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Christopher Hitchens was known for his razor-sharp wit, moral clarity, and devastating rhetorical precision – skills that earned his signature move its own name: the Hitch Slap. This technique involves forcing opponents to confront the horrific reality behind their comfortable assumptions, leaving them speechless through pure moral force. In his debate with Rabbi Kushner, Hitchens delivers one of the most brutal Hitch Slaps ever recorded – a piece of rhetorical dynamite that is seldom seen at this level of devastation. What makes this moment legendary isn’t just how he transforms a confident rabbi into a humiliated example of his thesis that religion poisons everything, but how he simultaneously silences an entire audience by making them complicit in their own moral failure. This is a phenomenal rhetorical move that’s extraordinarily difficult to pull off – it requires perfect timing, moral authority, and the ability to reframe optics in real-time. In this forensic breakdown, I’ll show you exactly how Hitchens constructs this devastating moment, why it works with such brutal efficiency, and how you can recognise and deploy similar techniques when confronting moral blindness disguised as humour.
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Debate Christopher Hitchens vs Harold Kushner, Peter Gomes God 2009: https://youtu.be/ZxhOh75jn4Q?si=P4NA-tJaTkIFuFoF
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