Salman Rushdie: Censorship Has Become a Progressive Orthodoxy

“The thing that’s different now is that it’s also coming from progressive voices. That there are progressive voices saying that certain kinds of speech should be not permitted because it offends against this or that vulnerable group,” Rushdie told Cooper.

“There seems to be kind of growing orthodoxy, particularly amongst young people, that censorship in those circumstances is a good thing … one of the arguments that I’ve always tried to make is that if you look at the history of censorship, in places where there has been censorship, the first groups that suffer from that are minority groups. So, to support censorship, in theory, on behalf of vulnerable groups is a very slippery slope. It can lead to the opposite of what you want.”

Rushdie also said that hearing from people who have views differing from our own can be “enormously valuable” and castigated what he called “the offense industry.”

“Offense has become an aspect of identity politics. My view is it’s very easy for a book to stop offending you. You just shut it. At that point it loses it’s ability to offend you,” Rushdie told Cooper.