You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom
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Review
‘Cohen is perhaps the most insightful, thought-provoking and entertaining political writer in Britain today, and comes from the honest tradition of English liberal thought that threads from John Milton to John Stuart Mill and George Orwell’ Telegraph, Ed West
‘Nick Cohen’s books are like the best Smiths songs; however depressing the content, the execution is so shimmering, so incandescent with indignation that the overall effect is transcendently uplifting’ Julie Burchill, Prospect
‘It is useful to have all this material in one place, particularly for the benefit of young people, who must be taught about previous disputes over free expression’ Hanif Kureishi, Independent
‘You can read this book, and you probably should’ Hugo Rifkind, The Spectator
‘Into the space vacated by the controversialist Christopher Hitchens we might recruit the sardonic, sceptical columnist Nick Cohen’ Iain Finlayson, The Times
‘Nick Cohen’s new book is a corrective to the tendency of internet utopians to think that the web has ushered in an “age of transparency” New Statesman
‘Writing with passion, wit and erudition, Cohen draws upon the spirit of Orwell and Milton in his call for a fightback against the onslaught on free speech’ Metro, 4 stars
‘Cohen is the most stimulating – if at times infuriating – columnist in our national press, largely because you never quite know where he is going to end up. He lashes the stupid left as much as the smug right. He ferrets about in the lower reaches of politics to find disturbing symptoms of what should not be happening. He has a sense of history and literature, in contrast to the dominant political generation of PPE graduates who have read every page of the Economist since they were at Oxford, but have never opened a novel. In this vigorous polemic (which everyone involved with the Leveson inquiry should read), Cohen exposes the new censorship.’ Dennis McShane, Observer
Product Description
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. 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.
Inside This Book
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You should read this book.,
By
This review is from: You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom (Paperback)
`Do you believe in free speech? Are you sure?' So asks Nick Cohen in this important and timely book. Through a combination of righteous indignation, mordant wit and searing polemic, he shows how the ideals of Milton, Mill and the Enlightenment - those of freedom of expression, conscience and the free, enquiring mind - are being undermined, indeed, deliberately attacked, by a derisory and intellectually inadequate group of religious fundamentalists, oppressive corporations, quack scientists, timid politicians and self-satisfied academics.Cohen effortlessly takes us through some of the defining freedom of speech issues of our time: the Salman Rushdie and Danish cartoon affairs; the impressive figure of Ayaan Hirsi Ali throwing off the chains of obnoxious religious chauvinism only to encounter the gently ruminating herd of cloistered academia; the near-dictatorial conditions employees face the moment they step into the workplace, and the dangers faced by whistle-blowers in the face of managerial and bureaucratic incompetence; the absurd entity that is Britain's chiropractor lobby; and the vicious counter-attack against the liberating forces of the Internet, reminding us that oppressive nations are perfectly capable of utilising the net as well as its citizens. Along every step of the way, as Cohen shows, there is seemingly always a constituency just waiting to be offended into action. Readers will already be familiar with perennially grumpy and stony-faced theocrats like the Ayatollah Khomeini, calling as he did for the assassination of a private citizen in a sovereign country for publishing a work of fiction which he had not read, and probably could not have read. Perhaps more surprising for some will be a certain kind of bien pensant figure, one who is never more at ease and exquisitely complacent when seeking to delegitimise the champions of free thought and expression. The notion of tolerance has been twisted into meaning we should avoid offending others at all cost. Being offended is now one of the chief addictions of our culture, giving rise to and sustaining the truly totalitarian idea of pre-censorship. Cohen's articulate and lively distillation of this worrying tendency, why it all matters, and what we can do about it, is a fine reproach to the demagogues, the theocrats, the useful idiots, the closed minds and the impregnably humourless of our time.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The mind-forg'd manacles of the 21st century,
By
This review is from: You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom (Paperback)
In this lucid, urgent and well-argued book Nick Cohen starkly shows how we are living with new forms of censorship - 'political correctness' which stifles genuine debate about religion and creates a climate of fear; UK libel laws and corporate culture which massively favour the rich; and misguided Techno-Utopianism which ignores the Net's ability to create a culture of surveillance and, in its indiscriminate freeing up of data, to expose dissidents to the secret police in dictatorships. A must-read for anyone who cares about freedom of expression in contemporary society and wants to do something to bring it back.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can and you should..,
By Ms Viv (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom (Paperback)
Nick Cohen has done it again - identifying the issue we dare not name. A worthy addition to the growing "telling the truth even though no one wants to admit there's a problem" genre.Having recommended "What's Left" to everyone I know -the bar for his new book was set high but he has cleared it, with room to spare, with his attack on society's increasing cowardice towards freedom of expression and thought. You Can't Read This Book is entertaining and terrifying in its honesty and caustic approach and no one gets a free ride - not the famous, the infamous, the academic, the religious, ideological or promiscuous. He defies us to see that values aren't valuable if we aren't prepared to fight for them Confronting the danger posed by self-censorship, and the blatant chutzpah of those who would defend it as a way to dissuade all debate and critical thought, can not be overstated. We can only hope that a discussion will finally start about the right of everyone to offend everyone equally especially when that means speaking unpopular truth. Threats of violence and threats of deeper pockets should never make us waiver from taking on the bullies. As George Washington said - If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter..
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