Talk:Bernard-Henri Lévy

Photograph
Can´t we get a better photograph?
 * Indented line I'm reading up on Levy for the first time, Photo + criticism section make him seem like a jerk. Don't most living phillosopher's entries make them look like jerks? He is more than a jerk, he is dangerous as he is willing to declare war (without French people agreement) to any country not in tune with his vision of the world — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.102.243.152 (talk) 07:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Of all the photos of him that exist, we get one in which his hand covers half of his face. Smart.96.235.138.179 (talk) 05:03, 17 October 2017 (UTC)Adolf Fiddler
 * I think it's a good photograph. Bus stop (talk) 05:08, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I like the top photograph, he seems brooding, interesting. Funny the 2nd photograph in the article also has hand covering face. -- do  ncr  am  18:16, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Booksellers
I have put the link to the French Amazon site in for the readers' convenience. While there may be other booksellers who have these books readily available, the French Amazon site is easy and convenient. I see no harm in it and a little good. What is the problem with having it? Nobody is buying his book anyway. Without the fortune and the influence of his family he would be totally unknown as he gets no talent at all and no credit among philosph and writer.Fred Bauder 17:23, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

POV
The uses of words like "lofty" (which has "pompous" and "arrogant" as connotations) or "lavish" are, in my opinion out of place. Even worse is something like "he is nonetheless often lampooned as the archetypal pretentious". Levy is a controversial figure and the article, as it is now, does illustrate very well the polarization that his image creates--it does, however, sound quite informal and opinionated, which come out--again, in my opinion, as biased. I think the article lacks references (e.g. by whom is he "often lampooned as the archetypal pretentious Left Bank intellectual"?) and need to be seroiusly reworded. I do not, however, that the neutrality of the article is terrible--thus i left the POV tag on this talk page and not in the actual article page. J4vier Apr 8, 2005
 * I'm moving the POV check back to the main article. This tag should not be put on the talk page as the template itself references the talk page (which is redlinked from this page).  Also, POV checks in talk pages almost never get looked at. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 20:05, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm fixing what I can. I speak French, so I'm starting to borrow stuff from the French article. I'm also trying to cite as many claims as possible. Any help is much appreciated. I can only work on it in spurts. Thanks! I understand French too and what BHL is saying and doing is just horrific. French people lost their freedom of speech and thinking thanks to his habit to accuse of antisemitism the people he disagree with! There is no more dialog possible in France concerning middle-east policy --AaronS 18:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Sourcing?
Some phrases from this article seem to be lifted from the Guardian profile on Levy in a manner that borders on plagiarism, especially the second-to-last paragraph.
 * I wouldn't call it plagiarism, but it is true that much of the "personality" stuff does seem to come from that article. Since he just came out with a book, there's quite a few more articles on him. I'm going to see if I can diversify our sources. --AaronS 18:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

"Combat" paper
"Lévy is also a pre-eminent journalist, having started his career as a war reporter for Combat, the famous underground newspaper founded by Camus during the Nazi occupation of France."

When and where the paper was founded seems a bit tangental (and distracting) to me, considering Lévy wasn't even born before the occupation ended. If the paper is interesting enough, it should have its own page we can link to. But either way, I suggest removing the paper founding specifics from the "Biography" section. -- Or at the very least, include Camus's full name. BHL is a liar and pretends to be someone is not. He is a joke in France.--JMD 17:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Where are the evidences BHL wrote for Combat? This article is biased and the more it is changed the more biased it becomes. This is the work of Basbara. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justana (talk • contribs) 06:55, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Start class
With a little work this would be B class. Use uniform citations, currently inline and footnotes are both used. Also the lead needs to be expanded. It also appears everything comes from one source, to get to anything above B class there should be some variety, and an appropriate infobox is needed. Aboutmovies 02:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:48, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Article Summary
The last sentence of this read, "The french philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote that what the "new philosophers" pretended to bring was in fact totally empty and that the world didn't wait for them to start thinking correctly." I deleted this as it seemed entirely unnecessary and combative. Also, it's very telling that "French" was left uncapitalized. -- infiniteawe 18:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC) You deleted the best phrase of the article because of your agenda. The first sentence of the summary reads:

"Throughout his long media career (almost 40 years), aka BHL "Botul" cultural agent and geopolitics of the ultra-Zionist movement, was regularly exposed and denounced for his approximations, lies, fabrications and other accommodation with truth."

Is this vandalism or what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.246.78.41 (talk) 13:54, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Phony footnote
Some genius asserted that Henri-Levy's book about following Tocqueville's tour was "widely panned by critics," then in support gave one footnote to a single negative review. This is the kind of phony sourcing that, among other dishonesties, makes Wikipedia such a farce. J M Rice (talk) 14:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The only farce here is Levy himself. It is an honour for him to have such a long article on wiki, considering the uge nonentity he is. There should be no problem to find negative criticism, if not in english, then in french --Erikantoine (talk) 17:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Junkie
He is often accused of being a homosexual and a drug addict, those things should be mentioned, since its more then likely that they are true. Also the part about "concentration camps" should be changed, since he is pretty much the only one who called it "concentration camps", those were prisons and no one spent more then a few weeks in them and all who went to those camps were islamist fundamentalists and jihadists, many of them were also Al Qaida members.

Levy is not respected by anyone any more and this article should be written in that light! --СССССС (talk) 18:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * To say "its more then likely that they are true" is to talk dogmatic, subjective nonsense. By the way, it's "than," not "then." In addition, "its" should be "it's." Also, "islamists" should be capitalized so that it is "Islamists." These points are elementary and should be evident to anyone with a few years of public schooling.Lestrade (talk) 00:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)Lestrade

Filmmaker
Not a line about his hilarious film "Le Jour et la Nuit" ( "Day and Night", 1997 ), with Arielle Dombasle, Alain Delon, Lauren Bacall ?... 83.154.15.189 (talk) 21:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Endorsement of Botulism
Can a knowledgeable editor please fill us in on the apparently farcical citation by Lévy of the fictional philosopher Botul in "On War in Philosophy"? The quote from Lévy in the New York Times on 9 Feb, 2010: “My source of information is books, not Wikipedia.” The pieces I have seen are funny, but also extremely damaging to the reputation of philosophy. That's why someone with a good NPOV context can really do some good here. Thanks! Phytism (talk) 12:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Support Irak War
"He drew controversy due to his support of the Iraq War, in 2003." That's not what he said ! If he supported Iraq War in 2003, he "changed" is mind thereafter, which I wouldn't be surprised of. I clearly remember him in a tv-show ("tout le monde en parle", of thierry Ardisson), talking about his book on Daniel Pearl, and when Ardisson evoked the Iraq War, BHL answered : "No, from the very first day I was agains't the war. I said that the US governement was, at the time, runned by fools, that it wouldn't work, that it would be worst, and so on..." Then came Romain Goupil, the french filmaker and one of the very rare in France to support publicly the war in Iraq. BHL started to look embarrassed. And when Goupil saluted him and called him "my friend", Ardisson asked : "do you know each other", "Of course", replied Goupil, "we've known each other for a very long time" to which BHL immediately said : "we didn't agree on the Iraq War." "Indeed, we didn't, and I regret it", said Goupil. So, if he really supported Iraq War in 2003, I wouldn't very surprised of it but it seems he changed his mind a few times after. Or maybe he supported Iraq War on american tv and he opposed it on french tv, which wouldn't surprised me much either. Anyway, this affirmation needs a source. By the way, where are the weapon of mass destruction? In USA of course. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.53.96.41 (talk) 17:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've read his article here : http://www.lepoint.fr/archives/article.php/53028 (nb : the date is not correct. It's an article from 2003, not 2007). Basically, he says the war would be "justified on a moral point of view" but "a disaster politically speaking". And he concludes : "that's why I can't decide to support the Iraq war".(gpgpp 15:27, 25 November 2010 (UTC)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.250.199.240 (talk)

Ecole normale supérieure
There is a mistake in the description of his education : one cannot "graduate" from the Ecole normale supérieure, since the Ecole doesn't deliver diplomas (at least at the time not). The title must be "former student of the Ecole normale". The students attend also the university and graduate there, and most of them pass successfully the national competitive exam "agrégation". Levy is "agrégé de philosophie". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.67.195.12 (talk) 20:25, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Source 15 is no longer there
Are there any other sources for the cited text, which seems to be running up against NPOV? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.100.242.80 (talk) 15:54, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

2 things
- The photograph is terrible. - At the "Available in Spanish Section": Nobody saw that "Piero della Francesca" is Italian??? NOT SPANISH.--77.225.29.19 (talk) 18:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Criticisms
His support for DSK is cited under 'criticism'. This doesn't make sense. It's a viewpoint he has and he has expressed. It's out of place in a section about what other people have said about him. ItCanHappen (talk) 20:53, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Public Enemies
The current minor details for the book read: New York: Random House, 2011, paperback, 320 pages, ISBN 0812980786

That is the book I have here, New York: Random House, 2011, paperback, but it's 309 pp., ISBN 978-0812980783

Varlaam (talk) 00:03, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Nationality?
Why is he listed as a "Jewish public intellectual, philosopher and journalist in France"? He's of French nationality, so why isn't it "French public intellectual, philosopher and journalist"? Because he is working for Israel, being based in France. He has double nationality but his mind and his voice is coming from Israel. For French people he is just a shame. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.243.156.16 (talk) 21:58, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Cool story, bro. Centrify (f / k / a Factchecker_blah_blah_blah)  (talk)  (contribs) 13:10, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, but the article is being changed by hasbara and turning the man into a Saint.--Justana (talk) 06:45, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Article has a lengthy section devoted to criticism and diligently avoids any praise
Red flags, folks. Article is a hit piece. Centrify (f / k / a Factchecker_blah_blah_blah)  (talk)  (contribs) 13:10, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

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