Zizek en Tsipras (SYRIZA leader)

[Tim Cornelis]

Apparently, Zizek is a reformist. I've not watched the entire thing yet (3:15), but Zizek defends Tsipras.

4U2b9XChiv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2b9XChivc

[ed miliband]

you read/heard zizek on obama? this should come as no surprise really.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think people forget sometimes that Zizek is a popular Hegelian art critic and makes no pretenses to be the next great revolutionary thinker. He certainly wouldn't be the first popular left intellectual to support a less-than-stellar Leftwing party. So he supports a reformist ... well, what does that mean about how we relate to his thinking? Angela Davis supported the CPUSA which is no better than SYRIZA, and she is a very capable intellectual and committed radical. It does not discredit what she has to say about the prison system. Really, I think we should be able to appreciate intellectuals without agreeing with every single position they take. After all, Heidegger was a Nazi and many of his ideas are still interesting (if his thick and opaque style doesn't put you to sleep first.)

Also, this has been posted before.

[ed miliband]

zizek acknowledges this himself - fair play:


"I am writing a mega-book about Hegel. It is a true work of love. This is my true life's work. Even Lacan is just a tool for me to read Hegel. For me, always it is Hegel,Hegel, Hegel - but people just want the shitty politics."

[Ocean Seal]

People Zizek is a mind that spouts absolute truth sometimes and shit some other times. Take it as such. Don't excommunicate him from the church of holy leftism. Just use the good gospels that he has written.

[GerrardWinstanley]

Can't see the video.

Is Zizek actually coming out as a reformist or is he, like many revolutionaries, simply offering Tsipras and SYRIZA his critical backing while refusing to get absorbed into the movement? (which is totally sensible in my view)

[brigadista]

this whole zizek thing is starting to be like a cult

[Geiseric]

To not support SYRIZA in greece, which is as radical as it can get in terms of pushing the working class to stand up to the big banks means to support any other multitude of bourgeois parties or to support KKE, the third period eurocommunists. Unless you're golden dawn, however there's nothing wrong with SYRIZA's program, despite what all of the ultra leftists (who provide no alternative rather than revolutionary slogans with no substance in real life) seem to think. The road to the french revolution of 1848, the russian revolution and any other revolution is paved with reforms that conflict with the bourgeoisie's interests. SYRIZA's "reformist," demands are what the greek working class is demanding, an end to the Troika's financial rule of greece and paying off the debt in a way that will not devastate the working class, nor would lead to an depression if they left the EU like KKE is saying.

[Stalin Ate My Homework]

Is it just me who, in the most cynical way possible, thinks SYRIZA should be supported on the basis that their oscillating between pseudo-radical rhetoric and ordinary social democracy shows sign of Tsipras becoming something of a Kerensky-esque figure?

[Rafiq]

Zizek doesn't pretend to be a revolutionary leader of any sort, so...

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[The Intransigent Faction]

To not support SYRIZA in greece, which is as radical as it can get in terms of pushing the working class to stand up to the big banks means to support any other multitude of bourgeois parties or to support KKE, the third period eurocommunists. Unless you're golden dawn, however there's nothing wrong with SYRIZA's program, despite what all of the ultra leftists (who provide no alternative rather than revolutionary slogans with no substance in real life) seem to think. The road to the french revolution of 1848, the russian revolution and any other revolution is paved with reforms that conflict with the bourgeoisie's interests. SYRIZA's "reformist," demands are what the greek working class is demanding, an end to the Troika's financial rule of greece and paying off the debt in a way that will not devastate the working class, nor would lead to an depression if they left the EU like KKE is saying.

Revolutionary leftists are there to provide an alternative perspective---to emphasize that the current system is a failure and must be torn down in order to replace it with something else. If nobody dares say this for fear of being branded an "ultra-leftist" (I find it disturbing, by the way, that supposed communists, "ultra-left" by any standard of the system they seem to think we should work within, consider that term an insult), then it never will be a viable alternative.

I understand that you think you're being pragmatic, but there's a line between pragmatism and selling out the working class to the bandaid solutions of social democracy.

Thinking you can simultaneously remain in the Eurozone, get aid, and revoke austerity measures is not a solution to problems rooted in capitalism.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Is it just me who, in the most cynical way possible, thinks SYRIZA should be supported on the basis that their oscillating between pseudo-radical rhetoric and ordinary social democracy shows sign of Tsipras becoming something of a Kerensky-esque figure?

The Bolsheviks originally "critically supported" the Kerensky regime with the slogan "down with the ten capitalist ministers" Obviously this wasn't going to make the Provisional government in Russoa a workers government. Revolutionaries can't control where the working class will go to in a time of crisis. We have to appeal to them where they are at, not dismiss the prganisatyions they join as merely reformist.Yes Syriza has serious faults.They can repressent , at least intially, the forward movement of the working class against austerity. They should be critically supported from the left

[Futility Personified]

The demands that Syriza are making are in the confines of capitalism, unrealistic. They can't have their bourgeois cake and eat it, so their being voted in will likely provoke more revolutionary conditions. Zizek seems a little mad but supposedly he accepts that the old paradigms and battlelines need redrawing. Giving the finger to austerity sounds like a good place to start!