Excited to announce that my first book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment, will be published by
@PitchstoneBooks
on Feb. 14. You can preorder it here:
Oh, and by the way, it wasn't actually Hamas who introduced the law banning homosexuality in Gaza.
Guess who it was?
The British Empire.
"Same-sex sexual activity is prohibited in Gaza under the British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance 1936."
Christopher Hitchens once said the fatwa against Rushdie was a simultaneous death and life sentence. For decades, he has faced it with unimaginable courage and decency, and he’s faced it on our behalf.
Please make it through.
Perhaps it was published this month because the author dedicated a lot of time and energy to producing a careful, unbiased evaluation of the evidence — something professional gun-jumping, hot take-spewing grifters like Weinstein forgot how to do long ago
Why would Quillette publish this lab leak takedown in Aug ‘23?
It’s not argument for a natural origin of COVID. It’s an exercise in pretending there’s still lots of room for reasonable people to disagree—a defibrillator for a bad hypothesis that must periodically be reanimated.
Hitchens also said the degeneration of the movement for Palestinian statehood into the “theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas” was one of the most depressing political spectacles of his lifetime
There’s something truly nauseating about cloaking your apologia for imperialist dictatorships and their useful idiots in the language of love, peace, and understanding
An imperialist dictator launched an unprovoked, devastating war against a neighboring democracy. That’s why people support Ukraine so strongly. Obscurantist messages like this will be remembered for decades to come for their sheer moral confusion and stupidity
Ukraine-ism is now a new religion. Kyiv is the Vatican, Zelensky is the pope, and career politicians in both parties are the new faithful. It’s sad that they’ll make a pilgrimage halfway around the world while ignoring the invasion across our own southern border right here at
Funny coming from a guy whose endless spew of conspiratorial bullshit feeds the hyper-paranoid and increasingly widespread conviction that the most important Western institutions are irredeemably corrupt
@mtracey
So you consider overthrowing Saddam Hussein legally and morally interchangeable with overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Got it.
A reminder that
@RubinReport
holds right- and left-wingers to completely different standards on free speech. From an article for
@AreoMagazine
in August 2018
@HPluckrose
My latest in
@QuilletteM
argues against the fashionable claim that, despite all the data (and historical evidence) that suggest otherwise, the religious impulse remains as strong as ever
As
@FukuyamaFrancis
explains, anyone who thinks a second Trump term will be just like the first hasn’t been paying attention.
An extremely dark future awaits. Time to wake up and stop it
If you want to see a prototype of a JBP tweet
Just read this one
Which takes some banal annoyance in modern life
And inflates it to a harbinger of totalitarianism
And is spaced out
With weird syntax
Which makes its dark but confusing implications
Hit a little
Harder
If you want to see a prototype of the coming surveillance state
Just spend a few hours in any commercial airport
Government/corporate collusion to tyrannize theatrically
All in the name of an illusory "security"
But plenty of shopping
(Note: The plenty won't last)
The rest
ICYM my latest for
@ArcDigi
: To people who believe they’re standing between civilization and the “War Machine’s promotion of militarism and imperialism” (
@ggreenwald
,
@jeremyscahill
), getting out of Syria is an article of faith
Many self-appointed guardians of the West have elected to stay neutral — or have effectively taken the wrong side — in the greatest confrontation between the West and its enemies since the Cold War.
My latest, no paywall. Link in bio
It’s bad enough when leftists treat Hamas as the authentic voice of the Palestinians, but it’s an ugly and dangerous farce when they lavish the organization with praise.
My latest for
@thedailybeast
The avalanche of bad faith directed at
@shadihamid
-- prominent editors calling him a "terrorist shill," think tank presidents describing him as a Hamas propagandist, etc. -- is genuinely shocking
It's sad to see
@jpodhoretz
so unable to control his anger online. He's a grown man and the editor-in-chief of a well regarded magazine. It's just lazy. It's also a sure sign that you've lost the debate and have literally nothing of substance to say.
So the nurse in this story expressed her frustration with anti-vaxxers a few seconds before "indicating she was aware of many people injured and killed" by mRNA vaccines?
If you're going to lie, at least do it plausibly
I sat next to a nurse (older) on a flight. I asked her about her experience during the Covid crisis. She said that “anti-vaxxers” had made things tough. Then she stopped herself and said “of course don’t know if you might be an anti-vaxxer”
I said “I wasn’t one, but the Covid
Shouldn't
@bariweiss
have a bit more to say about the moral and intellectual collapse of the movement she said we should all listen to a few years ago?
My latest for
@thedailybeast
Vaclav Havel on "what Russia's accusation of 'NATO encirclement' really meant: that Russia should continue to dictate the future of three states that it had forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union..."
Stellar piece by
@OscarClarke17
for
@Quillette
"Hitchens believed in freedom of speech in an arena where the unhindered exchange of competing ideas can battle it out. But he did not believe that charity should extend to totalitarian regimes"
Superb review of my new book by
@michaeljtotten
,
@Quillette
Remember when Jeremy Corbyn said his "friends" in Hamas are dedicated to "long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region"?
I missed this excellent piece by
@NickCohen4
, which summarizes the selective and self-serving ways in which right-wing populists invoke the will of "the people."
The "he" in this passage refers to
@GoodwinMJ
To all the people who sanctimoniously lectured us about journalistic ethics / told us the poor members of Antifa were actually the victims of a brutal fascist hammer assault: Maybe you have an agenda, too.
(Yes, they’re all assholes. No, I’m not defending the Proud Boys. Etc.)
Kinda silly that a scuffle over a hammer is being analyzed like the Kennedy assassination film, but FWIW, this looks like a pretty definitive view of what happened.
Putin is a corrupt autocrat with utter contempt for democracy who has massacred tens of thousands of people to satisfy his vain imperial ambitions, but Jordan Peterson says he's on the right side of the culture wars.
My latest for
@thedailybeast
Judith Butler describing the October 7 massacre as armed resistance: “We can have different views about Hamas as a political party, we can have different views about armed resistance. But [...] the uprising of October 7th was an act of armed resistance.[...] This was an uprising”
It’s depressing that so many people think *this* is the only principled left-wing position you can hold on the war in Ukraine. It isn’t principled or honest — it’s a robotic refusal to confront facts that don’t conform to a boring, prepackaged worldview
Let us not be deceived: NATO is an expanding instrument of U.S. global power that provoked Russia into a criminal invasion and occupation of Ukraine. This proxy war between the American Empire and the Russian Federation could lead to World War III. We must stop the war and war
My brother just started listening to
@verybadwizards
, and he "can't believe some of the shit these guys say. How do they not get in trouble?"
He's on episode 1/192
@peez
@tamler
This guy claims to be the victim of a McCarthyite smear campaign when people accuse him of being an apologist for Putin (which he is)
Then he says people are traitors for…waving Ukrainian flags
I became a U.S. citizen in 1982. As part of that process, my family took an oath of loyalty to the U.S. That oath also required us to forswear loyalty to any other country. I always remember that when I see Americans waving foreign flags.
Pete Buttigieg has been interrupted four times here in Dallas by protesters. One yelled “Marriage is between a man and a woman!” Another yelled “Repent!” After the 4th, Buttigieg continued, “The moment I packed my bags for Afghanistan, to defend that man’s freedom of speech...”
My latest in
@AreoMagazine
, in which I take issue with the claim (made by
@shadihamid
,
@sullydish
, and others) that genuine atheists don't actually exist and consider the implications of that view for the future of pluralism in the United States
I haven't looked into Bret for a while, but wow. Who considers *this* evidence of *anything*? How can anyone with such a large platform be so reckless and stupid?
So the nurse in this story expressed her frustration with anti-vaxxers a few seconds before "indicating she was aware of many people injured and killed" by mRNA vaccines?
If you're going to lie, at least do it plausibly
Insisting that a few anecdotes on Twitter constitute evidence that people should be concerned about "terrifying" adverse effects from the vaccines is fantastically irresponsible for someone with a platform as large as Weinstein's.
My latest for
@ArcDigi
:
"This war is a war of values, a war of narratives -- and one side really is in the right and one side really is in the wrong."
Powerful, clear-eyed essay by
@DJtotheS
for
@merionwest
"If Putin-friendly 'populist conservatives' are the equivalent of Castro-friendly, Cold War-era progressives, that’s quite a self-own—and a self-reveal."
Excellent essay by
@CathyYoung63
for the
@UnPopulistMag
(and
@JoinPersuasion
)
Bolton may want to reflect on his role in perpetuating the insular and paranoid ideas that have animated the president's populist assault on the international system that the United States has built over the past 70 years.
My latest for
@BulwarkOnline
:
ICYM my recent article for
@ArcDigi
: "Unlike the liberals who want everyone around them to pass a battery of ideological purity tests, I can't cut the Trump supporters out of my life. If I did, I'd be forced to disown half my family."
My first book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment, is now available!
@PitchstoneBooks
Tonight, while sharing a stage with two former Russia-state media employees, Cornell West parroted the Kremlin narrative that NATO & US imperialism “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This “Peace in Ukraine” event, hosted by CODEPINK, platformed zero Ukrainian voices.
THREAD: Niall Ferguson (
@nfergus
) recently wrote a bizarre essay lamenting what he calls the descent into "late Soviet America."
@CathyYoung63
wrote an excellent response in
@BulwarkOnline
:
Here's my take in
@UnPopulistMag
: (1/8)
.
@anthonyLfisher
on the ludicrous notion -- which some people evidently still believe -- that Musk's acquisition of Twitter is all about free speech
@thedailybeast
“If the mass of people felt prosperous and secure, few outside the left would care if the rich got richer or Johnson got away with cheating. In today’s Britain, millions are enraged.”
@NickCohen4
on the context of the Tory collapse
"Pinker knows these movements aren’t indestructible. They are not a boot stamping on a human face forever, but collapse eventually under the weight of their own absurdities."
Very good piece by
@NickCohen4
This is the future that awaits us if Trump returns to the Oval Office. Powerful, ominous review of
@JacobHeilbrunn
's book America Last (which I just ordered) by
@JeffreyHerf
in
@Quillette
Actually, you’ve just moved to the right because that’s where your audience is. I don’t think there’s a single “heterodox” thinker who hasn’t made this transition
One question I get a lot is "What explains your asymmetric focus on Democrats and the Left?"
The short answer, after some soul searching and introspection, is simply this: "The Gaslighting of Experts."
I see the Republican party fighting the experts they oppose. I don't see
Many “heterodox” intellectuals are political dilettantes who credulously embrace obvious right-wing con artists and hacks because a Democrat happens to be in the Oval Office and they’ve convinced themselves that they’re dissidents in an imaginary dictatorship
@ArthurCDent
Plus, his claim that the essay is an appeal to bothsiderism is ludicrous. It makes a clear case that the natural origin theory is more plausible on the available evidence. Aside from being chronically full of shit, Weinstein apparently struggles with basic reading comprehension
The Ivermectin story dealt this guy’s reputation as a “sensemaker” a mortal blow, so naturally he’s stumbling around the track taking victory laps until he pukes
The Ivermectin story completes a picture of the racket our system has become. The media, government, academy, Pharma and Tech teamed up against the people—exacerbating a man made disaster and demonizing resisters in order to mass-administer a deadly, ineffective, unnecessary shot
@stillgray
@Emmyjewel
Really? This is your response? You know the clip was taken out of context. If you had a shred of decency or intellectual honesty, you'd delete it and tell your followers why.
Of course you won't.
"The secular republic with the separation of powers," Hitchens wrote, "is still the approximate model, whether acknowledged or not, of several democratic revolutions that are in progress or impending."
My latest for
@AreoMagazine
@IonaItalia
The Ukrainians would have fought — and many European countries would have supported them — with or without the United States.
Many Americans have this weird childish belief that their country is the only one with agency.
While Trump is a uniquely malignant force, his takeover of the GOP never could have succeeded without the McConnells of the world.
My latest, no paywall. Link in bio
What's the implication here? That the United States and other Western countries *wanted* a war in Gaza for all the refugees it would create?
Musk is just mindlessly regurgitating every bigoted and paranoid theory on offer for his new constituency of right-wing trolls and dolts
Wow, this is hideous bullshit. The Spanish Civil War cemented Orwell’s socialism and his hatred of Stalinism at the same time. He took a fascist bullet in the throat and despised fascism to the end.
I know Cernovich is an unscrupulous moron, but some lies are just so grotesque
George Orwell was a socialist who as a foolish young man, victimized by propaganda, fought against General Franco’s forces. Orwell admitted later in life it was all a lie. Communists were raping and crucifying nuns. Western media covered it up. General Franco was the good guy.