Nick Cohen: Writing from London

The Literary Review.
Feb 2012

The grand posture of writers in liberal democracies is that they are the moral equivalents of dissidents in repressive regimes. Loud-mouthed newspaper columnists claim to ‘speak truth to power’. Novelists, artists, playwrights and comedians announce their willingness to transgress boundaries. Their publishers look for controversy like boozers look for brawls because they know that few marketing strategies beat the claim that a courageous iconoclast is challenging establishments and shattering taboos.

To maintain the illusion that they are part of some kind of radical underground, intellectuals must practise a deceit. They can never admit to their audience that fear of violent reprisals, ostracism or crippling financial penalties keeps them away from subjects that ought to concern them – and their fellow citizens.
Carry on reading

By Ram Mashru
The Independent
31 January, 2012

“Here, Nick Cohen’s point about power resounds: “few admit that what makes liberal democracies liberal is that “power” will not throw you in prison [for speaking freely]”. Freedom of expression exists therefore only to the extent that the State will protect it. In this instance, the “power” of the radical, militant few was allowed to stifle free discussion because of the absence of political will. This apathy amounts to an abdication of the responsibility, shared by alldemocratic governments, to safeguard the right of free speech.

“The most pernicious implication of the Rushdie debacle is self-censorship. As Nick Cohen points out in his timely book, fear is the greatest threat to open discussion. Extremists, by definition, flout both the moral consensus and the law. The refusal to apprehend the threat of violence and the patent indifference shown towards free expression by India’s governmentrisks establishing a dangerous precedent. The risk is one of fundamentalists filling the power vacuum left by the absence of political will.”
Carry on reading

Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2012

• Luckily, I didn’t need to fly to Davos to get my fill of stardust: TV mogul Samir Shah’s 60th birthday party drew John Humphrys, Bianca Jagger, Diane Abbott, Andrew Neil and a host of others. Nick Cohen, whose new anti-censorship polemic, You Can’t Read this Book, has elicited comparisons with the late Christopher Hitchens, was among the luminaries.

I suggested to the BBC programme-maker beside me that he could make a brilliant documentary based on Nick’s book. “Are you kidding?” he snorted, “A white, middle-class, middle-aged man? Nick’s script, yes, but only if delivered by Diane Abbott. Even better if she converts to Islam.” Why not ignore the box-ticking and just call the documentary You Can’t Watch this Programme?

From The Hindu
Eminent author Salman Rushdie was on Sunday reported as likening the “secular” Congress to its Hindu nationalist opponents in the way it tended to exploit religion for political ends.

He believed the way the government agencies conspired with Muslim fanatics to keep him out of the Jaipur Literary Festival — preventing him from even addressing it through a video-link — showed the extent to which the party was prepared to sacrifice its own professed principles and appease communal groups in the hope of garnering votes.

In its attempt to “showcase” itself as the “caretaker of Muslim interests” ahead of the crucial Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress government of Rajasthan went to the extent of manufacturing a “massive threat perception” to deter him from attending the festival, Mr. Rushdie was quoted as saying in a conversation with The Observer writer and free speech campaigner Nick Cohen who has just published a book, You Can’t Read This Book, on the chilling effect of censorship on creative freedom.
Carry on reading