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Controversy as Slavoj Zizek talks at Left Forum

INTERNET — Taryn Fivek is dressed in all black, backed by Marxist guru Molly Klein AKA RedKahina, who has some kind of Chinese hat and togas loosely knotted around her body. She chews on one and fiddles with it, staring at her internet device. Slavoj Zizek is sitting on the stage, sweating and psychoanalyzing the wild audience. A majority of them have left, including Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman. Those that are left are totally involved, cheering and jeering the Slovenian slobberer at each provocation. The Left Forum emcee, Kristin Lawler, is standing in for Goodman who was slated to question Zizek but left without a reason or statement of protest. So this emcee is taking the heat from Fivek like it’s nothing at all while some goon is doing some menacing darting in and out of their personal space. I paused this video for about five minutes and took a long breath. It was almost unwatchable with meaning, the most potent cringe vid on the internet. Who are all these people? Why am I watching this?

I first came across Fivek when perusing Molly Crabapple hatred. Crabapple is a socially engaged artist splattering watercolors that reflect on the horrors of war as often as personal stories of women getting abortions. Under the nome de plume EM Quangel, Fivek wrote a dystopian fiction, Spooks, which warned against Crabapple’s brand of politics. Also she wrote the non-fictional essay, Weaponized Naked Girls, which says of Crabapple’s breed:

Their support of imperialism, combined with their self-promotion as empowered savvy “burlesque dancers” or “naked girls”, combined with their self-portrayal as frightened women under attack, is effective in triggering silence from the left … it would be anti-women, certainly anti-female sexuality, to attack the media as using the nakedness as a screen for pro-NATO positions.

Very well. Absolutely. Actually it must be true because “anti-woman” was my knee-jerk reaction when reading Spooks without its non-fiction analog. Feminism is one of many politics deployed on the margins of neoliberal order as a weapon, there is no doubt. Also it is encouraged within, belonging as it does to hallowed liberal rights, those that cost capitalists nothing. Feminism can be so strongly hegemonic that the CIA funds feminists such as Gloria Steinem to operate in strategic areas.

Among Fivek and comrades, there seems no doubt whatsoever that Crabapple must be a CIA operative. The pseudonymity provided by the EM Quangel alias was necessary for Fivek because it allowed her to continue her work with a UN associated migration publication while speaking out against the western worldview and its propaganda. Molly Crabapple had knowledge of Quangel’s identity for years and deployed the dox strategically. The starving children making doe eyes, supplicating US drones for death, were too precious for any westerner to deny. Only a totally inhuman monster would not happily digest this base propaganda, and the outrage that sly Crabapple witch cooked up against Fivek in conjunction with the doxing likely put Fivek out of her chosen career path forever.

But now Quangel is maybe dead, and Fivek is even more ferocious than her pseudonym. And here she is on this vid, confronting Slavoj Zizek and the Left Forum, leaning the fuck in and insisting that the slobberer can’t use that n-word. And that may be enough to fry your egg on, but there’s more!

Standing behind Quangel is Red Kahina. The biggest name of all in Crabapple hatred on twitter. As a point of massive interest, she gave a talk against Zizek at Left Forum in 2014. It is described in its abstract:

Is Slavoj Zizek a US propaganda psyop? I want to ask my comrades on the left to consider the possibility. After years of research, I have come to the conclusion that Zizek is a charlatan posing as a “Stalinist” to both discredit communists by performing a caricature Bolshevik and simultaneously, to smuggle fascist ideas including old fashioned Aryan supremacism and 19th century race theory, back into public discourse disguised as radical left critique of liberalism.

The talk was entitled Zizek Delenda Est, but Klein later employs the gender corrected slogan “Zizek Delendus Est” so the name is not likely a clever joke for people who took a year or two of Latin in high school. I wish the talk was put together with more care than the title. I want to be convinced. Klein’s quavering voice often sprints off to the end of a statement, and indeed to the end of the talk. Was Zizek a far right agitator in Slovenia, pushing for annexation by the neoliberal order during the breakup of Yugoslavia? A racist nationalist? So little of the situation is explained, each loose connection hangs to the next without clear reference back to Zizek and his particular, specific involvement.

Kahina takes us down some old paths, common tales such as Nietzsche the proto-Nazi, all “French Post-Structuralists” as Heideggerian “cuckoos” and Nazis. During the talk she uses the politically incorrect word “gypsy” to reference Roma and I consider putting this in the “gotcha” sack. But nah, less of a gotcha and more of a meaningless false equivalent. But these things are adding up, and it is also a fair point by now to think to myself, “Why should I listen to her talk about this distant conflict if she cannot even name the people involved by their right name?”

But it is not actually a total flop of a talk. I continue to listen. I am interested now in Zizek’s former career. It could change my opinion of him or his sincerity. The accusations are so serious I cannot dispose them. Maybe Zizek has committed a genocide or been complicit in one. Maybe he is a right wing spook, but past that what can I say? These questions are just left hanging there. Someone in the audience pushes the panel, asks them if they will answer “yes” or not to the question posed by their abstract. Is Zizek a spook? The panel refuses. So much for that. I feel like my time has been wasted.

I stop hyperventilating from the cringe after several minutes and commit to the rest of the video.

Kahina holds her internet device as if a frog is dancing on top of it and smiles with the kind of satisfaction I’d get from seeing such a marvel. The moment the words “you blacks have a big penis” come out of Fivek’s mouth, Kahina looks out to the audience, grinning and holding the toga to her chin. The dwindled crowd erupts into passions and Kahina orders, “Patience!” The exasperated emcee gets her microphone back in the commotion. I am not sure when Fivek got a hold of it to begin with, but the emcee was upset about it. Fivek repeats the obscene Zizek quotation, and Kahina smirks at her internet device. Fivek declares Zizek’s misogyny and racism is now a given, as well as his hatred for refugees entering Europe. She demands that Left Forum organizers answer to this. How much did they pay Zizek and how can they justify it? The emcee answers that the Left Forum organizers considered the complaints against Zizek and that it is a kind of critique that takes his statements out of context. At this point, Fivek, the audience, and Zizek say “the N-word” all at the same time. That is, they are all shouting the euphemism and not the expletive itself. As the camera pans to Zizek, Kahina raises her voice, “You know the context! What about that context changes?” Fivek moves to the center of the audience shouting with the anti-Zizek leaflet raised, and everybody in the room begins to shout. Somewhere in the mix there is the word “Friendship!”

Zizek has been confronted, the smuggled goods are now on display. He answers to the leaflet’s accusations of misogyny, taking a grave tone to defend his position that trauma confuses the accounts of rape survivors, that incoherence should not discredit their testimony as the leaflet wrongly suggests. And he knocks down other critiques just as handily to applause and laughter. But here and there I hear a lone laughter at moments that seem wrong, carrying some kind of inscrutable, disturbing message. At times through the shoddy, echoing audio it sounds like a defeated, traumatized sob.

The smuggler is caught red handed in the open, and he empties his pockets. Inside are all the same old tricks that poke fun at “white liberal antiracism,” a phrase that gets the last big laugh of the night. The emcee Lawler thanks Zizek and ends the talk, but I want more. I still want more and I scrape twitter for every mention of Zizek, but nothing satisfies. I type tweet after tweet trying to wrap my head around the politics, personalities, and power dynamics at play at this mad talk. Kahina and Fivek are the underdogs, the heretics, the ones resisting a pleasant night with a talented and well-loved speaker and they’re raising a great alarm that is so urgent and compelling I want to know more. I have to know. I want to be able to explain it, understand it, and not stick to empty assertions that are so easily laughed off. I am still searching for this smuggled fascism and racism when I come across a pair of tweets from Kahina. I don’t want to believe they’re real. I hope they’re a joke. Kahina makes an admission of white privilege into white supremacy as neat as I’ve ever seen. Just who’s smuggling what, and why is a professional, expert young woman like Fivek with such explicit, strong views to the contrary an attack dog for this kind of white savior junk?

"White Liberal Antiracism"

 

58 replies on “Controversy as Slavoj Zizek talks at Left Forum”

molly klein and taryn fivek may know each other but it’s not like there was a collaboration. to refer to one as an “attack dog” for the other is a slur. obviously anyone who turns up for left forum to criticize zizek is going to get molly klein in their corner.

Preposterous. Klein is charismatic and I am not slurring anyone to suggest she may also be manipulative. You have missed my view entirely. A charismatic doesn’t need to put anyone up to anything. They must only convince others of a worldview and a cultivate a constant sense of urgency. In my opinion Klein’s clearly expressing and promoting white savior politics, and Fivek along with many others have been drawn along. Sure, we can pretend that every person is totally atomized and there is no social connections or influences at work here, but that’s disingenuous. Klein is what she says Zizek is, a smuggler of racism, and her target is Fivek and everyone else in the world.

I wanted to know what they wanted. The semantic high talking is the most cringe-worthy element of this person’s “question” on stage. I felt sad for her. What is this supposed to accomplish, and for whom?

At the risk of oversimplification, I think this is a stunt in the name of fake internet eFame or bust. And she’s bustin’

Well this is definitely one your best analysis pieces fishfag of the manuf(r)actured left sh(r)ill brigade. Finally, it seems the shearing of your beard helped you recover your writing MOJO.
Frankly they all need to died in a fire

Down with Amy Goodman!
Down with Amy Goodman!
Imperialist Smuggler Democracy Now!
Slave Labor Interns!
Down with Amy Goodman!

OMG OMG OMG Amy Goodman ran away from the Zizek talk when things started getting messy!

Amy Goodman is One of Us! One of Us! One of Us!

Amy Goodman will doubtless tell us to all vote NeverTrump come November so you know that her boycotting Zizek is deeply meaningful. She didn’t say anything but you just know, y’know?

Side of Amy Goodman I’ve never seen. “Fishfag” ? Really, Amy?

The white supremacy really goes pretty deep with these two. They are saviors of sex workers and liberals who cheer on imperial wars but would vote for the communist party if not for all that darned propaganda at the margins.

Taryn Fivek and Molly Klein already used the racist trope of black boys viciously assaulting you if you say “the N word” regardless context apparently. In order to Prove Zizek is Racist.

https://twitter.com/fivek/status/736025948496244736

I think the timing is interesting. Fivek started a kickstarter for a 2 month cross country trip where she gives voice to those without voices, from communist perspective, as she says. A few days before this demonstration. After this event, the donations poured in and amount to ten thousand dollars. Molly Klein is promoting her like she was her agent on Twitter and lots of Tweeters who would otherwise question this kind of silly non radicalism have decided it’s important to support a savior blog. Most of them are like Fivek, just journalists and wannabe journalists who will ultimately have to use these tricks to get ahead or else rot on Twitter as a younger generation of witty political far leftists take their place.

Her project.

https://twitter.com/fivek/status/732048929936789506

Whore$ (useful twitter/social media village idiots) who aren’t actually whore$, BUT who pretend to be whore$, AND who live in CIA/FBI funded (un)safe glass houses, virtually stoning (doxxxing & harassing) duped proxies, helping this psyop wetdream agenda cum true. Here’s a hashtag for your clickactivist mentality Noamfag #whineylittlebitch. Carry on useful pawn.

Amy Goodman most definitely skipped this mess rather than get splattered. The Twitters played like they took it as a sign of solidarity with the all important Zizek boycott.

The most revealing part for me is who actually signed on to this #FreeFivek #ZizekDrumpf thing and her media project. People who define their activism as radical communist going for this identity politics shit show that looks like a honeypot for the swarm. If Twitter is so full of fools, then why isn’t Kahina more popular? Are people horny for Fivek? She projects an anti sex vibe with every gesture, every image and every tweet and blog. There is no way she’s been manipulated by Molly Klein. If she’s manipulated by anyone it’s her own family, if they are the show business and news anchor pair that people are gossiping about.

What if they all work together? What if they all set this up. Frustrations with Zizek are at a boiling point among the fringe that follows this stuff. Seems like the perfect tiny little story to get them all frothing and relevant.

If you look on Twitter, there is neither pushback nor substantiated support for this PC fuck up.
Everyone retweets her project without a word, and minor celebrities call her smart and good and unique. On the whole, people avoid her Zizek bedwetting and prefer her savior project.

Oh god that’s Fivek in sock. The latest, most self obsessed creep on twitter, accusing a detractor of being a red pill frog meme.

It turns out that, um, everyone on twitter is a SJW gamergater fag. And after all that shaming that they weren’t being taken seriously enough.

That’s what you missed here, kilgoar. You took it with a sincere concern for where all the politics is going. But there are no politics. They’re a bunch of creeps who are more interested in one cause above every other. Themselves. And of course they like to travel if they can afford it. Which they pass off as caring about others.

GTFO here with taking this infantile tantrum at some boring lecture seriously. Nobody is this dumb. Kahina and Fivek are trolls trolling trolls. JFC, look at the video again. Molly is about to pee her pants it’s so much fun and Fivek is a caricature of everyone’s nightmare of some dowdy college bitch come to get offended that English Literature 101 hasn’t replaced Shakespeare with Toni Morrison yet.

All these commietards leftists including the Noamfag have major cases of unwarranted self-importance. Js

I can’t believe Noam Chomsky just commented on your news article! Anyway, I can see where he is coming from, and I appreciate the conversation that came out of this.

Everything is awesome – except Spooks, lol. What a piece of shit.

Everyone on the outside gets it. On the Youtube page pretty much every comment is dripping with contempt at the little politburo language police dweebs. They look like lousy thugs to everyone and yet Fivek and Klein keep pushing it like there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

This kind of stupid “I’m going to waste my life working hard on my Twitter account” seems to be what they live for though, so….

I think made another comment you missed but I’ll say it again.

Fivek used this Very Revolutionary Protest as a promotional stunt to publicize her cross country amateur poor people reporter project. She has a kickstarter that almost got 10 grand so she can spend 2 months criss crossing America giving a platform to the unheard. Poverty pornography that she promises will be done “from a dialectical materialist communist perspective”. I don’t think she’s ever discussed communism beyond labelling herself as one so this is the real psycho deal of white lady saviors insinuating themselves into the left on the basis of a history saying that the left is fooled by white lady saviors who exploit the poor to make money for themselves and push racist imperialist narratives.

I’m sure this is all just a big joke for Fivek. She takes the money, has the other radical (don’t even know what that means since they never define it) ally pundits like roqayya chams give her free advertising, and gets to experiment with the social media phenomenon of notoriety. Perfect for the mob of mean girls that constitute the online leftist activist community.

Just look at this weird retweet she made, like she’s rubbing everyone’s nose in it. “This is all just entertainment”. Just dumb fun with unsuspecting cucks and suckers going nuts lecturing everyone that if they don’t #freefivek then they’re also imperialist shills and conformists.

https://twitter.com/fperodov/status/735921239156396032

More “what the fuck.” You’re as kooky as Kahina.

Fivek’s a professional in the field at the very least, whatever you say, and the pay seems commensurate with the service. It is also true that she was victimized by Molly Crabapple and turned to the internet for support. I don’t think it’s hypocritical. Like I said, Fivek generally avoids the white girl savior syndrome and despises it — this video being an exception.

I contributed to her project. I don’t know what will come of it, but what is promised is a communist perspective and of course I will be sorely disappointed if she delivers white saviorism instead.

Gawd you remind me (grammar/spell) of one of those minimum wage Russian farm trolls.

Hey everybody! Look at me! I’m a retard cuckservative shit eater and Taryn Fivek took my manhood! Now I am a wraith, floating around the internet and doing my best to turn everyone against her. Too bad she took my balls, or I might have something to do with my life

Her victimization by Crabapple is overwrought beyond imagination. Fivek is a rich girl living in New York now. How the hell do you afford that when you’re struggling through tough times just to save people afar. I’m sure she was more than happy to drop the Syria shtick and put it on her resume as a done deal, adventure had, enough of this insanity.

A professional in the field? I think I see how you fit in with that online activism thang. What is a professional in the field of socialist activism today. A politician.

There’s nothing dumber than a “socialist perspective” from people who never read Marx except for the communist manifesto, always calling for big government.

Your ableist attack on Kahina as kooky isn’t so much insulting as pitiable. Such a cuck you can’t even criticize Klein, instead having to see her as mentally ill, the way every numbskull field activist on Twitter tears her a new one with “she’s crazy”. Substantive.

A professional in field. My what passes for thought among you bloated gas bag online thinkers. Professional in the field of socialism. Writing press releases. Making phone calss. Saving lives. Making revolution, right?

I saw people putting up Tweets like “don’t waste your money on a reactionary like rich lawyer Matt Bruenig…..waste it on poor little rich girl Fivek”.

You don’t have to answer me. I know you couldn’t even verbalize it to yourself, why you would donate to someone’s vanity project because they slapped on the label socialist dialectic . Well, there’s one born every minute! Ha, good luck figuring out what’s happening in that video, maybe hire a tutor to help. Hopefully a “communist” tutor. Who uses “communist perspective methods” to tute you, as white girl Fivek can complain of racism for the voiceless blacks, and then claim any criticism of her is dismissal of blacks.

One born every minute, I swear.

Yo Noam tho protest too much .. sounds like you have a horse in this trainwreck of a ‘race’. You seeing what I did there. Anywho seems like someone likes to write a PHD thesis in in this here comment section to hear the sound of their own voice. Satire much, obviously not. Flame on Noamfag.

‘Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism. Every society is three meals away from chaos.’

Where do you get the idea that I think Kahina is mentally ill? She’s a crank. A scholar out in left field. That’s why it is worth the effort of making sense of her politics. You said it’s a waste of time, criticizing her and writing this piece you’re obsessively commenting, and now you’re saying I’m a “cuck” for not doing what I did. Get fucked.

Fivek’s worked as a reporter for 10 years of her life. If you haven’t noticed, the news is fucked! It’s all advertisement and police-eye-view. And I may be a sucker but Fivek probably won’t give us her own flavor of Crabapples.

I mean, what are you, some pathetic guy she castrated in high school, trying to restore your manhood through years of obsessing over her every word? God, man, get a grip of yourself.

Crabapple does a better job than Fivek getting the word out about issues the MSM won’t cover. I can’t figure out what Fivek is ever saying. That’s because this flinging around race baiting charges of racism is the most coherent she’s ever been. It stuns me that this is the most success she’s found among leftists. They love themselves some racialized white savior politics.

I should be less obsessive a commenter and do like your other commenters, “fag, lol, crash and burn, froggiesarentsexy meowmeow”.

I guess we really **can** see why you would donate to a fake like Fivek. You prefer your alternative journalism retarded and empty.

Do you even know **any** of the journalism she’s produced for that decade? It’s garbage. Thanks but no thanks, if someone’s going to do alternative journalism that doesn’t do the cop POV, I prefer it with a little substance and research. I think Truthout, Truthdig, VICE, Gawker, Salon, Huffpo, NBC, the Intercept aw hell pretty much everyone has the alternative beat covered with plenty of hatred for the cops and for America.

Explain how exactly you expect tankie Taryn to add a platform. What’s that, you have no idea, you’re just a silly oaf looking to be a part of something? Oh, ok then. Enjoy your identity politics liberalism with Taryn’s unique brand of anti police POV content.

Come to think of it, I don’t think in the past 10 years I’ve heard a peep about the police from Fivek. Or about economics. Or about Marxism.

But there’s Fox news and the New York Times so somehow that makes Taryn an important alternative. You’ll be disappoited, bra. Just letting you know early so it doesn’t hurt too much later.

PS Taryn is great in bed. She didn’t castrate me at all. Just the opposite.

You’re a real trip! From “dowdy” to a sexy conquest just like that. But she’s also totally worthless, so what is it? You’re so mixed up with the compulsion to turn people against her you can’t keep your story straight fella. She ain’t just a victim of Crabapple, she’s a victim of you because you’re the one who snitched on EM Quangel to begin with ain’t you. It’ll come back around one of these days

That’s an expensive hobby, one would think sex workers might charge double time & a half for that weird shit. Js. And speaking of shitty …

You call that an slur, okay … ::blinks::: try harder again NoamFAG. Oh, as if he could even find a clitoris Fishfag, OR that any women would be willing to show him her clitoris.

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