A friend of mine took his young daughter to visit the famous City Lights in San Francisco, explaining to her that this store is important because years ago it sold books no other store would – even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive. So although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who famously called Sept. 11 victims “little Eichmanns,” he didn’t really mind seeing piles of Ward Churchill books prominently displayed on a table as soon as they walked in.
However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci’s new book “The Force of Reason” might finally be available, and that because Fallaci’s militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.
“No,” snapped the clerk. “We don’t carry books by fascists.”
Now let’s just savor the absurd details of this for a minute. City Lights has a long and proud history of supporting banned authors — owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was indicted (and acquitted) for obscenity in 1957 for selling Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and a photo in the store’s main room showed Ferlinghetti proudly posing next to a sign reading banned books. City Lights also has been featured in the ACLU’s annual Banned Books Week events.
Yet the store won’t carry, of all people, Fallaci, who is not only being sued in Italy for insulting religion because of her latest book, but continues to fight the good fight against those who think that the appropriate response to offensive books and cartoons is violent riots. It’s particularly repugnant that someone who fought against actual fascism in World War II should be deemed a fascist by a snotty San Francisco clerk.
Strangest of all is the scenario of such a person disliking an author for defending Western civilization against radical Islam — when one of the first things those poor, persecuted Islamists would do, if they ever (Allah forbid) came to power in the U.S., is crush suspected homosexuals like him beneath walls.
Yet those most oppressed by political Islam continue to defend it, even (perhaps especially) in the wake of the Danish cartoon furor. I’ve heard that in Europe this phenomenon is now called the Copenhagen Syndrome, and some of its arguments really are amazing.
For instance: “Freedom of speech is not absolute. It has to be in the service of something, like peace or social justice,” a young British Muslim woman named Fareena Alam wrote in the (U.K.) Observer in mid-February. While it’s true that freedom of speech is not absolute – laws against libel and making violent threats are stronger in Britain than here – Alam has it exactly wrong. Free speech doesn’t have to be in the service of anything but its own point of view. If it did, it wouldn’t be free speech.
I saw this sort of thinking for myself up close a couple of weeks ago, when I spoke about media bias at USC a few days after the first cartoon riots had broken out. A student wearing a hijab came up to me afterward, scoffing at the notion that violent demonstrations are a wrong and deadly response to offensive drawings.
“Oh, how many people have died?” she asked, screwing up her face in disbelief. At the time, the death total was four or five. By now it’s more than 100.
And this attitude isn’t only evident in women defending the faith of their fathers. Another woman in the USC audience stood up to ask a question – or actually, as so often happens at these events, to use the question-and-answer time to get up on a soapbox. She began by announcing that her father was in five different concentration camps, so she knows about the Holocaust. Then she segued into a long, rambling position statement about how little we understand the Muslim world.
The truth is, by now we understand the Muslim world all too well. For those who manage to remain perplexed, there are many helpful news photos of placards (“Behead Those Who Disrespect Islam,” “Get Ready for the Real Holocaust”), often carried by religiously shrouded women, that can clear up their puzzlement.
I hate it when long-winded “questioners” hijack the microphone at these things, and have little sympathy for reflexively leftist women’s studies types making excuses for the most misogynistic cause on earth. Also, especially post-James Frey, I was skeptical of that posturing about the Holocaust survivor father. It seemed like a scene from “The 40-Year-Old Freshman,” or perhaps a chapter in “A Million Little Concentration Camps.” So once this girl began extemporizing on the Iraq war, I said she was being unfair to the rest of the audience and to wrap it up already.
She looked rather stung, so I added that just as there’s no constitutional right not have your religion insulted, she didn’t have the constitutional right not to have her feelings hurt.
Back to City Lights, which indeed has no plans to sell any books by the “fascist” free-speech defender Oriana Fallaci. The store’s website proudly declares the place is “known for our commitment to freedom of expression,” in which case you might assume such commitment includes supporting those whose free expression puts them in real danger. But although “The Force of Reason” is expected to reach the U.S. this spring, a City Lights clerk said when I called they have no plans to carry anything by Fallaci and have never sold any of her work.
“You’re welcome to buy her book elsewhere, though,” my friend was told helpfully when he visited. “Let’s just say we don’t have room for her here.”
OK, let’s just say that. But let’s also say that one of the great paradoxes of our time is that two groups most endangered by political Islam, gays and women, somehow still find ways to defend it.
Catherine Seipp is a writer and visiting fellow with IWF. She also maintains a blog, “Cathy’s World.”