Christopher Hitchens, Antitheist, Dead At 62.
Christopher Hitchens, the cantankerous and wildly-intelligent writer, pundit, and “antitheist,” has died at the age of 62, from pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer. His last-known work, “Trial of the Will,” was just published in the January, 2012 issue of Vanity Fair. An excerpt:
Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do†death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.â€
In fact, I now sometimes wonder why I ever thought it profound. It is usually attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker. In German it reads and sounds more like poetry, which is why it seems probable to me that Nietzsche borrowed it from Goethe, who was writing a century earlier. But does the rhyme suggest a reason? Perhaps it does, or can, in matters of the emotions. I can remember thinking, of testing moments involving love and hate, that I had, so to speak, come out of them ahead, with some strength accrued from the experience that I couldn’t have acquired any other way. And then once or twice, walking away from a car wreck or a close encounter with mayhem while doing foreign reporting, I experienced a rather fatuous feeling of having been toughened by the encounter. But really, that’s to say no more than “There but for the grace of god go I,†which in turn is to say no more than “The grace of god has happily embraced me and skipped that unfortunate other man.â€
Vanity Fair offers this tribute, “In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011.”
Wonkette founder and journalist Ana Marie Cox wrote via Twitter, “He inspired and provoked me in equal measure. RIP.”
Vanity Fair via Twitter wrote, “There will never be another like Christopher Hitchens. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar.”
Two days ago, conservative author and pundit Andrew Sullivan, in “Pray For Hitch,” wrote,
If you pray. His physical torments are hard to fathom; his spirits and ability to write unchanged. I haven’t seen him in a long while, and he is now still in Houston undergoing the effects of brutal chemo, as his luminescent piece in the latest VF reveals. I don’t know why, but he is suddenly in my mind and soul constantly these days, and the kindness of a returned email even now takes me aback, given where he is.
He is the greatest advertisement for the existential courage of the atheist I have ever known. And I say that not just from his writing, but from two and a half decades of debate and discussion with him in person. I don’t know what else to say: but pray for or think of him today, if you will. He is worthy of a particularly intense form of love.
Wikipedia offers this biography, not-yet updated:
He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 wasvoted the world’s fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.
Hitchens is known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of, among others, Mother Teresa,Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. His confrontational style of debate has made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wingpublications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the “tepid reaction” of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini’s issue of a fatwÄ calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The 11 September 2001 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called “fascism with an Islamic face.” His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insists he is not “a conservative of any kind.”
Identified as a champion of the “New Atheism” movement, Hitchens describes himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens says that a person “could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct,” but that “an antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there’s no evidence for such an assertion.” He argues that the concept of god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book God Is Not Great.
Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. Asteroid 57901 is named after him. His memoir, Hitch-22, was published in June 2010.
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All three states considered to be the Pacific Northwest of the United States are ranked in the top 10 when it comes to anti-Black hate crimes.
The new study produced by the Mendoza Law Firm, which specializes in immigration, ranked all 50 states based on the average number of anti-Black hate crimes per 100,000 members of the Black population. While Vermont ranked No. 1 in the study with 240.6 crimes per 100,000 people, there are only 7,316 Black residents of the state.
Of the Pacific Northwest states, Oregon ranked the highest—No. 2 overall—with 121 crimes per 100,000 people. Idaho ranked No. 4 with 91 crimes per 100,000 people, and Washington state ranked No. 9 with 44.4 crimes. However, Washington had the highest Black population out of the top 10 states with 311,435 residents. Oregon has the second-highest of the top 10 with 82,453 residents.
Conversely, many southern states ranked at the bottom. Mississippi has the lowest number of anti-Black hate crimes with just 0.9 crimes per 100,000 people, followed by Arkansas and Florida with 1.6, and Georgia and Louisiana with 1.7. Though these southern states have much larger Black populations—for example, of the bottom five, all but Arkansas have well over 1 million Black residents with Georgia and Florida both having over 3 million—the number of hate crimes in those states is also lower than both Washington and Oregon.
The study looked at FBI anti-Black hate crime statistics between 2021 and 2025. The number of hate crimes over these five years was then averaged and compared versus the average Black population between 2020 and 2024.
While things may look bleak for the Pacific Northwest, it’s worth noting that in Washington, the number of hate crimes has steadily dropped over the past five years. Washington had 185 crimes in 2021, which dropped to 107 crimes in 2025. Oregon and Idaho’s numbers stayed relatively steady, however; Oregon had between 94 and 105 crimes during that five-year span. Idaho had a low of 7 crimes in 2021, but that jumped up to between 13 and 18 for the following four years.
Washington state is in the process of starting a hate crime hotline. The service will fully launch at the start of 2027, however, the pilot program launched in July 2025 will continue until the end of this year, according to Cleveland Jewish News. The hotline is designed to provide support to victims rather than receive incident reports. It’s under the purview of the state’s Attorney General’s Office, which does not have the authority to investigate crimes. However, it can provide victims assistance in reporting hate crimes to police. Police are also compelled to provide victims the hotline’s number and website for support.
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie, an activist minister with the United Church of Christ, has called on the Regal Entertainment chain of movie theaters to stop running a Department of Defense promotional video before films.
In an open letter posted to social media, Currie says that when he went to see the latest Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day at a Portland, Oregon theater, he was “forced to watch an advertisement touting the leadership of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the so-called Department of War.”
“It was like we were at a movie theater in Russia or North Korea. Democracies do not do this. The audience loudly booed,” Currie wrote.
READ MORE: Trump Promotes Chilling Iran War Op-Ed Warning of What Could Be Coming Next
“We routinely see videos at Regal promoting careers in the military. This was not that,” he continued. “This was an advertisement promoting the political views of Donald Trump. It was not promoting our military. It was not promoting America’s greatest strength: our diversity. This was a MAGA campaign commercial highlighting a fake cabinet agency, the Department of War, which is actually called the Defense Department, and the MAGA America First platform.”
The video run before the film was likely this video first released to YouTube on Saturday. The video description calls it the first advertisement by the DoD since it was re-christened the Department of War. The clip touts President Donald Trump’s “Peace Through Strength” slogan. It features footage of soldiers intercut with images of Trump while audio of a speech by the president plays in the background.
The video was also shown during Sunday evening’s Freedom 250 UFC Fight at the White House.
“Regal’s decision to show this video can only be construed as an endorsement of Donald Trump, his failed war in Iran, and the white Christian nationalism advocated by Secretary Hegseth,” Currie wrote. “Again, I must demand that Regal stop showing this video immediately. Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Currie has been an outspoken progressive activist for years. In 2019, he even received death threats for his work, according to the Oregonian. Florida dentist Richard Glenn Kantwill told Currie, as well as other public figures, he would torture and kill him. Kantwill also called Currie an “immoral degenerate” and a fraud.
In 2025, Kantwill was sentenced to two years in prison for making the threats after pleading guilty in court.
Image by Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel via the U.S. Army.
Longtime Never-Trump critic turned Democratic congressional candidate George Conway is mocking President Donald Trump in a campaign video and a social media post while the White House targets him in a highly critical attack.
“Hi, Donald, it’s me, George Conway,” Conway, a conservative attorney, says in his video. “I cost you 88 f —— million dollars, and I’ve only just gotten started.”
“I know you like putting your name on everything from your plane to the Kennedy Center,” he continues. “But the only thing your name is gonna be left on when I’m done with you is the orange jumpsuit you’re going to have to wear in prison.”
“And you see that building back there?” he says over an image of Congress. “That’s where we’re gonna hold your third and final impeachment trial. The one that’s gonna put you away for good. And I’m gonna enjoy every minute of that.”
“We’ve got a lot of serious problems in this country, including, and especially, the price of gas — which is hitting $6 a gallon in some places, and that’s all because of you, Donald Trump. We can’t fix those problems until we impeach you and convict you. And that’s why I’m running for Congress.”
In a statement to Fox News, the White House blasted Conway.
“Lightweight George Conway is a stupid person’s idea of a smart person,” a spokesperson said. “His severe and debilitating disease known as Trump Derangement syndrome has melted his brain and made him crazy in the head.”
Conway is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project and was considered for a post as Trump’s Solicitor General at the start of his first administration. Conway withdrew his name from consideration.
On social media, Conway further mocked President Trump.
“Here’s our TV ad that poor wittle Donnie (@realDonaldTrump) didn’t wike and had to compwain to Fox ‘News’ about,” Conway wrote. “Sad! I feel so bad for him.”
Conway is running for a reliably blue seat in Manhattan.
“Conway, who previously lived in Bethesda, Md., before launching his congressional campaign, faces an uphill battle in the race for the heavily Democratic seat vacated by longtime Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who is retiring,” Fox News reported.
Earlier this year, Conway warned, “The way things are going in America, it should be clear we don’t have much time.”
“We certainly don’t have three years,” he said in February. “We need to help ourselves by pushing for impeachment and removal as hard as we can and carrying it out as soon as humanly possible.”
Here’s the ad they’re talking about! pic.twitter.com/vtk80dQ6Af
— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway3d) June 15, 2026
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