Hitchens infuriated me, he made me laugh, he made me think. Often, all in the same article. I have on many occasions angrily hit the backbutton on Vanity Fair or other opinion pieces, thinking I was totally done with Hitchens and his opinions this time…but I almost always went back later and finished reading them. His book on Orwell was just amazing, quite apart from what anybody may think of his personal opinions.
I was meant to see him at the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne this year (with Dawkins, Dennett and Harris), although many of us going were sure he wouldn’t make it. I’m sad we were right. He was until a few months ago still assuring the organisers he would make it.
I was listening to Sam Adams on the radio this morning, who has interviewed him dozens of times over the years and was his friend, and even he said that Hitchens was often exasperating and difficult to deal with. But he said that even when drunk, which was usually, he could write like an angel. (And he then, of course, laughed at the analogy.)
I’m co-incidentally reading his autobiography right now, and he was a fascinatingly complex guy.
His brother Peter’s eulogy, linked upthread, is worth a read.
When I first realized I was an atheist, I read everything I could get my hands on for many years. Hitchens was important to me during that time of discovery.
Nope. It wasn’t a pitting; it was directly related to his participation in this thread, and to my reasons for engaging him in the way that i did. I didn’t insult him, and broke no rules.
I realize that, which is why I didn’t give you a warning.
I’m trying to keep this thread on track, with the understanding that the track is an evaluation of the man and his work, rather than a debate about the content of his arguments about atheism/religion, which, though important, are not the entirety of his oeuvre. Thus it seems to me that there are advantages to leaving this in Cafe Society rather than GD. I’m not invested in that decision, though, so if y’all would prefer that this go to GD I’d be happy to move it.
While it’s here, though, please treat it as a CS thread.
Its unfortunate that a man of such intelligence and ability has left us so prematurely.
Speaking of some of his later neocon political views I wonder if they evolved naturally from his sympathy for Trotsky-both in their own way want to spread what they believe to be freedom and democracy around the world.
He addressed this from time to time and said the constant point was his opposition to totalitarianism and fascism and his support for human freedom. I don’t think he would have approved of being called a neocon but he’d probably heard that before. He also condemned rising religious influence in Iraq.
And yet never really acknowledged that the rise of “Islamofascism” in that country has been, in considerable measure, a result of America’s ill-advised and dishonestly-justified invasion.
You have to give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is with regard to waterboarding - even if certain mealy-mouthed vermin did not. And even at the times I disagreed with him, I’ve only heard him fail to give his opponents the benefit of the doubt rather than doing anything I would consider dishonest.
You don’t think Saddam suppressed Islamicists? You don’t think there were Jews and Christians living in Iraq and worshipping there? Universal education for the sexes? Even exhibitions of nudes in Baghdad?
Who removed the oppressive regime that kept these things from being outlawed?
Saddam was an utter bastard, but the Ba’athist regime was anything but Islamicist, despite the lip-service Hussein gave them towards the latter part of his regime.
Qin you are so blinded by your ideology as to resemble those you profess to despise. It’s quite depressing.
It seems to me he was aware of that, but I don’t know if he ever drew a direct link or how much it changed his views. As it is, it seems like his primary reason for supporting the invasion was that Saddam was terrible, and that’s true. That doesn’t imply that he thinks the post-war effort was well-handled.
What exactly are you rolling your eyes at? This isn’t even arguable. Iraq isn’t an Islamic theocracy like Iran, but there is certainly a much stronger Islamic influence than there was in the past. To some extent it’s trading one set of brutal thugs for another, but it’s also a change that could be very harmful to the women of Iraq. That’s not something you can ignore or make disappear with an overload of the rolleyes smiley.
After some discussion with the other Cafe Society mods, I’m moving this thread to Great Debates because it’s primarily become a discussion of politics and religion (relating to Hitchens’ views on those subjects).
On consideration, however, to me the invasion of Iraq was just a few years ago and feels like yesterday, but to Qin it was half his entire lifetime ago. He’d have been roughly six or seven at the time. Thus while to an adult the incontrovertible natures of pre- and postwar Iraq is evident, to a child in the grip of an ideologue (either external or self-created), it would be quite easy to propagandise them to the point where they really don’t know the truth. Quite scary really.
As one of the commenters notes, stating that “None of them [the audience members] is smarter than the President” is tough to reconcile with his own statement that Bush is “unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated,” and so on.
He also brutally murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens especially Kurds and Shias. And I don’t see people saying the same thing about Mubarak who was far less bloodier.
That is true.
Incidentally since this is the Hitchens thread, where are the charges that he was a Holocaust denier coming from considering he’s Jewish himself?
He wasn’t one himself but has said that it must be allowed on the basis of free speech. (starts around the 4 min mark) He’s also spoken out in support of David Irving.
Actually it is true. In post 70 you linked to an artice, by Hitchens, calling Mother Teresa “fraudulent” in the title. So how on earth can you say that “it’s not true”? As for Hitchens accusing Mother Teresa of stealing money, that’s also true. Obviously you have good reasons for wanting to be in denial about Hitchens saying such horrible things about Mother Teresa as well as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and virtually every other prominent person who stood up for peace and freedom in living memory. Unfortunately for you, Hitchens put his words in print or said them on video, so your denial won’t accomplish much.
The article you linked to is full of Catholic-bashing, and falsely accusing someone of serious crimes is akin to saying we should hate them.
As I’ll be traveling for the next few days and don’t have time to continue arguing this, I’ll link to this piece by Gleen Geenwald:
It expresses my thoughts perfectly. Hitchens glorified the mass murder of innocent people over and over, first in communist countries, later in the Middle East.