Hitchens Resurrected

 

    A few weeks back, Margaret Atwood received The Hitchens Prize. Her acceptance speech was a fine and humorous one and these portions of it are worth providing to those who appreciate Hitchens-like thoughts.
    Ms. Atwood describes being at a literary event at Hay-on-Wye which Hitchens attended and she argued with him, but,

“At least he didn’t accuse me of hurting his feelings, nor did I accuse him of hurting mine. Having feelings was not a thing back then. We would not have admitted to owning such marshmallow-like appendages, and if we did have any feelings, we’d have considered them irrelevant as arguments. Feelings are real—people do have them, I have observed—and they can certainly be plausible explanations for all kinds of behavior. But they are not excuses or justifications. If they were, men who murder their wives because they’re feeling cranky that day would never get convicted….

Hitch and I were both of an archaic generation that endorsed the basic principles of logic. We knew an ad hominem when we fell over one. We didn’t consider the factual truth of any given matter to be dispensable—or worse, to be some scoundrelly piece of propaganda cooked up by the opposing party. We both believed in a healthy society’s need for public debate, with testable evidence presented…

I expect Hitch would join me in a distinction I have been making lately: that between belief and truth. It’s a comment on our special times that I’d even feel I have to make this distinction. A belief cannot be either proved or disproved. If you wish to believe that invisible flower spirits are causing your string beans to grow, there is no point in my trying to dissuade you, because these entities are invisible and immaterial. Something proposed as a truth can, however, be put to the test. In recent years, people have confused beliefs with truths. From this confusion have come ideologies and dogmas—the characteristic of a dogma being that it’s proposed as an absolute truth and cannot be disputed, and if you try disputing it, you’ll be burned as a heretic.

The conclusion:

But, more immediately, there’s another important question the times we live in are asking us. That question is: What sort of political system should we choose? If it’s open democracy, we’ve got some work ahead of us. We must roll up our proverbial sleeves, grab our arrows of desire, sharpen the paring knives of our wits, dedicate our swords to the pursuit of truth, strengthen our resolve, resist the serpents of false argument, hop into our chariots of fire, and … Oh dear (or slightly stronger exclamation), cries the ghost of Christopher Hitchens. What a sack of mixed metaphors!

Yes, I know. But desperate times require desperate remedies, and our times are desperate. However, instead of all these chariots and swords, I’ll propose something simpler. Don’t panic. Think carefully. Write clearly. Act in good faith. Repeat.

From: "Your Feelings Are No Excuse: Emotions May Explain Why People Overreact, but They Don’t Justify It”, Margaret Atwood, Atlantic, April 1, 2022.

About The Hitchens Prize

    Although I am a fan of Hitchens, I was unaware of The Hitchens Prize which was established in 2015 and awards $50,000 to ”the author or journalist whose work reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence".

The previous winners are:

2019 - George Packer, Journalist and Author

2018 - Masha Gessen, Journalist and Author

2017 - Graydon Carter, Editor

2016 - Marty Baron, Executive Editor of The Washington Post

2015 - Alex Gibney, Documentary Filmmaker

[the prize was not awarded during the ‘pandemic years’.]

   The generous creators of the Hitchens Prize are the lawyer Dennis Ross and Victoria Ross, a writer and art historian, who founded The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation. A portion of the “Mission” of the foundation is provided here:

“The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation (DVRF) is a non-profit foundation organized and operated for educational purposes, including support for public debate and discussion on topics of current or historical importance, and the promotion of emerging artists working in the theater, film, music, and visual arts. 

The Foundation is committed to the value of an educated and engaged public, and to that end plans to sponsor events featuring the work of authors or journalists whose work reflects open, honest, and critical inquiry, and a willingness to challenge or expand conventional wisdom. “

About Christopher Hitchens

   I have already dedicated three posts to Hitchens and if you read them you will know that the use of "Resurrection" was an ironic one. He remains dead, but the ideas he exemplified can still be honoured and promoted.  What it is about Hitchens that needs to be remembered is put well in this paragraph taken from The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation:

"Christopher ‬Hitchens defied easy categorization, with interests that spanned the whole landscape of cultural and political topics, and views that crossed conventional fault lines and left him with no firm anchor to the left or right. The Prize, in any event, is not intended, ‬if it were even possible,‭ ‬to identify writers who align closely with Christopher‭ ‬Hitchens,‭ ‬nor to celebrate his views in every particular.‭ Rather,‭ ‬the Prize seeks to advance what he was dedicated to throughout his life: vigorous,‭ ‬honest, and open public debate and discussion,‭ ‬with no tolerance of orthodoxy,‭ ‬no reverence for authority,‭ ‬and a belief in reasoned dialogue as the best path to the truth.‭"

Post Script: 

   For a current example of a case where Hitchen's analytical abilities and bravery could be useful, consider the word "Islamophobia." Earlier this month the government here in Ontario failed to pass Our London Family Act which was written by Muslim community leaders in reaction to a terrible event that occurred in London, Ontario. The subtitle of Bill 86 is "Working Together to Combat Islamophobia and Hatred." While the event was a horrible one and it is likely to be proved to have been motivated by hatred of Muslims or the Islamic faith, not all criticisms of Muslims or Islam need to be regarded as signs of "Islamophobia."

   Also during this month an Angus Reid survey relating to religions was released and one of the headlines about it is: "Canadians Consider Religions More Damaging Than Beneficial." It revealed that all religious groups surveyed viewed evangelical Christianity as more damaging to society than beneficial, while Islam was also perceived in a largely negative light." 
   As far as I know, we don't talk about "Pentecostalphobia" and we should talk less about "Islamophobia." We should be allowed to be critical of any religion without being labelled "phobic." 
  Here is what Hitchens wrote fifteen years ago and I doubt if he would now change it:

"All over the non-Muslim world, we hear incessant demands that those who believe in the literal truth of the Quran be granted “respect.” We are supposed to watch what we say about Islam, lest by any chance we be considered “offensive.” A fair number of authors and academics in the West now have to live under police protection or endure prosecution in the courts for not observing this taboo with sufficient care. A stupid term—Islamophobia—has been put into circulation to try and suggest that a foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam’s infallible “message.”

Sources:

   The source for Atwood's speech is provided.  See also: "Hitchens Remembered: On the Occasion of This Year's Hitchens Prize, A Look Back at Tributes to Christopher Hitchens by Atlantic Writers at the Time of His Death," by Cullen Murphy and Annika Neklason, Atlantic, Jan. 21, 2022. 
   My earlier posts about Hitchens are here: "The One and Only Hitch," "Christopher Hitchens" and "Mother Teresa." (A warning about the latter. To put it gently, Hitchens was not a fan.)

   For more about The Hitchens Prize see: The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation. 

   Hitchen's remark about "Islamophobia" is found in: "The War Within Islam: The Growing Danger of the Sunni-Shiite Rivalry," Slate, Feb. 19, 2007.  Hitchens is not the only one critical of the term. See the entry for "Islamophobia" in Wikipedia where this is found:

Atheist author and professor Richard Dawkins has criticised the term Islamophobia. He has argued that while hatred of Muslims is "unequivocally reprehensible" the term Islamophobia itself is an "otiose word which doesn't deserve definition. In 2015, along with the National Secular Society, he expressed opposition to a proposal by then Labour Party leader Ed Miliband to make Islamophobia an "aggravated crime". Dawkins stated that the proposed law was based on a term that is too vague, puts religion above scrutiny and questioned if such a law under the term Islamophobia hypothetically could be used to prosecute Charlie Hebdo or if he could be jailed for quoting violent passages from Islamic scripture on Twitter."

The Bonus: 
  Masha Gessen won The Hitchens Prize in 2018 and it was noted that her work is an urgent warning against authoritarian impulses, including in democratic countries. Her life testifies to the power of the written and spoken word as a force for justice and human rights, and as a bulwark against those who would constrain them."
  She is a critic of Putin and the author of this recent article in The New Yorker. It is about Kyiv and more particularly, Babyn Yar, the spot where 33,000 Jews were executed in 1941. "Letter From Kyiv: The Memorial: A Holocaust Atrocity Was About to be Commemorated. Then Came Another War," April 18, 2022.  The writing continues as do the atrocities.

Christopher Hitchens

  Christopher Hitchens passed away on December 15, 2011. This year marks the ninth anniversary of his death and since there will be many remembrances next year, I thought I would present mine now. Had he lived, he would be almost 72 and I am sure would have remained as pugnacious as he appears in the picture above.

Some of the reasons why I admire him are better expressed by Larry McMurtry who wrote this about him in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen:

“The descendants of the great readers I have mentioned are too often merely fluent know-it-alls, of whom Christopher Hitchens might be considered the exemplar. There he is, every week or month, in the Nation, Vanity Fair, the London Review of Books, writing about history, politics, books, public figures, virtually anything that comes down the freeways of our global culture. I personally have seen Christopher Hitchens in public debate while so weary or drunk or both that he can hardly have known whether he was even facing his audience, or whether there was an audience --and yet not a detail of his argument was dropped and not any of his long and well-turned sentences were slurred. His speech, like his writing, is precise, often brilliant, sometimes spellbinding, rarely inelegant; and yet one feels--as with many of his high-journalistic peers--that all this knowledge (or at least all this information) is not really reading-derived, but has been acquired more or less by osmosis, by rubbing elbows with his journalistic peers in Washington, London, New York, Paris, Delhi, Tehran, or wherever. I might note that this fluency is something few Americans seem to possess; perhaps it stems from admirable European secondary education. I might note too that it is mainly those high journalists who seem to command the steadily released energies of their Victorian counterparts, Bagehot, Macaulay, Saintsbury.” (p.123)

To be able to argue well while drunk may not be a skill you admire, but as one who does not do such a good job, even when sober, it is one that appeals to me. I am, by the way, rather good at drinking and much prefer it over arguing.

The abilities he displayed while arguing typically where employed in support of notions I also support. He was not a fan of religion as you will gather from the hint provided in this title: God Is Not Great. If you need a bigger hint, it is found in the not so subtle sub-title: How Religion Poisons Everything.

After receiving the cancerous death notice, he was asked near the end if it was likely that he would seek solace in religion. Here is his answer: "Mr. Hitchens discussed the possibility of a deathbed conversion, insisting that the odds were slim that he would admit the existence of God."“The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain,” he told The Atlantic in August 2010. “I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark, but no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a remark.”

  He was also a critic of what is termed "Islamofascism" and would have undoubtedly written (as I did) about the recent beheading of a French teacher and the murder of three churchgoers by Islamist terrorists. He defended Salman Rushdie who, you may remember, had to go into hiding and whose Japanese translator was murdered and his Norwegian publisher shot. This is what Hitchens wrote when asked about that fatwa:

When The Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship -- though I like to think my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offence of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. (p.268.)

Post Script:

In the "About This Blog" section of this blog I state the one of its purposes is to serve as a memory aid for me. By reading up on subjects and then writing down thoughts, I assumed, for example, that a year-or-two from now I might have a vague recollection of who Christopher Hitchens was. It is not working.

A few paragraphs into this post I had the thought that I might have written about Hitchens before. I have. Not only that, I quoted the same bit from Larry McMurtry! Well, it is a good bit and if I have any readers, they may have forgotten it as well. The post was about Mother Teresa, about whom Hitchens wrote a book: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

The Bonus:

Since I provided the McMurtry quote twice, here is a new one. It is from Michael Kinsley and it is found in a review of God Is Not Great, in the New York Times, May 13, 2007:

His enemies would like to believe he [Hitchens] is a fraud. But he isn’t, as the very existence of his many enemies tends to prove. He is self-styled, to be sure, but no more so than many others in Washington — or even in New York or London — who are not nearly as good at it. He is a principled dissolute, with the courage of his dissolution: he enjoys smoking and drinking, and not just the reputation for smoking and drinking — although he enjoys that too. And through it all he is productive to an extent that seems like cheating: 23 books, pamphlets, collections and collaborations so far; a long and often heavily researched column every month in Vanity Fair; frequent fusillades in Slate and elsewhere; and speeches, debates and other public spectacles whenever offered.

The quotation about Hitchens unlikely deathbed conversion is also from the New York Times:

"Christopher Hitchens, Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, Dies at 62," by William Grimes, Dec. 16, 2011.

You can see and hear Hitch in action in many YouTube videos; e.g. interviews with Jon Stewart and Sean Hannity and an almost seven hour compilation.

The Delicate Subject of Cartoons

  

   A distinction should be made between the act of drawing a cartoon and the beheading of a person. Many seem to think that the decapitators are better citizens than the cartoonists. I tend to side with the cartoonists and the silent minority on this issue. I can’t imagine a cartoon as bad as a beheading. Although I strive to avoid current events, at least this post does not again mention still-President Trump. It does involve our Prime Minister.

   The issue concerns the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Five years ago, twelve staff members at the publication were killed because they published cartoons of Muhammad. The killers are now going on trial, so the magazine decided to re-publish the images. A teacher chose to show the cartoons and discuss the issue of ‘freedom of the press” with his class. He was beheaded for doing so. I suppose the majority wonder how stupid the cartoonists and the teacher could be, while I think the beheaders deserve more criticism.

   President Macron apparently felt the same way and when he sought support, none was forthcoming from our Prime Minister. Trudeau had second thoughts, and just a few days ago the Leader of the Opposition had a few of his own, here are some of them:

“Regrettably, in the wake of the recent Islamist attacks in France, killings committed as acts of revenge for our freedoms, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted he did not believe in free speech if it could be used to offend someone. To be frank, these words are unworthy of a Canadian prime minister. They once again show Trudeau bowing to ideological Twitter mobs rather than standing up for a founding principle of our country.

Let’s be clear: no dogma, whether political or religious, is immune from criticism. As my colleague Gerard Deltell put it so well in the House of Commons, “Freedom of expression does not exist only when it suits us … It must exist especially when it does not suit our business.” And I will go further: tolerance, which truly defines our country, should not be a one-way street.”

   It does definitely seem like we are on a one-way street. If you are heading the wrong way, you are labelled  an 'Islamophobe' and criticism of Islamists can be classified as a hate crime or deemed 'blasphemous'. If you are among the politically correct and heading in the right direction you perhaps secretly admire those who are really good at cancelling culture, or at least the Western version of it.

   A few brave people spoke up about the issue of freedom of speech, but fewer still were willing to go much beyond that. I fear a fatwa myself for this rather mild critique, but will take the slight risk and go a step further and present a few jokes - but, certainly no images. The jokes are not mine, but I will give no source since the author of them may wish to avoid the fate of Salman Rushdie.

   These jokes were offered after the writer of them noticed that a major American newspaper was providing advice for the increasingly Muslim audience of readers, Here they are, but there are no pictures:

“Which way is Mecca? Ten Timely Tips for Budget Hajj Travel”

“Modern Romance: How Many Wives is Too Many?”

“Healthy New York: Maintaining Vitamin D Sufficiency Under the Burka”

“Food: Top 100 Kebob Houses in Lower Manhattan”

“Sunday Styles: Goat Tending for City Dwellers”

“Five Times A Day: Suing Employers Who Don’t Provide Prayer Rugs”

“Best of New York: Local’s Guide to Men-Only Tea Houses”

“Know Your Tenant’s Rights: Halal Animal Slaughter on the Balcony”

“Summer in the City: Cool Lightweight Burkas that Beat the Heat”

“Taxing Matters: Time for a Municipally Collected Jizya?”

“Healthy New York: Female Genital Mutilation Without Tears”

“CityScape: The 100 Most Beautiful Mosques on the Upper East Side”

“Modern Romance: How Young Is Too Young for Child Marriage? 14? 12?”

“Mosque and State: Time to Rethink the Founding Fathers?”

“The Feminist Muslim’s Guide to Politically Correct Wife Discipline”

   Some of the advice offered involves women and I was reminded of a curious incident that took place in Massachusetts. It concerned signs that were posted around the town of Winchester. The signs were plain and rather innocuous, but still perplexing as this headline indicates: "'Islam Is Right About Women': Odd Signs Spark Confusion in Local Town," Boston 25 News, Sept. 18, 2019. Was the sign poster being sarcastic? Is Islam right about women? Or Wrong? Here is the clever sign that is likely just a bit of troll bait.

Sources:

"Freedom of Expression a Founding Principle of Canada,"Erin O'Toole, Toronto Sun, Nov. 13, 2020.

See also: "Trudeau Shamed Into Supporting France, Freedom of Expression," Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun, Nov. 6, 2020.  These quotations are from this article:

"It’s a sad statement when leaders from around the world stand with France but Canada doesn’t.

The central question is whether it is ever acceptable to insult religious figures, specifically by showing images of Mohammed.

Islam forbids showing images of Mohammed, but I’m not a Muslim and shouldn’t have to live by that rule any more than their rule against eating bacon.

What he should have said is that while he may find the cartoons of Mohammed offensive and understands why Muslims do, it is a fundamental freedom to show them, publish them or discuss them."

Post Script:

I am too cowardly to use the image of you-know-who and hope the cartoon of Erdogan is not overly offensive. I am not the only coward. In 2009, Yale University Press published THE CARTOONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, by Jytte Klausen. Oddly enough, there is not one cartoon in it.

If you are interested in the debate over this issue, go back to the spring of 2005. At that time PEN awarded Charlie Hebdo a freedom of speech award. You will think that PEN members would be automatically in favour of presenting such an honour, but the event was boycotted by some. Of course Salman Rushdie, a former PEN president agreed since he had to go into hiding for several years, after the publication of Satanic Verses. Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, among others, protested.

Dawkins Not Talking

Berkeley: Home of the Free Speech Movement

     Richard Dawkins was scheduled to talk about his new book, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, on Aug. 9 in Berkeley at radio station KPFA. The talk has been cancelled because Mr. Dawkins has made critical remarks about Islam.

   I am sure it is correct to say that he has been critical of every religion. He is, after all, a “passionate rationalist.” He should be allowed to speak.

  You will find here, the rationale for the cancellation offered by KPFA. You will find here, the response offered by Mr. Dawkins.

    I agree with Professor Pinker:

“Harvard professor and author Steven Pinker came out in support of Dawkins, writing to KPFA that their decision was “intolerant, ill-reasoned, and ignorant”. “Dawkins is one of the great thinkers of the 20th and 21st century. He has criticised doctrines of Islam, together with doctrines of other religions, but criticism is not ‘abuse’,” said Pinker. “People may get offended and hurt by honest criticism, but that cannot possibly be a justification for censoring the critic, or KPFA would be shut down because of all the people it has hurt and offended over the decades.”

“Pinker said that the move “handed a precious gift to the political right, who can say that left-leaning media outlets enforce mindless conformity to narrow dogma, and are no longer capable of thinking through basic intellectual distinctions”.

Sources:

The Pinker quote is found in:  “Richard Dawkins Event Cancelled Over His 'Abusive Speech Against Islam',” The Guardian, July 24, 2017.

“Richard Dawkins Event Canceled Over Past Comments About Islam,” Janice Fortin, The New York Times, July 24, 2017.

For a good background report on how grim things now are in Berkeley see: “Fighting Words: A Battle in Berkeley Over Free Speech,” Katy Steinmetz, Time, June 1, 2017.