Salman Rushdie spoke out against so-called “cancel culture” in an interview with the Irish Times, calling it a “slippery slope.”
“I don’t know if there’s more [support for censorship], but it’s certainly more obvious,” the author said. “There’s a youthful progressive movement, much of which is extremely valuable, but there does seem to be within it an acceptance that certain ideas should be suppressed, and I just think that’s worrying. Wherever there has been censorship, the first people to suffer from it are underprivileged minorities.”
Asked if his students at New York University have spoken out in favor of “cancel culture,” Rushdie said, “No, and if they did they would get a short reply.”
The newspaper asked Rushdie about the recent cancelation of Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth, which was taken out of print by publisher W.W. Norton following allegations of sexual assault and grooming by Bailey.
“I have not read the Bailey book, but, in general, I don’t like the idea of any book being pulped because the author may be a scumbag,” Rushdie said. “I can understand the publishers’ distaste for such an author, obviously. But it feels like moral censorship. And I don’t like the suggestions that have been made that this somehow ‘cancels’ Roth as well.”
Rushdie’s newest book, the essay collection Languages of Truth, is scheduled for publication on Tuesday by Random House.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
