When a publisher's staff become book burners, culture itself is cancelled

The staff revolt at Penguin Random House in Canada over plans to release a new book from psychologist Jordan Peterson marks the latest chapter in the “cancel culture” saga. Specifically, it is part of a growing sub-genre of controversy wherein cancel culture appears as a push for workplace safety.

At an emotional town hall meeting Penguin staff called on the publishing giant to dump Peterson, the University of Toronto’s self-styled “Professor Against Political Correctness”.

In March, Hachette Book Group cancelled Woody Allen’s memoir after workers walked off the job in professed solidarity with survivors of sexual assault and the stable’s author Ronan Farrow. Some months later staff at Hachette UK objected to being asked to work on J.K. Rowling’s new children’s story, The Ickabog, citing the author’s views on transgender issues. I could go on – and I will, later.

To be clear, I’m infinitely relieved when publishers cancel books from snake-oil merchants, anti-vaxxers, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, celebrity chefs who have rightly become unpalatable to the cultural mainstream. This is not what we’re talking about when we talk about cancel culture. We’re talking about cases where the pushback against the allegedly dubious work or author is so over-the-top that it has become the story.

On that score I confess I’ve never been moved to read Peterson’s books or join the millions tuning in to his YouTube channel because he sounded thoroughly unremarkable – more notable for his following than his intellectual offering, which includes pep-talks for the lads to make their beds and man-up. His most famous transgression was an objection to gender pronouns on free speech grounds.

Peterson rails against the “post-modern neo-Marxist” cabal running our cultural institutions; his florid and trigger-happy detractors do their best to prove him right. It is Peterson’s enemies who’ve made him into a blockbuster. At the Penguin town hall, one employee told Vice, people were “crying” about Peterson’s impact on their lives. Penguin Canada’s diversity and inclusion committee reportedly received at least 70 anonymous staff messages attacking the decision to publish Peterson, with only “a couple” in favour.

J.K. Rowling’s views on trans issues – and their intersection with feminism – are distilled in a blogpost of nearly 4000 thoughtful and empathetic words, but this hasn’t stopped her opponents reducing them to a bumper sticker on Twitter.

As to Woody Allen, he’s a cultural icon and formidable creep who shacked up with the pseudo step-daughter he’s known since age 11. This much we know. Otherwise we have allegations he molested his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. He has denied the accusations and wasn’t charged after two investigations decades ago. I’m in no position to adjudicate the allegations. Presumably I run foul of some campaigners for sexual assault survivors in even suggesting the allegations need adjudicating.

I’m all for industrial democracy wherein the workers get their say about company management. And I’ll suppress the curmudgeonly voice within, grumbling the woke millennials ought to be grateful they even have a job amid the sequel to The Great Depression. Although perhaps their real problem isn’t lack of gratitude but the opposite: the workers seem so enmeshed with the company brand they’re shocked when it fails to reflect their worldview.

Publishing a work does not, of course, equate with endorsing it or the author’s every brain fart. But as one Penguin employee put it, he was opposed to publishing Peterson’s book “regardless of the content”.

In this realm some ideas aren’t simply distressing or enraging or worthy of dismemberment with rational argument, but their very expression is a breach of occupational health and safety. Matthew Yglesias, a co-founder of Vox, this month announced he was leaving his own publication because he felt restrained from challenging the prevailing “young-college-graduate bubble” sensibility. Earlier this year, after Yglesias signed the Harper’s letter objecting to cancel culture, one of his transgender colleagues, Emily VanDerWerff, told Vox editors his signature made her feel “less safe” at Vox.

I understand how vulnerability causes hyper-vigilance. I accept, for instance, that the black journalists at the New York Times genuinely believed Senator Tom Cotton’s flawed and inflammatory “Send In the Troops” column had put them “in danger”.

But while the Times incident took place against the febrile backdrop of the Black Lives Matter protests, this doesn’t shift the reality that the claim Cotton’s piece had put black journalists “in danger” had no supporting evidence. The only worker patently unsafe after the column’s publication was the op-ed editor James Bennet, forced into falling on his sword.

Unconscious bias runs deep; exposing it, a painful and necessary task. Yet I can’t help see in these skirmishes a basic mismatch between employee temperament and the imperatives of industries that feed on a robust contest of ideas. It’s a situation akin to vegans working at meatworks.

A common retort in these scenarios is that Peterson, Allen et al have plenty of avenues to broadcast their work, even if Penguin or Hachette turn them away. This is a cop-out. Each “cancellation” has a chilling effect on intellectual discourse. Each incident further polarises the public, as dissenters get cast out in the name of “diversity” and “inclusion”.

So I find myself in the perverse position of looking to bosses in the hope they’ll exercise managerial prerogative and stare down their staff. So far the managers at Penguin are passing round the tissue box but holding the line on Peterson.

Hachette UK told staff they’re free to express their views but not free to refuse to work on Rowling’s novels. “Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of publishing,” the company said.

Rarely has a statement of the bleeding obvious sounded so brave.