Synopsis: Explore Patrick Cockburn's biography of his grandfather, Claude, who founded The Week to counteract complacency in journalism during Nazi Germany. Short Description: Today we’re going to learn about a young British journalist who, seeing what was happening in Germany in the 1930s, quit his job with The London Times and founded The Week, a newsletter that became famous for its opposition to fascism and the Western powers that were enabling it. A new biography from Patrick Cockburn tells the story of his grandfather, Claud Cockburn. (anchor episode originally released November 15th, 2024) Guest: Patrick Cockburn, Journalist, and author including “Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism”, Verso Books. Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters. Become a supporting member at https://LauraFlanders.org/Donate
Description: Mainstream media has a lot to account for in 2024, but go back 90 years, and prestigious publications have often failed to see when things were so clearly wrong. In 1930s Germany, many journalists downplayed Adolf Hitler’s ascension to power, with the New York Times writing “There is no warrant for immediate alarm…The more violent parts of his alleged program he has himself in recent months been softening down or abandoning.” But one young British journalist who, seeing what was happening, quit his job with The London Times and founded The Week, a newsletter that became famous for its opposition to fascism and the Western powers that were enabling it. His name was Claud Cockburn, and he’s the subject of a newly-released biography by his son, Patrick Cockburn, “Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism,” out now via Verso Books. Patrick is an award-winning journalist himself, with a long expertise in the Middle East. And Patrick is Laura Flanders’ uncle; Claud is her grandfather. How did mainstream media miss what Claud knew about the rise of Nazis, and how did his guerilla journalism make an impact? And why is Claud’s story so relevant now? All that, plus a commentary from Laura. (anchor episode originally released November 15th, 2024)
Guest: Patrick Cockburn, Journalist, and author including “Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism”, Verso Books.
Note- Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. The following is from our episode "Patrick & Claud Cockburn: A Legacy of Guerilla Journalism Against Media Complacency." These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters. Become a supporting member at https://LauraFlanders.org/Donate
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Full Episode Notes are located HERE. They include related episodes, articles, and more.
LAURA FLANDERS & FRIENDS
PATRICK & CLAUD COCKBURN: A LEGACY OF
GUERILLA JOURNALISM AGAINST MEDIA COMPLACENCY
Watch / Listen, Download and Subscribe to the Podcast
NARRATOR: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. The following is from our episode, Patrick and Claud Cockburn, a legacy of guerrilla journalism against media complacency. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
LAURA FLANDERS: Dishonest reporting on war, racism, and politicians' lies, normalizing coverage of fascists campaigning for high office. If you are seeing too much of that sort of thing right now, know that you're not alone. And it's not the first time we've seen a situation like the one we're in today. Go back 90 years, for example, and you will find a prequel in the period that saw the rise of Adolf Hitler. What was the headline over the New York Times report on Hitler becoming chancellor of Germany on January 31, 1933? Well, here's what it was. Hitler puts aside aim to be dictator. And they continue, there is no warrant for immediate alarm. The more violent parts of Hitler's alleged program, he has himself in recent months been softening down or abandoning. Hitler, of course, went on to invade Poland, sparked World War 2, and implemented genocide slaughtering 6,000,000 Jews and millions of others, including disabled people, LGBT people, communists, and ethnic minorities. Today, we are going to learn about a young British journalist who, seeing what was happening at that time, quit his job with the prestigious London Times and founded The Week, an independent newsletter that became famous for its scoops and opposition to fascism and to the western powers that were enabling its rise. His name was Claud Cockburn, and he's the topic of a new biography by his son, Patrick Cockburn, that's titled Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied, Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism. It's just out from Verso. Patrick is an award winning journalist himself with a long expertise, especially in the Middle East. And if all that wasn't reason enough to focus here today, there's also the fact that Claud was my grandfather, making Patrick my uncle. Now regular viewers of this program have already met my sister, my partner, and learned about my dad. So let's round out the family tree a little bit further. Welcome to the program, Patrick. It's great to have you.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Thank you for having me.
LAURA FLANDERS: I should say that you have brothers. You weren't the only son of Claud Cockburn.
PATRICK COCKBURN: There are 3 brothers. There's, my much loved eldest brother, Alexander, who died about a dozen years ago. That's my, other brother, Andrew, who is, works for as a working editor of Harper's, produced many books, many on military themes, dissenting wholly from a conventional wisdom in a very convincing way. So, we all became journalists. I mean, Lord's 3 sons. And we've all sort of I don't think we've sat down and thought we'll do the same as our father did, but we have sort of, opposed the powers of being in our different ways and hopefully with some effect.
LAURA FLANDERS: And for people that are keeping track at home, you had 2 half sisters and and was one of those half sisters, who was my mother.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Exactly. Yes.
LAURA FLANDERS: Let's talk about why this book now. Why did you decide that Claud, who had written several volumes of his own autobiography, deserved another look by you?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I well, obviously, I knew about him when I was growing up, and I knew what he'd done. He'd written an excellent, autobiography in 3 volumes. And, I think what tipped the balance in my mind towards writing a biography about him was, in, 2,003, I, asked m I 5, the British equivalent of the FBI, to if I could see his archive, what they had on him, which I knew they they might release because 50 years had passed. I mean, enough time had passed for them to do so. I heard nothing, and then they released them 24 volumes or large files to, the National Archives, in queue in London. And then I found that two things. One, there was an awful lot in them that I didn't know. Secondly, I'd often wondered if, Claud's newsletter, The Week, all his campaigning against the Nazis and the government at the time, had had much impact on the powers that be.
And I could see from the Mi 5 files that it had enormous infrared, influence that you find all these senior civil servants, saying, how did he find this out? We see seems to know about what's happening in a cabinet meeting a few days before. Can't we do something about this guy? Loads of stuff. And I think that's what determined me to do it. And ever since, I've been sort of collecting information and finding lots of, things that I didn't know about him.
LAURA FLANDERS: Well, I thought I learned things I didn't know about him from the book, so I appreciate that. Just because some of those Mi files are so delicious in their ridiculous detail, is there any bit you want to share? Well, you know, there were loads of things. You know?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Soon after he started it, they wondered how on earth he knew what the prime minister had been saying to the ministers about a possible British military agreement with Germany. Hitler had just taken power. The, and the first sort of year of the week is very impressive, you know, at a time when the New York Times and others were saying that Hitler's, bark would be worth worse than his bite. Claud had, you know, horrible but graphic accounts of the persecution and murder of Jews in Germany. I mean, he had no doubt that this, Hitler and the the Nazis were the ultimate, evil, long before, any of the newspapers, and the politicians realized the same in, thing in, the US and UK. So I think that that's the most impressive thing about it.
LAURA FLANDERS: He had that because he had spent time in in Germany himself. He'd been in pre war Berlin. Talk a little bit about his history and how you think he came to be so clear sighted as to what was going on, to see it so clearly.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, he his father was a British diplomat. So at quite an impressionable age, I think he was about 16, he went to, join his father in Budapest. Budapest had but was the First World War officially ended, but in a sense, it was still going on in Budapest. There were pogroms going on. There were red terror. There was white terror. There was eventually a very nasty dictatorship. So he was very plugged into the politics of Central Europe. He learned German. He was, went to Berlin. He worked for the London Times. He spoke perfect German. He then later returned. He went to the US just before the great crash. He covered that. Then in 1932, through German friends, he knew things that were getting worse and worse in Berlin, so he resigned from The Times. He was New York correspondent, one of the New York correspondents, and returned to first to Vienna and then to Germany and found things that bad that we thought they'd be, they were even worse because these were the last days of the Weimar Republic. These were the, you know, Nazi stormtroopers were already in the streets. And then about 48 hours before Hitler took par, Claud was told by friends, you know, it'd be a really good idea to get out, that you're they got your name on the list. And he thought for a moment, maybe I'll stay. I've got a British passport.
And then common sense reassessed itself, and he got on the train to Vienna. So he just got out. Then he went to then he thought got there. He had no money. He didn't have a job, but he thought, what can I do to oppose this ultimate evil? So, he had very precise ideas how this would be done. So he set up this newsletter, The Week, in London in an attic, and, he filled it. It was filled with scoops from the beginning. His idea was to influence the influencers. He knew it wouldn't get to that number of people, but he hoped he hoped he could get to people who were really interested in what was going on. It would get to journalists. It would get to politicians and so forth. But that sort of idea only works if you can really provide the goods, in terms of information that other people don't have, which he did, which is the real reason why it took off and became influential.
LAURA FLANDERS: There's a part in, his memoir that you quote in your book where he's describing what people are actually saying in the capitals of Europe and how refugees from Germany are quite clear about what's happening and speaking in panicked or if not panicked, at least super concerned terms. He then points out that the language that this what is being said and the way that it's being said is simply not appearing in the newspapers of the day. Can you talk about the significance of that and the and the parallels if you see them to this moment?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Yes. So it was a great sort of vacuum of information about what a lot of people knew what was happening and what was peer appearing in the media. Now this doesn't re I think really come across in history books because newspapers in general, I mean, invariably, in fact, don't want to admit to their own failings to their own failings and, in terms of Hitler or, any other big, historic event, you know, be it the invasion of Iraq, be it what's happening at the moment in Gaza and Lebanon. But, so I think this became somewhat obscured later. But he he felt that it was very discouraging that people this wasn't in the newspapers, but he also thought it's very encouraging in a way because, he could fill that vacuum. So he sort of felt that I mean, he said at one point that even if he made only a small noise in the sort of atmosphere of the 19 thirties, in the atmosphere of continual crises, this would sound like a scream. And, in many ways, it it did. So his calculation, worked out. He felt it was something that could work when you had an era of, continual crisis or a series of crises as you had in the 1930s. And that was again a reason for writing the book now because it seems to me the 2020s are rather like the 1930s that we have one crisis succeeding each other another. We have these crises turning into wars. You know, the 19 thirties became known as the devil's decayed. In a way, I think one could use, the same words to describe the 2020. So I I think it's sort of particularly opposite what he was trying to do then with what's happening now.
LAURA FLANDERS: One moment that summarizes to me or at least sort of sums up a a lot of the parallels, is the moment where the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, takes to the pulpit as it were the the podium to declare that he has a relationship with Adolf Hitler. They've met, and that there is not war but peace in the offing. This is 1938. Here's a snippet of that speech.
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN: This morning I had another talk with a German chancellor Herr Hitler. And here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. We regard the agreement signed last night on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
LAURA FLANDERS: That was Neville Chamberlain speaking in 1938 in the famous Peace in Our Time speech. Forgive me if I'm exaggerating, but I I hear in that a version of what we have been hearing all year from the US president, Joe Biden, in relation to Israel and Gaza. A ceasefire is in the works, Just a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer. We're working ceaselessly. Kamala Harris says the same thing. Is that am I being hyperbolic here?
PATRICK COCKBURN: No. Unfortunately not, I think. You know, it's sort of and I think that was Claud's great frustration as one might feel frustrated now that it's it was pretty obvious what was going on. It was pretty obvious that things were going to get worse. Yet those who are meant to be in charge kept on announcing that, you know, peace was just around the corner, that things weren't as bad as they looked. So, yeah, I think the the the parallel is all too strong.
And so, every time, you know, practically by the day in 19 thirties, these crises got worse, and the same thing seems to be happening today.
LAURA FLANDERS: Why do you think as somebody who's written for mainstream mainline publications like The Independent and others, Patrick, why do you think mainstream media is so bad at sounding an alarm? Are they invested in there not being war, not us not naming fascism? Are they simply scared, intimidated from saying the things they really know to be true? Is it this kind of illusion of objectivity that if we actually sound anything other than normal, we'll be considered biased? What is it? What holds journalists and their publications back?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, a lot of them sort of basically reflect the attitude of the government of the country they're in. You know, they will reflect the, the attitude of the proprietor. You know, in the US, I guess, the Biden administration benefits from the fact that so much of the media doesn't for a long time, has more than anything to say too much negative about Biden and his Middle East policy on the grounds that all will benefit Donald Trump in the election. I think that retrospectively, certainly, the press often have amnesia about this. At the time that that, Neville Chamberlain was speaking in 1938, it was pretty well known. None of the established press wanted to, disagree with him. And, there was one newspaper, I think it's called the News Chronicle, where the editor had an opinion poll because an early opinion poll done, but basically the same ideas today. And it's often said that the politicians and the newspaper were only following public opinion, but, actually, that's not true. The opinion poll showed that the great majority of the British public completely distrusted to Hitler, didn't believe his word over Munich, thought there should be more defense spending, and so forth. So what did the editor do with it? He took it to 10 Downing Street to show to Chamberlain. So refused to publish this newspaper. So a lot of the sort of things that happened then, I'm afraid, happen now. You know, what can one do about it? Well, Claud felt one simple thing, and this is reflected in the title of the of the of the book, which is, is skepticism for individual, whether you read a newspaper watching television or any other, part of the news, news outlets, just to be skeptical, yeah, and not to believe anything, and it it's officially denied. It's amazing how many people, including lots of journalists, don't focus on the fact that so much of what they're being told is partisan, that those who tell leak leak them things have very good reasons for doing so. And, you you know, you find this not just in the present war, but as I've been sort of war correspondent in the Middle East, and have covered wars elsewhere. And it it sort of amazes me rather in retrospect how how very crucial things were misreported by the press. You know, I remember in 2001 in Afghanistan, it was fairly obvious, if one was reporting, day to day, that the Taliban hadn't been defeated. They'd gone home. But the media also reported that they were out of business. No need to pay any attention to those guys anymore. Well, look what happened since. In 2003, you know, the Iraqi army completely defeated. Mission accomplished. You know, we can put our own guys in to rule in Baghdad. Completely untrue. Most of the Iraqi army had gone home. There was no way the Iraqis gonna accept occupation. You know, and the revelations often you know, the that but what's really happening often don't come from the mass media. They come from politicians or they come from elsewhere.
LAURA FLANDERS: Well, being on the ground, I mean, you you were on the ground in the same way that Claud has been on the ground. I always feel like we get information that seems obvious when we're in a place and then come back to try to report it and it's sort of, unto untellable truth. I wanna come back to the Middle East in a second. But before we do, the part one of the aspects of the book that is so helpful to me and and and gratifying in a sense is that you add lots of people back into the story that didn't get much of a do in a lot of Claud's autobiographical writings and paint a picture of Claud in at work, but a lot of other people with him. My grandmother is mentioned, Hopel Davis, Jean Ross. Do you wanna talk a bit, Gaetto Toro? You wanna talk a little bit about some of the characters in Claud's life that fill out the picture? Because I found it, striking. The immunity, the company that he was in at that time.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Sure. I mean, at at quite an early stage when he was at university, when he was a doxford, his sort of closest power was Graham Greene, the novelist. And, there was a cousin, Evelyn Waugh, another novelist. These were very sort of close friends of his. They don't get much of a mention in his autobiography. But rather amazingly, his first two wives don't get mentioned at all. The first, Hope Hale, was a journalist in New York, whom he, married in in, 1931, and had a daughter by. And she thought of writing about him and their relationship, and also, about his second wife, Jean Ross, who was the model for Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles, you know, in Cabaret and elsewhere, but originally in Isherwood's novella about, Sally Bowles in Berlin, who hope rather amazingly became a very best friend of. And I found that extraordinarily, interesting because I knew absolutely nothing or very little about this. Also, Claud was writing back. He had told her that in, he was going to he was going to resign from the times and go back to Central Europe to, Berlin and because things were getting so bad. And she said, well, you know, she wants to have a baby, and she also wants to get married, which they did. But he told her previously he was going back. He did go back, and their relationship lasted for some time. But, eventually, they had a divorce. Although it was rather, a crude divorce that I think it was called a Mexican divorce at that time. You simply wrote to a a lawyer in Mexico in put a $100, and he sent you back a piece of paper saying you were divorced, and you send he sent you another $100. This was rather a crazy number of problems for Claud because although that might be recognized by an American court, it wouldn't be recognized by a British court. So although he lived with Jean Ross, and she she changed her name to Jean Cockburn, who was never officially married to her. Same with my mother, Patricia, a baroness she'd been. And, again, they did sort of, they did eventually get married, but she initially, she changed her name to, Patricia Cockburn. But, I found all that the information, the letters, everything else that Hope had collected, at at that time of sort of riveting interest.
LAURA FLANDERS: Mean, it's kind of extraordinary that he left the Gene and Hope out of his other autobiography. Any insight into why?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Maybe just sort of too complicated.
LAURA FLANDERS: A little complication that helped bring me to being. I take it seriously. I I I take umbrage.
PATRICK COCKBURN: So You take umbrage? Well, I was I I just I don't really know the answer to that. I mean, there's quite a lot of some surprising things, sort of left out of the book. Not just that, but, you know, when he was at school, there was a great sort of riot at the end of the First World War. There's practically no mention of that. There was no mention of going even earlier. He said his father had still retired from the foreign office and retired from South Korea where he'd been the chief British diplomat. Actually, I discovered that if it by going to the foreign office archives, that there were some an enormous sort of heaps of documents surrounding why his father, Henry Cowan, had resigned from the foreign office, which are very estimable that he was asked to take part of the rendition of a Korean who'd fled to British controlled territory, to escape the Japanese occupation. And he wouldn't return him over because he said he'd get tortured. But they actually used the word rendition on the official papers. I don't know because it's a sort of new thing that only happened after, after 9/11 and so forth. So he wouldn't return him turn him over to because he thought he'd be tortured. Eventually, the foreign office forced him to, and he immediately resigned from the foreign office. So a rather dramatic tale. Again, no mention of this.
LAURA FLANDERS: Well, don't get me wrong. I I adored Claud and admired him tremendously, a huge hero in my life, but, I have to say I was glad to see that you both found writings by my grandmother that hadn't been published and that they helped to add so much to the story. Coming back
PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah. She was very you know, she was highly intelligent. All the and she wrote very lucidly and very perceptively about him. And I I like to sort of take her stuff or she understood to a substantial degree, worked out what made him tick. Certainly, sort of emotionally, not well, the other source about him is completely different, which is MI5 and these intelligence operatives and, you know, agents going to see him in the office and pretending to be journalists and so forth, and all these policemen and others talking about him. So that's a completely different angle you get. So I like to sort of compare the two angles, that you got from, Hope and to a degree from, Jean Ross, with what the security services thought.
LAURA FLANDERS: I'm always interested. I'm often asked, you know, where does where do I get my political sort of framing from? Where does where does my, where does my ideology or my my my view of the world come from? It's not such an easy answer, actually, question to answer. Did you get any clear as to what had influenced Claud? What what caused him to to have the, politics that he had? And do you wanna describe that just a little bit?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think from an early stage, I sort of discovered this while writing the book. He was pretty sort of, rebellious, from an early stage. He started up even as a 15 year old at school, 2 sort of new different newspapers handwritten, which are very sort of critical of the school authorities and both of which were banned, although he got on quite well with the, the headmaster. I think it may have come from his father who, was very much a very conservative, you know, we would say, a high Tory, but at the same time, very sort of skeptical about, the powers that be. But then I think a critical thing was to be in Hungary in in Central Europe just after the First World War. The First World War made many sort of intellectuals and others feel that the, the authorities, the governments had disgraced themselves. But he was in Budapest, things were sort of particularly bad. This was a land of massacres and, very recent massacres. And, initially, he was sympathetic to Germany. That sympathy, ebbed as the years went by, by the thirties. He he sort of started with a skepticism towards German nationalism, and a, hatred of fascism, not just Hitler, but Mussolini, from a very early stage. Was he sort of known about these guys for a decade before others. And, when the the the week had a scoop that about, the Spanish Civil War was going to start. Was writing about that a month or 2 before there was the, putsch attempted putsch. They attempted, the the military uprising by Franco against the democratically elected government, and he went sort of immediately to, fight for them. He he became a communist, joined the communist party, you know, after getting back from Germany, because he thought they were the only people who had the sort of fanaticism on the organization to fight Hitler. He also thought that in Spain, that only through sort of organization, their sort of organization and arms from the Soviet Union, did they stand the slightest chance, of winning? You know, they weren't just fighting, Franco. They were fighting with Mussolini had sent 80,000 troops. Hitler had sent, the Luftwaffe, which carried out in Grevica. The, he never really I mean, he never he always felt that was right. Later, you know, the British government's US government had much the the the same thing when they had an alliance with the Soviet Union. But he had felt that from quite early on in the thirties. He also his feeling was that in Germany and later in Britain, that people said, why aren't you more moderate? He said the problem is the moderates never do anything apart from telling him to be more moderate, and he felt that, right through. So he was, he felt that the the effective opposition to appeasement of Germany, effective opposition to, the government at, in, Britain. What you required was to be organized by people who are pretty fanatical. But then you immediately had to get a a very broad band of public opinion, which are could include people who are very conservative in many ways to stand with you, and then you could be quite effective. So you had quite well worked, theories of how you could oppose, the powers that be the authorities and have an impact.
LAURA FLANDERS: Was the week effective, do you think?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think it was. Yeah. I was sort of surprised by this. You know, there is that's why there's the sort of subtitle of the book is the invention of guerrilla journalism. He had a very sort of well work. He didn't owe any money, as I said, or, resources, but he, thought that, if particularly when there was a great vacuum information about things that people were really interested in and felt they weren't finding finding out about. That if you could, have a publication which would sort of provide stories, influence the influencers, would reach politicians, above all, would reach other journalists, You could have a big impact. I used to wonder about this, but, actually, looking at what m I five, British Security and British Politicians and, senior sort of officials were saying, I think he was dead right. He didn't get much credit for this, and I think that was always inevitable because news outlets never want to admit they haven't been reporting.
PATRICK COCKBURN: They generally, if they can get away with it, in my experience, do not want to say, well, actually, this story has been appearing before in this publication. In Britain
LAURA FLANDERS: How come he was never shut down or censored or sued?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, his idea was that, he had so little money. He had a little office in, in Westminster, Great Victoria Street, up a sort of shaky lift and a sort of stairs like a ladder. When people got to see him who might be want just wanting to sue him, they'd realize there was absolutely no chance of getting any money out of him. He also made clear he'd never apologize, so they knew they'd been in for a very tough fight. He said he'd always if they had additional information, which might show a a different light on the story he'd printed, he'd happily print do that. But, of course, people just wanted him to withdraw some story, which was probably most awful true. I mean, that hasn't changed much. And, you know, there's sort of there are letters from people who are thinking of suing, the weak who would just then just realize that they'd have a terrible fight, and they wouldn't get a penny out of him. So, he thought hanged half, and it worked pretty well.
LAURA FLANDERS: Hi, lovely listeners. Laura Flanders and Friends is, as we say, the place where the people who say it can't be done take a back seat to the people who are doing it. Our guests are doing it. Now we just want to thank you, our member supporters, for doing your part. All of you who have yet to become members, please do it. Join our community today by making a one time donation or make it monthly at lauraflanders.org forward slash donate. That's lauraflanders.orgforward/donate. Thank you.
LAURA FLANDERS: So let's come to the present. We we have often on this program discussions with people that call themselves movement journalists. We talk about, people doing journalism, covering social movements, focusing on social movements, accountable to social movements, having and they tend to agree that they have a very different attitude towards this idea of objectivity than people that work for the commercial mainstream. How do you think about objectivity in light of your own reporting and and the work of Claud? And how do you, what do you consider to be your role in the work that you do?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, obviously, I try to be objective, but I also, you know, accept, and I think people get this a bit wrong, that, you know, all news reporting is partisan for various reasons. First of all, you know, you have newspapers boasting in the you know, across the top of the editorial, the facts and only the facts. But since there are an infinite number of facts in the world, and we use our best judgment or our bias, some would say, to select those facts, of course, our judgment comes into it. You know, it's not as though there were 5 facts in the world. We found them. Claud, you described it, you know, as being like sort of say, we we aren't like sort of, gold miners, and we find 5 nuggets and put them in. There are infinite number of gold nuggets, so to speak. So judgment always comes into it. And there are other things to do with the news business, I think, that, you know, there's partisan ownership, that creates great bias. There's, but it's not, I think people often think it's in fake facts. In my experience, it's normally selectivity. Sometimes fake facts, and sometimes these are manufactured, particularly in wartime. There's also just selectivity that various sort of parts of the news, aspects of news just don't get reported at all. They disappear. And, also, there's something that you know, all what's really going on is pretty complex, and people want to you know, they have a newspaper article, particularly on television and, on screens, you know, that they produce a sort of simplified version of of events, which is so oversimplified and selective that it's it's totally misleading. So it's a it's not a minor thing. It's not a it's not a minor thing. When I think of the wars I've covered, you know, beginning in Northern Ireland in the seventies, over to, you know, the the wars in the Middle East, recent wars, the US invasion of, Iraq. I mentioned Afghanistan, Libya. The the main line of what the media was saying was untrue. It wasn't just wrong at the periphery. It had just completely misunderstood the situation. And, I think that one of the problems is that people who are very absorbed, and particularly if they feel a deep sense of outrage about something, what is happening, may not be very good at conveying it to a wider audience. Why not? Because, you know, simply people who feel a sense of outrage feel that the truth sort of, is shouting out from the front page. It isn't. You have to sort of present it to people. This was Claud, a a clue point that Claud Orphan made. You you really had to think about how you presented this in order to get people's attention, even at things that you thought were of vast importance. And he used to cite the example, and he actually is, his chief correspondent in Washington made to him early on when he was in the US. This was around that just after the great crash. And he said, when you're writing an article, imagine that you're writing for an old lady who's got a cat, which she dear dearly loves. And all the time, you're competing for her attention with that much loved cat. Now it may sound frivolous, but, actually, it's a jolly good idea to think about that when you're trying to persuade people who may not be that interested or even hold contrary opinions that what you say is true and worth worth listening to.
LAURA FLANDERS: What do you think is the most important thing that mainstream journalists are getting wrong right now with respect to the Middle East?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think they don't realize that, you know, that whole peoples are involved in this. By this, I mean, they talk about Hamas and, Gaza, but one's really talking about, you know, the Palestinians. What's happening to the Palestinians as a whole? Will the Israelis eliminate Hamas or Hezbollah? Yeah. But these sort of spring out of the Palestinian and the Shia Muslim community in in Lebanon. The these guys are gonna go go home. You know? Eliminate every last member of Hamas and Hezbollah. These problems will still be there. The, you know, the violence will not stop. I think that when they talk about Iran, but the, you know, the axis of resistance but this is basically just the Shia commit. What gives this substance is not sort of weapons from Iran, but this is the Shia communities in the Middle East. And so I think that that's always that's misunderstood. It was misunderstood in Iraq. It was misunderstood in, in Afghanistan that, when you were attacking, you know, you could focus on these leader on leaders who kill the leaders. You could inflict great casualties on various movements. But underneath these were whole communities, millions of people, who weren't going to be intimidated and, were going to fight on. I think that that's something that isn't, generally understood.
LAURA FLANDERS: Do you think that a 2 state solution is viable, ever was viable, is viable now?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, no. Because, you know, everybody's being, you know, it's not only they don't have a state. They often don't have a village, or they don't have a house to live on. I think it seems to be absurd and almost insulting to say in a sort of highfalutin way, could there be a 2 state when somebody's just had their house bomb from underneath them. You know, first of all, you want to have your house, then you want to maybe down the road, you want to you also want to have a state. If somebody's gonna deny you that house and if your village you're gonna be driven from your village or ordered out of your village within 45 minutes, you know, you're not gonna get us you're not they're not gonna be willing to give you a state. So I say and I think it's a sort of a diversion from reality, Diversion from the, you know, the terrible cruelty of what's going on to millions of you know, to 100 of 1000, millions of people to go on about the 2 state solution. I'm amazed that anybody's, you know, basically, diplomats in private except this has been, you know, dead as anything for 20 years and still is.
LAURA FLANDERS: It was never all that viable. I don't think a diversion from what? Where should we be focusing at this moment? And if Claud was around today, where do you think he'd be focusing?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think he'd be focusing on that. He'd been focusing on what's actually happening, in the front line, on the ground, as opposed to what people say. I think there's rather more. I mean, one shouldn't be sort of too pessimistic about this. You know? Simple things like the phone cameras mean that massacres who which could have been covered up and were covered up or played down when I was first a journalist in Lebanon in the late seventies eighties. You know, I was at actually in Sabra Shatida. There was a little bit of thought with that. That was the massacre of the Palestinians there by the, Christian militias backed by Israel. The, but there wasn't much. Now a lot of this stuff is impossible to to hide. What's horrific is, although it's out there, it's not being hid. It's still you still find these, political leaders and other leaders saying somehow it's not happening or it's, you know, it's, it's it's not that bad. You know? Or it's somehow, you know, this should, sort of go on. I think that's what's sort of truly horrific about present events. The good thing is that it's no longer can no longer be hidden, in a way it was in the past or partly concealed. The the the the horrible thing is that although it's out in the open, it's still happening. And, not just, Biden and, Trump, you know, but all these Europe, Starmer, all these European politicians, all behaviors if it wasn't, and suddenly don't do anything to stop it. I think that's what's, but I don't think one should be I think one one needs to just keep going at this. You know, the point that Claud used to make continually that the those in authority, the powers that be always want to say to everybody, you know, do not your efforts are so puny. You are so weak. We are so powerful that it's it has absolutely no effect what you say. Now Claud was wholly cynical about the, motives, of those with power and money, but he also thought they were much weaker than they looked, that they were always trying to, diffuse opposition by present pretending it had no impact on them. It does. It has an enormous impact on them. And that, as I said earlier, was what one of the things that impressed me about Claud, that there are various historians that didn't make much impact. But when you actually got to the, you know, the government's archives, you find it had enormous impact. I think that's still true. I think there's this continual bid from various directions that say that opposition, that protests have no impact on the course of events, and and they do. And that furthermore, individuals, if they really think about it, can put up effective opposition. In other words, in a sort of you know, if David fighting Goliath can, you know, really think through his tactics or her tactics, then you can have an impact. That's right. That's what Claud believed at the end of his life, and I and I think he was right.
LAURA FLANDERS: The poet Audre Lorde used to say that the idea that you can't fight city hall is a lie spread by city hall.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Exactly.
LAURA FLANDERS: I mentioned at the top, that you had brothers. You have 2, Andrew and Alexander. Alexander, much missed, passed away a few years ago. His publication, Counterpunch, surely is an example of the kind of guerrilla journalism, that you describe. Are there other examples? I mean, we're an independent media outlet for sure. There are others out there. But how do you describe today the impact today of this kind of independent, what you call, guerrilla journey?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, in Britain, you have private eye, which Claud also worked on, when he was older, which doesn't have an exact US equivalent. People have tried to set up the equivalent in the US, and which is this is a fortnightly magazine, which is a mixture of sort of, news and, satire. And, which very much does the same as The Week. I mean, I need to when I look at it, I find, you know, that it's had stories. I don't I don't know how far they are known about in the US, but there was a tremendous scandal here about subpostmasters being innocent subpostmasters, about 900 of them being accused of stealing money, put in jail, their lives ruined. Turned out it was all a complete. They're completely innocent and so forth. Private eye had been going on about this for about 10 years till the rest of the media caught on. They never mentioned this, that they well, practically never, that private eye had been doing this longer than 10 years, actually. The, Mohammed Al Fayid has that, the man who owned Harrods, the great department store, who has been exposed as a horrible sexual predator and rapist, and who, was sort of preyed on his own staff. Suddenly, this is being exposed partly because he's dead. But, in his published was publishing this in 1998, or in a quarter a century ago. It never got picked up.
LAURA FLANDERS: So maybe it's just a matter of time. I'm gonna have to say I I look at the situation that we're in today and think about the impact of the week in a period that probably at that time also felt like fairly locked down in terms of the traditional, the conventional narrative of what was going on. Claud was up against with a very small machine, up against very big megaphone for the government and its point of view. Today feels somewhat similar, although there are, as you point out, 2 ways to look at it. On the one hand, sort of explosion of independent media, and you talked about the guerrilla journalism of proud Palestinian reporters who were the only people getting the word out about what is happening on the ground despite the brutal assault that they've been under and the many casualties they've taken. In the US too, you see a lot of independent media outlets, ours being one of them, but at the same time, a concentration of media power in a few hands like Elon Musk's that sometimes look to me to have the kind of power of a goebbels of of of today. Distributing a free platform that is a a funnel for a certain point of view and taking no responsibility for the, results of that often hate mongering and lies that spread. Which way do you look at it? Is this are we in a a better moment, a less good moment, or is it just the same old moment and we we trundle forward?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, it's a pretty bad moment, and it also is sort of bad because, you know, one likes to feel things are getting better in the world. You know, there's a degree of progress that the sort of savagery, you know, of the past won't be revisited in similar form today, but it turns out that maybe it is. Maybe human beings don't progress very much. In some ways, it was worse then, I think, because now there are alternative means of communication to a wide audience. I mean, like what you and I are doing, but, you know, elsewhere. And, it requires people to pick it up, but there are alternatives. You know, Claud used a a a mimeograph machine, to put out his stuff, and he said, look. This is a sort of a small weapon, a bit like a sort of handgun up against the sort of tanks and armored cars of the big battalions of the media, but still you can use it, and still it can be effective. Now these days, there are many more handguns around in the if that's the right analogy, in on the Internet, you know, elsewhere. So you can have an impact. But it's not, you know, it's not game over. You know, the the main organs of the mass media, you know, still, you know, they don't have quite the total dominance they do. You know? But it's, it's an overriding, dominance. But I so I think that the the balance is less skewed against people who want to, you know, basically, you know, say stop doing the terrible things you're doing. And it's.
LAURA FLANDERS: But going back to the beginning, you said Claud was able to have impact because he was one of a few voices. Today, there are many voices countering the traditional the the conventional, the pro status quo kind of, version of life. And it seems that even when good things are published, I'm thinking of a very good investigation in a mainstream publication, The New York Times Magazine, looking into the violence of the settler movement and its collection to the contemporary administration of Bibi Netanyahu seemed to have no impact, although it was an extraordinary you would have thought an extraordinary expose of people who should absolutely not be in power and not receive US weapons, and are now in in in the very top of that of that government.
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think I think
LAURA FLANDERS: So that that concerns me.
PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah. This is true. There aren't also sort of political movements putting this out. You know? It's sort of, you know, you every so often, I see articles like that. Maybe they're in the New York Times. Maybe that suddenly reveal something, and prove something, like somebody did a a very good survey of the US bombing in Iraq, around Mosul about, what's 7 or 8 years ago, going to the villages where the US Air Force said they killed 1 person. You may remember this. It turned out the real figure was 40. You know, half of them were sort of women, children, and so forth. Complete lies, which I've been saying. Now I think that all from those who oppose this don't you know, should be circulating this the whole time. They should take this article, another article like the one you just mentioned, and make sure everybody gets it. Unfortunately, they often think the Horridale New York Times, God. You know? I'm not gonna secrete anything from them or from elsewhere. I think people don't necessarily think through, you know, when established media institutions, produce something like that. Another one, I remember CNN about, you know, the attack on an 8 convoy in Gaza. You know, they've done a lot of work on this. Again, I feel somebody should have been distributing this. One of the problems is which has probably grown worse, which is there's now such an ocean of information on the Internet that things get swallowed up, even things that appear in mainline, publications, which you think would you know, people would see this and react to this, but it it gets swallowed up in a great sort of, you know, in this vast sort of ocean of information that is out there unless somebody sort of, drags it to the surface and keeps pointing at it.
LAURA FLANDERS: Talking about that ocean, your your other brother, Andrew, has been doing extraordinary reporting on the role of Amazon in this moment, in providing, IT services and satellite services to the Israeli Defense Force, so called. Another important story, you can find that at Harper's. The family continues to do this work. I'd love to ask you the question, Patrick, that I ask all of our guests, which is what you think the story will be that future journalists will tell of of now. Look forward 50, 90 years. What will the reporters be saying about this period, do you think?
PATRICK COCKBURN: I think that, how did we return to an era of wars? Would you similar to the twenties and above all to the 19 thirties? We don't I think we are back in a devil's decade. I think they'll be pretty astonished, particularly Gaza and Lebanon and Iran. You know, I covered many previous, wars in the Middle East. You know? Usually, the US may have been complicit with Israel in various attacks and invasions, but after a a bit, they would restrain them. That hasn't happened this time. This is pretty extraordinary. You know, we go into why that hasn't happened. So there's a much more accidental feel about this. Some things that have happened, let's say, in Ukraine, there's a feeling of inevitability about some of those things. Maybe it could have been avoided, but there were some major forces moving towards a confrontation. Certainly, the tender was dry in the Middle East. You know, I've been writing for quite some time, and sometimes it was gonna blaze up. But I must say the actual circumstances of Gaza, the role of the Biden administration was something I didn't expect. So it it happened quicker. It happened when it didn't happen to happen. It'd been awful lot worse than I imagined. So, likewise, in the 19 in thirties, you know, there was inevitability of what was gonna happen after Hitler came to par, after Franco had won this, civil, war in Spain, or was winning, the rise of fascism. Very difficult to stop. And in one sense, Claud did get exactly what he wanted at the end of the day, which he'd rather to his own amazement, which was he'd wanted a British government, and and U.S. government fully committed to fighting fascism and the Nazis and Hitler. Eventually, that happened. He said they could only do this in, in alliance with the the Soviet Union. That happened to 2 thirds of the German army was on the eastern front come d day. And, in Britain, you had a sort of popular front government that sort of united everybody. It's so in a way, he was sort of, come the the come the war, the second World War. Those two things he'd wanted had happened. You know, had he you can then you say, had he played any role in this? Well, the people who wanted wanted that to happen eventually won out, both on the right and the left. So I don't think one should sort of depress oneself too much. And, you know, that those in power, I think, are more vulnerable. I think one can have, more impact than one thinks. Or, you know, Claud, it was often said, you know, that, I think, horrible phrase, you're talking truth to Pa. Well, dear old Pa certainly doesn't want to hear the truth. You know? It's a very good idea of the truth. Doesn't want to lose its Pa. What you ought to do, what everybody ought to do, is tell the truth to the powerless and enable them to do something about it, or at least know what's happening so they can act. That's what he was sort of about, and now that's what I think others should be about too.
LAURA FLANDERS: Do you fear Donald Trump? Do you fear Donald Trump?
PATRICK COCKBURN: Trump doesn't Trumpism. I'm fairly frightened of Biden too. You know? I mean, there is a continuity in the US government, if I may say so in their policies, you know, whether whoever is there. People say different things, but when you look at Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq but hold on a minute. Obama is in power, and we have Libya. What's happened to Libya now? The whole place is destroyed. You know? Then we, you know, we move on to to Trump. We actually started known wars. I read a book called wars in the age of Trump, but they were all wars were started before Trump. Maybe this was an excellent, you know, Do wars major wars start under Biden. Maybe this would have happened anyway, but there is a sort of continuity in this. And, I think also reading Claud's stuff, you know, in some ways, he looked at the background of a typical Englishman. You know, he went to public school. He went to Oxford. Because he was brought up in Central Europe in the midst of wars, he had a very clear idea what wars were like. I get the impression that, sir, party Biden and all these others, those who who push these wars don't really know what they're like. I don't mean in terms of horror. They they don't understand how you know, they're full of wildcards. You can't whoever thinks people who start wars think they control them. They can't. They spin out of control almost immediately. I think Claud understood that, very well. And, but he had a background which was much more, like that of a Central European, very similar. Many of his sort of political friends were Joe, anti Nazi Germans. Many of them Jewish, but they're either but part of German culture. So he had a very tough, but I think, ultimately, all too realistic view of the way things worked.
LAURA FLANDERS: Patrick Hoban, thank you so much for joining us. We will put all the information about your rest of your books and this new one. Believe nothing till it's officially denied out now from Verso at our website. Thank you. Thank you.
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