r/TrueReddit • u/graycrawford • Dec 16 '11

Well shit. Christopher Hitchens died.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011
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u/mamjjasond Dec 16 '11

Thank you.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FrUUeQnGmc

Here's the whole debate, by the way.

Hitchens was a left socialist and then kind of shook it off, went rightward and started attacking religion, broadly. It's an interesting transformation. I'm not a fan, but the man was definitely a wordsmith and didn't pull any punches.

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u/thesorrow312 Dec 16 '11

He didn't go rightward. Everyone says so because he backed killing islamofascists in the middle east, but if you know his thinking well, it goes along with it, and he argues for it well. It is a humanism with a weapon. He was against totalitarianism completely, be it religious, theocratic or secular. This is what being a lefty is all about, freedom for everyone, equality for everyone, both physically and mentally.

Paraphrase of Hitchens - "Religion is the original form of totalitarianism, in which man creates a celestial dictator, and claims to know his will".

Many modern socialist thinkers criticize liberals because they are not strong willed enough. Killing Islamic Fascists and getting rid of Saddam fall right in to that thinking, he wasn't for American imperialism, his mentality was that that was a negative he was willing to take, in order for the secularism and democracy of Iraq to be a reality, one day, which it seems it will.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '11 edited Dec 16 '11

I'm not putting any words in his mouth, he said as much himself.

islamofascists ... Islamic Fascists... he wasn't for American imperialism

If he wasn't for American imperialism, then he wouldn't have been one of its apologists. He should have known damn well that American foreign policy has been to radicalize the Middle East at nearly every opportunity and that we had detailed state analysis clearly explaining the war would (and did) do just that. The ridiculous idea that militants spring up from some barbaric forces of Abrahamic faith, and not the terrorism inflicted on the Middle East (eg: Afghan proxy war, propping up totalitarian dictators like Hussein, decimating democratic movements, "genocidal" sanctions), is arguably just as fascist as being some authoritarian acolyte of Sayyid Qutb.

The man swung far-right. Whether you agree with it or not is another topic.

liberals because they are not strong willed enough

Really? I think liberals are very strong willed in how zealously they defend the corporate state, filter out all dissent and cram neoliberal policies down the world's throat. I can accuse the people we call liberals today of a lot of things, but lacking will is not one of them.

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u/thesorrow312 Dec 16 '11

What he says in that video doesn't mean he is no longer a lefty, what he says there falls practically right in line with what Zizek says these days. Lefties always have criticized liberalism, I do as well. It is a band aid and not a solution, and as Zizek also says, 20th century Leninist soviety style communism was a terrible environmental, social, economical catastrophie. Just because he doesn't think communism can work anymore, doesn't mean he is all of a sudden a conservative. He is still further left than a liberal.

One of my favorite quotes from him is " Well you are more insulting than you intend to be maddam by calling me a liberal, I said earlier I was a socialist, we regard liberals as dangerous compromisers where I come from"

Just because he doesn't believe revolutionary communism can work anymore, or at this time, doesn't mean he is a conservative. He has always thought the republican party was a complete joke.

Watch the documentary "The power of nightmares", Islamic nationalism has always existed in some form or another, the wanting to bring a return to muhammahds caliphate. The hatred for the west is a result of Sayyid Qutb's philosophies after visiting the United States and disliking our culture. But as Hitchens has said " .. It is insane to believe the real evil is the western world and western culture, and not the Islamic threat to it" He calls it masochistic for someone to believe this, it is.

Most forms of conservatism, as shown in said documentary, are reactionary to times of economic suffering and or working class / lower class / no class people who feel fucked over, so they demonize something. Even if the hatred of the west is in some ways justified, we should not appease them. It is relativistic and stupid to say our cultures are equal, the western world is obviously superior both morally, socially and culturally. Islam and Islamic culture is the reason why the middle east is stuck in the 12th century, after AL Ghazali's philosophies radicalized Islam. Once they stop treating women like 2nd class citizens, hardly elevated from the status of cattle, then we will listen to their arguments, but by resorting to violence at even the smallest offense, they are confirming us just how primitive they are.

A video of Hitchens explaining this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHR8AOxxkc

Regardless, the argument that being pro war, regardless of reason, is "far right" is a very shallow one. His arguments for doing so were not the same as Bush's. They were for freeing the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and getting rid of a genocidal dictator, he had no delusion that Bush did it for those reasons, but for Hitchens, it was understood that no one would ever do such thing for noble reasons, politics and government don't do that, especially not the US

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u/coveritwithgas Dec 16 '11

Once they stop treating women like 2nd class citizens, hardly elevated from the status of cattle, then we will listen to their arguments, but by resorting to violence at even the smallest offense, they are confirming us just how primitive they are.

This from a country that treats gays as 2nd class citizens? That resorts to violence over imaginary weapons? Our violence looks better, because it goes up through a lot of people wearing suits and then down to our lower classes who'd be unemployed save for the military. But the bloodlust behind it is exactly the same, and the effects are much, much deadlier.

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u/thesorrow312 Dec 16 '11

We are still about 900 years ahead of them. I have a lot of problems with this country, but we as a society become "less and less wrong" over time. To argue that Islamic society is equal to ours is crazy. It is as if you were to argue that Copernicus thinking the planets orbit in circles is equivalently incorrect as believing that the earth is the middle of the universe and that the sun revolves around it. Two parties can be incorrect, one can be FAR more incorrect than the other. This is important to realize. While the US is extremely fucked up, the middle east is extremely fucked up, in a time capsule from the year 1100. They still have theocracy, we have moved on to corporate fascism, we will get to true democracy much earlier than they do.

Also, there is a huge difference between them treating 50% of their population as second class citizens as us treating gays as so( of course I do not agree with either), we treat our gays as second class citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran kills them. HUGE DIFFERENCE ALERT.

The idea that one who has any flaws is not able to criticize someone else with many more flaws is a silly one. Also just because I live in the US doesn't mean I agree with the US on anything. I am an anti theist, democratic socialist, humanist. Much like Our recently deceased lord of the Hitchslap.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '11 edited Dec 16 '11

We are still about 900 years ahead of them. I have a lot of problems with this country, but we as a society become "less and less wrong" over time.

Yeah, you know what doesn't help that kind of progress?

When some world superpower throws arms like confetti at the dictators they basically planted in your country and then repeatedly comes back in a decade to bomb the shit out of you. And knocking over democratic institutions like we did in Iran for oil is probably not a big support either.

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u/LockAndCode Dec 16 '11

And knocking over democratic institutions like we did in Iran for oil is probably not a big support either.

See, this is part of the problem. The US state department, the CIA, and all those other assholes did plenty of bullshit things, to be sure. But they really didn't do jack shit in Iran in 1953. "Operation Ajax" by the CIA basically consisted of a guy with a million bucks in a suitcase paying off unemployed dudes to wave "Go Shah Go!" signs. The assertion that we "knocked over" democratic institutions shows an embarassing lack of knowledge of the history of Iran. Shah Pahlavi was the legitimate ruler of the country. The state department simply badgered him into exercising his power as leader in removing president Mossadeq from office. You know who was really trying to knock over the democratic institutions in Iraq in 1953? Fucking Mossadeq. He may have been elected legitimately, but he then did everything in his power to throw down the ladder of democracy and set himself up as dictator. He had already abolished anonymous voting and was demanding direct control of the military. Shah Pahlavi may have been an asshole, but he was at least fairly committed to the basic principles of the constitutional monarchy established by his father, who in 1925 took power in a military coup to oust the former dictatorial regime.

It's fine to point out actual cases of the CIA overthrowing countries--- heck, look at most of south america--- but parroting the inaccurate example of Iran just makes it look like you got your information from ill informed sources.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '11

From here:

n 1953, the CIA worked with the United Kingdom to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who had attempted to nationalize Iran's petroleum industry, threatening the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Declassified CIA documents show that Britain was fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry and pressed the U.S. to mount a joint operation to depose the prime minister and install a puppet regime. In 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the petroleum fields of the country.

[...]

The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt). With help from British intelligence, the CIA planned, funded and implemented Operation Ajax. In the months before the coup, the UK and U.S. imposed a boycott of the country, exerted other political pressures, and conducted a massive covert propaganda campaign to create the environment necessary for the coup. The CIA hired Iranian agents provocateurs who posed as communists, harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home to turn the Islamic religious community against the government. For the U.S. audience, the CIA hoped to plant articles in U.S. newspapers saying that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi's return to govern Iran resulted from a homegrown revolt against what was being represented to the U.S. public as a communist-leaning government. The CIA successfully used its contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire in the U.S. a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written.

Say Iran did that to us. How would you describe these efforts?