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The Q&A: Nick Cohen

An unprecedented age of censorship

Feb 2nd 2012, 16:40 by J.P.O'M | LONDON

NICK COHEN, a British journalist and author, is a polemicist. His views have swung from the left to the right and back again over his 30-year career, but his arguments are often punchy and persuasive. In “You Can’t Read This Book” (Fourth Estate), his sixth book, he argues that we are living in an unprecedented age of censorship, coerced by violence, religion and money.
 
The book opens in 1989 at the end of the cold war, a time when many believed that liberal democracy would spread and freedom of speech would flourish. It was also the year that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, for his supposedly blasphemous book, “The Satanic Verses”. Mr Cohen uses the Rushdie fiasco as a springboard to discuss censorship, and the correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and the suppression of free thinking in the West, both in society and online. His argument borrows heavily from the works of writers such as George Orwell, John Milton and John Stuart Mill—especially Mill’s principle that censorship should only be applied in extreme circumstances.
 
We spoke to Mr Cohen about censorship, religion and freedom of speech.
 
What made you want to write a book about censorship?

Firstly, it was watching a Russian oligarch with a criminal record using the libel law in Britain to silence all newspapers that wrote articles about him. Secondly, a great feminist writer, Ophelia Benson, co-wrote a book called “Does God Hate Women?” which was denounced overwhelmingly by the liberal press in Britain, including the paper I write for, the Observer. So once you start with an idea, the logic of the book then takes over.
 
Do you see a correlation between religion and censorship?

No. I don’t think religion poisons everything. My argument in the book, however, is that respect for religion is different from tolerance. I think the problems arise when religion claims dominion over men’s and women’s bodies. It’s like saying, about a political creed, you must respect it and not criticise its fundamentals. That is what every dictator in the world does.
 
Do you see the divide between Islamic and Western values as impossible to bridge?

With Christianity and Judaism, the secular Enlightenment has battered back their repressive instincts, more than in the case of Islam. However, you can still find Christians in America who have totalitarian mindsets. Or Orthodox Jews in Israel whose behaviour towards women, and attitudes towards freedom of speech, are just as bad as they are in Iran or Saudi Arabia. But the point is they are not in power, and crucially, on the whole, they don’t use violence. I think it is more a problem of militant religion than of Islam itself. Radical Islam pushes people into appeasing radicals.
 
How do you think Western society has changed since Salman Rushdie published “The Satanic Verses”?

Ever since the controversy over the publishing of that book, people don’t tend to question the myths of Islam, like people question the founding myths of Christianity. They have started to appease. So if there are terrible wars and tyrannies in the Middle East, liberals say that the root cause is Israel. Now Israel is guilty of many crimes and corruption, but it simply isn’t responsible for the vast underdevelopment, the tyranny and the subjugation of women that happens across the region. Israel is just an excuse to stop people from confronting wrongs that they ought to be confronting. Israel is the one legitimate enemy you are supposed to have as a liberal in the West.
 
So do you see Western liberals as hypocrites?

The main problem with intellectual life in the West is that there is a great deal of falsity about it. People do actually talk as if they are members of a revolutionary underground movement: being edgy, pattering the bourgeois and taking on established power. As a result, it’s very hard for people to admit that they are frightened. That blows their whole radical persona. How can they be seen as the great iconoclasts if they do that?
 
In most Western societies you refer to workplaces as dictatorships. Why? And what can we do to counter this?

To have a society where people cannot state that their boss is behaving in an incredibly dangerous manner, and warn others about it, strikes me as very foolish. If people tell the truth about their boss they should be rewarded, not punished. There is a great deal of psychological research which proves that hierarchies tend to appoint vastly overconfident men as CEO’s. I think we need to have a far more challenging and argumentative culture in the workplace. There should be workers on the boards of directors. In Germany this already happens.
 
Which country holds the best laws on free speech?

As I say at the end of my book, if you have a chance to pass one piece of legislation in any country, make it the US First Amendment. It separates church from state, which is vitally important; it also gives freedom from religion, freedom of speech and freedom of press. Even that doesn’t guarantee you anything, but it means that the ground rules are established. In Britain, if you want to exercise your right to freedom of speech you have to jump very high legal hurdles. The English judiciary have no gut instinct for liberty at all.

Do you think Wikileaks demonstrates freedom of speech?

In journalism there isn’t much morality. But the one moral rule that journalists have is: never betray a source. If someone is risking something for a noble cause, don’t hand them over to the authorities. What Wikileaks did, by publishing the names of everyone who spoke to US embassy officials, was to betray sources on an epic scale. Secret forces all over the world now have a list of names that they can pick up and abuse for collaborating with the common enemy. I think the main reason for this is that Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, is an egomaniac. As a result, he is putting at risk the lives of better and braver men than he will ever be.

“You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom” by Nick Cohen is published by Fourth Estate and is out now in Britain

Readers' comments

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barleysinger

The "Coalition of the Willing" acts like a 3rd world banana republic.

oh great.

It is no accident that the government led attack on Wikileaks came after they posted footage of US soldiers shooting local civilians (some of them press members, and local government) using helicopters and acting like it was a video game. I doub't it had anything to do with the diplomatic press releases, but the other thing; the helicopter shooting gallery footage. It did the trick. It was classified military footage, which showed US troops not even trying to identify their targets...people obviously unarmed some of whom were well known local government officials and members of the press.

In that footage, a long standing accusation by reports and local in Iraq was verified. The US soldiers really did just shoot anyone. It was shown all over the world. At the time I thought for certain it would have serious repercussions to Wikileaks.

In a different year, I listened to the better informed press people talking about the diplomatic cable releases. About their opinions of the ethics of the head of WIkileaks...and the most senior press in the free world thought he had done no real damage with the release of those diplomatic cables and a lot of politicians said the same thing. No real damage done. They thought he was very cautious with his sources (far more than other reporters) and also careful not to place people in harms way....unlike many other major news sources in the USA.

So...they didn't believe that he was attacked over the cables. So why was he was attacked? I keep coming back to that helicopter footage and the damage it did to the US image in Iraq. It was (again) images they did not want people to see. Not quite as bad as Guantanimo, but a disaster none the less.

Then we have this - in the normal world you can't extradite a person based on an accusation. Not even one made by a person to the authorities. You need to present real evidence. You need formal charges filed against a person first. They must be WANTED for CRIME. No charges were ever filed against the man, yet he was STILL extradited to a country OTHER than the one where his 'supposed' accuser lived. Wrong jurisdiction.

I recall a few years ago when Australia had a scam artist flee all over the globe to avoid capture. They extradited him to THEIR OWN country, not to Sweden or New Zealand, and did so after filing charges against him. So, that whole set of circumstances with Julian's extradition to the UK is very odd indeed.

And after that Wikileaks had their money cut off. VISA and MASTER CARD and PAPPAL stopped letting Wikileakes use them to take payments. The had no incoime anymore. This is the first time in history a web site lost all their income sources without being convicted of anything illegal, and to a site on political speech.

Scary Stuff people.

This was an orchestrated attempt to silence dissenting voices using a spear campaign, and financial pressure.

The worst polluters in the world get the services of VISA and MASTERCARD and PAYPAL. Illegal forms of PORN get to use their services. PAYPAL, VISA and MASTERCARD help the scam artists in the world do their dirty business. No matter who you are you can have access to their services...UNLESS...unless you say things about the USA that tell the truth of their actions...unless you whose their soldiers murdering innocent unarmed people. If you tell the truth about that....then you will get you shut down and get sent to another country on an extradition based on an accusation, and you will stay there without being charged - indefinitely.

This was done to make a point to the press and to the bloggers of leaks on the internet and it has sent a chill though the veins of reporters all over the world.

For now on, if you break a big story and tell the truth...if you say something large and verifiable that slaps the US government in the face, you will pay for those actions. Instead of becoming like Edward R Murrow, turning into a celebratory investigative reporter, you will turn into a criminal in the eyes of the world, based on accusations of immorality.

You will get no trail and no formal charges will be filed against you. Just like the dissenting candidates in 3rd world dictatorships, you will have the privilege (for doing the right thing) of being locked away based on a government led accusation. You will get no trial and you will then be placed in indefinite house arrest.

The accusation will be about an issue of sexual immorality or drugs or terrorism. An accusation about immorality - and done to discredit you, of an action that is despised in your country...exactly like the famous dissenting democratic politicians in various Islamic banana republics who are accused of being gay and then locked away forever.

Here we have it. The US & UK governments, working with their friends to behave like a dirty little dictatorship in order to silence dissenting voices.

TonyBoersma

I feel that religion has become a scape goat. We are losing more and more of our rights, I don't care what religion you are. In France its ilegal to wear a cross, not matter what the size, in public as it might offend those around you. Kids got suspended from school for merely tobowing as it represented prayer. What rights do we have? To be 'normal', like everyone else? We are limiting ourselves by fear of offending someone else's space. God forbid someone be different, oh sorry did I say 'god'?

TonyBoersma

I feel that religion has become a scape goat. We are losing more and more of our rights, I don't care what religion you are. In France its ilegal to wear a cross, not matter what the size, in public as it might offend those around you. Kids got suspended from school for merely tobowing as it represented prayer. What rights do we have? To be 'normal', like everyone else? We are limiting ourselves by fear of offending someone else's space. God forbid someone be different, oh sorry did I say 'god'?

lochaberlaird

The innate bias of even the most liberal people is telling.

"In Britain, if you want to exercise your right to freedom of speech you have to jump very high legal hurdles. The English judiciary have no gut instinct for liberty at all."

I know we are used to this but it is worth pointing out that language matters.

ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN!

Scotland has its own distinct legal system and, for the present, it is still part of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

lochaberlaird in reply to MellorSJ

Sad, I wonder if you will feel the same when you realise that, in fact, the Scottish economy is supporting the rest of the UK. With attitudes like that it is no wonder that Scotland, Wales,the English regions (or at least Cornwall and those in the North )and Northern Ireland want more control over their own affairs. This is not all about money but it is the narrow grasping attitude that seems to be developing in certain sections of society (which you seem to subscribe to) which is offensive. It is not one that I and many others in these islands subscribe to.

MellorSJ in reply to lochaberlaird

ROTFL!

Classic Scots double-think! It's not about the money, but we want independence because Scotland is a net contributor to the UK. It's offensive to have a narrow grasping attitude, but here you are grasping and narrow.

*Please* let's have a UK-wide vote on Scottish independence. The result, a massive English Yes vote and a narrow Scottish loss (after they actually think about it instead of the usual give-us-your-money-and-we'll-hate-you-for-it attitude) would be even funnier than your posts.

Not being British in any sense (except that I'm Her Majesty's subject down under), I agree with your stance one hundred per cent. Narrow nationalists are the same everywhere in the world. On the most innocent discussion thread - on a new electric vehicle, a brainchild of MIT and manufactured in Spain - you'll encounter a bunch of crazies stating that Catalonia is keeping the rest of the country alive.

As you rightly put it in the beginning of your comment - ROTFL!

And a beautiful day it is in SYD, finally. Pity about the floods up North though.

I suggest that WA start whining and complaining about sharing mining taxes. Oh, wait! There's the little matter of sharing GST revenues.

Actually, the thing that annoys me so intensely about lochaberlaird's posts is the sense of grievance. Just GO!

MellorSJ in reply to MellorSJ

BTW, some great lines in Bagehot Jan 21.

"One involves breathtaking political hypocrisy. ... For Mr Salmond to act dismayed by ant-English grumbling requires a degree of political chutzpah bordering on performance art."

ROTFL indeed!

guest-iinlnls

I must say that this is the best article/interview I have read in a very long time. The sincerity and factual nature does it for me when it comes to human freedom of choice and the cultural principles of various religion he is attached to. As a religious person, I have come to appreciate my believe more from the perspective of the choice of believing it gave me and I think the test of our faith for any person associated with any form of religion is to allow their faith to be put to the test as Christianity has so as to sincerely allow for questions rather that follow blindly as most of the world has. The USA have succeeded in doing the first and most important thing; separate religion from the state and have made remarkable progress in giving its citizens the freedom of choice. Whereas many other societies have continually clung to power using religion as a shield from being questioned or probed in the event of their inevitable excesses.
I agree with Mr Cohen's submission about Assange's Wikileaks as the worst ethical violation of a journalist though which shows to a large extent the eye-service the US embassies play to their host countries. All he did wrong was to compromise and put all his sources (and that of the US embassies)at risk. I will definitely read this book and those others mentioned in this interview. God bless him(if he believes HE exist).
Peju, Nigeria.

RyanDonovan

A company deterring its employee's speech is an entirely different issue than a government, or possibly religion, deterring it's citizens or devotees. Companies and employees may voluntarily associate as they choose, and it's up to equityholders to install corporate governance more or less sensitive to employees. Equityholders would provide no avenue to hear from employees at their peril, to be out-competed by owners of other companies. The employee is always free to walk away and speak his mind. Voluntary association is the key. A key aim of the first amendment is to protect citizens from any legitimate force that might be brought to bear to silence them.

barleysinger in reply to RyanDonovan

In much of the world, US included, it's nearly impossible to recover from being fired for doing the right thing. Even with whistle blowing laws. To enforce the things, you must have money for lawyers. A lot of money. And if you just plain quit for the right reasons, your boss can just claim you were fired to discredit you (and it will stick in the official state employment records).

I quit my senior IT job in 1989 because of issues with the owners nutty wife poking her head into the business & screaming at me at work & with them owing me thousands in unpaid overtime, never allowing us legally allotted paid breaks & lunches as hourly employees...all against Washington state & Federal laws. Before you wonder, I couldn't do anything about it, as the government agency that used to defend employees against that sort of treatment was eliminated by Reagan early in his presidency. The law had no teeth anymore. I'd have needed tens of thousands of my own $$$ to take him to court on my own & so instead I spent three years out of work, part of it homeless, because you can't get a new job if your only boss lies about how you left (and I made most of their money making technology).

ALSO - I grew up in a small timber town that was heavily polluted by the pulp and paper industry..and they were the only game in town for most people. Most everybody in town knew they obeyed none of the environment laws, people died from it, chlorine gas clouds floated through parts of town taking the paint off of cars. Oh they got fined every few months for violations of air quality, water pollution & workers safety. The fines were less than 1 seconds profit. Some companies forced their people to all be on call 24/7 all year long, without overtime pay (it took a huge amount of union support to have the money to fight for all that back pay and stop the practice...20 years of fighting)....the people had no other choices. They had to keep their jobs at the dangerous mills that made them and their kids sick. They logged illegally, did not care & killed their workers.

The towns were small with few choices other than leaving. The kids nearly all did (I did as soon as I could). People moved out not in. Houses (though low priced) did not sell, but stayed empty for years. People with houses could not afford to move away. They stayed because moving meant having no job anywhere.

Home owners with mill jobs (or unemployed ones) had no choices at all. There were no jobs to find anywhere else (logging was dead, all offshore were work was less costly and they could chop down anything anywhere).

But in tiny dying towns, welfare and food stamps were still around, so people stayed in their cheep houses in the horrible pollution and hoped to get a job pulling venier on a green chain, mixing glue, or even selling burgers...anything. By the 1990s when the mills had over-logged the woods (there were no trees left to cut in western Washington anywhere) there were finally some federal retraining programs for displaced workers.

My remaining co-workers in that old I.T. place in timberville were all displaced when the owner sold the business & the new owners closed it down (kept the software to sell it). By then I had taken jobs in several "sweat shop" I.T. firms (oh yes they do exist). I wrote software for minimum wage and slept on couches. I started all over again in another state. Becasue there is no worker protection in the US and when unemployment is high, they are under the thumb of ruthless people with no ethics. A total lack of ethics is how you succeed in business in the USA, whereas here in Austrlalia it can get your doors padlocked by the government.

After another decade as a high end senior I.T. contractor, the pollution of my childhood finally caught up with me. I had brain damage, nerve pain, endocrine disruption and liver problem (and an infected stone filled gallbladder the size of a football which had pre-cancerous polyps and was also FAR too dangerous to remove). It is now calcified (porcelain gallbladder, a pre-cancer condition in a belly too messed up for surgery). I am waiting on a time bomb thanks to the mills of my childhood.

There is a great deal at stake in having an environment in which people can't do the right thing & report a dangerous employer, without being harmed greatly. People have family responsibilities. That's how oil companies and chemical concerns still get their employees - desperation. Nobody wants to work for a cancer machine. But having a starving family will get you to work for the Mafia if need be.

I relocated here to Australia, when I was headhunted for senior I.T. before my disability. Had that occurred in the USA we would have lived under a bride or in a box until I died. Yes...we thought hard about losing the "Bill of Rights" which I grew up loving for its ideals. However since it wasn't worth anything anymore, we left in 1999 pre-dubwa. Besides most of it is enforced here, without it in the constitution.

Orionmcdonald

I'm gonna call bullshit on that last answer, it blows all the credibility he's building up to and paints him as either a run of the mill contrarian or one of these islamophobic american loving brits that turn up time to time and claim Orwell for a hero while lacking his empathy or expierience, he turns around very quickly with his notions of protection of sources, those are not wikileaks sources but rather the U.S. governments sources, and I believe the transparency that they revealed at least had in writing that elites the world over were lying to there people about sometimes minor but occassionally very serious policies.

Elites? Too vague a term... If you meant any kind of officials, we didn't need no Wikileaks to know they're liars.
And the fact remains that Assange continues to bask in crazy lefty chicks' adoration while his source - Bradly The Geek - will rot in jail.
As to "Islamophobic", this means just normal, i.e. with no real or phony middle class Western guilt.

Kheturus

Without having read the book, it seems odd that the Chinese Communist Party is not mentioned once in a discussion around censorship. Censorship in China surely affects far more people than the ravings of Iran's leadership.

TCDPhilSec

The First Amendment would give us marginally more free speech than the average Western democracy, mainly benefitting a small number of people with extreme views that are prohibited in continental Europe, while allowing large organisations to thoroughly pervert/buy the democratic process through their free speech rights.

Hmm, not a great trade-off. And if you're not in a liberal democracy, there are strong cultural forces dissuading you from unpopular speech, anyway.

rewt66 in reply to TCDPhilSec

You think the alrge organizations are "buying" the democratic process *because* of the First Amendment? Without it, you still have large organizations "owning" the democratic process - they're just *different* large organizations. It was CBS News rather than George Soros. But we can get the Koch Brothers to oppose Soros; we couldn't get anybody to oppose CBS News (NBC and ABC didn't really do so).

RyanDonovan in reply to TCDPhilSec

I haven't yet read the full opinions in Citizens United. I wonder the the accuracy of the popular synopsys of the decision that "corporaitons are people, so they have rights under the first amendment." I wholehartedly approve of the court's result, but if "corporations are people" was key to the decision, their reasoning was unnecessarily complex. A better understanding is that corporations are just groups of people. If people assemble as a school, or as a church, or as any other public or private assembly, the first amendment would prohibit the government from abridging their freedom of speech. Why should the result be any different when people assemble as a corporaiton? It is a dangerous expansion of government power if the government can pick this or that kind of association of people who, because of their association, can no longer speak freely.

belinda poltrino

I love this writer, and his book, because it coincides what I believe, and have seen, free speech, needs to be protected, and the speaker, be they an employee, speaking about outrageous bosses, bully coworkers, polluters, and those who violate our rights to drink clean water, breathe clean air, and live our lives in peace, needs to be protected with all of our right and might. Sadly, those with money, power, and position, are in position to prevent information from rising to the top, to prevent, to stop, and to cure, we are being crippled by fear tactics, harassment, internet bullying, the forum has become so much more dangerous, and employers are closing ranks on employees who spoke to the abuses, as if the revelation tainted them, and so they need to shut down, that one person who told the truth, to save us all. I also agree that the 1st amendment is a powerful tool that the whole world could do with... a nice shiney gift... that says... the whole and entire truth...will save us...it will set us all free. Love it!

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Named after the hero of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", an expert on the power of books and the arts, this blog features literary insight and cultural commentary from our correspondents, and includes our coverage of the art market.

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