Bernard-Henri Lévy

L’idéologie française, denouncing “the French version of fascism” is published by Grasset. It quickly becomes the object of polemical debate in the daily and weekly press, as well as in certain scholarly journals such as Esprit. Raymond Aron expresses indignation that, through his writing, the author could be capable of “putting into peril” (sic) the Jewish community… Lévy is championed by Jean-Toussaint Desanti, Jorge Semprun, Jean-François Revel and, again, by Philippe Sollers.

Eighteen years later, on the occasion of the re-release of L’Idéologie française in pocket format by Le Livre de Poche, the French press will applaud this visionary text: regional identification, suspicion of the “cosmopolitan spirit”, hatred of intellectuals – it would be necessary for time to pass, for three major trials to shake France (Klaus Barbie, Paul Touvier, and Maurice Papon), and finally, that the extreme-right political party Le Front National and its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, take hold in the national political landscape, before the anticipatory role of this work would be recognized.

In September 1981, Bernard-Henri Lévy leaves for Afghanistan with Marek Halter and Renzo Rossellini to give three radio transmitters, purchased with funds raised in a public, European collection, to the Afghani resistance led by Commander Massoud. Thus is born Radio Free Kaboul. The “travel diary” of this journey to an Afghanistan occupied and devastated by the Soviet army is published in Le Nouvel Observateur.