allowing me to dwell in the illusion that it’s all just an obscene game while I remain innocent in my intimate purity. The first task of a critic is to demonstrate how fake this purity is."
> You're being kinda selective/misleading here with what you're quoting aren't you?
Those are the only sections of the article that I could find that concern what has been done that's failed and what should be done instead. If it's misleading, it's because I've been mislead by the writing.
> in that last passage zizek's talking about the supposed moral purity of trump's critics, not the supposed purity of trump, but you've cut that part out:
I don't see anywhere in that section that would indicate that this is about Trump's critics and not a general point about the "turning around" of the "standard relationship" between the private/public and obscene/pure. The two sentences before the one *you've* selected specifically refer to Trump, so, no, I don't see how it's about Trump's critics.
And this:
> In order to undermine Trump, one should begin by displacing the site of his obscenity and treat as obscene his ‘serious’ statements.
Is an explicit statement that the overall prescription is regarding Trump's statements and not some call for critics to demonstrate (?) they themselves are fake (??), or something? The latter idea doesn't even sound coherent to me.
I thought Zizek was being quite clear with his aims in the article. When it comes to what should be done, he offers a pretty clear anecdote about how after the Trump election he was asked to write a psychoanalytic treatment of Trump and refused, instead arguing that what really required psychoanalysing was the over-the-top liberal reaction to Trump, which clearly failed in preventing Trump from getting elected, and looks like it may help him get elected again.
I thought the claim Zizek was making is pretty similar to a lot of things we've all seen written about the Trump phenomenon; people care more about norms and 'civility' than policy, we need to focus on what Trump does, not what he says etc. etc; What's obscene about Trump is not his speech or his rudeness but his policies, but focusing on his speech allows commenters to think that they're "pure" in comparision while ignoring actual politics.
In that case, which I *don't* think is clear in the article at all, psychoanalyzing the phenomenon of Trump's appeal is exactly what Zizek does *in that very article.*
And maybe it's the media that I personally consume - since "liberal-left" is so vague that one can say anything about it - but focusing on Trump's policy and executive actions over Trump's weekly buffoonery is literally what I find the liberal-left to be doing. Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats visited the border detention facilities in July, for example. That's not focusing on Trump's obscene speech but obscene immigration policy. Like, all the 2020 Democratic candidates, but especially the more left candidates, are critical of his policies over his rudeness or whatever.
If your interpretation of the article is correct, Zizek both fails to understand the liberal-left response to Trump and is guilty of the same 'stupidity' that he attributes to them.
Hmm, I don't see any psychoanalysing of trump or trump voters happening at all in that article. How is Zizek guilty of the same stupidity?
I do agree with you though that "liberal-left" is pretty vague, and do think it's a very good thing that people like AOC have learned how to handle Trump well. But I would still argue that there's a very large contingent of people who haven't learned anything from 2016 and continue to meltdown over every little thing Trump says, though I guess they might be voices that are more liberal than left.
> Hmm, I don't see any psychoanalysing of trump or trump voters happening at all in that article. How is Zizek guilty of the same stupidity?
All the rumination on the relationship between private/public and obscenity/purity. If you don't want to call that psychoanalytical, sure, whatever, but it's the same sort of "think piece" analysis of Trump's appeal.
> But I would still argue that there's a very large contingent of people who haven't learned anything from 2016 and continue to meltdown over every little thing Trump says, though I guess they might be voices that are more liberal than left.
Cool, but could you argue it with someone else? Because I see hand-wringing over liberals not "getting" Trump to be a part of liberal-left stupidity.
>Cool, but could you argue it with someone else? Because I see hand-wringing over liberals not "getting" Trump to be a part of liberal-left stupidity.
I guess this is just where we're gonna have to agree to disagree. I am honestly scared that liberals not "getting" trump and repeating the errors of 2016 might lead to his re-election, but obviously people have different priorities and takes on the matter.
bertrand russell was a fucking moron. stephen jay gould? totla dipshit. much like jacques derrida,, immanuel wallerstein, guy debord, judith butler, aristotle, kant, galileo, some other philosphy guy ive heard of, are all fucking dipshit stupid fucking morons. they knew nothing about anything, borderline ratarded braindead, but you know whose epic? xi jinpinng
I really do not want to get into a debate about whether or not Noam Chomsky is good or bad. He has done essentially no activism in America since the Vietnam War ended. He worked with the Pentagon while he was at MIT. He is a millionaire with a million dollar trust fund set aside for his children - one of the very things he has criticized. Perhaps I shouldn't call him a moron but he is certainly a hypocrite and has become the very thing he disdained in the 60s and 70s.
Zizek is transparently a grifter. He makes his political views as shifty as possible so it is impossible to criticize any statement he makes; he endorses fascist candidates like Donald Trump or makes claims that there's literally no different between a neoliberal politician and a neofascist politician - which is wrong. Zizek is a so called leftist who will only endorse fascists or refuse to endorse the opponents of the fascists. Either he is a moron and does not see the material difference between fascist politics or else he is a grifter and at some point he stopped being a member of the left. Either way he's a piece of shit.
my guess is you''re echoing some post you saw saying "zizek is dumb because he said vote for trump" and that's literally your only exposure to zizek, because you don't even seem to understand the 1 zizek hot take that you seem to know about. your rush to be uncharitable to literally anyone, and basically this broader tendency among leftists to do that, will be to your detriment. it will mean that you will basically never learn. stop collecting reasons to cancell whichever new intellectual you just heard about. stop using the fucking fallout karma system to rate philosophers. perhaps keep whatever little detail in the back of your mind while you're actually considering and trying to understand what they're writing, but don't use it as a thought-terminating cliche.
because when you end up saying "the guy who invented the _chomsky hierarchy_ and redefined modern linguistics was a total fucking moron" thats just another level of stupid philistinery. it's wrong, like really obviously wrong, even if you dont agree with him. it takes like no intellectual effort to read some influential person;s biography on wikipedia or on some reddit comment by a cringe agendaposter and be like "loll nietzsche was such a dippshit dumbass idiot didnt know anything" to flex how cool you are and a lot more to actually read whatever theyre talking about and analyze it for yourself
I'm not calling them stupid, I'm calling them morons. I'm not trying to provide a full critique of Chomsky or Zizek; I have no interest in doing that on fucking Reddit lmao. I'm just insulting them because they do moronic things and say moronic things and generally engage in behavior that I find distasteful. No need to flip your shit about a random guy on Reddit not being sufficientlu respectful of your intellectual idols.
theyre not my intellectual idols, it's just that what youre doing is posting cringe. i am absolutely 100$ certain that "because it's reddit" is a narrative youve invented for yourself and that the real reason you won't critique what they believe is that you have a surface-level understanding of what they believe and havent thought through what parts of their philosophy you agree and disagree with
You've got some weird issues. I posted one line expressing that I didn't like Chomsky or Zizek and now you have lost your mind. How can you possibly think that my one sentence was me trying to critique the entirety of their collected works? You're just making shit up at this point. At no point should you have understood that I am critiquing Chomsky or Zizek. It is quite obvious that I was just talking shit.
You opened up this entire argument with the most /r/iamverysmart comment I've ever seen. Stop making assumptions about what other people know and instead, idk, ask why they think what they think. You're just being hopelessly combative for absolutely no reason other than, I assume, wanting to feel superior for whatever reason.
> Either he is a moron and does not see the material difference between fascist politics or else he is a grifter and at some point he stopped being a member of the left.
well yea everyone knows he wrote for abercrombie and fitch like 20 years ago. after that, whenever anyone says "zizek" i immediately know they are an intellectual fraud and leave to go buy a shirt from american eagle so they know i know what's up
If you shneer at Zizek, he will become more powerful than you can poshibly imagine
Weren’t there a lot of problems with this book?
Why is this here?
[…]
[…]
[…]
Instead of calling out Trump’s “just like you guys” populist appeal as fake, which is inadequate, we must call out Trump’s “just like you guys” populist appeal as fake.
much like noam chomsky, zizek is a fucking moron