Pol Pot or Christopher Hitchens?

Does “Hatchet” Hitchens — you’ll never bury him alive! — have a recipe for immortality (based, for all we know, on eye of jihadiste newt and tongue of fellow-travelling toad), or is there another possible end to his otherwise untruncatable loquacity?

1) Read ‘Smear and Distortion’ by your colleague, Chris, right above this post.
2) Go back to writing about recipes and zany Asian advertising. Your mindless stream-of-consciousness blather is much more suited to such.

Steve

P.S.
John Kerry or Adolf Hitler?

1) He spoke German, a EUROPEAN language.
2) He spoke French, a EUROPEAN language.

Its easy, right? The lesser politician is John Kerry. (as Goebbels once said, “We were democratically elected, weren’t we?”). It’s only fair to note here, that, John Kerry is not, in fact, a genocidal maniac. Well, not someone who has actually killed anyone, that we know of (oops…). Its also nice to know that Hitler has a myspace profile (His interests include taking control of Poland and genetic experimentation. Music? Wagner, obvious).

Sheesh

And, in strict obediance to the law of right-wing freudian projection, steve’s post-script is much more stream of consciousness.

Presumably Diderot and Tom Nairn are also worse than Pol Pol, at least from a rhetorical point of view.

Isn’t CH, who I do not care for and never have, being humorous or some such? Granted the full passage is incoherent (Well, if everyone else is allowed to rewind the tape and replay it, so can I. We could have been living in a different world, and so could the people of Iraq, and I shall go on keeping score about this until the last phony pacifist has been strangled with the entrails of the last suicide-murderer.) but the strangling paraphrase is neither a modest nor a serious proposal, is it? Treating it as if it were would seem to be a distortion of CH’s intent.

Of course Hitchens is merely joking when he calls for the strangulation of phony pacifists; in D.C., you can get a ticket for that.

Sick joke, I’d say, but one that we should make, and should rub his nose in.

Since it’s such a good allusion (see post 7 above), I’m willing to smile at Hitchens’ use of it, so long as he said/wrote it with something approximating a sardonic grin, either on his face or in his mind. Like Harry B, though, I still find Belle’s post amusing.

I’ve come to think that writing about politics simply isn’t Hitchens forte. He’s an excellent literary critic. But he seems to go to pot (not Pol Pot, however) when writing about, say, Iraq. For instance — suicide bombing makes it hard to find entrails undamaged enough to be wound about anyone’s neck — even a pencil necked pseudo-pacifist. If he is looking for entrails with tensile strength, he is going to find much better ware among the pro-war set. Carnivores and proud of it, I would imagine the Rumsfelds of the world have entrails you could lift a Dodge pickup with. Manly entrails, in short.

Presumably Diderot and Tom Nairn are also worse than Pol Pol

The thing is, the rhetorical violence in both those cases was directed at powerful, respected, not to mention actually existing groups. Whereas Hitchens’ is at the Official Enemy and a figment of his imagination, respectively.

That’s what’s so striking about it to me — not the suggestion of violence, but the way a famous attack on convention has been turned into a mindless endorsement of it. Kind of encapsulates Hitch’s whole career, actaully.

It seemed obvious to me that he was quoting Diderot and/or Meslier.

It’s kind of like bitching about someone saying “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” and claiming that they’re bitching about a period of three days.

There’s more going on with that quotation.

P. O’neill — I think a more pertinent question is — if we “know this,” why has Hitchens, for three years, loudly supported the incredible series of American screwups in the occupation of Iraq without ‘assuming the mantle of generalship” – his very stupid phrase – once? Or in other words, offered any critical feedback whatsoever. If you know that a disaster can easily happen and in the face of that knowledge you:
a. use half the manpower you need to affect your ends;
b. staff your organization with G.O.P. college kids on their summer vacations;
c. spend more time reorganizing an economy to benefit your corporate sponsors than trying to instill security in the zones you govern;
and d., respond with maximum and alienating force to hits on the occupying army — while letting hits on the natives sorta slide —
then hey, you get Samarra, and this kind of handwringing.

This is why these ‘analyses,’ and others by the pro-war set, are so self-subverting.

There’s more going on with that quotation.

Yes: specifically, an effort to dress up reheated conventional wisdom as daring contrarianism.

The phrase “killing field” is so completely identified with Cambodia that Hitchens’ use of it makes him seem deranged. It evokes indiscriminate killing on an unimaginable scale. It’s like calling for a Holocaust against your enemies, or demanding that they be slaughtered like the Tutsi. It’s so utterly in bad taste that the reader can only stand aghast at the unhinged hysteria of the writer.

It’s a Holiday in Cambodia. Where you’ll kiss ass or craaaaaaack!

Who counts as a “phony pacificist”? People who claim to be followers of that disreputable, unkempt Jesus character but call for carpet-bombing and lakes of blood?

I’m pretty sure Hitchens’s reference to strangulation is a metaphor, whereas Pol Pot was presumably being literal.

Also, Hitchens perceives a positive moral failing (whether you agree or not), for which this metaphorical strangulation is to be imposed. Pol Pot could justify killing someone for merely being “of no use anymore”. He goes so far as to hint that the person in question was of some use before; no matter. Good job well done, BANG! Brains on the floor.

Hitch is the more bloodthirsty, at least in a metaphorical sense, when you disregard at least one important moral consideration.

I’m pretty sure Hitchens’s reference to strangulation is a metaphor, whereas Pol Pot was presumably being literal.

How about the killing fields?

Excuse me, I don’t care about the literary reference. If I were to say “I will not rest until the last [unkind reference to group I dislike — say “greedy plutocrat”] is strangled with the entrails of the last [overheated reference to really quite bad group — say “torturing war criminal”]” the reaction would properly be revulsion at my homicidal ideation, literary reference or no. If you ask me whether Diderot deserves the same condemnation, I will point out that in the end the kings and priests were not the only ones to get it in the neck. And refer to Lemuel Pitkin’s 19.

Some such bloodthirsty rhetoric was described as “playing with fire by people who don’t know that fire is hot,” by a writer who Hitchens really ought to read.

Matt’s right. If someone were to say, “I don’t like that Oliver Kamm, and I do believe I will make my bullets drunk with his blood, and my knife shall gorge itself with his flesh,” pointing out that it’s a literary allusion to the Book of Deuteronomy wouldn’t make it any less deranged.

(Isn’t Jean Meslier (sp?) the point of origin for the entrails quote, originally?)

Henry: The Orwell/Connolly line is brilliant. The whole discussion is well worth it for producing that.
As for the Hitchens quote (the antecedents of which are given in Chris Brooke’s blog:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2006_02_01_archive.html#114017837951131018 )clearly comparisons to actual genocidaires can’t be serious. But there is, I think, a valid point to be made about Hitchens’s propensity for violent, false-macho rhetorical over-kill (ahem); all the chest-thumping and self-delighted revelling in saying brutal things for the sake of being shocking and appearing tough — well, it does seem to me a fair target for mockery. Even if Hitchens were right, such talk would be uncalled for. And as it is …

I dunno… I’ve been heard to mutter “Shoot them all like rabid dogs!” when the local city council does something stupid. I think the hyperbole just comes from having been exposed to a lot of commie rhetoric. It’s humor, dark humor, but humor.

Ahem, Mr. #40: Pomposity descending to levity is pomposity still.

I dunno… I’ve been heard to mutter “Shoot them all like rabid dogs!” when the local city council does something stupid.

Normally city concilmen do not getting killed, and if they are, inflammatory rhetoric will be cited as a factor.

Iraqis, otoh, are getting killed every single day, often massacred, tortured and abused by US soldiers who, apparently, take the “killing fields” rhetoric quite literally.

Hitch&Co are an equivalent of the writers for Der Sturmer. I don’t see them advocating killing fields in Alabama for chrisitanofascists or in Israel for jeudeofascists; their appeal is unmistakably racist. They have a group of people singled out for extermination because of who they are, for the brand of religion they’ve been practicing for centuries.

It is not a joke when people with guns are acting on it.

Although some of Kamm’s remarks can be interpreted as self-deprecating, he has also stated in the past that his soi-disant ‘objectivity’ is “not a gag but a statement of fact”, and at such length as to indicate he wished to be taken seriously.

Hey, isn’t this where someone ought to say Pol Pot was all Chomsky’s fault anyway?

Right you are, Anthony. This is exactly where.

Pol Pot was all Chomsky’s fault.

Literary “allusions” aside, Christopher Hitchens is still an idiot when it comes to all things Iraq (this quote above being from his most recent column on Iraq in Slate.) His columns have the whiff of desperation, as he clings to every last rational for having supported the war in Iraq as if his very sanity is riding on it. I for one hope that he does crack soon, and will disallowed from accessing the internet or pen and paper while he recovers in an asylum somewhere. Is that harsh? Yes. Does he deserve it? Certainly. It’s no harsher than what he directs at any critics of the war.