by CONN HALLINAN
For Chaos heard his voice: him all his Traine
Follow’d in the bright procession to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
–Paradise Lost, John Milton
Alexander Cockburn’s funeral should include a passage from Milton. For more than 50 years, Cockburn combined polished, erudite writing with fierce political insight in the tradition of the great 17th-century English polemicist. Cockburn died July 20th in Germany at age 71, following a two-year struggle with cancer. He was buried July 28th in his beloved Petrolia, California.
It is hard to sum up his career because it was catholic in true meaning of that word: all-embracing. He wrote for newspapers in England as well as New York’s Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, and the Nation—and, along with Jeffery St. Clair, founded the investigative publication CounterPunch. For more than 50 years, Cockburn was a relentless critic of U.S. foreign policy, opposing the Yugoslav War, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the recent war in Libya.
He was particularly critical of Israel, and for that earned the undying enmity of people like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who called him an anti-Semite. Cockburn responded by publishing a book of essays entitled The Politics of Anti-Semitism, commenting that one could always tell Israel was misbehaving when charges of anti-Semitism were thrown at its critics.
He was born in Scotland, the oldest of three sons of Claud and Patricia Cockburn. He had two sisters from his father’s previous marriages. The family moved to Youghal, County Cork in 1947, and Cockburn lived there until he went to Oxford in 1960. Graduating from Oxford in 1963 with a degree in literature and language, he worked as a journalist in London. He moved to the United States in 1972.
For 12 years Cockburn wrote a column for the Village Voice called “Press Clips,” which dismantled the myth of objective journalism and exposed the incestuous relationship between U.S. foreign and domestic policymakers and the media. The column sent shockwaves through the fourth estate in much the same way as A.J. Liebling’s critical writings had done in a previous generation.
He left the Voice in 1984 and began writing a column named after one of his father’s novels, Beat the Devil, for the Nation. He continued to do so up until a few days before he died. His last column appeared in the Nation July 30th.
In 1996, he and Jeffery St. Clair founded CounterPunch, a combination print and online investigative magazine that features some of the leading writers on the left.
Keeping It in the Family
The Cockburn family was sort of a journalism collective. Alex’s father Claud was probably the best frontline reporter during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War—and the competition was rather steep for that designation—and a brilliant essayist on everything from British foreign policy to Irish agricultural practices. The elder Cockburn’s ability to write about virtually anything paralleled Alexander’s career. As Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel told the Associated Press, “His range was extraordinary. He could write about fox hunting, and he could write about intervention.”
Foreign Policy in Focus for more