Salman Rushdie, a man who has been cancelled perhaps longer than any other writer, has spoken out against left-wing cancel culture:
Salman Rushdie has warned that Left-wing ‘cancel culture’ is a threat to literature and freedom of speech.
Responding to the idea that authors should write only ‘what they know’ or risk being ‘cancelled’, the Booker Prize winner said he could not accept that ‘there are areas in which censorship is acceptable’.
He added: ‘I’ve always seen democracy as a public square in which everyone is arguing… The ability to have the argument is what I would call freedom because in countries that are authoritarian the first thing rulers try to do is to shut down that argument.’
The Anglo-Indian author has long been a staunch defender of free speech and his own life was under threat for many years after Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him in 1989, following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses.
Most recently he joined more than 150 signatories of an open letter in US magazine Harper’s, objecting to ‘cancel culture’.
Nicky Hager’s attack on me was all about cancel-culture. Instead of fighting for my right to speak the compliant media, under veiled threats from Hager also sought to stifle my speech. They trialled their methods with me and continue to do it to powerful, conservative voices.
It was all about shutting down the argument, in any way they could, including by illegal means. It’s also why lawfare has been deployed, to silence voices speaking truth to power.
This is why we must counter the cancel-culture by supporting conservative voices like those at The BFD.
You can do that by subscribing to one of our membership plans.
Don’t forget that by joining you are in the draw to win one of three signed copies of Judith Collins’ best selling book ‘Pull No Punches’.
