Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism

by Bernard-Henri Lévy

Book Overview

In this unprecedented critique, Bernard-Henri Levy revisits his political roots, scrutinizes the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those on the horizon, and argues powerfully for a new political... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 140006435X
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.4" x 0.9" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

with liberty and justice for all

If for nothing else, this book makes a strong argument for universalism which I believe is too often ignored by the Left. Many professional colleagues or friends are unwilling to hold Arab countries accountable for human rights violations. They justify this position by stating that we can't impose our values on these cultures or we aren't perfect so how can we criticize others. Levy deftly decimates both these arguments. In addition he captures the inherent contradiction in their stance. Many people who identify as being on the Left, which is where I put myself, say that it is wrong (absolutely wrong) to murder people because of their race, sex, religion, nationality, criminal activity, etc. When you exempt groups from adhering to this standard based on cultural relativism you are really saying that cultures are inferior or backward. This is a greater insult to those culture than saying as Levy does, that there are no "good" or "bad" cultures, rather there are some cultures that have very bad elements that should be changed. I found this book comforting because helped me to understand my discomfort with the Left as I experience it everyday.

The night comes on

Part autobiography, part political essay & part ideological polemic, Left In Dark Times is a survey of this prominent leftwing French intellectual's political roots, a look at old & new varieties of authoritarianism and a plea for a fresh moral vision. Having observed the mindless and juvenile parroting of consensus ideas by the Stepford Left, he analyzed the development of Leftist thought, identifying the four pillars of its current manifestation as: (a) Indifference to suffering using the excuse of relativism (b) A perverted notion of tolerance that excuses any type of barbarity perpetrated by non-Western cultures (c) Irrational & obsessive Anti-Americanism articulated in a juvenile & oddly uniform manner (d) Anti-Zionism which is the New Antisemitism, the favorite pastime of the parasites from the rubbish dumps of the planet that infest transnational bodies like the United Abominations. Much of the book concerns French politics as Lévy struggles to justify his attachment to the term "left." I found this quest totally overwrought & pointless. He is attached to a certain romantic vision of this ideology but for most it brings to mind Stalin, Pol Pot and yes, the National SOCIALISTS of Germany - murderous collectivists all of them. He however redeems himself with unique insights & unusual perspectives on other issues. Since the implosion of the Soviet Empire, the resentment of Western Leftists has consumed them to the point of rejecting Enlightenment values. The convenient scapegoats Israel & the USA are demonized as a matter of course whilst the most savage, cruel & barbaric regimes are excused merely because they oppose the West, or their atrocities utterly ignored. Amongst those he mentions is the mediocre playwright Harold Pinter who defended the butcher Slobodan Milosevic. Fur further evidence, check out The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and Liberal Opinion. A very shrewd observation of his is that the collapse of Communism has obscured the evidence of its crimes, permitting certain apologists, predominantly academia's tenured termites in the humanities, to start nurturing that deadly dystopian dream again. Amongst these are also found the supporters of thugs like Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Putin and hardcore Islamists. Lévy diagnoses European anti-Americanism as "power envy", resentment at having been liberated and protected by the USA plus the conspiracy theory of a Zionist cabal controlling the country - the latest version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is common to both the Left & Far Right, not only in Europe but in the USA too, lest we forget Patrick Buchanan & the grinning peanut Jimmy Carter. Lévy shows how (his) Left's ideals of sympathy for the oppressed and striving for justice have been replaced by hatred; how its body is being consumed by pathogens that grow by devouring what little remains of the good. Its intellectual bankruptcy & practical failure everywhere have turned L

A brilliant analysis of the sins of the Left

Like many of those on the sane Left Bernard Henri- Levy has become disturbed with the strange alliance of the Left with the neo- Fascists, the xenophobic, the American bashers, the Anti- Semites, the preachers of Radical Islam. The Left's abandonment of traditional values and allies is considered here by a writer who has shown not simply integrity in thought, but courage in action. Henri- Levy is one of the few well- known thinkers living today who is also a journalist in the best sense of the world, one who goes and covers the territory. He does this when its the friendly territory of the United States , and also when its the potentially hostile territory of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is here I think especially lucid in analyzing the Left's Anti- Semitism which expresses itself as showing repulusion towards the one democratic state in the Middle East, Israel and currying favor with Radical Islam. As a person of the Left Henri- Levy particularly feels distressed at being abandoned by those who are his true intellectual home. But he makes an effort here to point out the way to a new sane Left, one as much concerned with Equality and Social Justice as he himself is.

so sad

I had the idea that the great thinkers had given up on politics, based on how much disbelief I run into when I manifest radical tendencies. If I could limit myself to "Let's drop fascism," I would have many points in common with the universal theme that provides much of the motivation for the many intellectual threads that the book traces through the hectic politics of the present situation. When I talk about trouble, I mean what happens when I get nasty, and to get really nasty with this book, I would have to say, "This is a lot like Jack Ruby justice." My Oswald patsy portraits were never popular, but the two main pictures were Oswald telling a reporter holding a microphone up to him, "I'm just the patsy," and a picture of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald which I captioned with Nixon saying, "Two rights don't make a wrong." For many years after World War II, Bob Dylan was getting the right picture in "With God On Our Side" by singing that we forgave the Germans and we were all friends. Levy sees how this was true almost everywhere, but he sounds like an Israeli version of a folk song, "From the Arab borders to the Arab borders, this land was made for you and me." The spiritual fathers of radical fascislamism were the best friends Himmler had when they toured Auschwitz and told Himmler they would go to their own graves happy to know that so many million Jews had been killed in an effort to rid the world of Jews. Linkage has been a big issue for me in global politics. The British get their share of the blame in this book for selling shares that were invested in Caterpillar stock because Israel used that brand of bulldozer to destroy Palestinian homes suspected of harboring terrorists. For a while I was an engineer working on a Great Man Made River Project for Libya, prior to 1986, when the project was linked to a plan to take all the water from the Nile in Sudan so Egypt would dry up. Everything that gets tied in to efforts to clean up the world create so much confusion that I had concluded American totalitarianism demands your indifference, a position which is not far from the kind of thinking that support for Israel assumes. I tried to be contrary when the Secret Service asked me for an alias and I told them: Bruce the Amalekite because the American empire has the capacity to change the way things are by bombing a new Chinese embassy someplace else. Not that I really ever meant what the American pre-school marching ditty said: 1, 2, 3, . . . A, B, C, . . . Bomb the Chinese embassy.

The book a great read

I bought it the other night when BHL debated Zizek (and won, hands down!) and read it in two nights. But I'll have to think about for weeks. It's hard to imagine a reader so closed-minded and parochical that he or she would not be totally fascinated by the opening scenes of this book: presidential candidates wooing a philosopher, the philosopher forced to question his deepest convictions and take a stand, the unease at seeing his own political allies follow their worst not their best instincts. The drama is there even if you don't know a Sarkozy from a Chirac--but of course we all do know a Sarkozy from a Chirac! After the initial drama, the two-thirds of the book devoted to the traps that liberal-progressive politics has laid for itself in the current "dark times" of dictatorships, Islamist fanaticism, ethnic cleansing and genocides, etc., is really provocative. There is so much to argue with here, for AND against. It's making me rethink what we all mean when we glibly call the U.S. an Empire. Is that a genuine analysis or just a slogan that gives people an alibi for ignoring anything they can't blame on America--like Darfur--or for sympathizing with a rightist-disguised-as-a-leftist like Chavez just because he is anti-American? BHL makes a very troubling argument that if a new anti-Semitism takes hold in the world it will be under the banner of progressive ideology not reactionary ideology. Very scary. Really worth thinking about. He's a leftist quite unlike anything we are seeing in today's political debates and blogosphere.