Latest news with #Fascist
Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The ‘Elvis of cultural theory' on Trump, hope and history's lessons
Slavoj Žižek has many intellectual heroes. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci is one. Arrested and imprisoned by Mussolini's Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died in 1937 in prison. Fredric Jameson is another. The American literary-cultural theorist wrote about futurism, tech utopia, science fiction, pop culture, postmodernity and late capitalism. Last September, Jameson died, aged 90, at his home in the US. Shortly after, Žižek published a glowing obituary. 'Jameson was the last true genius in contemporary thought,' the Slovenian philosopher wrote in a Substack post: 'He was the ultimate Western Marxist, fearlessly reaching across the opposites that define our ideological space: a 'Eurocentrist' whose work resonated deeply in Japan and China.' That poignant tribute could easily be used to describe Žižek's life and legacy. Often referred to as 'the Elvis of cultural theory', Žižek is the author of more than 50 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Among his most famous are The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2008) and Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist (2024). He's written and presented numerous documentaries too, such as The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), which examine film in a philosophical and a psychoanalytic context. 'I'm a moderately conservative communist,' the provocative 76-year-old philosopher explains from his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 'I use the term ironically. But I think we need a radical re-arrangement of our way of life that moves towards global solidarity.' He is also a pessimistic realist. 'Optimists are always disappointed. But remaining pessimistic means when something good happens occasionally in life, the surprise brings unexpected joy.' Next week Žižek publishes Zero Point, a collection of essays. The title is borrowed from a term used by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Five years after grabbing power, Lenin wrote a short text called On Ascending a High Mountain (1922): it used the image of a climber who retreats to a 'zero point' to rethink old strategies that have proved politically ineffective. Žižek is fond of quoting other authors and idealists, distilling and reframing them in his own words with frantic urgency. In the opening pages of Zero Point, he borrows a line from Archaeologies of the Future (2005), in which Fredric Jameson observed that for some people 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'. Žižek says many Western leftists are still stuck in this nihilistic mindset, but there are historical reasons for this. Specifically, he's referring to the left in the West, which, in his view, traditionally meant North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. From the 1960s onwards, he says, the left began to prioritise cultural freedom and individual liberty over collective economic and political freedom. He refers to this transition as 'the culturalisation of politics'. In his view, the left became distracted by political correctness and gave the right total control of global economic power, via neoliberalism. With its fixation on free trade, faith in markets, deregulation, globalisation, privatisation, and minimum state intervention, neoliberalism became the dominant political and economic philosophy in the West from the early 1980s, until the global economic crisis in 2008. The left, he says, spent decades 'babbling on about neoliberalism' but lacked the strength, unity, or courage to take sufficient action to combat it. 'It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the global economy that Donald Trump has recently introduced with tariffs, trade wars, and so forth, in effect, put an end to neoliberal, global capitalism,' he says. 'Capitalism has now transformed itself into a new post-capitalist order. Which is starting to look more like techno feudalism. We are entering a new era. The left just hasn't yet fully realised it or come to terms with it yet.' The new populist right, meanwhile, treats communism and corporate capitalism as two sides of the same coin. 'Trump pretends he is for total market freedom, but Trump is all about state intervention. He is constantly criminalising his ideological opponents, trying to control what people do, and even how they think,' says Žižek. 'This is classic communist logic. We have not seen this since the 1970s, when communism was still the dominant idea in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.' Žižek spent most of his adult life living in a communist country. 'Without communist oppression in the mid-1970s, I would have probably ended up as a minor, local philosophy professor in Ljubljana,' he says. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The small central European nation had then recently become part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: a one-party, multi-ethnic federation, made up of six republics, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. 'Yugoslavia was in one sense a totalitarian communist country, where we knew who controlled power. But it was comparably more open and liberal than other communist countries,' says Žižek. 'From the early 1960s onwards, the borders were completely open for most of the population.' He completed a master of arts degree in philosophy in 1975 at the University of Ljubljana, and in 1981, earned his first doctor of arts degree in philosophy. That same decade he spent time in Paris, writing a second doctoral dissertation,a Lacanian interpretation of the work of Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Saul Kripke. A self-confessed workaholic, Žižek attributes his enormous output to the freedom that comes with being a globetrotting academic. Today, at 76, he holds several academic positions, including international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, a visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher in the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. 'I give talks here and there, and I am a permanent researcher, which means I have the freedom to do exactly what I want,' he says. This includes time for creative endeavours such as writing, reading, and speaking freely, without fear of censorship. The latter half of his new book provides an account of the speech he delivered at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023. A controversy began with Žižek's support of Adania Shibli. The Palestinian novelist was due to receive an award at the fair for her novel Minor Detail, a fictionalised account of the rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949. But the ceremony was cancelled after October 7. In his speech, Žižek called the decision to postpone the ceremony scandalous. He also pointed to an irony that comes with Germany's unconditional support of Israel: it contributes to the growth of antisemitism. 'Today we are witnessing something terrifying,' he says. 'The old neo-fascist European right — which was traditionally antisemitic — is now taking the side of Israel. This is a mega tragedy. Especially for Jews.' Loading But does some hope loom on the horizon? To answer this, he cites a quote from a letter that the novelist Franz Kafka penned to his friend Max Brod in the 1920s. 'There is infinite hope – just not for us,' Kafka wrote. You can read that letter two ways, Žižek explains. One interpretation says we are all doomed. Another says: there isn't much hope for us, now, at least not in our present state. But there might be if we can change how we think and act. That, in essence, is the main argument of Žižek's latest collection of essays. He remains cautiously sceptical about the future. 'I don't think we learn a lot from history,' he concludes. 'We are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Today, history is radically open. But there is no guarantee that we will survive.'
The Age
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
The ‘Elvis of cultural theory' on Trump, hope and history's lessons
Slavoj Žižek has many intellectual heroes. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci is one. Arrested and imprisoned by Mussolini's Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died in 1937 in prison. Fredric Jameson is another. The American literary-cultural theorist wrote about futurism, tech utopia, science fiction, pop culture, postmodernity and late capitalism. Last September, Jameson died, aged 90, at his home in the US. Shortly after, Žižek published a glowing obituary. 'Jameson was the last true genius in contemporary thought,' the Slovenian philosopher wrote in a Substack post: 'He was the ultimate Western Marxist, fearlessly reaching across the opposites that define our ideological space: a 'Eurocentrist' whose work resonated deeply in Japan and China.' That poignant tribute could easily be used to describe Žižek's life and legacy. Often referred to as 'the Elvis of cultural theory', Žižek is the author of more than 50 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Among his most famous are The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (2008) and Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist (2024). He's written and presented numerous documentaries too, such as The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), which examine film in a philosophical and a psychoanalytic context. 'I'm a moderately conservative communist,' the provocative 76-year-old philosopher explains from his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 'I use the term ironically. But I think we need a radical re-arrangement of our way of life that moves towards global solidarity.' He is also a pessimistic realist. 'Optimists are always disappointed. But remaining pessimistic means when something good happens occasionally in life, the surprise brings unexpected joy.' Next week Žižek publishes Zero Point, a collection of essays. The title is borrowed from a term used by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Five years after grabbing power, Lenin wrote a short text called On Ascending a High Mountain (1922): it used the image of a climber who retreats to a 'zero point' to rethink old strategies that have proved politically ineffective. Žižek is fond of quoting other authors and idealists, distilling and reframing them in his own words with frantic urgency. In the opening pages of Zero Point, he borrows a line from Archaeologies of the Future (2005), in which Fredric Jameson observed that for some people 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism'. Žižek says many Western leftists are still stuck in this nihilistic mindset, but there are historical reasons for this. Specifically, he's referring to the left in the West, which, in his view, traditionally meant North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. From the 1960s onwards, he says, the left began to prioritise cultural freedom and individual liberty over collective economic and political freedom. He refers to this transition as 'the culturalisation of politics'. In his view, the left became distracted by political correctness and gave the right total control of global economic power, via neoliberalism. With its fixation on free trade, faith in markets, deregulation, globalisation, privatisation, and minimum state intervention, neoliberalism became the dominant political and economic philosophy in the West from the early 1980s, until the global economic crisis in 2008. The left, he says, spent decades 'babbling on about neoliberalism' but lacked the strength, unity, or courage to take sufficient action to combat it. 'It gives me no pleasure to say this, but the global economy that Donald Trump has recently introduced with tariffs, trade wars, and so forth, in effect, put an end to neoliberal, global capitalism,' he says. 'Capitalism has now transformed itself into a new post-capitalist order. Which is starting to look more like techno feudalism. We are entering a new era. The left just hasn't yet fully realised it or come to terms with it yet.' The new populist right, meanwhile, treats communism and corporate capitalism as two sides of the same coin. 'Trump pretends he is for total market freedom, but Trump is all about state intervention. He is constantly criminalising his ideological opponents, trying to control what people do, and even how they think,' says Žižek. 'This is classic communist logic. We have not seen this since the 1970s, when communism was still the dominant idea in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.' Žižek spent most of his adult life living in a communist country. 'Without communist oppression in the mid-1970s, I would have probably ended up as a minor, local philosophy professor in Ljubljana,' he says. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The small central European nation had then recently become part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: a one-party, multi-ethnic federation, made up of six republics, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito. 'Yugoslavia was in one sense a totalitarian communist country, where we knew who controlled power. But it was comparably more open and liberal than other communist countries,' says Žižek. 'From the early 1960s onwards, the borders were completely open for most of the population.' He completed a master of arts degree in philosophy in 1975 at the University of Ljubljana, and in 1981, earned his first doctor of arts degree in philosophy. That same decade he spent time in Paris, writing a second doctoral dissertation,a Lacanian interpretation of the work of Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Saul Kripke. A self-confessed workaholic, Žižek attributes his enormous output to the freedom that comes with being a globetrotting academic. Today, at 76, he holds several academic positions, including international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, a visiting professor at New York University, and a senior researcher in the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. 'I give talks here and there, and I am a permanent researcher, which means I have the freedom to do exactly what I want,' he says. This includes time for creative endeavours such as writing, reading, and speaking freely, without fear of censorship. The latter half of his new book provides an account of the speech he delivered at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2023. A controversy began with Žižek's support of Adania Shibli. The Palestinian novelist was due to receive an award at the fair for her novel Minor Detail, a fictionalised account of the rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949. But the ceremony was cancelled after October 7. In his speech, Žižek called the decision to postpone the ceremony scandalous. He also pointed to an irony that comes with Germany's unconditional support of Israel: it contributes to the growth of antisemitism. 'Today we are witnessing something terrifying,' he says. 'The old neo-fascist European right — which was traditionally antisemitic — is now taking the side of Israel. This is a mega tragedy. Especially for Jews.' Loading But does some hope loom on the horizon? To answer this, he cites a quote from a letter that the novelist Franz Kafka penned to his friend Max Brod in the 1920s. 'There is infinite hope – just not for us,' Kafka wrote. You can read that letter two ways, Žižek explains. One interpretation says we are all doomed. Another says: there isn't much hope for us, now, at least not in our present state. But there might be if we can change how we think and act. That, in essence, is the main argument of Žižek's latest collection of essays. He remains cautiously sceptical about the future. 'I don't think we learn a lot from history,' he concludes. 'We are condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Today, history is radically open. But there is no guarantee that we will survive.'
CTV News
14-06-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
‘It's unfair what's happening': Over 1000 anti-Trump protestors march downtown
Toronto Watch Chants of 'Tyrant' and 'Fascist' echo as protestors rally against U.S. President Donald Trump Siobhan Morris reports.
Washington Post
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Fearing Trump, academics worldwide issue anti-fascist manifesto
LONDON — In the spring of 1925, a group of academics, researchers and writers in Italy published an open letter in multiple newspapers, hoping to ring alarm bells over the creeping authoritarianism of Benito Mussolini and his Fascist party. It called for 'intrinsic goodness' and recognizing the value of 'liberal systems and methods' over 'violence and bullying and the suppression of freedom of the press.' Spoiler: It didn't work. Mussolini wasn't stopped, fascism plunged Europe into darkness, and the letter signers were variously fired, sidelined and beaten. But exactly a century later, a modern group of academics, researchers and writers around the world is giving it another go — fearing that the world is once again sleepwalking into dictatorship and violence. More than 400 scholars from dozens of countries, including at least 30 Nobel laureates, are reprising the 1925 Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals to warn that 'the threat of fascism is back.' 'In the past two decades we have witnessed a renewed wave of far-right movements,' the new letter states, 'often bearing unmistakably fascist traits: attacks on democratic norms and institutions, a reinvigorated nationalism laced with racist rhetoric, authoritarian impulses, and systematic assaults on the rights of those who do not fit a manufactured traditional authority.' Organizers said the open letter — published Friday by media outlets in Britain, France, Italy, Australia, Argentina and other countries — was inspired by rising influence of, as they see it, a growing roster of would-be demagogues and dictators around the world and their followers. The essay does not name names. But in interviews, organizers cited Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine; the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters trying to block the peaceful transfer of power; and myriad crackdowns on press, protesters and professors in Hungary, Brazil, Israel and other democracies. Their fears have been supercharged by the early actions of the second Trump administration, they said. 'What we are witnessing at the moment is extremely concerning for people who want to defend democracy,' Andrea Pisauro, an Italian professor of neurology at the University of Plymouth in England and one of the organizers, said in an interview. 'It looks to us like authoritarianism is on the march throughout the world and now in the United States.' The group timed the specific release of the letter to coincide with the military parade that President Donald Trump planned to roll through Washington on Saturday, his 79th birthday, which organizers of the letter characterized as a ritual of authoritarian pomp. 'We thought, 'That's perfect. A person is trying to be a king and wants a parade,'' said another organizer in the United States, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. 'It's the classic mix of ridiculous and scary.' Publication of the letter also coincides with the Trump administration's ongoing push to exert greater control over universities, including Harvard, by cutting research grants, seeking to block the enrollment of international students and threatening to raise taxes on school endowment funds. The idea of an updated manifesto began mostly among hard-science researchers from Italy, who were familiar with their country's own descent into dictatorship and the noble, if futile, efforts by intellectuals to stop it. Support for it quickly spread to other disciplines and nationalities. Dozens of political scientists, legal scholars, historians and economists added their names. The list is growing, and the organizers plan to keep the letter open for new supporters. Those already signed up include some renowned thinkers, among them historian Garry Wills, New York University's Ruth Ben-Ghiat — the author of 'Strongmen,' a history of authoritarian rulers — and tyranny expert Timothy Snyder of Yale. 'I think it's important to remember that there is a history of university professors and other intellectuals taking risks in the name of principles,' Snyder said in an interview about why he joined the signatories. 'Secondly, it was important to me for people to have this historical reference to fascism, that things today might be more explicable when we have clear references to the past.' The project was launched in February by a loose confederation of academic colleagues who had been wary of rising autocracies for years. They saw Trump's moves to deport international students, threaten sanctions on unfavored law firms and ignore judicial restraints as another check-engine light on democracy's dashboard. The Trump administration has also pulled research funding for the National Institutes of Health and other scientific bodies, they noted, and has co-opted federal watchdog agencies long viewed as independent monitors. Among the most concerning, Pisauro said, were actions by Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service to erase decades of irreplaceable research on climate change, sexuality and other suddenly taboo topics. 'We are researchers,' Pisauro said. 'That really shocked us.' Fully aware that academics were already in the crosshairs of powers from Washington to Budapest, they decided to reprise the 1925 letter, which condemned Mussolini's 'bizarre mixture of appeals to authority and demagogy, of proclaimed reverence for the laws and violations of the laws.' The modern version was largely written by an international medical researcher at an American university, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said the atmosphere of fear and mistrust that has enveloped academic institutions under Trump makes him afraid to go public. He isn't alone. Several signatories of the letter opted to remain anonymous. That alone should be seen as a warning sign that the United States is descending into the wary chill that characterized the former Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes, said the researcher, whose identity and credentials were verified by The Washington Post. 'I don't want my colleagues to know what I'm doing,' he said. 'That is definitely not something I thought would happen when I moved to the United States many years ago.' The organizers are quick to say that current events in the U.S. and elsewhere are not exact parallels to the rise of dictators like Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. By 1925, many opposition figures were imprisoned and a growing number of dissidents were dead, part of a wave of violence that grew to engulf Europe. Still, even though there is debate over the definition of 'fascist' — a label easily deployed in political arguments — the letter writers see echoes of it in the actions of today's strongman leaders and the conditions that enable their rise. 'These movements have reemerged across the globe, including in long-standing democracies, where widespread dissatisfaction with political failure to address mounting inequalities and social exclusion has once again been exploited by new authoritarian figures,' the letter states. 'True to the old fascist script, under the guise of an unlimited popular mandate, these figures undermine national and international rule of law, targeting the independence of the judiciary, the press, institutions of culture, higher education, and science.' Some of those who signed the manifesto did so while also arguing for universities and institutions to address their own shortcomings. Among them is a widespread intolerance of political and cultural views that many academics don't like when it comes to hiring experts and setting curriculum, said Pippa Norris, a longtime political scientist at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. 'We need to make sure all viewpoints are heard and taught,' Norris said. 'At present we don't have the balance right.' Norris said she signed the open letter because she also recognized the rising threat to academic freedom coming from governments. Her institution has seen federal funding stripped by the Trump administration and its international students blocked from applying for visas. 'Everyone can speak up in different ways,' she said. 'And this is something I can do.'
Local Italy
12-06-2025
- Business
- Local Italy
Saldi: When do Italy's summer sales start and end in 2025?
Retailers in Italy are allowed just two big saldi, or sales, a year – one in the summer and one in the winter. The practice aims to boost consumption and give vendors a chance to shift stock from the previous season while ensuring an even playing field between competitors. The custom dates back to the Fascist era, as it was first introduced by a government decree in June 1939. It was then scrapped for about four decades after the collapse of Benito Mussolini's regime but was brought back in an updated form in 1980. In 1997, the law was revised to hand autonomy over to individual regions, which is why the length of the summer sales season varies from region to region. Though Italy's saldi estivi can go on for over two months in some cases, they run for at least a month in all parts of the country, meaning you'll have plenty of time to snap up a bargain regardless of where you live. Here are this year's official dates for each Italian region: Abruzzo: July 5th-September 2nd Basilicata: July 5th-September 4th Calabria: July 5th-September 2nd Campania: July 5th-September 2nd Emilia Romagna: July 5th-September 2nd Friuli Venezia Giulia: July 5th-September 2nd Lazio: July 5th-August 16th Liguria: July 5th-August 19th Lombardy: July 5th-September 2nd Marche: July 5th-September 1st Molise: July 5th-September 2nd Piedmont: July 5th-August 30th Puglia: July 5th-September 15th Sardinia: July 5th-September 2nd Sicily: July 5th-September 15th Tuscany: July 5th-September 2nd Umbria: July 5th-September 2nd Valle d'Aosta: July 5th-September 30th Veneto: July 5th-August 31st You may have noticed that the Trentino-Alto Adige region is missing from the list above. That's because the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano decide their own sales periods independently from the rest of the country, with start and end dates often varying by municipality (or comune). The dates for this year's summer sales in each comune in the Bolzano province are available at the following link. How much of a discount can I expect? Discounts usually start at around 20 to 30 percent of the original price but can climb as high as 70 percent. Shops are required to display both original and discounted prices, so you should know exactly how much of a bargain you're getting. Italian law states that the items on sale must only come from the season just gone, rather than being stock that's been sitting on the shelves for months, though the rule is hard to enforce.
