Christopher Hitchens, 1949 - 2011

Christopher Hitchens

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

Hedges was hard on Hitchens on Day 6 this morning. With good reason.

This is from the "later", unabridged Hitchens. Got anything pre-2007, Orwell, Jefferson, Paine, Rushdie? The free-speech bits?

THough Hitchens walked the talk far better than Jefferson ever did.

I'm not saying I always agreed with him; more often thatnot I didn't. And I think his analysis was clouded by his zeal.

But I do think Hitchens was less of a hypocrite. and I don't base that solely on a revisionist analysis of Jefferson never bothering to free his slaves, not even his lover.

Its was his writings and discussions on religion that gained him the most prominence. In many ways he was sort of like the Bob Rae of polemics.  You never know which way the shit is going to fly.

Was this posted earlier?

Christopher Hitchens at is evolutionary best on women:

From THE ONION:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fumbling-inarticulate-obituary-writer-s...

According to some Babblers a guy who did nothing but write opinion articles for magazines and newspapers is more guilty of crimes against humanity than an appointed living god who actually had the ability to order and did order crimes against humanity.

You can't even make fun of the idiocy in this way of thinking. It's too depressing.   Maybe if Hitchens forced people to read his stuff at gunpoint or something?  But how did he force people to agree with his opinion?

First post on babble, and already you're lying. Smarter trolls than you generally try to worm their way in first, then start spreading shit around.

Go write a Russian novel or something. You'll feel better fast.

No, D, Hitchens and thee are guilty of generalizing, and there is always the "oops" moment whan one realizes how the innocent pay the price. For him (and Blair), the half-million Iraquis civilians were the oops victims. Brilliant polemicist though he was, there really is no excusing that. Keeping in mind, the bloody-minded mullahs - not the ones who say that Allah was not bloody minded - are not one iota his moral superiors. I think that that is the sort non-generalized condemnation that so many hoped for from him. He simply sold out to a political perspective that was founded on oil, empire, and lack of concern for the butcher's bill. Pity.

Have no idea what your point is beyond the nihilist thingy, Sj. That quote from a few days back had to do with control of ideas/expression hereabouts...an attempt at humour, as it were...but I should know that that can be a dangerous direction.

Nihilism has to do with the declaration/argument, that there is no hope. And there is something wrong with that.Humanists don't need religion or a re-working of reasons for its rejection, beautifully as it was done.

It is funny.

Me dense(maybe that last highball).

And happy holidays, Sj.

David Corn, of Mother Jones (and formerly of The Nation), wrote the following commentary following the death of Hitchens: "Here is how I came to hate Christopher Hitchens...."

I'm happy to report that I never heard him speak, or read anything by him, and, now that he's safely dead, I rather think that trend will continue. Merry Christmas!

@ North Report

And then there's the arrogant know-it-all variety, of which Hitchens was one.

I don't think I'd call him dull.

Oh, I was much, much later, when Davies had been long gone and buried. I was there late 90s/early 2000s

question: "I expect the snottiness of '75 still infected the precincts in your time? " Which was some time after one of my sociology-profs-to-be staged a sit-in at the president's office (68?) Anyway, the debating club must have had shit-disturbing in mind? Anything to disturb the dust?

Often? Give one example. I personally think religion (all of it) is nonsense, and I think atheism exists. I define it as opposition to the God stuff, not as "absence of theism" or something.

So - please - one example of opposition to religion that uses this so-called "shield" that "atheism isn't anything at all", please.

On the contrary, I have seen defenders of religion who are so full of themselves that they define everything as a religion. Including atheism. And science. I will not cite any examples of such fools, however.

Nonsense. The word "fundamentalism" is just an insult, hurled around with abandon at one's enemies. Anyone whose brand of religion one doesn't like can be branded a "fundamentalist". It's sort of like calling anyone who uses violence, and whom you don't like, a "terrorist". The use of the term "fundamentalism" has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone interprets some text literally or not. It's about as informative as calling someone an "asshole".

I know religious people who are intensely moral and who connect that with their faith. However, if a religious person says "I believe the Bible is the revealed word of God", they had better add: "Ummm, except for the bullshit that people who disrespect their parents shall be put to death", and so on - otherwise, they must not be heard to whine about not taking it literally. Either they abjure the shitty bits, or they wear them.

There are very few moral aspects of the bible (at least the Old Testament - the New one does have a fair volume of touchy feely platitudes).

Suggesting today, and at long last [unlike in past times when Christianity in the western context was the code by which nearly everyone was expected to configure their entire lives around, under pain of death in countless instances, or later as more refined methods were introduced, social ostracization being only one price for sceptical disobedience] that it would be better for all of us if such absurdities were 'hidden from sight...'practice if private as you wish'....but remove all influence from our public offices,' and having the suggestion described as a shield; only outlines the extent of our problem by making everything appear nearly as eternal to what they've been proposing all along.

To find a device of the Christian Right employed where you'd least expect, and to recognize the same technique applied against every progressive struggle...everything has a fundamental quality to it nowadays.  It's quite striking in it's simplicity and effectiveness.

It's not necessarily a case of abjuring the shitty bits or wearing them. There is also realizing that it was a 2000-plus year old law book, so of course, it is going to have many things in it which have developed since then. But the fact remains that it is a foundation on which much of what we now accept was built.

And of course, a lot of it is just as relevent today as it was then.

Actually no, SJ. It's not about everyone having to wear the shitty bits, unless you are of the same opinion as Richard Dawkins, who thinks that even progressive believers are to blame. 

There was a bit more going on in the 1300s (the end of the dark age, actually) than the ascendance of the church of Rome. There were also the Cathars, who had a completely different conception of Christianity - so different and threatening that there was a centuries-long crusade devoted to wiping them out.

And of course there were the eastern churches, some of  which had nothing to do with European, or any other kind of imperialism, as well as the Irish church before it was taken over by Rome.

And while some of the faiths that came out of the protestant reformation were as oppressive as what they opposed, there were also anbaptists and other faiths who wanted nothing to do with earthly  power.

It's not that I don't think we all have to bear the responsibility of the things our culture has done. But it is a bit different to have people who had nothing to do with it, and others who struggled and died to resist oppression tarred with the same brush as their murderers.

And I haven't even mentioned the many other faiths that were involved in the history of those times.

@ Dave W

Point taken, and I agree he was very interesting, committed, and good at what he did in many ways.

One of my most striking memories of him is on his interview with Jian Ghomeshi a few years back, The last question was what his greatest joy was.

He replied that it was to win arguments against people and make them wish they had not challenged him.

Goes to show that most of us have two sides.

And I don't think it's a real Hitchens-style rumble until someone starts yelling shame on you.

Gaian, that's a really interesting bit you wrote about Robertson Davies!  Were you, by any chance, the young reporter?  Or were you at the table?

I used to love Davies' books in my late teens and early 20's.  I re-read them all many times.  I haven't read them in a long time, though.  I don't know if I would enjoy them in the same way I did then - maybe I should read them again sometime and find out.  I think I was more easily able to put my feminism on the shelf then during story time, and I was pretty ignorant about any but the most blatant types of racism then, and probably classism too.  And my politics weren't overly-well defined then either, although I'd say they were vaguely progressive-leaning.  I could probably forgive it, though, because his writing is so good, and so funny in places.  His satirical bits are incredible!

But then, I still love L.M. Montgomery's books, despite that they were often infected with colonialist racism and certainly classism, although there was a certain amount of first-wave privileged feminist leanings in it, certainly without being called that in any way.  Somehow it's easier to overlook that sort of thing in a turn of the century author, though, than it is in an over-privileged, snobby, mid-to-late 20th century Toronto-based author.

Anyhow, this is totally off topic.  Sorry folks.  Just really enjoyed that anecdote!

I see bits of the mainstream admiring tributes for Hitchens, the greatest propagandist for neoconservative imperialism and slaughter, have seeped onto Babble.

I'm sure someone could also come up with mitigating tributes for that other master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels: "he was intelligent, literate, had an advance education in dramatic literature, was pleasant to those he agreed with....", blah, blah.
The fact remains that both men's main employ were as facilitators for murderous imperialism and fomenters of deadly prejudice and slaughter. Those facts override any "positive" attributes either men had.

Far from merely a "writer of articles" Hitchens' main output (in his last ten lucrative years or so) was primarily focused on furthering imperial aggression; his main venues were the electronic media and his weekly articles in Slate and elsewhere--(even his "new atheist" writngs of his later years were skewed as a handy vehicle for his "war of civilizations" propaganda).

But his role did not end with propagandizing to the masses, he boasted of being instrumental in convincing Bush to invade Iraq, by way a series of meetings at the White House along with his friend and closest neoconsevative ideologue, Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz, main architect of the invasion.

Obviously, this is not a "balanced" assessment of Hitch. If someone can explain how to balance his good qualities with his work for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions --all based on a calculated web of lies--I'm waiting.

Hitchens' methods were not "flawed". He was a master propagandist who boasted of his skills at "logic chopping".

Saying his methods were "flawed" is like (and actually directly related to) the many apologists for the calculated deception of the Iraq war who claimed it was a "mistake" caused by faulty intelligence.

Hitchens, of course, never would claim it was a mistake, or repudiate any of his proven deceptions--both for him were successes.

Contrary to your statement, Hitchens was conscious of, and clearly was enthralled by, Wolfowitz's deception and supposed theoretical justification for it (Strauss).

He even defended "war for oil" at one point. 

The evidence for these statements are in his own words, readily availlable.

Perhaps, then, you should refrain from allowing your offence at the violation of some stupid internet meme to overcome your offence at Hitchens's shilling for imperialist wars.

Probably because, unlike your other examples, it's a reference that's easily understood by almost anyone with a high school education - or even access to a television.

Well, I think he took his particular brand of socialism far too seriously. He drank of the finest spirits on the principle that nothing was ever too good for the working stiff. His loathing of totalitarian systems was so intense that he often demonstrated a willingness to personally bear any burden, including in the case of Iraq and elsewhere, the white man's universal burden, so long as it meant setting everything straight as he determined it bloody well should be.  I also think the affinity he displayed with respect to the foreign policy decisions of GWB and Co. stemmed directly from external threats to his craft and livelihood in particular, which in his case couldn't be separated from free expression. With American style Capitalism at least, certain status figures can still say whatever they like. Aside from that, and the thousands of subsequent victims in the regions where he and Bush shared an interest in sorting things out, little else seemed to have stood out as a commonality between them.

@ Freedom 55

To call something a meme is to dismiss it as meaningless. It implies that it is just a conditioned act with no real thought behind it. 

I don't really care if Godwin uses the term or not, but as for how appropriate it is for him to use it in reference to the over-use of  Nazi analogies, I could hardly make the case better than he does in that article. 

I think you're missing the point of what it means to throw one's lot in as a journalist and public figure.  We can call Thomas Jefferson out as a slave owning product of his time, while saying that the separation of church and state was a nifty idea.  Similarly with Hitchens, we can say that in the accounting of the record he left behind, it was made out as obvious that he succumbed to and revealed a host of demons ranging from imperialistic tendencies to blatant misogyny, but that he nevertheless rendered a service on behalf of the struggle against religious oppression.

@ Freedom 55

I think the aspect I am pointing at is right in that definition - imitation. 

Portraying my comment as a "stupid internet meme"  is to say that my response was unthinking, invalid, and not worth paying attention to. And you recognize that yourself.

 (though according to that definition, an "internet meme" is actually something else)

In fact I pointed out a number of reasons why comparing Hitchens to Josef Goebbels is inaccurate and out of scale - fair comment. 

And why I mentioned Godwin? Because in many cases (as in this one) people don't use Nazi amalogies because of their accuracy, or because Goebbels is more well-know than William F. Buckley. They use them as an "absolute evil" argument that distracts from anything else that was being said. 

After all, if you want a showstopper, how are we supposed to say anything good about someone who is just like Joseph Goebbels?

But speaking of distractions, we should probably agree to disagree on this and get back to Christopher Hitchens (at least until next time someone does it again).

No, I know he wrote what was under his name. I was refering to the headline, which he probably wrote as well, though that is often written later to fit the space.

My question though is how you can accuse him of deception when he is in fact pointing out the motives of others, and explanations they might use. After all, what does invocation of Machiavelli mean? It is not an entirely flattering image.

The fact he might share opinions with some of these people is not relevant. Nor is the fact you and I might disagree with him.

The question is how his revelations can be interpreted as secrecy.

Did I say that? 

I brought it up to make a point, which included other arguments.

But clearly we disagree. Can we refrain from calling each other stupid and move on? 

In Political Science circles, in general, Machiavelli does not automatically conjure the usual untutored negative public response to the name--for Strauss, he is a central modernist figure for statecraft.

The nature of Hitch's equivocation rhetoric in this case is to leave to the question ambiguous (typically Straussian):
Many (who are unaware of the  centrality of Machiavelli to Strauss's neocon followers) are more likely to associate Machiavelli negatively with the vilified Sadaam--also a good polemical result for Hitch.  For those "in the know"--a different association.

Seymour Hersh's later article in the New Yorker is a good place to start for the various connections of the Bush II administration  to the latter day, power-connected, would-be Straussians:

@ Contrarianna #73

Well perhaps, he is an admored figure in political circles, but I think Slate magazine (like most media) is geared to a much more general audience, and seeing as his name was used only as a reference, I think it was meant more to get the sort of reaction you'd expect if you asked someone on the street what "Machiavellian" means. 

And again, one can hardly be selling into the deception if he is laying it out on the table for you.

No, I did. 

But perhaps I truly am dim, because the gist of the article, as I read it, was that Hitchens argues Saddam was finished (that is to say, he was incapable of any move, Machiavellian or otherwise) .

On the other hand, intervention was the very essence of Machiavellian realpolitik - "making virtue of necessity".

Instead of simply stating that one thinks an analogy is over the top - which would be readily understood by more people, rather than just those who are cool enough to be in the know - 'Godwin's Law is invoked as a trump card to suggest that according to the sacred laws of the internetz somebody has 'lost' the debate. Sometimes analogies, like the one in this thread, are appropriate. I called the meme stupid, but sorry if you mistook that to mean you.

Freedom 55, I never said nor did I imply that anyone lost the discussion. The law actually has meaning, and that is not the essence of it, even though some use it as a parlour game.

And on the "stupid" comment, fair enough, though it actually refers to "holding up".

Please, for the third time, can we agree to disagree and get off this?

(edit)

@ M. Spector

Read his article and tell me again how trite his motivation was. Or better still, just read it again, and don't.

There's no such thing you know.

Yes, there is.

Hitchens believed that the religious were his foes, He was so staunch in this belief that he allowed himself to be used as a cats paw, by a monsterous, cerebrally constrained evangelical Christian during the lead up to a war that Hitch thought was a battle against religious faschism.  Osama bin Laden had the same sort of absolute certainty that Hitchens did.  Christipher Hitchens was a fundamentalist, a fanatic.      He's about the only one of the popular athiests (Dawkins, Harris et al) who deserves that label.  The others are intollerent and annoying, but none of them, as far as I'm aware, has supported a colonialist oil war on the grounds that it was needed to halt the advance of the believing infedels. 

I think Harris could be fitted out as well while your at it.  Not sure about Dennett.  Dawkins likes to put the sedate Church of England at the milder end of the fundamentalist spectrum...essentially harmless.  He avoids relating to it as part of the foundation for so much in that respect.

Don't have the quote on hand, but Dawkins has said that all believers are responsible for the damage done by religion, because even the reform ones promote belief in a god, which he feels is universally negative. 

In that respect, I think Dawkins is more of a hard-liner.

I don't have Dawkins's quote either. But my own view is that "moderate" religious faith is harmful not only to the moderate believer himself (in that it disposes the mind to accept things as true in the absence of any evidence) but also to others (in that it promotes public acceptance that it is reasonable and legitimate - even virtuous - to believe in supernatural entities and processes beyond our control). In other words, it confers a kind of social respectability on the same kinds of irrationality and superstition that lie at the core of religious extremism. 

I agree. Hitchens is reasonable and moderate, and very knowlegeable about religion. His portrayal in the media as a fanatic who is ignorant of religion doesn't hold up if you actually read his books.

I think Harris could be fitted out as well while your at it.  Not sure about Dennett.  Dawkins likes to put the sedate Church of England at the milder end of the fundamentalist spectrum...essentially harmless.  He avoids relating to it as part of the foundation for so much in that respect.

 Why does RD go easy on the anglicans?

I suggest to everybody that you actually read something by Hitchens rather than basing your opinions on secondary sources that cherry-pick passages out of context to massage the particular agenda of the reviewer. You will find that Hitchens is harshly critical of all religions.

Hitchens draws the most ire of the atheist writers because his arguments against religion are the most damaging, based as they were on knowlege rather than ignorance. Besides the selective quotations, many religious writers seek to discredit him by suggesting that he misunderstands Scripture, an argument that falls apart when you consider that the entire basis of this assertion is his lack of belief.

If the inability to be convinced by an irrational belief system means that we don't really understand it, then there can be no discrediting of anything, however ridiculous, and we are open to being duped by any bipedal charlatan that shambles into the public sphere.

It's not all that difficult for a westerner to imagine something far worse than what one is used to. 

I think before too long we'll have the twisted religious creeps and apologists using the example of Hitchens to relate atheism to neo-conservatism.  They're already referring to non-belief as fundamentalism.  There doesn't appear to be any depth to which they wouldn't lower themselves in order to protect the concept of their imaginary sky friends from questioning.

Do we believe that God told Dubya to invade Iraq?

Personally, I really don't believe that any supernatural deity spoke to Dubya or any of the rest of them, and therefore I can only generalize certain accepted truths in forming a conclusion of neocons:

1. Dubya and neocons in general are batshit insane, or

2. Dubya and neocons like him are highly intelligent madmen who believe in nothing but their own personal fortunes.

I think number 2 is true. I think they believe in nothing but themselves and imperialism. 

The vicious empire of today has similarities with that of ancient Rome. Roman leaders could introduce cult to any number of Roman deities as long as not deviating greatly from tradition of the ancestors. There were marble busts and statues of the gods all around Rome, and Romans were encouraged to pay respect to the gods. But Roman elites themselves were said to merely pay lip service to them. The elites themselves were probably not true believers. They believed that they themselves were annointed and making their own way as masters of the world.

I'd like to see this HorseWoman dropped in on that coversation about "people" with religious beliefs in general. 

ETA: Apparently even Hitchens realized that bin Laden and Qa'eda were kept safe by the same corrupt Pakistani elite allied with the west for so long. Good for Hitchens. He was pretty much on the ball about that.

Yes, Hades and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans. They took control over the cosmos and ruled the sea, the underworld and the first heaven. Gaia's earth was their domain from then on.

Hitchens on Moore's Farenheit 9/11

It's one large apology for the right. Yes, Christopher, they were in bed together, and there surely was penetration. Who was paying you to be so naive, Chris?

Perpetual wars are more continuous and enduring and far more profitable than Christopher Hitchens may have realized.

Isn't there some kind of Godwin-type "rule" about how every thread on the topic of religion versus atheism eventually has someone presenting Albert Einstein as the poster boy for moderate religious belief? It certainly seems to happen on babble every time.

In those instances you had one fiction superseding another, where such events usually corresponded with the transition of empires and forms of rule. Such transitions typically involved the imposition, gradual or otherwise, in whole or partly mixed as with Christianity and European Paganism, of the ruling/dominant classes' form of worship; which incidentally in nearly every case served as the basis for science, philosophy and law.  If anti-theism could be suspected of wanting to impose anything, it would be evidentiary based reason and peer reviewed sciences...and eventually...perhaps governments that took such things into account in their deliberations.  It's a flawed comparison, to be polite about it.

Closing for length.