Chris Hedges is still frothing at the mouth
Chris Hedges is as nasty as ever. It’s a wonder he has any spittle left, he’s expended so much of it on people he hates.
The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway.
Hitchens and Harris peddle racist filth, says Hedges mildly. Really? No, but that’s ok, Hedges writes for Truthdig, so he can’t be just making it up out of his own bile and bad-tempered mendacity.
Our secular and religious fundamentalists come out of this twisted yearning for the apocalypse and belief in the “chosen people.” They advocate, in the language of religion and scientific rationalism, the divine right of our domination, the clash of civilizations. They assure us that we are headed into the broad, uplifting world of universal democracy and a global free market once we sign on for the subjugation and extermination of those who oppose us. They insist—as the fascists and the communists did—that this call for a new world is based on reason, factual evidence and science or divine will.
No they don’t; no they don’t; no they don’t; no they don’t.
All fundamentalists, religious and secular, are ignoramuses. They follow the lines of least resistance. They already know what is true and what is untrue. They do not need to challenge their own beliefs or investigate the beliefs of others. They do not need to bother with the hard and laborious work of religious, linguistic, historical and cultural understanding. They do not need to engage in self-criticism or self-reflection. It spoils the game. It ruins the entertainment. They see all people, and especially themselves, as clearly and starkly defined.
Unlike Chris Hedges, who does such a brilliant job of seeing people as complicated and various and difficult to pin down, not to mention his genius for self-criticism and self-reflection.
Jeezis he’s spiteful. It’ unusual to see a mainstream journalist carry on that level of invective and to not be reined in by editors. It’s weird that he’s this emotional and angry about people like Hitch and Harris. Especially when they’ve explicitly, repeatedly denied they have any such naive faith in inevitable human progress! Hitchens a utopian? Srsly?
This is the first I’ve even heard of Chris Hedges and already it’s astonishingly obvious how well this paragraph applies to him. I suppose if he’s won an award for his journalism he must have done good work, but the many examples of dishonesty that Harris provides impugns pretty much everything he has to say relating to atheists. One would hope responsible journalistic outlets would simply refuse his writings on the matter.
aoib nu;89v m
Sorry, that was me squirting milk out of my nose laughing. I really shouldn’t drink milk when I type.
Mind-numbingly stupid.
… except this week he might be right. Harris in particular has let his bigot flag fly this week.
Citation needed, Joe. Really. That’s the kind of thing you really are obligated to cite so that readers can evaluate that claim.
Hold me to it, Josh… I’m still trying to hunt down the quote, and I’m not dodging you at all, and I know I saw Harris be a giant asshole this week.
Harris’s reply to Hedges was classic:
What an absolute disgrace that guy is. Methinks the
twatdoth shriek too much.Intellectual dishonesty is far more appalling than stupidity. It’s a puzzle how he can manage to prevent the rising effluvia of his own noxious dishonesty from choking him to death in the silent hours before he sleeps. Tedious.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/christian-terrorism-and-islamophobia/
Some of those names, like Mark Steyn and Robert Spencer, are known far-right anti-Muslim bigots. Others are obsessive neo-conservatives who are proud to fan the flames of bigotry to advance their anti-civilization goals.
In a week of murder and tragedy, Harris feels that the “final irony” is that a Christian(“Christian” in quotes because Harris is a bigot who things terrorism only comes from Muslims) terrorist makes it harder for him to make his case against all Muslims, even though Christian terrorism is more frequent.
To hell with Sam Harris. He’s a bigot. I’m not willing to stand with him, no matter how wonderful some of you think he is.
It usually amuses me when I encounter Trinitarians who are so filled with rage. However, Hedges’ Calvinist ire infects his prose style so much that I feel exhausted when I try to read him.
I don’t know some of those people, Joe (but thanks for the citation, really), so I can’t judge their views. I do know that Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are not, however, obsessive conservatives or racists.
I don’t think anyone here is an unqualified Harris fan with no reservations. I don’t endorse everything he says, and some of it is troubling. But you can can that bullshit “how wonderful some of you think he is.” Dial it down. You’re overdramatizing it and fighting with people who aren’t your enemy.
*Facepalm* at improbable joe. Holy mother of christ.
Really? And here I was thinking that nobody can surpass the Buddhists or Jains in violence.
Josh…
http://maryamnamazie.blogspot.com/2011/07/norwegian-tragedy-confirms-our-call-to.html
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/violence-directed-liberal-and-govern
https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/tesat2010.pdf
Sam Harris’s focus on Islam is WRONG.
Here’s PZ Myers:
Who is Chris Hedges?
Ben @ 7 – I almost used that sanctimony line for the teaser. But there was a wealth to choose from. He does that kind of thing really well!
I forced myself to finish his entire “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” once I started it. It is surely one of the most-ill conceived and written polemics I’ve ever seen. Has he even bothered to read the New Atheists, or does he just act like a creationist and quote-mine to make his point? That said, this essay didn’t surprise me at all coming from Hedges. While his book “American Fascists” on Christian fundamentalism was excellent, his statements about the New Atheists are nothing short of deluded…
I will confess that I have a tiny headache from altitude sickness but that is some crapped out writing. I can’t make much sense of it b/c it is so nasty, overgeneralized, and gaseous.
skep, Chris Hedges is a former (I think former) New York Times reporter who did an admired book on the Iraq war (War is a [something – force?] That Gives Us Meaning); he reported on the Middle East for a longish time. He wrote a terrible book called I Don’t Believe in Atheists which is very like this article – stuffed with raving abuse of atheists without a shred of documentation. It’s just mind-bendingly bad – lazy and sloppy as well as malicious and dishonest. I’ve hated him a lot ever since that book. (When he did interviews for it he would get into a screaming rage within minutes. DJ Grothe talked to him for Point of Inquiry and said sure enough, he was in a rage most of the time.) Horrible man.
Ooh Claire are you in Mexico City, is it wedding time? Have fun!
I made a little joke about pudding and Nebraska on the other thread…
@Julia F, #10:
I’m a little confused, here. Is Hedges Catholic? Also, what is meant by “Calvinist ire?”
Trinitarian=joky word for “Christian”?
Improbable Joe, it seems to me that Harris’s doubts about Breivik’s religiosity are pretty well founded. Did you take a look at the selections he cited?
I’m with Improbable Joe–Harris has said things that are bigoted.
Hedges still makes sweeping claims about the “New Atheists” generally, though, which cannot be supported.
The STRATFOR analysis on Breivik is well worth a read (the writer has clearly read most, if not all, of the manifesto):
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110727-norway-lessons-successful-lone-wolf-attacker
I must admit, my first instinct was to see Breivik as a Neo-Nazi or Odinist in a much more European mould, but after reading a fair bit of his manifesto, I realised that while there are elements derived from traditional European-style extremism, there are other things (presumably from across the Atlantic) as well. One of the standouts is Breivik’s philoSemitism and pro-Israel stance. That is way outside the standard ideological form when it comes to European fascists of whatever stripe.
This man is a fucking loony. We had to slog through his diatribe again the new atheists in a class I took at the Harvard Divinity School and I still feel I haven’t scrubbed the last gobbets of infected mental jism from my brain. Yuck.
Great points, Ophelia, et al. I’ll infer from Hedges’s thin argument that fundamentalism of any sort=dogmatism and is therefore bad news. I can hastily agree with him there. (@Improbable Joe:) It’s worth noting Harris is careful to qualify that the list of writers he names who share his opinion, share it “in general.” I doubt, if he’s pressed, that he’ll admit to sharing much of what Geller (whom I think he alludes to as the oft-quoted blogger who admires Hirsi Ali) has to say. Fine. But what is Hedges about when he claims that those “who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies” are the “gravest threat” we face w/respect to “terrorism”? Is this about deadly cartoons again? It’s just silly.
Hedges is the worst of the gnubashers. I’d put his capacity for exaggeration, false equivalency, and overall idiocy up against any of ’em. What’s especially troubling is that there seems to be a large contingent who thinks he’s just brilliant. I’ve said it before: even when he says something I agree with (on subjects other than this one) I think to myself, “Yes, well, that is the case—but could we maybe dial down the sanctimony, pal?”
To be honest, when I stand naked in front of the mirror in my bathroom, I do see myself clearly and starkly defined, and if I go down to the beach I find fellow humans minimally obfuscated. It’s not, to my mind, a bad thing. I doubt that a moderate dorsal orientation, a focus on the fundament, makes me a fundamentalist, exactly.
Much to my dismay, a colleague at a South African online newspaper seems to be channeling Hedges in this piece on Harris and ‘Islamophobia’. I’ll be responding to it, although the problems run so deep it’s hard to know what to focus on.
Godless Heathen @22
Ophelia got it right, I used “Trinitarian” as a jokey term for Christians, to distinguish them from the other monotheists. As I understand it, Protestants believe in the trinity, so they are included. Unitarians are not considered Christians by many other churches.
Hedges has a degree from Harvard Divinity School and his father was a Presbyterian minister. I admit that does not prove that his ire is particularly Calvinist. Indeed, an angry, scolding tone is not unique to Calvinists.
He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al.
I read that as a list of authors writing on Islam that Breivik admired rather than authors endorsed by Harris.
He even singles out my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali for special praise, repeatedly quoting a blogger who thinks she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
Harris only singles out Hirsi Ali as a someone he admires.
Harris is entirely right about the unique threat that political Islam poses to human freedom and security. Unlike the other religions, even bloody fucking christianity which I personally abhor, Islam is backed by scores of nation states which try pretty damn hard to extend the grasp of theocracy, let alone its rogue jihadists. If Joe were to read more malaysian newspapers, maybe he’d begin to understand.
I have to say, I find Chris Hedge’s piece, to be akin to a fundamentalist tract itself.
That’s…
I mean…
GAH!!!
Thanks OB; I don’t think I’d ever heard of Hedges before. Now after reading his polemic I don’t have to pay any more attention to him. I had to wait until the penultimate paragraph to figure out where he’s coming from. A medievalist, who hates anything and everything modern, and with horrendous anger management problem to boot.
BTW Joe: I don’t think that, just because there are lots of other dangerous terrorists out there, we need to ignore islamic terrorism which is a much greater problem in many countries than it currently is in the EU or USA.
Isn’t it telling that the only people (besides Breivik himself) who cheered–and immediately claimed responsibility for–the massacre in Norway were Islamists? A hundred infidels (I imagine a few were atheists) dead? Allahuakbar!
<i>Our secular and religious fundamentalists come out of this twisted yearning for the apocalypse </i>
What? Leaving aside the lazy ‘fundamentalist’ nonsense, who the hell yearns for the apocalypse?
I’m not a big fan of Harris, he’s a brilliant polemecist but with a weakness for some types of woo-thinking. Joe has a valid point about Harris’s extremist take on Islam.
Not if Breivik is right when he claims that his terrorist actions were done on behalf of an organization he calls Knights Templar (or “Knights Templar Europe”, in some media sources).
@Don
For example ?
This sound like drive by criticism by someone who has never bothered to read any of Harris’s works but get his information second hand from sources not unlike Chris Hedges.
I can’t think of anyone less infected by woo like thinking than Sam Harris. If you are referring to his views on meditation and the plasticity of the human brain then you obviously have not taken the effort to understand them.
Ditto.
Benjamin @39,
There is no such organization. At least none that anyone has been able to find any trace of. Breivik may have thought he was doing a lot of people a favour with his terrorism, but, so far, the only people publicly celebrating were two Islamist groups that rushed to claim they did it for the glory of Allah… or whatever.
Hedges wrote a book which slammed the religious right — “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America”. He is one of the good guys.
I don’t understand his hang-up with Harris. I wish there was an effort for real dialogue — maybe it could be cleared up at least somewhat. Even if Hedges is uncivil, the best response is a polite one. Harris could have taken the high road, but now he looks as sanctimonious as Hedges. “Teacher, he did it first!” is always a losing mindset.
It could just be some misunderstanding or something, but since Harris has responded in kind–i.e., with personal attacks–we’ll never know.
Hedges goes off the rails, and yet you fault Sam for not “taking the high road.” Then you say Sam’s response made him look “just as sanctimonious.” Um, no. Why are you so willing to let Hedges off the hook and put the responsibility on the target of his unwarranted attack?
Maybe Hedges isn’t as much of a good guy as you’d like him to be. But even if he is, you don’t have to engage in ethically perverse special pleading to excuse his atrocious behavior. Come on.
I certainly hope you’re right. Still, it’s worth noting that he thinks, or claims, that he is speaking and acting on behalf of a wider public. And some of his claims are suggestive as leads — e.g., he claims a Facebook following, and conference connections from some time ago. But that’s certainly not evidence, so hopefully it’s just him being a lunatic.
Hedges is not one of the good guys. He’s dishonest and vicious. I don’t care what “good” he has done in other areas; the guy who wrote that mendacious book is not good.
hee hee hee the State Dish of Nebraska: Pudding (as long as you include *Cool Whip mixed with Crushed **Oreos!)
*Cool Whip is a whipped-cream substitute made from non-dairy ingredients. It’s a white, poofy food that mixes well with crushed Oreos
**Oreos are dark brown cookies stuck together with sticky white food-glue made from non dairy products.
Benjamin @44,
It’s always shocking when people like Breivik (or McVeigh) come out of the woodwork, and this is not to belittle their destructive capacity, but they’re essentially one-off terrorists. The woodwork these days is dominated by a far more numerous and far more dangerous group. Breivik is not much of a Christian in any religious sense; he’s basically a racist. The Islamists have “god” on their side. My point above was that the Islamists have already changed the face of the contemporary world and they threaten to deface it even more, given half a chance. Unlike the unending tsunami of terrorism emanating from the Allahuakbar-ists (and the not-so-collateral damage to the rights of women, gays, etc., the vast majority of whom are fellow Muslims) I can’t see Breivik’s acts inspiring a wave of anti-liberal or even anti-Muslim terrorism.
The Nebraska love affair with pudding makes me laugh every time I think of it. Like right now.
That’s not pudding; it’s an atrocity! Good lord. Cool Whip? As a kid I used to beg my mother for that stuff instead of the “gross” handmade whipped cream with vanilla she always made. Why????
Same reason I liked Twinkies when I was 5, probably.
@Julia #32
Thanks for the clarification. I always forget that Protestants are trinitarians also…
Cool whip! Ever heard the Austin Lounge Lizards sing about it?
Want to eat / but not vegetables / want no meat / from dead animals / want a treat / made from chemicals / cool whip! cool whip! cool whip!
Pure genius.
‘Verbal diarrhea’ is the only way to describe Hedges’ invective, so many straw men with the standard misuse of the term ‘racist’ and such a tendentious ‘argument’.
# 47 Alain
yes, Breivik’s atrocity doesn’t necessarily indicate that there’s a widespread right wing conspiracy throughout Europe and that Christian terrorism is a likely as the Islamic variety. Some commentors, with their own agendas, are pushing that idea, so far, I’m not persuaded.
RJW, we probably should keep in mind that for the past decade and longer there have been acts of terrorism and assassination performed on abortion clinics (and most recently, Planned Parenthood). They’re often Christian, and they’re quite organized. It’s too easy to see everything against the background of 9/11, these days, but I don’t think we should be lulled by that.
I agree with Improbable Joe about some of the people on Harris’s list- Steyn and Spencer are flat-out racists, and I’d put Pipes on the list too.
It’s like putting out a list of people who are concerned about crime among African-American youth in the inner city and citing David Duke as someone who “shares your general concerns”
#55 MikeN.
Spencer and Pipes are certainly pro-Israel propagandists who claim that the West is in some existential struggle with Islam. They claim to be just anti-Islam but they certainly run a nasty anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian campaign on their websites. I’d include Melanie Phillips on the list.
#54 Benjamin S Nelson,
Agreed, I was simply expressing some irritation as to the instant pontification in regard to Breivik’s homicidal rampage, who the hell knows the implications at this stage.
I’m also not particularly comfortable with Harris’ obsessive focus on Islam, but the Hedges piece is way over-the-top. I must admit, though, I am quite disappointed to hear that Harris joined the Christian/right-winger parade of “The worst part about 70+ people being killed is that it makes it harder to criticize Islam”. If Hedges had written a piece savaging specifically savaging that comment, I’d probably have trouble disagreeing with it. The problem with the Hedges piece here is that it is often way too non-specific, throwing around accusations of racism without any sort of backing, and when it does verge into specifics it is often a flat-out misrepresentation (e.g. his continued twisting of Harris’ comments about Islam and nuclear war). I’m not much of one for harsh criticism that is not also specific.
Anyway, as to Hedges being one of “the good guys”… when I first encountered this piece somewhere else in the atheiblogosphere, I looked him up on Wikipedia, and as I was reading, I’m like, “This is weird, this sounds like somebody I’d agree with on a whole slew of issues.”
Then I read his educational background: Master of Divinity, honorary doctorate from a UU Seminary. Yep, seems like religion poisons everything. The guy is ultra-liberal and right on a quite a few issues, but he’s got a blind spot about his dumb-ass faith-based beliefs. So annoying…
I agree, James. My first introduction to Hedges was when he dared to mention the Iraq war at some commencement ceremony and was deafeningly booed. How dare he spoil the party! And the Christian fascism book was good. So I wanted to defend him up until the book on atheism. I think he wants to own criticism of religion, in a way that puts his own religious commitments off the table. He is the only one who is allowed to criticize other people’s religion. “Because I have a master’s degree…. in Divinity!”
I discovered this blog a few weeks ago (guess how) and have enjoyed reading. I don’t get the Nebraskan pudding thing though. As a Nebraska native, should I be insulted? I think of kolaches (sp>) or rhubarb pie as the archetypical Nebraska sweet. And how about them runzas?
:- )
Flora, no – it’s a specific anecdote of my friend Claire’s from when she taught at the U. of Nebraska.
I’m kind of a fan of Nebraska myself, because of Willa Cather.
There is no place like Nebraska, good old Nebraska U.
Where the girls are the fairest, the boys are the squarest,
Than an old place that you knew
–actual unretouched fight song
Ahhhhhh they’re all like that. Me, I’m fond of Tom Lehrer’s “Fight Fiercely Harvard.”
To Sceptical Lawyer:
Not so way outside. The French Front National makes much of its support for Israel. It is both actual and code for racism (anti arab).; driven by french expatriates from Algeria and Trinitarian fundamentalists.