Olivia: Here’s a thought, Jackson: What if being ‘respectful’ is actually the enemy of being tolerant? What if the very act of demanding respect for ideas is one of the most effective forms of censorship we face today? Jackson: Whoa, okay. That feels like a statement designed to start a food fight at a dinner party. My brain immediately wants to argue with that, but I'm also incredibly intrigued. Where is that coming from? Olivia: It’s the central, explosive argument in Nick Cohen's book, You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom. And Cohen is the perfect person to make this argument. He's a British journalist known for his sharp, libertarian-leaning critiques, and this book actually won 'Polemic of the Year'—which tells you it's designed to provoke a debate. Jackson: Polemic of the Year, I love it. That's not an award for making friends. Okay, so this idea that 'respect' is the enemy of tolerance... that feels like a landmine. Where do we even start with that? Olivia: We start with the story that, for many, defines the modern battleground of free speech: the story of a single book that set the world on fire. We have to talk about Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses.

Jackson: Right, the Rushdie affair. I know the headlines, of course—the fatwa, him going into hiding. But honestly, the details are fuzzy. It just seems like this massive, terrifying event from a distance. What actually happened? Olivia: That's the key. The distance makes it feel like a historical artifact, but Cohen argues its shockwaves are still shaping our world. So, let's go back to 1988. Salman Rushdie is a celebrated author, born in India to a secular Muslim family, educated at Cambridge. He's already famous for his novel Midnight's Children. He writes The Satanic Verses, a complex, magical-realist novel about migration, identity, and the feeling of being caught between cultures. Jackson: Okay, so it's not a political treatise. It's a work of fiction. Olivia: Exactly. It's literature. But within its dream sequences, it plays with the foundational stories of Islam. It questions, it satirizes, it treats religious text as a literary text—something to be interpreted and re-imagined. And before it was even widely read, the outrage began. First, India banned it. Then Pakistan. Protests were organized, largely by groups who, as Cohen points out, hadn't even read the book. Jackson: That’s the part that always gets me. How can you protest a book you haven't read? Olivia: Cohen includes this absolutely perfect, and chilling, quote from an Indian politician who demanded the ban. He said, "I do not have to wade through a filthy drain to know what filth is." Jackson: Wow. That says it all, doesn't it? The decision is made before the evidence is even considered. It's a judgment on the idea of the book, not the book itself. Olivia: Precisely. And this is where the demands for 'respect' come in. The argument was that the book was blasphemous and deeply disrespectful to the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran. The protests escalated, people died in riots in Pakistan. And then, in February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa—a religious edict—calling for the death of Salman Rushdie and anyone involved in the book's publication. Jackson: A global death sentence for writing a novel. That's just... it's hard to even comprehend that. What was it in the book that was so explosive? Olivia: Cohen argues that any book worth reading is, to some degree, blasphemous. Blasphemy is just a word for challenging sacred authority. In this case, Rushdie's novel contained fictionalized elements that questioned the divine, unchanging nature of the Quran. For a theocracy, for fundamentalist leaders, that's the ultimate crime. You cannot allow your followers to believe that the holy text is open to interpretation or, worse, human error. That's how you lose control. Jackson: So the 'offense' was a tool. The outrage was manufactured to maintain power. Olivia: That's Cohen's core argument. He says the leaders demanding respect and punishing blasphemy aren't really protecting God. They're protecting their own authority over their followers. And the most terrifying part was how this fear leaped across borders. Bookstores were bombed. Translators were attacked, one was murdered. Rushdie himself had to go into hiding for nearly a decade under police protection. Jackson: This is horrifying. But how did the so-called 'free' world, the liberal West, react? Surely there was a massive, unified defense of free expression? Olivia: You would think so. And many people, writers and citizens, were incredibly brave. But Cohen is scathing in his critique of the response from parts of the liberal establishment. He points out how quickly some commentators began to hedge, to say things like, "Well, of course we support free speech, but he shouldn't have been so provocative." The argument became about Rushdie's supposed insensitivity, not about the fundamental right to write and question. Jackson: Ah, so they blamed the victim. It's easier to critique the author for 'causing trouble' than to confront the people issuing death threats. Olivia: Exactly. It's a form of self-censorship born from fear, disguised as cultural sensitivity. This is where Cohen's argument about respect versus tolerance becomes so sharp. He quotes Thomas Jefferson's idea of religious tolerance, which was the right for all people "to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion." The key word is argument. Tolerance isn't about tiptoeing around ideas so no one gets offended. It's about creating a space where all ideas can be argued with. Demanding 'respect' for a belief system is often a demand to place that system beyond argument. Jackson: And once an idea is beyond argument, it's beyond challenge. And that's a form of control. Olivia: It's the ultimate control. Cohen has this killer line: "Stop offending, and the world stands still." Progress, whether it's scientific, social, or artistic, has always come from offending the established order. The Rushdie affair was a brutal lesson in the price of that offense. And the fear it created, the idea that certain topics are just too dangerous to touch, still lingers in publishing houses and newsrooms today. Jackson: Okay, so that's censorship by overt, violent threat. It's terrifying, and it's clear how it works. But Cohen's argument is that this is happening in 'free' societies too, right? Without the fatwas. How? Olivia: That's the other side of the coin. It's quieter, it wears a suit and a tie, and it uses the law and money as its weapons. It's a much more subtle, and in some ways, more insidious form of censorship.

Jackson: A quieter censorship. That sounds... slippery. How does that work? Are we talking about corporations pulling ads from news shows they don't like? Olivia: That's part of it, but Cohen focuses on something even more direct: the way the wealthy can use the legal system to literally erase inconvenient truths. He dives into the bizarre world of British libel laws and a legal tool that sounds like it's straight out of a spy movie: the 'super-injunction'. Jackson: Wait, hold on. A super-injunction? That sounds like a superhero's court order. What on earth is it? Olivia: It's essentially a legal gag order with a twist. An injunction is a court order that stops a newspaper or individual from publishing something—say, a story about a celebrity's affair. But a super-injunction goes a step further. It makes it illegal to report on the details of the story, and it makes it illegal to report that the injunction even exists. Jackson: Get out of here. Really? So it's a secret gag order? You're gagged, and you're also gagged from telling anyone you've been gagged. Olivia: You've got it. It's censorship that censors the fact of its own existence. And for a while in the UK, they were being used by the rich and famous to keep their secrets out of the press. Cohen tells the incredible story of the Premier League footballer, Ryan Giggs. Jackson: I remember this! But I only remember the aftermath. What was the setup? Olivia: Giggs had an affair, and the woman involved was going to sell her story to the tabloids. His lawyers went to court and got a super-injunction. The judge warned the media: censor yourselves, or face the consequences. So, legally, no newspaper in England or Wales could name him or even hint at the story. Jackson: So, case closed? Money and power win, story dies. Olivia: This is where it gets interesting, and where Cohen explores the double-edged sword of technology. The story was legally dead in the UK press, but it wasn't dead on the internet. Word leaked onto Twitter. People started connecting the dots, and soon thousands, then tens of thousands of users were tweeting Giggs's name in connection with the injunction. Jackson: So technology saved the day! The people fought back with tweets. Olivia: It's a nice thought, and it's partly true. But Cohen's point is more nuanced. He cautions against what he calls "technological determinism"—the idea that the internet automatically guarantees freedom. Giggs's lawyers tried to sue Twitter to get the names of the users. The legal machine was still churning. What really broke the dam wasn't just Twitter. It was two other things. First, newspapers in Scotland and India, which are outside the jurisdiction of English courts, ran the story. And then, a Liberal Democrat MP stood up in the House of Commons and used parliamentary privilege—a right that protects free speech in parliament—to name Ryan Giggs. Jackson: Wow. So it took an act of political speech, protected by a centuries-old tradition, to finally break a modern form of censorship. Olivia: Exactly. Cohen's quote is perfect here: "Technology can change the rules, but it cannot change the game." The internet helped, but freedom still had to be fought for using political tools. And he uses another story to show why we can't rely on tech alone. It's the "Bankers' Dilemma." Jackson: The Bankers' Dilemma? What's that? Olivia: It's a short, powerful anecdote. Two bankers, one from New York, one from London, are at lunch after the 2008 financial crash. They both know their industry is still fundamentally broken and that the public is at risk. They talk about writing a joint article to expose it. Jackson: Okay, a classic whistleblower scenario. So they publish it and cause a huge stir? Olivia: No. They immediately dismiss the idea as too dangerous. They know, with absolute certainty, that if they spoke out, they would be fired instantly and blacklisted from the entire financial industry. Their careers would be over. Jackson: And there's no super-injunction there. No fatwa. Just the silent, crushing pressure of money and career preservation. Olivia: That's the point. It's a form of censorship that requires no laws. It's purely economic. The fear of losing your livelihood is just as effective at ensuring silence as the fear of a lawsuit or a physical threat. This is the kind of censorship that thrives in plain sight in our "age of freedom."

Jackson: So we have these two wildly different types of censorship—one with death threats and burning effigies, the other with lawyers in expensive suits and the quiet fear of a pink slip. But the outcome is the same: silence. Olivia: Exactly. And Cohen's ultimate point, drawing on thinkers like John Stuart Mill, is that this silence is what's truly dangerous. Mill argued for a "free marketplace of ideas," the belief that the only way to find truth is to let all ideas—good, bad, offensive, brilliant—compete in the open. When we censor, we rig that market. We protect bad ideas from challenge and prevent good ideas from ever being heard. Jackson: It's like we're trying to create a sterile environment for thought, but in doing so, we kill off the intellectual immune system that helps us fight off bad ideas. Olivia: That's a great way to put it. We become weaker. Cohen argues that when we stop offending, when we stop questioning—whether it's a religious text, a powerful billionaire, or a corrupt industry—the world stands still. Progress requires argument. It requires friction. Jackson: So what's the takeaway for us, for people listening who aren't famous authors or whistleblowing bankers? This all feels so huge. Olivia: I think Cohen's advice is actually very personal. It's about cultivating a certain kind of courage in our own lives. Be brave enough to ask the uncomfortable question. Be willing to have the difficult conversation. And most importantly, be skeptical when someone, anyone, demands 'respect' for an idea. Jackson: Instead of respect, demand argument. Olivia: Yes. True tolerance, as Cohen shows, isn't about avoiding offense; it's about having the argument and trusting that, in the long run, better ideas will win out. But they can only win if they're allowed to fight. Jackson: That's a powerful thought to end on. It really reframes the whole debate. What do you all think? Where have you seen these subtle forms of censorship in your own lives? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.