http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040301/004657.html
Ted Winslow wrote in response:
The idea of "love" that defines "socialism" is "mutual recognition." The psychotic psychopathology associated with a largely unmastered "deep strain of violence and intolerance" is incapable of "love" in this sense. The extreme degree of psychopathology involved also makes such a capacity very difficult to develop. There isn't, therefore, an "inner truth and greatness" in National Socialism that "could be articulated into a Socialist project."
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Yes, but perhaps by taking a step back from the hard-set psychopathological forms -- National Socialism in the 1930's and '40s and Jihadist nihilism today -- and considering the fundamental needs these movements exploit we can see the value in Zizek's idea here.
Richard Wright scholars may correct me but I believe there's a moment, early in the novel "Native Son" when the protagonist Bigger is sitting in a movie theater watching a pre-war newsreel from Nazi Germany.
He finds the images of clean, happy, efficient people, building an industrial future together, attractive. The symbology, pageantry and smart uniforms are like a vision from a more perfect world.
All propaganda of course but compelling because the ideas presented address, through Leni Riefenstahl fantasies, a genuine need -- for order, for community, for modernity without alienation.
Yes, national Socialism is, was, bereft of "inner truth and greatness" and could not be "articulated into a Socialist project."
But the needs which are the foundation and fuel of the psychopathology -- the legitimate desires of the population which constitute true resistance to capitalism -- these can be so articulated.
I believe this is Zizek's focus.
DRM