#The left goes nuts over liberals who dare to defend free speech

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Salman Rushdie lived a fugitive’s life for years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his 1989 fatwa ordering Muslims to kill the novelist over the “blasphemous” novel “The Satanic Verses.”
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One-hundred fifty luminaries, mostly of the left, signed an impassioned statement against the intolerance of cancel culture — and were promptly targeted by intolerant liberals for cancellation.

Liberal culture in 2020 is beyond parody: The maddened mobs that came for the letter writers proved their point instantly and perfectly.

“A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” appeared Tuesday in Harper’s Magazine, signed by novelists (Margaret Atwood), academics (Steven Pinker), journalists (Malcolm Gladwell) and musicians (Wynton Marsalis). They decry “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate,” with the “free exchange of information and ideas . . . daily becoming more constricted.” They worry about “intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming.”

Cancel culture is a beast of the left, and though the writers are against conformity, they were careful to trumpet their #Resistance bona fides: “The forces of illiberalism” have “a powerful ally in ­Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.” But the “dogma” and “coercion” they’ve “come to expect” on “the radical right” is becoming a feature of the #Resistance, and “right-wing demagogues” are “exploiting” it.

Indeed, “Donald Trump is the Canceler-in-Chief,” Thomas Chatterton Williams, who shepherded the letter, assured The New York Times. Huh? Who has Don canceled lately?

The virtue-signaling wasn’t enough, of course. “ ‘The Letter’ was shaped/spearheaded from conversations by four privileged white men,” huffed New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi. “Apparently they felt entitled to really weigh in on racism, diversity and inclusion. That says it all.”

Never mind that the spearheader, Williams, is a black man. Fassihi is completely condescending to the many women and nonwhite people on the list. Does she think they can’t possibly have ideas and opinions of their own? Can they be nothing more than tools of “privileged white men”?

Having a diverse demographic isn’t enough for the new left if the minorities stand beside people in the wrong demographic. Anything uttered by white men is suspect, even if plenty of others agree.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet the Times noted “spent more than eight years in prison for a carjacking,” is particularly concerned about the “unforgiving nature” of the culture. Does his experience as a black man not count?

The letter didn’t list specific ­examples of cancel culture, but the responses to it did them one better.

Emily VanDerWerff wrote to her Vox editors complaining that another staffer, Matthew Yglesias, signed the letter. “He has never been anything but kind to me and has often supported my work publicly,” she conceded, but “his signature being on the letter makes me feel less safe at Vox,” because it was also signed by “several prominent anti-trans voices” and “contained many dog whistles towards anti-trans positions.” (J.K. Rowling, another signer, is a critic of gender ideology; presumably that’s who VanDerWerff had in mind.)

VanDerWerff claims she isn’t trying to get Yglesias fired — but at what else would a note like hers be aiming?

Already, one signer has folded. Writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan tweeted a mea culpa: “I did not know who else had signed that letter. I thought I was endorsing a well-meaning, if vague, message against Internet shaming,” she wrote. “I am so sorry.”

Another letter writer might have told the Times the same thing — we don’t know because she would only speak “on the condition of anonymity in an effort to stay out of the growing storm.”

Countless liberals proved the letter’s point with their outrage at its warning that an illiberal society “invariably hurts those who lack power.”

Two of the signers understand that intimately. The dissident Garry Kasparov can’t return to his home in Russia, for fear that Vladimir Putin’s henchmen will throw him out a window for his tireless work for democracy. Salman Rushdie lived a fugitive’s life for years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his 1989 fatwa ordering Muslims to kill the novelist over the “blasphemous” novel “The Satanic Verses.”

It’s insulting to suggest their courageousness counts for nothing because some white men agree with them. But it says everything you need to know about today’s ­illiberal left. Once they come for their own, there is no hope for anybody else.

Twitter: @KJTorrance