JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie among 150 artists, activists to raise ‘illiberalism’ concerns

Acclaimed authors comparable to Salman Rushdie, J Okay Rowling and Margaret Atwood are amongst round 150 writers, artists and activists to signal an open letter, warning in opposition to the rise of “forces of illiberalism” impacting free speech.

The group, which additionally contains American activist Noam Chomsky and Indian historian Meera Nanda, warns that the unfold of “censoriousness” is resulting in “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”. The open letter, printed in Tuesday’s ‘Harper’s Magazine’‘, acknowledges the Black Lives Matter motion and different highly effective protests for racial and social justice, that are resulting in overdue calls for for police reform, together with wider requires better equality and inclusion throughout our society.

“But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favour of ideological conformity,” it notes.

“As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in (US President) Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy,” it reads.

The letter warns that the “free exchange of information and ideas”, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is day by day turning into extra constricted.

“While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty,” it provides.

The letter additionally condemns “disproportionate punishments” meted out to targets of public shaming by institutional leaders conducting “panicked damage control”. It goes on to warn of worry spreading via 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.

There has been an enormous on-line response to the letter, with the Index on Censorship calling it an “important letter on open debate”, however it has additionally been criticised as an overreaction in some quarters.

(This story has been printed from a wire company feed with out modifications to the textual content. Only the headline has been modified.)

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