"Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint"
About this Quote
Hitchens turns “terrorism” from a mystical evil into a cold negotiating style: an extortion note with political theory stapled to it. The line works because it refuses the comfort of ambiguity. “Tactic” is the tell. It strips terrorism of romance, grievance, and even ideology, and recasts it as method - chosen, instrumental, repeatable. That’s classic Hitchens: moral clarity delivered with the chill of a taxonomy.
“Demanding the impossible” is both diagnosis and indictment. It suggests not just maximalist aims, but aims designed to fail in ordinary politics. If you ask for what cannot be granted - total purity, total surrender, total reversal of history - you make compromise look like betrayal and normal governance look like cowardice. The impossible demand becomes a machine for escalation: it guarantees refusal, then harvests that refusal as proof that only violence “works.”
“And demanding it at gunpoint” is the punchline, but also the subtext about speech itself. Terrorism mimics politics (demands, messaging, leverage) while destroying the conditions that make politics real: consent, persuasion, the right to say no. Hitchens is implying that the violence isn’t an accidental accompaniment to the cause; it’s the central argument, the only argument.
Context matters: writing and speaking in an era shaped by 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror,” Hitchens was pushing back against apologetics that treated terror as merely “the language of the unheard.” His formulation insists the unheard aren’t just speaking loudly - they’re replacing conversation with coercion, and calling it justice.
“Demanding the impossible” is both diagnosis and indictment. It suggests not just maximalist aims, but aims designed to fail in ordinary politics. If you ask for what cannot be granted - total purity, total surrender, total reversal of history - you make compromise look like betrayal and normal governance look like cowardice. The impossible demand becomes a machine for escalation: it guarantees refusal, then harvests that refusal as proof that only violence “works.”
“And demanding it at gunpoint” is the punchline, but also the subtext about speech itself. Terrorism mimics politics (demands, messaging, leverage) while destroying the conditions that make politics real: consent, persuasion, the right to say no. Hitchens is implying that the violence isn’t an accidental accompaniment to the cause; it’s the central argument, the only argument.
Context matters: writing and speaking in an era shaped by 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror,” Hitchens was pushing back against apologetics that treated terror as merely “the language of the unheard.” His formulation insists the unheard aren’t just speaking loudly - they’re replacing conversation with coercion, and calling it justice.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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