SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK on the THE LEFT'S STRATEGY

"When today’s Left bombards the capitalist system with demands that it obviously cannot fulfill (Full employment! Retain the welfare state! Full rights for immigrants!), it is basically playing a game of hysterical provocation, of addressing the Master with a demand which will be impossible for him to meet, and will thus expose his impotence. The problem with this strategy, however, is not only that the system cannot meet these demands, but that, in addition, those who voice them do not really want them to be realized.

For example, when ‘radical’ academics demand full rights for immigrants and opening of the borders, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent working-class racist backlash which would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics? Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met – in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position

[…]

The gesture is that of calling the other’s bluff, counting on the fact that what the other really fears is that one will fully comply with his or her demand. And would not the same gesture also throw our radical academics into a panic? Here the old ‘68 motto ‘Soyons réalistes demandons l’impossible!’ acquires a new cynical and sinister meaning which, perhaps, reveals its truth:

‘Let’s be realists: we, the academic Left, want to appear critical, while fully enjoying the privileges the system offers us. So let’s bombard the system with impossible demands: we all know that these demands won’t be met, so we can be sure that nothing will actually change, and we’ll maintain our privileged status!’"

— Slavoj Žižek, “Happiness after September 11″, from Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 75-77.

via Never yet melted

While I do not agree with his first paragraph - a country with a sovereign currency can finance anything using its own currency and staying within available resources - the rest is spot on.

The big lie

Reposted from Lew Rockwell

"The key to this line of thought is an exploration of the ideological “left-wing” roots of National Socialism and Marxism."

This is indeed controversial. FA Hayek has similar views. In 'The Socialist Roots  of Naziism' Hayek writes:

Lensch follows  this  up  with  a consideration  which  again  contains  much  truth  and which  deserves  to  be pondered: "Since the Social Democrats,  by the aid of  this (universal] Suffrage,  occupied  every post  which  they  could obtain  in the  Reichstag, the State  Parliament,  the  municipal  councils, the courts  for the settlement of trade disputes, the  sick funds, and  so forth,  they  penetrated  very  deeply into  the  organism of  the  state;  but  the  price  which  they  had to pay for  this was  that the state, in  its  turn, exercised  a  profound influence upon the working classes. To  be sure, as  the result of strenuous  socialistic  labors  for  fifty  years,  the  state is  no longer  the same as it,was in  the  year 1867,  when universal suffrage  first  came into operation; but then, Social  Democracy, in  its turn, is  no longer  the same as it was at the time.  The state  has  undergone a  process  of'  socialization,  and Social  Democracy  has undergone a  process  of nationalization."

To me it makes sense.

The big lie

It is commonplace today to assert the death of civility and open debate in academia, in the mainstream regime media, and in the nation at-large. If someone on the Left cannot answer or address an argument they resort to scurrilous name calling, labeling their opponent a “Nazi” or “racist,” even in many cases, a savage thuggish resort to physical violence and assault.

Dinesh D’Souza has a new book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, which was released today on Amazon. It purports to move beyond Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse; and Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change, in asserting the common ideological make-up and philosophical origins of American Democrats and German Nazis. This is a very controversial thesis which strikes at the dark clotted heart of contemporary Democrats and progressives. The key to this line of thought is an exploration of the ideological “left-wing” roots of National Socialism and Marxism. There is excellent prior research which points in this sinister direction.

Take a look at this brief excerpt from the award-winning documentary, The Soviet Story, which compares and contrasts National Socialism (Nazism) under Hitler and International Socialism (Communism) under Stalin. Both were violent left-wing, anti-capitalist movements which believed in creating “a new man,” by pseudo-Darwinian selective breeding (eugenics) and eliminating the “racial trash” (Friedrich Engels term) by genocide. It was recognized at the time of the origins of Soviet Communism in the USSR, fascism in Italy (created by the former radical Marxist revolutionary Benito Mussolini), and the NSDAP in Germany, that all were competing leftist ideological movements.

The Nazis got their spurious ideas on eugenics (and financial funding from major foundations) in the United States from progressive intellectuals and scientists – virtually every man or woman a Democrat, see Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era. See also Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race; Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust; and Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism.