Opinion of Christopher Hitchens

[Gustaf]

I respect him more than most others of his ilk. But I don't really like left-winged intellectuals in general. They reek too much of hypocrisy, arrogance and narcissism for my tastes.

[Gustaf]

I respect him more than most others of his ilk. But I don't really like left-winged intellectuals in general. They reek too much of hypocrisy, arrogance and narcissism for my tastes.

Hitchens hasn't been left-wing in any meaningful sense for a long time.

Define meaningful sense?

[Gustaf]

I respect him more than most others of his ilk. But I don't really like left-winged intellectuals in general. They reek too much of hypocrisy, arrogance and narcissism for my tastes.

Hitchens hasn't been left-wing in any meaningful sense for a long time.

Define meaningful sense?

Well, it's like pornography, isn't it? I know it when I see it.

Unfortunately, this isn't the Supreme Court. I'm using the same definition to reach a different answer.

I would like to note though that I never said left-wing. I said left-wing intellectual. And I didn't mean a left-winger who is intellectual or an intellectual who is left-wing, but a "left-wing intellectual" (tm). And that's what I consider Hitchens to be.

[Gustaf]

Hitchens seems to be what in Dutch would be called 'Weldenkend Links' (tough to translate, but something like 'the Sensible Left'), which roughly indeed is an elite version of liberalism, with some disdain for the 'Leftwing Church' and a semi-arrogant anti-PC posturing on 'controversial' issues  (most of these people are virulently anti-Islam), which in Hitchens case appears to be Religion.

That said, he's a brilliant polemicist and seems like a nice person to deal with, so I guess he's not an HP, even if I find most of his positions all but repulsive.

Is "Weldenkend" something like "world-knowing" in literal translation?

[Gustaf]

Unfortunately, this isn't the Supreme Court. I'm using the same definition to reach a different answer

Actually I'd not been off a train long and was looking for a cheap answer...

But, basically, I don't consider Hitchens to be on 'the Left' for a couple of reasons that I'll now fail to explain very well.

Fundamentally Hitchens stands for a certain sort of establishment (as in the highly specific context of 'literary establishment'; see also tossers like Martin Amis) liberalism (which is in practice highly conservative, at least in its position within intellectual tendencies) and that's not something that I would ever consider to be left-wing in a meaningful sense. Even the contraryism noted earlier fits into that pattern quite clearly, though not nearly so much as his tireless defence of a certain ideal of Western values. He's not strayed far from this territory for a very long time, whatever his views on issues outside the remit of that intellectual territory might be.
Hitchens, of course, has a great deal of left-wing baggage (as noted earlier his more unpleasant intellectual habits are clearly influenced by his time as a youthful Trot, and then you also have his things for Orwell and Marx), but then so do/did the neoconservatives. Unlike them, though, he's not actually crossed over to the Right and if what is not Right is Left, then he must be considered as Left. But I would always demand a little more than that.

Ramble, ramble, ramble.

Hm. How would you classify some random wild examples like Wilde, Zola, Chomsky or Vonnegut?