Claud Cockburn’s Legacy of Guerrilla Journalism

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 on January 31, 1933, “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.” Hitler went on to invade Poland, spark World War II, and implement genocide, slaughtering 6 million Jews and millions of others, including disabled people, LGBTQ people, communists, and ethnic minorities. But one young British journalist who, seeing what was happening, quit his job with The 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. Patrick is my uncle; Claud is my grandfather—and his story is especially relevant now.

—Laura Flanders