He keeps laying the boot in to Neil Ferguson. While we can all agree he didn't do the right thing (and chose to step down), it is utterly fallacious to take that as evidence he was wrong. Hitchens keeps doing it, I suspect because of the nature of that indiscretion. It's prudish censorious monitors of the public good like Hitchens that thrive on this nonsense. The sort of loser that think s sex education is best when there isn't any. Despite all evidence ot the contrary.
In the end it is simply a litany of excessive ranting hyperbole. That it's delivered by a poe faced meek little Englander who longs for the days of cricket at the vicarage and permanent Sunday school changes nothing. His words carry influence and they are heard loud and clear by some of the most socially regressive, even destructive, forces imaginable. Of course he will abrogate all responsibility for that influence. This is just as disingenuous as anything else he says. He can't be blamed for winding up the ignorant and feeding them a diet of unfocused outrage precisely because it is unfocused: he isn't pointing the gun. He just loads it and hands it over.
His comments on the BLM protests are equally incoherent (and revealing):
"As it happens, it was the death in Minneapolis, a city most British people will never even see, of George Floyd. Seeing the surging crowds, the rioting and the looting in the USA, the British radical Left grew jealous.
They imported the protest, converted it into outrage against some mouldering statues, and set the streets alight. Last week I attended one of these demonstrations, against the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford. I have lived in Oxford for more than 50 years and I went out of interest, not because I care especially about this mediocre sculpture of a questionable man. "
What does it matter if Minneapolis is unfamiliar to protesters over here? Does it possess special qualities that, to outsiders, mean the experience of George Floyd was unique? What nonsense. It's precisely that police racial murders aren't unique that's the problem. But he cannot, and will not see this. Hitchens claims to be anti authoritarian (in some bizarre sense), but he isn't. He craves authority; a queasy little bootlicker that needs someone or something (God) to tell him how to live his miserable little life.
The accusation of jealousy is just that; a puerile little jab. The experience of people over here isn't that different and neither is our society. We also experience racial based policing and have long campaigned to fight it. This isn't a fad but the likes of Hitchens, a comfortable old white boomer, will never understand. How can he? He doesn't even want to.
His comment about a mediocre sculpture is telling. It's intended to devalue it. To trivialise the power such sculptures wield: this power is demonstrated by the response to Edward Colston. They are gatekeepers of the legacy of white colonial power; attempts to valourise or lionise. To make the man a role model, a philanthropist, to whitewash his horrendous behaviour. Rhodes was no different. Just saying the statue is (hopefully was) mediocre deflects from addressing this. Hitchens won't engage in the substantive issue he just assumes all people believe slavery was wrong, therefore there's no institutional racism or structural privilege. He is of course wrong.
It's a tired argument; he accuses the "Radical Left" of needing Empire to give them a purpose. This is nonsensical unless you accept the notion Hitchens doesn't believe in systemic racism etc. I've just demonstrated that isn't true and this proves it. We don't need Empire, that is our entire argument and the "radical left" fights to bring down its legacy so that everyone can be free, black or white.
"Anyone, as she learned last week, can now be ‘cancelled’ – the new radicals’ chilling word for the obliteration they like to visit on their victims. She has been pursued for saying the wrong thing about the transgender issue. In fact, there is no right thing. I have known for years it was futile to try to respond with fairness and reason to the new orthodoxy. "
Here Hitchens shifts to JK Rowling and her ridiculous transphobic scribblings, which were also factually incorrect (you can look that up here). Of course he defends her, he's a religious transphobe. There is a right thing: to support a community that is marginalised and suffers daily abuse and violence for it. Rowlings comments were unnecessary and hurtful. But Hitchens would have you believe they, too, are another shadowy leftist agency with an "agenda". Part of his regime change conspiracy theory. He is simply a very British Alex Jones.
"No actual debate can take place in these conditions. And where there is no debate there is no freedom. I have also pointed out for years – without effect – that the police were long ago infiltrated with radical Left-wing thought."
So he asserts. But what debate does he want? Why should we give in to the notion that these issues aren't settled. Trans people are human beings and trans rights are human rights. You can either agree with that or be wrong. It's like the creationist argument (an analogy I use deliberately); they continue to push for legitimacy by asserting that they are being shut out from debate. That their opponents are mean and controlling. The reality is that we've had the debate, the science is settled. Creationism is superstition and myth; evolution is fact.
There must come a point, in all debate, when the discussion is over and truth arrived at. You would not debate the existence of the sky or that the earth is round. You would amply shake your head at fools asserting otherwise. But this is Hitchens last, desperate, play. He wants that legitimacy, provided by a platform in a debate that no longer exists. The discussion is over, you lost. Decrying your opponents because you refuse to amend your thinking isn't our problem and levelling accusations of totalitarianism just makes you look egregious and hysterical.
Just like Alex Jones.
There is no evidence for regime change any more than there is for the left being in control of the major social institutions of Britain. All that does exist is a desperate cry for help from a man stuck in the past refusing to change or move forward. If I didn't find him such an objectionable bigot I might be sympathetic.
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