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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.

Alexander Claud Cockburn (pronounced kōbɜːn, "co-burn"), born June 6, 1941, is a self-described radical Irish journalist who has lived and worked in the United States since 1973. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch. He also writes the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation and a weekly syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times. Cockburn is also a regular contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

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 and Eric Alterman. Cockburn has also been highly critical of his former friend and colleague, Christopher Hitchens.

Most often sarcastic, Cockburn can also show a condescending sense of humor, once declaring Gerald Ford America's greatest president for doing the least damage and praising the Lewinsky scandal's entertainment value. In the same vein, he has also expressed his admiration for the beauty of both Tipper Gore and Laura Bush.

Cockburn has a flair for over-the-top flamboyance. His nudge-nudge, wink-wink brand of British humor is demonstrated in his response to a question asking for a comparison between George Bush and Napolean Bonaparte. He replied that wasn't sure about Bush as Napoleon, "though surely Josephine's heart beats beneath Laura's delicious bosom."

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.

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.

Allegations of anti-Semitism

Alexander Cockburn has been accused of publishing anti-Semitic material by conservative and/or pro-Israel media analysts, academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other journalists.

In 2006, the pro-Israeli NGO Stop the ISM reprinted a pseudonymous article from Indymedia, which they allege to have been censored from that site, which stated, "Again 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." Cockburn and Finkelstein, in turn, have viewed such rhetorical slurs as techniques in silencing critique of Israel's human rights record.

In 2005, David Horowitz's neo-conservative publication FrontPageMag printed an article by editorialist Steven Plaut, titled "Counterpunch’s Self-Hating Jews." Ostensibly about anti-Zionist communist CounterPunch writer Gilad Atzmon, the article compared Cockburn with the widely-reviled author David Irving in passing: "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."

The Jewish Political Studies Review published an article by Jerome A. Chanes that stated Cockburn was "an intractable foe of Jewish interests." However, he does also go on to say that "to tar all critics of Israel with the brush of antisemitism is unfair, so the argument goes, and may be counterproductive in that it is the first principle of community relations that counteraction of an activity should be premised on the motivating factor of that activity." Still later, Chanes draws a distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, following Gavin Langmuir, and Cockburn is assuredly an outspoken anti-Zionist.

Clay Waters, Director of the online publication Times Watch, itself a project of the conservative Media Research Center, made similar accusations in an article attacking New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. "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.'" (ellipsis in original)

It is worth noting, however, that in the context of the original article, Cockburn was pointing out the possibly anti-Semitic attitude then prevailing in the media cited; the examples he gave implying that the media are not a vast Jewish conspiracy, as is often claimed by real anti-Semites. The core of the article, however, was decrying the disparity of public responses to anti-Semitism in comparison to what he considered more reprehensible behavior, the primary example given being the public chastisement of evangelist Billy Graham for anti-Semitic remarks, versus the indifference toward his suggestion to President Nixon that he "should step up the war and bomb the dikes" in North Vietnam.

Other controversies

In addition to arousing controversy in some quarters for his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Cockburn has also generated controversy on a variety of other subjects.

One of these subjects is his nuanced position with respect to the activities of the Church of Scientology. In an Los Angeles Times column published in the late 1990s, Cockburn criticized the attempt by the German government to inhibit the growth of Scientology through restrictive laws, and invoked several comparisons to Nazi Germany in order to illustrate what he views as a threat to the rights enjoyed by Scientologists to worship in a manner they see fit. Although he conceded that the aggressive posture of the CoS deserved scrutiny, he also maintained that the demonization of any particular unpopular group—even one that might be cultish in nature—presented a far more imminent danger than the activities of Scientologists, or the organization they belong to. This stance has led some critics to accuse him of being a shill for the Church of Scientology.

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

External links

• CounterPunch website
• Alexander Cockburn bio at The Nation.

References

1. The Anti-War Movement and Its Critics, Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch, November 14 2002, accessed April 29 2006
2. Hitch the Snitch, Editorial, CounterPunch, 1999, accessed April 29 2006
3. Prostration before reaction, David Walsh, World Socialist Web Site, 2 September 1998, accessed April 29 2006
4. The extreme sport of insult , Reported by John Leo, 22 Dec 2003, in US News and World Report online
5. The Hazards of Making The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz, JBooks.Com Promotional Interview, accessed April 29 2006
6. Nutty Professor Screams About "Plot" Against Him, Cites Troika of Evil, Alexander Cockburn, 28-30 May 2005, Norman Finkelstein website, accessed April 29 2006
7. Autonomist (3 March 2006). "Look who has taken up the "Cause" of Rachel Corrie!". America’s Nazi Party and Indymedia.org: Mein Fuhrer is Rachel Corrie. Stop the ISM.com. Retrieved 2006-07-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
8. Plaut, Steven (21 June 2005). "Counterpunch's Self-Hating Jews". FrontPageMagazine.com. Retrieved 2006-07-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. Chanes, Jerome A. (2004). "What's "New"—and what's not—about the New Antisemitism?". Jewish Political Studies Review 16:1-2. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Retrieved 2006-07-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); External link in |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
10. Langmuir, Gavin I. Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism (Hardcover ed.). Berkeley, CA: U. C. P. ISBN 0-520-06143-8, LCC DS145.L32 1990. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |origmonth= ignored (help)
11. Waters, Clay (16 July 2003). "Kristof's Conspiratorial Sources". TimesWatch. Media Research Center. Retrieved 2006-07-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. Cockburn, Alexander (12 March 2002). "When Billy Graham Planned To Kill One Million People". American Journal. CounterPunch. Retrieved 2006-07-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• 1941 births
• Living people
• American journalists
• Anti-war activists
• Irish-Americans