Margaret Atwood speaks up for free expression

Wise old women are not always comfortable to have around. Canadian author Margaret Atwood would be the first to agree. Speaking (via Zoom) to the international writers conference of PEN held in Krakow, Poland, on September 2, the 85 year old writer applied her reflections on history to the decline of her country's big neighbor.

... We ourselves are living through what appears to be the collapse of an existing structure of power – that of the United States. Externally, the U.S. seems to be abdicating its position as the dominant world power. Internally, it appears to be turning its back on its one-time much celebrated status as an open, liberal democracy – the torch-carrier for freedom, a beacon of light to oppressed Soviet satellites during the Cold War – and flirting with the very kind of autocracy that it once stood so firmly against.

Outside its borders, other counties are no longer doing what it says – witness Russia, Israel, Ukraine, and India, just for example. Wars and power struggles are breaking out all over. And inside its borders, the present administration seems determined to destroy or co-opt American institutions that have been built up over centuries. A fair voting system, a judiciary independent of the executive power, just to name two. 

The secretary of Health Care, for instance, seems to be conducting some weird Social Darwinist experiment – survival of the fittest – let’s see who lives and who dies if we remove all protection against deadly diseases. What’s the goal? Who even knows? The elimination of poor people, because they aren’t healthy enough? It wouldn’t surprise me. 

The use of the military to intimidate civilians is another signpost; many countries in mid-century Europe were all too familiar with that.

One of the harbingers of autocratic takeovers is an attempt to control writers and artists, either by censoring them and dictating to them what sort of art they should produce – we saw a certain amount of that coming from the so-called academic left in North America and Britain over the past decade, twinned with online mobbing generally known as “cancel culture”– or by book banning and the intimidation of universities and media outlets, which we are now seeing on a rather large scale in the United States. The levers are money and lawsuits, but these have been quite effective. Most people with jobs are by nature fearful of challenging authority, or at least any authority with the power to fire them. 

I look back to the French Revolution – the prototype of all revolutions since – and remark merely that one of its first stated goals was freedom of expression, a value it espoused until its leaders gained power. Then, miraculous to behold, strict censorship set in, printing presses were smashed, and those who had published questionable views were beheaded. 

During the Terror, you could be executed for just being suspected of thinking counterrevolutionary thoughts – Thoughtcrime, as Orwell would have it. People entering the United States are currently having their phones and computers searched for evidence of Thoughtcrime against the Trump administration.

Self-supporting writers don’t fear being fired. Their employers are their readers. For this reason, they are often asked to speak about difficult subjects, and to say things publicly that many other people are thinking privately. And that is why I am here with you today – because I don’t have a job. ...

Beware of revolutions, perhaps. We need revolutionary imagination, courage and some visionary energy. But beware of revolutionaries, absolutely. In this, I'm with my old lady comrade.