Philosopher accused of plagiarizing white separatist journal. No, really.

Slavoj Žižek is one of the world's leading modern philosophers, a scholar and thinker with a tendency to call his students "boring idiots" who write "shitty papers." In other words, he's subtle.

Now Slavoj Žižek is being accused of plagiarism, and not for stealing from Noam Chomsky or Aristotle--but a white separatist magazine called American Renaissance, which I imagine is only the classiest of white separatist magazines.

A blogger found the nearly identical passages between the philosopher and American Renaissance in which Žižek allegedly plagiarizes heavily, a giant swath of copying largely unseen outside of a lazy 5th-grader's essay on the War of 1812.

NPR reached out to Žižek, who replied via email that a friend of his wrote the passages in question, and that he--Žižek--didn't plagiarize at all. "As any reader can quickly establish, the problematic passages are purely informative, a report on another's theory for which I have no affinity whatsoever; [...] In no way can I thus be accused of plagiarizing another's line of thought, of 'stealing ideas.' I nonetheless deeply regret the incident."

Deny, deny, deny--and then drop in a "thus" and a "deeply regret"--it's straight out of the elitist academic public relations plan. But Žižek continues with the charm, going full-on CAPS when he replies to NPR again, really driving home the point that he's entirely not to blame.

"I find it difficult to consider plagiarism using a brief resume of a book written by a friend FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF ME USING IT. If this is plagiarism, then quite a few academics I know are plagiarists," Žižek writes.

Throwing everyone under the bus is straight out of the Panic 101 handbook. Apparently the key to not writing "shitty papers" is to allegedly steal from the upper crust of white separatist journals--all while being a deadbeat and having your friend do all the work.





photo: The Guardian



Doesn't Žižek kind of look like a lower-level James Bond villain from the 1970s? Not the mastermind thwarting Bond, but some Eastern European strongman with a group of henchman that die way too easily at the sight of a British secret service agent?