Bernard-Henri Lévy

We know the Bernard-Henri Lévy of Bosnia, who puts his physical courage to the test of his convictions. We’re perhaps less familiar with the one who does not balk at difficult intellectual battles, the one who does not hesitate to raise the lance in the face of his peers of the French intelligentsia, however unanimous they may be, when it comes to defending what he believes to be a just cause.
It’s October 2006. The French parlement has just voted a law condemning the negation of the genocide of the Armenians. At the time, the antiracist heart of the Left beats in favour of Turkey’s entry into the European Union. And this vote provokes an uproar from the media. The press, inspired by the influential group «liberty for history», composed of eminent and respected figures, lays into this supposed “memorial” law, no holds barred. Their argument is as simple as the day is long and just as implacable: it is not up to «Parlement to write history»; this is a «liberticide text», and “why is France, who would do better to clean up her own back yard, getting involved in this?” Mass is said, and all those forces the country counts as progressive, but the reactionaries as well, form a consensus to pillory this text and to shoot at the pro-Armenian ambulance. With the exception of one. Bernard-Henri Lévy, in his column in Le Point dares to dissent. At the time, he is the only intellectual (others, including Michel Onfray, have since come round to his point of view) to launch a challenge in a deleterious climate imbued with the hostility of some particularly vehement historians who argue with him, to the general incomprehension of everyone who is anyone in Parisian journalism. When a delegation of the Armenian community comes to his home to thank him for taking a stand, he explains that, for him, there are three yellow lines: racism, antisemitism, and negationism. And he will come to stamp his feet at public meetings and demonstrations to justify this rather unexpected commitment, one in which he has a great deal more to lose than to win. “Of course it is not up to Parlement to write history, but unfortunately, history has already been written,” The purpose of this law is not to hamper the historians, but to “free research” from the pressure and the politico-economic blackmail of an international negationism of State, that of the Turkish authorities. Ultimately there is nothing incongruous in the fact that France, siding with the victims but unable to rescue them from their destiny, is exercising her duty of memory and the right to continue in this affair.

No one in the audience at that meeting of January 17th, 2007, at the Mutualité will soon forget the philosopher’s amazing speech. In a 20-minute intervention, straight as a die, Bernard-Henri Lévy defended, with implacable logic, the necessity in this case to oppose the extraordinary means of negationism of the Turkish State (the world’s 16th economic power) with the force of the law. The crowd went wild. Without a doubt, no one had ever exposed this cause with such pertinence. No one had ever so justly hit the mark in describing what is at stake and the stigmatization of negationism as the “penultimate stage of genocide”. Le Monde published an article a few days later describing the key ideas in this intervention. One can find videos of the speech, as well as those that followed in the next two years, in Marseille on March 22, 2008, and before the Senate on November 22nd of that year, or even in the United States, at Columbia University and at a major Jewish center in New York, on Youtube. It should be noted that no member of the “liberty for history” group that defied the law penalising this negationism ever responded in substance to BHL. Pierre Nora, with all respect otherwise due him, refused a debate with the philosopher. And Jean-Noël Jeanneney, also very much involved in this association, recognized and praised his «eloquence» (dixit) during a debate on negationism organized by LICRA at the city hall of the 6th arrondissement in Paris, but declined to counter his arguments. The end result is that Bernard-Henri Lévy’s intervention made his point heard—and that is not the least of its merits—and if he, alone, did not reverse the tendency, at least his speech offered food for thought and stopped the a priori tidal wave of reprobation in the matter. Had he not leapt to the defense of the opposing view, the question would have undoubtedly been buried beneath the double weight of ignorance and Realpolitik, in view of the obstinate pressure of Ankara, which considers the “combat against the allegations of genocide” as one of its foreign policy priorities.

Today, of course, the battle has not yet been won. But the PS group of the Senate has just decided to use its parliamentary forum to propose discussion of the law and thus end four years of prevarication. Finally, the question will be put to debate, and not without stirring a few recollections among the most eminent Socialists, including, as it happens, Ségolène Royal.

When she was campaigning for the presidency, in 2007, her staff provided a waffling reply to a questionnaire on the subject sent by Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine. I expressed our disappointment to Bernard-Henri Lévy. He is the one who, having thoroughly discussed the question with Ségolène Royal, related to us her new and much more assertive stand on the genocide of the Armenians and the necessity to combat its negation, including by means of the law.

For some disadvantaged peoples, the role of intellectuals in history is not just a simple subject of dissertation. So it is with the Armenians, for whom the name of Lévy is now inscribed upon the list of exceptional figures who are part of a long tradition of support, including Juarès, Péguy, and Sartre. But can knowledge, rhetoric, and conviction suffice to reverse the course of things?
One thing is certain: only a drowning man can understand the true worth of an extended hand. And the Armenians are unlikely to forget that courageous one offered by a certain Bernard-Henri Lévy in 2006, one that has, since, never let go.

Ara Toranian

Ara Toranian is the director of “Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine” (News from Armenia Magazine).

Translation Janet Lizop

Photo 1 : Paris,  Bernard-Henr Lévy front of the Senat, protest with the Armenians at the invitation of the CCAF. (C) AFP
Photo 2 : Bernard-Henri Levy at the meeting of January 17, 2007 organized by the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF).