Nick Cohen

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Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen (centre) at the public launch of the Euston Manifesto at the Union Chapel, Islington in 2006
Born 1961 (1961) (age 53)
Stockport, England
Occupation Journalist

Nick Cohen (born 1961)[1] is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He has written for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman. Cohen has written five books: Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous[2] (1999), a collection of his journalism; Pretty Straight Guys[3] (2003), a highly critical account of the New Labour project; What's Left?[4] (2007), which he describes as the story of how the liberal left of the 20th century came to support the far-right of the 21st;[5] and Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England[6] (2009). His most recent book, You Can't Read this Book,[7] was published by HarperCollins in 2012 and deals with censorship. The Orwell Prize for political writing shortlisted What's Left? in 2008.[8]

Early life[edit]

Born in Stockport, but raised in Manchester,[9] Cohen was educated at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). He began his career at the Sutton Coldfield News, later becoming a well-known journalist writing for The Observer and The Independent.[1]


He was an advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq,[10][11] and a critic of the Stop the War Coalition.[12] In 2006, he was a leading signatory to the Euston Manifesto,[13] which proposed "a new political alignment", in which the left opposes terrorism and anti-Americanism. An opponent of what he has termed the "tyrannophile left",[14] Cohen has criticised such people as Andrew Murray[12] and George Galloway,[15] while expressing his admiration for the opposition movements in countries such as Belarus.[14] Cohen is an atheist.[16]

What's Left?: How Liberals lost their way[edit]

In his 2007 book What's Left?: How liberals lost their way, Cohen argues many leftists are blinded by instinctive anti-Americanism, with their opposition to imperialism leading them to defend brutal dictatorships and terrorist movements.[17] He focuses on several foreign policy issues: the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s, the Iraq War in 2003,[17] and the broader war on terror, including Israel's conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah- to argue that many socialists and liberals have misplaced priorities, condemning American and Israeli policies but ignoring the crimes of autocratic regimes.

In Chapter 1, "an Iraqi Solzhenitsyn", Cohen discusses his friendship with exiled Iraqi dissidents in the 1980s, including trade unionists and Kurdish human rights activists, as well as architect and writer Kanan Makiya.[17] His then argues that the British left, in adapting an anti-war position in 2003, effectively betrayed these dissidents by opposing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Criticizing the massive anti-war rallies in the weeks before the invasion, he writes: "On Feubrary 15, 2003 a million liberal-minded people protest the overthrow of a fascist regime.".[17]

Chapters 4 and 5, "Academic scribblers and a defunct economist" and "Boys on the edge of the gang"[17] discuss the Left's reaction to Serbian atrocities against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s. He details how scholars like Noam Chomsky, along with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), allegedly denied the existence of concentration camps and the Srebrenica massacre.[17] He also discusses the Living Marxism trial,[17] in which survivors of Trnopolje concentration camp testified against Living Marxism magazine, which had published an article claiming photographs of the camp were fabricated. The far left's alleged defense of Milosevic, Cohen writes, was not a product of Islamophobia but of instinctive anti-Americanism; once the US bombed Serb forces in 1995, the far left set out to claim the intervention had been unjustified: "The ignoble and inevitable terminus of the reasoning of Chomsky and his comrades was denial. It had to be. The Yugoslav equivalents of the gas chambers of Auschwitz were Srebrenica and the pictures of wild-eyed starving men at Trnopolje. Both had to be denied if the project of blackening the belated intervention in the Balkans was to stand a chance of succeeding.".[17] Chapter 9, “Kill us, we deserve it”, criticizes how many leftists reacted to 9/11,[17] arguing the atrocity was motivated by anger at American foreign policy, rather than by of violent ideology of al Qaeda. By dismissing the attacks as a response to American misdeeds, they failed to acknowledge the threat of al Qaeda’s own hateful narrative.


He lives in Islington with his wife and their son.[18]


  1. ^ a b "Nick Cohen". Retrieved 13 January 2013. 
  2. ^ Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous - Nick Cohen - Google Books. Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  3. ^ Pretty Straight Guys. Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  4. ^ What's Left?: How the Left Lost Its Way. Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  5. ^ "Biography",
  6. ^ Cohen, Nick. "Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England by Nick Cohen". Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  7. ^ "You Can’t Read This Book : Nick Cohen". HarperCollins. Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  8. ^ "Shortlist 2008", The Orwell Prize
  9. ^ Nick Cohen Waiting for the Etonians, p. 23
  10. ^ Personal View (14 January 2003). "The Left betrays the Iraqi people by opposing war". Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  11. ^ Nick Cohen (16 February 2003). "Nick Cohen: The Left isn't listening". Guardian. Retrieved 2012-09-28. 
  12. ^ a b Nick Cohen "Strange bedfellows", New Statesman, 7 April 2003
  13. ^ "The Euston Manifesto". 2001-09-11. Retrieved 2012-04-06. 
  14. ^ a b Nick Cohen "The Pope's unholy alliance with the dictator", The Observer, 16 January 2011
  15. ^ Nick Cohen "Following Mosley's East End footsteps", The Observer, 17 April 2005
  16. ^ Nick Cohen "Hatred is turning me into a Jew", The Jewish Chronicle, 12 February 2009
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i What's Left?: How the Left Lost Its Way. Retrieved 2013-12-17. 
  18. ^ 'Law without Order', New Statesman 2004, 'Waiting for the Etonians' p.99


External links[edit]