Christopher Hitchens

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Christopher Hitchens, 2007

Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949 in Portsmouth , England , † December 15, 2011 in Houston , Texas ) was a British - American author , journalist and literary critic .

Among other things, he caused a stir with publications about Henry Kissinger , in which he massively criticized what he believed to be the aggressive, interventionist US foreign policy of the 1970s and called for the former US security advisor and foreign minister to be prosecuted as a war criminal.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , he became a supporter of the US “ war on terror ” and the Iraq war from 2003 onwards. At the same time, he criticized the American left for what he said was softness towards Islamist terrorism , which he called “ Islamic fascism ”. called, whereupon numerous former companions distanced themselves from him.

Throughout his life he was vehemently committed to a secular worldview and made religion responsible for numerous grievances and undesirable developments in today's world.

Life

Christopher Hitchens' father was an officer in the Royal Navy and his mother was a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service . They met in Scotland , where Hitchens' father was in command of the cruiser HMS Jamaica , which was involved in the naval battle off the North Cape in December 1943 .

The father's profession meant that Hitchens spent his early childhood in various places, including Malta and Rosyth in the Scottish administrative unit of Fife . His mother set great store by an education that would give her son access to the upper class. Therefore, at her insistence, he attended boarding school at an early age and finally the Ley School in Cambridge . In 1967 he enrolled at Balliol College , Oxford . There he began to get involved in the political left , but made connections with people from across the political spectrum. In 1970 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy , politics and economics and then moved to London , where he wrote for The Times Higher Education Supplement . In November 1973, Hitchens' mother and her lover Timothy Bryan, a former Anglican priest, committed suicide in Athens. He later worked for the New Statesman , the Daily Express, and the Evening Standard . After a stay in New York , he moved to Washington, DC in 1982 , where he wrote columns for The Nation magazine . Most recently, Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair and the online magazine Slate .

In early June 2010, Hitchens published his memoir under the title Hitch-22 (German: The Hitch ). The English original title is a play on words from his nicknames "Hitch" and " Catch-22 ". In late June 2010, Hitchens was diagnosed with advanced esophageal cancer. He died on December 15, 2011 at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia , a result of his cancer.

Positions

atheism

Hitchens was a prominent exponent of atheism and antitheism . He coined Hitchens' razor , which is useful in epistemology .

In his 2007 book The Lord Is Not a Shepherd. How religion poisons the world , Hitchens called for liberation from the "spiritual slavery of religion". The belief in a god or gods stood for him on feet of clay. For him, religion was among other things "violent, irrational, intolerant", a mixture of "tribalism and bigotry" and hostile to the freedom of science . He put forward four main theses in this book, namely that religions

Hitchens viewed the growing skepticism in parts of the religious right about Darwin's theory of evolution with suspicion. He directed himself vehemently against the attempts of the creationists to establish their pseudoscientific theses in biology classes in public schools.

During a lecture at the University of Toronto on November 15, 2006, Hitchens said that religion should be ridiculed and treated with "ridicule, hatred and contempt."

Again and again he caused a stir with sharp attacks against persons of religious life. In a newspaper article he referred to the Catholic sister Mother Teresa as the “ Ghoul of Calcutta”. He accused their missionary efforts and a glorification of suffering. For example, she banned the use of painkillers in her hospitals because she believed that the more patients suffered, the closer they were to the Christian God.

Hitchens also argued that "one of Lenin's great achievements " was the creation of a "secular Russia".

Distance from the left and evaluation of terrorism

Hitchens, a former Trotskyist and columnist for the left-wing magazine The Nation , had long received acclaim from the left for his investigative research. a. for his 2001 book on Henry Kissinger : Hitchens criticized the former US Secretary of State for his share of responsibility for the US intervention in Chile , the senseless expansion of the Vietnam War and the role of the United States in the genocide in East Timor . However, Hitchens gradually began to distance himself from the positions of the left, especially after the fatwa was imposed on his longtime friend Salman Rushdie . After September 11th, Hitchens increased his criticism of the left and, to the surprise of his former comrades-in- arms, sided with the neoconservatives .

One reason for this change of attitude was the attempts by many leftists to explain Islamist terrorism . Hitchens sharply criticized attempts to interpret the terrorist attacks as a reaction to "structural imperialism" in the United States. The 9/11 attackers are rather " fascists with an Islamic face "; this must not be forgotten by formulas critical of globalization in which the perpetrators are stylized as victims. As an expression of postmodernism, the New Left assumed a relativistic character. The Nation left Hitchens in an argument after accusing editors and readers of believing then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft to be a greater danger than Osama bin Laden . However, he kept emphasizing that his views hadn't changed much since then. Rather, he saw the support of the Iraq war as an inevitable consequence of his attitude critical of religion and his commitment to " secular humanism ".

In the internet magazine Slate on May 30, 2011, Hitchens stated that the failure of the West to counter the Serbian crimes during the Bosnian war had prolonged the "carnage". Even after Dayton , Slobodan Milošević was offered concessions with regard to Kosovo , until the plan to ethnic cleanse the Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia finally failed. Hitchens compared Ratko Mladić to John Demjanjuk ; unlike the latter, Mladić was not a recipient of orders, but the organizer of the crimes.

Attitude to the Iraq war

Hitchens supported the United States' Second Iraq War . He thought it was justified to defend the values ​​of secularism , feminism and liberal democracy . He saw the war as a conflict between secular democracy and “theocratic fascism” (or “fascism with an Islamic face”). That is why he is often referred to as the “liberal hawk”. His strong criticism of Michael Moore and his film Fahrenheit 9/11 can also be seen in this context . Even eight years after the war began, Hitchens retained his opinion about the war. Nevertheless, he accused the Bush administration of negligent leadership and instrumentalization of the Iraq operation and spoke out in favor of prosecuting those responsible.

Attitude to the Middle East conflict

Hitchens took a pro-Palestinian stance in the Middle East conflict and described himself as an anti-Zionist . Historically, the Palestinians have been victims of great injustice. The Zionism had a purely religious basis.

Criticism of Mormonism

Hitchens was very critical of Mormon theological claims . He believed that the Book of Mormon was a copy of texts from the Bible and the angel Moroni was an invention of Joseph Smith . He also criticized the baptism in the dead .

further activities

Hitchens often appeared on talk shows and sometimes heated debates, both verbally and in writing, with representatives of political life as diverse as Noam Chomsky , Charlton Heston , Norman Finkelstein , Al Sharpton , Tariq Ramadan , George Galloway and his younger brother Peter Hitchens , who also is a well-known publicist. A television appearance by Hitchens on the television show Hannity & Colmes on the conservative private broadcaster Fox News Channel , in which he had a violent clash with one of the two presenters, Sean Hannity , gained greater attention . The reason for the battle of words were harsh and sometimes mocking comments from Hitchens about the American television preacher Jerry Falwell, who died the day before . Falwell had said of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that the United States deserved the sentence and Hitchens had called him a traitor. Hitchens also caused a sensation with a self-experiment in which he (as an Iraq war advocate) voluntarily submitted to so-called waterboarding . He then castigated this interrogation practice as torture , thereby contradicting representations by the Bush administration. During the 2008 presidential campaign he supported Barack Obama against John McCain .

Hitchens' personal friends and companions included the neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz , the evangelical Larry Alex Taunton and the Iraqi politician Ahmad Tschalabi . Hitchens was also an honorary member of the National Secular Society , the main association of British atheists.

Awards

In 2011 Hitchens was awarded the Richard Dawkins Award from the Atheist Alliance International for his life's work. Richard Dawkins gave the laudation and presented the critically ill Hitchens with the award himself. Posthumously, in 2012 he received the special award for the Orwell Prize .

Works (selection)

Hitchens has published over twenty books as a solo author and others as a co-author. Of which have appeared in German:

Hitchens worked on the script for the documentary Accused: Henry Kissinger with. There is also the documentary Collision , which is a series of debates with Douglas Wilson and Hitchens about Christianity .

media

  • Chris Corner , head of the British music project IAMX , bows to Christopher Hitchens on his fourth album Volatile Times (2011) in the song I Salute You Christopher .

Web links

Commons : Christopher Hitchens  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Hitchens, Author and Television Personality, Dies at 62
  2. ↑ Walsh, John: Hitch-22. A memoir by Christopher Hitchens, The Independent. May 28, 2015
  3. ↑ Christopher Hitchens in the online version of the Encyclopædia Britannica
  4. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Hitch-22: A Memoir , Twelve 2010.
  5. ↑ a b Another bottle. In: Spiegel Online , October 10, 2011.
  6. ^ Topic of Cancer
  7. ↑ Writer Christopher Hitchens Dies At 62
  8. ^ Richard Gebhardt: Satanic Verses in God's Own Country ( Memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: Jungle World . July 26, 2007.
  9. ↑ Free Speech 6 ( Memento of February 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), position 0:16:29
  10. ↑ Interview with Christopher Hitchens ( Memento from November 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 154 kB), quote: "One of Lenin's great achievements, in my opinion, is to create a secular Russia."
  11. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous In: Slate , September 13, 2005, quote: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true)"
  12. ↑ Interview with Christopher Hitchens In: The Independent , September 22, 2004
  13. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: The End of Fukuyama In: Slate , March 1, 2006
  14. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Defending Islamofascism In: Slate , October 22, 2007
  15. ↑ Christopher Hitchens, Taking Sides In: The Nation , Sept. 26, 2002
  16. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Mladic the Monster. Our failure to respond to the Serbian atrocities prolonged the slaughter. In: Slate , May 30, 2011.
  17. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Injustice 9/11. In: Slate , June 21, 2004.
  18. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Did I get the Iraq was wrong? No . In: The Australian , March 20, 2008.
  19. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: The Iraq Effect . In: Slate , March 28, 2011.
  20. ↑ Walter Hölbling, Klaus Rieser-Wohlfarter: What is American ?: new identities in US culture . LIT Verlag Münster, 2004, ISBN 978-3-8258-7734-7 , p. 351– (accessed on April 6, 2011).
  21. ^ Evan R. Goldstein: Born Grumpy, with a Talent for It: Christopher Hitchens's Memoir is Too Happy by Far . In: Jewish Daily Forward . June 2010.
  22. ^ Benjamin Kerstein: Christopher Hitchens's Jewish Problem . Jewish Ideas Daily. Retrieved May 9, 2012.
  23. Jump up ↑ Deceiving Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Mormons
  24. ^ Hitchens at "Hannity & Colmes".
  25. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Believe Me, It's Torture. In: Vanity Fair , August 2008.
  26. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Vote for Obama. In: Slate , October 13, 2008.
  27. ^ Larry Alex Taunton, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist . Nelson Books, Nashville 2016, ISBN 978-0-7180-8112-6 , pp. XV and others .
  28. ^ National Secular Society: Our Honorary Associates
  29. ↑ www.collisionmovie.com
personal data
SURNAME Hitchens, Christopher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hitchens, Christopher Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British author, journalist and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Portsmouth , England
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 2011
Place of death Houston