By Steve Sailer
07/11/2014
From Newsweek:
Did Marxist Philosophy Superstar Slavoj Žižek Plagiarize a White Nationalist Journal?By the way, it would be wise for the media to stop assuming that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a disinterested authority, and instead notice that the SPLC has a very lucrative gig organizing the expression of hate toward targets of its choice. You might almost say it is America’s most successful hate group. That’s one of those huge ironies that deconstructionists never to seem to get around to deconstructing. But, let’s get back to poor old Žižek.By Taylor Wofford
Filed: 7/11/14 at 3:18 PM
Slavoj Žižek, one of the most widely known Marxist philosophers of the 21st century, has been accused of plagiarism by The American Renaissance, a conservative magazine focusing on “race and racial conflict” that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a white nationalist hate group.
Žižek’s bombastic style and frequent forays into criticism of popular culture have earned him a large following. The International Journal of Žižek Studies, whose purported mission is “investigating, elaborating and critiquing the work of Slavoj Žižek,” called him “the Elvis of cultural theory.” The author of more than 70 books, Žižek is a frequent contributor to The Guardian and is the subject of three films: Žižek!, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology.One of my commenters, IHTG deserves credit for quickly suggesting, “That’s really weird. It looks like he copy-pasted somebody else’s summary.”Which makes Žižek a big scalp if you are a conservative commentator. On July 9 conservative blogger Steve Sailer called attention to a book review written by Žižek in 2006. “A Plea for a Return to Différance (with a Minor Pro Domo Sua)”, a review of [more of a broad essay touching upon] The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements by Kevin MacDonald, was published in 2006 in Critical Inquiry by the University of Chicago Press.
Sailer wrote, “The superstar professor achieves a higher degree of clarity while expounding MacDonald’s message than in any other passage I’ve read by Žižek.”
Later the same day, a blogger writing under the name Deogolwulf posted a side-by-side comparison of passages from Žižek’s review and another review of MacDonald’s book by Stanley Hornbeck that appeared in the March 1999 issue of The American Renaissance. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, The American Renaissance “regularly feature[s] proponents of eugenics and blatant anti-black racists.”Hey, a man’s got to sleep sometimes …Deogolwulf pointed out that the two reviews bear an uncanny resemblance. …
When Newsweek contacted Critical Inquiry, James Williams, its senior managing editor, agreed that Žižek “absolutely” borrowed from Hornbeck’s review. “We’re very sorry it happened,” he said. “If we had known Žižek was plagiarizing, we would have certainly asked him to remove the illegal passages.”
Newsweek then contacted Hornbeck, who writes under a pseudonym. “Anyone who has seen the side-by-side comparisons can have no doubt that Žižek is a plagiarist,” he said. “I know nothing about his writing habits. Maybe he does this all the time. Or it may be that as a prominent Marxist he didn’t want it known that he reads American Renaissance. In any case, what he did is contemptible, and his publisher…should certainly have a word with him.”
Newsweek emailed Deogolwulf and Sailer for comment, but they did not respond by publication time.
Attempts to reach Žižek through The Guardian were also unsuccessful.
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