Slavoj Žižek: evaluation

Transcript context

…A Twitter question. Super-quick 30-second answer. Norway too suffers from the stigmatization of Communists. And even though the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, with far-right parties in parliament, workers are reluctant to turn to the left. How can we best turn the proletariat towards our cause? Thirty seconds, please. [laughter] First, you say poor are getting poorer, rich are getting richer, but you know, Norway is still an ideal for many of us, if I may say this. This I got from my good friend, Varoufakis, who said, “Everybody protests austerity, but for us, or you in the developed West, austerity means, ‘Oh, my God, purchasing power fell half a percent.’ Austerity is what happens in Greece, where it fell 30 percent.” What I would say is, again, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez formula . . . I’m totally, again, for all this new identity movement — not identity, but feminism and so on, gay rights and so on. But don’t fall into this gap of cultural politics. Find a link with the majority because poor are getting poorer, and so on, and so on. Is there a political party talking for them? But not in this traditional Marxist way. It doesn’t work. But because so many in United States, politically correct people — you can see that their political correctness quite often has a secret class bias. They don’t say it, but the politically incorrect are the poor, primitive people, working class, and so on, and so on. It’s a much more complex situation, and I will say now something that you will like, but for this you will get to Gulag for that. The problem is much bigger one. Does the Left . . . I was there in Occupied Wall Street, and I was asking them, “What do you want? Do you have a project?” Many of them just have a vague idea of less corruption; big banks are corrupted. What do you want? Are you a Fukuyamaist? A little bit more efficient system. Do you want all social democratic welfare? Do you want old-style Communism? And I will be very critical, leftists. I’m the first one to admit that the Left doesn’t have — I’m not talking about legalistic details, but a general vision of a future society. Slavoj —…

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