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NICK COHEN
You Can’t Read This Book
Censorship in an Age of Freedom
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Fourth Estate
This revised edition published by Fourth Estate 2013
Copyright © Nick Cohen 2012, 2013
The right of Nick Cohen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 978000751850
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780007436453
Version: 2017-03-27
For Christopher Hitchens
(1949–2011)
There is an all-out confrontation between the ironic and the literal mind: between every kind of commissar and inquisitor and bureaucrat and those who know that, whatever the role of social and political forces, ideas and books have to be formulated and written by individuals.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
CONTENTS
Rules for Censors (1): Demand a Respect You Don’t Deserve
Rules for Censors (2): A Little Fear Goes a Long, Long Way
Rules for Censors (3): Go Postal!
4. The Racism of the Anti-Racists
Rules for Censors (4): Say that it is Bigoted to Oppose Bigotry
How to Fight Back: John Milton and the Absurdity of Identity Politics
5. The Cult of the Supreme Manager
Rules for Censors (5): People Don’t Want to Know
Rules for Censors (6): Money Makes You a Member of a Master Race
How to Fight Back: John Stuart Mill and the Struggle to Speak Your Mind
7. The Internet and the Revolution
Rules for Censors (7): Look to the Past/Think of the Future
8. The Internet and the Counter-Revolution
How to Fight Back: Advice for Free-Speaking Citizens
INTRODUCTION
Do you believe in freedom of speech?
Really, are you sure?
You may say you do. It’s the sort of thing that everyone says. Just as everyone says they have a sense of humour, especially when they don’t. You will certainly have had serious men and women assure you that freedom of speech is inevitable whether you believe in it or not. In the late twentieth century states, courts, private companies and public bureaucracies confined information, their argument runs. If it spread