Hitchslap

plural Hitchslaps

1. informalA devastating put-down characteristic of Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011), British-American author and journalist.

   A few years after the creation of YouTube in 2005, the site was full of 'Hitchslap' videos, showing the master either wittily insulting interlocutors or simply stating his abhorrence of their views with great vehemence.

   2020, Ben Burgis, Conrad Bongard Hamilton, Matthew McManus, Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson

   3 more examples

   All the ‘Milo OWNS stupid feminist’ type of videos today are made with much the same style as the new atheist videos that were equally numerous on YouTube a few years before with titles like ‘HITCHSLAP. Hitchens OWNS stupid Christian woman’.

   2017, Angela Nagle, “Basic bitches, normies and the lamestream”, in Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN

   The articles Christopher Hitchens dedicated to these real-life skirmishes left his readers in little doubt as to which side he was on. His “Hitchslap” putdowns of Islam and every other religious group or utterance are as caustic as they are uncompromising.

   2018, Iain Ellis, Humorists vs. Religion, page 11

   As an aside, my favourite Hitchslap is from a public debate in which he was challenged on the subject of prayer by a venerable cleric. When confronted with the question of whether he, a self-proclaimed antitheist and libertarian, had ever prayed, he happily conceded that yes, once, he had done so. For a hard-on.

   2021, Graham Bullen, The Broch, page 45