SZ

"A typical middle-class Western leftist has no right to despise a Cuban who has decided to leave Cuba not only because of political disenchantment, but also because of poverty and hunger. I remember from the early 1990s dozens of Western leftists who proudly proclaimed that Yugoslavia still existed, and reproached me for betraying the opportunity to prolong that existence--to which I answered that I was not yet ready to lead my life to avoid disappointing the dreams of Western leftists. There are few things more worthy of contempt, few attitudes more ideological (if this word has any meaning today, it is here) than a tenured Western academic leftist patronizing an Eastern European from a Communist country who longs for liberal democracy and some consumer goods."

{ Slavoj Žižek, "Knee-Deep," London Review of Books, 2 September 2004 }