This post is entitled “A Tribute to Hugh Fitzgerald,” but not in the manner of the devastating series of “Tributes” of various academic poseurs, craven politicians, and useful idiots that Hugh himself wrote for Jihad Watch. (You can find them, among a great deal more of enduring value, in his Archives here.) This one is a genuine encomium to a writer and analyst of extraordinary ability.
It is with great regret that I must announce that Hugh Fitzgerald is no longer writing for Jihad Watch. This unfortunate parting has come about because of budget constraints. Contrary to wildly misleading media reports, resisting the jihad is not lucrative, and while I tried to stave off this day for a year and a half, ultimately it proved impossible.
Hugh will be writing for other publications, and I strongly urge you to seek out his work, as he is a singular voice: an astoundingly erudite, deeply insightful, and marvelously witty writer whose Jihad Watch articles are as engaging as they are instructive. There is simply no one like him. Over the years at Jihad Watch he manifested an astonishing breadth and depth of knowledge about the history and present conditions of nations and regions spanning the globe. His analyses of why the American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan were doomed to failure, and were, in fact, counterproductive if the goal was to contain the spread of jihad, Sharia and Islamic supremacism, were widely derided in 2004, 2005 and 2006 by those who had bought in to the prevailing simplistic and shallow declarations that we would soon bring “freedom” to those unhappy lands. But the passage of years has shown Hugh to have been entirely correct, even prophetic.
Equally prophetic are his evocations of what an Islamic Europe would mean for Western culture and Judeo-Christian civilization, and so much more that you will discover if you make it a habit to peruse Hugh’s Jihad Watch archives, which you can find here and which will remain on the left sidebar of the site. I recommend that habit very strongly: take one every morning and read it. The topical events that inspired it will scarcely render it dated; the jihad is with us more than ever, and there is a certain recurring quality to the Jihad Watch archives in general: jihadists keep blowing things up, and killing people, and terrorizing infidels, in various places in various ways, while Islamic supremacist con men and academic useful idiots in the West lie about the reasons why these things are happening, and aid and abet cultural, stealth jihad encroachments upon our freedoms that may ultimately prove more devastating than a jihad bombing. And meanwhile, our politicians continue to pursue fantasy-based policymaking based on what they wish Islam and jihad were, rather than on what they actually are.
The dreary sameness of all this, along with the limpidity and enduring quality of his analysis, ensure that Hugh’s Jihad Watch articles are never dated. And what’s more, they’re an utter delight to read. Hugh Fitzgerald is a prose stylist without peer. To be sure, in his comments on Jihad Watch posts he would, in his haste and Swiftian indignation, sometimes fail to resolve dependent clauses, leave out key words, or commit other stylistic infelicities that shrouded his insights in confusion. But his articles are generally polished and clear. And in addition to the sharp-eyed analysis contained within them, they are brimming with his remarkable wit and humor, strengthening one’s resolve to face and decry our wholesale cultural capitulation to the jihad with a new determination to preserve the good things in life — like wit and humor, and laughter, and music, and art, and literature: all the things that Hugh Fitzgerald loves so well and conveys his love for so brilliantly and beautifully.
Hugh Fitzgerald is a deeply private man, and has made few public appearances. This led several Islamic supremacists and their Leftist dupes to conclude, and loudly insist, that I myself must be Hugh Fitzgerald, writing (for what reason?) under another name. While I do not have the honor of being Hugh Fitzgerald, I was always aware of the compliment they were paying me: they were saying that I was capable of laying aside my generally vanilla prose and pedestrian insights, and – like Clark Kent turning into Superman – suddenly become a brilliant writer of English prose and an even more brilliant analyst of the current scene.
If only.
Hugh Fitzgerald is irreplaceable. He will be sorely missed at Jihad Watch. But there is one thing that we all can do in his absence from this site: READ HIM.