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On 5/26/14 9:45 AM, Richard Menec via Marxism wrote:
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(I cannot attend this, unfortunately, but it would be great to have a
report!)
http://www.leftforum.org/content/zizek-delenda-est
Zizek Delenda Est
Participants:
Jacob Levich Chair,
Hannah Wolfe ISO
Molly Klein
John Steppling
Levich is a long time "anti-imperialist" who was a Marxmail subscriber
over a decade ago. I can't remember if I booted him or if he unsubbed.
The title of the workshop comes from "Carthage delenda est", which means
Carthage must be destroyed. I wonder if Michael Smith was an outside
consultant on the title.
I have written a number of articles critiquing Zizek but I would never
consider him some kind of imperialist operative, which is the impression
that these panelists want to convey based on the blurbs found in the
Left Forum website.
Abstract:
Is Slavoj Zizek a US propaganda psyop? I want to ask my comrades on the
left to consider the possibility. After years of research, I have come
to the conclusion that Zizek is a charlatan posing as a "Stalinist" to
both discredit communists by performing a caricature Bolshevik and
simultaneously, to smuggle fascist ideas including old fashioned Aryan
supremacism and 19th century race theory, back into public discourse
disguised as radical left critique of liberalism. I zill focus on how he
exploits his radical left image to spread imperialist propaganda and
disinformation. I'll trace the origins of the Zizek Industry to his
first anointing by the New Left Review,then under the control of
Croatian Nationalists and Tudjman supporters, as the Balkan Leftist who
would initiate, in 1990, the dominant strain of imperialist propaganda
about Yugoslavia, and yet further back to his career as an antiMarxist
dissident and Slovene ethnic nationalist. I will discuss the way he has
influenced a generation to the point where now right wing and
reactionary ideas as well as pure white house disinformation and
propaganda are routinely packaged as hip "lefty" and "radical" thought.
(I assume that Levich wrote this. It smacks of the conspiracist mindset
that has infected the left for decades now. Skullduggery reminiscent of
the Mad Magazine "Spy versus Spy" cartoons.)
Molly Klein:
Zizek Must Be Destroyed. Zizek is not only an individual celebrity
intellectual who, with the help of the NYTimes, the Guardian, the BBC,
In These Times, and Verso Books has become the most recognizeablle
"Marxist" in the spectacle, but the name of a type of ideological
revanchist black operation which seeks to reverse the gains of the
radical scolarship and decoloniality of the past decades, to vend US
imperial propaganda and disinformation as "critique of liberalism" and
"contrarian insights," to rebarbarize moeurs (normalizing racist and
sexist verbal aggression, re-segregating intellectual milieux) which had
been to a great degree civilized by the successes of the social
movementsm, and to revive Nazi ideology - rebranded as "radical left" -
in academic, "indy" publishing, and what's left of "counterculture"
circles. The problem is not confined to this one individual (whom many
dismiss as clownish) but involves a significant network of culture
producers showing his influence routinely reproducing US
imperialapology, propaganda and disinformation in a superficial "left"
package and opportunistically attacking all challenges to Empire which
threaten to gain steam.
(I just love the business about "ideological revanchist black
operation". I have a feeling that Molly must have a poster of Vishinsky
on her bedroom wall like John Travolta had one of Al Pacino in "Saturday
Night Fever". Klein, like Levich, is anxious to demonize NLR and Verso.
Over the years I have grown used to sectarian idiots making NLR and
Verso into a kind of litmus test after the fashion of the Trotsky "From
a scratch to a gangrene" polemics. As if someone lecturing on "The
Matrix" is the biggest problem facing the left. In my view, the biggest
problem facing the left is the sheer lunacy of people wasting space and
time at the Left Forum on something like this. Frankly, I was a bit
distressed to see that Hannah Wolfe of the ISO is taking part. The
comrade should know better.)
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