Cancel Culture Carries On

by Phyllis Chesler

In 2017, Bruce Gilley’s work on colonialism was cancelled by Taylor and Francis. Just now, in 2020, after a typically vicious social media campaign, Gilley’s work has again been cancelled by Rowman and Littlefield; his book series has also been cancelled by Lexington Books.

My own two-volume works on Islamic Gender Apartheid and on Honor Killings were also cancelled by Taylor and Francis—but they did so in a smooth and clever way. After a long, long silence, and after many worried emails from me, and only months before our scheduled publication date, they finally wrote that they were familiar with my work and knew that I had a large audience. They said (I am paraphrasing) that it was in my best interest to take the work elsewhere because Taylor and Francis had to charge a rather huge sum for such volumes and my reader base would probably not be able to afford it. They had a point and yet… it should have been my decision. Their spin avoided having to say anything about the content of my work.

Happily, I almost immediately placed these works at New English Review Press and have never regretted it and never looked back.

Ever since Salman Rushdie’s work drew a fatwa and the author was rushed into hiding—the West has been busily self-censoring. Objective discussions about Islam, Islamic gender apartheid, polygamy, veiling, honor killing, the fate of Christians and Jews and other religious and racial minorities under Islam, especially the fate of apostates and homosexuals under Islam, the objective facts about black slaves in the New World—all forbidden, all relegated to defamed “conservative,” and allegedly “white supremacist” sites which are not read by liberals.

No Mohammed cartoons were allowed to appear in a volume about these same cartoons that Yale University Press published—and no, the author was apparently not told about this in advance. There are endless examples of both censorship and self-censorship and I’ve written about this dangerous trend many times before.

Now, Henry Kopel, another scholar and Assistant U.S. Attorney (Dept. of Justice), has–or had a book, War on Hate, coming out at Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield. His subject? The nature of hate propaganda, Palestinian-style, and how it is used to indoctrinate people. Will his work also be cancelled as yet another example of “white settler colonialism?” Is discussing this subject a Thought Crime? Are academics and intellectuals no longer allowed to even discuss certain subjects?

Sadly, the answer is yes. The West has submitted. Some of us will keep fighting.

Update: Henry Kopel just clarified the following:

“I hope I have not erroneously suggested that the book has already been cancelled. It is still out for peer review.” However, based on what has just happened to Gilley, he is worried and has sought support from the academic community.