Shadow falls on France’s leading light

[Hoping4Change]

Serious questions are being raised about Bernard-Henri Lévy aka BHL. He is best known for his book about the murder of reporter Daniel Pearl.


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The first salvo has been fired by left-wing journalists Jade Lindgaard and Xavier de la Porte, whose book – Le BA BA Du BHL (The ABC Of BHL) – seeks to expose the vapidity of a society that allows BHL to reach such heights. They start with BHL’s bestselling 2003 book on the murder by Islamic extremists in Pakistan of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.


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For Lindgaard and de la Porte the book’s success is evidence of France’s intellectual collapse, with the replacement of serious analysis by a form of instantaneous media-thought, of which BHL is the supreme and highly telegenic proponent. They write: “He is the prime embodiment of the deep crisis in our society – where proven lies have the same value as truth, where simplistic ideas, as long as they are eye-catching, prevail over real intelligence, and where connivance and networks of friendship count for more than genuine scholarship.”


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In the coming months five books are due out which seek to debunk the BHL myth. Not only is he a vain intellectual imposter, they claim, he is also the mastermind of a network of financial and media interests whose prime function is his own self-promotion. The heir to Sartre, Derrida and Foucault is a sartorially obsessed faker.

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The other books are to make similar points. According to Erwan Poiraud, author of BHL: Sociology Of A Media Intellectual: “His strength is the creation of rapid ideas. Where a philosopher will spend five years working on every nuance, he can turn out a book in four months ready-made for the television and radio. How is it possible that the media recognises him as the great intellectual of the end of the 20th century when he is acknowledged by virtually no philosopher or academic? What he produces is a kind of nothingness that fills the media void.”


http://www.sundayherald.com/46542