Hitchens pivoted right by channeling Islamophobia into liberal atheism.

Evidence

Christopher Hitchens, a prominent contrarian turned War on Iraq apologist revered by this new anti-Muslim vanguard, spurred on Islamophobia denialism with his 2007 book God Is Not Great. The book and its title, a direct swipe at Islam’s signature proclamation of Allahu Akbar, weaponized atheism as a new liberal sword against the prolific anti-Muslim hate that percolated post-9/11. Hitchens, once an intellectual giant among progressive and liberal thinkers, embraced the hawkish posture of the Bush administration and its war on Iraq, and pivoted markedly to the right on account of his swelling Islamophobia. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 318

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s global-synthesis framing in Iftikhar — the liberal-atheist wing of Islamophobia as a distinct national mechanism within the larger transnational condition.