Alain Badiou (2002) 'Prefazione all'edizione italiana' in _Metropolitica_, Naples: Cronopio 

Badiou ridicules the 'anti-globalisation' movement as missing the target. He characterises the struggle against neo-liberal democracy in this way:

'Today the enemy is not called Empire or Capital. It's called Democracy.'
(2002: 14) 

Alain Badiou (2006) _Metapolitics_, trans. Jason Barker, London: Verso.

Democracy creates a discredited consensus: standing for the collapse of socialist states, the well-being of western capitalism, and the ongoing crusades against terror. Badiou takes this to be based on 'authoritarian' principles, for it is forbidden not to be democratic (2006: 78). The consensus it creates is a form of control and masks the underlying exploitation and antagonisms. In response to criticism of being undemocratic, he cites Lenin's defense in pointing to the distinction between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy, and also in linking the idea of the State to truth, thus (as with Schmitt) arguing for an understanding of democracy that is directly linked to the State and its effective sovereignty (the power of the people to rule themselves, the word democracy contains the words 'demos', the people, and 'keratin', to rule). Yet to Badiou the State is a fiction of sovereignty.

The State cannot be separated from the interests of the demos - this is what Badiou describes as the truth of the collective (2006: 81). But Badiou is not arguing for an understanding of democracy with reference to a benevolent State nor that leads to generic communism but one that exposes politics in itself, that is understood as a form at a distance from the State. Democracy is susceptible to consensus through liberal hysteria (for instance, by invoking security issues over the war on terror, thus providing spurious comfort in perceived uncertain times).