The French Philosopher Who Loves America

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher given to interpreting the world’s maladies. He is in New York for the publication on Feb. 12 of his latest book, elegantly provocative, “The Empire and the Five Kings.” It describes “the new geopolitical order which is designing itself before our eyes” as a result of “America’s abdication” of global leadership.

“You have America going back,” he says, “retreating and lowering its flag, both on military and ideological terms.” In Mr. Lévy’s thesis, “five former empires, which we all thought to be dead and buried, are waking up again—Russia, China, Turkey, Sunni radical Islamism and Persia. We thought they were pure ghosts—but no, they are moving again; they are dancing again on the floor of the world.” They are rushing unchecked, he says, into the voids left everywhere by the retreat of the West, most notably under Donald Trump.

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So who are the gilets jaunes (Yellow vests)? “They are obviously desperate people, who feel they are treated in an unfair way,” says Mr. Lévy. “And they are right.” Yet many of the protesters own cars and tractors, farms and small businesses—that’s why they hate the fuel tax. How desperate can they be? “They work during the week,” Mr. Lévy says, “and they demonstrate on Saturday. In other words, they are certainly not the Damned of the Earth.”

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They also seem unfriendly to Jews. Mr. Lévy tells me protesters have made an arm gesture called the quenelle, invented by a comedian named Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, that is widely understood to be anti-Semitic. They have also chanted the word “Rothschild, again and again, as an obsession.” No doubt that is a way of anathemizing Mr. Macron, who worked for Rothschild & Cie Banque a decade ago—but it is also part of the French left’s anti-Semitic argot. “French socialism, when it was born 130 years ago, had two wings,” Mr. Lévy says. One of them, led by Jules Guesde and known as the Intransigents, “was really anti-Semitic. There was this idea, in this half of the party, that the embodiment of capitalism was the Rothschild Bank, and Rothschild was a nickname for the Jews. And this tradition continues, still, today.”

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Mr. Lévy is among the most pro-American of France’s public intellectuals. “I love America,” he says. “I was taught, all my childhood, that without America I would not even exist.” Mr. Trump dismays him, and the U.S. “retreat” from the world fills him with dread. With Mr. Trump, he says, America’s retreat has become “tragically worse. For this time, the betrayal is generalized. He betrays the Syrian democrats, he betrays the valiant Kurdish fighters, and he delivers the Middle East to Putin. And this creates, for Israel, the most threatening situation there could be.” What would he like the Trump administration to do? “Stand with the Kurds,” he says fiercely. “Stay in Syria. Tell Putin, ‘Hands off Ukraine! Don’t touch the Baltic states!’ Make Erdogan understand that the time of the Ottoman Empire is over. And understand that carrying out America’s democratic and liberal vocation isn’t only an honor, but in America’s best interests.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-french-philosopher-who-loves-america-11549668746 (paid subscription)