On Wed, 9 Feb 2000 22:29:30 -0500 Apsken at aol.com wrote:
> Zizek's comments on the plebeian extreme right are as sniveling and
evasive as anything I've seen yet, when they are not simply banal.
The bigger the deal that is made about Haider, the *MORE SUPPORT HE WILL GET* - this isn't bullshit - it just happens to be a fact. The more international stink that is made about it - the MORE IT AFFIRMS HIS PLATFORM AS A LEGITIMATE ONE. Big time shit about anarchy and the WTO, now the US has more anarchists than ever before. Big time shit about the fundamentalist right in America - and there are recond numbers of active fundementalists in the US. Figure out what comes next with a racist fuck gets media attention (polemics work wonders for the economy - not to mention garnering support for what you hate (LOVE!) the most - an enemy!).
You ask what the Left should do? Make fun of the way he dresses. I don't know - but we've seen time and time again that "outing" racists or fascists *doesn't* work, it simply gives them more power until guns a hauled out of the dusty cellars. Make fun of his typing skills. Whatever. CHANGE THE DISCOURSE - focus on economic policy. Yes, this is a deliberate and strategic act of censorship - make "anti-immigration" a forbidden subject (if you take something out of language, you eventually take it out of thought). Start chanting "We are in Europe, and Europe is in us!" (which is something like the slogan the recent Croatian centrist party won on)(I'm not going to pretend to know anything more than what a 300 word news article about Croatia wrote today). I'd love to vote commie or Green here in Canada - but they aren't going to win - and the Conservatives and right-wing Reform present a clear and present danger - so I modify my vote, compromise and vote for the left of centre party - the only leftist party with a chance. I'd vote liberal if I had too. Let's not even think about maintaining purity. It's old. And it's been done with greater violence that most of us can stomach.
ken