The tyranny of guilt : an essay on Western masochism / Pascal Bruckner ; translated from the French by Steven Rendall.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Guilt peddlers -- The irremediable and despondency -- The ideology that stammers -- The self-flagellants of the Western world -- A thirst for punishment -- The pathologies of debt -- Placing the enemy in one's heart -- The vanities of self-hatred -- One-way repentance -- The false quarrel over Islamophobia -- Innocence recovered -- How central is the Near East? -- "Zionism, the criminal DNA of humanity" -- Unmasking the usurper -- A delicate arbitrage -- America doubly damned -- The fanaticism of modesty -- A tardy conversion to virtue -- The empire of emptiness -- The pacification of the past -- The guilty imagination -- Recovering self-esteem -- The twofold lesson -- The second Golgotha -- Misinterpretations of Auschwitz -- Hitlerizing history -- The twofold colonial nostalgia -- Listen to my suffering -- On victimization as a career -- Protect minorities or emancipate the individual? -- What duty of memory? -- Depression in paradise : France, a symptom and caricature of Europe -- A universal victim? -- The wild ass's skin -- Who are the reactionaries? -- The triumph of fear -- Metamorphosis or decline? -- Doubt and faith : the quarrel between Europe and the United States -- To be or to have -- The troublemakers in history -- The archaism of the soldier -- The swaggering Colossus.