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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:53 am Post subject: Christopher Hitchens is dead |
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Christopher Hitchens, the author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes on the left and right and wrote the provocative best-seller "God is Not Great," died Thursday night after a long battle with cancer. He was 62.
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What can you say. He was certainly one of the defining public intellectuals of our time, especially in the last 10 years. Many of us, myself included, found it hard, if not outright impossible, to forgive his post-911 cheerleading for neo-con military interventionism, but that's the stand he took and he never wavered. After a while, it seemed as if there wasn't a conflict on the globe that he didn't think would benefit from American/NATO/western bombing.
I should say that his writing, on whatever topic, always had a moral sincerity about it that I wouldn't credit to all writers. There was never much doubt that he truly believed that he was championing causes to make the world a more just and equitable place. Probably this was rooted in his orgins as a left-wing idealist.
One thing that struck me about his later pro-war writings, though, was how much they seemed to veer into deliberate wartime propaganda, as if he were actually studying propaganda efforts from earlier wars and incorporating their motifs into his own work. I thought there might be a connection between this and his research into George Orwell, another idealist who took to writing propaganda for pay towards the end of his life.
I never found Hitchens' writing about religion all that convincing on a theological level. I did appreciate his defense of tolerance and secularism in the political realm, but I suspect his deep-seated hostility to religion played some role in making him susceptible to secularist arguments in favour of the post-911 wars. Ironically, the result of all these wars has not exactly been a boon for the forces of tolerance and moderation in the Middle East.
Anyway, RIP.
link
Last edited by On the other hand on Fri Dec 16, 2011 9:38 am; edited 1 time in total |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 8:59 am Post subject: |
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| Not unexpected but still shocked. One of the more interesting intellectuals of our time. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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I was strongly influenced by Hitch circa 2008, but have long since abandoned his brand of authoritarian secularism and moral absolutes. Nothing could be more foolhardy than to venerate democracy and liberalism.
But still, I'll really miss him.
I also think it's an error to view Hitch as 'no longer a leftist'. To qualify as a leftist, must one be a pacifist and hold that we must leave the crummy regimes of the world be? A moral crusader who holds that we must violently impose democracy and liberalism is a radical, certainly, but still remaining in the broad church of the left. Remember that at no point does Hitch ever wish to impose the market economy. Nor, even, does the market economy have any place in his ethics. As far as I know, Hitch was weak on economics and, to the extent that he took any position at all on capitalism, would be very much in favor of interventionist and redistrubutive government if pressed to give an answer on the topic. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Nor, even, does the market economy have any place in his ethics. As far as I know, Hitch was weak on economics and, to the extent that he took any position at all on capitalism, would be very much in favor of interventionist and redistrubutive government if pressed to give an answer on the topic. |
Hitchens on capitalism...
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REASON: You�ve called yourself a socialist living in a time when capitalism is more revolutionary.
Hitchens: I said this quite recently. I�m glad you noticed it. Most of the readers of The Nation seemed not to have noticed it. That was the first time I�d decided it was time I shared my hand. I forget whether I said I was an ex-socialist, or recovering Marxist, or whatever, but that would have been provisional or stylistic. The thing I�ve often tried to point out to people from the early days of the Thatcher revolution in Britain was that the political consensus had been broken, and from the right. The revolutionary, radical forces in British life were being led by the conservatives. That was something that almost nobody, with the very slight exception of myself, had foreseen.
I�d realized in 1979, the year she won, that though I was a member of the Labour Party, I wasn�t going to vote for it. I couldn�t bring myself to vote conservative. That�s purely visceral. It was nothing to do with my mind, really. I just couldn�t physically do it. I�ll never get over that, but that�s my private problem.
But I did realize that by subtracting my vote from the Labour Party, I was effectively voting for Thatcher to win. That�s how I discovered that that�s what I secretly hoped would happen. And I�m very glad I did. I wouldn�t have been able to say the same about Reagan, I must say. But I don�t think he had her intellectual or moral courage. This would be a very long discussion. You wouldn�t conceivably be able to get it into a REASON interview.
Marx�s original insight about capitalism was that it was the most revolutionary and creative force ever to appear in human history. And though it brought with it enormous attendant dangers, [the revolutionary nature] was the first thing to recognize about it. That is actually what the Manifesto is all about. As far as I know, no better summary of the beauty of capital has ever been written. You sort of know it�s true, and yet it can�t be, because it doesn�t compute in the way we�re taught to think. Any more than it computes, for example, that Marx and Engels thought that America was the great country of freedom and revolution and Russia was the great country of tyranny and backwardness.
But that�s exactly what they did think, and you can still astonish people at dinner parties by saying that. To me it�s as true as knowing my own middle name. Imagine what it is to live in a culture where people�s first instinct when you say it is to laugh. Or to look bewildered. But that�s the nearest I�ve come to stating not just what I believe, but everything I ever have believed, all in one girth.
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Reason magazine |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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One slight point contra Hitchens...
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The revolutionary, radical forces in British life were being led by the conservatives. That was something that almost nobody, with the very slight exception of myself, had foreseen.
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I know what he means by "conservatives" here, people identified with the right. But the Thatcherites were more accurately described as liberals, in the 19th Century sense of the word. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2011 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_figure_deaths/
| Glenn Greenwald wrote: |
When someone dies who is a public figure by virtue of their political acts � like Ronald Reagan � discussions of them upon death will be inherently politicized. How they are remembered is not strictly a matter of the sensitivities of their loved ones, but has substantial impact on the culture which discusses their lives. To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems � enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts � is not a matter of politeness; it�s deceitful and propagandistic. To exploit the sentiments of sympathy produced by death to enshrine a political figure as Great and Noble is to sanction, or at best minimize, their sins. Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble.
All of this was triggered for me by the death this week of Christopher Hitchens and the remarkably undiluted, intense praise lavished on him by media discussions. Part of this is explained by the fact that Hitchens � like other long-time media figures, such as Tim Russert � had personal interactions with huge numbers of media figures who are shaping how he is remembered in death. That�s understandable: it�s difficult for any human being to ignore personal feelings, and it�s even more difficult in the face of the tragic death of a vibrant person at a much younger age than is normal.
But for the public at large, at least those who knew of him, Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views � not ancillary to his writing but central to them � that were nothing short of repellent. |
But Greenwald lauds Hitchens'
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| brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism |
which is as much propaganda as anything else that has been written about Hitchens of late. I agree with Glenn when he labels Hitchens a narcissist. |
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