#whatireadovershabbat Bernard-Henri Lévy's Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, trans. Benjamin Moser (Random House, 2008)
To be a man of the Left, Louis Aragon said, means sometimes preferring to lose your arm than your compassion. If Aragon is right, then Lévy, to extend the metaphor, has risked his soul in an effort to heal the Left itself.
The contemporary Left, prone to knee-jerk anti-Americanism, witless Jew-hatred, and fawning over anti-liberal autocrats, needs a healer like Lévy. Diagnosing these and others ills and prescribing remedies—not least a recuperation of the reflexes of political disgust—Left in Dark Times offers a cure for the neo-progressive barbarism that has lately edged out the Left's traditional commitments to liberty and universalism. The book is a decade-and-a-half old and yet still timely, for the symptoms of illness have only worsened.
Indeed, I anticipate a return to some of these themes when Lévy speaks at Ohio State next week. That the so-called radical Left is afflicted with both America Derangement Syndrome and Israel Derangement Syndrome has been proven this past year, with the apparatchiks and fellow travelers of the new barbarism crowing the praises of Putin, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Chinese imperialism. If anything his analysis could be sharpened with reference to Susie Linfield's insights into the terrorist Left, the swath of the Left, especially the academic Left, which exalts violence over politics, and that has dominated Leftist discourse since October 8th.
What I don't anticipate is any change in Lévy's commitment to the Left, despite its recent manifestations. Left in Dark Times evinces a great love of his political family and a sincere attachment to its ideal values. You may believe, contrary to Aragon, that being on the Left doesn't mean risking your arm, but instead instead relinquishing it, yet after reading this book you can’t doubt that Lévy’s compassion would, in either case, remain intact.
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