Julie Burchill's book on woke culture has been cancelled by, um, woke culture:
A forthcoming book by Julie Burchill, the writer and newspaper columnist, has been dropped by its publisher after she was accused of being Islamophobic on Twitter.
The book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity killed progressive politics, was billed as a “characteristically irreverent and entertaining” indictment of the “outrage mob” and its impact on freedom of speech. However, the book itself appears to have become a casualty of the very forces it was describing, after Burchill’s remarks, deemed by many to be racist, caused outrage on Twitter.
Little, Brown, the publisher, announced it would not be publishing the book in April next year, as planned, after Burchill “crossed a line” by accusing Ash Sarkar, a left-wing commentator, of “worshipping a paedophile” because she was Muslim.
The row started when Sarkar expressed her disgust at an article by Rod Liddle from The Spectator published in 2012 in which he wrote: “The one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I’d be right in there, on day one. We’re talking secondary school level here, by the way — and even then I don’t think I’d have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called.”
Sharing an extract of the article among her 270,000 followers, Sarkar wrote: “Also when he writes that he wouldn’t have ‘dabbled much below year ten’ that’s referring to 14 and 15-year-olds. That’s still child sexual abuse and it’s astonishing that both he and his editor thought guffawing about hypothetically being a paedophile made for a good article.”
In the offending tweet, Burchill wrote in response: “Can you please remind me of the age of the Prophet Mohammad’s first wife? Thank you in anticipation.”
She went on: “I don’t WORSHIP a paedophile. If Aisha was nine, YOU do. Lecturer, lecture thyself!”
Later, Burchill announced on Facebook that her book had been “cancelled”....
In a statement, Little, Brown confirmed the title had been dropped.
“We will no longer be publishing Julie Burchill’s book. This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We believe passionately in freedom of speech at Little, Brown and we have always published authors with controversial or challenging perspectives — and we will continue to do so. While there is no legal definition of hate speech in the UK, we believe that Julie’s comments on Islam are not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint, that they crossed a line with regard to race and religion, and that her book has now become inextricably linked with those views.”
I, on the other hand, would suggest that Julie's comment on Islam are very much to the point, and also quite funny.
And you can almost guarantee that if someone states how they "believe passionately in freedom of speech", it's a prelude to an act of censorship which proves that, actually, they don't.
The statement comes in a stark contrast to the publisher’s earlier promotion of the book, published on its website.
Announcing its forthcoming publication, a preview said the book would look back at Burchill’s pursuit by the “outrage mob” after she wrote a defence of Suzanne Moore, a fellow columnist who until recently wrote for The Guardian, in 2013.
“Welcome to the Woke Trials will be part-memoir and part-indictment of what happened to Burchill between then and now, as the regiments of the woke took over. It will also be a characteristically irreverent and entertaining analysis of the key elements of a continuing and disturbing phenomenon — all told with the common touch and rampant vulgarity that has made Burchill a household name.”
So they promote the book by celebrating Burchill's abrasiveness and her notable tendency to be rude to people - and when she is rude to people, they promptly cancel her.
I hope we see some protests from other Little, Brown authors about this, but I'm not holding my breath.
Ash Sarker, meanwhile, is discussing her options for further action with her lawyers.
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