Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy (born 5 November 1948) is a French public intellectual, media personality, and author. Often referred to in France simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the "Nouveaux Philosophes" (New Philosophers) movement in 1976. His opinions, political activism and publications have also been the subject of several controversies over the years. He frequently writes on the subject of anti-Semitism.

I saw things I should not have seen. I saw things a man should not see. But I saw them.

I assert that Pakistan is the biggest rogue of all the rogue states of today. I assert that what is taking form there, between Islamabad and Karachi, is a black hole compared to which Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad was an obsolete weapons dump. ~ B.-H. Lévy

Quotes

• The world was rightly horrified by America’s recent blunder in bombing the Médecins sans Frontières’ hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. But how many Syrian Kunduzes will result from Russian airstrikes if the Kremlin continues to favor bombs over guided missiles?
  • West should not appease Russia [1]

• Yes. We have, in France, a real tradition of what Jean Paul Sartre, in the foreword of a book of his friend Roger Stéphane, called l’aventurier. Lawrence of Arabia, Byron, Andre Malraux. And for me, l’aventurier was a very honourable destiny. To write and to act … To live your life far from yourself, far from you bases ... To change yourself deeply … All these were real targets for me. Life is worth being lived if one takes the risk and the chance of being different than himself. To break the ropes which tie you to your place. To break the rules of your natural group. To convert yourself into something else. To change your soul.And not to do what you were formatted, shaped to do. I was shaped to be a professor, I was shaped to be just a writer. And then, Bangladesh happened.
  • BHL in Dhaka

• Moreover, you know … mass murder, slaughter, is often an abstract thing. But when you happen to see it directly, to be a witness of it, it’s something quite different, you cannot just play games. It changes you deeply. And you are compelled to do something. The last weeks of 71, November to mid December, were among the most moving, disturbing and terrible I have experienced in my whole life. I saw things I should not have seen. I saw things a man should not see. But I saw them.
  • BHL in Dhaka

• I assert that Pakistan is the biggest rogue of all the rogue states of today.
  I assert that what is taking form there, between Islamabad and Karachi, is a black hole compared to which Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad was an obsolete weapons dump.
  • Lévy, B.-H. (2014). Who Killed Daniel Pearl.

Barbarism with a Human Face (1977)

Harper & Row, 1980

• I am the bastard child of an unholy union between fascism and Stalinism. I am the contemporary of a strange twilight when the clouds above are dissolving amid the clash of arms and the cries of the tortured. The only revolution I know, the one which may grant notoriety to this century, is the Nazi plague and red fascism. Hitler did not die in Berlin. Conqueror of his conquerors, he won the war in the stormy night into which he plunged Europe. Stalin did not die in Moscow nor at the Twentieth Congress. He is here among us, a stowaway in the history that he still haunts and bends to his mad will. You say the world is doing well? It's certain in any case that it keeps on going, since it isn't changing. But never before has the will to death become so nakedly and cynically unleashed. For the first time the gods have left us, no doubt weary of wandering on the plain of ashes where we have made our home. And I am writing in an age of Barbarism which is already, silently, remaking the world of men.
  • p. ix

Quotes about Bernard-Henri Lévy

• The French playboy philosopher, who toppled Gaddafi, ponders the big questions. And fervently supports Israel.
  • Why Does Everyone Hate Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jacques Hyzagi [2]