Nick Cohen back-pedals, rather furiously
This whole saga is getting quite amusing. First Nick Cohen wrote an article in the Observer clearly implying the British liberal left had failed liberal Muslims, especially groups like the Fabian Society. Then Sunder pointed to lots of examples where this wasn’t the case. I joined in, Nick backtracks. Then Sunder replies, twice.
1) Nick writes on LibCon that Jamaat-i-Islami had been appeased “by such noted lefties as the Lord Chief Justice, Prince Charles and Her Majesty the Queen.” — WTF?? Since when did the Queen become a noted leftie? Prince Charles may be pro-environment but a leftie? I mean honestly, is this the sort of argument I’m supposed to engage with?
2) He says he quoted, “Shiraz Maher saying that an investigation he has done into misogynist, racist, anti-semitic, anti-democratic and anti-enlightenment groups would not have been published by a left-wing think tank, which is true, in my view.” — for the record Shiraz has not approached the Fabians or IPPR, ever. So Nick is just letting his leftie-bashing instincts get in the way of facts. You’d think a national journalist would at least ask more about such empty claims.
3) But we know why this is: Nick then says he shared (I’m assuming) Shiraz Maher’s “contempt” for left-wing campaign groups. Nick’s contempt for the left in general is become open knowledge now, not sure why he even pretends to stick to liberal values, when half the time he is praising people (Policy Exchange) who are hypocritical on the same values.
4) He also says: “All I imply is that it is telling that exposes of clerical fascism come from right-wing rather than left-wing think tanks.” — Well, Policy Exchange clearly has an agenda that was exposed when its research came undone after a BBC Newsnight investigation. Does Nick Cohen not believe in proper research supported by facts?
Subsequently, Charles Moore essentially accused the BBC of appeasing Islamists by challenging their piss-poor investigation and threatened a lawsuit that never actually materialised. Why would the Fabians ever publish something so pathetic? They have however have willingly got involved in far more intelligent and nuanced projects challenging Islamists.
5) Nick didn’t answer my other point: why did he change his mind over Anthony Browne, a guy he had criticised for clearly for not-so-subtle racism? Has Nick now taken to cosying up to racists?
6) Nick Cohen defends himself by citing Martin Amis. That just all the more confirms what I’ve been saying.
7) Anton Vowl wants to know if he’s ‘Ratbiter’ from Private Eye.
Tom Griffin wants to know:
Who was the “pleasant American” lady who invited him to meet Paul Wolfowitz at Annabel’s? (Nick Cohen, Evening Standard, 21 June 2005).
Is she by any chance related to the lady who’s been running “cozy, off-the-record briefings by senior Pentagon officials, fellow-neo-cons and fellow members of the Defense Policy Board (DPB) for select British and European reporters in exclusive clubs and cafes in London and Paris”. (http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=176)
Some reasonable answers would be nice Nick, instead of quick, derisive answers. The liberal-left appeasers of “Islamofascism” await with bated breath.
| Post to del.icio.us |
Filed in: Civil liberties, Cultural Relativism, Islamists, Terrorism
Point one is on the mischievous side.
As for Cohen this day has been coming for a long time. I would have probably taken the side of Cohen about 2001/2 when he was criticising the post-modernism of the far left and its alliance with islamists and the multicultural political creed of supporting reactionary community leaders such as Sacranie.
Unfortunately, around 2002/3 he lost his mind and became a cheerleader for that US imperialist adventure in Iraq, and decided to smear the entire left(and anyone who didn’t agree with him) as pro-saddam/racists who didn’t care about the human rights of brown people; and then to rub it in accused them of betraying their enlightenment tradition.
This infuriated me at the time as there was no evidence for WMD (the rationale behind the war). He must have known about it as everyone else at the Observer did(read flat earth news), yet he carried on regardless. Then this defender of human rights (and the lefts intellectual heritage) justifies torture! words fail me.
I have stopped taking him seriously many years ago, Cohens left-wing credentials are an occassional bashing of the super-rich, while bashing a left that only exists in his head. Sadly for Cohen the ideological climate has changed; the neo-cons are top-dogs no more, some have moved on and admitted their mistakes (Hari), but not Nick his pride won’t allow it even as his credibility heads south.
Time for the Guardian/Obsever group to cut him loose and allow him to join the Mail, where his brand of leftie bashing and the odd pop at the super rich will be appreciated.
The Right Wing including PM’s and Presidents are appeasers of anything including cold blooded murder that Israel does andno one mentions this.
Why Not?
Why does Nick Cohen fail to condemn the government and oppositions failures to hold Israel to account?
Its all one sided and the right wing are the biggest loud mouthed war mongers on the planet.
The shit they started with you are with us or against us nonsense.
They called for war based on lies.
What about appeasement to that?
Ask him that.
What about support for extra-judicial processes that violate international conventions?
Also why was a British PM allowed to go to war based on the interests of a third country which itself was going to war for oil and the interests of yet another country?
The right wing are a bunch of loud mouthed trouble makers and agitants.
Mr. Cohen didn’t back-peddle; I don’t know what back-peddling is, but it sounds like the sort of thing the Barclay’s Bank tax-dodging department would do.
Yeah. Everyone is a bit right here but do keep arguing. This is more performance blogging isn’t it.
I don’t know why we care, Cohen’s an idiot. Need any more be said?
It really sounds like yourself, Anton Vowl and others need to get together and start a campaign: ‘Not In Our Name.’ You could say that you have been inspired by all the recent drivel about the Luton protests and have decided to distance yourself from Nick Cohen as you are left-wing and he is not.
I mean, there’s been REPEATED mention of Cohen’s pretenses at being ‘left-wing’; he evidently just wants to claim the intellectual credibility of being a ‘left-wing commentator’ while slagging the left wherever possible.
It’s getting old. Y’all need to OUST him.
*clicks on link to Cohen’s site* DUDE! He’s proud of having an extract of his book in the MAIL?! And the cover of it says ‘How The Left Lost It’s Way.’ It’s Way? It’s Way? As in the way that IT IS, rather than the way that belongs to it?
Forget ousting, he needs a tranquilliser dart in the bum.
The fundamental split on the left is between those who believe in the ideology of absolute equality based on Enlightenment values and those who take the relativist view, which is the popular position but leads to the idiocy of self-styled progressives effectively defending the right of a man to beat his wife if it is part of his culture. It’s basically bourgeois and racist but if you wanna get on this town, it’s the road to take.
Leon,
I would like to say that the only idiot around here is you but unfortunately Amrit seems to fall into that category as well.
Nick Cohen’s book ,which is on my desk as I write this, is entitled ” What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way”.
It is without doubt one of the most important books about the left ever to be written and reflects what I have been saying about the left for years. Some of the most viscious opportunists I have ever come across inhabit the “left”.
One of the problems with it is that there are commandments as rigid as those on the tablets God gave Moses and any deviation from them results in a metaphorical auto de fe ordered by latter day would be Tomas de Torquemadas.
What most of the detractors of Gilligan and now Cohen seem to do, at least as far as I can see, is to use the “holocaust revisionist” defence. What that involves is taking the testimony of two survivors of a particular camp or transport, examining what they have to say seventy years after the events, finding a discrepancy and then using that to dismiss the rest of the evidence.
Look at the core of what is being said and deal with that. Anyway Sunny you will be getting an article soon on the events that led to the death of Blair Peach at Southall thirty years ago next month and the relevance that they have for protest today.
I understand Nick is Ratbiter, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition; Private Eye’s Street of Shame column slags off newspapers for nepotism, back-scratching, poor reporting and publishing inaccurate stories on the front page and tiny corrections on page 94. Street of Shame is compiled by Francis Wheen, a good friend of Nick Cohen’s. Nick Cohen is given an occasional column to beat to death his usual hobby-horses, and when they turn out to be inaccurate (as they so often do – the Eye has hosted bollocks Nick rants on MMR, Hassan Butt and Policy Exchange vs Newsnight, for example) the pieces are simply never spoken of again.
This reputation for memory-holing, which we’ve all seen Nick do time and time again, is enough to prove that he isn’t a serious journalist, just a sensationalist hack who’s allergic to research. I’m more saddened by what it’s doing to the Eye – when Ratbiter publishes some inaccurate crap, you don’t even get the tiny correction on page 94.
Fuck off troll.
All I imply is that it is telling that exposes of clerical fascism come from right-wing rather than left-wing think tanks.
Well – they don’t, really. Maher’s report isn’t really an expose at all. Nick seems to only ever read the output on ‘clerical fascism’ of one think tank – policy exchange – which as you say doesn’t exactly have a good track record of truthfulness in its exposes. Hilariously Nick (in his Ratbiter incarnation) doesn’t seem to think that the proof of PX making up stuff about British Muslims discounts its findings on British Islam. and again it is worth stressing that he took Hassan Butt at face value only last year…
To use a Cohen buzzword, Nick appears ‘undeterred’ by the repeated instances of Policy Exchange having serious credibility issues in its research, especially on Islam. And he has written more pieces praising Policy Exchange than any other think-tank in recent times – including that rather embarrassing u-turn on Anthony Browne.
Put simply, Nick is doing PR work for PX. He’s nicely on message but the claims he makes on PX’s behalf just don’t stand up to scrutiny, which is why, now he’s made the colossal mistake of naming names (as opposed to blaming an amorphous ‘liberal left’) he’s become rather unstuck. His book ‘What’s Left’ only made sense if you didn’t care about good research and you were happy with unprovable generalisations.
when Ratbiter publishes some inaccurate crap, you don’t even get the tiny correction on page 94.
Well, the Eye does offer a right of reply in the letters pages, to its credit, where Ratbiter is chewed out fortnightly by those who actually know about the subjects he highlights.
What I find strange is that the Eye don’t seem to react to the trend in shoddy journalism which these letters demonstrate – they seem happy for their columnist to be shown up as a bad journalist on a fortnightly basis. very strange.
If you follow his recent columns (which carry his name) carefully, Cohen’s politics are now pretty much those of a right of centre libertarian who really, really hates the left. The only ‘left-wing’ thing about him is that the list of blogs he likes (consisted largely of right-wing blogs) on his website is entitled ‘comrades’…
Amrit certainly isn’t an ‘idiot’ by any stretch of the imagination, and neither is Leon.
As usual Bo’s hit the nail on the head in #8, by the way.
Bill: Some of the most viscious opportunists I have ever come across inhabit the “left”.
From a guy who worships Melanie Phillips this is completely unsurprising. And I keep asking you this Bill but you keep running away like a little kid. Tell us why she’s so good?
Nooo! Nooo! Don’t insult me Bicky! How on earth will I live with myself for having criticised Nick Cohen?!
Did you mean viscous? Or vicious? That’s pretty rich coming from someone who rarely misses an opportunity to bitch about ‘black racists.’
Heh, the way I look at it if idiots like him don’t like me I’m doing something very very right.
please look up ‘back-peddle’ and ‘back-pedal’.
Sorry about the misspelling but I’m only a bricklayer or has everyone forgotten Ian Dury. I think I’ve won that one again Leon. When you are reduced to swearing and trying to refute an argument by pointing out spelling mistakes you are reduced to foot stamping and throwing your rattle out of the pram.
Should be announcing the web site for the commemoration of the death of Blair Peach this week. To look at the front page of the Guardian this week all that happened is that the Special Patrol Group has become the Territorial Support Unit, simply a name change.