Politics & Power Quote by Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens is doing what he did best: landing a political critique by making it socially embarrassing. The list is the weapon. “Solemn, mirthless, herbivorous” isn’t just insult-comedy; it’s a diagnosis of how movements lose power when they stop radiating pleasure. “Herbivorous” is especially barbed. It suggests a left that has traded appetite for moral purity, choosing the optics of cleanliness over the messy charisma that actually recruits humans. The punchline is that righteousness, in his telling, doesn’t read as courage; it reads as scolding.

The subtext is tactical as much as aesthetic. Hitchens isn’t merely complaining about tone; he’s arguing that style is a form of politics. If the left becomes “monochrome,” it cedes the cultural terrain of humor, irreverence, and risk to its opponents, who then get to pose as the fun ones even while selling harsher policies. That’s why “boring” is the most devastating word in the chain: boredom is a mass-demobilizer. People will endure being disagreed with; they won’t volunteer for a sermon.

Context matters. Hitchens came out of an Anglo-left tradition that prized polemic, satire, and argument as public sport. By the time he’s writing in an American register, he’s watching parts of the left lean into earnestness, procedural moralism, and lifestyle signaling. His intent is to snap it back toward provocation: not less serious about injustice, but less joyless about persuasion.