Christopher Hitchens, Part Two
Author
of Letters to a Young Contrarian talks with Robert Birnbaum
 Posted:
(Date Unknown), 2002
Copyright 2002 by Robert Birnbaum
All photos by Red Diaz / Duende Publishing
Print this interview.
"The voice of reason is small but persistent."
-An inscription from the Sigmund Freud memorial
in Vienna
Christopher Hitchens regularly writes for Vanity
Fair and contributes to such publications as Granta, The
London Review Of Books, The New York Review Of Books, The Los Angeles
Times, Dissent, New Left Review and The Times Literary Supplement.
His Letters
To A Young Contrarian was published in the fall of 2001.
Modeled on Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Hitchens' book
is loosely constructed as a series of correspondences to a young
person considering a life of dissidence. Contrarian extraordinaire
Hitchens explores a wide range of dissent and cites examples of
contrarians such as George Orwell, Emile Zola to Vaclav Havel and
Salman Rushdie. Christopher Hitchens is a zealous proponent of the
dialectic as an agent of social progress. His rhetorical skills
and nimbleness of mind are in full evidence in this slender tome.
This conversation was the second Hitchens and I had in 2001; the
first was occasioned by the publication of The Trial of Henry
Kissinger and his collection of literary essays, Unacknowledged
Legislation. Now, with the recently published Letters,
our dialogue continued. We met just after Hitchens' return from
Pakistan, a voyage he documented in "On the Frontier of Apocalypse",
Vanity Fair (January 2002).
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this interview.
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books.
Robert Birnbaum: Is there such a thing as an old contrarian?
Christopher Hitchens: Yes…
RB: Would that be you?
CH: It's a curmudgeon, it you are not careful. There are
people, one of whom I knew — of the two I'll mention —
Bertrand Russell and Jessica Mitford, both people, [who] it seems
to me, succeeded in getting more radical as they got older. Without
becoming idiotic figures, without becoming cartoon figures or making
old fools of themselves.
RB: In the case of Russell, that's arguable.
CH: Well, there were foolish things he did in his later
years, but they were analogous to the foolish things he had done
when he was young.
RB: Ah, consistency in foolishness.
CH: I wouldn't say he didn't have a foolish streak and couldn't
sometimes be taken in by charlatans or encouraged to make slightly
rash statements. That wasn't a problem with his age. I remember
thinking it was very unfair, not to say graceless, for some people
to say, "That just proves the old boy's mind is softening."
There seems to me no doubt that he was extremely lucid until the
final days of his 92nd year. So yeah, some people ask me if I have
always been like this, and now it's the first time I've been asked,
"Am I always going to be like this?" It's a nice change
of pace.
RB: The terminology starts to shift with the developmental
process. As a youth one can be, perhaps, a rebel or a contrarian,
but as one gets older, can one be a contrarian?
CH: When you get asked by Basic Books to be the author of
a volume to be entitled, Letters to A Young Contarian, then
you do know you have become middle-aged. You know they wouldn't
ask you if it weren't evident to them that you have become some
kind of grizzled veteran. So that's good-bye to youth or any illusions
about retaining it. And also you have to realize that, if you are
to take the book seriously, which I did, and you write to people
that you have actually met. I had in mind some students of mine,
younger journalists I knew, people who had written or e-mailed me…
RB: So in the book you were responding to real correspondence?
CH: As I was writing I always had somebody or sometimes
some composite character in mind. [It] makes it much easier to write,
for one reason. And, for another, these were real questions. Again,
that reminds me of what I already know. People who are perfectly
grown who are my students, when I talk about what happened in 1968
have no idea of it from their own memory. Of course, that gives
me a very vertiginous feeling.
RB: Just that?
CH: Well, things like that. Mainly, to do with memory and
references. What reference can you make to be certain that someone
instantly gets it? That's actually a very difficult task for all
teaching.
RB: Excuse me for being picky — and I know you are
Oxford-educated — but why so many French and Latin references?
CH: You know what?
RB: What?
CH: If I was to do it again or if I were to read it again
in proof I would do less of that. It struck me that there was too
much of it in such a short text. The reason why I sometimes resort
to them…
RB: Because they say what you want to say better?
CH: Actually, yes. And more tersely. There is another reason…
RB: I didn't think you were showing off.
CH: No. Because it isn't any great achievement to know a
few phrases. There is another reason, actually it's subliminal.
One of the people with whom I was corresponding in my mind is a
Lebanese-Palestinian student of mine whose preferred language was
French. And their English is good and my French is very bad. We
would in common conversation resort to quite a few Facon de parler.
I can manage that much. This justification has only just occurred
to me…
RB: Do you think about people looking at you and questioning
what price you are paying for being a contrarian?
CH: Sure I do. Because I am one of those doing the looking.
It's an easy way of embarrassing me if you want to give me a good
review. It's actually happened to me a couple of times. It's embarrassing
in a way even to tell you about it. A couple of reviewers of my
last book…
RB: The Trial of Henry Kissinger?
CH: …and also Unacknowledged Legislations —
compare me to George Orwell. Now if somebody thinks that, I don't
mind. If they say it, I don't mind. If they put it where other people
can see it, I do mind. I can imagine other people reading that and
saying, "What are you fucking talking about?" I can understand
why, too. I've obviously been strongly marked by reading him [Orwell],
that's fine. Or to have it said that I am a strong admirer. That's
fine. I'm about to bring a book out on him for his centennial in
2003. But when you think of what he had to go through to make his
point and I've had to go through…it is nothing short of highly
embarrassing. The only thing I can tell myself is that there have
been moments where I would have thought that it would have taken
practically nothing to take a strong position. The example from
my book is Salman Rushdie. It seemed to me there was no time to
waste in deciding what one thought about that [the fatwa]
and what should be done. A lot of people did hang back for what
I would regard as slightly cowardly reasons. Whenever, I am praised,
as I was on the radio this morning, for my courage — I do reply
and I try not to make it an affectation, "It is not brave to
do it — anything I have done. The things I have done it would
have been cowardly not to have done, but the moments when push comes
to shove have really yet to arrive." Therefore, one should
keep rehearsing for when we might need it.
RB: You have told me that you make a point of, every year,
going somewhere dangerous.
CH: That's true. Countries either difficult or dangerous…
RB: Are you thrill-seeking?
CH: No, that's to remind me… and describe it also in
the book how being in Bosnia was a life- and mind-altering experience
for me. I discovered there, as I had already found in other places
where there is fighting going on, that I'm never going to be a war
correspondent. I've worn a flak jacket and done some drives over
difficult roads and have been shot at. I know what it's like to
have a bullet go past my ear. It wasn't a ricochet; someone had
fired hoping to kill me. Everyone should have that sensation, but
I don't need it more than once. I got it with incredible speed.
There are journalists that do it all the time that I hugely admire,
but I couldn't be one of them. I've just come back from Pakistan
and Kashmir and from the Afghanistan border. Last year it was North
Korea. Not necessarily dangerous. It's kind of risky and extremely
difficult…an arduous place to be. Before that most of the examples
would have been from the former Yugoslavia. I have more or less
kept that promise [to myself]. And also Kurdistan. Lebanon. Over
the last ten twelve years, I think I have kept the promise.
RB: Being a war correspondent means being where the action
and not just hanging out in a hotel lounge in Kabul or Sarajevo?
CH: Yeah. Being the guys at the front line and actually
taking more risks than the soldiers do. Especially the photographers,
they have to not just be there but have to have a point of advantage.
They can't just hunker down. I know a lot of people who make a living
this way. Some of whom I suspect of being spaced out, affectless
sadistic types, thrill seekers…you get jaded and need constant
reinforcement of violence.
RB: Like John Savage's character in your buddy Oliver Stone's
movie, Salvador?
 CH:
Yeah. And some are extremely brave and intelligent people who…
RB: I just wanted to get a mention of Oliver Stone…
CH: Oh yes, Mister Stone.
RB: I find myself referring to you as the 'ubiquitous' Christopher
Hitchens…
CH: That's kind.
RB: It seems true.
CH: It just seems that way. It just seems that there is
more of me than there is. Well, everything is in the timing, I think.
It's a bizarre feeling in a way. Because to say that Sept. 11 changed
everything is probably the most obvious thing anyone could conceivably
say. So here I am being a very dissenting and combative and critical
member of the vast majority. But when I say that I really mean it.
I felt on that day as if I had changed…as if there had been
a whole change in the zeitgeist, as if one's own molecules had been
part of it. I also found that I had a sensation — that when
I examined it, it surprised me — after I had been through rage
and disgust, and depression and so on. There was something left
over that was keeping me awake. It was exhilaration. I was excited.
I thought, "This battle has really been joined now with theocratic
fascism. If it goes on all my life, I will never get bored with
fighting that."
RB: Who is fighting that battle?
CH: What I was astounded by was the number of people who
not only felt that prospect a dismal one but who, while I'm sure
they mouthed the idea that everything had changed, tried as best
they could to act as if "as I was saying before I was so rudely
interrupted."
RB: (laughs)…
CH: Oh, the clowns who took this view. Clowns and thugs,
I would actually say. Chomsky and Stone were salient. As it happens
I brushed up against them very early in the argument…we've
been pounding away ever since.
RB: I have to say that you seem to have resorted to Stalinist
era jargon. Using the phrase, 'Finkelstein-Chomsky-Zinn faction
or clique' or something like that in The Nation.
CH: Oh yeah. I read all three of their effusions. Crummy
though the suggestion of equivalence was, what alarmed me far more
than that was the utter refusal to realize that something new had
happened…I know at least as much about Marxism as they do,
and one thing I definitely remember from the opening of the 18th
Brumaire, is "that the tendency of people when learning
a new language or trying to is to translate it back into the one
they already know." This is not necessarily a good tendency.
What these guys were just saying proves me right. That's appalling.
I was willing to say, "Well, whatever the consequences of this
are, I'm not going to tell you immediately that I know them. I can
only tell you about the situation…And, for example, in a battle
against theocratic fascism there will be realignment. There already
has been…Now I can't let you get away with the idea of Stalinist
technique. I hadn't quite put it this way, the Buhkarin-Rykoff-Chomsky
bloc of rotten elements. I think I said 'quarter'. I was pretty
neutral, But come to think of it, it's always in my cortex, somewhere.
RB: You are exhilarated because the battle has been joined.
We know one of the protagonists. Are you not worried about the New
Coalition, the free democratic coalition?
CH: I am very worried about the coalition with Pakistan.
It's a very bad idea. It was the coalition with Pakistan that created
Al-Quadah and the Taliban in the first place. My worry has been
there from the beginning… I signed a petition in June, which
I can show you — I didn't just sign it — my name was on
the…
RB: I'll accept your word…
CH: My name was on the — I talk this way because I
think I'm on the radio…not all the time. My name is on the
masthead of the petition as it was sent out with all kinds of people
I have recently quarreled with, like Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinem
(over Clinton). But I was very proud that they wanted my name on
this thing — as far back as June, about he scandalous treatment
of women in Afghanistan. Something about which the United States
had nothing to say at that point. It recognized the Taliban regime
because it was Pakistan's client, therefore it was ours. For a long
time I have thought there has been a great problem of under reaction
to the Taliban and to religious fundamentalism. Now we are cutting
with the grain in that argument. You can say to any audience in
America anywhere on any subject, you can speak firmly to them about
the need to fight this and they know you are right. If any administration
spokesman spoke and said we are only against it in this case we'd
be on a shady and sticky wicket.
RB: You are not concerned that this is a cartoon where a
bad guy has been identified, and in the next incident of "bad
guyism," the principles that have been invoked here will have
to be reiterated, or it will have to be suggested again what principles
we are espousing? Which is to say…
CH: Fine by me. Those are the principles I am most interested
in defending. Those are the bad guys I am most interested in whacking
out. People keep saying, I think rather feebly, "Oh well, Bin
Laden, if you cut him down another will grow in his place, maybe
another three or four." I'm not so sure that is true because
he seems to me to be a rather one-of-a-kind, kind of guy. Look at
his deputies — they are average thugs and ranters — and
if he died, the first thing that they would do would be to start
cutting each other's throats, I guarantee you, to see who would
be next in line, the anointed one. So I'm not sure that the assumption
that others would take his place is a safe one. Though there are
people who wish it to be true. What I could guarantee and is a safe
assumption is that in that case, at least 10,000 to one would spring
up to kill him all over again. And I would be happy to recruit them.
RB: You are anti-capital punishment, aren't you?
CH: I'm not a pacifist.
RB: Would this be the first instance of you expressing an
interest in killing someone?
CH: Certainly not.
RB: Really?
CH: Undoubtedly, it would not be. There are a lot of people
who if they knew what I thought about them…I would hope would
die right there…
RB: (laughs heartily)
CH: I would wish, I would hope for Bin Laden to be captured
and taken to the International Tribunal that the United States so
stupidly has not yet signed on to. I think again you see a pattern…
the tendency of the argument would be to say, "We wish we had
somewhere to take him." Well, you should have thought of that
before. That's dialectics to me. That's exploiting the ironies of
the situation. It's not collapsing in front of them, worrying about
double standard. I think it would be a superb occasion if it were
properly conducted. To show bin Laden something about a proper trial.
Also to show the Muslim world that not everything about the West
is repulsive and also to those who do [think that] to say, "Look
we are now going to show all of them what happened at the World
Trade Center."
RB: Is that really a lesson we need to broadcast to the
Muslim world?
CH: Yes, I personally believe that there is a clash of civilizations.
I don't see why people are so reluctant to adopt this view. I think
it's because they wish there were not… since there is one,
let it be well-conducted on our side.
RB: You discuss simplicity in this book and one example
you cite is the fatwa…and that if an adversary can not
disavow the murder of writers for what they write then you can have
no further debate…
CH: I did that on Crossfire…
RB: Who was your adversary?
CH: Some American Muslim leader. You see, for me, this battle
has been going at least since…Some scumbag from some verminous
mosque came on …I said, "Let's get one thing out of the
way, you are opposed to the offer of money for the murder of my
friend [Salman Rushdie] then we can discuss anything you like?"
He appealed to Pat Buchanan, who was his defender, of course. "Islam's
feeling have been very much hurt." I said, "We'll get
to that, I promise you. But first I want your assurance…"
And he said, "For Muslim peoples, it is the feeling…"
I said, "Look, hold it right there, you are not getting past
me. You're just not. I'll waste your whole hour if you want."
And I did. And at the end I came right up to him. I know where you
live. I have your home phone number. It's the only way.
RB: When we last spoke, I remarked to you my amazement at
the BBC's Jeremy Paxson relentless probing of Tony Blair
and how that kind of interrogatory never happens here…
CH: No, there's much too little of that on American TV in
general. Actually, it was a stalemate because Buchanan wouldn't
let me speak either. Because Buchanan is pro fatwa…
RB: Wait a minute. You think Pat Buchanan is pro fatwa?
CH: More or less. Look, here's the situation. There were
those who said that the problem was the offer of bounty for the
murder of a novelist in the name of theocratic…that was the
problem. I was one of those. The Cardinal Archbishop of New York,
John Jay O Connor, another ignorant peasant, the Chief Rabbi of
the Sephardic Jews, the Archbishop of Canterbury all said the problem
was blasphemy. The Observatorie Romano, the Vatican newspaper,
said the problem was blasphemy…a kind of reverse ecumenism.
Though no other countries endorsed the fatwa, they all more
or less said it was problem of blasphemy, too. So there you have
all the cloaks, all the verminous vestments of mullahs and rabbis
and priests…a fat target. Again, I had a sort of Hegelian moment.
I know exactly what this means to me. This is what I was born to
be arguing. This is perfect. It was like being in love; I couldn't
think of anyone but Salman. I kept trying to get his name into the
conversation. And it was a very great battle and we won. They withdrew
the bloody fatwa.
RB: They did?
CH: Absolutely. He [Rushdie] goes anywhere he likes without
bodyguards. And better still, the mullahs, the turbaned turds in
Teheran, are having a hard time holding on to power against the
youth and the intelligentsia and masses in their country. Who will,
I think, succeed in removing them. So it was worth it. Every bleat
that you heard from people was repeated recently…
RB: 'Bleat' as in the sound sheep make?
CH: Bleat, bleat bleat…not from the usual flocks, and
"What could we do about Afghanistan its impossible terrain.
Ancient hatreds…" Absolute cock. It would have meant a
surrender to barbarism, to fascism….
RB: In writing this book, besides imparting the accumulated
wisdom of your years to youngsters, you assume a public role. Like
being designated his intellectual heir by Gore Vidal…where
do you fit in the media culture in this country? How are people
positioning you and is it controllable?
CH: Long may this question continue to be asked. I don't
want there to be an answer to that, but I do want it to be asked.
I do want huddles of people to form to ask them. I want to be a
widespread topic of conversation, and I want people to go out and
buy
my little books. Which they haven't been doing much until
recently. I was box-office death for a long time. Lost a lot of
publishers that way. I don't know if this is contrarian or not,
but of the people who are cited as my fans or endorsers on the back
of this book, I think it says Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Edward Said
and someone else.
RB: There are only those three.
CH: …anyway since the jacket was printed, I've had
a great disagreement with all those three people. They haven't all
taken the same line on the recent crisis.
RB: Susan Sontag?
CH: Susan's position…I just think she didn't write
enough. She's much more thoughtful about it than that New Yorker
squib. And Edward Said is not Noam Chomsky…Gore Vidal the same,
he has taken this as an occasion to lecture America on the sins
of empire. I feel like I have just spent a whole year doing that,
trying to get Kissinger rounded up, so I didn't have to prove that.
And I wouldn't take a word of that back. But I didn't think now
was the precise moment…
RB: Who wrote about Kissinger calling CNN when he was stalled
in Germany during the Sept. 11 aftermath to offer his analysis?
CH: Oh yes, Michael Thomas in the New York Observer…
RB: He probably finds Kissinger as odious as you do.
CH: No, excuse me, hold it right there. Don't let anybody
say that. By the way, I think perhaps I should take back the word
'verminous ' as applied to a mosque. A vermin is a mullah. I don't
want to back off completely…"towelhead" is a vulgarism.
But it isn't racist. There ought to be a good word for people who
wear Hassidic clothing, beanies or any robes and so forth —
anything that is in your face, that forces you to notice that there
are religious differences and also anyone who wears that with any
air of superiority. In Jerusalem, the secular Israelis referred
to the heavily cowled extremists as the "Crows." Anyway,
"towelheads" is too thuggish…
RB: You do a good job of coining phrases or at least original
iterations…I've never seen the verb 'ventriloquize' before.
Is that a common usage?
CH: It's not common, but I don't think I've coined it. What
do you do when you operate the dummy?
RB: Puppetize?
CH: I think you ventriloquize.
RB: I'm commending you.
CH: I'm glad you like it. In this case I am using it in
a different mode…
RB: Amongst the gems in this book, I liked: "Innocence
only takes you so far. You have to be sophisticated by experience
before you are old enough to argue that, say, it might be wrong
to launch a thermonuclear war but not wrong, indeed only prudent,
to prepare the weaponry of extermination. Or that an act that would
be a loathsome crime if committed by an individual is pardonable
when committed by a state. But these are the rewards of maturity,
to be enjoyed only as we decline." [p.50] That's upbeat. Would
your younger students grasp that?
CH: I haven't heard from a single young person since this…
RB: How much are you going out and talking this book up?
CH: Quite a bit. The people who come and see me…it
looks like a geriatric ward. These are people who probably looked
on me fondly when I was young myself. I wouldn't say I had much
feedback from the "young." I guess it will take time.
I do hope it will come in the form of letters…
RB: This is your third book this year…
CH: If you put it like that, it makes me seem like a bit
of a hack…the collection wasn't really a book, it's just a
collection. The Kissinger thing, I've been writing in my head for
a long time, and I happened to be very lucky and very unlucky at
the timing. And this one was actually the first book I've been approached
to write.
RB: Given your frequent appearances on cable, has there
been talk of a television show for you?
CH: It comes up a lot.
RB: Do you want to?
CH: No. I decided a long time ago I didn't want to do that.
RB: What about documentaries?
CH: Yes, I am making one on Kissinger.
RB: I know you are on a tight schedule. Thanks for your
time.
CH: Thank you.
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