Hey, Parents: Meet Neo-Soviet NYU, Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen
Speaking with Fareed Zakaria on CNN in 2010, Cohen didn’t speak for 30 seconds in response to a question about Putin’s KGB government before he began attacking the U.S. for alleged acts of foreign aggression. Such classic neo-Soviet “whataboutism” reminds of a Soviet joke: An American in Moscow, displeased with the wretched services offered by his hotel, complains to the manager, who retorts: “Yes, but you lynch blacks.” It’s traditional Soviet strategy to change the subject and smear the critic. Cohen did the same thing in March of last year when speaking about Putin’s rigged return to power: when asked whether Putin had legitimately taken power, he stated:
I don’t know what the word ‘legitimately’ means. I know people who think that the second President Bush didn’t become president legitimately after Florida.
On the question of whether Putin became “president for life”:
It’s none of our business.
But it certainly is Cohen’s business when he’d like it to be: in an extended interview with Dan Rather, Cohen vigorously defended the merits of a Putin return to power.
As Cohen continued with Zakaria, he bizarrely said the U.S. got along just fine with the USSR, so there’s no reason it can’t continue doing the same with Russia. He launched a stream of insults against both Zakaria and a Wall Street Journal reporter, angrily declaring “this is not a serious discussion.” Then he blamed Yeltin and greater democracy for the nation’s pandemic problems of murder and corruption.
We can speculate whether Cohen is simply making himself a niche as a TV presence (with so few willing to defend Putin, the networks are bound to come calling), or if he actually sides with Putin on perverse moral grounds. Yet clearly, Cohen — NYU and Princeton Professor Cohen — is serving the interests of the Kremlin against his own country, undermining American values and alienating American allies. And he offers no greater factual basis for his positions than did the old Soviet politburo.
I am truly shocked, shocked! Another self -loathing jew. Waxing nostalgically for return to the days of the Bolsheviks.
re: Afghan vet-when the Bolsheviks set about destroying Judaism and Zionism in the USSR they utilized the Evsekskia, Jewish party members, to do the dirty work.
re: Yeltsin-he was not a democrat but a deliberate transitional figure designed to bridge the path from Gorbachev to Putin. His resignation from Russia’s presidency following his re-election led to Putin’s rise. His resignation from the Communist Party in July 1990 reflected the strategy presented by Yeltsin in a speech to that CP Congress of creating a multi party system in which “one of another of its factions” would become a “vanguard party”. That is, Yeltsin was the democratic window dressing for a restructuring of the Soviet Union with the KGB maintaining control and the communist party replaced by an “alternative” among competing parties; in the current case Putin’s Unity party. Yeltsin’s democratic credentials were further burnished by the August coup, a Soviet provocation, that was stage managed to appear to bring democracy. No one explains how Gorbachev under house arrest could be allowed to broadcast to the West nor why Yeltsin’s lines of communications were never cut when he was on top of the tank (let alone why he wasn’t shot). The coup was theater designed for Western eyes, excited that the USSR had “collapsed” and democracy installed. Yet here we are facing a Russia who everyone forgets is really Russia: Commonwealth of Independent States, armed with fifth generation deployed nuclear weapons, a reviving naval arm, state control of media as noted by our correspondent. The key to the theatrics was two fold: to integrate Russia into the Western economic system eg G-7(the league of industrial democracies)becomes G-8 to get the West especially the US to disarm; ie the peace dividend. This process is accelerating under Obama but began with Bush senior and Clinton.
The article was very good and Leib’s comments were especially thought provoking. I had never heard or read Leib’s interpretation of the August Coup and Yeltsin’s and Gorby’s parts in it. A great conspiracy theory and quite possibly true.
One point about the article. Please supply some references to back up your contention that Paul and Buchannan are fans of Putin. After all, you excoriate Cohen for asserting things without proof. You don’t want to do the same, yourself, I’m sure.
Or as Gorby once said the train will be put on “new rails”. Interpretation: still going in to same direction but with a new track. Perestroika Deception. Read It.
Stalin had Walter Duranty, Putin has Steven Cohen.
Vladmir Putin is a KGB thug, first, last and always.
There must be something in it for Cohen like there was for Duranty.
Or else he’s simply nuts.
I’m not shocked at all, especially if this guy is married to Katrina Vandenwhatsis. She’s a red-diaper baby and has been an shrill, useful-idiot Soviet apologist her entire adult life. Not surprising at all to see she married within her own ideological colors (meaning: RED).
I wonder how much money he gets from the Russians. That Voice of Russia blog might be a way to funnel money to him. Perhaps an unregistered agent of a foreign power?
People here should also remember that this is the same guy that, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the old USSR, was on Charlie Rose practically every other night proclaiming that the SU would last forever because it had the rock-solid backing of the Russian public. Rarely has a supposedly really smart academic and “intellectual”–especially one who was/is? supposedly a specialist on Russian affairs and the old SU–been so wrong. After the fall of the Wall he pretty much hunkered down and disappeared from public view. Now, it seems he has latched onto Putin as the means to begin his public rehabilitation.
So he’s a True Believer and not just a paid mouthpiece?
Have always wondered why John Batchelor (John Batchelor show) gave Steve Cohen air time.
A Left-Wing professors a two major (and expensive) universities. How can this be?
Since the 1960s many universities seemed to need to have at least one Marxist faculty and many had more than one in their economics, political science, and sociology faculties. Glad to see Cohen has retired, but his, and their, progeny are everywhere, and still “publishing” in Monthly Review (check it out, it’s the same crap from 50 years ago).
are cesspools, to where all the filth and offal of jew-hatred flows as unto a vast reeking sewer
What you have is a squirrel looking for a nut. He has the ties, ideological and personal to the Russia, and is hoping to turn that relationship into something useful to him.
His technique is to show Putin etal that he is their friend, and is on their side. With that proven loyalty he hopes to reap some benefit in the for of MICE (Money, Ideological satisfaction, Compromise, and Ego). He wants to be their agent, but where the has gotten anything is not clear.
Ever since I first saw him on the Macneil-Lehrer report back in the 1970′s he has always said the same thing: The Russians never do anything wrong unless the USA (usually Republicans) make them do something wrong.
One small note — “emeritus” is the higher-ed term for retired.
Another left wing Jew tearing into America! What a shock!
Married to an elite Obama water carrier, editor of the Nation, the Sviets’ mouthpiece of N.y-the Nation, Ms. Van Der Heuvel comes from a well of movie moguls’ family, a dilettante chasing a sturdy microphones, and deep thinking Lefties are both a relic from the tired Sixties, playing with other people”s money, living off the wealth made by others, a fine way to freeload, what real life experience do both bring to the discussion? How to leach?