Political Critique: Would Žižek vote for Hitler?

Žižek states that while he is shocked by Trump, it is Clinton who is the real threat. The danger of her position lies – according to Žižek – in the fact that the Democrat candidate would merely continue propagating the status quo, effectively suppressing or downright burying any hope for change. Every society, Žižek says, has a web of unwritten rules directing the behavior of its elites – and Trump breaks these rules. Trump’s victory can shock American society into political activity, forcing both the dominant parties, Republicans and Democrats, to re-evaluate their approaches and return to their ideological roots. Žižek would – obviously – not welcome Trump’s victory; he is merely investing his desperate, very desperate hope into it. [...]

I believe Žižek’s rationalization of voting for Trump hides a similar mechanism of subjectivity’s destruction and self-sacrifice. A left-wing or liberal voter could subjectively incline towards voting for the Democrat candidate, despite Hillary Clinton embodying the ingrowing elite of those in power and despite the liberal coat of paint of the Democratic party showing more and more wear and tear to reveal the cynical realpolitik underneath.  Žižek would have voted “objectively”: not for himself (since his own opinions disagree with Trump), but to sacrifice his vote on the altar of the ideal of the political activation of society. He does not ask whether there are any prerequisites for such a development: who would mobilize? What forms would the mobilization take? How familiar is Žižek with the reality of life in America? He further explains that the election of Trump would not be a cataclysmic disaster – because the USA is not a dictatorship, but a democracy. This is a remarkable statement. What democracy is there when the country is ruled by – as he himself claims – isolated elites and shadowy political-economic structures, represented by Clinton? Žižek is simply contradicting himself here. [...]

I do not want to crudely compare Trump to Hitler (Trump, after all, lacks SA and SS units). What I am trying to point out is the danger and – in a certain sense – the perverseness of Žižek’s arguments that remind me of the old adage “the worse things become, the better”. Žižek dreams of a Lenin-like jump, of seizing the historical opportunity – not of a Menshevik wait for a situation allowing for revolution. But the year 1933 in Germany showed that there is no bottom to history: that the situation of “the worse things get, the worse they get” is possible. Because of that, Žižek’s desperate hope is really a pure gamble, a sacrifice intended for something that cannot be seen – something with no name or shape.

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Social Europe: The Hungarian Government Is Ultra-Concerned About The Safety Of Women – And Roma…

Before the referendum, a joke political party, Kétfarkú Kutya Párt (Two-tailed Dog Party) launched a massive counter-campaign, poking fun at the governmental propaganda posters, and some smaller left-wing parties also started initiatives against governmental discourse. Social media served as a prominent platform for satirical counter-actions: users created (with „poster-generator” applications) and posted hundreds of their own versions of the “Did you know that…?” posters. Some of these messages reflected on gender issues: “The Paris attacks were carried out by men. All the members of the Hungarian government are men. Are you afraid?” or “One woman per week is killed by her partner in Hungary” or “Roma women are placed in segregated maternity wards in Hungarian hospitals”.

However, references to violence against women as a major threat linked to migration became part of governmental discourse. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán mentioned at a public event that Western countries “with large numbers of illegal immigrants experience dramatic increases in crime… According to UN statistics … Sweden is second only to the southern African state of Lesotho in terms of figures for rape.” (The analyst of the Hungarian Spectrum blog emphasised that “comparative criminal statistics are full of pitfalls” due e.g. to the differences between legal definitions of rapes, law enforcement and crime reporting rates.) [...]

The referendum and the related governmental propaganda cost Hungarian taxpayers a lot: the campaign was estimated to have cost around 11.3bn HUF (approx. €36.8m) according to an MP of the Hungarian Socialist Party – while the Head of Cabinet of the Prime Minister, Antal Rogán, referred to a campaign budget of 3.9bn HUF (approx. €12.7m). The administrative costs amounted to a further 4.5–5bn HUF (approx. €14.6–16.3m). Let’s imagine the number of female and Roma citizens (not to mention female Roma citizens), whose lives could have been improved if the government had chosen to use this money more wisely – for relevant social purposes – instead of trying to persuade the electorate to reject just 1,294 refugees.

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Vox: Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters

According to the US Elections Project’s count so far, only about 56.9 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot on Election Day. That means 43.1 percent of people eligible to vote just didn’t. (The voter turnout rate will increase over the next few days as the final votes are tallied.)

It also means that Hillary Clinton, based on the latest estimates, got a little more than 27 percent of the voting-eligible population’s vote, while Trump got just 27 percent. (Trump won the Electoral College but may have lost the popular vote.) So a little more than a quarter of the voting-eligible population chose the next president.

This isn’t a total anomaly in US elections. Voter turnout has been fairly stable over the past few elections, hitting 55.3 percent in 2000, 60.7 percent in 2004, 62.2 percent in 2008, and 58.6 percent in 2012, according to the US Elections Project. So President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush also won their last elections with around 30 percent of the voting-eligible population — not a huge difference from 27 percent.

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BBC News: Poland opens huge Catholic shrine - after 224-year wait

The cornerstone of the Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw was laid in 1792, but a Russian invasion and two world wars stalled progress.

The most recent work began in 2003, attracting €50m (£43m; $54m) in private donations.

For Poland's conservative government, the shrine is an emblem of perseverance - and nationalism. [...]

An inaugural Mass was celebrated at the temple, with Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and President Andrzej Duda in attendance.

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki cited John Paul II, the Polish former Pope, in calling for a "responsible" use of freedom and warning against the "arrogance of power".

Even after two centuries, work on the church is is not yet over. Some painting is unfinished and the stained-glass windows are yet to be completed.

Around €7m more in donations is needed to finish the job.

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The Huffington Post: I Am Gay. I Will Not Be Tortured Again

My childhood best friend Nick McKinney stopped being a friend; he, along with a pack of neighborhood kids rode their bikes into me, threw things at me, called me faggot as I walked home pretending that this was not happening. If there was no empty seat on the schoolbus, I had to squat in the aisles. No one would let me sit next to them, and Betty, the blue-shadowed bus driver, would not drive until I squatted. [...]

I discovered later in life that my grandmother resented post-puberty me because she had a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. Her first husband, who moved her from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C. just before World War II, turned out to be gay. She grew up in the Catholic church. The church refused to annul the marriage because it refused to accept homosexuality—and so my grandmother had no choice other than to divorce her first husband. As a result, she was excommunicated. She lost it all: church (not faith), husband, her reputation. She married my grandfather, a brilliant man haunted by his own demons and alcoholism, and her life took a direction she never planned it to take. [...]

Mike Pence advocates conversion therapy. Make no mistake: Conversion therapy is torture. It involves electrocuting and drugging LGBT people to make them suffer while looking at homosexual pornography in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality. Not only has it been proven not to convert people, but it causes severe physical and psychological trauma and potentially can result in serious mental disorders. Teenagers have committed suicide in desperate moves to avoid ongoing conversion therapy. In the event a gay man, as an example, were coerced into either believing or pretending that he had been “converted” in order to stop the torture, the best-case scenario would be his entering into a marriage under false pretenses with a woman who otherwise could have found a loving partner.

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