In this particular circle though, this kind of NY cultural hub with tendrils across and perhaps beyond the country, I do think that Zizek is embraced as an ideologue, one that perhaps registers largely because of charisma. I haven't read any of his books, nor do I plan on it, but often just thinking about him makes me smile.
And I get the sense that this veneration is common in the circles that some of these people traffic through. Whether or not his ideas resonate as much as his attitude, I'm not certain. I'm more certain that many of his fans don't care about Hegel, though. (edit: or are at least content in feigning an interest)
And if we are to give perhaps too much credit, my idea of his generic intellectual fan (along the NY lines) seems to involve a reckoning with the resonances caused by social and cultural progress, perhaps measured in terms of representation in popular media content.
That is, a certain grappling of a bourgeois left with the role they play in social, socio-political oppression. What I;m talking about seems to have less to do with economic oppression, and is more contained within the social and cultural dimensions of the economically privileged. In this sphere, opinion is largely if not primary determined by such and such popular media information sources.
Like how Chadwick Boseman was more or less slated to become the central figure in the far-and-away most lucrative film franchise of all time, before he passed.