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Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Congress for Cultural Freedom
12 min read
The article references CIA funding of T.S. Eliot translations and abstract expressionist painters during the Cold War - this was part of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA-funded organization that covertly promoted Western culture against Soviet influence. Understanding this historical precedent illuminates Žižek's ironic contrast with Trump's current anti-intellectual cultural policies.
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Minsk agreements
11 min read
The article discusses US-backed peace negotiations for Ukraine and accusations that European leaders are blocking peace efforts. The Minsk agreements represent the most significant prior attempt at diplomatic resolution of the Ukraine conflict, providing essential context for understanding current peace negotiation dynamics and why previous diplomatic efforts failed.
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Itamar Ben-Gvir
12 min read
The article describes Ben-Gvir and his party wearing gold noose pins in the Knesset to support death penalty expansion for Palestinians. Understanding Ben-Gvir's political history, his Kahanist background, and his role in Israel's current far-right government provides crucial context for the 'civilizational erasure' theme Žižek is developing.
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“USCE” in the title stands for the “United States of Civilizational Erasure,” a name which fits perfectly the vision of the US presented in the 33-page document “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” quietly released by the White House in late November 2025.1 While we do not learn anything new in this document, it provides a kind of systematic exposure of Trump’s “America First” doctrine: it sets out the administration’s realignment of US foreign policy, from shifting military resources in the Western Hemisphere to taking an unprecedentedly confrontational posture toward Europe.2 What until now may have been dismissed as Trump’s confused improvisations is now clearly articulated as a global ideological vision which effectively amounts to what he accuses Europe of: civilizational erasure.
Apart from well-known general trends toward civilizational erasure (Trump’s animosity toward academia and independent public media), let me just mention two minor facts: Trump nominates three actors to steer Hollywood in the direction he desires (Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight); Trump brutally intervened in the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, changing its orientation toward popular culture. Where are the good old years around 1950 when the CIA financed translations of T. S. Eliot’s poems into East European languages and directly organized abstract expressionist painters into a group to counter Communist influence in Western Europe? And is the ultimate document of the erasure of civilization not a long drone shot of Gaza with almost all of its buildings destroyed? Not even to mention the gold noose-shaped pins worn on December 8, 2025, in the Knesset by Ben Gvir and members of his party. They were nearly identical to hostage pins that came to represent Israel’s demand to bring its abducted citizens home, but while the yellow pin symbolized the fight for life, the noose pin did the exact opposite: it advertised the celebration of death as legislation. Their display accompanied the latest push in the National Security Committee to advance a bill that would dramatically expand Israel’s use of the death penalty: it seeks to impose a mandatory
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