{"id":3708,"date":"2008-08-16T12:40:08","date_gmt":"2008-08-16T17:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3708"},"modified":"2008-08-16T12:40:08","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T17:40:08","slug":"slavoj-zizek-democracy-versus-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3708","title":{"rendered":"Slavoj Zizek: Democracy versus the people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Slavoj Zizek, <em>The New Statesman<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/books\/2008\/08\/haiti-aristide-lavalas\">14 August 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>A new account of Haiti&#8217;s recent history shows how the genuinely radical politics of Lavalas and its leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, proved too threatening to the country&#8217;s wealthy elite and their foreign backers<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_3707\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/books\/ghij\/h-titles\/hallward_p_haiti.shtml\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3707\" data-attachment-id=\"3707\" data-permalink=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?attachment_id=3707\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karmalised.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/51ca5qgimdl_sl500_aa240_.jpg?fit=240%2C240\" data-orig-size=\"240,240\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Hallward\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Peter Hallward: Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karmalised.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/51ca5qgimdl_sl500_aa240_.jpg?fit=240%2C240\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karmalised.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/51ca5qgimdl_sl500_aa240_.jpg?fit=240%2C240\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karmalised.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/51ca5qgimdl_sl500_aa240_.jpg?resize=240%2C240\" alt=\"Peter Hallward: Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment\" title=\"Peter Hallward: Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3707\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karmalised.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/51ca5qgimdl_sl500_aa240_.jpg?w=240 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/karmalised.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/51ca5qgimdl_sl500_aa240_.jpg?resize=150%2C150 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3707\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peter Hallward: Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment<\/p><\/div>Noam Chomsky once noted that &#8220;it is only when the threat of popular participation is overcome that democratic forms can be safely contemplated&#8221;. He thereby pointed at the &#8220;passivising&#8221; core of parliamentary democracy, which makes it incompatible with the direct political self- organisation and self-empowerment of the people. Direct colonial aggression or military assault are not the only ways of pacifying a &#8220;hostile&#8221; population: so long as they are backed up by sufficient levels of coercive force, international &#8220;stabilisation&#8221; missions can overcome the threat of popular participation through the apparently less abrasive tactics of &#8220;democracy promotion&#8221;, &#8220;humanitarian intervention&#8221; and the &#8220;protection of human rights&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/books\/2008\/08\/haiti-aristide-lavalas\">Read the review<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slavoj Zizek, The New Statesman, 14 August 2008 A new account of Haiti&#8217;s recent history shows how the genuinely radical politics of Lavalas and its leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, proved too threatening to the country&#8217;s wealthy elite and their foreign backers. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3708\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-XO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3708"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3713,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions\/3713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}