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person1970s-2011

Christopher Hitchens

Disciplines:
philosophy
journalism
cultural criticism/political criticism

Summary

British-American journalist and polemicist who was the most brilliant essayist of his generation — and whose support for the Iraq War, combined with his New Atheism, alienated his former left-wing allies.

Core Contribution

God Is Not Great: a polemical case against religion — 'Religion poisons everything.' Letters to a Young Contrarian: on the virtues of dissent. Support for the Iraq War: Hitchens was a prominent left-wing intellectual who supported the invasion, framing it as anti-fascism — permanently damaging his standing on the left. Mortality: a brief, honest book written as he was dying of esophageal cancer.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Was waterboarded as a journalistic exercise and published his conclusion: waterboarding is torture. This changed many people's minds on the issue, including some who had argued otherwise.
  • His public friendship with Salman Rushdie after the fatwa — standing physically beside him at public events, refusing to hide — was an act of personal courage he never publicized.

Notable Works & Achievements

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Letters to a Young Contrarian

God Is Not Great

Hitch-22

Mortality

Historical Influences

George Orwell Leon Trotsky

Intellectual Lineage

British Left JournalismLiterary Journalism

Contemporaries & Peers

Richard Dawkins Sam Harris

Minds Influenced

New Atheism Contrarian Journalism

Intellectual Posterity

New Atheism Contrarian Journalism

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