Christopher Hitchens

I recently witnessed a C-Span interview with renowned author/editor Christopher Hitchens. I must be really out of touch with the “intelligentsia”, because up until this show, I had never heard of him. He is certainly an interesting character, to say the least.

Christopher Hitchens is currently an editor with Vanity Fair and writes for Free Inquiry, a magazine promoting skepticism. He has been a very outspoken individual on the subjects of socialism (he was an advocate of Trotskyism), religion (he is an anti-organized-religion atheist), and the Iraq War (he supported it, to his leftist colleagues’ dismay). In everything, he has a very blunt, direct, albeit honest style has its appeal, regardless of the merit of his expressed opinions. Hitchens is currently featured in a Newsweek magazine article highlighting his long-time criticism of Mother Teresa’s legacy in Calcutta, India. Hitchens believed that she hurt the people she was supposedly serving by exalting their poverty while simultaneously keeping the women there in an oppressed state by opposing any contraception and emphasizing their subservient role. He has stated that to believe that a God responsible for the creation of the entire universe is attentive to a believer’s individual prayers is extremely narcissistic and unhealthy. He has characterized Billy Graham as “evil”, particularly in his recruitment of young people to a belief system that Hitchens says Graham no longer believed in. He accused Graham of being a convenient public relations buffer between Presidents and their troubles that they accrued in office. Hitchens is merciless with his denunciations of Mormonism and Scientology. But he saves his greatest criticism for extremist Islam. Hitchens believes that the followers of Al-Qaeda and other extremist Islamic groups are bent on world domination, and to see the recent terror attacks and wars as a reaction to perceived Western or Israeli “aggression” is delusional and dangerous. This is why he has supported President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, a view that has distanced him from other leftist intellectuals. Hitchens also has claimed that, although Bush has claimed adherence to evangelistic Christianity, he has done more than any other President in actually bringing about a more secular society. After 9/11, Hitchens, originally a British subject, filed for citizenship here and has become an American citizen.

Christopher Hitchens, with his denunciations of organized religion, sounds like he is standing up for people who are in the face of manipulation and abuse. But his admiration of Leon Trotsky, who is culpable in the mass murder of thousands, if not millions, is inexcusable. I am personally tired of people who exalt characters such as Trotsky, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong, all of whom believed that the ends justified the means and that, and that in order to effect a revolutionary change in society, many would have to die (and did).

I found, by watching this interview, that Christopher Hitchens is an honest, albeit arrogant and sometimes rather obnoxious person who tends to act as if he is sitting on the throne of judgment, in charge of dispensing verdicts regarding those whose lives he has crossed. Ironically, I believe that his style is very attractive to a more passive, sheep-like audience that tends to look for aggressive personalities who see the world in stark black and white terms. And to me, this is a sort of paradox about Hitchens: while being so cut-and-dry with his opinions, he is also a confirmed skeptic. Skepticism as a philosophy, though, would seem to demand a more subtle and measured approach than that which Hitchens applies. That aside, agree or disagree, he is an interesting, different voice. And although he is at times brutal with his opinions, he does, to his credit, back them up with his reasons for them.