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Originally Posted by Glice
I think the problem I have is that, while he's a good critic of the left, I don't think he's a good critic from the left. Personally, while he may have been a firm critic of kneejerk leftisms, I think he fell into as many mindwrongs as the cosy (Graun) left does.
I quote the above to illustrate a point relating to yours - a lot of the anti-capitalist left (quietly) celebrated 9/11 as a deflation of vulgar capitalism; Hitchen celebrates it as a forbear to the dissolution of literalist cod-religion. Both positions are inadequate, to my mind (and of course, the problem with sublime acts is always their impossibility).
But he's a journo, a writer, not a philosopher - when he wrote provocative things, they're to be taken in that context. I don't think he's an amazing thinker but I think he was a necessary writer. And even so - that article Keep Poppin Pimples posted above is pretty vile, invidious and cheap. Not every writer shits gold, obvs.
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The triumphalism you mention is a problem for me, too. I wouldn't say that Hitchens was particularly guilty of it, though. I'd say he was more describing the
excitement of 9/11, which I think a lot of people experienced, regardless of their political persuasion. It's very different to the triumphalism I note in writers like Zizek following the economic crisis or, say, Naomi Klein in light of hurricane Katrina, both of whom seemed a bit too pleased with events they clearly saw as conspiring to prove them right all along. I don't think Hitchens was ever interested in why 9/11 took place but rather how a certain Left-Liberal establishment (of which he was vaguely a part) felt and acted as a consequence of it.