Lame Ducks and Dictators

‘Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them,” said George Orwell. And he should know, having let his socialism convince him to fight alongside child soldiers on behalf of Stalinism in Spain.

The French philosopher Alain Badiou convinced himself that Mao Zedong “thinks in an almost infinite way” and effectively pledged his own intellectual career in the service of the Cultural Revolution, of which he then knew almost nothing.