about a day.

Disclaimer: I wrote this yesterday and put it on Facebook because of its deeply personal nature. However, after some consideration I decided to post this here. 9/11 helped shape my political beliefs, and I want my readers to understand where I am coming from. I'm sorry that everything is in lowercase and that there are no apostrophes or anything, but this is how my thoughts run. Also it's a bit of creative writing so give me some artistic license here. Anyway enjoy.

An outsider's view of Corbyn

Today, a Saturday and my day off, I had the fortune of waking up at six thirty in the morning. So I did what I always do when I wake up and checked my Twitter, only to discover that it was nearly time to announce the UK Labour Party's leadership election results.

Now, I am not British and the only British people I know are people I have met online. I don't particularly have any material reason to care about politics outside of the countries where I hold citizenship, the United States and Brazil (the latter of which is where I live).

However, I was oddly drawn to Jeremy Corbyn, the favorite to win. I have seen many comparing him to US "socialist" Bernie Sanders, usually to moan about how both are equally fake leftists trying to take hold of imperialist first world parties for their own careers' sakes. Normally, I would agree with such a statement, especially when dealing with Labour. However, something about Corbyn seemed genuine--well, more than something, really.

At first glance Corbyn appears to be some kind of populist front the Labour party threw into the forefront in order to attract younger, more liberal voters. It soon became clear that Labour was doing everything in its power to actually discourage Corbyn's progress, going so far as to purge the left wing of the party. Corbyn himself was perhaps corralling the left back into Labour, but the party certainly did not want to budge from its deeply entrenched right wing politics.

This is curious because the US Democrats have historically put out more left wing politicians as a sort of bait. And it has been incredibly effective--Dennis Kucinich played this role during the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections with such radical-sounding quotes like, "Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance," and, "Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction," and, "I believe health care is a civil right."

Except despite the fact that Kucinich actually does have a decent voting record on left wing issues (the one glaring exception is his initial support for the war in Afghanistan), he has always ended up throwing his support behind presidential front runners like Obama in 2008 and Kerry in 2004. Hence, no matter how radical his politics appeared to left-liberals, he was and will always be nothing more than a lone liberal voice in a party dedicated to war, imperialism, capitalism, and racism.

The democrats have made this sort of left-liberal candidate into a feature of the electoral machine. Give the youth and left-liberals a lefty sort of candidate to cheer for and when the time for presidential nominations draw near, have that candidate support the true party favorite. In 2016, it appears that Bernie Sanders is this election's Kucinich and the party favorite to win the nod is Hillary Clinton. Sanders somehow manages to be even less progressive than Kucinich despite claiming to be a socialist, but because Clinton lacks the star quality Obama had in 2008, it appears as if Sanders is a radically better option.

Since I am now a real political blogger, the shitty political photomanips were inevitable.

With Corbyn, I don't believe this is the case. Unlike Sanders, he has been consistently anti apartheid and anti war even as a politician within Labour. Sanders keeps bleating about how he marched with black people once so he has the right to tell Black Lives Matters activists (the only truly progressive activist group in the United States at the moment) that in fact All Lives Matter. His track record on Israel says he won't exactly lead the way against apartheid any time soon.

Corbyn isn't perfect, but I have honestly never seen a first world politician with such mainstream success be so openly left-wing. In fact, my only problem with Corbyn is that he seems to think he can turn Labour, a party that has led the UK into war and effectively destroyed the welfare and healthcare system in the past twenty five years, into a progressive party. He will not be able to push the party towards the center-left on his own.

But what leaves me hopeful is how the conversation in the UK will perhaps turn leftwards. Perhaps now Labour will have to answer to an increasingly left wing constituancy. And perhaps when they inevitably lose and/or purge a substancial part of their membership, they will be forced to the left anyway to compete with the overall left wing political climate.

What is more likely is that Labour will continue being Labour (i.e. utter shit) and Corbyn will continue to appeal to leftists from his new position. He now has an enviable reach, and I believe he won't turn his back on his politics like his so-called counterpart, Sanders, in the US. Naturally, I don't support Labour, but I do support Corbyn and I support the people who voted for him. Perhaps this is the beginning of something. It will certainly be interesting.

A Response To Zizek

Before I begin, I would like to state that I don't care if Zizek ever sees this. In fact, I'd rather pretend he doesn't exist. However, many of my comrades believe Zizek is an important socialist with important things to say and therefore we must listen to what he's saying even if it's complete nonsense. If it's hard to understand then it must be intelligent, goes the logic. Nothing that is clear and simple and easy to comprehend is worth reading--this is very troubling thinking for supposed Marxists for obvious reasons.

And so I feel the need to say my piece on the matter. Because I am from the third world, because I am visibly of color, because I have few if any ties to the first world, because I will always be nothing more than a migrant or "guest worker" to the first world--because of all of this, I chose to write a response to the man so many of my comrades respect. A man who openly calls for closing borders and has consistently done so for over twenty years--this is the man socialists choose to respect.

I do not believe Zizek is overall good and that he is somehow tainted by a few poorly worded opinions. I believe he has fooled an altogether too-receptive left into supporting far right, racist ideologies. What troubles me is not that Zizek is racist, but that any and all criticism is immediately shot down and treated as infantile and liberal. I admit that I have not read his books but from his articles and excerpts I feel Zizek is closer to a white supremacist right winger than a Marxist. Once more, it troubles me that the left looks up to this man as the great Marxist philosopher of our time when I feel he is instrumental in the rehabilitation of right wing, reactionary values among the left.

This is why I wrote this, and I welcome any criticism that comes my way.

---

Zizek has always struck me as an act. Zizek the person is obscured by Zizek the character. The character of the strange slovenly sweaty man who often says incomprehensible and often amusing one-liners is the one everyone knows best. This is often everyone's first introduction to the man, who has quite a long bibliography.

Probably the truest thing he's ever said.

However, when we look at Zizek's actual politics and writings, we find an altogether different sort of person. Here is a man who writes with absolute conviction, a man certain of his opinions and thoughts. There is no humor in his articles, at least not the one I am about to discuss.

Recently Zizek wrote an article for the London Book Review entitled "The Non-Existence of Norway." In it he suggests Europe strengthen its border control lest the awful brown and black hordes invade, leaving nothing left for its indigenous white populations.

He begins by criticizing the left liberal position of open borders and equating the right and left positions as being equally distasteful:

Europe, they say, should show solidarity and throw open its doors. Anti-immigrant populists say we need to protect our way of life: foreigners should solve their own problems. Both solutions sound bad, but which is worse? To paraphrase Stalin, they are both worse. The greatest hypocrites are those who call for open borders. They know very well this will never happen: it would instantly trigger a populist revolt in Europe. 

While Zizek claims the "anti-immigrant populists" (read: far right and fascist politicians who infest governments all over the continent) are as bad as the people calling for open borders, later in the article he wholeheartedly agrees with the right:

It is not inherently racist or proto-fascist for host populations to talk of protecting their ‘way of life’: this notion must be abandoned. If it is not, the way will be clear for the forward march of anti-immigration sentiment in Europe whose latest manifestation is in Sweden, where according to the latest polling the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats have overtaken the Social Democrats as the country’s most popular party.

He goes on to claim that the left-liberal position is "arrogant moralism" because supposedly even opposing racist border control policy gives the argument crediability. Zizek claims the left knows better than the white working class, which of course, opposes opening its borders. He doesn't back this claim up with sources; Zizek says the white working class is inherently racist, and therefore they naturally reject migrants and refugees.

While the white working class in both Europe and North America have been historically reactionary when it comes to race (just look at Donald Trump's popularity--considering their history of electing open and proud white supremacists like David Duke, this can be understood to be a feature of the modern white working class), for a Marxist to suggest that such a thing is inherent implies two things:

1. It claims that the working class is entirely composed of white people when there is and has always been an ever-growing population of people of color joining the proletariat. The idea of an entirely white working class is a myth.
2. It implies the class consciousness of white workers cannot be changed, and I'm sure I don't have to explain why that's absolutely ridiculous. As we all know, class consciousness can be changed, and seeing as class is racialized, it goes without saying that raising class consciousness includes anti-racist action. To suggest the white proletariat is inherently reactionary is a direct contradiction to the Marxist idea that the working class is revolutionary. You cant have it both ways--either the working class is revolutionary, or it is reactionary. You cannot be a Marxist and believe the latter.

I somehow find it in me to be surprised and outraged when I see Marxists repeating anti-working class rhetoric and yet, here I am. Perhaps I am naive for expecting white Marxists to understand why Zizek's opinion on the white working class is not only racist but anti-worker. I get that many of you reading this hold some racist views you need to work through but your understanding of race as a special interest instead of something that is, in fact, of vital imporatance to proletariat liberation must be challenged.

Marxists from Che to W. E. B. Dubois to Lenin to Marx himself have pondered the national question. What I am suggesting is not something that hasn't been a feature of socialist thought for the past century. If anything, it is Zizek who is breaking with socialist tradition with his blatant racism.

Next, Zizek identifies the causes of the migrant crisis and he does so in a most peculiar way:

The anti-immigrant populist also knows very well that, left to themselves, people in Africa and the Middle East will not succeed in solving their own problems and changing their societies. Why not? Because we in Western Europe are preventing them from doing so. [...] If we really want to stem the flow of refugees, then, it is crucial to recognise that most of them come from ‘failed states’, where public authority is more or less inoperative: Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, DRC and so on. This disintegration of state power is not a local phenomenon but a result of international politics and the global economic system, in some cases – like Libya and Iraq – a direct outcome of Western intervention. (One should also note that the ‘failed states’ of the Middle East were condemned to failure by the boundaries drawn up during the First World War by Britain and France.)

So far, so good. But then Zizek shifts his focus from Western Europe to the rich Arabic nations like Saudi Arabia who have failed to aid refugees.

New forms of slavery are the hallmark of these wealthy countries: millions of immigrant workers on the Arabian peninsula are deprived of elementary civil rights and freedoms; in Asia, millions of workers live in sweatshops organised like concentration camps. But there are examples closer to home. On 1 December 2013 a Chinese-owned clothing factory in Prato, near Florence, burned down, killing seven workers trapped in an improvised cardboard dormitory. ‘No one can say they are surprised at this,’ Roberto Pistonina, a local trade unionist, remarked, ‘because everyone has known for years that, in the area between Florence and Prato, hundreds if not thousands of people are living and working in conditions of near slavery.’ There are more than four thousand Chinese-owned businesses in Prato, and thousands of Chinese immigrants are believed to be living in the city illegally, working as many as 16 hours a day for a network of workshops and wholesalers.
The new slavery is not confined to the suburbs of Shanghai, or Dubai, or Qatar. It is in our midst; we just don’t see it, or pretend not to see it. Sweated labour is a structural necessity of today’s global capitalism. Many of the refugees entering Europe will become part of its growing precarious workforce, in many cases at the expense of local workers, who react to the threat by joining the latest wave of anti-immigrant populism.

Notice how he points out how there is, in fact, slavery in Europe itself right now but specifically uses a Chinese-owned factory as an example. Zizek will, of course, never recognize his support of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia which led to the bloody ethnic conflicts, NATO intervention, and the "third worldization" (to paraphrase Michael Parenti) of the region. His "both sides are wrong" screed implicitly condemns the very victims of an active, decades long effort to destabilize and disembowel Yugoslavia.

The intention was always to devalue Eastern European labor power to such a degree where now migrants from the former Warsaw Pact nations come in droves to the UK looking for any low paying, dangerous jobs the west will throw at them. He will never recognize this, but Zizek is far too happy to once again point out how it is the brown, eastern, strange countries are the ones contributing the most to the migrant crisis.

This is a deliberate omission on his part. I am not saying that nations on the periphery cannot be responsible for atrocities and serious labor violations. But as Zizek failed to condemn the causes of the most bloody conflicts on Eastern European soil since World War II, this omission seems even more horrific. Why the left is willing to overlook this but eagerly points fingers at nations on the periphery is extremely telling.

Finally I would like to draw attention to the most damning line of the entire article:

It is not inherently racist or proto-fascist for host populations to talk of protecting their ‘way of life’: this notion must be abandoned.

Host populations here means Western European first world white nations. The use of the word "host", as if these countries are generously permitting entry to brutal savages, is bothersome. Had Zizek been referring to third world nations resisting western soft imperialist penetrations through media imports, this statement would hold more weight. However, remember that the countries he is referring to are NATO countries, the ones responsible for the destabilization of the entire Middle East.

It is not racist or fascist to bar refugees from wars and interventions heavily marketed as "bringing democracy to savages"! After countries like Germany and the UK made fortunes plundering the entire planet, including other European nations like Greece, somehow there is no money to go around--not for the native population, and not for the victims of imperialist wars.

I am reminded of Malcolm X's infamous "the chickens have come home to roost" quote. You created this situation. Now you must deal with it. Accept the consequences of your actions. The fact that the first world left refuses to hold their governments accountable for virtually anything explains why they seem to love Zizek so much.

One thing is clear: national sovereignty will have to be radically redefined and new methods of global co-operation and decision-making devised. First, in the present moment, Europe must reassert its commitment to provide for the dignified treatment of the refugees. There should be no compromise here: large migrations are our future, and the only alternative to such a commitment is renewed barbarism (what some call a ‘clash of civilisations’).

Renewed barbarism? Clash of civilizations? Whose national sovereignty does Zizek want to protect? A clash of civilizations implies both sides are equal yet in the very same sentence he speaks of migrants--two equally powerful societies would be stable, and not have mass migrations from one side to the other. Where are the European refugees swarming into the third world?

But what about solutions? Zizek has plenty. He says that in order to accept migrants, certain conditions must be imposed. They must "privilege the Western European way of life" as that is "the price to be paid for European hospitality". "These rules should be clearly stated and enforced, by repressive measures – against foreign fundamentalists as well as against our own racists – where necessary."

As I said earlier, the idea of the white working class is a myth. There is no monolithic working class culture--the only thing that unites the working class is its exploitation. There are working class protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims; there are working class women and queers; there are working class people of color. 

And this "Western European way of life" nonsense implies that Western Europe is inherently better, superior, to all others. Strange that Zizek upholds Europe as a bastion of progress and liberalism. Transgender people are sterilized in order to transition on your great continent. It doesn't matter if trans rights don't exist in other places--Europe is supposed to be The Most Progressive region on earth! Somehow European barbarism is more acceptable than barbarism of any other variety.

Then, to prevent further migrations, Zizek suggests a "new kind of international military and economic intervention [...] a kind of intervention that avoids the neocolonial traps of the recent past" but also warns against "non-intervention" because then other, undesirable countries like Russia will get involved. So the west must involve itself in other countries, but other countries must not involve themselves in geopolitical conflicts. This to me strikes as a defense of western military and economic intervention, and it certainly isnt the first time Zizek has supported intervention:

"Up to a point I agree with this, but I have always been in favor of military intervention from the West. Around 1992, with a little bit of pressure, the war would have been over. But they missed the moment." - interview with Geert Lovink, InterCommunication 14, February 27 1995

I don't think we can get any more explicit than this. I think Zizek has become more conscious of how that sort of statement comes off, so he's become more adept at masking his pro-western interventionism behind dense speech. 

No comment.

Even more infuriating than this nearly fascist defense of closing off the borders is Zizek's final thought: 

Fourth, most important and most difficult of all, there is a need for radical economic change which would abolish the conditions that create refugees. Without a transformation in the workings of global capitalism, non-European refugees will soon be joined by migrants from Greece and other countries within the Union. When I was young, such an organised attempt at regulation was called communism. Maybe we should reinvent it. Maybe this is, in the long term, the only solution.

How amazingly insulting.

After going off on a racist, pro-NATO speech about how great the west is and how refugees must conform to western standards lest the west be destroyed by the evil barbarian hordes, Zizek suggests communism as the solution. Great! I agree! Except nothing about this man's politics is communist whatsoever.

In my opinion, the first world left has an important role to play with third world liberation. They must stay the hand of their imperialist governments. Yet leftists like Zizek actively fan the flames of national chauvinism with outright fascist rhetoric about how brown people destroy the white European way of life. And this isn't the first time he's said this kind of thing either--Zizek has a history of being overtly racist and pretending it's actually really super progressive and communist:

Žižek: Tolerance is not a solution there. What we need is what the Germans call a Leitkultur, a higher leading culture that regulates the way in which the subcultures interact. Multiculturalism, with its mutual respect for the sensitivities of the others, no longer works when it gets to this "impossible-à-supporter" stage. Devout Muslims find it impossible to tolerate our blasphemous images and our disrespectful humor, which constitute a part of our freedom. But the West, with its liberal practices, also finds forced marriages or the segregation of women, which are a part of Muslim life, to be intolerable. That's why I, as a Leftist, argue that we need to create our own leading culture. - from
SPIEGEL March 2015 Interview with Slavoj Zizek: 'The Greatest Threat to Europe Is Its Inertia' (which sounds incredibly fascist but whatever)

Zizek's idea of a "leading culture" is one where he is allowed to make Holocaust jokes and complain about how bad Muslims are. He sounds much more like a right-libertarian or a fascist than a Marxist, or even a liberal. And yet this man continues to masquerade as a real Marxist, namedropping Stalin and communism as part of his "Actual Stalinist" character, but that is exactly what it is: a character, an act.

No amount of esoteric references and stupid metaphors about sex and silly rants on YouTube will change the fact that Zizek is a conservative attempting to destroy the left--and you're all falling for it.

Yours, 

Gabriel