Left Forum Zizek Controversy: Activists & Organizers Speak Out

The controversial decision by the organizers of Left Forum 2016 to feature Slavoj Zizek as the closing plenary speaker was met with protest, a walk out, and social media activism.

One of the most outspoken critics of the decision to include the Slovenian philosopher at the annual conference was activist and journalist Taryn Fivek.

Fivek is the creator of No Platform, a project that will send her around the country in a mission to explore the disparate views of the American electorate that are undercovered by the mainstream media. Fivek describes her project as “a collaborative multimedia project that aims to explore a side of the US not covered in our 24-hour news cycle…. in the tradition of Studs Terkel.”

Fivek’s opposition to Zizek’s speaking to close Left Forum stemmed from a number of offensive comments the philosopher has made over the past decade. The poster below features some of the more egregious, but it appears that for Fivek- and for many on the left- his comments on refugees in April of this year were the last straw.

In April, Zizek made remarks Britain’s Channel 4 that were interpreted by many as racist and bigoted. His comments appeared to frame the refugee question as a problem of integration and multiculturalism on the part if the refugees- and furthermore, his comments suggested that the west shared no responsibility for the refugees plight.

That’s the way Fivek interpreted it in an email to Left Forum program coordinator Marcus Graetsch:

Zizek explains that opening our hearts to welcome refugees from imperial wars across the Middle East and North Africa will “make things worse for the refugees”, that we should “not just enlighten” them, that his idea is not that we should “live together with all different races, cultures, we all love each other,” but rather he wants a “polite ignorance.”

That email was part of a longer chain in which the two debated whether or not Zizek should be disinvited from speaking at the closing plenary. Fivek argued that the philosopher’s presence made it “not difficult to understand why women, people of color, refugees, LGBT and other oppressed populations would feel excluded and threatened by his presence at Left Forum.”

The exchange ended with Fivek repeatedly attempting to follow up on Graetsch’s April 18 acknowledgement of her concerns and promise to forward the information to the Left Forum board. In the email exchange forwarded to me by Fivek, she followed up on the 20 and the 27 with Graetsch, to no avail.

According to Fivek, the next time she spoke to Graetsch was the evening of May 22, as she awaited Zizek’s speech. Fivek says Graetsch told her he had informed her to submit a formal letter to the board in April.

“When he said ‘I told you to write a formal complaint to get a comment from the board,’” Fivek told me, “I said: ‘No. You didn’t. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’”

When I spoke to Graetsch on the 24, he admitted he had made a mistake with that reply.

“I made a mistake [with what I said to her],” Graetsch said. “I sent her emails with her links to the board, I made a mistake.”

Greatsch told me he had forwarded the information along to the board and they decided to add a Q and A section after the speech. The Q and A was expected to be chaired by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, but she abruptly left after her short speech, less than ten minutes into Zizek’s talk (I’ve repeatedly reached out to DN for comment and will update this article when and if they get back to me).

“I don’t know why she left,” Graetsch said when I asked him about Goodman. He added that he did not believe the walk out once Zizek took the stage was necessarily a reaction ot the speaker.

Graetsch said the question before the board on Zizek concerned whether or not he is a racist. If he is, Graetsch said, he would have been disinvited. But it was the opinion of the board, and Graetsch himself, that Zizek uses a clownish entertainer’s personality to critique the right.

“Zizek is using a specific European form of comedy,” Graetsch said. “He is going into different personality and using the language of the right wing to state his critique. Sometimes people don’t get this.”

Fivek isn’t buying it. Zizek’s use of racist and misogynistic language is not the language of the left. Her activism in response to his speaking was a reaction to his racism.

“I joined others — mainly women and people of color — who had come to protest his presence by handing out flyers and heckling him from the audience.” Fivek said in a statement. “I like to think that Left Forum is a space where women, people of color, refugees, Reds — and, of course, debate — are welcome.”

Fivek’s activism- the flyers and her heckling of Zizek- culminated with her approaching the microphone for the Q and A period. Instead of directly addressing Zizek, though, she aimed her comments at the Left Forum organizers. As she began to speak, the livestream on the Left Forum website was cut.

“My question, directed at the organizers of Left Forum, was how much they paid a man who publicly said and wrote such racist, misogynist, and xenophobic things,” Fivek told me. “We would all like to know the real story — why Left Forum used community money to bring a man to New York to say such things.”

Graetsch said that Left Forum does not pay speakers.

“Some people believe Left Forum is swimming in money,” he said, “But we don’t pay. Maybe a plane ticket, maybe a hotel room. And not all of them.”

The Left Forum will have to wrestle with the after effects of Zizek’s talk for some time. Fivek was far from the only person who was disgusted by the Slovenian’s inclusion in the talk- social media was alight Sunday night with people criticizing both Zizek for his comments and Left Forum for inviting him.

The debate, as much as there is one, over Zizek can be boiled down to your opinion on the philosopher’s motivation for his racist comments.

On the one hand, there are people who believe as Graetsch does; that Zizek is not a racist and that his influence and work for the left supersedes the feelings of those who oopse him.

Graetsch pointed to the many people he said have told him they became interested in Marxist thought and communism because of exposure to Zizek over the past decade.

“If he is on the left and promoting these communist ideals, as a controversial critical intellectual,” Graetsch said, “Then to say he is a racist take him out of the game. Is this a decision somebody here should make? I don’t know.”

Fivek believes it’s a decision Left Forum should make, and should have made a month ago.

“If they think right-wing demagogues sell tickets, then we should all look forward to seeing other speakers such as Alex Jones, David Duke, and Tom Metzger closing Left Forum in the future,” Fivek said. “All they need to do is call themselves Marxists first.”

You can find Taryn Fivek’s Kickstarter here.

To register for Left Forum 2017, visit the organization’s site.

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