My guest this week is the writer Matt Johnson. He’s written for Quillette, Haaretz, The Daily Beast, and many other outlets, and he’s here this week to discuss his new book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment. Christopher Hitchens was an extraordinary figure. He was a brilliant, wide-ranging, and famously fluent writer, a literary man, a fierce advocate for his chosen political causes, a great wit, and (as I learned firsthand) an accomplished debater. A Marxist in his youth and an advocate for various left-wing causes throughout his life, he was also a liberal in the classical sense, though his support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to a falling-out with many American liberals.
We lost Hitch to cancer in 2011, but Matt thinks his brand of liberal universalism can still rescue a left that, as Matt sees it, has been derailed by identity politics, knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and hostility to globalization. But is the contemporary left even worth saving at this point? Matt thinks many traditional left-liberal policy preferences—like single-payer health insurance—and advocacy for the working class have taken a backseat to identity, with disastrous results. Matt talks about why the American left needs to reacquaint itself with Hitchens’s brand of “fearless liberalism” and why they seem so resistant to it.
I may not have agreed with Hitchens on every issue, but I share the deeper commitments—to the dignity of the individual, to democracy, and to the necessity of remaining open to change—that made him what he was. Matt’s book is a great introduction to Hitchens and a compelling argument on behalf of those commitments. I hope the left is listening.
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0:00 How Matt first encountered Christopher Hitchens
6:07 Matt’s new book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment
8:00 Why Matt thinks Cornel West’s Vietnam-Afghanistan analogy is flawed
14:21 What’s worth preserving in the left-liberal tradition?
21:38 Matt: Identity politics is a “toxin”
27:20 Was affirmative action ever necessary?
35:29 Matt: I wish the left would rediscover Hitchens’s universalism
45:04 Hitchens’s “fearless liberalism”
Recorded July 6, 2023
Links and Readings
Matt’s new book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment
Hitchens’s NYRB review of Douglas Murray’s Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas
Hitchens’s book, Why Orwell Matters
George Orwell’s book, Keep The Aspidistra Flying
Glenn’s recent conversation with Cornel West
Matt’s Quilette essay on John Mearsheimer
Matt’s Quillette essay on Bayard Rustin
Nathan Glazer’s book, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy
Roland Fryer’s NYT oped, “How to Fix College Admissions Now”
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Atlantic essay, “The Case for Reparations”
Bayard Rustin’s 1965 Commentary essay, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement”
Norman Finkelstein’s book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Come to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom
Glenn’s conversation with Norman Finkelstein
Matt Johnson – The Lessons of Christopher Hitchens