>IMO, Zizek's calling the rioters "rabble" is over the top.
That''s not exactly what he did. He said "they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the ‘rabble’, those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through ‘irrational’ outbursts of destructive violence – what Hegel called ‘abstract negativity’."
That's a bit different than "calling them rabble."