RIP, gin-soaked ex-Trotskyite popinjay

[sabotabby]

You know, I am truly and genuinely sad about Christopher Hitchens' death.

I've spilled a good number of pixels here bashing the man, and he entirely deserved it, but he was a complicated villain, and thus generally more interesting than the people I typically mock on his blog. He switched from the right side of history to the wrong one, but I can't forget that he wrote The Trial of Henry Kissinger or that he subjected himself to the same torture techniques that he endorsed, and having done so, changed his mind about them.

So yes, he was racist, misogynistic, and warmongering, but as far as racist, misogynistic warmongers go, I had a strange and twisted affection for the bastard. I'm sorry we don't have him to kick around anymore.

Comments

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Me too. I've come quite interested in his sublty complex views on Marxism, and the fact that he came same idea I had that Marx had underestimated the dynamism of capitalism and that socialist thought has stagnated, failing to offer a good alternative.

And I found his sudden emergence as an atheist thinker to be totally cynical. He started writing about it extensively just after Sam Harris and Dawkins came to prominence and after he had been largely discredited through his neo-con turn-about and support for the Iraq War. There's no better distraction than some provocative sound bites about pious christians and some time-honored Islam-bashing.

I haven't read his atheism book yet, but most of the lectures and debates I have watched were just sophisticated condecension, name-calling and straw-man arguments on his part. He's the kind of athiest and makes me dislike many other atheists.

Still, the man was interesting and could think. He makes a more challenging punching bag than most other public intellectuals, or I should say people that pass themselves off as public intellectuals these days.

[sabotabby]

He's exactly the sort of atheist I'm not.

Saw a cute macro the other day: "Religion is like a penis: It's fine to have one, it's fine to be proud of it, but don't whip it out in public or shove it down my children's throats." That's pretty much my take on a practical level (theologically, I'd need to make a whole series of posts). I'm glad Hitch exposed Mother Teresa as an opportunistic, sadistic bloodsucker. I'm less glad that he seemed to view secularism as something that should be spread by Holy War.

He had wicked one-liners, though. And unlike most neocons, he was actually willing to engage in debate, which says a lot about his character.

[scruloose.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my take on a practical level (theologically, I'd need to make a whole series of posts).

I'd just like to point out that I think that would be awesome and fascinating. I dunno about anybody else. Also, as a practical philosophy, mutual tolerance is a hard thing to find fault with.

Speaking as somebody whose parents were both firmly atheist and both teachers (so I was raised with a deep and abiding awe for the natural world and a tremendous respect for scientific reasoning) and then came to believe in God in my university years (although to this day I have no more sympathy for the institutions of religion than I did as an atheist), I have a very personal fascination with the intersection between scientific understanding and religious/spiritual belief.

[sabotabby]

I feel like scientific understanding and spiritual beliefs are genuinely different questions. I don't mean this as a cop-out; I'm firmly an atheist. Intellectually, I don't understand the religious impulse, and I'm interested in it because I can't see how it would be possible for me to believe in such things. But I also think that religion and science are, for the most part, separate spheres.

Theologically—well, I'm not a theologian. But I come from a religious tradition—to the degree that I was raised in any sort of religious tradition—where it's possible to be an observant non-believer. Of course, I didn't find this out until I was an adult. But to be a good Jew, you don't need to believe in God. You need to live life in a certain way. I find this fascinating.

(Not that I am a good Jew by any stretch of the imagination. But the framework of the religion springs up in the weirdest places in terms of the way I think.)

[scruloose.livejournal.com]

I didn't for a moment read that as a cop-out. Frankly, you don't really seem the type. :-)
Also, I have great respect for firmly-held atheism. My respect for someone's opinion tends to have far more to do with whether it's internally consistent and applied with integrity than with whether it happens to agree with my opinion.

I think it's a genuinely hard question whether scientific understanding and spiritual beliefs are strictly separate. I think it hinges on a question that falls in the purview of the philosophy of science: namely what kinds of experience and observation are considered valid evidence. Given that evidence arrived at by deductive reasoning is considered perfectly scientific (even though it's a very different thing than empirical observation) and also that intuitive leaps are often the driver for hypotheses (which naturally then get tested using empirical methods), I think even in the realm of serious science done by serious scientists the answer is not straightforward.

My favourite example of this question is that there are people in this world who I know love me. I don't trust easily, and I arrive at this certainty after years of being in a friendship or relationship and seeing how they treat me when things are good, when things are rough, etc. Now, these results are not repeatable using randomly selected sample groups and empirical double-blind methodology. It's just a category of evidence that isn't susceptible to that particular test. Does that mean that these people's love for me is not a part of the observable real world? I certainly don't think so.

From this starting point, scientific--or maybe 'rational' is a more fitting term, being somewhat broader--understanding of the universe and spiritual belief can have significant interaction, and not necessarily in the sense of clashing against each other. I've had many non-repeatable, highly personal experiences in my life, and absent some compelling reason to suspect that I hallucinated them, I'm generally inclined to treat them as real data-points to be taken into account in my (hopefully more-or-less rational) understanding of the nature the universe.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Actually he was pretty solid in the atheist department when he was slamming on Mother Theresa.

[sabotabby]

That too. He faced death with a great deal of dignity. I respect that.

[sabotabby]

I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT IS A THING

HOW IS THIS A THING?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Because we've let it get that far without stopping it.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I didn't know he had died. I am fortunate enough not to have read his whatevers, so will probably try to stay that way.

[sabotabby]

The Trial of Henry Kissinger is worth reading.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

So yes, he was racist, misogynistic, and warmongering, but as far as racist, misogynistic warmongers go, I had a strange and twisted affection for the bastard.

Okay, somehow I missed the racist bit. Was this part of his Neo-Con stuff or found elsewhere? And does the misogyny go beyond his "Women are not funny" article?

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Dude was reeeeeallll big on the post-9/11 "If we don't murder all the Muslims the West is doomed" rhetoric, like a lot of shitbags.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

My understanding was he was talking about ideology rather than ethnicity.

[sabotabby]

In real-world terms, there is not a clear distinction. My problem with the New Atheists in general is that they seem to support a continuation of Western imperialism and the White Man's Burden through other means.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I knew a racist element had embraced Hitchens, but I do not know whether or not he had encouraged it. I have not actually read that much Hitchens beyond his stuff on Mother Teresa and Henry Kissinger.

I thought Hitchens's throwing in with the Neo-Cons was stupefying since it is simply tarted up cynical Kissengerian realism without the Cold War nuclear restraints. Throughout the Cold War, the West had justified propping up despots by arguing that brown people were "not yet ready for democracy." Obviously, Neo-con rhetoric about "spreading democracy" said the opposite, so it was not overtly racist.

I saw through their democratic charade. I recalled that the Bush Administration told Saddam's reputedly more sadistic sons and generals that they could avert the invasion by handing him over, thus replacing one authoritarian puppet with another. Plus, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other Nixon alumni were in the Bush administration. The name John Negroponte says all you need to know about the honesty of their love of democracy and human rights. And of course, I remembered all the democratic rhetoric associated with liberating Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

I presumed Hitchens was bamboozled by the democratic rhetoric. Are you saying we was not? Granted, I was shocked by his position because I thought he was too smart to be fooled; and if anyone should have known better, it would be the author of The Trial of Henry Kissinger. If it was imperial cynicism on his part, it would certainly explain a lot.

Is Richard Dawkins linked to this imperialist impulse as well?

[sabotabby]

He took a right turn in the 90s and then a hard-right turn after 9/11. Hitchens, whatever else he was, does not strike me as stupid enough to be bamboozled by the likes of Bush. I would be more inclined to suspect cynical opportunism and a lack of empathy (remember, he insisted that waterboarding wasn't torture until he had it done to himself). Weirdly, Kissinger seems like a progressive next to the neo-cons Hitchens supported.

I would absolutely say that Dawkins is an imperialist. It's neither here nor there, but he also came down on the wrong side of Elevatorgate.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Well, fuck. Now I don't want to call myself "the Richard Dawkins of American History" anymore. Are there any comparably outspoken defenders of evolution that I can compare myself to? Specifically, ones that also say "fuck off."

It seems many of my questions about Hitchens have also been answered here ...

[sabotabby]

I think you're safe with PZ Myers. He's ornery and pulls no punches but seems to have pretty good politics and strikes me as an overall stand-up guy.

...I have been trying to get to that article all day and all I get is 404 Salon bollocks.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Check your emailbox. Yours via the miracle of cut & paste.

Apparently, the New Atheists have also clashed with Stephen Jay Gould and Tom Flynn, who I like (at least, that I know of).

[sabotabby]

A number of atheists, famous and otherwise, have problems with those guys. So do I. I find their views fundamentally contrary to what I find most valuable about secular humanism: inclusiveness, diversity, and a live-and-let-live attitude towards people's personal beliefs.

I mean, I like the idea of holding religion up to scientific scrutiny—it's a fun exercise—but no one is going to be convinced. NOMA as a philosophy makes far more sense to me.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I just now finished reading Tom Flynn's article "Why I Don’t Believe in the New Atheism". I guess I'll be re-reading his The Trouble with Christmas this holiday season.

Plus, Stephen Jay Gould was on The Simpsons.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Hitchens, whatever else he was, does not strike me as stupid enough to be bamboozled by the likes of Bush

On Real Time with BM, Hitch ranted on about how intelligent Bush was
and how ignorant his critics were. He then flipped off the booers.




Richard Dawkins linked to this imperialist impulse as well?

Well, he was against the Iraq invasion and "always votes left".

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

As I wrote sabotabby elsewhere:

I was surprised by that Dawkins map of Africa because when I saw his documentary Root of All Evil he says, "Clearly, historic injustice towards the Palestinians breeds hatred and anger." (Line at 43:00) In the U.S., that passing line would get him branded a "terrorist sympathizer." It would become a Fox News talking point.

The impression I got from the movie was that he was equally hostile to all religions and that he put suicide bombers in the same category with Christians who shoot abortion providers. By contrast, the map implies that he thinks one religion is a lesser evil. I would point out to him that the genocide in Rwanda happened on the Christian side of the map. It is even helpfully labeled for him.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Richard is from South Africa, yes? Anyway, it may be hard for Americans and British not to be literally blind to it.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

His post Hurricane Katrina article was extremely harsh on Bush as an elitist douchebag who has no understanding of the problems of the 99%.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

No. He was a staunch supporter of the Arab Spring and he wrote one of the most moving obituaries to Edward Said.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Hey there, scumvermin! How does fash like you find their way here?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Exactly. RIP hitch.