Christopher Hitchens: the life of a contrarian
Christopher Hitchens until December 15 was undergoing treatment for stage IV oesophageal cancer – and on this he always reminded his audience “there is no stage V”. Although if there is a stage V then this was it.
For those interested in the life of the Hitch, there are few stories left untold – his being beaten up by theocratic thugs in Beirut, the waterboarding, his long time spat with his brother have been laboured over and over. His drinking sessions including one which saw him hospitalised after a game of bare hand tumbler crushing with lifelong friend Martin Amis, his schoolboy bisexuality and his love of his Mother are less known, but they make for interesting reading, and prove that beyond his own output – which seldom failed to deliver – the life of the Hitch is itself something rather literary.
The most tiresome conversation that has been had, in what we now know were Hitchens’ last days, were the ones concerning his faith – or indeed lack of. Recently Mark Judge at The Daily Caller fantasised that since Hitch had publically rejected the Nietzschean aphorism, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” that his previous embrace of being fully conscious throughout death, so as to challenge it, was on the wane, so a deathbed conversion was imminent.
Little did Judge know that only a week later Hitchens would die – without said predicted conversion. And thank God!
On the subject of conversion, and the possibility of making one, he told Jeffrey Goldberg, for The Atlantic, that:
The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain [and] I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark. But no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a ridiculous remark.
Whatever your hopes and wishes for an atheist’s soul, if he had declared faith on his dying bed, it is more than likely it would have been out of fear – which might be fine by some, as many of the religious embrace fear in this sense. But what is surely true is that it would not have been real faith – and such is the age old criticism of Pascal’s Wager; that if faith meant something why should it be reduced on a condition of “hedging” just in case there is a God and you burn in hell for all eternity for not believing.
For Socrates, living by good moral standards should not be conditional on fear of the consequences for what might happen to one if they did not live by them, but living such a life should be a reward in itself. Similarly, if those like Mark Judge have any appreciation of faith in God then they should accept it not conditional on fear, but a truly felt experience.
But more than this who cares about what Hitchens felt? To save ourselves the time of second-guessing, we should judge the man by what he has said. I for one did not like all of it. I didn’t support the war in Iraq, I felt his anti-theism crass, and his support for Nader in 2000 and later support for George Bush were both grave errors.
But he looked and sounded, and indeed read, like a charming and wise person, of great depth, of influence and inspiration, and sound judgement – most of the time. His ability to debate is almost unmatched and never have I seen anybody so comfortable with taking on an audience, and making sure his audience knows his scorn.
It would not be a statement too far to suggest we will probably never see anybody quite like Hitchens again – for which the political and journalistic world is at a loss. Though perhaps this is a good thing. What made him unique should in no way be a benchmark because to do so would fail so many.
Excellent obituary, one of the best I’ve seen!
You’re too kind
the others that I’ve read are too gushy and do little to communicate the complexity of the man
I suspect that Hitchens would be offended if people refrained from criticising him after his death. He hardly held his tongue after the passing of others. (His only regret, in fact, may have been that he wasn’t there to argue with him.)
You’re referring to Fallwell I gather – of course, but on the other hand I know Hitchens prefers not being able to enjoy *this* debate than the alternative option. He said in a debate on the afterlife, before his death (!), that though death is like being told to leave from a party that is only getting started, belief in an afterlife is like being told that the party is going to remain ongoing forever, is now dying down, and you cannot leave, ever. So perhaps, after all, he is grateful.
Good one, much of the fringe Left seems to have taken the sour grapes approach to Hitchens’ death, which is only to be expected given their natural lack of human connection.
He certainly made some questionable political judgements, fondness for Trotsky, David Irving, etc but you can’t his capacity as a writer.
You’re quite right, what was exciting and enticing about the hitch was not that we simply agreed with every last word, but that he never failed to challenge assumptions. Alex Callinicos in his article about Hitchens in the Socialist Worker said that in the end the Hitch was merely a mouthpiece for the establishment – such is proof, if any more were needed, that the swappies have altogether lost track of what counts as the establishment view today.
fuck off cretin modernity tosspotT
here is a youtube clip about deathbed conversions and shit
I was inclined to opine that it stretches beyond breaking point the definition of “contrarian” to apply it to someone who spent the last decade of his life as an apologist for the rich and powerful (ignorance is strength,freedom is slavery etc.),but when I was looking for the piece where he abused Edward Said after the latter’s death I found this appreciation:
I think he would’ve been disgusted to see too much worshipful treacle being written about him upon his untimely death, so let’s remember that in addition to being a zingy writer and masterful debater, he was also a bellicose warmongering misogynist.
I’d also think that “being beaten up by theocratic thugs in Beirut” can easily be re-written as “pissed-up pissed head did best to piss off locals then feigned outrage that they got pissed off”.[And I think it was supporters of the SSNP, who are more easily described as having Nazi-influenced iconography than theocratic]
As I meant to say, you can’t deny his capacity as a writer.
I noticed that Hitchens’ (both of them) ex-comrades in the SWP take a rather mean spirited approach to his death, failing to mention that Chris Hitchens was a member of the International Socialists (forerunner of the SWP) and a stout defender of the political failure, Trotsky.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/12/late-christopher-hitchens.html
I think the reason that SWPers, etc dislike Chris Hitchens is that he could beat them in any argument if he were lying comatose on the floor after a 3 day drinking session.
PS: We shouldn’t forget that the Daily Mailer, Peter Hitchens was also a member of the SWP! Not that they like admitting it
Yeah, they’re trying really hard not to mention that:
I remember the young Christopher. He was a couple of years ahead of me at the same Oxford college in the late 1960s. He was then the best known activist of the International Socialists (IS, now the Socialist Workers Party) at Oxford.
Here is the late Chris Harman, ironically addressing Christopher Hitchens:
Chris may believe that the Socialist Workers Party today is intellectually arid and that the future lies with ex-members of the IS and the SWP (presumably, by that, meaning those like himself who have stayed on the left, as opposed to the real defectors like former News of the World editor Wendy Henry, Daily Mail leader writer Roger Rosewell, Sun columnist Garry Bushell and the Daily Express’s Peter Hitchens).
If all you can do is lie about the SWP, you might as well shut up.
thank you for the insights, the SWP’s history is as muddied as that of the Right, staunch and neophyte
Turns out Christopher Hitchens had fans and admirers from all walks of life. Found this post commemorating Hitchens by a rather unlikely blogger. Funny and poignant. He will be missed. Click here to read it for yourself http://bit.ly/w40uFn
Where is the mention at LENIN TOMB’s of the Hitchens’ connection to the SWP?
No where, that’s was my point.
I accept that most people at Lenin’s Tomb probably wouldn’t remember back more than a year or 2, but you might hope that Seymour (the SWP’s most prolific blogger) would be able to muster up a more rounded assessment of Chris Hitchens and not leave out the inconvenient bits
Some people just don’t know when to stop digging. Why if Mr.Seymour is trying to hide this awful truth does he allowthis comment to appear:
I first encountered Hitchens on a demo in Central Glasgow in support of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupation. He was dressed much as Alex Callinicos described him, managing to look foppish at the same time.
All he could talk about on the demo was how we (IS) were going to “smash” the SLL (later Workers’ Revolutionary Party).
As a young prole I wasn’t impressed.
I don’t waste any sympathy for the death of a scab?
The Lenin’s Tomb piece isn’t a biographical obituary so there was no reason to insert mention of his IS membership when it wasn’t relevant to the piece. There is no mention in the post above of the Hitchens’ IS ,membership, is Carl part of some evil Trot conspiracy to hide the truth from decent folk?
And here’s a further lie:
Where is the mention at LENIN TOMB’s of the Hitchens’ connection to the SWP?
No where, that’s was my point.
No, your alleged point was this:
I noticed that Hitchens’ (both of them) ex-comrades in the SWP take a rather mean spirited approach to his death, failing to mention that Chris Hitchens was a member of the International Socialists
Your evidence for this was the lack of a mention on Lenin’s Tomb, one SWP member’s blog, but there is a rather large mention in the party’s paper Socialist Worker. Thus to suggest that their ex-comrades were being mean-spirited by failing to mention his past membership when you have one ex-comrade not bothering to mention it in a non-biographical post while allowing someone to talk about it in comments while a Central Committee membership splashes it all over the official obit, you’re compounding the lie by repeating it and trying to pretend that you’d said something somewhat different. As you do when you claim “Peter Hitchens was also a member of the SWP! Not that they like admitting it”[Of course he was also in the IS rather than the SWP, but some things we have to let go with the slow-witted].
It’s modernityblog – I’m just impressed that the last comment managed to leave out a reference to Trotsky being a failure.
What can I say?
I am actually feeling a twinge of sympathy for Hitchens now, how could he belong to a grouping full of Oxbridge dimwits (like Skidmarx), who despite years of education can’t engage with a simple point:
Seymour’s obituary , avoids the fact that Christopher Hitchens was long associated with the International Socialists, the forerunner of today’s SWP.
That’s a fact.
Yet our mentally sluggish ex-SWPer, Skidmarx, instead of simply acknowledging that point goes off searching the web for other irrelevancies.
You couldn’t make it up.
That is the problem so often found when you deal with SWPers, or (ex-s, like Skidmarx) they can’t intellectually engage with their opponents points’ and so present non sequiturs, which they know, as once highly educated members of the British elite, are wrong, but they keep doing it almost out of habit.
I can only assume that Hitchens, who did have a sharp intellect was terminally bored dealing with this type of nonsense, and if that’s the case I can almost feel a degree of sympathy for him, almost.
I suspect that for all of Hitchens vices, *if* had he remained a loyal SWPer, then the obituary at Lenin’s Tomb would have been glowing and we would be told what a stout fellow he was. None of that cheap bile and sour grapes would be heard from Seymour.
As for Trotsky as a political failure, surely that doesn’t need spelling out? Or maybe it does?
Seymour’s obituary , avoids the fact that Christopher Hitchens was long associated with the International Socialists, the forerunner of today’s SWP.
That’s a fact.
And yet – nobody cares.
That being the case, then why did an ex-SWPer and yourself trouble to contribute?
But for me it is indicative of a wider problem with many of today’s supposed radicals and the Oxbridge elites, a lack of a sense of history or a desire to brush inconvenient facts under the carpet (you see it in the media, the City, amongst the political elites (Blairites, etc), Tories and the political fringes).
And why?
Because it deals with history, the messy parts of life and begets more questions, further, the middle classes, either in the City, media or politics don’t like addressing difficult questions lest they look like idiots, as they are forced to think for themselves on these occasions and not read from a political script.
In fairness to Callinicos at least he has a stab at it, but can’t find any answers as he admits:
Why is it important?
Because if you are going to give a clear and rounded picture of an individual then it is incumbent on the writer to ask questions of themselves as well of the subject, to probe a bit deeper or you end up with a hatchet job and something approaching the “Stalin school of falsification”, which I would hope aspiring Trots, quasi Trots or the politically broad might have read.
So unless you make that effort you end up with a rather simplistic and often trite judgement with no intellectual merit, which satisfies no one and convinces even less.
But that’s where we came in, with the piece at Lenin’s Tomb.
I can only begin to imagine how people like Modernity would respond to the death of Galloway! I cannot imagine much in the way of human connection!
Speaking of Socrates, he died last week and was much much more deserving of an obituary than this pompous jester for the court of Bush.
Christopher Hitchens – A Commissar of the West
From International Socialist to Neo-Conservative Warmonger
Yet another SWP member fails to get the memo that they must “[fail] to mention that Chris Hitchens was a member of the International Socialists”.
It is not a big point, but that boring Oxbridge tone, unable to understand anyone else’s point of view, is tedious.
Probably why the SWP remains a sect and a political failure.
Its members and many of ex-members (like Skidmarx) come over as so, er, mentally inflexible.
If they can’t get the basics right (comprehending the arguments of others) then anything remotely complex (analysing them) certainly eludes them.
Still, else where those who almost worship Hitchens can’t seem to bring themselves to analyse his conduct with David Irving and why?
Hint: if Hitchens was so bleeding smart then why did he get taken in by Irving? (PS: best not argue that he wasn’t, as the evidence suggests otherwise).
Modblog, did an Oxbridge student run down your mother or something? I’ve never found that any of the other universities struggle to produce dim-witted, inflexible morons, to be honest.
“did an Oxbridge student run down your mother or something? “
You’ve made my point for me.
You would have to be detached, supremely middle-class or the product of the British class system to make such a comment.
I find it sad that nowadays that so much of what passes for socialist thinking is dominated by Oxbridge graduates or the flotsam and jetsam from the English Public school system, which in part might explain its decline.
In the past socialists tended to have a grasp of class analysis and could see why the domination by an elite, be it, the Ivy League’s, Oxbridge or Ena, etc was a bad thing, more’s the pity that the authors of this blog can’t.
Modernity, most intellectual thinking is dominated by public school types, from the far left to the far right and every inch in between. That is the nature of an unequal system. The same goes for the arts etc. The only place where the lower orders seem to dominate is in work that requires a bit of elbow grease or is monotonous and crime.
Actually Hitchens was a great example of this, an upper class schoolboy lecturing to the lower orders about how one should live ones life and anyone who did not copnform was in some way or another, an idiot.
Self-evidently in Britain much of modern intellectual thinking is dominated by Oxbridge types.
You would have to be purblind not to see that, but that wasn’t my point.
Along with that domination comes a set of attitudes, which have been inculcated in the (once) training houses for the Empire, public school and Oxbridge.
It is that attitude that many people have commented upon
A snotty sneering attitude, an inability or desire to understand other people’s points of view and you can see why such attributes were prized when they were creating a class to run a world empire, they tried to create leaders, even from the most inadequate public school boy.
The problem nowadays is that the Empire, thankfully, is no more, however, those essentially conservative institutions at the heart of English middle-class elite education haven’t changed, much.
So they turn out individuals who often feel a sense of entitlement, to tell others what to think, what to do and how to do it, yet society has moved on and the under/working-class have had enough of such condescension.
But when the working/under classes answer back those illustrious products of the English class system, like Semple or Skidmarx, really don’t know how to react.
If they were to follow their academic training then they would argue, strongly but politely and look at the argumentation, making an effort to take their interlocutors’ strongest point and see where it goes, however, that rarely happens nowadays.
Instead you get sneering comments, irrelevancies, enough straw men to feed a nation and the patronising wrangling over the inconsequential.
The result can be seen on numerous “Left” blogs, detached argumentation, common fallacies, kettle logic and an singular inability to relate to the working/under class experience which in turn means that socialist ideas diminish and falter.
Fortunately, the Internet is not constrained as so much of society is, it is relatively “class-neutral”, by that I mean, your argument does not depend on a plummy voice, what Daddy did all which particular part of Oxbridge you went through and that’s why Semple and the likes of Skidmarx find it hard to deal with the Internet, their poor argumentation and questionable reasoning is open to dispute.
And anyone familiar with the British class system will tell you, the upper classes and the elites don’t like being talked back to, but that’s what the Internet allows us to do.
It allows the under/working classes to have their say and show, with evidence, why public schoolers and their mates at Oxbridge can’t really debate issues with any consistent level of objectivity or logic.
When you point out class to these Oxbridge types, they react as with Semple’s immature and demeaning comment. They don’t like discussing class because it requires a degree of introspection and they didn’t learn that, not much use when you’re going to run an Empire!
That’s why such discussions invariably become ill tempered, the Oxbridge types don’t like being made to look fools because they can’t argue, or in many cases read terribly well, so they respond with immaturities and nonsense.
Again, class comes out, but the Internet allows us to demonstrate why the Oxbridge elites are so ill suited to run a society, not they that will admit it.
very well put and you have helped me understand why they are so threatened by the internet eruption of disagreement and seem to be reduced to snide desperation as they attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.
Very well put? Is it fuck! Modblog is rabbiting on without actually making a relevant point. The reason I asked the question about whether or not his mother had been run down by an Oxbridge student is this; “snotty, sneering” attitudes – not to mention poor skills of argumentation and reason – are not limited to Oxbridge, nor are they even more prevalent there than anywhere else. He seemed to be insisting that these are solely the preserve of Oxford and Cambridge.
Assuming Modblog is not himself a product of one of those two universities, nor of an English public school, his attempt to call me “an illustrious product of the English class system” is rather mistaken, as is the allegation that I don’t like the internet because my skills of debate aren’t up to it since I can’t use my plummy voice. Firstly I’m Northern Irish; I don’t have a plummy voice. Second, we’re all products of the English (assuming one means British) class system – whether we’re ruling class, working class or other unspecified category. The point is not to glory in one identity or another (as Modblog’s inverse snobbery attempts to) but to abolish the system.
Lastly his use of the phrase “middle-class” is woolly at best when levelled at people because of what they say. He doesn’t know me, I don’t know him – he knows I went to Oxford (a simple google-search shows as much). So he’s making assumptions about people who went to Oxford. He counterposes this to the concept of working class, though he doesn’t know what my job is, or what I earn or basically anything about me. In otherwords, he’s a hypocritical cunt – because he attacks everyone else for straw-man arguments and irrelevancy while indulging in them to the level best of his ability.
Far from being irrelevant, my sarcastic remark above was intended as commentary on his constant mud-slinging against Skidmarx (who I don’t know and don’t agree with) and “that boring Oxbridge tone” he imputed to Skidmarx and an inference that he should stick to arguments not personal attacks. Else he can fuck off back to whatever underclass-ridden sewer he crawled out of.
Modernity,
The problem I have with you is that it seems to me you don’t really have a problem with the upper classes in general but only those sections that divert from your particular worldview. So anyone not adopting your preset ideas falls under the umbrella of ivory tower intellectual/studentist who just doesn’t understand what the good old salt of the earth man in the street says. In which case how are you any better than them?
You have set yourself up as the torch bearer of the word on the street. Well, let me tell you something, it isn’t any street I have ever walked down.
You start from your own set of opinions and analyse events from there, rather than objectively looking at the situation.
Your words are fraudulent, lacking in any sort of concrete ideas and offer nothing in the way of constructive criticism.
You are a master of deception, whataboutery and diversion.
You, not the oxbridge types, make internet discussion banal, boring and depressing.
Edgar
Thank you for your contribution.
I am glad that you have the ability to read my mind and tell me what I was thinking, or what you think I was thinking, even if it’s wrong
But you’re not really interested in my views, and like our third rate Oxbridge contributors, you don’t engage with anything that I’ve actually said.
That incidentally is another technique which is used.
I am against elites be they in the City, running nations or controlling our lives, but unlike many other people, I don’t feel the necessity to trot out slogans.
I am against the priest class, intermediates, those who would tell us what to think.
I am very much for debates and I freely acknowledge I sometimes get the wrong end of the stick, but I’ll try to engage with someone’s argument when I can, if it rational and based on reason.
I am naturally a man of my own experience and unlike a lot of youngsters nowadays, I’ve been around for decades and decades.
I have seen the likes of Hitchens come and go, organisations run by elites, which itself perpetuate, and in turn become detached from the working-class. I think that’s wrong.
But as you’re a bleeding mind reader you would know all that, and you’ll probably be able to tell me all the trade unions I’ve belonged to, as well? And all the tedious argument I’ve had with the privileged, and self-selecting elites.
Conceivably, Edgar, with your omniscience you will be able to tell about those caring, intelligent public school types that I met who made fine socialists, because they connected to people, they listened?
However, as we fortunately don’t know each other, and you don’t know my views, or the life I have lived and seem to care less, then none of that will matter to you
Still, the facts won’t change if I’m not here or long dead in the ground.
Yes, it is true the elites do run British society, but they do it very poorly and for their own benefit and no one outside to them is fooled either way.
The Internet allows us to exchange views with them and even their 3rd rate incarnations (the Semple and Skidmarx of the world) and in doing so demonstrate why we don’t need to listen to them, seek their sage advice or duff our forelocks to them, politically or socially.
We don’t need Blairites, we don’t need Leninists telling us what to think and certainly we don’t need Cameron, etc doing it either
Moreover, we don’t need Hitchens, Peter or Christopher.
Edgar, I am sure you know all of that and won’t care a jot about what I think, after all I am a terrible person.
Nevertheless, back to Chris Hitchens and David Irving.
I think describing Hitchens’s writing or debating skills misses the point that in his later years he had an appalling lack of integrity. His support for Bush wasn’t simply over Iraq, he even defended (maybe even praised him) over Katrina. He developed a penchant for smearing former friends like Chomsky and Said. His contribution to discussions over the riots in the French banlieue was to accuse the rioters of antisemitism. He didn’t seem to have a whole lot to say about zionism after his conversion to less specific forms of western hegemony save to accuse those he assumed would be anti-zionist of antisemitism. Given his lurch to the right from shortly, though not immediately, after, 9/11 it is hard not to place Hitchens firmly on the side of the establishment. Even when Hitchens claimed to still be opposed to Henry Kissinger Hitchens claimed that Kissinger was opposed to regime change in Iraq. This was a lie. On the question of Iraq, Kissinger said that he was not opposed to regime change per se, but only to making it the subject of “declaratory policy”.
Hitchens changed his politics precisely when it became clear that the establishment was becoming more intolerant of dissent and then he made out that it was everyone else that had changed or not been ok in the first place.