Immediately after the September 11 attacks, he spoke of caution, of not veering into overreaction, yet soon he was picking fights with anyone who dared question U.S. reaction or even contextualize the attacks as "Anti-American" or worse. His early smears of Noam Chomsky and many others allowed for the entry -- even into some quarters of the Left for a short time -- of talk of loyalty and patriotism.
Hitchens became the patron saint of what some came to call "The Decent Left," those who signed the "Euston Manifesto." Seymour’s first book, The Liberal Defence of Murder, gives a history and analysis of this tendency, and is well worth the read. But Hitchens went far beyond even the "decent left" in his calls for civilizational warfare, his shocking and even genocidal Islamophobia (stating that he refused to share a planet with this "enemy"), even, tragically, his disavowal of his early and stalwart anti-Zionism.
It reeks of the unintentionally self-parodying, hysterical outrage that only a stupid western Marxist could muster.
Any article that begins off describing Richard Seymour as "one of the few remaining great radical left journalists" is bound to be a joke.
ReplyDeleteBrain damage has to be a prerequisite for writing for rabble
ReplyDeleteOh, the horror, that the left should feel loyalty and patriotism for anywhere but Cuba!
Chomsky's piece after 9-11 was one of the most despicable things I've ever read. It was basically, "this is bad, but we deserved it." Fortunately, he's very old, so he can't last much longer.
The far left is in trouble when they best they will soon have to offer are half-wits like Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges, both of whom are mental midgets compared to Hitchens. Hitchens eviscerated Hedges in a debate, and Klein is like a mentally-challenged younger version of Chomsky in drag.