Commentary on Christopher Hitchens Essay: ‘Assassins of the Mind’

Writer Christopher Hitchens at the 9th Annual LA Times Festival of Books on April 25, 2004. (Amanda Edwards/Getty Images) The writer-journalist wrote an essay on freedom of expression in 2009.

Part 2 looks at how freedom of expression can be destructive if used without restraint.

As discussed in part 1, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued in 1989 a religious edict, or fatwa, calling for the killing of novelist Salman Rushdie for writing “The Satanic Verses.” In his essay, “Assassins of the Mind” (2009), Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) calls out this fanaticism as “the opening shot” in a war on freedom of expression.

Hitchens, a British journalist and commentator, was born Christian, but from his days at Oxford disavowed religion. As a writer and public speaker, Hitchens gained notoriety by irreverently penning articles about otherwise popular public figures, including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. He moved to America, where he spent his most high-profile years.

Ironically, in defending free speech in the wake of the Salman Rushdie affair, Hitchens claims that faith, rather than fanaticism, is the problem; his misdiagnosis flows from the very fundamentalism he fumes at. Free speech absolutists like him render freedom a religion unto itself, celebrate choice above everything else, and fault anyone who threatens its expression.

Hundreds of Muslims gather outside the site of a reading of the "Satanic Verses" in 1989 in New York to protest the book of Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie, accused of blasphemy. Ron Haviv/AFP via Getty Images

Rather grandly, Rushdie once declared that, without the “freedom to offend,” freedom of expression dies. That he was nearly killed by someone who had allegedly taken offense is a reminder that this freedom remains endangered.

All great art and science has offended someone at some point. But in championing the freedom to offend in such a utopian vein, Hitchens is as wrong to insist that “nothing is sacred” as Rushdie is to imply it.

There are several other belief systems besides religion: legal, judicial, legislative, police, bureaucratic, journalistic, academic, and electoral. The freedom to offend is balanced by other factors in these systems.

For instance, Venezuela would not abandon elections because a dictator perverted its electoral system. Societies hold erring individuals, not institutions, to account, and require them to abide by moral and constitutional principles. How unfair it is to hold the institution of religion alone to a higher standard. As Bishop Robert Barron hints, the revived Marxist-Left of communism, too, is a kind of newfangled fanatical religion.

Bishop Robert Barron. (Diegobcardenas/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Free Speech Absolutism

That the civilized world hesitates to chastise communism doesn’t make it acceptable. This post-truth hypocrisy normalizes depravity and pulverizes free thought before it becomes word or action, in ways that would bewilder even the most bigoted religious figures. What you are innocent of on Thursday, you’ll be guilty of on Friday—homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, misogyny, sexism, racism, misgendering, or hate speech.

Yes, we must resist fatwa-like policing of words and actions by totalitarian religious figures and their followers. But avowed atheists exploit religion, too. Barron calls communism “monstrously oppressive,”  like bigoted theocracies, bent on fomenting conflict. Tibetan scholar Judith Hertog wrote of communist China, “If Mao wanted to eliminate religion, Xi wants to nationalize it.” Even otherwise pacifist Buddhism, in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka, adopts totalitarian expressions that, strangely enough, claim to check Islamic fundamentalism.

Following the vulgarizing of Christianity in the 2024 Olympics, Barron wonders, as Simon Gray did with Hitchens: “Would they … have dared mock Islam” similarly? Barron says that the radicalized left shows tolerance for everyone except those who denounce their depravity, taking liberties with Christians that they wouldn’t with Muslims.

Do Words Matter?

Rushdie once mused that language was the knife he used to counter bigotry. But it’s no longer just besieged writers who’re weaponizing language as politics. Nearly everyone is.

Gods of grievance now occupy the town square. Whites shouldn’t speak on the black experience. Men shouldn’t write about women’s issues. Native-born citizens shouldn’t comment on the immigrant experience. Old books and films can’t be re-released without a sensitivity reader’s edits. No one should have anything to do with fossil fuels. Offense, like tar, paves all roads.

Rights belong in a hierarchy. It’s why nations demand respect toward their flag, anthem, legal-judicial-legislative codes, and war heroes. Nations place the right to privacy over some other, but not all, rights. It’s reductive to argue that these rights are symbolic anyway, and that no one should take offense because no one’s being harmed. Not that everyone is entitled to become a touch-me-not or exaggerate beyond reason the notion of harm, but there are degrees of harm and some of them are unacceptable.

Barron’s call to righteous offense is akin to the call of patriotism.

Yes, some things are sacred.

Honoring the letter of the First Amendment isn’t license to desecrate its spirit. Its point is to protect, not pervert, democracy. Absolutism glosses over this complexity. Fallible humans create fallible institutions; protecting them requires tending, not triumphalism. For all its democratic credentials, America isn’t free from the threat of communism just because its statesmen historically opposed it or because communism originated elsewhere.

Inscription of the First Amendment (Dec. 15, 1791) in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Robin klein/CC BY-SA 3.0

Life’s Compromises

So, what can writers and artists do?

For all its seemingly limitless possibilities, bounties, and joys, life is one big compromise, with sickness, loss, separation, aging, and death. Literature and art are no different. As in life, creators of literature and art must compromise. It’s more in the when, where, why, how, and how much that they find the elbow room to recreate. It’s all they can do. Even the greatest don’t create. They reorganize. They rearrange using tools, materials, processes, grammar, and formulae organized by someone else.

These tools are evident in musical notes, grammar, a camera, a chisel, and paint. All writers and artists are taught, trained, and retrained to use these tools and recreate, reorganize. They don’t create out of nothing. Their finite, imperfect nature binds their creative freedom too, compelling dependence and interdependence. If creative work delights in its freedom to offend, it must respect the freedom to be offended. Humans are unique, or there’d be no writers, or artists, or inventors. But if they go on to pervert or puff up that individualistic impulse, the ensuing individualism corrodes their humanity.

John Stuart Mill said that silencing assumes infallibility of the one silencing. If that’s so, doesn’t untrammeled speech assume infallibility of the one speaking? Democracy is about acknowledging originality, creativity, and enterprise within all individuals, including those speaking and those spoken to. But it’s also about negotiating with their fallibility. It’s about getting the right balance. That’s hard work. It requires distinguishing between taunt and grave threat.

Yes, society must do all it can to stay out of an artist’s or writer’s way, resisting the temptation to heed every dog whistle. Yes, writers and artists must continue to dream, to dare, conjure new, even impossible worlds, fearlessly. Fear chokes creativity. But it’s also up to the writer and artist to be sensitive, if not, beholden to the moral and social boundaries in which he thrives, even if he must keep broadening and, occasionally, breaking artistic and aesthetic boundaries.

Christopher Hitchens reading his memoir “Hitch-22,” in 2010. meesh/CC BY 2.0

If nothing’s sacred, then isn’t (almost) everything at risk of being rendered profane? In the hands of an angered or alienated writer or artist, the line between sacred and profane can be all too callously blurred, and even obliterated.

Following the assault on Rushdie, writer Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in solidarity with Rushdie, “Words are not violence.” But whatever happened to that slogan “words matter”? Thankfully, judicial wisdom in America, Europe, and elsewhere has acknowledged the power of words to deify or degrade symbols and symbolisms that matter. Witness judicial attention to the concept of “fighting words” that risk inciting violence.

Khomeini, too, used mere words, signing his fanatical fatwa. Freedom to express oneself is not a religion, but a privilege that must be kept in balance with all other rights that society holds sacred.

Part 1 discusses the source and causes of fanaticism.

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