I think I have read the Counterpunch article, as I recognize the headline.

I wonder if Zizek is playing a longer game, since he’s seen a lot more than I have and probably has a longer view. Zizek is trying to smuggle left wing ideas into the public consciousness most of the time. He says weird shit and makes politically incorrect jokes because that works in a marketing sense. Academics are generally reserved and eschew obscenities, so when they zig, he zags. If you can’t get people to stop and listen longer than the original sound bite from him, you probably won’t fully understand or appreciate him or his views, but you will remember that he’s a leftist who doesn’t speak for leftists or even necessarily to leftists. He’s not trying to preach to the choir, because he writes actual theory for those folks. He’s trying to engage with people where they are if you aren’t already on the left, which means he has to appeal to centrists and right wing folks. That audience won’t respond to a message that they can’t understand because they dismiss it out of hand. Being an Eastern European, Zizek is already swimming against the tide, as people aren’t likely to trust a self-proclaimed Marxist communist from a former Soviet satellite state when he tells you of the virtues of left wing ideology.

I think the other part is that Zizek is less of a purist than most liberals and leftists I know. Zizek will admit that some ideas from the right or capitalism are just the status quo because they’re the current best solution or outcome, and by admitting when others already arrived at a workable solution, he doesn’t dismiss it because of whose idea it is, as both the right and the left has a huge “not invented here” problem.

Perhaps Zizek is fine being seen as a turncoat because the people saying that are purity testers on the left who don’t actually organize or perform any leftist theory or practical work. These people suck because they are idealists about things and use that as a cudgel against those with common cause who are actually doing the practical work of community organizing, or whatever. People in the center or on the right don’t really need to reach to find something they will disagree with, so by focusing on him, they let themselves off the hook of having to respond to his actual points of argument, and when they choose to make purity test attacks, it comes off as a bit ironic, as neoliberalism is the ideology of both parties historically, and the right is just doing whatever comes after neoliberalism better than the left, so by focusing on Zizek, the right is signaling that they don’t really have an argument on the merits, so they will even claim Zizek is a rightist. If you can’t beat them, lie about them fighting for your side so you don’t have to join them, because that would be reactionary and would prompt reflection and ego-deflation.

Money talks, bullshit walks. Zizek seems to do both and has a supermodel wife. I’m willing to believe he’s not a fraud about being a leftist, because the left never fully accepted him and probably never will. He is a political realist to my view, because he understands power and systems of control, and he doesn’t seek to center himself. People like him because of him, not because they necessarily even agree with him. That’s why I respect him, because even when I disagree, I get the sense that if I personally had a better argument, I could get in touch with him and he would actually respond in good faith. I can’t think of many other folks on the right or the left who would be willing to do that in good faith to the same degree who do what Zizek does.