1. I loved Hitchens but it's worth noting that the entire trajectory of his career goes against the narrative Brooks is constructing here. The more of a reactionary crank Hitchens became, the bigger platforms he gained. https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1286619122835619845

2. Some history: I first started reading Hitchens in the 1980s, when he was mainly found in the pages of very small literary magazines (Grand Street: his best essays) & mid-size political ones (In These Times, Nation). He was at that time solidly anti-imperialist.

3. By the 1990s Hitchens was appearing in bigger venues (Vanity Fair) & had also modified his anti-imperialism to supporting wars of liberal humanitarianism (in former Yugoslavia). Not directly connected but the two turns went hand in hand.

4. The really big shift in his career came after 9/11 when he was able to rebrand himself erstwhile leftist who supported Bush's foreign policy while also repurposing his atheism in a way that was ideologically useful to war on terror (as enemy of "Islamofascism").

5. The post-9/11 Hitchens -- supporter of Iraq War, un-PC contrarian who said women weren't funny & Dixie Chicks were "fucking fat slags"-- had immense mainstream success: Atlantic, Slate, best-sellers, White House access etc.

6. Hitchens entire career illustrates that the path to success to move away from radical politics that make people uncomfortable (is early critique of American imperialism) and market yourself as stylish pseudo-contrarian who upholds status quo.

7. Fittingly, the person who best explained what happened was Hitchens himself, prophetically in 1985: “To be able to bray that ‘as a liberal, I say bomb the shit out of them,’ is to have achieved that eye-catching, versatile marketability that is so beloved of editors"

8. Hitchens entire 1985 statement on the profitability of faux-contrarianism is instructive.

9. Also, while I'm here: Brooks is wrong about this: "The liberal New Republic has less viewpoint diversity than the conservative National Review." TNR runs both socialists, Biden-style liberals, & Never Trump conservatives.

10. Louis-Ferdinand Céline was one of France's greatest novelists. He would be unemployable today because there was no set of priors he wasn’t willing to offend https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1286619122835619845