Christopher Hitchens - Murtadd to Human

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Christopher Hitchens

A collection of 11 posts

Orwell, Jabotinsky, Fascism and Islam - Part 2

Totalitarianism Featured

Orwell, Jabotinsky, Fascism and Islam - Part 2

"At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying." — Benito Mussolini

Christopher Hitchens’s “Axis of Evil” speech, Part 2: Iran

Totalitarianism Featured

Christopher Hitchens’s “Axis of Evil” speech, Part 2: Iran

The Iranian mullahs lost so many young people in the suicide waves that they sent against Iraq, the sending of gangs of school children and teenagers to clear minefields on the Iraqi border. There's not enough room in large parts of Iran to bury the number of people they killed.

"Islam is not a religion," Answer to Lloyd de Jongh - Part 3

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"Islam is not a religion," Answer to Lloyd de Jongh - Part 3

"You shouldn’t be in the totalitarianism business if you can't exploit a ready-made reservoir of credulity and servility that’s as big as that." —Christopher Hitchens.

Anatomy of a madness, Part 3

Anatomy of a madness, Part 3

I read The Satanic Verses in the winter of 1996-97, unemployed and frozen, and again in the winter of 2014-15, Charlie Hebdo on TV 24/7. The third time was in that magical realist summer of 2020, with a fresh-ish MFA to my name, to study the work as art. 12 August 2022: the author survived.

Christopher Hitchens’s “Axis of Evil” speech, Part 1

Totalitarianism Featured

Christopher Hitchens’s “Axis of Evil” speech, Part 1

All the years that were spent in trying to contain, coerce, or civilise this man, had been wasted. They had all been exploited by him to advance his program. It seemed that his appetite for power only grew with the eating.

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 12

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 12

"a boot stamping on a human face, forever." — George Orwell.

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 6

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 6

You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behaviour. In these people the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible.

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 5

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 5

Were they not in such a parlous state, they would see that Zemmour is their very last hope to stop the slide towards the stark alternatives of either civil war or barbarism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 4

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 4

An easy way to assess how Orwell “speak[s] to us in our own time with great urgency and topicality,” is by looking at the way we regard Islam, and to discern whether the decay of thought and the negation of being that Orwell sees in the civilisational breakdown we call fascism, is present in us.

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 3

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 3

Islam will come to Germany, whether you like it or not. Your daughter will wear the hijab. Your son will have a beard. We multiply relentlessly. We have seven or eight. On top of that, we take four wives, then we have twenty-two children, against your one child and a small dog. That’s how it is.

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 2

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism: we have become comfortably numb - Part 2

Shari’a is evil, Islam is evil, the Qur’an is evil, Muhammad is evil: husbands may imprison, rape and beat their wives; parents may kill their children; men may rape children; a dhimmi may not defend himself against a Muslim; a divorced woman must be pimped out before her marriage can be restored…