Times article by Hadley Freeman

[PriOn1]

Sorry to start a thread with no access, but could anyone help with a share token for the article linked in this Twitter post please? I’d love to read what she has to say about authors and the publishing industry.

https://x.com/KateClanchy1/status/1756596279994417307?s=20

I'd be really interested to read this too.

I hope this works (my first share token).

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/38b0d899-cf23-43aa-a615-6449c6904a19?shareToken=b1cca4b478b4cd05f432833424102847

Thank you so much, it's really good.

I asked Rushdie if he thought people would react better now: “Put it like this: the kinds of people who stood up for me in the bad years,” he said, meaning people in the liberal arts, “might not do so now. The idea that being offended is a valid critique has gained a lot of traction.”

And

“Horseshoe theory” sums up how the far left and far right are actually so close they almost touch, and identity politics perfectly illustrates that. In the RSL and SOA’s attempts to be inclusive, they have shown themselves to be as exclusive as the old way of thinking, if not more so. Worse, they are cowards, scared of backlashes on social media, though apparently fine with Rushdie being stabbed.

And yes mentions Rooney ✅

It's a much needed piece about courage and the concept of being offended.

In 2021 I interviewed the most courageous man I’ve ever met: Salman Rushdie. We talked about his books, and we also talked about the fatwa…

Everyone likes to imagine that they’d have been on the right side of history then, defending Rushdie’s freedom of expression. But many weren’t. John le Carré, of all people, said of The Satanic Verses, “There is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity.” I asked Rushdie if he thought people would react better now: “Put it like this: the kinds of people who stood up for me in the bad years,” he said, meaning people in the liberal arts, “might not do so now. The idea that being offended is a valid critique has gained a lot of traction.”
…
“Horseshoe theory” sums up how the far left and far right are actually so close they almost touch, and identity politics perfectly illustrates that. In the RSL and SOA’s attempts to be inclusive, they have shown themselves to be as exclusive as the old way of thinking, if not more so. Worse, they are cowards, scared of backlashes on social media, though apparently fine with Rushdie being stabbed.

ETA: xd with Warrior as we posted at same time but interesting same material caught us both.

Great piece, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the share token. I had seen the Salman Rushdie tweet but didn't know the context. Hadley Freeman's interview with him was one of the reasons I hung on reading the Guardian as long as I did. An incredibly brave man and far more forgiving than I could ever be.

Thank you so much @OldCrone

But when a literary society is more interested in the diversity of its writers than the quality of their writing, and is more worried about causing offence than the physical safety of novelists, it has ceased to have any reason to exist.

This sad last paragraph was what caught my eye. It’s not just the literary societies that seem to be captured. Painfully, it seems to be heavily ingrained throughout the industry.

@RethinkingLife maybe because of the triggermometry Peter Boghossian interview?

Incidentally I'd completely forgotten that my dad had a marble bust of Socrates on his desk when I was growing up.

It's all part of the same concept and conversation around the importance of free speech and good, effective debate. Using reason and evidence. Railing against authoritarianism.

It's mind blowing that literary societies have forgotten these concepts.

Yes. That and this essay that has haunted me since I read it and of which I'm reminded several times a week. It's well worth reading the essay and the statistics and references.

I will compare my past and present experiences to illustrate the following parallels between the USSR and the US today: (i) the atmosphere of fear and self-censorship; (ii) the omnipresence of ideology (focusing on examples from science); (iii) an intolerance of dissenting opinions (i.e., suppression of ideas and people, censorship, and Newspeak); (iv) the use of social engineering to solve real and imagined problems.
…
Let’s begin with the pervasive fear of speaking up. First, some definitions. Self-censorship is the refusal to produce, distribute, circulate or express something for fear of punishment. Self-censorship is different from discretion. When I choose not to talk about my views on religion at the dinner table in order not to upset my mother-in-law, that is discretion. But when I choose not to say in a faculty meeting that considering only diversity candidates for a faculty search is discriminatory because I am afraid of being ostracized, or worse—that is self-censorship.

The flip side of self-censorship is compelled speech. That is when people express opinions that are not their own for fear of punishment. Again, there is a difference between telling little white lies in order to please someone and saying something you do not believe in for fear of repercussions. Saying “Oh, you look exactly like you did 30 years ago” to your high-school sweetheart is not compelled speech. Compelled speech is when your institution issues a pledge to fight systemic racism and you are afraid to ask, “Is there any evidence of systemic racism in our university?” Instead you stand up at the faculty meeting and pledge to apply yourself fully to dismantling systemic racism.

Self-censorship is a reaction to oppressive environments. It is a symptom of fear. It is an indicator of cancel culture.
How often do we engage in self-censorship? Let’s do the numbers.
Surveys have been conducted since the early fifties that measure how often Americans self-censor their speech [2,3]. In 1953, 13% of Americans self-censored (for reference, this was the McCarthy era). In 2019, 40% of Americans self-censored (this is in the general population; the percentage is higher among the highly educated, and is 60% among college students). The results of an MIT poll [4] taken in November 2021 are even more disturbing: 60% responded “Yes” to the question “Do you feel on an everyday basis that your voice, or the voices of your colleagues are constrained at MIT?” and 83% responded “Yes” to the question “Are you worried given the current atmosphere in society that your voice or your colleagues’ voices are increasingly in jeopardy?”

hxstem.substack.com/p/from-russia-with-love-science-and

In case the share token doesn’t work (from Twitter)

She is just excellent. I hope Hadley knows how admired she is.

Not really the point of the article, but the description of the RSL team was quite jaw-dropping. If it was a charity for women or "queer" people then fair enough, but what the hell does it have to do with literature? It makes them look so juvenile and unserious.

rsliterature.org/about-us/team/

Oh, the looks like a good article, I’ll go and have a read.

When I saw the headline of the article this morning I thought it was going to be a diatribe against the sort of people who file their books with the spine pointing in…

Kate Clanchy has written about her experience at the hands of the SoA and RSL - it sounds absolutely ghastly. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/65205/the-rsl-rushdie-and-gaza-kate-clanchy

FFS what nonsense is this? They are so up their own arse aren't they?

Not surprising though, it seems to be everywhere - I used to work in a small local charity that focused on a degenerative illness. However one or two of my colleagues spent far too much time and energy on gender nonsense/ trans issues - our social media posts were frequently about rainbow this and that... It's like instead of the actual issue they were supposed to be supporting, they used their platform to push their own agenda. I think they viewed themselves as crusaders, rather than boring old workers like the rest of us.

And it was so awkward, because if you say anything you are being mean and bigoted, but it was so inappropriate.

It is appearing increasingly that this specific strand of activism is not compatible with a position of responsibility or doing a job effectively, since the point of the activism is not to do the job at hand or serve the people involved, but to make the best possible use of and exploit the platform and access to others to enforce and push the activist political agenda.

It's not a problem I can think of that has occurred with anything else, but I was interested in a request for a reference the other day to see a question asking to my knowledge was this person an activist or involved in any strong political movements or feelings.

hmm. Kate Clanchy wrote a book about schoolchildren which included appalling racist and classist descriptions (yes, I read it, they were both embarrassingly unpleasant and trite and predictable). A reviewer on Goodreads said they disliked the book because of the attitudes displayed. Clanchy attacked the reviewer and threatened to report them to their employer and get them sacked. (The review was made by a private individual in a private capacity). There was a pile-on in support of the reviewer. Clanchy hasn't stopped whinging since.

I'm not saying the people who criticised Clanchy then or afterwards are nice or good people (I felt massively sympathetic towards the reviewer who had a right to her own viewpoint and who was terrified), but I would not and could not align myself with such a Ms 'Don't You Know Who I Am?' as her.

How come the link is to an article by the frankly appalling Clanchy and not by the excellent Freeman?