The Rushdie attack highlights a growing cancer

The politics of free expression have changed in the past 30 years. The practice of seeking retribution for causing ‘offence’ is widespread

TPublishers routinely censor books; fear of ‘hurt feelings’ has become compulsory

he attack on Sir Salman Rushdie recalls the letter he and dozens of other prominent people sent to Harper’s magazine two years ago. The signatories deplored “the forces of illiberalism”, and protested that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted”.

The letter highlighted growing limits on freedom of expression – editors sacked for running controversial articles, academics punished for teaching certain texts, and calls for “swift and severe retribution” against those refusing to conform to a new, illiberal orthodoxy. One victim of these trends is another signatory, JK Rowling, being rendered a non-person by fascists of the Left who object to her expressing a perfectly legal and sincerely held opinion on what really constitutes a woman. Sir Salman, regrettably, knows too well the horrific forms that the extremism of retribution can take, but it has other appalling manifestations, as a growing number of academics, writers and other intellectuals will testify.

When Iran imposed a fatwa on Sir Salman 33 years ago it appeared to be because he, as a man of Muslim birth, had blasphemed. However, there were profound political reasons too, not least Iran’s attempt to wrest from Saudi Arabia the notion that it led the Islamic faith. Nonetheless, a cultural clash between Western and Eastern values was widely debated. There seemed no point trying to ask the East to respect Western freedom of expression, because the theocracies would not have it. Sir Salman apologised, something he said he later regretted; for it made no difference. We cannot ascertain his attacker’s motivation. Since before 9/11, attacks by Islamists in America usually turned out to be politically motivated.

When the fatwa was issued, the British Left rushed to defend Sir Salman; the British state provided comprehensive police protection. But in the intervening years the politics of free expression have changed. The creation of an international mob of censors and bigots – also politically motivated – on Twitter and elsewhere has meant that the practices of denying freedom of expression and demanding “retribution” are widespread among those whose only gods are ideological. This has been Ms Rowling’s fate.

Those who own certain rights to her works expunge her name from their spin-offs, not necessarily because of their own convictions, but because the mob bullies threaten them into doing so. In universities, dons often live in fear of the opinions of their students, which limits their academic freedom, and distort curriculums to focus on race, gender and sexuality. Students who question the consequent assumptions become afraid to speak out in case they are marked down or failed. Their teachers often conform with the new orthodoxy because they fear losing their jobs if they do not.

Publishers routinely censor books because certain words have become unutterable; fear of “hurt feelings” has become compulsory. This desire to signal virtue, to acquire the same false cloak of self-righteousness, is not confined to the Left: Conservatives such as Tom Tugendhat jumped on the bandwagon when the late Sir Roger Scruton was wrongly branded a racist, because it advanced their reputations among those with whom they wished to ingratiate themselves.

The Harper’s signatories wrote that “we need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences”. As we now know, the consequences of this mania to control free expression go far beyond the professional. They appealed for individuals to defend these rights, because otherwise democratic states could not be prepared to do so. Well, Sir Salman and others have stood up. What will the Western democracies actually do about cutting out this cancer before it becomes universal?