Yes but what did she SAY?
Another clash – another book “canceled” – another taboo violated – another uproar roaring.
The Guardian reports, with startlingly squeamish ineptitude:
The journalist Julie Burchill has had a book contract cancelled after her publisher said she “crossed a line” with her Islamophobic comments on Twitter.
Notice the lack of quotation marks on “Islamophobic,” and notice also the use of the word “Islamophobic,” which is a notoriously and obviously ambiguous and trouble-making and slyly theocratic word. What is the Guardian saying? Did Burchill’s tweets express hatred of Islam? Or was it hatred of Muslims? The Guardian of course never says.
Burchill’s publisher, the Hachette imprint Little, Brown, said it had decided not to publish Welcome to the Woke Trials because she had used indefensible language when communicating with the journalist Ash Sarkar.
What was the indefensible language?
Sarkar said Burchill “quite openly subjected [her] to Islamophobia”.
Yes but what does “Islamophobia” mean? And what was the language?
Believe it or not, the Guardian never does say. It writes a whole story on this but never tells us what Burchill said – so we are left to imagine an ugly racist outburst.
Little, Brown said Burchill’s comments on Islam were “not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint” and they “crossed a line with regard to race and religion”. It added that her book had become “inextricably linked with those views”.
Ok but what were these comments? If you’re going to heap all this ordure on Burchill you could at least give us the relevant information.
“We will no longer be publishing Julie Burchill’s book,” the statement said. “This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We believe passionately in freedom of speech at Little, Brown and we have always published authors with controversial or challenging perspectives – and we will continue to do so.”
Except when we don’t.
The book had been billed as being “part-memoir and part-indictment” of what happened to Burchill after she wrote an article for the Observer in 2013, which was removed after criticism that it contained transphobic language. At the time, the paper apologised for the offence caused in what it described as a “highly charged debate”.
We’re not told what that language was, either.
They can’t say. The peril is too perilous.
This really does seem a bit Orwellian. Why I am quite skeptical of “hate crime” as a concept in general.
Now…one problem is this approach is used against truly hateful people. And ultimately, as a private company, they are allowed to police what they want to publish. But it seems like we are returning to the glorious days of strictly limited speech on moralistic grounds like when The Church policed heresy.
According to the Times, Sarkar had been getting worked up over a ridiculous 2012 article from bad taste merchant Rod Liddle about how he could never have been a teacher because he “could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids”.
Burchill tweeted “Can you please remind me of the age of the Prophet Mohammad’s first wife? Thank you in anticipation.”
I bet they’re gay.
It would also be interesting to know what wording in the contract allowed it to be terminated in these circumstances.
Burchill’s tweet was a bad one, there’s no doubt about that. A classical example of whataboutery (or is it whataboutry? It feel like we have invented so many new words recently!) She could as well have written a rant about ‘Dear Muslima’ a la Dawkins.
And Owen Jones is, frankly, a little shit and Ash Sarkar, who often makes some good points, also likes nothing more than to go around policing opinions and shutting up debate. As for Rod Liddle…
The whole shit show reminds me of a customer of mine watching a football game between two sides he hated: “YA good result here, Arnaud, would be an earthquake.”