Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens is a 2013 book about Christopher Hitchens by the British writer Richard Seymour. [1] [2] The book focuses on Hitchens's work on religion, his engagement with British politics and his alleged embrace of American imperialism. [3] In January 2013, Seymour said of Unhitched, "It is written in the spirit of a trial ... I do attempt to get a sense of the complexity and gifts of the man, but it is very clearly a prosecution, and you can guess my conclusion." [4]
Seymour assesses Hitchens' conversion from an opponent of neoconservatism to an Iraq War hawk, observing that he belongs to a "recognizable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire". For Seymour, Hitchens' conversion was the result of a perception of religion as a global force for evil and an accompanying sense that American imperialism could be a force for good. However, Seymour also traces the origins of Hitchens' neoconservatism to his earlier support for causes such as that of the British government in the Falklands War and his view that the Roman conquest of Britain constituted "a huge advance" in the development of the region. Seymour also considers Hitchens' reversal on the Bosnian War, his call for humanitarian intervention at the end of the Gulf War, his reverence for Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell, and his defence of the Tunisian government in 2007. [5]
Unhitched received a mixed reception from critics, several of whom, such as James Kirchick, had been friends and colleagues of Hitchens. Gregory Shupak, writing for In These Times , a left-wing magazine, argued that Seymour, with his "gift for reeling off an entire firing squad's worth of bullets in a single sentence" was also "plainly a caliber of intellectual that his subject is not." [3] In a similar vein, Doug Enaa Greene of Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal characterised Unhitched as "a well-argued, concise and powerful brief that can leave no doubt that Hitchens is guilty." [6]
The review of Unhitched in The Daily Telegraph argued that the book's contentions were "all perfectly to the point", and that the book was "well-argued", but due to its orthodox left-wing perspective omitted some potentially interesting lines of inquiry such as the possible influence of Hitchens's youthful bisexuality on his depictions of Gulf War soldiers. [7] The book was forcefully denounced by Fred Inglis in The Independent , however, as "sectarian and mean-spirited". [2] Colin Woodard of The Washington Post , meanwhile, described Seymour as an "over-zealous prosecutor" who "insists on advancing his argument from solid ground onto very thin ice." [5] George Eaton of the New Statesman described the book as a "hatchet job," criticising its "embittered, polemical" and biased tone and its "tediously inflated" prose. [8] Writing for Newsweek , an article titled "A Nasty Piece of Work" by James Kirchick described Unhitched as a "tawdry new book" [9] that, among other things, included unsubstantiated claims of plagiarism and unfounded personal attacks. Seymour responded by saying that Kirchick's review "was the most deliciously splenetic fanboy tribute to unreasoning hysteria that it has ever been my pleasure to gloat about" in a piece for his blog that was subsequently reposted by Salon . [10]
Reviewing the book for the Irish magazine Red Banner, writer Kevin Higgins noted Seymour "lands many heavy punches" on Hitchens' reputation, and that "Unhitched is well written, if a little verbose in places". [11] Higgins agreed with some of Seymour's criticisms of Hitchens, arguing when Hitchens "was wrong, he was very, very wrong", singling out as an example Hitchens' defence of the Bush administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. However, Higgins also took issue with Seymour using former members of the Socialist Workers Party (UK) as sources, pointing out that though Seymour had left the SWP since he wrote Unhitched, he had been "happy to quote as reliable witnesses people whose word he clearly...no longer accepts as gospel". [11] Higgins also stated that Seymour was wrong to criticise Hitchens for not having a detailed political program, arguing Hitchens "was never a writer of manifestos" but rather an iconoclastic journalist. [11]
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1960s during the Vietnam War among foreign policy hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s. Neoconservatives typically advocate the unilateral promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, together with a militaristic and realist philosophy of "peace through strength". They are known for espousing opposition to communism and political radicalism.
Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author, journalist, and educator. Author of 18 books on faith, culture, politics and literature. He was born and educated in Britain, graduating in the 1970s from Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. In the early 1980s, he emigrated to the United States and wrote for The Nation and Vanity Fair. Known as "one of the 'four horsemen'" of New Atheism, he gained prominence as a columnist and speaker. His epistemological razor, which states that "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence", is still of mark in philosophy and law.
The London Review of Books (LRB) is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an English conservative author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C. Peter Hitchens has contributed to The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Guardian, First Things, Prospect, and the New Statesman. His books include The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory.
As Nasty as They Wanna Be is the third album by Miami bass group 2 Live Crew. It was released on February 7, 1989, and became the group's largest seller, being certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. In 1990, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled that the album was legally obscene; this ruling was later overturned by the Eleventh Circuit. It is the first album in history to be deemed legally obscene.
James Martin Fenton is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.
The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics but were also firmly anti-Stalinist. The group is known for having sought to integrate literary theory with Marxism and socialism while rejecting Soviet socialism as a workable or acceptable political model.
The Trial of Henry Kissinger is a 2001 book by Christopher Hitchens which examines the alleged war crimes of Henry Kissinger, the National Security Advisor and later, the U.S. Secretary of State for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Acting in the role of prosecutor, Hitchens presents Kissinger's involvement in a series of alleged war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor.
God Is Not Great is a 2007 book by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens in which he makes a case against organized religion. It was originally published in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Books as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion and in the United States by Twelve as God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, but was republished by Atlantic Books in 2017 with no subtitle.
Why Orwell Matters, released in the UK as Orwell's Victory, is a book-length biographical essay by Christopher Hitchens. In it, the author relates George Orwell's thoughts on and actions in relation to: The British Empire, the Left, the Right, the United States of America, English conventions, feminism, and his controversial list for the British Foreign Office.
Douglas Murray is a British author and conservative political commentator, cultural critic, and journalist. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was associate director from 2011 to 2018.
Christopher Hitchens was a British and American author, polemicist, debater and journalist who in his youth took part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, joined organisations such as the International Socialists while at university and began to identify as a socialist. However, after 9/11 he no longer regarded himself as a socialist and his political thinking became largely dominated by the issue of defending civilization from terrorists and against the totalitarian regimes that protect them. Hitchens nonetheless continued to identify as a Marxist, endorsing the materialist conception of history, but believed that Karl Marx had underestimated the revolutionary nature of capitalism. He sympathized with libertarian ideals of limited state interference, but considered libertarianism not to be a viable system. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he supported the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. After 9/11, Hitchens advocated the invasion of Iraq. In the 2004 election, he very slightly favored the incumbent Republican President George W. Bush or was neutral and in 2008 he favored the Democratic candidate Barack Obama over John McCain despite being critical of both of them.
The term New Atheism describes the positions of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion, and irrationalism should not be tolerated. Instead, they advocate the antitheist view that the various forms of theism should be criticised, countered, examined, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics. Critics have characterised New Atheism as "secular fundamentalism" or "fundamentalist atheism". Major figures of New Atheism include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen" of the movement.
The Rage Against God is the fifth book by Peter Hitchens, first published in 2010. The book describes Hitchens's journey from atheism, far-left politics, and bohemianism to Christianity and conservatism, detailing the influences on him that led to his conversion. The book is partly intended as a response to God Is Not Great, a book written by his brother Christopher Hitchens in 2007.
Neoconservatism: Why We Need It is a 2006 book by Douglas Murray, in which the author argues that neoconservatism offers a coherent platform from which to tackle genocide, dictatorships and human rights abuses in the modern world, that the terms neoconservativism and neocon are often both misunderstood and misrepresented, and that neoconservativism can play a progressive role in the context of modern British politics.
Arguably: Essays is a 2011 book by Christopher Hitchens, comprising 107 essays on a variety of political and cultural topics. These essays were previously published in The Atlantic, City Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Newsweek, New Statesman, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Wilson Quarterly, and Vanity Fair. Arguably also includes introductions that Hitchens wrote for new editions of several classic texts, such as Animal Farm and Our Man in Havana. Critics' reviews of the collection were largely positive.
Richard Seymour is a Northern Irish author, commentator and owner of the blog Lenin's Tomb. His books included The Meaning of David Cameron (2010), Unhitched (2013), Against Austerity (2014) and Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (2016). Seymour was born in Ballymena, Northern Ireland to a Protestant family, and currently lives in London. A former member of the Socialist Workers Party, he left the organisation in March 2013. He completed his PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Paul Gilroy. His thesis, dated 2016, was titled Cold War anticommunism and the defence of white supremacy in the southern United States. In the past he has written for publications such as The Guardian and Jacobin.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.
Socialist Worker is the name of several newspapers currently or formerly associated with the International Socialist Tendency (IST). It is a weekly newspaper published by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United Kingdom since 1968, and a monthly published by the International Socialists in Canada. It was a monthly published by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the United States from 1977 to 2019, and a biweekly published by the Socialist Workers Party in Ireland, a quarterly published by the International Socialist Organisation in Zimbabwe and a monthly published by the former International Socialist Organisation in Australia.
Michael Jamal Brooks was an American talk show host, writer, left-wing political commentator, and comedian. While co-hosting The Majority Report with Sam Seder, he launched The Michael Brooks Show in August 2017 and provided commentary for media outlets, making regular appearances on shows such as The Young Turks. Brooks contributed to various publications, including HuffPost, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, openDemocracy, and Jacobin. His book Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right was published by Zero Books in April 2020.
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