a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
doublejay  ·  4001 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Discrimination and Equality: Debating Mandela's Legacy

zizek has been selling this same article around the world and it appeared in the Guardian, UK paper too. I have no time Zizek with his lofty theories while doing nothing to implement them or to inspiring others to do the same - and it's particularly vulgar to write this piece at this time. His theoretical models might be entertaining at parties, but have little grounding in political struggle. He's been criticized before for having no real belief system or moral compass or indeed conviction and this article is testimony to that criticism.

To address the points in his article, first of all it's quite wrong from the Left to claim him as a hero of theirs who fell short; his goal was emancipate black people from being legally 2nd class citizens and he did so with out the bloodbath that he could easily have brought forth on his release from incarceration. He grew wise and matured enough to compromise the original Freedom Charter - authored some 40 years earlier, in order to secure a peaceful equality for black indigenous Africans.

That he did not transform water into wine, part the oceans, or shoot fire from his finger tips of little concern for those millions for whom he won basic human rights.