[lbo-talk] Bernard-Henri Levy

[andie nachgeborenen]

BHL was one of the "new philosophers," ex-Marxists in the 1970s, like the more intellectually serious Andre Glucksman. Under the influence of Solzhenitsyn and changing fashion, he wrote a book in 1977 that made a mild splash called "Barbarism With A Human Face," playing off Dubcek's slogan of the Czech '68 (Socialism With A Human Face), arguing the usual dreck that Marxism was inevitably totalitarian and led directly to the Gulag. It was lightweight, a standard piece of its dreary genre, more "God That Failed," crap, nothing new to add -- nothing like, e.g., Leszek Kolokawski's intellectual serious three volume study, Main Currents of Marxism -- LK was a Polish new leftist who made the same journey some years earlier, now teaches at U of C -- which is real contribution, essential reading for anyone interested in Marx, Marxism, or the history of the left, and much more nuanced in his very negative conclusions. The New Philosophers lost their appeal with

 Gorbachev and then their point with the collapse of Communism. One hears BHL's name surface from time to tome, but I haven't bothered to keep up, it was clear enough from his Barbarism book that he had nothing to say and was essentially a fashionable featherweight. As I recall he was a big pro-interventionist in the Kosovo matter and he's now signed on, predictably enough, to the idea of war against Islamofascism so called.

--- On Thu, 9/11/08, Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> wrote:


> From: Lenin's Tomb <leninstombblog at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bernard-Henri Levy
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 3:05 PM
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 8:49 PM, Chris Doss
> <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Can somebody tell me about this guy? The name rings a
> very faint bell, but
> > he's only in my consciousness at present because
> apparently he wrote a piece
> > in Le Monde about his experiences in Georgia that
> turned out to be complete
> > fabrication
> (http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=2645 )
> >
> 
> I have loads of material about BHL in my upcoming book,
> *The Liberal Defense
> of Murder*.  He's authentic ruling class, loaded to the
> hilt, has several
> mansions, and is deeply imbricated with the PS-wing of the
> French political
> class.  He spent his early years as a marxist of some
> stripe under the
> influence of Louis Althusser, before deciding to become an
> 'antitotalitarian' when much of the French left was
> freaking out about the
> Union of the Left and praising Alexander Solzhenitsyn
> beyond all
> proportion.  He cozied up to the Mitterrand administration
> in the early
> 1980s, helping to form SOS Racisme, a vacuous anti-racist
> organisation with
> strong ties to the Socialist Party.  He has always defended
> US imperialism,
> and co-signed an appeal on behalf of the Contras.  He has
> had some years of
> involvement in Afghan politics, including an intriguing
> romance of sorts
> with Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance, and was
> sent by Paris as
> an envoy to the country in 2002.  He was also one of
> Izetbegovic's main PR
> agents in France.  His main brief today is to be a
> figurehead for the
> 'anti-anti-American' tendency in France, berating
> critics of Israel as
> antisemitic, championing a front against the 'new
> totalitarianism' in the
> form of Political Islam, and helping to drive the Socialist
> Party further to
> the right.
> 
> What more do you want to know?
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