[1] Levy, who continues to consider himself a member of the "left", says that the book grew out of a phone call he received from French President Nicolas Sarkozy on January 23, 2007 asking for his support in the Presidential campaign.
Levy responded that, "no matter how much I like and respect you, the Left is my family", to which Sarkozy replied, "These people who've spent 30 years telling you to go (expletive) yourself?
"[3] The phone call set Levy thinking, and he concluded that his abiding commitment to the left is rooted in his "adherence to the freedom and dignity of the individual, anti-fascism, anti-colonialism and 'the anti-totalitarianism that is the legacy of May '68'.
"[3] The "New Barbarism" thesis has been criticised by Dag Tuastad, who argues that the New Barbarian writers tend to equate "terrorism" with "Islam" and "the Arab Mind", explaining the former as irrational, and therefore a threat from backward cultures.
This neo Orientalist approach justifies continuation of colonialist violence in the Middle East and elsewhere[4] It has also been argued by Paul Richards that the widely-perceived "barbarism" of rebel groups in resource-rich regions (like Sierra Leone), is not so "irrational" once you understand the distorted images of dominated people.