Left in Dark Times

Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism (2008) is a book by the French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, translated into English by Benjamin Moser. It is a work of political intervention in which the author, who still considers himself part of the left, examines why, in his view, that political camp has lost many of its founding principles.

Lévy argues that after the collapse of communism, the Western left stopped upholding universal ideas of justice, stopped sympathising with the oppressed and lost its commitment to truth. In their place, he claims, it has embraced a pathological hatred of America, of Jews and Israel, and ultimately of freedom itself. To counter this drift, he takes on what he identifies as six chief claims of the European and American left: that liberalism means only the free market, that Europe is little more than capitalism, that America is a fascist nation, that humanitarian intervention is an imperialist ploy, that Israel causes anti-Semitism, and that Islamism is a product of Western culture. Against these, he maintains that liberalism includes democracy and human rights, and that Islamism is homegrown and threatens the West as seriously as fascism once did.

The book traces its origin to a phone call in January 2007 from Nicolas Sarkozy, then a presidential candidate, who asked for his support. The exchange led Lévy to reflect on the basis of his own membership in the left, which he locates in his commitment to individual freedom and dignity, antifascism, anticolonialism and the anti-totalitarianism inherited from May 1968.

The thesis of the new barbarism has drawn criticism. Dag Tuastad argues that its proponents tend to equate terrorism with Islam and with an alleged 'Arab mind', portraying violence as irrational and characteristic of backward cultures, an approach he sees as justifying colonialist violence. Paul Richards, for his part, argues that the barbarism attributed to rebel groups in resource-rich regions such as Sierra Leone appears far less irrational once the distorted images held of dominated peoples are understood.