Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism

Reflections of a French leftist intellectual on the strange transformation of the Western left in the late 20th-early 21st centuries. The "new left" has abandoned ideals of liberalism and human rights, and is seeking allies among Islamists and third-world nationalists. In ch. 5 (pp.

147-166), "The New Anti-Semitism Will Be Progressive - or Nothing at All", notes that antisemitism has always been at the ideological vanguard, disregarding what was at the core of its accusations against the Jews: either that they killed Jesus, invented Christianity, were unpatriotic, invented capitalism, or belonged to an alien race.

The new antisemitism, able to attract multitudes to a mass movement, also builds on one of the most advanced ideas of our time - compassion for all those oppressed and victimized. Its main argument is that the Jews monopolize the memory of martyrdom, drawing world attention to the Holocaust.

Claiming that the Holocaust is unique, the Jews allegedly leave no place for compassion for other victims of oppression, and this is done in order to support the Zionist cause and the "fascist" State of Israel. Lévy argues that the opposite is true: Holocaust memory works as a radar that has helped detect genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere.