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

Significance of Taliban leader’s death shouldn’t be diminished

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*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 16, 2016.

When Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed by a U.S. airstrike in May, President Obama called it “an important milestone in our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan.” This statement seemed uncontroversial to me — the leader of the Taliban had just been dispatched by an American drone and the president wanted to remind “all those who target our people and our partners” that they will “have no safe haven.” He was reassuring our allies and threatening our enemies — foreign policy 101.

Mansour was an entrenched enemy of the U.S. He was a high-ranking member of the Taliban during the Afghanistan War, he was Mullah Mohammed Omar’s acting replacement after 2013 and he was rigidly opposed to peace negotiations with President Ashraf Ghani’s government. When Mansour officially became emir of the Taliban in 2015, he received a “great pledge of allegiance” from Ayman al-Zawahiri — the leader of al-Qaeda since Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011. According to U.S. officials, Mansour was planning “imminent” attacks on U.S. and coalition targets in Kabul.

Read the full article in The Topeka Capital-Journal.

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