I've watched hours and hours of his talks, and found some of what he says to be useful or interesting. But what is he really saying?

  1. Most is barely intelligible, with tangents upon tangents of weird psychoanalytical jargon.
  2. The jokes function to disarm and disorient anti-communist talking points.
  3. The core message seems to usually be "idpol bad" (which is true, at least for the liberal variants), but nothing much more interesting.

???

SUBTEXT: Ex-Yugoslav lib reformer now supports COMMUNISM*! If he can, so can you!

* by which he always specifies "the big problems are not solvable by capitalism" and distances all other associations

  • MonarchLabsOne [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    He is a good introduction to the general spectrum of left thought to "normies". I looked up to a Marxist philosophy major when I was in high school so my introduction to Zizek was "look at this clown, don't take him too seriously". Of course, that was before the rise of IDW and other reactionary elements of new media. Now that we have to compete with the spectacle of Ben Shapiro, Zizek is able to keep the attention of people who might otherwise tune out. His films are decent explainers to some concepts that are easier to explain with visual aids.