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OCTOBER 18, 2019

WHAT IS ŽIŽEK FOR?

The celebrated “leftist” “philosopher” is a racist and

reactionary whose intellectual product is worthless. The
Left should have nothing to do with him.
 by THOMAS MOLLER-NIELSEN (/AUTHOR/THOMAS-
MOLLER-NIELSEN)

C
onsider the following passage:

What would be my—how should I call it—spontaneo attitude towards the universe?
It’s a very dark one. The first one—the first thes would have been—a kind of total
vanity. There nothing, basically. I mean it quite literally. Like, ultimately—ultimately—
there are just some fragments, some vanishing things, if you look at the universe it’s one big void.
But then, how do things emerge? Here, I feel a kind of spontaneo affinity with quantum
physics, where, you know, the idea there that the universe a void, but a kind of a positively
charged void, and then particular things appear when the balance of the void disturbed. And
I like th idea spontaneously very much, the fact that it’s not just nothing, things are out there.
It means something went terribly wrong, that what we call creation a kind of a cosmic
imbalance, a cosmic catastrophe, that things exist by mistake. And I’m even ready to go to the
end and claim that the only way to counteract th to assume the mistake and go to the end.
And we have a name for th , it’s called “love.” Isn’t love precisely th kind of a cosmic
imbalance? I w always disgusted with th notion of “I love the world, universal love.” I don’t
like the world. I’m basically someone in between I hate the world or I’m indifferent towards it.
But the of whole of reality, it’s just it, it’s stupid. It out there. I don’t care about it. Love for
me an extremely violent act. Love not “I love you all.” Love means, I pick out something,
and you know, again it’s th structure of imbalance, even if th something just a small detail,
a fragile individual person, I say “I love you more than anything else.” In th quite formal
sense love evil.

Having conducted an informal poll among friends and family members, my strong suspicion
is that your reaction to this passage—which, as you can see, ranges over such seemingly
disparate topics as the meaning of the universe, quantum physics and the emergence of
matter, and the nature of love—will fall into one of three categories: (i) You believe that it
expresses something profoundly insightful; (ii) You believe that it expresses insane gibberish;
(iii) You are utterly unsure what to make of it: perhaps it is saying something insightful about
the universe, creation, emergence, quantum physics or love; or maybe, in fact, it’s just
unbridled lunacy posing as philosophical profundity.
If you fall into the rst category, you most likely are—or would be—a Slavoj Žižek
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek) fan: the above passage is a
verbatim transcript (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MfV1O20OJi4) of the start of the
popular 2005 documentary lm about the 70-year-old Slovenian philosopher, entitled
(somewhat unimaginatively) Žižek!. And you’re in good company. Described on his book
covers and lecture tours as a “Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political
activist”, Žižek—a self-described “radical leftist
(https://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/slovenian_philosopher_slavoj_zizek_on_the)”—
is one of the only intellectuals alive today who has an entire journal
(http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/IJZS) exclusively dedicated to discussing his ideas.
Prestigious newspapers and magazines have labelled Žižek a “celebrity philosopher
(https://www.macleans.ca/society/life/four-operas-and-a-romantic-scandal/)” with “rockstar
popularity (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/28/courage-of-hopelessness-
slavoj-zizek-review)” who has a “fanatical global following
(https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jun/10/slavoj-zizek-humanity-ok-people-
boring),” the “Elvis of cultural theory (https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/movies/the-
worlds-most-unlikely-movie-star.html),” and, perhaps most (in)famously, as the “most
dangerous philosopher in the West (https://newrepublic.com/article/64692/disputations-still-
the-most-dangerous-philosopher-the-west).” Millions of people have watched his lectures and
videos on YouTube (https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Slavoj+zizek); thousands
of students, academics, and laypeople have bought his books; and many thousands more have
attended his lectures: 3,000 people recently packed out the Sony Centre in Toronto, where
Žižek held a debate with the Canadian clinical psychologist and fellow public intellectual
Jordan Peterson. Tickets were sold for as much as $1,500
(https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20190404-peterson).

If, however, you fall into the second category of people, you’re not in bad company either. In a
much-read analysis of  Žižek’s work in The New York Review of Books, the distinguished
British political philosopher John Gray
(https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/07/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/) claimed that
Žižek’s work merely “[a]chiev[es] a deceptive substance”, before eventually concluding that
“Žižek’s work … amounts to less than nothing”. Harvard evolutionary psychologist and
popular public intellectual Steven Pinker
(https://mobile.twitter.com/sapinker/status/493957347127988225?lang=en) openly
described Žižek on Twitter as a “charlatan” (as well as a “student-detesting … plagiarist”); and
Noam Chomsky (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AVBOtxCfan0&t=4s), perhaps the
world’s foremost public intellectual, recently accused Žižek of engaging in “theoretical
posturing” by “using fancy words,” but that Žižek’s work ultimately contains “no content …
beyond the level of something which you can explain in ve minutes to a twelve-year-old.”

Finally, if you fall into the third category of people, you’re also likely in good company too—
though you’ll rarely, if ever, nd such agnosticism publicly expressed by other academics and
public intellectuals (or even, for that matter, by individuals online). Discussions of Žižek’s
work—as is the case in much of public discourse these days—tends to be heavily polarized:
people either love him or hate him. Those who are unsure what to think mostly remain silent.

I should lay my cards on the table at the outset: I am not at all unsure what I think of Žižek—I
fall squarely within the second category of people listed above. More speci cally, I, too, think
that Žižek is, at his best, a posturing charlatan. However, I also think that, at his worst, he is
signi cantly worse than that: he is also a repetitive, reactionary, and at times even racist
individual whose continued acceptance and, in some sectors, even quasi-veneration by the left
is, I think, deeply harmful to the global progressive cause.

I realize that these are serious allegations, and that they require a signi cant amount of
substantiation. Let me, then, prove the charges one by one.

RACISM
Let us begin by examining claims for which Žižek has garnered a signi cant amount of
criticism over the last couple of years—namely, those related to Islam and the European
refugee crisis, as spelled out in his 2016 book Against the Double Blackmail: Refuge , Terror
and Other Troubl with the Neighbours (“ADB”).

Much of what Žižek writes in ADB very much conforms to what a self-proclaimed leftist
would say on these issues. For instance, he writes that the “ultimate causes” of the refugee
crisis are a combination of both “the dynamics of global capitalism” as well as “Western
military intervention” in Libya and Iraq. Moreover, he writes that Western Europeans are
“preventing” Africans from “changing their societies” through “devastating” forms of
“economic neocolonialism,” often mediated by international institutions such as the IMF and
the World Bank (69-72). Žižek also argues that “our goal” as global progressives should be to
“reconstruct global society” such that the “desperate refugees” are no longer forced to ee
their country of origin (18-19)—which thus (presumably) entails ending such Western
military interventions and economic neocolonialist policies throughout Africa and the wider
Middle-East. Later in the book, Žižek also explicitly states that “the principal threat to Europe
does not come in the shape of Muslim immigrants but in its anti-immigrant populist
defenders” (107), and that “Europe will have to reassert its full commitment to providing
means for the digni ed survival of refugees” (155). (Furthermore, in a television interview
with Mehdi Hasan (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qkdPZ-UmrSw) on Al Jazeera’s
UpFront, Žižek was also similarly explicit that he wants “even more refugees” to be allowed to
seek asylum in Europe.)
(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/91Y6DkG98oL.jpg)

In summary, Žižek believes that: (i) the West bears signi cant responsibility for causing the
refugee crisis; (ii) Europe should (therefore) do the morally acceptable thing and open its
doors to the refugees; and (iii) to deal with the root cause of the crisis, Europe should
ultimately cease its destructive economic policies and military ventures in Africa and the
Middle-East.

To repeat: all of these points are, of course, very standard things for a leftist to say. (And I
agree with all of them.) However, throughout the book Žižek is also keen to establish a fourth,
core thesis in his book, one that leftists would not standardly subscribe to—namely, that
Europe should open its doors to the refugees in spite of the cultural incompatibility of refuge
and Western citizens. More speci cally, in the book Žižek openly defends Samuel
Huntington’s (in)famous thesis of the “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the Western
world. As he writes: “We are de nitely in the midst of the clash of civilizations (the Christian
West versus radicalized Islam)…” (11). 

Lest one think that such a remark was some kind of a bizarre anomaly, Žižek, in fact, makes
virtually identical remarks at two di erent points later in the book. Thus, he writes that:

“…the refuge want to have their cake and eat it. They basically expect to get the best of the
Western welfare state while retaining their specific way of life, which in some of its key featur
incompatible with the ideological foundations of the Western welfare state.” (88)

Perhaps most explicitly, near the end of the book he unambiguously states that “it is a simple
fact that most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible with Western
European notions of human rights” (149).

Exhuming the rotting corpse of Huntington’s repeatedly (https://m.youtube.com/watch?

v=bQ7QbUPJkiA) debunked (https://www.thenation.com/article/clash-ignorance/) thesis is,
obviously, a rather strange—not to mention highly in ammatory—thing for a self-proclaimed
“radical leftist” to do. Hence, the obvious question is: What reasons does Žižek provide for
thinking that there is such a “clash”? More speci cally: What are these “Western notions of
human rights”, and why is Islam ostensibly incompatible with them?

Žižek is not entirely explicit on these points. However, from what he writes, it appears that he
believes that “Western” and “Islamic” culture are irreconcilable for at least two di erent
reasons. The rst, he writes, is because “Muslims nd it impossible to bear blasphemous
images and reckless humor,” which is apparently incompatible with “Western notions” of free
speech. And the second is that “the subordination of women” is “part of the Muslim life-
world”, which con icts with “Western values” relating to women’s equality (149).

To talk this way about the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims—and, moreover, to do so while
providing virtually no substantiating evidence—is incredibly provocative, to say the least.
Moreover—as Žižek is surely well aware—to talk of “Western notions of free of speech” is
itself an exceedingly gross simpli cation: for one thing, there are signi cant di erences
(https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-19/free-speech-in-europe-isn-t-
what-americans-think) between European and American free speech laws and attitudes; for
another, even within Europe there are enormous di erences in interpretation of the notion of
“free speech”. (Thus, for instance—to use Žižek’s phraseology—the German government
(https://www.thelocal.de/20180803/freedom-of-speech-doesnt-cover-holocaust-denial-
germanys-top-court-rules) actually “ nds it impossible to bear” the denial of the Holocaust.)
Moreover, by claiming that Islam inherently con icts with the (“Western”) concept of free
speech, Žižek ignores the enormous di erences
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country) in the interpretation and
implementation of free speech laws in the world’s fty majority Muslim countries, as well as
the fact that, when asked, most Muslims around the world in fact express support
(https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2012/07/10/most-muslims-want-democracy-personal-
freedoms-and-islam-in-political-life/) for “Western values,” including (but not limited to)
freedom of speech. Last but not least, leveling such an accusation against Islam is also deeply
hypocritical, given that Žižek himself has openly advocated criminalizing certain forms of
speech. As he writes in his (2018) book Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: “The only thing we
can do […] is to mobilize the broadest international public in order to directly criminalize any
talk of the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction” (390).

What about the claim that the “subordination of women” is “part of the Muslim life-world”?
This will undoubtedly come as a surprise to, for instance, many of the women living in
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. This is a country which has
previously elected a female president
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawati_Sukarnoputri) (unlike, say, the U.S. and many
other European countries); where more than 40 percent of senior management positions are
occupied by women (https://www.mic.com/articles/84601/the-countries-with-the-highest-
number-of-female-executives-are-not-the-ones-you-d-expect) (a percentage twice as high as in
Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.); and which has a higher proportion of elected women
government o cials (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SG.GEN.PARL.ZS) than many
countries in Europe (and exactly same the proportion as the U.S.). 

What evidence does Žižek himself adduce in support of his claim regarding Islam’s attitude
towards women? Apparently—and, indeed, almost absurdly—the only piece of evidence he
cites in his book is the infamous 2015-16 New Year’s Eve Cologne attacks
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/germany-crisis-cologne-new-years-eve-
sex-attacks), when several hundred men—many of whom were apparently of North Africa
descent—were alleged to have sexually assaulted hundreds of women near the city’s central
train station. According to Žižek, the attack was:
[A] public spectacle of instilling fear and humiliation, of exposing the privileged Germans to
painful helplessness […] [N]aive attempts to enlighten immigrants (explaining to them that our
sexual mor are different, that a woman who walks in public in a miniskirt and smil do not
thereby signal sexual invitation, and so on) are exampl of breathtaking stupidity. Immigrants
know all th perfectly well – and that’s why they are doing it. They are well aware that what
they are doing foreign to our predominant culture, and they are doing it precisely to wound
our sensitiviti . (143-4)

In an interview (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qkdPZ-UmrSw&t=307s) on Al Jazeera’s

UpFront television program, presenter Mehdi Hasan confronted Žižek over this passage:

HASAN: How th not a statement that couldn’t come out of the mouth of Marine Le Pen,
of the Golden Dawn, of all sorts of horrible groups? … Immigrants as a whole are trying to
wound European sensitiviti ?

ŽIŽEK: Not immigrants, those who did [what happened] there [in Cologne]… And I spoke
with people from there…

HASAN: So you took an attack, and generalized, to make a generalized point about European
culture? How that not bigotry? How that not what the far right do ?

ŽIŽEK: Wait a minute. It w absolutely not a sexual attack in the sense of rap and so on. It
w a kind of a—if I may use your term—sort of a provocation, if I may use the word that you
used…

HASAN: The attackers were provoking who? European culture? Seriously? A bunch of drunk
thugs?

ŽIŽEK: My Arab friends told me that what happened in Cologne w also happening on
Tahrir Square in E pt…

HASAN: And what do you extrapolate from that? What’s your conclusion?

ŽIŽEK: Nothing…

HASAN: Nothing?! But it happens in Germany at the Oktoberfest in Munich, it happens at

Mardi Gr …
ŽIŽEK: It’s not the same…

HASAN: Why it not the same? Women get attacked in public plac all over the world. Why
are you racializing it? Why are you culturalizing it?

ŽIŽEK: No, I think you are here absolutely simplifying things….

HASAN: You are! Sorry Slavoj, you just said to me that it happens in Tahrir Square and it
happens in Cologne. What happens? What the lesson from Cologne and Tahrir Square that
you are making? That you think worth making?

ŽIŽEK: The lesson that we should learn to talk openly about all these problems and not try to
whitewash them and so on.

Žižek’s alleged “lesson,” however, naturally only raises the further question: What, exactly, are
“these problems,” if they’re not equivalent to the fact that “the subordination of women” is
“part of the Muslim life-world”—an alleged problem for which he has (still) not provided any
serious evidence?

Žižek’s issues with Islam, however, do not end with its (alleged) violations of “Western values”
of free speech and women’s equality. In two particularly outrageous passages, he suggests that:
(1) any form of political Islam—even of the “moderate” variety—is tantamount to fascism;
and (2) that a pedophilia scandal
(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rotherham-grooming-gangs-1500-victims-
investigation-police-national-crime-agency-pakistani-white-a8219971.html) in the UK city of
Rotherham perpetrated by men of predominantly Pakistani descent suggests that young
Pakistanis are inherently predisposed toward pedophilia:  

♦ The political choic provided by Islam can be clearly identified: they reach from Fascist
nihilism, which parasitiz on capitalism, up to what Saudi Arabia stands for […] The most
Islam can offer (in its ‘moderate’ version) yet another ‘alternative modernity,’ a vision of
capitalism without its antagonisms, which cannot but resemble Fascism. (37-8)

♦ One can well imagine a non-pedophilic [Catholic] priest who, a er years of service, gets
involved in pedophilia because the very logic of the institution seduc him into it. Such an
‘institutional unconscio ’ designat the obscene disavowed underside that sustains the public
institution […]. In other words, it not simply that, for conformist reasons, the Church tri to
hush up its pedophilic scandals; rather, in defending itself, the Church defending its
innermost obscene secret. What th means that identifying oneself with th secret side a key
constituent of the very identity of a Catholic priest. If a priest seriously—not just rhetorically—
denounc these scandals, he thereby exclud himself from the ecclesiastic community, he no
longer ‘one of ’. […] We should approach the Rotherham events in exactly the same way.
Here, we are dealing with the ‘political unconscio ’ of the Pakistani Muslim Youth. (52-3)

Regarding the rst claim: this would appear to have the absurd consequence that the only
forms of political Islam that exist are extremist versions of Sunni Wahhabi-Sala sm, and
(hence) that, for instance, the Ennahdha Party
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennahda_Movement) in Tunisia is either a fascist party or
isn’t truly Islamic. Regarding the second claim: putting aside the (outrageous) claim that
pedophilia is “a key constituent of the very identity of a Catholic priest,” I nd it impossible
not to read this passage as suggesting that pedophilia features as a “key constituent of the very
identity” of “Pakistani Muslim Youth”—which, I think, can only plausibly be read as a
textbook instance of racism of the most debased variety.

In short, Žižek’s views on (Muslim) immigrants and refugees can be roughly summarized as
follows: despite the fact that the majority of immigrants are inherently predisposed towards
fascism, pedophilia, the subordination of women and the hatred of free speech, Europe
should, nevertheless, open its doors to them and guarantee their “digni ed survival”. It’s a
position that, to my knowledge, has not been defended in the literature before, possibly
because it’s so patently absurd: after all, if someone really believed that the refugees were
pedophilic women-subordinating freedom-hating fascists, why on Earth would he or she want
Europe to allow them in? Indeed, one suspects that, by attempting to carve a niche for himself
by nding a “third way” between the “left-wing” view that Europe should “open its doors
widely” to the refugees and the “right-wing” view Europe should “pull up the drawbridge”
(16), Žižek has ended up endorsing a position—one might even call it a form of racist
humanitarianism—that leaves him not only wide open to criticism, but also outright ridicule,
on both fronts. 

REACTIONARYISM
But it is not merely on the topic of refugees that Žižek has expressed views that many—and
not only those on the progressive left—would nd deeply troubling. To list just a few of them:
he openly supported Donald Trump (https://m.youtube.com/watch?
v=b4vHSiotAFA&t=3s) in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (a position he has since
proudly defended (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-hillary-clinton-populist-
right-left-democratic-party-civil-war-a8975121.html)); he recommended
(https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/french-elections-marine-le-pen-emmanuel-macron-
no-real-choice-a7714911.html) that French voters abstain in the second round of the 2017
French presidential election, his reason being that the choice between the pro-EU, pro-
NATO, neoliberal Emmanuel Macron and the anti-EU, anti-NATO, neofascist Marine Le
Pen—who has compared Muslim immigrants in France to Nazis
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8197895/Marine-Le-Pen-
Muslims-in-France-like-Nazi-occupation.html)—represented a “false choice”; he has
recommended that Europe should consider enacting the “global militarization of society,”
including (e.g.) the introduction of universal conscription, as one potential means of
responding to the refugee crisis (ADB, 147); he has suggested that the West might need to
engage in terrorism in order to defeat ISIS (“In order to bring about this destruction [of ISIS]
… we must avoid … engaging in the usual Left-liberal litany of ‘One cannot ght terror with
terror, violence only breeds more violence’” [ADB, 9]); he has suggested that certain forms of
political engagement may permit one to carry out moral atrocities (“We should absolutely
reject … the idea that we should be ready to constrain our political or (religious-political)
engagement when it leads us to violate elementary moral norms, when it makes us commit
mass killings and cause other forms of su ering” [TP, 378]); he has repeatedly shown
contempt for ordinary people (calling 99% of them “boring idiots
(https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jun/10/slavoj-zizek-humanity-ok-people-
boring)”), and has even gone as far as to claim that he “does not believe there is anything really
authentic in ordinary people’s actual worries (https://m.youtube.com/watch?
v=4Mkvt6SX2nk&t=141s)”; and, most preposterously—and worryingly—he has explicitly
expressed his preference for “the worst of Stalinism [over] the best of the liberal-capitalist
welfare state” (TP, 269).

Plainly, many of these claims are simply indefensible; and, indeed, even Žižek himself often
evinces little interest in trying to defend them. Moreover, to the extent that any kind of
argument can be discerned behind these claims, they are often—as I will now attempt to show
—extraordinarily weak. 
Take, for instance, Žižek’s support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Although Žižek claims to be “horri ed (https://m.youtube.com/watch?
v=2ZUCemb2plE&t=5s)” by the (prospect of the) Trump presidency, his support for Trump
in the U.S. election was based on the presumption that his victory would “trigger a process of
radicalization in the Democratic Party—and this process is our only hope
(https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-hillary-clinton-populist-right-left-
democratic-party-civil-war-a8975121.html)”; or, as he told Channel 4’s Cathy Newman in a
U.K. television interview: “I want right-wing chaos so that the New Left will save us from it
(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xN2ZGSX0cIE&t=1086s).”

Now, put aside the inherent danger in voting in as U.S. president a climate change-denying
(https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en) clown
who has pushed the country to the brink of a potentially catastrophic war with Iran
(https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/russia-accuses-pushing-iran-situation-brink-war-
190621083706284.html) and a species-ending war with Russia
(https://www.rt.com/news/383972-medvedev-syria-usa-trump/); for there are, at least, two
other serious problems with Žižek’s claim here.
(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/zizek2.jpg)
Illustration by C.M. Duffy (https://www.cmduffy.com/)

The rst is its apparent inconsistency with some of Žižek’s other professed beliefs, in
particular his claim that Trump “is really a centrist liberal … he is really a pretty ordinary,
centrist politician (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/28/slavoj-zizek-donald-
trump-is-really-a-centrist-liberal),” as well as his previous assertion that “we have to abandon
the idea that there is something emancipatory in extreme experiences, that they enable us to
open our eyes to the ultimate truth of a situation” [ADB, p. 66]. After all, if Trump really is
just a centrist liberal, how will he provide the “right-wing chaos” that Žižek desires? Moreover,
if there is “nothing emancipatory in extreme experiences”—and, surely, Trump’s election
would count as just such an example—then why does Žižek express faith in the claim that the
left will be invigorated by Trump’s victory? Furthermore, if Žižek really wants right-wing
chaos, why didn’t he simply recommend voting outright for Marine Le Pen?

The second, less ad hominem problem with Žižek’s claim, on the other hand, is the complete
and utter lack of evidence that he provides for it. Why, exactly, is right-wing chaos a necessary
precursor for radical change? Why does he think that Trump (or Le Pen’s) victory might
(re)invigorate the left, rather than destroy it? Why does he think it is impossible for leftists to
vote for the lesser immediate evil now in (e.g.) Clinton and Macron, whilst simultaneously
organizing in order to enact more progressive political change in the future? And why on earth
(at least in Trump’s case) does he think it’d be a good idea to actually vote for the “disaster”
that Žižek—as well as nearly every other sane individual on planet Earth—is so keen to avoid?
To use Žižek’s own phraseology once again: if voting for Clinton or Macron was like “o ering
us as a cure the very thing that caused the illness” (LTDB, 166), this surely only raises the
obvious question: Why in God’s name vote for the symptom of an illness?

Žižek, in fairness, has in fact responded to (some of) these objections:

A classic liberal argument for voting for Clinton or Macron against Trump or Le Pen that
while it true that what Clinton and Macron stand for the very predicament that gave birth
to Trump or Le Pen, not voting for Clinton or Macron like voting for an actual disaster in
order to prevent a possible future disaster. Th argument sounds convincing, on condition that
we ignore temporality. If Le Pen had been elected President in 2017, it could have tri ered
strong anti-fascist mobilization, rendering her re-election unthinkable, pl it could have given a
strong push to the Le ist alternative. So the two disasters (Le Pen President now or the threat of
Le Pen President in five years) are not the same: the disaster a er five years of Macron’s
reign, if it turns out to be a failure, will be much more serio than the one which did not
happen in 2017. (LTBD, 164)

But this argument is patently absurd. For one thing, if it is true that Le Pen’s election “could
have triggered strong anti-fascist mobilization”, then it also naturally follows that she might
not have triggered such mobilization; and, similarly, if it is true that she could have “given a
strong push to the Leftist alternative,” then it also naturally follows that she might not have
given the French Left such a strong push. 
Secondly, even if it true that a Le Pen victory in 2017 would have mobilized anti-fascist
resistance and/or given a strong push to a leftist political alternative (for instance, a movement
led by the respected French leftist politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon), this does not necessarily
entail that Macron’s actual reign will “end in failure”—as Žižek himself appears to admit (“if it
turns out to be a failure”).

Thirdly, even if it true that Macron’s presidency do “end in failure”, this simply does not
entail that it would have been better to have (in a sense) “gotten Le Pen over with” by voting
for her in 2017—for the simple and entirely obvious reason that Le Pen not required to win
in 2022.

And nally, even if it true that Le Pen wins in 2022, this does not mean that her election
then will be “much more serious” than her (hypothetical) election in 2017. Why, for instance,
couldn’t her election in 2022 cause “strong anti-fascist mobilization” and give a “strong push
to the [French] Leftist alternative”? Why, in other words, couldn’t her election in 2022 be just
as serious as—or perhaps even less serious than—her (again, hypothetical) election in 2017?

In summary: Žižek holds deeply reactionary views on a number of important political issues,
including (but not limited to) those relating to recent Western presidential elections. Many of
his more outrageous claims (e.g, expressing support for state-sponsored Western terrorism)
are, to my knowledge, never substantiated in any of his works. Moreover, those views that he
does attempt to substantiate are done so by evidence or argumentation of the imsiest variety
—and sometimes even straightforwardly contradict some of his other professed beliefs.

REPETITION AND ACADEMIC

MALPRACTICE
One of the rst things one notices upon beginning to study Žižek’s work is just how
monumental a task studying him is: to put it bluntly, the man has published an absolute shit
ton. Since he began writing in English in 1989, Žižek has published an incredible 48 books in
the English language alone
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_bibliography), an average of
well over a book every year. Moreover, during this period he has also written or appeared in
numerous documentary lms (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1670978/), given hundreds
of public lectures (https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Zizek+lecture) and
television (https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Zizek+interview) and newspaper
interviews (https://zizek.uk/complete-zizek-interviews-list/), written numerous newspaper
articles (https://www.independent.co.uk/author/slavoj-zizek), and, to top it all, written a
further 16 books in Slovenian
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_bibliography).

How has Žižek been able to achieve such astounding levels of output—and what is more,
achieve them while (to quote the blurb of his 2015 book, Trouble in Paradise) “rang[ing] over
everything from music videos to Marx” in virtually all of his works?

As it turns out, there is no unique answer to this question—rather, there are (at least) three.

One obvious reason is Žižek’s proclivity for citing the same core group of authors, and
discussing virtually the exact same collection of (admittedly wide-ranging) topics, in nearly all
of his books. Thus, in addition to Hegel and Lacan, a typical Žižekian book will include
bountiful references to Alain Badiou, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx; it will usually include
relatively detailed discussions of or references to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir
Lenin; and, nally, it will contain various treatments of, or scattered allusions to, current
“hot” political or cultural issues, including (but not limited to) the failures of capitalism,
communism, Christianity, China, anti-Semitism, immigrants, Islam, and—perhaps most
frequently—sex. A lot of sex.

The table below attempts to illustrate this point using an admittedly rather crude quantitative
method, namely the number of references Žižek makes (according to iBooks) to each topic or
theorist or historical gure in ve of his most recently published books. (In the table I have
tried to exclude references made in the books’ indexes and footnotes; moreover, I have—
somewhat arbitrarily—included, e.g., words such as ‘Freudian’ as references to Freud.) The
rst three books—Like a Thief in Broad Daylight (“LTBD,” 2018), The Courage of
Hopelessness (“TCH,” 2017), and Trouble in Paradise (“TP,” 2015)—were written for a
popular audience: in total, they average out to approximately 200 pages a piece, or around 500
pages on iBooks. (Unless otherwise stated, all future page references refer to the iBook version
of the relevant book.) The last two books—Absolute Recoil (“AR,” 2015), and Less Than
Nothing (“LTN,” 2013)—are marketed as more serious, “academic” works: the former is
approximately twice the length of the other three books; the latter is more than ve times as
long.

Like a Thief in The Courage of Trouble in Absolute Less Than

Person or Topic Broad Daylight Hopelessness Paradise Recoil Nothing
(2018) (2017) (2015) (2015) (2013)
Hegel/Hegelian/‘Hegelese’ 47 37 23 705 2236
Lacan/Lacanian/‘Lacanese’12 33 21 461 1689
Badiou 13 20 22 74 666
Freud/Freudian 11 10 19 224 486
Marx/Marxist 60 44 59 145 349
Hitler 9 15 19 12 13
Stalin/Stalinist 39 31 47 23 84
Lenin/Leninist 206 18 34 31 30
Capitalism/capitalist 337 491 737 66 332
Communism/communist 58 221 352 35 134
Anti-semitism/Jews 46 108 44 39 177
China 27 67 24 5 16
Christians/Christianity 40 42 38 85 396
Immigrants/refugees 60 131 15 3 9
Islam/Muslims 37 298 58 10 16
Sex/sexuality/sexuation
155 268 43 277 573
(etc.)

What this table shows is that although in Žižek’s more serious works the number of references
to capitalism, communism, immigrants, Islam, China, etc., (proportionally) tends to decrease,
it never quite go to zero. Furthermore, such a decline in references is invariably more than
compensated for by a proportional increase—and sometimes even enormous increase—in the
number of references to Badiou, Lacan, Hegel and Freud. In other words: in Žižek’s more
serious books, he merely refers to the same core group of philosophers more frequently than he
do in h popular books, while the (admittedly wide) range of topics remains more-or-less the
same. (Interestingly, and rather weirdly, the number of references to sex remains (roughly)
proportionately constant, regardless of whether or not the book is pitched for a popular
audience.)

A second reason for Žižek’s proli c publication record is—to put it charitably—his rather lax
personal standards for what constitutes acceptable academic practice. In particular, Žižek has
previously: written about lms (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jul/15/slavoj-
zizek-interview-life-writing) before he’d seen them; cited extended descriptions of operas and
lms from Wikipedia (e.g., LTBD, 47-8, 99-102); cited blurbs of books rather than the books
themselves (e.g., TP, 37-8); written about topics (e.g., the philosophy of quantum mechanics;
LST, Ch 14) with which he has little, if any, genuine familiarity and/or with minimal
engagement with the contemporary literature (more on this later); and, in one particularly
bizarre episode, plagiarized (ostensibly by accident (https://gawker.com/slavoj-zizek-sorta-
kinda-admits-plagiarizing-white-supr-1604590014)) from a white supremacist magazine.

(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/712x46auhxL.jpg)

The third and most important reason for Žižek’s prodigious output, however, is also, on
re ection, perhaps the most obvious one: he self-plagiarizes—or, to put it in less litigious
terms, he recycles material—a lot. And I mean a lot.
Such an accusation against Žižek is hardly new: in 2014 he was accused of, and subsequently
admitted to, recycling material from one of his books for a New York Tim op-ed. (In his
defense, Žižek claimed (https://www.newsweek.com/slavoj-zizek-self-plagiarized-new-york-
times-269221) that he was unaware that this contravened the newspaper’s o cial policy.)
However, what is far less appreciated is the extent to which Žižek self-plagiarizes even from
among h own books. Take, for instance, the following passage, which appears in virtually
identical form in (at least) six of his recently published books:

So while, in a market economy, I remain de facto dependent, th dependency nonetheless

‘civilized’, enacted in the form of a ‘free’ market exchange between me and other persons
instead of direct servitude or even physical coercion. It easy to ridicule Ayn Rand, but there
a grain of truth in the famo ‘hymn to money’ from her Atlas Shrugged: ‘Until and unless you
discover that money the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money
ceas to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of
other men. Blood, whips and guns or dollars. Take your choice—there no other.’ Did Marx
not say something similar in h well-known formula of how, in the universe of commoditi ,
‘relations between people assume the guise of relations among things’? In the market economy,
relations between people can appear on of mutually recognized freedom and equality;
domination no longer directly enacted and visible such.

(LTBD, 58-9; compare to Living in the End Tim (‘LET’), 565-6; TCH, 111-2; LTN, 1538-9;
First Tragedy, then Farce (‘TTF’), 183-4; TP, 217-8)

Several other examples of such inter-textual, paragraph-length self-plagiarism could also be

cited: (1) Against the Double Blackmail (‘ADB’), 12-13; TP, 118-9; TCH, 36-7; (2) LTBD,
300-2; TP, 145-6; LET, 622-3; (3) ADB, 36; TCH, 292-3; TP, 164-5; (4) ADB, 296-7; LTBD,
201-2; TP, 296-7; TCH, 555-6; (5) TP 312-3; AR, 304-5; LTBD 371-2. (Note: these are just
the passages I could nd which appear in at least three books.)

To many of you, such inter-textual recycling might seem innocuous. Don’t academics recycle
their work all the time? Of course, it is true that many of them do. However, what sets Žižek
apart from other academics is arguably not the mere fact that he is happy to re-use portions of
his work—though the fact that the re-used portions are often verbatim copies of one another
is, perhaps, somewhat unusual. Nor is his unique feature merely the scale of his self-plagiarism
—though the scale is, indeed, great compared to the majority of other academics. Rather, I
think, what distinguishes him is the fact that he is the only prominent academic I am aware of
who engages in intra-textual self-plagiarism; who, in other words, recycl passag in one and
the same book.

Take, for example, the following passage, drawn from his book Trouble in Paradise:

What all th impli that today’s conservativ are not really conservative. While fully
endorsing capitalism’s continuo self-revolutionizing, they just want to make it more efficient by
supplementing it with some traditional institutions (religion, for instance) to constrain its
destructive consequenc for social life and to maintain social cohesion. Today, a true
conservative the one who fully admits the antagonisms and deadlocks of global capitalisms,
the one who rejects simple progressivism, and who attentive to the dark obverse of progress. In
th sense, only a radical Le ist can be today a true conservative. (TP, 40-1)

Now compare it to the this one, drawn from later on in the same book:

Today’s mainstream self-declared political and cultural conservativ are not really conservativ :
fully endorsing capitalist continuo self-revolutionizing, they just want to make it more efficient
by supplementing it with some traditional institutions (such religion) to contain its destructive
consequenc for social life and maintain social cohesion. A true conservative today the one
who fully admits the antagonisms and deadlocks of global capitalism, the one who rejects simple
progressivism, and attentive to the dark obverse of progress. In th sense, only a radical Le ist
can be today a true conservative. (TP, 325-6)
(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/9780141979540.jpg)

This is hardly an isolated example. Here, for instance, is another passage, drawn once again
from Trouble in Paradise: 

One of the weird consequenc of the 2008 financial meltdown and the measur taken to
counteract it (enormo sums of money to help banks) w the revival in the work of Ayn Rand,
the fullest ideological expression of radical ‘greed good’ capitalism: the sal of her magnum
opus Atlas Shrugged exploded. According to some, there are already signs that the scenario
described in Atlas Shrugged—the ‘creative capitalists’ themselv going on strike— now being
enacted. Yet th reaction almost totally misreads the situation: most of the gigantic sums of bail-
out money went precisely to those deregulated Randian ‘titans’ who failed in their ‘creative’
schem and in doing so brought about the meltdown. It not the great creative genius who
are now helping lazy ordinary people; rather, it the ordinary taxpayers who are helping the
failed ‘creative genius ’. (TP, 67)

And compare it to this one, again drawn from the same book:

As we have already pointed out, one of the weird consequenc of the financial meltdown and
the measur taken to counteract it (enormo sums of money to help banks) w a revival in the
works of Ayn Rand, the closest that one can come to an ideologist of radical ‘greed good’
capitalism—the sal of her magnum op Atlas Shrugged exploded again. According to some
reports, there are already signs that the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged – the creative
capitalists themselv going on strike—h been enacted.… The absurdity of th reaction that
it totally misreads the situation: most of the gigantic sums of bailout money went precisely to the
deregulated Randian ‘titans’ who failed in their ‘creative’ schem and thereby brought about
the meltdown. It not the great creative genius who are now helping lazy ordinary people but
the ordinary taxpayers who are helping the failed ‘creative genius ’. (TP, 334-5)

Indeed—amazingly—in the Penguin paperback version of Trouble in Paradise I was able to

nd at least three further examples of such intra-textual, paragraph-length self-plagiarism.
(Compare pages 35 & 231; 59 & 232; and 45 & 235 [physical copy].)

In summary, the secret of Žižek’s prodigious output is not really that much of a secret at all: he
sticks to the same authors and topics; he often engages in shoddy (some might even call it half-
assed) scholarship; and, perhaps most crucially—and, strangely, as he himself has even openly
admitted (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=545x4EldHlg&t=2854s) (“I am always writing
the same book”)—he just writes the exact same things, repeatedly, over and over again. And,
when that’s not enough, he simply repeats himself in one and the same book. Literally.

CHARLATANISM
Thus far, we have discussed Žižek’s repetitiveness, his bigotry, and the often remarkably poor
amount of evidence or level of argumentation that he often adduces in support of some of his
more controversial positions. 
What we have not discussed so far, however, is another major feature—perhaps the major
feature—of Žižek’s work, namely, his (remarkable) discursiveness.

Take, for instance, his most recent book, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight, published by
Penguin’s Allen Lane, a publishing house which on its website
(https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/penguin-press/allen-lane.html) claims to
be “the leading publisher in the UK of bestselling serious non- ction…. Our books are
renowned for their quality and their originality of thought”. The book features a glowing
endorsement from Greek economist and renowned leftist public intellectual Yanis Varoufakis
on its back cover, who writes that “Žižek’s excellent new book serves humanity a way that only
authentic philosophy can.”
(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/91Z0nc4b7JL.jpg)

What is the book about? Its jacket cover informs us that:

In recent years, techno-scientific progress h started to transform our world – changing it almost
beyond recognition. Here renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek turns h gaze on the brave new
world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselv moving
closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realisation of Marx’s prediction that ‘all that solid melts
into air’. […] Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminat the new dangers well the radical
possibiliti thrown up by today’s technological and scientific advanc , and their electrifying
implications for all.
Thus, the book is ostensibly about science and technology, and in particular its impact on
future (and present) human society and politics. This belief is further reinforced by the book’s
subtitle: “Power in the Era of Post-Humanity,” as well as by the fact that Žižek himself
mentions in the book’s second paragraph “the shattering impact [on humans] of modern
sciences, especially brain sciences and biogenetics,” and how “the progress of today’s sciences
destroys the basic presuppositions of our everyday notion of reality.” (7-8)

As one quickly progresses through the book, however, one soon recalls the old adage about
not judging a book by its cover—or, apparently, by its introduction or (sub)title. The book is
not about technology. It is not about science. It is not about “power in the era of post-
humanity.” It is not, in truth, about anything at all. In fact – if anything – it is largely about
sex.

Here is a selection of excerpts from the book—which, to repeat, is supposedly about the impact
of science and technolo on human affairs:

♦ … I doubt that the American comedian Lou CK’s acts, deplorable and lewd they are,
could be put on the same level direct sexual violence. (9)

♦ [W]here do Lenin stand [on the issue o ] mak[ing] a risky radical gesture without being
able to foresee all its possible consequenc ? (132)

♦ In what sense can the self-critical admission of one’s responsibility for serio mistak be
compared to the need to shit and fart? (176)

♦ [W]e should never forget that the LGBT+ stru le can also be co-opted by mainstream
liberalism against ‘class essentialism’ of the Le . (188)

♦ A Europe where Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders are in power no longer Europe. (204)
[Aside: this arguably only makes Žižek’s recommendation of abstention in the 2017 French
presidential election more bizarre, given that Le Pen’s election would apparently destroy
Europe.]

♦ [Robert E. Lee] may well have been a gentleman with nice manners and personal honesty,
but he nonetheless dealt brutally with slav …(248)

♦ Some perceptive observers have already noticed how the only form of sexual relation that fully
meets politically correct criteria would be a contract drawn up between sado-masochistic
partners. (310)
♦ Although I am not a fan of Sex and the City, an interesting point made in one of the
episod where Miranda gets involved with a guy who lik to talk dirty during sex, and since
she prefers to keep silent, he asks her also to voice whatever dirty things pop up in her mind,
with no restraint. … In the middle of her babble she mentions that she h noticed how he
enjoys it when, while he mak love to her, he push her finger into h ass…. The lesson of th
incident important: even the universality of talking freely based on some exceptions other
than extreme brutality. (302-3)

♦ [T]he paradigmatic hardcore sexual position (and shot) that of the woman lying on her
back with her legs spread wide backwards and her kne above her shoulders; the camera in
front, showing the man’s pen penetrating her vagina (the man’s face a rule invisible; he
reduced to an instrument), but what we see in the background between her thighs her face in
the thrall of orgasmic bliss…. Th elementary hardcore scene perfectly renders the minimal
reflexivity that cuts from within every immediate orgasmic One. (334-5)

♦ There are many good things to say about [the 1935 film] Top Hat, beginning with the role of
tap-dancing a disturbing intrusion into the daily routine… (352)

♦ The first and obvio Lacanian reading of La La Land would see its plot yet another
variation on the theme of ‘there no sexual relationship’… (354)

♦ What can we learn from Hegel about Donald Trump and h liberal critics? (376) [Aside: this
is the rst sentence of the book’s concluding chapter.]

♦ W …Stalin not the big jokester of the twentieth century? (379)

♦ The question , how do an emancipatory-revolutionary collective which embodi the

‘general will’ affect intense erotic passion? (361)

♦ [W]ho, then, really deserv [the Nobel Peace Prize]?(395)

♦ Let’s compare the sexual liv of two US presidents, Kennedy and Trump. (429)

In between all of these profound re ections on farting, porn, Robert E. Lee, Lenin, La La
Land, and the sexual lives of US presidents, there are—as far as I could tell—only three places
in the book which have even a minimal bearing on the issue of technology and its impact on
humans.

The rst (92-5) is when Žižek brie y discusses the philosophical impact of newly-developed
“mind control techniques,” in particular an experiment (for which Žižek does not provide a
reference) conducted at New York University in 2002, in which a rat’s brain was
“control[led]” by an “external machine.”“Will I remain totally unaware that my movements
are being steered, or will I realize that something is wrong, that an external power is
determining them?” (95) Žižek asks—before immediately ignoring the question and moving
on to discuss the Greek eurozone crisis. (The alleged link between the two subjects is that
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is, according to Žižek, an example of a “steered human
being in our political reality”.) 

The second (405-6) time Žižek discusses technology’s impact on humans is when he brie y
considers the philosophical consequences of a potential new law in Egypt which would (Žižek
claims) make it “illegal for people to believe in God, even if they don’t talk about it.” This
leads Žižek to ask the question: “[H]ow will authorities establish if someone is an atheist if he
doesn’t even talk about it?… [W]ill they scan the suspect’s brain with the devices used by
neuro-theologists trying to determine if there are traces of religious experiences in his
neurons?” Having asked this question, Žižek again immediately ignores it. Further down the
same page, we nd him discussing “the wave of pedophilia” among American Catholic priests.
(I’m not joking.)

The third (99-119) and nal time when Žižek discusses the stated themes of the book is when
he o ers a 20-page (99-119) analysis of the lm Blade Runner 2049—a large portion of which
is drawn directly from Wikipedia.

In brief, Žižek’s book isn’t about technology at all. Indeed, it’s a book which is about virtually
anything but technology. It’s about identity politics; it’s about LGBT+ rights; it’s about
Macron and Le Pen; it’s about Clinton and Trump; it’s about Europe and the European
Union; it’s about immigrants and refugees; it’s about Islam, Christianity, Judaism and
atheism; it’s about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism; it’s about sex; it’s about porn; it’s about
movies and TV shows; it’s about the Russian Revolution; it’s about Lenin; it’s about Stalin;
it’s about Hegel; it’s about Hitler; it’s about Lacan; it’s about Badiou… In short, it’s about
everything—and, in an important and obvious sense, nothing.

Curiously, Žižek himself would very likely agree with this assessment: as he himself says, “a lot
of what I write is blah, blah, bullshit, a diversion from the 700-page book on Hegel I should
be writing (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jul/15/slavoj-zizek-interview-life-
writing).” Fair enough – so let’s turn to that (actually 1000-page; and on iBooks, almost 3000-
page) book, namely his (2013) work Less Than Nothing: a book which Amazon describes as
“the pinnacle publication of a distinguished career (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Less-Than-
Nothing-Dialectical-Materialism/dp/1781681279/ref=sr_1_1?
keywords=Less+than+nothing&qid=1563445638&s=gateway&sr=8-1),” and which Žižek
himself has described as “my true life’s work
(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/27/less-than-nothing-slavoj-zizek-review).”

As it turns out, there is a crucial distinction between this kind of work by Žižek, and his other
“less serious,” more popular books. In particular, although it is true that (e.g.) Like a Thief in
Broad Daylight doesn’t have a single particular topic or subject matter, nevertheless (nearly)
all of the particular paragraphs that one can nd in it do, and, what is more, they make sense.
In other words, we understand (pretty much) what Žižek saying when he’s talking about
episodes of Sex in the City, or Robert E. Lee, or hardcore pornography—even if we don’t
understand why he is saying it.
(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/81p4TCDetkL.jpg)

Not so for Žižek’s “more serious” tomes. Here, for instance, is Žižek’s summary of the central
thesis of Less Than Nothing:

Less Than Nothing endeavors to draw all the ontological consequenc from th eppur si
muove [a phrase alleged to have been uttered by Galileo when forced by the Inquisition to
recant his claim that the Earth moves around the sun]. Here the formula [of Less Than
Nothing] at its most elementary: “moving” the striving to reach the void, namely, “things
move,” there something instead of nothing, not because reality in excess in comparison with
mere nothing, but because reality less than nothing. Th why reality h to be supplemented
by fiction: to conceal its emptiness. (18-9)

Confused? I certainly was. How can something exist, and yet simultaneously nothing exist—or
rather, less-than-not-exist? Furthermore, who—or what—is “supplementing reality by
ction,” if (less than) nothing exists? Are (e.g.) novels being written by things that don’t exist
—or perhaps by things that don’t even not exist? Does Žižek exist? If he doesn’t—or if he
doesn’t-even-not-exist—then who the hell wrote the book I’m reading? What’s more, who the
hell is reading it?

But perhaps, I thought, I might be able to get a better grip on the book’s central thesis by
beginning with its subtitle: “Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism.” As someone
who’s always struggled with understanding just what, exactly, dialectical materialism consists
in, I was curious to see to what extent Žižek was able to enlighten me. (Curious, but not
especially hopeful.)

Here are some relevant excerpts from the book:

♦ Here are the very last lin of Parmenides: —’Then may we not sum up the argument in a
word and say truly: If one not, then nothing ?’— ‘Certainly.’ —’Let th much be said; and
further let affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one or not, one and the
others in relation to themselv and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and
appear to be and appear not to be.’ —’Most true.’ Is th not the most succinct, minimal
definition of dialectical materialism? If there no One, just multipliciti of multipliciti , then
the ultimate reality the Void itself; all determinate things “are and are not.” (114-5)

♦ Buddhism th provid a radical answer to the question “Why there something and not
nothing?”: there is only Nothing, nothing “really exists,” all “somethings,” all determinate
entiti , emerge only from a subjective perspectival illusion. Dialectical materialism here go a
step further: even Nothing does not exist—if by “Nothing” we mean the primordial abyss in
which all differenc are obliterated. What, ultimately, “there ” only the absolute Difference,
the self-repelling Gap. (599)

♦ [D]ialectical materialism begins with the axiom of de-centering: the sex organs involved in
copulation function “organs without bodi ,” organs invested with libidinal intensity which
are experienced minimally separated from the subjects’ bodi —it not the subjects
themselv who copulate but their organs “out there.” […] Th means that even (or precisely) in
the most intense sexual activity, the participating subject reduced to the role of a helpless,
passive observer of its own activity, to a gaze fascinated by what taking place…

♦ The true foundation of dialectical materialism not the necessity of contingency, but the
contingency of necessity. (1218)

♦ [According to] dialectical materialism … there no “objective” reality, every reality already
transcendentally constituted. (1390-1)

♦ [O]ne cannot help noticing that, to the positive content of Hawking’s Theory of Everything,
it bears an unmistakable resemblance to dialectical materialism, or at least fully compatible
with a reasonable version of dialectical materialism. (2820)

Thus, dialectical materialism, as construed by Žižek, is the thesis that: (i) nothing exists; (ii)
nothing (or Nothing) does not exist; (iii) in general, things both exist and don’t exist; however,
(iv) “absolute Di erence” (aka “the self-repelling Gap”) exists, while (v) objective reality
de nitely does not exist. It also claims—in fact, it even “begins with” the thesis—that (vi) sex
(which seems to exist) is a passive experience for all sexual participants (who also seem to exist
—at least while having sex). Ultimately, though, dialectical materialism’s “true foundation” is
the thesis that: (vi) necessity (a concept which, presumably, exists) is contingent (a concept
which also apparently exists). Oh, and if you’re still unsure what the thesis of dialectical
materialism is: (vii) Hawking’s (uncompleted, and hence presumably only semi-existing)
Theory of Everything “unmistakably resembles” it. So there.

Still confused? I still was. So I turned to a slightly more recent (2015) book of Žižek’s,
Absolute Recoil. This book’s subtitle is: “Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical
Materialism.”
(https://images.currenta airs.org/2019/10/41RPgNTbzL.jpg)

I was disappointed when I discovered in the Introduction that the book “contains chapters in
—not on—dialectical materialism: dialectical materialism is not the book’s topic; it is, rather,
practiced within these pages” (12)—this sounded slightly hand-wavy to me. Nevertheless, I
was hopeful that Žižek would provide the reader with at least some explicit de nition that I
could work with, to at least give me some kind of handle on what the hell Less Than Nothing
(and, by extensions, Absolute Recoil) was supposed to be about.

Here are some relevant excerpts:

♦ [D]ialectical materialism transpos back into nature not subjectivity such but the very gap
that separat subjectivity from objective reality. (35)

♦ [W]hat characteriz dialectical materialism precisely that it incorporat the idealist legacy,
against vulgar democratic materialism in all its guis , from scientist naturalism to the post-
Deleuzian assertion of spiritualized “vibrant” matter. Dialectical materialism , first, a
materialism without matter, without the metaphysical notion of matter a full substantial
entity—in dialectical materialism, matter “disappears” in a set of purely formal relations.
Second, despite being materialism without matter, it not idealism without an idea—it a
materialism with an Idea, an assertion of the eternal Idea outside the space of idealism. (165-6)

♦ For dialectical materialism … the subject prior to the process of subjectivization: th process
fills in the void (the empty form) that the pure subject. (183)

♦ Dialectical materialism considers historical materialism a specific ontolo , a kind of

metaphysica specialis of the social being, the application of the universal laws of dialectics to
the social sphere … (214-5)

♦ [D]ialectical materialism do not posit just the original multiplicity of being…. For dialectical
materialism, one h to think a Two prior to multiplicity… (598)

♦ …[T]he position of dialectical materialism that there no peace even in the Void. (932)

Gone are the obscure references to the possibility—and, indeed, the actuality—of
simultaneous existence and (less than) nonexistence, and of necessity being (necessarily?
continently?) contingent. Now, we are told that dialectical materialism: (i) claims that matter
de nitely does not exist, although at least one Idea does exist; (ii) is committed to a speci c
metaphysical thesis regarding historical materialism; (iii) claims that “the process of
subjectivization … lls the void of” “the pure subject”; (iv) a rms that the “gap” which
“separates subjectivity from objective reality” (a reality which, we are apparently now led to
assume, exists) is to be “transposed onto nature”; (v) that one has to think (of the number?)
two before thinking of any kind of multiplicity; and (vi) peace can’t be found anywhere—let
alone in the (existent? nonexistent?) Void.

Is such almost comic obscurity intentional on Žižek’s part? It’s certainly possible—though,
interestingly, Žižek himself denies that it is: in the 2005 documentary Žižek!, Žižek
unequivocally a rms (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MfV1O20OJi4) that he’s “a total
Enlightenment person. I believe in clear sentences and so on.”

On the (dubious) presumption of Žižek’s intellectual honesty, then, we are apparently left
with two options: 

1. Žižek has expressed these ideas as close to clearly as one possibly can, but the ideas
themselves are too complicated for most of us (except, e.g., Žižek) to understand;
2. Žižek has honestly tried to express these ideas as clearly as he can, but he has done so in a
suboptimal way (due to, for instance, a poor writing style, lack of intelligence, etc.).
Though (1) is, of course, always a possibility, I see little evidence to suggest that only Žižek, as
well as, perhaps, a smattering of other Hegelian/Lacanian philosophers, are capable of
grasping such ostensibly complex philosophical ideas—for the simple reason that, from what I
can gather from the comprehensible part of his writing, Žižek isn’t really that smart. 

To (further) illustrate this point, take the nal chapter of Less Than Nothing, which is—to
put it lightly—a catastrophically embarrassing foray into the philosophy of quantum
mechanics (a topic I have experience teaching at university level). Here, Žižek fails to cite a
single established contemporary philosopher of quantum mechanics, instead mostly relying
on popular science books by Brian Greene and Steven Hawking, as well as a book on quantum
mechanics by Karen Barad, a Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and the History of
Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

In this chapter, Žižek ends up endorsing, with virtually no argumentation, a wildly

controversial interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics—
which is, in itself, an extremely controversial position to adopt in the philosophy of quantum
mechanics. (According to Žižek, the Copenhagen Interpretation claims that “it is the collapse
of the quantum waves in the act of perception which xes quantum oscillations into a single
objective reality” [1392]—a position which, among other things, he appears to be unaware
was famously mocked (https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~oldstein/quote.html) by the great
physicist John Bell: “Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of
millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little
longer, for some better quali ed system … with a Ph.D.?”) Žižek also makes numerous crucial
technical mistakes throughout the chapter (e.g., he confuses decoherence with wave-function
collapse [1454]); and, in classic Žižekian style, he goes wildly—and I mean wildly—o topic.

Here are a few excerpts from the chapter—which, to repeat, ostensibly about what Hegelian
philosophy h to say on the philosophy of quantum mechanics:

♦ Perhaps aliens are already here, but just so large or so small that we do not even notice each
other. (1390)

♦ …[W]e should insist on (sexual) difference itself the primary fact, the impossible Real
with regard to which both positions, “masculine” and “feminine,” appear secondary, two
attempts to resolve its deadlock. (1434)

♦ [I]t seems that the very diagnos of Hamlet an obsessional neurotic points in th direction:
in contrast to hysteria which found throughout all (at least Western) history, obsessional
neuros a distinctly modern phenomenon. (1460)

♦ So, to conclude, let recapitulate not only th chapter, but the focal point of the entire book,
by taking a starting point Ray Brassier’s question: “How does thought think the death of
thinking?’ (1463)

♦ One h to oppose here sexuality and animal sex (copulation): animal sex not “sexual” in
the precise sense of human sexuality. (1473)

Yes, it really is this bad: further Žižekian ruminations on sex—on this occasion, animal sex—
are supposed to illuminate the nature and philosophical implications of the quantum world.
This would of course be amusing—if it wasn’t also an intellectual travesty. 

I won’t try to give an analysis of the rest of the book, much of which is virtually
indistinguishable from what one will read in essays produced by the various postmodern essay
generators (http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/) that one can nd online (e.g., “when
Meillassoux asserts contingency as the only necessity, his mistake is to conceive this assertion
according to the masculine side of Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, that is, according to the
logic of universality and its constitutive exception” [987]). So let us, instead, take a step back,
and ask ourselves the obvious question: Why, in spite of his repetitiveness, his racism, his
reactionary tendencies, his inconsistent beliefs, his complete inability to stick to a single topic,
and his virtually self-evident charlatanism, does Žižek have such major appeal among
audiences today? 

FINAL THOUGHTS
This question is, I think, ill-posed. That is, I do not believe that Žižek is celebrated around the
world in spite of the fact that he clearly possesses all of the negative qualities enumerated
above. Rather, I suspect, he is celebrated in large part precisely because of them. 

In particular, I think that his “controversial” positions on refugees and Islam are almost ideally
suited to a contemporary media culture that thrives on outrage
(https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/year-of-outrage/579100/); I believe
that his discursiveness is a perfect match for an age in which our attention spans are growing
ever shorter (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/16/got-a-minute-global-
attention-span-is-narrowing-study-reveals) (thanks, in part, to our increasing use of social
media); and I suspect that the (astoundingly) repetitive nature of his writing simply isn’t a
problem, and may even be bene cial, in a broader intellectual culture in which people only
seldom read books (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisure-
reading-in-the-u-s-is-at-an-all-time-low/). As my friend the philosopher James Williams has
put it, in much in the same way that Donald Trump was the perfect “clickbait candidate,”
Žižek is the ultimate “a clickbait philosopher”: ideally suited for TV sound bites, he’ll give us
our commodi ed “radicalism,” one insane, outrageously provocative quote at a time. 

That said, I doubt that there is any single reason why people like reading, watching, or
listening to Žižek. Some, I suspect, take pleasure in his regular use of coarse or seedy jokes;
some might like his frequent references to popular culture; others, perhaps, merely enjoy the
overall e ect of his physical appearance and mannerisms (his heavy accent, his lisp, his
incessant tics, and his invariably disheveled look); and others, I suspect, are simply
hoodwinked (by the media, by their teachers, by their friends, or even by Žižek himself) into
thinking that what they are reading or listening to is truly profound thought—when, in fact,
it is anything but. 

This, however, still leaves several puzzles unsolved. Why, for instance, does Penguin—one of
the most prestigious publishing houses in the world—continue to to publish Žižek books, and
to market them as misleadingly as they do? And how is it that, for instance, Yanis Varoufakis
—someone whom I generally admire—felt comfortable publicly describing Žižek’s last book,
which consisted almost entirely of pervy nonsense, as “excellent.” How did this happen?

The short answer is that I don’t know—in much the same way that I don’t know why other
charlatans (including (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2cqTE_bPh7M), incidentally,
Žižek’s hero, Jacques Lacan) throughout history became famous, were o ered exorbitant book
contracts, and were treated with awe and reverence by students, academics, and members of
the general public.

However, what I can say with a fair amount of certainty is that the effect of Žižek’s fame is—
and will likely continue to be—signi cantly deleterious to the global left. Right-wingers tend
to mock him, and appeal to him as a textbook example of a moronic leftist Marxist intellectual
(and not without some justi cation). At the same time, many progressivists, having been
repeatedly informed (albeit sometimes only implicitly) by the media class that th what a
le ist intellectual like, will likely be tempted by the false dilemma of: (i) trying to defend him
in the name of “progressivism”—a doomed, and even dangerous enterprise; or, even worse,
(ii) rejecting him and, as a result, rejecting their progressive politics or instincts.

Ultimately, what we on the left should do is what Žižek himself is only rarely capable of doing:
exercise our critical faculti , and in particular notice a false dilemma when we see one. More
speci cally, the left should, in my view, denounce—and, preferably, renounce—Žižek as the
fraudulent clown that he is, and openly and explicitly call him out as a parody of
progressivism, a disgrace to academia, and the embodiment of a corrupted media system and
deeply impoverished intellectual landscape. 

It is a truism that today the left—and, indeed, wider human society—faces many important
challenges, including addressing and limiting the future (and present
(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/07/one-climate-crisis-disaster-
happening-every-week-un-warns)) impact of climate change and consequent biodiversity loss
(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/climate/nyt-climate-newsletter.html), eliminating
the ever-present (and growing) threat of nuclear war
(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nuclear-war-threat-trump-russia-
arms-cold-war-house-lords-a8883976.html), and combating numerous forms of global
inequality (https://www.scienti camerican.com/article/the-american-economy-is-rigged/).
The world doesn’t need to—and, arguably, cannot really a ord—to provide Slavoj Žižek with
a platform from which he can aimlessly ponti cate about shits and farts, about pedophilic
Muslims, and existent-cum-nonexistent somethings/nothings. We can do better.

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APPENDIX I: Argument
Formalization
Below is my proposed formalization of the Žižek passage quoted at the beginning of this essay.
Please send any other/better formalisations to: thomasmollernielsen@hotmail.com
(mailto:thomasmollernielsen@hotmail.com).

P1 Nothing fundamentally exists.

P2 Things emerge from this non-existent Nothing.

P3 Quantum mechanics, i.e., thesis that the world is a positively charged eld, is true.

P4 The universe exists by mistake. [By P1, P2, and P3.]

P5 The universe existing by mistake is a cosmic catastrophe.

P6 If the universe’s existence is a cosmic catastrophe, we should try to counteract this

catastrophe.

P7 The only way to counteract the universe’s being a cosmic catastrophe is to love other
people.

P8 We should love other people. [By P4, P5, P6, and P7]

P9 It is impossible to love everyone.

P10 Ought implies can. [Suppressed premise.]

P11 We should love a subset of everyone (or everything) who (that) exists.

P12 To not love everyone (or everything) is evil.

Conclusion Love is evil. [By P9, P10, P11, and P12]

Corollary We should do something evil.

This formalization, though roughly accurate, ignores Žižek’s various remarks about “(cosmic)
imbalances.” I have chosen to do this because I have interpreted these remarks as merely
making analogies between di erent aspects of the argument, rather than as part of the formal
argument per se.

The argument, as it stands, is obviously invalid: in particular, P1, P2, and P3 do not by
themselves entail P4. Such a problem could of course be easily be remedied by supplementing
the argument with the additional premise that P1, P2, and P3 entail P4. However, this would
in turn increase the already signi cant problems with the truth of the argument’s premises, all
of which —with the possible exception of P8—may legitimately be questioned, and some of
which (e.g., P3) are farcical. (Also, regarding P12: Is liking stu also evil?)

APPENDIX II: Most

Preposterous Žižek quote
Choosing this was extraordinarily di cult. Initially, I was tempted to opt for my all-time
favourite Žižekian world salad, which I came across in Trouble in Paradise:

[T]he negation of the Right giv the (established) Le , but the negation of the Le do not
give the Right again, but rather a non-Le which of the Le more than the (established)
Le itself. (TP, 126).

However, this was quickly superseded by another, even more unintentionally amusing quote
in the same book, in which Žižek ponti cates over the virtues of onanism compared to normal
sexual intercourse:
A directly pleasurable thing probably rhythmic squeezing of oneself, masturbation maybe,
and definitely not the complex effort of a full act of copulation which, again, h to be learned.
(TP, 136-7)

However, the ultimate winner was decided when I began watching Žižek’s videos on
YouTube, and came across a truly remarkable interview in which, for some reason, Žižek feels
the need to explain the meaning of (male) homosexuality (https://m.youtube.com/watch?
v=3rvrDyYOQp0) to his interviewer, Cathy Newman:

If I am gay, I am a man who wants to do it with a man.

The quote, though undoubtedly amusing on its own terms, in my view becomes the outright
winner when one also takes into account (as, perhaps, one shouldn’t) Newman’s bone-dry
response:

Yeah. I understand that. I mean, there are bits of your book that I found hard to grasp but that
… that clear.

Feel free to send your own favorite quotes to thomasmollernielsen@hotmail.com

(mailto:thomasmollernielsen@hotmail.com)

APPENDIX III: How to Write like

Žižek
1. Use at least one of—and preferably more than one of—the following words: obscene,
obscenity, perverse, perversion, ambiguo , ambiguity, paradox, paradoxically, sex,
sexuation, ideolo , ideologically, (self-)negation.
2. Use at least one—and preferably more than one—“emphasizing” word such as: precisely,
absolutely, definitely, definitively, radically, fully, fundamentally.
3. Refer to—and, preferably, allow the sentence to be interpreted as a critique of—
capitalism, political correctness, “liberal” (aka insu ciently radical) leftists, or minorities
(especially Muslim immigrants).
4. Refer to one of—and preferably refer to more than one of—the following philosophers:
Hegel, Lacan, Marx, Freud, Badiou, and/or one of the following historical gures:
Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Lenin.
 5. Make use of at least one—and preferably more than one—“technical”
Hegelian/Lacanian/Badiouan/psychoanalytic concept: the Real, the Absolute, the
Event, the Nothing, the Void, the non-All, the object petit a, the Transcendental, the
superego.

Here are three examples:

♦ But not the obscene ambiguity of capitalism precisely an Event in Badiou’s sense—that , a
paradoxical (self-)negation of the Real?

♦ Here we must absolutely reject the implied distinction between the ideolo of Stalinism and
its le ist liberal perversion; rather, we must fully embrace the inherent paradoxicality of the
Hegelian Absolute

♦ Lacan’s theory of sexuation definitively offers an answer: the Nothing embraced by Muslim
immigrants fundamentally obscene in more than a purely ideological sense—it
transcendentally constituted; it radically sexualised.

Again, please feel free to send your own best e orts – or your own alternative Žižekian writing
formulae – to thomasmollernielsen@hotmail.com
(mailto:thomasmollernielsen@hotmail.com) ♦

Thom Moller-Nielsen (/author/thom -moller-nielsen) 

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