by Alexander Cockburn, Irish-American Journalist, Author and Co-Founding Co-Editor of Counterpunch
This is one of Alexander Cockburn’s last commentaries before he transformed and journeyed onto the Other Side, July 22, 2012. Rest in peace, Alex. – Lady MJ Santos, Founder & Publisher
August 4, 2012 (TSR) – Since what is now going is being described as “the greatest financial scandal in the history of Britain” — the Barclays imbroglio – I have a question to ask. Where are those tents outside St Pauls? Or ones in solidarity this side of the Atlantic? Where are the vibrant reminders that – as has happened in the Barclays case – there is most definitely one law for the 1% (none, in fact) and another for the 99 %?
It was very hard not to be swept away by the Occupy movement which established itself in New York’s Zuccotti Park last September and soon spread to Oakland, Chicago, London and Madrid. And indeed most people didn’t resist its allure.? ?Leninists threw aside their Marxist primers on party organisation and drained the full anarchist cocktail.
The Occupiers, with their “people’s mic”, were always a little hard to understand. And as with all movements involving consensus, everything took a very long time.? ?Was there perhaps a leader, a small leadership group, sequestered somewhere among the tents and clutter? It was impossible to say and at that point somewhat disloyal to pose the question. Cynicism about Occupy was not a popular commodity.? ?But new movements always need a measure of cynicism dumped on them. Questions of organization were obliterated by the strength of the basic message – we are 99 per cent, they are one per cent. It was probably the most successful slogan since ‘peace, land, bread’.
The Occupy Wall Street assembly in Zuccotti Park soon developed its own cultural mores, drumming included. Like many onlookers, I asked myself, Where the hell’s the plan?
But I held my tongue. I had no particular better idea and for a CounterPuncher of mature years to start laying down the program seemed cocky. But, deep down, I felt that Occupy, with all its fancy talk, all its endless speechifying, was riding for a fall.
Before the fall came there were heroic actions, people battered senseless by the police. These were brave people trying to hold their ground.
There were other features that I think quite a large number of people found annoying: the cult of the internet, the tweeting and so forth, and I definitely didn’t like the enormous arrogance which prompted the Occupiers to claim that they were indeed the most important radical surge in living memory.
Where was the knowledge of, let along the respect for the past? We had the non-violent resistors of the Forties organising against the war with enormous courage. The Fifties saw leftists took McCarthyism full on the chin. With the Sixties we were making efforts at revolutionary organisation and resistance.? ?Yet when one raised this history with someone from Occupy, I encountered total indifference.
There also seemed to be a serious level of political naivety about the shape of the society they were seeking to change. They definitely thought that it could be reshaped – the notion that the whole system was unfixable did not get much of a hearing.? ?After a while it seemed as though, in Tom Naylor’s question in this site: “Is it possible that the real purpose of Occupy Wall Street has little to do with either the 99 per cent or the one per cent, but rather everything to do with keeping the political left in America decentralised, widely dispersed, very busy, and completely impotent to deal with the collapse of the American empire…
“Occupiers are all occupied doing exactly what their handlers would have them be doing, namely, being fully occupied. In summary, Occupy Wall Street represents a huge distraction.”
Then the rains of winter came. Zuccotti Park came under repeated assault, the tents were cleared from zucotti Park and from St Paul’s Cathedral and by early this year it was all over.
People have written complicated pieces trying to prove it’s not over, but if ever I saw a dead movement, it is surely Occupy.
Has it left anything worth remembering? Yes, maybe. With Bob Diamond squirming before British MPs, and politicians jostling to apportion blame for the Barclays scandal, memories of the 99 per cent and the one per cent are surely at least warm in the coffin.
Everything leftists predicted came true, just as everything hard-eyed analysts predicted about the likely but unwelcome course of ecstatic populism in Tahrir Square also came true. ·I do think it’s incumbent on those veteran radicals who wrote hundreds of articles more or proclaiming a religious conversion to Occupyism, to give a proper account of themselves, otherwise it will happen all over again.
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AUTHOR: Alexander Claud Cockburn
Born and raised in Ireland, Alexander Cockburn has been an American journalist since 1973. He has established a reputation as one of the foremost reporters and commentators of the left by writing newspaper and magazine columns for the past decade. Cockburn’s areas of interest include the American political scene, economics, the environment, labor issues and international policy. The author of a bi-weekly column for The Nation called “Beat the Devil,” Cockburn also writes a syndicated newspaper column, which is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate and has appeared regularly in such papers as the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer,San Francisco Examiner, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Detroit Free Press. In 1987, Cockburn authored a highly successful collection of essays, some autobiographical, entitled “Corruptions of Empire” for which he was called “the most gifted polemicist now writing in English” by the Times Literary Supplement. Cockburn also co-authored the acclaimed “The Fate of the Forest, Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon.” He has appeared on numerous national television programs, including interviews with Ted Koppel and Phil Donohue. He also lectures regularly on environmental issues and global politics. Educated in Ireland, England and Scotland, Cockburn graduated with honors from Oxford University in 1963. He is the co-editor of Counterpunch with Jeffrey St. Clair since 1996. He died on July 22, 2012. Read our tribute for Alex here.
