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Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why it Matters
While his post-9/11 turn to the right has defined Christopher Hitchens for the last two decades, we may now be in a position to rehabilitate his long pre-9/11 career as a left-wing polemicist. Burgis reminds readers about what was best in Hitchens's writings and helps us gain a better understanding of how someone whose whole political life was animated by the values of the socialist left could have ended up holding grotesque positions on Iraq and the War on Terror. Burgis' book makes a case for the enduring importance of engaging with Hitchen's complicated legacy.
160 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
About the author
Ben Burgis
11 books102 followersBen Burgis is a graduate of Clarion West, and he has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast program in Maine. He writes speculative fiction and realist fiction and grocery lists and Facebook status updates and academic papers. (He has a PhD from the University of Miami, and currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship at Yonsei University in South Korea.) His work has appeared in places like Podcastle and GigaNotoSaurus and Youngstown State University’s literary review Jenny. His story “Dark Coffee, Bright Light and the Paradoxes of Omnipotence” appeared in Prime Books’ anthology People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 28, 2023
ADMIRATION VS ACCOUNTABILITY
I can’t call this a love/hate compendium. What Ben Burgis has written here in this critical synopsis of the phenomenon that was Christopher Hitchens leans more toward love/disappointment. Burgis loved the pre-9/11 Hitch, the Hitch who took on Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa. He was disappointed in the post-9/11 version, the Hitch who supported both the US invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan.
“…a genuine desire—however horribly misdirected in this instance—to bring about a better world. That’s about the most generous [thing] you can (plausibly) say about Christopher Hitchens’s support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
THE RUMOR MILL
At one point Burgis writes that people close to Hitchens told him that Hitch’s excessive drinking “ate his brain.” Other sources allegedly attributed Hitch’s shift in political philosophy to Islamophobia that arose from “strident atheism” or from “plain old jingoism.” Burgis concurs by saying, “there’s probably a germ of truth in that one.” This is a rather backhanded way of implying that Hitch somehow devolved into someone who was either cognitively impaired or an Islamophobe or an extreme bellicose nationalist or maybe all of the above. What’s worse is that Burgis attributes these various speculations to unnamed sources without footnotes or citations. It is all, at best, malicious hearsay.
20/20 HINDSIGHT
To say that Christopher Hitchens was strongly impacted by the events of September 11, 2001 goes without saying. It would be foolish to think that his views on religion and politics would not be altered in some way. If Hitch was wrong to advocate for a military response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 then he was wrong in the company of millions. Response was inevitable, with or without Hitch’s support, and anyone who thinks otherwise wasn’t watching those twin towers fall. Were the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan appropriate and constructive responses? Absolutely not—but we sit in judgment with the advantage of hindsight. Burgis himself acknowledges as much:
“Bush and his enablers justified that intervention by (a) claiming that Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and (b) claiming to be worried that at some point in the future he might use them himself or share them with Al Queda . . . two decades later, the evidence for (a) turned out to be a hodgepodge of half-truths, outright lies, and nonsense whispered into the ears of neoconservatives by Iraqi emigres like Ahmad Chalabi who wanted the Americans to hand them the keys to their country—or whimpered into the ears of CIA torturers by naked and humiliated prisoners desperate to say whatever their captors seemed to want to hear.”
PERPETUAL RELEVANCE
Overall, there’s more deference here than disapproval. Ben Burgis is one of us, an ardent Hitchens reader and admirer. Hitch was not perfect and never claimed to be, but—as stated earlier—if he came down on the wrong side of history he did so with open eyes and a sincere desire to bring about a better world.
“I hated parts of his work and loved most of the rest . . . I can’t help but think that we need more Christopher Hitchenses . . . things have gotten bad enough that one won’t be enough. We need a hundred of him.”
I can’t call this a love/hate compendium. What Ben Burgis has written here in this critical synopsis of the phenomenon that was Christopher Hitchens leans more toward love/disappointment. Burgis loved the pre-9/11 Hitch, the Hitch who took on Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa. He was disappointed in the post-9/11 version, the Hitch who supported both the US invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan.
“…a genuine desire—however horribly misdirected in this instance—to bring about a better world. That’s about the most generous [thing] you can (plausibly) say about Christopher Hitchens’s support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
THE RUMOR MILL
At one point Burgis writes that people close to Hitchens told him that Hitch’s excessive drinking “ate his brain.” Other sources allegedly attributed Hitch’s shift in political philosophy to Islamophobia that arose from “strident atheism” or from “plain old jingoism.” Burgis concurs by saying, “there’s probably a germ of truth in that one.” This is a rather backhanded way of implying that Hitch somehow devolved into someone who was either cognitively impaired or an Islamophobe or an extreme bellicose nationalist or maybe all of the above. What’s worse is that Burgis attributes these various speculations to unnamed sources without footnotes or citations. It is all, at best, malicious hearsay.
20/20 HINDSIGHT
To say that Christopher Hitchens was strongly impacted by the events of September 11, 2001 goes without saying. It would be foolish to think that his views on religion and politics would not be altered in some way. If Hitch was wrong to advocate for a military response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 then he was wrong in the company of millions. Response was inevitable, with or without Hitch’s support, and anyone who thinks otherwise wasn’t watching those twin towers fall. Were the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan appropriate and constructive responses? Absolutely not—but we sit in judgment with the advantage of hindsight. Burgis himself acknowledges as much:
“Bush and his enablers justified that intervention by (a) claiming that Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and (b) claiming to be worried that at some point in the future he might use them himself or share them with Al Queda . . . two decades later, the evidence for (a) turned out to be a hodgepodge of half-truths, outright lies, and nonsense whispered into the ears of neoconservatives by Iraqi emigres like Ahmad Chalabi who wanted the Americans to hand them the keys to their country—or whimpered into the ears of CIA torturers by naked and humiliated prisoners desperate to say whatever their captors seemed to want to hear.”
PERPETUAL RELEVANCE
Overall, there’s more deference here than disapproval. Ben Burgis is one of us, an ardent Hitchens reader and admirer. Hitch was not perfect and never claimed to be, but—as stated earlier—if he came down on the wrong side of history he did so with open eyes and a sincere desire to bring about a better world.
“I hated parts of his work and loved most of the rest . . . I can’t help but think that we need more Christopher Hitchenses . . . things have gotten bad enough that one won’t be enough. We need a hundred of him.”
January 5, 2022
A big problem with this book is that it is simply mis-titled. As someone who always felt that Hitchens’ way of thinking has only become more relevant in the decade since his death, I reflexively bought it because of the subtitle: “What he got right, how he went wrong, and why he still matters.” Unfortunately, the author fails to address any of these points in a satisfactory manner.
Instead, the book is more of the Burgis’s personal response to Hitchens’ life from the perspective of a democratic socialist and philosophy student. So I guess if you follow and enjoy the author, you might get some use out of it. It is not a comprehensive accounting by any means.
Personally, I found most of the book extremely annoying to read. The first chapters are more of a sophomoric commentary of some of Hitchens’ battles, with which most readers will already be familiar. You don’t get anything new other than having the author come in and position himself as the authority to assess Hitchens’ rightness or wrongness.
Fully a third or more of the book is basically just the author recapping old debates he’s watched on YouTube and nitpicking to inject his opinion on what Hitchens should have said instead at different moments.
On the positive side, I felt that the chapter on Hitchens’ political evolution was a thoughtful analysis, based on a thorough reading of the record over time. It was more honest and nuanced than the superficial approach most critics of Hitchens from the left usually take.
Overall I wouldn’t recommend this to most of the people interested in Hitchens’ legacy, unless you’re a completist or you have a red rose in your Twitter avatar. Until a better analysis of Hitchens life comes along, I’d instead recommend looking up the number of remembrances published on the 10 year anniversary of his death in places like The Atlantic, Prospect, and the FT.
Instead, the book is more of the Burgis’s personal response to Hitchens’ life from the perspective of a democratic socialist and philosophy student. So I guess if you follow and enjoy the author, you might get some use out of it. It is not a comprehensive accounting by any means.
Personally, I found most of the book extremely annoying to read. The first chapters are more of a sophomoric commentary of some of Hitchens’ battles, with which most readers will already be familiar. You don’t get anything new other than having the author come in and position himself as the authority to assess Hitchens’ rightness or wrongness.
Fully a third or more of the book is basically just the author recapping old debates he’s watched on YouTube and nitpicking to inject his opinion on what Hitchens should have said instead at different moments.
On the positive side, I felt that the chapter on Hitchens’ political evolution was a thoughtful analysis, based on a thorough reading of the record over time. It was more honest and nuanced than the superficial approach most critics of Hitchens from the left usually take.
Overall I wouldn’t recommend this to most of the people interested in Hitchens’ legacy, unless you’re a completist or you have a red rose in your Twitter avatar. Until a better analysis of Hitchens life comes along, I’d instead recommend looking up the number of remembrances published on the 10 year anniversary of his death in places like The Atlantic, Prospect, and the FT.
January 9, 2022
Here's the guy who failed math in school and doesn't get logic to analyze Hitch. Cute. Ridiculous.
May 24, 2022
The last part of the title is actually 'Why He Still Matters' which is where I think Mr Burgis falls flat. Not being well versed in Marxist socialism myself, I trust that Burgis' love of 'old Hitchens'. On the second question, he deals with Hitchens' 'controversial' stances a bit better than I thought he would. Certainly he attempts to go give a better account than many on Burgis' cohort of the American progressive left who do indeed saw Hitchens as a drunken sellout. However, there are instances where Burgis tries to have it both ways. For instance he conceded to one of the common slurs that Hitchens dabbled in 'Islamophobia'. A term ridiculed not just by Mr Hitchens himself but all those who have had to live under the boot of Islamic theocracy or are fed up with Islamic bullying even outside Muslim countries. I wonder if Burgis has ever tried to use 'Christanityphobia', worried about any sense of 'unjust' attack from people on the left who have for decades stood up to Christian brainwashing and bullying? Also, if 'Christanityphobia' sounds clunky and ridiculous, that's because it is, just like 'Islamophobia'. But at least he notices that Kurdistan is a Muslim majority region, that 'Hitch' defended largely Muslim Bosnia and he was a life long supporter of Palestinian rights. A better account given than most from those who use that ridiculous term against Hitchens.
One thing that is glaring in this section is the omission of any mention of Hitchens' friendship of Salman Rushdie and his reaction to the fatwa, the death warrant for writing a work of fiction for a guy living in another country. A fellow writer... I thought that might've been worth engaging with since it was the first time, agree or not, that Hitchens felt that we living in secular open societies might have to change 'their' societies if they were going to make threats like that.
So, back to the final question of 'Why he still matters'. You would think this would be the most important question to deal with, making a comprehensive defence in the face of all those people, especially on Burgis' side of politics who do not care for Hitchens today. It doesn't seem that he does. If one were to be charitable, you could say he attempts to infuse the last question with the first question, in the first third of the book. He doesn't made a good case of why 'Hitch' going after the Clintons on healthcare matters to Americans in 2022 where Mr Biden is the incumbent President and Mrs Clinton was defeated in the 2016 election.
If it isn't clear already, this unusually slim book entitled with three big questions regarding one of the most celebrated essayists of the past thirty years (and very few essays mentioned I might add. Burgis is far more interested in the live debates on YouTube. Hitchens once said all this new exposure on video sharing platforms was welcomed, yet he still would rather be better remembered for his writing) is mainly aimed at the American progressive left, that left that champions Bernie Sanders. At the end of this book, Burgis wonders whether 'Hitch' would've supported 'Bernie'. So this book isn't aimed at people in general who should take on interest in the arguments of Hitchens for their own sake, it's aimed at the Bernie wing of the American left (and I emphasise the American left here...). Which Mr Burgis would say is the point I'm sure. Yet it's never specified in the title of this book. The problem is he doesn't make a convincing case even for his own team. What is most particularly baffling is that Burgis' claims that the most 'interesting' things Hitchens said was in the final decade of his life. He doesn't follow that up with an explanation and it's especially confusing given that he spends the bulk of his pamphlet condemning Hitchens for his unapologetic positions on Afghanistan and Iraq.
So if you're looking for a comprehensive case by Ben Burgis as to why he matters in general, you'll be disappointed. Goodness knows what he may think if there is a young Afghan woman who absorbs herself in the writings of Hitchens. Or someone from Iraqi Kurdistan or one of the many rebellious Iranian youth who've had it up their ears with theocracy and manage to feel invigorated by at least some of his work. I can only speak for myself, having grown up in a rather reactionary Islamic community and say that Christopher Hitchens very much does matter to me.
One thing that is glaring in this section is the omission of any mention of Hitchens' friendship of Salman Rushdie and his reaction to the fatwa, the death warrant for writing a work of fiction for a guy living in another country. A fellow writer... I thought that might've been worth engaging with since it was the first time, agree or not, that Hitchens felt that we living in secular open societies might have to change 'their' societies if they were going to make threats like that.
So, back to the final question of 'Why he still matters'. You would think this would be the most important question to deal with, making a comprehensive defence in the face of all those people, especially on Burgis' side of politics who do not care for Hitchens today. It doesn't seem that he does. If one were to be charitable, you could say he attempts to infuse the last question with the first question, in the first third of the book. He doesn't made a good case of why 'Hitch' going after the Clintons on healthcare matters to Americans in 2022 where Mr Biden is the incumbent President and Mrs Clinton was defeated in the 2016 election.
If it isn't clear already, this unusually slim book entitled with three big questions regarding one of the most celebrated essayists of the past thirty years (and very few essays mentioned I might add. Burgis is far more interested in the live debates on YouTube. Hitchens once said all this new exposure on video sharing platforms was welcomed, yet he still would rather be better remembered for his writing) is mainly aimed at the American progressive left, that left that champions Bernie Sanders. At the end of this book, Burgis wonders whether 'Hitch' would've supported 'Bernie'. So this book isn't aimed at people in general who should take on interest in the arguments of Hitchens for their own sake, it's aimed at the Bernie wing of the American left (and I emphasise the American left here...). Which Mr Burgis would say is the point I'm sure. Yet it's never specified in the title of this book. The problem is he doesn't make a convincing case even for his own team. What is most particularly baffling is that Burgis' claims that the most 'interesting' things Hitchens said was in the final decade of his life. He doesn't follow that up with an explanation and it's especially confusing given that he spends the bulk of his pamphlet condemning Hitchens for his unapologetic positions on Afghanistan and Iraq.
So if you're looking for a comprehensive case by Ben Burgis as to why he matters in general, you'll be disappointed. Goodness knows what he may think if there is a young Afghan woman who absorbs herself in the writings of Hitchens. Or someone from Iraqi Kurdistan or one of the many rebellious Iranian youth who've had it up their ears with theocracy and manage to feel invigorated by at least some of his work. I can only speak for myself, having grown up in a rather reactionary Islamic community and say that Christopher Hitchens very much does matter to me.
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November 12, 2022What happens when your heroes go astray?
Ben Burgis, like me, inhaled Hitchens early in life, although I discovered him in his edgelord le-atheist period, and so I took him with a grain of salt, even if I was astounded by his rhetorical ability. So what you see is one smart, charming man trying to reconcile the Hitch remembered with the Hitch he loved. Does he succeed? Kind of. It's still a fond wander through some of Hitchens' work by a fine observer.
Ben Burgis, like me, inhaled Hitchens early in life, although I discovered him in his edgelord le-atheist period, and so I took him with a grain of salt, even if I was astounded by his rhetorical ability. So what you see is one smart, charming man trying to reconcile the Hitch remembered with the Hitch he loved. Does he succeed? Kind of. It's still a fond wander through some of Hitchens' work by a fine observer.
May 11, 2022
Very enjoyable read if you’re a major fan of Hitchens’ work, as I am. I think Burgis fails to identify a few a few fatal flaws in Hitch’s reasoning that would make his mistakes clearer. Nevertheless, he does a good job of explaining the importance of his work & why it still lingers in our society long after his death.
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January 13, 2022Artig og lettlest liten blekke
April 19, 2022
Burgis cuts Hitchens way too much slack
August 17, 2022
….IT WAS REALLY NOTHING.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews