Nick Cohen

Nick Cohen at the Euston Manifesto launch

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Nick Cohen is a British newspaper columnist who depending on your point of view is an Islamophobic neocon chickenhawk, a troll, or a rare pragmatist among political commentators. He identifies as an atheist and opposes Islamofascism, generally being pro-American and pro-Israel. He was once a left-winger but, in the early 2000s moved to the centre, with his Hitchens-like support for the Iraq War.

A columnist for the London Observer for more than twenty years, his column was suspended in August 2022 after accusations of his behaivor towards female colleagues began to enter the public domain. Cohen left the newspaper in early 2023 after an investigation by his employers, his reputation now seriously tarnished.

Career

He was born in 1961 in Stockport in north-west England and studied PPE at Oxford. He formerly wrote a regular column for the The Observer (and earlier for the New Statesman, until the Iraq War), and latterly for The Spectator, a conservative publication . His journalism is collected in two books, Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous (1999) and Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England (2009). His original books include Pretty Straight Guys (2003), an attack on New Labour taking its title from a Tony Blair self-description; What's Left?: How the Left lost Its Way (2007) an attack on the British left for failing to be tough enough on Islam; and You Can't Read This Book (2012) about censorship. He was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing for What's Left?

The political left and the political right

He was involved in the Euston Manifesto, a 2006 document calling on progressive intellectuals to support America in its war on Islam. He was critical of those who put any blame for the 9/11 attacks on the US's support for Middle Eastern tyrants or long history of coups and wars in the region. He opposes Israeli settlements in the West Bank but supports Israel's right to wage war on Palestinians.

Cohen wrote in February 2009 that once his "sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing opponent of the far Right, and the blood-soaked antisemitic superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard", but by the time he was writing "the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the modern Left succours and indulges". He condemns the obvious white apologists of radical Islam like George Galloway, but also asserts the "wider liberal society is almost as complicit. It does not applaud the Islamist far Right, but it will not condemn it either".

Middle East

In the early 2000s, he was strongly in favour of the invasion of Iraq. He argued that those who opposed the war were supporters of fascism, while ignoring the fact that many anti-war campaigners were actually concerned about the Iraqi people being exposed both to vast numbers of American bombs and years of subsequent civil war; even Cohen's dislike of fundamental Islam (or Islamism) does not convince him that handing Iraq to Shia extremists might have been a bad idea. He is generally strong on moral principle to the extent of not actually caring about the consequences of any action that appears to be right. For the moral absolutist Cohen, it is impossible to do the wrong thing out of good intentions, just as no amount of suffering or abuse excuses any crime.

Even 10 years after the invasion he was still declaring that it was right. He opposes Israeli settlements in the West Bank but supports Israel's right to wage war on Palestinians.

Bosnian genocide

On the Bosnian genocide, he attacked those on the left, who downplayed the seriousness of Serbian war crimes such as Living Marxism (later LM magazine) which accused ITN of faking concentration camp footage, lost a libel case, and ceased publication. He was heavily critical of Noam Chomsky and Seumas Milne, a Guardian colleague at the time.

Atheism

Cohen is an atheist in the Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens mould. Which is to say, he believes atheists are morally superior and likes to shout about it. As Cohen points out, so-called "militant atheists" in the West have never planted terrorist bombs or attacked anyone. He seems to believe atheists in the UK are a beleaguered minority under constant attack from the left as well as right. This is probably overstating the case a little.

Resignation from The Observer

Cohen's last regular Observer column was published on July 9, 2023.ref name=pg2022 /> In this article he stated the Boris Johnson government, then surviving in a janitorial or caretaker role, had "pushed standards of public life so low that, however despicably future prime ministers behave, they will be able to say that they never sank to the level of" Johnson.

It became public knowledge in early August 2022 that his Observer column had been suspended after accusations of his sexual abuse and accounts of his reputed harassment of female colleagues had begun to enter the public domain. Seven women gave accounts of Cohen's unprofessional conduct over many years to The New York Times around May 2023; one journalist reported her experiences to the (female) managing editor in 2018, but received a brush-off. Cohen's reputation as a harasser of women was known by ten former male and female colleagues in the newsroom, according to the Times.

In January 2023, it emerged Cohen had resigned from The Observer. Officially this was stated to be on "health grounds", but it followed an investigation into Cohen's behavior towards women by Guardian News and Media (GNM) which lasted several months. The investigation by The New York Times published on May 30, 2023 followed the rejection by a London newspaper, the Financial Times of the work of one of its own journalists. A few weeks later, GNM editor-in-chief Katharine Viner and chief executive Anna Bateson finally wrote to several of the women involved apologizing for the manner the company had handled internal complaints.