Herman on Hitchens

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Tue Dec 4 15:36:00 PST 2001


Edward Herman's letter forwarded by Mark Pavlick:
>> Dec. 4, 2001
>>
>>Dear David Schweickart:
>>
>> I didn't hear Hitchens recent talk at the University of
>>Chicago, but from what you summarize of his remarks there, and
from

I was there and if you go down to December 3rd at this site: http://www.wbez.org/frames.asp?HeaderURL=../schedule/hd_sched.htm &BodyURL=/schedule/worldview/worldview.htm

you can listen to it. Please do; it's classic Hitchens!

Despite the fact that the organziers didn't promote it at all, maybe only in the student paper and on a public radio station, the audience was giant, mostly students it seemed. And this despite the fact that there was another big lefty event which included the editor from the Progressive and other major leftists in the media. During question time, Hitchens was attacked repeatedly by the ISO and he responded brilliantly to each - mostly personal - attack. (He had even bought a paper from them when he encountered them before the talk.)


>> The idea that the Taliban is a fascist and expansionist
threat,
>>and that Islamic fundamentalism more broadly speaking is the
same,
>>doesn't hold water (Louis Proyect's note to you deals with this
>>quite well). Hitchens has come to use "fascist" as an epithet
to
>>apply to any enemy of the moment.

What are people's (Doug?) opinions of Proyect. I pretty much ignored him when he was on the list. Herman has gone way down in my estimation.

Peter



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