{"id":214960,"date":"2026-09-04T14:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/214960\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T14:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:12:22","slug":"benjamin-moser-many-countries-opposed-nazism-who-is-opposing-netanyahu-only-pedro-sanchez-eps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/214960\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Moser: \u2018Many countries opposed Nazism. Who is opposing Netanyahu? Only Pedro S\u00e1nchez\u2019 | EPS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Moser, 49, lives in a house near the caves of Lascaux<\/a> that is quite literally lost in France\u2019s P\u00e9rigord region. For the past 20 years, he and his partner have spent months there, surrounded by wisteria, olive trees, pines, oleanders, a swimming pool and the Ravel-like song of the cicadas.<\/p>\n

Moser, who completed high school in France, speaks four languages. \u201cIt prevents dementia,\u201d he jokes. When he speaks Spanish, he sounds Venezuelan. He lived there when he was 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela is like if Dubai suddenly came to a standstill and you returned 30 years later. Americans believe in the idea of historical progress, unlike the rest of the world, which knows history is cyclical. That\u2019s why what\u2019s happening will devastate us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question. You began writing The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters when you moved to the Netherlands. What turned your world upside down?<\/p>\n

Answer. Meeting my partner. I was 23 and working for a publishing house in New York. My boss didn\u2019t know what to talk about with an author and asked me to join them for lunch\u2026 The basis of my career is that: I know how to talk to people. The night before I met Arthur, I read his novel The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi. Books reflect who we are. I was fascinated.<\/p>\n

Q. You were 23, and he was 43.<\/p>\n

A. I thought: he\u2019s an old man and\u2026 why not?<\/p>\n

Q. Is he passionate about everything?<\/p>\n

A. You can\u2019t write without passion. You can write without conveying anything \u2014 that\u2019s what artificial intelligence does.<\/a> But the purpose of art is to communicate. You want readers to see what you see. He was my kind of person.<\/p>\n

Q. What attracts us to someone?<\/p>\n

A. A quality of the soul. That\u2019s what The Upside-Down World is about: what a painter reveals of himself in his painting.<\/p>\n

Q. Your book brings closer to \u2014 and questions \u2014 the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age.<\/p>\n

A. Questioning things has to do with my U.S. background. I grew up surrounded by ideas that seem settled until you learn not to take anything for granted. While writing it, I learned, for example, who the first painter was to depict human feelings on a face. Until Aristides of Thebes did it in 340 BC, nobody had drawn a person smiling, that is, showing their feelings!<\/p>\n

Q. It took you 20 years to write The Upside-Down World.<\/p>\n

A. I felt I didn\u2019t know enough.<\/p>\n

Q. In that time, you wrote biographies of Clarice Lispector and Susan Sontag<\/a>. Why them?<\/p>\n

A. At university, I tried to learn Chinese. People said, rightly, that it was the language of the future. I failed. I thought that knowing Spanish and French would make Portuguese easier. I read Lispector\u2019s The Hour of the Star; it was the best thing I\u2019d ever read. I became obsessed, went to Brazil, and wanted to make her famous.<\/p>\n

Q. Do you want to save people?<\/p>\n

A. It\u2019s a character trait that leads to depression when you can\u2019t do more. With her, I succeeded. I devoted five years to the book. I was paid \u20ac8,000 [$9,300]. If that\u2019s not passion\u2026<\/p>\n

Q. How did you make a living?<\/p>\n

A. By translating or writing about a restaurant for $1,000\u2026<\/p>\n

Q. Lispector knew she wanted to be a writer when she was seven. Was it the same for you?<\/p>\n

A. It took me longer. Then, Clarice gave me a career. Because of her, at 25, I was commissioned to write Sontag\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n

Q. Lispector was also Jewish. In Recife, where she grew up, people confused Jews with Judas.<\/p>\n

A. They didn\u2019t know what they were. Brazil is a very nationalistic country. It\u2019s not that they want to invade Uruguay; it\u2019s that, as happens with large countries \u2014 the U.S. or Russia \u2014 they can\u2019t see beyond themselves: they\u2019re not interested in difference. Americans like foreign origins. Everyone has one, more or less invented. There are people whose families have been there 300 years who tell you they\u2019re Irish. Fine. Can you locate Ireland on a map?<\/p>\n

Q. Lispector was born in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

A. She wrote in Portuguese in a way no Brazilian would dare. It wasn\u2019t about being foreign, but about what she sought with words, the almost violent way she broke clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

Q. She wrote about longing not to have been born an animal.<\/p>\n

A. For her, her dog Ulisses was the purest person. Animals are always pure.<\/p>\n

Q. She feared not loving more than not being loved.<\/p>\n

A. She was right. She was always right. But everything affected her too much. She suffered from having a good soul. Real life mattered more to her than academic life.<\/p>\n

\"\"Markel Redondo<\/p>\n

Q. Is the same true of you?<\/p>\n

A. Yes. I appreciate research that provides data, but the most interesting thing about art is what touches you emotionally. Lispector didn\u2019t read philosophy, but she was a philosopher because, like all original people, she thought for herself.<\/p>\n

Q. When writing biographies, how do you decide what to include and what not to?<\/p>\n

A. In portraying someone, you also create a portrait of what matters to you. You\u2019ll do the same with this interview: you\u2019ll pick what seems most interesting to you. One problem in journalism is not being honest about the point of view. If someone writes about Israel<\/a>, being Jewish or Palestinian is considered disqualifying. It should be the opposite. It\u2019s more honest to say where you\u2019re speaking from. We all have a perspective. Many biographers think telling a life means gathering facts. \u201cOn Thursday he ate eggs\u2026\u201d. That kills a biography. A life is not data.<\/p>\n

Q. You\u2019ve written that Lispector and Sontag had charisma.<\/p>\n

A. Charisma is a mix of vitality, truth, charm, kindness, passion, mystery and beauty. But it\u2019s politically incorrect to write about a writer\u2019s beauty. For me, beauty is an obsession. It\u2019s always more. I\u2019ve met people who are attractive from five meters away and completely boring once they start talking. And the opposite is true as well. When people speak, their intelligence, talent and kindness come through.<\/p>\n

Q. What\u2019s the hardest quality to find?<\/p>\n

A. Kindness is unattainable because controlling wickedness requires patience, self-knowledge and a sense of humor. Clarice used to say: \u201cI have several faces, one is almost pretty. Another almost ugly.\u201d Our face changes with years and from one moment to the next.<\/p>\n

Q. After the Lispector biography, you were commissioned to write Sontag\u2019s.<\/p>\n

A. Sontag was an electric person: you touched her and she gave you a jolt. But\u2026 I knew it was my chance to write about my own culture.<\/p>\n

Q. You won the Pulitzer.<\/p>\n

A. I was the authorized biographer. I had access to documents and family. But the biography was not authorized. The distinction matters: we spent a year negotiating the contract. Everyone wants, and I would want it too if someone were writing Arthur\u2019s biography, to read it and be able to correct mistakes.<\/p>\n

Q. Mistakes?<\/p>\n

A. Exactly. Nobody objects to changing a fact. But\u2026 what do you think offends people?<\/p>\n

Q. Not seeming honest?<\/p>\n

A. Sex and money. That is, French literature, Balzac.<\/p>\n

Q. Who you slept with?<\/p>\n

A. Who and on which side\u2026 You can\u2019t predict what will offend people, but you must know, when writing a biography, that people will surely be offended.<\/p>\n

Q. You wrote that Freud: The Mind of the Moralist was written by Sontag, not co-written with her then-husband, Philip Rieff…<\/p>\n

A. That\u2019s an example of something you can\u2019t predict will offend people. It wasn\u2019t a secret. Susan told anyone who would listen for 50 years. Her husband acknowledged her as a co-author at the end of his life.<\/p>\n

Q. Why didn\u2019t she set the record straight?<\/p>\n

A. Because when they divorced, he threatened to take away her son. She traded a book for her son. Lies always point to a deeper truth. And… people always lie.<\/p>\n

Q. What do you lie about?<\/p>\n

A. My grandmother used to say everyone lies about their age in the wrong way. She\u2019d add seven years. \u201cThat way I\u2019m much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q. Lispector lied about her age.<\/p>\n

A. She was brutally honest, but I think she tried to rewrite her mother\u2019s tragic story [who died when the writer was nine from syphilis contracted after being raped by Russian soldiers]. She wrote that it was easier to be a saint than a person. She was never wrong.<\/p>\n

Q. Wasn\u2019t Sontag ever wrong either?<\/p>\n

A. She made mistakes. But Sontag is always interesting. She never stops thinking. Studying her, you could watch a mind making its way through life.<\/p>\n

Q. Was she hard on people?<\/p>\n

A. She was very generous. But when people abused her \u2014 which happens, especially with success \u2014 she shut down. When you care deeply about people, as she did and I do, people disappoint you. And you disappoint them too.<\/p>\n

Q. What do you think she lied about?<\/p>\n

A. About her sexuality. Obviously. And when you lie about that\u2026<\/p>\n

Q. Was she bisexual?<\/p>\n

A. No. She was gay. When you lie about that, you not only deceive yourself; you\u2019re dishonest with your partners. Sontag moved through history, reflecting whatever was happening at each moment. She was an alpha lesbian, a powerful symbol. Behind her struggle were thousands of people. But for her it was a source of pain.<\/p>\n

\"\"Benjamin Moser, U.S. writer and historian, at his home in Les Eyzies, France.Markel Redondo<\/p>\n

Q. Why is it important to talk about her sexuality?<\/p>\n

A. Because many of the people who have shaped the way we think were gay. They have the perspective of outsiders. What makes you who you are is what you live through.<\/p>\n

Q. Did you have problems with your sexuality?<\/p>\n

A. The year I finished high school, 1994, I lived through the miracle of AIDS treatment<\/a>. I felt fortunate. I didn\u2019t have problems because for my family it wasn\u2019t a problem. And\u2026 I\u2019m tall: bullies don\u2019t pick on tall people.<\/p>\n

Q. What was Sontag\u2019s great contribution?<\/p>\n

A. She symbolized the counterculture. I\u2019d like people to read her. Studying her, I realized few have. Every sentence is an idea.<\/p>\n

Q. Why do we need art?<\/p>\n

A. It\u2019s what makes life bearable. Imagine a life without music, books, dance or theater\u2026 it\u2019s depressing. For some, art is frivolous, irrelevant. It can be frightening if you don\u2019t want to dig deeper.<\/p>\n

Q. Must art be original?<\/p>\n

A. That\u2019s how we think about it now. But it wasn\u2019t always the case. In the Renaissance, the ambition was to seem classical. Today young artists want to be original without knowing the origins, and originality doesn\u2019t come from ignorance. It would be like driving to the end of a marathon and considering yourself the winner.<\/p>\n

Q. In the 19th century, in the Netherlands, if a canvas was good, it was attributed to Rembrandt. Has that been corrected?<\/p>\n

A. In recent generations of art historians, there\u2019s a more democratic, inclusive air. But there\u2019s little interest in correcting some issues. Rembrandt has a very large oeuvre, about 600 paintings. We know there are hundreds he did paint. But around that certainty, there are gray areas.<\/p>\n

Q. He painted 80 self-portraits.<\/p>\n

A. Some of those are also questioned. He was very famous during his life. And people copied him. There\u2019s little appetite to clarify false attributions because selling a Rembrandt<\/a> fetches more money than selling a painting from the Rembrandt school.<\/p>\n

Q. You write: \u201cIn Rembrandt, evil is more important than darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n

A. It\u2019s like Shakespeare. You enter a museum and see portraits, martyrdoms and, suddenly, a criminal whose entrails a group of scientists is cutting out. You don\u2019t realize how strange it is that someone would paint that until you stop to think that no one else portrays so many dead people, murderers, rapists\u2026<\/p>\n

Q. Why do we like Rembrandt so much?<\/p>\n

A. For a reason similar to why we like Sontag: we don\u2019t fall in love with saints. Rembrandt holds all human possibilities, from saint to monster. He\u2019s like Goya. The Black Paintings<\/a> from his Quinta del Sordo [estate outside Madrid] \u2026 is that what you want surrounding you? There\u2019s someone willing to face his fears and emotions there.<\/p>\n

Q. When you look at a painting, what changes if you know too much or too little about it?<\/p>\n

A. If you know little, you can be fascinated. I recently traveled to Egypt. I knew one god had a cat\u2019s head. Little else. But the art was fabulous. There\u2019s something fascinating about discovering that you like something you don\u2019t understand. Knowledge can make enchantment disappear, but it\u2019s also what opens the door to depth.<\/p>\n

Q. When we look at a painting, do we see the artwork or the artist behind it?<\/p>\n

A. You think you\u2019re looking at scenes, styles and so on, but what you\u2019re really looking for is the person. Many scholars argue that a person\u2019s life and their work are two separate things. I believe the opposite: what we do is who we are. If you\u2019re not present in what you do, you won\u2019t get very far. When you fully commit yourself to your work, you do. And the people looking at it want to know who you are.<\/p>\n

Q. That\u2019s what The Upside-Down World is about. Even about talent turning against itself.<\/p>\n

A. When you\u2019re young, you\u2019re drawn to authors you try to imitate. That\u2019s dangerous. [British writer V.S.] Naipaul warns: you can\u2019t become who you are when you\u2019re so good you can be anyone. Many of the most talented fail to learn discipline. Or self-criticism.<\/p>\n

\"\"Benjamin Moser with his dog, Basso, from whom he is inseparable. Markel Redondo<\/p>\n

Q. Johannes Vermeer<\/a> had to live with his mother-in-law because he didn\u2019t have enough money.<\/p>\n

A. And Jan Steen had to open a tavern. And devote himself to painting comic scenes, which is the most serious thing there is. We see it in Shakespeare: nothing is harder than making people laugh because comedy, when well done, is profound. One characteristic of the best art is that it hides its difficulty. Think of dance. The lightness they achieve by defying gravity\u2026<\/p>\n

Q. Fabritius has a place in art history because of a goldfinch.<\/p>\n

A. How do you get people to talk about you 400 years later for painting a bird? That\u2019s charisma. It\u2019s like beauty. You can\u2019t buy it. You can pay for makeup, surgeries\u2026 but not beauty.<\/p>\n

Q. In your latest book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, you write about Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism. Is that your position as well?<\/p>\n

A. I grew up blind to it, like many people. Not only Jews: Americans grow up convinced that their country does good in the world. But they\u2019re not interested in the world. My partner, Arthur, is Dutch. In a small country, you learn your neighbors\u2019 language. That\u2019s seeing from another point of view. In North America, getting to know the other isn\u2019t part of the culture. Remaining ignorant is. Insecurity is a great gift. If you accept it, you can go far. If you hide it, you become arrogant. The same goes for ignorance. It\u2019s an opportunity. I didn\u2019t know anything about Dutch art\u2026<\/p>\n

Q. Have you questioned your American identity as well as your Zionism<\/a>?<\/p>\n

A. I\u2019m still American. I\u2019m no longer a Zionist.<\/p>\n

Q. Supporters of Zionism argue that giving up the State of Israel means having nowhere in the world to belong.<\/p>\n

A. Don\u2019t Jews in Spain have somewhere to live if they can afford a house? What about Jews in Paris? Are we talking about today or the 15th century? You can\u2019t make the victimhood of people who lived five centuries ago your own. Jews in France have full rights and are protected by the rule of law. They may be afraid, but so are Muslims, and Black people and immigrants. And women. No one has a monopoly on victimhood. Using victimhood as a path to power stems from Zionism because, without the Holocaust, Jews could not have claimed a homeland by presenting themselves as the greatest victims among victims. I think it\u2019s time to grow up. Many countries opposed Nazism. Who is opposing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu? Only [Spanish Prime Minister] Pedro S\u00e1nchez. What is the rest of this supposedly civilized world doing?<\/p>\n

Q. Osama bin Laden believed that only the United States had the power to destroy the United States.<\/p>\n

A. The same can be said of Israel. It\u2019s so obvious that it\u2019s hard to see. It\u2019s a principle of jiu-jitsu: letting your opponent use his own strength against himself<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benjamin Moser, 49, lives in a house near the caves of Lascaux that is quite literally lost in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16469],"tags":[244,96193,243,304,96192],"class_list":["post-214960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-clarice-lispector","tag-israel","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-susan-sontag"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117213183793863429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}