Christopher Hitchens made a living out of attacking religion

By Ben Cohen: I’m beginning to feel that the ongoing war between atheists and religion is one big scheme to create controversy, sell books and get on television. While there is an important debate to be had, the constant screeching is becoming boring and I find myself switching off when anyone kicks off a ‘Religion vs Science’ debate.

Bashing the religious leaders who spend their time trying to put religion into politics and destroy science in public education is viewed as sport by prominent atheists, and while it is important to curb the effects of religious fundamentalism, I don’t believe the tactics used to do so are fair, or even effective.

I’ve written a fair amount about the militant atheist, Christopher Hitchens, who made millions selling anti religious books and lecturing on the dangers of ‘Islamofacism’. I believe that Hitchens was one of the greatest intellectual frauds in modern history – a man more concerned with being in the limelight than maintaining any semblance of intellectual honesty. Hitchens was once a serious journalist with a commitment to confronting power, but his metamorphosis into a raging war hawk and shill for the Bush Administration showed a serious flaw in his psyche and moral character. Hitchens got rich pimping the war when it was popular, and he got rich slamming religion when the war (and his position) became unpopular.

Hitchens made some valid points against religion and some of the disastrous effects it has had on society, science and culture. But his single mindedness and extreme intolerance became tiring and predictable. Hitchens wanted everyone to believe that religion was the greatest threat to mankind, and he would be the man to enlighten us. ‘God is Not Great’ became a best seller and the war against religion became Hitchens great cause.

Other prominent atheists like Sam Harris have latched on to a similar trick, selling book after book describing the evils of religion and the particular nastiness of Islam. Harris has a captive audience in the United States, and he’s doing rather well out of it. I’m not suggesting Harris doesn’t believe what he’s saying, but to literally build a career out of slamming religion smacks of something a little disingenuous.

The problem is that militant atheists focus on religious fundamentalism – an easy target because fundamentalist usually aren’t particularly bright. Atheists like Hitchens and Harris hypothesize that religion is a poison and turns people into idiots. The truth is that people are idiots and use religion to justify their stupidity. If it wasn’t religion, it would be another system of belief – fascism, socialism, capitalism, yoga, spiritualism etc etc.

Most of the religious people I know have a very complex understanding of their faith, and do not take it literally. They are intelligent, spiritual people with interesting insights and a belief in something bigger than themselves. I’m a firm agnostic – I know that I don’t know, and I’m completely fine with that. I think that anyone who takes a religious text completely literally needs their head examined, but I won’t spend time debating them. It’s not interesting, and I don’t get off on feeling intellectually superior to them. I get the feeling people like Hitchens and Harris did – or do get off on making people look stupid, and that’s why I have a hard time listening to them.

Attacking religious fundamentalists certainly won’t stop religious fundamentalism. It will only anger them and reinforce their belief that non-believers are evil.

And while militant atheist may not be evil, they are most definitely making things worse.

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I was not a fan of Christopher Hitchens by any means, but his passing due to esophageal cancer marks the end of a truly enigmatic figure and intellectual powerhouse.

Never at a loss for words, Hitchens was one of the most quote worthy public figures in history. His one liners and ripostes were the stuff of legend and watching him engage in debate was like watching a champion prizefighter engage in combat. Unfortunately for his adversaries, Hitchens was almost always a class or two above, and first round knockouts were a common theme in his lengthy career under the lights. His friend Martin Amis once said:

Towards the very end of the last century, all the greatest chessplayers, including Garry Kasparov, began to succumb to a computer (named Deep Blue); I had the opportunity to ask two grandmasters to describe the Deep Blue experience, and they both said: "It's like a wall coming at you." In argument, Christopher is that wall. The prototype of Deep Blue was known as Deep Thought. And there's a case for calling Christopher Deep Speech.

Hitchens also did some incredibly brave reporting early on in his career, hounding Henry Kissinger for his role in escalating the Vietnam war and opposing the first war in Iraq. However, Hitchens lost many supporters with his unexpected support of George W Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq leaving him a mixed legacy that will be debated for years to come. Hitchens spent much of his last years attacking religion, making enemies of all faiths and provoking uproar wherever he went. While one may disagree with his tactics, his arguments were compelling, forcing religious scholars and intellectuals to defend their beliefs vigorously and seriously.

Whatever one thinks of Hitchens as a person or a writer, he brought a great deal of interest to public debate and always provided entertainment that was sorely missing from American intellectual life.

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French philosopher and serial rapist defender Bernard-Henri Levy has made a career out of pretending to be smarter than everyone else. His writing (at least his english language work) is a mixture of pompous moral posturing, pretentious word play and unbelievably bad sentence structure. In a recent piece on The Daily Beast, Levy turns his supposedly formidable intellectual prowess towards defending recently deposed IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Khan of rape. The article is an astonishing attempt to exonerate Strauss-Khan by virtue of his friendship with Levy, and by essentially accusing the accuser of lying. Writes Levy:

What I know even more is that the Strauss-Kahn I know, who has been my friend for 20 years and who will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast now being described nearly everywhere. Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally, but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate, obviously no, it’s absurd.

I certainly do not want to assume that Strauss-Khan is guilty – far from it. He deserves his day in court, and has every right to defend himself. As the law dictates, Strauss-Khan is innocent until proven guilty. But for Levy to hurl accusations at the alleged victim is beyond reproach. He writes:

It would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.

Implying that Strauss-Khan is innocent because, well, Levy knows him and thinks a chambermaid could not have possibly cleaned a hotel room by herself is not just maniacally egotistical, it is patently absurd. Seeing as Levy wasn't with Strauss-Khan at the time, there is no way he can know what happened, so like the people he rails against for assuming his guilt, he should keep quiet and wait until the evidence is presented.

Levy has made a career out of injecting himself into debates he shouldn't have anything to do with, a common trait of narcissistic self promoters who make money from their 'enlightened' ideas. Levy is France's version of Christopher Hitchens – a man concerned only with himself and his relevance to society, who will defend the indefensible for the sake of self promotion and disguise his intellectual vacuity behind bravado and insatiable snobbery. At least Hitchens writes well, unlike Levy whose work resembles that of a precocious teenager turning in his first philosophy paper. Just check out this hilariously badly written sentence:

I do not want to enter into considerations of dime-store psychology that claims to penetrate the mind of the subject, observing, for example, that the number of the room (2806) corresponds to the date of the opening of the Socialist Party primaries in France (06.28), in which he is the uncontested favorite, thereby concluding that this is all a Freudian slip, a subconsciously deliberate mistake, and blah blah blah

A cash prize for anyone who can work out what Levy means here. But then that's the point – you're not supposed to.

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By Ben Cohen

"The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling. The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules."

        – Christopher Hitchens on Wanda Syke's performance at the White House Correspondence dinner.

This is a classic phrase from Hitchens, once a decent journalist, now a slobbering drunk. Not only is it utterly vile and racist, it's also a revealing insight into why he was present at the dinner himself. Hitchens used to be a revered name in progressive circles, up there with Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn and feared by the political establishment. And then somehow, he found himself in bed with George Bush cheer leading the worst foreign policy blunder in recent history.

Fed up with a marginalized role in American intellectual life, Hitchens forgot everything he once stood for and saddled up to the right wing fanatics who had hijacked the country and helped them ram through their extreme agenda. Hitchens was invited on all the networks to pimp the war, and his notoriety surged along with his pay check. Once a thorn in the side of imperial politics, Hitchens became a cog in the wheel – a sophisticated sales man with an authoritative voice and no sense of shame.

When public opinion turned, Hitchens quickly changed the subject, embarking on an atheist jihad against fundamentalist Christianity that shot him back onto the media circuit as quickly as he came off it. Hitchen's chameleon like political views have served his pockets well, and he knows exactly how to play the game.

Wanda Sykes is not a part of that game, and committed the cardinal sin of offending the ruling classes. Hitchen's slur betrayed a revulsion not of Sykes comments, but of himself, for what he has become. A sophisticated hack who once offended the elite but now plays among them.

(photo by Scott Hurst)

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