While he is most explicitly a (sometimes misunderstood) philosopher, I've been finding Zizek's recent opinion pieces on world events refreshingly sober. This one is ostensibly on the media's...
While he is most explicitly a (sometimes misunderstood) philosopher, I've been finding Zizek's recent opinion pieces on world events refreshingly sober. This one is ostensibly on the media's (over)reaction to Trump's recent Europe visit (particularly with regards to Putin), but in the end delves quickly into a variety of issues with the overall political climate.
For one, I think he is on point with the observation that
The panicky reaction to Trump’s latest acts demonstrates that he is undermining and destabilizing the US political establishment and its ideology.
The "left" media's overreaction to the Helsinki summit therefore reminds me just how implicated they are in the system-as-is, which people seem to forget in light of the perhaps more blatant example from the other side of Fox News.
Also interesting in this article is Zizek's questioning of just why Trump is so anti-Europe, and his conclusion that it is more related to the idea of Europe than to its actual reality:
Although America and Russia may appear opposites – unbridled liberalism and individualism versus new authoritarianism–, seen metaphysically, they are the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology grounded in fake patriotism (“America first,” “Russia first”).
He also touches on 'fake news,' fundamentalism, digital communities, and so on.
I quote the last line to perhaps inspire interest in reading:
One thing is clear: there is no return to the old ideological hegemony. The only way to return to Truth is to reconstruct it from a new cognitive interest in universal emancipation.
While he is most explicitly a (sometimes misunderstood) philosopher, I've been finding Zizek's recent opinion pieces on world events refreshingly sober. This one is ostensibly on the media's (over)reaction to Trump's recent Europe visit (particularly with regards to Putin), but in the end delves quickly into a variety of issues with the overall political climate.
For one, I think he is on point with the observation that
The "left" media's overreaction to the Helsinki summit therefore reminds me just how implicated they are in the system-as-is, which people seem to forget in light of the perhaps more blatant example from the other side of Fox News.
Also interesting in this article is Zizek's questioning of just why Trump is so anti-Europe, and his conclusion that it is more related to the idea of Europe than to its actual reality:
He also touches on 'fake news,' fundamentalism, digital communities, and so on.
I quote the last line to perhaps inspire interest in reading: