SDG here with an interesting interview of Christopher “I hate Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, and Mel Gibson” Hitchens (as he was recently described) by liberal Johann Hari trying to wrap his head around Hitchens’ support for Bush and the war on “Islamofascist” terror.
Hitchens is no friend of religion of any kind. But at least he avoids the insanity of certain wackos on the left whose hatred of fundamentalist Christians and traditional Catholics is so great that they consider them as bad as if not worse than head-severing terrorist psychos in black masks.
Some excerpts:
To many of Christopher Hitchens’ old friends, he died on September 11th 2001. Tariq Ali considered himself a comrade of Christopher Hitchens for over thirty years. Now he speaks about him with bewilderment. “On 11th September 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed the planes they had hijacked into the Twin Towers of New York. Among the casualties, although unreported that week, was a middle-aged Nation columnist called Christopher Hitchens. He was never seen again,” Ali writes. “The vile replica currently on offer is a double.”…
He explains that he believes the moment the left’s bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. “The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women’s rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists.” He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali’s books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. “It’s explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody – any movement – that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings.”
Poor Johann Hari, trying so hard to understand what Hitchens is saying while still holding onto his own Bush-sucks-and-America-stinks worldview. I’m surprised his head didn’t explode after that conversation.
The sentence that jumped out at me was this one:
“George Orwell – one of Hitchens’ intellectual icons – managed to oppose fascism and Stalinism from the left without ever offering a word of support for Winston Churchill.”
True, but Orwell also despised pacifists (calling them “objectively pro-Nazi,” if I remember) and seemed to realize, deep down, that there was nobody *but* Churchill who was actually prepared to fight back against the Fascists. If Hari ever makes a similar connection in his mind, there may be some hope for him. As it is, he remains an ideologue, excessively fond of his own purity of thought and utterly useless when it comes to dealing with the real world.
Hitchens is what the late Harry Elmer Barnes called the “pro war pacifists.” As you may recall, he was gung-ho in favor of murdering Serbs because of their supposed “genocide” against Moslems.
I remember an article by Hitchens in which he was thrilled that the Kurds had women judges and uncensored internet. In other words, Hitchens knows that US involvment in these areas will extend leftism to even more of the world.
As with most leftists, Hitches can’t get excited about anyone unless he can label them “fascists.” Is there any proof that OBL has been influenced by Mussolini’s corporate state? Of course not, but Hitchens labels Al Quaida fascist to get the support of the left.
If a European state adopted a moderately reactionay form of Christianity, Hitchens would be in favor of US sanctions if not bombing. They would be “fascists” to him.
Hitchens is just another shill for the managerial elite who run the West. He isn’t worth the time of day.
Orwell was firmly convinced that only a socialist government could win the war. Some of his statements are naive to an extreme, such as there are production problems in a socialist state, because the government decides how much is needed and makes it.
Nor is OBL following the fascist rejection of the transcendent objective, signified, of personal moral responsibility or the establishment as the summum bonum of the group will to power, which is the ideological side of fascism, from Hitler to Pound to Shalelah.
Anne-let me get this straight, you actually believe that the bosnian muslims were NOT being massacred by the Serbians? Have you been reading Justin Raimondo’s “antiwar.com” from the committee to free Slobodan Milosevic?