Paxman interviews Christopher Hitchens - Newsnight archives (2010)

he's been at it the best part of 40 years however tough the hide if he wants to he'll sting it such as telling President Kennedy's spokesman that his boss was a murderer even to kill his allies like the same family in Vietnam the right yeah nothing to do what the hell come oh yes if no proof of that whatever you would pay to say that at the time you paid to say that we had a liar but then we don't have this we had a liar make statement arrest who was involved in war now 61 and living in Washington cancer came calling this summer Christopher can we start by talking about the cancer what is the prognosis well the the particular form of malignancy I have is in my esophagus but it's metastasized as they love to say to my lymph nodes you can practically feel one in my clavicle on bad days anyway and I'm afraid to at least a tiny speck in my lungs I mean the prognosis for that is that if you lump it all together and you leave out every other consideration 5% of us live another five years so that's not ideal but I have a strong constitution for example just served me quite well though if I hadn't had such a strong one I might have let it and we'll healthy life to handle but in the meantime in the old cliche you live day to day though yeah yes one does but actually who doesn't there is however I think something specifically terrifying which I'm trying to oppose my writing and my appearances about cancer are you terrified by it no I think it's a superstition and one among many and I think I know where it comes from actually if you if you like me to say I mean well when I was a child we were all very frightened still by polio it takes an effort to remember that now it in many countries people still our previous generations would have been smallpox the heart that never gets the right rhythm bronchitis TB all these things but none of them have the same I think horror as cancers being allowed to acquire and I think it's probably because of the idea of there being a live thing inside you a sort of malignant alien that can't outlive you but that does in a sense have a purpose to its life which is to kill you and then die it's like an obscene parody of the idea of being pregnant in fact I always feel sorrier for women who have cancer than men for many idea of hosting another life if any kind is sort of hard to think about but for a woman it must be a grotesque nasty version of the idea of being a host to another life I have a feeling this is why people propitiated with bogus cures terrible rumors scare stories and so on and I've set my face to try to demonstrate that it's a it's analogy like any other and it will yield to reason and science and that's what I'm trying to spend my time vindicating reason and science but yet the word most commonly used about cancer is battling cancer isn't it yes and I again think that's a version of the pathetic fallacy it's it's giving it's giving a real existence to a something that's in a sense inanimate or real sense inanimate if it has a sort of life but not a real I rather think it's battling me I have to say it's much more what it feels like I mean I have to sit passively every few weeks and have a huge dose of kill or cure venom put straight into my veins and then follow that up with other poisons to don't feel like fighting at all possibly resisting I suppose but no you feel as if you're drowning in passivity and being assaulted by it by something that has a horrible persistence that's working only while you're asleep does it make you angry no it makes me sober objective I think well this is a this is the best-known of our our disease enemies I'm one of its many many many victims I'm probably one of the lucky ones in point of being at to have treatment and care I'd like to prove to other people that it's not the end of everything to be diagnosed with it in other words yes it can be resisted I think I prefer resistance to battling I didn't pick this fight but I'm no I'm in it I'd like to give it my best shot and as I say what what this means to me is putting myself on the side of those men of medicine and science and reason who are trying to reduce it to something that is understandable similar bill to reason and and that will be brought under control but the likelihood is that it will kill you but with a certainty is that's what I'll die from yeah some people die with cancer I might die with it it will be unless I have a heart attack which I could easily have by the way I'm much more likely now to have a blood clot than I was before or a stroke perhaps but I mean no it's the proximate cause of my death and I'd I'm both lucky and unlucky to know it in advance and be able to take its measure and there will be people and they won't say it to your face perhaps but the well he smoked a lot he drank a lot yes well that's exactly what's demystifying about it I mean they're also people who say it's God's curse on me that I should have it near my throat because that was the organ of blasphemy which I used for so many years and I used many other organs to blaspheme as well if it comes to that no it's it is banal in that precise way it's if you let a rather bohemian in rackety life as I have it's precisely the counsel you'd expect to get that's a bit of a new one you're not an old man and you're living with the prospect of an abbreviated life yes what does that do to the way you think about life well it um tuberose slightly from dr. Johnson it does concentrate the mind of course to realize that your time is even more rationed than you thought it was and though I can be stoic in point of myself about that because everyone has to go sometime and whatever day but the newspapers came out and I wasn't there to read them I've always thought that'd be a bad day at least for me I now have a so I have a more pressing idea what that might be like anyway that's being stoic from my own sake but for my family it's not very nice and I could wish perhaps to have led a more healthy and upright life for their sake and that's a very melancholy refraction of course and then there are things I would like to live to see I've mentioned some of them in an article I wrote on the subject I'd like to see the World Trade Center reopened I'd like to see Osama bin Laden on trial or dead there are places I'd like to go people I'd like to meet books I'd like to at least reread if not read for the first time but in a sense that would always be true I still I hope have these ambitions has it given you a mellower view of humanity mellower yes something about that word that I don't relish I don't know quite why well that's because you're a you know um ulema sister control hello no I mean no if you like no it's give me a view is already quite stark which is we're born into a losing struggle I knew that when I was well or thought out myself to be well we're born into a losing struggle we're in joined by the faithful to consider ourselves to be born sick and yet commanded to be well the hope the whole thing is at best ironic some think meaningless or random I don't know if I want to go that far but it's a stark existence and for many people born in this portion of circumstances than mine it's always stuck it was stark every day till they died this just makes it's darker does it make you regret saying or doing things this doesn't know I mean I have sometimes had cause to regret saying things but wish I'd said them in a different way but that's part of the ongoing revision of being a writer I hope this hasn't prompted me to that now perhaps it should your famously a person with very strong convictions and a very persuasive forceful form of of argument do you have it thank you do you know it's that's what you do you're you're you're celebrated worldwide for it do you have any sense of why you were like that no I don't my parents were both people of principle it's true but they didn't expect to inflict this on others I mean it was just something they were something they did and something they inculcated in me but they didn't want an audience for it no I wanted an audience for it do you regret any of the targets you chose like I mean who needs to attack mother Teresa was very important to attack mother why well for the same reason that people admire her which is you have to care about the millions of people who are stricken by millennial poverty I mean poverty of the sword it's almost impossible to escape from that was her pretended concern now as it happens was put it no by no means well you say that but it wasn't her fault that people were in poverty not in the first place but as it happens I could go on a length by this but summarized in one one statement which i think is pretty hard to refute the best-known cure for poverty we've come up with is something called the empowerment of women if you give women control over their cycle of reproduction you don't keep them chained to an animal cycle annual pregnancy and so forth and you give them if you if you add to that by throwing in a handful of seeds or some credit you've done very well nowhere where that's tri does it not work you'll see in an instant Mother Teresa has spent her entire life campaigning against that she thought the contraception and abortion were morally equivalent and that abortion was murder now that's not what Calcutta needs and I think her teachings and preachings were actually counter to the cause that she's supposed to represent so I thought it was very important to point that out are there any of the targets of your polemic or essay in the past that you regret choosing no no I don't I will regret only not doing more about it you fell out with a lot of people over your support for the decision to go to war against Saddam I say yes do you regret that at all well it wasn't people dead maybe to say one had no regrets would be a mean would be uh normally unreflecting I think no one can be other than horrified than that the current state of of Iraq but I don't take the view the glib view that's taken by so many people that the casualties of all the result of the intervention I mean for one thing it's an outrage to the idea of moral responsibility last month in Iraq and the al-qaeda forces broke into a Catholic Church as it happens in Baghdad and masker about 50 people people say that's Tony Blair's fault or George Bush's fault emissary it how dare you absolve the actual murderers of what they have done say well they wouldn't be there if we weren't there how are you so sure al-qaeda is operating in enumerable countries and was certainly present in the form of mr. tsankawi in Iraq before we got there I'm not going to have it put like that no I also think that there was a terrible misery and implosion coming to Iraq as long as it was left in the controllers that I was saying plus UN sanctions that affected mostly the Iraqi people I thought that was an impossible state of affairs and I finally found I couldn't support any policy that involved the continuation of Saddam Hussein in power the private ownership of Iraq in other words by him and his crime family I thought that you couldn't give your support to any policy that accepted that so to that extent I'm not apologetic but it did a lot of damage to the United States and waterboarding for example which George Bush only a couple of weeks ago defended as not being torture and as a legitimate means well I'm one of the few people you're likely to meet as dean water I know and I read with everyone applauds you for three my read was I read with them with alarm and discussed the former presidents What did he say damn right down some awful I mean try to live up seemed to me to the worst interpretation himself as a Texan big mouth I don't sacrifice any of my internationalist or humanitarian dilemma Craddock principles in saying that these principles are however incompatible with the existence of regimes like that of Saddam Hussein slobodan milosevic Charles Taylor in Liberia and others who I think Tony Blair deserves credit for helping to get rid of whatever else may be said that must be part of the account you didn't ask me you only said did I regret the targets I did pick there are some I regret not picking I was much too soft on without me I say it in my memoir I I claim to have had good reasons for it I was very keen to see the end of white supremacist dictatorship in southern Africa and I was probably soft-pedaling what I knew about some of zanu-pf but having a good motive is not a good enough reason for doing something that was a betrayal really of principle anyway hoping to see the end of these and others is is a good reason for KBO as muttering on well it EVC will allow that to be said well it's bit early in the evening but we can try and family values and we're sitting here talking in Washington and you have said that you you felt you were born in the wrong country yeah did you feel that it's a bit like the question what was for me a bit like the question why did I want to be a writer essentially unanswerable I could only say that it was more that I felt I had to run and I wanted to and when I was not much older I was in my mid-teens I began to have a very strong feeling of sort of pull from the American planet best way I think of phrasing it didn't know why none of my family had ever been didn't know much about it but very strong gravitational pull which eventually I succumbed to and now because as you know god says life has to be lived forward and then reviewed backwards now I sort of dunno in there were versions the two things are the same in order for me to become an independent self-starting writer I had to move to the United States had to leave England why you may ask I don't know but it could have something to do with the relative openness the United States you didn't have to keep on surpassing so many approval tests as you did seem to in London you're a polemicist yes and you look at our country now with its coalition government yes muddling along yes as its muddled along for many long years and how do you feel I mean could could you exist there in Britain I have half of my life still to look back on I was about 30 when I left a lot of that was formative it's where I learned to love literature and look at my bookshelves would show what I like still anglo-american is what I am I think it's quite a nice synthesis what do I think about the Cameron Clegg coalition it doesn't make me think all that much I have to say that speaks volumes in itself it might yes also I suppose book for historical reasons I joined the Labour Party as soon as I was eligible to do so I watch more the future and character of the Labour Party I still feel involved in that do you still consider yourself a leftist yes really yeah I do exist as you know many of your critics would say what's happened to you is that you as you waistband expanded your politics move further to the right well they should see my West man I've just like 30 pound me not not your nicest possible way and but the accusation oh of course well it's such a well-known script that it is indeed yes serving of the name cliche and I pin that sure accusation on my kisses that's what they're resorting to him to do any of these labels apply to you leftist or whatever I mean you're more of an iconoclast aren't you well there isn't a global international working-class movement anymore they used to be some of us miss it like a missing limb but it's gone is it likely to be replaced I don't think so is there a socialist theory of an alternative world economy that just in theory could stand up against the idea of a market system over define not not conspicuously no the anti-globalization movement seems to me to be nostalgic for pre-industrial society in many ways thus to be rather conservative from this you could probably tell that i still think like a marxist which i do yes you believe in the dialect yes and in the materials conception of history yeah I do that the end of the Cold War really buggered everything up didn't it um yes it did it was a huge release of human energy huge release of human energy and emancipation it was a great day November 9th 1989 I have on live just behind me you can see it a chunk of the Berlin Wall on my mantelpiece and I was in Romania to see the end of the shadow regime the worst of them all and mature eyes is my view that that human nature is actually incompatible with dictatorship and savoring conflict is intrinsic to human history yes and there will be some further conflict many people say it has already begun and it's the conflict between the West and sort of Islamofascism do you think that is a conflict which can be lost by the West well first on conflict you're completely right it's it's unavoidable and I'm glad of that because I think it's desirable especially in the United States there's a huge privilege given to the word unity or unification partly because it's a very various and multifarious societies big need for good manners but if you say I'm a unifier not a divider you expect and usually get applause I'm a divider I think only only division can cause progress you'll say the politics of division politics is division by definition if there was no disagreement there was no fight that been a project so the illusion of unity isn't worth having and anyway is unattainable what I do think of as the greatest crisis greatest conflict at present is it's a version of the old conflict we between totalitarianism and free thought which is in other words between theocracy and the Enlightenment and the form in which this is currently being played out you could define as the West versus Islam but it's not quite so within many Islamic countries that are people who have a greater respect for pluralism than there are people in Britain who would like to censor me for criticizing Islam for example but roughly you describe the the outlines correctly yes I refuse to be told what to think or how let alone what to say or write by anybody but most certainly not by people who claim the authority of fabricated works of primeval myth and fiction and once want me to believe that these are divine that I won't have that's the original repudiation the first rebellion against mental slavery comes from saying this is man-made it's not divine and to be clear about what you're talking about here you'll doom at the Bible and the Koran yet we'll add the and the Torah yes yeah all of these are works of fiction all of these are depraved works of man-made fiction yeah and in what Wade is saying that you find the Quran laughable not laughable in places in what way does that help the spread of reason oh well I think mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly holy texts that are dictated by God and show that they are man-made what you have to show they're internal inconsistencies and absurdities and one of the one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the abilities and laugh at Authority it's it's it's an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like but they if they call it that they have to assume that there's something to be blaspheme some divine work well I don't accept the premise a lot of people in your position might take Pascal's wager they might say I don't know whether I'm right or wrong yes but if I accept the possibility of there being a purpose under God I I can't lose either way because if there isn't I've lost nothing and if there is I gain yes why haven't you done that well I've I thought about Pascal's wager and wrote about it in my book long before I became possibly mortally sick and what I've said about it was this shall we just quickly say what it says yes please well Pascal was a great mathematician and one of the founders of probability theory actually I think it's his lowest point is what's called his wager or sometimes his gambit he says rather like a huckster what do you got to lose you win everything if you bet on God and you've everything to lose if you're wrong well what does this involve if it's correct it involves a very cynical God and a rather stupid one who will say ah I noticed you make a profession of faith just there and I also because I'm God I know why you did because it was in the hope of winning favor with me well that's fine you'll there forget it that seems to me a rather contemptible thing and necessarily therefore to entail a rather contemptible human being says I don't really believe this I have no faith but what can I lose by pretending to God that I do I might get a break I mean this is pretty low isn't it if I'm surprised to find when I pass on from the state of chess that I'm facing a tribunal which you notice by the way you're not allowed to bring a lawyer there's no jury there's no appeal I mean this is altogether unattractive why people want it to be believed their God is this way I don't know but suppose that I'm there maybe one person tribunal depending on your view of the Trinity I would say I hope you noticed that I didn't try and curry favor that I was honestly unable to believe in the claims made by your human spokespersons now do I get any understanding and if that doesn't work well then I don't know what would but I'm not going to try anything serve I'll I'm resolved on that point it would be more comforting wouldn't it and more comfortable which the serve I'll know to make an accommodation to have some belief in a possibility of this not being the end well as long as I don't have to take the word of other humans on what are the necessary propitiation xand gestures and subjection z' I have to submit myself to in order to qualify words there there are many many discrepant religions all of whom say only if I support them or endorse them will I qualify well now I don't know that there is no such thing as consciousness without the brain for example that there's no such survival I'd very much doubt it but let's say we don't know enough to say it's impossible I I would say what is impossible is that other humans can know what the conditions are whereby you qualify for survival that I do know is false do you fear death no I'm not afraid of being dead that's to say there's nothing to be afraid of I won't know I'm dead with my strong conviction I won't and if I find that I'm alive in any way at all well that'll be a pleasant surprise not quite like surprises but I've strongly take leave to doubt it I'm I can't be to insouciant I mean we we one can't live without fear this question what is your attitude towards fear I am afraid of a sordid death I'm afraid that that I would die in an ugly or college way in cancer can be very pitiless in that that's a fear of dying is yes sir of death right there was so if I forget now which you are what do you use a good distinction what do you think of death no of dying yes I feel a sense of waste about it because I'm not ready I feel a sense of betrayal to my family and I like to think even to some of my friends who would miss me I'm done things aren't attained objectives but as I said before I hope I'd always have that if I was a hundred when I was checking out but no my I think my main fear is of is of being incapacitated or imbecilic at the end that that of course is not something to be afraid of it's going to be terrified on Bertrand Russel said I believe that when I die my body will rot . well who doesn't I mean that's it well that's really actually he does go on to say a bit more than that but he's but that's uncontroversial I mean nobody expects to get their old body back I certainly don't want body back then I'll die with and nobody would it would be no doing no-one any favors so some reassembly of atoms would have to occur but they'll have to occur anyway if only for us to be reunified with those who died so that we could live got blown to pieces for doing so do you think it's been a life well-lived I'd really have to leave that to others Jeremy and I have to I'm encouraged I'll say this much I've been encouraged in the last few months by some extraordinary generous letters including these are the ones I take most to heart from people I've never met or don't know if they say that what I've written or done or said means anything to them then I'm I'm happy to check in to face value for once I'll say I'll take that and yes it cheers me up and I hope it isn't written with the intention of doing so though I must allow for it possibly being for that reason but in case you are watching this um anybody and you ever wonder whether to write to anyone I always do because you'd be surprised by how much of this economy I've regrets Cheers regret I regret not doing it more often myself thank you very much my pleasure you

Channel: BBC Newsnight

Views: 1,123,190

Rating: 4.8757186 out of 5

Keywords: hitchens, christopher hitchens, paxman, jeremy paxman, interview, newsnight, bbc, news, bbc news, bbc newsnight, bbcnewsnight, archives, newsnightarchives, newsnight archives, cancer, mother theresa

Id: LIVEsa2g4ag

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/DunedinWorrBaDit]

RIP Hitch.

I would have enjoyed 20 more years of your thoughts. You would have been one hell of a podcaster too.

[u/Watershed787]

In these times, I get such catharsis from him.

[u/atswim2birds]

Minor nitpick: this interview was recorded in November 2010, not "right before" Hitch died in December 2011.

At 07:32 he says "There are things I would like to live to see ... I'd like to see the World Trade Center reopened, I'd like to see Osama bin Laden on trial or dead." Hitch did live long enough to see and write about bin Laden's death in May 2011.

[u/0osimo0]

"We're born into a losing struggle. We're enjoined by the faithful to consider ourselves to be born sick - yet commanded to be well. The whole thing is at best ironic. Something meaningless or random... I wouldn't go that far. But it's a stark existence "

[u/[deleted]]

He said so much and still had so much to say. A voice of reason and logic in a world of confusion and emotion.

[u/Hubristic_Ballbag]

Legend.

[u/RandoScando]

I found Hitch interesting because I disagreed with him equally as often as I enthusiastically agreed with him. All the same, he was maybe the only person in memory for whom I always found the argument entirely compelling and would be hard pressed to create a counter argument. More often than not, i integrated his arguments into the construction of my own beliefs and opinions. Not necessarily agreeing with him 100%, but at the very least conceding that he was right about at least parts of his arguments. Truly a genius.

[u/turnturnburn]

So I got to see Hitchens speak at an event in Texas shortly before his death, even got his autograph on a pamphlet.

At one point during the conference he sat up on stage in front of a banquet hall full of people sitting around large tables. I was with a student group so we were sitting in a couple rows of chairs lining the back of the hall. Then it happened. While Christopher was taking a second to breathe after talking someone, somewhere in the room farted. It was a real squeaker. Now the room was full of adults and there were a couple of giggles but it died out pretty quickly, except for my friend who was sitting right next to me.

He made the mistake of trying to completely stifle his laughter which ended up making him laugh that much harder. So for a good 3-4 minutes after the fart had happened he was sitting there, face as red a tomatoes trying not to explode from laughter. Obviously everyone sitting next to him was.seeing him struggle and in turn trying not to bust out laughing either. I tried pinching him on the leg for a good minute or so before he finally managed to cough/choke down the laugh.

Then we went and got some books signed. That's my hitchens story.

Oh and also there was a guy there who was PhD thesis was about whatever the exact disease was that ended up killing him, and he got him to sign the paper. Hitchens thought it was kinda funny.

[u/TheWickedSon]

"Ive used many other organs to blaspheme" what an elegant mother fucker he was!