Young Christopher Hitchens on Latin American and the US (1987)

Christopher Hitchens discusses Latin America and US Foreign Policy. He appears here on Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr.

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[nickhughes]

Why am I addicted to watching Hitchens and Buckley videos in 2023

[kdurston]

Watching his career, I just noticed Hitchens never saw a beige jacket he wouldn't wear. lol

[giorgikvatchadze]

Despite many differences between myself and Christopher on an array of subjects pertaining to the domain of politics and religion, I have always enjoyed listening to him and am terribly saddened by his unfortunate and premature death. I salute W.Buckley Jr. for inviting Christopher to so many of these insightful discussions.

[mikem]

Boy it doesn’t get any better than Hichens/Buckley … how I miss those days

[rsoulburnz]

New hitch stuff I haven't seen/heard before :) thank you for posting!

[shelleymartin]

Buckley by now had long recognized the formidable intellect, infinitely well-read/ erudite, and always conversationally charming persona Hitchens consistently brought to Firing Line, , & It looks like here that he had allowed Hitchens to basically play Host and Game Master in a sort of one against three juggling / chess match - The three being other world leaders - the one being an immigrant from England! Boggles my mind. The GOAT.

[ThePossumone]

Fantastic Hitch as always
Erudite but not infallible not always right
Miss these kind of intellects
And of course William Buckley

[lostfan]

2:49 that signature throat clear. I have listened to so much of his speeches that I literally recognize that throat clear as Hitch

[peggie]

Your comment rocks!!!! Made me Like when. i come across the word, ‘heart. ‘

[ambassador]

Love Christopher Hitchens. He would have a Field day in 2021. I hope heaven exists for him, with J.W black, cigs and awesome conversations.

[Xpistos]

I really wish he would have taken better care of himself - less smoking, substituted for coffee, less drugs, less eating, more sleep, more exercise, more meditation, healthier eating. If he were alive, his voice would have been so refreshing to hear over these past ten years.

[jorged]

That Chilean guy is a shame to his country and all the southamerican countries that suffered the american foreign policy of those days

[theonlyantony]

Buckley, stoned and nit-picky, as ever. What a magnificent beast! Tenacious as Hitchens. They had mutual respect of character, if not politics. Buckley gave Hitchens a lot of air time and I respect him for that. Oh blimey, these days, as the Hitchens TV footage gets thinner on the ground, i get a bit misty when a clip ends.

[patdel]

I am a big fan of Hitchens but with regard to the Nicaraguan segment, anyone who thinks Hitchens, "won this debate, " just completely misunderstood the purpose of this segment and is essentially stanning for Hitchens, which I think Hitchens himself would not have encouraged anyone to do. Everything Mr. Riviera said was proven in hindsight to be completely correct, the Soviets paid over $800 million in arms to the FSLN in the 1980s, which was the purveyor of the de facto one-party state in Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan civil war was a proxy war between the US and Soviet Union and the US did not in fact end up overthrowing the government of Nicaragua after all, but rather there was a peaceful transfer of power after one of the most observed elections in Latin American history in 1990, after which the FSLN conceded defeat and became a political party, ending the civil war--precisely as Mr. Riviera said was the objective of the contras (of course there were many groups constituting the contras, but I'm just talking about Mr. Riviera here). Now, as to whether Oliver North's admissions on the Contra's being, "mostly opportunists, " was true is sort of a moot point, given that the objective, at least from Mr. Riviera's statement, was to restore a multi-party system, and it's not really an indictment of Mr. Riviera that such an repugnant criminal happens to be the one providing safety and security against an even larger, more repugnant criminal. That being said, by having been a witness to atrocities perpetrated by the United States in Latin America in the 1970's, Hitchens himself was in a sense of victim of US Executive branch brutality and spent the rest of his career trying to make sense and right those wrongs. The man definitely had a deep hatred for totalitarianism, fascism, dictatorships, communism, and I believe he was trying to do his best as a journalist to probe for the truth here and in some way build awareness to hopefully prevent an even worse right-wing dictatorship from swooping in as had definitely happened in the 1970s Argentina and Chile. If you read some of Hitchen's essays on Argentina and Chilean dictatorships you will see what I mean...horrifying things occurred, and yes they were largely done with our explicit approval and in many cases Kissinger's explicit direction.

[xanajak]

From 8 minutes till about 18 minutes, Hitch pretty much destroyed the morale of the Nicaraguan dude while basically telling Buckley to STFU.

[johnnymiller]

How many influential people-leaving aside, for the nonce, his ideological leanings-would have been able, or even willing, to put on television a program that actually, by intention, brought thinkers from different sides of the political spectrum together to engage in discussion and debate in the way Buckley has?Like him or not, there hasn't been a show like Firing Line since.I miss it.

[futterkulcha]

What is the word Kanossa or knossa? That Hitch uses to describe the act of Buckley? Thanks

[dmolmalowski]

This comment section is completely incoherent.

[nadax]

He was almost 40 here, he started writing column at 20, so by no means is he "young"

[robertbentley]

Don't know it for a fact but that Nicaraguan is lying through his teeth.