JK Rowling joins Rushdie, Chomsky and others to denounce 'cancel culture'

JK Rowling has joined around 150 writers, academics, and activists to denounce the so-called 'cancel culture', an online phenomenon of shaming individuals who, they believe, are at the wrong side of an argument. Rowling, who has repeatedly been accused of her alleged binary views on sex and gender, recently received a huge backlash over her alleged anti-trans views.

In an open letter published in Harper’s Magazine on July 7, the public figures raised concerns over new set of “moral attitudes” that tend to weaken the norms of open debate and toleration. They said they applaud the “needed reckoning” on racial and social justice and wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across societies but denounced the “vogue for public shaming and ostracism”. 

They argued that the forces of illiberalism have found a powerful ally in US President Donald Trump who represents a real threat to democracy, however, resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion. They added that democratic inclusion can be achieved only if they speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides,” the letter reads.

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'Hasty and disproportionate punishments'

The letter further said that the free exchange of information and ideas is becoming more constricted with every passing day. The signatories believe that intolerance of opposing views and tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a “blinding moral certainty” is spreading widely in the new cancel culture.

“We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought,” it says.

The signatories include US intellectual Noam Chomsky, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, Canadian author Margaret Atwood, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, prominent political theorist Michael Walzer, and journalist Fareed Zakaria among others. The letter condemns the “hasty and disproportionate punishments” meted out to the targets of cancel culture by institutional leaders in a “spirit of panicked damage control”.

“The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation,” it argues.

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