Christopher Hitchens Q&A
Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens takes questions from audience during his March 3, 2010, Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA. The lecture was presented by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, the Daniel Pearl Foundation and the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA. A well-known commentator on contemporary thought, politics and culture, Hitchens has written more than a dozen books and corresponded from more than 60 countries. He has contributed regularly to the Atlantic, Slate, Vanity Fair, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, Washington Post Book World, the Nation, the National Review and the New Left Review, among other media outlets. Honored frequently for his reporting and the literary quality of his prose, Hitchens received a National Magazine Award in 2007 and was a finalist for a 2007 National Book Award. He appears frequently on radio and television broadcasts. BACKGROUND: Daniel Pearl was a prominent Wall Street Journal reporter and the paper’s South Asia bureau chief when he was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002. Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, a computer science professor at UCLA, and his family established the Daniel Pearl Foundation to promote and continue Daniel’s mission of fostering cross-cultural understanding throughout the world. The lecture series, established at UCLA in 2002, features scholars, journalists and policymakers who have contributed original analyses or …
Tags: christopher hitchens, Hitchens, yitzhak rabin, Christopher, computer science professor, television broadcasts, judea pearl, journalist christopher hitchens
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“Fuck that!” HAHAHA. Hitchens… what a man. Love him.
recording quality is not very good, i hope UCLA with buy a proper gear.
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@schrire39 Oh, I am sure there are many facets to anti-semitism, much like there are probably many facets to racist and cultural Judaic/Islamic anti-Christianity, I am just staying focused on the topic, which happens to be the religious aspect of the conflagration.
@FaganRoberts you clearly have no grasp about the history or nature of antisemetism. You are under the misapprenhesion that it is some sort of theological dispute. Do some reading (some real reading), I don’t want mean to sound rude but your points are vague and ignorant. So I’m wrapping up my part of this dialouge. Feel free to have the last word.
@FaganRoberts you clearly have no grasp about what the history or nature of antisemetism. You are under the misapprenhesion that it is some sort of theological dispute. Do some reading (some real reading), I don’t want mean to sound rude but your points are vague and ignorant. So I’m wrapping up my part of this dialouge. Feel free to have the last word.
@FaganRoberts you clearly have no grasp about the history or nature of antisemetism. You are under the misapprenhesion that it is some sort of theological dispute. Do some reading (some real reading), I don’t want mean to sound rude but your points are vague and ignorant. So I’m wrapping up my part of this dialouge. Feel free to have the last word.
@FaganRoberts you clearly have no grasp about the history or nature of antisemetism. You are under the misapprenhesion that it is some sort of theological dispute. Do some reading (some real reading), I don’t want mean to sound rude but your points are vague and ignorant. So I’m wrapping up my part of this dialouge. Feel free to have the last word.
@comanchio1976 I actually figured that out after re-watching, but your reply was wonderfully cogent and informative nonetheless. So thanks. :)
@sgblack Yes. As long as Jews assert they are god’s chosen people Christians will have a specific reactions to this. As long as Christians believe Jews reject Christ and are doomed to eternal hellfire, Judaic believers will have a reaction to this. Atheists can and do laugh this off as we know better. But both sides of this religious difference are dead serious, and all sides act out in their own respective ways. Hence anti-semitism and Jewish inspired Christian cultural subversion. Insanity!
@schrire39 Often this hatred is based on the Jewish assertion that they are god’s chosen people. Sometimes it is based on Jewish anti-Christian pronouncements and actions against Christian traditions and culture based on old European assertions that they are saved for god’s salvation while Jews reject Christ and doomed to hell-fire. My only point is that religion confuses everything, on all sides. Jews, Christians, Islam, Hindus are all guilty of this. I’m semitic, non-Jewish, hence atheist.
@FaganRoberts sure &enlightened people (mostly Jews!) “call it out” all the time… but the history of Jew-hatred is a history of violent hatred and opression, not a “response” to notions some Jews may or may not have about being superiour. Historiacally Jews had absolutely no milatary protection or power. In other words, unless your genda is to *blame the victim*, the history of Jewhatred doesn’t have much to do with the notion of “choseness”…. oh, and you never explained what “I’m Semetic”
@schrire39 I think many people have an aversion to any religious group or racial subdivision that proclaims itself to be specially chosen by a god to exist thereby giving them justification to assert themselves based on that false superiority when interacting w/ others at any level. Whether it be merely interpersonal or all the way up to the international hegemonic arena. Whether it is rational or not, it rubs many people the wrong way. It needs to be called out if progress is to be made.
@FaganRoberts firstly, what does “I’m Semetic” mean? does it absolve you from rational debate or mean that you cannot possibly have an irrational hatred of Jews? secondly, hatred of an enitire group of people is not “a reaction”- it is dangerous pyschological impulse in the mind of the hater…people hate people for all sorts of reasons. The fact that Judaism contains in it superior/ racist notions of chosn people is simply *not* the cause of anitsemetism …of course, Jew haters say it is…
@schrire39 It is “crazy stuff.” And I know the racist “god’s chosen people” mentality forms much of the reactionary basis for anti-semitism throughout the ages, particularly with other religious fanatics. We can laugh it off. Or you can proclaim confusion and assert some kind of personal agenda to others regarding antisemtism or antiChristianity or whatever reaction. But the god chosen people mental perversion is REAL my friend. I’m semitic , my agenda is exposing facts not personal vendettas.
@stokesterful but thank God for people like you saving humanity by posting comments on YouTube
@FaganRoberts “never fails to mention”? are you kidding me? Have you read God is Not Great? Have you seen Hitch debate various rabbis in which he repeats over and over again that circumscion is “genital mutilation”….?
also, don’t confuse your issues: God of Abraham, chosen people and religion maybe crazy stuff,- but antisemtism is a very real phenomenon. Methinks you an agenda of some kind….
@MrJuha82 im done talking with you… find someone else to listen 2 you….
@diceyLee i think we can to change still opinions and talks here but still dont need to be friends either.
AMEN.
@diceyLee Jews are ok in my book.
It was cruel when Nazis kills a huge bunch of Jews in Germany a many many years back.
It was horrible Aadol Hitler’s season.
Oh men Hitler is surely in the hell.
no i didnt hate Jews because, until now, i didnt know Bernie Madoff was one….DAMN YOUSS… ;)
@sgblack I really don’t think he meant that. I think he was referring to how Jews have been the historical ’scape goat’ for many failing society’s ills, a barometer of ill weather engulfing a nation.
Probably due to the universal ‘other-ness’ that the Jews have been viewed with, due to their restricted professions over the centuries(in many European countries and possibly others)..all stemming back to that whole ‘christ-killing’ mentality Hitch was talking about.
Hope that made sense?
I don’t quite understand the point Christopher was making with regards to anti-semitism beinga unique harbinger of a society’s degredation and ultimate downfall. This would seem to indicate a certain ‘chosen-ness’ of Jewish people, would it not? I’m actually Jewish, but I abhor the ‘chosen people’ mentality and was under the impression that Hitch (a personal hero of mine actually) felt the same.
Anyone care to explain?
I wish he would cough at my face
@Golkarian I suppose I could see what he was getting at. The god label, for me, carries something else with it. Things like omnipotence and the ability to perform miracles etc So to the extent that they both in their own way control or oversee what happens, they are similar, but that’s where the similarities would end so I’m not sure it’s similar to a belief in a god at all.