The Skimmer

Left in Dark Times By Bernard-Henri Levy Random House; 233 pages

French journalist and philosopher (apparently still at least a part-time profession in the 21st century) Levy is in full finger-wagging mode in this latest polemic. Unlike the grounded, tangible arguments of 2006's excellent American Vertigo--in which he roamed the U.S. à la Tocqueville and painted a portrait of a nation both majestic and mad--there's an intellectual ranginess to Dark Times that makes it difficult to pin down. The object of Levy's ire is the left, or rather, "the monsters that the new laboratories of what we in Europe call Leftism and what Americans call liberalism are giving birth to." In its better days, says Levy, the left stood against evil and injustice and all the worst aspects of fascist and totalitarian systems. Now, amid a surge in anti-American, anti-Semitic and antiliberal sentiments, the left appears "sometimes more right-wing than the right wing itself." It's quite a damning statement, but one that is undercut by Levy's reliance on insular and obscure historical examples that clearly resonate for him and his European partisans. The rest of us, however, are left firmly in the dark.

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