ce399. 2008 'Obama faces race issue' (before)
ce399. 2008 'System Denial' (after)
The external manifestations of violence may have largely disappeared from the public space, as Muchembled argues. Instead, they have been internalised into the very workings of our societies and economies, which ruthlessly winnow out the winners from the losers, according to Zizek. Echoing the debates of 19th-century Marxists who condemned social democrats for trying to improve a bad system that needed to be destroyed, Zizek attacks “liberal communists” as the enemies of the progressive struggle today. These “liberal communists”, capitalist philanthropists such as Bill Gates and George Soros, are like “chocolate laxatives” – they create a problem while simultaneously claiming to solve it. He writes: “Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation.”
Typically, Zizek concludes with a highly provocative paradox. “If one means by violence a radical upheaval of the basic social relations, then, crazy and tasteless as it may sound, the problem with historical monsters who slaughtered millions was that they were not violent enough. Sometimes, doing nothing is the most violent thing to do.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c1c0f9fc-fedf-11dd-b19a-000077b07658.html?ftcamp=rss
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