Nick Cohen

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Nick Cohen: "The left has swerved to the right."
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Nick Cohen: "The left has swerved to the right."

Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author, and political commentator. He began his career at the Birmingham Post and Mail before becoming a reporter at The Independent. He now writes a political column for The Observer, a weekly column for the London Evening Standard, and contributes regularly to the New Statesman. His books include Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous (2000), and Pretty Straight Guys (2003). What's Left?, which Cohen describes as the story of how the liberal left of the 20th century ended up supporting the far right of the 21st, will be published in February 2007. [1]

Cohen is known for the promotion of a democratic, left-wing secular humanism, and is regarded by supporters as belonging to the intellectual tradition of radical writers such as George Orwell and Albert Camus. Hitherto a strong critic of American foreign policy, Cohen created controversy in 2002 when, in several hard-hitting columns, he announced his support for the invasion of Iraq and denounced the left for failing to address Islamist ideology. "The left has swerved to the right," he wrote.

As with Orwell, his attacks on what he sees as the bad faith and myopia of the left have been interpreted by some as symptomatic of a shift towards the political right. In 2006, he became a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, which proposes 'a new political alignment' in which the left stands for liberal democracy, and opposes tyranny, terrorism, racism, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

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[edit] Domestic politics

Though arguably best known for his views on foreign policy, Cohen also writes on domestic issues, including education policy, civil liberties, and inner-city racial tension. He has been a consistent opponent of the introduction of identity cards, has declared his support for grammar schools, and has attacked the increasing involvement of the private sector within public services.

He has been a longstanding critic of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the "New Labour" project, which he argues is based on image, not principle. He told the British television network, Channel 4: "You get this picture of the leadership of this country, people in the heart of power, Blair, Campbell, Powell all in Downing Street, all worried intensely and working intensely about the Prime Minister's image. This is the government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They really ought to have better things to do with their time ... Apart from Tony Blair's image, his sincerity, his integrity, there's no ideology behind it, beyond the standard neo-Conservative ideology of the day, and so his integrity is kind of all they've got." [2]

Cohen takes a broadly libertarian viewpoint on civil liberties issues. In particular, he has been a consistent opponent of the introduction of identity cards, which he described in 2004 as a "counterproductive, authoritarian and ruinously expensive folly" [3]. He has also attacked the misuse of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, arguing that they "have created a new outlet for the small-minded and allowed them to treat people who would once have been dismissed as unlucky or unconventional or simple-minded as villains." [4]

He has also written frequently on the topic of inner-city racial tension. In the aftermath of the Birmingham riots in October 2005, he recalled his time as a reporter for the Birmingham Post & Mail during the Handsworth riots twenty years earlier, and drew pessimistic conclusions from events in the interim period, writing: "I can see no more urgent task than taking the fight to those on the right and the left who are busily piling bricks on ghetto walls. If they're not stopped, I don't like to think what Handsworth or the rest of the country will be like in 20 years." [5].

Cohen has never expressed a firm party-political allegiance. In 2001, he voted for the Liberal Democrats, but prior to the 2005 general election declared his support for the Labour Party. He has lately written on the relative success of the British National Party at the 2006 local elections, arguing that, "if polite society stuffs British citizens into hermetically sealed boxes and labels them as the blacks or the Muslims, it is not so strange that people should decide to be the whites and vote accordingly." [6].

[edit] Cohen, Islam and the "war on terror"

Alan Johnson, Eve Garrard, Nick Cohen, Shalom Lappin, and Norman Geras at the launch in London of the Euston Manifesto in 2006. They wrote that anti-Zionism has "developed to a point where supposed organizations of the Left are willing to entertain openly anti-Semitic speakers and to form alliances with anti-Semitic groups."
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Alan Johnson, Eve Garrard, Nick Cohen, Shalom Lappin, and Norman Geras at the launch in London of the Euston Manifesto in 2006. They wrote that anti-Zionism has "developed to a point where supposed organizations of the Left are willing to entertain openly anti-Semitic speakers and to form alliances with anti-Semitic groups." [7]

Before the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2002, Cohen had been a fierce critic of UK and U.S. foreign policy. These criticisms continued for some months after the attacks of September 11, 2001; he opposed that year's Afghanistan war and, in November 2001, argued that Tony Blair had "pinned a large target sign on this country" in his alliance with the U.S. in the war on terror. [8]. In January 2002 he declared in the New Statesman that the US's "unilateral" foreign policy meant it was "right to be Anti-American".

After the large-scale February 2003 anti-war demonstration in London, he was particularly critical of those human-rights, feminist and gay-rights activists who marched alongside Islamist groups, whom he accused of homophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny.

Cohen criticized the Stop the War Coalition over its attitude toward Iraqi dissenters: "Iraq is the only country in the Arab world with a strong, democratic movement. Yet I wonder how many who marched yesterday know of the dissenters' existence. The demonstration's organisers have gone to great lengths to censor and silence ... The Socialist Workers Party, which dominates the alliance, was happy to cohost the march with the reactionary British Association of Muslims. The association had blotted its copybook by circulating a newspaper which explained that apostasy from Islam is 'an offence punishable by death'. But what the hell. In the interests of multi-culturalism, the SWP ignored the protests of squeamish lefties and let that pass. The Trots aren't Islamophobes, after all. The only Muslims they have a phobia about are secular Iraqi Muslims who, shockingly, believe in human rights."[1]

He has been particularly critical of George Galloway, the Respect MP, whom he has likened to Oswald Mosley, and the Respect coalition more generally, which is linked to the Stop the War Coalition and the Socialist Workers Party. He has also criticized Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, for his association with Islamist clerics such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi. For Cohen, the "principled left" is a thing of the past.

The hit of the season is Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a sort of Fox News for liberals. Among the many clunking contradictions and honking errors, one unforgivable scene stands out. Moore brushes aside the millions forced into exile and mass graves by Saddam Hussein, and decides to present life in one of the worst tyrannies of the late 20th century as sweet and simple. Boys scamper to barber shops. Merry children fly kites. Blushing lovers get married. At the end of the film, leftish audiences in America and Europe show they are more than prepared to forgive and forget. They rise to their feet and applaud. [2]

In his switch to support for the wider war on terror, Cohen cited Paul Berman's book Terror and Liberalism as a major influence: "The only time I realised I was charging up a blind alley was when I read Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism. I didn't see a blinding light or hear a thunder clap or cry 'Eureka!' If I was going to cry anything it would have been 'Oh bloody hell!' ... I was going to have to turn it round and see the world afresh." [3]

Critics of Cohen's position on Iraq have pointed to his support of the Iraqi National Congress in the run-up to war, and his praise for its leader Ahmed Chalabi, the alleged conduit for much of the faulty pre-war intelligence. As the possibility of war with Iraq emerged in early 2002, Cohen promoted the INC as 'an inspiring resistance group' and criticised its 'shunning... by right-thinking, Left-leaning people', as well as by the CIA and State Department:

Many in the INC believe that what truly infuriates the CIA is that Chalabi is a cultured businessman, who speaks English better than most Western politicians. He argues with style and force against the INC’s detractors on the US networks and in Congress and the Washington think-tanks. George Tenet, who, incredibly, remains the CIA director after his failure to protect his country on 11 September, is the leader of the faction in Washington which loathes the INC… In Washington, the State Department, which has stopped funding the INC after disputed accusations of fraud, and the CIA take no notice of the threat and support the ‘nicer Sunni tyrant’ option. Paradoxically, the greatest supporters of the civilian movement are the military in the Pentagon. The struggle between the departments is underway, but the balance of forces is against the INC. A democratic Iraq would give the subject peoples of the Gulf monarchies ideas above their station. [9]

Cohen repeated his praise of the INC in a number of columns leading up to the war, describing it as a 'a loose and fractious coalition, but one which, for all its faults, is committed to democracy.' [10]. Even before revelations of the role played by Chalabi and the INC in providing dubious intelligence, Mark Seddon argued that 'Cohen's faith in the shambolic Iraqi National Congress, presided over by a convicted fraudster, Ahmad Chalabi, is horribly misplaced.'[4]

Cohen has written about the anti-Semitic attacks his columns have attracted, particularly after writing about the relationship between the left and the far right. After one such column, he wrote: "I couldn’t believe the anti-Semitism that hit me." [11] Although readers may have assumed he was Jewish because of his surname, he has written that, in fact, "there hasn’t been a Jewish member of [his] family for 100 years". [11]

His attitude to George W. Bush has evolved concurrently with his views on foreign policy. He wrote in January 2005: "In the long-run the only solution is for the global move towards democracy to get moving again. In these strange times, the only person who believes that this is possible or desirable is George W. Bush. In his inauguration address last week he announced that the 'survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.' And was feared and hated by right-thinking people the world over for saying so." [5]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "Biography", nickcohen.net.
  2. ^ Easton, Mark. "Blair's integrity under threat", Channel 4, August 2003
  3. ^ Cohen, Nick. "Marking your card, The Observer, December 5, 2004
  4. ^ Cohen, Nick. "A law for the vindictive", The Observer, March 27, 2005
  5. ^ Cohen, Nick. "Politics of the ghetto", The Observer, October 30, 2005
  6. ^ Cohen, Nick. "Bigots, racists and worthless buffoons - so why do they keep getting elected?", The Observer, May 7, 2006
  7. ^ "The Euston Manifesto", March 29, 2006.
  8. ^ Cohen, Nick. "Come on, you liberals", The Observer, November 4, 2001
  9. ^ Cohen, Nick. "Our enemy's enemies", The Observer, July 28, 2002
  10. ^ Cohen, Nick. "The last thing the US wants is democracy in Iraq", The Observer, July 28, 2002
  11. ^ a b Cohen, Nick. "Anti-semitism", New Statesman, October 10, 2005

[edit] Further reading

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