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Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949) is an author, journalist and literary critic. Now living in Washington, D.C., he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Nation and Slate; additionally, he is an occasional contributor to many other publications.

Hitchens is known for his iconoclasm, anti-clericalism, atheism, anti-fascism and anti-monarchism. He is also noted for his acidic wit and his noisy departure from the Anglo-American political left. He was formerly a socialist and a fixture in the leftist publications of Britain and America. But a series of disagreements beginning in the early 1990s led to his resignation from The Nation shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

He is a vociferous critic of what he describes as "fascism with an Islamic face" and is now sometimes described as a "neoconservative" (Hitchens himself only makes reference to his "temporary neocon allies") or a "Liberal Hawk", though his idiosyncratic ideas and positions preclude easy classification.

Hitchens no longer considers himself a socialist, but maintains that his political views have not changed significantly. He points out that, throughout his career, he has been both an atheist and an antitheist, and that he has always remained a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason.

Education

Hitchens was educated at The Leys School Cambridge and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a third in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Political views

Early career

Hitchens became a Trotskyist during his years as a student at Oxford University, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and was impressed by the example of Noam Chomsky (Hitchens 1985). He wrote for the magazine International Socialism, which was published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". This was symbolized in their slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism". Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree and in the 1970s went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with, amongst others, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. At the New Statesman he became known as an aggressive left-winger, stridently attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War and the Catholic Church. After emigrating to the United States in 1981 (see Christopher Hitches, Hitchens wrote for The Nation. While at The Nation he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. Hitchens criticized the first Gulf War, claiming — in an essay reprinted in For the Sake of Argument— that the Bush administration lured Saddam Hussein into the war.

"Theocratic fascism" and early disagreements with the Left

Hitchens was deeply shocked by the fatwa (February 14, 1989), against his longtime friend Salman Rushdie, and he became increasingly concerned by the dangers of what he called "theocratic fascism" or "fascism with an Islamic face": radical Islamists who supported the fatwa against Rushdie and sought the recreation of the medieval caliphate. Hitchens is sometimes credited with coining the term Islamofascism, but he denies inventing or using this term. Malise Ruthven appears to be the first to have used it in an article in The Independent on 8 September 1990.

Hitchens did use the term "Islamic Fascism" for an article he wrote for The Nation, shortly after 9/11 (although the phrase is used earlier than that, e.g., in The Washington Post on 13 January 1979; it also appears to have been used by secularists in Turkey and Afghanistan to describe their opponents).

Hitchens also became increasingly disenchanted by the presidency of Bill Clinton, accusing him of being a rapist and a serial liar. Hitchens also claimed that the missile attacks by Clinton on Sudan were a war crime. The support of some on the left for Clinton alienated him further from the "soft left" in the United States. On the other hand, he became increasingly distanced from the "hard left" by their lack of support for Western intervention in Kosovo.

The years after the Rushdie fatwa also saw him looking for allies and friends; in the United States he became increasingly frustrated by what he saw as the "excuse making" of the multiculturalist left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican right, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz, with whom he became friends. Around this time, he also befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi.

Post-9/11

After 9/11 his stance hardened, and he has strongly supported US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly in his "Fighting Words" columns in Slate. Hitchens had been a longterm contributor to the left-wing The Nation, where weekly he wrote his "Minority Report" column. After 9/11 he decided the paper was making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of the threat of radical Islam and of the proper response to it. On September 24 and October 8, 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation . Chomsky responded . Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded . Approximately a year after the 9/11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation in part because he believed its editors, its readers and contributors such as Chomsky considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden . This was one of the most highly-charged exchanges of letters in American journalism, involving Hitchens and Chomsky, as well as Katha Pollitt and Alexander Cockburn.

Where he stands now

Hitchens has said he no longer feels a part of the Left yet does not object to being called a "former" Trotskyist. However, his affection for Trotsky remains strong, and he says that his political and historical view of the world is still shaped by Marxist categories. In June 2004, Hitchens wrote an attack on Michael Moore in a review of Moore's latest film, Fahrenheit 9/11 .

Despite his many articles supporting the US invasion of Iraq, Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the US presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for George W. Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens's vote as pro-Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to neutral, saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end" .

In an interview with the journalist Johann Hari in 2004, Hitchens described himself as "on the same side as the neo-conservatives". In that interview, Hitchens made clear that he does not support George Bush per se (still less Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld) but rather those whom he sees as the "pure" neo-conservatives, especially Paul Wolfowitz. Although Hitchens finds himself defending Bush’s foreign policy, he has little admiration for the man himself and has criticized Bush's support of 'intelligent design'. As an anti-theist intellectual with a penchant for drinking, Hitchens was unimpressed by Bush's claim to have been "saved from drink by Jesus".

In March 2005, Hitchens supported further investigation into alleged voting irregularities in Ohio during the US presidential election, 2004.

In contributions to Vanity Fair, Hitchens criticised the Bush administration for its continued protection of Henry Kissinger, whom he views as complicit in the human rights abuses of Southern Cone military dictatorships during the 1970s. In 2001, he had published a book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, on Kissinger's alleged role in the crimes of regimes in South America and Asia. An even more iconoclastic work was his 1995 book on Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position, which was highly controversial.

In May 2005, George Galloway MP entered into an argument with Hitchens before giving evidence to the US Senate. Galloway called Hitchens a "drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay", "ome of which", Hitchens contendedcolumn, "was unfair." A few days later, Hitchens wrote an article that attacked Galloway's political record, criticized his Senate testimony and made a case for Galloway's complicity in the Oil-for-Food scandal. Hitchens debated with Galloway in New York at Baruch College on 14 September, 2005 . Both Galloway and Hitchens appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on September 23, 2005.

In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the ACLU and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA; challenging President Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU .

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Key points

Hitchens has taken many positions over the years that are "contrarian". Whilst he may not deliberately court controversy, he appears to find contention agreeable nonetheless. Listed below are some of the key positions he has taken during the course of his career and his reasons for these positions. Unless stated otherwise, his views on these issues have remained consistent throughout his career.

Trotsky

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Hitchens favored Trotsky and supported Trotskyism. Also, he considered Trotskyism as a bulwark against both Stalinism and the capitalist West.

Nuclear Weapons

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Hitchens regarded the employment of nuclear weapons as the compulsory enlistment of civilians in a war and, as such, a violation of individual sovereignty.

Vietnam

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He regarded America’s intervention (and that of its allies) in Vietnam as a shameful continuation of European colonialism, betraying the enlightenment principles of liberal democracy and human emancipation. Today, he also views it as a betrayal of the American Revolution.

Israel-Palestine

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Hitchens regards the occupation of Palestine as an example of colonialism and an unjustifiable subjugation of another people. He has described Zionism as being based on "lies" but supports Israel's right to exist.

Mother Teresa

In 1992, Hitchens wrote an article for the US left-wing journal, The Nation, in which he called Mother Teresa "The Ghoul of Calcutta". He later produced a television documentary on the subject and expanded his criticism in a 1995 book, The Missionary Position. He despised the unquestioning adoration of the vast majority of Western commentators, which he felt judged her actions by her reputation, not her reputation by her actions. His particular qualms were with her lack of treatment for people — particularly children — placed in her care; her strong religious views on contraception, abortion (which she described as "the biggest threat to world peace"); and her "acceptance" of poverty (which took the form of encouraging the poor to embrace their poverty). He also criticized her for what he considers to be less-than-honorable financial dealings: the pursuit and acceptance of donations from third world dictators, large donations accepted from Charles Keating, who was later convicted of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy; and the allocation of these donations away from treatment and towards furthering what Hitchens considered "fundamentalist" views. Hitchens's writings have earned him the ire of conservative Roman Catholics — Brent Bozell, for example, called Hitchens a "notoriously vicious anti-Catholic".

During Mother Teresa's beatification process, Hitchens was called by the Vatican to argue the case against her. This role was previously known as the devil's advocate, but the position was abolished under John Paul II. Hitchens has satirically referred to his work in the case as "representing the devil pro bono".

Yugoslavia

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Hitchens argued that the choice in Yugoslavia was between what he perceived as multi-ethnic plural democracy in Bosnia and fascistic, religiously inspired ethnic cleansing driven by Slobodan Milošević; although some strategists, such as Yossef Bodansky, argue that this position is counterproductive, given the presence in Bosnia of Islamic fundamentalist militia . Hitchens argued that defending multi-ethnic democracy was morally essential and of far greater importance than any leftish concerns about a ‘new imperialism’.

Iraq

Hitchens opposed the 1991 Gulf War and wrote passionately against the George H. W. Bush administration's intervention in Saudi Arabia and argued that Saddam Hussein had been supported by the United States throughout the 1980s. Hitchens debated actor Charlton Heston on CNN in early February 1991 on this topic; part of the debate was described in the Toronto Star: "Heston was simply no match for Hitchens, who has written brilliantly on the forces leading to war in the Persian Gulf. After a while, Hitchens got a little show-offy. He challenged Heston, who professed to be so knowledgeable about the Middle East, to name Iraq's neighbors. Clockwise. It was awful to watch. Heston stumbled and sputtered, totally humiliated, before finally blurting out: 'Bahrain. The Soviet Union....'"

Hitchens supported the 2003 war in Iraq and has regarded Operation Iraqi Freedom as a critical front in the conflict between secular democracy and theocratic fascism. He also argued that it was a moral necessity to support Iraqi and Kurdish left-wing secularists. He drew parallels with the left's response to the Spanish Civil War and argued that neutrality was not an option. In his view, the anti-war left has abandoned the principles of secularism, liberal democracy and feminism. Hitchens has written a number of articles praising the secular Iraqi politician, Ahmed Chalabi.

Today, Hitchens regards himself as a 'single-issue voter', concerning himself with what he sees as the battle between the forces of secular democracy and those of theocratic fascism.

Despite his involvement with neoconservatism, Hitchens is sometimes seen as part of the self-styled "pro-liberation left", comprising left wingers who supported Operation Iraqi Freedom. This informal grouping includes Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch, Francis Wheen and Julie Burchill. Neoconservatives of the last decade are hesitant to embrace Hitchens as one of their own, in part because of his criticisms of Ronald Reagan, one of the standard-bearers of the movement.

Individuals

Daniel Pipes

Hitchens severely criticized his fellow critic of Islam, Daniel Pipes, upon Pipes' nominiation to the U.S. government-sponsored U.S. Institute of Peace. Hitchens expressed "bafflement" at this appointment in an invective-filled Slate essay entitled "Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace". Hitchens claimed that Pipes "employs the fears and insecurities created by Islamic extremism to slander or misrepresent those who disagree with him," and that this contradicts the USIP's position as "a somewhat mild organization devoted to the peaceful resolution of conflict." Hitchens concluded his opposition to Pipes' nomination by claiming that Pipes "confuses scholarship with propaganda" and pursues "petty vendettas with scant regard for objectivity."

Cindy Sheehan

In a scathing column, Hitchens states that Cindy Sheehan "has obviously taken a short course in the Michael Moore/Ramsey Clark school of Iraq analysis and has not succeeded in making it one atom more elegant or persuasive." Sheehan told Nightline that her son "was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel." Hitchens denounced Sheehan for allegedly positing a "Jewish cabal" and for attracting the support of David Duke.

Juan Cole

Hitchens, in an article in Slate, criticized Juan Cole's interpretation of a speech of as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an attempt to minimizing the Iranian threat. .

International journalism

Hitchens spent part of his early career as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. In the past several years, he has continued journeying to and writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan.

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Literary review

Hitchens regularly contributes literary reviews to the Atlantic Monthly. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works. Works he has recently reviewed include Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie; Saturday by Ian McEwan; the D. J. Enright translation of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust; and the Alfred Appel Jr. annotated version of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (whom he named as on par with James Joyce).

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Praise for and criticism of Hitchens

Appropriately for a self-described "contrarian" who deliberately seeks to provoke, Hitchens is the subject of considerable praise as well as of severe criticism. In September 2005, Hitchens was named as one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect magazine. Prior to Hitchens ideological shift, the American writer Gore Vidal had declared Hitchens his "dauphin" or heir.

Some criticize Hitchens for his frequent television appearances and claim that he is egotistic and has changed his political views for personal gain. Among his most severe critics is one-time colleague and friend Alexander Cockburn. Cockburn has frequently alluded to Hitchens's tendency to tipple. In a column for August 20, 2005 , Cockburn wrote:

"What a truly disgusting sack of shit Hitchens is guy who called Sid Blumenthal one of his best friends and then tried to have him thrown into prison for perjury; a guy who waited his friend Edward Said was on his death bed before attacking him in the Atlantic Monthly; a guy who knows perfectly well the role Israel plays in US policy but who does not scruple to flail Cindy Sheehan as a LaRouchie and anti-Semite because, maybe, she dared mention the word Israel".

Hitchens's reply can be found here .

There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character, Peter Fallow, in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, but others believe it to be Spy Magazine's "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest.

In April 2005 William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights denounced Hitchens as an "anti-Catholic bigot". UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge claimed that Hitchens has participated in "anti-Catholicism ... the last form of bigotry respectable amongst the elite".

Hitchens has also been criticized for his heavy and public use of alcohol, which causes many to discount his opinions. Juan Cole, for example, wrote the following after being attacked by Hitchens in Slate: "I don't think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind." Hitchens has never attempted to hide his alcoholism; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule." Noting that his doctor expressed amazement at his alcohol consumption, Hitchens wrote that "in my time I've met more old drunks than old doctors." He noted that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind."

Personal

Ethnic identity

In an article in the Guardian Unlimited on April 14, 2002, Hitchens insists he is Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. When Hitchens' brother, Peter, took his new bride to meet their maternal grandmother, Dodo, who was then in her nineties, allegedly, Dodo said, 'She's Jewish, isn't she?' and then announced: 'Well, I've got something to tell you. So are you'. She said that her real surname was Levin, not Lynn and that her ancestors were Blumenthals from Poland . According to the Observer, April 14 2002, Christopher "insists that he is Jewish."

In a column he wrote for the Los Angeles Times on February 9, 2006, Hitchens wrote, "my grandmother told me as an adult that both she and my mother were Jewish, and it sent me looking for my forebears on the German-Polish border". Hitchens's brother, Peter, disputes that the brothers have significant Jewish ancestry, and considers himself a Christian.

Relationship with brother, Peter

Hitchens's younger brother by two-and-a-half years, Peter Hitchens, is also a journalist, author and critic. The brothers had a protracted falling-out after Peter wrote that Christopher had once joked that he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon" (a suburb of London). Christopher denied having ever said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as "an idiot" in a letter to Commentary, and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. However, after the birth of Peter's third child and some secret diplomacy by Peter, Christopher expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew; shortly thereafter Christopher and Peter gave several interviews together in which they said their personal disagreements had been resolved.

Bibliography

As Sole Author

• 2007 God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. Warner Twelve (pending)

• 2005 Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Eminent Lives/HarperCollins, ISBN 0060598964

• 2004 Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1560255803

• 2003 A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, Plume Books

• 2002 Why Orwell Matters, Basic Books (US)/UK edition as Orwell's Victory, Allen Lane

• 2002 The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Verso

• 2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian, Basic Books

• 2000. Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, Verso

• 2000. No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, Verso

• 1995. The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Verso.

• 1993. For the Sake of Argument: Essays & Minority Reports. Verso.

• 1990. Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies. Farrar Straus Giroux. (reissued 2004, with a new intro., as Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, Nation Books, ISBN 1560255927)

• 1989. Prepared for the Worst. Hill and Wang (US)/Chatto and Windus (UK).

• 1987. Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles. Chatto and Windus (UK)/Hill and Wang (1988 US)/ 1997 UK Verso edition as The Elgin Marbles: Should they be returned to Greece? (Published with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns)

• 1984. Cyprus, Quartet, (revised editions as Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, 1989 (Farrar Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso))

As Co-Author or Editor

• 1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor and co-editor with Edward Said), Verso, ISBN 0860918874

• 1976. Callaghan: The Road to Number 10 , (with Peter Kellner), Cassell, ISBN 0304297682

As a Contributor

• 2005 A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, Thomas Cushman (Editor). University of California Press, ISBN 0520245555

External links

Biographical

• Atlantic Monthly profile

Hitchens's work

• The Christopher Hitchens Web, columns, articles, interviews, etc.

• Our war on fanaticism is just (SFgate.com)

• Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle: What's wrong with her Crawford protest (Slate.com)

• The case for mocking religion - Muhammad cartoon controversy (Slate.com)

• Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, March 2005, "Ohio's Odd Numbers"

• Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, 9 November 2004, "Kissinger Declassified"

• Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 21 June 2004, "Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore"

• Christopher Hitchens, Grand Street, Autumn 1985, "The Chorus And The Cassandra" - a defence of Chomsky's role in the Faurisson affair and the Cambodia/Khmer Rouge controversies, also reprinted in Prepared for the Worst, (1989) pp. 58-77.

• A few words of fraternal admonition to "Norm" Finkelstein, Hitchens's response to Finkelstein

• 'Galloway is a hot, blustering bully - but I'm staying on his case until the very end' (Daily Telegraph)

Others

• Christopher Hitchens, Bob Graham, David Corn, Ruth Wedgwood - Were We Misled? A Debate on Pre-War Intelligence live recording of WNYC's Brian Lehrer show recorded in February 2006 at The New York Society for Ethical Culture, mp3 format

• mp3 of George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens, September 14, 2005

• George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens, in The Independent, 16 September 2005

• "The Grapple in the Big Apple", by Alex Massie, National Review Online, September 16, 2005

• "The Grapple in the Big Apple : A Musical Soundtrack", The debate set to a musical score by House Of Morton

• "Galloway vs. Hitchens", by Louis Proyect, Counterpunch, September 16, 2005

• Christopher Hitchens: Arguments for the war to liberate Iraq collected by the Center for Security Policy September 22, 2005

• "Christopher Hitchens vs. Playthell Benjamin", by Leo Vladimirsky, The Accuser, February 10, 2006

• "Free Radical", interview in Reason by Rhys Southan

Criticisms

• Fraternally yours, Chris, by Norman Finkelstein: criticizes Hitchens for perceived "opportunism"
• Dreams and Delusions, by Edward Said: pillories "expatriate British journalists in America" for "just racism at the bottom though, no matter how dressed up it is"
• Scoundrel time redux: Christopher Hitchens as a social type, by David Walsh
• About Hitchens, by wsws.org
• Hitchens fully embraces the war, by wsws.org
• Christopher Hitchens' last battle, by Juan Cole
• Hitchens Backs Down, by Alexander Cockburn
• Christopher Hitchens Rants Again, by Daniel Pipes
• The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens, by Monthly Review
• Hitchens Watch, Critical articles, reviews, quotes
• Obelus.org Christopher Hitchens: Flickering Firebrand
  • A point-by-point rebuttal of Hitchens' critical review
• "Farewell, Hitch" A critical look at Hitchens' politics by George Scialabba in n+1 magazine, (Spring 2005)
• Shoveling Coal for Satan: Christopher Hitchens collects check from Microsoft by Matt Taibbi
• Big Brothers:George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens Exposed By John Dolan
• Christopher Hitchens and Haditha A look at Hitchens' article in Slate comparing Haditha and My Lai
• The Purest Neocon: Christopher Hitchens, an unreconstructed Bolshevik, finds his natural home on the pro-war Right. By Tom Piatak, American Conservative, October 10, 2005

References

1. The End of Fukuyama, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, March 1, 2006
2. See, for example, Christopher Hitchens, "Realpolitik in the Gulf," New Left Review 186 (March-April 1991)
3. Linda Diebel, "Pressure is Strong to Toe Line on Patriotism," Toronto Star (10 February 1991) H4.
4. Hitchens, Christopher, "Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace", Slate, August 11 2003
5. Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, August 15 2005
6. The Cole Report, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Tuesday, May 2, 2006
7. Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, May 03, 2006
8. http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html
9. Christopher Hitchens, "Living Proof," Vanity Fair (March 2003).

• Atheists
• Balliol College, Oxford University
• British essayists
• British journalists
• Living people
• 1949 births