TL;DR - Hitchens questioned everything and held people accountable to hypocrisy.

It is rare to find a character quite as rare and nuanced as Christopher Hitchens. A fearsome intellect, Hitchens made a career out of challenging people and their opinions, most notably those who were religious or conservative. He was unapologetically controversial, for example naming a book God Is Not Great, a negative form of the Arabic expression 'Allahu Akbar'. Likewise, he went on television and sparred with the likes of [Sean Hannity] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKkOSMaTk4) and [Bill O'Reilly] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kqvLnpU23Y) to debate religion and right wing values. No one was off limits for Hitchens. He [excoriated Rabbi Harold Kushner for his views on circumcision] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx_ov2NiNo4).

His appearances on various programmes over the years gave rise to the expression Hitchens's razor: 'What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.' It is things such as this that give Hitchens such an important legacy. He defied political correctness and refused to kowtow to anyone. Yes, he was controversial and his attacks on religion will have offended many. Yet, anyone who has watched or read Hitchens cannot say that his views are put forward without research, reason and evidence. He epitomised intellectual rigour and promoted independent thought. No one has filled the void Hitchens left and the world is poorer without his acerbic intellect and cutting irreverence.

TLDR: Hitchens may have been the last great Debater - watching his fights on Youtube, on issues long since ignored, is still fantastic entertainment. But he is certainly not the last great intellectual, nor would he have been considered a great intellectual when he was alive.

He added nothing new to any field he approached - his books on religion are reductive in the extreme, his work on Islam wildly offensive and wilfully obtuse - but the fact that he so loved a fight, and would take them up with such intelligence and enthusiasm, made him one of the most important proponents of liberal enquiry and freedom of speech of his generation.

If that is what a makes a public Intellectual, then he is certainly up there.

If you want to see Christopher Hitchens gets critically torn apart, look up a video called "The Sophistry of Christopher Hitchens" by CosmicSkeptic