Christopher Hitchens dies

[Kromovaracun]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16212418

I've never agreed with everything Hitchens said/wrote, but love or hate him, it's surely pretty hard to deny his formidable intellect and remarkable eloquence made him one of the most interesting commentators around. And 'interesting' is doubtless how he would have liked to be remembered.

RIP Hitch.

[Apologies - I realise I have an annoying habit of posting questions that aren't really questions. Sorry...]

[Kromovaracun]

Jno - forgive the late response. I wrote a reply last night before bed but didn't like it, so thought I'd try again in the morning.

"(I find it intriguing that these come from friends rather than from obituarists striving to be impartial.) "

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your obituaries (which I agree are very interesting) are not from friends - they're from people who met him, which is an important difference. Your first one says as much, and the second one claims that Hitchens openly described himself as a contrarian, which he never did. In the interview I posted earlier - before he was really famous - he describes how much he regrets putting it in one of his book titles because he doesn't like the implication that he just argues for the sake of it.

People who were his friends and knew him personally - the two examples that immediately come to mind are Stephen Fry and James Randi - have not attributed any insincerity to him. In fact quite opposite, if I remember right.

"I can only say that to be a supporter George W Bush and Karl Marx, and an opponent of Clinton and Saddam, doesn't seem an obvious marker of consistency. "

I appreciate it might not look as such from a distance, but if you go into more detail you can see the consistencies. The form of Marxism Hitchens came to subscribe to, for instance, stresses the later work of Marx, which identifies capitalism as a necessary and inevitable stage in development with its own revolution. The way Hitchens interpreted this was to argue that Marx was an admirer of the revolutionary aspect of capitalism. Now, whether you agree with that or not isn't the issue, but that does mean his support for globalization and simultaneously Marxism pretty consistent. (If you want me to, I'll elaborate on this point more as it is a bit unusual.)

In addition to that, Hitchens had a very sort of melodramatic view of the world. He considered the conflict of freedom vs. tyranny to be essentially the defining conflict of human existence (which is a bit at odds with his Marxism) - and he always judged or condemned people based explicitly on how he thought they were contributing to that fight. So on balance he considered Blair & Bush's toppling of Saddam more important in the grand scheme of things than pretty much anything else they did - but that still didn't stop Hitch from attacking them when he thought they were doing wrong. One of the last public debates he did was versus Tony Blair on the role of religion in the world.

Now, the reason I didn't like my previous post was because I think what you have shown is that I've been more than a little starry-eyed in my praise for Hitch - he was certainly a deeply flawed character and wouldn't approve of the adulation I've given him. But I still uphold that if he was a 'professional arguer'/troll as you're saying, something he always denied, he would have been far, far, far more inconsistent in his actual writing than he was.

[Kromovaracun]

Also - jno is not trying to say Hitchens = Hitler/Pol Pot/whoever. She's just making the point that it's easy to be seduced by people who are eloquent, and those cases are particularly extreme examples of people doing so with destructive consequences, of which we're all aware. The only point she was trying to make there was that eloquence doesn't make you right, which is true.

[jno]

Kromovaracun, that's an interesting assessment and I have to admit I'm wondering if I'm wrong. (Birdie might like to remind himself that my "loathing" of Hitchens is a figment of his imagination; I distrusted him, that's all.)

I think you are right to suggest Greenslade and Hoggart were not friends of Hitchens in the sense that, say, Martin Amis was; but they seem (on their own account, of course) to have been people who knew him well enough - not recently, because he'd lived abroad for 30 years - to give a personal memoir of his behaviour.

That's why I'm inclined to accept Greenslade's view that he would argue for the sake of it. He doesn't say Hitchens always did so - in fact he specifically says he didn't; his support for the Iraq invasion was genuine. But this sort of thing was the basis of my distrust of him: he could always put a good argument (like a good lawyer), but you couldn't always be sure he meant it.

I don't think being insincere is the same as being a contrarian. Contrarians, those who take up unpopular positions, may well be totally sincere. Whatever he may have said, though, I think he was one; it was his job, so it's hardly a criticism. As you reminded me, there's no shame in doing your job well.

What you have made me rethink was my belief that he was inconsistent. I still think he was, but I also think you're right to suggest that this was only in details and that he was pursuing a greater overall consistency. So I must concede that point.

It still doesn't make me admire Hitchens, any more than I'd admire a barrister for the vigour of his argument; I'm more likely to be impressed by the argument itself. I still (for instance) find his distinction between waterboarding and "real" torture specious.

I'll leave this thread now, as it may otherwise turn into a series of bilious attacks on me personally - ironically, it seems, because I'm being a contrarian. But thanks for the debate, and your own civility.

[birdie1971]

Jno -

I've not been trying to pick a fight with you despite what you may think of the “... bilious attacks...” that you obviously feel I've launched in your direction.

What I wanted you to understand (and still do want you to accept) is that it is deeply inappropriate and insulting to compare Hitchens to a mass murderer. Regardless of said mass murderer's oratory skills, he was still a mass murderer and a thoroughly evil individual. I do not believe for one minute that the comparison you made in your post at 10:41 on Friday, 16th December 2011 was anything other than a cheap shot.

I find it deeply sad and slightly worrying that neither you nor Kromovaracun seem to be able to grasp just how insulting this comparison is. I find it even more incredible that you still haven't seen fit to withdraw your earlier statement.

[birdie1971]

Kromovaracun -

Once again, I disagree with your interpretation. Whether or not Pol Pot was a great public speaker matters not one jot. Do you think that if 'Jno' had compared Hitchens with Hitler, we'd still be having this conversation? Hardly. The comment would have been roundly criticised and derided.

'Jno' made the Pol Pot comparison in order avoid accusations of invoking Godwin's law by choosing an almost equally (but less well known) monstrous individual.