Alexander Cockburn

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This page is on the journalist Alexander Cockburn.

For the Lord Chief Justice of that name, see Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet.

Born in Scotland, Cockburn grew up in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland, son of the well-known Communist author and journalist Claud Cockburn. After studying at Oxford, Alexander worked in London as a reporter and commentator, and after moving to the United States wrote extensively for numerous publications, including The New York Review of Books, Esquire, and Harper's. Until 1983 Cockburn was a writer with The Village Voice, originating its longstanding "Press Clips" column, but he was suspended for accepting a grant from a Palestinian organization without disclosing this. He left the publication upon being offered the "Beat the Devil" column with The Nation. Since leaving the Voice he has also written columns for the Wall Street Journal, New York Press and the New Statesman.

Over the years, Cockburn's writings have consistently displayed certain themes including:

• Outspoken criticism of US foreign policy, from its policies in Central America in the 1980s, including the Iran-contra scandal, to the First Gulf War in 1991, the Kosovo War in 1999, and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• Criticism of the government of Israel based on its treatment of the Palestinians.
• Calls for political reform in the United States, mostly focused on criticising the Democratic Party for failing to provide a progressive alternative to the Republican Party, as well as strong support for Ralph Nader's presidential candidacies in the 2000 and 2004 elections.
• Contempt for the mainstream establishment, in particular for public figures who, in his view, garner mainstream respectability by criticising those to their left; targets have included the New York Times, Sen. Barack Obama, representative Bernie Sanders, the late academic Irving Howe and some of his The Nation colleagues, including Marc Cooper, David Corn [The Anti-War Movement and Its Critics], Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch, November 14 2002, accessed April 29 2006 and Eric Alterman. Cockburn has also been highly critical of his former friend and colleague, Christopher Hitchens. [Hitch the Snitch], Editorial, CounterPunch, 1999, accessed April 29 2006

Alan Dershowitz recently stated that Cockburn was one of three leaders (along with Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky) who are engaged in an attempt to discredit and malign him.[The Hazards of Making The Case for Israel], Alan Dershowitz, JBooks.Com Promotional Interview, accessed April 29 2006[Nutty Professor Screams About "Plot" Against Him, Cites Troika of Evil], Alexander Cockburn, 28-30 May 2005, Norman Finkelstein website, accessed April 29 2006

Cockburn has two brothers, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn who are also journalists. Journalists Stephanie Flanders, Laura Flanders and actress Olivia Wilde are his nieces.

Bibliography

• Incompatibles (1967) (co-edited with Robin Blackburn)
• Student Power (1970) (co-edited with Robin Blackburn)
• Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death (1975)
• Smoke: Another Jimmy Carter Adventure (1978) (with James Ridgeway)
• Political Ecology (1979) (co-edited with James Ridgeway)
• Corruptions of Empire (1988) ISBN 0860919404
• The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (1989) (with Susanna Hecht) ISBN 0060973226
• The Golden Age Is in Us: Journeys and Encounters (1995) ISBN 0860916642
• Washington Babylon (1995) (with Ken Silverstein) ISBN 1859840922
• Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (1998) (with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1859842585
• 5 Days That Shook The World: The Battle for Seattle and Beyond (2000) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 185984779X
• Al Gore: A User's Manual (2000) (with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1859848036
• CounterPunch: The Journalism That Rediscovers America (2002) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1859844553
• The Politics of Anti-Semitism (2003) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1902593774
• Serpents in the Garden (2004) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1902593944
• Imperial Crusades (2004) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1844675068
• Dime's Worth of Difference (2004) (co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1904859038

Compact disc

• Beating the Devil: The Incendiary Rants of Alexander Cockburn

Allegations of anti-Semitism

The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this section is [NPOV disputedisputed].
Please see the discussion on the [anti-Semitism and publishing anti-Semitic material by media analysts, academians, non-governmental organizations, and other journalists, including his peers at The Nation.

The non-governmental organization Stop the ISM wrote an article in 2006 that stated, "Like Counterpunch, the Nazi web site is full of rants about Jews controlling the US government. The main difference between Cockburn’s site and the Nazi site is that the latter has almost no readers, whereas the Counterpunch Nazis do."[link]

In a 2005 article titled, "Counterpunch’s Self-Hating Jews" Steven Plaut compared Alexander Cockburn with convicted Holocaust denier David Irving; "It is always of interest to see Alexander Cockburn and David Irving, who has actually been convicted of Holocaust denial in a court of law, sharing the same affections." In the same article, Cockburn was also accused of supporting the genocide of Jews, "The genocide of Jews that would accompany its destruction is just one of those unfortunate minor side effects from doing what people like Cockburn and Atzmon think is the right thing to do."[link] Plaut has also written, "Cockburn has been repeatedly denounced as an anti-Semite by The New Republic and by a variety of other journals and columnists, including the Seattle Times, Declaration Foundation, Prof. Edward Alexander, LewRockwell.Com, LeftWatch, and Christian Action for Israel. Cockburn has openly given credence to reports that Jews spread anthrax in the US and that Israel was part of a conspiracy to topple the World Trade Center."[link]

The Jewish Political Studies Review published an article by Jerome A. Chanes that stated Cockburn was "an intractable foe of Jewish interests."http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-chanes-s04.htm]

Clay Waters of Times Watch wrote, "Cockburn spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the March 12 2002 edition of Counterpunch: 'It's supposedly the third rail in journalism even to have a discussion of how much the Jews do control the media.…Certainly, there are a number of stories sloshing around the news now that have raised discussions of Israel and of the posture of American Jews to an acrid level. The purveyor of anthrax may have been a former government scientist, Jewish, with a record of baiting a colleague of Arab origins, and with the intent to blame the anthrax on Muslim terrorists. Rocketing around the web and spilling into the press are many stories about Israeli spies in America at the time of 9/11. On various accounts, they were trailing (Mohammed) Atta and his associates, knew what was going to happen but did nothing about it, or were simply spying on US facilities.'"[link]

External link

• [CounterPunch website]

References