[The Sabbaticus]

The host took issue with the fact that Zizek offended LGTB activists by asking in his book: "Where would it end? People marrying their pets?" He also claimed that Ghandi was more violent than Hitler.
Both statements taken out of context, for which Zizek offered his signature round-about explanations.


Other issues:

- why he supports Trump
- why a vote for Macron is a vote for Le Pen four years later.
- why the right (Trump) should cause more chaos, in that a new left can form
- that the American Left was estranged from reality by focusing on transgender toilets during the elections, upon which he offered his solution: three bathroom facilities. (But as a matter of practicality, all three 'groups' could use the third bathroom.)

It was a very amusing conversation. Much better than when he's interviewed by academic types.

[mikema63]

Zizek is an enormous walking meh and not much of an original thinker. He uses bad word choice and gets his points muddled and misunderstood by not making them well.

He also does that so on and so on thing *sniff* that makes it hard to listen to him for long.

[The Immortal Goon]

Zizek "supports" Trump in the same way that a Trump supporter might support cancer attacking someone they hate.

He is taking an accelerationist stance:

He claims Hillary’s loss was necessary for the long-term survival of the Democratic party. “The inertia of status quo should somehow be broken and open space for a new political reconfiguration. I think this is the only chance for the left,” he said.

Of course, that's too complicated for a lot of rightists who are mostly looking for feels instead of any kind of thought applied to their ideology, so the misunderstanding is expected.

So far as Zizek's premise, though I am wary of accelerationist thought, we are all accelerationists now.

[Decky]

We always were TIG. As Lenin said, the worse the better.

[The Immortal Goon]

It certainly depends on the topic and forces at work.

I'm sure you, and virtually every modern Marxist, would agree with James Connolly in his argument against the "Pope of Marxism" in New York that a struggle for higher wages is important for workers; whereas DeLeon argued that they should instead focus on dissolving marriages and other social junk he imagined so they could let things get as economically as terrible for workers as possible.

If absolutely nothing else, and there's a lot to be said for Connolly in this case, it was an instance where accelerationists divided instead of United the working class.

[Rugoz]

Jesus, it hurts my ears. Wtf.

[SolarCross]

Jesus, it hurts my ears. Wtf.

Pure comedy though, you can see the interviewer holding in the giggles the whole way through.

[MB.]

Pretty good interview, thanks for posting it, The Sabbaticus. Zizek is right about the failure of nationalism and emergence of the super-national blocs, BRICs, Anglo-America and Africa, and the interviewer kept reminding him, correctly, that this is essentially the 1984 world as imagined by George Orwell. Zizek reiterated his accelerationist position, stating that the geological crises will continue to trigger political crisis that the nation-states will not be able to respond to successfully which will further encourage regionalism. He reminded us that Fukiyama, Huntington, Drucker, and the other neoliberal international relations, geography, and business scholars are correct when they discussed the dominance of market forces, ethno-linguistic and geographical tribalism, religion and business culture comprising the basis of post-modern globalization at the end of the 21st century.

The crisis since then have routinely demonstrated that national isolationism is not a viable position and that states pursuing this path have invariably required international aid and assistance or regional support to maintain the status quo. He argues that the left today has the moral high-ground and this position has changed since the beginning of the feminist movement and collapse of the cold war authoritarian Soviet bloc at the end of the century. Zizek states that if the status-quo continues, the state institutions, including the party establishments, will continue to wither as they are superseded, in the fashion described by Carol Quigley, by new organizations and bureaucracies. Zizek reiterates his support for bureaucratic organizations as bastions of order in the face of increasing non-state chaos.

Zizek and the host have a long and interesting conversation about LGBTQ+ issues in which Zizek reminds the audience that this represents approximately 2% or less of the general population.