TO THE CONTRARY :

The dishonourable policeman of the left : The contrarian Christopher Hitchens's support for the war on terrorism surpised many. Scott Lucas argues that he is no longer the "authentic voice of dissent" (Scott Lucas, 27th May 2002, New Statesman)

"The Hitch" is no longer an activist, no longer a participant in the real debates about power and who wields it, no more a source for thought. No, he is an industry, posing in trench coat with a cigarette dangling from his top lip, hailed as "one of the few remaining practitioners of the five-hour, two-bottle lunch". And, naturally, the most profitable industry is a monopoly. So he packages himself, surreally, not just as a policeman but the only policeman of "a radical left that no longer exists".

Just as Orwell eventually saw himself as Charles Dickens, "a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls", Hitchens now sees himself as Orwell (who, as the cover of Orwell's Victory reminds us, also dangled a cigarette from his top lip), the lone voice of decency among the ranks of a naive and/or nasty left.

It's an effective tactic. Like Orwell, Hitchens has made himself the poster boy of "principled opposition", even as he sides with the dominant powers in the US, by wielding a scatter-gun, "common-sense" rhetoric that does not have to deal with troubling political or economic considerations. He need not worry about such details. Only he, in his words, has "elementary morals". All others, with their "oppositional stance" (like Orwell's pacifists who were the accomplices of fascism, like his "pansy" leftist writers), can cower with their al-Qaeda allies or whimper in the op-ed columns of the Guardian.

I don't care when the hapless Andrew Sullivan of the Sunday Times, through columns repetitively void, or his preening website, thrashes against the "left". I read Mark Steyn's "loud bloke in a pub" opinions in Conrad Black's newspaper from the same safe distance that I would keep from any loud bloke in a pub. But Hitchens, because of his past affiliations, the quality and persistence of much of his writing, and especially his cause celebre against Kissinger, has street cred.

Man, these folk are slow learners. Mr. Hitchens has been a man of the Right for nearly a decade now, or roughly since Bill Clinton was elected president. Once you cut through the angry young man pose, the "I was a boyhood Marxist" shtick, you find a guy who's largely been doing conservative bidding in recent years.

This bit about having street credibility because of his vendetta against Kissinger is especially deluded. Kissinger used admittedly vile methods but he used them to achieve the Left's ends--getting out of Vietnam; suing for a truce with the USSR; coddling Mao; etc.. Thus, the Right hates him far more than the Left ever could. When Ronald Reagan briefly flirted with the idea of making Gerald Ford his Vice Presidential running mate, the conservatives at the convention were most horrified that it was a way for the Kissingerites to return to power. There's no better way to ingratiate yourself with the Right than to attack the architect of detente. And in destroying his reputation you shred the last tatters of the Left's Cold War legacy.

But just in case that didn't suffice, Mr. Hitchens also spent the eight Clinton years going after the perp-in-chief with hammer and tongs. Real afficionados of Impeachment will recall that Mr. Hitchens even went so far as to testify against his old pal Sid Blumenthal during that mess.

For goodness sake, his most recent book is called Orwell's Victory and he's pretty clearly come to model himself after his subject, as he too drifts from socialism to conservatism. Still his former fellow travelers express surprise that he's become a supporter of President Bush and of the War on Terrorism? Do they pay any attention?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 29, 2002 1:12 PM