In memoir Hitch-22, Hitchens says the combination of raging teenage hormones and an 'all-male school featuring communal showers, communal sleeping arragements, and communal lavatories. The revealing glimpses of Hitchens having jovial conversations with Wilson, whom Christopher’s brother Peter once referred to as a “purveyor of weapons-grade Calvinism,” reminded me of a 2016 book. Hitch-22: A Memoir is a memoir written by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens. The book was published in May 2010 by Atlantic Books in the UK and June 2011 by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA, and was later nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring. In his remarkable book Mortality, Christopher Hitchens wrote a dispassionate, clear, frightening and inspiring account of his decline toward death from esophageal cancer. His writing brings the reader into his hotel room when he was first struck down.

1. Christopher Hitchens Book Recommendations
2. Christopher Hitchens's Daughter Sophia Hitchens
3. Christopher Hitchens Book On Thomas Jefferson

Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949–2011) was a chain-smoking, atheistic, British^{[note 1]}drunken smartarse — what every self-respecting gentleman aspires to be! Hitchens was a self-identified antitheist and was known as one of the 'Four Horsemen' in the New Atheist movement (along with Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris). He was the brother of Peter Hitchens and, until shortly before Christopher's death, the two had been estranged for many years.

Prior to his atheist activism, Hitchens was known for his criticism of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Dubya (though for a while, he might have been his most noted atheist cheerleader, although for quite separate reasons of anti-theocratic and anti-dictatorial sentiment), and Obama administrations. He was also known for his opposition to the theistic concept of an intervening God. In fact, looking back on his 40-year career, there weren't many people Hitchens liked, except for George Orwell,^{[note 2]}Václav Havel, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson,^{[note 3]}Oscar Wilde and, once upon a time, Noam Chomsky and Che Guevara. And himself of course. However, his fierce ideological disagreements did not keep him from maintaining unusual personal relationships. In the latter years of his life, people as diverse as Lawrence Krauss, Salman Rushdie^{[note 4]} and Justice Antonin Scalia^{[note 5]} frequently visited him at his house to debate God knows what.

Although Hitchens eventually abandoned socialism in favor of Keynesianism, he continued to call himself a Marxist^[1] and he expressed sympathy for Karl Marx and felt his critiques of capitalism were fairly accurate.^[2] Though applauded by many atheists for his vocal and uncensored criticism of religion, some of his views were controversial, for example his furious support for the War on Terror and interventionism in the Middle East,^[3] as well as his support of burqa bans, saying: 'It is quite plainly designed by men for the subjugation of women.'^[4]

He was 62 years old at the time of his death from esophageal cancer,^[5] a cancer most often associated with drinking and smoking.^[6] However, this age has been called into question due to missing transitional forms.

• 1Views on religion
• 2Views on other topics

Views on religion[edit]

He was known for his views on atheism and other social issues on which he would hold forth eruditely and at length. He was also known for taking provocative positions on various topics. He was a supporter of the Iraq War (something that hurt his standing with the left), and had notoriously attacked Mother Teresa and Hanukkah for representing a triumph of religious orthodoxy over scientific and humanitarian advancement.^{[note 6][7]} He also condemned former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a war criminal, stating that Kissinger deserves prosecution 'for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture.'^[8]

Formerly a Trotskyist of the Tony Cliff variety, Hitchens was the last Trotskyist convert to the right-wing; however, he denied the term neoconservative, stating that he wasn't a Conservative in any sense of the term. Like many other ex-Trotskyists, his opposition to Islam was one of the primary reasons for the switch in ideology.

As a result of his grievances with Islam, Hitchens had a long-standing feud with former British MP George Galloway, who once traded barbs with Hitchens outside a US senate subcommittee, calling him a 'drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay', to which Hitchens replied 'Only some of which is true.'

His 2007 best-selling book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything^[9] proved to be a major work of what would become known as 'New Atheism,' seen as a more militant approach to dealing with religious matters. In it, he argued that religion, being the root of much tribalist and isolationist thinking, is irrational and dangerous to societies that aspire to freedom.

Christopher Hitchens Book Recommendations

Hitchens' dislike of religion did not prevent him from opposing Islamophobia, for example. When reviewing Oriana Fallaci's book The Rage and the Pride, Hitchens called the book 'a sort of primer in how not to write about Islam', describing it as 'replete with an obsessive interest in excrement, disease, sexual mania, and insectlike reproduction, insofar as these apply to Muslims in general and to Muslim immigrants in Europe in particular'.^[10]

Criticism of Mother Teresa[edit]

One of Hitchens' earliest forays into the criticism of religion was his book The Missionary Position which argued that Mother Teresa of Calcutta gave substandard clinical treatment to many at her hospices and that her spirituality entailed a masochisticcult of suffering for Jesus often to the point where patients in her care were denied pain-relieving treatment. Hitchens further argued that much money donated to her charities was funneled to right-wing Catholic regimes around the world. He also held that her charities acted as a front for proselytizing and for promoting Catholic proscriptions against birth control. Hitchens found her views against birth control particularly odious given that she worked in India, a country wracked by poverty and overpopulation. A film documentary based on the book entitled Hell's Angel aired in the UK to a large television audience, but got virtually no exposure in the United States.

Mother Teresa was first promoted heavily in the Western world by Christian pundit Malcolm Muggeridge, with whom Hitchens found multiple occasions to quarrel.

Fighting Islamofascism[edit]

Hitchens evolved from being largely a pacifist to being a believer in confronting what he considered evil and fascistic governments. This transformation was completed after 9/11 when he became a strident advocate for war in the Middle East.

He believed that Islamofascism must be fought in every possible way, including restricting the right to wear what one wants by banning the burqa. He argued that this is for security and the desire to protect women from overbearing men, and was not in any way an attempt to take away peoples' freedom — even though it negates more than two different interpretations of the US Constitution's First Amendment: freedom of religion, free speech as applied to dress, and freedom of association.^[4]

In 2008, Hitchens volunteered to be waterboarded so as to write about it from experience. It was performed by experts in torture and torture resistance from SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). He lasted only 17 seconds. He reaffirmed his position that waterboarding is torture, and is both immoral and ineffective, and furthermore opens the doors to American prisoners being tortured by others.^[12]

Criticism by religious moderates[edit]

Non-fundie religious commentators have often noted that Hitchens attributes the positive elements of some Christian individuals and organizations to humanism rather than to Christianity. In particular, in God is not Great, Hitchens argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King are not really Christian (which is a compliment from Hitchens' perspective), noting that King never advocated divine punishment for his opponents and derived much of his thinking on non-violence from Gandhi, a non-Christiansource. While it might seem a moot point to lambast Dr. King in this way, the same point about the cognitive dissonance of 'moderate' faith is continually made (even more fervently) in the opposing trench:

In a televised debate with his brother, the (ironically enough) Christian apologist Peter Hitchens, the latter unsurprisingly argued that this was essentially a no-win scenario for Christianity. Others similarly concluded that Hitchens has too narrow a definition of religion which then enables him to condemn it as universally toxic.^[14] So far, none of these critics have accused Hitchens of engaging in the no true scotsman fallacy, not only because this exact phrase circulates more frequently among rationalists, but more importantly since believers calling Hitchens out on alleged logical fallacies would be a bit like him being accused of being yellow by a bunch of bananas.

Chris Hedges has made similar criticisms, as well as denouncing his support for the Iraq War. Hedges' criticisms are heavily focused on the notion that evil does not originate per se mainly in religion, rather religion provides a secondary post hocrationalization for evil. Hedges and Hitchens debated these issues in Berkeley, California in 2007.^[15] At this debate, when the two quarreled over the motivations of suicide bombers, Hitchens angrily accused Hedges of making excuses for suicide bombers, suggesting that Hedges condoned their actions. Hedges has also accused Hitchens and Sam Harris of the same divisive rhetoric as religious extremists.

Views on other topics[edit]

Abortion[edit]

Hitchens personally opposed abortion, even going so far as to name himself philosophically pro-life^[17] (while politically championing the pro-choice right to abortion),^[18] all the while strongly criticizing the Christian pro-life movement. For example, in a 1989 piece in The Nation, he wrote:

He reiterated these arguments in a 2006 World Magazine interview, stating 'I've looked at sonograms,' and 'the concept 'unborn child' seems to me to be a factual statement.'^[20] In his 2007 book God Is Not Great, he argued, 'As a materialist, I think it has been demonstrated that an embryo is a separate body and entity, and not merely […] a growth on or in the female body.'

In a 1990 article in the Washington Times, he stated, 'I can't think of a single circumstance in which I'd favor emptying a woman's uterus.'^[19] He later acknowledged in God Is Not Great that '[t]here may be many circumstances in which it is not desirable to carry a fetus to full term,' citing the occurrence of spontaneous abortions (i.e. miscarriages) and arguing that 'sad though this is, it is probably less miserable an outcome' than an increased number of children born with severe birth defects.^[19]

However, Hitchens was opposed to overturning of Roe v. Wade,^[18] and voiced support for a legal right to choose despite his personal misgivings with abortion in a 1991 interview in Mother Jones:

Women[edit]

Christopher Hitchens's Daughter Sophia Hitchens

Skipping a beat from his generally pro-equality views, Hitchens wrote a piece in 2007 in Vanity Fair in which he seriously advanced the view that women are generally less funny than men.^[23] He argued that men are funnier than women because 'the chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex,' while 'women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way,' since 'they already appeal to men, if you catch my drift.' He wrote that 'male humor prefers the laugh to be at someone's expense, and understands that life is quite possibly a joke to begin with,' in contrast to women, who, 'bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is.' He claimed that 'reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing' for women, and that this 'imbues' women with 'the kind of seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle' (or, in other words, makes them humorless sticks-in-the-mud, especially during pregnancy). He also claimed that women are more likely to put stock in superstitious and/or sentimental beliefs and practices because they are 'partly ruled ... by the moon and the tides.' While he offered zero evidence, he must have been talking about the same intervals seen in the woman's menstrual cycle and the Moon cycle. Unless he was joking of course (being a man of humor, and with wit that could be mordant).

In a 2010 interview with Australian television host Jennifer Byrne, Hitchens remarked that 'most men are pretty hopeless when newborn bundles arrive,' and are so impressed by how 'women appear to know what to do [that] they think, 'Well, I'll go and do extra work and make some money.'^[24] When Byrne noted that women can also be breadwinners, Hitchens replied, 'I'm not having any woman of mine go to work,' then added, 'No, they don't need to work. They can if they like but they don't have to.' He also stated that women are 'called the gentle sex for a good reason' and expressed a wish not to see women 'coarsened in the labour market.'

But it would be disingenuous to judge Hitchens' views as consciously chauvinistic, as he not only expressed sympathy towards women's political and social rights, but proudly and loudly championed for its political realisation worldwide, writing:

Hitchens regularly referred to the sentiment of the above quote, on numerous occasions and in various contexts.^{[25][26][27][28]} This might have eventually left a taste of 'I can't possibly be X, since I'm Y' in some people's minds. Unconscious bias can be a bitch though, as Hitchens would no doubt agree if he wasn't deader than a horse joke.

In his criticism of the atrocious nature of dogmatic religion, he made sure to deliver blows against the view of the woman as tainted or somehow lesser, writing:

Broadcasts[edit]

In 1988 Hitchens contributed to a collection of published essays titled Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship And The Palestinian Question. His essay, 'Broadcasts,' explored the assertion of the Israeli establishment that 750,000 Palestinian Arabs evacuated Palestine in compliance with orders issued by their own religious and administrative leaders. Hitchens argued that this assertion lacks evidence of any such broadcast and that the Palestinian Arabs were, in fact, forced to flee from a number of their major population centers by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). Hitchens concluded his essay in a pessimistic tone by speculating that 'Even though nobody has ever testified to having heard them, and even though no record of their transmission has ever been found, we shall hear of these orders and broadcasts again and again.'^[30]

Cancer[edit]

Unfortunately, smoking frequently and being an alcoholic—albeit a high-functioning one—does not come for free, and Hitchens had to undergo treatment for cancer of the esophagus. If you prayed for him, he'd kick your ass.^{[note 7]} He went to his eternal reward on December 15, 2011, due to complications related to the cancer.^[5]

A legacy and a half[edit]

The legacy of Christopher Hitchens is one mired in tragedy, yet with the skeleton of some truly terrific ideas. On one hand, he was a staunch defender of atheism, a frankly brilliant critic of Religious crankery, and a staunch defender of liberalism until his very end, unlike one of the horsemen, who gave that idea the finger. This was especially impressive given he lived the later part of his life in an incredibly religious country, and one of the states in Jesusland thereby. He, however, was never a strategist. He loudly and violently cheerled the Iraq War, and was willing to drop the iron hammer on tyrannies as he saw fit. Hardly ever would he consider the blowback of such actions, but alas they succeeded his time.

It represents perhaps the bigger issue with Hitchens, and it was a natural indomitable will for any position he took. In an ironic sense, this caused his liberalism to do a 180^o, another example being when he considered things such as Burqa bans, and possesed in times the aforementioned divise rhetoric that characterises wingnuts and moonbats alike. Old age was a bitch to Hitchens, as it caused his pacifism to turn into a postion bent on hardline destruction of tyranny. That's not to say he was a coward, as he would visit North Korea (like, what have you done lately? really) and similarly terrifying countries for his journalism. He is considered to be a potential chickenhawk due to a loud advocacy for war, although he is not as much of a little brat as others with the moniker considering he frequently remarked that he was incapable of performing the job of a soldier. It all leads back to that indestructible will that defined him.

And that's just the case with Hitch. We at RationalWiki hold Hitchens' in high regard in many places, but we do it knowing that he was far from a perfect man. Just because he was not anywhere near this designation, does not ever mean many of his ideas are so, so incredibly valuable, and some of his hot takes were extremely though-provoking and necessary in places that required it. An incredible speaker and debater, yet not to be idolised.

Christopher Hitchens was a great man. He is no saint (no, not Mother Teresa), and certainly deeply flawed in places. But a great man. To understand why Hitchens was so great, you must take on board his greatest failings.

Bibliography[edit]

• 1984 Cyprus. Quartet. Revised editions as Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso)
• 1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001
• 1988 Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports Hill and Wang, ISBN 0809078678
• 1990 The Monarchy, Chatto & Windus Ltd
• 1990 Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies, Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)(June 1990)
• 1993 'For The Sake Of Argument' Verso
• 1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso
• 1997 The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification, Verso
• 1999 No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family, Verso
• 2000 Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, Verso
• 2001 The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso.
• 2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian, Basic Books
• 2002 Why Orwell Matters also Orwell's Victory, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03050-5
• 2004 Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3
• 2005 Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4
• 2007 'Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography ', Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN 0-87113-955-3
• 2007 The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6
• 2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as God is not Great: The Case Against Religion, Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6
• 2008 Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press
• 2008 Is Christianity Good for the World?—A Debate (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2
• 2010 Hitch-22: A Memoir, Twelve, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9
• 2011 Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens, Twelve. UK edition as Arguably: Selected Prose, Atlantic, ISBN 1-4555-0277-4 / ISBN 978-1-4555-0277-6
• 2012 Mortality, Twelve, ISBN 1-4555-0275-8 / ISBN 978-1-4555-0275-2. UK edition as Mortality, Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-84887-921-0 / ISBN 978-1-84887-921-8

External links[edit]

• Christopher Hitchens on those who try hard to be offended.

Notes[edit]

1. ↑Though he did become a US citizen in 2007, while retaining his British nationality.
2. ↑Whom he wrote a book on.
3. ↑Hitch also wrote a book on him.
4. ↑Hitchens cited the Satanic Verses controversy as one of the first things that estranged him from mainstream leftism and made his criticism of religion more prominent and public
5. ↑Yes, that one.
6. ↑In his book The Missionary Position, he skillfully painted a picture of Mother Teresa as less a devoted worker for the poor than a monomaniacal, penny-pinching missionary with a perverse love of suffering and public attention.
7. ↑Not really. He was happy for people to pray for him if they wanted, and accepted it as a sincere expression of good wishes.

References[edit]

Christopher Hitchens Book On Thomas Jefferson

1. ↑'Paxman meets Hitchens full 30 minute interview with BBCs Jeremy Paxman RIP'. YouTube. 12 December 2010. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
2. ↑The Revenge of Karl Marx, The Atlantic
3. ↑Christopher Hitchens' 10 most controversial quotes, Sydney Morning Herald. 17 December 2011.
4. ↑ ^4.04.1Christopher Hitchens, 'Learn from France, and Consider Banning the Burka.' New York Daily News, 2009 June 30. [1]
5. ↑ ^5.05.1Julie Weiner, 'In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011,' VF Daily, 2011 December 15, [2].
6. ↑Anthony, Andrew. 'Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets', The Observer. 14 November 2010.
7. ↑Christopher Hitchens, 'Bah, Hanukkah,' Slate, 2007 December 3. [3]
8. ↑http://www.amazon.com/Trial-Henry-Kissinger-Christopher-Hitchens/dp/product-description/1859843980 The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001)
9. ↑'Secular Web Kiosk: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'. infidels.org. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
10. ↑Holy Writ, The Atlantic, June 2006.
11. ↑http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/11/14/hitchens 'Guess what, the bombing worked like a charm', Salon.com, 14 November 2001: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
12. ↑Christopher Hitchens. 'Believe Me, It’s Torture,' Vanity Fair. 2008 August. [4]
13. ↑'State of the Nation' webcast, Answers in Genesis (February 16, 2010)
14. ↑Eric Reitan. 'Christopher Hitchens, Religious in Spite of Himself?'. Religion Dispatches. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
15. ↑Hitchens vs. Hedges; Atheist vs. Believer Clash Ignites Audience, AlterNet
16. ↑'A quote from Hitch 22'. www.goodreads.com.
17. ↑Mark D. Wood, (1 September 2008). 'Christopher Hitchens the Pro-Lifer?' – via YouTube.
18. ↑ ^18.018.1EST, Lisa Miller On 11/28/08 at 7:00 PM (28 November 2008). 'Beliefwatch: Pro-life Atheists'. Newsweek.
19. ↑ ^19.019.119.2Quoted in the The Quotable Hitchens
20. ↑Mindy Belz, 'The World According to Hitch', World Magazine
21. ↑Dennis Perrin, 'Hitchens Rehabilitated?', Mother Jones
22. ↑'Christopher Hitchens vs Tony Blair Debate: Is Religion A Force For Good In The World?'. YouTube. 27 December 2010. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
23. ↑Christopher Hitchens, 'Why Women Aren't Funny', Vanity Fair
24. ↑'Jennifer Byrne Presents: Christopher Hitchens'. abc.net.au. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
25. ↑'The fanatic, fraudulent Mother Teresa.'. Slate Magazine. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
26. ↑'Christopher Hitchens: Empowerment of Women'. YouTube. 23 May 2012. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
27. ↑'The Feminist Mystique: Rest in Peace Christopher Hitchens!'. thefeministmystique.blogspot.com. Retrieved on 9 October 2015.
28. ↑http://umrscblogs.org/2012/02/04/planned-parenthood-lowercase-the-cure-for-poverty/
29. ↑Page 54-55.
30. ↑Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship And The Palestinian Question, p. 83, 1988.
31. ↑'The train wreck that was the New Atheism'. Pharyngula. 25 January 2019.

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