[lbo-talk] My Letter To CH

[James Heartfield]

Me, personally, I am all in favour of pissing on the grave, ideally while the earth is still loose. But this judgement on Hitchens is plain wrong: ‘as a critic, decidedly un-droll as a wit, not particularly erudite as a stylist, and his atheism was thinly disguised racism and imperialism’. 

You can disagree with some of what he said, but much of what he said was pretty sharp. As critic or wit – those are objective judgements that you cannot undermine by saying that you didn’t find him funny or erudite. As for ‘atheism’ being ‘thinly disguised racism and imperialism’ – that’s just barking.