Censorship and Self-Censorship: Some Reflections on Salman Rushdie’s Knife

I was recently inspired to read Salman Rushdie’s Knife, his memoir of the August 2022 attack that would nearly take his life and his remarkable recovery from the injuries he suffered. Rushdie had made some interesting remarks about Elon Musk and X in an interview with the Spanish daily El País. “Appropriating a noble cause — such as freedom of expression — when what you really do is the opposite,” i.e. censor, “is very dishonest,” Rushdie said.

As regular readers will realize, I cannot but agree. But reading Knife, I could not help but have the impression that Rushdie himself is only, so to say, an accidental free speech icon. He doesn’t censor others, but he does censor himself. One passage in particular stood out. In late 2022, Rushdie, despite his terrible injuries, was feeling increasingly fit, but many of his friends, who had hitherto appeared fit, were — suddenly and unexpectedly — falling terribly ill: some of them, it would turn out, terminally so.

Rushdie does note the irony, but he does not pause — perhaps does not dare — to ask why.

For the passage in question and some related reflections, see my new article at The Conservative Woman here — my first article for TWC.