The Nazis were in this sense play­ing bureaucratic roles in order to enhance their pleasure. Secretly, they knew that the rituals of duty were a pretence to disguise the enjoyment derived from doing something horrible - even..guilt feelings generated here served..their pleasure

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1062609843935240194 https://ift.tt/2FNuCkv

how often those people who pretend to be ultra-tolerant and multiculturalist respond along the lines of ‘maybe this goes in your primitive Balkan, but, sorry, here we are tolerant’ Their very identification of me in this way engenders a specific obscene enjoyment.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1062599775130918912 https://ift.tt/2Vb4h5i

the most horrible thing to encounter for a human being is this abyss of free will; when somebody simply acts out of free will.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1062256280696483840 https://ift.tt/2HQHMzo

clinging to ethnic identity serves as a protective shield against the trauma of being caught up in the vortex of non-transparent financial abstraction. The true “foreign body” that cannot be assimilated is ultimately the infernal self-propelling machine of Capital itself

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1062024793124495360 https://ift.tt/2UhiRe2

So what path will China take? …their historical enmity towards the bourgeoisie as a class fits perfectly with the progress of contemporary capitalism towards a managerial system without the bourgeoisie—in both cases, as Stalin put it long ago, “cadres decide everything.”

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061985806338965505 https://ift.tt/2uxDlAJ

The goal of Deng’s reforms was to introduce capitalism without a bourgeoisie (as the new ruling class); now however, Chinese leaders are becoming painfully aware that capitalism without a stable hierarchy (brought by the bourgeoisie as a new class) generates permanent instability

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061940501794955264 https://ift.tt/2FBQBuE

we should focus on…features that characterize contemporary capitalism: the long-term trend of shifting from profit to rent (in its two main forms: rent based on privatized “common knowledge,” & rent based on natural resources); the much stronger structural role of unemployment

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061890112018149377 https://ift.tt/2JC95PC

what we want…is..clear; but do we really know…what we are ready to renounce…”? …As Communists, we should abstain from any positive imagining of the future Communist society. Recall…: “If anyone tells you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘Look, there!’ don’t believe it.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061823448140394502 https://ift.tt/2UPJOm1

Keep in mind the open meaning of…apokálypsis (“lifting of the veil” or “revelation”): a disclosure of something hidden…in an era dominated by falsehood… Its arrival cannot but cause terror & confusion—recall HeinerMüller’s motto: the first appearance of the new is the dread

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061756730990870529 https://ift.tt/2FpQ51y

The only violence that I advocate is in situations where there is a terrorist or autocratic violent regime - usually you might call it…civil disobedience. Like when you start to behave as if you don’t admit the legitimacy of public authority… Violence should only be defensive

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061752949926445056 https://ift.tt/2uoIzyQ

[On Egypt’s Arab Spring Revolution of Tahir Square] Even though there were some tanks, people ignored them and went on to embrace the soldiers. Isn’t this a model of how to resist?

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061708919763075074 https://ift.tt/2TmVDim

This is why we should return…to Hegel’s “tragic” vision of the social process where no hidden teleology is guiding us, where every intervention is a jump into the unknown, where the result always thwarts our expectations

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061661121285971969 https://ift.tt/2UMAmA5

The left should learn, from the twentieth century, the horror of state terror or violence. Violence of leftist progressives should basically be defensive violence, in the sense that “We occupy the square . We defend if you attack us but not this kind of aggressive violence”

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061639722844520448 https://ift.tt/2ufrDKS

it was not that Marx was too utopian in his Communist dreams, but that…what Marx conceived as Communism remained an idealized image of capitalism, capitalism without capitalism, that is, expanded self-reproduction without profit and exploitation.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061617063419088896 https://ift.tt/2UJgYDU

Hitler’s problem was how to save the capitalist regime, how to prevent revolution. He did not really act;..his actions were fundamentally reactions. And he was doing all this just to make things stay the way they had been.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061612079008960512 https://ift.tt/2F8Q2XS

Although fascists claim that they represent all the people, it is obvious they’re never able to do so. They always need some kind of external threatening movement, like Jews, foreigners etc. In other words, they have much more sacrificial logic, as in “Somebody has to be killed”

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061601957297700864 https://ift.tt/2UGQhzF

“those in power don’t know either. Pussy Riot’s Your message is that, in Europe today, the blind are leading the blind. This is why it is so important that you persist” [Letter to Pussy Riot member when she was imprisoned. In: Comradely Greetings]

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061594409081421829 https://ift.tt/2O6hAB4

When it is said that people are not afraid, it doesn’t mean that they are crazily heroic. Of course, if you see a policeman shooting at you, you should…run away. But…you no longer take the leadership seriously. Those in power know this is the most dangerous moment for them

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061588116329369600 https://ift.tt/2O2fnGK

[Zizek to imprisoned PussyRiot member] “It may sound crazy but although I am an atheist, you are in my prayers. Prayers that you will soon see your family, children, friends. Prayers that you will at least have some time to read and reflect in peace while in prison! All my love”

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061575548953116672 https://ift.tt/2JbUlXo

the..appropriate reply to an ecologist trying to convince us of the impending threat is…: “Don’t worry, the catastrophe will come for sure!—the impossible is already happening all around us; but watch patiently, don’t indulge in the..perverse pleasure of thinking ‘This is it!

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1061028186962714624 https://ift.tt/2TMFNld

today’s excessive catastrophism (the mantra that “the end of the world is near”) is itself a defense mechanism, a way of obfuscating the real dangers, of not taking them seriously

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1060941421333618688 https://ift.tt/2Hd4Msa

the..taboo with…the word “communism” is the result of the defeat of…emancipatory struggle, so that when one abandons the word, one sooner or later also betrays the content

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059941040529043457 https://ift.tt/2NU6Ndb

one should have the courage of one’s own convictions: one should dare to assume fully one’s identifications.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059853222578401285 https://ift.tt/2SU0lDO

anti-Semitism as…elementary form of of accepting capitalism: if a “leftist” movement resorts to anti-Semitism…it displaces the cause of capitalist antagonisms,…evoking the fantasy that, once we get rid of this Other, we will get capitalism without its antagonisms.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059832809869770755 https://ift.tt/2IZkqsB

Everyone is…saying…the emperor is naked (democracies…torturing…suspects…etc.), and…nobody seems to mind. The system just goes on…as if the emperor has his clothes on.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059808975225610240 https://ift.tt/2IZifoW

a fetish..enables you to..participate in the..capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it; that you are well aware of how worthless this spectacle is;..that what really matters to you is the peace of the inner Self

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059764880083959808 https://ift.tt/2UkqVY9

Even if, in this way, we do not get what we wanted and/or expected, we none the less change the coordinates of what appears…as ‘possible’ and give birth to something genuinely new.” https://t.co/humdVPtvBZ

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059738430438064129 https://ift.tt/2EQyS27

I despise the kind of book that tells you … how to make yourself happy! The first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you are in.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059718316347006976 https://ift.tt/2SIpn94

There is thus an interconnection between the rising anti-immigrant tide…and the ongoing financial crisis: clinging to ethnic identity serves as a protective shield against the traumatic fact [that] the true ‘foreign body’ which cannot be assimilated is…Capital itself.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059649126927867909 https://ift.tt/2EsgnQ3

Fundamentalism is a reaction – a false, mystifying, reaction, of course – against a real flaw of liberalism

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059584944694087680 https://ift.tt/2H7RufH

Why is Christianity opposed to sexuality? Not because in sexuality our lower nature explodes, but because sexuality competes with pure spirituality as the primordial metaphysical activity.

http://twitter.com/extimacy/status/1059527061101002753 https://ift.tt/2NAJViM