Imagine waking up and finding an irate Hitchens on your doorstep…
The many and various Ann Althouses at Sadly No should take note that at least one wingnut is prepared to come round to your house and give you grief if you use his name as a pseudonym. He’s British, so no immediate worry, but he is Christopher Hitchens’ brother so you never know, this sort of thing could spread.
Like his brother Christopher, it seems Peter can’t take a joke, according to Guido Fawkes:
Peter Hitchens Stalking The Hitch
Something about the zeitgeist this month means that every successful blogger has to acquire a stalker. The Hitch has surpassed Guido in this sense. Whilst Guido has cyber-stalkers and comment trolls galore, the latent tension between “the real” Peter Hitchens the controversialist right-wing writer and the Peter Hitchens that writes for the Mail on Sunday is reaching hysterical levels. It was funny first time, but this round is bonkers.
First Hitchens complained to Yahoo that the Hitch was using the name Peter Hitchens in his Yahoo mail address. The complaint resulted in Yahoo removing his service. So he simply re-registered as therealpeterhitchens@… Then Guido got a phone call from the Hitch – “Peter Hitchens has just cycled up my drive”.
On his blog he elaborates –
I didn’t answer the door for a few reasons.
1, He didn’t ring the bell
2, I was wearing nothing other than my underwear
3, I thought “Fucking no way is that Peter Hitchens”Having put a pair of pants on and gone to the door he was gone, If he hadn’t I would have invited him in. I have to say I admire his balls for doing it, the man has made a career out of touring some of the scariest places on earth and confronting far nastier folk than your humble blog host.
This “Hitch” admires the other “Hitch” but thinks he is a bit up himself and should lighten up, having said that , as long as he keeps threatening me he can fuck off and I will ratchet this up as high as he likes.
At first Guido thought the Hitch had been at the sherry, but no, he claims Peter Hitchens is moaning and making vague threats via email continuously. It is hard to see what course of action is open to him in law. There is no law against parody. In fact it seems to Guido if anyone is guilty of anything, it is Peter Hitchens for having a total lack of a sense of proportion. Cycling around peering through people’s letterboxes, he should be charged with travelling without a sense of humour. That’s stalkers for you…
American readers will know drunken popinjay and neocon journo Christopher Hitchens well – who can forget that lovely takedown of the former Lunchtime O’Booze by George Galloway? The Hitchens’ name has become a byword in the US for the louche Brit journalist abroad, but what you may not know is that Christopher also has a brother, Peter, who though once a red-shirted International Socialist organiser is now a paid demagogue for the UK’s rightwing, asylum-seeker-obsessed Mail on Sunday. Sample P. Hitchens headline: “Is this what they mean by ‘Muslim tolerance’?”. The other Hitchens also appears on numerous tv and radio current affairs programmes pontificating loudly and obnoxiously on terrorism and against Moslems and foreigners.
It’s this Hitchens that’s turned up on his imitator’s doorstep peering through the letterbox. So far this phenomenon’s confined to London, but in light of this new development in blogging the denizens of S,N might want to think about Althouse-proofing their homes and mailboxes.
