M: So good morning, Christopher Hitchens,
Jewish Power, Jewish Peril.
Now before we start I want to ask you some
questions now, who is Christopher Hitchens?
How much do you know of him?
R: I know of his book called Hitch 22
M: His book called?
R: Hitch 22
M: Hitch 22, Ok good, so he is the author
of
M: it's a play on Catch 22, yeah, Hitch 22
R: I happened to see a debate he had
R: with Shashi Tharoor
M: And it was on, debate on Shashi Tharoor
R: I cannot recall, I think it was on
M: Hinduism, Islam Ok alright.
M: So yeah Hinduism, Islam and of course you
have the title itself.
So what kind of picture emerges, his interest?
R: Religion
M: Good, so he is
M: into religion but that's not all, that's
not all.
Ok.
He is much more than that.
Yeah so well, this is one of the most controversial
figures in contemporary American or on contemporary
American literary scene.
Now by contemporary, he is no more, he died
in 2011 but he is very relevant.
You may, you may not agree with his perspectives,
with his point of view which are deliberately
controversial and confrontational.
M: So religion is one of his interests, confrontational
style, he is also a literary critic, Ok and
a political observer.
He has a great style, Ok.
We are not interested in the man's opinion,
right wing, left wing or at the center
M: or at the center and leaning towards the
left or right, most of us are that way but
he gets quite confrontational about his position
but at the same time you need to think what
he is trying to say and at the same time,
need to understand the inherent contradictions
in his philosophy.
He is a philosopher; he is a thinker, no doubt
about it; but a philosopher of a very different
kind.
He is very open and he is many things, you
know, it is difficult to encapsulate the essence
of Christopher Hitchens in one class.
But, Ok let me just tell you, he is the author
of 30 books so you can well imagine how busy
he must have been throughout his life.
So he has authored 30 books.
Most of the time he was based in Washington
with his wife, I think Carol, she is also
a documentary film maker and all, Carol Blue
and she is still around, she survives him
and I will just tell you, when he died; it
is a very interesting anecdote, do you know
who is Graydon Carter, Graydon Carter doesn't
the name ring a bell?
The great Graydon Carter, he is the editor
of Vanity Fair.
Why I am talking about it, because the article
that we have chosen today, comes from, is
sourced from Vanity Fair, right?
Yeah so he was a constant contributor for
Vanity Fair and Graydon Carter who knew him
very well is the editor of Vanity Fair.
And he has on Hitchen's obituary, Carter said
that, he wrote a column about Hitchens and
he said that that I knew Hitchens very well.
We went out for lunch one day and he was supposed
to submit a thousand word column before noon,
you know, so that it can go to the press.
Now 1000 word is quite a bit and that too,
within one hour or half an hour.
Ok but they were lunching before that and
he hadn't started writing and he had to submit,
there was a deadline and then typically Hitchens
started with a canister full of scotch and
downed several canisters.
And then lunch was accompanied by some good
quality wine and lunch was followed by some
excellent cognac.
Now what does that tell you about the man?
We have done Hemingway, right and The Sun
also Rises, and kind of people, especially
writers yeah and they get fuelled when they
drink so heavily.
So he had reputation for his drinks and the
character of Peter Fallow from Bonfire of
the Vanities, Ok, Peter Fallow is loosely
based on Christopher Hitchens, Ok because
that's the, yes, Tom Wolfe, Christopher Hitchens,
sorry Martin Amis, Ian McEwan they are all
contemporary, Ok and if you read Peter Fallow
you know what colorful interesting character
he emerges as.
Fallow is not Jewish, he is British.
Yeah, not Jewish but it was based on him,
yeah; loosely.
There were other characters also but at least
the drinking part, the way he would drink
and start his day with heavy drinks and all;
that is based partly, loosely on Hitchen's
character.
So yeah, Hitchen's interests politics, religion,
literature, he has also written a book called
very interestingly titled,
M: “god is not Great” and this is the
way it appears, comment on it and he is unapologetic.
M: He is not the kind of writers who would
write something and sensationalize it, although
he accepts that yes it is a sensationalist
title and I did it to generate some kind of
debate and controversy, so you know, took
lot of delight in his position as
M: An agent provocateur, you understand this
word, it’s a French word agent provocateur,
agent of provocation, someone who deliberately
create some kind of provocation, deliberately
provokes certain established doctrines and
dogma and generate controversy and invite
debate and that's his style.
That remained till the end.
He began as Marxist socialist
M: the way most thinkers do.
he was also, during his young age or during
his college days he was anti-Vietnam war like
most students of that period but gradually
he shifted his position, his ideologies.
He felt the state or the ideology has failed
on all and the state of the nations that based
their political ideologies on these, Marxism
and socialism, they have more or less failed.
We know what we are talking about, which states
are those.
And he also felt that even in America, Marxism
and socialism has taken a different turn and
not what it should be, Ok. , he had the position
on Gulf war, very strong which many of us
may or may not agree with.
He has a very strong position of the, on Palestinian,
Israel Palestinian issue, that is what we
are going to look at in brief today.
Another important event was
M: 9/11 which happened in 2001 and after that
he famously said the attack exhilarated him,
why?
Because he says that finally people can now
talk about the battle between everything I
love and everything I hate.
See Jewish writing is also important from
the Jew perspective, Ok.
We have several great Jewish authors, Ok;
we need to consider that also.
Philip Roth for example, is an extremely important
writer who was a great friend of Hitchens,
Martin Amis of course and Tony Kushner, the
other day I was talking
M: about Tony Kushner and his, I told you
he is the screen writer for Munich, he is
a screen writer for Lincoln but he is best
known for his Pulitzer winning play called?
Angels in America, remember that.
M: See we cannot be doing everything in this
course but you have to know certain literary
texts on your own.
So Angels in America is one of the greatest
contemporary plays written by a Jewish writer
and as I was telling you, Hitchens was a literary
critic and he has written a great piece on
Angels in America.
So I think you should also look at that, what
Hitchens says about, yeah because the play
takes into account several issues particularly
the McCarthy period, then homosexuality and
also
M: AIDS, Ok.
This is one subject that was not really out
in the open at least in the 80s but Angels
in America took the subject, took the theme
by its horns and did a, I mean it’s a very,
very nice play, very good play and it has
to be read in order to understand number of
issues that ail contemporary America and how
the writer has tackled that and you have to
also read Hitchen's critique or review of
the play.
Ok so before we move on to do the text, how
many of you have read the text?
R: Somewhere that Hitchens, Dawkins and two
other public intellectuals are known as, Mr.
Dawkins and two other people, excuse me I
cannot recall them, all four are known as
The Four Horsemen of Doom, and they all four
very famous for coming out in the open with
their atheist, very radically atheist sounds
against other people.
But he seems quite similar in his stance to
Dawkins, Richard Dawkins as well.
And they are anti-religion but since they
are speaking very specifically US oriented
point of view, the religion they take up will
mostly be Islam or Christianity.
M: So let’s start with the text now, Jewish
Power, Jewish Peril now whatever that means
so.
He the introduction because the article comes
from Vanity Fair, at it says in seamless prose
that links history to current events Christopher
Hitchens brings clarity to some of the most
complex issues we face today, whether the
subject is the trouble within the marriage
of the so-called European Union or the role
of a tiny Gulf state like Qatar as a possible
model for opposed Hussain-free era.
He offers piercing insights borne out of ambitious
reporting.
Now I want you to look at the first paragraph.
R: Two old Jewish men are sitting on a park
bench in Berlin in the early 1930s.
Things are not yet so bad, but that doesn’t
mean they won’t get worse.
One of the two is solemn­ly reading a Jewish
newspaper.
The other is scanning a Nazi paper, and laughing
out loud.
Finally, the first man stops reading and says,
“It’s bad enough that you read that pro-Hitler
rag.
But to laugh at it!”
The second responds with a shrug.
“What if I read your paper?
It tells me about Jewish windows being broken,
Jewish shops boycotted, Jewish children beaten
up in school.
So ... if I read the Hitler paper it tells
me that we Jews control the whole world.”
M: Ok so that's a bad joke, Ok but that's
a joke
M: and that is the Jewish predicament in early
30s.
Now we are talking, he has taken us back to
that history just before the Holocaust.
Alright how many of us are here who do not
know these very basic terms?
Have you read any literature of Holocaust?
Yes, Namita
R: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
M: Ok Man's Search for?
R: Meaning
M: Ok by
R: Viktor Frankl
M: By Viktor Frankl?
R: Yeah
M: Ok, anything else?
R: The Diary of a Young Girl
M: The Diary of a Young Girl, alright.
I was looking forward to
M: something more complex.
Have you come across Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann's
trial (Eichmann in Jerusalem).Eichmann, have
you heard this name?
So just let me write it for the benefit of
viewers, Hannah Arendt
M: and Eichmann who was?
R: One of the top Nazi leaders
M: He was one of the top Nazi Generals, sorry
leader who carried on the order for all the
atrocities that happened in Germany, especially
in Auschwitz, Ok and what happened after war?
R: Tried at Nuremberg
M: Good
R: And
M: He was tried at Nuremberg.
It was a very well publicized, very well covered,
internationally well covered incident trial,
the trial of Eichmann and what does Hanna
Arendt, Hanna Arendt is a Jew, Ok and most
famously she has written a book called On
Violence.
You must read that, if you haven't already
then at least be familiar with what she says
in On Violence.
Now she says that she was, people went there
all planned, ready to hate Eichmann.
They must have thought that any man who can
order the killing of so many innocent children
and women and all those Jews in captivity,
he has got to be an out and out demon, a Satan
on two legs but when she met, she came face
to face and she saw him being tried there,
she felt he was just an ordinary man, Ok just
an ordinary man like any person next door.
Now what does that mean?
So she has famously given us, coined the term
called
M: banality of evil.
This is Hannah Arendt's term, banality of
evil where she says that, Eichmann says that
when he was asked why did you do that?
Why did you order that kind of massacre, annihilation
of the Jews?
He says I was just taking orders.
And it so happens because the other day we
were talking about Arthur Miller also and
I said a very prominent theme
M: in most, Arthur Miller is a Jew, so most
Jewish writers; particularly Miller is the
theme of guilt and responsibility.
Miller too has written something about Eichmann's
trial, that's not our concern right now.
But Miller said that he too was taken aback
how guilt-free Eichmann felt and how free
of responsibility he felt during the trial.
He was not guilty, he did not show any guilt
and he did not take any responsibility.
He had just one response.
I was just taking orders.
Now Hannah Arendt says that how banal!
You are just taking orders.
Anyone can tell you do anything so; you are
evil but at the same time a very stupid person.
You are not even a cunning or a evil in the
real sense who has, who has some ability to
think for himself.
But you are just the very foolish, just taking
the order kind of an evil; therefore the term
banality of evil, alright.
So from there we move on, that is the 30s
and the 40s that we are talking about and
then
R: As I began to write this article, synagogues
had been firebombed in several French towns
and in one north London suburb and a suicide
assassin had massacred Jews who just minutes
earlier had arrived from synagogues for a
Pass­over dinner in the Israeli coastal town
of Netanya.
In response, American Jews in California had
taken out an advertisement urging Woody Allen
and others to boycott the Cannes Film Festival,
on the grounds that the days of Vichy were
back.
Similar themes were being stressed by many
Jewish and Israeli writers, who spoke darkly
of the imminence of another Holocaust.
Very often recently, this “Never Again”
note has been struck by liberal and even radical
Jews who seem to regret their former softness.
Nat Hentoff, civil libertarian and longtime
friend of the civil-rights movement, told
New York magazine that “if a loudspeaker
goes off and a voice says, ‘All Jews gather
in Times Square,’ it could never surprise
me.”
M: Now what does this mean?
There is a Neo-Fascism in the air, or there
is a new anti-Semiticism feeling in the air.
But what's the time we are talking about?
Which period are we are talking about?
Ok, so early 90s again, you have this renewed
interest, I mean every country goes through
a wave of anti any race or anti any religion,
Oh yeah, so in the early 90s the problem was,
again the people had started becoming Anti-Jews
now whatever could be the reason for that.
May be Jews were becoming again quite prominent,
quite dominant all over the place and people
don't like that.
Jewish supremacy, that has always been a threat,
Ok and then we have these Israel Palestinian
issues, Ok and the threat from Islam and its
proponent who want, who want the break in
the peace, so-called peace talks.
If there are peace talks in progress between
Israel and Palestinian groups then they have
to be halted and therefore these renewed attacks
on Jews and their symbols such as synagogue.
M: Now on the grounds of days of Vichy were
back, what is Vichy?
It is not witchy but it is Vichy, what is
Vichy?
It's a, any one, it is a very important, Holocaust,
Auschwitz, Vichy, these are all interconnected.
There is a theme and there is a thread that
runs through.
Vichy is a place in France and Vichy was one
of the places in France that was controlled
by the Nazis.
This was, and the Jews were prosecuted very
badly in Vichy during the 40s.
It was the same; it was nearly as bad as the
Holocaust in Berlin or any other part of Germany.
So Vichy is remembered for that, Ok; Germany
was; they were also able to capture or take
over the control of Poland to some extent.
I am sure you are aware of Sophie's Choice,
Ok, one of the greatest novels ever written
so the Jewish, the Jews and their, the entire
idea of Anti-Semitism.
M: Now I have to, what does it mean?
Nat Hentoff, civil libertarian and longtime
friend of this and yeah, “if a loudspeaker
goes off and a voice says, ‘All Jews gather
in Times Square,’ it could never surprise
me.”
What do you understand by this?
R: It is referring to the Concentration Camp.
M: Almost going back to the concentration
camp, in 90s and people said "Never Again"
and for us, people sitting in this part of
the world, it's very difficult to believe
all these things happening but then perhaps
it is possible.
Ok, that is what he is trying to tell us.
The kind of attacks that are happening on
Jews in various parts of the world, it wouldn't
surprise anyone if the Jews are asked to come
in Times Square and they are packed off to
some kind of a concentration camp, Ok.
It is that bad, alright.
Now it is also interesting to note that when
Hitchens was growing up, his parents hid the
fact that they were a Jew family, yeah.
He says that I was never told till he was
quite old and he said but somehow I had always
guessed that something is different about
us.
So that is the idea, the idea of being perhaps
a little marginalized, perhaps a little ostracized,
Ok that feelings were already there, always
there.
Now next line,
Perhaps I should say here that I am related
on my mother’s side to this ancient argument
and that, according to the Law of Moses, the
Israeli Law of Return, and the Nuremberg laws,
I can be counted as a member of the ancient
tribe.
So I can be a Jew and he is a Jew from his
mother's side.
I maintain that I have the best evidence of
Darwin and DNA on my side, as well as many
recent ­anti-Biblical and ­anti-mythical
discoveries made by Israeli archeologists.
Ze’ev Herzog, professor of archaeology at
Tel Aviv University, has concluded that “the
Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander
in the desert, did not conquer the land in
a military campaign, and did not pass it on
to the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Furthermore, the united monarchy of David
and Solomon, which is described by the Bible
as a religious power, was at most a small
tribal kingdom.
Now what is the significance of all this?
How history is reinterpreted in every age,
in every society.
You know there is a renewed interest in religion
and history and then there are renewed comments
on history and literature and history and
religion, sorry not literature.
So it is always that whether we should take
religion that seriously or not?
That is there but he agrees to that, may be
did not happen but at the same time
Nonetheless, I like to think that I would
be despised or hated by any movement defining
itself as ­anti-Semitic.
And on my shelf is an American Nazi pamphlet,
denouncing the “Zionist Occupation Government”
(or “zog”)
What is Zionist?
R: It is the land promised to them.
M: Promised land, Ok so people who actually
ask for the Promised Land, there has to be
the Promised Land and this is what the article
is all about.
If you don't know what is Zion and what is
the Promised Land, the idea of the Jews being
given the Promised Land has always been in
existence, in history, in culture, in Bible,
in religion.
Ok but whether they will be given that or
not and how important it is to have a Promised
Land and if they are given then what are the
implications.
This is what the article talks about.
M: Alright, so at some point he also says
the protocols have been repeatedly and conclusively
shown to be a crass forgery, originating in
the witch trials of the Middle Ages and updated
for the modern world via the reactionary secret
police of the Russian czars and the publishers
of Mein Kempf.
(In neither circle, incidentally, were Arabs
or Muslims regarded very highly.)
Here again we find a version of the same sick
joke: the Jews are supposed to be diabolical
and clever enough to plot a secret world rule,
and stupid enough to write the whole plan
down.
Ok so there is a book in circulation, the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this is how
Jews have been projected.
There is some kind of a secret society that
is plotting to take the world down.
Hitchens takes a position which is extremely
pro-Jewish Ok, in spite of all his claims
that he is anti-religion and atheist and all,
but in spite of that, he takes a very strong
position.
M: So we need to now read the article to discuss
it better.
So I would ask you to read, come having and
prepared the article and read some more or
watch some more videos about Hitchens position
on Hinduism, his debate with Shashi Tharoor
and also his position on the Palestinian issue.
Only then we can discuss it further, alright?
So thank you.
