Slavoj Žižek

If we believe that things will fall into place by just letting them take their course, we will end up with multiple catastrophes.

Whenever a country’s social contract unravels, conditions become ripe for rumours and absurdities to circulate.

We need people like Assange to force such reckonings – to make us see “those in the darkness.”

A massive expansion of AI capabilities is a serious threat to those in power – including those who develop, own, and control AI. It points to nothing less than the end of capitalism as we know it.

Those who would claim neutrality forfeit their standing to complain about the horrors of colonisation anywhere.

Russia’s reversion to warlordism is fuelled by a religious fundamentalism.

For political figures like Trump and Putin, courage is redefined as a willingness to break the state’s laws if the state’s own interests – or their own – demand it. The implication is that civilisation endures only if there are brave patriots who will do the dirty work. This is a decidedly right-wing form of “heroism.” It is easy to act nobly on behalf of one’s country – short of sacrificing one’s life for it – but only the strong of heart can bring themselves to commit crimes for it.

Ethical progress produces a beneficial form of dogmatism.

Peaceniks argue that Russia needs a victory or concession that will allow it to 'save face.'

We in the West have no right to treat Iran as a country that is desperately trying to catch up with us.

By treating Israel’s colonisation of Palestine as a defensive struggle, Ukraine is validating its senseless aggression.

More is at stake in Ukraine than many commentators seem to appreciate. In a world beset by the effects of climate change, fertile land will be an increasingly valuable asset.

The mundane origin of the Kosovo crisis shows how easily a spark can be fanned into a conflagration.

Western political correctness (“wokeness”) has displaced class struggle, producing a liberal elite that claims to protect threatened racial and sexual minorities in order to divert attention from its members’ own economic and political power. At the same time, this lie allows alt-right populists to present themselves as defenders of “real” people against corporate and “deep state” elites, even though they, too, occupy positions at the commanding heights of economic and political power.

The left should maintain solidarity with those who resist aggressive, arbitrary power, whether in Ukraine or elsewhere.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are entering a new phase of warfare and global politics. Aside from a heightened risk of nuclear catastrophe, we are already in a perfect storm of mutually reinforcing global crises—the pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss, and food and water shortages.