My eye was caught by a wide yellow-spined book on a shelf at the library, which turned out to be Arguably, a fat collection of essays by Christopher Hitchens. I plucked it off the shelf and checked it out. Later, I opened it at random and started to read – on page 234, under the subheading The Afterlife of Animal Farm, in an essay on Animal Farm that originated as an introduction to a 2010 edition.
It starts with the “some animals are more equal than others” line. It cites communism in Russia and Eastern Europe and its “New Class” system, “with grotesque privileges for the ruling elite and a grinding mediocrity of existence for the majority,” and the moral effects that Orwell’s work had. He moves on to China, and a phone conversation with a Communist friend of his there.
Then a new paragraph, and a new country.
In Burma, one of the longest-lasting totalitarian systems in the world – an amalgam of military fascism, Buddhist dogma, and Communist-style rhetoric about collectivization – George Packer of the New Yorker not long ago heard a saying that had become popular among democratically minded Burmese. “We revere George Orwell very much,” they told him, “because he wrote three books about our country: Burmese Days, Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-four.” Thus far, Animal Farm has not been legally published in China, Burma, or the moral wilderness of North Korea, but one day will see its appearance in all three societies, where it is sure to be greeted with the shock of recognition that it is still capable of inspiring.
I stopped reading there, because a thought struck me.
The thought was how radically different that passage and the mind that was capable of it are from anything the more banal wing of the “horsemen” could come up with. It was how enormously distant he was from the kind of people who think “social justice” is a taunt. He was an informed and lucid social justice warrior his whole adult life, yes even when he was gung-ho for the invasion of Iraq. It was his subject. Atheism was a tributary of that, not the thing itself. He goes on the shelf with Orwell and Arendt, not with Harris and Dawkins.
yes even when he was gung-ho for the invasion of Iraq. It was his subject.
One thing that always contextualized Hitch for me was his consistent stand against “thugs and dictators” (his preferred description) Even regarding Iraq he was pro-Iraqi and, more so, pro-Kurd. Like his hero Orwell, he despised authoritarians and the stuffed shirts they put forth to rule over us – whether it’s Kissinger or Mother Theresa. His failings were great, too: like many smart, prominent, males, he was reluctant to admit a mistake, and he held grudges against those who caught him out in one. I remember his blathering about “women aren’t funny” (which was Dawkins-level stupid) and put it opposite his willingness to be waterboarded to highlight the journalistic whitewashing of torture.
Hitch also could back up his claims, usually blindsiding his opponent with a blizzard of references; I cannot imagine how terrifying arguing with him must have been for anyone who didn’t have fact and a sleeve-full of literary quotes on their side. I listened to many debates and arguments with Hitch and I never caught him – not once – lying. He was wrong about a lot of things, matters of interpretation, and it certainly hurt his reputation.
I was horrified when he started to slide into merciless advocacy of killing islamists (“drain the swamp” and “squash the mosquitoes”) he had accepted the narrative that violence is caused primarily by religion – a position I think he hardened into in the course of writing “God Is Not Great’ – ignoring the political nature of the problem in favor of anti-religion. I mark that as his greatest mistake, one he never recovered from. I’d hardly wish him dead, but I’m glad I didn’t have to read his opinions on the Iran/nuclear issue because I fear they would have been colored with his new-found love of warfare.
In his debate against Galloway, one of Galloway’s comments was the one that stung him – calling him “a court jester for the Bourbon Bushes” That left a mark. Sadly, that’s how I remember him: a witty and charming jester, not the brilliant analyst he wanted to be.
He was also a war-mongering windbag and poseur, safely far from both the atrocity of the imvasion of Iraq, and its catastrophic consequences. I’m sure he had he survived, he would have talked his way out of any criticism for his support for the war, or at least convinced numerous naive listeners that it was still a brilliant idea.
Galloway wasn’t entirely accurate, Hitchens was more like a courtier from the provinces than a jester.
[meta]
RJW, a salient difference between yours and Marcus’ comment is that his clearly expresses an opinion as such, whilst yours asserts your own as if it were fact.
Which means you claim he would have talked his way out of your criticism.
(I won’t dispute that claim)
@3 John Morales,
“…whilst yours asserts your own as if it were fact.”
No, that’s a straw man argument–when I wrote “I’m sure” I was actually expressing a strong opinion, not asserting a fact.
“Which means you claim he would have talked his way out of your criticism”
Wrong again, I wouldn’t consider myself naive in regard to Hitchens’ sophistry, perhaps you didn’t notice the qualifier–“at least convinced numerous naive listeners that it was still a brilliant idea”
No elephant stamp for you.
Hitchens had a lot in common with H. L. Mencken. He had a striking prose style, quite a few good ideas, and quite a few bad ones. I love to read Hitchens, but I’m about as likely to throw the work across the room in a rage as endorse it. The one thing I will say about his more egregious ideas – they do make you think more clearly about your own, because of all the arguing you do with him in your head. That’s actually a very valuable role, because when you do that, while thinking critically, of course, you will probably strengthen your own arguments, rather than just having a vague idea of what you think. Or, in some cases, you may change your mind, if you always keep an open mind to the idea that you may be wrong (and I have been known to be wrong. I try to never forget that!).
Hitchens was outrageous and unable to be ignored. I think the world needs more like him, on both sides of the aisle, if only to make us think more clearly about ideas we hold. (No, he did NOT convert me to the Iraq war, and in fact, I got quite annoyed at his constant insistence that being against the war was being a Saddam Hussein supporter. Nice false dichotomy, Hitch).
Unfortunately, the post-hoc ‘anti-war’ rhetoric has been rich with pro-Saddam language.
No one has yet claimed that he ‘made the trains run on time,’ but we’re still getting claims that he represented a secular leadership…the man who had a Quran caligraphed in his own blood!
Regardless of one’s opinion of his opinions, Christopher does stand out as the most lucid, the most engaging, and the most moral of the so-called ‘Four Horsemen of the Counter-Apocalypse’ (a title, much like the blessedly-aborted ‘Brights’, that he found laughable). His voice was the one I was most interested in hearing, and his words those I was most interested in reading; I shudder to think what we’re missing about Kim Jong-Un, Daesh, the Paris and Copenhagen atrocities, and a hundred thousand other world events which have transpired in the wake of his death. Christopher will have my admiration and my respect for his honesty, his bravery, and his wit.
I miss him.
He smoked himself to death.
This is not altogether true. Hitchens made plenty of other trips to the region, particularly Kurdistan. This sounds a bit like the Chicken Hawk critique, which isn’t all that thoughtful, when you think about it. Should only people who have been to war, or are going to fight war, have an opinion about it? I definitely appreciate the perspective of soldiers and veterans, but they don’t have a monopoly on the subject. And draft dodgers like Cheney and Limbaugh should be called out on it, don’t get me wrong. But it isn’t reasonable to expect middle aged essayists to both have an opinion worth reading about war and be on the front lines facing the consequences of their opinions.
@9 md,
I wouldn’t class ‘trips to the region’ as even remotely equivalent to the the dangers of combat or the daily terror and deprivation experienced by civilians in the ME as a direct, or indirect consequence of the invasion and devastation of Iraq.
I didn’t state anywhere that Hitchens wasn’t entitled to an opinion advocating war because he was middle aged at the time.
The invasion of Iraq was a war crime, if the US and its ‘allies’ had really believed that Saddam had acquired WMD the invasion would probably never have occurred. Did the planners in the Pentagon really believe that Iraq could be democratised on the post war German or Japanese model?
I can remember listening to Hitchens years ago, on (Australian) public radio, for all his eloquence, I remember him as a rather supercilious snob.
Mr. Hitchens will always be a welcomed voice to share with others. Truly missed.