[Marxism] Alexander Cockburn gets Spiked

[Louis Proyect]

Last June in a commentary on Alexander Cockburn’s global warming 
denialism, I mentioned that Zbigniew Jaworowski, one of his “experts”, 
had written for Spiked Online as well as Lyndon Larouche’s magazine 
“21st Century Science & Technology”. Like Lyndon Larouche, Frank Furedi, 
the top guy at Spiked Online, was once a Trotskyist politician. There 
are no illusions that Larouche as any connections to the left nowadays, 
but our boy Alexander still has trouble understanding that Furedi broke 
his ties to the left as well. In the latest issue of the Nation 
Magazine, he has an attack on recycling (unfortunately only available to 
subscribers) that starts as follows:

     Two years ago some smart leftists here put together an event called 
the Battle of Ideas, and the mix of provocative themes, well-run panels 
and competent speakers worked out well. I was invited to speak at a 
couple of sessions in the third Battle at the end of October and was 
happy to find its organizers threading a sane course past the rocks on 
which left-organized confabs usually founder: viz., endless mastication 
of the obvious, marked disinclination to address any new ideas, 
overblown preachments to the converted. In fact, on the surface at 
least, this didn’t seem like a particularly “left” affair, which 
probably explains why that weekend a thousand people were milling around 
the Royal College of Art, next to the Albert Hall.

One might assume that Alexander had about as much curiosity in 
uncovering the origins of the conference he spoke at as he did in 
finding out about Zbigniew Jaworowski’s long-standing connections to 
Larouche. If he once conjured up images of an intrepid investigative 
reporter, now he seems more like the dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party:

     “The Dormouse is asleep again,” said the Hatter, and he poured a 
little hot tea upon its nose.

     The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening 
its eyes, “Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.”