Matt Johnson

“Not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself, ‘What would Christopher say about this?’ Matthew Johnson’s brilliant reappraisal of the Hitchens corpus illuminates how Hitchens can save not just the left, but our entire, impoverished political discourse.”

James Kirchick, New York Times bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington
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“It’s like reuniting with a long-parted friend to open this book and reenter the mind and world of Christopher Hitchens.”

David Frum, Atlantic columnist and author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy
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“Excellent … Johnson offers more than an examination of Christopher Hitchens’s life and thought. His research takes him from the controversies about the Russian Revolution to today’s culture wars. No one reading it can deny that there has been a jolting cultural change in the US left over the past 10-15 years.”

Nick Cohen, author of What’s Left? How the Left Lost Its Way


Recent work

MSNBC, Tulsi Gabbard can’t be trusted to run American intelligence
The Bulwark, Gabbard and RFK Jr. were nominated to destroy, not to lead
Quillette, The open society and its new enemies
Persuasion, The deep and dangerous roots of Trump’s foreign policy
MSNBC, How Trump’s new ‘AI czar’ David Sacks went from MAGA critic to true believer
Quillette, ‘There’s nothing mystical about the idea that ideas change history’: An interview with Steven Pinker
The Bulwark, ‘Identity politics’ isn’t why Harris lost
The Daily Beast, Is Bari Weiss embarrassed by the Intellectual Dark Web?
The UnPopulist, Joe Rogan: A conspiracist for the Trump era
MSNBC, Trump’s ‘unity’ allies aren’t renegade liberals — they’re fringe, opportunistic right-wingers
Quillette, Towards a new liberal international order
Persuasion, A new paradigm for assisted dying
The Daily Beast, Jordan Peterson’s astounding ignorance on Russia and Ukraine
The UnPopulist, Niall Ferguson: The intellectual underwriter of Trump’s ‘American carnage’ idea
Quillette, Nationalist self-hatred
Haaretz, Why Tucker Carlson hates Ukraine so much
The Bulwark, Now is the worst time to abandon NATO
Quillette, Liberalism and the West’s ‘crisis of meaning’
Persuasion, We keep failing the blasphemy test
The Daily Beast, Left-wing defenses of Hamas are an insult to Palestinians
The Bulwark, When Hamas tells you who they are, believe them
Persuasion, The God divide within the heterodox community
Quillette, How Effective Altruism lost its way
The Daily Beast, Jordan Peterson’s constant state of delusional panic



Media appearances

The U.S. can’t escape history

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mattjj89

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*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, April 30, 2016. 

The United States — like any other free and prosperous country — has a moral responsibility to help people who are fleeing war or oppression. I know this notion will infuriate some people, but I’m willing to expand it: this responsibility is redoubled when the refugees in question come from a region in which we have been intimately involved for many years.

The U.S. simply doesn’t have the same international obligations as, say, Switzerland — we have the world’s most powerful military, largest economy and most active record of postwar military interventionism. In many places, such as Bosnia, the U.S. has prevented sectarian massacres and restored stability. In others, we’ve done the opposite.

Read the full article in The Topeka Capital-Journal.

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