From the comments section at infinite thøught:

Zizek is a raving theory-fiend who spends his spare time building models of concentration camps out of matchsticks, and populating them with figurines of characters from Hitchcock movies. His publications have a sinister, mesmerising power which enables them to turn otherwise decent people into fanatical communists, slavering with blood-lust and restlessly prowling the halls of academia in the vain hoping of finding some kulaks they can liquidate. Also, he talks very quickly in a faintly humorous Eastern European accent, and our informants in the former Yugoslav Republic tell us that he was personally responsible for everything unpleasant that has ever happened in that otherwise moderate and convivial region. His beard should be burned and his books shaved, and his legions of sycophants should be given Cognitive Behavioural Therapy until they realise it’s time to grow up and get proper jobs.

This is a 100% reliable summary, and you now do not need to read anything by Zizek, ever.

I had intended on writing a long response to Jodi Dean’s post on Zizek and the New Republic hit piece, which seems like it came out forever-ago. Because of that, I won’t now, but all the same I think it’s worth pointing out how reading Zizek as an ironist does not constitute some sort of perverse attempt at turning him into a philosopher-clown who makes jokes and therefore can’t be taken seriously—as if irony and activism were mutually exclusive (and as Dean would have us believe). I forget where exactly, but Zizek makes a point in one of his books that irony is different than cynicism, the latter being used to serve the interests of the ruling ideology. Rather, irony as a rhetorical device is an incredibly subversive tool for undermining one’s opponent.

And of course, Zizek’s other goal—besides the political one—is to popularize his German Idealist-tinted reading of Lacan, which in my opinion has a lot of textual support. But to anyone who has read Zizek, that should be fairly obvious. On the other hand, it’s also clear that Zizek draws a lot on the spirit of Lacan, whose texts and life are thoroughly laced with irony. One historical anecdote that comes to mind is that, at the same time as Lacan was making overtures to the head of the French Communist Party, he was in correspondence with his brother (a priest) claiming that his revision of Freudianism would be a great step forward for Christianity. Which isn’t to say that it’s just irony for irony’s sake, but something of a speculative claim that requires one, after the initial moment of bafflement, to think a little harder about things.

So, in conclusion, I think Dean makes a serious blunder (a political one, I might add) in excluding the entire domain of irony from political activism, which points more to the deficiencies in her otherwise “traditional” political views as opposed to any serious allegations regarding a misreading of Zizek’s work.