Simon Gros

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Slavoj Žižek, in his characteristically confrontational and dialectical manner, asserts that the political left has long been in a state of decline, tracing its terminal crisis to the aftermath of the events of 1968, which he provocatively labels a false liberation. Rather than achieving genuine emancipation, Žižek argues that the cultural and political upheavals of that moment ushered in a new era of commodification and alienation under the guise of freedom. Sexual liberation transformed into the commercialization of sexuality, and the ideal of escaping alienated industrial labor gave way to precarious, insecure employment. Similarly, the critique of academic elitism produced a hollowing out of the university system, with higher education reduced to instrumental value and subjugated to utilitarian demands. The left, he contends, mistook symbolic gestures for real systemic change and has since failed to articulate a viable alternative to the neoliberal order.

Central to Žižek’s critique is the culturalization of politics—a process by which class antagonisms and material contradictions have been displaced by moral and identity-based discourses. While he acknowledges the legitimacy of causes such as diversity and inclusion, he views their institutionalized forms, such as cancel culture and woke politics, as fundamentally elitist. These movements, he claims, often marginalize the very groups they purport to defend, as upper-middle-class liberals impose politically correct language and moral standards onto working-class or underprivileged communities. He illustrates this through an anecdote of a Native American man who preferred to be called “Indian,” offering a sardonic critique of white liberalism’s failure to recognize the autonomy and irony of marginalized voices.

This liberal paternalism, Žižek argues, is not merely hypocritical but actively undermines solidarity. The left’s obsession with symbolic battles over language and representation alienates ordinary people and leaves the field open for right-wing populists like Donald Trump, whose appeal lies in his shameless transgression of established norms. Žižek does not merely condemn Trump as a vulgar outlier but rather as a symptom of a deeper postmodern obscenity, in which authority is decoupled from dignity, responsibility, and shame. Trump’s self-indulgent spectacle, he insists, stands in stark contrast to the modest dignity of figures like Bernie Sanders, whom Žižek praises as embodying the respectful paternal qualities that are now lacking in public life. While Žižek identifies as a communist and radical leftist, he provocatively suggests that the left must rediscover values traditionally associated with conservatism: respect, restraint, and even shame.

This reclamation, however, cannot proceed without a thorough rethinking of feminism and its relationship to material conditions. Žižek critiques contemporary feminism, especially movements like #MeToo, for their tendency to reduce complex social and economic realities to individualized moral dramas. The symbolic contest over terminology and sexual dynamics, he argues, obscures the more pressing issues of childcare, education, and healthcare, which are the true foundations of women’s emancipation. He emphasizes that real feminism must be grounded in concrete universality—the recognition of specific, embodied, and structural conditions that shape women’s lives. To this end, Žižek praises historical examples like Eva Perón’s successful campaign for menstrual leave in Argentina, holding it up as a model of practical, material feminism that the contemporary left should aspire to.

In exploring the crisis of authority, Žižek contends that the erosion of paternal or maternal figures within the family has left young men vulnerable to peer pressure, radicalization, and reactionary movements. Citing the work of Adorno and Horkheimer, he argues that modern authoritarianism no longer relies on patriarchal authority but manifests in immature, hysterical, and obscene figures like Trump, who resemble adolescent rebels rather than dignified leaders. True authority, Žižek maintains, should provide stability and ethical guidance, a bulwark against the chaos of unregulated desire and the disintegration of shared norms. The absence of such authority in both the family and the public sphere, he believes, has created a moral vacuum now filled by demagogues and charlatans.

Žižek’s diagnosis of the present thus leads him to a paradoxical conclusion: the left must embrace a form of charismatic, even dictatorial leadership—not in the fascist sense, but as a way of reclaiming the capacity to act decisively in times of emergency. He provocatively argues that the left needs its own Trump, someone who can bypass the inefficiencies of liberal democracy and inspire mass mobilization for urgent causes such as the ecological crisis. This figure would, in Žižek’s vision, wield power not for personal aggrandizement but to reinstitute collective solidarity and social justice. He likens this to the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, despite his authoritarian style, implemented transformative policies through direct appeal to the people. Žižek emphasizes that liberal proceduralism has become paralyzed by its own formalism, and that without bold leadership, the left will remain incapable of responding to the existential threats of the twenty-first century.

Despite this seemingly dystopian prognosis, Žižek refuses the posture of despair. Instead, he proposes what he calls “methodical pessimism”—a stance that recognizes the gravity of the current situation but sees this recognition as a catalyst for action. In his view, pessimism is not a retreat into cynicism or nihilism, but an urgent call to mobilize against the encroaching collapse of democratic ideals and planetary habitability. This means confronting not only external enemies but the internal contradictions of leftist politics: its romanticization of rebellion, its retreat into symbolic protest, and its refusal to engage with the real sources of power.

Žižek’s analysis culminates in a scathing critique of contemporary techno-capitalist figures like Elon Musk, whom he regards as the ultimate embodiment of post-1968 false liberation. Musk, he argues, lives like a “communist,” in the superficial sense of violating bourgeois norms, but his actions—hyper-productivity, disregard for labor, reproductive promiscuity—reveal the nihilistic underside of neoliberal individualism. Musk’s power, Žižek asserts, is a direct consequence of the cultural legacy of a left that mistook anti-authoritarianism for liberation, failing to distinguish between vulgar subversion and genuine dignity. For Žižek, the left must now abandon its residual nostalgia for 1968 and its naive faith in the spontaneous emergence of progressive values. It must instead engage in a rigorous philosophical reassessment of its premises, reforge its political imaginary, and rediscover the structural foundations of freedom.

Slavoj Žižek’s wide-ranging and provocative intervention—delivered iwith incisive irony and relentless dialectical critique—amounts to a manifesto for the reinvention of the left. He challenges his listeners to resist both complacency and nostalgia, to reject the empty moralism of liberal identity politics, and to rediscover the emancipatory power of reason, responsibility, and collective will. It is a call not for purity or orthodoxy, but for the courage to confront the decadence of the present with clarity, discipline, and an uncompromising demand for justice.