"By peace it means no help to Ukraine" - why does it read as "help" for an upstanding citizen to give weapons to a victim of the rapist and say "go on, defend yourself" instead of facing the assailant and saving the victim? What is the logic here? That victims should be empowered enough so they can take revenge on the bully, becoming a bully themselves, instead of a third party punishing the bully? Why not directly punish the bully instead of leveling up the victim?
Is it because punishing requires self-sacrifice of pacifist "no-violence" morals and shows care and is against the will of unnamed higher power, and it is not socially acceptable to care or go against the higher power, only hope for eventual appeasing with sacrifices that will make the Gods choose the right side? Projection of "defund the police" at geopolitical scale?
I was a little child when Mark Fisher used to write his blogs, and only discovered his work in 2021. I'm so fortunate though, to live in a time when Philosophers like you are using blogging media like Substack.
I tend to look at elections like this, from a sort of Deluezian/Foucaultian perspective, using the factory as a metaphor. The immediate job of elections is to procure enough votes for a given politician to get into office. The larger job is to manufacture consent in general, to give enough of a semblance of consent and participation that people don't engage in open revolt and ultimately what this factory produces is nothing less than the legitimation of the current neoliberal capitalism system. Like most factories, producing this creates a number of biproducts and pollutants, some of which are toxic and hazardous. Be like Lukacs, learn to see things from the perspective of totality, see these opposed political factions as interlocking parts of a larger machine.
The far right is this toxic and hazardous biproduct. Having lived in the US during the Trump years, having family in "red states," etc this is how I now understand things. There's that old Sartre quote about the anti=semites, but it effectively describes the entire far right political milieu then as much as now:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Who could not see Trump's blatant disregard for any semblance of telling the truth in that description? Donald Trump is full of shit, even by the standards of US politicians, which is a high bar to clear. There is no lie to vulgar, no absurdity too stupid, no conspiracy too poorly founded for him. He will literally say whatever he thinks is expedient at the moment to advance himself politically. To go back to the earlier metaphor, this is the equivalent of a factory dumping toxic waste into the aquifer most people drink out of. He's turned entire parts of the US into the political equivalent of EPA superfund sites. I mostly agree with the "violence" of telling the truth. But it will take many year to clean up this political mess, if it ever occurs. So much of US politics roles out of leftover similar political pollution during the Cold War. Decades upon decades of propaganda broke a lot of people's brains.
Polish PM (pro-democratic) announced this week militant democracy (streitbare Demokratie) in Poland. Putting the law aside in certain cases for better good is my country answer to the current uncertain times.
What do you mean “if” it happened in Russia in this sentence? Russians are *already* torturing and raping Ukranians, including women and children. What’s the point of putting an “if” in this sentence, I really couldn’t quite get that.
“Can one even imagine what our reaction would have been if the same thing happened in Russia!”
I was appalled by Rockhill's hagiographic account of these "Eastern Marxisms" which Rockhill props up as a critical counterpart to the Western Marxism he wants to condemn as obsessed with its status as a beautiful loser. As you pointed out, he totally overlooks the devastation of China's revolutions (he says the people made incredible sacrifices in the contradictions of socialist development) and praises the imperialist activity of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative.
Anyways, really appreciate this piece, as well as the concrete proposal of some sort of third political mechanism which within the ecosystem of political apparatuses embodies the violent truth which is neither minor nor major but rather excluded.
Lenin's "your enemy can be even your best friend, one among your closest circle" is the default female worldview, where every passing male is a suspected potential rapist - and the liberal self-fulfilling prophecy of actually importing and tolerating immigrants that are much more likely to be rapists, bringing reality closer to the female fantasy, like forcing interaction with more and more extreme phobia triggers in an attempt to prove their being harmless and cure a phobia.
The dictatorial regime in Georgia, during the rule of President Saakashvili, who was brought to power by the USA and called his dictatorial regime "a beacon of democracy". They abused people with the same methods as in the prisons in Israel that you have in your article. His dictatorial regime abused its own people, took away businesses, engaged in murders in broad daylight, and its patrons in the person of the USA turned a blind eye to everything. Dear Doctor of Philosophy, you should give this example more often, where even now the USA supports him and his criminal ministers who are in leadership positions in Ukraine.
< Anti-vax, thinks that the average kid gets up to 150 vaccines by the time they graduate high school (lol)
< Thinks that vaccines cause autism (lol)
< Thinks Covid is fake (lol)
< Needs to always be contrarian, no matter what
< Thinks that they have all the answers, while also having no formal education in what they are discussing
< Just an all-around conspircacy theorist
Lmao, how did you even end up here? This is Slavoj Zizek's substack, your target audience are not going to be found anywhere near an intellectual's articles.
Classic conspiracy theorist. Everybody that disagrees is either an NPC, a bot, or a sheep that needs to "wake up". Those that disagree get dehumanized, because clearly nobody could disagree with you for a good reason, apperantly.
You're obnoxious af and don't belong on Zizek's substack.
This sounds like a fairly terrible idea, for the same reason aristocracy, elitism etc. has always been criticised - they would serve themselves, not the people, there would be immense corruption etc.
It might work for Iran, because religious extremists are often seen as a less corrupted, less greedy - this is the reason for support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, they are perceived as taking care of their people economically.
But if we try this for ecological reports, we will just end up them selling special permits for bribes.
Experience (or suffering) has nothing to do with Truth; it is pure subjectivity, which is not even truth-apt (‘our experience cannot be subject to a normative principle if the principle is subject to our experience’). What then is the ground of Truth? When you speak of the truth here it is clear you mean the “event”, the empirical dimension of truth-claims, which are all unknowable insofar as they preclude certainty, objectivity, and are not even univocal in how they are intersubjectively experienced, which in turn implies that they are all false truth-assertions, lies or delusions, wishful thinking or apocalyptic anxiety, but there is a category of truths that is not deficient in this way, proper truths, knowable truths, a priori truths. It is there that every rational discourse begins and ends; all other paths lead to enslavement or murder.
Zizek is the MF Doom of Philosophy
"By peace it means no help to Ukraine" - why does it read as "help" for an upstanding citizen to give weapons to a victim of the rapist and say "go on, defend yourself" instead of facing the assailant and saving the victim? What is the logic here? That victims should be empowered enough so they can take revenge on the bully, becoming a bully themselves, instead of a third party punishing the bully? Why not directly punish the bully instead of leveling up the victim?
Is it because punishing requires self-sacrifice of pacifist "no-violence" morals and shows care and is against the will of unnamed higher power, and it is not socially acceptable to care or go against the higher power, only hope for eventual appeasing with sacrifices that will make the Gods choose the right side? Projection of "defund the police" at geopolitical scale?
Because we don't want WW3 and nuclear annihiliation.
I was a little child when Mark Fisher used to write his blogs, and only discovered his work in 2021. I'm so fortunate though, to live in a time when Philosophers like you are using blogging media like Substack.
I tend to look at elections like this, from a sort of Deluezian/Foucaultian perspective, using the factory as a metaphor. The immediate job of elections is to procure enough votes for a given politician to get into office. The larger job is to manufacture consent in general, to give enough of a semblance of consent and participation that people don't engage in open revolt and ultimately what this factory produces is nothing less than the legitimation of the current neoliberal capitalism system. Like most factories, producing this creates a number of biproducts and pollutants, some of which are toxic and hazardous. Be like Lukacs, learn to see things from the perspective of totality, see these opposed political factions as interlocking parts of a larger machine.
The far right is this toxic and hazardous biproduct. Having lived in the US during the Trump years, having family in "red states," etc this is how I now understand things. There's that old Sartre quote about the anti=semites, but it effectively describes the entire far right political milieu then as much as now:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Who could not see Trump's blatant disregard for any semblance of telling the truth in that description? Donald Trump is full of shit, even by the standards of US politicians, which is a high bar to clear. There is no lie to vulgar, no absurdity too stupid, no conspiracy too poorly founded for him. He will literally say whatever he thinks is expedient at the moment to advance himself politically. To go back to the earlier metaphor, this is the equivalent of a factory dumping toxic waste into the aquifer most people drink out of. He's turned entire parts of the US into the political equivalent of EPA superfund sites. I mostly agree with the "violence" of telling the truth. But it will take many year to clean up this political mess, if it ever occurs. So much of US politics roles out of leftover similar political pollution during the Cold War. Decades upon decades of propaganda broke a lot of people's brains.
Polish PM (pro-democratic) announced this week militant democracy (streitbare Demokratie) in Poland. Putting the law aside in certain cases for better good is my country answer to the current uncertain times.
With utmost respect and admiration of your work…
What do you mean “if” it happened in Russia in this sentence? Russians are *already* torturing and raping Ukranians, including women and children. What’s the point of putting an “if” in this sentence, I really couldn’t quite get that.
“Can one even imagine what our reaction would have been if the same thing happened in Russia!”
You and I must be reading the same texts right now, because I shared an essay this week about Rockhill and Losurdo's new book on Western Marxism - https://samsara.substack.com/p/this-eastern-marxism-sure-looks-a
I was appalled by Rockhill's hagiographic account of these "Eastern Marxisms" which Rockhill props up as a critical counterpart to the Western Marxism he wants to condemn as obsessed with its status as a beautiful loser. As you pointed out, he totally overlooks the devastation of China's revolutions (he says the people made incredible sacrifices in the contradictions of socialist development) and praises the imperialist activity of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative.
Anyways, really appreciate this piece, as well as the concrete proposal of some sort of third political mechanism which within the ecosystem of political apparatuses embodies the violent truth which is neither minor nor major but rather excluded.
“The actual political violence that may follow should be practiced in a Gandhian way.”
Oh 🤦🏻♂️.
🙄
Lenin's "your enemy can be even your best friend, one among your closest circle" is the default female worldview, where every passing male is a suspected potential rapist - and the liberal self-fulfilling prophecy of actually importing and tolerating immigrants that are much more likely to be rapists, bringing reality closer to the female fantasy, like forcing interaction with more and more extreme phobia triggers in an attempt to prove their being harmless and cure a phobia.
The dictatorial regime in Georgia, during the rule of President Saakashvili, who was brought to power by the USA and called his dictatorial regime "a beacon of democracy". They abused people with the same methods as in the prisons in Israel that you have in your article. His dictatorial regime abused its own people, took away businesses, engaged in murders in broad daylight, and its patrons in the person of the USA turned a blind eye to everything. Dear Doctor of Philosophy, you should give this example more often, where even now the USA supports him and his criminal ministers who are in leadership positions in Ukraine.
Get wise to the Statism Deception in my podcast here:
https://soberchristiangentlemanpodcast.substack.com/p/s1-statism-deception-1-of-3-rebroadcast
< Anti-vax, thinks that the average kid gets up to 150 vaccines by the time they graduate high school (lol)
< Thinks that vaccines cause autism (lol)
< Thinks Covid is fake (lol)
< Needs to always be contrarian, no matter what
< Thinks that they have all the answers, while also having no formal education in what they are discussing
< Just an all-around conspircacy theorist
Lmao, how did you even end up here? This is Slavoj Zizek's substack, your target audience are not going to be found anywhere near an intellectual's articles.
Clearly, you are an NPC. Best of luck to you.
Classic conspiracy theorist. Everybody that disagrees is either an NPC, a bot, or a sheep that needs to "wake up". Those that disagree get dehumanized, because clearly nobody could disagree with you for a good reason, apperantly.
You're obnoxious af and don't belong on Zizek's substack.
The conclusion of this essay scans to me as fantasy. I predict that none of the violence Z imagines here will happen.
This sounds like a fairly terrible idea, for the same reason aristocracy, elitism etc. has always been criticised - they would serve themselves, not the people, there would be immense corruption etc.
It might work for Iran, because religious extremists are often seen as a less corrupted, less greedy - this is the reason for support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, they are perceived as taking care of their people economically.
But if we try this for ecological reports, we will just end up them selling special permits for bribes.
Experience (or suffering) has nothing to do with Truth; it is pure subjectivity, which is not even truth-apt (‘our experience cannot be subject to a normative principle if the principle is subject to our experience’). What then is the ground of Truth? When you speak of the truth here it is clear you mean the “event”, the empirical dimension of truth-claims, which are all unknowable insofar as they preclude certainty, objectivity, and are not even univocal in how they are intersubjectively experienced, which in turn implies that they are all false truth-assertions, lies or delusions, wishful thinking or apocalyptic anxiety, but there is a category of truths that is not deficient in this way, proper truths, knowable truths, a priori truths. It is there that every rational discourse begins and ends; all other paths lead to enslavement or murder.