Levy, Bernard-Henri: Left in Dark Times: a stand against the new barbarism.
Translated by Benjamin Moser, Random House, NY 2008.
Overview: This is a cri de cour of a dedicated French intellectual who believes that his progressive views have never changed – but the Left itself has lost its way.
He says: “In advancing a ‘critique of neoprogressive reason,’ I attempt to address all those who have been led astray on both sides of the Atlantic, in both of our countries. And what I mean by this is a critique of those who inspired by the desire to create a heaven on earth, were – and are, more than ever – led to a flirtation with darkness, barbarism, and hell.”
I ordered this book as soon as it came out because I so admired the author of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? While the book is well-intentioned (the intellectual left needs this sharp slap), it is essentially almost unreadable by an American audience that does not know, or care about, the French intellectuals that pepper its pages. This is a different style of academic discourse than used by American scholars, who are much less stream of consciousness.
Levy is a leftist-progressive who has really put his money where his mouth is by being a witness to some of the worst human rights horrors, as well as revolutionary movements, since World War II. His credentials are impeccable, and he has more than once put his life on the line.
To boil this book down to its essence, Levy accuses the left of abandoning its mission of supporting freedom and human rights and engaging in an active flirtation with Islamofascism. Because Islam is the enemy of the left’s perceived enemy (the U.S.), it must be their friend. The Islmofascists are happy to have their support. Today’s neoprogressives are regarded by Islamists in the same way that the Soviets regarded them: as useful idiots. Were this horrible movement to prevail, the intellectual liberals would be the first to be lined up and decapitated.
Levy is more surprised than I am at the defection of neoprogressives who admire militant Islam. He seems to have forgotten that the leftist movement, beginning with the French Revolution, was not a supporter of liberty or human rights. It was a supporter of state power – total state power – and centralized control over thought and speech. This movement has always been an enemy of the status quo and ancient regime – but not based on intrinsic differences. It has tried to substitute its own “brave new” society for the old – with most of the horrors only emerging when it was too late to stop them. Remember that the Bastille prison was replaced by the Guillotine – which killed more people than the old guard had.
But Levy does hurl a few good javelins (amidst the passionate wordiness of his book) that deserve credit:
• Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter – who detests the United States so much that even America’s defense of Bosnians and Kosovars (genuine victims) did not make him change his mind. Instead, he threw his progressive weight on the side of the Serbians, particularly in defense of Slobodan Milosevic, a fascist that even the UN brought to trial as a war criminal.
• Noam Chomsky, a linguistic genius and political midget, who decided that the Cambodian genocide couldn’t have been that bad because it was Cambodians murdering other Cambodians—and communists to boot—with nary an American to blame it on.
• Castro, Chavez, Ahmadinejad. One cannot detest colonialism without loving the most oppressive former colonial subjects – most of the Arab world, no matter how awful they are. You must love Castro and Chavez and Ahmadinejad because they are all enemies of America. In the latter case, liberal woman are told to keep their mouths shut. They mustn’t offend a friend like Ahmadinejad.
• Anti-Semitism. The new and chic anti-Semitism breeds Holocaust deniers, and objects to the notion that the Holocaust was unique (what other holocaust was done by a people as educated and sophisticated and industrialized as Nazi Germany?). Equating Israelis with Nazis because they defend themselves against unremitting attack by their neighbors is bizarre.
• Muslim Brotherhood. Making excuses that the Muslim Brotherhood movement, born in Egypt in 1928, is an anti-colonial movement defies logic. It was – and still is – a firmly fascist movement that goes so far as to claim that Hitler was of Muslim origin. That movement’s founder’s grandson, Tariq Ramadan, is beloved by academics who see in him “moderation.” Yes, he believes that stoning women to death, although mandated by Sharia, should have a moratorium (to be reinstated later?). This professor was given a wonderful Paris platform in November 2003, as speaker at the European Social Forum, only a few days after he circulated a list of Jewish intellectuals that he thought should be cut off from French media. The United States refused him a visa to lecture at Notre Dame, which unfortunately had invited him.
Better than Levy’s book, if you want to understand what has moved the new left into its flirtation with neofascism, particularly Islamofascism, is Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, (Doubleday, 2007). Goldberg provides the history of this political philosophy from its origins in the French Revolution, to today, and makes a convincing case.
Another very thoughtful view of Europe’s flirtation with neofascism is Claire Berlinski’s, Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis is America’s, Too, Three Rivers Press, 2006-7.
In the face of homegrown Islamic radicals bombing subways in London, attacking the railways in Spain, murdering a film-maker in Holland, Europe is belatedly beginning to see its risk. Berlinski traveled from London to Istanbul, talking to a wide range of people from Muslim immigrants to German rock stars and French cops – and everywhere, she found Europe seemingly unable to confront their new set of troubles. She saw a spiritual void in Europe which has given rise to some ancient evils that have beset Europe for 2,000 years. The United States is not in this position yet, but she worries that it may be if people follow Europe’s lead.
I still admire Bernard-Henri Levy for his passion and decency. But I cannot really recommend wading through this book to come to the same conclusion you would reading the more disciplined writers I have recommended.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.
