Bernard-Henri Levy is a French icon of the Left, an intellectual provocateur, and most unusually, pro-American. He was interviewed in Der Spiegel about his new book, Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, and the question of Why Europeans Love Obama. The interview is fascinating on several levels, first for what it reveals about the Left and secondly for what it reveals about the muddled thinking that even a noted intellectual giant exhibits when discussing Obama and the Left.
Bernard-Henri Levi has fought against Leftist barbarism for his entire life. He has never been one to excuse the crimes committed in the name of Left wing ideology. His concerns about the Left today are laid out in the opening of the interview:
SALON: The subtitle of your new book is "A Stand Against the New Barbarism." Can you explain what you mean by that?
Levi:What I mean by the new barbarism is great ideas having bad effects. Great ideals turning out to be the stem cell of big crimes, big injustices, unfairnesses, brutality and so on. The barbarism 30 years ago when I wrote "Barbarism With a Human Face" was Marxism, which pretended to be a fight in favor of justice, social equality, freedom, eradication of slavery, and which was exactly the contrary. And you have today a new barbarism in the case of these women and men who pretend to fight in favor of tolerance, in favor of anti-imperialism, in favor of anti-colonialism, and actually plead for slavery of the women, massive violation of human rights. Or when they don't plead for that, they tolerate them, refuse to denounce them.
...
But in the name of tolerance there can be also some crimes -- not committed but veiled ... For example, those who tell us that we have to be tolerant of the radical Islamist movements. Those who tell us that being tolerant means trying to understand their reasons and their justifications. Those who tell us that, about women, to veil the face of a woman is just a customary habit, which we Westerners are not allowed to judge according to the standard of human rights. This is a very bad thing.
It is fascinating that 70 years after the old Left famously ignored, as does modern soft left pedagogy today, the horrendous crimes of the Soviet and Maoist eras, the current Left is so comfortable doing the same with the horrendous crimes of their fellow travelers in the Islamist world. As well, the current MSM incarnation almost exactly follows in lock step the practices of the 1930s MSM. Simply compare Walter Duranty's myopia for Stalin's crimes to the current MSM's insouciance with the crimes of Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the Castro brothers.
However, it is when Bernard-Henri Levi tries to define the Left (something I have attempted, with very limited success to do) that he is most revealing of the muddled thinking that is is at the core of the left and which ultimately causes many of the horrific outcomes that have become expected when the Left attempts to rule society:
SALON: Would you define for an American audience what you mean by a leftist? I'd like to try and get at what the difference is between someone on the left in Europe and the U.S.
LEVI: In the two countries, I think it is the same definition: to have freedom and equality, the two dreams of freedom and equality walking at the same pace. To refuse to choose between the two.This is written in the motto of the French Republic, as you know, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” And it is also written in the DNA of the best of America. The real dream of equality, which fed the battle, for example, for the civil rights, Martin Luther King and so on, and the battle for individual freedom. Those who ask to choose between the two -- if you have freedom you do not have equality, if you have equality, you do not have freedom -- for me, they are not leftist. This is a good definition of the left. [Emphasis mine-SW]
The American idea was, and still is, that we strive to provide all equality of opportunity but that we privilege freedom. Levy, like so many on the Left, refuses to choose between two choices that are inherently in conflict. You cannot have freedom and equality of outcome, yet the Left, in privileging equality, must impinge on freedom. Although Levy's insists he does not choose, the choice is a forced choice; it is impossible not to choose. Intellectuals can convince themselves that if they refuse to follow the logic of their discourse (because, after all, the text only means whatever they want it to mean) they can succeed in not choosing, but reality dictates that the choice is made, either overtly or covertly. Wealth redistribution, enhanced government regulations, increased taxation, all of these are covert efforts that result in decreased individual freedom in the service of enhanced equality. A people might well decide to choose such an outcome but it should be done with awareness and honesty. Bernard-Henri Levy is effectively endorsing dishonest government.
[Note to commenters: If you would like to argue about the dishonesty of the Right, feel free to do so on your own blog. If you do not have a blog, feel free to write a post of your own arguing the point and I will post it here, as long as it is polite and free of invective. The point of this post is to discuss the flaws and contradictions in the Left, an important point since it is so likely that they will soon be in control of the entire apparatus of government.]
SALON: What is the state of revolution in the world right now?
LEVI: It depends on what you mean by revolution. ...
Now, if you mean by revolution changing the world in favor of the have-nots, of the less gifted, and so on -- if you mean by revolution, more and more democracy and liberal democracy and not to choose between liberty, freedom and equality, this is still going on. Not enough. I hope it will be more.
SALON:I think that if Obama is elected, it will be a revolution in the United States.
LEVI:In a way, you can understand it like this. I am in favor of that myself. I hope, if I could pray I would pray, for Obama being elected.
[Perhaps an emended version of the old saw should be: There are no atheists in voting booths.]
SALON: Why do Europeans love Obama?
LEVI: I don't know. I can't tell you why. I don't love him, by the way. I wish him to be elected. It's not a question of love or hate ... This is not the best way to make politics.
Why Obama should be chosen, in my opinion: No. 1, because it would mean really the end -- and the complete victory of the battle begun in the '60s. No. 2, because it will mean the end of a new American evil, which is the dividing, the Balkanization of American society. This is another counter-effect of a great idea, which was tolerance. You so much tolerate that you tolerate the American society to be in separate bubbles having their own peculiarities, and so on. Obama as president will mean all these bubbles submitted to a real ideal of citizenship. This is his message. McCain will not be able to do this.
[If anyone, including Levy, can point out one area in which Barack Obama has opposed the most left wing part of the Democratic Party, I am eager to hear of it. If he rules from the Left, he will alienate the large center-right part of the population; if he rules from the middles, he will certainly alienate the far Left. There are real near irreconcilable differences between the left and Right in this country. So far I have seen no evidence that Barack Obama, merely by the force of his rhetoric or persona, can bridge that gap.]
If McCain is elected, I can tell you the Iranians will close themselves in the Iranian identity. The Arabs will coldly, freezingly imprison themselves in the Muslim identity. The African-Americans will believe that the American society is more and more built against them. You will have an increase of the Balkanization.
[This is truly remarkable. The Iranians will presumably surrender what they consider their most important national interests merely through the force of Obama's suasion? I know intellectuals can believe foolishness with relative ease, but this is dangerous nonsense. The Iranians will like Barack Obama in direct proportion to how much he facilitates their achievement of a nuclear capacity. They have already effectively announced their policy positions for Barack Obama.]
And No. 3, you have another ideal in the America of today, which I call the competition of victims. Competition of memories. If you are in favor of the Jews, you cannot be in favor of the blacks. If you remember the suffering of slavery, you cannot remember too much the suffering of the Holocaust, and so on and so on. The human heart has not space enough for all the sufferings. This is what some people say. Obama says the contrary. It will mean the end of this stupid topic, which is competition of victimhood.
SALON: If McCain is elected, then how will the world react?
LEVI: The only way America can get out of the current crisis is a minimum of welfare state, of a Rooseveltian New Deal. It will not be tax cuts and so on ... So America will react badly. The world will react also badly. McCain may not be a bad guy, but he will mean -- his victory will mean -- the revenge, freezing, frightened, shy, rear-guard America. Rear guard. Not vanguard. Not victorious. Not optimist America.
If Bernard-Henri Levy believes that an Obama Presidency will not feature a "competition of victimhood" he has not been paying attention. The Left and its offspring, illiberal liberalism, has been all about the "competition of victimhood." What is affirmative action or political correctness except for disguised, and not so disguised, tactics by which one group is advantaged over another. This is only considered to not be a competition of victimhood if one designates(through the magic of post-modern deconstruction de-realizing words to strip them of their meaning and supply a new progressive meaning in their place) the new victims and oppressors. The "oppressors" can then be victimized at will. All "rich people" in America, making in excess of $250,000, are instantly fair game. (As time goes on this number will, of necessity, diminish to $150,000 and then to $100,000. Many people will be unpleasantly surprised to find out they are rich under the new regime.) However, even in this setting, there will be a hierarchy of victimhood, as Hillary Clinton learned to her great dismay.
When the quasi-socialist practices of the Left, even if it is the ethical Left of Bernard-Henri Levy, diminish our well being, our wealth will diminish (or, if we are lucky, increase more slowly) and the competition for the nurturance from the state will increase as a result. Decreasing resources while promising more to more people is a prescription for a competition that will intensify such that only the state will be able to manage. We have seen this before and, since human nature can never resolve the conflict between fairness and liberty, we will see it again.
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