Cockburn – His radicalism deserted him

The youthful Cockburn became increasingly attracted to fascism

As Kipling remarked, when all around are losing their heads it’s a good idea to keep one’s own.  In snatches of the Internet over the past few days I have been astonished that a reactionary and it would appear, corrupt buffoon, has been lauded by much of the Left.

The internet magazine Cockburn founded became a test bed for what has been called the Brown-Red alliance

The paper I am closest too, the Weekly Worker has it would appear abandoned its Marxist analysis (or at least its columnist Jim Creegan has) and comrades like Mick Hall, who authors the excellent Outrage blog, seem to lost their bearings.

There is a whole genre of ‘the left’ who, having no confidence in the working class, mouth radical slogans.  Gilad Atzmon is one such creature.  Cockburn was another.

Cockburn abandoned socialism for nationalism

I must confess I was stunned by the Jim Creegan’s Obituary of Alex Cockburn’s ‘A Radical for all Seasons’.  He was described as an anti-Zionist no less.  I accept that in American terms Cockburn took up what would be described as radical postures but he did it as a caricature of true progressive and socialist politics.

Cockburn was never a Marxist

Cockburn made common cause with the whole galaxy of Atzmonites and other fake progressives. He was a part of that reactionary gaggle of conspiracy theorists who, not understanding capitalism, reached back into the cesspit of pre-capitalist society.  Instead of looking for the obvious, the control of the resources of this planet by a thin crust of the ruling class, their prostitute regimes and military, he reached for conspiracies as an all embracing answer.  This put him on a par with the neo-fascist survivalists and idiot blogs like Veterans Today.  The fruitcakes and loony tunes of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

I have done a quick google search on the Counterpunch site and it lists no less than 304 articles by Gilad Atzmon, no doubt some of them are duplicates.

What is worse is that this garbage site Cockburn set up, Counterpunch, has constantly reprinted the articles of the medieval anti-Semite Israel Shamir who believes that the Blood Libel, whereby Jews murdered non-Jewish children to use their blood to make matzot (unleavened bread) for Passover, is true. Countless Jews died the most horrible deaths, victims of Christian inspired pogroms at Easter because of this. Julius Streicher, editor of Der Sturmer and Gauleiter of Franconia, who was hanged at Nuremburg, revived this blasphemy in his pornographic paper.

This was the extent of Cockburn’s radicalism, reaching into the sewers of the most barbaric anti-semitism.  Nor was this the only example.  In the print edition of Counterpunch was an article by Shamir ‘Dreyfuss Case Revisited’ . ‘Was he really a victim of anti-Semitism’ Shamir asks about the royalist-military-clerical frame up of the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfuss. It was precisely the defeat of these reactionaries that led, 40 years later to the resistance to the Nazis and the remarkable survival of 75% of French Jewry in the holocaust.

I also have a personal-political axe to grind. When Mary Rizzo, Atzmon’s collaborator (before she found out he was a mysoginist) printed a particular article attacking me  and Jews Against Zionism. Roland Rance and myself replied.  Cockburn not only refused to publish it but he, despite many emails and phone messages, refused to even acknowledge it.

If his father, the redoubtable Claude Cockburn, had seen what and who his son had aided in the cause of ‘anti-imperialism’ he would have turned in his grave. That Alex Cockburn started off as a radical is not doubted but he died a reactionary racist who believed that conspiracies explained all.

Tony Greenstein