The illiberal spirit gathers its forces

In 1989, the murderous threats against Salman caused many of us to come together to show our protest and support.

In the months and years that followed, we learned and perfected a vocabulary to defend freedom of expression, thought and writing.

We understood that freedom of expression was the cornerstone of all our freedoms.

All the rights and freedoms that we possess have had to be stated and written.

At the time we could hardly tell, but the fatwa was proclaimed just as the world began to open up.

During the 1990s, democracies flourished in South America, Eastern Europe, and South Africa.

With the end of the Cold War, political optimism was very present.

Things are different today.

Democracy is a target of attacks.

China may soon have the technical means to perfect its totalitarian model.

Putin's Russia is openly hostile to the open society and looks more and more like a fascist state.

Two years from now, we may even see the end of the republic in the United States.

Hungary, Turkey, Pakistan, the Gulf States: the space for free thought has been slowly shrinking around the world.

The pressures come not only from the entrenched power of a state and its security services or from religious groups, but also from the extreme right and sectors of the left.

Sometimes it seems that the world has forgotten how to disagree without resorting to a weapon or, in the mildest of cases, cultural suppression.

The institutions of the rich West,

The fatwa of 1989 appeared as a last desperate attack on modernity and its secular self-confidence.

Now that the illiberal spirit is gathering its full strength, the attempt on Salman Rushdie's life seems sickeningly in keeping with our times.

Our defense of the open society has to be even more forceful.

Ian McEwan

is a writer.

© Ian McEwan 2022. This article was first published in

Reproduced with permission of the author c/o Rogers, Colleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, UK.

Translation by

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