Rowling and 150 arts icons in free speech warning
JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among high-profile figures to sign an open letter warning of the threat to free speech in the modern day.
Hitting back at the ‘intolerant climate’, the 150 writers, academics and activists highlighted the ‘vogue for public shaming’.
It comes after a series of rows between Harry Potter author Miss Rowling and the transgender community.
The letter – also signed by British novelist Martin Amis, US intellectual Noam Chomsky, feminist Gloria Steinem and Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov – was published in American magazine Harper’s.
It stated: ‘The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.
‘While we have come to expect this on the radical Right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.’
The letter said open debate was being stifled in favour of ‘ideological conformity’, adding: ‘We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.’
It went on: ‘This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.’
The writers of the letter took aim at what is known on social media as cancel culture, saying: ‘It is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.’
They urged society to ‘uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters’.
Several of the authors have had works banned, including British novelist Mr Rushdie – who went into hiding for nine years after receiving death threats for his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.
Miss Rowling, who denies being transphobic, was targeted after mocking an online article that used the words ‘people who menstruate’ instead of ‘women’.
She spoke of her own experience with sexual assault as a significant factor in her support for ‘singlesex spaces’, and gave examples of where she thought demands by transgender activists were dangerous to women.
But Harry Potter film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, as well as Fantastic Beasts actor Eddie Redmayne, hit back at the best-selling writer’s comments.
This week children’s book author Gillian Philip was sacked after backing Miss Rowling.