Genet’s loyalty lay with the defeated in any conflict

Evidence

Genet tended to sympathise with the defeated or despised in any situation; in 1944 that meant Germans and collaborators, not the triumphant résistants. He went on to support traitors, violent revolutionaries, Baader–Meinhof terrorists, Black Panthers and more or less anyone who was an outsider. He backed the student radicals of the 1960s too, but remarked to William Burroughs, ‘If they ever win, I’ll turn against them.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 691

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘If they ever win, I’ll turn against them’ quip is a darkly funny, tweetable one-liner about eternal contrarianism.
• SHARE: Worth sending to a friend who loves Genet’s politics or outsider-art figures.