Review: Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

Coming from the Left, and attacking it from within, Christopher Hitchens divides opinion and establishes himself as the pre-eminent polemic of his time, as his hero, George Orwell, was before. Hitchens is a brilliant writer, of that there is no question, but what his critics point out, often correctly, is the tendency for the hyperbole and bombast of his words to sound bullying. He doesn’t so much argue a point, as bite the heads off his critics, chewing them up, and spitting them out, ready for his next combatant.

The book, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left, has been put together to highlight some of the disagreements Hitchens has had with former comrades of the Left, comrades he deserted over his continued support first for the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq. Hitchens, a profound atheist (in his words an ‘anti-theist’) sees the September 11 attacks on the US not as a natural response to US and Israeli imperialism and aggression as some of his colleagues did, but rather, as a new form of ‘Islamo-fascism’, or fascism with an Islamic face.
Simon Cottee, criminology lecturer at the University of Wales (Bangor), and Thomas Cushman, professor of sociology at Wellesley College (Massachusetts), compiled this collection of Hitchens writings in the post-9/11 world, and juxtaposed them with criticism from his Left-wing comrades emphasising just how far his political conversion has gone. Overall, the book succeeds, we see an aggressive, flamboyant Hitchens at the top of his game, and the dissection by his critics often hits the mark. Juan Cole gives a good ‘Fisking’ to a Hitchens piece entitled A War to be Proud Of, and Hitchens is accused of blindly following the Bush Administration into unnecessary wars by more than one critic.

The reader is given a thorough knowledge of Hitchens belief structure, and is left to make up their own mind from there. Hitchens has a love him or hate him way to his writing, and this book will satisfy the blood-lust of those in both camps.