Christopher Hitchens - Revision history

Melissa Jones: /* Naomi Klein */

2015-02-04T02:19:42Z

Naomi Klein

Melissa Jones at 02:14, 4 February 2015

2015-02-04T02:14:48Z

Tom Griffin: /* External Resources */

2012-03-22T20:31:36Z

External Resources

Tom Griffin: rewrote intro - added external resources

2012-03-22T20:29:25Z

rewrote intro - added external resources

Tom Griffin: typo

2011-03-08T02:25:18Z

typo

Tom Griffin: category:Old Leysians

2011-03-08T02:24:55Z

category:Old Leysians

Idrees: /* Attacks on former friends */

2010-01-22T20:13:15Z

Attacks on former friends

Idrees: /* Harold Pinter */

2010-01-22T19:39:36Z

Harold Pinter

Idrees: /* Harold Pinter */

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Harold Pinter

Idrees: /* Harold Pinter */

2010-01-22T19:02:17Z

Harold Pinter

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 ===Naomi Klein===
-In an article in which she described Klein, Tariq Ali and Michael Moore as 'fellow travellers with fascism', Hitchens described a recent article by her as 'nasty, stupid' and accused Klein of 'offering swooning support to theocratic fascists'. He went on to accuse the Nation magazine of 'publishing actual endorsements of jihad'. <ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://www.slate.com/id/2106324/pagenum/all/ Murder by Any Other Name], ''Slate'', 7 September 2004</ref>
+In an article in which he described Klein, Tariq Ali and Michael Moore as 'fellow travellers with fascism', Hitchens described a recent article by her as 'nasty, stupid' and accused Klein of 'offering swooning support to theocratic fascists'. He went on to accuse the Nation magazine of 'publishing actual endorsements of jihad'. <ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://www.slate.com/id/2106324/pagenum/all/ Murder by Any Other Name], ''Slate'', 7 September 2004</ref>
 ===Edward Said===

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−	'''Christopher Hitchens''' (1949-2011) was a former columnist for ''The Nation'', initially on the left, who in the late 1990s shifted to the right to first argue against abortion, <ref>Sasha Abramsky, 'Christopher Hitchens - Interview', [http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/Progint.html ''Electric Library''/''The Progressive''], 1 February, 1997. (Accessed 7 April, 2009)</ref> and later embracing a neoconservative stance of support for the US invasion of Iraq,which he visited as an embedded journalist during the occupation. In his later years, he wrote mostly for ''Vanity Fair'' and ''Slate''. <ref>'Christopher Hitchens - About This Author', [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3956.Christopher_Hitchens goodreads.com], accessed 7 April, 2009.</ref>	+	'''Christopher Hitchens''' (1949-2011) was a former columnist for ''The Nation'', initially on the left, who in the late 1990s shifted to the right to first argue against abortion, <ref>Sasha Abramsky, 'Christopher Hitchens - Interview', [http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/Progint.html ''Electric Library''/''The Progressive''], 1 February, 1997. (Accessed 7 April, 2009)</ref> and later embracing a neoconservative stance of support for the US invasion of Iraq, which he visited as an embedded journalist during the occupation. In his later years, he wrote mostly for ''Vanity Fair'' and ''Slate''. <ref>'Christopher Hitchens - About This Author', [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3956.Christopher_Hitchens goodreads.com], accessed 7 April, 2009.</ref>

	==Attacks on former Comrades==		==Attacks on former Comrades==

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 ==External Resources==
-*Jeff Stein, [http://spytalkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/whats-government-hiding-about-hitchens.html
+*Jeff Stein, [http://spytalkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/whats-government-hiding-about-hitchens.html What’s the Government Hiding About Hitchens?], ''Spytalk'', 20 March 2012.
 ==Affiliations==

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-'''Christopher Hitchens''' is the former columnist for ''The Nation'', putatively on the left, who in the late 1990s veered to the right to first argue against abortion, <ref>Sasha Abramsky, 'Christopher Hitchens - Interview', [http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/Progint.html ''Electric Library''/''The Progressive''], 1 February, 1997. (Accessed 7 April, 2009)</ref> and then turn on his former colleagues.  Now, Hitchens is considered a neocon who supported the US war of aggression against Iraq, and even travelled to Iraq as an embedded journalist to cheer on the US troops.  He now writes mostly for ''Vanity Fair'' and ''Slate''. <ref>'Christopher Hitchens - About This Author', [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3956.Christopher_Hitchens goodreads.com], accessed 7 April, 2009.</ref>
+'''Christopher Hitchens''' (1949-2011) was a former columnist for ''The Nation'', initially on the left, who in the late 1990s shifted to the right to first argue against abortion, <ref>Sasha Abramsky, 'Christopher Hitchens - Interview', [http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/Progint.html ''Electric Library''/''The Progressive''], 1 February, 1997. (Accessed 7 April, 2009)</ref> and later embracing a neoconservative stance of support for the US invasion of Iraq,which he visited as an embedded journalist during the occupation. In his later years, he wrote mostly for ''Vanity Fair'' and ''Slate''. <ref>'Christopher Hitchens - About This Author', [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3956.Christopher_Hitchens goodreads.com], accessed 7 April, 2009.</ref>
 ==Attacks on former Comrades==
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 ==Related Articles==
 ==Affiliations==
 ===Connections===

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−	[[Category:Neocons\|Hitchens, Christopher]][[Old Leysians\|Hitchens, Christopher]]	+	[[Category:Neocons\|Hitchens, Christopher]][[Category:Old Leysians\|Hitchens, Christopher]]

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−	[[Category:Neocons\|Hitchens, Christopher]]	+	[[Category:Neocons\|Hitchens, Christopher]][[Old Leysians\|Hitchens, Christopher]]

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 At Edward Said's passing away, amidst perfunctory praise, Hitchens questioned Said's 'political judgment' which was perverse enough to 'only imagine the lowest motives for those in favor of regime change in Baghdad'. He noted Said's 'slight tendency to self-pity'; the 'too-highly developed sense of injury and victimhood' that marred his literary work; his capacity for 'stooping to mere abuse when attacking other dissidents—particularly other Arab dissidents, and most particularly Iraqi and Kurdish ones' [Said had written critically of Kanan Makiya, the KDP and PUK].<ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://slate.msn.com/id/2088944/ A Valediction for Edward Said], ''Slate'', 26 September 2003</ref> It was in 2003 -- a quarter of a century after it was first published -- that Hitchens wrote an attack on Edward Said's influential ''Orientalism'' as Said was in his final decline. <ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200309/hitchens Where the Twain Should Have Met], ''The Atlantic'', September 2003.</ref> In the latter, Hitchens refers to the 'sheer vulgarity', 'incoherence', 'essential emptiness', 'direly excessive rhetoric' and the 'fantastic' quality of Said's writing; chides him for his opposition to the Iraq war and upbraid's him for suggesting that the US was responsible for the destruction of Iraq's museums and libraries (curiously Hitchens insists this was done by 'the Saddam regime'). Hitchens also berates Said for his 'repeated and venomous attacks on Ahmed Chalabi and Kanan Makiya', who, he insists, are the 'hope of cultural and political cross-pollination between the Levant, the Orient, the Near East, the Middle East, Western Asia (whatever name you may choose to give it), and the citizens of the Occident, the North, the metropole'.<ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200309/hitchens Where the Twain Should Have Met], ''The Atlantic'', September 2003.</ref><ref>Clare Brandbur, [http://www.counterpunch.org/brandabur09192003.html Hitchens Smears Edward Said], ''Counterpunch.org'', 19 September 2003</ref>
 ===Harold Pinter===
-In the wake of 11 September 2001, Hitchens falsely accused Harold Pinter and John Pilger of having written that the victims of the attacks had been 'asking for it'.<ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/26/september11.usa Murder was their only motive], ''The Guardian'', 26 September 2001</ref> Shortly afterwards Guardian issued a retraction and Hitchens wrote a letter claiming that he had been 'wrong apprised' of Pinter's comments.<ref>All the correspondences available on Harold Pinter's webiste: [http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_representation.shtml Misrepresentation in Media August - September 2001], accessed 22 January 2010</ref> The day after Harold Pinter was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, Hitchens took to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to call the choice 'a straight and philistine preference for the grotesque'. The 'ludicrous elevation', he wrote, 'of a third-rate and effectively former dramatist is driven by pseudo-intellectual European hostility to the change of regime in Iraq'. He went on to sum up Pinter's recent writings as 'a preference for dictatorship larded with obscenity and fatuity'. In the same article he also lashed out at Jose Saramago, adding: 'without his staunch post-1989 membership of the unusually degenerated Portuguese Communist Party he would not have been considered'. For Hitchens, 'sinister mediocrity has become Mr. Pinter's stock-in-trade...Even in his increasingly lame and slovenly literary output, Mr. Pinter always married politicization to illiteracy.' After dismissing Pinter's opposition to the Iraq war as a madman-like fight 'against any attempt to liberate [Kurds] in Iraq', Hitchens described the celebrated dramatist as 'a writer of doggerel; a very poor man's Beckett, a man most celebrated for the long silences that punctuated his stage "dialogue," who would have no reputation of any kind if it were not for the slightly unbelievable character of his public statements.' Finally he invited the readers of his right-wing publication to 'hope for a long silence to descend upon the thuggish bigmouth who has strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage for far too long'.
+In the wake of 11 September 2001, Hitchens falsely accused Harold Pinter and John Pilger of having written that the victims of the attacks had been 'asking for it'.<ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/26/september11.usa Murder was their only motive], ''The Guardian'', 26 September 2001</ref> Shortly afterwards Guardian issued an apology and a retraction and Hitchens wrote a letter claiming that he had been 'wrongly apprised' of Pinter's comments.<ref>All the correspondences available on Harold Pinter's webiste: [http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_representation.shtml Misrepresentation in Media August - September 2001], accessed 22 January 2010</ref><ref>Also see: John Pilger, [http://www.counterpunch.org/pilger1.html Hitchens's Slurs], ''Counterpunch.org'', 7 October 2001</ref> The day after Harold Pinter was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature, Hitchens took to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to call the choice 'a straight and philistine preference for the grotesque'. The 'ludicrous elevation', he wrote, 'of a third-rate and effectively former dramatist is driven by pseudo-intellectual European hostility to the change of regime in Iraq'. He went on to sum up Pinter's recent writings as 'a preference for dictatorship larded with obscenity and fatuity'. In the same article he also lashed out at Jose Saramago, adding: 'without his staunch post-1989 membership of the unusually degenerated Portuguese Communist Party he would not have been considered'. For Hitchens, 'sinister mediocrity has become Mr. Pinter's stock-in-trade...Even in his increasingly lame and slovenly literary output, Mr. Pinter always married politicization to illiteracy.' After dismissing Pinter's opposition to the Iraq war as a madman-like fight 'against any attempt to liberate [Kurds] in Iraq', Hitchens described the celebrated dramatist as 'a writer of doggerel; a very poor man's Beckett, a man most celebrated for the long silences that punctuated his stage "dialogue," who would have no reputation of any kind if it were not for the slightly unbelievable character of his public statements.' Finally he invited the readers of his right-wing publication to 'hope for a long silence to descend upon the thuggish bigmouth who has strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage for far too long'.
 <ref>Christopher Hitchens, [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112950379731670200.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries The Sinister Mediocrity of Harold Pinter], ''Wall Street Journal'', 17 October 2005</ref>