>So Zizek is criticizing himself here?
He practices at home what he criticizes abroad:
At home: ***** "Civil Society, Fanaticism, and Digital Reality: A Conversation with Slavoj Zizek"
CTHEORY: What is your view on the work of the Soros Foundation and the concept of an "open society"?
Zizek: If you look into my heart, you'll see I am an old-fashioned left-winger. In the short term I support it, but I don't have Popper notions about it. Soros is doing good work in the field of education, refugees and keeping the theoretical and social sciences spirit alive. These countries are not only impoverished, but the sphere of social sciences is hegemonized by Heideggerian nationalists. But the Soros people have this ethic of the bad state vs. good civic, independent structures. But sorry, in Slovenia I am for the state and against civil society! In Slovenia, civil society is equal to the right wingers. *****
Abroad: ***** "WHY DO WE ALL LOVE TO HATE HAIDER?"
And this brings us back to Haider: significantly, the only political force with the serious weight which DOES still evoke an antagonistic response of Us against Them is the new populist Right - Haider in Austria, le Pen in France, Republicans in Germany, Buchanan in the US. However, it is precisely for this reason that it plays a key structural role in the legitimacy of the new liberal-democratic hegemony. They are the negative common denominator of the entire center-left liberal spectrum: they are the excluded ones who, through this very exclusion (their inacceptability as the party of the government) provide the negative legitimacy of the liberal hegemony, the proof of their "democratic" attitude. In this way, their existence displaces the TRUE focus of the political struggle (which is, of course, the stifling of any Leftist radical alternative) to the "solidarity" of the entire "democratic" bloc against the racist neo-Nazi etc. danger. *****
He says he's a "left-winger," just as many European Third Way politicos say they are. And he supports Soros "in the short term" while using the existence of "Heideggerian nationalists" to legitimate the "liberal hegemony" of which he is a part. Get the picture? This used to be called hypocrisy. Now it is called irony, I'm sure.
>I'm wondering why you like the verb "plays". Zizek "plays" a marxisant
>cultural critic. Hitchens "plays" a leftist on TV.
I'd say neither plays his role well. Perhaps they are aiming for a Brechtian alienation effect.
>A "true" marxisant leftist would
>be against NATO (the U.N.?) using military force anywhere, at anytime?
What is NATO for besides repression of the working class? As for the U.N., the General Assembly condemned the USA for its invasion of Panama, for instance, but its real power lies in the Security Council, and you know who controls it. BTW, you don't have to be a marxist to oppose imperialism. Most people I work with locally are religious lefties, anarchist youths, black nationalists, etc. I'm one of the _very few_ Marxists in Columbus, Ohio (a left-wing waste land).
Yoshie