I am reaching a point where I wonder if Hitchens and his detractors (as outlined in this piece, with his detractors being identified as "the Left") are irrelevant to the future. They own the terminology and to some extent the [verbal] debate, but I have reason to hope that third world movements hold the answers of the future.
My first thought reading the Platypus piece on Hitchens was sort of similar: conflating Hitchens with the Left suggests a someone who understands neither the limitations of "the Left" as formulated for that piece nor the extent to which external conditions require new avenues of analysis.
DC