Democracy Should Be Divided – but Not This Divided, Says Bernard-Henri Lévy

  • 6 years ago
Politics is a noble, brave world, says Bernard-Henri Lévy – but that's not what we have here. Levy's latest book is "The Genius of Judaism" (https://goo.gl/eo6w1J).

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Transcript - I'm so sad when I remember the first speech of Barack Obama, which I heard in 2004 in the Democratic Convention endorsing John Kerry. He said, "There is no blue states and red states of America, I know only United States of America." So such a long way down since this first speech of the young senator of Illinois. We are so far from the United States of America, which he was thinking of at this time. America is divided as never because of what? A lot because of Mr. Trump, a lot because of the sort of campaign he did; vulgar, populist, aggressive, counting on fascists passions in part of his electorate. And this has created an unprecedented division in the American society. I like division. It belongs to democracy. It's part of democracy. Democracy is, of course, a society divided with itself inside itself but not to this point.

if I had to make a parallel I would say probably Berlusconi. In general America show the road and Europe follows. And this time it's a European country who did show the world and America has followed. Because the pattern, the pattern. The godfather of this sort of new spectacular populism, populism based on TV, populism based on real television – is Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, exactly the same. He started with the same program as Donald Trump. He acted with women exactly as Donald Trump is reported, true or false, to behave. He had the same sort of despise of his enemies and of his friends as Trump, and he, Berlusconi, created the same sort of division which you are facing today in America. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/hoz9pI.

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