Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens

By Richard Seymour

Blistering and timely interrogation of the politics and motives of an infamous ex-leftist.

Irascible and forthright, Christopher Hitchens stood out as a man determined to do just that. In his younger years, a career-minded socialist, he emerged from the smoke of 9/11 a neoconservative “Marxist,” an advocate of America’s invasion of Iraq filled with passionate intensity. Throughout his life, he played the role of universal gadfly, whose commitment to the truth transcended the party line as well as received wisdom. But how much of this was imposture? In this highly critical study, Richard Seymour casts a cold eye over the career of the “Hitch” to uncover an intellectual trajectory determined by expediency and a fetish for power. As an orator and writer, Hitchens offered something unique and highly marketable. But for all his professed individualism, he remains a recognizable historical type—the apostate leftist. Unhitched presents a rewarding and entertaining case study, one that is also a cautionary tale for our times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verso
• Release date: Jan 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781781684610

Richard Seymour

Richard Seymour is an emerging voice on the radical left, providing expert analysis on British politics across international media. He co-founded the magazine Salvage, a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters, and has authored numerous books. He is the author Against Austerity: How we Can Fix the Crisis they Made (Pluto, 2014), Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (Verso, 2016), Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens (Verso, 2013) and The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso, 2012).

Reviews for Unhitched

[hampusforev · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I suppose it's quite dangerous to take the prosecutor at his word without hearing the defendant's; with the latter being six feet under (though it wouldn't surprise me if Hitchens was cremated), I suppose we have to either listen to the people willing to defend him, and that defense consists of a slew of neocons, Washington hacks, his swooning fans, and the perennially boring semi-left New Statesman.

Like most tired old adages, there's some usefulness in judging a man by the company he keeps; and the trial of Christopher Hitchens have to be damning in this regard. He's up and running with Ron Paul and Dawkins for the most blindly sycophantic and annoying fan-base; they persistently stalk the Internet, ready to spam and flood any negative appraisal with incoherent drivel and indignant outrage at their idols exposed cracks and scratches.

I was 11 years old when the planes hit the twin towers, so it's fair to say that I wasn't quite intellectually involved in the debate during those years, and when looking back at the Bush-administrations scramble for war and their general craziness, it all looks like a giant farce. I suppose I encountered Hitchens along with the "new atheist" movement, and though I'm an atheist myself, I can't stand any of them. But Hitchens always struck me as the most entertaining of the lot.

He was a very good writer, much better than Richard Seymour, and trying to one-up him in the art of raucous free-wheelin' insults looks faintly silly and is bound to fail. However, looking beyond the style of the book, Seymour definitely has more than a point. Hitchens was a petty and, though well-read and spoken, an unremarkable intellect; and I think he knew it himself. His self-styled contrarianism looks like bravado and empty charading; what's contrarian about supporting American aggression like all the other hacks in the NY Times and mainstream media? If he was a contrarian, how come he received warm eulogies from the two principal nitwits of respectability, the prime minister and president of the most powerful bullies in the world; why did every respectable drivel-rag of mainstream punditry wax turgid and tearful in appraising this "contrarian" when he fell of the proverbial twig (which probably cracked under his swelling ego)? Atheism? There's nothing controversial about pissing on religion, perhaps if you were Tyco Brahe, but not when you're sitting in your comfortable swivel-chair in Washinton flinging insults at the pious of the 21st century liberal countries.

Hitchens became a mercenary character assassin for the Bush regime, which is evident in his slanderous nonsense against Noam Chomsky, Vidal, Naomi Klein Edward Saïd, Tariq Ali and anybody daring to oppose the Bush administrations reckless rampages; Hitchens never really made any more sense than Bush when defending the Iraq war, if a with a little more flourish and trademark style. He accused anybody who opposed the occupation of being "fellow-travelers with fascism", which is just akin to saying "either you're with us, or you're with the terrorist".

To call Hitchens a "great thinker" is preposterous, he was much more a pamphleteer of some talent and erudition; a lesser Tom Paine without a revolution to attach himself too, and I suppose he thought he found his revolution with the neocons.

However, Hitchens is fascinating; he never really reneged on his leftism like other useless ex-leftists like David Horowitz and co. even if the did betray some old friends over vainglorious pride and for a seat at the neocon table. Hitchens is well-worth reading; this book however, is sloppy and uneven, and as an indictment it falls well-short of what it could've been. And that just adds fuel to the fire of the faithful Hitchens-worshippers.

[mmyoung_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A rather 'inside the beltway' discussion of Hitchens that contextualizes his political opinions and arguments from within the ideological context in which he first made his name and which later gave weight to his opinions about Bush and the war. (If even a Trotskyist thinks such and such then it must not simply be a right-wing talking point.)Enjoyable to read a examination of Hitchens work that does not focus unduly (or indeed much at all) about his atheism save for the way in which it informed his choice of political argument.Unfortunately quite weak on the intersection between leftist politics and feminism.