Did Silvio Berlusconi presage Trump?

This is on point, but I don't know how Zizek can defend trumpist accelerationism if he knows what Berlusconi meant for Italy. The similarities between the two are countless and the only difference of note I can mention is that Berlusconi actually owned televisions and newspapers, while trump was disliked by all media.
Anyone who knows Berlusconi should know that trump is bad news for everyone. Berlusconi was the only argument the left had for twenty years. All the left parties had zero ideology: just defeat berlusconi was the political program.
And then at some point they did, with the help of Europe, and now we see that the "left" was worse than him. All the things Berlusconi tried to do and couldn't, are being done now by the left.
I'm telling you, if you're american and you think hatred and fear of trump or the consequences of his policies are going to wake up the left you are sadly mistaken.

Berlusconi had underage prostitutes frequently coming and going at his house(s) and had sex parties with VIPs and political affiliates.

To me, the point where it gets eerie is the physical vanity.

Same 2bh, fam. Whenever he uses philosophical concepts I'm not familar with I try to slow down my reading pace but sometimes even that doesn't help so I have to skip it and maybe return to it later in case I have acquired the knowledge somehow. At least we're trying.

can't you just look them up

Trump is the culmination of the failure of neoliberlism and an increasingly out of touch globalist elite.
You can see the beginning of trump in guys like Ross Perot or pat Buchanan.
Then you have bush, a neocon shit, destroys the economy and the world, even by the end of his run republicans hated him,
The comes obama, hope and change from the magic negro turns into the same neoliberal, neocon sterility as always, he bails out the bankers, expands the surveillance state.
Under obama, american culture becomes hyper tribalistic, liberal become insane authoritarian called social justice warriors, their ilk infect every single micron of society, nowhere to relax or run, everything must be politicized for them.
Under obama the media becomes more servile to the establishment even more than they were under bush, the media after all, being a corporate monopoly.
The people arent completely stupid, they know the media is lying, they have known, but thanks to the internet, they can now be bypassed.
This brings the reaction of the so called alt right, the ignored middle america, the rusted out, mocked, dying white population who even the so called left have abandoned to serve their globalist corporate masters, in comes the golden haired champion who acknowledges their existence, doesnt talk like the establishment, in fact is enemy number 1 of the establishment.

Think of it this way, obamas america was weimar germany, trumps america is well, you know godwins law germany.

Christ man, should have just let the nerds have their video games you dumb feminist cunts

Sure you can look up the jist of it, but that isn't exactly the same as actually understanding it. I mean, I can tell you in brief what Plato's cave analogy is about and you'll probably get it, but that isn't the same as reading it and understanding what it is in its entirety.

SJWs are a pain but saying they've infested every micron of society is overstating it a little I think.

quote pic for subversion purposes + memecube

they have, there was no escape, movies, tv, news, video games, music, comics, sports.
Everything turned into hyper politicized social justice garbage during the obama years.
Just an endless torrent of smug, arrogant, liberals who thought they would be in power forever.
And trump was the reaction middle america gave back to the liberals in their gated communities and gentrified areas who cant go on living if Juanita gets deported.
I mean, who else is going to raise their kids and wash their clothes for them!

Sure, I can look it up but I still have trouble with basic philosophy so even if I look it up and read it, it's no guarantee I'll actually get it.

shiet

Trump lives in the lefts head rent free.
Trump has been compared to Hitler, berlusconi, Mussolini, mao, and just about every other political figure you can think of by bored click bait journalists.

If you actually read about trump, he is pretty disciplined, while everyone else was doing coke at studio 54 he was buying new york real estate, he doesn't drink or do drugs despite looking like a guy who did rails in the 80's

It werent a week ago he did a big speech in font of congress that even libshits were hailing as "now trump is finally president", forgotten after Russian and wire tapping hysteria.

You know what they want?
They want a trump that talks like them.

Not like the plebeians.

You're confusing liberals and leftists matey.

...

I guess you're right if your life consists entirely of consuming the spectacle but they hardly dominate society over all.

Yeah except the berlusconi comparison is right.

It's the only comparison worth making. Both the hysteric leftoids who call everything they don't like fascist and the childless drone e-neoreactionaries who have a boner for his manners expect Trump to be much more than just a populist, and they're both retarded.

indeed

Well I mean

>How is this appearance of ideology as its own opposite, as non-ideology, possible? It hinges on a shift in the predominant mode of ideology: in our allegedly "post ideological" era, ideology functions more and more in a fetishistic mode as opposed to its traditional symptomal mode. In the latter mode, the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptoms qua "returns of the repressed"–cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie–while the fetish is a kind of envers of the symptom. That is to say, if the symptom is the exception which disturbs the surface of the false appearance, the point at which the repressed Other Scene erupts, while the fetish is the embodiment of the Lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth.

There's a lot jammed in there sometimes, and if you're not at all familiar with Zizek or philosophy or whatever this kind of thing is practically incomprehensible.

The Zeez writes just as he talks, too, (minus the sniffs and tugs), so one point leads right into another. It's like one long thread. You can't just examine bits of it to get the full meaning, you have to examine the final product, what it's woven into.

Good show old boy

All the more reason to work at theories to undermine the system.

I think it's way easier to understand him when he talks.

I don't have trouble understanding his writing, but since one thing leads right into another and can seem to just go on and on it gets a little exhausting.

Ha, I'm and that was one of the parts I struggled with as well. Even more when he further elaborated on fetishes.

As a pasta I want to give my opinion on this.
Berlusconi was a different character from trump imho. First of all it's absolutely essential to remind that he owns (and most importantly he has owned through all of the period where he actually had power, since he owned the national channels too at the time) three of the most watched tv channels in italy. Italy is a place where a LOT of people watch tv and trump can only dream about something like this.
Second thing while trump basically based all his campaign on the idea that if it wasn't for him america would be destroyed, berlusconi wasn't so apocaliptyc. He still based a lot of him political problems on randomly blaming on "commies" (whoever was left wing) all the "problems" italy had (especially taxes, the good ole move) like a true classic right wing politician but a lot of his brainwashing was really about maintaining a state of absolute ignorance on social, civil and political problems. For example two of the most watched """"""information"""""" programs on his channels (striscia la notizia and le iene) are relentlessy dedicated to fear mongering about petty thiefs and scams, and the wider idea was that berlusconi was the big dad that would have solved all of this little problems that could hit italians in their daily life (opposed to how trump insults "the establishment").
But really, for me berlusconi wasn't really different from any neolib from a purely political viewpoint: he only added a sense of italian provincialism and vague tradiscional christianity to it (really vague), it's how he absolutely derailed the thought of people from real problems to his tv shows that his terryfing. Everything on mediaset (his tv corporation) is trash celebrity scandals (celebrities often pre built in his own programs), trash news about kids who kill their parents because of vidyas, trash prize shows and all of that shit that has brainwashed italians… I mean truly brainwashed because even when he actually begun to lose his firm grip a lot of people who were against him couldn't reason outside the berlusconi mind game: for example a lot of people thought that by removing talk shows italy would be saved.
That's why I think they're different, imho trum rode a wave of fear in a strange moment for america while berlusconi built a mind-control empire.

Shit, he owns the two trashiest channels on Spain too, and they do literally the same.

what the fuck? Seriously these channels are berlusconi tentacles? Holy shit he's like fucking ganon. Do you have the shit news/comedy shows too? The ones where """journalists""" go around "exposing scammers" and showing le evil niggers while there are sexy girls and buffoon presentators too

BASED Luke Skywalker

bumpusconi

he is actualy berlusconi, u cuck.

Let's be honest here, John Tory is as establishment and small-l liberal as they come. He's basically a "red tory", got the backing of the provincial liberal party during his run, and has governed with an aim on ultra-centrist managerial politics. I'd call that "establishment liberal" with no regrets.

Let's be honest, his "abolish the catholic board" days are way behind him.

Oh right, "bunga bunga parties". I'd forgotten that shit.