The Salman Rushdie Assault
Free speech is in a crisis. Authors and artists are afraid of cancellation on the left and right. Authoritarianism and thought control are on the rise throughout the globe. And on Friday author Salman Rushdie was savagely attacked onstage at the Chautauqua Institution – a forum that has stood for free speech since the 1800s.
Let’s reflect a moment about the lack of security at Chautauqua. Michael Hill, president of the institution, indignantly told the New York Times that he did not want to turn the forum into a “police state.” I understand that worthy sentiment. After all, speakers as provocative as Susan B. Anthony and Mark Twain have held forth historically there. Former President Theodore Roosevelt once stated that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America.”
But where the hell has Michael Hill been in the last decade or so? Doesn’t he know that words are now fiery arrows, that speech has been weaponized? That America is teetering on the brink of civil conflagration? Stationing three or four armed cops at the foot of the stage would’ve probably prevented the knife attack on Rushdie. And no, Mr. Hill, the presence of these cops wouldn’t have amounted to a “police state.” Just an acknowledgment that Rushdie has been – and obviously still is --the target of Islamic fanaticism.
Rushdie himself should’ve taken more security precautions. Countless authors and editors and fans can tell you that they have rubbed elbows with Rushdie over the years since he was released – at least officially – from his fatwa lockdown. I myself chatted with Rushdie at a Manhattan cocktail party not long after his release. (He was a charming conversationalist.) I understand the drive to live one’s life freely. But Rushdie knew when he published The Satanic Verses”in 1989 that he would have a target on his back. That was the lamentable price of this kind of free speech. And by blithely appearing at public forums without security, Rushdie also put others in harm’s way. On Friday, Chautauqua moderator Henry Reese – an activist for authors who’ve been forced into political exile – was also injured in the knife attack.
But the main culprit in the Chautauqua outrage is the 24-year-old man from New Jersey named Hadi Matar who tried to silence Rushdie with a knife. Like dozens of other assailants in the U.S. who act each year on behalf of some religious or political cause, Matar decided that violence is a righteous path.
He was wrong. Shedding blood only leads to more fear, hatred and further bloodshed. Will America come to this realization before it’s too late? Before we plunge into a civil war fueled by righteous fury?
Yesterday, I chose to be a guest on a conservative radio show hosted by a Florida lawyer named John Gordon. We disagreed – civilly – about the 2020 presidential election. (He’s convinced it was stolen from Trump and he claims he has the facts to support it.) But we spent most the hour-long program talking about my book The Devil’s Chessboard and the assassination of President Kennedy. I said that the American people have been lied to by our government in Washington and the corporate media about a series of defining moments in my lifetime – from the Warren Report to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that got us into the Vietnam War to the Iran-Contra scandal to 9/11 to the WMD propaganda the triggered the invasion of Iraq. Gordon agreed with much of what I said – including the fact that President Trump caved to the “deep state” when he approved the CIA’s continued coverup of relevant JFK documents.
Gordon also made a strong appeal for the exchange of ideas across the political divide. I agree that dialogue sometime brings us closer. It did yesterday when the radio host and I agreed that the erosion of belief in authority began during our lifetimes with the official lies told about the murder of JFK. Federal officials, the New York Times etc. are STILL lying about the assassination.
Do I believe that our bitterly divided country can come together, or at least talk to each other enough to avoid a national meltdown? Despite what happened in Chautauqua, I remain optimistic. Ask me again next week.
Salman Rushdie