La Trahison des Clercs of our time

"La Trahison de Clercs": the treason of the intellectuals.

History repeats itself.

Just as the West buried its head in the sand prior to World War II, we are now in a complete state of denial regarding the Islamic Jihad.

Time to wake from our slumber.

"Trahison des clercs."

arrgh. imperfection everywhere.

I hope the C-SPAN cameras were there and that it will be televised soon.

As it happens, I have a .pdf version of Julien Benda's original masterpiece, plus the stinging essay he wrote in 1946 to bring the polemic up to date. (Hugh may be interested that our old friend Roger Garaudy already features - dishonourably, of course.) Anyone who wants a copy can send an e-mail address to the following e-mail: laurettelatini@yahoo.fr. Incidentally, for the benefit of les oreilles ennemies - there is no such person as Laurette Latini.

Garaudy in 1946? He was an active idiot for longer than I thought.

laurettelatini@yahoo.fr. Incidentally, for the benefit of les oreilles ennemies - there is no such person as Laurette Latini.

Maybe not, but I would not bet on it. Years ago a song about Lola, said that 'whatever Lola wants, Lola gets'. A woman named Lola Getz sued for illegal use of her name, I think she won. Or maybe that's just an urban myth.

I read the whole text of Bostoms speech. I think there are plenty of thinking people who study and learn the ins and outs of jihad. Most of them are not in power positions. Those that are in power positions are taking the 'ignorance is bliss' path to self destruction. 'Ignorance is bliss' toward Islam is the equivalent of the 'What, me worry'??, theme of idiocy in Mad Magazine.

I read where Gandhi would lead members of his ashram to clean up human waste along roads and paths. He called this Holy work. Associates reluctantly went along with this but I doubt they considered it holy. Since this was during the time when this was considered Jews work, this may have been an early protest against this practice on his part. At least it's a motivation beyond sanitation...

Wikipedia summary on long-lived Benda, with the usual misuse of a word or two (e.g., "notoriety" is not the same thing as "fame"):

"Julien Benda (December 26, 1867 Paris – June 7, 1956) was a French philosopher and novelist.

Born into a Jewish family, Benda became a master of French belles lettres. Yet he believed that science was superior to literature as a method of inquiry. He disagreed with Henri Bergson, the leading light of French philosophy of his day.

Benda is now mostly remembered for his short 1927 book La Trahison des Clercs, a work of some notoriety in its day. The title of the English translation was The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, although "The Treason of the Learned" would have been more accurate. This polemical essay argued that French and German intellectuals in the 19th and 20th century had often lost the ability to reason dispassionately about political and military matters, instead becoming apologists for crass nationalism, warmongering and racism. Benda reserved his harshest criticisms for his fellow Frenchmen Charles Maurras and Maurice Barres. Benda defended the measured and dispassionate outlook of classical civilization, and the internationalism of traditional Christianity, which Benda understood well.

Other works by Benda include Belphegor (1918), Uriel's Report (1926), and Exercises of a Man Buried Alive (1947), an attack on the contemporary French celebrities of his time. Most of the titles in the bibliography below were published during the last three decades of Benda's long life; he is emphatically a 20th century author. Moreover, Benda survived the German occupation of France, 1940-44, and the Vichy regime despite being a Jew and having called the Germans "one of the plagues of the world". Nevertheless, Benda appears little read nowadays. The Betrayal of the Intellectuals is his only work translated into English. That Roger Kimball wrote the introduction to a 2006 edition of this translation suggests that Benda commands some respect among present-day English language conservative thinkers."

His most famous work, "The Betrayal Of [By] The Intellectuals," was translated into English by none other than Richard Aldington, the man who finally wrote the truth about that mythomane T. E. Lawrence, exposing not only his own lies, but the nonsense and exaggeration and lies that Lawrence and the Arabs and their supporters had spread about the significance of the so-called "Arab Revolt" against the Turks. Aldington's work is important because the supposed help of the Arabs for the Allies against the Turks [far less help than was provided by the Jewish spies of Nili, even without taking into account all the other help given by the Jews of what became Mandatory Palestine]is part of the Arab Bill of Whining Particulars, and part as well of the mythology that connets to the whole misunderstood and phony business of the supposed "promises to the Arabs" (think Sykes-Picot, think Sir Henry McMahon -- who continually denied that the Arab version of what he had said had been said, and finally fed up, set down the version he knew to be true in a letter to The Times in July, 1937].

A digression, I know, from Julian Benda to Benda's translator Richard Aldington, but one of relevance to the larger purposes here.

Benda argues for the return of the disinterested philosopher, one who "loves wisdom." He argues in favor of Rationalism and reason as opposed to Irrationalism and "action".

For those who've read Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, the point of "action" is one to attend to: Where Benda wants rational philosophers thinking and discussing, Goldberg points out that the Irrationalists want action for its own sake to generate the meaning of life for all. Look at "action" as short-hand for "social activism." The fascists of the 20-40s were interested in action as state. In this case all must be action, which, Goldberg writes, ranged from American Progressive war socialism of 1916-18 and Mussolini's "War of the Grains" and beyond to Johnson's War on Poverty, and so on. Crisis demands immediate and collective action. Benda asked for a retreat of the intellectuals to the right domain of philosophers, to the realms of disinterested thought, rather than the rush into "action," i.e. fascism. It can be confusing, though, if one sees Al Gore's idiot rampage across the intellectual landscape as action and at the same time sees Spencer's efforts as action. The two are obviously different, the one being a false demand for communal action against a false crisis meant to further collectivize the nation under the state, while Spencer's "action" is to mobilize the thinking population to intelligent private (and co-operative)response to the former.

Goldberg, I think, paints with too broad a brush the picture of "action." Those impressed by his work should consider the details. There is action in the fascist sense, and acting, in the sense Benda would see as rational, which is Spencer's approach. Think, then act rationally.

Interesting how Amazon says "in stock" and Borders says "yet to be published".

duh_swami: whoever tries to identify with Laurette Latini will be grossly wrong, unless they are dead. If such a person ever existed, she certainly does not now.

Let us, incidentally, hope that Dr.Bostom has made sure that he does not join her too soon. Given the habits of the subjects of his books, we would not want him endangered.

Islam has been on a benda for 1400 years.

Paolo

Les oreilles ennemies......and the ghost of Barres belong to the same club.
Barres et L'affaire Dreyfus remember...
The roots of the actual denial of the real danger of Islam can be found in the way of thinking of the elite during the years before WWII.
Antisemitism or you can call it jealousy was prominent in Europe way before Hitler started his propaganda.
and when Hitler started his cleansing of the jews. nobody moved. It is just when Les Clercs saw their own existence threatened by the tyran that they dialed 911.
and now " On prends les memes et on recommence"
Les clercs d'aujourdhui are so afraid to be accused of racism. or intolerance that they close their eyes.
and also you have to agree to the fact that the enemy today is taking the back door to conquer the house.
Religion of peace, we are not all terrorists. we love America ...this song is playing very well in the ears of the leaders.
In order to understand the real goal of Islam, it is not going to take only education, unfortunately it is going to take another Sept 11
(ten times worse) for the Americans to wake up .

I have a solution:RS for president ...

Listen to Andrew Bostom, editor of the essential new collection The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, address the Hudson Institute here

Listen now

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