Nick Cohen Explained

Nick Cohen should not be confused with Nik Cohn.

Nick Cohen
Occupation:Journalist
Birth Name:Nicholas Cohen
Birth Place:Stockport, Cheshire, England
Children:1

Nicholas Cohen (born 1961)[1] is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He was a columnist for The Observer and is a blogger for The Spectator. Following accusations of sexual harassment,[2] [3] he left The Observer in 2022 and began publishing on the Substack platform.

Personal life

Cohen was born in Stockport, and raised in Manchester.[4] His father was Jewish. He was educated at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).

Cohen lives in Islington with his wife and their son.[5] He is an atheist but says he is becoming "more Jewish".[6] He is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.[7]

Career

Cohen began his career at the Sutton Coldfield News, before moving to the Birmingham Post, later becoming a contributor to The Independent and The Observer in 1996.

Cohen was a columnist for The Observer and a regular contributor to The Spectator. He has also written for Time, the Independent on Sunday, the London Review of Books, the London Evening Standard, the New Statesman and The New European. He has written for the magazine Private Eye under the pseudonym "Ratbiter".[8] [9]

In August 2022, Press Gazette reported that Cohen's regular Observer column had been "paused", pending an investigation by the newspaper's publisher, Guardian News and Media (GNM). The Gazette also reported that allegations against Cohen had been made public by the barrister Jolyon Maugham, and that a direct complaint had been made by the journalist Lucy Siegle, which she accused GNM of mishandling.[10] Writing in The New European, Siegle detailed her alleged sexual harassment by Cohen in the Observer offices some years before, along with her experience of making a complaint in 2018, stating that GNM executives failed to offer a formal investigation.[2]

Cohen's last column for The Observer was published in July 2022.[11] In December 2022, he began publishing on Substack.[12] In January 2023, the Press Gazette reported that he had resigned from The Observer on "health grounds".[13] In May 2023, Jane Bradley reported in The New York Times that in addition to Siegle's accusations, several other women had come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against Cohen, and that the British media had failed to cover the story.[3] [14] [15] Furthermore, Bradley revealed that Madison Marriage of the Financial Times actually had the story earlier, but was stopped from making it public by FT editor Roula Khalaf.[16]

Views

Foreign policy

In the early 2000s, Cohen was a critic of the government of Israel and described Zionism as "colonialism".[17] [18]

Cohen was for many years a critic of Tony Blair's foreign policy.[19] [20] He began modifying his views after 2001, advocating support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq,[21] [22] and becoming a critic of the Stop the War Coalition.[23] In 2006, he was a leading signatory to the Euston Manifesto,[24] which proposed what it termed "a new political alignment", in which the left would take a stronger, stance in favour of military intervention and against what the signatories deemed to be anti-American attitudes. Cohen supported the NATO-led intervention in Libya to oust former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.[25] In 2012, he called for Western military intervention in the Syrian Civil War.[26]

Domestic

In a 2006 press release, the Muslim Council of Britain suggested Cohen and four other journalists were "part of a circle of pernicious Islamophobic commentators".[27]

In August 2014, Cohen was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.[28]

In 2014, he spoke out against the UK Independence Party and its leader, Nigel Farage, in The Observer, for which he received the Commentator Award by the European Press Prize a year later.[29] [30]

Other

Cohen criticised Ecuador for granting political asylum to Julian Assange and called Ecuador a "petro-socialist authoritarian state".[31] He has also been critical of the CANZUK agreement, calling it "an Anglo-Saxon Narnia".[32] He has criticised halal and kosher slaughter and believes they should be illegal.[33]

Works

He has written five books: Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous[34] (1999), a collection of his journalism; Pretty Straight Guys[35] (2003), a highly critical account of the New Labour project; What's Left?[36] (2007), a critique of the contemporary liberal left, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize;[37] [38] Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England[39] (2009); and You Can't Read this Book (2012),[40] which deals with censorship.

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Nick Cohen . . 13 January 2013 . 15 December 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191215075436/http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/author/2994001-nick-cohen . dead .
  2. [Lucy Siegle]
  3. News: Bradley . Jane . 2023-05-30 . A British Reporter Had a Big #MeToo Scoop. Her Editor Killed It. . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-06-03.
  4. Nick Cohen Waiting for the Etonians, p. 23.
  5. "Law without Order", New Statesman 2004, 'Waiting for the Etonians' p. 99.
  6. Nick Cohen (12 February 2009). "Hatred is turning me into a Jew". The Jewish Chronicle. London.
  7. Web site: National Secular Society Honorary Associates. National Secular Society. 26 August 2019.
  8. 1205088310353387520. DoctorManhatt14. Doctor Manhattan. Ratbiter is Nick Cohen, who has had, for the last few years, what might charitably described as a hypothetical relationship with reality..
  9. Web site: Tony Greenstein on the Neocon Warmongering of Nick Cohen, Private Eye's 'Ratbiter'. 20 March 2019. WordPress.
  10. Dominic Ponsford and Charlotte Tobit (2 August 2022). "Nick Cohen's Observer column on pause whilst he co-operates with investigation". Press Gazette.
  11. Web site: Nick Cohen The Guardian . 2022-12-02 . The Guardian . en.
  12. Web site: Cohen . Nick . Writing from London by Nick Cohen . 2022-12-02 . nickcohen.substack.com . en.
  13. Web site: Ponsford . Dominic . Nick Cohen resigns from The Observer on 'health grounds' . Press Gazette . 28 January 2023 . 27 January 2023.
  14. News: France . Anthony . 1 June 2023 . Guardian bosses under fire over sexual harassment claims against Nick Cohen . 2 June 2023 . Evening Standard . en.
  15. News: Nick Cohen, Phillip Schofield and British media's own #MeToo reckoning . Evans . Rebekah . 2 June 2023 . 2 June 2023 . The Week UK . en.
  16. Web site: Lothian-McLean . Moya . 1 June 2023 . Britain's Journalists Protect No One But Themselves . . 2 June 2023.
  17. Web site: Cohen . Nick . 20 November 2000 . The Holocaust as show business . dead . 17 October 2019 . . To the successors of the 'Zionism is fascism' crowd of the Seventies (it isn't, incidentally, it's colonialism), the Holocaust and reaction sit comfortably together. . 17 October 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191017115919/https://www.newstatesman.com/node/193781 .
  18. Book: Cohen, Nick . 2003 . Pretty Straight Guys . Faber and Faber . 0-571-22004-5.
  19. Web site: 2021-05-19 . Sincerely ducking the hard questions . Nick . Cohen . 2023-06-02 . The Critic Magazine . Nor did Tony Blair's enemies in the 1990s — I know because I was one of them. . en-GB.
  20. Web site: I Was Tony Blair's Lapdog: Interview with Nick Cohen - Black Flag libcom.org . 2023-06-02 . libcom.org . en.
  21. News: Nick . Cohen . The Left betrays the Iraqi people by opposing war . . 14 January 2003 . subscription . London . 28 September 2012.
  22. News: The Left isn't listening . Cohen . Nick . The Guardian . London . 16 February 2003 . 28 September 2012.
  23. Nick Cohen (7 April 2003). "Strange bedfellows". New Statesman. London.
  24. Web site: The Euston Manifesto . eustonmanifesto.org . 11 September 2001 . 6 April 2012.
  25. Web site: Cohen . Nick . 13 March 2011 . EU support for Arab rebels is shamefully late . en-GB . The Observer . 2023-05-30 . 0029-7712.
  26. Web site: Cohen . Nick . 1 January 2012 . The west has a duty to intervene in Syria . en-GB . The Observer . London . 0029-7712.
  27. Web site: Martin Bright's C4 Documentary: Part of a Campaign to Divide and Rule. 13 July 2006. Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) Archive.
  28. News: Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories . The Guardian . London . 7 August 2014 . 26 August 2014.
  29. News: Gilley. Matthew. 13 April 2015. Observer's Nick Cohen among the €10,000 winners of European Press Prize. Press Gazette. 28 May 2020.
  30. Web site: The Cowardice of Nigel Farage. European Press Prize. 2020-05-28.
  31. Web site: Oppressive states such as Ecuador crush the web's power. Cohen. Nick. The Guardian. 6 September 2015.
  32. Web site: 29 August 2020. What hiring a failed Australian prime minister tells us about corrupt Britain. Nick. Cohen. 2021-01-11. The Guardian. en.
  33. Web site: God's own chosen meat. Cohen. Nick. New Statesman.
  34. Book: Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous – Nick Cohen – Google Books . 9781859842881 . 28 September 2012. Cohen . Nick . 2000 . Verso .
  35. Book: Pretty Straight Guys . 9780571220045 . 28 September 2012. Cohen . Nick . 2004 . Faber and Faber, Limited .
  36. Book: What's Left?: How the Left Lost Its Way . 9780007229703 . 28 September 2012. Cohen . Nick . 2007 . Harper Perennial .
  37. http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/book-title/whats-left-how-the-left-lost-its-way/ "2008 Book Prize Short List", The Orwell Prize
  38. http://www.nickcohen.net/?page_id=5 "Biography"
  39. Web site: Cohen . Nick . Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England by Nick Cohen . https://archive.today/20121230102337/http://www.harpercollins.com.au/books/Waiting-Etonians-Reports-Sickbed-Liberal-England-Nick-Cohen/?isbn=9780007308927 . dead . 30 December 2012 . Harpercollins.com.au . 28 September 2012 .
  40. Web site: You Can't Read This Book : Nick Cohen . HarperCollins . 28 September 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120902111656/http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/47000/you-cant-read-this-book-nick-cohen-9780007308903 . 2 September 2012 . dead .

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