Alexander Claud Cockburn (/ˈkoʊbərn/KOH-bərn; 6 June 1941 – 21 July 2012) was a Scottish-born Irish-American political journalist and writer. Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland, but lived and worked in the United States from 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edited the political newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn also wrote the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation, and another column for The Week in London, syndicated by Creators Syndicate.
Cockburn graduated from Oxford in 1963, after which he worked at the New Left Review, becoming its managing editor in 1966. He was also assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement, and in 1967 worked at New Statesman.[3] In 1967 Cockburn co-edited The Incompatibles: Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus with Robin Blackburn. Blackburn described the book as "[bringing] together trade-union organizers, leftwing journalists including Paul Foot, Marxist economists and two liberals—Michael Frayn and Philip Toynbee—who mocked the demonization of union activists by Labour as well as Conservative pundits."[3] In 1969 the pair co-edited Student Power: Problems, Diagnosis, Action, with contributors including Herbert Marcuse, Perry Anderson, and Tom Nairn.[3] In 1968, Cockburn published a letter to The Times supporting British socialists protesting the Vietnam War.[4]
Cockburn moved to the United States in 1972 and lived there for the rest of his years. He contributed pieces to The New York Review of Books, Esquire, Harper's, and, from 1973 to 1983, The Village Voice. For the latter, he initiated the longstanding "Press Clips" column. His interview of Rupert Murdoch in The Voice preceded Murdoch's purchase of the paper.[5][6]James Ridgeway later noted that "Murdoch, when he owned the Voice, was said to gag on some of Alex's pointed epithets, but he never did anything about it."[7]
In 1975 Cockburn wrote Idle Passion: Chess and the Dance of Death.[8] In 1979 Cockburn and Ridgeway co-wrote Political Ecology.[citation needed]
In 1987, Cockburn completed the first of a series of books collecting columns, diary entries, letters, and essays dating from 1976, titled Corruptions of Empire; the cover featured a portrayal of Admiral George Cockburn torching the White House.[12] Follow-up books included The Golden Age Is In Us: Journeys and Encounters (1995) and A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture (2013).[13] In the 1990s Cockburn contributed to, and eventually became co-editor of, the newsletter CounterPunch.
Cockburn became a United States citizen in 2009.[1][14] He lived in New York City for many years, before moving to Petrolia in Humboldt County in northern California in 1992.[15]
In a January 1980, Village Voice column, Cockburn criticized the US media's coverage of the Soviet–Afghan War, and described Afghanistan as "An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers ... I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan."[16][17] Cockburn later said that his comments were "satirical," "tasteless,"[12] and that he "shouldn't have written it ... it was a joke."[18]
Cockburn supported free speech, writing that "Free speech counts most when it's most risky".[29] He said, "America is well on its way to making it illegal to say anything nasty about gays, Jews, blacks and women [...] with the First Amendment gone the way of the dodo."[30] Cockburn wrote approvingly of the right-wing Patriot movement and militia rallies.[31][32]
Asked about his position on the Second Amendment and gun control, Cockburn said, "a native Mexican turkey wandered onto my property in Humboldt County, unaware that the California Fish and Game regulations permitted a window of vulnerability for the aforementioned wild turkey. I then proceeded to my 12-gauge and brought that turkey down, thirteen and a half pounds, plucked it, drew it, and ate it, with my loved ones as they say," but also said "I think that people shouldn't carry Howitzers."[33] Following the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Cockburn wrote, "There have been the usual howls from the anti-gun lobby, but it's all hot air. America is not about to dump the Second Amendment giving people the right to bear arms."[34]
In December 1968, Cockburn married writer Emma Tennant; their daughter Daisy Alice Cockburn was born in February 1969.[49] Cockburn and Tennant divorced in 1973.
Cockburn had a complicated personal and professional relationship with British author and journalist Christopher Hitchens. Robin Blackburn commented that Cockburn “sort of invented Christopher. He showed him what could be done."[50][51][52]
Cockburn died on 21 July 2012, in Bad Salzhausen, Germany, age 71, after suffering from cancer for two years.[53]
In CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair wrote, "[Cockburn] 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."[54]
^Cockburn, Alexander (2013). A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture. New York City: Verso Books. pp. 201–202.
^Cockburn, Alexander (12 June 1995). "Who's Left? Who's Right?". The Nation.
^Raimondo, Justin (23 July 2012). "Alexander Cockburn, RIP". Anti-War. Archived from the original on 12 January 2014. Retrieved 12 January 2014. "...when Bill Clinton was targeting the alleged danger posed by the militia movement in the 1990s, Cockburn defended them, likened them to the Zapatistas, and described one militia rally he attended as "amiable""...
