'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.
Corey Robin wrote that “on the announcement of his death, I think it’s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most: speak for himself,” and then assembled two representative passages from Hitchens’ post-9/11 writings. In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (“those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words”), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was “exhilaration” because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call “Islamofascism”: “I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.”
Hitchens, of course, never “prosecuted” the “exhilarating” war by actually fighting in it, but confined his “prosecution” to cheering for it and persuading others to support it. As one of Hitchens’ heroes, George Orwell, put it perfectly in Homage to Catalonia about the anti-fascist, tough-guy war writers of his time:
As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ‘the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman’s legs’ was ‘a commonplace’ in Loyalist Spain.
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
I rarely wrote about Hitchens because, at least for the time that I’ve been writing about politics (since late 2005), there was nothing particularly notable about him. When it came to the defining issues of the post-9/11 era, he was largely indistinguishable from the small army of neoconservative fanatics eager to unleash ever-greater violence against Muslims: driven by a toxic mix of barbarism, self-loving provincialism, a sense of personal inadequacy, and, most of all, a pity-inducing need to find glory and purpose in cheering on military adventures and vanquishing some foe of historically unprecedented evil even if it meant manufacturing them. As Robin put it:
Hitchens had a reputation for being an internationalist. Yet someone who gets excited by mass murder—and then invokes that excitement, to a waiting audience, as an explanation of his support for mass murder—is not an internationalist. He is a narcissist, the most provincial spirit of all.
Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker‘s John Cook, who — in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary – detailed Hitchens’ vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected (he denounced the Dixie Chicks as being “sluts” and “ fucking fat slags” for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief). As Cook put it: “it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong”; indeed: “People make mistakes. What’s horrible about Hitchens’ ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.”'
Greenwald is of course correct here, and it does bring sharply into focus the issues relating to Iraq, and the broader issues relating to the role of intellectuals and journalists when the political class espouse criminality and avarice: is the role of the intellectual to question 'official' lies and challenge received opinion? Or to remain silent? Or (Hitchens' choice) to parrot the lies and savagely attack (as 'unpatriotic', 'traitors' etc.) those whose conscience brings them into conflict with the State?
Whatever choice the intellectual makes, ultimately it's up to him or her. But, before Hitchens' self-evaluation as some kind of 'rebel' or 'contrarian' is taken seriously: a few questions.
1 : Above we see the grisly spectacle of Tony 'the Butcher' Blair, the extraordinarily rich and powerful terrorist and mass murderer standing next to the ex-Popinjay (who has ceased to be). Tony Blair is of course a key member of the Establishment. He is, in other words, someone who would despise and fear a genuine rebel or 'contrarian'. But Blair loved Hitchens and had nothing but good words to say about him on hearing of his death. What does this tell us about Hitchens' anti-establishment credentials?
2: The 'liberal' media, which Hitchens affected to despise, has been overwhelming in its praise for the Popinjay now that 'Last Orders' has finally been called. The air has been heavy with rich white males telling us how brilliant and wonderful he was. Would a genuinely controversial and divisive figure receive such treatment? Is the Popinjay indeed now to become the People's Popinjay of Hearts? ('Loved by millions' as so many commentators have pointed out. And so wealthy!).
3: The one thing that unites almost all of Hitchens' fans is the colour of their skin. Hitchens (said Hitchens) was desperately keen to liberate the Arab and Muslim masses from tyranny and oppression, a feat that would be accomplished by cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorus and torture. And yet a quick glance through the Arabic media shows a pronounced absence of the sickly encomia we have seen so much of in the White Man's Media. It's almost as if the Arabic world knows little and cares less about this 'great intellectual'. How do we explain this profound mystery?
4: And finally, isn't it interesting that the praise for Hitchens focuses almost entirely on his personality, his history and his legendary capacity for drinking? Rather than, say, on any of his individual works, the earliest one's of which are already well on their way to being forgotten? (Ten out of ten to any of his little fanboys who have actually heard of, let alone read, 'Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger' or 'The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification'.)
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