Salman Rushdie has railed against those who attack free speech as he hit out at those that were ‘too eager’ to slap down voices they disapprove of.
The Satanic Verses author, 77, warned of the ‘very slippery slope’ of cancel culture and urged to ‘trust the audience to be able to make up their own minds’.
Sir Salman issued the stark statement last week at the Hay Festival in Wales.
In comments reported by The Observer, when asked about free speech, the Indian-born British author declared: ‘I’m in favour of it.’
And he also posed a question about the Lucy Connolly case, the wife of Conservative councillor Ray Connolly, who was handed a 31-month sentence after admitting posting an online rant about migrants hours after killer Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls on July 29 last year.
‘Here in Britain, we have the Race Relations Act, which makes it against the law to make racist statements. In the United States, there is the power of the First Amendment, which is why American racists are able to openly say what they have to say, and they’re not prosecuted.
‘The question is: which do you prefer?,’ Sir Salman said.
The 42-year-old former childminder deleted her post after four hours, but was arrested in August and pleaded guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred in October.
She last month lost her appeal against her sentence, meaning she faces serving another eight months behind bars.
It sparked a free speech row with Donald Trump ally and political commentator Charlie Kirk saying he was going to raise Connolly’s case with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Sir Salman last month said he was ‘over’ the horrific knife attack which left him blind in one eye after his attacker was jailed for 25 years.
Hadi Matar, 27, was sentenced for attempted murder after he repeatedly stabbed the author on stage during a lecture in New York in 2022.
Sir Salman recently told Radio 4’s Today programme that he was ‘pleased’ the man who set out to kill him had received the maximum possible prison sentence.
But he wishes to move on from the terrifying ordeal and focus on his new book coming out later this year.
He also highlighted the ever increasing role AI is playing in society, and warned authors would be ‘screwed’ if the technology ever learned how to write a funny book.
Speaking at the Hay Festival, he said: ‘The machine can absorb a million jokes but it can’t make one up, because you only get a version of the million old jokes.
‘Unfortunately, however, this thing learns very fast.’
The award-winning Midnight’s Children writer was left blind in one eye in the knife attack, had damage to his liver and was paralysed in one hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.
The event had tight security, with sniffer dogs and bag searches.
Once Sir Rushdie entered the stage to an audience of applause, he joked: ‘I can’t see everyone – but I can hear them.’
Although he said he felt ‘excellent’ he added there ‘were bits of me that I’m annoyed about, like not having a right eye. But on the whole, I’ve been very fortunate and I’m in better shape than maybe I would have expected.’
Last year, he published a memoir called Knife about the ordeal, which he said was his way of ‘fighting back’.
It comes decades after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses which made him the target of death threats as some Muslims consider blasphemous for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.
A short story collection called The Eleventh Hour is set to be released by the author in November.