deathtokoalas
and, yes - hitchens ripped him apart in the q & a.
he's christopher hitchens.
he'd do that to anybody.
Throw Away
Were we watching the same debate, Hitchens was juvenile, doing nothing but parroting neolib talking points.
deathtokoalas
i actually found much of what parenti said in the q & a section (such as resorting to questioning the motives of the rulers, which is irrelevant) to be somewhat idealistic and juvenile. but, you forget that what you call "neoliberalism" (the more correct neologism is neoconservatism) is rebranded trostkyism, and hitchens was a self-identified trotskyist. the difference is in the honesty of the discourse; the neo-cons presented left-wing arguments in a dishonest manner to advance their empire, and all evidence is that hitchens actually believed what he said. so, it's the difference between a fake trostkyist and a real one.
but, i've noticed this continually over the last 15 years - yes, hitchens was wrong. but, he was also badly misunderstood. few people seemed to really follow his argument.
mr t
Many neoconservatives did start out as Trotskyists but the ones that did usually renounced Trotskyism by the time they became neocons (Hitchens, Horowitz, Howe, Schachtman etc.) There's definitely a "pipeline" between the two since Trotskyists indirectly support imperialism, and continuing to follow their logic and mindset can lead hem to coming full circle and becoming totally pro-empire. That being said, the broader ideology of Trotskyism and neoconservatism are totally incompatible. Neocon arguments are definitely not left-wing. I'm saying this as someone who hates Trotskyism by the way.
deathtokoalas
hitchens did not denounce trotskyism, and you can find videos of him identifying as a trotskyist as late as 2009 - four years after this debate. hitchens' arguments here are explicitly trostkyist, and only resemble neo-conservatism by proxy.
i mean, he starts off by citing hegel, ffs.
hitchens points it out himself - this is really a debate between a trostkyist and a...i'm not going to call parenti a stalinist. maybe a titoist. but, it's a debate between two different strains of the left, and the actual truth is that hitchens is really representing the further left variant of the two.
mr. t
Hitchens explicitly renounces Marxism (of which Trotskyism is a variant) in God is Not Great. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FcBeyEWgSM) Even in this debate he alludes to having formerly been "in the same church" with Parenti, ie he used to be a socialist. And supporting imperialist war and the deaths of thousands of innocent people for corporate profits is not left-wing in any possible sense and is certainly not "more left-wing" than not wanting to do that. No offense but I honestly laughed out loud at that last part i mean wow.
deathotkoalas
that's not a renunciation of trotskyism or a step away from the left, it's a statement of skepticism towards the dogmatic precepts of theory in the context of a text written to uphold independent thought. you've completely misunderstood what he said there, as you are misunderstanding what he's said here. listen to that short excerpt again and you can hear why hitchens supported the invasion, and it had nothing to do with supporting imperialism or corporate profits - it was a legitimate, if misguided, statement of solidarity with the iraqi people from an explicitly trostkyist position, in an honest attempt to liberate them from abject tyranny. so, yes - supporting imperialist war and the deaths of thousands of innocent people for corporate profit is entirely consistent with a trostkyist position if that imperialism and death also leads to the overthrow of a bourgeois state, and the emancipation of millions more - which is the point he hoped for and the point he was wrong about, and not any of these other things, which are irrelevant to any argument he made. to a leftist, it is the outcome that matters and not the intent, because the left is pragmatic and not idealistic.
(edit: hitchens also argued repeatedly that the nazi state was deeply christian, so that picture of hitler in the video is instructive in it's intent to mislead. that video was no doubt put together by one of hitchens' admirers on the far right, which has co-opted his statements for it's own purposes. to state that hitchens was not a member of the bill o'reilly faction on atheism, which is no doubt where the implication in putting the picture in the video originates, is an understatement; he would have argued that nazi atrocities were carried out in the name of religion and were a reason to abolish religion, rather than that they were carried out in the name of atheism, or a reason to support religion. the statement no doubt referred primarily to mao, and also to stalin - and he would have made those arguments during his days as an accepted leftist, as well.)
you can see hitchens reaffirm his trotskyist identity in a 2009 video at the hoover institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkWQ-DwgmA
when he says he "used to be in the same church as parenti" and "used to be a marxist", what he means is he got kicked out, not that he left - and that is true. hitchens was renounced by the left and had to react, but he did not renounce the left, himself.
on the socialist spectrum, you have anarchists like chomsky (and myself) in the furthest left position, and then you have the rosa luxemburgs, and then the "permanent revolution" folks at the fourth international that far-left anarchists can mostly deal with. parenti is a kind of centrist socialist, so i'm being kind by calling him a titoist - he has flirted with the far-right variants, as presented by stalin. and, hitch is right to point out that parenti is acting out a sympathy with systems of authoritarian dictatorship, as embodied by the failed "arab socialist" revolution of the baath party. parenti is not as far right as zizek, but he's well to the right of hitchens.
that's just a question of actually knowing who these people actually are.
a good way to understand what happened to hitchens is to look at what's happening to glenn greenwald. greenwald has been denounced by much of the left, but he'll still identify as belonging to it. the reality is that he's been banned from virtually every left-wing media outlet - and still gets invited to speak to audiences of conservatives. over time, will people call him a conservative? well, they might. but, glenn hasn't left the left - rather, the left has thrown him out.
there is a 2009 article written in the atlantic entitled "the revenge of karl marx", where hitchens makes his continuing marxist views abundantly clear.
if i'm to concede slightly, it seems as though the late hitchens - who we have to realize actually understood this stuff - seemed to shift his focus towards the need for a fuller capitalist expression in the existing period, which, if anything, is a shift towards leninism. remember: marxists don't argue that capitalism and communism are in opposition to another, but that capitalism is the required first stage towards socialist evolution. so, what you hear in hitchens' later years is a sort of realization (after 1989, although it took until 2003 to fully form) of the need to actually go through the capitalist phase. but, his criticism was always constructive, and he never embraced capitalism as an alternative to the left, or stood back from his insistence on the struggle against tyranny and oppression.
and, so while there is certainly room to introduce subtlety in the late hitchens' views towards marxist theory it is absolutely clear that he never lost an identification with the left, or with the ideals of the left, even as he became aware of the limitations of it, and ended up disenfranchised by it for not falling in line.
mr. t
First of all, just in the interest of reality I have to contradict that interpretation of both of those videos. I don't personally care if he was a Trotskyist or not but in both cases he so clearly identifies himself as not being one. In the 2009 one he simply explains why he used to be one and why he still admires Trotsky as an individual in some ways. You're basically saying that because he still claims to have a certain "leftist spirit" surrounding his beliefs that he's still a Marxist even though he doesn't call himself one, doesn't identify with any Marxist movements or governments, actively supports Western imperialism against Marxist movements, and doesn't support any Marxist positions (apart from perhaps some long-term, utopian vision for the future, but he supports none of the short-term goals that might bring us there).
And as far as excuses for imperialism goes you could make the same argument for George Bush. He didn't say he was going into Iraq to steal the oil and overthrow an uncooperative government, he used the same arguments Hitchens used. They all make up humanitarian sounding reasons for imperialism, whether they believe it or not, but that doesn't make it leftist. Anyone who thinks that the overthrow of the 20th century socialist countries was a good thing, and that things are better off since then, is not holding a left-wing position on that question. You can say you disagree with those countries or you don't think they were real socialism, but to say that the US-installed neoliberalism of the 90s was better (as he says in this video) is straight-up pro-imperialism.
deathtokoalas
you're tearing down a strawman of hitchens, and i'm not interested in counteracting what amounts to a smear campaign on a dead man. the historical record is clear enough, and people that know what they're talking about can look it up. i would ask you to back up some of your claims, though - and claim you have the burden of proof when arguing that hitchens "doesn't call himself a marxist" (in fact, he continued to call himself one until his death, as i demonstrated with two links), "doesn't support any marxist governments" (which means what, exactly? where are there marxist governments? and he certainly continued to identify with marxist movements.), "actively supported western imperialism" (an absurd claim) or "doesn't support any marxist positions" (when he clearly did, until his death).
and, talking about "short term goals that might bring us to marxism" means what exactly? have you read any marx at all? that's absurd on it's face, unless you're an anarchist.
if you think that bush and hitchens used the same argument, you either haven't listened to hitchens, haven't listened to bush or haven't listened to either. maybe you read that in some progressive rag or something, but that's absolute nonsense. or, maybe you've managed to listen thoroughly to hitchens and fail to understand a word he said.
i'd love to see a clip of dubya citing hegel in his justification for the overthrow of saddam hussein, though. that'd make my day.
and, i mean, what to make of this?:
Anyone who thinks that the overthrow of the 20th century socialist countries was a good thing, and that things are better off since then, is not holding a left-wing position on that question.
i mean, we'd have to cross off a long list of people, then - your list of leftists would be restricted to the hardest right stalinists and the most genocidal maoists. that's a ridiculous, offensively stupid statement. the quality of life in eastern europe has gone through the fucking roof.
the bizarre confusion underlying your post is setting capitalism and socialism off against each other, which just indicates you don't understand either.
mr. t
Wow, well alright, I definitely did learn something from this (about psychology if nothing else). I'll just leave with this, and I mean this in as helpful of a way as possible. It sounds like some of your statements regarding Hitchens are some form of projection. The idea that the "far-right stalinist left" won't take you "real leftists" seriously when you go around supporting imperialist war and CIA interventions in socialist countries.
Leftism is more than just saying "I'm for good things and against bad things." There's no ideology on the planet that doesn't make the same claim. Leftism is a specific definition of what that "pro-good things" vision looks like, and how to get there.
One of the main movements associated with leftism is workers' rights and workers' liberation. That's probably the most basic thing. So if a capitalist imperialist empire is invading a country where the workers have liberated themselves, and attempting to bring capitalism back into that country, supporting that is not leftist. You should just call yourself a neoliberal if you're gonna do that. Then this wouldn't be so confusing, but I'm glad you helped clarify it anyway. Good luck.
deathtokoalas
again: the stupidity inherent in this comment is baffling - as though iraq was a socialist country (baffling stupidity.) and the reason hitchens supported it had anything to do with the cia. i will state this again: no leftist would give the slightest fuck what the reason the american military goes into a country is, or base their support or opposition for the action on why it is occurring. the left cares strictly about outcomes and would base it's opposition or support strictly on what would happen or would not happen should such an event occur. so, for somebody that clearly has not read much of any marx, or know anything about the left to try to lecture me that leftism isn't deontological is just baffling in it's application of the dunning-kruger effect - you are the one presenting a conservative, kantian ethics here, and i'm the one channeling the liberalism of machiavelli, as per trotsky, via hitchens.
let me ask you this, though: what was your position on the recent fiasco regarding the american withdrawal from syria, insofar as to how it pertained to "protecting the kurds"? i'm just curious if you can even string together a coherent thought on the topic.
to be clear: hitchens was not making a deontological argument - he was making a consequentialist argument. and, that's why he was making a more purely left-wing argument, and why parenti's deontological defense is inherently conservative. but, you don't even know what those words mean, do you?
...and hitchens was wrong - because he misunderstood the consequence, not because he misinterpreted the intent.
and, to alter your facile and stupid language, let me clarify that you have the concept backwards - leftism is for saying "i don't remotely fucking care if the intent is good or bad, i care only if the outcome is positive".
this is useful, though - it demonstrates just how badly hitchens was misunderstood by people that did not have the intellectual capability to understand what he said.
...it was this uprising of incredibly stupid people, reacting to his arguments in the most base, facile way possible.
no wonder he become withdrawn and distraught.