Alexander Cockburn has died

[~Spectre]

WEEKEND EDITION JULY 21-23, 2012
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Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012
Farewell, Alex, My Friend
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Our friend and comrade Alexander Cockburn died last night in Germany, after a fierce two-year long battle against cancer. His daughter Daisy was at his bedside.

Alex kept his illness a tightly guarded secret. Only a handful of us knew how terribly sick he truly was. He didn’t want the disease to define him. He didn’t want his friends and readers to shower him with sympathy. He didn’t want to blog his own death as Christopher Hitchens had done. Alex wanted to keep living his life right to the end. He wanted to live on his terms. And he wanted to continue writing through it all, just as his brilliant father, the novelist and journalist Claud Cockburn had done. And so he did. His body was deteriorating, but his prose remained as sharp, lucid and deadly as ever.

In one of Alex’s last emails to me, he patted himself on the back (and deservedly so) for having only missed one column through his incredibly debilitating and painful last few months. Amid the chemo and blood transfusions and painkillers, Alex turned out not only columns for CounterPunch and The Nation and First Post, but he also wrote a small book called Guillotine and finished his memoirs, A Colossal Wreck, both of which CounterPunch plans to publish over the course of the next year.

Alex lived a huge life and he lived it his way. He hated compromise in politics and he didn’t tolerate it in his own life. Alex was my pal, my mentor, my comrade. We joked, gossiped, argued and worked together nearly every day for the last twenty years. He leaves a huge void in our lives. But he taught at least two generations how to think, how to look at the world, how to live a life of resistance. So, the struggle continues and we’re going to remain engaged. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

In the coming days and weeks, CounterPunch will publish many tributes to Alex from his friends and colleagues. But for this day, let us remember him through a few images taken by our friend Tao Ruspoli.

http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/alexjasper9694.jpg

http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/alexwriting.jpg

http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DSC03726.jpg

[Teacher]

Very sad, Alex was a great guy and one of my early inspirations.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

This fucking sucks. The guy was a truly independent thinker and exposed many crimes of U.S. imperialism and showed that we really don't intervene for "freedom" or "human rights".

[Terminator X]

Counterpunch was one of the mags that helped turn me toward the revolutionary left. I haven't read it for years, but gotta give props to the guy who was one of my early influences.

[RedHal]

I check counterpunch daily, sad news RIP

[passenger57]

Goodbye my dear friend, my socialist father, Alexander Cockburn, I will always miss you. Cancer is mass murdering this world. Cancer and other diseases is killing us all, while capitalist governments of this world are spending so much money in bailing out bankers, in wars, in elections, in corruptions in the high-salaries of the government functionaries. We need a cure for cancer as soon as possible.

WE WILL ALWAYS MISS ALEXANDER COCKBURN OUR BROTHER !!


.

[~Spectre]

His Eulogy from The Nation:


Alexander Cockburn and I met in the 1980s, when we shared places on a panel in Detroit, where the topic was the latest murders of Catholic priests by Latin American death squads. Alex was talking about the horrors of US foreign policy. I was talking about the horrors of US media coverage of US foreign policy. We were sufficiently in sync that our mutual friend, brilliant music writer and thinker Dave Marsh, came up at the end of the evening and. presuming that we were comrades long-standing, told us we really should take the show on the road.

We did, more or less, appearing frequently together over the years. But most of our time together was spent at my home in Madison, Wisconsin, where Alex was a frequent guest. He would pull up in a great big American car, the trunk packed with favored libations, new books and the facsimile machine he used—even after the Internet had its moment—to send columns to The Nation. (Alex regularly proved that his knowledge of history, his memory and his veteran reporter’s knack for asking the right people the right questions could be the superior of even the most powerful search engine. Eventually, however, he did with Jeffrey St. Clair develop a politically potent website, CounterPunch.)

Alex, who has died too young at age 71 after a two-year battle with cancer, loved writing—so much so that he missed just one deadline even as his illness progressed toward its final stages. His commitment to the craft—to the radical power of the word—extended far beyond his own contribution. He poked, prodded and inspired the rest of us. When I was working on an article at my home computer, he would lean over me and make suggestions. Invariably, Alex wanted to see a paragraph added on some new evil done by a corporation, some third-party candidate who had not gotten enough attention or some third-world cause that had gotten even less attention. Alex’s suggestions did not always fit where he proposed that I add them, and I asked them about this once.

“Sometimes you just have to get the story out,” he said, “anywhere you can.”

But, of course, Alex never just got the story out. His prose, honed during an Anglo-Irish childhood when he learned at the side of the master—his father Claud, the great radical British journalist of mid-century who lent him the title of his column, “Beat the Devil”—never failed. Alex knew how good he was. He knew that he could take readers where other writers could not, to the fields of India where Coca-Cola was stealing water from peasants, to the barricades of neglected labor battles in Austin, Minnesota, and Toledo, Ohio; to “The City” of London where the Libor scandal now unfolds.

Alex’s last column for The Nation was a delicious takedown of all the dark players involved in the scheme by the biggest bankers in the world to fix rates. The bankers got their due, of course, but so did the regulators and, of course, the pliant media. “Now it turns out that the whole thing is a fix—a grimy hand all too visible,” Alex wrote. “Is is possible to reform the banking system? There are the usual nostrums—tighter regulations, savage penalties for misbehavior, a ban from financial markets for life. But I have to say I’m dubious. I think the system will collapse, but not through our agency.”

Casual readers might imagine a darkness in the closing line of what Alex’s last Nation column published in his lifetime. But that is a misread. Alex shared Tom Paine’s faith in the necessity of information and insight, of speaking truth to power; this, he knew, to be the essential element for building the activism that would begin the world over again. He was a radical democrat who believed ultimately in the power of the people to overturn the corruptions of empire that politicians and the corporate media would otherwise keep in place.

Alex kept the radical faith, steadily, constantly, going to the ends of the earth to cover the next story of revolt and revolution, going to the far corners of the United States to uncover the news that Americans were not taking it anymore. If a crowd had gathered, and if they were raising the red flag, or any flag of protest, that was enough for Alex. He would report their struggle, usually in The Nation, but also in the pages of The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Esquire and (for a brief period as remarkable as it was ironic) the Wall Street Journal.

Alex chose as the title and the underlying theme of his finest collection of essays a line from the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. From Tristes Tropiques:

If men have always been concerned with only one task—how to create a society fit to live in—the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done but turned out wrong, can be done again. The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is in us.

Alex taught me, he taught us all, that those were not blandly optimistic words. They are demanding. They suggest that we have fewer excuses than we thought, that this is the place, that now is the time and that there is truth in the Gandhian maxim that we are the people we’ve been waiting for.

[Clifford C Clavin]

Wasn't this guy a 9/11 truther, climate change denier, Stalinist fellow traveler, and "pure intellectual" who never spent a second dirtying his hands with organizing anything outside of his papers? I don't understand the outpouring of grief.

[Mr. Natural]

Clifford C. Clavin, I hope you didn't join Revleft just to diss Alexander Cockburn. You are correct, in any case, that he was a climate change denier (and a most vocal, extreme denier), and I see some Stalinism in his personality, but I do not recall he was a "9/11 truther".

Cockburn went on a cruise some years ago in which a "scientist" convinced him climate change was a hoax, and then Cockburn went on a crusade against anthropogenic climate chaos in his column in the Nation.
In this he was his usual way over the top self, and his dogmatism was apparent. He was also way wrong.

However, Cockburn also had keen insights into most matters. For instance, he pointed out that Obama did not become president despite his race, but because he is African-American (actually African/Caucasian- American). He never would have stood out to successfully challenge Hillary Clinton if he weren't black.

So RIP Alexander Cockburn. I fault you for cultivating a closed mind on certain matters, but the Nation will now be even more boring and useless without you.

[Lynx]

He was correct about peak oil.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Wasn't this guy a 9/11 truther

Not that I know of.


climate change denier

Yes.


Stalinist fellow traveler

Not that I know of.


and "pure intellectual" who never spent a second dirtying his hands with organizing anything outside of his papers?

Probably


I don't understand the outpouring of grief.

His writings about the effects of U.S. imperialism and attacking the myths perpetuated by the media about U.S. foreign policy were great and he should be commended for them. I found his articles on Libya and the "freedom fighters" very interesting and enlightening.

[Clifford C Clavin]

Re the Stalinist fellow traveler, I remember that he did a few media interviews during the fall of the wall / Eastern Bloc on American TV where he was basically defending "really existing socialism" as it was being completely discredited on a nearly global basis.

This is my main memory of the guy. He always struck me as a kind of fossilized moral-radical from a bygone era.

[Clifford C Clavin]

I was wrong about the 9/11 stuff. I just double checked. Sorry for that.

[Kotze]

Yeah, he was very much against all that 9/11 conspiracy stuff (http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/11/28/the-9-11-conspiracists-and-the-decline-of-the-anmerican-left/).

Cockburn was an idiot about climate change (http://www.monbiot.com/2007/06/12/the-conspiracy-widens/).

[Clifford C Clavin]

He was no John Reed, that's for sure!

[~Spectre]

Yeah, he was very much against all that 9/11 conspiracy stuff (http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/11/28/the-9-11-conspiracists-and-the-decline-of-the-anmerican-left/).

Cockburn was an idiot about climate change (http://www.monbiot.com/2007/06/12/the-conspiracy-widens/).

Indeed, though (completely unrelated), Monbiot is a dishonest charlatan himself.

[~Spectre]

A more balanced take by Corey Robin:


Alexander Cockburn, one of the finest radical journalists—no, journalists—of his generation, has died. Because of the similarities between him and Christopher Hitchens—both Anglos (he of Ireland, Hitchens of England) in America; both friends, for a time; both left (though, in Hitchens’s case, for a time); and both dying relatively young from cancer—people, inevitably, will want to make comparisons. Here, very quickly, are three (and why I think Cockburn was ultimately the superior writer).

First, Cockburn was a much better observer of people and of politics: in part because he didn’t impose himself on the page the way Hitchens did, he could see particular details (especially of class and of place) that eluded Hitchens. At his best, he got out of the way of his own story and allowed his readers to see things they never would have seen without him.

Second, he was extraordinarily well read, but he didn’t make a parade of his learning. One sly quote from Gibbons or Tacitus was enough. He understood, unlike Hitchens, that less is more, and that helped him—to an extraordinary degree—on the page. Ever the over-achieving schoolboy, Hitchens simply drew too much attention to himself, and even his finest sentences (which were quite fine) had a way of distracting from the matter at hand.

Finally, and though this does get into the politics or at least character of the two men, Cockburn managed to achieve, again at least on the page, a better equanimity between his savagery and his sweetness. I remember one of his pieces on taking his daughter to school, and it was affecting: poignant and pungent. When Hitchens was sweet, he often slipped into sentimentality. Never Cockburn. At least not that I can remember.

I should say that Cockburn had some tremendous failings as a journalist: his thoughts on climate change, his indulgence of the paleocon right, and more that I can’t immediately remember. If I had time for a fuller reckoning, I’d go back through his work and offer up a more balanced view of his virtues and failings. On the whole, for better and for worse, I’d say he was the great refusenik of our time.

But for now, on the question of Cockburn versus Hitchens, this is it.

Update (July 21, 11 am)

Via Brad DeLong, I came upon these comments from Cockburn on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (http://books.google.com/books?id=t_pmdoRTuOwC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=Alex+Cockburn,+%22Press+Clips,%22+Village+Voice ,+January+21,+1980.&source=bl&ots=eyYDGlqvO_&sig=hp_iyedagMDN9pDgw371Rq9mUDY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=38UKUN2RHomN6AHZg4iMAg&ved=0CFMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Alex%20Cockburn%2C%20%22Press%20Clips%2C%22%20Vi llage%20Voice%2C%20January%2021%2C%201980.&f=false) They are simply unconscionable. And I suspect there are probably more like this on similar topics. Any fuller accounting of Cockburn would have to reckon with these.

[~Spectre]

I do like that even in death he's being used to take shots at Hitchens. :laugh:

[Clifford C Clavin]

"We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. And unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to the penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too." - Alexander Cockburn, "Press Clips." Village Voice, January 21, 1980.

What a cool guy. A definite asset to the left.

[passenger57]

Clifford: I think Alexander Cockburn was a bit sectarian leftist. I think he was a hardcore anti-9-11 truther. In fact he said Fidel Castro belongs in a mental hospital for supporting the 9-11 truth movement inside job theory.

I think Alexander Cockburn like many leftist intellectuals of USA was a bit confusing, they write nice articles against US wars, against the bailing out of bankers. I think Alexander Cockburn, was like many celebrities and rich intellectual writters of the left that have been able to rise economically to a middle upper class lifestyle, hang around high circles, hang around capitalists, and the bourgeoise sectors of the country, like Ariana Huffington, Naomi Klein, Norman Solomon, Amy Goodman, Tom Engelhardt, MAtt Taibi, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Paul Krugman, Jeremy Scahill, the people of The Russia Today News, Lauren Lyster, Thom Hartmann, Max Keiser, and many many others who because of their middle upper class lifestyle are unable to advocate for a workers-dictatorship, for leninist dictatorship of the proletariat in the spirit of Lenin. In fact they don't even mention the founding fathers of political socialism in their books and articles. I think most of them are reformist-capitalists, social-democrats, Norway third-way social-democrats. Not Marxist-Leninists at all.


.



Wasn't this guy a 9/11 truther, climate change denier, Stalinist fellow traveler, and "pure intellectual" who never spent a second dirtying his hands with organizing anything outside of his papers? I don't understand the outpouring of grief.

[The Red Hammer and Sickle]

A man with a terrible, no the most terrible last name in the world has died.:laugh: Anyways it's unfortunate to see such a prominent figure pass. Even if he was an idiot on some topics.

[cynicles]

Clifford: I think Alexander Cockburn was a bit sectarian leftist. I think he was a hardcore anti-9-11 truther. In fact he said Fidel Castro belongs in a mental hospital for supporting the 9-11 truth movement inside job theory.

I think Alexander Cockburn like many leftist intellectuals of USA was a bit confusing, they write nice articles against US wars, against the bailing out of bankers. I think Alexander Cockburn, was like many celebrities and rich intellectual writters of the left that have been able to rise economically to a middle upper class lifestyle, hang around high circles, hang around capitalists, and the bourgeoise sectors of the country, like Ariana Huffington, Naomi Klein, Norman Solomon, Amy Goodman, Tom Engelhardt, MAtt Taibi, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Paul Krugman, Jeremy Scahill, the people of The Russia Today News, Lauren Lyster, Thom Hartmann, Max Keiser, and many many others who because of their middle upper class lifestyle are unable to advocate for a workers-dictatorship, for leninist dictatorship of the proletariat in the spirit of Lenin. In fact they don't even mention the founding fathers of political socialism in their books and articles. I think most of them are reformist-capitalists, social-democrats, Norway third-way social-democrats. Not Marxist-Leninists at all.


.

Only people who wanna do what Lenin wanted to do are real socialists!

[Book O'Dead]

Good as he was as a radical writer, nothing he ever wrote, impressed me more than Chomsky's works.

Chomsky is still alive. Let's all praise Jesus for that!

[blake 3:17]

A loss for our side. Damn. His book Whiteout on the CIA & the cocaine trade was excellent.

[A Marxist Historian]

A more balanced take by Corey Robin:

I think Cockburns "comments on Afghanistan" were some of the best stuff he ever wrote.

He got fired from the Village Voice back in the 1980s for telling the truth too often, particularly about Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The Voice tried to use as an excuse some grant money he'd gotten from an Arab foundation to write something, since obviously any money from an Arab just isn't kosher.

Workers Vanguard, the Spartacist newspaper, offered him a job when he was fired, commenting that if he took the job he'd better get all the Arab money he can, since WV couldn't afford to pay him much.

Instead he took a job with the Nation, which paid slightly better. And, after he won his famous fight in the Nation with Hitchens, who stormed out of the Nation and then the left altogether in a huff, they cut his column down to half size and filled the spot with a liberal law professor.

Both he and the Nation went downhill after that, though more the Nation than Cockburn. He did have some pretty foolish positions starting in the '90s, climate denial, trying at one point to pretend that the militia movements vs. the Clintons were somehow "progressive" etc. But Coounterpunch had some great stuff, and he'll be missed.

-M.H.-