This three-way is coming mostly from the Right. But for Soviet history buffs and self-identified Marxists, it’s worth a good listen. It’s not dumb.
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August 13th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
3…2…1… Start the Hitchens hate…
This has been up for a whole hour and no mouth frothing yet.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Cash for Clunkers anyone?
August 14th, 2009 at 4:07 am
$1.50
August 14th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Hitchens on the Hoover Inst. payroll ? Nice.
(Is that suitable Dan ?)
Those final quotes from Trotsky are totally new to me and the most interesting thing in this dialog. I enjoyed Service’s dismissal of Trotsky as a credible alternative to Stalin – have long thought romanticizing Trotsky as “the good guy” was mostly fantasy and unwillingness to look at the Bolshevik project for what it really was – imposition of a totally unscrupulous, albeit modernizing, dictatorship.
Hitchens is the ’68 generation’s Max Schactman. No matter how far to the right he moves, by sheer force of intellectual will he manages to keep it all a matter of principle as a “man of the left.” Fascinating, sort of – I mostly gave up on Hitchens-watching a few years ago, but it was good sport from about 2001 to 2006.)
August 14th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I agree with reg. Service has Hitchens outflanked and is rolling back the mythology of Trotsky.
Furthermore, the wishful fantasy that Trotsky could have been an alternative to Stalin also obscures and mythologizes Lenin.
Pop quiz — who was the then 25 year writer who visited the dying Trotsky the day after the attack?
August 14th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Arrrrgh… let’s have that last one read:
Pop quiz — who was the then 25 year old writer who visited the dying Trotsky the day after the attack?
August 14th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Rob, Dying to hear the answer. Who? Bonus questions: Who were the world reknown painter and the celebrated poet directly implicated in the plot/s against Trotsky (Not Diego Rivera).
August 14th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Saul Bellow. He had travelled to Mexico to meet Trotsky. In this account by CH, Bellow arrives too late — Trotsky is already gone.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/hitchens-bellow
As a footnote on page 205 of “Koba the Dread” by Martin Amis, Bellow has arrived just before Trotsky dies.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Marc – David Siqueros.
Okay – here’s an easy one. What Hollywood movie involved that sex scene with Leon Trotsky that so many of us had been waiting for for for so long ? Hint: The director was also responsible for The Lion King !!!!
August 14th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Also a Poet ? Okay, I won’t google this, but I’ll guess it’s got to be Neruda.
August 14th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Reg.. yes, Neruda. At the time of Trotsky’s murder Chile had a pop front govt with Communist participation. Neruda was the Chilean consul in Mexico and worked with She killingtalinists to provide Trotsky’s assassin Ramon Mercader with a exit visa from Mexico prior to the killing. Ever read Neruda’s “Ode to Stalin” ?? Chilling.
I imagine the answer to ur question must be Frida, no?
August 14th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Yep.
In looking for a translation of that Neruda poem (which rather pathetically expresses faith in Malenkov to “carry on” in it’s last line, which makes all of the preceding blather seem more ridiculous than anything else) I found this bit of trivia: Neruda also wrote a “Saludo a Batista” back in the 1940s. Yes, THAT Batista. Pretty embarrassing stuff…
August 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/
great site.
August 15th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Reg
I didnt know about Neruda kowtowing to Batista, but no real surprise there. Batista’s first government included popular front Communists and Neruda was following the Party line. I just looked up the Saludo a Batista and it’s rather nauseating for sure. I have never been a fan of his because my knowledge of poetry is too scant to overcome his rather servile Stalinism and specifcally his dubious role in the murder of Trotsky.
““To be men! That is the Stalinist law! . . ./We must learn from Stalin/ his sincere intensity/ his concrete clarity. . . . [...] And Stalin, the giant,/ Carried her at the heights of his forehead. . . ./A wave beats against the stones of the shore./But Malenkov will continue his work.”(full English translation
August 15th, 2009 at 4:45 am
“Batista’s first government included popular front Communists”
Well if that isn’t enough inspiration for a poem I don’t know what is !!! Neruda wrote some beautiful stuff, but he was also obviously quite the whore.
August 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Apparently, even uncle Walter had an interest in this stuff:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751940/
August 16th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I have never been a fan of his because my knowledge of poetry is too scant to overcome his rather servile Stalinism and specifcally his dubious role in the murder of Trotsky.
I liked the one about preparing conger stew.
I will say this, however: I am a big fan of the Brazilian singer Luciana Souza, but her CD of Neruda poems set to music is somehting I just can’t bear.