#161

aerdil posted:



Come to Left Forum and meet Father Christmas

#162

aerdil posted:


lmao.

#163
zizek sure makes neoliberalism look edgy.
#164
[account deactivated]
#165

http://ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/tolkien__the_lord_of_the_rings_1__en.htm

‘So he journeyed by night up into the highlands, and he found a little cave out of which the dark stream ran; and he wormed his way like a maggot into the heart of the hills, and vanished out of all knowledge. The Ring went into the shadows with him, and even the maker, when his power had begun to grow again, could learn nothing of it.’

#166

roseweird posted:

idk i think he mostly just makes it look unhealthy and cocaine-addled

i never really watched zizek speak before and wasn't prepared for all the twitchy shoulder hunching and tense-limbed flailing



Look, i know he's a disheveled looking, somewhat antisemetic, fat, spastic, coke addict cryptofascist but he really has some *belches wetly and closes mouth for a second as he swallows the reflux* pretty insightful things to say.

#167
it's a shame there are no other charismatic people who say any truly left things and get the same level of mainstream media time and attention and mass reach.
#168
i want to have an actual discussion about zizek but also not really. i don't think i can articulate my thoughts well enough about it to last in a rhizzone battle of wits. instead maybe i'll just set up an automatic +1 votebot for getfiscal's posts
#169

drwhat posted:

i want to have an actual discussion about zizek but also not really. i don't think i can articulate my thoughts well enough about it to last in a rhizzone battle of wits.

Why don't you just ask a question of the people you disagree with

#170
Heres my Zizek opinion, maybe it will get you moving a bit too. Zizek's audience goes straight to "you don't understand what Zizek is saying" when Zizek's racist language is questioned. They then summarize Zizeks argument that "full" integration - hi Syrians, you are now thoroughly, culturally, Euro-Amerikkan - would be a cultural imposition on the refugees compared to giving them their own, segregated space to have community. But the cultural imposition already happened when USA and friends bombed the refugees' countries all to bits.

The alternative to "cultural imposition" isnt what Zizek is proposing (they're proposing to get various militaries involve to, finally, come up with a solution for the refugee problem), it's a complete end to the Western war on the middle east followed by massive reparations.
#171
Actually I disagree with Zizek's refugee comments, but that was a small corner of the flyer and the quote there doesn't give a good sense of it, which is why I explained the other quotes (which I think do make sense and he has clarified them endless times).

His points (as I understand them):

1. Refugees exist in a chain of causes, and the liberal technocratic cosmopolitan view is that being generous and sympathetic involves accepting (some!) of them, when in reality it is the liberals who are creating the conditions of exodus. Angela Merkel is praised for her compassion when she is a leading figure in brutal neoliberal capitalism. When responding to this, the point is to reject the blackmail by saying that if you really support refugees you should stop imposing this brutal logic that leads to it.

2. Suggesting that people are interchangeable statistics without real independent values and cultures condescends to them. Average people can see it is plainly not true, they see divisions in their communities where new neighbourhoods are springing up with different cultures. Treating people as liberals-waiting-to-bloom is the same logic that had the USA invading Iraq and assuming sweeping away the Saddam Hussein government could produce a system largely identical to the USA . Living together in some coherent polity would require mutual challenging of values in a radical way, which asks too much of both sides when it involves jarring mixing on a large scale.

I think he frames part of the question correctly but the incorrect part is that the left should be the one promoting that radical struggle between people with different values, partially (as Sam Kriss said) because the imbalance is probably often on the side of the imperialist core. Mass immigration does provide radical challenges to existing institutions and cultures, but leftism is not an ideology of social peace. The idea that it feeds into the far-right and shows liberals to be bankrupt is, as horrible losers say, "a feature not a bug".
#172
I wish there were some bullet points on what zizek purposes we do on various things primarily migrants since they are always buried in his waffle.

I'm not too happy at the pro 'revolution' views of some Syrian migrants and most the western grassroots solidarity response but I guess it's a fair exchange since Europe is exporting its reactionary dregs to the middle East we should take some of theirs

I guess migratory mobile populations are a fundamental thing we'll be dealing with and we should get up to speed on how to effectively organise them?
#173

drwhat posted:

it's a shame there are no other charismatic people who say any truly left things and get the same level of mainstream media time and attention and mass reach.

itt people explain why they need to give money to no platform.

#174

HenryKrinkle posted:

on a side note some people on twitter really think dispo is an op of sorts and the roof outing was part of a "lone gunman" frame-up to hide the larger conspiracy of nazis and the kickstarter is part of some CIA thing too.

w/e.



Holy hoisted by her own petard

#175
*Me, crying in the rain holding a gun on a prone henrykrinkle* HANK! I knew you was five-oh!

Edited by le_nelson_mandela_face ()

#176
[account deactivated]
#177

tpaine posted: