I heard with some sadness on Friday that the great polemicist Christopher Hitchens had died of cancer. It wasn't entirely surprising, but from his recent appearances (including a particularly moving one alongside Richard Dawkins) showed that while he'd become physically frail his mind was undented. The man remained, and will remain, an inspiration. Looking about at the obituaries that accompany the falling of such a giant, there are no surprises, and they can pretty neatly be separated into three separate categories - the sick cluckings of Christian voices - fake love thy enemy homilies, speculation of a deathbed conversion and words on Hitch being in hell; fawning obits of the like that would no doubt, if he was anything like his public persona, have made him sick; and last and most obnoxious of all, "it's what Hitch would've wanted" obits casting an eye on his troubling shift to becoming a Bush-loving neocon, occasionally shooting barbed potshots at the Religious Right who had accepted him into their ranks. As you can tell, my writing on the subject will be the third of those - well, I'll aim for that, but it'll be quite balanced as I do like the man's writing.
That old chestnut - "I didn't always agree with his political views". I didn't, many of us who lean to the left didn't. We were actively irritated by his toeing of the Bush party line. On this particular subject he managed to make his brother, Peter Hitchens, perma-scowling Daily Mail columnist ever so slightly on the right of Martin Webster, seem reasonable. He started favouring "humanitarian interventionism" - all men are entitled to their opinions, but when it results in Guantanamo Bay and the death of 113,00 civilians its time to throw your hands up and admit you're wrong. He didn't, of course, he just sneered at those who'd let such petty thing as facts get in the way, hanging all his faith that he was right on lies (familiar?), and made another proto-EDL remark about Islamo-facism. This was, of course a common theme - check his track record on Yugoslavia. He was an outspoken atheist who brought up his twelth Jewish roots whenever challenged for supposedly anti-Semitic remarks, as if that ever mattered.
Now, at the risk of being fair to a dead man who can't defend himself, something Hitchens would never have done or cared about (and why would he?), some of the ones flagged up as anti-Semitic categorically aren't - circumcision, where there is no medial impetus, IS genital mutilation - just the same as the mutilation of young girls but less frequently frowned upon as it has become accepted in Western society (and to be fair, it is less damaging). Its an interesting point that, according to commentators of different religions and political backgrounds Hitchens is a right winger, a leftist, an imperialist, a socialist, a Zionist and an anti Semitic anti-Zionist who has particular dislike for Catholics / Muslims / Jews depending on who you listened to. All this adds up to two things - he's a blonde fat thin man with red hair and a clean shaven beard, and also his own man - not easy to pin down into one box. This was refreshing in a world of "creative free thinkers" churning out books of each other's opinions differently worded, and toeing the party line.
So while I and many people didn't agree with his views and thought he was a hypocritical idiot for holding them and espousing them with all the theatrical fervour of a Bible belt televangelist, that was actually part of the appeal. Here was a man who had no truck with the "left/right" divide thats all well and good and tidy but often bears no resemblance to reality. There really was something of the Orwell about him, a man with similarly flawed logic often bordering on the hypocritical, probably why he idealised him. Both had a way of expressing opinions many of their core readership would despise in a way you'd respect, couched in ornate writing, referencing everything from the halls of Academia to Trotskyist tracts to pop culture and inserting self referential asides that managed to be both boastful and self deprecating. He remembered that free speech included his own ideological enemies as well as his friends. The man could write, and the man could debate. Often it wasn't even that he was right but that his opponents were so wrong. Look at the vultures circling, the "good Christians" spewing passive-aggressive bile in a way that Jesus would've been disgusted by if he'd existed. I will miss him and you probably will too if you've read this far. Let's not remember him as an arch polemicist, let's remember him as a flawed but very intelligent and inspiring man.
After all, it's what he would've wanted.
And imitation, I think you'll find, is the sincerest form of flattery.
That old chestnut - "I didn't always agree with his political views". I didn't, many of us who lean to the left didn't. We were actively irritated by his toeing of the Bush party line. On this particular subject he managed to make his brother, Peter Hitchens, perma-scowling Daily Mail columnist ever so slightly on the right of Martin Webster, seem reasonable. He started favouring "humanitarian interventionism" - all men are entitled to their opinions, but when it results in Guantanamo Bay and the death of 113,00 civilians its time to throw your hands up and admit you're wrong. He didn't, of course, he just sneered at those who'd let such petty thing as facts get in the way, hanging all his faith that he was right on lies (familiar?), and made another proto-EDL remark about Islamo-facism. This was, of course a common theme - check his track record on Yugoslavia. He was an outspoken atheist who brought up his twelth Jewish roots whenever challenged for supposedly anti-Semitic remarks, as if that ever mattered.
Now, at the risk of being fair to a dead man who can't defend himself, something Hitchens would never have done or cared about (and why would he?), some of the ones flagged up as anti-Semitic categorically aren't - circumcision, where there is no medial impetus, IS genital mutilation - just the same as the mutilation of young girls but less frequently frowned upon as it has become accepted in Western society (and to be fair, it is less damaging). Its an interesting point that, according to commentators of different religions and political backgrounds Hitchens is a right winger, a leftist, an imperialist, a socialist, a Zionist and an anti Semitic anti-Zionist who has particular dislike for Catholics / Muslims / Jews depending on who you listened to. All this adds up to two things - he's a blonde fat thin man with red hair and a clean shaven beard, and also his own man - not easy to pin down into one box. This was refreshing in a world of "creative free thinkers" churning out books of each other's opinions differently worded, and toeing the party line.
So while I and many people didn't agree with his views and thought he was a hypocritical idiot for holding them and espousing them with all the theatrical fervour of a Bible belt televangelist, that was actually part of the appeal. Here was a man who had no truck with the "left/right" divide thats all well and good and tidy but often bears no resemblance to reality. There really was something of the Orwell about him, a man with similarly flawed logic often bordering on the hypocritical, probably why he idealised him. Both had a way of expressing opinions many of their core readership would despise in a way you'd respect, couched in ornate writing, referencing everything from the halls of Academia to Trotskyist tracts to pop culture and inserting self referential asides that managed to be both boastful and self deprecating. He remembered that free speech included his own ideological enemies as well as his friends. The man could write, and the man could debate. Often it wasn't even that he was right but that his opponents were so wrong. Look at the vultures circling, the "good Christians" spewing passive-aggressive bile in a way that Jesus would've been disgusted by if he'd existed. I will miss him and you probably will too if you've read this far. Let's not remember him as an arch polemicist, let's remember him as a flawed but very intelligent and inspiring man.
After all, it's what he would've wanted.
And imitation, I think you'll find, is the sincerest form of flattery.
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