Salman Rushdie, Charles Murray, Fatwa and Cancel Culture
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Block, Walter E. 2022. “Salman Rushdie, Charles Murray, Fatwa and Cancel Culture.” August 30; http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/august/30/salman-rushdie-charles-murray-fatwa-and-cancel-culture/
Salman Rushdie, Charles Murray, Fatwa and Cancel Culture
By Walter E. Block
At first glance, there would appear to be something wrong with the title of this essay. Surely, the Muslim fatwa against Salman Rushdie (death sentence in his case) for writing The Satanic Verses, a book widely deemed offensive in this community, can have little or nothing to do with Charles Murray in particular and the wokester cancel culture in general?
Not so fast.
Au contraire, there are indeed similarities between the two, and important ones at that. Both Salman Rushdie and Charles Murray were physically attacked upon the occasion of them giving public speeches on intellectual/artistic matters.
Yes, it cannot be denied that no one, at least of yet, has been murdered by the progressives for articulating viewpoints they regard as invasive. But, then, the same can be said of Salman Rushdie. He was recently subjected to a violent attack on him in Chautauqua, near Lake Erie in western New York, at the Chautauqua Institution, a community that offers arts and literary programming; despite that, he is still alive. Moreover, a fatwa is merely a finding emanating from a recognized Islamic authority on a point of Muslim law. By no means do all fatwas call for the death of those judged in this manner.
On the other hand victims of the so-called “progressives” have indeed also suffered from violence. Consider the case of Charles Murray. Conservative and libertarian Middlebury College students invited him to speak on his latest book Coming Apart, which subjects the plight of the white working class to the same type of rigorous analysis for which he most famous for, which appeared in his co authored book The Bell Curve. Leftist students at that institution of higher learning found his views odious, and tried to physically intimidate him. He escaped bodily unscathed, but the same cannot be said for Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor who accompanied him; she had to be hospitalized with a concussion. Not as bad as being knifed in the neck? True enough. But we’re getting there.
Here is a very famous statement by New York State Senator Chuck Schumer addressed to two U. S. supreme court judges: "I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” concerning Roe v. Wade. Those words were a clear criminal threat, and should have been punished. I want to now use similar words, not as a threat, but as a prediction: if the liberal – left continues down its present path of quelling free speech, they, too, will be “releasing the whirlwind.” The chickens will come home to roost; no, they are already doing so. As we have just seen in the case of one of their own favorites, Salman Rushdie, both sides can victimized by this evil, vicious game. I implore the left, socialist, liberals to cease and desist from this barking mad behavior of theirs. That would include, in addition to cancelling speakers, requiring McCarthyism-type loyalty oaths for hiring, tenure and promotion in academia, safe spaces, microaggressions, promoting the view that all whites are racists and the claim that all racial or sexual diversity is due to racism or sexism to elementary school children and all the other panoply of these modern-day totalitarians.
Pegs:
Rushdie attacked
Fatwa:
Chuck Schumer's threat to supreme court judge:
"I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer said.
the physical attack upon Charles Murray:
Stanger:
https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/professor-injured-students-sanctioned-at-middlebury-college-in-vermont-after-conservative-speaker-is-protested/
I'm not sure that the chickens hatched by the barking mad behavior of Social Justice Warriors in academia will come home to roost anytime soon. The problem has metastasized to the point where even the top leadership of major public universities have been doing crazy things over the past couple years, and are not the least bit worried about a political backlash interfering with student loan subsidies of tuition, research award subsidies, or health care subsidies for university hospitals. They know that Republican politicians are more attentive to the needs of the pharma and defense lobbies than to the outrage of the Republican base (which, as Pew surveys have indicated, sharply turned against higher education about a decade ago), and that Republican politicians are reluctant to threaten existing government benefits and thus gravely offend the half of the electorate that depends on handouts, so the money keeps flowing.
I recently retired from an institutional research analyst position at the University of California's systemwide Office of the President (UCOP)--I was the guy who, among other things, generated all the metrics about UC's research enterprise, responded to national surveys about faculty compensation, and maintained a database of all the extramurally-sponsored contracts, grants, and other awards. Most of my coworkers in the department kept tabs on students, and we routinely interacted with UC's top leadership and were well acquainted with their thinking.
The woke/green/vax transformation of UCOP and UC generally during the COVIDian lockdown was simply astonishing. The woke loyalty oaths, indoctrination sessions, and speech policing are being imposed on staff, not just the faculty. Likewise, everybody must be tested, jabbed, and face-diapered as a condition of accessing indoor UC facilities; all coordinated with a QR vax pass of course.
The woke diversity, inclusion, engagement effort isn't just confined to subjecting the UC community to cutting-edge Chinese-style social controls, openly discriminating against whites, or the silencing of dissenters. It has also meant the abandonment of standardized admission tests, and in the near future will include assaults on grading, journal publications, and even the pursuit of patents by faculty. There is also a plan for the year 2030 proposing to greatly increase the number of students admitted and degrees awarded. Oddly enough, the 2030 planning documents say almost nothing about research or about maintaining the quality of scholarship. I sensed a similar lack of interest in the research enterprise by UC's leaders lately. In short, UC has pretty much deprioritized its ostensible mission of public knowledge via research, education, and public service.
Another aspect of wokeness is that prior achievements of the University, and those who contributed to them, are being denigrated and their memory canceled. Alumni publications and fundraising messages from Chancellors, etc. no longer look on the history of the University as a source of pride, contradicting the traditional self-image of several UC campuses as having earned their reputations for being among the leading research institutions in the country. Woke universities are sacrificing their pasts as well as their futures, rendering themselves doubly irrelevant.
They are not just requiring loyalty oaths, they are requiring one to cover ones face in public and to inject oneself with an experimental unnecessary medicine