A Proper Criticism of Zizek's Endorsement

October 27, 2019

Thesis: While Zizek starts with a rather solid criticism of electoral politics, he fails to fully apply it and as a result inadvertently finds himself falling into the mindset he criticizes.

Slavoj Zizek has always been a rather controversial figure, both in how he presents himself and also his insistence on breaking from what he deems the mainstream left. From what I've read of his academic work, his choices in rhetoric and attitude are at least understandable, if not agreeable; as a staunch Lacanian in a post-Deleuze world, he's inevitably bound to make his fair share of enemies.

One of his more polarizing choices came in 2016: he decided to endorse the Republican presidential nominee in an attempt to strengthen the American left. Press and certain circles within the left immediately seized on this, as more evidence supporting their doubts about him. Zizek would go on to maintain years later that this was no fluke, that he absolutely stands by his decision.

The purpose of this article is not to discuss whether Zizek backed the right horse: I could care less for who the “lesser evil” is. What bothers me about this statement is that his justification for said choice displays an uncharacteristic lack of understanding on his part, to the point where one cannot just write it off as a fluke.

He's maintained and doubled down on this position for years, continuously giving justification on his decision; if this is just another hot take, it demonstrates his willingness to participate in political theater, and if it isn't, then there's a lot more that has to be called into question.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I will approach this as if he is fully serious, attempting to provide a more thorough criticism of this than what has already been said, because I am sure there are “vulgar accelerationists” out there who unironically believe in this.

“Trump as a Paradox”

Currently at the eye of the storm that is personality politics, we have the 45th president of the United States. One might ask, what makes 45 such a special number? I'll let Zizek explain:

Counter to the liberal perception of Trump as an autocrat, to Å½iÅ¾ek, he is more accurately described as a middle-of-the-roader: â€œTrump is a paradox: he is really a centrist liberal, and maybe even in his economic policies closer to the Democrats, and he desperately tries to mask this. So, the function of all of these dirty jokes and stupidities is to cover up that he is really a pretty ordinary, centrist politician.â€

Even with pedantry aside, that's nowhere close to the definition of a paradox. Could you argue that electoral politics adopting ironic elements is a symptom of the world around us changing? Sure. But the issue is, that observation doesn't just fail to support his assertion of this man being unique, it works against it.

Political rhetoric changes with the times, that's not a particularly new phenomenon. Zizek somewhat acknowledges this, but for every correct statement criticizing one side of the political stageshow:

The lesson of this thought-experiment is clear: the danger today is not passivity but pseudo-activity, the urge to â€œbe active,â€ to â€œparticipate,â€ in order to mask the vacuity of what goes on. People intervene all the time. People â€œdo something.â€ Academics participate in meaningless debates, and so on. The truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw. Those in power often prefer even a â€œcriticalâ€ participation, a dialogue, to silence, because just to engage us in dialogue, is to make sure our ominous passivity is broken. The votersâ€™ abstention is thus a true political act: it forcefully confronts us with the vacuity of todayâ€™s democracies.

We end up with him parroting the very same language of the “pseudo-active”:

How did we end up here? One has to repeat again and again that Clintonâ€™s defeat was the price she had to pay for neutralizing Bernie Sanders. She did not lose because she moved too much to the Left but precisely because she was too centrist and in this way failed to capture the anti-establishment revolt that sustained both Trump and Sanders. Trump reminded some of his voters of the half-forgotten reality of class struggle, although, of course, he did it in a distorted populist way. Trumpâ€™s anti-establishment rage was a kind of return of what was repressed in the moderate liberal Leftâ€™s politics focusing on cultural and PC issues.

Littered throughout his writings on the topic we have him throwing around terms like “establishment”, “PC”, and “mainstream media”. And I think there's the bridge from a (rightfully) cynical view of electoral politics to an outright endorsement. Zizek is able to see through one narrative, but completely buys into a competing one.

And just because these narratives are competing does not mean they aren't serving the same purpose. Sure, the populist narrative might add an “underdog” spin to things, but ultimately, it's about as much of a shake-up as the countless other “political revolutions” that preceded it.

Once again, I can cite Zizek against himself here:

First, the fear that a Trump victory would turn the United States into a fascist state is a ridiculous exaggeration. The United States has such a rich texture of divergent civic and political institutions that their Gleichschaltung (the standardization of political, economic, cultural and social institutions as carried out in authoritarian states) cannot be enacted.

As he notes, political power in the United States is undeniably diffuse; however, he fails to apply this observation to the others involved in this election:

The popular rage that gave birth to Trump also gave birth to Sanders. Both express widespread social and political discontent, but they do it in opposite waysâ€”one engaging in rightist populism and the other opting for the leftist call for justice. And hereâ€™s the trick: The leftist call for justice tends to be combined with struggles for womenâ€™s and gay rights, for multiculturalism and against racism. The strategic aim of the Clinton consensus is clearly to dissociate all these struggles from the leftist call for justice, which is why the living symbol of this consensus is Tim Cook. Cook, the CEO of Apple, proudly signed a pro-LGBT letter to North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and can now easily forget about hundreds of thousands of Foxconn workers in China assembling Apple products in slave conditions. He made his big gesture of solidarity with the underprivileged by demanding the abolition of gender-segregated bathrooms.

Like, I honestly have to stop and ask where he got “Clinton consensus” from; if he's referring to the recuperation of political movements, sure, but that a phenomenon that goes past Clinton, it goes past the US, it goes past 2019, and it certainly goes past “political correctness”. As it stands, all of ideology has been transformed into representation and commodified: the very nature of electoral politics is evidence of that.

And to the credit of these “multicultural” movements Zizek implicitly throws under the bus, they have often been some of the strongest critics of this milquetoast “progressive liberalism” he derides. Sure I have many disagreements with the analyses of these movements, but I still recognize the importance of their critiques: both Federici and Fanon wrote through the lens of their own experience, and as a result were able to analyze traditionally “Marxist” concepts from a different angle. “The ruthless criticism of all that exists” means the ruthless criticism of all that exists, and these critiques have greatly contributed to our understanding of the material base itself.

What doesn't contribute is the constant horse-betting that lures in leftists every election cycle. And regardless of who wins, voters go through the same exact motions repeatedly. Obsessing over individuals who will lose relevance in just a few years, constructing an elaborate case for how their pick will advance the greater good, and in the situations they lose, finding someone to blame.

It's not enough to just say “both options are bad”, unless you are able to acknowledge the fundamental incapacity of electoral politics, you'll be forced to play the weighing of 'lesser evils” game, which seems to be what is happening here.

Eventually, after he made his decision, all of his rebuttals to Democratic voters hit him like a boomerang:

The philosopher continued, â€œLook, the one point when I fully agreed with Trump was, you remember, when Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary? He said, Trump, wasnâ€™t it simply true. He said itâ€™s like somebody from Occupy Wall Street endorsing Lehman Brothers. In every society there is a whole network of unwritten rules, how politics work and how you build consensus. Trump disturbed this.â€ â€œAnd if Trump wins, both big parties, Republicans and Democrats, would have to return to basics, rethink themselves, and maybe some things can happen there. Thatâ€™s my desperate, very desperate hope, that if Trump wins, listen, America is still not a dictatorial state, he will not introduce fascism,â€ he argued. But it will be a big kind of awakening. New political processes will be set in motion, will be triggered.â€ â€œBut I am well aware that things are very dangerous here, not only all this white supremacy groups, but listen, Trump openly said, and thereâ€™s a report saying that heâ€™ll probably do it, you know how important in the United States the Supreme Court is? Heâ€™s already said he will nominate right-wingers. So there are dangers and Iâ€™m just afraid that Hillary stands for this absolute inertia, the most dangerous one. Because she is a cold warrior, and so on, connected with banks, pretending to be socially progressive.â€

And its statements like these where electoral myopia completely falls apart. Disturbing the order? Absolute inertia? A big kind of awakening? How many “disruptive” election cycles do we have to go through until people will realize this is the norm, not the exception? Elections have never brought about the long-fabled “political revolution” and there's no reason to assume they ever will, regardless of whichever face of the day is “fighting the establishment”.

Before the New Right there was the Tea Party, before the DSA there was the Greens. Before the Tea Party there was the Republican Revolution, before the Greens there was McGovern and Jackson. No matter which side covers these stories, the unquestioned assumption seems to be that any of this is unique or new. But, simply put, it's not. Sure, one could argue the rhetoric has taken a shift in these new movements, but of course rhetoric will change with the times, because what we perceive as authentic does too.

And ultimately, rhetoric can only give you so much insight into a person, especially one running for office. We can have the Gipper talking about “morning in America” one second and pushing some of the most inhumane policies the next. This is why it's so dangerous to let personality obscure politics; it ultimately does not matter which individual is sitting in the Oval Office, because power is so heavily diffused in our system. Not even just federal checks and balances, but also industry, the international community, and political parties. The president's job is to act as a face to a much more abstract and complex process; due to the inherent nature of their role, they can only exist as a subject. It shows in the way we discuss and consider these people: 'Bush era”, “Reagan won the Cold War”, etc.

And this is where you have to be careful in putting emphasis on people. Political currents often go beyond people, and when we fail to acknowledge that, we attribute phenomena to the wrong causes. Some might blame the Great Depression on President Hoover, when we see that recovery primarily came from the large spike in demand generated by war as opposed to the policies of the New Deal.

“Pushing the Democratic Party Further Left”

The Overton Window seems to be a favorite shield of the “left-liberals” (as he calls them): justifying their support of a cause/individual based on the hopes that “they will steer the conversation further to the left”. Zizek, instead, sees to it that his endorsement isn't gradualism, but rather instead gradualism with extra steps.

In his statement defending his judgement years later, he discusses the effects he hoped for:

Saritha Prabhuâ€™s opinion piece recently published in the Tennessean deserves to be quoted at length. It moved me almost to tears with its description of a simple truth: â€œBrace yourself; there is a civil war coming soon in the Democratic Party. At the heart of todayâ€™s Democratic Party is an identity crisis and an ideological struggle. For starters, is the Democratic Party a party of the rich or a party of the little guy? For many years, theyâ€™ve been the party of the rich playing a good game of pretending to be for the little guy. And the Democratic establishment does it in insidious ways that are too clever by half: they are for the marginalised guy or gal in the race, gender, and sexuality issues because, hey, that doesnâ€™t hurt their and their affluent constituentsâ€™ pocketbook much... But all this worked until 2016, but canâ€™t be pulled off anymore...” Letâ€™s make it clear: it was the rise of Trump which triggered the â€œcivil warâ€ in the Democratic Party â€“ and, by the way, the proper name of this â€œcivil warâ€ is class struggle. So letâ€™s not lose nerve, letâ€™s rather use the opportunity inadvertently opened up by Trump. The only way to really defeat Trump is for the left to win that civil war.

First question to deal with: is this “civil war” actually representative of class struggle? No, I don't think so, and I have a few reasons for being skeptical of this.

The groups in “conflict” are too vaguely defined and equivocal. There's a conscious effort on the “left” wing of this issue to define the conflict as between the “people” and the “establishment”. This is most likely done to ensure broad electoral appeal, however, in the process of doing so, it loses any distinct character. It might seem like a nitpick, but class struggle without the element of class is ultimately no different from generic populism.
It's difficult to trace the rift back to economic origins. If anything, the fact that it took a candidate of the opposite party taking a surprise win makes me believe the “conflict” we're witnessing is purely a tactical disagreement. It would explain why its within a political party, why the rhetoric is strategically decided, and why there's such a hyper-focus on individual candidates.

And secondly, I want to confront the notion of “steering discussion”, because it's an incredibly common argument I hear from gradualists. Sure, the Red Scare brought with it misconceptions and negative connotations, but that is to be expected. Of course Marxism is controversial, it's a pointed critique towards something as fundamental in our society as economy. We aren't utopians, we're not here to “pitch socialism” to the public, our goal is the ruthless criticism of all that exists.

There's danger in the term becoming inoffensive too; being recuperated into “acceptable discourse” means that the conflict of class conflict had to have been neutered in one way or another. It means that our criticism lacks teeth, so it should come to no surprise that these advocates of the Overton Window are suggesting exactly that: partial demands, withholding criticism of their figureheads, and the complete erosion of class analysis. At the end of the day, we're left with a “socialism” that only differs from social democracy in name. It's precisely because we fear “losing our platform” that we end up losing the radical nature of the movement.

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