Slavoj Zizek: Defend the Enlightenment!

[@trentmccormick6171]

"No, I don't like Seattle" - Slavoj Zizek, 2021

[@oceanbearmountain]

portland on the other hand he's said is one of his favourite cities - what a hipster !

[@minamur]

i mean, is he wrong?

[@kmcq692]

Weather is gonna push us to do the decent things 20:00 We’ve clearly shown the dystopias lying in wait if we don’t. 160 years of sci-fi…?

[@SensoriaMaRia]

What about Berkeley, CA?

[@flynnjaman]

“Fuck Seattle!” -Nic Cage “PIG”

[@MultiJevens]

I get the impression from the comments that this video might be peoples first encounter with Zizek.

[@minamur]

wow

[@johnd2058]

This is a strong dose of him, too. I'm lucky to have accidentally titrated up.

[@Antifadiva]

I just wish I could understand what hes saying

[@dawnkeyy]

​@@johnd2058hahahahahhaha accidentally titrating up to žižek is a thought that tickled my brain in such a right way

[@MM-du7je]

i love how foreigners can speak more honestly "a movie about a gey boi I think"

[@daddydallas4789]

@Working Prole inc. We from the Eastern block rock, we are no bullshitters, haha.

[@daddydallas4789]

@Working Prole inc. Damn right xD

[@MM-du7je]

@Nort chill out smh

[@nochepatada]

"becomes friends with a gay boy or an Italian man"?!?!?😂🤣😂

[@bdee5301]

@Nort You're right though!

[@Crashoverall]

Zizek, please let me buy you a microphone. Seriously, your shit is a gift and we need to be able to listen clearly.

[@cesandman727]

I love the point that he makes about climate refugees. Changing how we view and treat refugees now is going to be crucial for a future where millions are displaced from their homes due to inhospitable climates.

[@baizhanghuaihai2298]

Eventually we will all be climate refugees, no matter where we are, and there is no other planet to go to. Mars colonies and space travel are just pipe dreams, regardless of whether Jeff Bezos rides a dick-shaped silo to the edge of space.

[@bluntedvegas702]

Fake news...no such thing as climate change...lets worry about America...fuck the rest

[@alexanderthomas9687]

@@bluntedvegas702 What is the rock you've been living under? America itself is seeing the effects of climate change.

[@Javier-il1xi]

@@bluntedvegas702 stop smoking crack

[@Kintabl]

LOL! There is no such thing. It's all BS.

[@trevorthompson9887]

Protect Žižek at all costs

[@willknowsright9615]

hell ya dude

[@TheNoblot]

beware mindless people hate philosophy and anyone that thinks

[@willknowsright9615]

@@TheNoblot Uh ok

[@fikriyazc4305]

No doubt. Court jesters are valuable for the establishment.

[@danielsykes7558]

"I haven't watched the movie, but ..." - Slavoj Žižek

[@joshuamarx8209]

One of the best there is, period.

[@Racination]

Wrong. Read some more books or something.

[@ImperiousIndustries]

@@Racination Wrong. Read even more books.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

@@Racination Zizek's latest books are awesome.

[@injujuan8993]

What a beautiful mind! This kind of conversation is much much needed

[@MyDenis0]

People think that contemporary times are just a default and not a historic process that came thru with hard wars. Really is sad this dissolution of history.

[@donov25]

Don't pretend that's modern. That's the human experience. Simplifying but in preindustrial times the idea that the world moved forward was unheard of. The world was the way it was.

[@MyDenis0]

@@donov25 no there was a cultural perception of themselfs that resulted in shovinism and nationalism. There was some "goal " be it Christian religious or rational illuministic very strong selfawareness. They took pride in theyere history "We are the best, this is the best way to be," and this was the normal human experience they took it for granted this was theyre normality. People 160years ago were radicaly different from people today in perception of realty and it's understanding. They weren't "'contemporary" people living in the past. Maybe a few but not all. this is a fallacy resulting from the blindness of taking yourself for granted just like people in the past did

[@MyDenis0]

@@donov25 It doenst really matter. Anyway I am just saying contemporary times are not just a given. But a result of many precise historic processes. That you can say begun with Thomas Aquinas if not earlier.

[@MyDenis0]

@@donov25 in the preindustrial times people were " waiting" for the day of judgement in real fear with no cinism. And in the process maintained the ritual religious practices that would guarantee for the future generations and theyere salvation. People were seen as a tool as an in-between phase of heaven and earth. Not as an end like today. They had a mission a cultural social mission.

[@donov25]

@@MyDenis0 Nationalism arose post enlightenment. I never implied they were contemporary. That was one of my biggest problems with GOT actually lol. They seemed to be thinking like modern people with modern sensibilities and less like people that would have existed in that milieu.

[@huugosorsselsson4122]

That analysis of Nomadland was really interesting and incisive. Whatever you think about Zizek, this is why we need him.

[@DeadEndFrog]

this

[@alexanderleuchte5132]

"Humanitarianism" as almsgiving is just one of the aspects how Identity Politics somehow remind me of growing up under Catholicism

[@6milphil975]

That's an astute observation. The evangelism of ID politics is one for me...

[@l.w.paradis2108]

You're still being too kind.

[@nightoftheworld]

17:58 “if you allow me a brief conclusion…”

[@belkyhernandez8281]

Enlightenment is about freedom of the mind which is the foundation of every other freedom.

[@santerisatama5409]

Historically Englightenment followed the Great Witch Hunt, which was persecution of spiritual experience as such. The materialist-reductionist dogma of enlightement/modernism continues in the form of normative materialist-individualist psychiatry, which upholds class society structures. Rationalism of modernism denies genuine humanity and alienates us into objects of quantitative administration. Enlightenment materialism has been and is totalitarian colonialist project of biological and cultural genocide against indigenous spirituality and sovereignity.

[@farrider3339]

Are you free when you have to tell yourself that you are free ? What is this mind you're talking about ? shit °

[@tomatotomato9813]

@@santerisatama5409 It seems to me that you confuse super- with substructures here.

[@santerisatama5409]

@@tomatotomato9813 The metanarrative of modernism is pretty much materialistic reductionism. What do you mean by super- and substructures?

[@TheRaveJunkie]

@@santerisatama5409 Basic marxist terminology to describe the structures which uphold "class society structures"

[@gazhollister1602]

Always good to see Slavoj!

[@joelleonard7766]

Identity Politics in South Africa is far, far more complex than Zizek's example here, but his analysis (and his warnings) of problems arising with immigrants has already happened in SA. On one side of the spectrum, identity politics helped to shape our Democracy and was crucial to toppling the apartheid regime, by unifying masses to fight back. On the other hand, post democracy, Identity Politics has been perverted by rogue groups to excuse xenophobia and outright violence against foreigners. Thanks to apartheid, South Africa is caught in a vice grip with identity politics.

[@Keddeadkedemption]

It's really sad cuz south Africa is a beautiful country. It really hurts that our south African brothers kill us Nigerians for no reason

[@geraudonly6229]

South African xenophobia is just the first step in the creation of a true post Apartheid South African Nationalism. The first step in the creation of a genuine national consciousness is defining who is not part of the nation.

[@3SLBK]

Ukrainan became a conventional literary language in the early 19th century, not 20th. Upd. But indeed, in the 1920s there was some sort of cultural renaissance, partly thanks to soviet policy of promoting the Ukrainian culture. Though later it would be called 'The Executed Renaissance' because of mass stalinist repressions against the cultural elite a decade later.

[@abhishekparija400]

Oh myyy Gotttt, Zizekkk...♥️

[@mirlindthedon]

I love him

[@julieherz8909]

What is so fascinating about Slavoj is that he holds to paradoxical views and ideologies at the same time-- structuralism in the form of enlightenment thinkers like Hegel and also some elements of postmodern thought with heavy Lacanian influence, some elements of Foucalt and possibly Judith Butler

[@TheSpecialJ11]

Life itself can be paradoxical, so it makes sense to me. I think the key element is holding ideas not marrying them. This allows cognitive dissonance to be a tool for the mind to use in exploring reality rather than a cage.

[@fikriyazc4305]

No doubt. Zijek talks as a Court Jester. He knows what he did.

[@eziekial101]

i can't take this video seriously with this thumbnail

[@shanihandel9621]

Nice shout out to Powell's!

[@94josema]

Who are you refering to?

[@muzikalproztitute]

He’s so left ,he’s right

[@superspeederbooster]

horseshoe

[@stud6414]

Like the Jacobins and Spector Magazine

[@davidlamb7524]

Interestingly his take on authentic refugees was identical to David Cameron's !

[@fikriyazc4305]

Pointing left hitting right.

[@shad.baksh1]

This is nice topic. It is not enough to be sane and responsible human.

[@proskub5039]

"if you allow me a brief conclusion"

[@kharyrobertson3579]

We should certainly inform ourselves with ideas from the Renaissance, but lets leave old ideas in the past where they are most relevant, while building better and new ideas with the new more pertinent information.

[@gregmattson2238]

considering that those 'ideas from the Renaissance' (the scientific method, the age of reason, critical debate and dialectic) are keeping you alive right now and making you able to even express your opinion in this forum, I'd say that's a pretty good basis for us going forward don't you think? Perhaps the only realistic basis?

[@bsands116]

@@gregmattson2238 European renaissance was a few centuries before its enlightenment and they still have not achieved the age of reason, maybe it is time to step out of the dark ages and stop living of other peoples miseries

[@gregmattson2238]

@@bsands116 well, technically that's true, but the seeds of the enlightenment were sown well before it actually happened. francis bacon, kepler, newton and gallileo all had a major part in developing the scientific method, and spinoza and locke had a large part in development of modern democracy. and gutenberg had laid the foundations for the enlightenment a hundred or so years earlier with the printing press. In any case, ALL the ideas that cause our woes today are anti-enlightenment. Post modernism, fundamentalism, communism, fascism, racism, consumerism - are all anti-reason. They all rely on groupthink and wishful thinking to some degree. All of them are to an extent religious. What we need now is PRECISELY a huge dollop of reason to overcome all the brain dead non-thought of today.

[@parmiggianoreggie-ano1832]

Your ideas and your view of the world are built on the paradigm of what other have thought before. If Lacan insists today on the consequences of the Cartestian cogito there’s a reason! Heck! Nietzsche would even say that we are still grounded on Plato today, and he’s right about that. The rationalization of the world is something that started 2500 years ago and still influences us today! The times have changed, but we cannot and shouldn’t forget our past. “We live our present in the past” and we cannot change how we approach our today’s problems without changing those of yesterday. Moving forward is a game of reinterpreting the facts of the past and realizing that there’s still another way things could go!

[@lauraschreiner2361]

which further book covers the topic to not catch up with the former west or the critique on universal (i.e. western) culture? any recommendations? thank you.

[@nhajas1]

Multinational cooperation of vanguard parties ftw. Even in the form of objective social democracy such as The Progressives International. Fine balancing act to do if we as leftist want to win elections, must be radical enough but not too radical for a 'better dead than red' situation.

[@Special_Agent_NSB]

Or I suppose you could simply lie and present yourself as a moderate and then take a maximalist approach to governing until you are inevitably voted out. How much progress could you force if you didn’t care about being re-elected?

[@mauricioquintero2420]

Based

[@SpiritRed]

Zizek nails it.

[@Gromp]

This was refreshing I really needed to understand how i got fooled by Nomadland. They had me at 'a film about poor Americans' that ideology is always tasty when you are from the satellite colonies.

[@oceanbearmountain]

i'm not sure if i fully agree with slavoj; not that i disagree per se, but to me the perverse thing is how it appeals to a certain centre-left liberal sympathetic gaze, similar to another darling of the award ceremonies, Parasite. they neutralize the antagonisms of class antagonism by turning it into a spectacle directed towards a self-back patting liberal spectator. these films aren't socialist, they're solidly liberal, in the american sense

[@romywebster7728]

@@oceanbearmountain I really think you’re on to something with this line of thinking.

[@Gromp]

​@@oceanbearmountain Thats his point though is it not? its the glorification of the poor by the centre-left who have never been there. That's why i liked Parasite, though most of Bong Joon Hos other films are more raw. Here the sub-proles are scheming backstabbers with fidelity only to them selves and to a certain degree those directly close, i mean in Parasite the family doesn't even exist, they are more of a team, the paternal authority is castrated, which allows for a more cooperative spirit. Then there is a nice (unconscious?) homage to the Frankfurt school about how the west don't like using their nose. This Benjaminite point becomes the very tool of class concussions identification in the film, ultimately it is also what ends the class collaboration/exploitation. These points however were undoubtedly lost on the liberal audience, they probably just found it ethnically soothing or something to watch a subtitled film. I hate that they "loved" it so much for the wrong reasons, introducing it the way they introduce kimchi to its audience. It makes me think of Sabos comment to Nabo in the mighty boosh "a little day trip around the crunch, we can all go as tourists, oooh thats a lovely bit of crunch!" The final scene in my opinion is to be read as a "it will never happen" kind of thing.

[@ruben7801]

I haven’t seen Nomadland but I’ve seen Parasite and it seems like the opposite

[@mintusaren895]

I AM THE GREATEST. THE SENTENCE.

[@wrnr_mn]

does anyone have some references on what Zizek is saying at 8:20 ??

[@eravulgaris211]

These commentators can't keep up.

[@alexgorki]

"Solidarnost was a"

[@emanuelcain9024]

"We must get ready for a lots of movement of the population, Emergency measures , i think here... communism... Some form of communism will be necessary, capitalism cannot confront this problems...." S. Zizek .

[@gabagoul67]

If the ones who hold the power to help these people wanted to help them, they easily could, it's just that don't want to. in these times the power is achieved by those who seek it, but those who seek power are less likely to want to actually do something useful with it

[@stud6414]

Russia is Huge!

[@saooran7364]

In Brazil they have specific laws against homophobia. Curiously, gay people are still murdered as if there is none. Also I'm a little surprised to see that Zizek uses his shelves for books.

[@Sablus]

I mean they just ruled in 2019 via their Supreme Court that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a crime akin to racism, so it's not like there isn't a malignant culture left. However the malignant culture must now suffer the existence of actual laws that may be enforced by the state (and will require more support by the populace to do so). A similar mindset could be given to the removal of Jim Crow laws and desegregation in the United States, i.e. black people were still lynched, harrased, abused, yet the start of a legal framework of defense was created (i.e. now victory versus a legal victory but still a cultural stalemate). The goal of leftism in liberation of oppressed groups and destruction of oppressions should always be a twofold path, dismantling legal systems that allow oppression and replaced by those that defend groups from oppressions, and the destruction of oppressive culture (which is why the current war against critical race theory exists in the U.S. as a means of pushback against a attack on formerly dominant white racial dominance and superiority within the annals of U.S. history).

[@saooran7364]

@@Sablus how are we regarding that second part?

[@steadmanuhlich6734]

NOTE! This speaker has a thick accent. I suggest if you have trouble understanding him, because of his accent, simply turn on the CAPTIONS on KZbin (look for the gear icon on the video on KZbin) and it will generate English captions that you can read as you listen. Hope that helps more listen/watch to hear what he has to say. Hope that helps.

[@Luksoropoulos]

Classical Socialists also often denounce the Enlightenment as bourgeois, though.

[@Mart-Bro]

It's one thing to critcise the negatives of the Enlightenment as it's first growing and spreading, because you want to go beyond it. (cf. How Marx celebrated but critcised Capitalism in the Communist Manifesto) It's a very different thing to attack the positives of it once it's established and claim it's positives are more negatives. And to try to dismantle the whole project and drag us back to Pre-Enlightenment times from a mindset of naïve puritanical utopianism

[@AlexandreSchwarz]

It's bourgeois. Doesn't mean the bourgeois revolutions didn't push us to a better place

[@johnc.wrigley6147]

Kant -> Hegel -> Marx

[@somniatic]

The commentary he made before mentioning Luca had me realize that...the ending sucked. Luca and basically his race are not persecuted because *love wins*, even though these folks had years, and years, and years, AND YEARS of hatred towards this race. It magically disappeared in the blink of an eye. And***spoiler***** He's leaving to a place that will be inhabited by more folks who might not be as quick to accept him as the town did. I will say though that, in a way, the movie tries to show a form of enlightenment-- Luca is amazed by the answers to questions greater than what he knows and becomes hungry to learn more, to get that education. And the big gruff father is the one who stands up for the boys... I don't know. The movie tries and sadly you have folks who are more upset Luca isn't LGBTQ+ instead of the bigger picture and statement the movie tries to give. Edit: i am interested in going back to listen to this gentleman. I've seen his name but never listened and he has some wonderful points and knowledge

[@paulsevenitz616]

Nice analyse of poland

[@Ninof33]

Right the real problem to see - is what creates immigration and poverty. I own a home care business (not too much longer); witnessing what poor immigrants have to do to survive and support their families is the most inhumane thing to see. And recently had a horrible experience in North Miami Beach, watching $500,000 cars flying by homeless, disabled, and older adults like it was a normal thing. When will human beings wake up and see what is going on with them and how their ideas and actions affect each other?

[@ardien.535]

his critique of nomadland is dead on

[@donov25]

i love what he has to say but I'm not quite sure it has much to do with the enlightenment. Unless I missed exactly what the connection was

[@dumrat]

1. Zizek always takes the long way home 2. When he's talking about communism (That capitalism isn't capable of solving our problems), he's talking about enlightenment values.

[@soulander13]

Syriza in total was more of a disaster than a miracle.

[@Dayglodaydreams]

The word he is saying is "Ukraine".

[@ricardopontes7177]

Ukrayn

[@donq2957]

Michael Jordan with that tongue. Same iw too.

[@RolandoCocom]

Which movie did Zizek mention? Thanks

[@juancamilogutman164]

Nomadland

[@ruben7801]

Luca

[@williamshears9953]

More like defund the enlightenment amirite

[@Valaskjold]

Lol yeah, pretty obvious he hasn't seen Luca 🤣

[@rule-of-three1483]

So, is that how you are supposed to pronounce Ukraine? Or is that just the way he does it?

[@rule-of-three1483]

@@nuclearglue4286 Right, but is it universal across all Slavic languages, or just his own? Either way, I'm borrowing it.

[@johnperniciaro785]

@@nuclearglue4286 u (at) krai (edge) all the Slavs recognize the roots here

[@mgkos]

@@johnperniciaro785 spot on “at the edge”. The Ukraine (the edge semantically correctly translated) is a Frankenstein of lands that were part of other countries till WWII. Poland, Hungary, Moldavia, Romania & Russia. The actual Ukraine historically, was a very small patch of land area. People shld look up videos on historical borders of the Ukraine this last 500 yrs. (Both my grandmothers are from MaloRussia what’s now called Eastern Ukraine. White Russian Émigrés fled in 1917, all fluent in Russian still)

[@philpottkentucky4802]

@Valentín Ukraine means "The Frontier". Calling it "the Ukraine" is saying "The the Frontier"

[@jakecarlo9950]

@4:00 He’s right. The ‘noble savages’ of the precariat can do without libs ‘celebrating’ us, thank you very much. Oppression has lasting consequences. (Y’know, bad ones.) Otherwise, why fight it? Suffering isn’t ‘noble.’ A little pain never hurts, but suffering is like a disease, and we affected are also infected and become vectors of suffering for others. Plastering over suffering - and the deep requirement to slay or at least slag your oppressors - by ‘celebrating diversity’ is just sneaky and gross. But it’s also been goddamn effective in deracinating the Left.

[@tylerhackner9731]

✊🏼✊🏼

[@antoinepetrov]

Please write Žižek's name properly

[@thomassimmons1950]

Zizi wants his cake and eat it too.

[@KGGalb]

Zizek...what do you think about the question about enlightenment?...Well *sniff* i saw this movie, and IMMIGRANTS!

[@makslargu5799]

I’m so confused as to why he thinks moralistic children’s movies are a new thing. Surely even Snow White (1939) could be read as an allegory for the other? She escapes an abusive home situation and finds acceptance among forest creatures and dwarves. An American Tail, The Goonies, Monsters inc. and even Shrek come to mind as allegories for the other. There’s just so many, could you not read watership down as a story about refugees?

[@bryanherrera7928]

Idk if this adds anything to your comment, but Snow White as we know it is heavily edited with moralistic values compared to the original Grimm tales. I was reading about when the brothers Grimm first published the collection of german folklore and the german people at the time heavily criticized the stories for being morally ambiguous/corrupt. The Grimm brothers responded to the criticism by saying the original culture of oral tradition produced stories that were morally ambiguous and all that they intended to do was publish something that was historically accurate. They later went on to heavily change the writings to please the moral “requirements” of the time and become commercially successful. But even today when you compare the last Grimm publishing to the first, the first is much more interesting to read. And although today movies and stories are tailored to specifically highlight some kind of moral lesson, is our society any better because of it? Idk if my comment is relevant lol, I just wanted to share.

[@petey6467]

He mentions it because of its relevance and recency. The movie is a "demi-intentional" one step forward into acceptance because the director himself is glad that people find the movie as something that the other can find comfort in, may they be LGBT+ or immigrants.

[@makslargu5799]

@@petey6467 he said he’s worried about moralistic movies now, why? Why is Luca more egregious than other past examples of Disney’s work? Arguably movies have far less influence on people now than when it was the only form of screen based entertainment available. Also what confuses me is, the main plot device in Luca is hardly original, I would say that there are other examples within Disney that are better. In terms of allegories for LGBT stories mulan and Aladdin both deal with concealment and disguise and Aladdin even deals with self expression as a form of recognised identity ( because of his courage etc.🤮 the sultan says that this is what is intrinsic to his identity as a prince, not his stock). I mean I understand it’s reductive but movies that have explicit political messages and aren’t catered to children are also highly reductive. Hidden figures, Green book, the Help, Forrest Gump. All media is propaganda and to treat it all with scrutiny makes more sense to me than to critique a movie you haven’t seen, that is an allegory, for not going explicitly into the conditions that caused the refugee crisis. I mean, even real world examples don’t make westerners care any more - the US and UK in particular cant stop patting themselves on the back for ‘winning’ WWII and liberating death camps, completely ignoring that fewer people would have died if they hadn’t engaged in and purported ideas of eugenics for 100 odd years beforehand, or antisemitism/ antiRoma rhetoric for 400+ years.

[@makslargu5799]

@@bryanherrera7928 thank you, it’s definitely interesting and I know that Grimm tales tend to be much darker, but then so were a lot of fairy tales of the time. The Hans Christian Andersen little mermaid when she’s human form feels like she’s walking on glass shards! I guess I’m just trying to understand why that kind of moralistic story telling is less relevant in his mind than the movies being released now. At least there’s quiet parts they aren’t supposed to say out loud anymore, moralistic stories back in the day had undertones of “white is heroic” “slaves are happy” “villains are camp” “Natives were savages until Pocahontas’ love for some blonde dude civilised them, so both sides were wrong”.

[@petey6467]

@@makslargu5799 I recognize your points and I agree. However, as I’ve said with my earlier comment, he mentions it because it’s relevant and new. It was released just more than a month ago and there are many active talks about it being an allegory for the other. Bringing up another movie would’ve been fine too. It’s just that this particular movie was the one he chose.

[@leezhang3202]

3:00

[@paykaygeez]

Yes, liberal humanitarians are problematic. The problem with the slightly conservative guy who says immigrants are too annoying they live in a shitty place so let's stop what we do so they can have a normal life there is that he does not exist. you should talk about Macron vs Le Pen, not this imaginary conservative guy you want to tolerate. It seems to me like this is Zizek himself who wants to think in this way and he has repeated similar sentiments here and there. Zizek never addresses the ethnocentric aspects of the enlightenment that was put to him to respond to.

[@asms_music417]

The more I listen to Zizek, the more I realize he doesn't describe a single leftist in my circle. Smart man but I think he too often trades in strawmen that think in binaries. I encourage him to assault a reactionary backlash with at least as much fervor as he does "wokeness" which i now take to mean "young angry college kids"

[@squfucs]

More likely it is because you and your circle are liberals masquerading as leftists.

[@asms_music417]

@@squfucs i was saying that the people i know don't conform to his strawman of the liberal. derp. Thanks for the useless presumptive comment.

[@asms_music417]

@@squfucs your comprehension appears to be on the low side.

[@asms_music417]

@Vebunkd lol i agreed with you until you laid down that total goofiness... facepalm

[@ruben7801]

@Vebunkd Cringe

[@Jay121]

Take a drink everytime Slavoj touches his nose.

[@rhodesphotoco]

Even if it's water, you'd die.

[@SimGunther]

Village/ownership economy is the best and most logical middle ground that no one wants to consider because it would break the "LOL epic battle" between capitalists and commies (Slovoj, you're awesome) in which professional victims on both sides justify their existence and don't actually solve problems because ultimately, it's the corrupt rule makers that decide how little or how much suffering the people get.

[@bigger_mibber6029]

What is this so called "village/ownership economy"?

[@MistaZULE]

@@bigger_mibber6029 I'm not him so I'm only guessing that it's from Anarchist philosophy. If you have small villages interconnected by labour and the sharing of resources/workload we have people who are able to own their own proerty (house) but also are reliant on the community because they cannot do everything for themselves. So you have created a system with no real ruler (probably ran by a democratically elected council), but everybody knows each other and works for each other to create a functioning village. It's not exactly Communist since there is still the concept of private property (my little plot of land), but everybody works for each other and the values of the society are aimed at mutual benefits for everybody, not the rich few. I could be totally off base here. This is what i've understood from reading some of Kryopotkin.

[@Zhicano]

@@MistaZULE that’s sounds fine and dandy but there’s more people. Bigger cities and not enough land to be distributed that way. Hierarchy is a given in a metropolitan environment. Too many variables at play for horizontal rule all across the board and production/labor is tied to factories, service industries you know what I mean not land.

[@professorspf]

@@Zhicano Horizontal rule was also practiced in industrial/metropolitan centers, i.e. Barcelona 1936

[@Zhicano]

@@professorspf Which worked wonders didn’t it. I like the idea I honestly I just want to see an example of it working in the modern day and hav it running successfully instead of it running like revolutionary Catalonia because it was not as pretty as we romanticized it to be.

[@unregierbar7694]

The only leftist I can respect.

[@EdGregor]

don't understand why Slovoj uses Luca to describe 'woke' culture in media, the director expressly rejects that it is a gay love story in any way. Its the woke projecting identity politics onto art that should be his target

[@EdGregor]

@Isaac Cardona I'll just take him at his word that there was no intention of gay romance or sexual attraction..."“I was really keen to talk about friendship before girlfriends and boyfriends come in to complicate things. Interestingly, even narratively, once Giulia comes into the picture and we looked at the structure of it, sometimes the story would pull you toward some puppy love romance, and to be completely honest, I wanted to talk about friendships. So that was never our plan and this was about their friendship in that pre-puberty world.“ “They’re both lonely, there’s a loneliness at the heart of it that I think is filling a void in all these kids because they feel a little bit odd and lonely. Giulia is the same thing, we wanted to make sure there’s a little loneliness so there’s the space that gets filled with an important friendship. That’s a lot of the things we talked about that felt really important to talk about in a way that, especially today, how hard it sometimes is to have the meaningful strong friendships. How do differences challenge us?“

[@ashleybennett4418]

she's a bit of a looker

[@gerardmulder7656]

He got based talking to JBP. Nice work!

[@Ikbeneengeit]

I think he should start by defining identity politics, because I think he's arguing against a straw man here

[@720zaka]

best comment

[@l.w.paradis2108]

If only . . .

[@foughtthelaw1]

Zizek is right about a lot of things, but he's wrong, and short-sighted to dismiss humanitarian efforts toward immigrants. As Lacan would tell him, the very idea of European civilization and the grumpy anti-immigrant attitudes it yields is structured on a false premise of cultural wholeness. What difference does it make if immigrants with different cultural values come to Europe and then there is cultural conflict about it? This is not something that negates any of the principles of Marxism. Zizek is falling for something he's usually smart enough to see through: the idea of some sort of organic cultural origin. He's also fantasizing this binary between the woke humanitarian and the grumpy European who wants to fix colonialism. That's not a binary that really exists, at all. I can see that he doesn't want to establish some sort of fake, woke "horizontal" hierarchy in which the immigrant is reduced to an identity under capitalism. That makes sense. but the answer isn't to return to some sort of "natural" international order. That never existed. The answer is to embrace the immigrant in the fashion I once heard a Catholic priest speak of Mexican immigrants crossing at the southern US border: as "the very face of god." Embracing the immigrant not as another identity, but the very identity that most fully manifests the contradictions of society itself.

[@parmiggianoreggie-ano1832]

Where did zizek claimed that we shouldn’t be open to immigrants? What he reproaches in the humanitarian approach is its “dressing” of the figure of the immogrant. There’s a ton of ideological images around those poor people: the Holliwoodian “poor good people” while, of course, there is actual horror in poverty (and God only knows what I’d do in their situations), the “they’re the new proletarians that will start the revolution” and so on and so on. The fact is that we should not welcome them because they’re good people or something. We should not let them be in their misery because that’s what we must do! “Seeing Christ in them” doesn’t mean expecting a reward (their good behavior in being a revolutionary force or something) from them but the radicality of a pure gift... and that is something in which the humanitarian approach usually fails. The whole concept of integration then falls into the false “whole” of society, and Zizek knows that well. The humanitarian approach that sees the refugees as a way to fill that whole just does evil to them... They just become the object by which our fantasy is sustained: this means that they become stuck in their conditions without any means of change... And that’s not good. What I understood of Zizek’s point is that we should not tell fantasies that avoid the radical problems in order to accept them.

[@robertkinoy7392]

I think Zizek was discussing a hypothetical conversation with a conservative where you would appeal to the anti-immigration logic of dismantling colonialism. It seems to me he is positing that the immigrant would be happier in and prefer to be in their home country if possible, which is probably usually true. Simply accepting their identity as refugees before capitalism without further criticizing the material context of why or whether they need to be refugees at all is also a trap. Wouldn't it be better if their homelands weren't destroyed by the rich countries and they could stay? Identity politics cuts off the conversation before it can turn into criticism of capitalism. He is saying of course we should help people on humanitarian grounds but that the situation itself is unnecessary.

[@ben8147]

Perhaps, in the stead of defending the Enlightment, we could reject it.

[@johnc.wrigley6147]

But then again, perhaps, in the stead of rejecting the Enlightenment, we could accept it

[@ben8147]

@@johnc.wrigley6147 I find ration to be far too shaky a foundation for something as heavy as a civilization.

[@bsands116]

Europe was built on the sweat and blood of non-Europeans. no matter how hard you try, we will not forget.

[@gerardmulder7656]

Non sense. Complete non sense. Europeans brought modernity to most colonies who lived in Barbary.

[@tomatotomato9813]

@@gerardmulder7656 dada?

[@ruben7801]

@Vebunkd Lol Europe was extremely resource-poor and underdeveloped in the late medieval period compared to South Asia, East Asia, South America or many parts of Africa. The development we did have was mostly military because we had relatively few resources and had to fight one another for them. That was Western Europe’s primary advantage in colonisation - turn up in a prosperous and relatively peaceful nation with the latest weapons that people there never needed to develop analogues to, and take whatever seemed useful at gunpoint.

[@ruben7801]

People need to read Aimé Cesaire

[@ruben7801]

@Steven Salerno I’m literally a European, in Europe, who studies my own country’s medieval and post-medieval history and that of the continent as a whole. We had a rich popular culture in the medieval period but very few natural resources and an extremely low standard of living for even the superrich (just look at how many aristocratic children died in infancy for proof) and the economic development we had at this time was primarily military: naval innovations, cleverly built fortifications, weaponry. Innovations in agriculture, milling, and medicine among other non-military technologies mostly came from elsewhere along the Silk Road. We had few real cities and very small numbers of literate people. Europe does generally have good soil and a temperate climate, but these alone only produce a subsistence economy, so especially when trade with East Asia became more difficult (15th century onwards) it proved more effective to take the riches of other regions and build on those. I’m still simplifying, of course, but that’s history.

[@breadandwater7038]

:26 the left has not fallen out of failure ? Tff we just had Bernie run for president and almost win ? Also, How are y’all continuing to build?

[@berraloks]

He for sure didn't come close he or any democratic socialist will never be president of the united states.

[@breadandwater7038]

@@berraloks yes he did come close… and I only hear this type of rhetoric from the right OR people that don’t understand or have any experience with actual organizing tbh. So which one are you ? *sorry I meant to put favor not failure.

[@ruben7801]

Bernie isn’t the left, he’s just a step back to 1950s American protectionist economics and a slightly more humane approach to immigration

[@breadandwater7038]

@@ruben7801 now you’re just talking semantics but I would like to know exactly what you mean by “back to 1950s protectionist economics” because I might agree with you. *has he released a full immigration reform bill? because i have only heard him say things ‘like kids shouldn’t be in cages’ and that immigration, broadly speaking, needs to be reformed. I’m not sure what you mean by “slightly more humane”

[@ruben7801]

@@breadandwater7038 Bernie often talks about Eisenhower's infrastructure investment, relatively high taxes etc., and seeks to reassure voters that a return to these policies is really all he wants (that or Scandinavian social democracy). Obviously, when referring to that era and those policies, he and others like him ignore the surrounding context of segregation and neocolonialism. I don't think he's released a full legislative proposal on immigration, generally I think his positions are pretty good on the issue and certainly better than other candidates.

[@princesskenyetta4745]

Ontology = list of what exists. I'm trying to figure-out the ontology of socialists. As a natural lawyer I put class, sex, gender, 'race', ethnicity, and religion as priority concepts in my list of what exists in the context of social justice. Each element of the ontology has a relation to all other elements. An essentialist 'black or white' thinker is going put more priority on one element over others. A focus on one element makes the others seem unimportant. Someone who studies class will tend to see class as a priority, while someone who studies race will see race as a priority, and so on. The fact that class binds us does not negate the other elements that are subjective in the perception of the people socialism claims to serve. Know your audience. Socialism in a multi-cultural society is charged with managing inclusion and representation for a wide range of cultures. To be a mindful socialist is to know the people you serve. I think the contrast to an essentialist perspective of class and identity is a systems-thinking and category theoretic approach. A category is composed of its parts. Class, sex, gender, 'race', ethnicity, and religion are all elements in a single category that are all connected to each other through their relationships. The relationships make the whole. All political perceptions are made from the point of view of self-identity. All politics is self-identity politics. Some white people and entitled westerners have a problem in that they see themselves as the 'default people' without an identity. They are the identity by which they measure all others. That's what class essentialism coming from Marxists looks like. Our interpretations of class can not be divorced from any other component, since aside from education, those are the significant components that comprise working-class perceptions of world and self, which can not be divorced in the psyche. What is in your ontology? What are the relationships/operations between the elements/variables that comprise the whole of your worldview?

[@bbHoodski]

This feels so obvious to me I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes. You're the first person I've come across in the comments with this take and I appreciate it! The singular obsession with class is so stupid. It was a useful conversation starter and a decent enough lens to kickstart our analysis of capitalist structures... But come on! Even the Catholic Church reinterprets their doctrine and adds to their ceremonies. Karl Marx is not the second coming and it's confusing why so many on the left continue to treat his written word as holy gospel. We can fight for class solidarity while also tackling the very real bigotry around us smh. While I have my critical opinions regarding the post-modern movement, who TF disagrees with the idea that any singular framework is capable of explaining the entirety of humanity's past, present and future.

[@ThePsycoDolphin]

This is stupid for vast reams of reasons. You can't build ontology from epistemology. Subject is worthless with object, something the postmodernist charlatans were never able to learn. Identity is entirely focused on epistemology. It fetishes subject at the expense of object. Its not real, never has been, never real. Essentialist thinking over identity can only reinforce completely absurd, utterly laughable and miserable flaky ideas of identity which do more harm to the groups themselves. The endless conflation of racial category as constuency can lead one to proclaim that the recent victory of a black man screaming for more tough on crime policies in primarily poor black neighbourhoods is somehow a victory for black people sinply because it represents "black politics" or "black agency" - terms that mean absolutey nothing. In fact, his victory is a calamity, a disaster for the left, and for the communities he represents. It represents a total failure for BLM to achieve any goal. But when you're you're cretinous identitarian, any and all vaguely minority related politics as somehow uniquely possesed of progressive agency (wrong) and therefore capable of having the same level of structural power as workers (it cant). Black people, women, LGTBQ+ people etc cannot be considered just one facet of peoples struggle "alongside class". That's nonsense, and in your comment there's a very subtle slight of hand which allows you to conflate this. Yes, all politics is self identifying, but what are they self identifying as, with whom, and how? Identity politics wants you to believe in isolated "identities" which passively "intersect" with one another. But intersectionality is worthless, it neither identifies the causes of said unified struggle (aside from vauge, nebulously defined "oppression") nor gives anyone any roadmap or guide for fighting it. At best, all it does is rearticulare some vague wishy washy Rawlsian liberal politics of generic common human traits and against bad things, which neither works intellectually, strategically, or politically. Universality alone cannot produce any concrete political analysis, especially when the identity constructs that are intersecting are themselves already fragmented and divided from the beggining, thereby making any grand proclamations of the unity of identity and class facile. To say identity politics is divisive to society is like saying society is divisive to society. To say identity politics is making politics more divisive is like saying politics is making politics more divisive. The problem therefore is not identites per se, but again, who is being identified first of all, and from that, how that can be broadened into coalitions to produce change, and with that how it can be universalised to become a wider political struggle. Identity politics is incapable of doing either. It turns the soft and malleable clay of identity and transforms into a rigid, solid crafted item of ornamentation, through its essentialism characteristics ("black", "gay", "woman", each with their own unique, but within each groups universal struggles), mistakenly presumes such essentialised identites that it can be treated the same as *constituency* (e.g black = radical progressive), and then, having neatly divided categories amongst themselves, utterly destroys the capacity of any pan-group solidarity (due to how supposedly vastly different the experience of identity groups are, where are best you can be 'allies', never comrades, together yet always separate like navy gun boats from different armies crusing on the same sea). "Check your privildge" or "I'm not here to educate you" or "listen to POC" takes the place of education, discussion and agitation. By privileging subjective experiences of oppression ("I feel oppressed by x, y or z") and supposing that counts as an objective casual analysis of said oppression ("I was oppressed by a white cop, hence the abstraction called 'whiteness' is the problem") identity politics will remain a bizarre form is reverse segregation, where peoples interests remain rigidly defined and immovable, and hence remain completety worthless for broader politics. There is one group that can however. Class. Class becomes the unifier of these groups. Class, and maybe class alone, is the only true concrete universal, capable of at once acting as both the specific and the universal, the concrete and the abstract, something that effects the white straight male steel worker in Pittsburg as much as the young woman Chinese iPhone maker in the China. Its universality comes not from spurious identity, but from its social position in the means of production. That does not mean identity is eliminated, merely that it is sublumated in its role as part of the global labour force. Capitalism knows this, hence why it spends every waking breath trying to spread into as many corners of the earth and to tries to turn as many human beings into proletarians as possible. Capitalism gets its universalising mission (its both its enormous strength, and ultimately, its greatest weakness). Sadly, the left still does not. If you think class is an indentity you literally know nothing. Class is not an identity. At all. Working class people do not self identify as working class. They do associate working class with a set of ascriptive notions, both negative and positive. The only people who do do that are, ironically, those who want to DENY the existence of classes, and treat it as culture, by presuming somehow that working class people aren't really oppressed, and are part of that class due to lifestyle or habit. To deny the centrality of class is to deny the centrality off capitalism, which is to not even live in the real world. You must understand the universal totality of the system, you must focus on the entire building and how it is built, not merely the foundations or the roof, and certainly not the individuals bricks inside it. Class, as Marx laboriously wrote about, is based on your social relationship to the means of production (I.e. places of work where stuff is made for markets). That's it. You are working class is you have to work for a living. You are working class is you are dependent on the wage given to you by a capitalist in return for your labour time you've contributed to the making of the commodity. Patently, if a worker stops self identifying as a worker, yet still goes to work everyday, he's delusional. If a black person or a woman stops identifying as either a black person or a woman, they cease to totally embody whatever values are associated with that. They exist now as human beings, not the labels put upon them mostly by racist, pathrichal elites. Both still will be however, no mater what they think, workers. That's because class is structural and economic, and identity is ideological and discourse based. They operate in two completely different realms of existence. Race is a social construct, class an economic one. That's the difference. Class, therefore, is already intersectional. Class oppression is the total system of the whole world now, because the whole world is now capitalist. It is the glass prism from which all other identity struggles in today's society project out from, the reflective rainbow canopany of colours that can only be seen once a beam of light shines through a central object, to reveal them all within. So if we, as marxists/socialists/communists self identify as such, it I because we can identify a very real, very tangible group of people in the world from which all of capitalism derives its strength from, and thus, can potentially be destroyed by.

[@princesskenyetta4745]

​@@ThePsycoDolphin Words and forgiveness are free. Lets forgive ourselves since our words do not influence each other. Activism against ruling-classes has always worked to change working-class beliefs in a way that has them challenge the ruling-class. Argumentation is about influence. Good luck with your narrative.

[@princesskenyetta4745]

​@@tomc4187 Yes it's a non-response, because I'm not bored enough to argue with cute sock puppets who write like children. I think you understand perfectly.

[@gregsimmons3323]

"Ontology = list of what exists." No, it isn't. I think the root of your error and confusion lies there.

[@bsands116]

Zizek has become an apologist for european obscurantism

[@TheRaveJunkie]

How so? What part don't you understand?

[@helenjanas985]

A lots WORDS about NO THING?????!!!!!!

[@xspotbox4400]

So Disney made a LGBT cartoon for kids, wonder how many people will see it, i definitely won’t and i wouldn't allow my kids to watch it. Communists turned into capitalists in Eastern Europe, more money and power resulted in the worst corruption and military police oppression than before. The same families on power in communism and in democracy result in the same kind of totalitarianism, with new elements. Rich communists are living in isolated communities, surrounded by security services. Victims of their police states are driven to remote gulags and ghettos, hidden from international media and very rare tourists, where they die young from system induced poverty and cancer. Many innocent citizens were thrown from their homes on the streets, millions of emigrants flooded over borders, none of them was sleeping in the parks, they were all sheltered the very first day when they illegally crossed borders. Many of them got employed by security companies, all of them are secret police collaborators and informants. To many people is the main reason for global warming, primitive cultures multiply like rabbits because it's written so in ancient religious fairy tale books. They don't understand secularism, reject atheism, can't socialize with host societies, so they can't work, but they can make babies and demand religious rights. This is how the world was before enlightenment, the intellectual movement didn't spread to Third World countries, but it's dying now in the west.

[@johnstewart7025]

Many in the west patted themselves on the back for spreading ideas of freedom and liberation to the third world. However I agree that those ideas sit uncomfortably next to traditional modes of living.