[lbo-talk] Zizek: Berlusconi is our future

[Wojtek S]

[WS:]  He does not seem to be saying much in this 5 minute clip.  There are
very thoughtful critiques of democracy - or perhaps mob rule - from
Aristotle to de Tocqueville, to Lenin, and to Mencken, which focus on
specific mechanisms that make this system of government dysfunctional.

 However, none of it surfaces in Zizek's video clip. I am disappointed, even
though I fully agree with his conclusions - that populist celebrity figures
a la Berlusconi is the way of the future.

Or putting it in a slightly different way - latter days politics bifurcated
into two different spheres: the epiphenomenal sphere in which it took the
form of professional wrestling, a quintessentially fake drama offering cheap
thrills to the rabble, and the substantive sphere, largely hidden from the
public view, in which it took the form of patronage or selling indulgences
to those in the position to pay for them.

Wojtek

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 8:09 AM, Ira Glazer <ira.glazer at gmail.com> wrote:


>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/jul/06/slavoj-zizek-living-in-the-end-times
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