Christopher Hitchens’s warning from a 2009 Q&A has exploded back into the public eye this week after Dave Rubin shared a resurfaced clip in his Direct Message segment, and conservative audiences are rightly treating it as a prophecy. Hitchens urged his listeners to “resist it while you still can,” warning that the term Islamophobia would be introduced as a cultural cudgel to stop legitimate criticism and shield extremism. Rubin’s reposting has lit a fire across conservative channels, reminding patriots that free speech once lost is almost impossible to recover.
The substance of Hitchens’s warning is painfully simple: when criticism of an ideology is recast as hatred toward people, the civic space for debate collapses. What he called a cultural shift — turning objections to preaching into accusations of bigotry — is now being weaponized by activists and some politicians who demand deference rather than scrutiny. That shift hasn’t happened in a vacuum; elites in media, academia, and parts of government have actively promoted language and policies that chill honest discussion about dangerous doctrines.
Dave Rubin framing the clip as a vindication was no accident — he’s been sounding the alarm on deplatforming and censorship for years, and this moment gives conservatives a clear talking point. Rubin’s audience reacted as you’d expect: anger at the double standard and relief that a respected intellectual foresaw where this would lead. The clip going viral on alternative platforms is also a rebuke to Big Tech’s monoculture; when platforms censor the truth, the truth finds other channels.
We should not be naive about where this rhetoric leads. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, efforts to formally define “Islamophobia” have escalated into proposals that dangerously blur the line between religion and race, creating the very blasphemy-style protections Hitchens warned about. Conservatives must oppose any law or policy that grants special immunity to ideas simply because they belong to a religion, or that uses abuse-of-speech labels to shut down debate on matters of public safety and women’s rights. Allowing one class of ideas to be beyond criticism is the first step toward eroding the civic foundations that let free societies thrive.
This is more than abstract philosophy; it has real victims and real consequences. When authorities worry more about being called racist or Islamophobic than they do about prosecuting child exploitation rings or confronting extremist preachers, ordinary citizens pay the price with safety and freedom. Hitchens’s metaphor of the barbarians taking a city only when someone opens the gates is a blunt reminder that surrender often comes from within, from those who believe tolerance must mean silence. Conservatives must make common cause to defend the right to complain, criticize, and question without fear of being smeared into silence.
The political left’s reflexive defense of Islamist ideas as sacrosanct should be called out for what it is: an alliance of convenience that privileges ideology over liberty. Too many on the liberal side would rather shut down debate than confront uncomfortable truths, and that cowardice weakens the West. If conservatives fail to push back now we will wake up to laws and social norms that treat honest criticism as a crime, and that outcome would be a catastrophe for free expression and national cohesion.
Hitchens was never a conservative, but his clarity here is a gift to anyone who values liberty. The resurfaced clip is a rallying cry: defend free speech, resist fashionable silencing tactics, and demand consistent standards that protect all citizens equally. Dave Rubin’s sharing of the video should be a prompt for every patriot to speak up, organize, and vote for leaders who will protect our right to speak the truth about dangerous ideas without being branded a bigot.
