Christopher Hitchens assaulted in Beirut

[sabra]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/hitchens-assaulted-in-beirut-20090220-8dm9.html



LONDON: As a professional provocateur and vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens has been engaged in countless verbal punch-ups with his ideological opponents, most of them conducted from the safety of a television studio.

But when the author, broadcaster and journalist defaced a political poster in Beirut, he found himself at the wrong end of a bruising encounter that left him with a limp and nursing cuts and bruises.

Hitchens had been drinking in Beirut's main boulevard, Hamra Street, last Saturday afternoon with two other Western journalists after attending a rally to commemorate the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. They spotted a poster for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a far-right group whose logo bears a resemblance to the Nazi swastika, and Hitchens decided to act. "I couldn't tear it down but I got my marker out and wrote on it, effectively telling them to 'f--- off'," he said after arriving in Britain.

Hitchens's political statement was witnessed by a group of SSNP activists, who have a strong presence in Beirut.

He described how he was knocked to the ground, ending up with his shirt covered with blood after he cut his arm in the fall and "skinned" two fingers on one hand. A crowd later confronted the assailants, saving him from further injury.

[Justitia]

1. Drunk & Dumb is no way to travel thru the Middle East. -eom

[Cha]

33. Not

even.

[sufrommich]

2. "Hitchens had been drinking ". Shocked. nt

[bigscott]

3. more like

Hitchens drunk again.....

what a douche bag

[SoCalDem]

37. "...Hitchens had been drinking...".. says it ALL ..n/t

[Mari333]

4. dont drink and pontificate

and choose your battles wisely.

[wtmusic]

5. Speech is free for Hitchens, but not necessarily you

The failed state of Iraq, in a nutshell.

[peace frog]

6. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

But Hitchens has made a career of it.

[Canuckistanian]

7. Wow, what an idiot

He walks into one of the most politically charged countries in the Middle East, then proceeds to get drunk and starts scrawling insults on posters.

It's like he said to himself "I'd like to get get beaten up, but I don't have much time. What can I do?"

[Blue_Tires]

11. lol... he deserves the "brass ones that clank" award for that stunt

i don't know if he is fearless, crazy or stupid...probably a combination of the three

[Justitia]

13. OMG - your last line has me crying, I'm laughing so hard -LOL. -eom

[originalpckelly]

8. Well, although he's usually a douchebag...

I myself would probably do the same thing. That's pretty galling that they use a swastika like symbol:


That's pretty outrageous.

[KittyWampus]

18. okay, my thoughts went to camera shutter graphic and then to quilt pattern called pinwheel

[TlalocW]

19. That's not a swastika

That's a throwing star. Obviously Hitchens got off easy because he was apparently messing around with the logo for the local Ninja club.

TlalocW

[originalpckelly]

22. It's the Syrian Nazi party.

When it's a shape so close, with the same ideology, you need to exercise common sense and realize they're trying to come up with a variation on a Swastika.

[TlalocW]

25. Ninjas

TlalocW

[originalpckelly]

27. Are there many ninjas in Syria?

Just give up already, you're the only trying to say it isn't a swastika like thing.

[Silent3]

35. No one knows how many Ninjas there are anywhere.

If you know they're there, they can't be Ninjas!

[Silent3]

9. What annoys me most about Hitchens...

...is that he's considered by many to be the voice of atheism, and this atheist doesn't at all like having Hitchens as his public representative.

[MindPilot]

28. I agree with you!

Having had the unfortunate experience of a personal encounter with Hitchens, my hope is that he quickly fades into obscurity. He's a bigger embarrassment than O'Hair was.

[BootinUp]

10. Dumb Drunk Luck

Anyways, glad he wasn't seriously injured or killed.

[Deep13]

12. Just to be clear, he was assaulted for insulting the local Nazi party.

"National Socialist" is Nazi-speak for "Nazi."

Whatever his personal faults and whatever disagreements I may have with him on some specific issues, I appreciate him as a voice for rationality over superstitious dogma. I have found him to have a strong analytical mind and a deep and wide scope of historical, philosophical and literary knowledge. In particular, I find his book God Is Not Great to be a devastating dissection of religion and religious "values" in general and of the "good" parts of Christianity in particular.

Yeah, he was drunk. Yeah, as a matter of self-preservation, one should not be acting like that, especially in a foreign country. Still, he was right and he was subjected to violence for saying so.

[originalpckelly]

14. I know, I can't understand the weird reaction here.

It's so strange, it's as if they don't get that this is the local Nazi (or Nazi like) party.

[SidneyCarton]

31. If I may...

I understand Hitchens' revulsion and disgust, he saw a poster celebrating a group that emulates one of the most vicious, brutal and vile regimes in the history of man, and he does what anyone with a sense of history and moral outrage (albeit tempered with a fair amount of alcohol) might do, and proceeds to take a stand for the reality-based community.

That said, he should pick his battles more wisely. (I'll blame the booze, it has a knack for getting men far smarter than Hitchens into trouble) His attack on a symbol did no real damage to the Syrian Nazi Party, and nearly got him killed. A cost-benefit analysis of his actions (very difficult, admittedly while shellacked) would say that he paid a high price for almost no return.

While I am no great fan of Hitchens, I do not condemn him here, his outrage is perfectly justifiable, his actions however, were ill-concieved.

[Mz Pip]

15. He's lucky he got away

with just some cuts and bruises. It could have been a whole lot worse.

[Deep13]

16. True enough. nt

[sufrommich]

17. I don't think anyone here is defending the Lebanese Nazi

Party.

[originalpckelly]

20. Then why would some be against Hitchens doing it?

If I lived in a country where they put up Nazi posters, I would be doing far more than writing on them to go fuck themselves.

Some DUers are opposed to it, because it's Hitchens, they don't pay attention to who he was fucking with.

[Deep13]

26. No, of course not. nt

[Marr]

21. Good for him.

Probably not the brightest thing in the world to do, but there you go.

[originalpckelly]

24. I know, if anything, this raises my opinion of Hitchens.

That takes a lot of balls to do, sober or drunk.

[DemoTex]

23. Drunk as a Lord .. again.

The boy's got a problem. Looks like he's inching close to a permanent cure.

[City Lights]

29. You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

:nopity:

[Donald Ian Rankin]

30. Trying to stand up to Nazis is laudable.

There are many things about Hitchens that I disapprove of, but this is not one of them.

[MindPilot]

32. I'm a little surprised that anyone here is defending this guy.

He advocates the wholesale annihilation of Muslims, he's a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, (he is in favor of anything that results in dropping bombs on brown people) and he is very right-wing.

People who are deluding themselves into thinking this was some great courageous act of support for an oppressed people have probably never actually met him.

Hitchens is all about Hitchens.

[Blue_In_AK]

34. You're kidding me. He had been DRINKING?

Who knew? :rofl:

[Arugula Latte]

36. No one could have predicted that.

What's next ... That he was SMOKING INCESSANTLY, too?