Christopher Hitchens is Dead. Remember What He Wrote About Lebanon

World famous writer and polemist Christopher Hitchens has died today. The man has left many marks on the literary world, but he also left a small fingerprint in Beirut.

In 2009 , while walking in Hamra, he saw a poster with the logo of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which to him looked like a swastika. He didn’t like it and decided to do something about it:

call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only — to be defaced. Telling my two companions to hold on for a second, I flourish my trusty felt-tip and begin to write some offensive words on the offending poster. I say “begin” because I have barely gotten to the letter k in a well-known transitive verb when I am grabbed by my shirt collar by a venomous little thug, his face glittering with hysterical malice. With his other hand, he is speed-dialing for backup on his cell phone. […] It becomes evident, as the backup arrives, that this gang wants to take me away.

Mr. Hitchens experienced first hand what was later dubbed the “SSNP’s Fiefdom in Hamra”. An area that is supposedly in the heart of cosmopolitan beirut but that is rife with rabid pro-Syrian thugs who enforce their own law onto anyone they don’t like, under the noses of police officers who always look the other way.