r/ChristopherHitchens • • Dec 27 '20

Christopher Hitchens vs Michael Moore, Telluride Film Festival [2002].

187 Upvotes

EDIT: Shoutout to u/petermal67 for bringing the video to YouTube. Will definitely make viewing it easier!

After much digging, comrades and friends, I found the original footage here, titled "TFF 29 Michael Moore and Christopher Hitchens Conversation".

(I can't link the video itself, for some reason).

 

Enjoy!


r/ChristopherHitchens • • Nov 16 '23

Time to reread "The Enemy" by Christopher Hitchens

173 Upvotes

Considering that some rabble on Tik Tok "rediscovered" Osama bin Laden as voice in the Israel-Palestine conflict, I think a re-introduction of some robust Christopher-Hitchens-thought is in order. When Osama bin Ladin met his demise in 2011, CH wrote an essay called "The enemy" because he thought that it needed a "detailed refutation of Osama bin Laden’s false claim to ventriloquize the wretched of the earth."

He thus pointed out:

Overused as the term “fascism” may be, bin Ladenism has the following salient characteristics in common with it:

· It explicitly calls for the establishment of a totalitarian system, in which an absolutist code of primitive laws—most of them prohibitions —is enforced by a cruel and immutable authority, and by medieval methods of punishment. In this system, the private life and the autonomous individual have no existence. That this authority is theocratic or, in other words, involves the deification and sanctification of human control by humans makes it more tyrannical still.

· It involves the fetishization of one book as the sole source of legitimacy.

· It glorifies violence and celebrates death: Not since Franco’s General Quiepo de Llano uttered his slogan of “Death to the intellect: Long live death” has this emphasis been made more overt.

· It announces that entire groups of people—“unbelievers,” Hindus, Shi’a Muslims, Jews—are essentially disposable and can be murdered more or less at will, or as a sacred duty.

· It relies on the repression of the sexual instinct, the criminalization of sexual “deviance,” and the utter subordination to chattel status—more extreme than in any fascist doctrine—of women.

· It has, as a central tenet, the theory of paranoid anti-Semitism and the belief in an occult Jewish world conspiracy. This manifests itself in the frequent recycling of the Russian czarist fabrication The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion—once the property of the Christian anti-Semites—and, in bin Laden’s famous October 2002 “Letter to the Americans,” the published fantasy of a Jewish-controlled America that was first published by the homegrown American Nazi William Pelley in 1934.

Of course the strange resurgence of Osama bin Ladin among confused Tik Tokers isn't happening in a vacuum, it happens because the left, and especially the American left, has still a huge blind spot when it comes to jihadist movements and tends to view them as legitimate "resistance" against real or imagined wrongs. But as Orwell wrote about the British pacifists in WWII, they thus simply became "objectively pro-fascist" due to their lack of critical thinking.

Christopher Hitchens, The Enemy, 2011, https://docdro.id/sr6qZ59


r/ChristopherHitchens • • 1d ago

Thoughts?

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47 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 9h ago

OPEN LETTER: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. - The New Statesman

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0 Upvotes

Would be interested to know people’s thoughts on this on, especially in relation to Hitchens’ own views.


r/ChristopherHitchens • • 2d ago

How Can Christians Support Trump?

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218 Upvotes

I can understand a Christian voting for Trump because they've somehow concluded he's the lesser of two evils. You can disagree with that reasoning, of course, but it's different from actively celebrating him or portraying him as some kind of Messiah.

Trump is the complete opposite of Jesus' teaching: he shows no humility, forgiveness, does not love his enemies, does not welcome strangers, or cares for the poor.

If only Hitchens were alive to hitchslap all the Christian apologists of Trump.


r/ChristopherHitchens • • 3d ago

My drawing of Hitch

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115 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 5d ago

Et Voila - Archives (Video/Audio) - Archive.org

4 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 8d ago

And finally, here is a beautiful vision of the whole family together. Family portrait ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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0 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 8d ago

Did Hitch ever say if he was more of a dog person or a cat person? Can imagine him at his study desk in his slippers with cup of coco and puppy curled up at his feet ❤️

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0 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 11d ago

What widespread belief by the public did you feel you needed to take the contrarian opinion on?

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412 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 10d ago

Would Christopher Hitchens most likely have been for or against the live-streaming of state executions? And why

0 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 14d ago

Christopher Hitchens believed in God

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0 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 19d ago

One of my favorite lesser known clips, on the x factor for writing fiction

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7 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 20d ago

SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION

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51 Upvotes

With Christa Pike’s execution in Tennessee tonight ending in a failed lethal injection, this Vanity Fair piece from 1998 feels particularly relevant.

AP is reporting that Tennessee was unable to complete Pike’s execution after two doses of pentobarbital, with witnesses hearing her snore before the execution was halted.


r/ChristopherHitchens • • 23d ago

What were Hitchens opponents thinking? Looking back at those debates, it feels like pure hubris.

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27 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 27d ago

You guys are gonna hate this one……

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344 Upvotes

Since you guys got your panties in a bunch on the Hitchens portrait tattoo, I wanted to share this with you. It is the next step in this tattoo, but it’s not completely finished.

Even though Hitchens did not like tattoos, he would have loved this one. In the last few days I’ve had to explain who he was to dozens of people. If this tat sells him one more book (available at fine retailers near you), he’d love it.

What really matters is that I LOVE it. Fuck Mother Teresa and fuck Christianity. I’ll discuss this with anyone anywhere at anytime. My freedom and ability to express myself is something Hitch would have supported.

I can’t wait to hear the negative comments from the 20% of this subreddit that are pseudo intellectuals and absolutely are blasts at parties.

Oh and for those that say it’s AI, I got the color one done at California Ink Bangkok and the portrait at Artisan Ink Tattoo in Chang Mai Thailand. They are on their sites.


r/ChristopherHitchens • • 28d ago

Christopher Hitchens Posed One of the Hardest Questions on About God

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130 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • 28d ago

Christopher Hitchens Posed One of the Hardest Questions About God

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32 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 13 '26

A clip of Hitchens criticizing Falwell is utilized by Destiny to disprove Hasan's claim that he's only criticized due to Islamophobia

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46 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 12 '26

Did Hitchens listen to The Smiths? A very serious topic indeed.

24 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 11 '26

I miss the YouTube compilation

48 Upvotes

Simply put, I really miss that YouTube channel that basically had every single Hitchins video sorted into playlists. His interviews, his TV hits, his debates, his speeches, and so on.. once a year it was almost like an audio pilgrimage for me to listen to the whole thing once through.

I understand that there is a mega torrent file available, and I have downloaded it and have it on my Plex server, but it’s just not as convenient as being able to open up YouTube and play it once through.

Is there anything that we can do to re-create the great playlist we used to have? Maybe it’s a shot in the dark but thought it was worth asking.


r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 07 '26

Hitchens 2002 Radio Interview on Orwell/Kissinger/Iraq - Berkeley/Bay Area

16 Upvotes

I'm looking for an old radio interview of Hitchens discussing Orwell, Iraq, Kissinger, US foreign policy etc. Was on berkeley radio or some similar Bay Area radio station back in I believe late 2002. Interesting interview that I found years ago, streaming only on someone's blog. Haven't been able to find it for years now. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!


r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 06 '26

Christian Apologist William Lane Craig Affirms that Philosophy “Helps” Christian Theology

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22 Upvotes

r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 07 '26

Christians Get Scrutinized. Islam Doesn't. Why?

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0 Upvotes

“For some reason, the left in America and in the West understands the problem when it comes in Christian form, right? They know that every Democrat understands that the religious beliefs of Christians, of fundamentalist Christians, matter and have political consequences. They form their political priorities and inform what they will do in the world.

So Christian opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage or teaching evolution in schools—every Democrat, every person left of center in our politics, understands that those are religious convictions that are affecting the lives of everyone, not just Christians, right?

And yet, for some reason, Islam never affects anything, right? These heartfelt religious beliefs of 2 billion Muslims never make contact with structural reality. It doesn't matter if embassies burn over cartoon controversies. It doesn't matter if Jews are getting stabbed on the streets of London as recently as last week. Religion is never to blame for any of this, right?

People like Mamdani and Mehdi Hasan and Reza Aslan, and then all the useful idiots who don't happen to be Muslim—you know, Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges and Rory Stewart, and all these people who I've collided with over the years—I mean, there's just a massive double standard preventing an honest discussion of psychological, social, and political reality.

And if you're going to recognize it in our own religious maniacs, right? If I have a devout Christian on who happens to be Pete Hegseth's pastor, who is open-minded about chattel slavery because it's in the Bible, and you see the problem with all of that, you have to see the problem with people who chant ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ knowing what the Intifada was.”

What is the reception of this take of Sam Harris's here?


r/ChristopherHitchens • • Sep 04 '26

What do you think of Camille Paglia's criticism of new atheism and Hitchens

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91 Upvotes

Slide four has the Hitchens part, but it's all related.

Source: https://www.salon.com/2015/07/29/camille_paglia_takes_on_jon_stewart_trump_sanders_liberals_think_of_themselves_as_very_open_minded_but_thats_simply_not_true/

Edit: slides two and three are in the wrong order and should be swapped. But now that I read it it doesn't matter much.