Zizek on Haider

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Fri Feb 11 03:33:01 PST 2000


In message <005601bf73fb$52e3a760$a5e8fea9 at nsn2>, Nathan Newman <nathan.newman at yale.edu> writes
> I want
>progressive Austrians denouncing the racism of Israel's immigration policies
>and Israelis denouncing the racism of Austria. And everyone denouncing the
>racism and brutality of the US economic and judicial system.

Sounds suspiciously like the first world war to me. British propagandists became adept at denouncing German imperialism, and likewise Germans at exposing British imperialism. In fact, this was just chauvinistic tub-thumping masquerading as 'exposure'. That's how we managed to slaughter millions of each other both sides with God, and justice, on their side.

(One of the historic curiosities of this period is the great mass of pamphlets, posters etc published by the British campaign to save Serbia from German aggression - circa 1916. Britain's Serb minority brought them out of the closet in the current campaign, imagining that they could shame Blair, forgetting that he has no sense of history.)

It was to avoid exactly this kind of national chauvinism masquerading as anti-imperialism that Lenin coined the slogan, 'the main enemy is at home'.

In message <006101bf7418$543a3080$a5e8fea9 at nsn2>, Nathan Newman <nathan.newman at yale.edu> writes
>(I'd add the same third communist, former communist and Green parties signed
>up for Kosovo as well, but we can avoid the implied class nature of that war
>given their participation, unless you want to link them to the Haider
>actions

Or, alternately, the support of the French Communist Party for a Nato bombardment might say something about the degeneration of the PCF. After all this is the party that opposed Algerian independence and even led a mob to attack an immigrant hostel at Ivry, the local communist mayor driving a bulldozer through the building. In message <v03130300b4c9553fc160@[140.254.113.93]>, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes
>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.

Well, Zizek might be wrong about the Slovenian state (but what would I know about that) but he is definitely right about 'Civil Society' which is code for right wing intelligentsia and small capitalists in Eastern Europe. Leftists in West Europe like Offe, Keane, even the late EP Thompson hoped that they could relate to East European 'civil society' which was all very stylish when it was dissidents playing Jazz and listening to Frank Zappa under the iron heel of the state. But in power they turned out to be a vicious gang of hardened capitalists, whose heroine was Margaret Thatcher.

-- Jim heartfield



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