# You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom

Nick Cohen

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the advert of the Web, everywhere you turn you are told that we live in age of unparalleled freedom. This is dangerously naïve. From the revolution in Iran that wasn’t to the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich, we still live in a world where you can write a book and end up dead.After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech - religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states - are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. And it ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.

## NICK COHEN. You Can’t Read This Book. Censorship in an Age of Freedom


## Copyright

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Fourth Estate

This revised edition published by Fourth Estate 2013

Copyright © Nick Cohen 2012, 2013

The right of Nick Cohen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 978000751850

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780007436453

Version: 2017-03-27

For Christopher Hitchens

(1949–2011)

There is an all-out confrontation between the ironic and the literal mind: between every kind of commissar and inquisitor and bureaucrat and those who know that, whatever the role of social and political forces, ideas and books have to be formulated and written by individuals.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

PART ONE: GOD

1. ‘Kill the Blasphemer’

Rules for Censors (1): Demand a Respect You Don’t Deserve

2. A Clash of Civilisations?

Rules for Censors (2): A Little Fear Goes a Long, Long Way

3. Manufacturing Offence

Rules for Censors (3): Go Postal!

4. The Racism of the Anti-Racists

Rules for Censors (4): Say that it is Bigoted to Oppose Bigotry

How to Fight Back: John Milton and the Absurdity of Identity Politics

PART TWO: MONEY

5. The Cult of the Supreme Manager

Rules for Censors (5): People Don’t Want to Know

6. A Town Called Sue

Rules for Censors (6): Money Makes You a Member of a Master Race

How to Fight Back: John Stuart Mill and the Struggle to Speak Your Mind

PART THREE: STATE

7. The Internet and the Revolution

Rules for Censors (7): Look to the Past/Think of the Future

8. The Internet and the Counter-Revolution

How to Fight Back: Advice for Free-Speaking Citizens

Keep Reading

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Nick Cohen

About the Publisher