DAN WOOTTON: The intolerant left belittles the death threats against JK Rowling at its peril

There should have been only one response from the literary world when JK Rowling was threatened with death by a terrorist supporter after tweeting her support for Sir Salman Rushdie: Unity against such obviously dangerous criminal behaviour.

But the ugliness and intolerance of the left today is driving previously sane folk to the edge of madness.

So, the Harry Potter author, who has been waging a brave war to stand up for the rights of women by stating biological realities, instead found herself belittled and mocked by her craven critics who should know better.

Chocolat author Joanne Harris even posted a facetious Twitter poll, asking: ‘Fellow-authors… have you ever received a death threat (credible or otherwise).’

The response options were ‘Yes’, ‘Hell, yes’, ‘No, never’ and ‘Show me, dammit’. She later deleted the tweet, admitting she had got the tone wrong. 

Inexplicably, this woman is chairman of the Society of Authors, an organisation which should be intensely focussed on protecting the safety of writers who take controversial positions.

And as the despicable terrorist attack against Rushdie proves, such menacing ultimatums should never be taken lightly.

The death threat against Rowling came in a reply to her tweet after learning of Rushdie’s stabbing on Friday at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state where she posted: ‘Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok.’

The Iran-supporting Islamic extremist Meer Asif Aziz, a political activist and student based in Karachi, Pakistan responded with the chilling reply: ‘Don’t worry you are next.’

Aziz also described Rushdie’s alleged attacker Hadi Matar as a ‘revolutionary Shia fighter’.

The response to Rowling – now persona non grata among the liberal elite who used to worship her before they dismissed her as a TERF – proved everything that’s wrong with the woke elite, who are so terrified to offend certain minority groups, no matter how appalling the behaviour.

Astonishingly, after making a formal complaint, Rowling even received an email from the social media platform that read: ‘After reviewing the available information, we determined that there were no violations of the Twitter rules in the content you reported.’

It took Rowling to post a screenshot of that response juxtaposed with Twitter’s own guidelines, which clearly state violence cannot be threatened against individuals or groups and terrorism cannot be promoted, for action to be taken.

Meanwhile, Facebook allowed a group called Stand with Hadi Matar to post messages praising the alleged Rushdie attacker as a ‘hero’ who ‘stood up for his rights and defended his faith’.

The irony is, of course, that if you go against the woke orthodoxy of the US tech giants you can be banned in a flash.

I know highly credible folk who have been permanently banned from Twitter for criticising the work of the Tavistock gender identity clinic for children (which the UK government has now announced will be shuttered) and questioning the efficacy of Covid vaccines.

Such discrepancies show why the west is entering difficult terrain.

It’s easy to pick a war against gender critical feminists like Rowling, while ignoring the Batley Grammar School teacher who still remains in hiding after losing his job a year ago for showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad in class.

Beneath it all there is an unspoken feeling from the left that bubbles over publicly every now and then, like with the Harris poll belittling Rowling, that these folk were somehow irresponsible for putting their heads above the parapet and offending the Muslim lobby or trans extremists.

When the fatwa was issued against Rushdie by Iran after the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, so much bravery and unity was shown to support the British hero, led by the literary community.

High profile authors gathered together for readings, knowing full well they could be targeted by extremists, bookstores ignored threats of violence to continue stocking the novel, and translators stared down the risks to go about their work (the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses Hitoshi Igarashi was murdered in 1991).

Has there been that sort of solidarity to unite around Rowling in the modern era? Far from it.

It’s the same type of organisations and individuals who bravely backed Rushdie back then who now so casually call for the cancellation of Rowling in 2022, even trying to erase her from the Potter franchise she created.

No wonder it’s widely accepted today that The Satanic Verses would never be printed by a mainstream publishing company.

Free speech is being eroded as the cancel culture mob bows to external malevolent forces on a regular basis.

What’s most frustrating is that they do so using the argument that they are promoting tolerance in society, when in fact all they do is encourage the sort of violence against Rushie by empowering the likes of Iran.

Iran’s Kayhan newspaper, which is controlled by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggested further violence against former US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the attack on Rushdie.

The newspaper’s sickening front page editorial at the weekend read: ‘God has taken his revenge on Rushdie. The attack on him shows it is not a difficult job to take similar revenge on Trump and Pompeo and from now on they will feel more in danger for their lives.’

The constant threats are working.

People are scared to offend.

They’d rather turn on one of their own, than risk being accused of transphobia or islamophobia, a cardinal sin in Hollywood that will see you cancelled.

But Rushdie’s attack needs to be a moment of recalibration, starting with the full throttled support of Rowling to express her views on gender without facing any consequence from her own peers.

As Rushdie’s son Zafar declared wisely after the brutal attack on his father: ‘Free speech is life itself. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game.’