And you're not the only one watching the masterpiece of a speech at the beginning of 2024. Let's hope there are still those of us listening to the great man in 2124. RIP Mr Hitchins.

Very pleased to know I’m not the only person who keeps coming back to this debate. His memory is kept alive by the sheer force of his arguments

@@alecsmith8050 you're certainly not alone, I revisit his debates and TV appearances and programmes now and then, just to remind myself what a genius sounds like.

"Painfully relevant" is how I feel about a lot of 00s-era Hitchens speeches these days.

I watch this several times a year, someone always needs this stuff explained to them - myself included.

Time to raise a Jhonny walker in his memory

He is needed today more then ever , there will unlikely be someone else like him again.

U mean james walker

@@AndyDeSantisRD unfortunately you’re right I think. No living person comes close

@@euphegenia Douglas Murray comes awfully close. Equally fearless, comparably eloquent, another erudite, and a personal protege and friend of the late great Hitchens.

"Come to think of it, how _can_ I prove the Earth is round?"

So articulate

how convenient that this line is so often used to defend fascists and holocaust deniers but not leftists or union reps. Then again, when a supposedly "marxist" like hitchens supports the iraq war, you have to wonder if his words are genuine or if it's all bollocks

My favorite quote.

@@sarcasmenul it is used to defend marxist and communist free speech, don't try that that. Now down to hitchens, he was a trotskyist. And he was entirely consistent with iraq war, you're being deliberately flippant. He took the side of the victim and supported the struggle of the iraqi people and of the secular democratic leftist kurds to free themselves from saddam and from hafez al assad and in Turkey and in Iran.

@Arkd Dee I think Hitch got that from Wodehouse's “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

same

Same here. Nice to see someone else feeling the same

M K: Very likely. Hitchens (like all sensible people) loved Wodehouse.

He’s just so concise and eloquent

Absolutely.

2024, and I'll still be watching these old hitchslaps well into 2034... ❤❤❤

Same here, this is timeless and could have been spoken at any point in the last 10 years

@@alecsmith8050 Even better than timeless, this speech, and subject matter in general, become more prescient with each passing day.

It's hard to say. This is one of the best speeches made by him and also made by anyone so I would posit it like this: Video > Speech > by Hitchens / By someone else > about X

It is,

Wonderful lol

If I had to fit a Hitch quote from this video on my forehead, it'd be "Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus." There are so many other great ones in here though. It's just ridiculous.

I love this thought, not as the text of the video tattooed on your forehead, but the actual video as a concept, tattooed on 🤣🤣🤣

You don’t have enough forehead.

Ouch

Thank you for sharing this.

Yes thanks for that info. Even the great Hitch can make a mistake.

I wish I read this, before memorising hitch's speech.😅😖

Really well done. Thanks.

Amen 🙏

He was turning when he was still alive.

@@abrahamlincoln9758 a dervish of diction and erudition his whole life long

I actually always wondered about that. It sounded like an inside joke, or perhaps the equivalent of a half serious rivalry between different universities. Care to provide any insight into the comment to an ignorant yank across the pond?

I love this comment hahahaha

@@TheJeremyKentBGross It's not really a British reference so much as a Hitchens one. There's a much older clip of him being asked about the late Billy Graham and he mentions the antisemitic views that the evangelist had (or used to have in the early '70s when he was recorded expressing them). Comparing this, Hitchens admits to having an aversion and/or phobia towards people from Yorkshire for reasons he can't explain. He then goes on to explain that this and antisemitism aren't really the same sort of prejudices. In this video, in referencing Yorkshire again, he's basically playing on an old in-joke.

@@Extra_050 Tbh I have trouble understanding antisemitism in general, especially in the modern world. My best guess is it being caused by envy as their mythology is the sort that engenders success. Although I can understand pretty easily that people did not appreciate the tactics of loan sharks in the middle ages, a role they often filled being unable to take stewardship or ownership of land. Although how they ended up in the situation to need that occupation in the first place is not entirely clear to me. I also gather that the nobility, who's siblings tended to control the church, used it as a platform to blame their own failures in leadership that caused general hardship for the public on them, in the same way that leaders today blame the middle class and incite riots (or pogroms). (I mean, what was the Saint Fentanyl riots if not modern pogroms incited by our overlords against the minor merchant class based on deliberate misinformation?) One Hispanic dude I sorta knew who seemed to be a bit on the antisemitic spectrum once asked how they were able to keep their own religion in the European middle ages when all the natives were more or less forcibly converted to Christianity at some point, which did seem like an interesting question that had never occurred to me. I think there's some animosity from the Islamic world based on the existence of Israel, but tbh I can't tell if that's real the cause, or just an excuse, and an excuse that perpetuates problems. I do think there must be a small but powerful mafia or two of that particular ethnicity that people object to, which would explain folks like Mel Gibson and Ye, but even accepting that probably exists, it doesn't even remotely imply that anything like a majority of the enthic group could be involved in it. Although it does seem like both people attacking and defending anything that probable mafia does, frame it in such a way as to imply it's all of them, instead of just a particular small cabal, which doesn't help matters. I wonder if Hitchens would be as amazing today, or if he would have gone full Sam Harris. I'd definitely like to see the timeline where Hitch, Bill Hicks, and George Carlin were still around. And also where Firefly was never canceled. Alas.

@@TheJeremyKentBGross Well, I can answer some of that: in Mediaeval and Renaissance Europe, Christians did not believe that usury (the practice of lending money and charging with interest) was compatible with the teachings of the New Testament. The Jews were obviously not subject to the same laws and they were also, as you say, barred from most guilds, so many of them turned to moneylending as a profession. This is likely why Shakespeare chose Venice as his setting of choice when he introduced his Jewish character Shylock in "Merchant of Venice". Venice was a place in Europe that had relative religious freedom and Jews were allowed to have their own businesses and kosher butchers. That more or less answers your Hispanic friend's question as to how Judaism remained in Europe: some countries tried to coerce Jews into conversion and even those who didn't sometimes held them with a level of suspicion due to their status as non-Christians, but on the other hand they were useful and so relations between some of them were relatively cordial. Much of our modern animus towards bankers probably stems from that era when you think about it: there's no meaningful reason to dislike banks, as they're just places where you put your money, but of course if ever the economy goes wrong they serve as a convenient distraction from the politicians who regulate them and who pass laws on where our taxes should go. On the question of Islamic/Islamist antisemitism, the answer is mixed. Part of it is obviously religious, because Jews, together with Christians, do not acknowledge Muhammad as a prophet, but it's also racial: Israel serves as a convenient geographic personification of all things they see as Jewish much as "the West" is looked at by them as the main driving force behind Christianity (and hence, Crusaders). Some Islamists propagate or translate into Arabic antisemitic and/or Holocaust-denying works to their less religious brethren to try to justify their hatred. As you rightly speculate, it is likely a means by which to distract from their leaders' own failings. Finally, it is of course true that the world's culture and tastes are shaped somewhat by various lobbyists and pundits, etc., but I don't think they're of any particular race or religion. Mel Gibson was raised by a Holocaust denier, which explains a few things there and Ye, bless him, is away with the fairies and surrounded by people who never say "no" in his presence.

immediately stupider* or after the day* ...idiot hehe

I weep with u man but on the side. Lets be stoic after all

Don't live in fear, lots of people get away with it.

do you adore him while said 12:29

@@chrispywilliams1992 The power structure of religion (People not the principles) are full of hatred or destruction. Religions power is political not spiritual

repent of your sin...of being a theist.

@@Harry-uq9qd I’d rather be free. I can hear your chains from over here

@@chrispywilliams1992 did you misread my comment?

And not only that, he had a panache and éclat that's usually reserved for career entertainers not public intellectuals. Fuck I wish eh were still around. In any case I try to exude his values and continue the fight in my own less brilliant way

And Bill Hicks.

Indeed I do!

Same here.

@@AFMMarcelD Oh stop. It's a platform not a country.

You have no understanding of irony. This website has never professed to be ‘free speech’, therefore youtube censoring shit on their site isn’t ironic in any fashion.

@@WhamBang You really are an idiot. You clearly don't have even the slightest clue what free speech is or why it is so important. For KZfaq to censor anything is iniquitous because it assumes that only tech geeks know what is right and what is wrong and that the rest of us are morons who need to be spoon fed the information that they decide is good and safe for us to receive. In your case of course they are probably correct.

And you would get handwaved away as a bigot so they can go back to scrolling Facebook on their phones without feeling guilty about it.

Many of those with whom he locked horns now carry the mantle of free speech. Not sure how he'd feel about it, but somebody needs to do it.

He is one of mine for sure

Extremely competitive

You damn right!!!

No he wouldn't, because 'cancelling' means nothing to those who don't place value on it. They can try to censor you or block you from social media, but we're humans, not computer programs. We cannot be cancelled.

I hope you look up the works and speeches of David Irving as well.

I never got the appeal of Jordan Peterson.

I do remember when "this guy" was a public intellectual, yes. I don't agree that Jordan Peterson needs to be brought up, nor that hes "delirious" nor a "crank". They are very different people and one does not take the place of the other.

In the movie perhaps, but not the book.

​@@TheJeremyKentBGrossAgreed, even though Snape did redeeming things and ultimately was a hero, he was very much a bully and needlessly cruel and unfair to Harry throughout the books.

Scientific consensus supports evolution.

That's not the context of which he was speaking. Did you watch his presentation or just cherry pick my quote to reply to? Science doesn't take refuge in consensus, it repeatedly tests and verifys.

Mr. Hitchens used Paines introduction in the age of reason as an example of the protection of freedom of speech to ones religious views. It can also be applied to ones opinion to anything (Mr. Hitchens uses the example of someone who believes the Holocaust never happened) and their right to express that opinion and it be protected. You can read the introduction here: www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/intro.htm

I second this point very strongly. Going along with whatever the majority says is lazy and thoughtless...it robs you of your own ability to think.

@@ScandinavianHeretic Then again, mindlessly going along with things that are not conscensus is equally bad.

I mean, all the social media realm has done is prove him righter than he even knew.

For whatever reason, it seems he looked at a world in which most profess an adherence to one set of religious beliefs or another and then ascribed the atrocious acts of flawed people to the belief system (or label) they had chosen. His thinking was so rooted in reason that he saw little benefit in thinking beyond it, which is the realm of belief and faith. I find it fascinating that his brother, Peter, is both staunch in his religious faith and resolute in his adherence to reason on worldly matters. What must their house have been like?