9th July: Harry Potter’s creator JK Rowling along with authors like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and 150 writers, academics, and activists have signed an open letter denouncing the so-called cancel-culture.
According to BBC News, they say they applaud a recent “needed reckoning” on racial justice, but argue it has fuelled stifling of open debate.
The letter denounces “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism” and “a blinding moral certainty”.
Cancel culture is the online shaming of individuals who cause offense.
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“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” says the letter.
The letter which was published on Tuesday in Harper’s Magazine also included the names of the US intellectual Noam Chomsky, eminent feminist Gloria Steinem, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and author Malcolm Gladwell.
JK Rowling’s name appeared on the letter among signatories after she was attacked online for comments that offended transgender people.
Her fellow British writer, Martin Amis, also signed the letter.
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It also says: “We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.
“But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”
The letter condemns “disproportionate punishments” meted out to targets of cancel culture by institutional leaders conducting “panicked damage control”.
It continues: “Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study, and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.”
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As per the letter, the cancel culture has spread far through arts and media.
“We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement,” it says.
It adds: “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”
The letter was signed by the New York Times op-ed contributors David Brooks and Wari Weiss. The editor of the newspaper’s editorial page was recently removed amid uproar after publishing an opinion piece by the Republican Senator Tom Cotton.
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