You can’t read this book – censorship in an age of freedom

Available from Amazon –  Fourth Estate (19 Jan 2012)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This book is dedicated to Christopher Hitchens, so it is entirely appropriate that there is a quotation from Christopher Hitchens at the front.

There are very many gems in this brilliant book, which has a straightforward argument elegantly executed. Cohen, for example, likens suing Twitter because you don’t like what tweeters post like to suing the sky because you don’t like the weather. It is impossible to get lost in Cohen’s argument. For example, “Censorship’s main role is to restrict the scope for action”, or, later in the book, “Censorship is at its most effective when its victims pretend it does not exist”.

I am deeply attracted to the argument proposed by Cohen. I feel censorship can too easily turn into an abuse of privilege and an abuse of process, in the same way that if you censor elements of one’s past you do not allow people a chance to see how you have responded to events. A strong thread of proportionality runs through Cohen’s argument, which is the fundamental basis of the law (not morals necessarily). For example, should there be a superinjunction protecting Sir Fred Goodwin? Should one censor Salman Rushdie on the grounds of religious bigotry only to subject him to death threats?

It is clear Cohen is well read, but not arrogant with it. The sources of Cohen’s thoughts are clearly signposted, ranging from Pedro Almodóvar to Maulana Abdu’l Ala Maududi. The account of John Milton’s “Areopagatica” being passionate against censorship, and the reference to it by William Wordsworth,  is indeed moving. The account of the response to the Satanic Verses, including the response to the fatwa is detailed and alarming; with the narrative depressing for proponents of a ‘free society’. Cohen’s thesis is immaculately delivered with precision, analysing how Robert Hughes and Christopher Hitchens might have been mindful of confusing ethicity with political ideology, in consideration of an abstract concept of ‘the Rushdie Affair’.

Cohen has a knack of saying something deadly serious at one moment, and then saying something utterly hilarious (but albeit pointed). Take, for example,

“The English establishment has a dictionary of insults for men and women who take on the futile task of making it feel guilty – ‘chippy’, ‘bolshie’, ‘uppity’, ‘ungrateful’ – It directly them all at Rushdie.”

Cohen also has a knack of stating the blindingly obvious in a way not to make you feel stupid. In opining about his rule for censors that a little fear goes a long way, he offers:

“Free societies are not free because their citizens are fighting for their freedom. They are free because previous generations have fought for their freedom.”

Cohen makes mincemeat of the big beasts typically troublesome in a discussion of censorship – such as religion, power, and money. Regarding the latter, a recurrent theme, powerfully articulated by Cohen, is that status, salary and position should offer no protection from criticism. It is fitting that Cohen mentions the modern scientific method here, but one wonders if he should have discussed the legal issues which journal peer review can find itself confronting (and the concomitant subject of libel reform in England). The discussion of the failings of the financial services, meanwhile, is compelling, However, it is clear that Cohen feels intrinsically perpexed about what he discovers under the name of ‘liberalism’ at an early stage of the book. In examining the response of liberal societies to the ‘Islamist wave’, Cohen finds that it is characterised in fact by a ‘disastrous mixture of authoritarianism and appeasement’. However, on the other hand, Cohen considers very carefully the words of J.S. Mill in its correct societal context of Victorian Britain, and finds, most convincingly to me, that some of the answer comes from the modern scientific method here. My understanding of this scientific method is that nothing can ever be as such proven (though it might be possible to disprove certain hypotheses through reductio ab absurdum), so if individuals are fallible their ideas certainly can be. This is what makes censorship against religious beliefs and political controversy potentially so dynamite.

This is the sort of book that I wish I was bright enough to write. And I did wonder whether one of the references to journalists was our very own @fleetstreetfox?