December 15, 2011: Christopher Hitchens Dies

December 15, 2011: Christopher Hitchens Dies

December 15, 2011: Christopher Hitchens Dies

“Posterity is unlikely to deal kindly with his willingness to be a singer in the camp of George W. Bush.”

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

Christopher Hitchens wrote for The Nation from 1978 to 2002, when he resigned his long-running “Minority Report” column over what he perceived as irreconcilable differences between him and the editors regarding the proper response to the attacks of September 11 and the desirability of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Hitchens’s memoir, Hitch-22, was reviewed in the Nation of August 16, 2010, by D.D. Guttenplan. Hitchens died of cancer on this day in 2011.

No matter what he wrote when he resigned from The Nation in October 2002, Hitchens must know that exasperation with your readers isn’t a badge of oppression. But then, I don’t believe he left the left, or The Nation, for political reasons. I think he just outgrew them.

Not over Iraq, 9/11, Sarajevo or Salman Rushdie. Because even when the movement was “everything,” that was never more than half the story. There was always—always—another column of figures, charting the rise of Christopher Hitchens…. The best thing about keeping two sets of books—personal and political—is that when the columns are added together the balance is always in your favor. Which makes changing sides as easy as changing trains. But there is also a price to pay, and Hitchens has paid it. In The Balkan Wars Trotsky writes, “I was not prepared to play the role of ‘singer in the camp’ of the…warriors.” Hitchens’s disgust with Saddam was honorable, but posterity is unlikely to deal kindly with his willingness to be a singer in the camp of George W. Bush. Most of all, Hitchens has to live with the knowledge that young men went into battle with his words on their lips—and not all of them came back.…

To measure his loss, and ours, look at Prepared for the Worst, a collection of his early work published in 1988, or his superb, and sadly still pertinent, book on Cyprus from 1984. Or read his Nation column from May 2001 on Bob Kerrey’s lasting culpability for a massacre in Vietnam. Hitchens was teaching at the New School at the time, making Kerrey, he wrote, “my president”; yet the piece, incandescent with moral outrage, is never callous or crude. “If you look back on the essay that made his name,” Hitchens writes about Noam Chomsky, “you will find a polemical talent well worth mourning, and a feeling for justice that ought not to have gone rancid and resentful.” I wish Hitchens a speedy recovery, a long life and as much celebrity as he wants. But it’s the Christopher with a feeling for justice I mourn. I miss him very much.

December 15, 2011

To mark The Nation’s 150th anniversary, every morning this year The Almanac will highlight something that happened that day in history and how The Nation covered it. Get The Almanac every day (or every week) by signing up to the e-mail newsletter.

Can we count on you?

In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win.

We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives. Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.

Stories like these and the one you just read are vital at this critical juncture in our country’s history. Now more than ever, we need clear-eyed and deeply reported independent journalism to make sense of the headlines and sort fact from fiction. Donate today and join our 160-year legacy of speaking truth to power and uplifting the voices of grassroots advocates.

Throughout 2024 and what is likely the defining election of our lifetimes, we need your support to continue publishing the insightful journalism you rely on.

Thank you,
The Editors of The Nation

Ad Policy
x