Professor Slavoj Zizek, philosopher and darling of Western intelligentsia, recently wrote an article for The Guardian on Ukraine. Professor Zizek, uses the platform provided by The Guardian, to launch an attack on anyone on the Left who dares to question the Western narrative regarding Ukraine.
photo Slavoj Zizek (wikipedia)
Ramping up Russiophobia
In his article, typical of Guardian pieces on the subject of Ukraine, Zizek supports the rampant Russophobia of the Western imperialist states. This Russophobia is ratcheting up Cold War tensions with Moscow to dangerous levels.
He jumps from culturing referencing John Lennon’s peace song Imagine to berating anyone who dares call for a peaceful solution to this war in Ukraine. In his eyes both Chomsky and Kissinger come in for criticism to dare suggest Ukraine should give up some of its land claims to negotiate a peaceful outcome. Nope, not good enough for Zizek.
In Zizek’s imagination, this war is currently in a protracted stale-mate, he repeats this assertion. The reality is Russia is winning this war and will soon be in a position to dictate terms. You do not have to be supporting Russia to have this view.
Zizek, like all good Western “liberals’’, gives unconditional support for the Zelensky regime. Professor Zizek states that Zelensky is not a dictator yet he has banned all political parties, banned Russian speaking media and banned the Russian language from schools where a third of the population has Russian as their first language.
Zelenksy’s government is also planning to remove 100 million books by Russian authors, including literary giants such as Pushkin and Dostoevsky, from the libraries of Ukraine.
Photo readrate.com
In Zizek’s imagination Putin has an imperial dream
That Putin views Ukraine as it’s colony – not that it currently serves as US puppet! In his imagination Putin is planning to take control of the northern transport routes and use food to blackmail the world. Dr Evil incarnate. I guess if you really believe these things you would be pressing for war too? On this basis though Zizek seems puzzled why Russia would be unhappy with Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
In this article Zizek declares that the wrong response to the war is pacifism and that all Leftists should uncritically support Ukraine. He also declares that we need a stronger NATO to counter those evil Russian hordes which threaten European democracy. Never mind the fact that NATO, since its inception, has been an offensive military alliance geared for war against Russia.
Zizek article also jumps from nowhere into the global warming narrative. Is this meant to be further evidence of Putin’s evil doing that he plans to profit from global warming. Not that our elites have competing claims there then.
Zizek’s article displays a breathtaking ignorance of the history of Ukraine since the coup of 2014 which has profoundly shaped current events. I would refer to him to “unbiased’’ sources such as historian Professor John Mearsheimer, of Chicago University, who cannot possibly be accused of being a paid agent of the Kremlin. Since 2014 Professor Mearsheimer has warned of the grave dangers of further NATO expansion into Ukraine and how the arming of Ukraine threatened conflict with Russia.
Since the beginning of the current war Mearsheimer has repeatedly stated that the actions of the US are the principal reason for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The expansion of NATO making Ukraine a de facto member of the alliance, crossed a line which the Kremlin warned the West about on many occasions since 2008. In late March Mearsheimer declared,
My story about the conflict’s causes should not be controversial, given that many prominent American foreign-policy experts have warned against NATO expansion since the late 1990s.
Zizek’s article, like that of many hundreds of others written by Western liberals, chooses to ignore the many war crimes committed by the Ukrainian army and neo-Nazis in the Donbass since 2014. The most infamous of these war crimes being the Odessa massacre on 2 May 2014 that left over 100 Russian speakers dead at the hands of the neo-Nazi Right Sector. There is an abundance of evidence from Western sources to illustrate these war crimes.
Public Domain
As early as September 8 2014 Amnesty International noted the failure of the Ukrainian government to deal with war crimes committed by neo-Nazi militias/regular government forces in the Donbass:
The failure to stop abuses and possible war crimes by volunteer battalions risks significantly aggravating tensions in the east of the country and undermining the proclaimed intentions of the new Ukrainian authorities to strengthen and uphold the rule of law more broadly.
Yet Zizek maintains that Leftists in Europe should uncritically support the Ukrainian government which has presided over many human rights abuses/war crimes.
His article displays an egregious disregard for the incessant shelling of civilians settlements in Donetsk and Lugansk by Ukrainian forces over the last 8 years. This has led to the deaths of over 14,000 people with thousands more wounded and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.
Every day civilian settlements around Donetsk city are bombarded by Ukrainian artillery causing many casualties amongst civilians. One impartial source for these attacks comes from the daily video reports provided by American journalist Patrick Lancaster. All you have to do is to go to his YouTube channel. By ignoring these war crimes suggests that Professor Zizek condones such attacks on Russian speaking civilians.
Further on his article, Zizek goes on to make the outrageous and historically inaccurate statement that all Leftists who display “understanding for Russia’’ are just like those who appeased German fascism in the 1930s. Yet, the vast majority of socialists and rank and file communists supported the struggle against German fascism from 1933 onwards. For they realised that fascism represented a deadly threat to the working class and its institutions. Whatever faults Russia’s government might have, it is not a fascist "Eurasian" regime bent on the conquest of the European continent, the destruction of the organised working class and a genocidal race war against Jews and Slavs.
That's all Zizek's imagination
Professor Zizek is a willing dupe of Western imperialism, and uses his position to attack and try to shame Leftists who refuse to support the ultra nationalist regime in Kiev. In the democratic West no one can be allowed to have a different opinion to the prevailing narrative regarding Ukraine.
Professor Zizek finishes off his attack on the Left in the West by making the incredible statement:
the minimum to be done by those who oppose Russian invasion of Ukraine is to demand Assange’s immediate release.
He appears wilfully ignorant of the fact that Julian Assange is the victim of psychological torture at the hands of the governments of the UK, US, Sweden and Ecuador. That is the opinion of Professor Nils Melzer, UN Rapporteur for Torture. The governments of Britain and the US are the leading lights in NATO, which Zizek wants to strengthen, and have conducted the horrendous persecution of a journalist who has exposed American and NATO war crimes. Nor should we forget the fact that the EU, whose member states belong to NATO, has not lifted a finger to help Julian Assange.