Where Christopher Hitchens Went Wrong

In this Majority Report clip, Christopher Hitchens was better than Sam Harris, but who isn't?

"Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say it, God. He died today at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, after a punishing battle with esophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father.

He was a man of insatiable appetites—for cigarettes, for scotch, for company, for great writing, and, above all, for conversation. That he had an output to equal what he took in was the miracle in the man. You’d be hard-pressed to find a writer who could match the volume of exquisitely crafted columns, essays, articles, and books he produced over the past four decades. He wrote often—constantly, in fact, and right up to the end—and he wrote fast; frequently without the benefit of a second draft or even corrections."*

[IulianusTabernarius]

Hitchens turned me into a socialist, I was a neocon adjacent liberal republican until I was about 20, then found him and became first an atheist, then a progressive leftist, then finally a full blown socialist. all over the span of the past 9 years.

Which, is also why I am a fan of this show now. and why the idiot fanboys in the comments give me a migraine. Maybe they should read the source material Hitchens quoted from rather than trying to divine the opinion of a man who had been dead since 2011

[rn]

One legend speaking of another. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends..rest peacefully Brooks and Hitchens

[Trowa]

Hitchens taught me that nobody is perfect, and I've never blindly idolized anyone since. The world is too complicated for anyone to be right about everything all the time. We all have bad takes. We all grow, for better or worse.

[andrewherrera]

He was horribly wrong on a lot of stuff post-9/11, but I wish he was here to shit on Jordan Peterson tbh.

[TheInsideVideo]

As somebody who knew of Sam Harris and Hitch way before I heard of TYT or MR, it's bizarre to me how you selectively focus on their almost completely justified attacks on Islam. These guys slated ALL religions, and just so happen to have more recent material to work with when it came to Islam. The way you frame them as if they were concentrated on Islam is either really ignorant of their background, of purposefully nasty as you lack nuance in distinguishing intelligent criticism of religion with bigoted attacks on Muslims. I'm the leftist of the left you could meet, but I don't arrive to the party with prejudice towards those critical of religion.

[xTEETSx]

i wish hitchens would have been able to debate peterson, jordons career would already have ended

[NoWay]

The nuance with Hitchens support of the Iraq invasion is that Hitchens supported Kurdish independence. That was the basis for his support for the invasion and it's a noble reason. He was wrong, but his reason for being wrong was right if that makes any sense. You could go on almost indefinitely about what Christopher Hitchens was wrong about. He was glib and antagonistic and he was a skilled debater who sometimes argued just to argue with a various degree of tongue-in-cheekiness. He once argued that women weren't funny, and it was kind of him being facetious and kind of him playing the role of a chauvinist pig. Personally, I can cut him a great deal of slack because he was funny and insightful and had little or no bad intent.

Unlike Sam Harris over the last few years, Hitch went after religion without restraint. He did not primarily attack a religion that's in the minority in the US and Great Britain. He attacked Islam, but one of his last public speeches, maybe his last one, he was at Liberty University confronting a crowd of Christians. He said he felt like lion thrown to the lambs. He was pretty fearless and sometimes wrongheaded, but he would change his mind given new information. IMO, I don't think that he would look back on the Iraq invasion now, with no great improvement for the Kurds, and say it was the proper thing to do.

[Johnsavage]

lots of legitimate criticism of Hitchens but im always put of by the cheapness of the 'drunk' thing.

[benjaminh]

Hitchens relished in his contrarian posture a bit much and I think it became his downfall. He was better than most.

[DealingWithDylan]

"If you have concluded that there is no longer an international socialist movement, that it's not going to revive, you're really only being opposed for saying you're a socialist nonetheless.

And that's the position that I'm in now.

But I do miss it, and miss it like an amputated limb.

I miss the way that there used to be an international left, and I'm very distressed and appalled of whats rushed in to fill the vacuum of the critique of Liberal Capitalism.

Because what's come in to fill that gap is much more something like theocratic primitivism, if not worse, fascism, that is now the alternative to the globalized capitalist structure."

-Christopher Hitchens in 2007 [When asked to expand on his statement of him: 'struggling to be a socialist living in a time when capitalism is more revolutionary.']

Hitchens would be battering the alt-right today, and all of the conservatives who loved him would be more likely trying to understand his position, and wondering if they too should be Sanders supporters. We needed hitch 2016 to present. I miss him like an amputated limb.

[Wildcard]

Hitchens had his faults but he far and away was one of the best voices of reason and critical thinking. I know he took hits on his support of the 2nd Iraq war but given all of the variables( being in material breach of the ceasefire, supporting terrorists hiding uranium scud missiles and small caches of chemical weapons) I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I would scold him on not criticizing the half ass bungling and out right incompetence of the military occupation and of Paul Bremmers administration. Aside from that Hitchens more times than not was spot on.

[kylestyyle]

I'm a big fan of Hitchens with mad respect for his intellect. That said, I think "The world was like a proxy for his social circles and personal arguments and vendettas" is a pretty insightful summation by Michael.

[SeanDDaily]

Careful, guys. You're shitting on one of the brightest lights in the Atheist Pantheon. Hell, that's almost as risky as criticizing Jordan Peterson nowadays.

[ZosoZeus]

Like, ya know, like, ya know, like, ya know, like, ya know, like, ya know, like, ya know, like, ya know

[TheDarkMatter-iuge]

I love the Hitch. I only disagreed with once and that was on the Iraq War but his views on religion, religious sheep, the right, the left, the Clintons, Kissinger, the media, false charity, drinking and the love of women was really spot on. He traveled, ate good, drank good and loved to read. He never became “a bore.”

[jimmybamslam]

Hitchens was accurate with his condemnations of Religious dogma.

He also was wrong on some of his foriegn policy views.

[jaredcardenas]

I feel like Carl Benjamin wants to be Hitchens.

[jakobrhinehart]

This is actually pretty good about hitch. He also would build a straw man with people's arguments and take it down

[josephhilditch]

Christopher Hitchens got to the point where he could no longer call himself a Marxist. For goodness sake he even considered voting for John McCain according to his own words. Peoples opinions and politics do change over time for the better and sometimes for the worse.

[paddyquinlan]

The path from Trot to neocon is surprisingly well trodden.