> Mike Beggs suggested:
>
> You could check out Badiou's 'The Meaning of Sarkozy' - it's more of a
> motivational than an analytical book but it gives some idea. Badiou
> calls him a 'Petainist' rather than a fascist, and links him to the
> long lineage of French reaction. It's not only nationalism and racism,
> but also an exaggerated fear and loathing of radicalism, a desire to
> exorcise 1968, partly a result of France's equally long and more
> distinguished revolutionary heritage.
>
>
> http://mariborchan.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/alain-badiou-the-meaning-of-sarkozy/
>
>
> .....
>
>
> And lest it be overlooked...
>
>
>
> We're often unaware (or under-appreciative) of the admirable efforts
> of our fellow list members.
>
> LBOTalk "Lenin's Tomb" (aka Richard Seymour, author of _The Liberal
> Defense of Murder_ <http://bit.ly/32Lj3o> ) reviewed _The Meaning of
> Sarkozy_ last February:
>
>
> Badiou on Le Petit Nicolas
>
>
> Alain Badiou doesn't mess around. As an advocate of direct action,
> contre "capitalo-parliamentarism", he has pledged to reward his
> nastier critics (largely idiots like BHL) with a slap whenever he sees
> them. These opponents, with their accusations of antisemitism and
> fascism, were responding to the publication of his book 'Polemics' (in
> French, 'Circonstances 3') and the more recent 'The Meaning of
> Sarkozy' ('De quoi Sarkozy, est-il nom?'). The latter is less about
> the "fidgety mayor of Neuilly", or "the Rat Man", than about what
> Sarkozy's ascendancy says of the vacuity of the electoral process.
> Sarkozy himself is important only inasmuch as he embodies the spirit
> of reaction, even if it is a dwarfish embodiment compared to the
> Thermidoreans, the Orléanists, the Versaillais, Pétain and even
> d'Estaing. The book is a curious mixture of political philosophy and
> acuminated satire. I had never thought of Badiou as an especially
> funny man before, but - as is so often the case - it is because he is
> so serious that his satire is so lethal. Through a series of essays
> and lectures, he takes the occasion of Sarkozy's election victory and
> subsequent travailles to subject parliamentary democracy to an acerbic
> critique - and behind all of this witty and indomitable polemicising
> lurks the shade of communism.
>
> According to Badiou, the French Left (and by extension, the Left as
> such) has practised a reactive politics based on fear of the right,
> which in turn is essentially mobilised by the fear of the leftist
> challenge. At the same time, the politicians of the reformist left
> flaunt their impotence, their inability to transform affairs, and
> cling to it. All they can do is keep the right out of office and limit
> the reaction. Then Sarkozy wins, and Socialists - many from the
> generation of the nouveau philosophes - flock to join his
> administration, or be part of the clique. Sarkozy expresses his
> 'openness' to the left, the better to coopt its luminaries for the
> creation of a technocratic single-party state (this is what the
> language of bipartisanship always boils down to) and form what Badiou
> calls a Union for Presidential Unanimity (a pun on the name of
> Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Movement). This is the state
> that neoliberal capitalism has reduced politics to. As Badiou says,
> quoting Zizek, those who used to oppose parliamentary democracy to
> Stalinism missed the point that Stalinism was the future of
> parliamentary democracy. Indeed, "the technological means for
> controlling the population are already such that Stalin, with his
> endless handwritten files, his mass executions, his spies with hats,
> his gigantic lice-ridden camps and bestial tortures, appears like an
> amateur from another age".
>
>
> [...]
>
> full at --
>
>
> <http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/02/badiou-on-le-petit-nicolas.html>
>
>
>
Thanks for posting this. I keep wanting to post on MS, but work keeps
getting in the way.
j