[D66] Slovenian Marxists for Trump

[J.N.]

https://theintercept.com/liveblogs/trumpdown/slovenian-marxists-trump/

Robert Mackey – Nov 4 2016, 19:08 pm
Slovenian Marxists for Trump

Well, one at least: Slavoj Zizek.

In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News on Friday, the Slovenian 
philosopher essentially endorsed Donald Trump — even though he is 
“horrified at” the prospect of his presidency — as a means of disrupting 
the American center-left consensus in favor of the global market economy.

“If Trump wins,” Zizek argued, “both big parties, Republicans and 
Democrats, would have to return to basics, rethink themselves and maybe 
some things can happen there.”

Zizek explained his perhaps overly optimistic dream of a Trump 
presidency inspiring a radical leftist takeover of the Democratic party 
in more detail in August, writing:

     The leftist call for justice tends to be combined with struggles 
for women’s and gay rights, for multiculturalism and against racism. The 
strategic aim of the Clinton consensus is clearly to dissociate all 
these struggles from the leftist call for justice, which is why the 
living symbol of this consensus is Tim Cook. Cook, the CEO of Apple, 
proudly signed a pro-LGBT letter to North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and 
can now easily forget about hundreds of thousands of Foxconn workers in 
China assembling Apple products in slave conditions. He made his big 
gesture of solidarity with the underprivileged by demanding the 
abolition of gender-segregated bathrooms….

     Trump is not the dirty water one should throw out to keep safe the 
healthy baby of U.S. democracy. He is the dirty baby who needs to be 
thrown out to make us believe that we got rid of the dirt, i.e., in 
order to make us forget the dirt that remains, the dirt that lurks 
beneath the Hillary consensus. The message of this consensus to the Left 
is: You can get everything, we just want to keep the essentials, the 
unencumbered functioning of the global capital. With this frame, 
President Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can!” acquires a new meaning: Yes, we 
can concede to all your cultural demands, without endangering the global 
market economy—so there is no need for radical economic measures.

“This is why WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is right in his crusade 
against Clinton, and the liberals who criticize him for attacking her, 
the only person who can save us from Trump, are wrong,” Zizek added. 
“The thing to attack and undermine now is precisely this democratic 
consensus against the villain.”

Of course, as one of the many Slovenians not married to Donald Trump, 
Zizek does not have a vote in Tuesday’s election. Another hero of the 
left, and a fellow Bernie Sanders supporter, Noam Chomsky, does have a 
vote, and he has taken the opposite view. In an essay published in June, 
Chomsky and John Halle called on voters in closely contested swing 
states to cast their ballots — in “a corrupt system designed to limit 
choices to those acceptable to corporate elites” — for Hillary Clinton, 
arguing that her presidency would clearly be “the lesser evil.”

In a defense of “lesser evil voting,” Chomsky and Hall wrote:

     1) Voting should not be viewed as a form of personal 
self-expression or moral judgement directed in retaliation towards major 
party candidates who fail to reflect our values, or of a corrupt system 
designed to limit choices to those acceptable to corporate elites.

     2) The exclusive consequence of the act of voting in 2016 will be 
(if in a contested “swing state”) to marginally increase or decrease the 
chance of one of the major party candidates winning.

     3) One of these candidates, Trump, denies the existence of global 
warming, calls for increasing use of fossil fuels, dismantling of 
environmental regulations and refuses assistance to India and other 
developing nations as called for in the Paris agreement, the combination 
of which could, in four years, take us to a catastrophic tipping point. 
Trump has also pledged to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants, offered 
to provide for the defense of supporters who have assaulted African 
American protestors at his rallies, stated his “openness to using 
nuclear weapons”, supports a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and 
regards “the police in this country as absolutely mistreated and 
misunderstood” while having “done an unbelievable job of keeping law and 
order.” Trump has also pledged to increase military spending while 
cutting taxes on the rich, hence shredding what remains of the social 
welfare “safety net” despite pretenses.

     4) The suffering which these and other similarly extremist policies 
and attitudes will impose on marginalized and already oppressed 
populations has a high probability of being significantly greater than 
that which will result from a Clinton presidency.

     5) 4) should constitute sufficient basis to voting for Clinton 
where a vote is potentially consequential-namely, in a contested, 
“swing” state.