tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055855971874669446.post3623870705653576213..comments2023-11-05T09:32:26.285+00:00Comments on Communist Realism: Re-Booting Communism and the End of PhilosophyBecketthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07611811837667869318noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055855971874669446.post-56124518466250102622009-03-23T23:29:00.000+00:002009-03-23T23:29:00.000+00:00Serbedzija is a great actor, whose talent is of co...Serbedzija is a great actor, whose talent is of course vastly underused in Halliwud productions, so you should see his Yugoslav work - some of it's available with subtitling.<BR/>I completely hated his ''Russian accent'' in Kubrick, esp. given he's such a powerful voice actor as well.Dejanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11960835065614594014noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055855971874669446.post-59308184842124617492009-03-23T23:24:00.000+00:002009-03-23T23:24:00.000+00:00To the extent that the Slovenian ''Revolution'' wa...To the extent that the Slovenian ''Revolution'' was to a large extent CULTURAL - the Slovenes gained a lot of points on the Laibach and their ''parodies'' of Communism-as-Nazism an their coqueteering with Western mass culture - I believe it is entirely impossible to view Dr. Zizek's theorizing as apolitical, and I see him as a politician as well. In this sense I view your search for ''pure Theory'' behind this, as well as dr. Sinthome's, futile.<BR/><BR/>The paragraph below is what doesn't make sense in your otherwise accurate analysis:<BR/><BR/>Tito, in fact, was very conscious of ethnic 'distinctions' (and like<BR/>any socialist, was interested in moving beyond such essentializing<BR/>fantasies) and, indeed, because of both Serb and Croat racism towards<BR/>Muslims he overcame this problem by declaring Muslims an official<BR/>ethnic group within Croatia (prior to that Muslims there were<BR/>continually being forced to take sides between Serb/Croat<BR/>animousities, being asked "Are you a Serb Muslim or a Croat Muslim?" <BR/><BR/>The very Communist constitution of the old Yugoslavia, created by Edvard Kardelj and blessed by Tito, was ''decentralized'' not as a way of curbing non-existent ''nationalisms'' but as a way of cornering Serbia while the Western-oriented, traditionally richer, formerly Austro-Hungarian republics, would be privileged, most of all - financially. Cornering Serbia sounds nationalistic, but if you look carefully you will quickly see how it enabled the collapse of Yugoslavia after the fall of Communism: its political and economic position substantially weakened by the existence of ''autonomous provinces'' (Kosovo and Vojvodina), and with its historic track record as the rebellious factor in the Balkans, Serbia was easily cast as the ''bully'' who wanted to ''force'' other republics into an unequal union. Crushing Serbia was essential not because I think the West is especially against Serbia, but because it was paramount to curb Russian power, of course, to allow for the spreading of the Empire. And the constitution made this STRUCTURALLY possible; his other faults notwithstanding, Milosevic was initially reacting to THIS instead of asserting ''Serbian nationalism'' against the other republics. His formal as well as informal position in this time was genuinely Yugoslavist, and whoever starts on his ''Serbian nationalism'' is just repeating NATO-sponsored propaganda.<BR/><BR/>I do not remember any problems with either nationalism or racism in Bosnia prior to Tito's declaration of the Muslims as a nation. My grandparents, both of them Communists, never mentioned any. Problems came after that, as extremist Muslim leaders found a good opportunity for essentialist fantasies, for example, about a huge islamic state in the middle of the Balkans. With the support of the West, they were able to coax a lot of the Bosnian Muslim population into the independence movement that was born out of this.<BR/><BR/>And in this Tito was being neither progressive nor especially Communist: the ''Muslims'', throughout all of our difficult history, were ALWAYS used as a ''trading currency'' between the Empires, i.e. Turkey and Austria. It IS still a little baffling that they were stupid enough to play along, but then on the other hand, everybody was duped in that civil war.Dejanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11960835065614594014noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055855971874669446.post-84300506389697601622009-03-23T21:03:00.000+00:002009-03-23T21:03:00.000+00:00This tedious issue of Zizek's biographical-Sloveni...This tedious issue of Zizek's biographical-Slovenian politics in the late-1980s/early-1990s and his scapegoating for the collapse of the former Yugoslavia (conveniently ignoring the wider external and internal forces leading to the breakup) is forever raising its ugly head on the blogosphere. Really, like Levi Bryant of Larvel Subjects, I've no interest in Zizek's 'personal life' or in his political viscissitudes (Le Colonel Chabert devotes much of her blog-life to <I>ad hominem</I> Zizek-bashing, to no end beyond destructive, energy-draining bitterness). I'm interested in his - as with the other participants at the conference - ideas. In their contribution to <I>Theory</I>.<BR/><BR/>Changing the topic, what do you, as a Serb, think of Croatian Serb actor, Rade Sherbedgia (Milich in <I>Eyes Wide Shut</I>, Alexander in <I>Before The Rain</I>, assorted nasties in Hollywood product etc)?<BR/><BR/><I>The following is a response to mainstream press profiles of Sherbedgia.</I><BR/><BR/>This article profiling Sherbedgia is quite extraordinary in its ignorance of Yugoslavian history, and must indeed have dumbfounded Sherbedgia when he read it. Take, for instance, this claim: <BR/><BR/><BR/>"<I>But he [Sherbedgia] always chafed against the totalitarian practices of communist Yugoslavia, which attempted to erase the ethnic distinctions of the populace. In 1992, when the Yugoslav Federation began to fracture into ethnic and regional wars, Sherbedgia and his wife left Zagreb, without any passports.</I>" <BR/><BR/><BR/>The only 'erasing of ethnic distinctions' is on the part of the writer of this article, who completely ignores and side-steps Sherbedgia's own ethnic origins. Firstly, Tito's Yugoslavia was neither 'totalitarian' nor communist and Tito's policies prevented (especially in Croatia, as Tito was himself a Croat) ethnic conflict, especially <BR/>between Serbs and Croats. The article fails to point out that <BR/>Sherbedgia is a Croatian Serb (it is as if the writer believes that <BR/>all Croatians are of the same 'ethnicity', so completely oblivious to why the horrendous Yugoslav wars of the 1990s began). Sherbedgia fled Croatia because, as a member of the Serb minority in a Croatia who's Croat population and leaders (neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic: Croatia is <BR/>now the most anti-Semitic and fascist 'republic' in all of Europe, thanks to the US and NATO support for the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia in the 1990s. We should remember that Croats fully supported the Nazis during WWII and slaughterd some 700,000 Serbs, Jews and others in Croatian concentration camps. Serbs wre anti-fascist, and Tito led the successful Resistence Movement against the Nazis. The ethnic cleansing committed by Croats against Serbs in the 1990s was <BR/>what sparked the numerous wars in the former Yugoslavia in that <BR/>decade, the worst case of ethnic cleansing since WWII; the tragedy is that such an atrocity was fully supported by the US, then putting in power Franjo Tudjman, easily the most neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denying madman in the whole of Europe, instead of sending him to the war crimes court. That's 'realpolitic' for you!! <BR/><BR/><BR/>Sherbedgia fled Croatia to escape such insanity. But it is ridiculous to say he and his wife had no passports. As with everyone else in Yugoslavia, they had Yugoslavian passports: the problem was that this country's status as a country was collapsing due to the unilateral secessionism by its breakaway republics, Slovenia being the first offender in 1991, so he went there (it is also the richest part of the former Yugoslavia, and its insular arrogance in seceding without even <BR/>negotiating [this would be like a US state, say Texas, unilaterally <BR/>seceeding from the Union, no questions asked], is ultimately the act that destroyed the country and plunged it into civil war. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Tito, in fact, was very conscious of ethnic 'distinctions' (and like <BR/>any socialist, was interested in moving beyond such essentializing <BR/>fantasies) and, indeed, because of both Serb and Croat racism towards <BR/>Muslims he overcame this problem by declaring Muslims an official <BR/>ethnic group within Croatia (prior to that Muslims there were <BR/>continually being forced to take sides between Serb/Croat <BR/>animousities, being asked "Are you a Serb Muslim or a Croat Muslim?" <BR/>Tito sucessfully displaced such racism, which is why, of course, he held the country together for so long, and this despite its biggest enemy, the Soviet Union, ever since Stalin denounced Tito a traitor in 1948, was continually attempting to annex the country (Yugoslavia, of course, was the most liberal 'communist' country during the Cold War, with free travel and free trade, and with favourable relations with <BR/>every Western power, including the US, which is why Tito's funeral was the biggest in terms of political leaders attending in history; indeed, Yugoslavia was a major tourist resort for European holiday-makers. I first visited there in 1981.) <BR/><BR/><BR/>In fact, there are remarkable similarities between the neo-Nazi- <BR/>motivated ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia in the 1990s (with Western assistance) and the recent attempt by Saakashvili's Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia (with Western assistance): <BR/><BR/><BR/>"Georgia for a long time, and in fact Georgians and the political <BR/>elite and elsewhere have talked about an incident now 13 years ago, but 13 years ago actually this month in August [2008], something called Operation Storm, when the Croatian military moved into a region of its own territory called the Krajina, to oust a local secessionist Serb entity. That military operation went forward with a green light <BR/>from the United States after the Croatian army had in fact been <BR/>trained and equipped by the United States military, succeeded. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Now, it lead to about hundreds of thousands of Serbs being pushed out of the area, but it allowed Croatia to reassert control over its own territory, it lead directly to the agreement, the Dayton Accords on Bosnia, and I think the Georgians had become convinced that if they <BR/>could do this kind of lightning strike, and succeed, they would create a situation on the ground that the Russians would have a very difficult time countering. In the end the Georgians did not succeed militarily and now we're seeing the result of that failure." <BR/><BR/>BTW, Sherbedgia, like many of Croatia's leading actors, artists, and intellectuals, is a member of the Socialist Labour Party of Croatia, which in addition to denouncing the current regime in Croatia as neo-Nazi, also is committed to the kinds of progressive social and <BR/>economic policies that were pursued by Tito, like democratic socio-economic decentralization and autonomy via 'worker self-management' etc.Becketthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07611811837667869318noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055855971874669446.post-40411390585914774172009-03-22T00:58:00.000+00:002009-03-22T00:58:00.000+00:00The ferocious battles over land acquisition that h...The ferocious battles over land acquisition that have been and are still being fought in India ...<BR/><BR/>I recently learned from talking to a Croatian migrant in Holland that nearly one third of Croatian land has been purchased by rich Dutch farmers, where they exploit both land and labor at one fifth or less of the price they would pay in Holland. <BR/><BR/>Three or so years ago Serbia was full of reports about all the multinationals who came to us after the fall of Milosevic in order to lock a patent on the newly-discovered water resources underneath Belgrade. None of this ever reached the Western press, at least not in any visible manner.<BR/><BR/>A lesser-known fact about Yugoslavia is that it has natural resources enough to feed half of Europe in case of a nuclear disaster, which explains why Serbia didn't suffer any food shortages despite a decade of various sanctions.<BR/><BR/>With this in view you can see easily why Zizek and the minions are so eager to present the case in an abstract format, as though ''ground reality'' were overcome by the triumph of capitalism; above all it serves to cover up Zizek's deep complicity in the Yugoslavia break-up project, where he not only betrayed the Yugoslav Communist Party of the period and the Communist principles, but also, in supporting the demise of the most important Russian ally, contributed to the death of the same Communism which he is now parodically marketing in Birkbeck, in some idiotic retro-nostalgic format with fasho-flavored recourses to violence and authoritarianism.Dejanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11960835065614594014noreply@blogger.com