Who is Slavoj Zizek?

Who is Slavoj Zizek? I didn't know till I read this article in the New Statesman. He is Slovenian and smells to me like a post-modern philosopher of extreme tripe and is shortly to have a documentary titled Zizek! released, which is totally devoted to his utterances. The press loves him, and so do academics who are on some expensive grant or the other in foreign universities. What does it matter, we have a scapegoat for all the world's balderdash, so why don't we indulge him, eh? Here are a few excerpts from the article written by Johann Hari, who was a journalist and staffer of the Independent who confessed to having committed plagiarism. 

His defenders claim he is trying to stretch the scope of philosophy to cover the everyday flotsam that philosophers have hitherto ignored. But gradually, as you pore through Zizek's words or watch his audiences, whose bemusement is caught on film, you discover that the complex manner in which he expresses himself does not imply that his thought is itself subtle or complex. In fact, he seeks to revive a murderous and discredited ideology.
Asked by an audience member what his idea of a good social order is, he replies: "Communism! I am absolutely in favour of egalitar ianism with a taste of terror." Behind Zizek's comedy routines, he believes we need to return to Bolshevism. He is not offering warm, fuzzy Lennonism; this is cold, bloody Leninism. Zizek writes rapturous hymns of praise to the "genius" and "strength" of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, calling him "the poli tician of the 20th century" and demanding "fidelity to Lenin's legacy". Just in case there is any ambiguity about the anti-democratic nature of supporting the man who erected a monstrous one-party police state in Russia, Zizek explains that Lenin's "ultimate lesson is that only by throwing off our attachment to liberal democracy" can we become virtuous.

So who is this man who claims to love Stalin, Lenin, and Mussolini? A good thing he didn't mention Hitler. Modern or post-modern, or down in the dumps firebrand and mischief-maker?

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