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Frankfurt Book Fair attack

anecdote · personal/autobiographical · retold in 3 talks

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, with Slovenia as guest of honour, Žižek gave a careful speech condemning Hamas and adding only that Palestinians also suffer; a commissioner for anti-Semitism and two politicians stood up and shouted that he was anti-Semitic and 'contextualizing', and German newspapers ran a series of attacks on him.

2024: 2 talks 2025: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 3

“they stood up and started to shout at me. i'm anti-semitic, i am equalizing blah blah blah, and i am the worst thing. i'm contextualizing it.”
“I was brutally attacked in all the media. But you know what made me... really depressive.”
“moderately conservative mass media, I can publish there things which this fake progressive left-center media never publish.”

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

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Every retelling 3

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, with Slovenia as guest of honour, Žižek gave a careful speech condemning Hamas and adding only that Palestinians also suffer; a commissioner for anti-Semitism and two politicians stood up and shouted that he was anti-Semitic and 'contextualizing', and German newspapers ran a series of attacks on him., illustrating depoliticization,Hamas has no context,German repression of pro-Palestinian speech
Žižek recounts being brutally attacked in German media after giving a cautious speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair days after October 7, highlighting the suppression of dissent in Western Europe compared to the 'reasonableness' of Israeli secret services., illustrating ideology,geopolitics-war
Žižek notes that conservative media allows him to publish things the 'fake progressive left-center media' bans, illustrating the radical center's role in annihilating figures like himself., illustrating ideology,liberalism-political-correctness