Relatively less savage
Hitchens vs “Melanie”
September 25, 2007 23 comments
In a peculiar column at Slate, Christopher Hitchens hopes that Al Gore will enter the Democratic nomination race. (Peculiar since, as Hitchens Watch reminds us, Hitchens thought in 2004 that Gore was “completely nuts”.) But it was an offhand aside that caught my eye:
George Bush at his worst is preferable to Gerhard Schröder or Jacques Chirac — politicians who put their own countries in pawn to Putin and the Chinese and the Saudis.
What can we make of this? Is there something about choosing to say “the Saudis” rather than “Saudi Arabia”, and “the Chinese” rather than “China”, which expresses a kind of emotional distaste for the foreigner, conceived as faceless collectivity? Well, perhaps. But the factual claim is intriguing too.
After all, it would seem, according to Hitchens’s contemptuous little side-spit about other countries’ apparent dependence on “the Chinese” and “the Saudis” (it must be just a coincidence that to symbolize Germany and France he specifies their ex-leaders who opposed the Iraq war, not their current leaders) — it would seem that Hitchens thinks the US itself does not in fact have a rather dependent relationship with Saudi Arabia in view of, er, its “energy” requirements. And that the US dollar, for example, is not in fact at the mercy of China’s enormous foreign reserves, not to speak of the US trade deficit. Thank God Dick Cheney, burps Hitchens in a parallel universe, that “George Bush at his worst” has not put his country “in pawn” to those filthy villains across the seas.
But what’s this? “Melanie Phillips”, Hitchens’s ideological tag-team partner in the mud-wrestling pit of bellicose xenophobia, takes exactly the opposite view: The Real Conspiracy, as she thrillingly calls it, is that America in particular and “the west” in general really is in the process of pawning itself to “Islamists” from Saudi Arabi and elsewhere: just look at all the Saudi petrodollars and endowments to US universities — even, shudder, “Saudi funding at Oxford” in England. Nearly as terrifying:
And now we also learn that the Islamic world (albeit a relatively less savage variety) has gained a majority control over the London Stock Exchange.
At least the UAE is relatively less savage than “the Saudis”. Phew! Of course, they’re still a bit savage, because after all the official state religion is a sky-god religion that differs from a couple of other sky-god religions. But let us be grateful for small mercies.
But now any connoisseur of the kind of throbbing alarmist bigotry practised by Hitchens and “Melanie” must be confused. Is there really a “strategy to take over the west” masterminded by Saudi Arabia and its “relatively less savage” counterparts that is succeeding to a horrifying extent in the US, as “Melanie” claims? Or, as Hitchens claims, is the US actually the only country with cojones enough to resist this evil scheme, in contrast to all those craven European surrender monkeys? Readers, the plot thickens.
My heart has long ached over Hitchens. He has written great things. This column was not one of them.
“I am occasionally asked why it is that so many Europeans display reflexive anti-Americanism, and I force myself to choose from a salad of possible answers…”
None of which, apparently, involve challenging the odious sub-McCarthyism inherent in the question.
“…a complete moron like Jimmy Carter…”
What cheap, rank abuse from someone who praises the intellect of Karl Rove and Paul Wolfowitz.
“George Bush at his worst is preferable to Gerhard Schröder or Jacques Chirac—politicians who put their own countries in pawn to Putin and the Chinese and the Saudis.”
Since Steven has deconstructed the last part of that sentence beyond repair, what is left of it?
“George Bush at his worst – say, when he is proposing to bomb a television station in a friendly country or banning the provision of medication to prisoners – is preferable to Gerhard Schroeder or Jacques Chirac when they… erm… do things that Bush has also done… er…”
What makes that all the more petty and spiteful is that if Schroeder, Chirac and Carter had all said in 2003 that invading Iraq was the BEST IDEA EVAR (or that Iraqi mosques were packed with WMD, or that the re-election of Bush was good news for Darfurians and Palestinians among other such insights), Hitchens would now be holding them in great esteem.
“Don’t ask what a campaign against global warming has done for ‘peace'”
Yes, don’t ask, because there is a chance that someone will tell you and so make you aware of how uninformed you are on this subject.
Hitchens could find one answer if he read Stephan Harris’ excellent piece on the role of global warming in the Darfur genocide, placed at no great distance from Hitchens’ own piece in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’.
Alternatively, prior to asking, we can just speculate at what 100 million+ refugees, sunken coastal cities and diminishing agricultural land and freshwater supplies will do for international relations.
“…he [Gore]could also present himself in zeitgeist terms as the candidate who was on the right side of the two great overarching questions: the climate crisis and the war in Mesopotamia.”
Huh? An extremely odd backhanded compliment from someone who piled on Gore along with the rest of the Beltway bullies back when it was cool (and is pointedly wrong about both overarching questions).
“I remind you that Gore was once a stern advocate of the removal of Saddam Hussein, and that in office he might well not be the coward or apologist that the MoveOn.org crowd is still hoping to nominate.”
OK, examples of vulgar and mendacious unspeak, anyone?
I counted “removal”, “coward”, “apologist” and “crowd”.
Well that was cathartic. I feel I have found some closure.
…we also learn that the Islamic world (albeit a relatively less savage variety) has gained a majority control over the London Stock Exchange.
This “Melanie” character is a British scribe, isn’t she? But don’t you guys have a criminal law against racist propaganda; why isn’t she in jail? This doesn’t seem much different from Streicher’s stuff; well, OK, maybe a slightly less savage variety.
I would have thought that the London Stock Exchange would make a poor instrument for Islamic fundamentalists opposed to capitalism, because it’s a stock exchange.
A few posts down she has a doozy by the way:
Gordon Brown’s face is everywhere, and the not so subliminal pitch is obvious. He represents strength as opposed to David Cameron –who was not mentioned at all in the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon; no need for nasty vulgar personal attacks which so upset the voters when everyone can make the comparison for themselves between Gordon, the stern and unflinching hunk of Caledonian moral granite and Cameron, the spivvy PR man who is a blank sheet of paper currently being torn to shreds between competing bandwagons
It’s obvious that he’s simply assassinating the character of David Cameron, by the cunning means of not doing so.
a blank sheet of paper currently being torn to shreds between competing bandwagons
is overtaxing my poor imagination – is the sheet stretched lengthwise between the two bandwagons, with either end of the sheet attached to the side of a wagon? (Maybe with thumb-tacks: bandwagons would be wooden, right?) Or are the two bandwagons right next to each other, so the paper is flat between them and it’s friction that’s doing the tearing? Does it have anything to do with the phrase “couldn’t fit a cigarette paper between their positions” that was popular for a while and isn’t any more?
Given the relationship between some of the ruling Saudi bodies and the Bush’s you’ve got to have a laugh at poor old Hitch.
lamentreat: those are all very apt questions. But I suppose if “Melanie” thought before writing, or even after writing, her prose might be very different.
Thanks to Alex for thoroughly dismantling the rest of the Hitch piece.
I love the idea that “Gordon’s face” is itself a “not so subliminal pitch”. The bastard, using his face.
“In a peculiar column at Slate, Christopher Hitchens hopes that Al Gore will enter the Democratic nomination race. (Peculiar since, as Hitchens Watch reminds us, Hitchens thought in 2004 that Gore was “completely nuts”.)”
No, he doesn’t. he speculates on whether or not Gore will run and in what circumstances. He then muses on the ‘jolt’ this will give to the currently boring process. I suppose you could infer that he would like the boring process to become less boring and that therefore he would like to see Gore enter, but that is rather different from your dishonest reprsentation of the piece.
“What can we make of this? Is there something about choosing to say “the Saudis” rather than “Saudi Arabia”, and “the Chinese” rather than “China”, which expresses a kind of emotional distaste for the foreigner, conceived as faceless collectivity?”
I don’t see why, but if there is, the emotional distaste extends to his fellow citizens who he refers to in a similar way.
“(it must be just a coincidence that to symbolize Germany and France he specifies their ex-leaders who opposed the Iraq war, not their current leaders)”
No, he was referring to the individuals in particular rather than any old leader of France or Germany or the country in symbol.
A bit of a feeble attack all in all. I enjoy some of the other stuff though.
Here’s a tip. Before accusing someone of dishonest representation, take care to read fully what is being represented. Had you done so, you would no doubt have noticed that Hitchens writes:
I added some boldface to help you out there.
He says “the Americans” when referring to America or the American government or people? That would be strange. Of course we know that that form of words can indeed express distaste, as when used eg by OBL or Ahmadinejad etc.
Tu quoque, old chap.
“Here’s a tip. Before accusing someone of dishonest representation, take care to read fully what is being represented.”
You are quite right that I missed the implication of the the three words that you kindly highlighted but that doesn’t chnage the fact that, to my mind, you are dishonetly misrepresting Hitchens in the post. Hitchens thinks that Gore’s entry into the race would make it more intersting and fun to watch and for that reason he would welcome it. There is no contradiction, therefore, with his previous belief that Gore was in some way ‘nuts’. Nutty people can make things more interesting. And anyway, he later explains that he suspects, or hopes, that Gore has travelled on a bit in the interim.
But you are right that I should have been more careful, so I won’t go an about it.
“He says “the Americans” when referring to America or the American government or people? That would be strange. “
He says ‘Americans’. ‘The Americans’ sounds strange but only for conventional reasons, just as ‘Chinese’ without the article sounds strange. I can’t really see how you can read anything else into the use or non-use of the article in this sort of case unless you really, really want to.
John M, I think there is actually a contradiction between dismissing someone as “completely nuts” (not “in some way nuts” but “completely”) and some years later urging that same person to run for president or risk earning your contempt. Especially since Hitchens makes no attempt to chart the considerable mental journey that must have been travelled in between.
Which was from here:
“I’m persuaded that personality is the question–character, if you want to call it that. Al Gore had allowed himself to become a humble, hollowed-out, humiliated figure. I didn’t want a zombie to be the president of the United States.”
Moving on…
“The Americans’ sounds strange but only for conventional reasons, just as ‘Chinese’ without the article sounds strange. I can’t really see how you can read anything else into the use or non-use of the article in this sort of case unless you really, really want to.“
No, I’m with Steven – there is something nasty about Hitchens’ talk of countries being in pawn to “the Chinese” (what, all of them?) and “the Saudis”.
It’s xenophobic sloppiness of the kind the old Hitchens expressly repudiated. Consider Hitchens’ introduction to Joe Sacco’s graphic art depiction of the Bosnian War, ‘Safe Area Gorazde’:
“Where there is bile in these pages… it is not directed at ‘the Serbs’. Even in their extremity, Bosnian victims referred to Serbo-fascists as ‘Chetniks’ and thus honorably agreed to loathe them uder a political and historical and not an ethnic rubric.”
nice catch Alex!
Excellent work. It is good sport to damn the present Hitchens with the previous Hitchens’s own words.
Incidentally Hitchens’ piece in Vanity Fair is interesting (in a good way) this month. It’s about a US soldier who was killed in Iraq – a liberal guy who was strognly influenced by Hitchens’ own articles to enlist.
It’s a problematic piece in many ways, but also moving in parts and contains the first partial acknowledgement from Hitchens I’ve seen that his advocacy of the Iraq War was misguided, or that the person he became in the process was a worse one.
Mmm, you read it more kindly than I, since it seems to me an exercise in sentimental self-exculpation and self-aggrandisement. Well, the piece is here, in case anyone wants to talk about it further.
Despite the Vanity Fair piece’s sentimentality (not to mention its irksome slippage from ‘How should I feel?’ to ‘How should we feel?’ – thank you, Christopher, but my feelings are unlikely to coincide with yours), I have to give Hitchens credit for keeping the focus on Mark Daily. Compare David Aaronovitch’s monstrously solipsistic article on visiting Iraq in 2004, in which both argument and empathy become subordinate to hilarious jokes about whether or not David will be killed by the scary beardy people.
Greatly enjoying your blog, BTW; found you recently through the Zizek thread and will be sticking around for more.
Liss – thankyou, and welcome!
I agree that Hitchens is still far superior as a writer of prose to his fellows such as David Aaronovitch or Nick Cohen. I like to believe, indeed, as one who greatly admires much of his work, that even now Hitchens is not irrevocably lost to reason and common humanity. And perhaps after all Alex is right to take the Vanity Fair piece as a first glimmering of hope in that direction. It would be nice to think so.
“I like to believe, indeed, as one who greatly admires much of his work, that even now Hitchens is not irrevocably lost to reason and common humanity.”
Precisely my hope.
Hitchens has really enraged me these past few years, not least because I tried to defend him as far as was reasonably possible.
But he just kept hacking away for the Republican Party.
What I noticed in this piece, anyway, was the absence of cheap shots against opponents of the war.
The beginning was a little weird though – he’s been advocating the invasion and occupation all these years and now he is dismayed to learn that someone took his views seriously enough to act on them? That only makes sense if we assume he no longer has confidence in his argument.
A couple of peculiar moments in Hitchens’ piece on Mark Daily. (1), when Hitchens announces that he’ll share no more than one excerpt of Daily’s love letters “with your permission”. Just the reflex banter of an assured public speaker, a trick to establish intimacy with his audience by fiat? It seems especially jarring in a piece which turns on the collapse of a faceless reading public into a heroically individualized single reader. And (2) when he describes himself as one who used “to advocate strongly for the liberation of Iraq”. Is “advocate for” standard US English? To my Brit ear, the prepositional doubling sounds awkward.
Yes, that “with your permission” is weird, it almost sounds like Gollum or something. From Gollum to the reincarnation of George Orwell within one article is quite an impressive range.
I couldn’t help noticing the bit where he wonders who killed Mark Daily — among the possible culprits, it seems, is “the Bush administration, which thought Iraq would be easily pacified”.
Can we think of anyone else who thought Iraq would be easily pacified and shouted as much?
Um…
Oh yes.
Christopher Hitchens, January 2003.
Dennis Perrin on the Vanity Fair piece:
“The beginning was a little weird though – he’s been advocating the invasion and occupation all these years and now he is dismayed to learn that someone took his views seriously enough to act on them? That only makes sense if we assume he no longer has confidence in his argument. “
I’m not sure what the weirdness is here. All of us who support the invasion feel queasy at the thought of the deaths that it necessarily entailed. Surely it would be odder to be undismayed. No doubt you support or have supported some military action(s) but would be nonetheless dismayed to discover that a particular individual had sacrificed himself as a direct consequence of your support. It’s just being human, innit?
Ah, you felt queasy, but presumably you nonetheless had the stomach for the fight. As usual, you can distinguish the righteous from the craven by their intestinal fortitude.
“Ah, you felt queasy, but presumably you nonetheless had the stomach for the fight. “
I felt queasy but nonetheless thought that the fight was the right fight, largeley because there was not an option that did not mean innocents would have to die. You, I am sure, felt queasy about those who would have been condemned to Saddam’s torture chambers if the invasion hadn’t taken place (I hope I’m not giving you too much credit) but nonetheless found that you could stomach it. We all choose our moral commitments and very few of them come without a cost.