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
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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:
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)
Happiness is conformist, it’s better to be interesting
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
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.
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.