The Beaten Devil
Oh, Counterpunch. How do I loathe thee? Clicking through the site’s archives, one comes across a confused piece entitled “Muammar Gaddafi: In Memoriam,” written by someone named Fawzia Afzal-Khan. This article ponders whether we should view Gaddafi as a tyrant or a reformer. The jury is out for Ms. Khan or, indeed, never convened in the first place. Perhaps not wishing to out herself as an unadulterated lover of tyranny, Khan is careful not to state too clearly what she thinks. Cockburn himself was less demure. Here’s what he wrote about Gaddafi in October 2011:
Dollar for dollar I doubt Qaddafi has a rival in any assessment of the amount of oil revenues in his domain actually distributed for benign social purposes. Derision is heaped on his Green Book, but in intention it can surely stand favorable comparison with kindred Western texts. Anyone labeled by Ronald Reagan “This mad dog of the Middle East” has an honored place in my personal pantheon.
Cockburn died in Berlin, Germany. If he had been living there in April 1986, he may have been one of the casualties of the bomb that exploded at the La Belle discotheque, planted by the henchmen of Abu Nidal, a long-time client of Gaddafi. How interesting, but not at all surprising, that Cockburn would choose only Western nations in which to live and hawk his wares, and only those that had been attacked or degraded most viciously by people he regarded, in varying degrees, as co-thinkers and comrades-in- arms.
Sometimes, this hypocrisy took the form of amnesia. In 1980, when the Afghans were getting their own taste of the Brezhnev doctrine, Cockburn wrote of their country:
An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world…. If ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.
That, you see, is what they call “speaking truth to power.” Predictably, Cockburn opposed the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. An alleged “radical,” he nevertheless defended the status quo when it came to the most barbaric reactionaries and seemed comfortable with, if not amenable to, the death-cult establishments in Palestine and Lebanon. In fact, when I think hard about it, I wonder why this man was considered a radical at all. When your essential worldview is shaped by the writings of a 19th century German philosopher, you are not a radical. When you publish op-eds by dictators who have been in power since Eisenhower was president, you are, in a very literal sense, a conservative. When you’re skeptical about everything except Josef Stalin, you cannot be said to have a very developed sense of bucking “the establishment.”
“Too many radicals get a pass when they die; they become martyred on the obit pages as freedom fighters for the very people they did the most to keep tortured in their cells.”
Just wait until Pete Seeger passes. It will be sickening.
“His leftism was of the old European variety: hard, stark, bitter, cynical, uncompromising, and, most important, shameless.”
As with all socialists and communists, they must be defeated wherever they are. Now that we see that we have those same people in the White House today, from Van Jones (who was forced to reseign, thank God) to Obama, we can see that the younger generation is just as bitter and nasty as the older one. These are the times I yearn for the 1950s all over again. At least then we didn’t have any problems going after unashamed communists. Today, to the politically correct elites in Washington, these are simply people on the “far left” with opposing views. What rubbish.
These people have not changed in over 60 years and they’re not about to change now. They would be happy to destroy you if they thought you were standing in their way. Which is why they must be stopped, and fast, before more damage is done to the country. The first step is to throw Obama and his minions out of office in November. The next step is to put people like Eric Holder in jail for perjury and obstruction of justice. That will at least send a message that we won’t tolerate any more subversion of the American government ever again. It would be a start, and it’s about time we stood up to these “people.”
communists should be allowed to operate freely in the public square. their ideas can be defeated in an open forum. freedom of political speech — something that didn’t exist in the fifties — must be absolute in a free society.
Yeah, a jerk – and a cruel-minded, Stalinist jerk, in to the bargain…but, I liked his writing. I hope that somehow or another he’s redeemed…
Your point is a good one. Cockburn was a dyed in the wool Fabian, a proud communist and articulate spokesman for his cause. He let you know where he stood and and his defence was as vigorous as his attack. Not for him the sneaky elitist academic pretense of “progressive” or the euphemism of “liberal.”
Most Americans have no awareness that pre-WWII the Communist Party of the USA campaigned openly and actively, running for every public office from dog-catcher to President. Today the Socialist Partly membership is at the lowest point in its over-100 year existence. The Democrat Party has taken over the Socialist’s mission and purpose, and no candidate on the conservative side has the guts to make that a major point in this election. mostly because of the fear of being labeled “McCarth yist”. Joe’s accusations were correct: he just didn’t have the incontrovertible evidence,
Better an honest partisan that a treacherous scamster.
Only at the end do they realize the error of their ways…as a true Stalinist (aka: atheist) he finds himself kneeling before the altar of God where he has to make an account of his life to the Lord with his own tongue. Jesus is beside him, but instead of recognizing Jesus as his Savior, he hears Jesus say, “Woooooocy, you have some splaining to do….”
Oh, give it a rest.
Alexander Cockburn just died. Can we not be a bit better than the left and refrain from dancing on so fresh a grave?
Yes, Cockburn was a thorough-going leftist bastard writing from his perch at The Nation. Still, he made me laugh. Here’s his brilliant parody of Andy Warhol interviewing Adolf Hitler for “Interview” magazine:
http://books.google.com/books?id=m9PYNIXp8BMC&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=%22alexander+cockburn%22+%22corruptions+of+empire%22+hitler+interview+cover+story&source=bl&ots=9SQPgtRrUK&sig=zOONjwbish6c95T5miTAJQ7W7Oc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R9cKUJ2OJ4ye8gTA0-3JCg&ved=0CGIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22alexander%20cockburn%22%20%22corruptions%20of%20empire%22%20hitler%20interview%20cover%20story&f=false
get lost with this crap. the piece is moderate in tone. would you have rather nothing was written at all, or that someone wrote a piece on cockburn that DIDNT mention his love for dictators and hatred of the united states?
why are you reading this site?
“Lurking somewhere in the syntax of Cockburn’s prose was always the vague feeling that, should he ever get his way, you just might be the first to be put up against the wall and shot… Always charming, he was, and yet always ready with the dagger in his pocket… His leftism was of the old European variety: hard, stark, bitter, cynical, uncompromising, and, most important, shameless.”
We need to be reminded that modern liberals are the opposite of classic liberals, the latter comprising those who believed in the equal value, equal dignity, equal rights and equality before law for all people. Modern so-called liberals like Cockburn are leftists – people who believe they are in a class by themselves – superior to the “little people” over whom they would rule via superior rights and superiority before law – justified by their superior value – in their own eyes that is. Leftists like Cockburn fancy themselves as Plato’s “Philosopher Kings,” men who would in fact re-establish a modern self-serving Marxist version of Medieval Feudal collectivization where, as with the Pigs of Animal Farm, some (themselves) are forcibly made “more equal than others.”
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property [and thereby power] in far fewer hands than before… Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic [and legal] inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” George Orwell
I encountered Cockburn, on paper, in a Liverpool bookshop, a few years before Robert Wargas was born. He had written some kind of “analysis” of the Cold War which miraculously managed to find that the USSR was much maligned, that NATO was the fons et origo of all evil, blah, blah, blah. I left it on the shelf. I’d heard of Claud Cockburn and guessed that there was a connection, beyond the easy mendacity, between the two.
Interestingly, the beebyanka, known internally as the “BBC”, employs Cockburn’s niece as an economics editor. While Stephanie Flanders manages to muzzle the send-them-to-the-GULAG instincts of her relatives, she is still notoriously left-wing.
Let’s show some class, shall we? Cockburn’s political opinions were vile, agreed. But he left behind loved ones who are grieving his passing, and who likely knew him as a man first and a commentator second (if at all).
As SF author Greg Bear put it in Anvil of Stars, “No villain comes in black, screaming obscenities. All evil has children, homes, regard for self, fear of enemies.” Condemn the evil they’ve willed and done, but do not hate them…and most especially, don’t wish damnation upon them. That will get you the fate you ask for him you despise.
get a grip…the column did just what you said, criticized his ideas and didnt express joy at his death
Speak no ill of the dead? Ok, Cockburn (fitting name that)is dead and his father is too. Good. His family is grieving as they should not be. Being Communist they should not care according to their beliefs. What is said today cannot harm dear comrade Cockburn. Let the truth be known so that he is properly accounted in the copy books…
Francis, it will be the death of us to hold the tongue in the hopes that those that seek our destruction will think the better of us.
So no one else will misunderstand me:
1. The article is decent enough. What I deplore is the attitude of some of the commenters.
2. Criticize and condemn Cockburn’s political opinions, his efforts to advance them, and whatever effort he made to silence others all you like, but refrain from wishing further evil on the man, or inflicting greater injury on those who loved him, than has already been done by his passing.
As a greater Authority than any found here at PJ Media put it: Hate the sin, not the sinner. “Doing it the other way around” renders one unfit for human company.
i jsut read through all the comments and found not one that was out of line. “hate the sin, not the sinner.” this is trash. whoever said it is an idiot. i hate what osama bin laden did as well as bin laden as a person.
go elsewhere if you cant handle people expressing anger over someone who got so much play for his horrific views. the fact that both the article and the comments are relatively moderate in tone means youre that much more of a wimp.
Sorry Francis, you have been duped by the Devil. There is no such quote in the Bible. It is a evangelical interpretation of a few passages in the Bible.
Hate the Sin, but love the Sinner
Okay, Francis, just who is this “greater Authority”?
A quick google search reveals:
“Hate the sin, but love the sinner.
—Popular evangelism technique not given in scripture
I have heard a lot of people bandy about the phrase, “Hate the sin, but love the sinner,” as if it were some sort of dominical command. Did Jesus ever command us to get all lathered up about sin? What is the scriptural warrant for such a proposition? I am not aware of any place in scripture where this is commended to us as a general rule of life or a method of ministry.”
Rev. Kenneth Collins
_________________________________
I’ll take his word over yours; thank you.
May Cockburn and his ilk, rot in Hell.
Quoted from Mahatma Ghandi if I recollect correctly. Per the link in my previous post to Francis. As far as I know he hasn’t been elevated to the level of G-d yet. And while he is to be admired for his tactics, his political beliefs are no better than Mr. Cockburn’s.
EFF the godless bastard. I’m glad he’s dead. Perhaps there is a chance for the human soul after death presented with The Truth. I pray this is so.
Marxists are not godless, government is their god, and since they invariably and self-servingly worm their way into government, Marxists end up worshiping themselves – the Priests of Power. Marxists hate God precisely because God is bigger than they are – and His natural law stands in the way of their tyranny.
“The religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements… Socialism’s pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism’s view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically… Finally, socialism’s hostility toward traditional religion hardly contradicts this judgment–it may simply be a matter of animosity between rival religions… It is certainly true that socialism is hostile to religion. But is it possible to understand it as a consequence of atheism? Hardly, at least if we understand atheism as it is usually defined: as the loss of religious feeling… The term “atheism” is inappropriate for the description of people in the grip of socialist doctrines. It would be more correct to speak here not of “atheists” but of “God-haters,” not of “atheism” but of “theophobia.” Such, certainly, is the passionately hostile attitude of socialism toward religion. Thus, while socialism is certainly connected with the loss of religious feeling, it can hardly be reduced to it. The place formerly occupied by religion does not remain vacant; a new lodger appeared.” Igor Shafarevich – The Socialist Phenomenon
His ideology, his writing, his life, you cannot separate one from the other.
Don’t fool yourself into believing the philosophical rubbish that declares you can separate a man’s deeds from who he is, nor believe you can fool the commentors here Mr. Porretto.
The same spirit you leave this life with is the spirit you take with you into the eternities. I don’t claim to know or judge just where that leaves the man, I just feel badly that he was obviously terribly unhappy as are most liberal and wish he had found some peace here before he moved on.
I miss Cockburn… like I miss Klaus Barbie. Both had the same goals