Christopher Hitchens 1949 - 2011

[Nick Armstrong]

The smoking and drinking and endlessly-bracing contrarian has succumbed to cancer. Very sad. We need more like him.

[Mr Pee]

The smoking and drinking and endlessly-bracing contrarian has succumbed to cancer. Very sad. We need more like him.

Couldn't agree more.

[amateur51]

Truly the end of an era.

His brother will be lost without Big C to lock horns with - who knows maybe he'll allow himself to drift back to his natural leftiness and become the next great polemicist

Until then - here's a glass in gratitude Christopher Hitchen!

[Lateralthinking1]

I am sorry to hear this news. There are only two kinds of political animal of worth. One is solid, effective, wholly genuine in belief, a team player - eg Clem Attlee. The other is the difficult, genuinely independent thinker, whose only team is what we might call the awkward squad. Christopher was firmly among the latter.

I always found him wonderfully thought provoking, challenging and entertaining. He could also be horribly abrasive but that, I think, is a part of that territory. Such character can often expose the dodgy far more effectively than teams of mediocre journalists, stuffy committees and overfed lawyers.

I probably disagreed with him more than I agreed with him. Of more significance to me were his breadth of knowledge and depth of conviction. More than anyone else, he with his brother asked us in their conflict to really question what is meant by the left and the right. That really matters.

One of the biggest sins in the modern age - in any era - is complacency. He will be missed by anyone who liked that to be shaken. We can sometimes underestimate the spirit that requires and also the tests and trials.

His early departure is not a surprise. His personal behaviour was in many ways symbolic of what he took upon himself. It is sad but fitting that he was educational in that way even to the end, not that is how he should be remembered.

[Nick Armstrong]

Great to see agreement here! You've put your finger on it, Lat - I'm with every word you say

[amateur51]

Beautifully put Lat - a classic piece of writing imo

[eighthobstruction]

I used to enjoy listening to him....his ability to make links between seemingly disperate contemporary pieces of current affairs/and culture....+popculture, was superb....As with Lat, he was annoying in that his wish to say something clever sometimes meant he avoided 'fleshing out' the nub of the issue he talked about....

Sad Loss....will not be replaced....

[Nick Armstrong]

Here's one from CH for my friend Monsieur Vinteuil:

"Cheap booze is a false economy"

[Pilchardman]

Unlike his nominally more rightwing brother, Christopher Hitchins vocally supported the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which caused the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Few writers have done so much harm in this world as Christopher Hitchins. He bravely spoke out in favour of war and neo-con strategy at a time when only the mainstream media was doing so.

Hitchens was an important propaganda face for the war on terror, especially useful in getting Labour people to support Blair's war. (His book on Cyprus notes that the Turkish intervention succeeded in toppling the Greek coup, but then went on to cause mass ethnic cleansing worse than the previous Greek pogroms. He could have known, if he'd wanted to, that the same could be predicted of intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan).

By supporting the war on terror, he secured his place as the pet contrarian of choice in the US middle-brow media, which kept him in wine and whisky. He was, furthermore, a better speaker than a writer; I suspect a lot of the people praising his writing style are thinking more of the debates and talks. However, I’m not sure that that I want to praise the eloquence of a warmonger's cheerleader.

[amateur51]

By supporting the war on terror, he secured his place as the pet contrarian of choice in the US middle-brow media, which kept him in wine and whisky. He was, furthermore, a better speaker than a writer; I suspect a lot of the people praising his writing style are thinking more of the debates and talks. However, I’m not sure that that I want to praise the eloquence of a warmonger's cheerleader.

You choose a small part of his output and then very selectively. I'm sure that you didn't mean to imply that Hitchens wrote as he did because ' ...[it] kept him in wine and whisky'.

You are entitled to your views, of course, and I would defend your right to express them

As I'm sure would the very recently-late Christopher Hitchens

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

“[O]wners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god.

"Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.”

Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-sto...#ixzz1gib5QJll

an interesting life .....

[Pilchardman]

You choose a small part of his output and then very selectively.

I chose to highlight the harm he did.

[Mr Pee]

I chose to highlight the harm he did.

You chose to highlight the harm you think he did. He was not a politician, he did not sign any orders sending anybody to war. If you somehow wish to claim that simply by expressing an opinion he somehow facilitated the war, then I think you are mistaken.

He was entitled to that opinion, however strongly you may disagree with it.

[Pilchardman]

He was entitled to that opinion, however strongly you may disagree with it.

Why would you imagine I think otherwise? Of course he was. He was entitled the be a pseudo left poseur, who, when push came to shove, turned out to be an enthusiast for neo con warmongering, and who was instrumental in winning over Labourites to a pro war stance, thus facilitating Blair.

[Lateralthinking1]

As I suggested earlier, I defend the individuality and depth of his thinking. His ever developing philosophy was, by definition, impossible to fully endorse. However, it did at least emerge from theory rather than managerial pragmatism. There was something into which you could get your teeth unlike the kind of nonsense we hear about Localism and the Big Society. Being contentious, he was able to take thinking off at different angles. I thought he could be great in opposing dominance. He was rather fanatical for me in his stances against religion. The main thing is that there was thought there and political construct.

“The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represent all the most reactionary elements on earth. ... However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this.”

This quote of his on 9/11 understated some of the more authoritarian American ways. The potential for totalitarianism emerging from modern banking methods wasn't often mentioned. Nevertheless it helps to contextualize how he felt about the wars you mention. It is hardly a ringing endorsement of Dubya and followed on from a serious critique of both Reagan and Bush Snr.

"I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian - on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes."

So, while he supported the neocons' wars, he was never in sync with all that they espoused. Their Christianity for example. Of that there is no doubt. He just felt that Islamic fundamentalists were a greater threat to liberty. They were bigger "thugs" - his word - than American thugs - what they did to women, minorities, the law abiding. It would be hard to argue against that point.

As with many intellectuals, there were huge contradictions. He left for America believing in the dream and wishing to oppose it. Islamic expectancy of subservience in women was opposed. At the same time, he had concerns about married women being employed. Religion was despised but there was a little pro-Jewish sentiment, albeit not that which would support Israel as a realistic answer. And in his early Bolshevik tendency, there was a refusal to condemn devastating impacts on individuals' lives. Some say that never left him, for all of the appearances to the contrary. He himself saw the neocons as ex-leftists. Arguably while they saw conclusions arising from their achieved objectives, he saw those as a stepping stone to something more egalitarian.

While we can agree here and disagree there, while some might say that it was all so terribly disjointed, there was also, I think, a greater coherence to it than one would ever get with a pragmatic type. If you try to build a house, people can criticise all aspects of the building. Those who build nothing just escape the sharper end of criticism. I would see the former as more worthwhile.