Trotting On

Christopher Hitchens' fans and detractors alike should enjoy his most recent interview, published last week in the right-wing webzine FrontPage. In the course of the conversation he both deserts and defends the left; he says nice things about the neoconservatives and then gives an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that no neocon would embrace. The exchange makes it even harder to pigeonhole the man, a fact that should please him: as he says at one point, "The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has -- from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness." On that much, at least, I can agree with him.

Meanwhile, another freethinking ex-Trotskyist -- novelist Ken MacLeod -- has written an engaging critique of the leftist argument for war that Hitchens and others espouse.