>>24565567His tics are more of a thing when he speaks in languages other than Slovenian. In his native tongue he's not as much of a meme:
https://youtu.be/2Xom7xFDL6A
>>24567454Maybe he is but he said to be an actual Stalinist would be crazy, vulgar and tasteless. But he played with Stalin in a trollish way to rehabilitate notions of discipline, sacrifice, responsibility, and collective order. That's a whole thing with him. Like, with refugees and immigrants, the left position has been to do nothing, the right position has been to expel them but also go into this neo-nationalist thing. But Zizek is opposed to their kind of fearful grievance-based nationalism, and thinks Europe needs more organization, more centralization which is the only way to really deal with the refugees. For Zizek it's all about finding some universal form that goes beyond narrow identites and builds courageous, collective subjects. He'll generally side with the liberals like say, on the question of COVID being real, but wants a well-organized state to handle it, he wants a stronger and more unified Europe with a European army and more economic planning to build factories for military production. He is absolutely pro-courage which also means having the courage to get your hands dirty in contrast to "beautiful soul" leftism:
https://youtu.be/1VjFYm7ZNKk
This is my own view, but I think most Marxist-Leninists today are attracted to that muscular stuff to cope with their own powerlessness. It stems from ressentiment. A thing in Zizek is that what can appear radical is often displaced fear of true political engagement, which leads to a politics based around moralism, purity spirals, and cancel culture-style moral policing. They always find some way to reject anybody on the left who comes close to power because they're deeply afraid of power in reality. Zizek wrote the introduction to this Frederic Jameson book which proposed enlisting everyone in the U.S. into the army, a universal national guard in which everyone participates in collective labor and service. He's not saying he endorses this specific plan but he respects its ambition as a shared project and universal obligation.
