In the suffocating climate of the Reagan era, three radical talented writers fought almost weekly in the US magazine The Nation against the neoliberal right and its imperial policies. They were Andrew Kopkind, Christopher Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn. Cockburn, sole survivor of this informal group, died on 21 July.

He also wrote for Le Monde diplomatique, bringing what really characterised him — the desire to confront the most difficult subjects, at the risk of contradicting the comfortable assumptions of some of its readership. He challenged theories that the 9/11 attacks were a White House plot, for instance. He believed they were the product of a tendency to conspiracy theories, which detracted attention from the real schemes the US employed in its system of domination. As he wrote in LMD: “The Bush years saw the near extinction of the left’s capacity for realistic political analysis. Hysteria about the consummate evil of Bush and his right-hand man Richard Cheney led to a vehement insistence that any Democrat would be qualitatively better.”

His concern never to serve as an intellectual lifeline to a Democratic Party he loathed led Cockburn (an implacable opponent of tactical voting) to adopt positions that ran counter to the progressive consensus. In his paper CounterPunch (counterpunch.org), he denied that human activity was responsible for global warming and defended the availability of firearms.

Cockburn will be remembered not only for his scathing wit and talent, but also his intellectual courage. He was one of the first to point the finger at the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on US policy and media; it was enough to get him accused of anti-Semitism.

He was deeply concerned that the increase in charitable foundations funding progressive causes had institutionalised and watered down many radical struggles, undermining their social, anti-capitalist dimension. So too with US universities, happy to offer comfortable posts to revolutionaries as soon as they show more concern for their careers than the fight against oppression. And Cockburn had no illusions about the impact of intellectual engagement. He believed critical thought needed to be linked to social movements to be effective. In his last article published in The Nation, about the financial crisis, he concluded: “I think the system will collapse but not through our agency.”

Alex Cockburn was an honest, uncompromising, sometimes unpredictable man, full of character. His writing helped thousands of US activists to follow their convictions when all around were telling them to get back in line.  

---