Badiou

A brilliant analysis of political treachery at the NLR, but since they ask, outrageously for three quid per article, it's free at the above link. He's talking about the toads like BHL who were once 'revolutionaries' back in the 60's and 70's, but quit all that and crop up these days on the TV as spokes for Sarkozy and American invasions of far away lands. Their conversion, Badiou argues convincingly, has nothing to do with ideological or, even less, philosophical reasons but a tawdry 'will to power'. Thus, why did they betray the 'movement'? Because of,

". . . a mistaken understanding of the conjuncture, leading either to a blocked ambition, or to the realization that it was going to take a great deal of trouble and hard work in a situation that was not all that promising. You could see them in Balzacian terms as ambitious young men who imagined they were going to take Paris by dint of revolutionary enthusiasm, but then came to understand that things were a bit more complicated. The proof of this is that a large number of these people have found positions of power elsewhere, in psychoanalysis, in the media, as philosophical commentators, and so on. Their renunciation did not take place along the lines of: ‘I’ll go back to being anonymous’, but rather: ‘That wasn’t the right card, so I’ll play a different one.’ "