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

Trump’s dangerous plan to dismantle our alliances

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mattjj89

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*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 2, 2016.

When Donald Trump delivered his first major foreign policy speech in April, he called “America First” the “overriding theme of my administration.” Two sentences later, he celebrated the United States’ triumph in World War II: “In the 1940s we saved the world. The Greatest Generation beat back the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists.”

By stacking these comments on top of one another, Trump demonstrated that he’s oblivious to the foul history of the words “America First” in this country.

Founded in 1940, the America First Committee was an isolationist organization that sought to appease Hitler and keep the U.S. out of the war (until Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese in December 1941, at which point it ignominiously receded from the public sphere). And America First is infamous for more than its failure to recognize the moral and existential urgency of defeating the Axis powers.

Read the full article in The Topeka Capital-Journal.

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