/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Peak Anglo syndrome. Hitchens was undeniably intelligent but also steeped in the old English aristocratic ways of being an insufferable test which was far more of an influence on him than Marxism ever was. It's a good reminder for why self-described American patriots also make for poor Marxists.

I hate him because I'm arab and only in my early 30s; the war on terror is what radicalized me, and so for me, supporting it is a totally unforgivable sin.

>>676213
If you were old you realize no one is perfect and this idealized it's 100% Marxism-Leninism or nothing is utopian children thinking.

>>675107
Opposing the death of millions of innocent Iraqis and the destruction of their entire society and infrastructure whose effects they'll feel for generations to depose a despot put up by the US in the first place isn't being an apologist for the despot

>>676240
>coping this hard about “Hitchens’s Ideas”
He was a trotskyite cuckold and so are you

some irrelevant anglo retard that huge majority of people never heard of, who cares

>>676329
The man hated Saddam strongly how can you blame him

>What do you guys think of Christopher Hitchens? I think he is misunderstood and gets too much hate.
I like him, but I don't think he's misunderstood. His "one bad view" was also a serious one. Itellectuals can only be held accountable based on their views, so the hatred he gets from the Left is warranted.

It's understandable he'd faulter after the disasters of the 80å's and 90's. It really did seem like the movement was dead for good and would never come back. However, many Leftists turned into libs and still were able to stand against Bush and the wars. When it counted, he stood with capital and for disastrous war.

He may have called himself a Marxist and materialist, but his reasoning for his neo-con views were completely idealist and distinctly anti-materialist. His argument was precisely that Jihad and the threat of Islamism is caused by bad ideas, not war and imperialism, or other material conditions. Let this also be a lesson to all young radicals out there; the view of his that has been most conclusively refuted by history was the one where he most clearly diverged from materialism and veered off into idealism.

Still, it's stupid to discount him. He was able to make such an impact because the liberal Left he moved against was weak, impotent and crippled by idiocy. Which is far worse than being wrong, or even in the wrong. On the Left it was common at the time, as in some circles it still is, to react to every problem caused by Islam and muslim immigration with "ah, but this is all because West does so and so". This had nothing to do with materialism as a tool of analysis. It was - and for many continues to be - a craven escape into relativism, when the libs were faced with truly difficult problems they had no easy answers for. Again, they're not even wrong. They're stupid and weak, which for us, is worse.

I still like him. His writing was good, and he's the only person in his generation that can be called a proper orator. It's sad we lost him to the right, but in those days we lost literally everything. I dom't know that I could have lived through that time and not have my deepest ideas and convictions collapse.

>>676152
I'm 28 and I still think Hitchens is a shitheel

>>676369
Just like you hate the ayatollah so you don’t care about what a US coup would do to Iranians? Or how the US made these people posaible to begin with?

>>676482
I prefer the US over Saddam personally dunno about you

>>676602
They are one and the same

Literal neocon. Fuck him

>>676612
Looks the same with a sandstorm that blew over some papers and made the air look brown. I literally see no difference

>>676609
I don't think any US soldiers were torturing the sons and daughters and then killing them in front of the parents. I would take privatizing some reconstruction of roads over that but I could be wrong. Not an expert.

>>676638
Were they? I don't read much history so I didn't know that. How did they do that?

>>676618
Obviously the message is that the US military is the biggest polluter on the planet. Which is true btw.

>>676627
>I don't think any US soldiers were torturing the sons and daughters and then killing them in front of the parents.

Yeah they just blow up the whole family with an airstrike or drone.

>>676627
Some yanks literally did that. Any investment in infrastructure was only done in order to facilitate the movement of capital from Iraq to Western porky. I wouldn't even call this investment in infrastructure tbh, it undeveloped the country even further.

lol you're all childish marxists i'm a mature neoliberal who hates dictators so much i'm more than willing to cause the deaths of millions of people i say i want to save
saddam killing 100 people is a heinous act of evil, me killing those 100 plus a million more is the righteous anger of not-god (because i'm also an atheist)
also let's go save afghan women from the patriarchy by killing them ourselves

>>676654
All the data shows that US drone strikes are the safest form of war and that terrorists kill more people in these countries than civilians at die.

>>676627
us soldiers raped the daughters (14 yrs old) and killed the families

>>676692
>All the data

source: obscure NGO funded by oil companies

>>676692
>All the data shows that US drone strikes are the safest form of war
for us soldiers maybe
data also show that 80-90% of drone victims are innocents/collateral
reading your posts is sickening, it's all lies

>>676702
Do you have any contrary evidence?

>>676704
source?

>>676705
>>676706
bro you haven't presented any evidence to support your own claims

>>676705
You haven’t even provided your own evidence, catamite.

>>676692
Even if that were so and the surgical strike meme was true, it doesn't change the imperial nature of the war but only confirms it even more: total subjugation without any chance of resistance, the "war that didn't take place" that Baudrillard wrote about. In the end the result is the same: these countries are turned into extreme peripheries, basically slaves of the West with the burger boot keeping them on the ground.

>>676692
"Terrorist" is often defined as basically anyone who died in a drone strike or was put in Guantanamo
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/drone-attacks-innocent-civilians_n_1554380

>>676710
Your own study says that 90% figure was only during a 5 month period in Yemen. Their own stats show it's not even a 10% civilian death which is still much less than any other form of war. Nice clickbait headline though

>>676738
>Their own stats show it's not even a 10% civilian death
lol what are you talking about, this is bullshit

>>676727
>>676737
Again your own source shows that the actual non-CIA number is around 10%. Like I said in the original post

>>676692
The actual data behind drone warfare shows that it's an incredibly imprecise and ineffective grift. Read this.

http://www.killchain.org/read-online

>>676743
Look at the infograph

>>676738
Instantly reduce civilian casualties with this one weird trick

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/

Doctors hate him!

>>676752
The guy above posted the same type of article and it literally says the non-CIA journalists posted the real stats which is around 10% which is what I said above

>>676727
>Even if that were so and the surgical strike meme was true
The precision of these weapons may indeed be very high, however that only tells you that they hit precisely where they are pointed at. It does not help you to avoid pointing at civilians. They used signatures to point their weapons and that's were it all fell apart. They droned dudes shooting their Kalashnikov's, must be terrorists right ? But then it turns out that's a wedding ritual, whoops.

>>676755
no ti doesn't
>In the complex world of remote killing in remote locations, labeling the dead as “enemies” until proven otherwise is commonplace, said an intelligence community source with experience working on high-value targeting missions in Afghanistan, who provided the documents on the Haymaker campaign. The process often depends on assumptions or best guesses in provinces like Kunar or Nuristan, the source said, particularly if the dead include “military-age males,” or MAMs, in military parlance. “If there is no evidence that proves a person killed in a strike was either not a MAM, or was a MAM but not an unlawful enemy combatant, then there is no question,” he said. “They label them EKIA.”
so the graph you're talking about is shit because a bunch of those that aren't listed as civilians could be civilians because of the intentionally shitty way the US classifies its victims

>>676240
>perfection is not being pro-war in Iraq
Your bar is real low on perfection, child.

lol get fucked

>He was an ardent Marxist and socialist throughout his entire life
Nope, even when he was more of a pseudo-socialist he was a libtarded bong bougie trot
>Early in his career Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism, 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". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism"
Also, he moved quite a lot to the right at the end of his life unironically promoted the ultra-imperialist "islamo-fascist" narrative. He was also a great example of an early debatebro, man could be manipulated into defending almost any position if he felt his ego and reputation as a debater would be harmed by admitting he had been wrong

>>675086
>He was an ardent Marxist and socialist throughout his entire life
no he wasn't, he was part of the trot to neocon pipeline. He only had a deathbed conversion back to marxism because the recession/financial crisis of 08 onwards was still happening when he died in '11

All you need to know about Chris Hitchens:
https://archive.md/muWNg
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/26/hitchens-in-the-dock/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/30/another-look-at-christopher-hitchens-why-ben-burgis-why/
Or for that matter, just type this into DDG:
Christopher Hitchens site:counterpunch.org
Nobody on the Left should admire this racist social-chauvinist. I spit on his grave and will have no benedictions when his fellow British imperial revivalists Harris and Dawkins finally croak. It's just a fucking shame that they are the face of atheism for most people. Never trust a self-proclaimed "contrarian" for they have no principles by definition.