General Zizek speaks!

I was really hoping to get through this life without having to engage with the middle class, Lacanian-Leninism of Professor Zizek. But a chance encounter with a YouTube clip of the good professor compelled me out of my stupor. Ever the contrarian, Zizek’s mount sermons have become increasingly militaristic in tone. No longer satisfied with playing the clown, he now demands to be taken seriously as a military strategist, barking mad orders at his audience. Whenever the middle class become insecure, they attempt to control the world around them through militaristic discourse. In this video, Zizek commands his 'fandiots' (fan-idiots) to 'retreat to ground zero'. As the arguments below demonstrate, this Leninist manouvre is as shifty as it is silly.

The blog responds to a few genuinely imbecilic recent remarks by Zizek without wasting too much time on the clown. Inspired by Cyrus (the virus) Grissom, and "considering my audience, I'm going to make this very quick and very simple”. I have placed General Zizek’s militaristic commands in the left-hand column, and I have counterposed them with quotes from intelligent radicals in the right hand margin. The juxtaposition speaks for itself.

My criticisms of General Zizek should not be misconstrued as sectarianism, since Zizek and The People’s Clowns did not attend the same clown school. In my view, what runs through all these declarations of fealty to capitalism is weakness of character. Zizek is feeling insecure and god help us when the middle classes feel insecure because they are liable to open the gates of hell for mischievous monsters and angry demons whom capitalism has been hiding from public view.

Stupid quotes by General Zizek	Revolutionary counterpoints
"Donald Trump is a Liberal-Fascist".	The amalgam ‘liberal-fascism’ originates not with Zizek but with the sci-fi writer H. G. Wells. Zizek does not acknowledge Wells, giving the impression to the audience that Zizek himself came up with the phrase. Naughty! As Shah-Shuja makes clear (2008, pp. 21-24), Wells was a liberal at heart but was sceptical about liberalism’s ability to deliver the goods. So, he tried various combinations in order to make liberalism more muscular, more robust: he tried social democracy, then Leninism and Stalinism, before settling on (British) fascism as an armour for his liberal values. The concept of liberal-fascism has been further tarnished in recent years through the intellectual vacuous work of Jonah Goldberg (2008), who utilises it in a very confused and contradictory manner. Nevertheless there is no reason why we cannot utilise it, once it is properly updated and contextualised. By this I mean, Trumpism cannot be reduced to liberal-fascism but it can be viewed as a thoroughly post-modernised movement with four ideologies: neo-liberalism (as defined by David Harvey and not classic 18th century liberalism), neo-fascism (a modified and some would say more dangerous beast than its classic 20th century manifestation), right wing neo-populism (which takes care of Trump's 'family values') and neo-social democracy (which attempts to re-negotiate the Keynesian contract and recreate the equilibrium that once existed between industrial, manufacturing, finance and banking sectors of capitalism). So things are a bit more complex than the good professor suggests. Zizek has an annoying habit of using a lot of words to over-simplify things.
Having just analysed Trump as a ‘liberal-fascist’, General Zizek then commands his fandiots to “Vote for Trump” (Zizek justifies this command by assuming getting Trump into office will help people see though him).	As Chomsky retorted this is a “Terrible point! It was the same point that people like him [Zizek] said about Hitler in the 1930s”. Zizek's command aims to make the people suffer so they begin to see things with clarity! Historically, some idiot anarchists and idiot Leninists have on occasion suggested the same manoeuvre. Sanctimonious shits. On practical grounds alone, there are serious objections to this move. If this tactic was going to work, it would have done so by now. Centuries of parliamentary democracy suggest otherwise. Parliamentarism obfuscates and deludes; it almost never illuminates. As Workers’ Dreadnought put it in 1920, “Parliamentary action restricted workers to a subordinate and passive role as voters and left everything up to the 'leaders' in Parliament: 'Any attempt to use the Parliamentary system encourages among the workers the delusion that leaders can fight their battles for them. Not leadership but MASS ACTION IS ESSENTIAL.'” (quoted in Anti-Parliamentary Communism - The movement for workers councils in Britain, 1917-45, by Mark Shipway, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988).
"Retreat to ground zero". This is a firm favourite Zizekian command which is trundled off from time to time, to make him sound wise.	This simile is based on something Lenin once wrote in 1922,  'On Ascending a High Mountain.' He uses the simile of a climber who has to retreat back to the zero-point, to reach a new mountain peak. Having won the civil war against all odds, the Bolsheviks embraced the “New Economic Policy,” allowing a much wider scope for private property and the market. In explaining this decision, Lenin used the analogy of a mountain climber who must retreat “in order to leap further forward.” Lenin and the Bolsheviks had to resort to a mix of cheap similes and threats because by 1921-22, they had already lost the proletariat. So called 'War Communism' had seen to that. By subordinating workers' councils to the party and trade union bureaucracy the Bolsheviks had already alienated the people. The massacres of rebels at Tambov and Kronstadt were merely the delayed recognition of the victory of counter-revolution over the workers. The NEP was not a new path up the mountain. It was the diversification of the same policies associated with Bolsheviki capitalism. It seems Zizek dusts off this old, shady simile every time he needs to justify another strategic cockup or sell a new book.
“Europe must ally with China”. As Zizek calls for a strategic alliance between two imagined communities, he retorts ‘do you have an alternative option [for opposing US imperialism]?’	Zizek is a European, in the political and cultural sense of the word. He sees Europe as a civilising force and something worth fighting for. Once Europe is properly united, it can then oppose US imperialism. Fredy Perlman (1984) would have said: “According to a common (and manipulable) misconception, imperialism is relatively recent, consists of the colonization of the entire world, and is the last stage of capitalism (Perlman is of course referring to Lenin here]. This diagnosis points to a specific cure: nationalism is offered as the antidote to imperialism: wars of national liberation are said to break up the capitalist empire [in this respect it is noteworthy that Zizek supports national liberation wars in Palestine and Ukraine] … This diagnosis serves a purpose, but it does not describe any event or situation. We come closer to the truth when we stand this conception on its head and say that imperialism was the first stage of capitalism, that the world was subsequently colonized by nation-states, and that nationalism is the dominant, the current, and (hopefully) the last stage of capitalism … Nationalism is the opposite of imperialism only in the realm of definitions. In practice, nationalism was a methodology for conducting the empire of capital … Nationalism was so perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone — everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital” [the portion of capital Zizek, in his wet dream, wants to wields is Europe].

I could go on, but why bother?

General Zizek, you have made a wonderful career for yourself as a middle class clown with amusing jests and incandescent wit.

But what happens when clowns are no longer funny, General?

Is there a knacker's yard they can retreat to where they can Can Can with Lacan?

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Sources:

Zizek was interviewed by the social democrat Owen Jones at How To Academy. The interview is in four parts. See:

Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eb9Ud95LvQ&list=PLzMOG-CobnIcnlLnJnYrkXhytARrZ7d6q&index=1

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsngMSR9_zc&list=PLzMOG-CobnIcnlLnJnYrkXhytARrZ7d6q&index=4

Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LOrZlmZfbg&list=PLzMOG-CobnIcnlLnJnYrkXhytARrZ7d6q&index=4

Part 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW-G4-0rpKI

Goldberg, J. (2008) Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Doubleday Publications.

Lenin, V. I. (1924) Notes of a Publicist On Ascending A High Mountain; The Harm Of Despondency; The Utility Of Trade; Attitude Towards The Mensheviks, Etc. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/feb/x01.htm

Perlman, F. (1984) The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-the-continuing-appeal-of-nationalism

Shah-Shuja, M. (2008) Zones of Proletarian Development. Mute Publications.

Shipway, M. (1988) Anti-Parliamentary Communism - The movement for workers councils in Britain, 1917-45, by Mark Shipway, Palgrave Macmillan.