Opinion of Christopher Hitchens

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An extremely skilled polemicist. But that's more or less all he is. He's not as clever, profound or intellectually interesting as he likes to think. Far too frequently (and on a bewildering range of subjects) he has taken the position of the bigot and the bully; anyone who has the temerity to hold a view opposed to Hitchens or (heaven forbid!) to actively disagree with him is at best an idiot and is usually attacked as being utterly malign. Of course that's a fairly common trait of those who passed through youthful Trotskyism of one kind or another, but that doesn't actually excuse that sort of behavior.

That said, he's vastly superior to his brother who has all of his faults (though they manifest themselves differently, of course) and a few more on top. And is basically an out-and-out fascist.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.