Wooley: Where do we draw the line on censorship?

I worry about governments withholding information in order to protect us from our worst impulses, writes Charles Wooley

British-American author Salman Rushdie released his memoir ‘Knife’ on April 16, 2024, recounting the harrowing experience of being stabbed at a public event in 2022 and how he overcame the near-fatal ordeal. Picture: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP

Salman Rushdie’s latest book, titled Knife, is a contemplation on his survival of a near fatal attack, probably by a crazy man.

It will no doubt be a best-selling work in Australia, coinciding here with two recent outrages of the same kind in just the past couple of weeks.

The book begins prosaically enough: “At a quarter to eleven on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife.”

But of course, the story is not so simple and goes back to the publication of his fourth novel The Satanic Verses, in 1988, when perceived blasphemies in the work caused the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, to issue a fatwa calling for the writer’s death. For many years Rushdie lived in England under police protection, changing his address many times.

In 1989, the UK broke off diplomatic relations with Iran over the affair. Rushdie had become a cause célèbres in the free world. But he always knew that some day an assassin would come for him.

The fateful appointment was in an unlikely place. A literary convention at a leafy summer resort in rural New York State in a place called Chautauqua. Rushdie, the guest speaker, was lauded as a champion of free speech. As he was being introduced, he writes of seeing “a squat missile” running towards the stage. His first thoughts seem oddly philosophical and removed from the immediate danger of the moment.

“So, it’s you. Here you are.” And then a moment later, “Why now? Really? It’s been so long.” Then the alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, was upon him stabbing the author at least 10 times.

British-American author Salman Rushdie released his memoir Knife on April 16, 2024, recounting the harrowing experience of being stabbed at a public event in 2022 and how he overcame the near-fatal ordeal. Picture: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP

Two recent events in Australia lead to simple questions about human reactions to such violent attacks.

In the case of the somewhat unorthodox Orthodox priest Mar Mari Emmanuel attacked in western Sydney in what NSW police are calling a “terrorist act”, we ask why the victim didn’t run.

And of the stabbing spree in Bondi Junction where people did sensibly run, some are wondering why more of them didn’t put up a fight.

There are no simple answers, which makes the question seem somehow improper. But interestingly these are the same questions Rushdie asks of himself.

“Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I run? I just stood there like a pinata and let him smash me?”

In a powerful piece of introspection, the author is lying in his own blood and expecting to die.

It had been a long time coming. For years he had intimations and nightmares about this event and now: “It didn’t feel dramatic, or particularly awful. It just felt probable, matter of fact.”

British-US author Salman Rushdie's new book "Knife" is pictured in a bookstore in Los Angeles, California on April 15, 2024. British-American author Salman Rushdie released his memoir "Knife" on April 15, 2024, recounting the harrowing experience of being stabbed at a public event in 2022 and how he overcame the near-fatal ordeal. Picture: Gilles Clarenne/AFP

Against the medical odds Rushdie lived but lost an eye. Why he writes about it further tempting fate is another question. It may be the writer’s revenge. Perhaps the pen will prove mightier than the knife.

Or it may be that for a writer the horror and the grisly details are simply too irresistible. Rushdie remembers his eye dangling on his cheek like “a large soft-boiled egg”.

I don’t want to put you off yours this morning so I will spare you any more gruesome detail. It’s all in the slim book Knife, published by Jonathan Cape who, like Rushdie, might have to beef-up their security for a while.

A long while.

Rushdie’s misfortunes have seen him regarded once again as a martyr for the cause of freedom of speech.

The problem is, across all of the world’s profoundly divided societies including our own, one person’s freedom of speech is another’s bigotry.

In Scotland the author JK Rowling has risked hate crime prosecution for insisting that a person with a penis cannot be a woman.

Your columnist doesn’t have an opinion.

One fatwa a week is enough.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak initially supported the Harry Potter author, saying “We should not be criminalising people saying commonsense things about biological sex. Clearly that isn’t right. We have a proud tradition of free speech.”

The PM has since walked back from supporting Rowling and now “won’t comment on police matters”.

British writer JK Rowling. Picture: Tolga Akmen/AFP

Freedom of speech has become a phrase conferring all manner of ambiguity.

The Australian government’s internet watchdog has been attempting this week to force the social media network X to block users from seeing the violent footage of the church stabbing in western Sydney. This is despite the bishop now saying he doesn’t want it to be taken down.

In retaliation billionaire X owner Elon Musk has called the eSafety Commissioner a “censorship commissar”. He has invoked the spirit of the First Amendment right of the American Constitution conferring freedom of speech in the US.

“Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech.”

Despite an Australian court order against X this week, who knows where it will end, if ever.

But as a journalist I always worry about governments withholding information in order to protect us from our worst impulses.

Elon Musk found few federal political friends wanting to support his response to the violent footage of the terror attack in Sydney last week. Picture: ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP

If feeble minds are going to be influenced by a stabbing video, then what about all the violent movies our kids can access at home? And the sexual violence on pornography sites.

And if it’s about protecting us from the violence of the world then how about censoring the nightly news.

Only a sociopath would not be profoundly disturbed by the pictures coming out of Gaza every night.

Likewise, the brutality we saw when Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, last year.

The question is, which transmissions do we shut down?

Or if ignorance really is bliss, do we close all of them?

I grew up in an Australia infamous for its banned books.

To mention just a few, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and DH Lawrence’s (now quaint) Lady Chatterley’s lover.

JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (which eventually became a school text).

Mary McCarthy’s The Group and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

It was ridiculous and the only effect it had was to turn my little friends and me into a most enthusiastic bunch of clandestine readers.

Today Elon Musk is likely the only one who will benefit from Albo’s latest attempt at social engineering.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmania-based journalist