The Frogs have always had a strange attitude to the rest of the world. Someone, I can't remember who, once suggested they were the "greatest second-rate nation on earth".
And they get themselves into some very twisted ideas about the world: (Think Jacques Derrida, Algerian-born French/Sephardi philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work has had a profound impact upon continental philosophy, French philosophy, and literary theory)... all of which are, by definition, tautologies.
"Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business"
Silk-Shirt Prophet Bernard-Henri Lévy Rails at Zombie French Left
By DIANA JOHNSTONE
"The most discussed political book in France this autumn is "Ce grand cadavre à la renverse", literally, "this big corpse lying on its back", by Bernard-Henri Lévy (Grasset, Paris, 2007). It is supposed to be a book about the French left. But oddly enough, it is not really about the left, and it is not even really a political book."
She burbles a bit about "the small coterie of propagandists, some thirty years ago, under the label of "New Philosophers", who "began a highly publicized campaign to reverse the anti-imperialist sentiment that had become dominant worldwide in reaction to the U.S. war in Vietnam", then goes on to the meat of the matter.
"the New Philosophers undertook to stigmatize all left aspirations toward radical social change as inevitably totalitarian. Against the ever-present "totalitarian threat", the United States was restored as the necessary savior of democracy and defender of human rights."
Nevertheless, thirty years later, for whatever reason, their mission suddenly appears to be accomplished. Although no philosopher, Nicolas Sarkozy embodies the "new" Europe as dreamed by Rumsfeld at the start of the conquest of Iraq--a Europe ready to follow the United States blindly into its wars.
André Glucksmann, the most hysterical of the clan, lost no time in endorsing Sarkozy prior to the election, early on gaining the status of royal philosopher. Bernard Kouchner, the most worldly and ambitious of the humanitarian warriors, waited until Sarkozy was elected to join him as Foreign Minister.
And what is this new totalitarianism? Why, "anti-Americanism" of course. And what is "anti-Americanism" exactly? According to BHL, "anti-Americanism is a metaphor for anti-Semitism" (p.265). Now we know.
In his chapter devoted to the "progressive" future of anti-Semitism, BHL treats the latter as a sort of demon that prowls through history taking different disguises. It is a "long cry of hatred" that pursues through the ages "the People of the Word". It is not possible to ask "why?" One must only ask "how?"
He implicitly recognizes one reality that many other commentators ignore, that is, that the Holocaust is the real functioning religion in Europe today.
...as he puts it, the "religion of the epoch" is "ever more clearly founded on those three solid pillars which are the cult of the victim, the taste for memory and reprobation of the wicked (triumphant antifascism, love for victims and the duty of memory)." This being the case, he observes with alarm that a certain competition for victimhood is feeding resentment toward Jews for having "hoarded" for themselves, "human compassion" and "victim capital" "Shoah business." "What is left for the genocide of the American Indians? I was asked one day by the anti-Semitic Indian leader Russell Means"
At this point, BHL even makes a rare mention of the Palestinians, whose main enemy is said by some to be "this uproar over the suffering of the Jewish people which drowns out their voices" (pp 316-318).
That's worth repeating: "..the Palestinians, whose main enemy is said by some to be 'this uproar over the suffering of the Jewish people which drowns out their voices'. That's a bit astute, even for a Frog.
BHL's response is simply to reiterate that the Shoah is indeed unique in history, adding that the Muslims were on the side of Hitler and thus not innocent victims of Zionism, and that such complaints are manifestations of the new anti-Semitism.
Exhortation number one: stop talking about Israel and Palestine! Or, to be precise: "limit the obsessional reference to Israel". Meaning: Talk instead about Darfour, Chechnya but all this talk about the Palestinians is in reality a form of anti-Semitism.
Second exhortation: substitute laïcité (secularism, French style) for tolerance. Meaning: no tolerance for "Fascislamism" which he spots even in the relatively moderate positions of Tariq Ramadan, for instance, not to mention veiled women and Muslims who object to cartoons portraying the prophet Mohamed as a terrorist bomber.
Third exhortation: recognize Islamism as a form of fascism.
This programmed zombie is really all BHL has to offer either to the left or to the Jews.
The silence of reviewers concerning the flagrantly judeocentric nature of BHL's book suggests that a certain intimidation is at work."
'Nuff said.
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Personal Anecdote: Dated: 1959
This is a small fragment of my memory that may inform the message above
From 1959 to 1961, I lived at Fontainebleau, just south of Paris. I was in the full flower of teenagehood, and thumbed a lift up to Paris every weekend that I could. I think I met Jean-Paul Sartre in the Cafe de Flore, and I certainly met Alan Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso, maybe at the Tabou. Had I hung around there a little longer, I might even have become an obscure intellectuel like BHL. (Instead, I'm just obscure).
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