Monday, October 24, 2011

George Soros, the "Chocolate Laxative" of #OccupyWallStreet

We noted the arrival at Zucotti Park of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek in the October 10 post "Ossify Wall Street: Russell Simmons/Kanye West; Richard Trumka, Tim Robbins Swing By; Jesse Ventura only Gets as Far as Minneapolis".

Here's what he said, via the Slovenian Government Communications Office:
...Zizek encouraged the protesters to think about the work ahead of them and not be misled by the festive atmosphere in the park.

Saying that he supported George Soros, he compared the billionaire to a chocolate laxative, as he exhibited an internal contradiction. "First, they take billions from you, then they give back half. And that makes them the world's greatest humanitarians," said Zizek.

He advised the protesters to take the money, but keep fighting against the system.... 
The Observer had an extensive piece on Žižek's speech but somehow failed to mention that he writes for Adbusters, the folks who put the original September protest together.
From the New York Observer:
Slavoj Žižek Speaks to Occupy Wall Street
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek turned up at Zuccotti Park to address the Occupy Wall Street demonstration on Sunday, offering up a seminar on Radicalism 101 for an appreciative crowd.


Despite some difficulty with the Human Microphone—the sometimes unwieldy but strangely appealing system the protesters have adopted of repeating a speaker’s words, phrase by phrase, for the benefit of the crowd—he held the floor for the better part of an hour.

Standing above the assembly in a red T-shirt, the heavily bearded dissident–turned–academic superstar at first spoke from prepared notes, hitting on many themes that will be familiar to fans. Several riffs were recycled almost word-for-word from earlier talks included in the 2005 documentary Žižek!, but to be fair, they killed at the time and are perhaps even more relevant today.

He told, for instance, an old Eastern Bloc joke (borrowed from the introduction to 2002′s Welcome to the Desert of the Real) about a dissident who’s about to be sent to a work camp in Siberia....MORE
Here are some of  the Z-man's Adbuster columns.