“Nobody has the right to not be offended” – Salman Rushdie

It was a cold Leningrad evening when I left the apartment of my refusenik friends (for those not old enough to remember, refuseniks were people in the former Soviet Union who were denied permission to emigrate). In front of their apartment building stood a black car of the type that was only too familiar to Soviet citizens. The KGB person leaning against it motioned for me to approach. I slowly did, my knees shaking. In my backpack was a samizdat version of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a “dangerous” book that was considered damaging to the glory of the triumphant working class. It no longer carried the ten-years-of-hard-labor (basically the death sentence) of Stalin’s time, the likely punishment was what some now would call a “cancellation”: expulsion from the university, inability to find a good job, etc. The KGB man asked me for a light for his cigarette and with a smirk waived me off. I got lucky.
I recalled that episode when reading this article by Abigail Shrier. I am not familiar with the book being discussed and have no opinion on its scientific merits. The point is that a publication can be hounded and practically erased from existence by powerful monopolies because some find it offensive and/or disagree with the information. Meanwhile, Mein Kampf is readily available (as it should be). Is the The Books Are Already Burning headline justified? I’m not sure. There were periodic bouts of censorship in the US history when the likes of Tropic of Cancer and The Catcher in the Rye were banned for being offensive. I hope we collectively come to our senses and remember that – as Salman Rushdie said - “nobody has the right to not be offended.” The man knows something about the dangers of enforced conformity no matter how well-meaning it portrays itself to be.