askchapo

No, he recognized what his material interests were and has unabashedly followed them. This is a point he himself reiterates over and over again throughout his works. Make hay while the sun shines. He is ironically and absurdly as, if not more, pragmatic than Stalin, because at least Stalin still tried to work and think within the framework of the Soviet councils. Zizek is wholely libertarian in that regard.

With Zizek though, it is difficult to say if he himself believes his own ideology (hence why I consider him unserious) given how many times he has contradicted himself. I will not praise him for it, but I continue to have a soft spot for him regardless of this Nazi turn because he is literal embodiment, an avatar of proof, of the ideological genuflection you have to do to be considered a Marxist AND still be published within mainstream government circles. He is literally Parenti's "Inventing Reality", as a Slovenian raccoon man who probably did way too much cocaine after the fall of the Soviet Union. Fucking hilarious regardless if it's intentional or not.

However, in order to really get this joke you also have to read a stupid amount of old books, so idk if it's worth it. But also, it's not really that impressive imo, I'm pretty old by online western leftist standards.

Edit: I honestly should be nicer here. I'm just a very tired person most of the time. While technically correct, thinking like a Marxist means that"abandoning communism" is not really something you can do. Communism is a theoretical state of production that subsumes and overtakes capitalism, you can't abandon it, it just happens eventually.

If you are a Marxist-Leninist you can either try to accelerate the process or do damage control (depending on the overarching situation) on the fallout of the inevitable crisises that occur within capitalism, but material interests still dominate ideology, and the entire Western part of the world is designed to insulate itself from the fallout of those issues. That being said, the treats are starting to get abit more expensive and the majority of U.S. has zero idea of what it's like to live like the rest of the world. Potentially a very explosive, likely reactionary, situation. Idk though, I just know my area is generally financially fine, so if the cities go off like they usually do during a cost of living crisis, alot of people are gonna be willing to shoot their poorer fellow citizens and that is a recipe for disaster for long term civil stability.