Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek   ( philosopher,  writer)
Born	21 March 1949
Alma mater	•  University of Ljubljana •  University of Paris VIII
Member of	Progressive International
Slovenian "neo-Marxist" intellectual much published in corporate media.

Professor Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian public intellectual and International Director of Birkbeck Institute of Humanities (BIH) at the University of London.

Works

He has published over 50 books (translated into 20 languages) on topics ranging from philosophy and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, to theology, film, opera and politics, including "Lacan in Hollywood" and "The Fragile Absolute".,"Hegel in A Wired Brain" (Bloomsbury Press, London 2020) and "Chronicles of a Time Lost – Pandemic 2" (Polity Press 2020).

Presidential candidate

Slavoj Žižek was a candidate for, and nearly won, the Presidency of his native Slovenia in the first democratic elections after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990.

Covid

Žižek was conspicuously early in promoting a "left-wing" angle of the official narrative on Covid. Already on January 20, 2020, he published an piece stating that

This is my private paranoia: does the reason of the panic displayed by authorities although the actual effects are till now relatively modest reside in the fact that they know (or suspect, at least) something about possible mutations that they don't want to render public in order to avoid public confusion and unrest?... One thing is sure: isolation, new walls and further quarantines, will not do the job. Full unconditional solidarity and a globally coordinated response are needed, a new form of what was once called Communism...There is, however, an unexpected emancipatory prospect hidden in this nightmarish vision....Do half-abandoned streets in a megalopolis – the usually bustling urban centers looking like ghost towns, stores with open doors and no customers, just a lone walker or car here and there, individuals with white masks – not provide the image of non-consumerist world at ease with itself?...Even the white masks worn by the few people walking around provide a welcome anonymity and liberation from social pressure for recognition.

On 31 December 2020, Slavoj Žižek wrote in Jacobin magazine that we've been given a choice between a return to the old exploitative normality and a post-COVID corporate "Great Reset" that promises to be even worse. We need a real alternative, a "Socialist Reset" that can win justice for all and save the planet from climate apocalypse.

Žižek wanted to coerce everybody into taking the Covid jab with the use of government mandates. In December 2021, Žižek used the analogy of how state power is like an abusive husband who hits his wife constantly. The wife is the population. One day the wife is choking and the husband slaps her on the back to save her life "wouldn't be it'd be stupid for you to complain at this point against me because it would be easy for me to defend myself look I did what was natural, I saved your life"

Progressive

Slavoj Žižek is a Council member of Progressive International, the international organisation uniting and mobilising progressive left-wing activists and organisations.

In 2024, Žižek, in an op-ed in George Soros's Project Syndicate, advocated for its "allies" giving Ukraine nuclear weapons.

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