345. Matt Johnson How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment
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Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today\\u2019s left, he\\u2019s remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout\\u2014a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks.
In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important.
Shermer and Johnson discuss: Hitchens on free expression, identity politics, radicalism, interventionism, authoritarianism, patriotism, internationalism, America and Liberalism, reparations, religion, and death \\u2022 identity politics \\u2022 hostility to free speech \\u2022 why Hitch did not become a neoconservative, warmonger, or imperialist \\u2022 Enlightenment Liberalism \\u2022 Trump and the division of the right \\u2022 Hitchens on the precursors to Trump \\u2022 Putin and Russian nationalism.
Matt Johnson writes for Haaretz, Quillette, American Purpose, South China Morning Post, The Bulwark, Areo, Arc Digital, RealClearDefense, The Kansas City Star, and many other publications. His new book is How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment.
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